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For five months in 2017, Islamist militants took over the city of Marawi in the south of the Philippines. One of their prisoners was a Catholic priest, Father Chito, who was forced to make bombs under threat of torture. The experience shook him deeply, but he continues to hope Christians and Muslims will be able to live in peace. | By Josephine Casserly and Howard JohnsonBBC News, Marawi
It was dinner time at the Bato Mosque, and 20 people were gathered around the long table in the basement, ready to eat. On one side of the table, 15 jihadists. On the other, Father Chito, a Catholic priest, and and handful of other Christians.
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire startled them and they jumped into action. Father Chito reached for the AK47 at his feet and threw it across the table to one of the jihadists, who caught it and crouched at the entrance of the mosque, ready.
After a few minutes, the gunfire passed into the distance and they settled back around the table.
It had become a familiar routine. Father Chito had been held hostage for more than two months. He couldn't say he liked his captors, but he had developed what he describes as a "human closeness" with them. They were a little community, eating together, working together. And when he heard that one of the jihadists had died fighting the Philippine Army, he would grieve.
Father Chito was taken hostage on 23 May 2017, the day the city of Marawi was besieged by militants affiliated to Islamic State.
Before this, Marawi was a beautiful city, with tall, densely packed houses and ornate mosques. Located on the Philippines' southern island of Mindanao, it is a majority-Muslim city in an overwhelmingly Catholic country.
Islam first arrived in the south of the Philippines in the 13th Century via traders from the Middle East and the Malay and Indonesian archipelagos. Missionaries and mosques followed and those who converted became known as the Moro people. When the Spanish colonised the Philippines in the 16th Century, bringing with them Catholicism, they failed to conquer the Moro in the south of the country.
Since then, many Muslims in the south have felt marginalised. The region is among the poorest in the country and there have been calls for autonomy from what is widely seen as the Catholic powerbase of Manila.
Find out more
Listen to The Story of the Philippines' Lost City on Crossing Continents, on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 on 5 September
Or catch up later on BBC Sounds
When Father Chito was sent to Marawi 23 years ago, with the aim of building an inter-religious dialogue between Christians and Muslims, the vast majority of people in the city welcomed him and his colleagues. But in the months before the siege, he started to feel increasingly uneasy.
In early 2016, two brothers from the Maute tribe returned from studying in the Middle East to their hometown, Butig, south of Marawi. They started preaching a militant version of Islam and assembled a group of around 200 followers, who began attacking government forces in the area.
In 2017, the attacks drew closer and closer to Marawi. Fighters from Indonesia and Malaysia had already swelled the militants' ranks when, in late May, another IS-allied group, Abu Sayyaf, or "bearer of the sword", was spotted in the city.
The stage was set for the siege of Marawi.
In the middle of the day, Father Chito was woken up from a nap by the sound of gunfire. Then his tablet, computer and mobile phone all started beeping, as he was bombarded with messages from Muslim and Catholic friends, all saying same thing: "Get out of Marawi!"
Instead, he prayed. "I told myself, 'I trust everything to God's hands so I will not get out,'" he says.
At 5.30pm, the city fell silent, the streets emptied, windows were closed and lights turned off. The militants raised the black flag of Islamic State over the hospital. On the horizon the police station burned.
And then the jihadists arrived at the gate of the cathedral. As Father Chito approached the gate, two men raised their guns. Behind them, he saw over a 100 more armed fighters.
Along with five of his colleagues, he was forced into the back of a van and held inside all night, as the militants preached their version of Islam.
"During the whole evening, they are indoctrinating us: 'We are here because we would like to clean Marawi. This is called an Islamic city but there are drugs here, there is corruption here, there is wine and music here. We are here to establish the caliphate.'"
But there were thousands of civilians trapped in the city, who didn't want to be governed by allies of Islamic State. In the first days of the siege, there was chaos. People were stranded in their houses, desperate to escape but terrified of being caught in the crossfire.
Tong Pacasum was working in the town hall at the time, his job was to respond to floods and natural disasters. So when the conflict began, his phone began to ring.
"When we got the first call for the rescue operation, I was thinking twice about going out the gate because I know if I go out I'm not sure if I'll be making it back," he says. "But then you get overwhelmed with the situation, so you're left with no other option than to go, even if it means risking your life."
Tong brought together a team of volunteers from Marawi's Muslim community and together they went on death-defying rescue missions into the conflict zone. Their vehicles were shot at as they wound their way through piles of rubble and burning buildings. Tong decided that they needed a way to identify themselves as neutral. He remembered a pile of white construction helmets in his office, and he cut up a white table cloth to make arm bands. The team was soon branded the "Suicide Squad" by the local media.
But Father Chito and 100 other hostages, were far beyond the reach of the Suicide Squad. They were being kept in the basement of Bato Mosque, the militants' command centre.
They were told they would face "disciplinary action" if they didn't co-operate. Father Chita knew this meant torture, and feared it would cause him to lose his mind. So he worked for the militants, cooking and cleaning, and even - with a heavy heart - making bombs.
Urban guerrilla tactics - including punching holes through walls to create "rat runs" between buildings - helped the fighters evade capture. But aided by US and Australian intelligence the Philippine army carried out relentless aerial bombing.
The pattern of the airstrikes grew familiar to Father Chito. There were always two planes, each carrying four bombs, each explosion closer than the last.
He experienced more than 100 airstrikes in his four months in captivity, both wanting and not wanting to be hit. "I prayed and asked God for the next bomb to hit me," he says. But then he'd quickly change his mind. "No Lord, don't hit me. I don't want to be hit."
"There are moments when I didn't know how to pray," he says. "I complained to the Lord, 'If I sinned and you are punishing me, this is too much, this is not commensurate.' My faith in God was really challenged, to the point of blaming God."
On 16 September the Philippine army was so close to the mosque that Father Chito could hear their commands. Once darkness fell, he and one of the other hostages decided that this was their chance: they sneaked out the back of the mosque and ran. Two streets away they were greeted by a group of men brandishing guns - and whisked away to safety.
A month later, the Philippine defence secretary declared the country's longest siege over. The Maute brothers, Omar and Abdullah, and Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon had been killed, and their remaining fighters routed.
Over 1,000 people lost their lives in the five-month siege.
Nearly two years on, the city remains in ruins. The reconstruction has been painfully slow, with 100,000 people still displaced, living in camps or with relatives.
A square mile of streets in the centre of the city is now referred to as Ground Zero or the Most Affected Area. The scale of the devastation is akin to Raqqa, Aleppo or Mosul. Every single building has been damaged; many are leaning at awkward-looking angles or entirely reduced to rubble. We drive into the area with Father Chito, towards the cathedral that he was taken from.
As we pull up he excitedly points out the window. "That's our church!" he shouts. But as we enter, the mood changes. The cathedral has been reduced to a ruin. Bullet holes cover the walls, the tiles on the floor crack under foot and the roof has been blown apart leaving only the metal structure, which creeks eerily in the wind. The church is scheduled to be demolished and so this may be the last time he sees it.
Approaching the altar, my attention is grabbed by a statue of Jesus. There's a bullet hole in his stomach, his hands have been cut off and a crown of feathers is perched on his head. Father Chito leaves us for a moment to pray, he stands silently with his hand on a crumbling figure of the Virgin Mary, picking the plaster off it and crying.
Tong is one of those who lost his house during the siege and he has now been given a portable building. But instead of living in it, he stays with relatives and uses it as a base for a new organisation he's set up, called the Early Response Network.
Its aim is to stop radical Islam gaining a foothold in the community. A man hunches over a radio in the corner, doing the daily roll call to the network's 40 volunteers around the region. They report early signs of radicalisation and pass information to authorities, in the hope of preventing anything like the siege happening again.
Marawi is a clan-based society, and family feuds are common here. Tong says that in the years before the siege, extremist groups exploited grudges between families to recruit. Now, he and his colleagues try to mediate quarrels between households before they escalate.
In the immediate aftermath of the siege, all was quiet. The command structure of the militant groups had been decimated and the war had caused so much destruction that there was an overwhelming desire for peace and reconciliation.
But in the last few months, they have started picking up on some worrying incidents: sightings of armed militants, reports of young women attending radical training camps and recruiters targeting families bereaved during the siege.
"There's a small group trying to regroup," says Tong. "The root cause of this is what happened to Marawi. People's lives have been damaged. If the rehabilitation takes longer, more people will definitely be attracted to join."
Father Chito doesn't live in Marawi any more, he says it's too dangerous. But he sometimes visits to lead mass at the university, in a makeshift church set up in the gymnasium. He says that this is the only place in the city where Catholics can gather in large numbers and feel safe.
He's a local celebrity now and after the service, students queue up to take selfies with him. He is upbeat and excitable and recounts even the most distressing experiences with irony. It's a coping mechanism, he tells me.
"The sense of humour is an instrument that can make life lighter, that can balance so that you do not go to the extreme trauma, extreme stress. It can neutralise the worry and the painful experiences."
He's still undergoing therapy,
"I already lost my psychiatric balance, I was devastated. So although I'm happy I survived physically, my feeling of happiness is not on its full blast. Time heals and so we wait for the time."
But he is optimistic about the prospects for inter-religious peace in Marawi.
"After the war, people learned a lot of lessons. Because Muslim people and Christian people, they know that through violence, no-one will be victorious, everybody is a loser."
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She was well-known in the Hartlepool area as "Alco Ange" - drinking at least nine litres of strong cider every day - and was often to be found lying in the middle of the road.
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Carol Anne Davis, who in her book Children Who Kill profiled killers aged between 10 and 17, says many victims of child murderers resemble "a hated figure from their past".
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Ms Wrightson had preferred prison to being "on the out". According to Donna Jenkins, who met her in jail, "Angie was a lost soul who found life easier inside. She'd become largely institutionalised".
Her position as laundrywoman was "the first time she had felt valued", Ms Jenkins adds.
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Ms Jenkins says "it was the happiest time of Angie's life". She had a boyfriend, and became friendly with some local dog owners.
Then her boyfriend died from alcohol related problems, leaving her "heartbroken".
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Ms Wrightson would begin drinking as soon as she woke up and would carry on until she crashed out, rarely using any part of the house other than her living room, sleeping on the sofa.
But the darkness and confusion of Ms Wrightson's life was punctured by small pinpricks of kindness. She would buy chocolate bars when she was buying cider, and poke them through the letterbox for the young son of a neighbour.
She loved animals, and looked after an acquaintance's Alsatian for three weeks, which gave her a purpose and stemmed her drinking.
She was devastated when she had to give it back.
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When drunk she was out of control and unlikeable. Once, wielding a metal bar, she chased a girl down the street. She would call her landlord with fictional problems - saying windows had been broken when they had not, and then threatening to break them herself if he did not do what she wanted.
Her life was knotted with seemingly trivial arguments: Who stole whose tobacco; who was badmouthing whom; whose turn was it to buy drink.
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At that point, Ms Wrightson was inside - and so were the two killers, hiding in the bathroom.
She was unable to call for help. She was either unconscious or already dead.
Ms Moon impatiently tried Ms Wrightson's front door, which was unlocked. She put her head round and saw the devastation within the living room.
She shouted to Ms Gascoigne: "Someone's wrecked Angie's house - you should see the state of it."
The reply came back: "I don't care."
There were chances to save Angela Wrightson - many of which were sabotaged by herself.
In 2009 she was banned from buying alcohol. The Safer Hartlepool Anti-Social Behaviour Unit says she "consistently refused to engage" with the support she was offered over a number of years. She also "refused to stop her drunk and disorderly behaviour".
And she ignored the ban.
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There were many attempts to get her back into the retreat, but she kept leaving. Before long the opportunity was gone.
Angela Wrightson's story is not unusual.
The local area profiles for England indicate the levels of alcohol-related harm in Hartlepool are among the highest in the UK. The town is ranked 320th out of 326 local authority areas for the percentage of at-risk drinkers in the population.
Stephen Street is a run-down road where a significant number of houses are boarded up, and more than a quarter of occupied households are categorised as "economically inactive" - meaning residents are neither in work nor seeking employment.
Men and women clutching cans of strong lager and cider gather in grimy doorways and the nearby car park and graveyard.
The crime rate in Hartlepool is high, especially anti-social behaviour, violent crime and criminal damage. On Stephen Street, one woman was jailed for biting a police officer, another for dealing cocaine, another for arson.
The Institute of Alcohol Studies has previously outlined study findings that alcohol is involved in nearly half of all violent crimes.
Situations in which people get drunk are more likely to flare into violence, and Angela Wrightson was on both the giving and receiving end of arguments that culminated in physical altercation.
In 2014, the year Ms Wrightson was killed, there were 515 cases of murder or manslaughter in England and Wales. Few capture the full attention of the media.
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For the cynics among us, Valentine's Day is an annual nightmare: everything turns pink and heart-shaped, restaurants slap a premium price on a sub-par "special menu", and Hallmark shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank. | But beyond the cuddly toys and red roses, the tradition draws mixed reactions around the world.
From the hardline to the downright bizarre, here are just some of the ways Valentine's Day is embraced - or spurned like an unwanted lover...
Indonesia's condom raids
Authorities in some parts of Indonesia have banned students from celebrating Valentine's Day, saying it encourages casual sex. In the city of Makassar, police raided shops and dismantled condom displays.
The mayor told the BBC that condoms were removed from sight after customers complained, but would still be sold discreetly.
Valentine's Day has its roots in a Roman fertility celebration, but later evolved into a Christian feast day - a fact that worries conservatives in some Muslim-majority countries.
In Indonesia's second-largest city, Surabaya, pupils were told to reject the festival as it runs against cultural norms.
No emoticons for Malaysia :(
Next door to Indonesia, Malaysia has also seen a Valentine's backlash.
A group called the National Muslim Youth Association has urged women and girls to avoid using emoticons or overdoing the perfume, in a pre-Valentine's Day message.
The group's guidance included advice on how to combat the celebration of romance by making anti-Valentine posters and shunning Valentine-themed outfits.
Weddings on Robben Island
Robben Island will forever be associated with the infamous prison that held Nelson Mandela - but since 2000, it has hosted a mass celebration of love on 14 February.
The tradition was started by South Africa's Department of Home Affairs and the Robben Island Museum, and now attracts couples from across the globe.
This year, 20 pairs are planning to say "I do" in the island's little white chapel.
The service is offered for a small fee, and includes a tour of the island.
Organisers say 2017's couples were "chosen by the department based on their diversity and interesting romantic stories".
Thailand's 'very magical vitamins'
Thailand's civil servants are handing out free pre-natal pills on the streets of Bangkok on Valentine's Day, hoping to boost the country's falling birth rate.
Around 1 million baht ($28,600; £22,900) has been spent on the pills, for prospective mothers aged 20 to 34.
The "very magical vitamins" (to use the government's words) contain folic acid and iron.
In 1970, Thai couples had an average of six children, but the figure now stands at 1.6.
Pakistan's court crackdown
The High Court in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, has banned public celebrations of Valentine's Day, saying it is not part of Muslim culture.
The festival has gained a foothold in recent years, but local critics say it is a decadent Western invention.
The court order bans the media from covering Valentine's events, and bans festivities in public places and government offices.
Saudi's black market in roses
Saudi Arabia's religious police are on alert at this time of year for love-themed merchandise, including flowers, cards and suspicious "red items".
Florists have been known to deliver bouquets in the middle of the night to avoid detection, as determined lovers flout the countrywide ban.
A black market in roses and wrapping paper helps some broadcast their feelings.
But for others, it's the perfect time of year for a romantic break - to nearby Bahrain or the UAE, where celebrations are more tolerated.
Japan's anti-love protesters
As Japan geared up for the 14th, a group of Marxist protesters unfurled a giant "Smash Valentine's Day" banner in Tokyo.
The "Kakuhido", or Revolutionary Alliance of Men that Women find Unattractive, want an end to public displays of love that "hurt their feelings".
Members have been known to chant slogans including "public smooching is terrorism".
"Our aim is to crush this love capitalism," said Takayuki Akimoto, the group's PR chief.
"People like us who don't seek value in love are being oppressed by society," he added.
"It's a conspiracy by people who think unattractive guys are inferior, or losers - like cuddling in public, it makes us feel bad. It's unforgivable!"
The protests came as Japan's family planning association revealed that "sexless marriages" in the country are at a record high.
Nearly 50% of married Japanese couples had not had sex for more than a month and did not expect that to change in the near future, it said.
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Members of parliament recently unanimously voted in favour of arming civilians in a move they said would help combat the armed groups. It is due to be signed into law.
The attacks by militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group have significantly increased in the past year, causing more than half a million people to flee their homes.
Critics have questioned whether the new measure will make people safer, but the government insists that armed volunteers are necessary to stem the spread of violence.
Why get civilians involved?
The law says that the army's capacity to fight the militants is limited in terms of numbers of soldiers and lack of appropriate training.
"In light of the persistent threat, populations have... expressed their desire to actively engage in the defence of the homeland," it states.
But this is not proof of the army's weakness, the government insisted. Speaking to the BBC, Communication Minister Remi Dandjinou likened the future volunteers to members of the French resistance during Germany's occupation of France in the World War Two.
But there is a concern that the new measures could heighten ethnic conflict and fuel tensions between rival hunting and farming communities.
"The Burkinabe security forces are themselves implicated in very serious abuses against suspects," Corinne Dufka from Human Rights Watch told the BBC. "That is why subcontracting any defence responsibilities to armed civilians is so potentially problematic."
"It could exacerbate rising communal tensions and lead to more abuses, which would in turn push more people into the hands of the jihadists."
Burkina Faso's government has previously denied claims of widespread abuse.
Who will be armed?
Any national aged 18 and over can be considered for recruitment and there is no maximum age. But recruits cannot be part of any political group or party.
Volunteers must be patriotic and loyal and have a "spirit of sacrifice" which could include making the "ultimate sacrifice", according to the law that the MPs backed.
But, after it was passed, Defence Minister Cheriff Sy insisted recruits would not be used as "cannon fodder".
Recruitment will be carried out at a local level at an assembly where village leaders will be supervised by the army.
But the volunteers will not be a route to legitimising self-defence groups, made up of people who are sometimes referred to as vigilantes.
In Burkina Faso, as in Mali and Nigeria, civilians have armed themselves to defend their homes, and in some cases, gone on the offensive.
These self-defence groups are not officially sanctioned by authorities. They are often composed on ethnic lines and have in many cases targeted rival communities.
One of the concerns raised is that parts of the country - up to one-third according to some estimates - are believed to be under the control of militant groups, making it far too dangerous and impractical to hand out weapons in those areas.
The north and north-eastern border areas with Mali and Niger are the most affected by attacks, but so are increasingly the southern border areas.
What training will volunteers get?
It is unclear when the recruitment will start and whether people are actually keen to sign up.
The law states that at least 10 volunteers should be recruited per village or area of residency.
Once they are recruited, the volunteers will undergo 14 days of training, which will include how to handle weapons, basic combat methods, the rules of discipline and civic and moral education.
It is unclear who will be providing the training and whether it will be followed up.
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After their induction, the recruits will be given weapons, along with communication and observation equipment. But they will not get uniforms.
While volunteers, who are expected to sign up for at least a year, will not be paid, the groups will receive financial support from the state for equipment and other mission-related expenses. They are also allowed to receive donations.
They will get medical bills paid if they are injured and compensation if they are left with permanent injuries. Funerals will be paid for if those who die in action.
Nationally, the ministry of defence will oversee the work of the civilian force, but locally the village chief will be responsible.
What is their mission?
Volunteers are expected to be available at all times in their village.
They are expected to support the work of the army and police force, to help secure their village or district.
This could involve conducting surveillance and providing intelligence to the army but they are forbidden from conduct policing activities.
The volunteers will be expected to abide by a code of conduct, which for now has not been made public.
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Debris from last year's Japanese tsunami has already started landing on the West coast of the United States, and people living in Oregon are bracing themselves for more in the next few weeks, when the winter storms begin. | By Anne-Marie BullockBBC Radio 4, Oregon
The early mist over Yaquina Bay in Oregon is beginning to burn off as 25 volunteers gather to clean up the beach. The wind shapes the sand into dunes and debris can often be found collected at the base of these.
A dozen college students have joined pensioners, surfers and locals keen to keep the beach clear of all rubbish - but they are aware more debris from Japan is on its way.
"As far as what will come - that part scares me," says Sandy Hayden, who lives in the nearby fishing town of Newport.
"I've walked the beaches and see the trash that washes up anyway in the winter time so I have no idea what this winter will bring - but I just hope that there are a lot who will volunteer to clean it up."
Hayden is collecting pieces of polystyrene which have blown in and broken up. She puts them in a plastic sack along with bits of fishing rope, rubber and bottles. It's hard to say where it all originated, or when. But as time goes on, an increasing proportion of the rubbish will come from Japan.
It had initially been estimated the tsunami debris would hit land on the west coast of North America in 2013 but items started washing up in April this year, beaching in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. They are just starting to reach California now.
Volunteer beachcombers, who work alongside State Parks officers, are given gloves to protect their hands. There has been no evidence yet of any radioactive debris, but anyone who finds flotsam on the beach can alert the rangers if they do not want to touch it themselves.
In Oregon, 32 large bins have been placed along the coast as tsunami rubbish drop-off points.
Hayden says the volunteers are sensitive to what the debris is.
"It's a reminder of what happened, so it's not just trash. It was people's belongings and people's livelihoods and people's homes," she says.
More than 15,000 people died in the tsunami. The images of whole villages being dragged into the ocean remain vivid in the minds of anyone who saw them.
Thousands were drawn to Agate beach, Newport, when a 66ft (20m) concrete dock, kept buoyant by polystyrene, arrived intact in June.
"They all reacted in different ways," says Chris Havel of Oregon Parks and Recreation Service. "Many of them just walked up and touched it - without saying a word they were making contact with it... and after we confirmed it was from Japan the attitudes deepened. People were making this emotional connection with this horrible tragedy."
The bulk of the debris field is still currently north of Hawaii with the front edge starting reaching the West Coast, so much larger amounts are expected over the next year or so. That is a rough estimate.
"We can make these predictions about ocean currents but we've really got to get our eyes out there and see what's out there," says Jack Barth, an oceanography professor at Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.
"If it's a bunch of wood just from houses I don't see that as a big worry, but imagine larger pieces of houses if it was able to survive all the way across. There's obviously personal effects and we want to be watching out for those because it'll provide some closure for those families back in Japan."
This has already happened.
A football and volleyball washed up on Middleton Island, Gulf of Alaska, with names written on them, allowing beachcombers David and Yumi Baxter to trace the teenage owners and send them back.
When a container with a Harley Davidson motorcycle in it washed up on a beach in British Columbia, a Japanese person saw it in the press and helped locate its owner via the registration plate.
Despite the 5,000 miles of ocean between them, there is another connection that Oregonians have with Japan - a shared geology.
Signs at Yaquina beach warn of the tsunami risk here too. The coast has a history of significant earthquakes that in the past have caused giant waves, but that was before there were large settlements here.
The next one that strikes will leave them "susceptible to the same sort of tragedy that struck Japan", Mr Havel says.
"This dock, it shook loose from the west coast of Japan, travelled 5,000 miles across the ocean and delivered a message in a bottle to the people of Oregon saying: 'This will be you - we don't know when or how big it's going to be or exactly what will happen but this will be you. Understand that, prepare for it, but really accept the fact you live on the Pacific coast and there's a cost to doing that.'"
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A 17-year-old has been arrested after a dog walker was struck by a car and her pet killed in a hit-and-run crash. | The woman, who survived, and the dog, Millie, were hit on Doe Bank Lane, Great Barr, at about 17:00 BST on 22 July.
The teenager has been arrested on suspicion of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
Police said footage they released had been shared thousands of times and watched by millions of people.
The boy was arrested, after he was identified as the potential driver of a Renault Clio, West Midlands Police said.
The force said it still wanted any witnesses or people with dashcam footage to come forward
Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]
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Seventeen-year-old Jessie faced being forced into marriage to her 40-year-old cousin in Bangladesh. She begged the British Consulate in Dhaka for help and officials stepped in. She is just one of an estimated tens of thousands of British women at risk of being forced into marriage.
Here is her story. | Alan Morrison, the British Consul in Bangladesh, says his team meet a girl like Jessie every week.
Born in Britain but living in rural Bangladesh and promised in marriage to a much older man.
Jessie managed to call the consulate when her father was at evening prayers.
"She told them she was desperate not to marry but did not have any money and was not allowed to look after her own passport," said Mr Morrison.
Jessie had been promised to her cousin at the age of 11. She was due to turn 18 next month so the consul decided to act immediately.
"Her birthday is all important because normally we find a girl will be married on her birthday, so we need to get to her before that date," he explained.
When the embassy receives a call about a British citizen being forced into marriage they normally only have a few hours before the girl is moved away or married off.
"In these circumstances, when you've got a British girl, often she's seen as a commodity," explained Mr Morrison. "Because she's got a passport, he can get a visa, and work in the UK. We're seeing a generational strategy to emigrate to the UK."
They managed to locate Jessie in Sylhet, a day's drive from the capital Dhaka. It is where the majority of British Bangladeshis emigrated from to the UK and is where most of the forced marriages take place in the country.
Alan and a female consular worker, who acts as a chaperone and translator, drove straight there. They also took an armed guard, as families often resort to violence to prevent a rescue.
Dangerous
The element of surprise is also crucial for a rescue: arriving at the family home is the most dangerous time as they do not know how many male members of the family will be there to try and stop her leaving.
But the team find luck is with them - Jessie's father and uncles were not there.
Watched silently by the extended family of aunts and cousins they walked around the central courtyard and looked into the different faded, painted buildings until they located Jessie and her mother.
They found that Jessie had spent such a long time in rural Bangladesh that her English was almost non-existent.
Through the translator, Mr Morrison made sure she understood the consequences of leaving.
Without support from her husband Jessie's mum handed over her passport.
"If you want to take her I have no objections - but I must talk to her father," said her mother.
Within 20 minutes of arriving they were able to leave the family compound with Jessie and her passport.
Sat in the British Consulate car, Jessie held the hand of the female consular officer and smiled.
"She is relieved. It's a dream for her to go back to the UK," the translator relayed to Alan.
"I'm very, very happy," Jessie managed to say in English.
On the way back, Alan learnt more of her story: "She's just told us that she's hardly ever left the house, she's been to Dhaka twice and the UK twice - once for one month and then for 10 months.
"She hasn't been educated. For the past few months, as she argued with her father, no-one would even talk to her."
Jessie was taken to a woman's shelter, the only one in Bangladesh for forced marriage victims, to spend the first night of her life alone.
This, said the embassy officials, is the hardest time as Jessie has to wait four days for her flight to England so has time to think about what she has done.
'Be Strong'
Women's rights campaigner, Masouda Khatun Shefali, who runs the shelter, was on hand to encourage Jessie to keep strong.
"Remember they'll use love to trap you," she warned Jessie.
"Now your job is to get back to Britain, anything that gets in your way push it aside."
"You've got to be strong, it will be hard but you will make new friends," she reassured.
But Jessie revealed her own determination.
"I might be hurting but I won't give up, I'm strong and I won't change my mind. Even if I feel I'm dying I won't give up.
Jessie is the youngest of seven, but is the only child who has lived in Bangladesh. Her brothers and sisters all live in the UK, but she thinks they would not welcome her as they will feel she has brought shame on their entire family by not marrying her cousin.
A year later, Jessie has her own small flat in London and is going to college, studying for GCSEs.
"I have to learn lots of things because I have no support from anyone, no support from my family, no one," she said.
As expected her relatives in the UK have kept away from her. It has been a huge change and challenge for her but she stands by her decision.
"My cousin didn't want me, he just wanted a passport. Lots of Bangladeshi girls have to do that, we have to marry our cousins bring them to this country and then get divorced because we don't know each other well."
But she admits to a sadness at never seeing her parents again.
"I know my mum gave me a hard time, but I miss her a lot and I love her a lot because she's my mum.
"I don't know what she thinks about me but I feel sad. I want to see her again and hug her again but I can't, but one day maybe."
Jessie's story is told in My Forced, Unwanted Wedding on BBC Three, Monday 19 September at 21:00 BST.
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It is hard to overstate the symbolism and significance of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's chief financial officer and daughter of its founder. Huawei is the crown jewel of Chinese tech and Ms Meng is effectively its princess. | Karishma VaswaniAsia business correspondent@BBCKarishmaon Twitter
On December 1, the same day as President Trump and President Xi sat down at the G20 over grilled sirloin and caramel pancakes, to work on easing the trade war, Ms Meng was arrested in Canada and is now facing extradition to the US.
Although it's still not clear what the charges against her are - we know that the US has been investigating Huawei for possible violations of US sanctions on Iran - this is not simply a case about the arrest of one woman, or just one company.
This arrest could materially damage the relationship between the US and China at possibly one of the most sensitive times between the two countries in their long and torrid history.
"It could not come at a worse time and it is probably going to put a cloud over any upcoming negotiations," Vinesh Motwani of Silk Road Research told me. "The market had already turned more sceptical over the G20 agreement in recent days. This is only going to make the market more sceptical any deal can be reached. "
Rapprochement averted
Tensions have been rising between Washington and Beijing, not just on trade. But at that G20 meeting in Buenos Aires, it looked like the two sides had at least decided to talk, and thrash things out over a 90-day period.
Amongst those issues are technology concerns, which are front and centre of this trade war. Even if it wasn't clear how united China and the US may have been on the objectives, the very fact that discussions were taking place were seen as a semi-positive for the global economy.
'Hostage taking'
But this arrest is likely to be seen by China as an attack and "hostage taking", says Elliott Zaagman, who has covered the Chinese firm for the better part of the last two decades.
"China has a reputation for making agreements and not keeping them, not following through," he told me on the phone from Boston. "There's a theory that this could be a way for the US to hold Beijing to its word on the trade war."
If so, it is a move the Chinese media has not taken well.
"The US is trying to find a way to attack Huawei," says Hu Xijin, editor in chief of the Chinese and English editions of the Global Times - a publication often seen as a mouthpiece of the Chinese government.
"It is trying to keep Huawei down. That's why it has pressured its allies not to use Huawei's products. It is trying to destroy Huawei's reputation."
What Mr Hu is referring to is the recent rejection of Huawei's services by a number of US allies, including Australia, New Zealand and most recently the UK's BT which says it won't be using Huawei equipment in the heart of its 5G mobile network when it is rolled out in the UK (although it does still plan to use Huawei's mast antennas and other products).
There's no evidence of Huawei having ever been engaged in any spying or handing over of data to the Chinese government. In fact, whenever I talk to Huawei executives privately they tell me how frustrated they are because of how the US government and Western media unfairly paints them as a Chinese state-owned company that does Beijing's bidding.
Company sources tell me that Huawei should be seen as the modern, dynamic and law-abiding global firm that it is, and that the US's narrative is flawed and unfounded.
Still, Huawei's founder, the father of Ms Meng, is Ren Zhengfei - a former military officer in the Chinese army. And the fact remains, as Mr Zaagman points out in a recent piece for The Lowy Institute, "the firm's relationship with the Chinese People's Liberation Army remains an issue of concern and opacity".
Which is why the US says countries must be wary of Chinese companies like Huawei. Under China's laws, private companies and individuals may be obliged to hand over information or data to the government if they are indeed asked.
It's that possibility, government sources say, that is scaring them off doing business with Huawei.
Huawei has told me this is completely untrue, and other Chinese academics and business people have also rejected this notion.
Mr Hu of the Global Times agrees: "The Chinese government would not do this. China would not hurt its own enterprises. If it hurts its own companies, how would it benefit the country? Even if a middling or low-level official were to ask it, Huawei will have the power to refuse any kind of government request."
Many in China will see this as yet another attempt to contain the country's rise, by limiting its most global firms' access to international markets.
"This could further endanger Huawei's 5G aspirations outside of emerging markets," says Tony Nash of Complete Intelligence, on the line from the US.
"If Huawei is being investigated it could put both Huawei and ZTE on the back foot as other equipment makers gain a lead in North America, and potentially other developed markets."
Other countries
It's not just developed markets where Huawei may be losing ground. The scrutiny is building in emerging markets too. Industry sources tell me that the US has been putting pressure on Asian allies to stop them from using Huawei's equipment. The Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea were the latest recipients of this pressure, and India is thought to be next.
So what does this mean? The gloves are off. You should be under no illusion what this latest move by the US means for the relationship between the world's two largest economies: things have taken a dramatic turn for the worse.
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Chipmunk has said having an unfinished collaboration with US star Chris Brown leak onto the internet "felt like a bullet hit me in the heart". | The track, Champion, appeared online this week (24 November).
Speaking to Newsbeat the 20-year-old rapper said: "When it leaked... I was looking at the sky asking, 'God, why? I just didn't understand.'
"The amount of thought process that went into that track, the amount of battles we had for that track."
Chipmunk, who has scored hits with tracks like Chip Diddy Chip and Diamond Rings in the past, has been working on his forthcoming second album Transition due out in 2011.
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A Cumbrian police officer has been awarded the Queen's Commendation for Bravery for sacrificing his own life to save others. | PC William "Bill" Barker died on duty during the flooding in Cumbria in November 2009.
He was checking for people in the water when the bridge he was standing on collapsed beneath him.
The citation says "PC Barker paid the ultimate price for his selfless actions."
His colleagues at Workington police have created a garden in his memory.
His wife Hazel and his four children have since held fundraising events in his memory for the air ambulance.
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When a fire broke out at Grenfell Tower housing block in west London early Wednesday morning, a number of occupants were able to escape. One of them was 15th floor resident Christos Fairbairn, 41, who has told his story. (Readers may find some details of his account distressing.) | I live on the 15th floor of Grenfell Tower. I moved there two years ago.
At around 12.45am on Wednesday morning I was watching TV when I heard aggressive knocking at my door. I heard more activity and noise outside and shortly after I heard an alarm go off in the building. I saw smoke coming into the flat and that's when I realised there was a fire.
I rang the fire service and they told me to get out. They said: "Wrap a wet towel around yourself and get out of the block."
But I opened the door and the smoke was so thick I couldn't. I tried to leave the flat three times and each time the smoke was too thick.
I started to panic. I began banging on the window shouting: "Help me, help me, I'm stuck!" I tried to open the window but I burnt my hand on the melted plastic.
I could see police outside and people just standing there. It felt like they were just watching me. Then I realised if I don't go I would die here.
I wrapped a wet jumper around myself and ran out of the door with just the clothes on my back and my phone. The smoke was black and it was so hot and I couldn't breathe but I kept going.
I could feel myself tripping over in the dark. I was tripping over bodies. On one of the floors I tripped badly and fell, as I looked up I saw the face of a dead man.
I can still picture him now.
As I got to the third or fourth floor I was choking and couldn't breathe. I started to feel faint. I collapsed and that's when I felt a firefighter grab me.
I went to hospital and was treated for smoke inhalation. I had so much poison in my lungs. I was crying and having flashbacks.
Now I am left with nothing and have nowhere to live. But the council have paid for a room for me in Earl's Court in London where I am staying now.
I can't believe I am alive. I will never forget what happened and how traumatising it was. I know I will never live in a tower block again.
I feel lucky to be alive but I am devastated for those who were injured and lost their lives. Life is so short I know I will see my family and friends more now and appreciate the life I have. I shouldn't be here today but I am, and for that I am thankful.
Produced by Rozina Sini, BBC's UGC and Social News team
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Jeremy Clarkson will not have his contract at the BBC renewed, in the wake of allegedly punching a producer. But how did he get to where he is now? | By Justin ParkinsonBBC News Magazine
"In the competition between fame and fortune, you'd take fortune every day of the week," Jeremy Clarkson once said. "Fame is almost constant pain."
But the 54-year-old has made a career from being publicly controversial. The Top Gear host has managed to offend Argentines, Germans, Mexicans, Romanians and a host of others. Known for a fashion-proof love of tight denim, he's a friend of Prime Minister David Cameron and writes columns for two national newspapers.
Born Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, on 11 April 1960, to art teacher Shirley and travelling salesman Eddie, the star has described his early family life in a 400-year-old farmhouse as happy.
Clarkson first worked for the BBC aged 12, playing the role of Atkinson in the radio adaptation of the Jennings novels, Anthony Buckeridge's tales of life at the fictional Linbury Court preparatory school. The role did not last long.
"Why did it come to an end?" Top Gear co-host Richard Hammond once asked in an interview on LBC Radio. "He will have done something stupid, obviously." The truth was actually more prosaic. Clarkson's voice broke. Uttering schoolboy slang like "wizard" and "blinko" did not work in baritone.
Shirley and Eddie put Jeremy's name down for a number of public schools with apparently little idea of how to pay the fees. "They really didn't want me going to the local state school in South Yorkshire, which was rough," Clarkson once told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
Not long before Jeremy turned 13, the age at which he was due to become a boarder at the family's first-choice school, Repton, in Derbyshire, Shirley hit on a lucrative idea.
She made toy versions of Paddington Bear for Jeremy and his sister Joanna for Christmas. They proved popular with friends, so she and her husband started selling them. But lawyers for Paddington's creator, Michael Bond, weren't happy, at one point threatening litigation. So Shirley, who wrote about the episode in a book, and Eddie spoke to the author to seek out the licensing rights.
"It was the start of my good fortune, really, which has followed me all the way through life," Clarkson told Sue Lawley. "They just happened upon Paddington, just as I was getting to 13, so I was able to go away and the school fees were able to be paid."
Yet school did not turn out as Clarkson's parents had hoped. Living away from home meant "suddenly I found out that I could misbehave without the embarrassment of a parent finding out. A teacher finding out - who cares really? Who cares that your English teacher knows you've had a fag?"
"When you're young, you never guess which people are likely to make themselves into world-renowned figures," fellow ex-pupil Jerry Austen told the Sunday Times. "Certainly, Jeremy wouldn't have sprung to mind."
While Clarkson succeeded academically, passing nine O-levels, his behaviour was poor. He smoked, drank and, despite the restraints of a single-sex school, womanised his way out of Repton, the story goes. Ten weeks before sitting his A-levels, he was asked to leave. There is some debate as to whether this constituted a full expulsion or merely an agreed parting of the ways.
Out of education, Clarkson, by now 6ft 5in tall with dark, curly hair, had little to do other than return to his parents and help with stuffing bears. "They were so cross with me," he said, "but I knew something would come along. Something always comes along. It does in my life, anyway."
Walking along the street one day, he came across the general manager of the local paper, a family acquaintance, who asked him what he was doing there. After explaining his expulsion, the man replied that he should become a journalist.
Clarkson got an interview at the Rotherham Advertiser, where, according to his own account, further good fortune followed. The CV was sparse, but it turned out that Clarkson's grandfather, a GP, had delivered the editor's first child, having come out during a World War Two air raid to do so. Still grateful, the editor offered him a job.
Although now a fluent writer, Clarkson described himself as "properly rubbish" at local reporting, once forgetting the reason he had phoned a bereaved woman and, on another occasion, being forced to leave an inquest in hysterical laughter while messing around with a colleague.
"He was very much the same as he is now," sports reporter Les Payne, who shared a desk with Clarkson at the Advertiser, says. "He was a younger version of the current Jeremy Clarkson you see on TV. He mucked in with the rest of the office but he was very much a man who expressed his own opinions."
Payne remembers a colleague little interested in the goings-on in Rotherham, at one point bridling at having to cover an agricultural show. "He was taking the mickey," he says. "He didn't like having to write down which was the biggest marrow. The parish pump stuff clearly didn't appeal to him."
Clarkson is now a regular attender of Chelsea matches, but didn't always express enthusiasm for football. "He used to say all sport, except motor sport, was a waste of time, and that football was no more than kicking a windbag around a field and pointless," says Payne. "So I'm not sure when all that changed."
But one constant is Clarkson's love of cars and driving. When Payne wanted to buy his first car, Clarkson spoke to his girlfriend and she sold her yellow Mini to him.
In 2011, the BBC received more than 20,000 complaints after Clarkson joked on The One Show of public sector workers striking over pensions: "Frankly, I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families." But, says Payne, Clarkson also went on strike during a pay dispute in the late 1970s, although he can't remember him joining the picket line.
Clarkson left the Advertiser and worked for the Rochdale Observer and Wolverhampton Express and Star, but realised life in provincial journalism was not for him. He went home to his girlfriend one night and experienced an epiphany midway through telling her about the installation of some new office furniture. "I knew at that moment that I had to leave," he told Desert Island Discs, "because when new office furniture becomes so important that you even mention it, pack your bags, get out, move 200 miles away."
He went south, still looking for a role in life. "I couldn't really work this notion of working for someone else. I was living in Fulham in south-west London, a real Thatcher heartland, and everybody had their own little business doing up houses, a million different things, print shops and so forth. And I thought I've got to have one of these little businesses. So I forced myself to have an idea a day."
Playing on his love of cars, he started his own company, Motoring Press Agency, providing reviews to be syndicated among the regional press. From here, he became a regular contributor to Performance Car magazine.
At a Citroen product launch in the New Forest in 1987, Clarkson began talking to Jon Bentley, a researcher on Top Gear, the long-running BBC Two car magazine show.
"He was just what I was looking for - an enthusiastic motoring writer who could make cars on telly fun," Bentley, who now hosts Channel 5's The Gadget Show, has said. "He was opinionated and irreverent, rather than respectfully po-faced. The fact that he looked and sounded exactly like a twenty-something ex-public schoolboy didn't matter. Nor did the impression there was a hint of school bully about him. I knew he was the man for the job."
A few months later, Bentley, now promoted to producer, was able to offer Clarkson a screen test, in which he road-tested a Range Rover. "Clarkson stood out because he was funny," Bentley has said. "Even my bosses allowed themselves the odd titter."
Clarkson first appeared on Top Gear, which had been going since the 1977 as a straight car magazine show, in 1988. In an echo of his trip to the agricultural show in Rotherham a decade earlier, one of Clarkson's first assignments saw him reporting on a junk sale, in a style free of irony. His initial performances were, by his own admission, rather wooden.
But he became more relaxed and outspoken and he changed his appearance, going from wearing blazer, tie and chinos to his now signature outfit of jeans and casual jacket. Clarkson was highly critical of some cars. "We spent most of the time filming it from the back so as not to frighten viewers," he said of the Ford Scorpio. On the Vauxhall Vectra, he told viewers: "I have to fill seven minutes with a car that doesn't merit seven seconds."
BBC executives liked what they saw. In 1998 the chat show Clarkson started on BBC Two. It played on Clarkson's growing reputation for plain-speaking, allowing him to goad celebrities. "There are no transsexuals in Chipping Norton. That's just a fact," he said during an interview with the feminist writer Germaine Greer. In one skit, he put a 3D map of Wales in a microwave oven.
"It's regarded as a significant achievement to get a chat show," says media commentator Steve Hewlett. "When someone moves from their area of expertise, it's a signal that they're able to exert pressure. If you talk to people on the commissioning side of TV, they say there are lots of agents pushing for their clients to get a chat show." Unfortunately, says Hewlett, the programme, which came off-air in 2000, "tanked".
Clarkson left Top Gear in 1999, describing Birmingham, where the show was then filmed, as "the armpit that masquerades as Britain's second city". He even suggested his own style had grown tired, writing in Top Gear Magazine: "The shock tactics had become predictable and so weren't shocking any more."
"The first time you heard me liken some car to the best bits of Cameron Diaz," he added, "you probably sniggered about it at school all the next day. But now, it's tedious."
The Clarkson-less Top Gear was taken off-air in 2001 for a revamp. It returned the next year with Clarkson as the main presenter, after he and fellow Old Reptonian Andy Wilman, a producer, devised a different, mainly studio-based format, focusing on banter between presenters.
Clarkson's first co-hosts of the revamped show were Richard Hammond, who had worked on cable TV, and former car salesman Jason Dawe. For the second series, Dawe was replaced by James May, an experienced motoring writer.
The show soon gained a cult status. Items like Star in a Reasonably Priced Car were interspersed with studio discussions, slickly filmed car reviews and stunts and races. Items showing Clarkson, May and Hammond going around the world, getting into scrapes, proved popular.
"The reason you like it is [that] the relationship between the three presenters exactly mirrors the power structure of the relationship of the three bears," comedian Stewart Lee joked.
A silent, helmeted character called The Stig, his true identity unknown, joined as the show's test driver. The name was apparently an in-joke between Clarkson and Wilman, Stig being a nickname for first-year pupils at Repton.
The clubby new atmosphere worked. Top Gear became a hit not just in the UK, but much of the world. It is sold to 214 countries, has an estimated global audience of 350 million and reportedly makes the BBC £50m a year. Clarkson sold his stake in the Bedder 6 joint venture - which exploited the commercial rights to Top Gear - to BBC World in 2012 for £8.4m.
Clarkson lives near the small town of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. His friends from the area include David and Samantha Cameron, former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks and Blur bassist Alex James. The press has nicknamed this group the "Chipping Norton set". In 2010, Cameron reportedly appeared dressed as The Stig for a video filmed as part of Clarkson's 50th birthday celebrations.
A smoker since his school days, Clarkson has campaigned against the ban in enclosed public places, including bars, and is a frequent critic of bus lanes and the European Union.
Partly because of his friendship with Cameron and his dismissal of former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a "one-eyed Scottish idiot", for which he later apologised after a barrage of criticism, it is often assumed that Clarkson is a Conservative, but he rarely comments on party-political issues. His role is seen by some as more of a tribune of disgruntled middle England.
Clarkson has had a long-running feud with former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, whom he punched at the British Press Awards in 2004 for publishing photographs of him with a female colleague.
Arguments and controversy are never far away. In 2008, the BBC received hundreds of complaints after Clarkson made a joke about lorry drivers murdering prostitutes.
In 2010, the show upset Mexicans by branding them "lazy, feckless and flatulent". In July last year, the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom censured the show after Clarkson used a derogatory term for Asian people during a Burma special.
And, in May last year, Clarkson revealed he had received a final warning, and faced the sack if he made "one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time". This followed the dissemination of a clip, filmed in 2012 but not used on Top Gear, in which he appeared to use the "n-word". He apologised.
Other groups are considered fair game, though. "You can only be racist about people who have been persecuted," he once said, "and, I'm sorry, that doesn't include the Germans or the Americans."
Clarkson has had two marriages. His first, to Alexandra James in 1989, lasted only a few months. In 1993 he married his manager, Frances Cain. They have three children.
Clarkson bought a converted lighthouse on the Isle of Man's Langness peninsula, but he and Frances became involved in a seven-year legal dispute with ramblers over a path running near the property's kitchen. In 2012, a judge ruled in favour of the ramblers. Frances described the ordeal as a "horrible experience".
Now in his mid-50s, Clarkson remains as controversial as ever. Will he temper his act? Does the vitriol he gets in return sometimes hurt too much?
"Of course you mind," he said on Desert Island Discs. "You do mind... In the wee small hours you do think, 'I wish I were a nicer person. I wish I could be nicer about people and things.'
"But then in the heat of the moment, perhaps a month later, when you've perhaps had too much coffee, and you're in the studio and something crops up and you say something and everybody laughs and you feel great and you go home and actually you've upset somebody else."
The Sunday Times TV critic AA Gill, a close friend of Clarkson, has written that he does not feel appreciated by the BBC, that he has been "working for the enemy", while dealing with the loss of his mother and some health issues. David Cameron has also supported him, saying: "Because he is such a huge talent and he amuses and entertains so many people, including my children, who'd be heartbroken if Top Gear was taken off air, I hope this can be sorted out, because it's a great programme and he's a great talent."
Whatever happens, having already earned millions, Clarkson will not struggle for money. And his fame, however painful for him, is unlikely to diminish either.
More from the Magazine
It's hard to go anywhere in the world these days and not find that Top Gear has got there before you. The programme may have begun on regional television in the UK - but it's now viewed in pretty much every region of the globe, writes Daniel Silas Adamson.
How Top Gear conquered the world (11 March)
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Enrique Iglesias won't be joining Britney Spears on her tour of Canada and America, despite her announcement that he would on US TV. | Spears told ABC's Good Morning America programme that the pair would be hitting the road together.
But a statement from Enrique Iglesias denied the news hours later saying the singer was "very sorry for the confusion it might have caused".
Britney Spears starts her US tour on 17 June in Sacramento, California.
She released her seventh album, Femme Fatale, last week.
Enrique Iglesias is currently on tour in Europe and is due to play concerts in Nottingham, Cardiff and Glasgow in June.
The statement from Enrique Iglesias added that the singer, who had a number one single in the UK with Hero in 2001, respected Spears and was a fan of her work.
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North Korea does not have the greatest reputation abroad - death camps, dictators and nuclear-missile-testing don't make for good PR. But in some Asian cities the Pyongyang restaurant chain is seeking to change minds with good food and great service. | By Ed ButlerBBC News, Phnom Penh
I've travelled the world quite a bit but I can honestly say I've never encountered restaurant staff quite as talented as this.
After depositing their plates of food, waitress after waitress stepped up on to the stage to deliver a series of virtuoso numbers - Yong with her operatic arias, Ji-u on the violin, or Lin-a with her remarkable whirling dervish routine, balancing a pot on her head.
All of these performances were served up to a thumping electronic beat, while rose-tinted images of the Dear Homeland flashed up on a screen behind them.
I have to admit I became quite transported by it all. But perhaps this was the beer, and the enthusiastic crowd, who clapped and cheered throughout.
We'd been served tasty if overpriced Korean dishes - dog-meat casserole and pine-nut gruel among them. And there was a range of exotic $50 beverages, flavoured with ginseng and sea cucumber, plus herbal pills which, the waitress told me, really could cure anything.
But the question is - and I suppose the reason many foreigners like me wander into this place - what exactly are we coming to be cured of?
The nights I went in the place was packed, overwhelmingly with South Korean or Chinese expats, mostly large gangs of them drunkenly flirting with the staff.
The servers would dance elegantly between the tables in their colourful peasant smocks, smiling as they side-stepped the occasional groping hand of a client.
It led me to ponder one circulating theory - that this was all a complex form of espionage... the talented and attractive waitresses had been placed here to seduce high-value visitors, like me perhaps, to extract valuable state secrets?
To test that idea, I ventured a conversation with Yong, the waitress serving me, who did speak some English.
"How are you? Where are you from?"
"Pyongyang", she replied (OK, so that was a pretty stupid question).
"How long are you here in Cambodia?"
"Three years. I go home in one year."
"You like it here? You want to stay here?"
"No, I miss Pyongyang," she replied.
I wasn't sure but did I detect a slight clenching of her jaw there?
She was polite but a little stiff. If this was seduction, I was Kim Il Sung. I tried a more direct approach.
"Where do you live?"
"Upstairs."
"Gosh, how many of you live up there?"
"A secret. It's a secret," she smiled icily. And then, more firmly, as I moved to pull out my camera, "No, no photos allowed."
So instead I turned to an elderly South Korean doctor sitting nearby. He told me he'd recently been asked to treat a couple of the young ladies when they'd got sick.
They were not normally allowed out, he said.
"They were all highly trained at the State Arts College," he told me. "They were the most talented girls."
But here they find themselves watched night and day. The waitresses watch each other, the chef is watching the waitresses, someone is even watching the chef.
I decided to do some internet searching on my phone. Reports of defections from these places are actually pretty few and far between.
The staff, of course, have families back home, and experts say it could go very hard on them if anyone tried to run away - although one or two restaurant managers have been known to abscond with bags of cash.
On those occasions, restaurants had been shut down entirely.
The working assumption, according to most reports, is that the Pyongyang chain is primarily there to make money, to feed the North Korean leadership's desperate need for foreign currency.
Some speculate that the restaurants are in fact directly under the wing of the secretive Bureau 39, an agency that allegedly launders cash for the government through ventures that include arms sales and methamphetamine production.
But to be fair, there was absolutely no sign of that here. And anyway, given all the staff, pleasant decor and equipment, it occurred to me that this little place was hardly going to provide that much of a boost to the nation's struggling balance sheet.
I turned back to the Korean doctor. What did he think? Could these women be spies, or was this just a money-laundering operation?
He shrugged doubtfully. Maybe it wasn't about money or politics at all. Maybe the North Koreans just want to put on a show - to smile and to sing - they just want to be loved.
Maybe.
I am pleased to disclose that, after some persuasion, one waitress, Lin-a, did relent - she posed for a photo with me. In the picture she can be seen smiling in her peasant frock. I'm smiling, too, in my jeans.
And behind us, next to an epic mural of a rising Korean sun, stands another waitress, watching us.
How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent:
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Eva was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a motor neuron disease, just a few weeks after her birth in August. Her parents plan to enter her in a controversial "drug lottery" in the hopes of getting access for a promising new treatment that costs $2.1m (£1.6m) per patient. | By Jessica MurphyBBC News, Toronto
Ricardo and Jessica Batista noticed something was wrong with Eva just a couple of weeks after she was born.
The Toronto couple's "beautiful young girl" loved to play and smile but took a long time to eat. She would get tired. Her arms would fall back when they picked her up.
There was "no head control, she was very floppy," Mrs Batista recalls.
At just seven weeks, Eva was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy [SMA] a rare, deadly genetic muscle-wasting disease.
Between one in 6,000 to one in 10,000 children are born with SMA.
Eva is believed to be one of the youngest patients to be diagnosed with SMA Type 1, also called Werdnig-Hoffmann Disease, the most severe form of the disease the Batistas call "a nightmare".
'Not prepared for the road ahead'
Babies like Eva can face many health challenges, from muscle weakness to trouble breathing and swallowing. They may need breathing assistance or a feeding tube. The disease can be fatal if untreated.
"We did research on it but it still - when you research it - it tells you what it is and all that, but it doesn't prepare you for the road ahead and what to expect," said Mr Batista.
The Batistas' priority was getting the best care for their newly diagnosed child.
In Canada, where the couple live, they have access to Spinraza, a prescription drug taken during the patient's entire lifetime that can increase survival and motor function. It's been on the market since 2016 and is the first approved therapy to treat all types of SMA.
There is also a brand new drug - Zolgensma. It's produced by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis and was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for children under the age of two.
It's a one-time prescription gene therapy touted as a potentially life-changing treatment. It's also currently the world's priciest single-dose treatment, at $2.1m per patient.
Gene therapy, at the cutting edge of health science, involves introducing genetic material into cells to compensate for abnormal genes - in the case of SMA, the faulty SMN1 gene.
In consultations with Eva's doctors, the Batista's have begun treatment with Spinraza - but they see gene therapy as their daughter's best hope.
"We contacted a couple of families in the US that have taken this gene therapy and throughout conversations with them and through the research we did we immediately came [to the decision] that that's what we needed to get her, because that's the best option, the best solution in terms of what can help her for the best results," Mr Batista said.
But for the Batistas, the multimillion dollar price tag was beyond prohibitive.
Zolgensma is not approved in Canada. The couple would need special authorisation from Health Canada, the drug regulatory agency, to gain access to the drug for their daughter in that country.
Without that authorisation, they would have to go a hospital in the US to get it administered, bringing the total cost to approximately C$4m ($3m; £2.3m).
With fundraising, the family managed to raise some C$1.8m in about four months - a feat in itself - but "we need more help", says Mrs Batista.
Patient group Cure SMA Canada says they'll be pushing for access to Zolgensma as well as another promising new experimental treatment developed by drug company Roche.
Spinraza has proven safe and effective, executive director Susi Vander Wyk says, but is not ideal for all patients, so the more options the better.
"We're excited for patients to access this - but it's not quite [there] yet," she says.
There is third option for the Batistas - one that depends on the luck of the draw.
When demand from families for Zolgensma spiked following its approval in the US last May, Novartis subsidiary AveXis announced a programme to provide the therapy free to some eligible SMA patients.
Drug becomes 'coveted prize'
It would give out up to 100 doses to patients who meet clinical criteria using a "blinded selection" - a lottery - every two weeks through 2020, starting on 3 February.
The firm said in December that the managed access programme was "anchored in principles of fairness, clinical need and global accessibility...that doesn't favour one child or country over another".
Novartis says the programme was developed with input from bioethicists - but it has been criticised by patient groups around the world.
Kacper Rucinski, co-founder of the UK's TreatSMA and a board Member with SMA Europe, say they will be asking the pharmaceutical firm to remove "fully or partially" the lottery element of the programme.
Mr Rucinski says they support compassionate use programmes for pharmaceutical access but "here, what you are seeing is that the company says: 'Oh yes, we received your application, we see that it is needed, so we will throw a dice to see whether we should provide it or not.'
"That is basically unacceptable from the clinical point of view."
SMA Europe said in a statement the programme "will make thousands of SMA babies compete with each other for a life-saving treatment, splitting tightly knit communities and turning this experimental drug into a coveted prize."
Mr Batista says while the couple are happy some children will gain access to the drug "what are we going to say to the other kids whose lives are dependent on this? What do we say? 'Better luck next time?'"
Mr Rucinski also thinks there is a certain amount of "hype" around Zolgensma as the newest drug on the block.
"Personally we think it is a promising drug but we ask for more data," he said.
He notes questions were raised around the drug in August, when the FDA said Novartis had submitted manipulated data in its approval application, though the regulatory agency said it was confident the drug should remain on the market.
SMA Europe hopes to sit down in the coming weeks to discuss the programme with Novartis - which told the BBC it's open to feedback from patients groups and health professionals to "capture learnings and help guide us as we move forward".
For the Batistas, the high-stakes lottery is a "long shot".
They are working with Eva's neurologist to enter her into the Novartis programme but with 100 doses for the whole world "to just depend only on that is too risky", says Mrs Batista.
The couple have spent much of January at Toronto's Sick Kids hospital, where the Eva is being treated for pneumonia and two other viruses.
When she gets better their focus will be on raising enough money to get her treated in the US, which would need to be done before she turns two.
"The stress level is through the roof," says her mother. "But we're doing everything, everything we can to help her."
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Flood warnings and alerts remain in force across coastal parts of Wales following the highest tides in two decades. | The so-called 'supertides' have seen some roads closed and localised flooding, as the unusually high spring tides wash in.
Warnings have been issued for Crofty on Gower, and for the Clarach Bay, Ceredigion, and Aberystwyth tidal area.
A further eight alerts for the Welsh coast are also in place until later.
The spring tides reached an 18-and-a-half year peak over the weekend.
Natural Resources Wales warned of "dangerous conditions" with water rising to more than 6ft (1.8 metres) above normal levels in places.
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Three men have been reported to the procurator fiscal in connection with alleged hare coursing near Ardersier.
| Hare coursing is an illegal pursuit which involves dogs chasing and killing hares.
Police Scotland has thanked members of the public for providing information on incidents of the illegal activity in the Highlands.
The alleged incident near Ardersier was reported in the past few weeks, a spokesman said.
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Josette Audin spent more than 60 years asking French leaders to admit responsibility for her husband's death in Algeria. Finally, last year, Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that he had been tortured and killed in custody. At the same time, he said the archives would be opened to researchers - was this an empty promise? | By Charlotte McDonaldBBC World Service
"This is the university where we were studying in Algiers," says Josette Audin, pointing at a photograph of a grand building with classical columns on a tree-lined square.
The 87-year-old is telling me about her life with Maurice Audin, a fellow maths student at the University of Algiers in the 1950s.
They met during a lecture, fell in love and got married. Both were of European descent - as were one in 10 of Algeria's population after 120 years of French rule - and both were communists who supported the fight for Algerian independence.
"My parents were not fighting with arms," says Josette's daughter, Michèle, "My father was doing propaganda."
In 1957, Maurice was teaching maths at the university and working on his doctoral dissertation, while Josette was bringing up their three young children.
By this point the Battle of Algiers was raging. Pro-independence groups were carrying out violent attacks and the authorities were struggling to keep control.
When it became known that the Audins had given shelter in their home to a wanted communist leader, soldiers arrived one night and took 25-year-old Maurice away.
The French in Algeria
1830: France occupies Algiers
1848: After an uprising led by rebel leader Abd-el-Kader, Paris declares Algeria to be an integral part of France
1940: France falls to Germany in World War Two - allied landings in Algeria follow in 1942
1945: As WW2 ends, thousands are killed in pro-independence demonstrations in Sétif
1954-62: Algerian War - the Battle of Algiers lasts from 1956-7
1962: Algeria becomes an independent state
"My mother asked them, 'When will he be back?'" says Michèle.
"'If everything goes well,' they said, 'he will come back in half an hour.'"
But he never returned. A close friend who was arrested the next day said he saw Maurice strapped to a table, being tortured.
"After two or three weeks they told her, 'We have good news for you. Your husband has escaped,'" Michèle says.
Her mother instantly knew they were lying, Michèle says, and realised why. "She knew that he was dead."
But Josette wanted the truth from the authorities.
"She tried to publicise the case. She made a campaign but she had no means to do anything. She was just writing letters with a pen and paper."
Josette wrote to anyone she could think of who could help her cause - journalists and academics.
"I couldn't do anything else. I had no choice," she says.
In 1962, Algeria was granted independence. A few years later, Josette and her children moved to Paris. Over the years more evidence emerged that indicated Maurice had been tortured and killed. Books and many articles were written. One theory was that he was strangled by an interrogator, another that he was mistaken for someone else. A senior intelligence officer boasted in old age that he had given the order for Audin to be killed.
But despite Josette's campaign, officially there was silence.
Find out more
Listen to France, Algeria and the Battle for Truth on Assignment, on the BBC World Service, from Thursday
Click here for transmission times, or to listen online
Every time a new president was elected, Josette would write to him.
"Some answered her, some didn't even answer," says Michèle.
"She was not asking for apologies but she was asking to know the truth and some recognition of the responsibility of the (French) Republic."
Finally, in 2014, President François Hollande admitted Maurice died in custody. But the next president, Emmanuel Macron, surprised even the family.
He contacted Josette before she had even sent him a letter. Then, last September, he issued a declaration making clear the French state's responsibility for Maurice Audin's death.
A system that empowered the authorities in Algeria to stop, detain and interrogate any suspect had been a breeding ground for terrible acts, he said, including torture; Audin had been "tortured then executed, or tortured to death". On a visit to Josette's home, he asked for forgiveness.
But Maurice Audin is just one case. Thousands of people disappeared during the Algerian War, on all sides of the conflict, and in many cases nothing at all is known about what happened to them.
President Macron said he now wanted the national archives to be opened up, so that families could get answers.
Some historians are unsure what that might mean in practice, however.
It's already possible to access documents held in the national archives. Did he mean that unspecified military archives would be opened up?
Historian Raphaëlle Branche argues that incidents of torture and killing are unlikely to have been recorded in the first place.
"A lot of these activities are extra-judicial," she says. As they were not sanctioned, probably no record was made, she suggests.
Another historian, Fabrice Riceputi, says there is also evidence that documents were deliberately purged.
"At the end of the war the French army went to some effort to get rid of anything in archives that might lead to revelations about some of the crimes that were committed during the war," he says.
Riceputi did, however, make an interesting find while going through newly released documents in the French national archive centre in Aix-en-Provence.
It was a file kept by the Prefecture in Algiers of people reported missing by their families, containing the names of 850 individuals.
"The French prefer to maintain secrecy around these documents, which means that they were particularly precious and valuable," says Fabrice. "I realised that as soon as I saw them."
In the days after Macron's declaration, Riceputi uploaded these files to a website he has created with another historian, Malika Rahal, called 1,000 Autres - 1,000 Others.
He asked for people who knew the missing to get in touch if they had any information about them, and got his first response in less than 24 hours.
"I will remember for the rest of my life the first morning after we put the site online," Riceputi says.
"I opened my computer and I had a message which - and I say it without any shame - made me cry because even I wonder sometimes if the work we do is really useful to anyone."
They have now received roughly 300 witness statements about 70 individuals, many of which confirm that the missing relative never came home.
One of those is Mounira Yacef in Algiers. Her father, Lahcene Yacef, was detained and she has no idea how he died or what happened to the body.
"He was taken away one night and that was it," she says. "The absence of a body means the absence of a history."
The co-founder of the website, Malika Rahal, says: "There is huge hope for something which we are at this stage absolutely incapable of providing - the answers to where is the body and how did the person die.
"People hope we'll open up the archives and they'll contain answers to these questions, and they might not. These are questions to which you might simply never have the answers."
For Mounira, just seeing her father's name in an official document means something.
She says she has always felt an affinity with the Audin family, whose decades-long struggle she has followed from afar.
Josette Audin's daughter, Michèle, tells me this struggle has now come to an end for them, even though there is still much that they do not know.
I ask Josette if she is happy that a French president finally acknowledged the state's responsibility for her husband's death.
"Better late than never," she says.
You may also be interested in:
Yasmine Belkacem was a 14-year-old schoolgirl with a beautiful face and long black curls when she joined the Algerian independence movement. For months she carried messages between members of the National Liberation Front, along with money and food to fighters in prison. Then one day she asked if she could plant one of the home-made bombs the Algerian fighters were exploding in French cafes and outside police stations.
Read: A child bomber with 'no regrets'
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
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The obstacles to President Donald Trump's border wall are not confined to the four walls of Congress. As areas are cleared to start building new sections, some landowners, including a butterfly sanctuary, have sued to stop the construction. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
Marianna Trevino Wright sits on a bench near a wooded section of the National Butterfly Center and begins identifying animals.
Scissortail flycatchers, green jays, olive sparrows and clay-coloured thrushes swoop by, pecking at oranges set out as a snack and splashing in a bubbling fountain. From the tree branches above, great-tailed grackles screech and whistle like avian car alarms.
Closer to the earth, a menagerie of butterflies flit among the nearby flowering bushes. Zebra Heliconians and large orange sulfurs; queens and red-bordered pixies.
Then there are the other sights and sounds at the centre.
The hum of a US Department of Homeland Security helicopter high overhead. Border Patrol agents buzzing by on motorcycles and ATVs, their faces obscured by masks and goggles, pistols at their side.
The rumble of trucks dragging tyres behind them, smoothing dusty roads so the footprints of interlopers can more easily be spotted.
A government powerboat, with menacing .30-calibre machine guns on its deck, roaring down the river.
The butterfly centre, of which Wright is the director, sits on 110 acres near the southern tip of Texas - an area of low-lying marshes, brush and scrub forests, offering a variety of ecosystems that provide ample habitat for migratory species of all shapes and sizes.
It is also flush along the Rio Grande River, which forms more than 1,260 miles (2027 km) of the 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico.
That puts the small, private environmental preserve in the centre of a raging debate over immigration and national security - and whether and where to build Donald Trump's oft-promised border wall.
"It is a war zone," Wright says. "That's what the government wants it to appear to be. It's all theatre. So they've got to have all the actors, all the costumes and all the props."
South Texas is a funnel of all sorts for animals that winter in Mexico and burst into the northern climes as the weather warms.
It's also the closest point in the US geographically to Central America, where a growing number of families have been fleeing poverty and political violence to seek refuge on US soil.
Battle for the borderlands
Near where Wright was bird-spotting, a broad levee topped by a gravel road bisects the butterfly centre. This is where the US government wants to build a new section of wall, using its broad powers to confiscate private property for public use.
Wright points out that the Border Patrol has already built a massive gate along the road - made of the same kind of rust-coloured steel it uses elsewhere in its bollard fencing. For now the structure, unconnected to any other barriers, is more symbolic than useful. That may someday change.
Wright steps aside, as yet another Border Patrol truck rolls by. Its occupants, in green uniforms, smile and wave politely.
"They're only doing that because they know you're with the media," she explains.
Her relationship with the government personnel that have turned her little slice of Texas into a quasi-militarised zone is usually less than friendly, she says.
She explains how, on a summer's day in 2017, she discovered five private contractors with chainsaws and heavy equipment, clearing brush and trees along a road that runs the mile and a half from the levee to the banks of the Rio Grande.
They left after a brief confrontation, but a few weeks later a government representative arrived unannounced at her office.
"He came with posters of the border wall design and told me they were building the wall on our property," Wright says.
The plans laid out an 18-foot vertical slab of concrete along the front edge of the levee. An 18-foot-high steel bollard fence rises from there, with accompanying 22-foot-tall "all-night blitzkrieg lighting," as she calls it. The current two-lane road expands to the width of six lanes.
"And when the contractors return," she says the man added, "they would have a green-uniform [Border Patrol] presence. So armed federal agents on private property protecting for-profit contractors."
Wright worries about the impact the planned border wall would have on the species in her sanctuary.
Some birds and butterflies would be able to pass through or over the steel slates, but not all.
And terrestrial wildlife, like armadillos and endangered snakes and lizards, will be trapped behind the wall when the Rio Grande floods. In addition, natural habitat for all the various animals would be cleared as part of the wall's "enforcement zone".
After her meeting with the government agent, Wright began a multi-year series of court battles to block the US government from building its wall on the centre's private property.
It has made her a hero to environmentalists and immigration activists, and the target of obscenity-laden vitriol from some Trump supporters and wall proponents.
Added to the centre's gift shop collection of insect-related knick-knacks and books are displays explaining the ongoing legal battle and "Ay Mariposa" butterfly T-shirts, captioned "Battle for the Borderlands". More than $100,000 has been raised for the centre's legal fees.
"We're suing over the violation of the NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] and the Endangered Species Act and the de facto seizure of our private property, as well as multiple other egregious acts by Border Patrol," Wright says.
The centre filed intent-to-sue documents. Then the actual lawsuit. Then … nothing. No response from the federal government, and no court hearing for more than a year.
Finally, last month, as contractors moved heavy construction equipment onto the property, the centre filed a temporary restraining order.
The equipment was removed, but on 14 February, a federal judge in Washington dismissed the lawsuit.
The laundry list of environmental and cultural preservation laws that the centre's lawyers say the wall would violate had all been properly waived by the Department of Homeland Security, the judge wrote. Other possible violations could not be litigated until after the government breaks ground on the wall.
Wright and her legal team have appealed, while they wait for the government to make its next move.
More voices from the border:
In February, Congress appropriated $1.4bn for new wall construction. Lawmakers stipulated, however, that none of the money could be used for new fencing through the butterfly centre, wildlife preserves, a Catholic church and several other private properties that have gained prominence for opposing the construction.
Those restrictions do not apply to the money the Trump administration has freed up through the president's recent emergency declaration, however, prompting fears that the butterfly centre's reprieve may only be temporary.
Tim Beeken, one of the centre's lawyers, says they'll be ready if the builders return.
He contends Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen didn't properly consult with landowners before waiving the federal laws and regulations that normally apply to such large construction projects.
"What we want them to do is comply with those laws, move more deliberately and allow them to think about ways to protect the centre's property interests," Beeken says.
Such a strategy has been used already with some success - 63 times, by the Washington Post's count - to block other Trump administration policies that were rolled out without jumping through the proper procedural hoops.
It's a technical argument, but if it works it would buy the centre some time.
A wall, but not a solution
Wright says that in her six years at the Butterfly Center, she's only personally witnessed three small groups of undocumented migrants coming through the property.
US government numbers, however, indicate that the lower Rio Grande Valley is becoming an increasingly popular entry point for the Central American families and unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the US.
From October to February, the Border Patrol apprehended 58,032 families on US soil - a 209% increase over the same time period a year earlier.
Although Donald Trump has been touting a wall as a way of ensuring border security since the early days of his presidential campaign, the spike in unauthorised crossings has given his call a new sense of urgency - one echoed by Republican politicians and their supporters.
"I absolutely think the border wall is necessary," says Joacim Hernandez, a businessman in nearby McAllen, Texas, and president of the area's Young Republicans.
"It is necessary in some areas to help control the flow of traffic and assist Border Patrol agents and their job of apprehending illegal immigrants."
He warns that if the wall goes up in most of the Rio Grande Valley but not in places like the butterfly centre, those exposed areas will become the preferred illegal entry-point - with the increased traffic leading to exactly the kind of massive environmental damage the centre's defenders hoped to avoid.
That may end up being the case, but there is one small complication. A wall - even one along the length of Rio Grande in southern Texas - won't solve the current immigration problem.
"Our wall is oftentimes a mile or more away from the river, the real border," says Jim Darling, mayor of McAllen. Build it any closer, and it would be in the river's flood plain.
As soon as migrants cross the river, he continues, they're eligible to have their political asylum claims heard by a US judge.
In other parts of the US - such as California - the government is building walls right on the border, keeping would-be immigrants from setting foot on US soil.
In the Rio Grande, however, the crossings won't end until US asylum law changes - and those who are fleeing their homes in Central America know that the law has changed, and getting on to dry land would not be enough.
The current system has prompted more would-be migrants to steer away from places like Tijuana, on the California border, and head toward Texas, even though the adjoining Mexican state of Tamaulipas struggles to deal with violence and the influence of drug cartels.
"The policy right now is, let's keep pounding for the wall and ignore this massive problem we're creating with asylum and the failure of immigration policy," says Darling.
A missing crisis
The World Birding Center in Hidalgo, Texas, offers a preview of what could be in store for the butterfly centre, just a dozen miles up the river.
The tree-dotted grounds still attract wildlife-watchers, with binoculars around their necks and animal-identification charts in hand. A canal links the Rio Grande to an old pumphouse, which once supplied water to the agricultural fields to the north.
The pumphouse used to be a symbol of the region's connection to, and dependence on, the waters of the Rio Grande.
Now, the river is only accessible through a narrow road at the far end of the canal. The rest of the property is lined with the kind of towering border wall Mr Trump promises to extend.
The river levee is a solid vertical concrete embankment. A rusty-red bollard fence looms over areas where the concrete isn't as high. Chain-link fence and curled concertina wire with razor-sharp spines fill in where there's not steel.
A massive electronic gate near the pumphouse looks like something out of Jurassic Park, suitable for holding back an angry Tyrannosaurus.
Cameras dot the fence line, and at the other end, where the road curves down to the river, a mobile Border Patrol watchtower with dark, tinted windows surveils the area.
The wall is a tourist attraction of sorts, drawing some who may have come for a bird-watching stroll or a visit to the pumphouse museum.
Teresa Ruess, an Iowan who spends winters in balmy southern Texas with her husband, pauses at the imposing gate and says she approves of the wall.
"I hate to say it, but I think we need it," she says, adding that immigrants coming across the river could bring diseases into the US.
"But I feel for the kids," she continues.
Farther down the gravel road, a young couple - Ithiel Cruz and Keren Tovar, from nearby Texas towns - also peer curiously at the concrete, steel and barbed wire.
They say they have no opinion about whether it's good or bad, but they don't like all the negative attention the debate over border security is giving their region.
"We were just in Houston recently, and they hear we're from the valley, and they're like, dang, how is it down there? You guys see a lot of crime or a lot of people coming over?" Cruz says.
"It's like honestly we don't really hear much about it. It's really good where we're at. We don't know why y'all are scared."
Statistics bear this out. Nearby McAllen, for instance, has the lowest crime rate in 34 years - with declines each of the past nine years.
The town's police chief, Victor Rodriguez, attributes the success to the totality of resources the federal government has dedicated to border towns - of which the already constructed border wall is only a part. The most valuable resource they've received, he says, is the human kind. The number of Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley region has grown from 392 in 1994 to more than 3,100 today.
"People can make arrests, people can deter, people can stop," Rodriguez says. "Fences and walls don't do that."
What's clear to him, however, is that McAllen and the towns around it are not in a state of crisis.
While they've seen a surge in undocumented migrants, placing some strain on city resources, the asylum seekers don't stay in the area. They head to the north and east, where the jobs, and their friends and family, live.
"They're going to Chicago, they go to New York or the big cities," he says. "They will be the ones to tell you whether this is a crisis or not."
Memories of a river
It's a misty morning in mid-March, and just a few bends down the Rio Grande from the butterfly centre Sandra Leal and her son Edgar sit on the banks of the river and fish.
Anzalduas Park is located at the point where existing border wall turns into planned wall. It's a peaceful bit of green grass, trees, picnic tables, barbecue grills and boat docks.
The night before, more than 300 migrants crossed the river just south of the park, where they were quickly taken into custody by Border Patrol. Now, however, it's quiet.
There's a park on the Mexican side as well, just a hundred metres away. People are fishing there, too, and a few faint chords of ranchero music can be heard when the wind blows east.
Leal says she enjoys spending time with her son by the river. Earlier in the day, she showed Edgar a map of the Rio Grande and explained how it stretches all the way from distant Colorado. He wondered if some of the water they were fishing in travelled the whole distance.
She said she liked to think so - that the river, the fourth longest in the US, forms a bond that runs deep into the heart of the country.
"Even if we don't catch a thing at all today, it's more about being connected to our natural beauty out here," she says. Playing indoors is nice, she says, but the outdoor memories - going fishing, visiting the butterfly centre, going to something natural - are the ones that last.
She worries that a wall will cut her community off from the river, and give her son a different kind of childhood memory.
"Taking the kids out fishing, seeing the open land, being able to show him Mexico right there… having a wall just takes away from our natural beauty," she says. "I don't want a memory to be based off this big wall separating us."
That's a concern filmmaker Ben Masters says he's seen play out all along the US-Mexico border. He and a group of friends travelled along the Rio Grande from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico on canoe, horseback and mountain bike, recording their journey for the recently released documentary The River and the Wall.
"What I have seen in areas where there is a wall, people don't feel comfortable," Masters says. "There's a no man's land between the river and the wall where they're constantly harassed by Border Patrol. You know it's not an environment where people want to vacation."
Masters also notes the irony that the US fought a war with Mexico in the 1840s in large part to ensure access to the Rio Grande, the only major body of water in the region.
Now the country is essentially giving that land away.
By law the US government can't use the wall to block Americans off from their private property. Whether it's ranchers, homeowners, churchgoers or bird-watchers, the Border Patrol is obligated to construct gates along the length of the border wall to allow US residents to come and go as they please.
The butterfly centre's Wright promises to give her gate access code to every one of the 30,000 annual visitors and members of the preserve.
The reality, however, is that the wall - with its imposing steel, concrete and razor wire, under the watchful eye of uniformed government agents - could form a psychological barrier as much as it is a physical one.
That's the point Wright, in her lawsuit, is trying to make, that the wall creates more problems than it solves.
The government, she says, needs to take the people, and the animals, who live along the Rio Grande into full account.
"We appreciate the river," Wright says. "We know what an incredible resource it is both for our natural treasures, but also for our commerce, for our economy, for the amistad - the kinship - that we have on the other side."
The question is whether a judge will eventually agree.
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The trial of a former priest accused of assaulting eight boys while teaching at Fort Augustus Abbey School has been adjourned until next year.
| Father Benedict Seed, 83, denies the charges, which include striking pupils aged between 11 and 18 with a cane and a spiked golf in the 1970s and 80s.
A trial date has been fixed for 23 January for further investigations.
It also allows time to arrange for one witness to give evidence via a video link from Hong Kong.
Appearing at Inverness Sheriff Court under the name Thomas Seed, the former priest had his bail conditions continued.
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The Islamist al-Shabab group that controls much of southern Somalia has recently suffered several significant defeats. The BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse has been travelling with Ugandan soldiers in the African Union force that has been fighting the al-Qaeda-allied militants and reports from Afgoye, until last month one their key strongholds. | We were standing in the shade of some trees, sheltering from the vicious midday sun, when the unmistakable strains of Grieg's Peer Gynt began emanating from the pocket of a young man in camouflage fatigues.
Dum di dum dum dum-dum-duuum…
The young man reached for his mobile and squinted at the screen. "I don't recognise the number," he said, letting it ring.
As the tune continued, my curiosity was piqued.
"Perhaps it is one of your old friends?"
The young man nodded. His name was Absher Ali Mohammed, nom de guerre "Abu Khalit". He was a defector from al-Shabab.
The call was from Abu Khalit's former commander.
The two spoke in Somali, I could not understand the conversation, but I could hear it - the discussion was lively and punctuated by bursts of laughter.
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He accused me of being an apostate," Abu Khalit said.
Al-Shabab is being pushed out of towns and villages in southern and central Somalia by Ugandan and other African Union forces. The soldiers are by and large Christians.
Abu Khalit brushed away the suggestion that he had abandoned his Muslim faith.
"One day, you too will join us," he told his former commander.
It was that last remark that had prompted the loudest laugh at the other end of the line.
"If they catch me, they will slaughter me with their own hands, they will cut off my hands and legs," said Abu Khalit.
His commander in al-Shabab was a man by the name of Sheikh Mustaf. The defector said he was one of between 200 and 300 men under his command.
The sheikh had also acted as a local judge. His favoured punishment was amputation.
'Harassing people'
Abu Khalit said he had little time for the foreign fighters who provide the Islamist group with its ideological backbone.
"They hide their faces from us. They live in safe houses, and we are not allowed inside," he said.
When African Union forces took the town of Afgoye, near the capital, Mogadishu, at the end of last month, Abu Khalit and his fellow fighters had been pushed out of the area.
It was then that he decided to change sides.
"I realised al-Shabab did not want to bring freedom to the people. They were just harassing people."
Abu Khalit and another defector by the name of Gashan both said they had joined the Islamists out of a combination of religious and patriotic motives.
"When the African Union forces invaded, we were told, 'They are Christians, so you must defend your country and your religion,'" said Gashan, whose name means shield.
But some months ago, he said he noticed al-Shabab demanding tax by force.
They would confiscate animals from the nomads and carry out harsh punishments.
"I realised they were not about religion," he said. "They were about killing people."
So here they were, in the shadow of a tree, two defectors sharing a lunch of rice, chicken and goat meat with a contingent of Ugandan soldiers.
Later, we drove into town. There, another possible motive for their defection presented itself.
National obsession
At a crossroads on the outskirts of Afgoye, an impromptu market had sprung up; a line of tables, from which women in brightly coloured headscarves were selling small bunches of leaves.
For many Somalis, chewing this stimulant, known as khat, is a national obsession, close to a way of life.
Al-Shabab declared it to be "haram", forbidden, and banned it.
They would not have approved of Abu Khalit's musical ringtone either.
In that and many other ways, people here say al-Shabab have alienated the local population.
Once they enjoyed support for bringing relative stability where there had been chaos. That support now seems to be on the wane.
In the town of Baidoa, near the Ethiopian border, local residents said al-Shabab had been forcing young men and even boys to fight in a desperate attempt to bolster their numbers.
The result, they say, has been a wave of defections.
And the defectors have helped the African Union and their Somali interim government allies to arrest yet more fighters.
For many years now, the balance of power in Somalia has shifted among a patchwork of rival clan warlords.
People understand this system. They respect it.
For a while, al-Shabab became the dominant force in this power struggle.
But now the group is in retreat - many here sense its weakness and that may turn out to be the most fatal blow of all.
One man here observed: The African Union is now the biggest warlord in town.
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Councillors in Edinburgh have agreed to look into the price of scrapping the city's beleaguered trams project. | A special meeting at the City Chambers was called to brief councillors on the latest issues involving Tie and contractors Bilfinger Berger.
A contractual dispute has put the £545m scheme over budget and behind schedule.
Both the SNP and Labour put forward a motion to calculate the cost of cancellation before making a final decision on the future of the project.
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Wednesday's hour-long episode of Coronation Street, which depicted the shock and grief of Weatherfield residents when they found out about Aidan Connor's suicide, will go down as one of the most powerful in the soap's recent history. | By Ian YoungsArts & entertainment reporter
The ITV show has been praised for the sensitive and moving way in which it portrayed the reactions of his friends and family.
Seven million people watched the episode. It was written by Jonathan Harvey, who says he felt "a responsibility to try and be as honest as possible".
Harvey says the show didn't initially set out to tackle male suicide simply because it's a big issue in society - but explains that the plot was a chance to send a message about seeking help.
"It never started out as 'let's do this issue,'" Harvey tells BBC News. "It was organic, about character and things like that. But it did turn into, 'This could be a very important story for us and it could help people and change people's lives.'"
Harvey says he was keen to show the full range of realistic reactions to an unexpected death - especially the feeling of disbelief.
"The biggest thing I drew on was that my best friend died very suddenly about two or three years ago, of a heart attack," he says. "I know that's not the same as suicide, but I'd been out with him all day the day before, and when my partner got a phone call and told me, I was so incredulous.
"So I drew on a lot of what we went through then because I spent a lot of time with his family and everybody's got different reactions - anger, disbelief.
"I was really able to draw on all those experiences and put that into the script."
'Being truthful'
While dramatic, the episode avoided being sensationalist. Harvey explains that the show's writers are given an outline of each episode by the storyliners - and this one felt different from usual.
"Usually as a soap writer your job is to make the preposterous believable - when someone gets knocked on the head and bundled into the boot of a car and tied up for the third week on the trot.... really? Your job is to make the audience believe it.
"With this one, what was really nice was I believed every bit of it. So it was just a lovely episode to get because you could just be truthful. Rather than spinning a yarn, or spinning a conceit, there was a responsibility to just try and be as honest as possible."
The emotional centrepiece of the episode was a monologue delivered by one of the street's veterans Gail, played by Helen Worth.
She reflected on the fact you don't really know what's going on in each other's lives, as footage switched between different characters being told the news. It was originally meant to be a silent sequence.
But Harvey says: "It felt like it needed the gravitas of one of our longest-running characters to pass comment on the community that, when the programme started, was close-knit, looked out for each other and knew everybody's business. That's the cliche of what soaps are.
"And yet [she was saying], if you did know everybody's business then you would have seen this coming.
"It was a weird one to write because I thought, this could be really dreadful and flippant. But fortunately we all pulled it off."
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Suicide prevention charities The Samaritans and Calm were given the script at every draft stage and made recommendations, such as not showing the body of Aidan (played by Shayne Ward) or saying anything about how he took his life.
Harvey, an award-winning playwright and one of Coronation Street's longest-serving writers, also penned the episode in March in which David Platt was drugged and raped.
Wednesday's instalment saw David's storyline run in parallel to Aidan's, with David going missing before deciding he didn't want to end up like his friend.
"I've had lots of people getting in touch," Harvey says. "Like when we did the rape story, people start telling you their stories or their experiences. I've had lots of messages on Facebook from people who have been touched by suicide in some way."
Lucy Fallon, who plays Bethany, said on Twitter that Gail's speech was "the best bit of @itvcorrie I have ever seen", while Samia Longchambon (Maria) wrote that the episode was "one that will go down in #corrie history".
Digital Spy declared the episode "one of the show's biggest-ever triumphs", while the Daily Mirror's TV critic Ian Hyland said it "had the feel of classic Corrie from the 1980s" at times.
'Very real'
Speaking on BBC 5 live, comedian and writer Jake Mills, who founded mental health charity Chasing the Stigma, said it was "the opposite of what I would expect from a soap opera".
He said: "I thought it was dignified, sensitive, respectful, and I feel like it was actually real. So often we see things dramatised and pulled to the extremes, but with this it was very real."
The Samaritans' media advisor Lorna Fraser, who worked with the show, said: "One of the most important things that this storyline covers is the importance of talking if you are struggling to cope - talk to somebody, don't suffer in silence, there's always help out there.
"But also this storyline covers very well the importance of talking if there's somebody that you're worried about - if somebody doesn't really seem themselves, talk to them about it. Ask them if they're OK."
If you want to talk to someone, you can phone The Samaritans on 116 123 or email [email protected]. Calm can be contacted on 0800 58 58 58 (17:00-midnight). Details of other organisations that can help are on the BBC Action Line website.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
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Mario isn't your typical type of hero. He clearly doesn't pump iron, he wears overalls rather than a tight-fitting body suit, and is still rocking a 1980s-style thick moustache. | By Helen SoteriouTechnology reporter
But the little Italian plumber from Brooklyn is set to be the highlight of his Japanese parent's press conference at the world's biggest video games trade show this week.
Nintendo is expected to announce a new Super Mario game for its upcoming Wii U console, as well as provide more details about at least two titles featuring the character for its 3DS handheld games machine.
The revelations at the E3 event in Los Angeles will mark the latest evolution of the company's 31-year-old mascot.
Mario originally started life as Jumpman, a carpenter with a blue shirt and red overalls whose girlfriend was kidnapped in the game Donkey Kong.
He was renamed Mario by his creator Shigeru Miyamoto ahead of the sequel Donkey Kong Jr's launch in the US - a rare instance in which he portrayed the villain.
Legend has it he was named after Mario Segale, landlord of a US warehouse rented by the firm.
Mario art
He has since appeared in more than 200 games, including educational titles, sports simulations and, most famously, in a series of side-scrolling platformers alongside his brother Luigi.
But Mario's influence extends far beyond his video game cartridges, making him an unlikely cultural icon.
Tim Augst, a 24-year-old living in Melbourne, set up a website in 2006 to document all things Mario.
Mario Mayhem currently receives about 100,000 unique visits a month, with a cross-section of individuals contacting him to pay homage.
"I get a lot of younger kids sending in their Mario drawings and other kinds of art, and then I get the older kids, and even 30-year-old adults, sending in everything from videos to pictures of their tattoos," Mr Augst says.
"There are probably a few more guys contacting me than girls, but not by much."
Name change
The Australian curator and his visitors aren't the only ones with a Mario obsession. Some take it to a deeper level.
'"Except for cartoons, Mario was my only escape from the problems at home," Mario Brotha, a New York-based contemporary artist, tells the BBC.
Mr Brotha says changing his name to echo Nintendo's protagonist has helped attract attention, giving him a competitive advantage when it comes to winning commissions for magazine fashion shoots and advertising campaigns.
"I remember racing home from school everyday just to be Mario for a couple hours. Mario Bros was my first experience with the digital-electronic world. So I chose Mario Brotha as a name to represent how far technology has come in the last 20 years."
The character also proved influential to one of the men behind another hit video game series.
"Mario is a great character," says Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer - or "mighty eagle" - at Angry Birds' developer Rovio.
"But it's not just about him - it's the whole world that Nintendo has built, with the other great characters and the stories told through its games.
"Like Angry Birds, it's a game that both kids and parents can enjoy, and a great example of how games can connect generations."
Block buster
Mario's original design was the result of technological limitations.
He was given a big nose and moustache because early video games' graphics were limited to blocky pixels.
He has a hat as Mr Miyamoto was not a fan of drawing hair, and the colours red and blue were selected to help him stand out from the background.
Since then, little details have been added, such as buttons and the logo on his cap.
"As far as things go, there isn't a lot of depth to him," says Professor Jose Zagal, a game designer and academic at DePaul University, Chicago.
"He's defined by a few traits and characteristics: Italian-American, a bit tubby, sports a moustache, and is cheerful and brave. That's about it really."
Despite his appearance it would be foolish to underestimate Mario's power, says Ed Barton, director of digital media at Strategy Analytics.
"He is the most iconic video games character - Super Mario is to games what Mickey Mouse is to cartoons," he says.
"Nintendo has been very careful with the intellectual property he represents, keeping the quality of his games not just high but industry-defining.
"Super Mario games are a benchmark for all platforming games."
So how much is the little guy worth?
"A quick back of the envelope calculation comes to around 250 million unit sales, which even with a conservative average sales price comes out at around $10bn (£6.5bn) in new games sales," says Mr Barton.
"Obviously the series has generated more through second-hand games sales and licensing."
Smartphone boycott
Mario shouldn't need to worry that he will ever have to go back to unblocking drains. But there are some clouds over his future.
Nintendo posted a net loss of 43.2bn yen ($553m, £360m) over its last financial year, and some question the firm's refusal to release Mario games on iPhones and Android handsets.
"Smartphones are already the biggest device category, but gaming will be on all connected screens," says Mr Vesterbacka.
Prof Zagal suggests the character's fate may depend on the success of Nintendo's hardware.
"While Nintendo's 3DS sales have picked up, it got off to a rocky start and the upcoming Wii U console seems to have created more confusion than excitement," he says.
"On the other hand, Nintendo's Wii was met with great derision when it first launched but ended up soundly trouncing everyone else in terms of sales numbers."
But one thing the experts and fans are resolute about is that Mario should keep at his most lucrative activity.
"Princess saving is what he seems to do most often and most successfully," states Prof Zagal.
But Mr Augst says he wishes he could ask his hero one question: "Is Princess Peach really worth it?"
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A road in the Highlands is likely to remain shut until the weekend following a landslide almost a week ago, according to police. | More than 100 tonnes of rock came down on a section of the A890 Lochcarron to Kyle road on Thursday 22 December.
Contractors were asked to help council staff to manage the removal of other rock loosened in the slide.
Northern Constabulary said the section of road was expected to stay shut until at least Friday.
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A teenager has been charged with assault after allegedly spitting at a police officer and claiming to have Covid-19. | Sonny Manville is accused of assaulting two officers while being questioned in Bull Lane in Newington, Kent, at about 11:15 BST on 4 May.
It is alleged he kicked out at one officer and spat at another.
The 19-year-old, of Top Dartford Road, Swanley, is due to appear at Medway Magistrates Court on 26 June.
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Litter and fly-tipping bother us more than almost any other issue. MPs get more letters complaining about litter and dog fouling than almost anything else. | The amount of litter we drop - seven-tenths of it food related - is five times greater today than it was in the 1960s. Street cleaning is costing taxpayers almost a billion pounds a year in England - money that could be put to much better use.
Most of this litter lasts. Plastic bags take up to 20 years to degrade. Orange and banana peels can take a couple of years. Plastic and glass may last forever.
Are litter louts ruining your neighbourhood? Do your children have to walk to school past dog mess? Is fly-tipped waste being dumped near you?
We are investigating the state of our towns and countryside and want to find the UK's dirtiest streets and areas. If you have photos or video of a litter eyesore then send them along with the details and name of the location.
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A man has been arrested after a corrosive liquid thought to be ammonia was thrown at two men after a crash. | The liquid was thrown in the faces of the men who had gone to help the driver of a car that crashed in St Anne's Road in Eastbourne at 08:50 BST on Saturday.
The two members of the public suffered minor injuries, police said.
A man was arrested on suspicion of throwing a corrosive fluid with intent to burn, maim or disfigure and failing to stop after a road accident.
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Workers from three of Devonport Dockyard's four unions have agreed to accept a pay deal from the owner, defence company Babcock Marine. | The firm is offering two one-off payments to staff - £1,000 this year and £900 next year - in an attempt to mitigate a two-year pay freeze.
GMB, Unite and UCATT voted to accept the payments. The Prospect union's result is not yet known.
The GMB said 67% of workers agreed with the payments.
Babcock Marine employs about 4,000 people at Devonport, in Plymouth.
Stuart Fegan, GMB Organiser, said: "We are pleased that the members have considered and accepted the pay offer.
"The team believe that it is the best deal to be had by negotiation."
Prospect is expected to release its results later.
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A fire that caused a pub roof to collapse was started by an electrical fault, a fire service has said. | About 30 firefighters worked through the night after the blaze broke out at The Roebuck on Rockingham Road, Market Harborough, at 22:49 BST on Friday.
Customers and staff got out of the building safely.
Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service investigators concluded the fire was "accidental and was caused by an electrical fault".
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The Indian government has announced that it's extending its ban on the Tamil Tiger rebels of Sri Lanka for a further two years. | A statement by the Home ministry said the group was an unlawful association.
India first outlawed the Tamil Tigers in 1992 following the assassination of the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi,
which was blamed on the rebels.
Some pro-Tamil rebel organisations in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have been campaigning against the ban.
The extension of the ban has come at a time when fighting between the Sri Lankan security forces and the Tamil rebels has
intensified in recent months.
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Violence has broken out in an eastern city in Ethiopia after federal troops took over key positions including the local parliament. | Soldiers were deployed in Jigjiga, the capital of the Somali region, after an apparent rift between local authorities and the national government.
Protesters set fire to a church and looted shops and targeted non-Somalis.
The government recently accused regional officials of carrying out human rights abuses.
There has also been disagreement over the distribution of the region's oil wealth.
According to Reuters, soldiers arrived in the city on Friday night, where they fought regional paramilitary forces.
These forces have been partly responsible for ethnic violence with the neighbouring Oromia region, which has claimed hundreds of lives.
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A rare Botticelli drawing is to be sold at a London auction in July - the first such drawing by the artist to be sold for a century. | Study for a Seated St Joseph is believed to be the only drawing which can be clearly linked with one of Botticelli's painted compositions.
It is also thought to be the only drawing by the artist, created in the 1480s, in private hands.
It is estimated to fetch up to £1.5m at the Sotheby's auction on 9 July.
Aside from an album of illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, there are only 12 surviving drawings by Botticelli - all but Study for a Seated St Joseph are in museums.
The artwork comes from the collection of philanthropist Barbara Piasecka Johnson, the wife of the late John Seward Johnson - the co-founder of the Johnson and Johnson medical and pharmaceutical firm.
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Paloma Faith leads a handful of new names announced for next year's Isle Of Wight Festival. | Doves, The Saturdays and Daisy Dares You will also join headliners Jay-Z and The Strokes at the event held at Seaclose Park, Newport between 11-13 June 2010.
As previously announced Pink and Orbital will also play at the weekender, now in its ninth year after returning in 2002.
Tickets for the festival are now on sale.
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Two men have been charged with the murder of a boxer who was shot at a pub in Doncaster. | Tom Bell, 21, was shot through a window at the Maple Tree in Woodfield Way, Balby, on 17 January and died later in hospital.
South Yorkshire Police said Joseph Bennia, 28, from Balby, and Scott Gocoul, 29, from Bilton, near Hull, had been charged with murder.
Both are due to appear at Doncaster Magistrates' Court on Thursday.
A post-mortem examination found Mr Bell died from a shotgun wound to his chest and abdomen.
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Mimi Beard became homeless when she was 16. When she moved into a shelter, she was the only girl and the youngest one there. She describes how she survived by relying on food banks and studying by candlelight. | Just two years ago I felt lost and without direction - I was struggling with every aspect of my life.
My upbringing was turbulent, with social workers, counsellors and house moves littering my first 13 years. My dad left when I was four months old and I cared for my mum who had major mental and physical health problems. But when I was 16, I couldn't stay any longer and had nowhere to go, so I became homeless.
I was put up in the YMCA in Penzance by the council where I was the only girl and the youngest person there. I didn't have any option - I had nowhere else to go. Everyone assumed I had been causing problems at home and had been thrown out but it wasn't like that. It was very interesting to battle people's prejudices.
I was being bullied at school and so hadn't been attending - only going back for exams - but I got eight GCSEs and did enough to start my A Levels. I moved to another supported housing unit, which did not have a good track record. Nobody had ever completed their A levels, in fact, almost 100% of the tenants had dropped out of education altogether, so I knew the odds were against me.
I had to pay some bills there and everyday basics were a battle: how long could I afford to keep the electrics on? Was there enough left to heat the water for a shower? Should food take precedence? I can't even begin to count how many hours I must have studied for college by candlelight. I was always being told off for having so many candles in my room because of the fire risk.
In the evenings, everyone would be sitting around and drinking, and I'd be in the corner writing up my notes. I was known as the "sad" one because I was always studying when everyone else was having fun.
And, as much as I hate to admit it, I very nearly gave up, reluctant but defeated, ready to become a statistic. I had to leave during my first year to sort myself out. Life was bleak, I was tired and I couldn't see a way out. Things got really bad and on Halloween in 2017, when I was 19, I took an overdose of prescription drugs. It put me in a coma and doctors told my mum to come to intensive care as they didn't know if I would pull through.
I am so lucky to have woken up. The overdose was a line in the sand for me and I knew I had to turn things around.
A tech company called Hi9 had been to the shelter giving advice to people and saw something in me. The owners, Wo King and Kate Gibson, took me under their wing and they are the reason why I am where I am now.
I realised the only viable route out could come from my studies and I began to study as if my life depended on it - because, in reality, it did. For those of us who experience homelessness at a young age, we fall down so many steps we can't even see the doors closing - the possibilities being missed, life's options narrowing with every step. I knew from an early age I would never walk the same path as my friends but that didn't necessarily mean I couldn't succeed.
When my peers were looking at universities to apply to I was looking for a sofa to sleep on, because I was homeless again after a break-up. When my friends went to private tutoring, I went to the food bank. They do their best to provide you with the basics but it isn't proper meals. Food banks are a great cause, but it isn't nutritious. You're living on plain pasta and rice. And it was hard.
But I got through my first year and started to really think about a career in finance. I was working at Hi9 in the evenings and at weekends, filling in grant applications and learning about emerging technologies. Although I didn't have any experience, my love for business studies spurred me on. With that little bit more confidence and support, I pushed myself to apply for work experience.
As standard, I wrote to accountancy firms, hoping for a reply. On a whim I sent off an application to the work experience programme at top four accounting firm, KPMG, knowing full well that dozens of people would be too. I thought I had no chance of getting in, but I also knew if I didn't try I would never know for sure. Anyway, what was there to lose?
The process was long, with exams, essays, and video interviews. I couldn't afford the expected smart clothes, so Kate gave me hers whenever it was needed. I was aware that for the first time in my life I was wearing more money than I had ever owned.
I don't think I can truthfully say that at any point I felt confident of being chosen. Why should I? I hadn't networked with the appropriate people, I didn't come from a good school and I certainly didn't have the self-confidence to blag my way through it all.
So you can imagine my surprise when I opened the all-important email that told me I had been accepted.
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Youth homelessness
Source: Centrepoint
After my first day there I cried because I was the only person there who wasn't from private or grammar school and who couldn't afford to stay in a hotel overnight. It was a short programme, but I had my foot in the door and I was making a dent in the wall around me.
KPMG informed us we would be allowed to fast-track for recruitment at the firm as we had already completed some of the exams, but although I knew I wanted to be in accounting, I wasn't sure KPMG was where I definitely wanted to be. I kept repeating to myself, you've done it, you can't be ignored now, and that helped.
That was at the start of my second year of A-levels. I ended up getting As in psychology and business studies, with a B in economics. I also got my Level 1 Association of Accounting Technicians qualification.
I was so happy because the grades meant I would start an apprenticeship at Francis Clark accountants in Cornwall. I am still there now and it is going really well. I'm planning to stay with the firm when my apprenticeship finishes early next year.
I'm now 20 and hope my situation is something people can learn from. If you work hard you can get out of a difficult situation. I hope that I can in some way give a voice to people who don't know how to make themselves heard.
As told to Johnny O'Shea.
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More than 30 firefighters have been called to a blaze at a former garrison in Essex.
| The fire is close to the site of a blaze which destroyed the Officers' Club at the old Colchester Garrison in July, the fire service said.
Crews were called at 1920 BST and found a wooden building well alight. Roads around the site were cordoned off and have since been re-opened.
The fire was prevented from spreading to an adjacent abbey.
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A student walking alone was confronted by a fat, naked man performing a sex act on himself, police have said. | The 20-year-old woman was walking along Windmill Lane in the direction of Hull Road, York on Sunday afternoon, said North Yorkshire Police.
The man, who was bare-chested and had his trousers pulled down around his ankles then stood in front of her.
He was described as white, aged between 35 and 45 years, about 5ft 10in tall with a fat build.
Police said they are conducting "a trawl of CCTV covering the area" and increasing patrols.
They asked for anyone with information to come forward.
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President Xi Jinping will on Thursday preside over an enormous military parade in Beijing in commemoration of China's World War Two victory over Japan 70 years ago. Alexander Neill from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) examines what we can expect to see. | In an unprecedented show of military might, Beijing has promised never-seen-before firepower on display.
More than 10,000 Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops and 1,000 honour guards from 17 foreign countries will file past Mao Zedong's portrait, Chinese politburo members and assembled dignitaries on the rostrum in Tiananmen Square.
Nearly 200 aircraft will fly in formation over the crowds. Thirty heads of state and government leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, will attend the parade.
Most Chinese commentators believe that the first ever parade marking Japan's defeat is long overdue. The event has been formulated to generate deep historical resonance with the alleged sacrifice of more than 14 million Chinese victims of Japanese imperial militarism.
Mr Xi will present commemorative medals to veterans who fought in what China calls "the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression".
China's contribution
This parade is a significant opportunity for the world to better understand the huge contribution Chinese forces made to the ultimate defeat of Japan in 1945.
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, China had already witnessed Japanese aggression on its own soil for eight years and had been invaded two years earlier.
According to Chinese state media, of the nearly two million Japanese soldiers killed by the allies during World War Two; 70% of them were on Chinese soil.
The parade on Thursday will involve PLA units with histories of combat with the Japanese imperial army. Among them will be the Northeast United Anti-Japanese Force and South China Guerrillas.
Two veteran contingents comprising both communist and Kuomintang (KMT) combatants, many in their nineties, will also be on parade, as will a contingent of descendants of war heroes from that period.
Leading from the front
The PLA has also paid special attention to the role of women in China's armed forces.
Fifty-one servicewomen will march in the Chinese honour guard, which recruited women for the first time last year. Tian Ou - China's first and only female general to join the parade - will lead the formation.
In addition, an all-female medical team named after the Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, who served with China's Eighth Route Army during the war, will be on parade.
Another novel element to the parade will be the presence of more than 50 of Gen Tian's male counterparts in the march-past - literally leading from the front - as opposed to standing with the dignitaries as with past parades.
The Chinese media has reported that with an average age of 53, this cohort of generals have each lost about 11lbs (5kg) in weight in training for the event.
'Carrier killer'
In previous national day parades China has rolled out new weapons systems, but this event will be on a different order of magnitude.
According to Chinese defence sources, more than 500 items of latest Chinese weaponry will be displayed, 84% of which will be revealed in public for the first time.
The air force will show its latest upgraded long-range bombers, fighter jets, early warning and control (AWACS) aircraft as well as helicopter gunships, while the PLA Navy (PLAN) will display its latest carrier-capable fighter jets and anti-ship missiles.
A special feature of the parade's air display will be an air refuelling demonstration 500m above Tiananmen Square.
Military analysts are anticipating that a large number of China's latest and most sophisticated weapons systems will be on show, including drones, air defence, command and control systems and seven types of ballistic missile.
Pride of place will be the arsenal of the PLA's Second Artillery Force (SAF), the guardian of China's nuclear ballistic missile capability.
The DF-21D ballistic missile, dubbed the "carrier killer", is expected to be on show, along with the latest variants of China's intercontinental ballistic missile capability.
Such systems are controversial because they could be deployed by the PLA against US and its allies in what the Pentagon describes as an "Anti-Access, Area Denial" (A2AD) campaign.
The US Pacific Command is concerned that such tactics would be designed to keep the US at bay if, for example, a conflict between China and Taiwan were to break out.
Strategic signalling?
The theme of the parade has also courted controversy, with the notable absence of Western leaders.
During a period of strained relations between China and Japan, as well as increasing military tension in the Asia Pacific region, some leaders are reluctant to be associated with what they may view as a nationalistic, anti-Japanese mass rally.
Mr Putin's presence may have also deterred Western attendance. Despite this, the Chinese authorities have been at pains to emphasise that no specific countries have been targeted by the parade.
Some also view the parade as a symbol of China's dissatisfaction with the US-dominated post-war order that China, the "forgotten ally", helped to establish.
Part of President Xi's "China dream" is the creation a new more collective and inclusive Asian security architecture, offering an alternative to the US-led military alliance system introduced after Japan's defeat in 1945.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue Asia Security Summit in Singapore this year, PLA Deputy Chief of the General staff Admiral Sun Jianguo delivered a similar message, which was also enshrined in China's recent Military Strategy white paper.
The parade thus serves a dual role: a reflection of the past and a signal for the future.
China's official narrative of the horrors of China's wartime past - historical humiliation at the hands of colonial powers - is directly linked to China's current concerns over sovereignty and territorial integrity including the East and South China Seas.
At a visceral level within Chinese society, it is impossible to detach the past from the present. The historical element to the parade and the display of new weaponry thus seeks to embody President Xi's goals of national rejuvenation and deliver a potent warning to any adversary.
But there is also a powerful domestic message at a time of deep economic anxiety for China - Xi Jinping's resolve as the chief of the armed wing of the communist party to protect China's core interests.
Alexander Neill is Shangri-La Dialogue senior fellow
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Work to clear the site of a landslide at a Leicestershire canal which has disrupted boat traffic is due to start. | A 60m (195 ft) stretch of the Grand Union Canal north of Foxton is blocked after heavy rainfall in December caused a slippage of earth into the water.
Canal and River Trust engineers will dredge a channel through the centre of the obstructed waterway later.
Neil Owen, of the River Trust, said single lane boat traffic should be able to get through when the work is done.
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President Trump sees Europe as a place filled with cheaters and bedlam - and as a place populated by lovely people. Soon he'll be meeting with European leaders and will try to explain his contrasting views. What could go wrong? | By Tara McKelveyBBC News, Rome
On Wednesday, Trump will spend his first full day in Europe as the US president. He's said so many different things about the place - sometimes he says he loves the continent and other times calls it a hellhole - that it's hard to know how things will go.
One thing is certain: his schedule is packed. He'll visit Rome, the Vatican and Brussels on Wednesday, speaking on that day with Pope Francis and later in the evening with King Philippe of the Belgians. On Thursday he'll spend the day in Brussels, having lunch with President Emmanuel Macron of France and talking with European Union officials, then he heads to Sicily for a Group of Seven meeting.
During his whirlwind tour of the continent, he'll speak with the Europeans about Nato and defence spending of various countries (he thinks they should make a bigger financial commitment to the alliance).
He'll also talk about US foreign policy and his vision for the nation's role on the global stage. Over the course of the trip he's likely to be preoccupied, however, with the recent controversies in Washington, including the sacking of the FBI director James Comey and his own relationship with Russian officials.
His meetings in Europe could go well, or they could go very badly. So much depends upon his mood, say those who are close to him, and on the temperament of those who meet with him.
Trump is a "salesman", said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of Italian studies and history at NYU, and for that reason he's likely to adjust his remarks to make the people around him happy - at least for the moment.
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His aides believe that one of the president's strengths is his ability to deal with people in the moment and adapt on the fly. They cast him as a dealmaker par excellence, closing a sale when the time is right (or abruptly upping the ante), and in this way justify the way that he's expressed so many, conflicting views of the continent.
Michael S Smith, a terrorism analyst who has advised the US government, said: "The biggest challenge he's going to face is managing relationships after sending so many mixed signals."
He's offered up odd, disjointed praise: "Belgium is a beautiful city," he once said (he's also called Brussels "a hellhole"). He seems to be fond of Scotland, the place where his mother was born. Still he's not exactly embraced local customs.
Last year he visited a Scottish town with pubs where, as one of his travelling companions told me, "They served rabbit." So they drove to a town about 25 miles away with a McDonald's. It was another sign that he doesn't embrace European traditions and - sometimes at least - views them with distaste.
On a more serious level he's said Nato is "obsolete" and then seemed to change his mind. He once described Germany as a "total mess", tweeting that the country "owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!"
In his reckoning, the Europeans exploit trade deals. He's said the trade agreements are "very unfair to the United States." He's said he doesn't think the EU "matters very much for the United States", and he's described it as "basically a vehicle for Germany".
He was elected in part because of his outspoken manner and his tough, uncompromising positions: he made it clear that America wasn't going to get pushed around - by the Europeans or anybody else - and that he'd focus on American interests.
It's harder to act like a pit bull about American interests when you're talking to people who don't see them as their priority. Since taking office, he's tried to make amends with the Germans and the other Europeans who've visited the White House. More recently he's been advised to soften his tone while he's in Belgium and Italy, and to downplay his views about trade.
Still he's not going to soft-pedal all of his views. George Mason University's Francis Buckley, who worked on a foreign-policy speech for Trump during the campaign, said Trump has made it clear Europeans must contribute more to Nato and believes, Buckley explained, "that would have to be corrected".
Critics of the administration believe that the president has a dark view of Europe and has aligned himself with nationalist forces - and point to his generous assessment of authoritarian leaders in Russia and Turkey. In this way the president's views are, said Ben-Ghiat, "destabilising".
Smith adds: "The president has been posturing his intention to align the US with Russia in a manner that most people would consider stunning."
Smith said he hoped the president's travels through Europe would help to clarify his positions towards Nato, the EU and other institutions and dispel concerns about his intentions.
Up to this point, Smith said: "It's all been a fog of known unknowns."
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While nobody sets out to be an unpaid carer, it is a job more than six million people currently perform, according to the 2011 Census. This hidden workforce, thought to save the economy £119bn a year, is drawn from all ages and backgrounds. | By Laurence CawleyBBC News
Here are a few of their stories.
Gill
"You'll be listening to the radio on a Friday and somebody will say 'hey, it's nearly the weekend' or 'the weekend's nearly here'," says Gill West, who is a full time carer for her father George. "And? That makes absolutely no difference to carers. Carers don't have weekends."
George, 86, has Alzheimer's Disease and vascular dementia. He and Gill live in Harrow, north-west London.
In the three-and-a-half years that Gill - previously a human resources project consultant - has cared for her father, she has had just 10 days off.
"I now have a very different life," she says. "It is tough and it is difficult.
"When you meet up with your 'normal' friends you realise they are all living 'normally' - they might be talking about a promotion or a holiday or a new purchase. My whole world is caring.
"When you meet with other carers you can have a laugh about the things that happen in our daily lives."
As well as setting up a number of coffee mornings for carers, Gill, using her HR skills, has also developed her own courses to help new carers.
"I felt lost and isolated when I started out on my caring journey and wanted to help others, something positive to make my journey more worthwhile."
Rachel and Anjeli
Rachel and Anjeli Diack's mother has multiple sclerosis.
"Our dad (Trevor) does most of the caring", says Anjeli, 12, of King's Lynn, Norfolk. "But he works full time and we are needed to help out.
"In the last six months we have done more and more caring for mum and also lots more cleaning up and tidying up in the house because mum can't do things like that anymore.
"We help with her medication too, which is sometimes difficult to get right with all the different tablets she needs to take every day."
Shivakuru and Meenadchyammah
Shivakuru Selvathurai removes his spectacles to wipe the tears from his eyes. A Tamil refugee, he has been describing the horrors of the Sri Lankan civil war he witnessed first hand.
He, his wife Meenadchyammah and their daughter Anutha fled in 2001. They lived first in Liverpool and then in Harrow.
Shivakuru, 70, knows better than most the polarities of violence and kindness of which human beings are capable. Anutha, 37, has profound learning difficulties and needs round-the-clock care.
Yet Anutha's considerable needs are dwarfed by Shivakuru and Meenadchyammah's need to give. Not just to their daughter, but to the wider community.
"We have needed so much help," he says, "with our housing problems, language difficulties with the authorities, getting the right support from health service providers and money advice for our daughter who has some intensive and pressing needs.
"We are so very grateful to the UK Government and the British people generally."
Shivakuru has been a residents group champion, he volunteers for the NHS, the Royal British Legion, the Army Benevolent Fund and other charities. He is a multiple recipient of the Harrow Heroes Volunteer Award.
Why does he do it? The answer, he says, is that when he and his family were in desperate need, the UK provided them with sanctuary. His role now, he says, is to give something back.
Ronnie and Roger
Ronnie Lewis struggles to speak. "Some days I can't stop crying," she says.
Before her first severe stroke a decade ago, Ronnie, who lives beside a busy carriageway in west Norfolk, was an avid artist.
She still has her bright and airy studio, the walls lined with box upon box of arts and crafts materiel. But now even the simplest of tasks - such as gluing small feathers to a piece of paper - takes enormous effort.
"And some days I'm so tired I cannot get out of bed."
Two further strokes followed that first one 10 years ago. Her husband, Roger, a former publican, is her carer.
"There is not much time for anything besides being a carer," he says. "I do like to potter around our garden and I still nurture the idea of doing some more wine-making again one day."
Mukesh
"For me, being a carer is a blessing," says 49-year-old Mukesh Maroo.
Mukesh arrived in the UK from Kenya at the age of 10. While his late father ran a successful business in the UK, he believes the "shock" of emigrating - the "longing for home" and a sense of "isolation" - had a profound and lasting effect on his mother, for whom he is a primary carer.
In the aftermath of major knee surgery, Mukesh, himself a successful businessman, now finds himself both a carer and a recipient of care.
Mukesh, who lives in Harrow, says caring brings people back to fundamental needs - of loving, being loved, of giving and asking for the help of others.
"Too many people are almost 'cocooned' from each other - what we all need to again do is switch on our ability to care, by lessening our suspicions of each other," he says.
Jackie
For most of us, booking a holiday has become a simple series of steps, clicking boxes on a website and entering payment details.
Not so for Jackie Haverson, who lives with her husband and two disabled daughters in King's Lynn.
One daughter has epilepsy and dyspraxia, the other attention deficit disorder.
"When we book a hotel abroad we have to check what type of lights they use (because some can trigger an epileptic fit), where the nearest hospital is, how we might get to that hospital if we need it, how busy it is, what disabled facilities they have and so on," she says.
"We have to plan everything strategically and do it so far ahead. But we do it because we want our girls to enjoy their childhood."
A few weeks ago, Jackie and her husband went out for their first drink together in about four years. After half an hour, the babysitter - who knows the daughters well - found she could not cope with their needs.
"We didn't even finish our drinks."
Related Internet Links
Harrow Carers
West Norfolk Carers
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Nottingham's 544 caves have been used as everything from dungeons to bomb shelters throughout history but 100 of them were only discovered in the past four years. Take a look at how many of the caverns are still in use today.
| By Neil HeathBBC News, Nottingham
In 1330, the young King Edward III and a group of conspirators crept through a secret tunnel into the city's castle and took prisoner Roger de Mortimer, a nobleman who had until then effectively been England's ruler.
The tunnel later became known as Mortimer's Hole but this daring coup was made possible by the city's network of man-made caves within the sandstone rock.
The caves appear to have existed for as long as Nottingham and as far back as 868, a Welsh monk named Asser referred to the settlement as Tig Guocobauc, which means "house" or "place of caves".
Archaeologist Dr David Strange-Walker, project manager of Nottingham Caves Survey, has been mapping the city's caves for the past four years and has recently discovered scores more than were previously known. The work has also led to the development of a new smart phone app to allow people to explore the city's caves from above the ground.
He said cave dwelling had been an intrinsic part of the city's history, particularly during the Industrial Revolution when an influx of people arrived to find work.
"The upshot was there was a great crush in the city," said the archaeologist. "[And] slum landlords were housing families in caves, which is all fairly horrific."
Despite the 1845 Enclosure Act, which made it illegal for people to live in caves within Nottingham, many still had to find somewhere to live.
"Areas outside the city had caves [and they] became like shanty towns," he said. "Some caves had proper frontages, others had a sheet of metal over the front, no fresh air, sanitation, nothing."
Deep beneath the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre are the last remnants of Drury Hill, one of the streets in the former 19th Century slums of Narrow Marsh, where poor sanitation led to the spread of cholera, tuberculosis and smallpox.
Whole families would sleep and eat in one room, with some even living in grotto-like caves below in a desperate attempt to solve the problem of overcrowding.
Near to the ruins is the UK's only known underground tannery where eight-year-old children lived and worked in appalling conditions, filling vats with urine and excrement to create ammonia for the tanning process.
Today, the area is used as the City of Caves tourist attraction and is the only part of Nottingham's vast subterranean network that is open to the public to explore and learn the grisly truth about the city's cave dwelling heritage.
Andy Fowler, one of the attraction's tour guides, said conditions were particularly nasty for the child workers, who also had to live in the foul-smelling caverns, during the 1500s.
He said: "One of their jobs was to mix fresh animal skins with water and quicklime solution to strip them of their flesh and fat. They would have ended up with hands like claws as a result."
However, despite their poor life expectancy and the wretched conditions, the one thing they were immune from was the bubonic plague.
Mr Fowler said: "The rats and mites [that spread the disease] weren't found in the tannery so the workers weren't affected by the plague. Life was a double edged sword, really."
As part of the tour, visitors can pass through an old pub cellar which has a hole the size of a golf ball in its ceiling. It is thought the cave was used by criminals or other plotters who could be alerted to the presence of the authorities by someone dropping stones through the hole from the street above.
Legend has it that Dick Turpin, or even Robin Hood, were the plotters in different eras, but it was more likely to have been members of the Luddite movement in the 19th Century.
Lenton Hermitage, or Park Rock, a network of caves cut into an outcrop of sandstone in Castle Boulevard, was used as a dwelling during the 13th Century and later became a hunting lodge, a bowling club pavilion, a World War II air raid shelter and even a caravan showroom in 1985.
The large caves, which are protected as a scheduled monument by English Heritage, are hidden from view by several apartment blocks overlooking Nottingham Canal.
However, residents like Paul Watkins, are putting them to good use today as a secure area to keep bicycles but also to fight Gotham City's villains.
He said: "My kids use them as Batman caves and one of them makes little films in them, it's fantastic. But they're pretty annoyed with me that we're moving down the road."
Many caves around Nottingham were created for brewing, and storing, beer and ales due to their consistently cool temperature all year round.
The owners of the Hand and Heart, in Derby Road, use their ancient structure as a restaurant and said their customers love the novelty of dining in the caverns.
The road is a hotbed for caves and some are still being discovered. Property developer Paul O'Shea bought a 150-year-old building in Derby Road, in January, to convert into student apartments, when he found a trapdoor leading deep into long forgotten chambers.
Mr O'Shea, who is looking at turning his caverns into a bar, said: "It was a bonus [discovering it] and everyone has been amazed by what's down here."
He contacted Dr Strange-Walker who at first thought it was probably a cave he knew about but a shock was in store.
He said: "I had a good look at all our records and found no record of it whatsoever, so for us it's a brand new cave, number 544. A new cave is always very exciting."
Dr Strange-Walker believes it was used as a cellar for a long lost pub known as The Old Milton's Head which dated back to the 1840s.
He added: "It's a really good example that there are lots of other caves around the city that we don't know about and there aren't any records for.
"They do keep turning up and something we want to do is look for more of these caves so we can boost numbers up to 600, 700, who knows."
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My Money is a series looking at how people spend their money - and the sometimes tough decisions they have to make. Here Alex Wright from Leicester takes us through a week in his life during the coronavirus pandemic. | Alex, 29, is a venue manager of a gaming arcade and earns £25,000 a year. However, he has been placed on furlough since March. His partner Rebekah is an NHS nurse and has recently started maternity leave following the birth of their twin daughters, Eden and Indie, last week. They have two older boys, Rory, five and Casper, four.
Over to Alex....
The day starts at 7:00 with the newborn twins needing a feed. They came home yesterday after being at the hospital for the past few days and are on a feeding plan to help them gain weight as they were born nearly five weeks early, which means they will need formula in addition to breast milk. We never intended to use formula as breast milk is a lot cheaper! But when it comes to health, there is no discussion needed.
We've had a new Tesco open close by so I take a walk to see if the formula is in stock and how much it costs, whilst also taking the opportunity to use their coffee machine! They have the formula but it's slightly more expensive than our usual shop so I do not purchase it. I do pick up a coffee, a Red Bull, a couple of croissants for our other two children and some bacon for £7.85.
12:30. We have a visit from the community midwife to see the twins. Everything is ok and both gained some weight! Going to come back again in two days to make sure all ok.
Rest of the day is spent tidying. Our house with six in has suddenly gotten a whole lot messier! The twins are settling in and getting used to the new noisier surroundings generated by their older brothers. I purchase the formula from Sainsbury's where it is £10.50.
Total spend: £18.35
7:00. I check my bank account and see the direct debit for the gas and electricity has been taken today (£42.84). We're using slightly less than this so the account is now £5.86 in credit.
Usually I would be at work now but being on furlough is a strange situation, I've never not been at work since turning 18. The time at home is great, even more so since the twins' arrival, but it does feel like something is missing, let alone £200 less in my pay. To help with this, we have taken the option of a mortgage holiday which is saving us £627 a month.
11:30. We take a walk to the park for a picnic with a detour to the shop for supplies (£19.95). I always make sure I scan my Nectar card app as my points balance is worth over £55. Hoping to have this close to £100 in time for Christmas.
16:00. I plan to laminate the hallway but when I start I realise I've lost my hammer. I rip out the old skirting board and clean up before going to buy a new one. It's Casper's birthday on Friday and Rebekah asks me to pick up some things for his party so with these, a new hammer, some other bits and a couple of new t-shirts, I've spent £54.81. When I return I tell her to never send me shopping again on my own, I always seem to buy more than intended!
Total spend: £117.60
11:00. The community midwife arrives and Indie has gained a lot of weight but Eden is still the same. We're advised to keep to the feeding plan and she will return to check again on Friday.
13:30. During lockdown, we decluttered and listed a few items on eBay. A Nintendo Wii sells for £36, so Rory and I take a walk to the post office. We nip into the shop first for a drink and a sneaky chocolate bar (£2.10). I tell him that he's not to tell his brother or mum! Postage and packaging costs £14.49 and it's on its way to its new owners.
17:00. I'm informed I will be returning to work on 8 June. This is a surprise as I wasn't expecting to be back till July but the arcade I manage is being classed as a non-essential shop. I have mixed emotions, probably more so because of the surprise at being allowed to open. I pass the message on to my team who, reassuringly, respond with excitement.
17:30. I don't usually drink alcohol at home but seeing friends having drinks tempts me. £18.80 and a case of beers later and drinks for Rebekah and the boys, we're out in the garden.
Total spend: £35.39
Total made: £36.00
10:00. I have a busy day planned today. I agreed to help my mum's partner by moving a load of mixed concrete for him from a wagon. When I finish, there's a KFC close by which doesn't look busy so I pop by and have a fillet stacker meal which is £6.59.
16:00. On to the next job finishing the laminate flooring at home. Some difficult cuts to do round the stairs, doorway and piping but the job is complete and I'm happy with how it has turned out.
18:00. Need to pick up party food for Casper's birthday tomorrow. I can't remember the last time I filled the car up and it comes to £58.14, usually this would cost close to £70 every couple of weeks so love the low oil prices! Then to the supermarket where I spend £161.53 on food, tableware, party supplies and some tiny baby clothes as the girls are not fitting their up to one-month outfits.
I spend the rest of the evening building a go-kart whilst my partner wraps the presents we've been hiding in the wardrobe.
Total spend: £226.26
It's party day! Casper is turning four today and what a strange time to be in! It would have been his first real party with pre-school friends but sadly, not going to be the case. To try and make the day special, we found a bouncy castle company still operating and ordered one for the garden.
7:00. No surprise with the early start, the birthday boy jumps on to our bed super excited. Whilst this blog is about money, there is nothing quite as valuable as seeing that excited smile on your child's face.
8:00. The bouncy castle arrives and is inflated. They disinfect the castle prior to leaving and we pay them £55 for the day. The boys waste no time in jumping on!
11:00. The community midwife arrives to weigh the twins again. Both have put on weight, enough for no further additional visits, with the next being at 21 days.
11:30. So throughout the day, lots of text messages and phone calls arranging times for visitors to bring presents for Casper whilst complying with social distancing measures. Certainly a different type of party than we're used to. However all is worth it, especially when the birthday boy says it's the best birthday ever.
20:00. After a tiring day, a Chinese has been ordered (21.80). No way either of us are cooking tonight.
Total spend: £76.80
My Money
More blogs from the BBC's My Money Series:
12:15. As I am soon returning to work, I draft up some rotas ready for the reopening. It will be strange going back after so long and still so many questions. Will we be busy? How will customers react to the changes? And most importantly, will my team and myself stay safe?
13:30. A further DIY task, today the glamorous job of sealing a toilet base. Two young boys tend to "miss". However, all doesn't go to plan as one of the screws is damaged. After an hour of trying to remove, I begrudgingly order a screw extractor and some screws for click and collect which comes to £11.57. Get home but still no luck. I clean as much of the area and scrub underneath as much as I can then seal the base. Disappointed at a job half done and wasted money.
18:30. The day is wrapped up with a conference call to discuss fundraising ideas for Lutterworth Town FC, who I am the club secretary for, and a night on the sofa in front of the telly.
Total spend: £11.57
A quick look at today's forecast, another hot day on the cards so we decide to have a barbecue.
12:30. Off to the supermarket to pick up some coal, drinks and food to cook and prepare. £43.60 spent and plenty to enjoy.
14:00. The BBQ is going well, sun is shining and the boys are playing nicely together and the girls have been sleeping most of the time.
20:00. So after a relaxing chilled out day, me and Rebekah talk about the crazy week we've had. This coming week we need to decide what to do as we have the option of sending Rory back to school from 8 June. It seems like everything is going back to normal.
Total spend: £43.60
Total spent this week: £493.57
How does Alex feel about his week?
This week was by no means a normal week! Normally we would have done a weekly shop, maybe filled the car with fuel, made another couple of trips to the shop and spent around £150-£200. Being on furlough, and I'm sure others can relate, has left me a lot of newfound free time. I feel this has assisted in making the weekly spend creep up to help the days go by.
I don't know how I would class myself with spending. On the one hand, I always look for the cheapest deals and have no problem in not buying something there and then because it's the easy option. But on the other hand, I do tend to put a few non-essential items in the basket. This My Money exercise has certainly opened my eyes to what I actually do spend.
However, despite spending almost double on our usual week, this week has created memories to last a lifetime and you just can't put a price on that!
We're looking for more people to share what they spend their money on. If you're interested, please email [email protected] or get in touch via our My Money (World) Facebook group, or if you live in the UK, please join our My Money (UK) Facebook group and we'll aim to contact you.
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The SNP will take control of East Dunbartonshire Council. | The party formed a minority administration after a council meeting following local elections earlier this month.
Before the poll, Labour and the Conservatives ran a minority administration between them.
While the SNP are now the biggest single party, they fall well short of an overall majority with just seven of the council's 22 seats.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have six councillors each, Labour has two and there is one independent.
Most of Scotland's 32 local authorities have now formed administrations, but a few are still to reach decisions.
Stirling Council voted on Wednesday evening to back an SNP-Labour coalition.
Christine Simpson (Labour) was named as the new provost and Graham Houston (SNP) as depute convener.
West Lothian and Edinburgh councils are due to hold meetings on Thursday, after both adjourned meetings last week.
'Deal blocked'
In West Lothian, a proposed coalition between Labour and the Conservatives was blocked by Labour's Scottish Executive Committee. Labour has indicated that it hopes to find a way of governing as a minority.
There has been no sign yet of a deal to run Edinburgh Council. The SNP is the largest party with the Conservatives in second place. The SNP and Labour have each made it clear they will not do formal deals with the Conservatives in Edinburgh.
Inverclyde Council will also hold a meeting on Thursday.
Generally, councils now have either minority administrations led by the biggest local party or coalitions which include the biggest local party, but there are a number of significant exceptions.
In Aberdeen, the Labour group and the Conservatives have formed a coalition which keeps the SNP out - the Labour councillors have been suspended from the party for going ahead with the deal which was not supported by the party's Scottish Executive Committee.
The SNP has also been kept out of control in Argyll and Bute, Angus, Moray and North Lanarkshire.
The Conservatives are not part of the administration in Dumfries and Galloway and East Renfrewshire.
What about the other councils?
Aberdeen - Labour suspended nine councillors after they agreed a coalition deal with the Conservatives.
Aberdeenshire - A coalition of Conservative, Liberal Democrats and independent councillors will run the council.
Angus - Conservatives, Independents and Liberal Democrats form the administration.
Argyll and Bute - Independent, Lib Dem and Conservative coalition
Clackmannanshire - The first meeting of the new council could not agree an administration. They will meet again on 1 June.
Dumfries and Galloway - A coalition between Labour and the SNP has taken control, meaning the Conservative group, which won most seats, is kept out of the administration.
Dundee City - SNP to form administration with Independent.
East Ayrshire Council - SNP minority administration
East Dunbartonshire - SNP minority administration
East Lothian- Labour minority administration
East Renfrewshire - The SNP and Labour are set to run the council despite the Conservatives winning the most seats.
Edinburgh - No agreement reached. A new administration will not now be formed for at least another week.
Falkirk - SNP minority takes control of the council
Fife - Joint leadership, with power shared equally between SNP and Labour.
Glasgow - The SNP has formed a minority administration, ending almost 40 years of Labour dominance.
Highland - 28 independents along with 10 Lib Dems and three Labour have formed an administration, keeping out the SNP and Tories.
Inverclyde - Meeting Thursday 25 May at 16:00
Midlothian - Labour will run a minority administration
Moray - The Conservative group of eight councillors is to join forces with six of the independent members.
North Ayrshire - Labour will continue to run the council despite a surge from the Scottish Conservatives in the local elections. The SNP has the same number of seats as Labour.
North Lanarkshire - Labour has formed a minority administration. There will be no formal coalition agreement with the Tories.
Perth and Kinross - A Conservative-led coalition with the Lib Dems and independents.
Renfrewshire Council - will operate as an SNP minority administration.
South Ayrshire - A coalition of SNP, Labour and independent councillors has been formed to run the council.
Scottish Borders - A new Conservative-independent coalition has taken formal control. It was previously an SNP/Lib Dem/independent administration.
South Lanarkshire - Labour members abstained in a vote on forming an alliance with the Tories. The SNP took control of the council, with a minority administration. They are seven seats short of a majority but the other parties could agree to work together.
Stirling - The SNP and Labour agree a coaltion to run the council.
West Dunbartonshire - It will be an SNP-independent administration. The 10 SNP councillors have joined with one of the two independents to form an administration.
West Lothian - No deal agreed after Scottish Labour's ruling body told councillors not to enter a coalition with the Conservatives. They will meet again on Thursday.
Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland - All administrations dominated by independents.
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In his lifetime, millions knew Jimmy Savile as an eccentric TV personality. To some, he was Saint Jimmy, who raised £40m for charity. But it has transpired that he was also one of the UK's most prolific sexual predators. | Savile was one of Britain's biggest stars, a larger-than-life character who was known for tea-time TV favourites like Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It as well as stints on BBC Radio 1.
At the same time, it has since come to light, he was exploiting his status to prey on hundreds of people - girls and boys, men and women, but mostly vulnerable young females.
He assaulted and raped them in television dressing rooms, hospitals, schools, children's homes and his caravan.
The scale of Savile's crimes was "to the best of our knowledge unprecedented in the UK", according to a report into his activities titled Giving Victims A Voice, which was published in 2013.
The abuse was thought to have begun in the mid-1940s, when he was in his late teens or early twenties, and lasted until 2009, two years before his death.
"It is now clear that Savile was hiding in plain sight and using his celebrity status and fund-raising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades," the Giving Victims A Voice report concluded.
He was, the report said, "a mainly opportunistic individual who used his celebrity status as a powerful tool to coerce or control them, preying on the vulnerable or star-struck for his sexual gratification".
Savile once famously claimed he had no emotions.
"That would make me bad news for a psychiatrist or a psychologist because there's nothing to find," he told Dr Anthony Clare in BBC Radio's In the Psychiatrist's Chair in 1991. "What you see is what there is."
But that was the carefully constructed Savile myth. It ensured very few people ever really got close to him, or knew the truth about what made him tick.
The public persona portrayed him as eccentric and flamboyant, but essentially straightforward and good-natured.
The mask rarely slipped while he was alive, and it helped him deflect accusations of anything more sinister. He would attract speculation because he was odd, he would say - but that was all he was.
"It's a nice thing that I have nothing to hide from people," he told a documentary titled The World of Jimmy Savile OBE in 1972.
"They ask me, are you queer? I say no, but if I felt that way I would have been. They ask me, why don't you get married? I say, well I've never felt the need.
"I've got nothing to hide from people, and when you come to think about it I lead a dead simple sort of life, which is OK, and definitely enough for me."
But in one rare moment of candour, he was asked by the interviewer Louis Theroux in 2000 why he had said he had no emotions.
"'Cause it's easier," he replied. "You say you've got loads and then you've got to explain them for two hours. The truth is that I'm very good at masking them."
Savile, one of seven children and the son of a bookmakers' clerk, had survived serious spinal injuries while working in a coal mine as a teenager before becoming a dance hall DJ and manager after World War II.
His clubs included Mecca Locarno club in Leeds in the early 1960s. Post-war austerity was being blown away and Savile claimed to be the first person to DJ with two turntables so there were no breaks between records.
Bouncer Dennis Lemmon later recalled how Savile arrived at the club in a bad mood one day. A colleague told Mr Lemmon that Savile was due in court the following day after "messing about with a couple of girls".
When Mr Lemmon later asked how the case had turned out, his colleague told him: "It never got to court - they dropped the charges."
"I said 'How the hell did he wangle that one?'" Mr Lemmon continued. "He said 'He did what he did last time - he paid them off.'"
So how did he get away with it? "He was a very powerful man, wasn't he?" Mr Lemmon replied. "A very powerful man with a lot of influence."
Even at the start of his career, his forceful personality was fully formed and he claimed to have the muscle to back it up.
Savile told Louis Theroux that during his club days, he "invented zero tolerance" and was "judge, jury and executioner" when he locked troublemakers in the club basement.
The aura remained as Savile became more famous and influential. He later cultivated friendships with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Prince Charles.
It is not difficult to see how a young victim could have believed that his or her word may have counted for less than his.
'Open secret'
After the clubs, the tracksuit-wearing, platinum-haired showman went on to become a familiar presence, weighed down with jewellery and with cigar in hand.
Figures from the music industry and TV world have said they heard rumours about Savile's behaviour.
Roger Holt, a former record plugger who would visit the Radio 1 offices every week in the 1960s, said Savile's predilection for young girls was "an open secret".
"I heard through his office, just in conversation, 'Jimmy's at it again,'" he said. "He used to travel the country with his colleagues at the BBC [who would say] 'Oh he gets these young girls in his Rolls or the caravan when he was travelling around.'
"They'd just say 'Oh he's after these young girls.' It was an open secret in the record industry."
Savile would not socialise like other DJs, Mr Holt recalled.
"He was just a very strange person. You couldn't really have a conversation with him. I used to see him at Top of the Pops and didn't talk to him unless I had to go to his dressing room.
"When I had to go to his dressing room the last time I was there, there weren't any young girls in there - there were a lot of his mates who I thought were as weird as he was. There was definitely a clique in that dressing room."
Some suspicions centred on Savile's activities in the caravan he took on the road with a Radio 1 show called Savile's Travels.
In 1973, Radio 1 controller Douglas Muggeridge asked the station's press officer Rodney Collins to check whether any newspapers were planning to print rumours about his exploits.
"There were allegations that there were girls, under-age girls involved, maybe, in the caravan," Mr Collins told the BBC.
He reported back that the papers had "heard these allegations" but were unwilling to print them "whether they were true or not" because Savile did a lot for charity and was "perceived as a very popular man".
Savile persuaded the tabloids not to run stories by telling them they would be responsible for the end of his charity fund-raising.
Savile was said to have raised £40m for charities and it was an effective form of emotional blackmail.
His fund-raising activities also gave him a way to get into hospitals, schools and the corridors of power.
He had a bedroom at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, where his now-defunct charitable trust was based, as well as an office and living quarters at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in Berkshire.
In 1988, he was even appointed by the Department of Health as the head of a taskforce overseeing Broadmoor.
Eleven allegations of sexual abuse at Broadmoor were reported to a review that was published in June 2014, but this is thought to be an underestimate.
The review also recounted how he watched and made inappropriate comments when female patients stripped and showered naked in front of staff.
'Unwholesome' interests
Dr Chandra Ghosh, a former consultant psychiatrist at Broadmoor, told the BBC's Panorama that the victims were highly vulnerable.
"These were people that nobody believed," she said. "So if they had in fact turned around and said that he had abused them or raped them, nobody would have believed them."
Savile was also a regular visitor to Leeds General Infirmary, where at least 60 people have come forward to say they were abused. They were aged between five and 75 at the time.
A total of 44 reports into Savile's activities in relation to specific hospitals and hospice premises have also been published.
Stoke Mandeville Hospital was one of those concerned and a report published in February 2015 found Savile had full and unsupervised access to all areas of the hospital for more than 20 years.
It described Savile as an "opportunistic predator" who abused more than 60 victims between 1968-92.
Dr Sue Proctor, who chaired an inquiry into Savile's actions at Leeds General Infirmary, said the star also had an "unwholesome interest in the dead".
It is alleged he posed for photographs and performed sex acts on corpses in the hospital mortuary. She also referred to Savile's claims that large rings he wore were "made from the glass eyes of dead bodies at the mortuary".
'Very naive'
For Savile's friends and acquaintances who had no inkling of his darker side and only remembered his acts of charity, all this has been hard to come to terms with.
Roger Ordish, producer of Jim'll Fix It, which ran between 1975 and '94, said he never suspected any wrongdoing.
When Savile stayed at the Ordish family home one night, they put him in a bedroom next to their 14-year-old daughter. "We, in our innocence, had no idea," Roger Ordish's wife Susie said, speaking in October 2012.
Mrs Ordish said she thought Savile treated every woman the same way - "a very unsophisticated, naive, clumsy way".
"He would kiss every woman's hand. He thought he was being gallant. It wasn't gallant. It wasn't seedy. It was just very naive," she said.
"Because of his clumsiness with women, which was not in the least sexual, I thought he was one of those asexual people."
One of Savile's tactics for keeping his friends in the dark about his private life was to keep them apart.
Many fellow DJs, with whom he worked on BBC Radio 1 for decades, admitted they barely knew the man at all. But he had a separate set of friends in his home city of Leeds, with whom he would go running or have weekly meals in the Flying Pizza restaurant.
As well as Leeds, he had homes in Scarborough, London, Scotland and Bournemouth and had different groups of friends in different places. They were his "teams", he called them.
In Scarborough, Louis Theroux was let into the flat where Savile's mother had lived, and discovered Savile's continuing attachment to her, 27 years after her death.
Savile kept clothes belonging to his mother - whom he dubbed The Duchess - in her wardrobe, just as they had been when she had died.
After that documentary, the view many held of Savile shifted from odd to creepy.
One key element of the public Savile persona was that, despite hosting children's TV shows, he hated children.
Theroux again managed to get Savile to open up when he asked the star why he insisted that he hated youngsters.
"We live in a very funny world and it's easier for me as a single man to say I don't like children because that puts a lot of salacious tabloid people off the hunt," he replied.
Was that because such a reply would stop questions about whether or not he was a paedophile, Theroux asked?
"How do they know whether I am or not?" Savile said. "How does anybody know whether I am?
"Nobody knows whether I am or not. I know I'm not, and I can tell you from experience that the easy way of doing it, when they say, all them children on Jim'll Fix It, is to say, yeah, I hate them.
"That's my policy. That's the way it goes. And it's worked a dream. A dream."
Police forces did have chances to take Savile to court while he was alive - but no charges were ever brought.
Legal threats
In 2009, the Crown Prosecution Service looked at four allegations dating back to 1970, but decided not to pursue a case because the victims would not support police action.
Savile was interviewed under caution and said the allegations had been invented by the complainants, who he claimed were after money.
He threatened to take legal action against the police and mentioned that he had sued five newspapers in the past.
Savile was also named during a 2008 police investigation into abuse at Haut de Garenne children's home in Jersey.
But the truth did not come out until after his death.
"As a nation, at that time we held Savile in our affection as a somewhat eccentric national treasure with a strong commitment to charitable causes," Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said in June 2014.
"In reality he was a sickening and prolific sexual abuser who repeatedly exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes."
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A clash is about to take place on the capital's streets that sees the old pitted against the new. The livelihoods of London's iconic cabbies are at stake. But could they be stifling opportunities for a new breed of driver - that could even include you? | By Dougal ShawTechnology reporter
London's black-cab drivers are preparing to cause gridlock in the capital on Wednesday, in protest at Transport for London's stance towards a mobile phone app that allows users to book private vehicles, using GPS technology to set the fare.
It's the hottest topic of conversation amongst cab drivers since Olympic traffic lanes. What should be done about Uber?
Black-cab driver Lloyd Baldwin is in no doubt. "Our beef with Uber is that these drivers have come straight into London, and have been licensed straight away by Transport for London. We're regulated to within an inch of our lives.
"We don't do protests willy-nilly for petty things, we feel it's our only course.
"We just want them to be treated exactly the same as we are."
The issue of "regulation" covers a multitude of sins as far as the black-cab drivers are concerned, from the extent to which Uber drivers are security-vetted to a driver's profit margins.
But perhaps the battle can best be summed up by two symbols that sit proudly on each rival's dashboard: the fare-calculating taximeter and the smartphone.
Curb competition
In the five years of its existence, San Francisco-based Uber has expanded its operation into more than 100 cities across 30 countries, causing conflict in its wake with traditional taxi associations.
Its proposition is simple: users download an app to their mobile which they use to book cabs, wherever they may be. That much has already been offered to Londoners by firms like Kabbee and Hailo.
Uber has provoked controversy because of its pool of drivers. Anyone with a Private Hire Vehicle (PHV) licence can sign up with them. This has allowed Uber to build up a vast number of drivers quickly, many of whom only work part-time.
This makes Uber more like a minicab firm. But unlike a traditional minicab firm, there are no human operators available to take your booking on the phone at their offices. The process is completely automated by Uber's software, which allocates your booking to the driver best placed to take it on.
Uber evangelist
Ben John never imagined he would end up driving a cab round London.
Ironically, it was the digital revolution that got him into this situation. A successful A&R man for over a decade in the music industry, his profit margins suddenly shrunk as music downloads disrupted the record labels' business model.
For him, Uber has been a lifeline, providing him with lucrative, flexible work as he establishes his new start-up business selling e-cigarettes.
Evidently grateful, he has become something of an Uber evangelist.
"You can log in and off from work as you want to, which allows you to do other things with your day," he says, while keeping an eye on the phone protruding from his dashboard.
"Because [Uber] are not actually a cab firm, they are just a software firm, they're just a third party that passes on the jobs, they are able to charge much more competitive prices, and are able to pay the drivers a great deal more as well."
A lack of overheads allows Uber to offer drivers 80% of the customer's fare.
Ultimately, Mr John doesn't think that Uber threatens the black cab trade.
"What I'm seeing is that Uber are actually expanding the number of people who would otherwise not use minicabs."
Back to black
From the comfort of his black cab, Lloyd Baldwin begs to differ. "We're not afraid of competition. We've faced competition from minicabs for 40 years."
But in this case, Mr Baldwin believes the competition is not on a level playing field.
"Transport for London now aren't sure if they [Uber] should have been given a licence or not, hence they've gone to the High Court for a judgment on it, but they still licensed them before they were sure."
The issue at stake is whether Uber's use of the smartphone equates to a taximeter, a talismanic object for black cab drivers, which they feel only they have the right to use.
TfL's original position was that it did not believe Uber was infringing the law because its kit did not require a physical connection between the device and the vehicle, as is the case with the equipment used by black cabs.
The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) dispute this.
Mr Baldwin wonders why Uber was able to introduce the smartphone as a way of measuring fares without more scrutiny.
"We suspect that they [Uber] are backed by big, multi-billion pound companies," he says.
His suspicion extends to Amazon, which is not in fact connected to Uber. However, Goldman Sachs and Google do offer it financial backing.
Uber evangelist Ben John is careful to always refer to his smartphone as a "GPS device", rather than a meter, and is keen to talk up its benefits.
"The difference is that there is actually a lot of recourse if you believe as a customer that your driver is taking an overly long route, you can go back to Uber, and the price given back to you if need be."
You can also nominate a friend or loved-one to track your journey, as a security feature.
However, GPS-tracking could also be the Achilles heel of the firm, if data privacy fears arise. Uber has already handed over details on some of its customers' journeys to the authorities. By law, minicab and black-cab firms have to do the same, but they simply don't record their customer's journeys in the same level of digital detail.
Uber allies?
The cause of the black-cab drivers recently suffered a reverse with the announcement that app Hailo - which at first offered its services only to black cabs - would be working with private-hire vehicles.
"We feel that they used us to give them a place in the market, they used our reputation and our good name," says Mr Baldwin.
"We just feel used by Hailo," he says, with more bitterness in his voice than he reserves for Uber or TfL.
Twenty years ago, he explains, when mobile phones were still uncommon objects, he invested three very tough years of his life learning to become a black-cab driver. He devoted long hours to learning The Knowledge, the fabled test of a driver's memory of London's sprawling streets, which also includes a psychological test to see how you deal with difficult customers.
He thought those years of hardship were worth it, because he was earning a lifetime of guaranteed work, and the badge of pride that is the black cab.
But Uber and Hailo appear to be taking a bet on a different future where there is no meaningful distinction between black cabs and minicabs.
It's this vision of the future that the black cabbies are protesting against on Wednesday.
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A 17-year-old boy has been arrested by gardaí (Irish police) investigating the murder of Cameron Blair in Cork. | The 20-year-old was stabbed at a house party in Bandon Road in the west of the city on 16 January.
He died from his injuries at Cork University Hospital, prompting a murder investigation.
Irish national broadcaster RTÉ reported the teenager presented himself by appointment for questioning on Thursday.
Mr Blair, from the village of Ballinascarthy in County Cork, was a second-year student at Cork Institute of Technology.
Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, Dr Paul Colton, said he was well known locally as a rugby player and athlete.
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President Mahinda Rajapaksa has assured that Sri Lanka is firmly on the path to a political solution while militarily dealing
with the Tamil Tigers.President Rajapaksa was addressing the 2nd Summit of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic
Cooperation (BIMSTEC) on Thursday. | “Sri Lanka wholeheartedly supports the BIMSTEC Convention on Cooperation in Combating International Terrorism, Organized Crime
and Illicit Drug Trafficking as an important and vital milestone in our efforts on counter terrorism,” said President Mahinda
Rajapaksa.
Fighting terrorism
"Terrorist groups are able to sustain themselves by illegal fundraising, narcotics and people trafficking, money laundering
using international networks, and arms and ammunition smuggling including through the sea routes in the Bay of Bengal. I
urge you to consider setting up a mechanism to effectively police the seas of the Bay of Bengal, to deny these terrorists
mobility and connectivity.
“For over two decades, Sri Lanka has been facing a tremendous challenge to our democratic way of life through the barbaric
actions of a terrorist group, the LTTE. There is no doubt that such groups have to be dealt with militarily. At the same
time Sri Lanka believes that any underlying causes, exploited by the terrorists in an attempt to seek legitimacy for their
operations, should be dealt with politically. I wish to assure this august gathering that we are firmly on the path to a
political solution,” President Rajapaksa said.
expertise in poverty alleviation
The President also explained the success of his adminstration on its efforts to eradicate poverty in Sri Lanka. "After three
years of active implementation, a majority of the proposals contained in the ‘Mahinda Chintana’ which is my election manifesto,
have delivered many benefits to my people. A number of poverty alleviation programmes, both direct and indirect, indeed
have proved to be success stories, and have empowered the rural people".
President Rajapaksa said Sri Lanka will continue to share her experiences in the field of poverty alleviation with the other
Member States, while contributing whole-heartedly to the collective effort against poverty.
In his speech, the president thanked India for its hospitality.
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Control of a half-finished shopping centre site has been returned to a city council after the company which was set up to oversee the redevelopment was officially wound up. | Nottingham's 1970s Broadmarsh Centre was undergoing a redesign when the coronavirus lockdown hit.
The partnership in charge of the redevelopment - Broadmarsh Retail Limited - has gone into liquidation.
The partnership included owners Intu, who are in administration.
The liquidation was announced by The Insolvency Service, a government agency, which said the partnership did not have any employees or customers.
"The effect of this notice is to hand control of the site back to Nottingham City Council as freeholder," it said.
Intu declined to comment.
The city council, which owns the site and has already put £17m into the project said it was, "awaiting the outcome of legal processes."
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
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The inquiry into abuse carried out by Stuart Hall heard from dozens of witnesses. Here is some of the evidence given by former colleagues who worked with the disgraced presenter, and testimony from a victim. | Victim: 'I was groomed with alcohol'
A victim of Stuart Hall's abuse, who cannot be identified, told the BBC she was introduced as his "niece or goddaughter" and was brought into BBC buildings and to football matches.
She said she was "plied with alcohol - this was standard. There was always champagne".
She said she was "sometimes locked in" the BBC car park. She said she felt: "Numb, numb, numb."
"It's a very different scenario walking through the BBC today from then. There's security. You're signed in, you're signed out. In those days, I was there and nobody knew I was there."
She said it "never occurred to me that I should tell someone. I don't want my parents to feel ashamed of me, to wonder about me. That's the way grooming works".
She described being "quite withdrawn and didn't want to get into conversation with anyone".
'I saw him with young girls in his dressing room'
Deborah Robinson, who worked with Hall as a producer at the BBC in Manchester, said she saw him in his dressing room on Friday afternoons with young teenage girls "on more than one occasion".
She said Hall was a "celebrity and I was a young journalist. [Celebrities] had a lot of power - he was well known," she added.
"For me to say anything at work about, 'what you are doing here on BBC premises', it wasn't done."
In a BBC interview, she said: "The BBC was a very different organisation and society was different because we didn't understand child abuse - the thought of a celebrity doing something unspeakable with two young girls on public premises; I didn't think it was possible.
"It was only afterwards when all these accounts came out, and you realised that, yes, what I saw was wrong, then.
"You just didn't think that child abuse could occur in a public office. How could you?"
'I knew they were not his nieces'
Former studio worker Gerry Clarke recalled a specific occasion when he saw Hall bringing two girls, aged between 14 and 16, to his dressing room during rehearsals for a Children in Need programme.
Mr Clarke's recollection accords with the evidence of a woman who remembered going to see Hall as a child with her friend.
He said he had seen girls of this age range on the studio monitor at Oxford Road, "possibly between five and 10 times". He knew they were not Hall's nieces, but it did not bother him because he just never "thought that way".
Mr Clarke recalled an incident when he went to collect Hall from his dressing room. Hall had his trousers down and was holding a vibrating massager used for sports injuries in his hand.
One of the girls invited by Hall to the BBC studios for elocution lessons told the investigation that Hall referred to her and her friend as "nieces".
'He took young, pretty guests to his dressing room'
A journalist working in the Manchester television newsroom in the late 1980s, known as AH6, described a cookery slot on the regional TV news programme where Hall would be joined by guests.
"If they were young and pretty, everyone would know that they would not see Hall around before the programme as he would lock himself in with them in his dressing room/ green room."
She said: "It was known that [he] liked to entertain guests in his dressing room and you would know not to go in there... it was a bit 'nod, nod, wink, wink'."
'Hall could do what he liked'
Former BBC colleague Linda McDougall, who worked at BBC Manchester in the late 1960s and 70s, said Hall was a "nuisance to women".
"If you were female, at the slightest opportunity, he put his arms around you and forced his body against yours."
Ms McDougall said he would show up at lunchtime and, within seconds, would be touching her under the guise of saying 'good morning'."
When she complained, other women in the newsroom who were typists and generally much older told her: "That's the way things are", and she ought not to take it seriously.
When she complained to her editor, his reaction was "to laugh it off".
She described Hall as "King of the BBC in Manchester and he could do what he liked; I'm sure he believed he could as well."
'He had very wandering hands'
A witness called CH22, who worked in the newsroom in the early to mid-1980s, described how Hall would push himself at her and "grab a [breast]".
She did not report it. She thought if she had reported the incident, people might have said: "That's Stuart Hall for you." She said she would not tolerate such behaviour now.
Another witness, AH4, said: "Absolutely none of us ladies would walk up the narrow stairs in front of him, whether wearing a skirt or trousers. You could say 'he had very wandering hands'."
Hall was 'untouchable'
Former reporter Michael Delahaye, who worked with Hall in Manchester between 1972 and 1975, said: "Stuart Hall WAS Look North.
"Stuart knew this, often alluded to it and I believe traded upon it. More to the point, BBC management knew it."
Mr Delahaye said this gave Hall "considerable licence" and made management "reluctant to challenge him for fear of losing him".
"In short, Stuart's celebrity status (greatly enhanced as it was by It's a Knockout) rendered him relatively untouchable."
Source: BBC interview and Dame Linda Dobbs report
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Two motorists were seriously injured when their cars crashed and burst into flames. | The head-on collision happened on the A141 near March, in Cambridgeshire, at about 06:00 GMT.
Police arrested one of the drivers on suspicion of driving while under the influence of drugs.
Both cars were destroyed in the fire and the road was closed for more than two hours, but has since reopened.
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A wildfire has forced the closure of a stretch of the A9 in the Highlands.
| Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service said 40 firefighters were tackling the blaze at the Clashmore and Dornoch Bridge roundabout.
The emergency services were alerted to the fire in Sutherland at about 15:40. Police have shut the road because of the amount of drifting smoke.
The incident is the latest wildfire firefighters have been called to in the past few weeks.
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Once hunted to near extinction, North Atlantic right whales are now facing new human threats that could end the species. Here are the people risking their lives to save them. | By Jessica MurphyBBC News, Shippagan, New Brunswick
For whale rescuer Mackie Greene, there's no feeling in the world like seeing fishing ropes slip free from a trapped whale.
"It's almost like you could get out of the boat and run home," he says.
"It's like you're bouncing that high - and they must be able to hear us for miles cause you're hollering and hooting and the whole way in."
There's a flipside though: the times when the Campobello Whale Rescue Team head home with little to show for their efforts.
That was the case when they returned to Shippagan, a New Brunswick fishing village, after a long day on the water.
Three entangled North Atlantic right whales had recently been seen in the area and a rescue mission launched. Aerial surveillance had spotted one of the whales about 40 miles (65km) offshore and Greene's team headed out.
They got close enough to the animal - which can weigh up to 70 tonnes and grow to over 55 feet, about the length of a bowling lane - to see fishing rope wrapped around the tail stock and cutting deep into its flesh.
Weather had kept them off the water for part of the day, and despite the whale's distress, dusk was falling, and they had to head back to shore.
"You know that whale's still out there, still suffering," he says.
After more than a week of work, the team had two small victories - they had managed to partially free two five-year-old males, one almost hogtied by fishing gear keeping it from using its tail when diving.
The time and effort that went into the partial rescue shows just how complex the work can be.
Weather in the Gulf of St Lawrence can be capricious. It's a huge body of water, and the whales spend a lot of time below the surface, making them difficult to track.
The work is itself dangerous - a "big game of cat and mouse", says Greene.
"We have to get up pretty close. The danger is the whale changing course, bumping into the boat, knocking the boat over or slapping the boat with the tail."
Two years ago, Greene's friend Joe Howlett died after being struck by a right whale's powerful tail just after he managed to cut it free.
Howlett, a lobster fishermen by trade, had been working disentanglement missions with Greene for over 15 years and was dedicated to helping whales and loved the adrenaline rush that came with a rescue.
"We could work without talking to each other, we knew each other so well," Greene says.
"We had a pact - if anything ever happened - we knew it was dangerous what we were doing and if anything ever happened we were still going to keep it going, no matter what."
'People wouldn't stand for this'
North Atlantic right whale are like tanks in the water - heavy, wide and dense. They're also curious, acrobatic animals who can be seen breaching the water and smacking it with their flukes.
For centuries they were lucrative prey for whalers. In the medieval era, they were hunted by the Basques. Later, their blubber helped fuel the Industrial Revolution, when whale oil was used to lubricate factory machinery.
By the early 1890s, commercial whalers had hunted right whales in the Atlantic to near extinction.
Now their habitat overlaps with a heavily industrialised part of the ocean ranging from Florida to Newfoundland. It's over 1,000 miles of coastline crowded with ship traffic and economically important commercial fisheries.
Most are now being killed by boats and fishing gear.
The blunt trauma of a vessel strike can crush bones and fracture skulls and vertebrae. Propeller wounds can cut deep into flesh.
Researchers documented the case of one female right whale, healed from propeller wounds she received as a calf, who is believed to have died from an infection when she became pregnant 14 years later and her old scars split as she grew.
Entanglements can cause a slow partial amputations or mutilations, and whales who can't free themselves from the ropes can drag heavy gear for months. They may eventually drown or starve.
"If this were on land, people wouldn't stand for this," says Tonya Wimmer a biologist with Marine Animal Response Society (Mars), in Halifax, Canada.
Right whales on the move
For decades, right whales would spend summers in the Bay of Fundy on Canada's east coast.
The reliable stomping grounds made it easier to bring in conservation measures to make room for the whales.
In 2003, Greene's colleague, scientist Moira Brown, in collaboration with the shipping industry and the Canadian government, had shipping lanes rerouted around a significant feeding ground and nursery habitat area in the bay - the first time ever international shipping lanes were moved to help a species.
That small lane shift is credited with reducing the risk of ship strikes there by as much as 90%.
Between 2000 and 2010, the right whale population grew from about 350 to almost 500.
But then the whales began to change their behaviour - and their population began to drop alarmingly.
There are now just over 400 estimated to be in existence.
This June, six right whales were killed, devastating the network of scientists and conservationists fighting to save the animals from extinction. Two more were found dead in July.
It's unlikely they are the only mortalities, says Cathy Merriman a biologist with Canada's federal fisheries department.
"For various reasons we know that when we see a dead right whale there's probably other ones that we don't see," she says. "We can probably consider it's at least double."
One of the dead whales was Punctuation - a whale matriarch researchers had been sighting for almost 40 years.
The species had lost a grandmother, a whale who had given birth to eight calves - and with only about 100 breeding age females right whales still alive - every baby that she could have had in her lifetime.
What we know about her life shows how hard survival is for the species.
Punctuation had been through five separate entanglements and bore the scars from a number of small vessel strikes, including propeller scars on her left flank.
Three of her offspring are confirmed or presumed dead from severe entanglements or ship strikes.
Why is this happening now?
Scientists have known for a few years that some right whales had started spending their summers in waters north of the Bay of Fundy.
In 2015, about 40 right whales were spotted in the Gulf of St Lawrence, and they have been increasingly frequenting the region since.
It's believed the whales are following copepods—tiny crustaceans that form the base of their diet - as their distribution shifts due to climate change. Right whales have also been having fewer calves, which could be linked to them not getting enough food.
Their habitat shift put them increasingly in the path of ships and fishing gear - but it took a catastrophe to get the Canadian government's attention.
In 2017, 17 right whales were confirmed killed, 12 of them in Canadian waters. Howlett also died that summer, bringing global attention to the dangerous work of whale rescue.
"It was like a perfect storm of everything possibly horrible happening all at the same time," says Wimmer.
"So it was a moment where there was this light bulb that clearly came on for whoever it needed to come on for."
In August of that year, after over nine whale deaths, the government brought in some measures, including large vessel speed restrictions, in parts of the Gulf. It has continued since to slow boats and close some fishing areas to make way for whales.
It is also conducting aerial surveillance to track the whales and to support rescue missions, and is assisting in necropsies.
Organisations like the Campobello Whale Rescue Team and Mars - working on shoe-string budgets and relying heavily on volunteers - have been doing much of the marine response work on the east coast.
They run disentanglement missions for right and other whales, and handle hundreds of calls a year for stranded or dead marine animals.
Now some more federal funding is beginning to flow.
Greene was able to replace the old government surplus boat the Campobello team had been using for rescues since 2002 - a C$300,000 ($230,000;£184,000) upgrade.
"We've been asking for this for years, decades, probably, about how we increase this response capacity - for all elements of response - and it's been tricky, until we had a disaster strike" says Wimmer.
So what more needs to be done?
"It's not as simple as saying don't smoke or wear a seatbelt or let's not put lead in gasoline anymore," says Sean Brillant, with the Canadian Wildlife Federation.
"We can't end shipping in the Gulf of St Lawrence. We can't end fishing in the Gulf of St Lawrence. So where is that middle ground and what works?"
Brillant and others have been working with local fishermen to explore new fishing technology and methods that could curb entanglements.
Some have hosted researchers experimenting with things like ropeless fishing gear for lobster and crab fisheries on their boats.
That tech, which would secure fishing rope to the bottom of the ocean until it needs to be released, could be hugely beneficial but is years away. It's still too finicky and expensive to be used widely or reliably.
Other possibilities are "weak" ropes that could break under a certain amount of pressure, making it easier for a whale to free itself, or using underwater microphones to improve whale tracking.
"It's going to be a combination of things [that will help]. There's not one single silver bullet," says Philippe Cormier, whose engineering company, Corbo, is working on a number of projects, including ropeless fishing.
Slowing ships is still the best option to avoid fatal strikes - limited experiments to warn right whales of nearby vessels have been unsuccessful and it may be hard for them to hear approaching ships - but better early detection of whales ahead could help navigators.
Brillant says the government has made "difficult and unpopular decisions" in closing down large areas to commercial fishing and slowing shipping traffic - disruptions to important industries.
"We've come a long way," he says. "[But] they can certainly go farther on some decisions."
Right whales have shown themselves to be a deeply resilient species.
"It always amazes me how tough the whales are, what they can bounce back from," Greene says. "There's right whales around with half a tail or missing a flipper. They are really tough. There's one called Radiator with propeller scars down his back - really chewed up - and he's still going."
Despite so many pressures on their population, seven new calves were born this year. It's not quite a baby boom but enough to give some hope.
Brillant says he believes that the whales and humans can co-exist, "if we can meet them in the middle".
"At least they're doing their part to make sure they're surviving. We need to do our part to make sure we stop destroying them without even meaning to."
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You wouldn't necessarily expect the European Union to be such a rallying cry in Ukraine, but Ukrainians are so enraged by a government decision to suspend trade deal negotiations with the EU that they have been rallying protesters under the hashtag #євромайдан ("European Square"). | By BBC TrendingWhat's popular and why
First tweeted early on Thursday morning, the hashtag had been used more than 21,000 times by Friday as overnight opposition demonstrations were held in the cities of Donetsk, Ivano-Frankovsk, Lutsk, Uzhgorod and Lviv. Kiev's Independence Square is a focal point for protests - just as it was during 2004's so-called Orange Revolution. Then, protesters were bolstered not just by their strength in numbers but also by SMS messages: Mobile phones were key for organising protests, avoiding police cordons and ordering supplies. Now the protests are mostly being galvanised by social media. Ukrainian digital marketing expert Maksym Savanevskyy says there has been an explosion of calls-to-arms online since the government's decision on EU talks.
WBC heavyweight boxing champion and would-be Ukrainian president Vitali Klitschko tweeted: "Friends! All those who came to Maydan [Independence Square], well done! Who has not done it yet - join us now!" The protest hashtag was also gaining traction on the VKontakte social media network, and Mr Klitschko tweeted a link to a speech he made on the square saying that once the protest was 100,000-strong, "we'll go for Yanukovych" - referring to President Viktor Yanukovych.
But although Facebook, Twitter and other social media are buzzing with rallying calls for a major protest on Sunday, questions remain as to whether that will translate into big numbers on the rain-soaked streets of Kiev. "Many people tell you of their protest fatigue, and many believe that not just the numbers but the spirit of the Orange Revolution will hardly be repeated - whatever the tools," says the former head of the BBC's Ukrainian service Olexiy Solohubenko.
Reporting by Michael Hirst
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It's nearly finals weekend at Wimbledon when thousands of people will be forming an orderly queue to get in. But is queuing politely really the British way? | By Denise WintermanBBC News Magazine
Queuing, it's what the British are renowned for doing - and doing very well. Better than anyone else in the world, if reputation is to be believed.
Take the Wimbledon queue.
It's held up as a supreme example of Britain's prowess when it comes to queuing. The likes of tea, cake and camping chairs often make an appearance. It even has its own code of conduct in case, heaven forbid, anyone doesn't understand how the queue works.
But Wimbledon is an exception when it comes to standing in a long line, say social historians. Despite the UK's formidable global reputation, queuing in a calm, good-natured manner has not always come naturally.
"We're supposed to be so wonderful at it but really that reputation is built around a whole mythology to do with the British and queuing," says Dr Joe Moran, a social historian and author of Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime.
The temporary nature of queues makes it hard to trace their history, but key historical events are said to have shaped how the British queue and their reputation for being so good at it. One is the industrial revolution.
"The orderly queue seems to have been an established social form in the early 19th Century, a product of more urbanised, industrial societies which brought masses of people together," says Moran.
People were moving in huge numbers from the countryside into towns changing the patterns of daily life, including shopping.
"More of a barter system existed in local markets, the whole way people shopped was more informal," says historian Juliet Gardiner. "Traders started moving from market stalls into shops as they moved into towns. In the more formal setting of a shop people had to start to queue up in a more structured way."
Despite the mass expansion of manufacturing not everyone reaped the financial rewards and poverty was rife.
"Queuing started to become associated with extreme hardship as the poor had to queue to access handouts and charity," says Dr Kate Bradley, a lecturer in social history and social policy at the University of Kent.
But what really shaped Britain's reputation as civilised queuers was World War II.
"Propaganda at the time was all about doing your duty and taking your turn," says Bradley. "It was a way the government tried to control a situation in uncertain times."
The queue became loaded with meaning, drawing on notions of decency, fair play and democracy and the myth of the British as patient queuers was forged, says Moran.
"In reality there were arguments and disturbances, often the police had to be brought in to sort things out and restore order. Queuing was exhausting, frustrating and tense.
"Things that weren't rationed would go on sale spasmodically, word would go round and long queues would start to form. People often joined the end of a queue without knowing exactly what it was for, they just hoped it would be something useful."
The notion of the orderly queue is a belief that is still cherished today.
"It's a story we still like to tell about ourselves," says Moran. "We like to think it fits in with a particular idea we have of our national character - that we're pragmatic and phlegmatic."
Others argue that the British are good at organising themselves into a queue but not so good at waiting in it.
In the post-war years things flipped and the queue came to represent everything that was wrong about British society. Politicians and social commentators tried to make capital out of them, like the dole queue in the 1980s.
But the nation's reputation for queuing patiently remained intact. Wimbledon and other events - from queuing for Glastonbury to the Queen's 60th Jubilee concert - were and still are held aloft as British queuing at its best, but they are not the type of queue people experience in everyday life.
"The queue at Wimbledon is part of the whole ritual. You certainly don't get the same warm glow of togetherness waiting for the bus or standing in a line at the bank," says Moran.
It's the bus queue that is often cited as an example of the demise of civilised queuing. In some places it's every man, woman and child for themselves when the bus draws up. But cultural historians say there is little evidence that people behaved any better in years gone by.
"What we do know is people have been complaining about the disintegration of queue discipline for almost as long as they have been lauding the queue as the essence of British decency," says Moran.
What makes standing in a line for a bus problematic is that people have to police the queue themselves.
"The people who push to get on a bus are the same people who wait patiently in other queues," says Dr Michael Sinclair, a consultant counselling psychologist with City Psychology Group.
"The difference is in the bus queue people have to enforce the rules themselves. This is when the system can break down. We all want things to be done the way we'd like, the problem is people have different ideas of what that should be."
In most other places, like the bank or supermarket, people are shown how to queue so lines are controlled a lot better, says David Worthington, a professor in the department of management science at the University of Lancaster who has researched queues.
Poles with retractable straps, numbered ticket machines - developed in Sweden in the 1960s - and electronic called-forward systems, tell people what to do and when.
"People know where they are in the queue and that is important when it comes to keeping things organised," he says.
Other queue myths have also been picked apart over the years. The notion that other nations can't queue like the British is outdated, says Worthington.
The motives behind the UK's intolerance of queue-jumping have also been questioned.
"When people tackle breaches of queue discipline it's not really the notion of fair play that is driving them, it is protecting their own interests," says Bradley.
Ultimately, if the British can avoid standing in a line they will, just like everyone else.
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Your observations about queuing:
As a UK/Canadian dual citizen who has spent considerable time in both countries, and who loves and feels loyal to both, I can report unequivocally that Canadians are the superior queuers. Most particularly when they are driving, but everywhere really, and most apparently when queues require self organization, like waiting to use a bank machine. Michael Robinson, Canada.
Singaporeans are the world's best queuers in my opinion. When H&M first opened they had people queuing around the block all day, every day for a week - if three came out, three were let in. It was quite a bizarre thing to witness. Laura, Cambridge.
A globetrotter, I have been trampled in a "queue" to get on a ferry in Switzerland, watched Chinese in Hong Kong rush onto a subway train so fast you could hear the "click" as their backsides hit the seats, seen the Turkish barging into an otherwise orderly line at passport control in Turkey and both Indians and Egyptians waiting patiently despite the hot sun. Megan, Cheshire UK.
Having worked in a variety of airports for eight years now I have seen the splendid queues which form at check ins, security areas and passport control. But as stated in the article, yes the Brits can form queues but waiting in them? That is another story. I have heard it all before. "That queue is going faster than my queue", "they have pushed in front", "someone must be training on this desk as it is the slowest", "I was here first" to name but a few. The tutting and watch looking normally starts after about 20 minutes. Queuing is something I tolerate knowing that it is something that sometimes we just have to do. We can't all be first, and someone has to be last. Lucy, Portugal.
In Beijing the Chinese form very orderly queues whilst waiting at a subway station. There is no jostling for position or cutting in. They walk round a queue rather than through it. Immediately the train doors are open it is every man, and woman, for themselves. The very idea of a queue disintegrates and the evidence is gone. Trevor Daynes, Beijing, China.
I have lived in three different countries outside of the UK and let me tell you the British are fantastic at queuing. Whether it be at a bus stop, at a shop, there is no comparison. The only place that seems to lack the typical British queuing is when one is at a bar, pub or club. Jared King, Civitanova, Italy.
Canadians are very good at forming and observing queues. At automatic banking machines in shopping centres or with street-access, for example, we form a single line that starts about two metres behind the people using the machines. We leave room for passersby and afford the people at the machines privacy to conduct their business, and as each person finishes his/her banking, the next in line moves to that machine. Waiting for a bus, however... not so much. Ruthanne Urquhart, Ottawa, Canada.
I was picking up a few odds and ends one day, when an American couple stopped me at the tills and asked me how the queue worked. Whether they genuinely did not know, or whether our reputation for queuing is that formidable, I will never find out. They seemed delighted with the information they received in any case. Sacha Jones, Wigan.
British best at Queuing? When it suits us we can be awesome at it, and we love a good whinge when other folks don't adhere to our own high queuing standards, but we have our lapses as well. Take boarding a Ryanair flight for instance. Queue etiquette means nothing.... it's every man/woman/child for themselves. Nick Exley, Bradford, West Yorkshire
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Blasphemy laws are being challenged in a new global campaign launched by a coalition of humanist organisations. The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) says that, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, the time is right for countries to abolish laws that protect religious sensibilities. But blasphemy laws nevertheless remain popular in many parts of the world. | By John McManusBBC Social Affairs Reporter
The attacks on the staff of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine led to a massive response in defence of free speech - in France, but also across the world.
Equally intensely, some parts of the world saw protests against both the original cartoons, and the subsequent publication of another image of the Prophet Muhammad.
There is a particular prohibition against showing the image of Muhammad in some strands of Islam, but the crime of blasphemy can be found in many religions and countries.
To its supporters, it's a crucial way of protecting religious feelings and minorities; for others, it impedes free speech and can be used to suppress political dissent.
Minority persecution
Sonja Eggerickx is the president of IHEU which works to promote an evidence-led ethical society.
She says the campaign is intended to support local people on the ground already working against blasphemy laws.
"The idea that 'insult' to religion is a crime is why humanists like Asif Mohiuddin are jailed in Bangladesh, is why secularists like Raif Badawi are being lashed in Saudi Arabia, is why atheists and religious minorities are persecuted in places like Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, and the list goes on," she says.
Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes in May 2014 by a Saudi court after being found guilty of insulting Islamic religious figures on his blog.
Pakistan also has severe laws protecting religious feelings.
Asia Bibi, a 50-year-old mother-of-five, has been on death row since 2010 after being convicted of insulting Islam during an argument over a glass of water.
John Pontifex from the charity Aid to the Church in Need, which campaigns for Christian minorities, says many cases never reach court.
"They [blasphemy laws] give the fig leaf of respectability to acts of violence against Christians and others accused of crimes they very often have not committed," he said.
But do blasphemy laws help society in any way?
The Pew Research Centre has found that the laws are most common in the Middle East and North Africa.
And it is from this region that the most vocal advocates of the laws can be found.
The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, which represents 56 Islamic states, has repeatedly tried to get United Nations support for an international measure to outlaw insults to religion.
It says that such a resolution would protect groups from discrimination.
Last year, the organisation's secretary general, Iyan Ameen Madani, said that freedom of expression was clashing with Islamic teachings.
He criticised countries who refused to limit free speech, which he said was harming religious minorities.
"Muslim countries enacting laws to ensure respect for the sanctity and reputation of religious values, scriptures and personalities for promotion of peace in society, are criticised on account of limiting this freedom through blasphemy laws," he said.
Those laws are not just found in the Middle East.
Blasphemy in Europe
In Denmark, paragraph 140 of the penal code is about blasphemy. The paragraph has not been used since 1938 when a Nazi group was convicted for anti-Semitic propaganda.
In Myanmar, also known as Burma, in December, three men were charged by the authorities with insulting religion after they allegedly distributed a picture depicting Buddha wearing headphones.
Some European countries also criminalise anti-religious sentiments in some form.
In 2012 there were 99 convictions for "public blasphemy" in Malta, with punishments ranging from fines to imprisonment.
And in 2014, Russian MPs voted for a new law against offending religious feelings.
It followed a political protest by members of the group Pussy Riot in Moscow's Orthodox cathedral.
The charge against the three included "insult to religious feelings".
In Ireland, campaigners are furious that the government there has reneged on a promise to hold a referendum on its blasphemy laws, which were themselves only introduced in 2009.
And last year, a Greek man who satirised a dead Orthodox monk on Facebook was sentenced to 10 months in prison.
Those who want to extend religious insult laws are also making plans.
The UN Human Rights Council says it is likely that the issue of insulting religions will be raised at the council's upcoming sessions in March, at the request of Saudi Arabia.
'Minority voices'
The IHEU campaign, though, is not about encouraging discrimination, says Bob Churchill, its director of communications.
"Our campaign does not target laws against incitement to hatred, which are legitimate," he said.
Mr Churchill also rejects the charge of cultural imperialism.
"The reality is that minority voices for change and reform are there. The problem is they often cannot be heard."
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At the age of 12, Jordan Casey created a game that trended in the Apple iTunes store. Now 15, he's the chief executive of his own business, Casey Games . BBC Trending caught up with him to find out how he became a tech prodigy. | By BBC Trending What's popular and why
Casey first developed an interest in games when he was nine because he "thought it would be a fun hobby to blog about". After a short time writing about the games he was playing, he decided to make his own apps.
"At the time I was playing a game which had a tool to make your own house. So I figured this is how making your own game would work, only a bit more complex," he says. "I went to a store, bought a book on programming and started watching videos on YouTube. It all took off from there."
In 2012 he topped the charts in the Apple Store in his native Ireland with a game called Alien Ball. It was his first attempt to make a game suitable for iPhone, and the success came as a surprise.
"Alien Ball was a version of Space Invaders. Originally it was just an experimental game to test out the iPhone technology. I didn't expect it to do so well," he says.
The fact that the game was made by someone so young also helped. During the Apple review process, Casey wrote "by a 12 year old" in the description. That caught the company's attention. They contacted him and subsequently featured the game on their site. He's made several apps since then, including a sequel to Alien Ball.
In 2013 Casey ventured into more complicated software with the launch of TeachWare, an app which allows teachers to manage student information.
"I came up with the idea when my teacher lost her big black book with all of the students details of attendance and test results. I wanted to make something reliable. It's encrypted and saved in the cloud so you can't lose your information." TeachWare is now being used in parts of Asia, Africa and Europe and it won an award at an exhibition for young scientists.
When we meet him, Jordan Casey is confident, unassuming and relaxed. But he says that wasn't always the case. "I used to be really shy and I wasn't used to all of this attention. When I was 12 I was invited to the Cannes Lions festival. They treated me like I was famous and put me in a limo and stuff. It was really surreal and it happened really fast. In January I was making my own game and four months later I'm being shipped off to talk about my story."
Casey lives with his parents in Waterford in the Republic of Ireland. He goes to school and has a schedule for homework and his business. Like any ordinary teenager he enjoys spending time with his friends and playing football. And his coding expertise has come in handy for some teenage pranks.
"For my mum on Mother's Day I made an app and it looked like a search engine. Every time she tried to search something on it, it would just come up with 'Happy Mother's Day.' I was also trying to persuade her to let me have a sleepover so under the Mother's Day greeting it said 'Can I please have a sleepover?' in the search results," he says.
Despite his success he still considers his business a hobby - one that he's glad is catching on.
"When I started out at age nine, there weren't a lot of kids coding. But in the last four or five years, it's completely changed. Coding has become a normal hobby now - I think that's really cool."
Reporting by Anne-Marie Tomchak
You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending
All our stories are at bbc.com/trending
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The deal on fisheries required concessions from both the EU and the UK - but that only gets them to 2026, when the same issues return Until then, the British make modest inroads into Europe's share of catch quotas, much of that for species Britain has to export The penalties for breaking this short-term deal could be severe, and serve notice that access to European markets will come at a price, in access to British waters | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
'Kicking the can down the road': it was one of those expressions that came to characterise four and a half years of Brexit negotiations, as two prime ministers struggled to find a way to square impossible expectations in their own ranks with a formidable negotiating team on the other side of the table.
It hasn't ended. The fisheries can has been kicked down Cannery Row to 30 June 2026. The issue wasn't resolved. It was postponed.
Some time before that date - probably not long, if recent experience is any guide - we'll be pitched back into the most difficult bit of the Brexit negotiations.
Some things will have changed by then. UK vessels will have around an eighth more of the total catch from UK waters, or roughly 25% more than they have now. They will have received £100m from the UK government to expand and update the fleet.
And perhaps there will be a more realistic set of expectations of what Brexit can achieve.
In some ways, fish was the starting point of Brexit - the 'expendable' sector in the 1970s that stoked up resentment for the next 50 years.
That partly explains why it was the last issue to be resolved - still in dispute even hours after the scheduled Christmas Eve announcement time for a deal had come and gone.
And while the negotiators dispute has ended for now, it is one of the most hotly contested elements of the outcome. Fishery organisations, along with the Scottish National Party, say it is deeply or bitterly disappointing, and that promises have been broken.
The UK government concedes that it had to give some ground, but got most of what it wanted. And to the SNP, Conservatives hits back with the accusation of 'hypocrisy' - that SNP policy is to get Scotland back into the European Union, and its Common Fisheries Policy.
Sovereign rights
"Annexe Fish.4: protocol on access to waters", on page 899 of the EU version of the agreed text, sets out the most contentious issues with more clarity than you'll find on most other pages.
It uses British language about "independent coastal states" exercising "sovereign rights". It asserts that sharing of waters should be negotiated annually - again, a British demand.
It takes the EU view in "noting the social and economic benefits of a further period of stability", it continues the fishing access established over recent years.
That period lasts longer than the British wanted, and less time than the EU would have preferred, resolving the trickiest of issues in two brief sentences: "Article 1: An adjustment period is hereby established. The adjustment period shall last from 1 January 2021 until 30 June 2026".
During those five and a half years, shares will be "reasonably commensurate" with recent shares of fishing quotas and opportunities. Those stocks not restricted by quota are to retain the average tonnage of EU catch in UK waters (and vice versa) during 2012 to 2016. The same boats, or their direct replacement, must be allowed into each other's waters.
But then? The answer is on page 274: "Any subsequent changes to the shares... after 30 June 2026 are a matter for the relevant multilateral fora". In other words, back to the negotiating table.
Sprats and pouts
The British side established the sovereignty issue. But for the period of the transition, they got much less of a cut than the British fishers expected in European quota.
According to the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, using figures that were briefed on Christmas Eve but don't appear in the agreement document, UK boats will see an increase of 25%. The Federation quotes officials saying 2021 will see a 15% increase, and from 2022 to 2025, each year will see an increase of only 2.5%.
It won't be uniformly across all species. An annexe in the UK-EU agreement sets out the changes across stocks in different sea areas. Fisheries expert Griffin Carpenter, of the New Economics Foundation, explains that the really big increases in quota for UK vessels are in species they don't target much now, and for which there isn't much market in Britain; North Sea hake, up 36%, west of Scotland saithe, up 33%, English Channel sprat, rising 32%.
Likewise Norway pout caught in the North Sea, for which British boats will gain a 20% increase in share of the total catch. But starting from a very low base, that's a 400% increase in the amount they can land.
The most lucrative species are the ones where the UK's boats already have a share, and the relative increase in catch quota is more modest: herring, mackerel and whiting, which are mostly exported.
Possibly the best news for the white fish fleet, many of them out of north-east Scotland, is that the quota for cod is up 29% in the west of Scotland sea area, 22% around Rockall and 10% in the North Sea.
Retaliation
At least they know they can sell cod in the UK. Many of the other species require access for exports to European markets. And that's why it's worth taking a look at page 275 of the agreement: "Article FISH.14: Remedial measures and dispute resolution". That's where the Europeans set out their response if they lose any more than the agreed quota changes in the next five years.
First, they would block access for UK boats in EU waters. Then they would introduce tariffs on fishery products. And if that's not proportionate to the "economic and societal impact", they would introduce tariffs on other goods.
If that still isn't commensurate, they have a right to suspend the whole trade deal, and include in that the reciprocal agreement on road transport.
Such measures are subject to a tribunal judging whether these "remedies" are fair and proportionate.
But the message is clear: break this deal on fisheries for the next five years, and the EU will use the agreement to throw the kitchen sink at Britain in retaliation.
It also serves notice that any deal after June 2026 is going to link access for European vessels into UK waters with access of UK fishery products to European markets.
That shouldn't surprise us. In negotiating the deal, Michel Barnier has made it clear that the two will be tied together: asserting British sovereignty comes at a price, and that price will be access to Europe's marketplace.
It's a reminder that the deal struck on Christmas Eve begins with no tariffs or quotas. But as Britain chooses to diverge, there's no guarantee that it will stay that way.
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A fifth person has been arrested over allegations of fraud in connection with welfare to work company A4e.
| The 35-year-old woman was arrested by appointment at a police station in Berkshire on Wednesday.
Four other people were arrested in January, two men aged 35 and 41, and two women aged 28 and 49. All five remain on bail until mid April.
The Sheffield-based company handles millions of pounds worth of government contracts for welfare-to-work schemes.
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A pub which was "shamelessly" serving customers despite being ordered to stop trading because of coronavirus has been shut down. | The Staffordshire Arms in Burngreave, Sheffield was served with a prohibition notice on Friday but it was reported the pub continued to serve people.
Police and the council used new coronavirus legislation to shut the premises down.
The same action was also taken to shut the Prince of Vape shop in Sheffield.
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The government has suffered a second Brexit defeat in the House of Lords as peers backed, by 366 votes to 268, calls for a "meaningful" parliamentary vote on the final terms of withdrawal. | Ministers said it was disappointing and they would seek to overturn the move when the bill returns to the Commons.
Lord Heseltine, one of 13 Tory peers to rebel, said he had been sacked as a government adviser on regional growth.
The previous defeat was on the issue of guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens.
Lord Heseltine, 83, who served as a minister in the Thatcher government, said he was informed by the Conservative chief whip in the Lords he was to be sacked "from the five jobs with which I have been helping the government".
"This is entirely the right of the prime minister and I'm sorry that the expertise which I have put at the government's disposal over the last six years has now come to an end," he said.
"However, in the last resort, I believe, as I said in the House of Lords, the future of this country is inextricably interwoven with our European friends.
"It's the duty of Parliament to assert its sovereignty in determining the legacy we leave to new generations of young people."
Lord Heseltine had been brought in by former Prime Minister David Cameron to advise the government on a range of projects, including schemes in east London and Swansea.
'Deal or no deal'
After a three-hour debate on Tuesday, for the second time in a week peers amended the legislation that will authorise Theresa May to notify the EU of the UK's intention to leave and pave the way for official Brexit talks to begin.
The turnout in the Lords for the vote was the largest since 1831, according to Parliament's website.
The amendment, which was carried by a majority of 98, would require the final terms of the UK's withdrawal from the EU to be put to separate votes in the Commons and the Lords.
Some peers believe this would amount to a veto but ministers insist the UK would leave the EU anyway irrespective of whether it was approved or not.
As well as Lord Heseltine, 12 other Tory peers defied the government to vote in favour of the amendment, including former ministers Lord Deben and Viscount Hailsham.
The issue will now return to the Commons to be reconsidered by MPs, who have already rejected calls for the "meaningful vote" clause to be included in the legislation, saying verbal guarantees given by government on parliamentary scrutiny are sufficient.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said ministers were adamant they wouldn't back down after the Lords defeat and it was genuinely hard to tell at this stage if MPs had the numbers in the Commons to defeat the government.
Speaking in favour of the amendment, QC and crossbench peer Lord Pannick said it would enable Parliament to exercise some "control" over the process of withdrawal and fulfil its duty to properly scrutinise.
"It must be for Parliament to decide whether to prefer no deal or the deal offered by the EU," he said.
"It will guarantee that the government must come back to both Houses and seek approval for the result of negotiations."
But government minister Lord Bridges said once Article 50 had been triggered, the process of leaving the EU was irrevocable and the amendment was totally unclear on what would happen if the UK and the EU were not able to agree a formal deal on the terms of exit.
"We will leave with a deal or we will leave without a deal. That is the choice on offer."
'Not in the dark'
Parliament, he insisted, would not be left "in the dark" during the two-year process and would be able to shape future legislation on the incorporation of EU law and potential changes to immigration rules.
He also argued the amendment would tie Mrs May's hands and make her task in getting a good deal "more difficult from day one".
Reacting to the defeat, Brexit Secretary David Davis suggested peers were threatening the UK's aim of getting negotiations under way as soon as possible.
"It is clear that some in the Lords would seek to frustrate that process, and it is the government's intention to ensure that does not happen," he said.
"We will now aim to overturn these amendments in the House of Commons."
But Labour's Baroness Smith said that given the referendum campaign had been full of arguments about reasserting Parliamentary sovereignty, it was appropriate that Parliament should have the "final say" on the process.
Lib Dems defeated
And former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg urged MPs to "find the nerve" and ensure the requirement for a Parliamentary vote remained in the bill.
"I would urge MPs of all parties, including Brexiteers who campaigned to leave on the basis of parliamentary sovereignty, to stop Parliament being neutered.
"Parliament has a long history of ratifying treaties. What is the government scared of? If they cannot bring back a deal they are prepared to put before MPs, then it cannot be a deal that is good enough for Britain."
Earlier, a Lib Dem amendment calling for a second referendum on the terms of exit was comfortably defeated by 336 votes to 131.
Without a commitment to a second vote, the Lib Dems took the rare step of opposing the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill at its third and final reading although peers overwhelmingly approved the bill and sent it back to the Commons.
Theresa May has said she wants to trigger Article 50 by the end of March but the Commons is unlikely to have an opportunity to consider the changes made by the Lords until the middle of next week as four days have been set aside for debate on the Budget.
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Naomi Osaka has been making a statement with her face coverings while competing in the US Open: for every round, she wears a new mask bearing the name of a black victim of alleged police or racist violence in the US. | The Japanese tennis star made the pledge at the start of the tournament. Now, she's reached the semi-finals.
The families of some of these victims have publicly thanked her for wearing the masks, recording video messages which were played for her on the set of sports broadcaster ESPN.
Osaka said the messages left her "really grateful and... really humbled".
"I was just trying really hard not to cry," she told a press conference. "It's a bit surreal. It's extremely touching that they would feel touched by what I'm doing. For me, I feel like what I've been doing is nothing. It's a speck of what I could be doing."
Osaka has worn masks bearing the names of Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin and George Floyd. These are their stories.
Breonna Taylor
On 13 March, police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, used a battering ram to break down the door to Breonna Taylor's apartment.
They suspected her flat in the city's South End was being used to receive drugs by a gang based at a different address about 10 miles (16km) away.
One of the suspects was an ex-boyfriend of hers, and she was one of three people named on the warrant, local media reported earlier this year. She was not the main subject of the investigation.
But breaking down her door triggered a chaotic series of events and a barrage of police gunfire that left Ms Taylor - an unarmed, 26-year-old emergency medical technician - fatally shot.
Ms Taylor's name, and a call to "arrest the cops that killed Breonna Taylor", became a rallying cry for justice in this summer's global Black Lives Matter protests.
In June Brett Hankison, one of three officers involved in the shooting, lost his badge. Louisville Police interim chief Robert Schroeder said his conduct that evening was "a shock to the conscience", and accused him of "blindly" firing 10 rounds into Ms Taylor's apartment.
Attorneys for Ms Taylor's family said at the time that they wanted to see the other officers - Jon Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove - fired as well.
"We also look forward to these officers being prosecuted for their roles in her untimely death," they said.
While Mr Hankinson lost his job, the police officers involved in the shooting have not been arrested or charged.
Elijah McClain
Elijah McClain was a 23-year-old black man who died in police custody in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, Colorado, on 24 August 2019.
He was walking, unarmed, when he was stopped by three white police officers. A district attorney report later said there had been an emergency call about a "suspicious person" matching his description.
There was a struggle as the officers tried to search him for a weapon. On body cam footage, Mr McClain can be heard saying: "I'm an introvert, please respect my boundaries that I am speaking."
One of the officers then says, "he is going for your gun" - at which point they wrestle him to the ground and put him in a chokehold.
The report says Mr McClain lost consciousness, was released from the chokehold and began to struggle again.
The officers called for assistance, with firefighters and an ambulance responding. A fire medic injected Mr McClain with 500mg of the drug ketamine to sedate him.
Mr McClain was then put in "soft restraints" on a stretcher and put inside the ambulance. The medic who had administered the drug then noticed that Mr McClain's chest "was not rising on its own, and he did not have a pulse". He was declared brain dead on 27 August.
Mr McClain's family allege that the officers used excessive force for about 15 minutes as Mr McClain vomited, begged for them to stop and repeatedly told them he could not breathe. The officers also threatened to set a police dog on him, the family said.
Immediately after the incident, the three officers involved were placed on paid administrative leave. Three months later, prosecutors announced that they would not bring charges against the officers, and they then returned to normal duty.
In June this year, the officers were reassigned to "non-enforcement duties".
Ahmaud Arbery
Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia, on 23 February when he was shot dead by two white men - a father and son.
In the moments before the fatal confrontation, Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis, 34, armed themselves with a pistol and shotgun and pursued Mr Arbery in a pickup truck in Brunswick's Satilla Shores neighbourhood.
Gregory McMichael later told police he thought Mr Arbery looked like the suspect in a series of local break-ins.
A 36-second video shot by another man, William Bryan, leaked online on 5 May, generating a nationwide outcry that was swiftly followed by murder charges. Mr Bryan filmed it from his vehicle while he was driving behind Mr Arbery.
The clip appears to show Mr Arbery running down a tree-lined street as the McMichaels wait ahead for him in their vehicle.
A tussle follows between the younger McMichael and Mr Arbery, who then falls to the ground.
The three defendants were not charged until more than two months after Mr Arbery was killed. It was only when footage of the killing went viral that state police began investigating.
Travis McMichael, his son Greg, and William Bryan were indicted by Glynn County's Grand Jury on charges including malice and felony murder. They have pleaded not guilty, and are awaiting trial.
In a message to Osaka, Mr Arbery's father, Marcus Arbery Sr, said: "Thank you for the support of my family and God bless you for what you're doing and you supporting our family with my son. My family really, really appreciates that and God bless you."
Trayvon Martin
The killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2012 - and the acquittal of the man who killed him - sparked the birth of Black Lives Matter.
Trayvon Martin, 17, had just been to the shop to buy some Skittles and a soft drink when neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman spotted him.
Believing the unarmed teenager was up to no good, Mr Zimmerman tackled him.
Nobody witnessed what happened between them but a neighbour's call to the emergency services picked up cries for help, followed by the fatal gunshot.
Mr Zimmerman's lawyer maintained that his client had been viciously assaulted by Martin. Gun laws in the US allow those who own firearms to shoot somebody if they feel they're in danger of being killed or seriously injured.
Because of this, Florida police didn't arrest Mr Zimmerman for six weeks after the shooting, provoking mass rallies in Florida and throughout the US.
US law allowed him to say he shot Trayvon in self-defence but the teenager's family and friends always insisted it was murder.
Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, said in a message to Osaka: "I just want to say thank you to Naomi Osaka for representing Trayvon Martin on your customized masks, and also for Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
"We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Continue to do well. Continue to kick butt at the US Open."
George Floyd
The killing of George Floyd reignited the Black Lives Matter movement this year, sparking what is believed to be the most widespread civil rights protest movement in US history.
Mr Floyd, 46, was stopped by police on 25 May in Minneapolis.
Officers were investigating the purchase of cigarettes with counterfeit money.
Footage, which was later widely shared online, showed Mr Floyd's arrest - during which an officer pinned him to the ground.
A white police officer, Derek Chauvin, was seen kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes. Mr Floyd was heard repeatedly pleading with him to stop, saying: "I can't breathe."
He was pronounced dead in hospital.
As the footage spread globally, protests erupted in Minneapolis - the first of a summer of Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the world.
The four officers involved in his arrest were fired the following day, and later charged over his killing. They are expected to stand trial next year.
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Four postcode areas of Wales are among the 20 worst across the UK for drink and drug-driving, a new study has shown.
| Llandrindod Wells in Powys has the highest proportion of motorists with these offences with 1.98 per 1,000.
Swansea is fourth with 1.76 convictions per 1,000, Cardiff is sixth with 1.71 and Newport is 12th with 1.62.
The information came from analysing 11 million car insurance quotes by postcode over the past 12 months.
The drink and drug-driving rate for motorists in the LD postcode is more than double that of some Greater London areas, according to the study compiled by an insurance comparison website MoneySuperMarket.
The LD postcode includes Llandrindod Wells, Builth Wells, Brecon and Rhayader.
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Across the northern Indian states of Haryana and Rajasthan, many villages with "embarrassing" names have been pushing to get them changed for years now. BBC Punjabi's Arvind Chhabra talks to some of the people who have been leading this campaign. | "My village's name is Ganda [meaning dirty or ugly in Hindi]," Harpreet Kaur wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 in an attempt to officially change its name. She added that just the name of the village was enough to prompt humiliating taunts from whomever she met.
"The situation was so bad that even our relatives mock us relentlessly," she said.
In 2017, Mr Modi directed authorities to change the village's name. Today, the renamed village of Ajit Nagar stands proudly in the northern Indian state of Haryana.
The village council chief, Lakwinder Ram, said they had been trying for years to get the attention of the government and change the name. "When that didn't work, we thought that perhaps a young person writing directly to Mr Modi might move him," he said. "There was not a soul in the village who didn't want the name to change."
Locals say that Ganda got its name when a flood ravaged the area decades ago. An officer who visited in the aftermath of the disaster saw all the debris that had been swept in and remarked that it was extremely dirty or "ganda". Since then, they say, the name just stuck.
Mr Ram added that the name of the village also drove away potential grooms since they did not want a bride from a village that had such a humiliating name. "We are extremely relieved now," he said.
But Ganda is hardly a unique case.
Representatives from more than 50 villages have pestered the Indian government for a name change in the recent past. The reasons are varied - some names are seen as racist, others were just bizarre and a few more downright embarrassing for its inhabitants.
"The requests of some 40 villages have been accepted and implemented," Krishan Kumar, a senior federal government official, said.
Among these, is a village called Kinnar which means transgender in Hindi. That became Gaibi Nagar in 2016.
And in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, a village in Alwar district used to be called Chor Basai. But since the word chor means thief in Hindi, the village's new name is now just Basai.
But the process to get the name of a village changed is not that easy.
To begin with, the state government must be convinced enough to take up the issue with the Indian government, which has the final authority.
But before they can grant the request, the government also has to get clearances from other official units including the railways and postal department as well as the Survey of India. This is to ensure that the new proposed name does not exist anywhere else in the country.
For residents of Lula Ahir village in Haryana state - a derogatory term for a disabled person in Hindi- the process has been fraught with bureaucracy. They first wrote to the state government in 2016, unhappy with the village name.
"We wanted to change the name to Dev Nagar," village council chief Virender Singh said.
They waited for a response for six months - only to receive a rejection letter since a village named Dev Nagar already exists somewhere else in the country.
Back at the drawing board, the village council decided to try once again with another name - Krishan Nagar. "We wrote to the administration again and kept following it up with them," Mr Singh said. "But it just went from one department to another."
In July, they thought their luck had changed when the state's chief minister announced that the village had a new name. Instead, they found out that the decision hadn't been formally implemented by the central government yet. Officials confirmed that the request is still "under process".
"We have just been waiting and waiting ever since," Mr Singh said with a shrug.
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Tackling China's rampant corruption has been a personal mission of Xi Jinping's since he became president, and his campaign is now moving up a gear with the establishment of a new anti-corruption agency overseeing millions of people. | The National Supervision Commission (NSC) will oversee "all public servants exercising public power" - not just party members. It is thought the agency will supervise about three times as many people as existing watchdogs.
But critics say the greatly increased powers held by this new body - which rank it higher than the supreme court - give real cause for concern.
Amnesty International has called it "a systemic threat to human rights in China".
What is the new anti-corruption agency?
China taking aim at corruption is nothing new. More than a million Communist Party officials have been disciplined in recent years.
But it's the scope that's now changed. Until now, the main watchdog was the Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).
It would sweep in to investigate allegations of bribery, embezzlement or other corruption, removing guilty people from their posts and sending them to court. There they would get jail terms or in extreme cases, the death penalty.
Among the biggest names to fall under Mr Xi's campaign have been Zhou Yongkang, once the third most senior leader in China, and Bo Xilai, the former party chief of Chongqing who once seemed destined for senior leadership.
Given that most officials are also party members, the CCDI already had a wide reach - yet there were still many low-ranking state employees that escaped its jurisdiction.
The newly formed NSC - also referred to as the State Supervisory Commission - will go beyond that and cast its watchful eye over all management-level public servants, including at places like hospitals and schools.
It will be led by Yang Xiaodu, who for the past few years has been the deputy chief of the CCDI.
"The NSC is very much likely to work in tandem with the CCDI," Tom Rafferty of the Economist Intelligence Unit told the BBC.
"Its establishment marks the beginning of an effort to enforce much more widely the drive against corruption, extravagance and indiscipline that we have seen within the party over the past five years."
The agency ranks higher than the supreme court and will be in charge of supervision, investigation and also punishment.
It will have the authority to interrogate and detain any government manager, as well as freeze his or her assets and seize their property.
With its unprecedented power comes also a change in the detention system.
Previously, a shadowy and extra-legal system called shuanggui was in place - an internal disciplinary procedure where party members were imprisoned for months without access to lawyers or family until they confessed.
Under the NSC, the name has been changed to liuzhi and is now an official legal procedure. Liuzhi still allows for suspects to be held for up to six months without legal counsel.
The Communist Party says the NSC will have the power needed to fight corruption, and that it will be subject to strict internal and external oversight.
Why is it controversial?
The existing campaign been described by some as a massive internal purge of opponents, on a scale not seen since the days of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.
Rights groups say the NSC's broad jurisdiction - along with the fact that Xi Jinping is now cleared to be president for life - is cause for concern.
A group of Chinese lawyers even sent a rare open letter last year warning that it would be a crisis for the rule of law in China, and urging proper legal oversight.
Critics worry defendants will be left with little or no ability to appeal against the agency's decisions and that without proper oversight, it could be open to manipulation for political ends.
Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director at Amnesty International in Hong Kong, said the changes are "systemic threat to human rights".
"It places tens of millions of people at the mercy of a secretive and virtually unaccountable system that is above the law," he said in a statement.
"It bypasses judicial institutions by establishing a parallel system solely run by the Chinese Communist Party with no outside checks and balances. The law eviscerates China's legal system."
BBC Monitoring's Pratik Jakhar contributed to this report
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A car left the road and plunged off cliffs into the sea off the Gower coast. | The RNLI said it had sent a lifeboat to Limeslade Bay after the Coastguard was alerted at about 06:00 BST on Tuesday.
When rescuers arrived they had "a small amount of debris" to help them find where the vehicle was.
South Wales Police said a 37-year-old woman was assisted from the sea and detained under the Mental Health Act. She was taken to Morriston hospital.
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A murder inquiry has begun after a 19-year-old man was found dead with stab wounds in south London. | Met Police were called by an ambulance crew to Alpha Road, Croydon, just after 12:00 GMT on Wednesday.
The teenager's family have been informed and no arrests have been made, police said.
Crime scene restrictions remain in place as detectives from the Met's Specialist Crime South Command investigate.
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Kim Jong-un presided over solemn memorials to mark the second anniversary of his father's death on Monday. One particular snapshot can provide us with insight into the leadership in the wake of the recent brutal purge of his uncle, Chang Song-thaek, explains North Korea leadership specialist Michael Madden.
| Kim Won-hong
Kim Yong-chun
Pak To-chun
Jang Jong-nam
Choe Ryong-hae
Ri Yong-gil
Ri Sol-ju
Kim Yong Nam
Kim Jong-un
Pak Pong-ju
Kim Ki-nam
Choe Tae-bok
Yang Hyong-sop
Kang Sok-ju
Kim Kyong-hui
Ri Sol-ju
Kim Jong-un
Choe Chun-sik
Choe Ryong-hae
Chang Song-thaek
Hyong Yong-chol
Kim Kyok-sik
1. Vice Marshal Kim Yong-chun
Vice chairman of national defence commission
2013 status: A member of the so-called gang of seven who walked with Kim Jong-il’s hearse in 2011. One of the few survivors of that group, he was moved to another post and now runs the citizen militias.
2. Pak To-chun
Party secretary
2013 status: Always present at public events. He is a crucial figure as he is charge of the daily management of production of weapons and WMDs. In 2012 he was standing right behind Kim Jong-un.
3. Jang Jong-nam
Defence minister
2013 status: Was not prominent last year. He has received a recent promotion and his status is regarded as solid.
4. General Ri Yong-gil
Head of North Korea’s conventional armed forces /commander of military forces
2013 status: Promoted in August. Is not visible in the 2012 picture. He is the fourth person to hold this job in two years, but his position is currently regarded as stable.
5. Choe Ryong-hae
Head of the political corps of the army
2013 status: Considered extremely powerful. He has seen his influence increase over the last year.
6. Ri Sol-ju
Wife of Kim Jong-un
2013 status: Is a regular fixture at major state events at the leader’s side.
7. Kim Yong Nam
(Nominal) head of state
2013 status: Is a permanent fixture at such events. A symbolic figurehead with little real power.
8. Kim Jong-un
Leader
2013 status: On the face of it, he appears to have tightened control after his purge, but some analysts see it as a sign of weakness.
9. Pak Pong-ju
Prime minister
2013 status: Was not prominent in the 2012 picture, but has been promoted and is now in a position of favour and power. He is thought to have a similar reformist outlook to Chang Song-thaek and is believed to have visited South Korea to survey its economic development.
10. Kim Ki-nam
Propaganda boss
2013 status: He is one of the old guard who has not been purged. One of the so-called gang of seven who walked with the hearse of Kim Jong-il in 2011. He features in the 2012 photograph.
11. Choe Tae-bok
Korean Workers Party secretary
2013 status: Another one of the so-called gang of seven. A remnant of the old era and thought to be a reformer. In 2013 he was not visible. Analysts think that because he is ageing he may be permitted to shed roles and responsibility.
12. Yang Hyong-sop
Vice president of supreme people’s assembly presidium
2013 status: Powerful and a member of the Kim family by marriage. He has moved up a row from 2012.
13. Kang Sok-ju
Vice premier with responsibility for foreign policy
2013 status: Had a prominent role in six-party talks over the country's nulear programme. Was though to be close to Kim Jong-il and is clearly still a powerful force. Moved up a row from 2012.
14. Kim Kyong-hui
Wife to Chang Song-thaek and Korean Workers Party secretary
2012 status: In 2012 she was in a position of great power as the younger sister of Kim Jong-il whose death they were commemorating. In 2013 she was absent following her husband Chang Song-thaek's execution.
15. Ri Sol-ju
Wife of Kim Jong-un
2012 status: In December 2012 she was in her first year as the first lady of North Korea and had made a handful of public appearances by that time. This was one of the most important.
16. Kim Jong-un
Leader
2012 status: In December 2012 he had been leader for a year and was still surrounded by the men appointed to oversee his transition to the leadership.
17. Choe Chun-sik
President of the second academy of natural sciences
2012 status: In charge of the scientists and researchers in North Korea’s weapons programme. He had pride of place in 2012 because they had launched a missile just five days earlier. He and a number of his staff were invited to commemorate the anniversary as a mark of favour. They did not feature in the 2013 image
18. Vice-Marshal Choe Ryong-hae
Head of the political corps of the army
2012 status: He was powerful in 2012, but appears to have gained more favour over the last year.
19. Chang Song-thaek
Vice-chairman of national defence commision
2012/13 status: Kim Jong-un's uncle was regarded as a powerful figure in 2012 and was seen by outside observers as the new leader's mentor. He was known to be a proponent of economic reform. By December 2013 Chang Song-thaek had been executed - accused of multiple crimes, including forming a power base and attempting to overthrow the state.
20. Hyong Yong-chol
Chief of military general staff – conventional armed forces
2012/13 status: In 2012 this was a powerful position. He has since been demoted and does not figure prominently in 2013 picture.
21. Kim Kyok-sik
Defence minister
2012/13 status: Visited Cuba in July 2013, shortly before missiles were discovered on a North Korean ship which had left Cuba and docked in Panama. He has since disappeared and was thought to have fallen from favour. However, in an image of Chang Song-thaek being removed from parliament, he can be seen sitting in front of Chang.
22. Kim Won-hong
Minister of state security
2013 status: He runs the secret police and is regarded as very powerful. He is likely to have played a key role in Chang Song-thaek’s demise. In 2012 he was in the second row, while in 2013 he has moved up to the front row.
Early on 17 December, North Korea's elite paid homage at the Kumsusan mausoleum where the embalmed bodies of former leader Kim Jong-il and his father, the founder of the nation, Kim Il-sung lie.
They did exactly the same a year ago - but it was a different group of people. Comparing the line-up this year with the photograph taken last year can give us some insight into the power play in this secretive nation.
Conclusions are difficult to reach because the regime is both opaque and unpredictable, but there are possible clues about the future direction of Kim Jong-un and the men who surround him.
The images may look virtually identical but there are many hidden signs of subtle but potentially significant changes among North Korea's top leaders.
Power to the right?
There are several new faces in the front row and more military uniforms. The military and security staff are on Kim Jong-un's right and the party people are on the left. This represents a reversal from last year.
Some defector sources say that if you are on the right you are in a more valued position than if you are on the left. It is hard to say how true that is, but there is definitely an argument current among some that those on the Supreme Leader's right wield greater power.
The most notable absence is what has dominated headlines - which is that of Chang Song-thaek, recently executed in an unprecedented public purge.
Chang's widow Kim Kyong-hui is also missing from the picture, but few expected her to be present and it is difficult to know what to read into this. Some may see it as a sign she is out of favour but others have suggested that she may have even played a role in the purge.
People that Chang had social ties with and associates with a similar reformist outlook were present - one is the current prime minister, Pak Pong-ju. He seems to have come to the fore in the last year and occupies a prominent position in the line-up.
Two new names in 2013 stand out: General Ri Yong-kil and Defence Minister Jang Jong-nam - powerful figures to watch.
Ruthless rising star
China is the other silent presence in this picture. The men in civilian suits standing on the right of the picture - Kim Ki-nam and Choe Tae-bok - are all figures with ties in China and interests in foreign relations. These were people present in 2012 and so their inclusion projects a message of continuity - even if just cosmetic.
Another interesting figure obscured on the left is General Kim Won-hong but he is not to be overlooked. He runs the secret police, thought to be very powerful and whose star is rapidly rising.
He is likely to have played a key role in Chang Song-thaek's demise. In 2012 he was in the second row - he has now moved up to the front row. We may well see more of him.
Three members of the so-called gang of seven - the old guard who accompanied the hearse of Kim Jong-il and were thought to be appointed to oversee the transition of power - are also visible at the front.
Michael Madden runs the North Korea leadership watch website.
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The Metropolitan Police has said it will examine 58 GHB-related deaths, following the conviction of serial killer Stephen Port, who has been given a whole life prison term for poisoning four young men with lethal doses of the date rape drug. But what is GHB and why do people take it? | By Emma Harrison & Kate PalmerBBC News
"I had a cheeky shot here and there daily, but it gets to the point where you can't have sex without chems," says Charles, who says he became addicted to GHB.
The 31-year-old from London says he used the drug for more than 10 years to help him to "let go" of body insecurities and inhibitions.
But it was a friend's fatal overdose on Christmas Day 2015 that prompted Charles to stop using GHB, even though his friends continue to use it.
"The look on people's faces when I say I don't take it - they treat it like I don't drink," he says.
"I don't miss all the drama and accidents that happened with it."
'Very addictive'
Charles says he's had some "horrible experiences" of friends who have passed out from the drug - what he calls "going under" - and thrown out of nightclubs while still unconscious.
"'Going under' can last anything from 20 minutes to five hours and you don't know if that person might need an ambulance," he says.
He says the drug is used in nightclubs and at "chill-out" parties and is "very addictive".
GHB (gammahydroxybutyrate) and similar drug GBL (gammabutyrolactone), an industrial solvent that converts to GHB in the body, are usually sold as odourless, colourless, oily liquids in small bottles or in capsules.
While prices can vary, on average a 30ml plastic container of GHB costs about £15 from a dealer or online.
Commonly known as "G", it is often sold as "liquid ecstasy" because of its euphoric effects, but it has no relation to ecstasy (MDMA).
While the Class C drug increases the desire for sex and reduces inhibitions - the risks include unconsciousness, coma and death.
Those found in possession of it face up to two years in prison and an unlimited fine. Dealing can result in a sentence of up to 14 years.
GHB was the drug that serial killer Stephen Port used to poison four young men.
The judge told Port that he had carried out the murders to "satisfy his lust" for sex with young men who were rendered unconscious.
'Unconscious and vulnerable'
GHB was brought under the Misuse of Drugs Act as a Class C drug in 2003, so dealers switched to GBL as a legal alternative. GBL was eventually made illegal in 2009.
G is used on the "chemsex" scene by "a small proportion" of gay men to enhance sex, says consultant psychiatrist Adam R Winstock, the founder of the Global Drug Survey.
Dr Winstock says GHB was first developed in 1964 as a general anaesthetic, but was never widely used.
"In the 1980s it was popular on the gay dance scene in America," he says.
"However, it will always be associated with the chemsex scene. It has been a gay drug for 10 to 20 years."
He warned that a difference of 0.5ml can have a huge affect on a person's body.
One in five GHB users last year reported to the Global Drugs Survey that they had passed out or overdosed, he says.
Dr Winstock said of the 200,000 drug users surveyed worldwide, about 2,000 had said they had used the drug.
He estimates there are more than 1,000 GHB users in the UK, but the drug "is not mainstream in the way cocaine and amphetamines are".
People who take the drug and pass out "can be very unconscious and vulnerable to sexual assault," he says.
Users also risk becoming dependent in a couple of weeks, he says, and those who are addicted should seek specialist help.
Harry Sharpiro, director of drug information charity Drugwise, says the drug has been used primarily on the gay scene "for a while".
"People assume it is part of a growing trend. It is not," he says.
'Difficult to measure'
According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 10 GHB/GBL-related deaths registered in England and Wales in 2015, 12 in 2014, 10 in 2013, eight in 2012 and 10 in 2011.
But Mr Sharpiro says: "Mortality figures are incredibly vague.
"Quite often there will be multiple drugs involved and it is impossible to tell which is the drug that actually caused the death - so I am not surprised the figures don't match up [with the Met Police figures of 58 GHB-related deaths].
Neil Woods, an ex-undercover drugs squad officer, says: "Every single drug is more dangerous in the illicit market because you don't know what is in it.
"But the specific problem with GHB is you don't know how strong it is and a few drops of liquid are difficult to measure, especially if its odourless."
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I am seeing spots. More specifically polka dots, on a white maxi dress. Three women have walked by me - all wearing the same identical dress - in the half hour I've been sitting outside this café. I know it's from Zara, I've tried it on, and now I'm seeing those spots everywhere. | By Priya PatelBusiness reporter
It is the dress of the summer, another viral Zara fashion statement, complete with a dedicated Instagram account set up by fans.
Just one sign of how the Spanish clothing giant is bucking the trend of many of its struggling High Street competitors and posting record sales.
Considering the success and size of the company, it might be thought of as a bit of an enigma. It doesn't advertise, it does little marketing and its boss, who was named best performing chief executive in the world by a business magazine last year, has not given any big interviews, until now.
Pablo Isla recently laid out plans for Zara's future and said it was all about a digital and sustainable transformation. But is it possible for a company to be sustainable, when the entire business is about getting shoppers to buy as much fashion as possible?
'No contradiction'
Speaking at their campus-like headquarters in northern Spain, Pablo Isla, the chairman of Zara and its parent company Inditex, tackled the sustainability issue.
"There is no contradiction at all between sustainability and profitability of the company," he says.
"In the next year, all our stores in the world will be efficient - this means their consumption of energy and water is significantly lower. If your energy consumption is 20% less, you have a return."
In fact some of the key ways in which the business works helps with its sustainability goal. Mr Isla explains that Zara works with a "low level of inventory".
This helps the retailer minimise waste and avoid discounting huge amounts of clothing.
On my tour of the headquarters, I walk past rows of desks where staff are analysing instant data from Zara's store managers.
They use this information to decide what to make each week - Zara's factories will only make what they know will sell. Most of Zara's clothes are manufactured at its sites in Spain or in nearby Portugal, Morocco and Turkey.
'Long-term relations'
One of the key factories producing Zara's womenswear is just next to the head office. This way of working is all about speed, which allows Zara to get fresh trends into stores before their competitors.
But it hasn't always meant being able to keep a close eye on standards. Two years ago, some Zara customers in Turkey found notes in clothes from workers saying they hadn't been paid and asking for them to back calls for better working standards. When asked about it, Mr Isla says working with these suppliers was an "evolution".
He says "the most important thing is the idea of long-term relations with our suppliers" when it comes to keeping an eye on working conditions.
Fashion Revolution is an independent organisation which monitors where clothes come from and how ethical they are. They say Zara needs to provide more information about where their clothes are made to be held accountable for standards.
"Inditex, which owns Zara, remains one of the major fashion retailers that is dragging its feet on publishing a list of its manufacturers," says Fashion Revolution policy director Sarah Ditty.
"Other brands have published a list and proved that doing so doesn't hurt them competitively. "
Recycled plastics
Back at headquarters, I wander through the pilot store built on-site - a perfectly-kept Zara shop where everything is in place - but there are no shoppers. This is where Zara test how everything should look and feel, from lighting to displays.
They are aiming to reach zero waste in store - all packaging is made from recyclable cardboard and plastic. Recycling is a big theme for the clothes too.
They have been working with the renowned US university MIT to develop ways of making fabric from recycled plastics. I take the opportunity to feel the texture of some of the latest recycled plastic clothes from their sustainable line. The cloth feels silky to the touch.
Mr Isla has committed to 100% of the cotton, linen, and polyester used by Zara - and all of its sister companies - being organic, sustainable, or recycled by 2025.
Sarah Ditty from Fashion Revolution says that while it is great to see Zara taking steps to incorporate more sustainable material into its ranges, it is essential action that all brands should be taking.
However, she highlights that the real issue is all about the sheer volume of clothes they make.
Inditex reported putting over 1.5 billion products on the market in 2017 alone. Even with more environmentally-friendly materials, producing that many items each year is unsustainable for our living planet.
How much clothing we buy is a marker of just how much the industry has grown and changed in a short space of time. The UK has the highest rate of consumption in Europe, at 27.6kg per person per year.
Customer decisions
Indeed, Zara has an enormous turnaround, fashion influencer Jasmine Jonas tells me.
"I feel confident walking into a Zara, [being] able to find something that will look good, fit well, and that I can afford. But across the board, demand for eco-conscience clothing is rising."
It's not just Fashion Revolution - many campaigners say the only way to truly tackle sustainability in fashion is to make and sell less.
But how can that be a solution for Zara and Inditex if they want to keep those record-breaking sales?
"It's always the customers' decision of how much do they buy of each particular product," says Mr Isla.
"I think our responsibility as a company is taking care of manufacturing our products in a very sustainable way. Each customer, each person, is free to decide how much would he or she like to buy at any point in time, if this person wants to spend money going to a restaurant or buying clothes... this is the freedom that each person has."
"Should I, shouldn't I?" is the age-old changing room debate, but does it take on a new dimension if, as Pablo Isla says, it is ultimately in shoppers' hands to decide the crucial sustainability issue?
In the meantime, Zara says it will do what it can to keep the environmental conundrum for customers to a minimum.
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More than 2,100 bombs fell in the Cardiff district in nearly four years until the final air raid in March 1944. In total 355 were killed.
Across Wales, the civilian death toll was nearly 1,000 over the course of the war, with Swansea and Cardiff enduring the worst casualties.
Here BBC Wales news website speaks to three men for whom fate intervened on Cardiff's worst night of bombing during World War II in 1941. | By Steve DuffyBBC News website
It is 70 years since the worst night of the Blitz for civilians in Cardiff - when a bombing raid saw more than 150 killed.
The toll on the night of 2 January 1941 also saw 427 more injured, while nearly 350 homes were destroyed or had to be demolished. Chapels and the knave of Llandaff Cathedral were also damaged.
The worst hit areas were Grangetown and Riverside.
There, casualties included an estimated 50 killed in De Burgh Street, Riverside.
Meanwhile seven relations who had been to a family funeral earlier in the day were killed when bombs wrecked Blackstone Street.
The worst single incident was at the home of a bakers, Hollymans on the corner of Stockland Street and Corporation Road in Grangetown.
Around 32 people were killed - including at least five members of the Hollyman family, neighbours and strangers - as they sheltered in the cellar. The bomb when it hit left an 8ft pile of rubble.
The 10 hour air-raid, during a full moon, had started at teatime - 6.37pm - and Grangetown was the first area to be hit by 100 German aircraft.
John Williams, a 14-year-old delivery boy for the bakery, arrived the next morning for his horse-drawn round to find his employer Bill Hollyman's baker shop reduced to rubble.
Three generations of the family were among the dead. Around 20 unknown victims were buried at the spot in a mass grave.
"I knew nothing about it until I got there about 8.30 in the morning," said John, now 84. "I just saw a big ruin.
"The firemen were still spraying water on it and the water had turned to ice because it was so cold. They were starting to bring the bodies out on stretchers.
"It was incredible but the horse, in the stable next door, was all right. The bomb had gone through three floors of the house and into the shelter and exploded."
"I'd been in the shelter the night before. You'd walk down a few step into the cellar, there was seats inside and steel poles put in by the corporation to reinforce it.
"I'd finish my final round about 6pm and I went down the shelter, and then was given a bowl of soup.
"But that night, Bill Hollyman seemed to think there was a lot of activity overhead and said my mother would be worried and I should go home. It was fate."
"It was a bad night. I lived in Devon Street [half a mile away] and we had an Anderson shelter at the back and I was in there with my father, mother, brother and sister.
"Luckily, the nearest bomb to us was in North Clive Street, which landed on a wholesalers and blew the slates off the roofs in the street, but we were all right."
Ken Lloyd, 12 at the time, was walking home from a children's meeting at the Ebenezer chapel in Corporation Road, when the air raid siren sounded.
"You could hear the aircraft in the distance. Mr Hollyman was standing outside, calling people, all the children and anybody passing, into shelter in the basement," he recalled.
"Quite a lot of the children who'd been at the Ebenezer went in but I only lived over in Warwick Street and so didn't have far to go so I said 'no'."
"I'd been with the other children that day but everyone who went into that shelter in the bakery was killed outright."
Trevor Tucker, who was six, had also been offered a place in the shelter, along with his mother and brother.
"My father's job took him away from home a lot and the baker was very helpful offering us shelter if we were alone during a raid, especially at night.
"But there was no electricity and the only light was from hand torches or candles, so I found it spooky and I told my mother, 'please don't take me there'."
He remembers, with his older brother, their fascination when watching a body being removed from the debris the next day.
Censorship meant restrictions in details of the air raids in the newspapers, with scant details and in the days to follow, few death notices were published.
The death toll in Cardiff rose to around 165 after the raid. In the days following, there was an appeal for blood donations, as the injured continued to be treated.
"A list of casualties would be posted outside City Hall," recalls Mr Tucker, now 76.
"I remember being taken there by my father... But it was the rather macabre business of seeing a list of names and him reading down to see if he had lost a friend or neighbour."
As for his own reaction to the bombing, Mr Williams said: "I just went home but you just got on with it in those days."
One of the surviving members of the Hollyman family, Jack, who lived in Canton, started up the business again within a few weeks. The bakery building itself, like John's delivery horse, had survived.
"Jack was heartbroken - he'd lost all that family," said Mr Williams.
A hardware shop now stands on the Hollymans site in Grangetown but there is a plaque on the wall, erected by the local history society, to remember those who died there.
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As a new documentary reignites debate about the kangaroo meat industry, the film has an unlikely ally in a former high-flying band manager. Rae Harvey explains her new life's mission to reporter Jenny Valentish. | It didn't feel like the most fortuitous day when Rae Harvey hit a possum in a 50km/h (30mph) zone in Victoria, Australia. The possum was long gone, but a frog sound turned out to be its joey. Wrapping it in her jumper, Ms Harvey called Wildlife Victoria, who directed her to a local carer.
That moment, though she didn't know it yet, was her road to Damascus.
The tough-as-nails (she would argue "passionate") manager was more used to wrangling musicians than wildlife. She established Crucial Music in 1995 as a touring company, bringing American acts such as Blink 182 and NOFX to Australia.
By 2002 the company had morphed into artist management, with her roster including Gyroscope, Children Collide, rappers 360 and Pez. Her longest association has been with The Living End, whose arena anthems have earned them six ARIAs - Australia's top music awards - and multi-platinum status.
Now Ms Harvey is selling off her personal memorabilia - alongside items donated from others in the music industry - to fund Wild2Free, the wildlife shelter she runs with partner Sayo Prentic in Bega Valley, New South Wales.
The first auction, which took place on Friday, included one of those ARIA awards. Ms Harvey has packed up her Melbourne office, now just focusing on The Living End, surrounded by animal nutrition formula and pillow-case pouches, rather than platinum discs.
Originally, the couple had planned to slowly set up the wildlife sanctuary while still working full time, but then a fire gutted their new property.
"We were extremely calm whilst watching the house burn to the ground," she marvels. "I'd lost my life's work in the hard drives in the office, but we had the animals safe in the car with us and we had our lives. We just shrugged and said: 'Okay, we're starting again from scratch.'"
The Living End put on a benefit gig, and music industry figures helped promote an online fundraising page. Thanks to these efforts and the insurance money, Ms Harvey was able to kit out a smaller property with the basics and - sooner than she had intended - has swapped late nights for early starts, caring for vulnerable eastern grey kangaroos.
At their busiest, Mr Prentic will go to bed at 04:30 and Ms Harvey starts her shift half an hour later.
"I wish that Australians had the slightest bit of insight into how special this animal is," she says, trying to explain the sacrifices she's made.
"They're not like any other. They are emotional, sensitive, individual. They thrive on love. But let's be honest - a lot of Australians don't care."
That's also the premise of a new documentary, which opened in selected cinemas in Australia this week, called Kangaroo.
Local filmmakers Michael McIntyre and Kate McIntyre Clere set out to explore Australia's love-hate relationship with the animal; such as the use of the kangaroo as the emblem of Qantas and sporting teams, versus the attitude that the animal is a pest and a commodity.
The film has faced accusations that it is against the kangaroo meat industry. The Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia (KIAA), which supports 2,000 licensed "harvesters", has responded with a statement addressing points made by the film, with seven points being labelled as false, five as partly true and two as true.
Tony Mahar, chief executive of the National Farmer's Association, told Sky News: "The Kangaroo documentary is naive at best and offensive at worst… it's ridiculous to say kangaroos in Australia are endangered." He conceded that there were populations on the eastern coast and coastal areas that "we might need to look at".
More on the kangaroo debate:
Certainly Kangaroo has been more rapturously received in the US (where it has sold out premieres in New York and Los Angeles, and has been widely reviewed) than in Australia.
Seeing a kangaroo in the wild is topmost of any tourist's to-do list. Whereas Australians have frequently cast kangaroos in sinister or bloody roles - such as in Wake In Fright, Snowtown, Wolf Creek 2, Welcome to Woop Woop, Alice to Nowhere, Razorback and Crocodile Dundee - international audiences often prefer feel-good fodder, such as Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
So Ms Harvey tries to appeal to an international audience. On Instagram she tells detailed stories of the animals and uses multiple hashtags to come up in as many global searches as possible.
On Facebook, she'll do the odd advertisement and post videos, which are sometimes picked up by other sites and go viral. The stressful life of animal rescue isn't usually compatible with expert marketing, but as you'd expect from a music industry veteran, Ms Harvey has a few tricks up her sleeve.
In particular, a sponsorship scheme - in which donors are sent a personalised email from their animal - has taken off. Ms Harvey and Mr Prentic document the kangaroos they have released, and provide a post-mortem for those that died, educating the public on parasitic diseases such as coccidiosis and babesiosis.
She says it's not unusual for a kangaroo to arrive at the shelter suffering from myopathy, a result of being chased by dogs or running from shooters. It's a stress-related degradation of the muscles, which then turn rancid.
Disagreements about populations, commercial harvesting figures, the accuracy of shooters and the suitability of meat have raged on for years.
It means that, for Harvey, generating local support is a hard slog. Government funding for shelters is capped at A$3,000 a year, so she relies heavily on fundraising.
She admits she's probably known in former circles as the crazy kangaroo lady. "Have I lost friends?" she queries, with typical candour. "Probably. Do I care? No."
Jenny Valentish is a freelance writer based in the Goldfields region of Victoria.
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More than 400,000 soldiers contracted venereal diseases (VD) during World War One, despite warnings to "resist temptations" and "avoid intimacy". Those treated at an army training camp base in Wiltshire - known locally as the bad boys' camp - were kept behind barbed wire and forced to wear blue uniforms. But, they still managed to get female company. | By Jerry ChesterBBC News
Almost nothing remains of Chiseldon Camp in Wiltshire, set up in 1914 as a training base for up to 10,000 troops at a time, before they went to the front.
The surrounding countryside and the railway line running through the camp, linking it to the Midlands to the south coast, made it an ideal location.
In 1915, part of it was developed into a hospital for wounded soldiers before, in 1916, it began to treat soldiers coming back from the front who had contracted VD.
When war had been declared, Lord Kitchener had warned troops serving abroad "you may find temptations, but you must entirely resist them".
He urged British soldiers to treat all women "with perfect courtesy", but avoid "any intimacy".
But the blue-uniformed soldiers who, from July 1917, were kept behind 6ft-high barbed wire fences in a special area of Chiseldon, called L Lines, were proof that for some, Kitchener's appeals fell on deaf ears.
In 1918 alone, more than 60,000 soldiers needed treatment for VD - compared to around 75,000 who were treated for trench foot in the whole of the war.
'Naughty ladies and bad boys'
Sheila Passmore, of Chiseldon Local History Group, said that despite the barbed wire and guards, troops could still indulge the vices that led them there in the first place.
A shanty camp known as Piccadilly sprang up alongside the perimeter fence with shops and cafes for the troops.
"Ladies from Swindon used to get the early train, known locally as the meat train, and come down to Piccadilly and 'entertain' soldiers from the camp whenever they got the chance," according to Mrs Passmore.
"There were one or two tradesmen in the village who would, rather naughtily, pick up the officers, because they were paid.
"They would be covered up in the cart and would nip into Swindon to enjoy themselves.
"So we had naughty ladies and bad boys," she said.
Treating the VD cases had a real impact on the army's fighting strength, according to Professor Mark Harrison from Oxford University.
"It was an enormous drain on manpower because troops would normally be treated for around a month and that took a lot of people away from the battlefield," he said.
Soldiers who contracted VD would not be paid while they were being treated, and would also lose the right to take leave for a year.
Mr Harrison said that initially the army also wrote to the soldier's family spelling out what he was being treated for.
"That was stopped sometime around 1916, after a major committed suicide after his wife had been informed," he explained.
Historian David Bailey, who has written a book on Chiseldon, said the soldiers being treated for VD were kept away from locals and other soldiers.
"All four sides [of L Lines] were bounded by a six foot high barbed wire fence - effectively it was a prison camp."
'Wrong decisions'
The railway line linking the camp to Southampton also cut off the VD wards from the rest of the camp.
The treatments the soldiers received were "pretty horrendous", according to Mr Bailey, involving injecting arsenic and the use of a mercury-based cream - "substances that no-one would dare use nowadays".
In other ways, the village benefited from the presence of the camp - the army set up a cinema which was also open to locals, with children sitting cross-legged at the front.
But, those same children were warned to avoid men in blue uniforms, according to Mrs Passmore, with the military police summoned on occasions to round up any escapees.
The camp continued as an army base after World War One, then closed in 1962 when national service ended, and was demolished ten years later.
In 1992, the Chiseldon Local History Group put up a memorial plaque to "the men and women of all nations who passed this way".
But Mr Bailey still has mixed feeling about the bad boys in blue uniforms.
"I don't exactly sympathise with their plight, because like the army I think of it as a self-inflicted wound, but I can understand why they did it," he said.
"A young boy, away from home, 18 or 19 years of age, about to go into battle, wants to sample life, and maybe he made the wrong decision."
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The Carolina Panthers will take on the Denver Broncos for Super Bowl 50 - a historic milestone that an estimated 115 million fans are expected to tune in for. It promises to be quite a celebration, but it comes at the end of a troubled 12 months for the National Football League. | By Jessica LussenhopBBC News
From the rumbling fallout from the so-called Deflategate debacle to the ongoing questions about the long-term health effect of head trauma, it has been a tough 2015 for the sport's administrators.
BBC News asked four sports ethicists and historians to weigh in on the moral standing of the NFL on the eve of its 50th championship.
1. Concussions and player health
This year, the issue of head trauma and the possible link to serious cognitive issues in former players hit the big screen in the film, Concussion.
The film told the story of the doctor who originally linked a progressive degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy with former football players who took repeated blows to the head, and the NFL's efforts to downplay the risks of concussions.
In 2015, the doctors at Boston University who specialise in examining the brains of deceased former players diagnosed 23 cases of CTE. They have found the disease in 90 out of 94 players' brains, including, most recent, legendary Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler, who had "moderately severe" CTE.
Meanwhile, concussion diagnoses went up by a third in the 2015 season, as the league tried various measures to make the sport more safe.
But what long time sports ethicist Jay Coakley takes greatest issue with is to do with kids playing tackle football. The NFL invested in a training programme for coaches called Heads Up Football which certifies them in proper tackling technique and educates them on spotting concussions. Coakley finds ads for the programme that tug at parents' heartstrings troubling.
"What we've seen in 2015 is a concerted effort on the part of the NFL to push that positive image in ways that I think push moral boundaries a little bit, in terms of communicating to people, 'We've made changes and now it's safe for your boys to go out there and play tackle football'. I think that's really a stretch," he says.
A spokesman for the NFL referred BBC News to comments made by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to the BBC last week.
"We are trying to make sure people have the facts so when they make the decision of which sports their children play they have the facts about the risk and what the rewards are. That's what all parents do, that's what I do," he said.
"We want kids to participate in sports, there are risks to not participating and sitting on your couch. It's called obesity and it's one of the biggest epidemics we have in our world. We want them to play and be active."
2. Domestic violence
This issue came back into the spotlight this week with police in Dallas investigating Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel after a complaint by his ex-girlfriend.
The horrific elevator knock-out incident between Ray Rice and his wife dominated the debate over how the NFL handles domestic violence in 2014.
Goodell suspended Rice for two games before public outrage crescendoed after the release of the tape from inside the elevator. Rice was subsequently suspended indefinitely.
Since then the NFL has revamped its policies surrounding domestic violence, created a baseline suspension of six games and hired a former sex crimes prosecutor to perform internal investigations beyond that of local law enforcement. Player arrests dropped 38% in 2015.
But there were other controversies this year, before the Manziel episode.
For example, Deadspin obtained disturbing photographs taken by police of a former girlfriend of Dallas Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy. The photos shows extensive bruising all over the woman's body after she told police Hardy attacked her and threatened to kill her. Hardy was suspended for 10 games, but the punishment was later reduced to four games after arbitration.
"He still played this year which I thought was outrageous," says professor Shawn Klein, author of the blog The Sports Ethicist. "I think they probably need to do more education and awareness with the players and team personnel about how to spot signs of domestic violence or potential precursors so there can be an intervention before something happens."
3. Doping
In a bombshell documentary, Al-Jazeera linked Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning and other players to the use of performance enhancing drugs, including human growth hormone. Manning categorically denied any wrongdoing, saying the report is a "fabrication", and one of the main sources in the film later recanted.
However, Al-Jazeera stood by the story. Sports historian and Arizona State lecturer Victoria Jackson says that in the interest of transparency, the NFL should sign the World Anti-Doping Agency's code, which has been adopted by 600 other world sports organisations, and standardises which substances and processes are illegal for athletes. The NFL does test for HGH, but Jackson says an outside group needs to be responsible for oversight.
"The NFL needs to defer to an independent agency," she says. "The league has too much invested in Manning. Doping has real health effects and the NFL Players Association should be pushing for the NFL to sign on to WADA."
However, the NFL Players Association has gone on the record challenging WADA for its own transparency issues over how they test players for human growth hormone.
"We rejected WADA participation into our drug policies precisely because they failed to be transparent with us over these very issues," a representative told Reuters.
4. Deflategate
Then came Deflategate, when New England Patriots staff were accused of intentionally under-inflating footballs so that they would travel further during the 2014 Super Bowl. Quarterback Tom Brady was suspended for four games - before the punishment was nullified by a judge - and the team was fined $1m after an NFL investigation found that Brady likely knew about tampering with the footballs.
However, Stephen Mosher, a professor of sport management and media, was more scandalised by the amount of time, money and attention poured into Deflategate.
"It was great public messaging for the NFL - preposterously stupid," he says. "It was talked about as if it was the greatest moral sin ever committed."
After the NFL released the results of its own investigation, other scientists took it upon themselves to re-create the tests used to prove that the Patriots had cheated - including a little girl who used it as the topic of a science fair project. The Atlantic called Deflategate a "sports scandal that's full of hot air" for many reasons, but Jackson says more than just football fans' time was wasted.
"I think when a story takes over like that, my guess is if you're someone who's fearful of other stories you sit back and say, 'Oh, perfect! Everyone is spinning their wheels on a story that doesn't matter,'" she says. "But there are these bigger stories that deserve attention."
The NFL is appealing against the judge's ruling on Brady's punishment and Goodell has stood by the results of their own investigation.
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A man has admitted killing an 81-year-old woman who died weeks after she was attacked in a street. | Lesley Davies suffered head injuries in the attack in her home town of Par, Cornwall, on 19 July and died in hospital on 4 August.
Brian Downie, aged 69, from Par, was charged with murder but the prosecution at Truro Crown Court accepted a plea of manslaughter after reading a medical report.
He will be sentenced on 5 April.
More news and stories from Cornwall
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A couple have become the first people to move into new houses built on the site of the former Ravenscraig steelworks in North Lanarkshire. | Tony and Gina Martin have taken up residence in one of 850 houses being built by David Wilson Homes.
A total of 3,500 houses will eventually occupy the site.
The £1.2bn Ravenscraig regeneration project is one of the biggest in Europe. Once complete it is expected to be home to more than 10,000 people.
The partners involved in the project have estimated it could create about 12,000 jobs and attract in excess of £1.4bn of private sector investment over the next 15 to 20 years.
Work on the first phase of the redevelopment has also seen the opening of the £32m Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility and a new £70m campus for Motherwell College.
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Proposals for changing Guernsey's housing laws could be drawn up by the end of 2011, says the Policy Council.
| It is reviewing the island's licensing laws which restrict occupation of island dwellings by incomers.
It said that the review had taken longer than expected because of the complexity of the subject.
Incomers currently get licences to occupy dwellings for periods of five or 15 years, but new proposals are for one, four, seven or 14 years.
The review follows a report which suggested that changing the licence system might help the island's economy.
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Established in 1919, in the wake of World War One, Germany's Bauhaus art school brought a radical new approach to design and aesthetics which would eventually go on to help inform modernist architecture around the world. Now in its centenary year, we look at a selection of some of the buildings shaped by the influential art school. | The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar by Prussian architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969). While Bauhaus translates as "building house", Gropius didn't want to build only houses; instead, he wanted to create artists who could turn their hands to anything. Students were taught pottery, printmaking, bookbinding, carpentry, typography and advertising. They were encouraged to look at the world around them in a new way, studying in hands-on workshops that were the opposite of the stuffy and elitist lectures of many contemporary design schools.
In 1925, the Bauhaus relocated to the city of Dessau, where Gropius designed a new base for the school. With a steel frame structure and large walls of glass, the building featured many characteristics of modernist architecture.
The Bauhaus aesthetic combined form, function and efficiency and soon became evident in buildings around Germany.
Gropius left the Bauhaus in 1928 and was replaced as director by Hannes Meyer.
With German politics polarising, Meyer soon stood down and was replaced by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), who began placing greater emphasis on architectural design.
As support for the Nazis grew, the school began to be seen as being at odds with National Socialism and students and teachers fled to a new base in Berlin. When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933, the school was closed down.
Driven into exile, many key figures of the Bauhaus emigrated to countries such as the US and Israel, where their philosophies inspired generations of architects and designers.
One hundred years later, the austere, modernist influence of Gropius and his cohort can continue to be seen in buildings around the world.
The 100 Years of Bauhaus festival runs from 16 to 24 January 2019 at the Berlin Academy of the Arts in Germany.
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Judges in the US have issued an arrest warrant for actress Lindsay Lohan, who has admitted failing a drugs test just weeks after being freed from jail. | The 24-year-old star could be sent to jail for 30 days if she is found to have breached her probation.
She was freed in early August after serving 12 days in jail for violating probation stemming from a 2007 drunk-driving charge.
She is expected to appear at a Los Angeles court on Friday.
Last week Lohan wrote on her Twitter feed: "Regrettably, I did in fact fail my most recent drug test."
She said she was taking responsibility for her actions and was "prepared to face the consequences."
"Substance abuse is a disease, which unfortunately doesn't go away overnight," she said.
Lohan rose to fame as a child actor in Disney films such as The Parent Trap, but critics say her career has stagnated in recent years amid a series of high-profile scrapes with the law.
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A man and woman were killed when their car left a dual carriageway and hit a tree. | Derbyshire Police said the pair's Vauxhall Insignia crashed near the M1 junction of the A52 in Derbyshire at about 16:55 BST on Saturday.
The 37-year-old male driver, from Derby, and a 29-year-old female passenger, from Stapleford, both died at the scene.
Police have appealed for witnesses and dashcam footage.
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
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"At this very moment there may be a dozen climbers on the buildings of Cambridge. They do not know each other; they are unlikely to meet. And inadvertently they will find what we found, a love for the buildings and the climbs upon them, a love for the night and the thrill of darkness." | By Orla MooreBBC News
This is the passage that concludes The Night Climbers of Cambridge, a 1937 book that remains an influence on those with a head for heights in this famously low-lying city.
The tome describes a familiar skyline: the four piercing spires of King's College Chapel, the tower of St John's, the pale Portland stone of the Senate House.
And for decades, a clandestine group has sought distraction from the monotony of study by scaling some of these landmarks.
"If you like mountaineering or rock climbing, Cambridge is probably the worst place in the whole of Britain to be," says Tom Whipple - now science editor at The Times - who tiptoed across the rooftops as a restless maths student in 2000.
"I'm used to modern plastic drainpipes, but these were really sturdy cast-iron ones - you could get your hands behind them and climb.
"Sitting up there in the fog, the clocks are chiming midnight; you cannot see anything of the modern world.
"You flatter yourself; you feel part of this secret society, this continuum. I was hooked."
Whipple talks of abseiling into the Trinity Ball in a dinner jacket - and the kudos to be gained from "leaving a wheelie bin on New Hall dome".
"The fear of getting caught was more intense than the fear of injury," says Rebecca Wetten, who studied history of art between 2010 and 2014.
She says her favourite climbs were at the New Museums Site and the Faculty of History, which is noted for its resemblance to an open book.
"None of the climbs needed special equipment but you worked out a pattern to them; you needed someone who knew the way and would help you figure out shortcuts. That's why it was good to do it as a pair."
And although membership of a club isn't necessary to partake in this renegade pastime, it does appear there is a shadowy group dedicated to night climbing.
A reporter with Cambridge student newspaper The Tab, who in March 2016 followed a small group on the rooftops, claimed to have seen a list of 24 initiation questions for night climbers who hoped to join a secret society dedicated to the practice.
These ranged from "How close have you come to dying?", "Do you ever have to consciously prevent yourself from deliberately jumping when you find yourself standing on a cliff or rooftop?", to the apparently irrelevant: "What do you know about central banking and currency laws?"
Looking up at the rooftops, tourist Leo Hayes, 70, who is visiting Cambridge from Ireland, is incredulous to learn of the activity. "Just one word: mad," he says.
"Risk your life for nothing except a dare? Jumping between buildings? Crazy."
In 1899, British mountaineer and poet Geoffrey Winthrop Young was the first person to document the activity in his book The Roof-Climber's Guide to Trinity, written in part as a parody of an alpine guidebook.
The third edition in 1960, edited by Richard Williams, describes the practice as "like cat burglary, but without the robberies".
But 1937's The Night Climbers of Cambridge, by Whipplesnaith - the pseudonym of the author Noël Howard Symington - is the publication that is credited with inspiring generations of night climbers.
It describes in detail the routes up particular colleges - and indeed the routes off them: the "Senate House leap" is achieved by jumping across the 6ft (1.8m) gap between the roof of Gonville and Caius College and the neighbouring Senate House.
Jon Gifford, of Oleander Press, which reprinted later editions of Whipplesnaith's guide, says the work has "great literary appeal", with language that's "evocative of another age".
"It is melodious and romantic," he says. "The thrill of being alive and one with nature, in many ways.
"But it was also about civil disobedience, letting off steam, about risking lives."
Tom Whipple, who was given a copy by his father, remembers a particular passage with fondness: "As furtively as the bats of twilight, they shun the eyes of the world, going on their mysterious journeys and retiring as quietly as they set out."
Whipplesnaith also writes of injured backs and torn trousers, of near misses and scorched hands - although no-one is known to have been seriously injured or killed.
Two students were rusticated, or dismissed, by their colleges for climbing King's College Chapel in June 1937.
Another two were also "sent down" in the early 1960s after they were caught by police trying to scale the Senate House.
"One moment we were protected, isolated students, the next we had been abandoned, jobless, penniless in the last stages of a degree course," one of them wrote.
The Fleet Street photographer and filmmaker John Bulmer - an engineering undergraduate between 1957 and 1960 - was "asked to leave" King's College six weeks before his finals after one of his images "caused upset" when it appeared on the front of The Sunday Times.
"It was a photo of a climber on King's College Chapel window. I was hauled up before the proctors," he remembers.
"The college was dissatisfied that I was spending more time on photography than my studies."
The image was part of a feature written for Life magazine, which saw Bulmer, armed with a Canon 35mm and "big old-fashioned flashbulbs", following Cambridge's night climbers.
"It was challenging, but the aim with any photograph is always to kick the viewer in the gut," he says.
These days, Cambridgeshire Police "strongly discourages" the practice on safety grounds, however the force says that no crime is being committed by night climbers, as long as damage isn't caused to the buildings.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has previously warned urban climbers not to let an "appetite for adventure" override safety concerns. It points out that any accident affects not only the climber, but their family, the emergency services and staff who work on the sites.
Trespassing, police say, is mostly a civil offence, although night climbing can be considered a "public nuisance".
That's certainly how it must have seemed to the university over the years - although it declined to comment for this article.
In June 1958, a battered Austin 7 appeared on the roof of the Senate House overnight.
Seven years later, a banner reading "Peace in Vietnam" was attached to the lightning rods on the spires of King's College Chapel.
And in November 2009, climbers scaled an 80ft (24m) external wall of the chapel to fix four Santa hats on the pinnacles.
Ian Gray, the porter at King's at the time, says he and the college chaplain went up on to the roof to try to poke off the festive headgear with a stick.
"As it transpired the hats were on the very top of the spires and there was no way us less daring types were going to go up there and get them down," he says.
"I remember at the time just saying, 'wow - that is quite a feat'."
In the end, a steeplejack had to "rescue each one in turn at great expense".
Andy Buckley, now a particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, was a night climber during his time as a physics student between 1997 and 2005.
By the time he had arrived at Cambridge, the contours of the colleges had barely changed from the days of Winthrop Young, although CCTV cameras have been installed, as have wall-top spikes in a bid to deter nocturnal ascents.
"I was secretary of the climbing club at the university, and it had this old book about night climbing, and I thought it was a good yarn," he says.
"A lot of the building work was decaying and I felt bad about the possibility of damaging them. But you could shinny up the drainpipe and get a fantastic view into the inner sanctum of the university.
"You feel very exposed up there but you see the structures very differently."
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For Rebecca Wetten, scaling the heights of the Faculty of History is an enduring memory of her time in Cambridge.
"I threw off my shoes and climbed it in my May Ball gown, in my bare feet, and saw the most wonderful sunrise," she says.
"It was an amazing send-off for my final year.
"No-one can take that from me."
You can hear more about Cambridge night climbing and other stories on the theme of "Secrets" on the BBC Multi Story podcast on the BBC Sounds app or on the podcast's website.
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Uganda's public education system is reeling from absent teachers, poor facilities and high dropout rates. Despite these challenges the country's ministry of education is pushing to close a chain of low-cost private schools, which says it is trying to offer solutions to these challenges. | By Patience Atuhaire BBC Africa, Kampala
A few minutes off the highway skirting the northern side of Kampala, we go down a dirt path, in a neighbourhood of bare-brick buildings with corrugated iron-sheet roofs.
The Bridge International Academies campus at Nsumbi, Nansana town in Wakiso district in the central region of Uganda, would blend right in, were it not for its bright green iron-sheet walls and roofing.
The half-built brick walls and wire mesh on the front give the school complex the look of a farm house.
A notice on a chalk-board at the gate reminds parents to pay at least half of their children's school fees, which range from $14 (£11) to $23 (£18) per three-month term.
The school follows Uganda's public education system of seven years in primary school, with children starting from the age of six.
Uganda's education crisis in numbers:
Sources: Ministry of Education, 2014, Uganda National Examinations Board, 2015, Uwezo, 2015
Pre-installed lessons
When we arrive, the primary five class are in the middle of a social studies lesson; learning about forests and their use as a habitat for animals. Answers are shouted out in chorus, on the teacher's cue.
The lesson is scripted, the teacher seeming to recite every line. There is a set of signals for teacher-pupil interaction; her snap of the finger signals to a pupil to ask a question, or give an answer.
All that comes pre-installed in an e-reader, or a teacher computer.
"The tablet computers simplify our work. There is no need of writing up lesson plans," says Immaculate Nagawa, an English and Social Studies teacher.
"But we are closely monitored. We have preparation books which we fill in every morning.
"Some of the text books on the market have inaccurate information, but we don't fall victim to that because of the pre-installed content."
The expansion of the schools
I ask 10-year-old Alexa Rebecca Nakato what she thinks of this mode of teaching.
"The subjects are the same as my former school. But there we used to take down a lot of notes. I find the teaching method at Bridge very simple," she says.
Paul Kevin, her classmate, says his parents favoured the school so he could learn Kiswahili, East Africa's lingua franca.
As I move around the campus, I start to wonder whether it's all work and no play here, as even the queue for lunch seems to be managed with military orderliness.
In 2009, Bridge International opened its first academy in Mukuru, a slum in Kenya's capital, Nairobi.
The US-founded company, which aims to lower the cost of access to "quality education", now runs 405 schools in the country.
It also operates in India and Nigeria, and in January entered into a partnership with the Liberian government to run its primary schools.
The education venture opened its first school in Uganda in 2015 and just 18 months later operates 63 primary schools, with 12,000 pupils.
Why close the schools?
But the school has courted controversy elsewhere.
In Kenya, the teacher's unions and non-governmental organisations have publicly called for the closure of the academies, saying that the schools were compromising teaching standards.
Bridge International, which calls itself "the world's largest education innovation company", receives funds from the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank, the Bill Gates foundation, Mark Zuckerberg's education venture and other organisations.
The UK's Department for International Development (DfID) also funds Bridge International, a situation that has been criticised by the UN because it is supporting a for-profit company.
A DfID spokesperson said it did not fund the Bridge Academies in Uganda and that: "When state provision is not delivering for the poorest, we work with low-cost privately run schools to provide an education to children who would otherwise get none."
In Uganda, the education ministry ordered the closure of the schools in July, citing:
The ministry declined to comment for this report.
Children learning under trees
Andrew White, the country director for Bridge International in Uganda, says that schools could not operate if they were run as a charity:
"The money is like a soft loan and there is an expectation of a return in future. Bridge is not an NGO. The money we use to operate comes from the pockets of parents."
He also denies suggestions that teaching is low quality, or is over-reliant on technology.
"We have a residential program, where our teachers go through intensive training before they're deployed. Over 50% of our teachers are graduates of government teacher-training colleges.
"The integration of information technology in our teaching may look a bit different, but we're teaching the Ugandan curriculum."
He also argues that their buildings, which the education ministry has found wanting, were inspected and approved by the local District Education and Infrastructure Committees.
But if quality education is measured through bricks and mortar, then the government should not be criticising other educational providers.
Reports abound in the local press of public primary schools where lessons are conducted under trees or the children use anthills for desks.
Mr White said Bridge had a system that addresses one of the biggest problems in Uganda's public school's - teacher absence:
"Bridge has a computer system which will notify us if a teacher fails to show up for lessons. And we have a pool of substitute teachers. We can quickly deploy a substitute when we get the notification," he says.
The ministry complained about poor sanitary facilities, which Mr White says are basic ventilated pit latrines as "used in many schools in Uganda".
Twaweza, an education assessment NGO working in East Africa, found that children in Uganda's public schools aged eight-12 were unable to answer questions set for those aged seven.
Court case
Bridge International Academies says on its website that it aims to educate more than 10 million children across a dozen countries by 2025.
Its managers in Uganda say they are willing to explore all lines of dialogue with the education ministry, which seems bent on teaching them a lesson.
The schools are open for the moment, following an injunction issued by the High Court in September. The court case is expected to come for hearing on 28 October.
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Dave Myers - one half of celebrity cooks The Hairy Bikers - has been awarded an honorary fellowship by the University of Cumbria. | The 58-year-old received it for his lifelong contribution to the media industry and his excellence in the culinary arts.
Myers, who was born and lives in Barrow joined hundreds of students at their graduation at Carlisle Cathedral.
Speaking outside the cathedral, he told the BBC he felt "very proud".
Alongside his Geordie friend and colleague Si King he has starred in several TV series and published a number of books.
Related Internet Links
University of Cumbria
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It's hard to miss Ian Durrant's house in Lincoln. | By Nalini Sivathasan BBC Asian Network in Lincoln, UK
A Union flag and the cross of St George flutter 20ft (6.1m) high in his front garden.
Ian says they're there "because I'm a veteran and I'm proud to be English". But he admits the flags sometimes give off the wrong impression.
"Someone came to talk to me, and he said, 'Congratulations on flying the flag, what are you going to do about those bloody Muslims?' I said, 'Are you National Front?' 'Yes I am, brother,' he said. So I advised him - using army language - to get out of my garden."
A decade of waiting
With its towering facade, jade green dome and glistening gold crescent, Lincoln's first purpose-built mosque is already settling into the city's skyline.
In a few weeks the £2m ($2.9m) building will officially open - more than a decade after its first planning application was submitted to the council.
Ian was one of the mosque's most vociferous opponents. The former soldier - who served for 25 years in the army - set up a group trying to stop the application.
But he says his reservations were about traffic.
"There was no parking, there would have been nearly 90 cars, and the building only provided 12 parking spaces."
'We'll burn the mosque'
However, things then got nasty. The site where the mosque was planned to be built burned down in unexplained circumstances.
On three separate occasions, groups including the English Defence League (EDL) and East Anglian Patriots marched through the city centre.
Participants shouted chants like "Burn the poppy, and we'll burn the mosque".
Worried that his campaign against the mosque was being hijacked by anti-Islamic groups, Ian felt compelled to act.
"We had a letter campaign in the press against the EDL, asking people, 'If you see them, turn your back on them and walk away.' And they did," he says.
Rumours flying
Lincoln's Muslim population is small compared with cities such as Leicester or Birmingham, but it's long outgrown its current mosque. On Friday - the most important day of the week in Islam - it has to rent a larger community hall to accommodate about 250 worshippers.
After the mosque's initial planning bid failed, a subsequent application at a former dairy site was approved. This placated people like Ian who had been unhappy about the original location, but others were still sceptical about the mosque's intentions.
Tanweer Ahmed, chairman of the Lincoln Islamic Association, says there were rumours flying around that the new mosque would have "loudspeakers doing the call to prayer five times a day - and some thought we would try and get rid of the local war memorial".
In reality, he says, local Muslims simply wanted "to feel comfortable".
So he decided to act - by knocking on every door in the area.
Safety worries
"A lot of people welcomed us - but a few people were not happy. We were giving them leaflets, and they were throwing them straightaway into the bin," Tanweer says.
Even Muslim people questioned his moves.
"My wife was saying, 'Why are you doing that?', and my children were worried that someone could harm me. Some of my colleagues were also worried about safety. And there were some that just didn't want to do it."
Tanweer also needed to show locals that the presence of Islam in their area wouldn't threaten their way of life. So he reached out to Ian.
"I knew nothing about Islam, and someone sent me an email saying, 'We're running a series of talks - would you like to come?' So I did. I sat in the front on my own and it was fascinating," Ian says.
He's attended so many events - including Eid celebrations and mosque open days - that many worshippers recognise him on the street. But he's raised eyebrows within his own community.
"I took pride in being friends with, and talking to, Muslim people. Other people would say, 'Why the hell are you doing that?' And I said, 'They're people.'"
Joining Remembrance Day
"If I look out of the window to the left, I can see the cathedral in its glory," says Ian, as he draws a net curtain. "If I look right I see the mosque. East has met West in Lincoln."
Lincoln is best known for its beautiful 1,000-year-old cathedral. But it also has links with the armed forces - it was the birthplace of the military tank, and produced the renowned Royal Lincolnshire Regiment.
So Remembrance Day is a big deal for local residents. Ian and other veterans parade at their local war memorial, just 100 metres from the new mosque.
In 2012, he got a pleasant surprise when Tanweer and other Muslims turned up, carrying wreaths and wearing poppies.
"People who I knew have said, 'It's good to see them joining in the community.' I said, 'Tanweer Ahmed is here - not out of invite, but by right!'"
Shared history
Tanweer says some Muslims were sceptical about attending the memorial.
"People were saying, 'Why are you going there? Why do we need to go there?' I said to them, 'We live in this country, and these people have given their lives to save this country.'"
He also wanted to highlight both the English and Muslim communities' shared history. In World War One, 400,000 Indian Muslim soldiers fought for Britain, and in World War Two, 600,000 soldiers took part.
Tanweer says it was important for him and Ian to step into each other's sacred spaces and embrace each other's cultures, without sacrificing their own identities.
"Locals feel much more comfortable if we go to their space, they can ask us questions - but if they come to mosques, they might not feel comfortable asking questions," says Tanweer.
"So it's important that we visit them. But at the same time, they're coming to us".
Focusing on the future
Tanweer will be relieved once the mosque opens. But he knows his job isn't over.
Last year's terrorist attacks have created a sense of unease among Muslims in the city. Tanweer himself has been verbally abused, and the old mosque has been pelted with stones.
He thinks the Muslim community needs to continue engaging with locals to prevent any more trouble. He hopes the new mosque can help by offering space within the building for non-Muslims to run activities, such as children's clubs or exercise classes.
"A lot of people don't know what happens in the mosque, so if they're using the mosque on a regular basis, they will feel much more comfortable building a relationship with us," Tanweer says.
Ian's excited about the mosque's opening ceremony, and hopes to bring his friends along. He admits that their opinions about Islam have changed over the years - largely thanks to him.
"My guys - apart from one - don't mention Muslims any more to me. I'd like to think they're accepting my way of thinking. I don't like prejudice.
"I served in Kuwait with Muslims. I served in Borneo with Muslims. It makes me feel very proud that I have been accepted."
Crossing Divides
Crossing Divides: a week of stories about people creating connections in a polarised world.
|
The Government will resettle the remaining internally displaced people by 31st of January says Senior Advisor to the President
and Parliamentarian Basil Rajapaksa. | Speaking to journalists he said that there are about hundred and ten thousand IDPs and each and every one of them has voting
rights..
The presidential election is scheduled for January 2010 and Basil Rajapaksa said “They (IDP’s) are going to vote.”
“Sri Lanka will stand with India for their (IDP’s) security” he added.
Basil Rajapaksa said that the government will take necessary actions to find a political solution.
“Immediately after presidential election we will see all the constitution amendment needed for political solution will be
done” he added.
Senior advisor to the president Basil Rajapksa refused to comment on Kachchathiv issue and said that he is aware of the fishermen’s
incident with the coast guards.
|
The Queen smashed a bottle of single malt whisky against the nation's new aircraft carrier as she officially named it HMS Queen Elizabeth. It was a key moment in the project to build two new carriers that has attracted criticism over its £6.2bn cost and its level of ambition.
| By Caroline WyattDefence correspondent, BBC News, in Rosyth
Size of ship
Aircraft
Modular build
Power
Control towers
Size of ship
The Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers will be the largest warships ever constructed for the UK. With a displacement of 65,000 tonnes, they are three times the size of HMS Illustrious, the Navy’s remaining carrier. They are 280m long, about 70m wide, twice the width, and carry some 1,600 personnel, including air crew.
Flight deck
The carriers will be equipped with F-35B, short take-off and vertical landing joint-strike fighters. The coalition government announced in 2010 that it would buy the F-35C jets instead, because they had a longer range and had a bigger weapons payload, but the cost of fitting the carriers with the “cats and traps” launch and landing system proved prohibitively expensive and the government was forced to reverse its decision in 2012.
Modular build
The ships are built in blocks or modules, with pieces being constructed around the country and sent to Rosyth in Fife. The LB04, pictured, is part of the ship’s hull. It was constructed in the Govan shipyard by BAE Systems and taken by barge to Rosyth. The construction of the second carrier, Prince of Wales, is also under way, but its future is uncertain.
Power
The carriers are fitted with two propellers, with a diameter of seven metres. Each will output about 80MW of power, enough to run 1,000 family cars or 50 high speed trains. Two Rolls Royce MT30 gas turbines will provide about two-thirds of the ship’s power and the rest will come from four diesel engines. The MT30 is based on the engine which powers the Boeing 777 aircraft, and around 80% of the parts are the same.
Control towers
The carriers are designed with two 'island' control towers, instead of a traditional single one The forward or front island will house the ship’s bridge, with flight control based in the aft or rear island. Nine decks extend below the main flight deck. The hangar deck is big enough to accommodate up to 20 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
Even on a windy summer's day in Rosyth dockyard in Fife, HMS Queen Elizabeth is unmistakeable.
The 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier - the UK's biggest ever warship - looms over the shipyard where it was assembled and fitted out, dwarfing its predecessor HMS Illustrious, berthed alongside her for comparison.
The new carrier and its sister ship are a £6.2bn project first conceived in the 1998 defence review at a third of the cost.
The estimate by the time the contract was signed in 2007 was just over £3bn.
Along the way, there have been U-turns and doubters galore. But at the naming ceremony, five years after the first metal was cut, the focus will be not on the cost but what the ship means for the UK, and the nation's place in the world.
During the build, more than 10,000 people at shipyards and suppliers across the UK have been employed, and the pride felt by the workforce is tangible.
David Wassell is a painter, paint-sprayer and blaster from Newcastle, who has worked on many other ships, but never anything on this scale.
"It's amazing - it's something to be proud of," he said.
"It's the Queen Elizabeth, after all, and the build has all been amalgamated with the other yards and everyone's been working together. I think it's fantastic."
Although the carrier, with a flight deck, and another nine decks below, is much bigger than the Invincible class it replaces, the crew won't be - just 679 in total, similar to its predecessor. They will have a GPS system to help them find their way around.
"The ship is really impressive, and also very capable. Her highly mechanised weapon handling system is unique, and it allows us to operate the ship with a lean crew," Lieutenant Commander Harvie Montgomery said.
"It's a real privilege to be part of the first ship's company - I'll always be the ship's first training officer, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of my stint here."
'Strategic to tactical'
The glossy videos about the carrier that will be played at her naming ceremony also feature its sister ship the Prince of Wales, although it is not yet clear whether the government - in the next defence review - will find the money to run both carriers.
The head of the Royal Navy, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, has been a strong advocate for both, not least because running only one would leave the UK with lengthy gaps thanks to refits.
"HMS Elizabeth produces - and with luck, her sister ship will produce - a whole range of choices, which starts with the slightly ethereal business of offering governments a choice of how they play things on the world stage, alongside major partners in alliance, right down to producing force from her decks, or humanitarian support and it offers us a huge range of options from the strategic to the tactical," he said.
"It is also a sign to our strategic partners, from America to France and to Europe, that shows them that we are taking our responsibilities seriously, and that's a sign of our strategic leadership. And with leadership, we have responsibility - and the Royal Navy takes that very seriously indeed."
However, critics of the project have long criticised it for its cost and the scale of its ambition.
Not only are these the UK's biggest ever warships, but the stealth aircraft due to go on board - the Lightning II - is turning out to be the most expensive warplane ever developed by America and its partners, and is still suffering technical difficulties as it is developed.
'Frustrations'
The chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Andy Pulford, agrees it is a "very ambitious" aircraft.
The RAF is taking the lead on bringing it into service, although each squadron of F-35B Lightning IIs will be joint with the Fleet Air Arm, with the first flight trials on board HMS Queen Elizabeth due in 2018.
"It's a hi-tech, latest generation aircraft, and any of these large programmes come with frustrations and challenges along the way. But I'm confident that we're on track to make those timelines.
"The important thing now for the Royal Air Force is that we're looking forward, and I see that we are growing in the future," he said.
"The arrival of Lightning II will take the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm into a whole new area of capability."
'Eggs in one basket'
But what of the criticism that has often surrounded this project, both within and outside the Ministry of Defence - including within the navy itself?
Professor Michael Clarke, the director general of the Royal United Service Institute, explained: "The fact is, the carrier is going to be a first class carrier.
"It will be a strike carrier that will project power around the world.
"However, it will require most of the Royal Navy to support it and protect it, so it means we will in a sense design the navy around one carrier battle-group. That is pretty powerful, but it means putting a lot of eggs in one basket."
There are fears among some in defence that other crucial areas such as manpower - not least within the UK's already shrinking Army - may suffer as a result of the proportion of the defence budget devoted to big-ticket equipment projects such as the carriers and the fighter jets over the coming years, along with the cost of replacing the UK's nuclear deterrent.
The previous Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir David Richards recently expressed his worry over the declining size of Britain's forces, even as the UK builds what he called its "huge" carriers.
However, Rear Admiral Chris Parry, author of Superhighway: Sea Power in the 21st Century, insists the UK is right to focus on the maritime.
"The 'great game' has always been and will always be at sea, because in a connected world, with 70% of the world covered by the sea, it is the great connector for trade, warfare and many other ways of doing business together.
"It's also a route for criminality terrorism, refugees and things like that.
"So unless a country has a navy that's prepared to be out there, doing business on a daily basis, it will lose traction with regard to globalisation, and it will find that other countries will fill the gap left by them."
So the nation's future flagship being named in Fife today bears much more than its 65,000 tonne weight - it also carries Britain's hopes of remaining globally relevant on the world stage of the future.
And, for the next 50 years, it may well embody the UK's wish to project power across the world's oceans, for a nation that has perhaps not yet lost its appetite for making its voice heard far across the seas.
Explore the zoomable image below to see how a QE Class aircraft carrier (left) would compare in dry dock alongside HMS Illustrious.
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A plan to develop Porthcawl into an "iconic waterfront location" has moved a step closer after £1.5m of funding was secured for the project. | The project was approved in August 2017, and includes a water sports facility at Rest Bay, a refurbishment of the harbour and a new cycle path.
The EU funding is part of a Wales-wide plan to create 13 must-see destinations across the country.
Bridgend council said it would help turn the town into a "thriving" resort.
Porthcawl Civic Trust Society objected to the two-storey building when it was approved, saying it was "out of accord" with the area's character.
|
Minimum wages in Guernsey could rise if recommendations from the Commerce and Employment Department are accepted.
| The department is proposing a 2.5% increase in rates.
It would mean an extra 15 pence on the hourly adult wage, bringing it up to £6.15; and 10 pence on the young person's rate, seeing it rise to £4.35.
However, the department said it was ruling out equalising two the rates at the present time.
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Ninety-six fans died in the Hillsborough disaster, but the inquests heard their deaths could have been prevented if authorities had not made a number of mistakes. BBC News takes a look at some of the key decisions and failures.
| By Richard TurnerBBC News Online
1. Failure to prevent crowd congestion
In the half-hour before kick off, the approach to the Leppings Lane end quickly became congested. The 10,100 fans with standing tickets were expected to enter the ground through just seven turnstiles and by 14.30, fewer than half were inside. As more and more fans arrived, the crush at the front of the queue became worse - leading to the fateful decision to open the gates. The inquests heard this was the result of a number of failings.
Firstly, there was no police cordon on the approaches to the stadium to ensure fans formed "orderly queues or only those with tickets came near the ground". At the previous year's FA Cup semi final at the stadium, police cordons were in place regulating the entry of supporters. However, there were 172 fewer officers on duty on the day of the disaster. The police match commander, Ch Supt David Duckenfield, admitted in evidence that he should have given "serious consideration to cordons".
Police had also closed some turnstiles to keep Liverpool and Nottingham Forest fans apart. This decision - and the design of the approach to the stand - combined to make the congestion worse. The number of fans passing through each turnstile was three times higher than at other turnstiles in the stadium, an HSE investigation found in 1990. The Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP), set up to oversee the release of documents relating to the disaster, concluded there was "clear evidence in the build-up to the match, both inside and outside the stadium, that turnstiles serving the Leppings Lane terrace could not process the required number of fans in time for the kick-off."
The area outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles was described as a "death trap" by former South Yorkshire Police inspector Gordon Sykes. He told the inquest the layout of the turnstiles had previously caused problems and the access route outside the ground meant fans would get "trapped" in corners or against fences and gates. "Up to 1989, I'm going to put it bluntly - we got away with it," he said. Criticism of the turnstiles was rejected by Sheffield Wednesday club secretary Graham Mackrell who said the number of turnstiles for the Leppings Lane terrace had proved "satisfactory" at previous games.
Inside the ground, "there was no means of counting" the number of fans entering individual pens. This made it harder to prevent certain pens inside the standing areas becoming too congested.
The inquest jury blamed police failures before and on the day of the tragedy. It noted that a road closure in the area had exacerbated the situation. No contingency plans were made for the sudden arrival of a large number of fans and attempts to close the stadium's perimeter gates, before fans reached the turnstiles, were made too late.
As the congestion grew worse near the turnstiles and mounted officers struggled to keep control, a radio request was made for reinforcements at 14.44. Some 2,000 Liverpool supporters were still outside and Ch Supt Duckenfield gave the fateful order to "open the gates", letting fans into the ground.
2. Not closing the tunnel
As Gate C was opened, most of the 2,000 fans headed straight down a tunnel towards the full central pens, creating the fatal crush. However, if the tunnel had been closed, fans would have been diverted towards the relatively emptier side pens, the inquests were told. This was a recognised method of restricting access to the central pens and had previously been used during the 1988 FA Cup semi-final.
Mr Duckenfield agreed his failure to close the tunnel "was the direct cause of the deaths of 96 people". The jury heard he had at least three minutes to "consider the consequences" of opening the gates. However, Mr Duckenfield admitted he did not think about closing the tunnel but "froze" because of the pressure he was under. In mitigation, he said he was working from a "deficient" set of police orders, which made no reference to closing the tunnel.
Lord Taylor, in his 1990 report into the disaster, considered it "unfortunate" the 1988 closure "seems to have been unknown to the senior officers on duty at the time". However, statements seen by HIP suggested that both Ch Supt Duckenfield and his predecessor, Ch Supt Brian Mole, were aware that the tunnel could be used to prevent overcrowding.
Lord Justice Taylor, in his 1990 report into the disaster, had concluded the failure to close the tunnel was "a blunder of the first magnitude". The original investigation by West Midlands Police also concluded "failure to anticipate" that fans entering through exit Gate C and down the tunnel would lead to a sustained crush had a "direct bearing on the disaster".
The inquest jury said commanding officers should have ordered the closing of the central tunnel and their failure to do so caused, or contributed to, the fatal crush on the terrace.
3. Not delaying kick-off
As match commander, Ch Supt David Duckenfield had it in his powers to delay the kick-off in the interests of crowd safety. At about 14.30, TV monitors in the police control room clearly showed the numbers at the Leppings Lane end were growing. But, after discussing the postponement with his deputy, Supt Bernard Murray, Mr Duckenfield decided the game should go ahead on time. Under questioning at the inquests, Mr Duckenfield said he now accepted he should have delayed the kick-off.
Supt Roger Marshall, who was stationed at the Leppings Lane entrance, told the jury of his "profound regret" at not requesting a delayed kick-off. He agreed it would have alleviated "the anxiety and frustration" of supporters trying to get into the ground.
The decision was dealt with by the original Taylor inquiry into the disaster. Lord Justice Taylor concluded that, faced with a situation which was becoming dangerous, "crowd safety should have been Mr Duckenfield's paramount consideration". Kick-off should have been delayed which would have given time to relieve the pressure at the turnstiles, he said.
Glen Kirton, the Football Association's press chief in 1989, told the inquests he raised the possibility of a delayed kick-off with Sheffield Wednesday secretary Graham Mackrell. He said he asked Mr Mackrell whether, with 20,000 people yet to enter ground, the police may request a delay. He said he was told "they did not like to do that because of the potential problems that caused at the end of the game with getting spectators away." However, Mr Mackrell denied discussing any possibly delay with Mr Kirton and told the jury it was "a problem for the police to deal with". He said any delay was a decision for the match commander
Mr Duckenfield had previously told the Taylor Inquiry a delay would only be ordered "if there was some major external factor such as fog on the Pennines or delay on the motorway: not if spectators merely turned up late even in large numbers." But the kick-off had been delayed two years previously; the 1987 semi-final was postponed for a quarter of an hour because of late arrivals.
As the teams ran on to the pitch for the 15.00 kick-off, the HIP report said "the crowd cheered but already in the central pens people were screaming. Others fell silent, already unconscious". At 15.06, the match was stopped by a police officer walking on to the pitch.
4. Slow emergency response
The original Hillsborough inquests did not consider the response of the emergency services because the coroner, Dr Stefan Popper, controversially ruled out evidence from after 15.15 on the day of the disaster. His decision, later overturned, was based on the flawed assumption that all the victims were dead or fatally injured by this point.
However, the resumed inquests heard the response by emergency services had been "woefully inadeqate". David Whitmore, an expert in pre-hospital care, criticised a senior ambulance officer, Paul Eason, for failing to look inside the pens, even though a major disaster was unfolding in front of him.
Mr Eason was described by South Yorkshire Ambulance Service chief Albert Page as its "eyes and ears" at the stadium. However, he said he was unaware spectators were being crushed. He accepted he "failed to properly assess the situation" and "failed to declare a major emergency at the earliest opportunity". However, he said his radio had been faulty at the time. Asked whether he thought of alerting nearby hospitals, he said he had presumed the ambulance control room would do so.
Mr Whitmore said while the ambulance service response was delayed, volunteers from St John Ambulance "behaved better" than their counterparts by starting to help victims immediately. There were "misunderstandings and failures" in communication between the emergency services, he added. Bolt cutters, requested at 15.10 from the police garage, did not arrive until after all the injured had been removed. One doctor helping casualties on the pitch asked a police officer for oxygen equipment to resuscitate a stricken supporter. When he was passed a cylinder, it was empty, the jury was told.
Prof John Ashton, a public health expert who was at the match as a Liverpool supporter, told the inquests he led the assessment of casualties behind the Leppings Lane end because no-one else was taking charge. "It was just chaos," he said. "There were lots of casualties, there were a certain number of police, there was no evidence of any health service people."
At least one fan who died could have been saved with prompt medical attention. Dr Jasmeet Soar, a resuscitation specialist, said "earlier intervention before cardiac arrest" could have saved the life of James Aspinall, son of Hillsborough campaigner Margaret Aspinall.
Following a police request for a "fleet of ambulances" at 15.06, 42 front-line ambulances lined up outside the ground but access was delayed because police were reporting "crowd trouble". There was a "lack of the basic necessary life-saving equipment on the pitch where it was most needed", said the HIP report. Only two ambulances reached the Leppings Lane end of the pitch and of the 96 people who died, only 14 were ever admitted to hospital.
Mr Eason did not declare a major incident until 15.22. Chief ambulance officer Albert Page said this was "too long" a delay. He criticised Mr Eason for failing to assess the situation and prioritising a casualty with a broken leg. Mr Page said he initially thought the ambulance response was "speedy and efficient" but said the inquest hearings had led him to revise that view.
He said: "I think the weak point was activating the major incident call and the assessment by the ambulance staff at the ground, who listened to what they were being told by the police that it was a pitch invasion."
The jury decided the emergency services response had been delayed by the police's own delay in declaring a major incident and said the ambulance service failed to ascertain the nature of the problems on the Leppings Lane terrace.
5. Lessons not learned
In 1989, Hillsborough was deemed to be one of most advanced stadiums in the UK. It had been chosen to host FA Cup semi-finals in 1981, 1987 and 1988. It boasted state-of-the-art CCTV and a turnstile counter system to monitor fan numbers entering the ground. Yet it had been the scene of dangerous crushes on a number of occasions. The jury were told one incident, in 1981, was a "near miss". However, lessons about the unsafe nature of the stand were not learned.
According to John Cutlack, an expert stadium engineer, the seeds of the 1989 disaster were sown 10 years previously when a safety certificate overestimated the capacity of the Leppings Lane standing area at 7,200. He said the true safe figure was in fact 5,425. Pen three, where many Liverpool fans died, could only safely hold 678 fans but on the day of the disaster there were up to 1,430 people inside. The club's engineer, Dr Eastwood, agreed "with hindsight" the total figure of 10,100 - which allowed for an additional 2,900 standing fans in the north-west corner stand - was "too high".
In 1981, at the semi-final between Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers at Hillsborough, 38 fans were injured in a crush. In a course of events that would be repeated eight years later, police opened Gate C after congestion at the turnstiles. A serious crush developed in the Leppings Lane end and fatalities were "narrowly avoided", according to the HIP report. Two perimeter gates were opened to let some fans escape on to the pitch. Turnstile counters showed that 335 too many fans had been allowed on to the terrace that day. At the time, Sheffield Wednesday FC blamed Tottenham fans for "arriving late" and "rushing to their places", crushing those in front. After the incident, Hillsborough was not chosen to host an FA Cup semi-final for six years.
Under the terms of the ground's safety certificate, an Officer Working Party including the council, police, fire service and the club, inspected the ground each year. But the OWP never flagged up that the capacity of the Leppings Lane terrace needed recalculating. When it reviewed the stadium in May 1988, the OWP said the stadium had "no significant defects". Mr Cutlack told the inquests the annual inspections of the ground were missed opportunities to reassess the capacity.
The Leppings Lane terrace then underwent some significant alterations, none of which led to a revised safety certificate. On the recommendation of South Yorkshire Police, the club introduced the penning system to "prevent free movement of supporters". Yet proposals to feed fans directly to certain sections of the stand from designated turnstiles, allowing numbers to be monitored, were not acted on "because of anticipated costs to SWFC", the HIP report found. The gradient of the tunnel also significantly breached guidelines for sports grounds.
Reinstated as a semi-final venue in 1987, Hillsborough hosted the match between Leeds United and Coventry City. Shortly before kick-off, police delayed the match by 15 minutes to ensure that late-arriving fans could be accommodated. One Leeds fan described "a bad crush" in the central pens, the crowd so tightly packed, he was "unable to clap his hands".
The 1988 semi-final, also between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, passed without serious incident although some Liverpool fans and police officers later gave accounts of crushing within the Leppings Lane pens. On this occasions, the tunnel was closed and fans redirected to the side pens. According to the HIP report, Sheffield Wednesday "denied knowledge of any crowd-related concerns arising from the 1987 or 1988 FA Cup semi-finals".
It said overcrowding problems at the turnstiles in 1987, and on the terrace in 1988, indicated the inherent crowd safety dangers posed by the ground. The risks were known and "the crush in 1989 was foreseeable", it added.
The jury concluded there were too few operating turnstiles, signage to the side pens was inadequate and the stadium design and layout contributed to the crush.
|
A Highlands abattoir has reopened three weeks after closing due to a Covid-19 outbreak. | The operators of Millers of Speyside in Grantown on Spey took the decision to temporarily shut the factory on 2 September, initially for 14 days.
Positive cases of Covid-19 in the Grantown area rose to about 40 over the last three weeks, the majority of them linked to the abattoir.
On social media, the owners said they were pleased to be able to reopen.
|
A police station in south Warwickshire has been closed.
| Wellesbourne police station on Kineton Road has been axed as part of Warwickshire Police's attempts to save more than £20m.
The Safer Neighbourhood Team is relocating to Stratford-upon-Avon while the building is to be sold off to developers.
In January the force said it would sell its Leek Wootton HQ. Henley police station was closed last month.
Buildings removed
A statement from Warwickshire Police said: "Buildings that are no longer fit for purpose, in the wrong place or which do not support policing in the future will be removed."
Residents in Wellesbourne have already expressed their disappointment at the decision.
One villager, Rosalind Bolton, said: "It will be the first time for 170 years or so that there hasn't been a police station in Wellesbourne.
"It is a large place with 6,000 inhabitants and a visible police presence is so important and once it's gone it will be gone. We shall never have a police station again."
The nearest police enquiry desk will now be in Stratford town centre on Rother Street.
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President Donald Trump's former lawyer has made a series of allegations about his former boss. Politically embarrassing, yes. But how much legal jeopardy? Jonathan Turley, professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, gives his view. | "Let me... introduce myself."
Those words by Michael Cohen may have been the least needed portion of his testimony. He is truly a man who needs no introduction.
What he needs is a reputation. Well, a good reputation anyway.
Trump's fixer was appearing less than 24 hours after being disbarred as a lawyer and a few weeks before he goes to jail for three years.
So, let's look at the messenger
While Cohen tried to portray himself as the redemptive sinner, few who knew Cohen bought the act. Cohen is a serial liar and thug-for-hire whose lack of legal skill was only surpassed by his lack of legal ethics.
His testimony seemed to flail madly in every direction. He called Trump "a racist", "a conman," and "a cheat".
He was eager to recount how Trump lied about bone spurs to get out of Vietnam. He then reminded everyone that Trump attacked a real war hero, John McCain, for getting captured. He worked in how Trump got him to lie to the First Lady about his affairs.
It was riveting but largely irrelevant to the criminal allegations.
The Republicans and the White House worked hard to establish the obvious - that Cohen is a convicted perjurer and con man.
The evidence
Cohen is no daisy but he can still be a danger. He brought documents, including cheques signed by Trump, to bolster his claims of a pattern of criminal and dishonest practices.
Virtually all of these allegations were far removed from the collusion allegations that led to the special counsel investigation and concerned Trump's businesses.
Most of the examples that Cohen gave of Trump lying about his affairs or wealth or dealings were gratuitous and immaterial to criminal charges.
It is not a crime to lie to the public or the media. If it were, most of the members of the committee would be serving time next to Trump.
The WikiLeaks connection
One disclosure described as a "bombshell" was Cohen recounting that he heard Trump confidante Roger Stone tell Trump over the phone that he had spoken to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that WikiLeaks was about to dump a massive number of hacked emails related to Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
Stone and WikiLeaks deny this account. However, the real problem is the date. Cohen said that this occurred just before the Democratic National Convention. That would put the call from mid- to late July 2016. However, WikiLeaks was already known to have the emails and was publicly teasing their release at least a month before.
Moreover, there is nothing criminal in Stone or Trump wanting to see the emails or relishing their release. Cohen's account of Trump's delight at the news is hardly surprising - he publicly called on the Russians to release any hacked emails.
Moreover, Trump was not the only one seeking dirt from foreign sources. While the campaign falsely denied funding the controversial "Steele dossier", Clinton's campaign later admitted that it paid a former British spy to gather information on Trump from foreign sources, including Russian intelligence.
Indeed, Cohen expressly said that he had no evidence of collusion with the Russians.
The hush money
Cohen also repeated his allegation that Trump encouraged him to arrange for the payment of hush money to a Playboy model and a porn star to bury news of his affairs.
Cohen showed up bearing cheques with Trump's signature - signed when he was president and still denying prior knowledge of the payments.
This could amount to a campaign finance violation, but such violations are rarely charged as criminal matters and have had mixed success in prosecutions.
The inflated assets
Where Cohen may have caused new problems for Trump was his accounting of dishonest business practices from using his charity to pay portraits of himself for his own benefit or misrepresenting assets in communications with insurance companies and banks.
This included a curious series of asset reports that Cohen said were given to Deutsche Bank in a move to acquire the Buffalo Bills NFL team.
Trump's stated value seemed to jump from $4.56bn in 2012 to $8.66bn in 2013.
It is not clear what that asset increase was based on and whether the figures were put into any formal loan documents. However, any misrepresentation of wealth and liabilities can form the basis of bank fraud allegations.
What is clear is that Trump is looking at a growing threat not from the special counsel's investigation into Russian collusion, but the investigation into his business practices by the US Attorney in the Southern District of New York.
And attacking Cohen's lack of credibility will not change bank records.
From Cohn to Cohen
Trump has been quoted about his respect for Roy Cohn, who was the right-hand man to Joe McCarthy during the "Red Scare" period. He was widely viewed as an unethical and vile human being. He was also Trump's lawyer.
In March 2016, Trump reportedly asked in frustration: "Where's my Roy Cohn?" That man would prove to be Michael Cohen who had the same sense of freedom from rules of ethics or law.
Like Cohn, Cohen was known to threaten and bully people into submission. Like Cohn, Cohen would be disbarred for his unethical acts.
Many believe that Cohn was the person who taught Trump to never admit fault and always counterpunch. Cohn once said: "I bring out the worst in my enemies and that's how I get them to defeat themselves."
In the end, Cohn died a disbarred lawyer being pursued by the IRS for millions. Cohen is now a disbarred lawyer who is going to prison for, among other things, five counts of tax evasion.
Of course, Trump has no need to ask "where's my Michael Cohen" in the coming months. He will be in the federal penitentiary.
And the I-word
After the hearing in the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Chairman Elijah Cummings stated that he now believes that Trump not only committed crimes but "it appears that [Trump] did" commit crimes in office.
If true, Trump may be not only looking at a political push for impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.
But criminal charges after he leaves office.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and served as the last lead defence counsel in an impeachment in the US Senate
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A man has been charged with murdering a woman in London 10 years ago after being extradited from India. | Aman Vyas, 35, arrived at Heathrow on Friday and was charged with the rape and murder of Michelle Samaraweera in Walthamstow in May 2009.
He is also accused of offences against three other women, including attempted murder, seven counts of rape, five counts of assault and a sexual assault.
Mr Vyas is due to appear at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court on Saturday.
Scotland Yard said he had also been charged with possession of a knife in public and possession of an offensive weapon.
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Armed police descended on a retail park as they searched for a man wanted in connection with a robbery. | Officers from Cheshire Police and North Wales Police attended Broughton Retail Park in Flintshire at about 15:15 BST, after a robbery in Cheshire.
Cheshire Police said officers had carried out a "thorough search of the area" around Tesco but were unable to locate the man.
However, they have seized a vehicle in connection to the robbery.
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