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A woman has been charged with the murder of a man who was found stabbed to death at a block of flats. | Clare McMahon, 34, of Pennine Terrace, Dukinfield, appeared at Manchester Magistrates' Court earlier, accused of killing John Robinson.
Mr Robinson, 37, was found dead in a property on the same street at about 00:15 BST on 23 May.
In a tribute, his family said Mr Robinson had a "heart of gold" and they were "heartbroken and devastated".
Ms McMahon was remanded in custody and ordered to appear at Manchester Crown Court on Wednesday.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
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Looking at some of the latest tech news, it's tempting to wonder whether we've all jumped out of the same DeLorean famously driven by time travellers Doc Brown and Marty McFly in the 1985 film Back to the Future. | By Zoe KleinmanTechnology reporter, BBC News
In January 2015, the ZX Spectrum games console - originally launched by Clive Sinclair in 1982 - went back into production in the UK and will be sold pre-loaded with 1,000 classic games.
The same month, Sony brought a 21st Century twist to its classic personal stereo the Walkman, a brand it launched in 1979 and retired in 2010, in the form of a high-end digital music player.
Ion Audio also unveiled a new record player - the Air LP, a turntable equipped with bluetooth for music streaming. It also has USB connectivity so it can be plugged in to a computer.
And in the gaming zone at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, nestling between the Xboxes, Playstations, 4K graphics and virtual reality headsets, was a machine with origins dating back at least 250 years.
That device was the humble pinball machine - the earliest recorded being the bagatelles of 18th Century France.
So why can't we let go of our old tech?
'Design v tech'
"As is the case in fashion or furniture, retro is quite attractive," said analyst Carolina Milanesi from analysts Kantar.
"With tech, however, it gets tricky as you need to deliver value. In some cases, vendors deliver new tech in a retro package while in others the technology, while improved in specs, remains pretty close to the initial offering."
While using a brand like the Walkman is a good sales tactic, ultimately it is a long way from the original in terms of what it offers - and its price tag (£949) is steep, she added.
"Personally, I believe, that design versus tech would work better as a retro offering - but even so the appeal would be limited."
Arcade appeal
In America, old arcade games are enjoying a revival thanks in part to the success of drinking establishments like the chain Barcade, where drinkers can quaff locally produced beers while indulging in some classic arcade entertainment.
"Our most popular games are the classics like Ms Pac Man and Donkey Kong and also the multiplayer games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Simpsons, NBA Jam and X-Men," said Barcade CEO Paul Kermizian.
"We only feature classic video games."
Some traditional games have had to adapt to survive however.
Pin power
Chicago-based manufacturer Stern Pinball, founded in 1986, treads the line between offering a nostalgic product but with a contemporary hook - the firm has just released three new pinball tables based around cult franchises WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), Star Trek and the Walking Dead.
"We think we're part of the future," said founder Gary Stern.
"It's not just a ball bouncing round - it's a game, there is a sport to this."
While the majority of Stern's individual customers are "50 plus, used to play pinball in their 20s", the 25-30-year-old crowd is also becoming a target market.
"We realised we had to make different games for different people - one size doesn't fit all," said owner Gary Stern.
"We're trying to interest new players while keeping our core customers.
"But it's still basically a bat/ball mechanical action machine," he added.
"When you hit the door of the prison in the Walking Dead it opens and you see a zombie - it's not a programmed game."
The mechanics underneath the bonnet certainly look more complex than they would have done even 20 years ago. Semi-smart node boards have enabled each game to have more features, and LED lights rather than fluorescent tubes are now the norm.
As part of the design process, all of Stern's staff help out with the user testing.
"Staff have to play for 15 minutes every day. If you don't want to play pinball, don't work for a pinball company," said Mr Stern.
"I'm 69 - I'm old and slow. I represent the player in the pub who's had a bucket-and-a-half of beer."
With the machines, retailing at between $5,000-$6,000, it is not a cheap hobby. Mr Stern says his biggest customers are arcade owners, cinemas, collectors - and record buyers.
Record buyers are fast becoming a hot target market for other tech retailers too.
'Beautiful physical artefacts'
Martin Talbot, managing director of the UK Official Charts Company, predicts that vinyl sales alone are set to soar from £3m five years ago to being a £20m business in 2015.
Last year, more than one million vinyl record sales were made in the UK for the first time in 18 years.
"In an era when we're all talking about digital music, the fact that these beautiful physical artefacts are still as popular as they are is fantastic," Mr Talbot told BBC Radio 5 live recently.
"It's really remarkable."
The Official Chart Company is now planning to relaunch a separate chart for record sales in the UK - and firms making and selling turntables are also feeling the love.
"To be honest, we've always stocked and sold turntables at a fairly steady rate, but the past year has seen a 70% jump in the number of units we've sold," said Lol Lecanu, spokesperson for hi-fi specialists Richer Sounds.
Celebrity endorsement always helps of course - rockstar Dave Grohl, whose bands include the Foo Fighters and Nirvana, has spoken about his love of records.
In a podcast with comedian Marc Maron he described getting a turntable for his then six-year-old daughter and giving her some Beatles records.
"I walked out of the room, an hour later she had all the records out on the floor, she had listened to them all," he said.
"She was looking at the liner notes, she was dancing, it was unbelievable."
Grohl added that he did not feel he was doing his daughter a disservice by introducing her to the Fab Four accompanied by the legendary scratch and hiss of the humble turntable.
"This is what it sounded like when I was a kid," he said.
"I'm not going to give her the audio file version."
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Boris Johnson, the UK's new prime minister, was already one of the UK's most recognisable politicians. | His high profile - built up as an MP, London mayor and foreign secretary - has often seen his achievements accompanied by controversy.
Becoming an MP
As editor of the Spectator magazine and a Have I Got News For You contestant, Boris Johnson was already well known for his shambolic persona.
In 2001, he became an MP, replacing Michael Heseltine in the safe Conservative seat of Henley-on-Thames.
Gay rights
He was considered more liberal than many Tories. As a journalist, he had questioned the repeal of laws banning the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities. But as an MP, he changed tack and said the state should not interfere in people's lives. He also voted in favour of civil partnerships.
Mr Johnson continued to attract controversy.
In October 2004, then Conservative leader Michael Howard ordered him to visit Liverpool to apologise for a Spectator article accusing its residents of wallowing in "disproportionate" grief after Ken Bigley - an engineer from the city - was kidnapped and killed in Iraq.
And the following month, he was sacked as shadow arts minister, amid claims he had misled Mr Howard about reports of an affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt.
Political career
7 years MP for Henley (2001-2008)
8 yearsMayor of London (2008-2016)
4 yearsMP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (2015-
2 yearsForeign Secretary (2016-2018)
Nevertheless, a year later, he was on the rise again - resigning from his Spectator post when new Tory leader David Cameron made him shadow higher education minister.
However, he continued to write for the Telegraph and had to make another apology - to a whole country - after he linked Papua New Guinea to "cannibalism and chief-killing" in a column.
By 2007, the Henley MP had his sights set on one of the biggest jobs in UK politics.
Mayor of London
Taking over from Labour's Ken Livingstone in 2008, Boris Johnson remained London mayor until 2016. It is the longest continuous period of public office that he has held.
He's often spoken of what he considers to be his biggest achievements during that period: on crime, housing and transport.
Crime
The homicide rate in London - which includes murder and manslaughter - fell from 22 per million to 12 per million people during his time as mayor. However, it was also falling during his predecessor's second term.
And in the first few years after Mr Johnson took over, knife crime rose by over 15% - although from 2012-13 onwards it started to fall.
Mr Johnson had backed the police use of stop-and-search powers to tackle violent crime. And he said he would ensure police numbers would go up despite central government cuts.
Home Office figures show police numbers in London rose slightly, from 31,460 to 32,125, between March 2008 and March 2016. Across England and Wales in that period the number of officers fell by 17,603.
Housing
There was an increase in the number of affordable homes built - 101,525 by the end of March 2016, of which the Greater London Authority contributed to 94,001. This was a rise compared with the two terms of Mr Livingstone, although the definition of affordable housing had changed in 2011 so the figures are not directly comparable.
Transport
He scrapped the so-called bendy buses - which he said were too big for narrow streets and encouraged fare-dodgers.
In their place, he introduced a new version of the popular Routemaster London bus - a move that was criticised as a vanity project. There were complaints about non-opening windows and problems with the hybrid engines. They also cost considerably more than a normal bus.
One of his most famous transport initiatives was the so-called "Boris Bike" cycle scheme, introduced in July 2010.
Mr Johnson regularly promoted the hire bikes by riding them himself and the number of rentals reached more than 10.3 million during his last year as mayor.
However, critics pointed to the £11m-a-year cost of keeping the bikes on the road. Others pointed out that plans for a bike hire scheme had been announced while Mr Livingstone had been mayor.
Olympics
As mayor, Mr Johnson became involved in overseeing arrangements for the 2012 Olympics, planning for which started after they were awarded to London in 2005.
One of the most memorable moments was when he got stuck on a zip wire, while celebrating the UK's first gold medal win. The Olympics were widely seen as a success and there were claims that they had provided a major economic boost.
But there were also questions raised about the Olympics' legacy, including criticism of the conversion of the Olympic Stadium into a football ground. In 2017, an independent review said the conversion had cost £323m - far more than the original estimate of £190m.
Garden Bridge
The latter part of his time as mayor saw a plan to build a garden bridge over the River Thames as a memorial to Princess Diana.
The pedestrian-only bridge, with trees and plants, which was first suggested by the actress Joanna Lumley in 1998, was to be funded by private and public money.
But it was cancelled in 2017, after a review recommended the project be scrapped - £53m had already been spent on the project; £43m of which came from the public purse.
Jeremy Hunt: The other leadership contender
What's Jeremy Hunt's track record?
Foreign secretary
Mr Johnson decided he wanted to return to Parliament before his term as mayor ended, in 2016. He won the seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in 2015.
After resuming life as an MP, he declared his opposition to expanding nearby Heathrow airport, saying he would lie in front of the bulldozers.
As London mayor, he had promoted an alternative scheme, for an island airport in the Thames estuary, an idea rejected on cost and environmental grounds.
But Mr Johnson was noticeably absent when MPs subsequently voted on Heathrow expansion in June 2018, as he was on an official trip to Afghanistan.
Mr Johnson had been appointed foreign secretary by the new prime minister, Theresa May, in 2016.
He had also run in the Tory leadership campaign that year but dramatically pulled out after Michael Gove's surprise decision to enter the race.
The job as foreign secretary was seen as an acknowledgement of his role as a leading figure in the campaign to leave the EU.
However, there was also some surprise at the choice, with Lib Dem leader Tim Farron saying he would "spend more time apologising to nations he's offended" than working as foreign secretary.
And there were the disparaging comments about other countries and their leaders - some of which were made before he got the job.
They included a Limerick - which won a £1,000 award in 2016 - about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a goat. And he said the Libyan city of Sirte could be the new Dubai if "they... clear the dead bodies away".
Russian expulsions
As foreign secretary, Mr Johnson supported a tough line against Russia, with the expulsion of its diplomats after the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal.
Twenty-nine countries, including the US, Canada, Australia and EU states, joined the UK, expelling more than 140 Russian diplomats in a co-ordinated move.
Iran
But in the case of British Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, jailed in Iran, Mr Johnson had to apologise in Parliament.
He had said she had been teaching journalists in Iran when she had been detained, contradicting her statement that she had been on holiday at the time.
He later clarified that she had in fact been on holiday but has also said he does not believe his remarks made a difference to her plight - a claim rejected by her family.
A few days after Mr Johnson made his remarks, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was summoned before an Iranian judge, to face charges of engaging in propaganda against the regime.
Saudi Arabia
As foreign secretary, he also earned a rebuke from Downing Street, after comments emerged in which he had criticised close ally Saudi Arabia for engaging in proxy wars in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, he continued to allow sales of UK arms to Saudi Arabia, which is involved in a controversial military campaign in Yemen.
In 2018, Mr Johnson also faced criticism after writing in the Daily Telegraph that Muslim women wearing the burka "looked like letterboxes".
By this stage, though, he had left the government, resigning in protest at Theresa May's Brexit plan.
Brexit campaigner
Boris Johnson was a leading figure in the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 EU referendum.
He became well known for his attacks on the EU and for advocating the benefits of Brexit. He declared that he was "pro-having cake and pro-eating it".
But it hadn't always been clear which side he would support.
In fact, while mayor of London, he'd spoken of the benefits of being in the single market.
And in an article for the Daily Telegraph in 2013, weighing up the pros and cons of being in the EU, he had said that leaving would not solve the UK's problems.
However, he also made clear he supported plans to ask the British people to decide about EU membership.
During the Brexit campaign, he came under sustained criticism from those in favour of Remain, for his claims about the benefits of leaving and what he called "taking back control".
£350m claim
Most controversial was a claim about how much money the UK sent to the EU. The £350m-a-week figure, which appeared on the side of a bus during the campaign, recently led to an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute him. Critics pointed out at the time that the figure was wrong as it did not take into account the UK's rebate, or indeed money subsequently spent in the UK.
For his part, Mr Johnson dismissed warnings that leaving the EU could spark a recession, describing one such study as propaganda.
And he has continued to advocate a harder form of Brexit, sharply criticising both the deal that Mrs May agreed and her whole approach to the negotiations with the EU.
He described it as leading the UK into the "status of a colony", in his resignation letter, in July 2018.
Mr Johnson has continued to insist that the UK can and should leave the EU by 31 October, with or without a deal.
More on Boris Johnson
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State media carry limited details of the protest that erupted in Guangdong province over a planned chemical plant, but the BBC's Beijing bureau has been piecing together what happened using eyewitness accounts and reports from netizens. | By China blog staffBBC News
In the last few days, a document has been circulating on social media. It asks middle school students to agree to support a paraxylene plant soon to be built near their homes in Maoming City in southern China's Guangdong Province.
Paraxylene is a chemical used in fibres and plastic bottles, but in recent years many Chinese residents have expressed concern over its impact on people's health and the environment.
The Maoming government seemed eager to prioritise the city's development, however.
"To make Maoming a world-class chemical industrial base, the paraxylene projects should be actively and steadfastly promoted, so as to help develop our city and preserve our social stability," the document - which the BBC cannot verify - reads.
By signing the document, people agree to "never participate in any activities that go against or hinder the construction of the project".
Perhaps the Maoming government saw this coming. On Sunday, crowds of protesters turned up in front of the government office with banners calling for a halt to the chemical plant, and violence soon erupted between police and the protesters.
State media have played down the protest but accounts from eyewitnesses, plus images and video circulating on social media paint a different picture.
'Clubs and tear gas'
"Maoming people are very unhappy," said Mr Dong, a local resident who participated in the protest and called the BBC. "Maoming has always been a chemical industrial city. Sometimes walking on the streets, you can't even escape from the awful smell discharged from the chemical plants."
Mr Dong said that on Sunday morning, protesters started throwing mineral water bottles at the gate of the government building. A few hours later, clashes began and people were beaten by riot police with clubs.
After sunset, furious crowds gathered again in front of the government building and burned what they said was the mayor's car. People also set fire to a police car and the security stand near the gate of the government building.
Mr Dong said police dispersed protesters with tear gas and pepper spray. He said one man fell off his motorbike and died while being chased by police, and an entire floor of Maoming People's Hospital was taken up by people injured in the protests.
Photos and videos Mr Dong gave to the BBC showed police, carrying long clubs and what look like tear gas guns, running after protesters. A video shared by another woman who contacted the BBC showed a woman crying near a man being beaten to the ground with riot police stepping on him.
These cannot be verified - both contacts were unable to identify the specific time and place where the footage was shot, saying they received them from friends caught up in the violence.
In the past few days, however, several more people have called the BBC from Maoming city, telling us that the Meihua area, where protests first took place, has been closed off by police. In some locations, mobile phone services have been suspended, they say.
One man who wouldn't give his name said police had been checking people's phones randomly on the streets in an attempt to delete all videos and pictures from the protests.
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A new 210-pupil Welsh medium primary school could be opened in Wrexham. | Wrexham council is consulting on plans to open the new school at the former Hafod y Wern Infant School site at Queensway.
If agreed, pupils could start there in September 2019 before the school moves to a more permanent site at Borras Park Infants School.
Campaign group RhAG has criticised the council for not providing enough Welsh medium school places in the county.
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A woman arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a man was found with serious head injuries in a flat has been bailed. | The 25-year-old man was discovered in Nether Hall Road, Doncaster, at about 19:30 BST on Saturday, South Yorkshire Police said.
He was taken to hospital in a critical condition but is now described as "serious but stable".
The 37-year-old woman has been bailed while inquiries continue.
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About 40 people linked to a day nursery in Rhyl have been offered a hepatitis A vaccination following an outbreak amongst a family. | Public Health Wales (PHW) said there were four confirmed cases of the infection with one child attending the Fun Days nursery.
A vaccination session will take place for staff and children on Thursday.
There is no link with an outbreak of hepatitis A in the area earlier this year.
Dr Christopher Johnson, consultant in health protection at PHW, said: "Hepatitis A is a viral infection, usually short lived that has unpleasant symptoms but is rarely serious.
"Children often only have a very mild illness or do not have symptoms at all."
Hepatitis A facts
Source: Public Health Wales
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Theresa May is awaiting the result of a vote by Conservative MPs on whether they want to keep her as their leader. | The UK prime minister made a last-minute appeal for support at an emotional meeting of backbench MPs.
She told them she will not lead the party into the next scheduled election in 2022 - but wants to stay on to deliver her Brexit deal, MPs said.
She faces a vote of confidence in her leadership after 48 Conservative MPs called for one to be held.
The majority of Conservative MPs have publicly said they will support the PM but it is a secret ballot and there were signs of nerves among party managers ahead of the vote in Committee Room 14 at the Palace of Westminster.
Voting finished at 20:00 with the result expected within the next hour.
The prime minister was greeted with applause, and the traditional banging of desks, as she went in to the committee room to address her MPs. Some of them were reported to be in tears.
She is understood to have promised not to call a "snap general election" and told MPs that in her heart she would have liked to have led them into the next scheduled election, partly because of what had happened at last year's election, when she lost her majority.
But, she added: "I realise that the party would like a different leader to take them into that election."
Cabinet minister Amber Rudd said "she was very clear that she wont be taking the general election in 2022".
But Jacob Rees-Mogg, a key figure in the campaign to oust Mrs May, said she had received a "half-hearted" reception from MPs.
She had said it was not her "intention" to fight the next election, added Mr Rees-Mogg, which he said was a "politician's word".
Marcus Fysh, who also submitted a no confidence letter, said Mrs May "didn't really have anything new to say" about Brexit.
She vowed to involve more people in developing policy, the MP told BBC News, but he did not think that would happen.
And he predicted that the prime minister would face a no-confidence vote of all MPs - not just Conservative ones - when she tried to get her Brexit deal through the Commons.
"Whatever happens tonight I don't think she will be able to command the confidence of the House for the type of Brexit she is trying to pursue."
Minister Margot James said she was "proud" to have voted for the PM, tweeting a picture of her ballot paper.
Conservative Party rules say that if she wins tonight she can stay on as leader, undisturbed, for another 12 months.
That takes one uncertainty off the table. But she would be weaker - lonelier - and with less authority to drive her Brexit compromise through.
Already, cabinet ministers are speculating about which way she can tack.
The parliamentary sums don't change on her current planned agreement with the EU. The cabinet, let alone the rest of the Commons, won't give their backing.
Read Laura's blog
Can she survive the confidence vote?
Immediate statements of loyalty for the prime minister were issued by every member of her cabinet, including several who have been touted as possible successors.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Mrs May was "the best person to make sure we actually leave the EU on March 29", while Chancellor Philip Hammond suggested the vote would "flush out the extremists" in his party whose Brexit agenda was "not in the interests of the British people".
So far, 174 Tory MPs have publicly said they will vote for her, with 34 publicly against, according to BBC research. She needs to secure the votes of 159 MPs to survive.
If Mrs May wins the confidence vote she cannot be challenged as Conservative leader for at least another year.
If she does not win the vote there would then be a Conservative leadership contest in which she could not stand.
If Mrs May won - but not overwhelmingly - she may decide to stand down as party leader and trigger a leadership contest in which she could not stand.
What has Theresa May said?
In her statement delivered early on Wednesday morning, Mrs May said: "A leadership election would not change the fundamentals of the negotiation or the Parliamentary arithmetic.
"Weeks spent tearing ourselves apart will only create more division just as we should be standing together to serve our country. None of that would be in the national interest."
She said she was making progress in her talks with EU leaders and vowed to "deliver on the referendum vote and seize the opportunities that lie ahead".
The Conservatives had to build a "country that works for everyone" and deliver "the Brexit people voted for".
"I have devoted myself unsparingly to these tasks ever since I became prime minister and I stand ready to finish the job."
Will there be a new prime minister if she loses the vote?
Not immediately. She would be expected to stay on as a caretaker prime minister until a new Conservative leader is selected by the party, a process that could take up to six weeks.
If there are multiple candidates, Conservative MPs hold a series of votes to choose two to go forward to a vote of party members.
As leader of the largest party in the Commons, the new Conservative leader would then be expected to be asked to form a government and become prime minister, without a general election.
It's Wednesday, so... Prime Minister's Questions
Mrs May faced repeated calls from Labour MPs for her to quit - or hold another EU referendum - at a rowdy Prime Minister's Questions.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "The time for dithering and delay is over. The prime minister has negotiated her deal. She has told us it is the best and only deal available.
"There can be no more excuses, no more running away. Put it before Parliament and let's have the vote."
Mrs May said the vote will take place, and as Labour MPs shouted "when?" at her she said: "We've had a meaningful vote, we had it in in the referendum in 2016."
The PM added: "And if he wants a meaningful date I'll give him one; 29 March 2019 when we leave the European Union."
Veteran pro-European MP Ken Clarke called the prospect of a leadership contest "unhelpful, irrelevant and irresponsible", prompting loud cheers from the Tory benches.
But the SNP's leader at Westminster Ian Blackford called on Mrs May to stand down, saying her government was "an embarrassment".
Who is trying to oust Mrs May?
The challenge has been brought by Conservative MPs who think Mrs May has watered down the Brexit voters were promised in the 2016 referendum.
The PM thought she had seen off an attempt by this group of Brexiteers to get rid of her last month.
But her decision to cancel Tuesday's Parliamentary vote on her deal at the last minute proved to be the final straw for many who had previously given her the benefit of the doubt.
There needed to be 48 MPs calling for her to go - out of 317 Conservative MPs - to trigger a confidence vote and this threshold was reached on Tuesday.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has led backbench calls for her to go, said: "Theresa May's plan would bring down the government if carried forward. But our party will rightly not tolerate it.
"Conservatives must now answer whether they wish to draw ever closer to an election under Mrs May's leadership. In the national interest, she must go."
And Bernard Jenkin said the survival of the Conservative government depended on the support of the Democratic Unionists, who he said had lost faith in Mrs May.
Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, who is campaigning for a further referendum, told BBC Radio 2 she hoped Mr Rees-Mogg's group would "get a kicking" in the vote and that their "pompous gesturing" will be exposed.
Why are they trying to get rid of her?
They don't like the deal she has struck with the EU, which they say will keep the UK tied to the EU indefinitely with no say over its rules and unable to strike trade deals around the world.
Anger has focused on the so-called "backstop" to prevent the return of a physical border in Northern Ireland.
Mrs May has said she is seeking guarantees that this clause will be "temporary" but the Democratic Unionist Party, which she relies on to win key votes, wants the backstop to be ditched altogether.
And her Conservative critics think she will not be able to get anything more than cosmetic changes to her withdrawal deal because EU leaders say it can not be renegotiated.
Who are the frontrunners to lead the party if she loses?
There are many names being floated, with Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd among cabinet ministers rated by the bookmakers.
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis are the ex-cabinet ministers also judged to be in the running.
But, as BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg says, the field of hopefuls could be much larger and, initially at least, resemble the start of a Grand National.
What does it mean for Brexit?
Whatever the outcome of the vote, Mrs May is still likely to represent the UK at Thursday's summit of EU leaders, although that might change if she loses the Tory leadership.
She has been invited to update her 27 counterparts on the state of Brexit before they meet to "adopt relevant conclusions".
European Council President Donald Tusk has said the "seriousness" of the situation in the UK means the EU must accelerate its no-deal planning.
Mrs May met Germany's Angela Merkel and top EU officials on Tuesday as part of efforts to get changes to her EU deal to get it through the UK Parliament.
But she was forced to call off talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar, among others, on Wednesday to fight for her leadership.
Mrs May says any new Conservative leader would have to delay Brexit to renegotiate a deal with the EU while she has also suggested a leadership contest will effectively hand control of the Brexit process to MPs - many of whom either back leaving without a deal or having another referendum.
Many of those calling for her to go say they would be happy for the UK to leave the EU on World Trade Organization terms, without a deal. They say warnings of economic doom are exaggerated.
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The Scottish government is due to publish its climate and energy plans in the next week. Ahead of that, BBC Scotland has been looking at two radical schemes proposed by environmental groups. The second is a district heating scheme used in Norway. | By Kevin KeaneBBC Scotland's environment correspondent
For most of us, heat is something generated within the confines of the homes we occupy; coal fires, gas-powered boilers, oil, electric storage units.
But in the town of Drammen in Norway it is a shared commodity, created off-site and piped into homes.
District heating is considered to be much more efficient - and therefore more environmentally friendly - than all of the above.
And if you can create that heat with less reliance on fossil fuels, the carbon footprint is reduced even further.
In Scotland, heat accounts for more than half our energy use and so decarbonising it will have to become a priority if climate change targets are to be met.
The irony is that while district heating is not in widespread use here, the system in Drammen was installed by a Scottish firm.
Glasgow-based Star Renewable Energy installed the heat pumps in 2010/11.
In simple terms, they work like a refrigerator in reverse, taking river water and cooling it down by about 4 degrees.
The heat extracted is enough to turn a sealed network of ammonia from a liquid to a gas which, through pressure, can heat water to 90 degrees.
That water is then piped into people's homes to heat their radiators.
So why is such a simple idea not being used more widely?
Dave Pearson, from Star Renewable Energy, said: "I think it is a slightly abstract concept that we can harvest a river for heat. Rivers are quite chilly already.
"But really it's down to bringing a combination of technology which we're producing in our factory in Glasgow but also the imagination and the desire of the communities, the cities, the government to see better solutions."
Heat-pump technology is not carbon-free as it still needs to draw electricity from the national grid. That electricity is made from a combination of fossil fuels and renewable technologies.
If huge numbers of people shift from gas or oil-fired heating, it is going to place greater demands on the grid which is decarbonising.
In part, decarbonisation in electricity is caused by a reduction in consumption.
Relatively large-scale district heating systems do exist in some parts of Scotland but gas is the dominant fuel.
In Aberdeen, a combined heat and power network is used to heat 2,500 council-owned flats and public buildings while also selling electricity to the grid.
Generators create the power while the warm exhaust from the engines is used to create the heat.
Although there are no plans at present, ultimately it could be converted from gas to heat pumps using water from the sea.
Ian Booth, from Aberdeen Heat and Power, said: "Once the infrastructure is built you could actually bolt on at the front end other technologies as they improve.
"We're replacing electric heating systems with a combined heat and power fuelled system. The impact on the environment is about a 40% reduction on carbon."
In Norway, heat pumps rely on water from rivers and fjords which, around the surface, is about 8 degrees Celsius.
But Prof Janette Webb, from the University of Edinburgh, says Scotland has a source of much warmer water which could be exploited.
She said: "Right across central Scotland, not only have we got a lot of surface water we've also got underground mines, which are flooded now, which have water, in the deeper mines anyway, at about 30 degrees.
"We could extract heat from that water and use that to heat our buildings."
The details of how Scotland will meet its climate change targets will be published on Thursday afternoon.
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French Guiana, a small French overseas territory on the north-eastern coast of South America, is one of the most forested nations on the planet, but its precious ecosystem is under threat from illegal gold mining. | By Claire PressBBC World Service, French Guiana
Sergeant Vadim raises his left hand bringing his squad to a halt. His right hand remains firmly clasped around his rifle.
"Here you can see clearly the path of gold miners," he says, whilst pointing towards a faint track covered in leaves. "They were here three or four days ago carrying heavy goods."
Sgt Vadim is part of the French Foreign Legion - an elite infantry unit of the French army made up of mostly international recruits tasked with patrolling the dense rainforest.
After further surveying the jungle, Sgt Vadim gives a short sharp whistle. Seconds later, a reply emanates from somewhere deep in the undergrowth. A second unit of men is close by.
Manoeuvring in a pincer movement, the two units hope to flush out anyone attempting to plunder the forest for its riches. "Every country must defend its borders and stop illegal trafficking," says Capt Vianney, head of the operation and Sgt Vadim's commanding officer.
"But here in French Guiana we have a unique treasure, the jungle. Our mission is to protect it."
Beneath the Amazon rainforest lies treasure: gold deposits can be found just 15m (50ft) below the forest floor.
For centuries, prospectors have been lured into these forests in the hope of finding a fortune. But just over a decade ago, when the economic crash of 2008 caused the price of gold to skyrocket, a gold rush began all over the Amazon jungle.
Since then, the price of gold has continued to soar and rampant illegal gold mining has destroyed swathes of jungle from Ecuador across Peru, Colombia and Venezuela to Brazil.
In French Guiana, which has a population of less than 300,000 people, there are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 illegal miners.
As Dominick Plouvier, conservation expert and director of Amazon Conservation Team explains, the problem lies in the use of one high volatile chemical.
"Mercury, used in the extraction process is the big problem. It pollutes the rivers, which then poisons the fish, which then in turn poisons the people who eat the fish."
Mercury is a highly toxic and indestructible substance which is poisonous to humans.
After excavating large amounts of earth, prospectors add mercury to separate out the tiny flecks of gold from the soil. Within minutes it binds with the gold, allowing miners to simply wash away the dirt. The mercury can then be simply burnt off leaving the gold behind.
For every gram of gold extracted, at least one gram of mercury is also required. Left to wash away, discarded mercury enters the huge Amazon river network. Accumulating in fish, it then enters the food chain.
"Mercury acts very quickly," explains Mr Plouvier. "Attacking the nervous system, it damages your lungs, your kidneys and your brain. We have seen its effects on local children brought into hospital."
Scientists estimate one third of all the mercury produced by human activity on the planet comes from small-scale gold mining.
On the French Guiana-Brazil border, gold mining is mainly carried out by "garimpeiros", the Portuguese word used to described small-scale miners who extract the metal illegally.
"Most of the time, the garimpeiros are poor lads from Brazil looking for easy money. They live in the forest for months and months," says Capt Vianney.
"Back home they would earn 800 reais a month ($200; £150) for doing small labouring jobs. But in the forest, they can earn that in a few days."
It is the French Foreign Legion's job to find the garimpeiros and to destroy their camps.
Sgt Vadim signals to his team to move off. They tread carefully, scouring the forest for clues.
With no mobile phone signal due to the thick forest canopy, the garimpeiros leave messages for each other hidden in the forest. Elusive machete marks in the trunk of a tree, or hidden amongst the undergrowth, the red arrow on Marlboro cigarette packets are placed so as to point the way to their hidden camps.
Operating here requires perseverance as it much as it does a machete. Lying in wait, in this inhospitable labyrinth is a menagerie of poisonous insects, frogs, spiders and snakes. Mosquitoes carry malaria, dengue, yellow fever as well as zika, while in the rivers, caiman compete for space with piranhas.
"In the river there is also an electric eel with enough volts to kill a horse," says Sgt Vadim with a wry smile.
Covering up to 40km (25 miles) a day, the infantry may follow a single track for weeks in the hope of finding a hidden site. During these missions, they are dependent on a helicopter to deliver food and fresh water every few days. In the evenings, after a wash in the river, they spend the night in hammocks before rising early again the next day.
But despite all their armoury, helicopter support, gasoline boats, and GPS tracking systems, they rarely catch anyone. Often by the time they arrive, the gold diggers have already been tipped off and fled.
"We are watched all day long," says Capt Vianney. "They know about us before we even land".
Operating across an area the size of Ireland, this regiment of 400 men simply cannot be everywhere at once. But for conservation expert Dominick Plouvier, both the garimpeiros and the army acting on behalf of the French government are chasing short-term solutions.
"As soon as the army leaves, the garimpeiros return," he explains. "Gold mining is such an important livelihood in this area, you can't just say 'don't do it'."
"Many local people as well as Brazilians depend on this economy. If you want to stop the destruction of the forest, you need to offer legal and sustainable alternatives".
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People who use smaller roads, beaches and coastal paths in Devon and Cornwall are being urged to take care over the weekend because of damage caused by floods. | Damage included fallen trees, unstable banks and cliff edges, and landslips on roads and coastal footpaths in a number of areas, Cornwall Council said.
Rain had also increased river levels, leaving them fast-flowing.
Agencies have been working to address the issues, the spokesman said.
Health warning
Beach users in Cornwall have also been warned about bathing water quality following the recent heavy rain.
Surface run-off from agricultural land and overflow from drainage could reduce the quality of many streams across the county, the council said.
The authority's public health team said people should particularly avoid two streams crossing Perranporth beach.
Anyone who came into contact with that stream water should avoid hand-to-mouth contact and wash their hands after.
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"Dumping babies is forbidden," the sign created by Eric Mejicano reads. The Venezuelan artist posted the signs on walls across Venezuela after a newborn was found in the rubbish near his apartment block in the capital, Caracas. | By Guillermo D OlmoBBC News Mundo, Caracas
Mejicano says that he launched the campaign to alert people to the fact that in Venezuela "something is becoming common which should never be considered normal".
The country's economy is in freefall and one in three Venezuelans is struggling to put enough food on the table to meet minimum nutrition requirements, according to a study by the UN World Food Programme.
With contraceptives hard to come by and beyond the financial means of many, unwanted pregnancies are common. Strict abortion laws which only allow for terminations in cases when the mother's life is in danger further limit women's choices.
Amid the economic crisis, one charity said in 2018 that it had seen the number of babies abandoned in the streets or left at the entrances of public buildings increase by 70%.
The Venezuelan government has not released any official figures in recent years and neither the communications ministry nor the government body dealing with the rights of children answered requests for comment.
But social services and health workers consulted by the BBC confirmed there had been an increase in the number of abandoned babies as well as a spike in those handed over for informal adoption.
'Shortcuts'
Nelson Villasmill is a member of a child protection council in one of Caracas' poorest areas. He explains that, faced with a poorly funded adoption system that is in total disarray, desperate parents sometimes resort to shortcuts.
The story of Baby Tomás (not his real name) is one such case. He was born to a mother living in poverty in Caracas who felt she was in no position to raise him.
The gynaecologist who was present at Tomás' birth agreed to help.
He says it was not the first time he came across a mother who felt she could not bring up her baby. "They almost always change their minds the first time they breastfeed the baby," he explains. "But sometimes that is not the case, and then you have to find a solution."
He contacted one of his patients. In her forties and dreaming of having a baby, Tania (not her real name) had not been able to get pregnant.
She wanted to help Tomás and his mother, but after some thought decided against taking him in. Instead, she contacted a couple with whom she is friends who agreed to raise Tomás as their own child in their home in rural Venezuela.
They had to get the baby registered quickly in order not to arouse suspicion, so Tania paid a $250 (£195) bribe for an official to turn a blind eye and put down her friend's name as Tomás' birth mother.
Tomás is now being raised by her friends in the countryside and his new family has just celebrated Tomás taking his first steps.
Tania says she does not regret what she did and insists that she bypassed the official adoption channels for Tomás' benefit. "I never thought of doing anything like this but legal adoption doesn't work in Venezuela and that baby would have suffered a lot of hardships in a public orphanage," she explains.
Trapped
Tomás was given away with his mother's consent but there is no shortage of people exploiting the desperation of Venezuelan women.
While she was pregnant with her second child, Isabel's husband died, making Isabel (not her real name) consider giving up the child she was expecting. "I was alone and feared that I wouldn't be able to feed my baby," she says.
Following the advice of an acquaintance, she flew to the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean to meet a couple she was told were interested in adopting her baby.
She was told she would have the final say in any decision but soon came under pressure from the Colombian woman making the arrangements.
"I was told it was going to be all legal and never committed to give my baby away," she recalls. But once in Trinidad, "I realised I had been trapped in a net of human traffickers".
"I was always being watched," she recalls. Isabel says that she was not allowed to leave the house where she was staying and that the return ticket for the flight she had been promised would take her back to Venezuela never materialised.
Separated
Weeks later she gave birth prematurely in a Trinidadian hospital. She decided to keep the baby but immediately was pressured by the Colombian woman and a man who claimed to be a lawyer.
"They told me that the new parents were waiting in the parking lot and that I had to sign some documents in English that I didn't understand and to hand over my baby."
Isabel refused at first but over the following weeks, her captors increased the pressure, taking away her food, medicine and nappies.
"In the end, I had to hand over my son to save his life and for me to return to Venezuela to get help," she says crying.
With the help of a non-governmental organisation, Isabel has now set off on a legal battle to recover her son who is under the guardianship of the authorities in Trinidad. At present, she is only allowed to see him once a week.
She says she will not give up until she is reunited with him.
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Toni-Ann Singh has won the 69th Miss World beauty pageant. | It's the first time in history that black women hold the titles for Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, Miss America, Miss Universe and Miss World.
The 23-year-old student was born in St Thomas, Jamaica, and plans to study medicine and become a doctor.
She tweeted on Saturday: "Please know that you are worthy and capable of achieving your dreams... you have a PURPOSE."
Toni-Ann impressed judges at the event in ExCel London after singing Whitney Houston's I Have Nothing, and answering a variety of questions.
She said: "This feels like a dream, I'm so grateful."
"Whatever it is you see in me, thank you. I'm ready to get to work."
She beat 111 other contestants representing different countries, to be the fourth Jamaican winner of the title since the competition began.
When asked by judge Piers Morgan if she would consider a singing career, she said: "If the door is open I'll walk through it."
The runners up included Ophély Mézino from France and Suman Rao from India.
One moment that caught people's attention online was Miss Nigeria's reaction to Toni-Ann's win.
Nyekachi Douglas, who placed fifth, jumped and screamed with Joy when the winner was announced.
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Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.
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An 85-year-old woman has been killed after the car she was driving hit a white van that had stopped following another crash. | The victim was driving a silver Mini between Clyro and Hay-on-Wye in Powys on the B4351 on Wednesday at 20:00 GMT when she hit the back of the van.
Dyfed-Powys Police said the driver of the van had "initially stopped to assist with another collision".
Emergency services attended but the woman died later in hospital.
Police are appealing for witnesses to contact the force.
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South East Coast Ambulance Service says it is seeing "unprecedented levels of demand" and is warning of longer than usual response times. | The ambulance trust, which covers Kent, Sussex, Surrey and north east Hampshire, said it was "extremely busy", especially in Kent.
The public are asked to consider "all other options" before calling 999.
Members of the public who have called 999 are being urged not to call back unless the patient's condition changes.
A spokesman for the ambulance service said: "Our staff are doing a fantastic job but we are taking much longer to get to many calls than we would like."
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A public local inquiry is likely to be held into plans to improve a hairpin bend on the A9 in Caithness. | The trunk road drops from 150m (492ft) to 20m (65ft) as it enters a valley at the Berriedale Braes.
Transport Minister Derek Mackay has confirmed that a number of objections have been received to the initial proposals for the improvements.
Last month, Caithness Chamber of Commerce said it was taking too long to agree a plan of action.
Transport Scotland said it was continuing to progress the design work.
The A9 provides a link to the far north mainland coast and the ferry services at Scrabster, Gills Bay and John O'Groats to Orkney.
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One topic absolutely dominates Monday's newspapers - the run-up to Scotland's independence referendum, after a weekend poll put the "Yes" to independence campaign two percentage points ahead of their Better Together adversaries.
| By Andy SullyBBC News
Unsurprisingly, the news has the London-based national press worried, with the Independent's "Ten days to save the United Kingdom" setting the tone for a crop of Fleet Street headlines.
North of the border, meanwhile, the Scottish papers are focusing on what they see as the "panic" engendered by the poll inside the Better Together campaign.
The YouGov poll result gave the "Yes" camp so narrow a lead that, the paper explains, the outcome falls within the normal "polling error", which means in practice the real outcome could go either way and "Scotland appears to be heading for a knife-edge result on 18 September".
The paper quotes the former Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, a prominent "No" to independence campaigner, as saying the poll and others like it should "shake the complacency" out of the Better Together campaign.
"It is clear now that every vote is going to count. This isn't a protest vote, it's a permanent choice about our country's future."
The Financial Times - while headlining that the pro-union camp is "in chaos" - says it is too early to write an obituary for the UK.
"The growing prospect of a break-up of the Union should galvanise supporters," the paper says.
The Guardian says it has been told the package of measures promising Scotland more devolution should it stay within the UK - the so-called Devo Max option - has long been planned.
It notes a similar approach in Canada turned support for Quebec independence, to a narrow vote to stay with majority English-speaking provinces, in the 1995 referendum there.
The Daily Telegraph says the SNP's private polling - as tweeted about by Rupert Murdoch - suggests the "Yes" camp holding an eight percentage point lead.
The paper's Scotland editor Alan Cochrane says "scare stories" about an increasing privatisation of the NHS are one of the principal reasons for the "Yes" campiagn's success.
Cochrane says this notion is a "monstrous calumny" peddled by Alex Salmond, as health policy lies within the remit of his devolved administration.
The Times analyses the reasons for the swing towards independence, noting that Labour voters aged under 50 are the key voters who have switched allegiances.
"The focus on Labour leaves Mr Cameron reliant on Mr Miliband to appeal to the party's heartland supporters," the paper notes.
'Milk and honey'
The economic implications of separation are examined in depth.
The Daily Mail says the pro-independence polls could "rock" the stock markets, with uncertainty already pushing sterling 0.5% lower against the dollar - to a five-month low.
The paper notes a number of firms with a large presence in Scotland could also suffer stock market falls, including Diageo, Standard Life, GlaxoSmithKline and BP.
Larry Elliott in the Guardian argues that a post-independence Scotland would not face collapse.
"Countries much poorer than Scotland have thrived after independence," he says, "but it would not be a land flowing with milk and honey either."
Elliott argues that the currency union with the remaining UK wanted by the SNP is an "independence lite" option, meaning continued austerity and the Bank of England control over interest rates.
He quotes Gordon Brown who has written: "It has now become clear that the one power that the nationalists have always demanded - full control over the economy - is now one the Scottish government says it doesn't want."
The Independent's comment column agrees with this assessment.
It says that an independent Scotland still in currency union with London would replicate the flaws of the eurozone.
"Salmond is inviting Scots to put themselves in the same beggarly relationship with England as Greece and Portugal are to Germany," it says.
The paper says Mr Salmond is "plausible" when he argues that "no one will run the affairs [of Scotland] better than the people who live in Scotland".
However, it says this claim could be made for the other regions of the UK and the independence debate should mark a "historic crossroads" where the constitution of the UK is examined and the Act of Union is replaced by "a declaration of federalism".
Two tables in the Times highlight the differing claims between the "Yes" camp and the UK government.
They show the "Yes" campaigners saying there are £1.5tn worth of reserves of North Sea oil, compared with the Office of National Statistics figure of £0.12tn. The "Yes" campaign say it will cost £250m to set up an independent state, but the Treasury says this will be nearer £1.5bn.
Traditional holiday
One person whose opinions on Scottish independence are explored in most papers is the Queen.
The Daily Mirror's striking front shows the monarch under the banner headlines "don't let me be last Queen of Scotland".
While there is no evidence that those are the Queen's thoughts, the paper quotes a "palace insider" who says: "The Queen is a unionist - there is now a great deal of concern."
"If there is a 'Yes' vote that puts us in uncharted territory constitutionally. Nothing is certain and her being Queen of Scotland is not a given."
Palace aides have publically emphasised that the Queen is "strictly neutral" on the issue, the paper adds.
The Sun says the Queen is "horrified" at the prospect of the Union dissolving, and she is receiving daily updates on events "because she is so troubled".
The Daily Mail notes that there are calls within the SNP for a post-independence referendum on whether to become a republic after the Queen steps down or dies.
The party's official line is that the monarch will remain head of state of Scotland.
The Mail notes that the Queen will continue with her traditional holiday at Balmoral, which this year is set to begin on 18 September - the day of the referendum.
'Dog-eared white paper'
As might be expected, there are not many national newspaper pundits arguing for independence, but a plethora advancing the Better Together argument.
Boris Johnson, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says "the Scots are on the verge of an act of self-mutilation that will trash our global identity".
He compares the loss of Scotland to the Union to the loss of America in 1776, but says "it is far worse than that".
"Scotland isn't a colony... it's part of our being, of what makes us 'us'.
"This vote isn't just about saying 'yes' to Scotland... under any circumstances, Scotland will exist and be prosperous... people will wave blue and white Scottish flags and take pride in their nation and its success.
"Alex Salmond and his crew aren't really asking people to say 'yes' to Scotland's success; they are asking them to say 'no' to one of the oldest and most successful political unions in history."
Melanie Phillips in the Times says she has "some sympathy for the Yes camp".
"Whatever you think of Alex Salmond and his cynical, even xenophobic, opportunism in promising benefits he cannot possibly deliver, what he stands for is a story defined by a specific history, literature, language and outlook on life.
"Better Together by contrast, is trying to persuade [Scots] to remain in a project that is in steady process of willed disintegration."
However she says "a sense of common purpose will not be enough to make an independent Scotland thrive and prosper."
Former defence secretary George Robertson, writing in the Financial Times, says those supporting separatism "dare to imagine" that the dissolving of the Union will be "an amicable divorce".
Mr Robertson posits: "What if Scotland , whoever does the negotiations, does not win the deal the nationalists have promised - a currency union, easy entry into the EU and Nato, oil funds, an amicable share of UK assets, a warm welcome on the world stage? Then what?"
"No further referendum is planned. No more tests of the Scottish people's 'sovereign will'.
"Just a dog-eared white paper, Scotland's Future, whose 670 pages made no mention of the risks or downsides; a divided and disillusioned people; and an embittered close neighbour."
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Chinese President Xi Jinping is beginning a two-day visit to South Korea. It is the first time a Chinese leader has landed in Seoul before visiting North Korea, and the presidential summit is expected to focus on tackling Pyongyang's nuclear programme. But the regional perspectives from Seoul and Beijing are still very different. | By Lucy WilliamsonBBC News, Seoul
Chinese presidents are, according to Mao Zedong, supposed to be as close as "lips and teeth" with their North Korean counterparts. Seen in those terms, today's picture looks a little skewed. Mr Xi's arrival in Seoul marks his first trip to the Korean peninsula as Chinese president - something of a snub to his ally in Pyongyang, or at least a rather pointed change in political tone.
China is playing down the significance of this timing. Mr Xi did visit Pyongyang as vice-president in 2008, before North Korea's current leader took office, and there are good reasons why North Korea's young and inexperienced ruler Kim Jong-un may not have wanted to leave his capital and pay homage in Beijing.
But there is little doubt that relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have seemed cooler in recent years. Since coming to power in 2011, Kim Jong-un has ignored the advice, gentle chiding and growing irritation of his economic and political benefactor, and pressed on with a long-range rocket launch and a nuclear test.
'Complex impact'
In contrast Mr Xi seems to have discovered a personal spark with South Korea's President Park Geun-hye.
The two leaders have met four times already, and Ms Park was received with great personal warmth during a state visit to Beijing last year. In return, she addressed a university audience in Chinese and has spoken about her admiration of ancient Chinese culture.
The two countries have also been growing much closer in economic terms: China is now South Korea's largest trading partner and both sides have been working towards a free trade agreement. Quite a rapid rise for countries that only established full diplomatic relations in 1992.
Public opinion has shifted markedly too. A recent poll carried out by the Asian Institute in Seoul suggested that almost two-thirds of the South Korean public now see China as a cooperative partner, with less than a third viewing it as a rival - and the number of people who said they thought China would take North Korea's side in another conflict has also dropped sharply, by more than half.
But beneath the surface, the picture is murkier. That same opinion poll found that a majority of South Koreans saw China's military rise as dangerous, either to their own nation or the region at large, and 71% thought China's growing economic power was a threat.
Professor John Delury, a Sinologist at Seoul's Yonsei University, says that China's approach to South Korea is strikingly different to its image elsewhere in the region.
"The narrative that China's being assertive and antagonising all its neighbours really doesn't work up here in North East Asia," he said.
"China's getting along quite well with South Korea and South Korea's much happier with Mr Xi in Beijing than Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. So it shows that China's rise is having a much more complex impact on the region than if you just look at the dispute with Vietnam and the Philippines."
'Grand scheme'
Despite that new warmth and strategic interest, though, the two leaders' discussions today are likely to expose the old intractable differences at the heart of their political visions.
Both Mr Xi and Ms Park may agree that North Korea's nuclear programme is undesirable but they differ on how to stop it.
South Korea would like Beijing to do more to pressure Pyongyang, but for decades China has made the strategic calculation that stability in North Korea comes first - in its eyes, avoiding implosion of the regime is more important than avoiding nuclear tests.
Instead, Beijing has encouraged all parties to return to talks without pre-conditions. Seoul and Washington say that amounts to "buying the same horse twice". The discussions here will be watched for any small shifts in tone by Beijing, but the basic parameters of China's strategic interest are unlikely to change.
And there are those who say that China's interest is moving away from the North Korean issue anyway. Hwang Byung-tae, a former South Korean ambassador to China, believes that the two leaders might have very different ideas about what is important right now.
"South Korea is strategically important [to Beijing] because of China's relationships on its eastern boundary," he said.
"First there was America's pivot to Asia, then Japan's new nationalism, there's old rancour with Vietnam and territorial issues with the Philippines. South Korea lies in an important position geographically and friendly relations with it are part of China's grand scheme."
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A boy who attempted to incite a man in Australia to carry out an Anzac Day "massacre" has become the the youngest person in the UK to be convicted of a terrorism offence.
The teenager - who was referred to as Boy S in court and was 14 years old at the time - was given a life sentence and told he must serve a minimum of five years behind bars.
But could more have been done to challenge and stop the development of his violent mindset? | Dominic CascianiHome affairs correspondent@BBCDomCon Twitter
The boy's slide into extremism began more than two years ago, at a crucial period in his development.
His parents had separated, he changed schools, and he was developing a deep interest in world affairs. This was fed through his newly acquired smartphone.
From February 2013, he was failing to settle into his new school. He was abusive, disobedient and quickly excluded.
At home, his mother didn't want him associating with local youths, so he was spending hours online in his bedroom, apparently studying foreign affairs.
On 23 October 2013 - now back in school - he praised Osama Bin Laden and declared he wanted to die a martyred fighter's death.
Teachers talked to local officials involved in preventing extremism and he was referred to the national deradicalisation scheme, Channel.
The scheme operates at the very sharp end.
If police and other agencies identify a potential extremist - be they inspired by al-Qaeda, or neo-Nazi ideology - a meeting is arranged with a specialist who can help the person confront where they are heading.
Its single aim is to get the potential extremist to change before it is too late.
Boy S was referred in November 2013 - but it was another three months before he entered the process. Blackburn and Darwen Council, the lead body in the case of this teenager, wouldn't tell the BBC why there was such a delay.
However, once he was seen and assessed, local officials recommended moving him to a secure school for troubled children.
Once there, he became even more unhappy, alienated and aggressive.
He told one teacher he would stab him in the neck with a pencil and subject him to a "halal" slaughter. It was just one of many threats to kill.
"I felt angry, very angry with all of them," the boy has since said of his school, according to defence submissions.
"I just wanted to get excluded. You couldn't run away, it was secure with locked doors. The best way to get out and go home was to threaten staff with beheadings.
"I found the more I did this the more free time I had and I could get home on my phone."
In July 2014, Channel closed his case because officials thought he could be best supported through social services.
That decision came despite earlier proposals to set him up with a professional mentor.
By the autumn of 2014, Boy S was talking openly about beheadings. He showed teachers an appallingly violent video on his mobile phone.
And when he told teachers he had a beheading list, including the order in which he would kill them, he was referred to Channel again.
Before the second intervention began in January 2015, the boy went on a family trip to London. While there he met an extremist preacher, whom we cannot name for legal reasons.
Boy S followed the preacher's advice to get on Twitter. That proved to be a gateway to a series of extremist contacts, including leading figures inside the self-styled Islamic State group.
Later that month, he met for the first time a "deradicalisation intervention provider" - a mentor capable of challenging his mindset.
That mentor, known only as Witness A, concluded that of the dozen cases he had taken on, this boy was the most radicalised he had seen.
And he warned that someone was taking advantage of the teenager.
One of those people, Manchester Crown Court was told, was Abu Haleema, a self-styled London preacher who featured in an extremist social network that led to and maintained the boy's radicalisation.
During a session with the mentor, Abu Haleema sent Boy S a link to a page about a woman being beheaded.
In a phone conversation with BBC News, he confirmed that he had spoken to the teenager - and he claimed that at one point the boy had asked him whether he should kill an imam with whom he disagreed.
Abu Haleema insisted he told him that it would be wrong.
He has been interviewed by the police and has not been charged in relation to this case.
In a final meeting with his mentor, Boy S said he wanted nothing more to do with him unless he stopped working with the Prevent team - the government's counter-terrorism strategy.
"I only have my phone and you even want to take that off me," he said.
In March 2015, Channel officials threw in the towel and passed the case to the North West Counter-Terrorism Unit. Boy S was arrested on suspicion of making threats to kill.
When police undertook a full examination of the boy's mobile phone they found it was filled with extremist material.
Not only was there evidence of the Australia plot, but Boy S had also tried to incite a French man to carry out an attack, radicalised an American woman to raise her children as suicide bombers, and talked to a South African girl about going to Syria.
He was operating 89 Twitter accounts - and among those were evidence that he was in direct contact with leading IS figures.
Police discovered Boy S had formed an online relationship with a girl from Manchester who held similar pro-IS views.
In August, she pleaded guilty to possessing a recipe for explosives.
Unique circumstances?
Did Channel make mistakes? Could it have done more or were its officials simply confronted with someone they could not turn around? Well, we don't really know.
Harry Catherall, chief executive of Blackburn with Darwen Council and chair of the Lancashire Contest Board - the official body that overseas counter-extremism work in the county - has issued a statement commending the local partnership for preventing an atrocity in Australia.
But the council would not tell us whether it had reviewed how the boy's case was handled - or whether, with hindsight, it would do anything different.
"No doubt lessons can and have been learnt by many people from the unique circumstances of S's case," said the judge, Mr Justice Saunders.
"But there is no material before me from which blame should be attributed to anyone, except those extremists who were prepared to use the internet to encourage extreme views in a boy of 14 and then use him to carry out terrorist acts."
So what happens now to Boy S? Can his extremist identity be deleted?
More specialists will be brought in. The defence team argued that Boy S can be changed.
But if he doesn't, the life sentence imposed on Friday means he could stay in prison forever.
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A disorderly Brexit - with no deal and no transition period - could, in a worst-case scenario, deliver a severe economic shock to the economy, triggering a worse recession than we saw after the financial crisis, with the economy shrinking by 8%. | Simon JackBusiness editor@BBCSimonJackon Twitter
House prices could fall by 30%, commercial property by 48%.
Unemployment nearly doubles, the value of the pound could fall by a quarter, which would push up the price of imported goods, and see inflation rise by 6.5%.
That could prevent the Bank from lowering interest rates to help the economy - in fact interest rates might rise to 4% to tackle inflation.
Holy cow - so far so bad.
But wait.
The bank also said today in its Financial Stability Report that a close economic partnership after Brexit between the UK and the EU with zero friction at the border could see the UK economy boosted by up to 1.75% compared to current estimates as uncertainty lifted and confidence returned.
That doesn't appear to be on the table if you read the recent deal signed by the EU 27.
A more realistic assumption perhaps is a trade deal based on the one Canada has with the EU which involves some non-tariff barriers at or behind the border.
Not entirely frictionless - but Canada plus.
On this basis, the bank thinks the UK economy will be between 1.25% and 3.75% lower in five years time than it would otherwise have been.
The government's own assessment was that kind of scenario would leave the UK economy between 2.5 and 3.9% smaller by 2035 than if we'd stayed in the EU.
To argue the toss over half a percent here when comparing highly uncertain scenario analyses over long and different time scales like these is pretty pointless.
But the broad outlook from both the government and the Bank is similar.
Almost every plausible scenario makes the UK worse off than it would have been if it had stayed in the EU.
According to the Bank - the worst outcome is worse than the government thinks, and the best likely outcome is less bad.
Its important to remember these are scenarios - not forecasts of what will happen to the economy.
That gets affected by loads of other factors like trade wars, real wars, technology, natural disasters and so on, but in looking at the possible impact of a no-deal Brexit, the bank has in some ways come to the Prime Minister's aid.
The difference between her Brexit and no deal is very wide indeed. Her deal is not good, but its not that bad and no deal could be positively ugly.
Correction 26 March 2019: This article has been amended to make clear that in a worst-case scenario one of the consequences of a Brexit with no deal and no transition period could include the economy shrinking by 8%, according to the Bank of England.
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A slipway serving the world's last sea-going, manually-operated, turntable ferry has been repaired ahead of the boat's busy summer season. | The 45-year-old MV Glenachulish operates on the oldest crossing to Skye from the mainland.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) gave £31,500 towards the structural repairs to the slipway at Glenelg on the mainland.
The ferry carries 12,000 passengers every year.
Between April and October, the Glenachulish makes a short crossing of the Kylerhea Straits between Glenelg and Kylerhea on Skye.
A car ferry has crossed the straits since 1934.
The service has been run by the Isle of Skye Ferry Community Interest Company since 2007. The community-owned company was set up after long-time ferryman Roddy MacLeod retired.
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Shinzo Abe was Japan's prime minister for so long that people around the world came to recognise his face and perhaps even knew how to pronounce his name. So, should we all now be learning how to say Yoshihide Suga? That is a difficult question to answer. | By Rupert Wingfield-HayesBBC News, Tokyo
A month ago, there were very few who would have predicted what we are now witnessing. Firstly no one expected Mr Abe to go, certainly not before his beloved Tokyo Olympics. Even fewer would have guessed Mr Suga as his replacement.
The 71-year-old is known in Japan as Mr Abe's fixer, the backroom guy who gets stuff done.
When asked recently whether he thought of himself as a nice guy, Mr Suga responded: "I am very nice to those who do their job properly."
His public face is that of the unsmiling and seemingly charmless government spokesman. His nickname among Japanese journalists is the "Iron Wall", a reference to his refusal to respond to questions he doesn't like.
So how is it that Mr Suga is now suddenly Japan's new prime minister?
According to economist and long-time Tokyo resident Jesper Koll, Mr Suga was chosen by Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) bosses, the faction leaders who wield power behind the scenes, because they saw no obvious alternative.
"This is obviously an election in smoky rooms right inside the LDP," he says. "The public had no voice in this choice of the prime minister of Japan.
"In the end, you're only any good to your party if you can win victories in public elections. So, he is under pressure. He is going to have to prove himself to the party and to the Japanese people that he deserves to be prime minister," says Mr Koll.
Mr Suga is clearly not without political skills. He has served as Japan's chief cabinet secretary for longer than any of his predecessors. He has a reputation for toughness and discipline and for understanding the machinery of Japan's byzantine bureaucracy. But are those the sorts of skills that win elections?
Professor Koichi Nakano from Tokyo's Sophia University thinks not.
"He rose to power because he has the political skills of intimidating opponents, including the press and dominating the scene through backdoor dealings and controlling the bureaucrats quite well," he says.
"But when it comes to the public face of the party, when the lower house election needs to be called within a year, he's really unsuited because he's not very eloquent."
That lack of eloquence was on display as Mr Suga made his victory speech on Monday. In ponderous tones with long pregnant pauses he promised the following.
"I want to break down bureaucratic sectionalism, vested interests, and the blind adherence to precedent."
But Mr Koll is someone who knows Mr Suga personally and he says we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss him.
"Here is a man who gets up at 5am in the morning, does 100 sit ups and then reads all the newspapers," he says.
"By 6:30am, he's starting meetings with business people, with advisers, with outside economists. He absorbs like a sponge and wants to get things done for the country. He's not interested in any of the glitz or bling that comes with the government."
The new premier's eschewal of "glitz and bling" is put down to his humble origins.
Mr Suga was born in a small village in the snowy north of Japan, the son of a strawberry farmer. According to a 2016 biography, he couldn't wait to escape the rural backwater.
At 18 he left for Tokyo. There he worked in a cardboard factory saving to pay his own way through university. That sets Mr Suga apart from most of his predecessors, like Mr Abe, whose father was Japan's foreign minister, and grandfather prime minister.
Mr Suga's "origins" story is a good one, but according to Professor Nakano it makes him extremely vulnerable in the sometimes vicious factional struggles inside Japan's ruling party.
"Because Mr Suga comes from a humble background, he really doesn't have his own power base," he says.
"He doesn't belong to any faction. He rose to power because he was Mr Abe's preferred choice. And the party bosses rally behind him in an emergency situation. But once the emergency situation is gone and once the party bosses start to realise that they are not getting all they wanted, I'm sure there is going to be a power struggle."
There are many well connected "young pretenders" waiting in the wings, waiting for Mr Suga to make a mistake. And there are many things that could go wrong. Before he announced his departure, Prime Minister Abe's approval rating had fallen to 30%, largely over discontent at the way he's handled the Covid-19 crisis.
Mr Abe's greatest achievement was to give Japan a long period of political stability. Before his election in 2012, Japan had seen 19 prime ministers in the previous 30 years. It was called "the revolving door", and some worry Japan is now poised to return to factional infighting and short-lived governments.
"It does seem to be the case that after a long-serving prime minister, we get short-lived ones," says Kristi Govella, a Japan watcher at the University of Hawaii.
"I think it's likely we will now enter a period of more short-lived prime ministers. It's not clear if they'll be every 10 months or rather every two years. It would certainly be beneficial for Japan if it were not a different person every year."
For Prime Minister Suga, those are not reassuring words. He has a lot to prove, and probably not very long to do so.
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Fresh images of a proposed new harbour for Aberdeen have been released. | The cost of the project at Nigg Bay, to the south of the existing harbour, is being estimated at more than £300m.
A public consultation is currently ongoing.
The exhibition material can be viewed and downloaded, and feedback can be emailed to [email protected]
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Police in the UK say a "quantity of heroin" has been found on board a plane that flew to London from Pakistan. | No-one is under arrest following the discovery on Monday, but the aeroplane was impounded on arrival at Heathrow Airport so it could be searched for several hours.
The crew's passports were temporarily seized.
Pakistani reports say it was an aircraft of the national carrier, PIA, flying from the capital Islamabad.
They say the narcotic was distributed in bundles around different parts of the plane.
The plane has now made a delayed trip back to Pakistan with a new crew.
The UK's National Crime Agency says no arrests were made but enquiries were ongoing.
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Is India losing its mojo because of bad politics? | Soutik BiswasDelhi correspondent
It's an obvious question to ask at a time when powerful - and populist - regional parties are again flexing their muscles at a fickle federal government, key economic reforms are seemingly stuck in the bog of messy coalition politics, and the government is struggling under an avalanche of corruption charges. Economic growth and investment have cooled and inflation remains high.
So is it surprising that The Economist magazine, in its latest issue, says the politics is "preventing India from fulfilling its vast economic potential"?
Or when Fareed Zakaria, editor-at-large with Time magazine, tells an audience in Delhi this week that India's politicians are "out of touch… they try to portray India as a victim, not the victor".
With uncharacteristic exaggeration, The Economist even invokes a return to the stifling days of the controlled economy.
"Lately, like a Bollywood villain who just refuses to die, the old India has made a terrifying reappearance," says the magazine. It blames a "nastily divisive political climate" for the crisis and believes that India requires "energetic, active leaders, plus politicians who are ready to compromise".
'Corrupt and corroded'
Both the magazine and the pundit are right and wrong.
The quality of India's politicians, many argue, has declined drastically, as in many parts of the world. Most of them seem to be out of sync with modern day realities - expectations have fallen so ridiculously low that an iPad carrying politician is described by the media as a modern one!
Most are also seen as greedy, corrupt and disinterested in serious reform. The increasing number of politicians with criminal records and the brazen use of money to buy party tickets and bribe voters erodes India's ailing democratic process.
It is not a happy picture. "Today the Centre is corrupt and corroded," historian Ramachandra Guha wrote recently. "There are allegedly 'democratic' politicians who abuse their oath of office and work only to enrich themselves; as well as self-described 'revolutionaries' who seek to settle arguments by the point of the gun." Only serious electoral reform can ensure a better breed of politician.
But to believe that less politics is good economics is a bit fey. There is little evidence to argue that political instability has been bad for India's economy.
India's first flush of economic reforms was launched by a minority government headed by PV Narasimha Rao of the Congress party in the early 1990s. The reforms spluttered to a halt when the government secured a majority.
Later, a rag-tag 13-party coalition United Front government helmed by two prime ministers in 18 months in the mid-1990s undertook significant reforms, slashing taxes, deregulating interest rates and moving towards capital account convertibility.
One study by Kausik Chaudhuri and Sugato Dasgupta actually found that more investments take place when coalition governments are in power, one of the reasons being various regional interests are held together by "generous distribution of infrastructure projects". Economist Surjit Bhalla has argued that political instability is actually good for economic reforms.
"The contention is that lack of political dominance means that politicians in power will make the extra reform in order to fight for marginal votes in a future election," he has said. "And if political stability is present, the politicians are unlikely to make an effort because of their inherent short sightedness or complacence."
Elitist biases
The problem, as Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha and Shankar Raghuraman argue succinctly in a study of coalition politics in India, is that privatisation - a key aspect of economic reforms - remains a dirty word with most of India's politicians, trade unionists and opinion makers.
There is still a serious lack of political consensus on issues like foreign investment, lowering interest rates on deposits in pension funds and privatising profit-making state-run factories.
Public consensus is harder to come by in an awfully unequal society where the middle class and the rich root for further opening up of the economy, while the poor want the state to invest in health and education and check corruption. The elitist biases in public policy is made easier by a poorly-informed and often unlettered electorate with low expectations.
Many would argue that India never got any magic going, so there is no question of losing it.
Consensus is painfully slow in such a society, and sometimes only a crisis can provoke the government - and the people - to bite the bullet. Reformers need to be patient; there are no shortcuts in India.
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Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta came to power on a pledge to fight corruption, but three years into his presidency and the problem seems as entrenched as ever, with even the country's chief justice saying Kenya has a "bandit economy". Anti-corruption campaigner Boniface Mwangi gives his view. | A recent survey by Kenya's anti-corruption commission found that nearly 75% of the population thought there was a very high level of corruption in the country, with many people citing greed amongst public officials as the main reason.
The head of the commission, Philip Kinisu, told the Reuters news agency that the government lost about a third of its budget through corruption - a figure that the government disputes.
The losses come in the shape of, among other things, artificially inflated prices the government is charged for tenders, non-existent projects that are paid for and wages for employees who do not exist, also known as ghost workers.
Corruption is the monster that has sunk its claws into the neck of Kenya's economy, draining the life from the public and private sector.
Transparency International (TI) found Kenya's police, who are supposed to enforce the law, to be the "most bribe prone institution in Kenya", but not a single senior police officer is in jail for corruption.
A police recruitment exercise was cancelled in 2014 amid suspicion that some of the recruiters had received bribes.
This pointed to a bigger issue with employing high-calibre staff.
The working conditions are terrible and the primary motivation for many who want to join the police force is the opportunity to seek bribes.
The judiciary has also not been spared.
The TI report found that judges are also open to bribery, lending credence to the phrase "why hire a lawyer when you can buy the judge".
One of the country's most senior judges, Justice Phillip Tunoi, is going to be investigated after being accused of taking a bribe to influence his ruling in an election dispute.
Mr Tunoi denies the allegation.
But the affair has damaged what little trust Kenyans had in the judiciary
The attitude of the government towards the corrupt has been very demoralising. On the one hand President Kenyatta declared corruption a threat to national security, on the other we do not have people serving jail sentences for the crime.
Our president has been long on talk but short on action, in contrast to President John Magufuli of neighbouring Tanzania, who is admired for his no-nonsense stance.
Mr Magufuli's actions show that a president can lead in the war against graft and impunity.
He has fired the head of the anti-corruption bureau for poor performance, and some senior government staff accused of being corrupt have lost their jobs and are being investigated.
Today, Kenyans yearn for a Magufuli.
In Kenya, a chicken thief will be sentenced in record time and given a huge sentence, but those who steal and bleed the country dry will rarely answer for their crimes.
The victims of this greed are the ordinary people.
The president seems resigned to the situation, declaring on a recent trip to Israel that Kenyans are "experienced in stealing and perpetuating other crimes".
Chief Justice Willy Mutunga told a Dutch newspaper that Kenya's "bandit economy" is run by mafia-style cartels.
The Kenyan people however will rally behind anyone who is able to show that they have the will and the capability to fight corruption.
They are crying for a way out and for justice to be meted out to those who are strangling our economy.
The question is: Will Kenya get a Magufuli?
On Friday 25 March the African Debate on the BBC World Service will be asking "Is corruption Africa's biggest killer?"
You can hear it at 19:00 GMT and find it online afterwards
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A judge who dismissed a woman's claim she had been raped, as she had done "nothing physically" to stop the alleged perpetrator, is among a number of family court judges to hold "outdated views", a joint letter says. | By Emma AilesBBC Victoria Derbyshire programme
In it, over 130 lawyers and women's rights groups call for Judge Tolson's continuing cases to be reviewed.
And they say family court judges should be trained on the "meaning of consent".
The Judiciary said a commitment to further training had since been made.
'Serious harm'
The case centred around a man who had asked to be allowed to spend time with his son, who was in the care of his former partner.
She objected because she said the man had been controlling and had raped her.
In his ruling, Judge Tolson told the family court because the woman "was not in any sense pinned down", she "could easily, physically, have made life harder" for the man - and it "did not constitute rape".
The woman later argued the judge's approach had led to her losing the legal battle with the man.
The letter - signed by organisations including Rape Crisis England and Wales, Women's Aid and the Centre for Women's Justice - says attitudes such as those expressed by the judge "leave children and women at risk of serious harm".
Addressed to Justice Secretary Robert Buckland and the family courts president, Sir Andrew McFarlane, it says: "Increasingly, the courts are no longer seen as a safe place for women who have been abused."
It adds that since the case came to light in the media, it has "resulted in women contacting some of the signatories to this letter with their experiences of [Judge Tolson] and other judges who have expressed similar attitudes.
"Their concerns have included attitudes about sexual violence as seen in [this case], professional assessment of abusive parents being disregarded without reason and failure to provide special measures during hearings."
The letter is supported by the Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales, Dame Vera Baird, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, and the London Victims' Commissioner, Claire Waxman.
Trish's story
Judge Tolson was also the judge in the case of "Trish" - not her real name - deciding the level of contact she and her ex-partner were allowed with their children.
"I was with my ex-partner for several decades," she tells the Victoria Derbyshire programme.
"He was physically abusive and financially and emotionally coercive and controlling. I finally left when he started to abuse my children as well."
Trish's ex-partner applied to the courts for contact and was granted access.
Her elder child is now old enough to be able to make their own decision about not going for contact.
But she says her younger child is "terrified of going for contact with him and says he's been physically abusive".
"All I want is for this to be properly investigated. I've been in court at least 20 times," she says.
"He can afford lawyers but... I have to represent myself.
"He's continuing to control me and abuse - and that's enabled by the courts.
"The children's voices are not heard and to not even have the courts protecting vulnerable families is really scary.
"I am deeply concerned for the future of my children and their safety."
The woman whose rape claim was dismissed by Judge Tolson has now had her appeal upheld by a High Court judge, over its handling.
Ms Justice Russell, ordered a fresh case to be held before a different judge and said specialist training was needed on how family-court judges dealt with sexual assault allegations.
The letter welcomes her recommendations but adds: "There are wider systemic issues, including some lack of understanding of domestic abuse and serious sexual assault and a failure to apply the practice directions to afford victims a fair trial.
"This is despite training and clear rules."
It calls for the appointment of "appropriately trained domestic-abuse champions in each family court", greater accountability for judges and specific training on the meaning of consent and free will for all family-court judges.
The UK Judiciary said in a statement that "prior to the delivery of the appeal judgment [in the Judge Tolson case], the president of the Family Division had asked the Judicial College to provide additional bespoke training in dealing with cases of sexually related assault for judges trying domestic abuse cases in the Family Court.
"The enhanced training will be delivered - initially electronically - from May 2020 and from then on will be included in every continuation training course for the Family judiciary.'
It said the proposals would see family-court judges given "similar training to that which is already given to criminal judges who hear serious sexual criminal trials".
The Ministry of Justice declined to comment.
Follow the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme on Facebook and Twitter - and see more of our stories here.
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A British Airways plane bound for London caught fire at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport and forced the evacuation of 172 people on board. At least 14 people were taken to hospital with minor injuries. Here, passengers and eyewitnesses describe what happened. | 'Giant flames'
"I felt lucky the minute I landed, you know on the ground, and I feel very lucky right now. Everybody that got off before me as soon as they hit the tarmac they just sprinted because behind us are giant flames."
Letha Dunn
'I was terrified'
"Everything was going fine, the pilot was getting ready for takeoff, gaining speed on the runway and just as he was going to take-off there was a kind of bang, and then it just screeched to a halt and we were all kind of braced forward on our seats and we saw all this smoke.
"Eventually the pilot just told us it was an emergency evacuation, we were all just to get off the flight.
"As we were coming down the chutes it was pretty obvious the incident was on the left side of the plane, the whole engine was on fire on that side and the smoke was just belching everywhere.
"I was terrified at the time. When we were trying to get off the plane, everyone was pushing and shoving and screaming - it felt like 10 minutes, but it was all over in a matter of minutes."
Lynne Harrison, from Glasgow
'Holding their breath'
Eyewitness Reggie Bugmuncher said she was waiting at a gate for her flight when she heard people saying: "Oh, my God."
She said looked out the window and could see "bursts of flames coming out of the middle of the plane", the Associated Press news agency reports.
"Everyone ran to the windows and people were standing on their chairs, looking out, holding their breath with their hands over their mouths,'' Ms Bugmuncher said.
'Immensely brave'
"There were passengers saying 'there's a fire, there's a fire' and as soon as the crew heard passengers saying there was a fire there was no hesitation from them whatsoever. The exit doors were open.
"They were literally in full swing; it was like clockwork for them, to be honest.
"There was a lady with a very young baby not too far from us. She was immensely brave, taking her baby and stuff off the flight really quickly. Pretty much everyone was trying to help other people."
Dominic Worthington
'Burning rubber'
"We looked out the window and for the first time saw smoke near the wing. We could smell it. It was like burning rubber - bitter and deeply unpleasant - and it was time to panic," the Guardian's Jacob Steinberg writes, who was aboard the plane.
'Big bang'
"I was sitting on the right-hand side of the plane in the middle by the emergency exit. I was with my friend Jacob Steinberg - the Guardian journalist - and another friend.
"I heard a big bang and the plane screech to a stop. I saw smoke from the window. People started screaming and getting out of their seats.
"Some people were running towards the exits. We could hear the cabin crew trying to calm us down.
"One of them told us to prepare to vacate the plane by gathering by the middle exit - but then we saw smoke coming through into the plane from that exit.
"We were then told to go to the front of the plane and vacate from there instead. I wasn't hurt but there was a lot of adrenaline. I'm fine now but still coming to terms with it."
David Willey, from Manchester
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Since the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, an area of more than 4,000 square kilometres has been abandoned. That could be about to change, as Victoria Gill discovered during a week-long trip to the exclusion zone.
| "This place is more than half of my life," says Gennady Laptev. The broad-shouldered Ukrainian scientist is smiling wistfully as we stand on the now dry ground of what was Chernobyl nuclear power plant's cooling pond.
"I was only 25 when I started my work here as a liquidator. Now, I'm almost 60."
There were thousands of liquidators - workers who came here as part of the mammoth, dangerous clean-up operation following the 1986 explosion. The worst nuclear accident in history.
Gennady shows me a coffee table-sized platform, installed here to collect dust. This reservoir's bed dried out when the pumps taking water from the nearby river were finally switched off in 2014; 14 years after the remaining three reactors there were shut down.
Analysing dust for radioactive contamination is just a small part of the decades-long study of this vast, abandoned area. The accident turned this landscape into a giant, contaminated laboratory, where hundreds of scientists have worked to find out how an environment recovers from nuclear catastrophe.
The experiment that turned into a global catastrophe
On 26 April, 1986, at 1:23AM, engineers cut power to some systems at Chernobyl nuclear power plant's number 4 reactor. It was a critical point in a test to understand what would happen during a blackout. What engineers did not know was that the reactor was already unstable.
The cut-off slowed turbines that drove cooling water to the reactor. As less water turned to more steam, the pressure inside built. By the time operators realised what was happening and tried to shut down the reactor, it was too late.
A steam explosion blew the lid off the reactor, exposing the core to the atmosphere. Two people in the plant were killed and, as air fuelled a fire that burned for 10 days, a cloud of radioactive smoke and dust was carried on the wind around Europe.
BBC News Our World: In the Shadow of Chernobyl - Watch Victoria Gill's full report from the exclusion zone on Saturday and Sunday, 16 and 17 February, at 2130 GMT on the BBC News Channel, and afterwards on BBC iPlayer.
The first emergency workers rushed in as lethal smoke billowed out. Of 134 who were diagnosed with acute radiation sickness, 28 died within months. At least 19 have died since.
Gennady, an environmental scientist with the Ukrainian HydroMeteorological Institute, started work in the zone just three months after the evacuation. "We used to fly in by helicopter every day from Kiev," he explains, "to collect water and soil samples.
"The important thing then was to understand the extent of the contamination - to draw the first maps of the exclusion zone."
Today, that zone spans Ukraine and Belarus. Covering more than 4,000 sq km - more than twice the size of London. Every community within a 30km radius of the plant was evacuated and abandoned; no-one was allowed to return here to live.
In a forgotten, outer portion of the exclusion zone, people were quietly allowed to return home a few months after the disaster.
Unlike the "30km zone", no checkpoints prevent entry to this semi-abandoned area. Narodichi, a town of more than 2,500 people, is within that more-distant zone. Strict rules govern this officially contaminated district; exclusion zone land must not be cultivated to produce food and it cannot be developed.
Today, though, this part of Ukraine is not easily delineated into two categories - contaminated or clean. Research has shown that Chernobyl's aftermath is more complicated, and the landscape here much stranger - and more interesting - than the stringent "do not touch" rules in Narodichi would imply.
Fear of radiation could actually be hurting the people of Narodichi far more than the radiation itself.
'We're getting less radiation here than on the plane'
Over Gennady's shoulder, I can see the nuclear power plant - less than a kilometre away from the reservoir bed we're standing on. Gleaming in the sunshine is the huge protective steel "New Safe Confinement" that now entombs unit 4. It was slid over the top of the accident's epicentre in 2016. Beneath it, robotic cranes are dismantling 33-year-old, radioactive wreckage.
Prof Jim Smith from the UK's University of Portsmouth, a colleague of Gennady's, is a scientist who has studied the aftermath of the disaster since 1990. Here on one of his numerous research trips to the zone, he shows me a dosimeter - a black plastic phone-sized gadget he carries throughout the visit.
It measures the external dose of radiation he is getting from the environment. Atoms of the nuclear fuel dust that were scattered here by the 1986 explosion are spontaneously breaking down. They are giving out high-energy rays as they do so, and Jim's dosimeter is detecting the dose of those that we are receiving every hour.
The readings are in units (called microsieverts) that only make sense to me in the context of other relatively "radioactive activities". At one point in the middle of the flight to Kiev - for example - his dosimeter read 1.8 microsieverts per hour.
"It's currently 0.6," Jim says. "So that's about [a third] of what we were getting on the flight." With the infamous power plant visible in the background, I'm incredulous. But, Jim explains, we live on a radioactive planet - natural radioactivity is all around us. "It comes from the Sun's rays, from the food we eat, from the Earth," he says. That is why, up at 12,000m on an airliner, with less shielding from Earth's atmosphere, we receive a higher dose.
"Yes, the exclusion zone is contaminated," he tells me, "but if we would put it on a map of radiation dose worldwide - only the small 'hotspots' would stand out.
"Natural radioactivity is all around us - it varies from country to country, from place to place. Most of the area of the exclusion zone gives rise to lower radiation dose rates than many areas of natural radioactivity worldwide."
'You don't want to be in the hotspots for long'
While the boundary of the exclusion zone has not changed, the landscape has - almost beyond recognition. Where people were forced out, nature has moved in. Wilderness combined with abandoned buildings, farms and villages gives a sense of the post-apocalyptic.
Jim and his colleagues spend their days here collecting samples and planting cameras and audio recorders, which silently gather information about what wildlife inhabits this post-human place, and how the radiation affects it.
On the second day of our trip to the zone, I follow the team into the Red Forest. This is an exclusion zone hotspot that, because of the direction of the winds in 1986, took the brunt of the shower of radioactive material.
We put on dust suits to avoid contaminating our clothing.
In the forest, Jim's dosimeter reads 35 - almost 60 times the external dose we were getting in the cooling pond.
"We don't want to be here for too long," says Jim. He and the team gather their soil samples swiftly, take some photographs and head back to the car.
'The horses are adapting to the zone'
In the abandoned village of Burayakovka - just over 10km from the power plant - it is a very different approach. Jim and the team take their time exploring the area. The dosimeter reads 1.0 - still less than on the flight.
Inside one small, crumbling but still colourful wooden house, the sad truth of what people so suddenly lost here is apparent. A coat still slung over the arm of a chair is now covered in three decades of dust.
But what people left behind - through farming and gardening - has turned into a strangely rich habitat and provisions for wild animals. Long-term studies have shown that there is more wildlife in the abandoned villages than anywhere else in the zone. Brown bears, lynx and wild boar are seen roaming here.
Dr Maryna Shkvyria, a researcher based at Kiev Zoo, has spent years tracking and studying the larger mammals that moved in when people moved out.
There are studies suggesting that birds in the most contaminated areas show signs of damage to their DNA, but Maryna's work is adding to a catalogue of research that suggests wildlife is thriving throughout much of the exclusion zone.
Chernobyl's wolves, she says, are a particularly striking example.
"After 15 years of studying them, we have a lot of information about their behaviour," Maryna explains. "And the Chernobyl wolf is one of the most natural wolves in Ukraine."
By "natural", she means there is very little "human food" in the wolves' diet. "Usually, wolves are around settlements," Maryna explains. "They can eat livestock, crops and waste food - even pets." But not here where wolves hunt wild prey.
Chernobyl's wolves feed on deer and even catch fish. Some images - caught by camera traps - reveal gentler dietary habits. Wolves have been snapped eating fruit from around trees that used to be in people's orchards.
There is one group of animals that has made the zone its home and that - strictly speaking- should not really be here.
In 1998, Ukrainian zoologists released a herd of 30 endangered Przewalski's horses in the zone. The apparent aim was for the horses to graze overgrowth and reduce the risk of wildfire. There are now about 60 of them - in herds dispersed across Ukraine and Belarus.
They are native to the open plains of Mongolia, so forests peppered with abandoned buildings should not be ideal habitat. "But they're really using the forests," explains Maryna. "We even put camera traps in old barns and buildings and they're using them to [shelter] from mosquitoes and heat.
"They even lay down and sleep inside - they're adapting to the zone."
'You can have the cherry vodka; I made it'
Wildlife might be making the most of what's gradually become a post-human nature reserve, but not every village was left for animals to claim. Some people still live here - deep in the 30km zone.
On my fourth day here, we visit Maria's house. She is outside in her garden when we arrive at the gate, and - as I try to introduce myself in a few stumbling words of Ukrainian - she interrupts me by wrapping me in a warm hug and kissing me on the cheek.
Today is her 78th birthday. She is expecting us and has prepared a celebratory breakfast.
Maria ushers me, Jim, his colleague Mike, and our interpreter Denis to a wooden table under a fruit tree.
It is a gloriously sunny day and pleasantly warm even at 9am. Maria starts to bring food - fatty salted bacon, a whole fish, sliced sausage and steaming hot, home-grown potatoes. There are two bottles of what appear to be spirits - one colourless, one dark red.
"If you don't like this vodka, you can have the cherry one - I made it," she says.
Maria and her neighbours make up a tiny community of just 15. Each of these self-settlers, as they are known, travelled back across a patchily enforced exclusion zone boundary and reclaimed their homes in 1986.
Almost every family forced to leave here was given an apartment in a nearby town or city. For Maria and her mother, though, this cottage, with the garden wrapped around it, was home. They refused to abandon it.
"We weren't allowed to come back, but I followed my mum," Maria recalls. "She was 88 back then. She kept saying: 'I will go, I will go'. I just followed her."
There are about 200 self-settlers in total living in the zone and, for an ageing population cut off from the rest of the country, Maria says life is not easy.
"We're all very old," she tells me. "And we take each day as it comes.
"I feel full of life when my children come to visit me from Kiev. Otherwise, it's not so interesting to live here. But you know this is our land - our motherland. It's irreplaceable."
Maria's mobile phone rings and I am struck by the incongruity of our diminutive babushka hostess, standing in her exclusion zone garden, apparently trying to wrap up swiftly a call from her daughter. She is busy with her visitors from the BBC!
Remote as it is, this is a close community. As we sit in the garden (knocking back cherry vodka at our Maria's repeated insistence) her neighbour arrives with a birthday gift. She sits on the bench near the garden gate; she can't walk too far.
The self-settlers are a tiny minority, though. Most people who so suddenly lost their homes here have no hope of coming back.
Most of them lived in Pripyat - a true Soviet dream town, purpose-built for the power plant workers. Just a few kilometres from the plant itself, this town of 50,000 people was emptied overnight. No-one was allowed to return; it is now the archetype of a 20th Century ghost city.
Pripyat was, however, recently deemed safe to visit for short periods and has now become one of Ukraine's most talked about tourist attractions. An estimated 60,000 people visited the exclusion zone last year, keen to witness the dramatic decay.
Its bleak notoriety has made it the subject of some dark, social media-based showing-off. Search #chernobyl on Instagram and you will find - among the interesting landscapes and tourist snaps - images of anonymous, costumed characters, sometimes wearing gas masks or holding up creepy-looking dolls for the camera.
'Tell people Chernobyl is not such a horrible place'
The town of Chernobyl itself - somewhat confusingly much further from the power plant than Pripyat - is in a less contaminated area. It has become a relatively populous hub. Power plant decommissioning staff, scientists and tourists stay here.
Gennady, Jim, me and the rest of the research team are staying in one of its small hotels - a Soviet-style building with an incongruously pretty, well-tended garden around it. This greenery is looked after by Irina, who manages the hotel. She stays here for three months at a time before a colleague takes over. People are only permitted to live in the town for limited periods.
Over a cup of tea on our second evening at the hotel, Gennady translates as Irina tells us about her memories of the accident. She lived in Pripyat at the time with her grandmother.
On 27 April - a day after the explosion - the town was evacuated. People were ordered to leave immediately. They lined up for buses that would take them away from the town and the plant. Irina was on her way back to her grandmother's apartment at the time.
"A friend of my grandmother's was driving a cattle wagon - taking his livestock out," she recalled. "My grandmother asked if he would take me with him, so I climbed on to the cattle wagon.
"I didn't know what was happening."
But Irina, not unlike Maria, felt a need to return to the zone. She has never been back to Pripyat, though; it would upset her too much to see it now. But she takes pride in tending the flowers around her Chernobyl hotel.
"I like to make it as pretty as possible for the visitors," she tells me. "So maybe you can tell people back home that Chernobyl is not such a horrible place."
'We have forgotten that we are Chernobyl people'
Gennady's 33 years working in the exclusion zone might have been leading up to one meeting at the end of this week. It is being held in a school in Narodichi, the town in the outer zone.
Here, scientists, community members, medical experts and officials from the state agency that manages the exclusion zone are gathering to discuss a change that could transform this district's future.
For the first time since the boundary was drawn, the zone is set to change. Three decades of research have concluded that much of it is safe - for food to be grown and for the land to be developed. Narodichi is one of its least contaminated places.
Jim and Gennady are presenting their conclusions at the meeting. Before it is under way, I have arranged to visit the town's kindergarten, where the children are playing outside in the sunshine.
A rainbow-painted picket fence at the edge of their playground contrasts almost ludicrously with grey, half-built tower blocks next door.
There were 360 children here before the accident. Tatiana Kravchenko, a woman with a perpetual kind smile and who is wearing a thick, bright pink coat, is the kindergarten manager. She remembers the evacuation.
"The children were evacuated together with teachers to 'clean zones'," she recalls. "In three months we were sent back, and we had only 25 children. Eventually, people have come back, new children have been born and gradually the kindergarten started filling up again. Now we have 130 children here."
Most of the time, Tatiana says, she does not think of her community as being within the exclusion zone. "We forget that we are Chernobyl people; we have other issues to deal with," she tells me. "It's no secret that half of the parents [of these kids] are unemployed, because there is nowhere to work. I wish that we could build something here - that our community could start to bloom."
'Maybe it's time to redraw the map'
Back in the meeting, Gennady peers over red-rimmed glasses, attentively listening to what is being said. Discussions are taking longer than expected. Much of the community input seems to reflect Tatiana's thoughts - that it is time for restrictions to be lifted here.
But there is a lot at stake.
People affected by the accident receive financial compensation from the government. Here, in a town of high unemployment, in a country where the average wage is less than 400USD per month, that income is important.
And many still fear Chernobyl radiation - and the effect that it might still have on their health, and the health of their children. After many years of research, understanding and explaining the long-term health legacy of the accident has been infuriatingly complicated.
It is conclusive that around 5,000 cases of thyroid cancer - most of which were treated and cured - were caused by the contamination. Authorities failed to prevent contaminated milk from being sold in the region; many who were children at the time drank it receiving large doses of radioactive iodine. That was one of the contaminants blasted out of the reactor.
Many suspect that the radiation has or will cause other cancers, but the evidence is patchy.
Prof Richard Wakeford, from the University of Manchester's Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, points out that health studies look for a "signal" of a specific health effect linked to Chernobyl.
They aim to pick out that signal above the "background noise" from other causes. That has been incredibly difficult, primarily because of the huge background noise that was the almost simultaneous upheaval of the Soviet Union's collapse.
"It's assumed that there will be some cancers linked to the accident in addition to the thyroid cancers, but detecting them amid that socioeconomic chaos - that had its own impacts on people's health - has proven almost impossible," says Prof Wakeford. Cancer also affects between a third and a half of people in Europe, so any Chernobyl signal is likely to be small.
Amid reports of other health problems - including birth defects - it still is not clear if any can be attributed to radiation.
Prof Geraldine Thomas from Imperial College London explains: "Another confounding factor in this part of the world relates, confusingly, to iodine deficiency."
In its non-radioactive form, iodine is found in milk, green leafy vegetables and seaweed. A lack of it in the diet is a known cause of problems in the early development of the brain and spinal cord. "So one possible cause of birth defects is actually a lack of iodine in the environment," the prof says.
All of this means that estimates of cancer cases remain highly contentious.
In its seminal 2006 report on the the long-term consequences of the accident, the World Health Organization did conclude that many people's mental health has been damaged - by fear of radiation and severe disruption to their lives.
As a scientist who has spent years scrutinising the truth about the contamination in the zone, Gennady admits that he did not expect the people of Narodichi to be afraid of radiation.
"It's a very big factor affecting their lives, even more than 30 years after the accident. This is really something that surprised me," he says.
That fear can be physically as well as mentally damaging.
A sense of fatalism and hopelessness associated with assumptions of being doomed by radiation is thought to contribute to higher rates of of smoking and alcoholism in this region - both of which are definitively bad for people's health.
"It was a terrible thing that happened here," says Jim. "But that tends to dominate people's lives.
"Somehow - and it's very, very difficult - we've got to move towards a situation where people can go back to living their lives without this fear, this radiation blight."
We're not going anywhere
Gennady emerges from the meeting looking a little jaded, but he says he is cautiously optimistic. The map was not officially redrawn today, but, crucially, most people in the room agreed there was a need for change.
"The community wants to bring more life here," Gennady says. "And we, as scientists, know that a lot of places here can be easily excluded from this ban, so I think this was a very positive moment."
At the kindergarten, Tatiana has ushered the younger children inside for an afternoon nap.
There are rows of adorably tiny beds inside a new wing of the kindergarten that was built with money from a Japanese charity.
The close relationship between Japan and Ukraine has been forged by the former being in the early stages of understanding the impact of its own nuclear disaster - at the Fukushima power plant.
Looking from the pristine new kindergarten building to the neighbouring derelict block, she says she would support the town's removal from the zone.
"These houses could be reconstructed and filled with people. We dream about that.
"We live here. We are not going to leave for anywhere else. Our children live here."
By BBC Science Correspondent Victoria Gill. Photographs by Jemma Cox. Graphics by Lilly Huynh and Sana Jasemi.
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For years the music industry was the poster child for digital disruption. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
The record giants were portrayed as dinosaurs, thrashing around helplessly as piracy took away their revenues and tech giants took on the job of leading the industry into the future.
But today it's bright confident morning again for the UK music business - and most of the credit goes to the boom in streaming.
Overall, music revenues grew by 9.6% in 2017 according to the Entertainment Retailers Association, with streaming revenues from subscriptions to services like Spotify up 41.9%.
Separate figures from the BPI, which represents the record labels, show that streaming now accounts for more than half of UK music consumption,
Despite a lot of breathless talk about the vinyl revival, that's still a pretty small contributor and overall physical sales were down 3.4%.
Streaming - once regarded with deep suspicion by both the artists and the labels - now looks like the path back to prosperity in the digital era.
One cynical music industry executive told me the labels were now rewriting history: "They opposed every single new technology and said it was the end of the world. Now suddenly streaming was all their idea," they said.
Certainly the big companies seem convinced that the good times are back - news of the bumper pay packages awarded to executives at Warner Music Group raised eyebrows recently. But not everybody is so sure that the days of first class travel and unlimited spending on flowers for the office are - or should be - back.
Two forces - the power of the tech platforms and the anger of the artists - mean that the days of disruption may not be over.
Power game
Back in 2005, while the industry was beset by gloom, 98% of its revenues came from products over which it had a fair measure of control - either physical sales or digital downloads.
Now it has handed control over more than half of its revenue to the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, with their one size fits all £9.99 per month subscription packages.
Meanwhile, artists still aren't completely reconciled to the streaming model - and in particular the fact that, by one estimate, they get just 19% of the revenues earned by the record companies.
We have already seen major artists stamping their feet and demanding better deals - or negotiating directly with streaming services.
There's a complex three-way power game underway, with the tech platforms, the labels and the artists all dependent on each other - but it is no longer clear that the labels' sheer marketing muscle gives them the upper hand.
But technology - once seen as a threat - could now help to expand the music market.
In the "good old days" only half of the UK population ever bought a CD each year.
Now smart devices like the Amazon Echo and the Google Home are giving an older audience a reason to bring music back into the home.
For anyone who wants to see music have a sustainable and profitable future, there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful.
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When the BBC launched the Loneliness Experiment on Valentine's Day 2018 a staggering 55,000 people from around the world completed the survey, making it the largest study of loneliness yet. Claudia Hammond, who instigated the project, looks at the findings and spoke to three people about their experiences of loneliness. | "It's like a void, a feeling of emptiness. If you have a good piece of news or a bad piece of news, it's not having that person to tell about it. Lacking those people in your life can be really hard."
Michelle Lloyd is 33 and lives in London. She is friendly and chatty and enjoys her job - she seems to have everything going for her, but she feels lonely. She has lived in a few different cities so her friends are spread around the country and tend to be busy with their children at weekends. She does go for drinks with colleagues after work, but tells me it's the deeper relationships she misses.
"I'm very good at being chatty, I can talk to anyone, but that doesn't mean I'm able to have those lasting relationships with people," says Michelle. "You can be in a group and it can be intimidating because you're conscious of not letting people get to know the 'real you'.
"I would say I've always had an element of feeling lonely. Ever since I was a teenager, I've always felt a little bit different and separate from large groups of friends, but in the last five years it's crept in more."
Michelle has experienced anxiety and depression which she finds can amplify her loneliness because she finds it hard to articulate negative emotions.
"If I'm in a group I often find myself saying 'I'm great' when people ask how I am. It's almost like an out-of-body experience because I can hear myself saying these positive things, when I'm thinking about how I struggled to get out bed yesterday. It's the loneliness of knowing how you feel in your own head and never being able to tell people."
There is a common stereotype that loneliness mainly strikes older, isolated people - and of course it can, and does. But the BBC survey found even higher levels of loneliness among younger people, and this pattern was the same in every country.
The survey was conducted online, which might have deterred some older people, or attracted people who feel lonely. But this is not the first study to see high rates of loneliness reported by young people: research conducted earlier in 2018 by the Office for National Statistics on paper as well as online with a smaller, but more representative sample also found more loneliness among the young.
It's tempting to conclude that something about modern life is putting young people at a higher risk of loneliness, but when we asked older people in our survey about the loneliest times in their lives, they also said it was when they were young.
There are several reasons why younger people might feel lonelier. The years between 16 and 24 are often a time of transition where people move home, build their identities and try to find new friends.
Meanwhile, they've not had the chance to experience loneliness as something temporary, useful even, prompting us to find new friends or rekindle old friendships - 41% of people believe that loneliness can sometimes be a positive experience.
Michelle has been open about her loneliness and her mental health, even blogging about them. This is not something everyone feels they can do. The survey suggested that younger people felt more able to tell others about their loneliness than older people, but still many young people who feel lonely told us they felt ashamed about it. Were older people afraid to tell us how they really felt or had they found a way of coping?
The BBC loneliness experiment
In February 2018 The BBC Loneliness Experiment was launched on BBC Radio 4 in collaboration with Wellcome Collection. The online survey was created by three leading academics in the field of loneliness research.
But what the results do suggest is that loneliness matters at all ages.
When loneliness becomes chronic it can have a serious impact on both health and well-being. To try to pin down why some feel so lonely, we looked at the differences between people. Those who told us they always or often felt lonely had lower levels of trust in others.
The survey was a snapshot in time, so we can't tell where this lack of trust in others came from, but there is some evidence from previous research that if people feel chronically lonely they can become more sensitive to rejection. Imagine you start a conversation with someone in a shop and they don't respond - if you're feeling desperately lonely, then you might feel rejected and wonder if it's something about you.
Michelle recognises some of this in herself. "You become quite closed off. You are dealing with so many things alone that when people do take an interest you can be quite defensive sometimes. It can be incredibly debilitating being lonely."
The relationship between loneliness and spending time alone is complex - 83% of people in our study said they like being on their own. A third did say that being alone makes them feel lonely and in some cases isolation is clearly at the root of their loneliness.
Jack King is 96 and lives alone in Eastbourne, on the south coast of England, after losing his wife in 2010. On his windowsill sits the tennis-ball-sized rock that hit him, leaving a hole in his forehead, when he spent more than three years as a Japanese POW during World War Two.
Today, he says, the days feel very long, but to distract himself from his loneliness he fills his time writing novels and poetry, playing music and painting.
"I like to keep busy. I'm creative, it's a curse," he says. It was his creativity which kept him going when he was held captive all those decades ago. He would write comic plays and perform them for the other prisoners, fashioning stage curtains out of rice sacks.
After the war he was on a train which was just pulling out of the station when a young woman on the platform shouted to him that he could take her to the pictures if he liked. At first he thought she didn't mean it, but he did notice her beautiful head of hair. They did go on a date and married the same year. After 65 years of happy marriage she had a stroke, followed by another, developed dementia and eventually died. This is when his feelings of loneliness began.
"Loneliness feels like a deep, deep ache," he says. "It's strange when you find the house empty - you really don't know what to do. We took delight in the simple things in life, like walks. We used to go time after time to watch the cloud shadows on the sea at Seven Sisters. And that's what I miss - that type of companionship that is so close and so intense."
Jack has found some solace in his computer. Now that he's too frail to leave the house very often, he says it's opened up the world.
When we examined the use of social media in the survey, we found that people who feel lonely use Facebook differently, using it more for entertainment and to connect with people. They have fewer friends who overlap with real life, and more online-only friends. Social media might heighten feelings of loneliness, but it can also help connect people.
Michelle has found it both helps and hinders. "Through blogging, people have been in touch and that's great - but when I am at my lowest, going on Instagram and seeing people having these amazing lives and enjoying themselves does make you feel, 'Why can't I have that?'
"I think it's really important to remember that people only put up the fun stuff," she adds. "I think we should be more honest on social media. Celebrities are trying to be a bit more honest about the less glamorous sides of their lives, but there's a long way to go."
The survey also found that people who feel discriminated against for any reason - like their sexuality or a disability - were more likely to feel lonely.
Megan Paul is 26. Like Jack and Michelle, she's very sociable and lively. She is blind and looks back now on a very lonely time at school, set apart by her disability and even more so by others' reactions to it.
"I went to a mainstream, all-girls secondary school," says Megan. "It was OK for the first couple of years and then when girls hit their teenage years they become interested in makeup, magazines and how boys look - all quite visual things. I loved my books and animals, so I didn't have the same interests. I couldn't talk about whether boys were cute, so there was that natural growing apart."
In lessons pupils would often work in pairs. When the teacher asked the whole class who wanted to work with Megan, there would be an awkward silence until eventually the teacher paired up with her. Sometimes she felt the staff set a bad example.
"I would put my hand up needing help from the teacher and the teacher would ignore me or make inappropriate comments about me. Pupils learn a lot from adult role models at that age and they saw that the teachers didn't know what to do with me," Megan says.
"I felt awful. My mental health was the worst it's ever been. I wanted to die rather than be at school. Then in Year 11 they agreed that I could do a lot of my work at home. I found that was much better than being stressed out at school and it taught me great study skills."
Now Megan is studying for a master's degree and life has become easier, but she says that there are still aspects of her disability which can make her feel lonely.
"As a blind person we can't make eye contact or use body language. If someone who can see comes into a room they will gravitate towards someone who smiles at them. I'm not smiling until I know that they are there, so they don't get any feedback from me.
"The frustration is that I am confident enough to go up to people and chat, but I have to wait for people to come to me. It does mean the friends I have are really special though, because they're the kind of people who persevered. I appreciate the friends I have so much more because I don't have many of them."
When Megan first got an assistance dog, knowing how many people love dogs, she wondered whether the dog might draw people in to talk to her, but she's found that's not always the case.
"Being an assistance dog owner brings its own type of loneliness - a lonely-in-a-crowd scenario," she says. "If people start stroking the dog I'll use that to start a conversation, but quite a lot of people just walk off. Sometimes I feel I'm overshadowed by my dog. I know I'm not cute and furry but I do have something to offer."
I asked Megan whether she has tried joining any clubs or schemes designed to alleviate loneliness. She would like to, but finds access can be a problem. "Meetups are awkward because people don't know how to approach me. I recently tried to join a walking group with my dog, but they wrote back and said I needed to find a group that walks slowly. I'm a fast walker. They should decide how fast we walk together. If I do go to a group, I'm in the corner and everyone swirls around me. But the more groups I could join, the better."
As time goes on Megan has found that one solution is to turn to her phone. "As you grow, you develop coping strategies. If I feel really bad, now I drop people a message. I don't tell them I'm feeling bad, I'm just making connections and reaching out, so I can work through that feeling."
With the high levels of loneliness among young people, a blog Megan wrote might be particularly useful for those with disabilities at school today. She includes tips, such as holding the door open for people in order to start a conversation.
"I was so bored at school. A lot of people walked through without noticing, but even if you got a 'Thank you' or a 'Hello' at least it was an interaction. I wasn't able to go up to people and say 'Hi' because I didn't know where they were. So it's one way of getting noticed. It's nice to be seen as helpful rather than 'Here's the weird blind girl again.'"
Another of Megan's tips is to talk to teachers as if they're real people, and not just your teachers.
"Even as a teenager, if you're that lonely you don't care who you talk to. I remember talking to a teacher who told me her cat had had kittens. Afterwards I thought, 'That's one less break time spent alone.'"
Megan says she believes not being able to see has made her kinder to others. "People with vision judge people on appearances and I don't, because I can't."
It's possible that loneliness has made her kinder too. We found that people who say they often feel lonely score higher on average for social empathy. They are better at spotting when someone else is feeling rejected or excluded, probably because they have experienced it themselves.
But when it comes to trust, the findings are very different. Although they may be more understanding of other people's emotional pain, on average people who say they often feel lonely had lower levels of trust in others and higher levels of anxiety, both of which can make it harder to make friends.
Michelle can relate to this. "I sometimes feel that people are just being pitying by wanting to spend time with me. I do have trust issues and I think they stem from my anxiety. I think when you become lonely you do start to look inward and question people's motives. You find yourself wondering whether people spend time with me because they want to, or because they feel guilty."
Sometimes it's suggested that people experiencing loneliness need to learn the social skills that would help them to make friends, but we found that people who felt lonely had social skills that were just as high as everyone else's. So instead, perhaps what's needed are strategies to help deal with the anxiety of meeting new people.
Loneliness around the world
Both Jack and Michelle find weekends the hardest. Michelle would like to go out for brunch, but has no-one to go with.
"You can do these things on your own, but it's not as fun, because you can't try the other person's food," she says. "Nice weather makes it worse. You see people sitting outside laughing and joking and I think how I want to be part of that.
"If I stay in all weekend cabin fever will set in, so I take myself off to Oxford Street and spend money I don't necessarily have. It's not the most healthy or practical way of dealing with loneliness, but it's about being around people and it's great because you can lose yourself in the crowd."
So what might help? We asked people which solutions to loneliness they had found helpful. At number one was distracting yourself by dedicating time to work, study or hobbies. Next was joining a social club, but this also appeared in the list of the top three unhelpful things that other people suggest. If you feel isolated then joining a club might help, but if you find it hard to trust people, you might still feel lonely in a crowd.
Number three was trying to change your thinking to make it more positive. This is easier said than done, but there are cognitive behavioural strategies which could help people to trust others. For example, if someone snubs you, you might assume it's because they don't like you, but if you ask yourself honestly what evidence you have for that, you might find there isn't any. Instead you can learn to put forward alternative explanations - that they were tired or busy or preoccupied.
The next most common suggestions were to start a conversation with anyone, talk to friends and family about your feelings and to look for the good in every person you meet.
People told us the most unhelpful suggestion that other people make is to go on dates. Michelle says she does feel lonelier now she's not in relationship, but knows that that meeting someone new wouldn't solve everything. "It's important to remember you can be lonely even when you're in a relationship," she says.
Jack still misses his late wife desperately. I asked him whether he would consider sharing a house so that he had company, but he says he's too set in his ways. He wouldn't want to move to a residential home with other older people because then he'd lack the space to paint and write. So, too frail to leave the house, he called the charity The Silver Line, who arranged for a volunteer to phone him every Sunday for a long chat. His three children live a couple of hours away, but they all phone frequently and he has someone who comes in for two hours on weekdays to help out. All of this makes a difference, he says, but he finds it still doesn't give him the companionship he had previously.
"The weekend is a dismal time," says Jack. "The time can drag. I don't have any friends because all my friends are dead. All the ladies I loved are dead. At this age nearly everybody is dead - except me. I'm still here at 96-and-a-half."
I asked Jack what he thinks the solutions are. "Do what you can do. If you're mobile you can join a class or, if not, do something creative on your own. When you're painting simple watercolours you are so intent on what you're doing that you can't think about anything else."
How to feel less lonely
Another of the solutions suggested in the survey was to start conversations with everyone you meet. Jack does that. "It's a polite thing to do," he says. "If you can find an interest that the other person has got, it's a good way to start a conversation."
Several organisations run projects to alleviate loneliness, but Michelle hasn't yet found anywhere she would be comfortable attending.
"Where do you go to find friends if you're 33?" she asks. "People say, 'Get a dog.' I would love it, but it's not fair on the dog at this time in my life. Maybe exercise would be good - joining a yoga class maybe - or volunteering. I know how powerful that can be."
But after blogging about her loneliness she might be finding her own solution, tailored to her interest in music. Lots of people have been getting in touch with her about going to gigs and she's thinking about whether she could start some kind of social club in London for other young people who feel lonely and like music.
Michelle has also noticed that the small, kind things people do can help, and she tries to do the same herself. "On the way to work, someone smiling at you on the tube can make such a difference, especially if you've woken up feeling like the world is on your shoulders. I go and get coffee in the building where I work and the lady there is so lovely. That's my first interaction of the day.
"It's just being mindful that everyone is dealing with their own stuff, so be kind. Do tiny acts of kindness."
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A diver has been airlifted to a decompression chamber after surfacing from a 300ft (91m) deep pool at a disused quarry in Snowdonia. | The 24-year-old man was at the the flooded Dorothea Quarry in the Nantlle Valley, a popular diving site.
He was taken by an RAF Sea King helicopter to a private Wirral hospital which has a decompression chamber.
It is understood the diver is suffering from decompression sickness, also known as the bends.
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A man from Surrey has been charged with terrorism offences, Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE) said. | Asad Bhatti, 47, of Holland Close, Redhill has been charged with two counts of possessing an article for the purpose of terrorism.
He has also been charged with three counts of making or possessing an explosive under suspicious circumstances.
Mr Bhatti will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday.
He was arrested after a property in Redhill was searched by counter terrorism officers on 8 January.
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Scotland's only breast milk bank has fed more than 400 babies so far this year, with milk supplied from 180 donors. But the service, based at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, is looking for more mothers to donate their milk as it seeks to expand. | "I would donate blood, but I'm postnatal so I can't, so I'll donate milk instead," says Sara Stevenson from Glasgow.
Her baby, Sam, is six months old and thriving. But it was a "rocky start" to feeding him that prompted her to later get involved with the breast milk bank.
"Sam was losing a bit of weight and wasn't peeing and pooing," she says.
"I'd had so much support from my midwife and from the community support…I just felt that at least I could give something back that way."
Sara pumps milk for the donor bank at home and it is then collected by volunteer drivers.
The milk bank relies on these drivers, from Glasgow Children's Hospital Charity, to transport the milk from donors' homes to the bank, and then back out to neonatal units.
Driver Kenny Wilson, who has been a volunteering for two years, said: "Aberdeen is probably the furthest away place I go on a regular basis.
"During the summer we had a baby on Mull and we had to take milk down to Oban. One of the parents came and met us at Oban and the donor milk went over on the ferry.
He added: "I've always believed in volunteering, and have helped in hospitals in the past, so this is just an extension of that."
"We have donors from up in Inverness, right down to the Borders," says Debbie Barnett, co-ordinator of the breast milk bank, which supplies milk to neonatal units across Scotland.
She says both the donors and the drivers help ensure the bank can provide a vital service for premature and ill babies in their crucial early weeks of life.
"Mothers who have had a premature baby, or who are maybe themselves unwell, might take a little bit of time to establish their own supply," says Debbie.
"For the really small babies…those babies that are born at 24/25 weeks, their gut is really sensitive and having access to either mother's own milk or donor milk is much more protective for them.
"There are lots of anti-infective properties in breast milk as well."
Mothers wanting to become donors are screened before their milk is used.
Debbie explains: "We then take their milk and we pasteurise that. We take samples to make sure there is no unwanted bacteria, or bugs in that milk, and then we keep it in our freezers until all the test results are in.
"And once the milk has been cleared for use, it goes back out to the neonatal units."
One of the babies awaiting the arrival of the donor milk is Lily Gordon. She was born 16 weeks early and is being looked after at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital in Glasgow.
"She's been getting breast milk for seven weeks now," says her mum Danielle Gemmill.
"At the start she used to get half a millilitre every hour and now she is up to 25ml every two hours."
Lily's dad Daniel Gordon says that when she was born they were told by doctors there was a one in seven chance that she would make it. Now she is making good progress.
'Home for Christmas'
The One Milk Bank for Scotland opened at the old Southern General Hospital in Glasgow in 2013.
It replaced the old milk bank which had been running at the city's Sick Children's Hospital at Yorkhill since 1978.
In June this year, the Scottish government announced the bank would receive £300,000 of funding over three years.
It said the funding would benefit more than 700 of the most vulnerable babies a year, allowing them to be fed breast milk for a longer period of time to reduce the health risks associated with being sick or premature.
The bank now hopes to recruit more donors as it looks to widen its service.
Lily's dad Daniel says she is an example of the benefits it brings.
"She's doing well," he says. "Thankfully there are these people that actually donate the milk. It's a great thing for us."
"We would say to them - thanks very much. Keep it up.
"Hopefully we'll get Lily home for Christmas."
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As the leader of the PKK declares a ceasefire, there are hopes it will pave the way for an end to its three-decade conflict with Turkey.
One mother, Adile Samur, tells the BBC's James Reynolds in Istanbul how she hopes this would allow her children, all PKK members, to return home - but not without an "honourable" peace. | I come from a small Kurdish village called Suruc, near the border with Syria. My family isn't rich. A decade ago, we moved here to Istanbul because there were no jobs for us back home.
My husband now runs a small kiosk in a shanty area in Istanbul. We have seven children. We managed to send them to primary school, but after that they had to look for work. Three of our children have joined the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party]. None of them gave me any warning, but that's how it is.
My daughter joined up four years ago when she was only 18. My family in Suruc managed to get me a photograph of her. But I don't know exactly where she is at the moment - she could be in Turkey or in Northern Iraq [the main PKK base].
I haven't heard from either of my boys since they left. The first went up to the mountains three years ago, when he was 20.
'Devilish person'
Then, just six months ago, the other one joined up. He's 26 years old and had never planned to join the PKK.
But then he was jailed for six months. A judge ruled that he'd made "cryptic" remarks during a phone conversation with a friend.
Just one phone conversation - and he was jailed for six months! My son said that he was tortured during his time in prison. I wanted to see the marks on his body - but he refused to show me.
The last day I saw him, I was in the backyard. He was wearing green shorts and asked me to make tea for him. Then we sat down. He laid on the couch, put his head on my chest and said how comfortable it was. I remember that day so clearly. Then he was gone. He wouldn't have joined up unless he'd been tortured.
From time to time the Turkish police still knock on my door and ask me "Where is your son?" I say, "I don't know, you very well know where he is."
They call me a bad mother, a devilish person, for not knowing where my son is and threaten me that sooner or later they'll get him. I don't care what they say.
'Honourable peace'
I hope I will be able to see my sons and my daughter again. I can't lose hope. Over the last 40 years, thousands of young men and women have gone up to the mountains - their mothers are waiting for them to return.
They need to bring with them an honourable peace. They went up to the mountains in order to fight for peace and democracy - for the recognition of culture, identity, and language.
But our children can't come back empty-handed. If they just come back for the sake of it then I will not accept their return. My head is held high because my children want the right thing. But if they come back empty-handed then I won't be able to hold up my head and look others in the eye.
For 40 years, there has been a war in this country. People have been killed, or forced to migrate from their homes. There are mothers who are trying to find their children's bones. There needs to be justice for them.
I hope that [PKK leader] Abdullah Ocalan is released from prison and that he gets elected to parliament. I don't know how to read and write but I watch TV. The MPs who've visited him say that he is healthy and in good shape.
This time I believe there's hope for peace. I can't lose hope. I don't want any mothers to cry after their children any more. Neither the mothers of the Kurdish guerrillas nor the mothers of the Turkish soldiers. This should end.
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Plans for a new £4m art gallery have been approved. | Sherborne Arts Trust's Paddock Project in Sherborne, Dorset, will include three gallery spaces, a coffee shop and incorporate the town's tourist information centre.
Dorset Council approved the plans at a meeting on Tuesday.
The decision comes after several changes were made to the plans, including a repositioning of the main building.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) withdrew its previous objection following the amendments.
Other concerns raised during a public consultation included increased traffic and parking issues.
However, those who supported the application described it as an "asset" to the town.
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A town centre Christmas tree labelled "a twig" by critics has been replaced by a new specimen twice the size. | The original 15ft (5m) tree was given to Clacton by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and put up in the Town Square.
But Tendring District Council took it down saying it was "not man enough for the job".
Speaking about the new tree, council leader Peter Halliday said: "Christmas is truly back on in style."
Ian Wickes, of the FSB, said the new tree was "lovely" adding the organisation had been "needled appropriately" about the previous tree.
The smaller tree will be donated to charity.
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Neither business leaders nor economists have a monopoly of wisdom on what's good for Britain or are free from political bias. But it is perhaps therefore all the more important to remember that those paid to think about how best an economy should be run don't necessarily agree with those paid to run companies. | Robert PestonEconomics editor
On the day that more than 100 past and current business leaders have written to the Telegraph that the "Conservative-led government has been good for business and has pursued policies which have supported investment and job creation", a survey of academic macro-economists has come up with a different conclusion.
The Centre for Macroeconomics, which groups leading economists from Cambridge University, LSE, University College London (UCL), the Bank of England and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), polled what it calls its 50 experts on whether the "austerity policies of the coalition government have had a positive effect on aggregate economic activity (employment and GDP) in the UK".
Its result was a decisive no.
Two-thirds of the 33 economists who responded disagreed or strongly disagreed with the proposition that austerity had been good for the UK.
Now to be clear, this is not a scientifically robust poll of those who know best. But nor is the Telegraph's letter - and those those who took part in the economists' survey are no less distinguished in their field than the business signatories.
Among those who disagreed strongly that austerity had been a good thing, Oxford University's Simon Wren-Lewis (never shy to express an opinion) asked if the question was "a joke", adding that "the only interesting question is how much GDP has been lost as a result of austerity" (which he thinks could be as much as 10% of national income).
John Van Reenen of the LSE, who also disagreed with austerity, said "UK GDP is about 15% below where we would have expected on pre-crisis trends... Premature austerity has damaged UK welfare and, as I and others argued at the time, delaying consolidation would have left the UK in a much stronger position than it is today."
But Sir Charlie Bean, former deputy governor of the Bank of England, neither agreed or disagreed. And he said: "The UK consolidation was never undertaken in the belief that it would boost demand directly, but rather that it would reduce the likelihood of a loss of market confidence in the UK government's economic policies, which - had it occurred - would have necessitated a much sharper consolidation."
By contrast, Patrick Minford, of Cardiff Business School, agreed with the austerity policy, He argued: "The coalition government has managed to set a definite direction towards deficit reduction without moving so rapidly as to destabilise the economy. Essentially it has halved the deficit/GDP ratio in this Parliament. In spite of this correction and the reduction in public sector jobs, employment has grown strongly and recovery has been established."
Policy guide: Where the parties stand
The economists were also asked whether the outcome of the coming general election would have "non-trivial consequences for aggregate economic activity (employment and GDP)".
An overwhelming majority, 77%, either agreed or strongly agreed that the economic impact of the election result would not be trivial.
Their arguments for why the outcome would matter were not uniform.
Costas Milas from the University of Liverpool said: "This is conditional on whether a Brexit referendum (a referendum on the UK leaving the EU, as promised by the Tories) takes place. A Brexit referendum will add to investor uncertainty, pushing up borrowing costs that companies face and therefore delay their investment decisions. As a result, economic growth will take a hit."
Michael Wickens of Cardiff Business School and York University said: "Given the closeness of the likely outcome of the election, the Labour Party's denial of their role in ruining the public finances prior to 2010, their continued focus on increasing public expenditure and the likelihood of needing a working arrangement with the even more spendthrift SNP, the prospects for the UK are very precarious - almost on a knife-edge."
Meanwhile, Christopher Martin of Bath University said: "The difference between current Conservative and Labour spending plans is about £40bn per year by the end of the next Parliament. Even the most hard-core, anti-Keynesian would argue that £40bn a year has non-trivial consequences."
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Do you want to be in the audience of special programmes putting politicians under the spotlight?
| BBC Scotland is hosting a series of TV and radio debates ahead of the Holyrood election on 5 May.
Two hustings will take place in the south of Scotland - the first in Dumfries on 26 April and the second on 28 April in Selkirk.
The debates will focus on a number of issues including economic growth, transport and council services.
Debate in detail - Dumfries
Debate in detail - Selkirk
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Work is under way on a £1m project to improve the Waterworld leisure facilities in Wrexham. | It is part of a £2.7m investment at four leisure centres in the county borough.
The gym at Waterworld was shut over the weekend for new flooring and will close again next week for more renovations and equipment installation.
Plans to demolish the centre were scrapped in 2015.
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The long hot summer of 1976 saw Britain in the grip of a gruelling heatwave, struggling with a drought lasting for months. But it was not the only draining battle taking place. In north-west London, a group of South Asian women took to the streets in revolt at poor working conditions at the Grunwick film processing factory. Eventually more than 20,000 people joined in the protest. | By Bethan Bell & Shabnam MahmoodBBC News
The women behind the dissent eventually found themselves taking on not just the factory bosses but the trade unions that initially supported them.
So what is the story of the "strikers in saris"? It is a story not just of a groundbreaking movement, but of an extraordinary woman - Jayaben Desai.
In the 1970s, black and Asian workers were typically relegated to the lowest paid jobs, were often paid less than their white colleagues and were "more often than not, ignored by the trade unions," says Amrit Wilson, a writer and activist on race and gender issues.
Many of the women, originally from India and Pakistan, had been settlers in East Africa when it was under British colonial rule. They lived comfortable lives and worked in middle-class jobs such as teaching or administration.
When Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda gained independence, new governments adopted policies that discriminated against these Asian migrants. As British citizens they were entitled to settle in the UK and many decided to do so.
In London's unwelcoming post-war society, the only work they could get was low-paid factory work and manual labour.
The Grunwick factory, in north-west London, took on many migrant women workers, mostly Indian women from East Africa, who were considered to be "hardworking and docile," according to research.
On 20 August 1976, mother-of-two Mrs Desai walked out of the factory in support of a sacked colleague.
As she left, the line manager compared her and her colleagues to "chattering monkeys".
She replied: "What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo. But in a zoo there are many types of animals. Some are monkeys who dance on your fingertips, others are lions who can bite your head off.
"We are the lions, Mr. Manager."
Her son Sunil Desai, who also worked at the plant, helped her set up picket lines outside the factory. The pair began a passionate campaign to improve standards at the company and egged on many more workers to walk out.
Mr Desai remembers it as "a hot summer with hot tempers".
Mrs Desai, who died in 2010, said at the time: "They got more work out of us. Asians had just come from Uganda and they all needed work.
"So, they took whatever was available. Grunwick put out leaflets saying 'come and we will give you a job. We give jobs to everyone.'
"Door to door. When I went, a friend of mine followed. And soon they were full of Asians."
Hardworking the women may have been - but when roused, docile they were not.
Research by Dr Sundari Anitha, from the University of Lincoln, and Professor Ruth Pearson, from the University of Leeds, suggests that, while these women were "willing to accept jobs that had low status and low pay, they were unwilling to accept the degrading treatment that in those days was typically handed out to 'unskilled' non-white immigrants in workplaces".
Dr Anitha and Prof Pearson have also produced a comic strip about Mrs Desai.
What was wrong with their workplace?
One protester described the managers as "being in a glass cabinet. They could see us, and if they called us into their office, the rest of the workers could see them, but could not hear what was going on.
"We used to work out of fear."
The workers decided that they'd had enough. They joined a trade union and began to make demands.
Grunwick refused to recognise they had joined a union and also refused to give them permission to do so - a position from which they refused to budge.
The 137 workers on strike were sacked.
After a few months picketing outside the factory, their cause was taken up by the wider trade union movement. By June 1977 there were marches in support of the Grunwick strikers, and on some days more than 20,000 people packed themselves into the narrow lanes near Dollis Hill Tube station.
The dispute rapidly escalated, culminating in pitched battles between mass pickets and police as the company bussed in other workers. Three of the Labour government's ministers - Shirley Williams, Fred Mulley and Dennis Howell - joined the picket line.
National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill and striking colliery workers also joined in.
On a particularly brutal day in November 1977, when 8,000 people turned out to protest, 243 pickets were treated for injuries, 12 had broken bones and 113 were arrested.
Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, who insisted a heavy police presence was "necessary", turned up at the demonstration to appeal for calm but he was jeered.
The conciliation and arbitration service Acas was forced to withdraw from the dispute because the Grunwick management refused to take part in mediation.
Eventually, both the TUC (Trades Union Congress) and Apex (the strikers' union), felt that the dispute could not be won and withdrew their support.
At first, Jayaben Desai and the strikers refused to be dictated to.
The long hot summer of 1976 was now in the distant past and - on a cold day in November 1977 - four stalwart protesters - Mrs Desai, Vipin Magdani, Johnny Patel and Yasu Patel - started a hunger strike.
Mrs Desai and her colleagues felt abandoned and disillusioned. As she said: "Trade union support is like honey on the elbow - you can smell it, you can feel it, but you cannot taste it."
But nothing worked and after two long years of struggle, the dispute ended in defeat for the strikers.
The workers who took action were never reinstated and neither did they win union recognition.
There is now little sign in the narrow streets of Dollis Hill that this was once the site of a long and bitter struggle, other than a small, barely noticeable plaque on the wall of the former factory commemorating Mrs Desai's actions.
Later this year a mural will be unveiled where the factory once stood, the funds raised by Brent Trades Council and local activists.
But did the Grunwick dispute have any lasting impact?
Although the strikers did not get their jobs back, some concessions relating to existing and future workers' pay and pensions were won.
However, the greater victory was arguably the message it sent about immigrant workers' place in society and their determination to stand up for their rights.
"The strike was a unique and transformative moment," says Ms Wilson. "It did not put an end to stereotypes of Asian women, but it certainly challenged them.
"This passionate assertion of strength, and the claiming of a newfound collective identity, bringing with it a sense of hope and new possibilities, arose not only from taking a stand as exploited workers but from collectively confronting racism at work.
"It was also, often, about winning a struggle against the patriarchy of the women's families and communities in order to go on strike in the first place."
There were other knock-on effects from the dispute. The mobilisation of the trade union movement in support of the women was one of the factors that contributed to the outlawing of secondary picketing by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government of the 1980s.
And the period also saw the establishment of state databases of activists, for the purposes of surveillance. Special Branch even had files on the Grunwick strikers and some of their supporters, including Jack Dromey MP, who was at the time the secretary of Brent Trades Council.
He said that the lasting legacy of the strikes was the example set by Mrs Desai.
He said that, in generations to come, "people will look back at a woman who was truly one of the most remarkable women to ever have fought for workers' rights".
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A sheep-farming couple managed to dig one of the animals out of a snow drift and hope there are not any more. | Robbie Alman-Wilson and her husband have 2,000 sheep on their land at Llanbister, Powys.
However, they are not sure how many are missing following the heavy snow during Storm Emma.
They have been out each day and hope most of the flock made it to lower ground in time but will not know for definite until the snow has melted.
"I would like to think we haven't lost many, no more than 10," she said.
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Britain's biggest commercial news publisher is after your data, as part of a vigorous shake-up of the battle for readers and viewers. Newspapers have been slow to tap that source of reader value, while US-based tech giants have gobbled the advertising market. Newsprint sales continue to fall, for most, while the BBC's future is under pressure from market disruption and politics. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
If you haven't yet been "engaged in a key vertical", brace yourself.
The Daily Record stable of newspapers, which is Britain's biggest, currently provide access to online content for free, are about to demand your data.
That includes the Mirror, Express, their weekly partners including the Sunday Mail and many more local titles.
According to Jim Mullen, the Glaswegian who has led publisher Reach plc since last August, this "will enable us to better personalise our offering and introduce customers to new products and services".
It's to get "a better understanding of their behaviour and interests".
Sounds very considerate of him, doesn't it? But as you're probably aware, he's tapping into that data - your data - because, in the right hands, it's gold dust.
Up front, it can lead to personalised ads. Behind the algorithms, and diving deep into the "key verticals", it can be mixed with numerous other data sources to provide a rich and textured picture of customer behaviour, spending power and preferences.
This shouldn't shock you. Those who use the big four - Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft - are handing over vast amounts of information to them. In turn, they have become immensely powerful and valuable controllers of the data and algorithms that shape our online experience.
Hacked off
What might shock you more is how slow news publishers have been to join in.
Reach plc - formerly Trinity Mirror until it merged with the Express and Star group - gets data from only a tiny proportion of its online users - around 2% of 47 million users who ramble across its news sites, at least occasionally.
Mr Mullen wants it to become the fifth big player, at least in the UK.
The chief executive announced this initiative while revealing improved financial results for 2019.
That may have helped draw attention away from the £86.5m bill, so far, that his company has had to pay out or set aside for those whose phones it hacked - substantially up on last year.
Meanwhile, the print end of news continues to look weak and, for those of us proud to have worked in it, sad.
Some 61% of revenue from Reach newspapers comes from circulation (the cover price), down by 4.5%. Falling sales have been offset by higher prices.
In advertising, which delivers 39% of print revenue, it's down 19% in only one year.
Regional titles
The results were published in the wake of the industry's annual upsum on what they call "regional" titles. That description used to make Scottish national newspaper editors bristle with indignation. But falling sales of their print editions has made the "regional" description all too true.
The Audit Bureau of Circulation, owned by the industry, has just published figures for July to December, which show the not-so-national Scotsman shifting only 14,400 copies a day. Of those, 2,700 are given away.
Ten years ago, the Scotsman was selling 43,000. Until recently, it gave away online content for free, hoping that digital advertising at scale would make up for lost print sales. Those hopes haven't come to much.
After waves of cuts to editorial budgets, the financiers who bought the assets of Johnston Press, its former Edinburgh-based owner, when that was put into administration, are trying to sell.
Further north, in Dundee and Aberdeen, the city-based papers have declined, but not nearly as sharply. It seems that it helps not to aspire to be national, but instead to serve an established regional market within Scotland.
The Courier was down 3,000 on 2018, to 30,200 daily sales, on average, in the second half of last year.
The Press and Journal was down at a similar pace, to 39,500.
Deep pockets
By last month, among the papers classified as "national", the Scottish Sun was shifting 154,400 copies daily, both the Record and its Sunday Mail stablemate were just above 100,000.
Ten years ago, the Sun sold 340,000 while the Record was shifting 300,000 daily in Scotland, and 35,000 south of the border.
Last month, the Scottish Daily Mail was selling 70,200 in its average daily sale, and the Express 31,700.
The once world-beating Sunday Post sells 68,200 weekly.
For those publishers who see the death of print as inevitable, milking it for profit while they can, The Times shows it doesn't have to be that way.
It has combined reduced price print sales with online subscriptions, and other benefits from club membership. The paper's publisher has also used deep pockets to continue investing in journalism. The result is print sales which have defied the powerful sector gravity, and last month sold 28,400.
And The Herald? Or its stablemate, The National? Ten years ago, the Herald was selling more than 50,000. By 2018, that was below 20,000.
Then, during last year, American-owned publisher Newsquest opted out of the Audit Bureau of Circulation. It opted into a specialist at counting digital traffic.
Circulation numbers have now been released by BPA, the new auditors, that put Herald circulation on 22,400. The National, with a campaigning take on Scottish independence, is on 10,000 and the Sunday National on 11,000. Those numbers are up on the ABC figures, but may not be directly comparable.
Digital is where most news publishers are picking up new readers. That's where they hope to make a future for news publishing. But being so far behind the Google and Facebook curve in advertising, they have a long way to catch up if they're going to provide any challenge for the digital giants.
Licence to bill
The other news publisher that publishers would love to cut down to size is the BBC. It has a funding stream from the TV licence fee, and the corporation's website soaks up a large share of news traffic.
The opportunity to hobble it may have arrived, with a UK government consultation on the proposal that it ends the pursuit of licence fee non-payers through criminal law.
To that, add barely anonymised briefings from Downing Street that there's a project to force the BBC into shedding numerous services which compete with commercial media.
The corporation's competitors for viewer eyeballs - and notably younger ones - are now Netflix, Amazon and Sky, investing heavily to recruit and retain subscribers with glossy entertainment. In that environment, justifying the licence fee clearly gets harder.
The older newsprint publishers are unlikely either to come to the BBC's aid, or to shed a tear.
But along with ITV and STV, they fear the prospect of the BBC being forced to sell advertising. That competition could do a lot of damage to their advertising revenue.
John McLellan, spokesman for the newspaper publishers, wrote in The Scotsman last week about the perception of commercial publishers struggling in markets such as Orkney and Shetland, where the BBC offers local radio news services.
BBC Scotland's year-old digital channel is also under assault from critics over the size of its audiences. They are a long way behind the main four terrestrial channels - BBC1, ITV1, BBC2 and Channel Four. That should be no surprise. The BBC response is that the new channel does well against the dozens of others that compete further down the Electronic Programme Guide, and search for content on iPlayer has risen a lot and consistently.
"So much of the debate about the BBC in Scotland surrounds the spending settlement and alleged anti-SNP bias," wrote Mr McLellan, "while the really big questions about the suitability and sustainability of the licence fee, how Scottish public service broadcasting can be sustained, and the BBC's relationship with commercial media large and small go largely unanswered."
There are no simple answers - and any complex answer has to take into account the media market clout of the digital giants.
Taxing them fairly would surely help reduce their capacity for disruptive destruction. But that requires international agreement. And while President Trump is around, and Britain tries to curry favour with him and other trading partners around the globe, such tax fairness seems a distant prospect.
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The reclusive kingdom of Bhutan has for years granted only limited access to tourists. But the country is now slowly attracting more visitors - and one way it is doing so is through extreme sports, as filmmaker Alex Bescoby recounts. | It was 2am on a chilly September morning in Bhutan, and a gruelling 268km (166 miles) slog lay ahead.
Between me and the finish line in the capital, Thimphu, lay four mountain-passes each more than 10,000ft high (3,050m) and a feat of endurance that has taken world-class athletes more than 11 hours to complete.
As the organisers of the Tour of the Dragon (TOD) point out, real dangers awaited.
The TOD has been billed as the "toughest one-day bike race in the world". Between the rough undulating terrain and the potential to run into wild tigers, leopards and wild boar, it wasn't hard to see why.
Only 47 others took part and most were, unlike myself, perfect cycling specimens from Bhutan and abroad.
'It's my dream'
Beside me at the start-line was Wangchuk Namgay, the youngest rider at just 17.
"It's my dream to complete this race," he confided.
He had never ridden anywhere near this distance before, but his nerves were dampened by the months of training he had put in, and the potential to win the first prize of £1,500 ($1,950).
On my other side was a more seasoned Bhutanese rider, 46-year-old Rinzin Norbu, who was undertaking his eighth race.
"Has anyone ever died doing this?" I asked him, increasingly nervous.
"No, not yet", he grinned. "Our prime minister broke his jaw. It didn't stop him finishing."
It's a good insight into the people that thrive in this nation of just 750,000, tucked between India and China, and nicknamed The Land of the Thunder Dragon.
Bhutan's Prince Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck a passionate cyclist, founded the TOD in 2010 as a challenge between friends. But such is the veneration for the royal family in Bhutan, the race has become a national event.
The 34-year-old prince, dressed ready to race, stopped to greet each rider personally. Heads were bowed and backs straightened.
"Pace yourself, and stay safe," he told me in a reassuring tone.
Minutes later a rumbling prayer from saffron-robed monks built to a crescendo, and the starting gun set off a cloud of confetti.
Before sunrise, darkness was the biggest danger.
The cheap torch I'd strapped to my handlebars failed to spot cows emerging like bovine icebergs in the pre-dawn fog. They refused to move - possibly due to a lack of fear stemming from the ban on all animal-killing in Bhutan, or perhaps due to the copious marijuana growing wild around us.
When the sun finally rose five hours later, it brought its own problems. The temperature rocketed, and my skin turned bright-red in the thin mountain air.
The five-hour uphill slog that followed deserved its own circle in hell. Bhutan only paved its first road in 1962, and large sections of the route remained a work-in-progress.
As I inched forward in the lowest gear through mile-after-mile of treacle-like mud, the air turned blue with my increasingly inventive swearing.
I found myself dead last, making painfully slow progress. The driver of the sweeper bus behind me alleviated his boredom by live-streaming my efforts across social media via his smartphone.
Culture vs cash
Mobile phones only arrived in Bhutan in 2003 - just four years after the television - but the country is now reaching 100% penetration rates.
Its thinly spread population once relied on messengers travelling weeks on foot through precarious mountain passes.
But now social media is connecting the Bhutanese like never before, as well as broadcasting my suffering across the country in seconds.
And it's not just smartphones that have taken off in Bhutan. The country's tourism industry is also on the rise.
Bhutan has traditionally restricted tourism to the wealthy few, using steep daily visa-fees to safeguard its pristine environment and proudly independent culture.
But a partnership agreement with India has seen large numbers of tourists visiting Bhutan visa-free in the last few years.
Many bring their own cars and supplies, and stay only briefly in the growing number of high-volume, low-budget hotels popping up across the country.
While some welcome the extra revenue and interest in Bhutan's unique history and culture, it's an issue causing rare disagreement in a country famous for focusing on "Gross National Happiness".
Finding the right balance will likely be top of the agenda for the new government formed after Bhutan goes to the polls for only the third time in history in October.
So perhaps cycling could be the country's way of striking that balance - attracting international athletes while showcasing the best of its culture and environment.
Bhutan is traditionally known for its obsession with archery, its national sport.
But the Bhutan Olympic Committee (BOC) has been increasingly keen to see Bhutan's young athletes consider cycling as an option.
Its secretary-general, Sonam Karma Tshering, believes the presence of world-famous cyclists taking part in the TOD could inspire a future Bhutanese world-champion. He feels that Bhutan's unforgiving terrain is the perfect place for elite cycling to take hold.
The royal family's passion for cycling has also helped.
Bhutan's beloved former king, now in happy retirement having abdicated in favour of his son, can be seen cycling dressed in his traditional gho most days in the hills around Thimphu.
Back in the unforgiving mountains, my race towards the finish line continued.
After more than 14 soul-destroying and awe-inspiring hours, I finally surrendered at the 200km mark - a distance surprising both me and my growing online following.
"Ah, the last man standing", quipped Mr Tshering as I limped into his office at the BOC a few days later to discuss his vision for the race.
"It could be the Tour de France of Bhutan!" he declared, only half-joking.
While the race was over for me, the BOC has high hopes of attracting more riders than ever for next year's 10th TOD. But there is a limit, Mr Tshering insisted.
"We want a world class race without selling our soul."
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It was seven years before the first manned flight when James Ira Thomas "Taffy" Jones was born in St Clears, Carmarthenshire, on 18 April 1896. But the illegitimate son of a farm labourer would go on to become one of the most decorated fighter pilots in the RAF's 100-year history. | By Neil PriorBBC News
His career, which began as a 17-year-old in 1913, saw him earn 37 dogfight victories, and survive 28 crashes over the Western Front.
It all started when he won a place to study wireless engineering at the Army's Royal Flying Corps at Hendon aerodrome in London.
According to Byron Rogers, whose book Tiger Squadron tells his tale, it was here that Jones knew he was going to be a pilot.
He said: "I grew up with the stories of Taffy from my father and uncle who were in school with him. Even though he was only 5ft 4in and had a severe stutter, he was a force of nature.
"He'd barely started at Hendon when he was taken on his first flight. He described the sensation of people moving like ants below him, and wrote 'Please god let me do this for the rest of my life'."
Jones spent the first two years of World War One directing air traffic by radio from the trenches, but by 1916 he had progressed to flying as an observer.
According to military historian Dr Jonathan Hicks, the war in the air was changing, just at the right time for Taffy.
He said: "At the start of the war, planes were largely just seen as spotters for artillery, but gradually as their importance increased, they started to attack each other, often just with a pistol, or on occasions even with a rifle.
"Eventually they were fitted with machine guns, though they were incredibly difficult to use as you had to fly the plane with one hand and operate the machine gun with the other. Plus there was the risk of shooting off your own propellers.
"The invention of the interrupter gear was crucial, as that sequenced the gun with the propeller, allowing pilots to fire between the blades."
Unusually for someone from his background, Jones was commissioned from the ranks in 1917, and trained as a pilot just in time to become part of the new RAF's 74th Tiger Squadron on 1 April 1918.
After World War One he was given command of 74th Squadron, flying in operations over Russia and Iraq.
Semi-retired at the outbreak of World War Two, he trained pilots at RAF Porthcawl, where Taffy achieved possibly his most famous feat.
Having no available fighters, when the air raid siren sounded he took an unarmed Hawker Henley training plane and attacked a Junkers JU88 bomber over Swansea.
Armed with nothing but a flare gun, he forced the German pilot to abandon his bombing run.
Afterwards, in an audience with George VI, the King remarked: "You're too old for this sort of thing Taffy, it's a young man's game."
Though Mr Rogers believes Taffy's superiors were not as appreciative of his efforts.
He said: "As the war went on, Taffy increasingly felt he wasn't getting the recognition he deserved, and he began to drink heavily.
"This can't have been helped by what we'd almost certainly describe today as post-traumatic stress disorder.
"In one diary entry he describes waking from nightmares 22 times in a night, and having to tie the strings of his pyjamas to the bedpost to stop him thrashing around."
He died in 1960 after suffering a fall at his home and is buried at Cana Chapel yard in Bancyfelin, Carmarthenshire.
You can listen to the full story on Tigers Over The Trenches on BBC iPlayer.
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Villagers in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu hope to celebrate the New Year harvest festival later this month with traditional "bull-taming" contests once more. "Jallikattu" is a sport that has been practised in southern India for thousands of years, but was banned by the Supreme Court in 2014 following objections from animal rights activists. For the first time in centuries no events were held last year. | Now, political parties and supporters of Jallikattu hope the government in Delhi will promulgate a special act to bring back the contests in time for the 2016 season in mid-January. Photos by J Suresh. Words by Anbarasan Ethirajan.
This was a typical scene until 2014. Here a bull has been let loose at a "Manju Virattu" contest (a version of Jallikattu). In recent years, regulations were imposed to improve safety for bulls and spectators, as well as contestants.
In Manju Virattu, the bull roams freely in the crowd, while contestants try to pluck money or other prizes from its horns.
Last year, villages across the state celebrated Pongal, a New Year festival that coincides with the rice harvest, without the running of the bulls.
The Tamil sign on the top left says: World famous bullfighting arena at Alanganallur. The town's arena has been silent since the ban.
Bulls which would normally have been kept busy have been idle since 2014.
Protests have been held across the state, with political parties and cultural organisations up in arms against the ban. They say Jallikattu is a part of their cultural tradition.
Here in Palamedu near Madurai last month a special prayer was said in support of bringing back bullfighting.
To welcome the new harvest festival, people soon will be wearing new clothes, houses will be painted, roads will be decorated with garlands and special prayers will be offered to Mother Nature and other deities.
The bullfighting villages hope to be back in business too.
All eyes on the bull - for contestants the taming of the bull is a matter of heroism, pride and great danger. Seen here before the ban, young men are wearing numbered uniforms - part of the new regulations in recent years.
During the event, hundreds of men will run along with the bull, hold on to its hump and pluck away bundles of money or gold tied to its specially sharpened horns. Unlike bullfighting in Spain, in Jallikattu the bull is not killed and the bullfighters are not supposed to use any weapons.
The idea is to dominate and tame the animals. Jallikattu is more than 2,000 years old and considered to be one of the oldest sports still practised in the modern era. Though most of the bullfighting happens in January, several villages organise events during various festivals from January to June.
Here, bulls are readied for contest before the ban - animal rights activists argued that keeping the bulls in such an enclosed space was bad for their health.
They also pointed to tactics like tail-pulling as being cruel. The Supreme Court said that the use of bulls in the sport "severely harmed" the animals and was an offence under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.
Over the years, scores of people have been gored or trampled to death in the contests. Hundreds, including spectators, have been mauled or injured. In arenas like this one, coir matting from coconut trees cushioned the impact of a fall - but it provides no defence against a raging bull.
This young man's future is hanging by a few strands of cotton.
In Jallikattu, the bull is released from the pen and the bullfighters are supposed to hold on to the hump for about 15-20 metres or three jumps of the bull to win the prize.
Fighters have got to be fit - some may take a drink beforehand to strengthen their nerves, but being drunk means you won't be allowed to take part these days. It's also a very bad idea - when angry bulls with sharp horns are around, reflexes need to be razor sharp too.
It's prestigious to be the owner of a champion bull and takes a lot of money - the animals are kept on a special diet and very few can approach them.
Those who tame a bull - as the man in the picture above has done - were seen as heroes in their villages.
"Bull fighting has been part and parcel of our cultural tradition for centuries. Despite agreeing to the rules imposed by the court earlier, the event has been banned. We are terribly upset," says P Rajasekaran, president of Tamil Nadu Jallikattu Association, from the city of Madurai.
He denies accusations that the bulls were tortured and ill-treated. "We implemented strict rules regarding welfare of the bulls and bull fighters after the court intervened in 2008. We have no idea why the Supreme Court decided to impose the ban."
Contestants and the ferocious noise of the crowd ensured the bulls were enraged by the time they entered the arena.
Animal rights activists say the bulls were also sometimes force-fed homemade liquor, and had chilli powder rubbed in their eyes, ears and mouth. In some places their tails were even bitten and testicles pinched to get them angry.
Following the outcry, the state government introduced a number of strict regulations aimed at ensuring the bulls were not ill-treated and keeping people safe. Animals now need to be registered, photographed and tested by a vet before they are allowed to take part. Details are cross-checked before they enter the arena.
Bulls are also given regular exercise to keep them fit and strong for competition. If the ban is lifted they will be ready to run in time for the January festival, their owners say.
The events used to attract often vast crowds. There was always a higher risk of injury to people at Manju Virattu contests, where bulls were set loose among the tightly packed spectators and contestants.
At this pre-2015 Jallikattu contest some of the new safety measures are visible - the crowd is fenced off from the bull.
Since the ban was imposed, protesters in Tamil Nadu have been demanding the central government allow them to continue the sport.
The Bharatiya Janata Party government in Delhi has promised to look into their demands sympathetically, much to the annoyance of animal rights activists.
It's far from certain that bulls will be part of the festival this year - the government and legal opinion are at odds on the issue - but hopes in Tamil Nadu are high as their New Year approaches.
J Suresh is an award-winning photographer based in Delhi.
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Guernsey's housing minister has admitted more could be done to help first-time buyers - but said it was not a priority for his department. | It follows a call for a subsidy on stamp duty from Dean De La Rue, a local mortgage lender.
He said the burden of legal fees prevented people from getting on to the property ladder.
Deputy Dave Jones said his department recognised the problem and would try to improve the situation in the future.
He said: "It has never been easy to buy a house in Guernsey, it's always been expensive because we live in an island that has very little unemployment and it's a place where people want to live.
"We will have to look at it and see what we can do more to help youngsters, but at the moment our job at housing is to level up the playing field and make sure that all tenures of housing are available to all people."
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A US aircraft leasing company has signed a letter of intent to buy 50 Airbus A220s, the wings of which are made in Belfast. | By John CampbellBBC News NI Economics & Business Editor
Air Lease Corporation (ALC) made the announcement at the Paris Airshow on Monday.
About 1,000 staff work at the A220 wing factory in Belfast.
The A220 was formerly the Bombardier C Series until Airbus bought a majority share in the project in 2017.
The Belfast plant was given a similar boost in 2018 when US airline JetBlue ordered up to 120 Airbus A220 planes for delivery in early 2020.
The order announced in Paris is part of a bigger deal with Airbus.
Airbus said there is now an order book for more than 500 A220s.
ALC is one of Airbus's biggest leasing customers but this is its first order for A220s.
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Situated in north-eastern Europe with a coastline along the Baltic Sea, Latvia has borders with Estonia, Russia, Belarus and Lithuania. It has linguistic links with Lithuania to the south, and historical and religious ties with Estonia to the north. | Not much more than a decade after it regained independence during the demise of the Soviet Union, Latvia was welcomed as an member of the European Union in May 2004. The move came a matter of weeks after it joined Nato.
For centuries Latvia was primarily an agricultural country, with seafaring, fishing and forestry as other important economic factors.
Like its Baltic neighbours, Latvia has made a rapid transition to the free market since the early 1990s.
More than a quarter of the population is primarily Russian-speaking, and Russian propaganda efforts in this community are a cause of concern for the Latvian authorities.
FACTS
LEADERS
President: Raimonds Vejonis
Raimonds Vejonis was elected in June 2015 after five rounds of voting in Latvia's 100-member parliament.
Mr Vejonis's previous position as defence minister was seen as a possible advantage in dealing with heightened military and political tension with neighbouring Russia.
Although generally a ceremonial post, Latvia's president can veto legislation, call referendums, and has some leeway in nominating the prime minister for parliamentary approval.
Prime minister: Arturs Krisjanis Karins
Arturs Krisjanis Karins became prime minister in January 2019 at the head of a coalition of five conservative and liberal parties, excluding the pro-Russia Harmony party that had emerged as the largest bloc in parliament after the October 2018 elections.
Mr Karins was born in the US state of Delaware to Latvian emigre parents, and earned a doctorate in linguistics before emigrating to Latvia and going into business.
He was elected to parliament in 2002 as an MP for the centre-right New Era Party, and went on to serve as economy minister before becoming a member of the European Parliament.
He was the conservative Unity party's candidate for premiership at the 2018 election. MEDIA
The media operate freely, with few legal restrictions. A law provides prison terms for libel and incitement of racial hatred.
Newspapers - all of them privately-owned - reflect a variety of political views. Many titles have suffered declining circulations.
By 2015, around 82% of Latvians were online (Internetworldstats).
TIMELINE
Some key events in the history of Latvia:
1800s - Latvia is under Russian rule.
1917-20 - Latvian war of independence. After the Russian Revolution, Latvia fights to establish its independence against the Soviet Russian and German armies.
1920 - Soviet Russia recognises Latvian independence.
1940 - Soviet Union annexes Latvia, along with neighbouring Estonia and Latvia. Mass deportations to Siberia and Central Asia follow.
1941 - Nazi Germany invades. Some 70,000 Latvian Jews are killed by Nazi death squads and Latvian paramilitary units.
1944 - Soviet Army returns, heralding further waves of deportations and repression of resistance to Soviet rule.
1991 - Independence restored.
2004 - Latvia joins European Union and Nato.
2014 - Latvia joins the eurozone.
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The cold snap in the first few days of 2021 has created a winter wonderland across the West Midlands for photographers to capture. | Dozens of images of wonderful frost and snow scenes have been shared via the BBC Midlands Instagram account.
You can see them by following the Instagram hashtag #bbcmidlands, and below is a gallery of some of our favourite shots.
Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]
Related Internet Links
BBC Midlands Instagram
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Grooming, rape, trafficking, or the many other ways children are being sexually abused, the subject of child sexual exploitation - or CSE as it is known by professionals in the field - is in the headlines with depressing regularity. Telford is currently in the spotlight - but is by no means the first place and will not be the last. | By Bethan BellBBC News
There were so many opportunities - in Rotherham, in Rochdale, in Oxford - to step in and help. No-one did. The exploitation continued.
Not only did the cycle of abuse grind on, but the message given to the victims must have been that "we don't care about you".
One 13-year-old girl, "with disrupted clothing", was found by police in a house in the early hours with a group of men who had given her vodka. A neighbour had called the police after hearing the girl scream. The teenager was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. The men were not questioned.
A 12-year-old girl was found, being plied with alcohol, in a car with a 22-year-old man. He had indecent images of her on his phone. No action was taken.
Rather than being offered protection, teenagers groomed and coerced into having sex faced criminal charges of prostitution.
A major factor was the public - and professional - perception of the abused girls, who were often dismissed as troublemakers.
As the Children's Society 1995 Game's Up report asked: "Is it acceptable that a child abused at home is protected, whereas a child abused on the street is criminalised?"
And the media unwittingly helped to obscure the scale of the abuse, referring to children as the "girlfriends" of adult men. When in 2001, Lucy Lowe was murdered in Telford - along with her mother and sister - by the 26-year-old man who had groomed and abused her, news outlets - including the BBC - described the adult killer as Lucy's "boyfriend".
She was 16 and pregnant with her second child by Azhar Ali Mehmood, who set fire to the Lowe family home. The infant, who had been in the house, was later found wrapped in a blanket in the garden.
In court, the prosecution barrister Adrian Redgrave QC said: "There had also been occasions when he had been, in one way or another, humiliated in front of others by things that Lucy had said or done. He was jealous and possessive."
The court heard they had a "stormy relationship and argued frequently, sometimes about her relationships with other men".
It makes for difficult reading.
At no point is a suggestion made that this was not a "relationship" and that Lucy was a victim of rape. Targeted by Mehmood aged 12 and giving birth to her first child at 14, she was legally incapable of consent.
It was later to emerge that Lucy's situation was far from unusual. Operation Chalice, launched by West Mercia Police, led to the jailing of a group of Asian men, mostly of Pakistani origin, whom police said may have targeted more than 100 girls.
"Even five years ago, people were talking about the 'lifestyle choices' these young people were making," says Adele Gladman, the Home Office researcher who reported the scale of abuse in Rotherham.
As recently as 2012, when 24-year-old Ahdel Ali was convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl and jailed for 18 years, his barrister asked the judge to be lenient because "this type of rape is not like other horrible types of rapes".
It now seems astonishing, but lawyer Tayyab Khan stood up in court and said the child "had loved" Ali, who had been "pleasant to her" and it had been "a consensual relationship". A message both damaging and dangerous.
But the language used to describe young people in abusive situations is slowly changing. A significant factor was the abolishment of the term "child prostitution" in favour of the term child sexual exploitation, first used in 2009 in a Department for Education document.
A small change, perhaps, but it shifted the focus and clarified that the children involved were victims, not perpetrators, of crimes.
According to research carried out by Barnardo's, describing victims as a "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" can make it more difficult for them to realise they are in an abusive situation.
The Jay Report cites cases in which abusers targeted children when they knew there was a chance the victim might be especially vulnerable, such as those living in local authority residential units, and who have "a desperate need for attention and affection".
Those in local authority care are often deliberately targeted for exploitation as they may not have the same support in their lives, with adults who can spot that they are at risk.
The Barnardo's research indicates "perpetrators of this type of CSE will particularly draw on children's feelings of loneliness, their need for care, and their desire to be loved".
A girl starved of attention and kindness is more likely to believe she is in a caring relationship, leaving the perpetrator free to coerce her to have sex with friends or associates. As a result, children will often protect the perpetrator, even when they recognise their behaviour as exploitative and abusive.
"I know he loves me. He has other girlfriends, but I'm special," was a sentiment often uttered in the investigation into what happened in Rotherham. Many victims do not want to co-operate with the criminal justice system.
A care worker, who was employed at children's homes from 2003-2007, spoke anonymously to the BBC in 2014. He said men would arrive almost "every night" to collect girls, who escaped using a range of methods and were then usually driven off in taxis.
"Children who have been abused do not blame their attacker simply because they "are struggling for love".
"But you cannot provide love in a children's unit. It's one thing that you can't provide, and as a corporate parent it's where we fail.
"And if [the abusers] are providing that, plus drugs, and alcohol and freedoms, or perceived freedoms, then we're never going to be able to keep them safe."
Dr Helen Beckett, director at the University of Bedfordshire centre of researching CSE says: "What is common across all forms of CSE is the rarity with which young people disclose what is happening to them.
"There are many different reasons for this - many young people don't even realise the abusive nature of what is happening. Some may even feel in some way complicit in the abuse because there has been some kind of 'reward' or receipt of something."
That can be gifts, alcohol, drugs, or affection. In some cases victims are so traumatised they use drink or drugs to cope. But they then need the means to get the drink or drugs. It's a vicious circle.
Ms Gladman says this is one area in which "nothing has changed".
"The grooming is so good, so targeted and tailored that the girls - and boys - involved don't understand they are being exploited. They don't listen to warnings. They're desperate for love and attention and it's up to the experts to recognise that, to spot who is vulnerable, and almost follow the grooming process themselves.
"We have to engage with the young people and make them feel worthwhile, give them life skills."
There is, however, a danger in thinking the only people at risk are those with difficult histories. As Ms Gladman points out: "Parents tend to believe it's kids from troubled families who are at risk.
"Any child can be vulnerable if not protected."
While some of the most high-profile cases of CSE have involved gangs of men with Pakistani heritage abusing white girls, Dr Beckett points out that there is "no typical CSE case".
"It exists across every ethnic grouping, both in terms of those perpetrating and in terms of those experiencing the abuse. Research tells us that both males and females are abused through CSE. Similarly, both males and females perpetrate the abuse.
"Whilst most of our focus historically has been on adults abusing children, we are increasingly learning about peer-on-peer abuse and the risk that young people face within their own social settings."
One example is that of Laura Wilson, a 17-year-old murdered by Ashtiaq Asghar - also 17 - in Rotherham in 2010. He stabbed her multiple times and pushed her into a canal to die.
Once again, the press described the killer as her "boyfriend" at the same time as reporting that Laura had a four-month-old daughter with Asghar's friend, and that they "treated white girls as 'sexual targets' and not like human beings".
Peter Grigg from the Children's Society says there has been a gradual change in attitudes towards the nature of exploitation, and the exposure of the abuse in Rotherham, Rochdale and other places "has certainly ensured decision-makers and the public pay attention to issues".
But how is the issue tackled?
Everybody involved in child protection agrees there is no single solution. No one agency holds the answers.
According to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, systematic grooming and sexual abuse of children by groups of offenders in cities and towns of England and Wales is "widespread".
Adele Gladman says that over the past 12 years in which she has been working in the field, there is no geographical location where it is not a problem.
Peter Grigg says it's "very likely that many other victims exist that haven't yet felt able to speak out".
The charity's Old Enough to Know better? report showed that 50,000 females aged 16 and 17 experienced sexual offences against them but only around 5,000 of them were reported to the police.
The actual figures are impossible to accurately predict, says Cassi Harrison, director of the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse.
"Due to data limitations, we are making decisions in a fog. We just can't say if more children are being sexually abused. We know we are identifying more of it, but this the tip of the iceberg.
"Reported numbers are increasing, but that could be because of increased willingness of victims to report linked to confidence they will be taken seriously, increased professional awareness of the signs of abuse and commitment to take action - or because recording has improved."
'Nobody asked any questions'
Holly - not her real name - was a victim of a group of men in Telford. She told the BBC what happened to her
"He started violently raping me, he would beat me with his belt if I didn't let him rape me. Afterwards he would try to make me feel better - or make himself feel better - by giving me money or topping up my mobile phone.
"It quickly moved on to being sold to men maybe two or three times a night. I was taken to a place I can only describe as a 'rape house' which was set up for the purpose of young girls being sold to men.
"The reason I kept going back was that they kept threatening me with burning my house down, which was a real threat in Telford as that had actually happened previously. They said they'd rape my mum and rape my sisters. They knew all about my family. There was just no escape at all.
"I was gang-raped just after I turned 16 and that was probably the worst thing that has ever happened to me. After that I tried to commit suicide. People would say to me 'was that a cry for help?' and I would say 'no - I genuinely wanted to die' because I thought that was the only way out.
"I was in cars that were stopped and searched by police with older men and it was never questioned why I was in there or who I was. My name was never asked. I just think if they had been more proactive at points like that, things could have changed earlier.
"I was also going to the doctor and the youth sexual health clinic a couple of times a week for three years and getting the morning-after pill.
"Nobody asked any questions.
"I had two abortions and again, no questions were asked as to what was going on in my life."
Identifying at-risk children is done by various organisations - charities, social workers, and police all have child welfare personnel who are out on the streets at night. Outreach sessions are held in parks and other areas popular with children.
Some children are already in contact with social services, for example those who are in local authority care. Workers use methods including regular texting, calls and cards, as well as by arranging to meet on the young person's "home ground" or at venues where they feel comfortable.
Ms Gladman, now an independent safeguarding children trainer and consultant, says legislation has been made more sophisticated in order to deal with the impact of grooming - and importantly, every local authority now has a protocol to identify and prevent CSE.
"We've become more aware of abuse and better at spotting it. In some ways, we've made huge strides. We're reaching out to parents and communities - we're engaging with what's called the 'night-time economy', taxi drivers, takeaways, off licences, places like that."
Staff at such premises have proved a valuable - if unofficial - resource when it comes to safeguarding children. Last year, taxi driver Satbir Arora raised the alarm after he drove a teenager alone to a railway station.
"Often, people let their guard down when they're out and about or in shops. Children talk to each other, and they may be overheard by the shopkeeper who can get in touch with the police about what they suspect," says Ms Gladman.
Cassi Harrison agrees public awareness is changing for the better.
"Over the past few years, we've seen an increased understanding of CSE; the complexity of the relationships between the abuser and the victim, and the way the abuser can control and manipulate the victim.
"Our ambition should be to prevent abuse before it happens, not wait until a child has been abused. There are many ways we can do this. For example, we should support young people to have expectations of healthy relationships and provide support for children when they display harmful sexual behaviour.
"It is never the responsibility of a child to keep themselves safe; the blame lies with the perpetrator.
"As adults, it's our responsibility to spot the signs and take action to safeguard children, not rely on children to tell us they are being abused."
How to report CSE
If you're worried that a child or young person is at risk or is being abused you can contact the children's social care team at their local council. You can choose not to give your details.
You can report it online to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection command (CEOP).
Or you can call the NSPCC 24-hour helpline on 0808 800 5000 for expert advice and support.
If a child is at immediate risk call 999, or call the police on 101 if you think a crime has been committed.
Children and young people can call Childline free on 0800 1111 where trained counsellors are available 24 hours a day, every day.
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An excellent idea, or a betrayal of British authors? | The decision to allow writers from around the world to compete for the Man Booker Prize has split the literary establishment.
Some have welcomed the expansion of the field. Others say American novelists will come to dominate the prize, previously awarded to English-language authors from the Commonwealth, including the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe.
Many more have noted that the newly established Folio Prize was about to announce its first shortlist, using a similar international criteria.
Authors, judges and experts told the BBC which side of the fence they fell on.
AS Byatt, former Booker judge and winner
Once described as the "patron saint of bookworms", AS Byatt won the Booker in 1990 for Possession: A Romance, a story about two academics who use their skills in textual analysis to uncover the story of a clandestine love affair between two Victorian poets.
She also served as a judge in 1974 - and that is the basis of her objection to the new rules.
"I am very strongly against this change," she told the BBC, "because it will make judging impossible.
"I remember judging a short-story prize where the organisers were so overwhelmed with the number of entries, they employed sifters to reduce the number to an amount they thought the judges could read.
"In that instance, the winner was not someone picked by the sifters.
"I had to go back and ask for his entry because I knew of his work.
"So my worry is that good work may not be picked out."
Byatt thinks the number of entries from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth will have to be restricted to avoid overwhelming the judges, and is against the practice of publishing a longlist "because it depresses sales and spirits for any author" not featured.
Most of all, she fears that, by tinkering with the entry criteria, the Booker has diluted its identity.
"It won't have the thoroughness that the Booker has had - it was very intelligently planned."
"It is a little bit weird that Britain hasn't had an international prize," says AL Kennedy.
"Ireland does. America has some. It's always seemed a little bit churlish to not reward people for wanting to be published by a British publisher and write in English."
The writer, whose 2007 novel Day won the Costa Prize, was also a judge for the 1996 Booker, when Graham Swift's Last Orders took the title.
She says the literary award has had a "bumpy ride" over the past decade, and has undoubtedly felt the International Impac Dublin Literary Award and the Folio Prize nipping at its heels.
But she welcomes the decision to broaden its horizons.
"The wonderful thing about writing is that I can sit and I can read a Russian [novel] and be taken there. Or I can read about an old bloke or a dead fish - it doesn't matter. It's a field within which everything is possible.
"It's deeply international, deeply humane. It has no borders.
"It's lovely that the Booker is reaching out."
There could be an advantage for future nominees, too.
"I imagine they would get more prize money, potentially, if it was a very large international prize."
"It's a risk," says Prof Mullan, a literary critic who has judged the Best of the Booker in 2008 and the main prize in 2009.
"Although it appears to let in lots more good fiction, it risks diluting the identity of the prize, which has a strangely generous range and yet a curious kind of coherence."
The 45-year rule that the prize should go to a writer in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth "means that you get books, as in this year's shortlist, from all over the world that are bound together by common identity", he adds. "Bringing in American books might well risk diluting that."
"It's going to make it more and more likely that the competition is seen as a series of face-offs - a Ryder Cup of literature.
"It's going to be Toni Morrison versus Hilary Mantel, or Jonathan Franzen against Ian McEwan, and I think that's really unfortunate.
"The great thing about the prize is that there's always room in it for surprises.
"We shouldn't forget that, in 1981, when Salman Rushdie won with Midnight's Children, no-one had ever heard of him."
"Good novels will be overlooked," says Anne Meadows, assistant editor at Granta - who has concerns about the newly imposed restrictions on submitting entries to the Booker Prize.
Previously, any publisher could submit two novels for consideration. Under the new system, it will be one - unless they have had a book shortlisted in the previous five years.
"It means the prize will be dominated by big publishing houses who maybe aren't taking as many risks," says Ms Meadows. "It could make it incredibly elitist."
Editors at Granta had a hard task whittling down their catalogue to two books this year. Having to select just one, she says, would be a disservice to their writers.
"Publishers do not always bet on the correct horse," she argues. "It would be impossible for anyone to say, 'This is the best novel that we have'. Or at least it should be.
"If you're publishing brilliant writers, you're usually publishing a few of them."
On a positive note, Ms Meadows doesn't think Booker judges will be blinded by the leading lights of US literature.
"The Booker is very unpredictable and that is one of its great strengths," she says.
"It quite often eschews big names."
Dr Brauner welcomes the new rules, but describes them as "a commercial decision", designed to foil the Folio.
He says he would be "amazed" if US authors don't come to dominate the prize, "unless the panel are less than objective".
"I'm not impartial myself, I'm an American-ist, but it's been my view for many years... that there's really no comparison.
"Just on the microcosmic level of sentence-by-sentence the most exciting prose is being written by American writers.
"Even some of our most famous British writers would be the first to say that - people like Ian McEwan and Martin Amis and Julian Barnes.
"The people they are inspired by, by and large, are Americans."
Dr Brauner has drawn up a speculative list of the US novels that might have won the Booker in the 21st Century, had they been eligible.
It sees prominent authors such as Cormac McCarthy (The Road), Tony Morrison (A Mercy) and David Foster Wallace (The Pale King) named as potential winners.
Almost every time, says Dr Brauner, the US contenders outshine the actual winners.
"I believe the only Booker winner who might have triumphed even in the face of the American competition would have been Hilary Mantel with Wolf Hall in 2009.
"The fact that she was chosen again last year for her sequel to that novel, however, exposes the relative weakness of British fiction."
"I think there was some pressure on them from the Man Group, who sponsor the prize," says Andrew Holgate of the Sunday Times.
The story of the relaxed entry criteria "will be picked up in America", where it is guaranteed to "cause lots of argument", he says.
"That will be perfect for the Man Group. There's no such thing as bad publicity."
He concedes there will be "anxiety" about the influx of US authors, but states "British and Commonwealth authors can hold their own".
"There is an element of cultural cringe among British authors but if you look at it slightly more in-depth, Philip Roth has just retired and some of the other really big heavy hitters like Updike [and] Mailer have died.
In any case, he argues: "When they come over here, the American authors, they're not treated with as much respect."
The Folio was announced in 2011, somewhat controversially, as a counterpoint to the Booker, which had declared an intention to focus on "readability".
It was, until today, the only major literary prize open to writers from all over the world.
Founder Andrew Kidd admits he was "a little surprised" by the Booker committee's move, "because when we created the Folio Prize, it was because we perceived a gap".
"Whether or not this is directly a response to us, I'm sure it's something they have been thinking of on-and-off over the years," he told the BBC.
"We'll just have to wait and see whether it's the right decision."
Mr Kidd said the Booker's "impressive" profile in the US might suffer if it lost its intrinsic "Britishness" and became harder to distinguish from the Pulitzer Prize.
But he was philosophical about the competition between the Booker and the Folio, which hands out its first award in January 2014.
"There's room for both of us," he said, stressing that the Folio "is the only prize where writers are solely judged by their peers" in the writing world.
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Preeya Kalidas, who up until recently played the part of Amira Shah in BBC soap EastEnders, is launching a new career in pop music. | The actress-turned-singer signed a deal with Mercury in 2009 and releases debut single Shimmy on 26 July.
Speaking about the track Kalidas said: "When we were in the studio and we started laying it down, building it, it just became so sassy.
"It's total escapism, a real brew of sexiness and ethnicity."
The track is a collaboration with East London based MC Mumzy Stranger.
Before securing a part in the soap in April 2009 Kalidas appeared in films including East Is East and Bend It Like Beckham.
She also played the part of Sofia in Chris Morris' recently released movie Four Lions.
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Its list of alumni includes a Nobel-Prize winning economist, former prime ministers of Libya and Nepal, and many leading politicians, diplomats, artists and academics. It is also an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research, and is among one of India's top ranked universities. | Soutik BiswasIndia correspondent
Yet the storied reputation of Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) didn't deter a mob of masked men armed with sticks, stones and iron rods running berserk on its sprawling campus on Sunday evening. They attacked students and teachers and destroyed property even as the police refused to intervene for more than an hour. Outside the campus gates, another mob shouted nationalist slogans and targeted journalists and ambulances. Nearly 40 people were hurt in the violence.
Left and right-wing students groups have blamed each other for the violence. Most eyewitnesses told reporters that the mob was mainly made up of men belonging to the ABVP - the right-wing students group linked to India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - and a clutch of outsiders.
Ostensibly, Sunday's violence appears to have been stoked by a dispute over a hostel fee hike, which has roiled the campus for the last few months. University authorities have blamed the attack on a "group of students" who were opposing an ongoing admission process to register new students - it is widely believed that the statement referred to leftist students who have been protesting against the fee hike.
But there are deepening fears that the BJP wants to muzzle dissent on the campus, which has traditionally been a hotbed of left-wing politics. Ever since Mr Modi's party stormed to power riding a crest of Hindu nationalism, JNU has been a constant target. Students have been charged with sedition for making speeches, and the university has been vilified by the party and partisan news networks as "anti-national". Its students have been called "urban" Maoists.
Sunday's campus attack tells you a few things about India.
For one, it points to a breakdown of law and order in the capital, the responsibility of which lies with India's powerful interior minister Amit Shah. If mobs can enter one of India's best universities and the police fails to protect students and teachers, then who exactly is safe, many are asking.
Also, critics say BJP's brand of politics is leading to expected - and disturbing - consequences.
Since he has been in office, Mr Modi and Mr Shah have relentlessly belittled and demonised political opponents and critics, calling them anti-national and and urban Maoists. "By calling all protests as anti-national, an atmosphere of legtimisation of lawless violence has been developed," says political scientist Suhas Palshikar. There's been, he adds, a "systematic manufacturing of atmosphere of suspicion and hatred".
The result is that there is dwindling tolerance for dissenting views. The incident, according to Roshan Kishore, a senior journalist and JNU alumnus himself, proves that "we are living in an age where ideological differences in places of learning will be crushed by brute force, and the state at best will remain a bystander".
The attack on JNU is tragic in more ways than one.
The university has an amazing diversity of students, cutting across class, caste, gender and religion. The campus is a "revolution of sorts" where the rich and poor, the influential and the obscure, the city-bred and students from villages meet, study and live, says Rakesh Batabyal, author of JNU: The Making Of A University. "What happened on Sunday night is something the campus has never seen," adds Atul Sood, a faculty member.
However, JNU is no stranger to violent conflict. In the 1980s teachers and students clashed over plans to change the admission policy. Newspaper headlines spoke about the "anarchy" on the campus. Students attacked homes of teachers. Police, according to many accounts, thrashed students. A number of students were arrested and nearly 40 of them expelled from the campus. Force, writes Mr Batabyal, became a "new signifier for politics in the campus".
Things are different this time. The government's response to the violence has been frosty: it has refused to engage with protesting students. The JNU incident is the third time since December that protesting students have been targeted in campuses - students of two leading universities in Delhi and the northern city of Aligarh have recently borne the brunt of police brutality. "The constant demonisation of students by the government continues to increase their vulnerability to such attacks and awards impunity to the attackers. It is imperative that the government listens to its citizens," says Avinash Kumar of Amnesty International India.
What is more worrying, is that India's opposition has failed to pick up the cudgels on behalf of the students. "A society which condones violence against its universities is only condoning the destruction of its future," says Mr Kishore. India is clearly failing its young.
Read more from Soutik Biswas
Follow Soutik on Twitter at @soutikBBC
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In the post-war UK, groups of teenagers found a use for the crumbling bomb sites that scarred their cities - they raced bicycles on them. How did this hazardous and haphazard pastime become a hugely popular sport? | By Emma AilesBBC News
"The back wheels skid wildly, the cinders fly, and another rider makes a four-point landing on crash helmet, hands and knee…"
This was the scene painted by The News Chronicle and Sunday Illustrated. The year was 1950, and hundreds of people had turned out to line a dusty bomb site in south London to watch the hottest new sport around - cycle speedway.
Born in the aftermath of World War Two, cycle speedway grew from humble beginnings.
Groups of teenage lads with little to do took rickety old bicycles, not otherwise roadworthy, and began racing them on makeshift tracks in the rubble of the UK's war-ravaged cities.
They were imitating motorcycle speedway - which rose to huge popularity between the wars, with tracks all over the UK that drew large crowds.
The bicycle-riding "skid kids", as they were affectionately known, wore battered old crash helmets, leather jerkins and bibs proudly marked with their team's emblem.
Their kit was homemade, their bikes had no gears or brakes, but many of the boys soon became master mechanics and riders.
By 1949, the Daily Graphic estimated "the number of teenage enthusiasts of this post-war craze was anything between 30,000 and 100,000".
Races were televised by the BBC, and national newspapers including the Daily Mail, the News of the World and The Star followed the results.
There were more than 200 clubs in east London alone, and even the Duke of Edinburgh was said to be a fan.
The phenomenon spread across the country. Portsmouth, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff and many other British cities each had numerous teams.
Wherever the bombs rained down, speedway tracks rose from the ashes.
One of the original skid kids was Len Finch. He grew up in wartime Walthamstow, north-east London, and started cycle speedway racing at the age of 16 in 1946.
"Where we lived in the East End there were lots of bomb sites. They were a draw for kids - they were untamed land," he says.
"My bike was an old frame my dad bought for five shillings, and some old wheels put on. No brakes or anything. And the handlebars were bent up high like bull horns - people used to make them out of gas piping.
"After the war it was just a matter of make do and mend. It was a Cinderella sport."
Finch remembers joining together with other kids from the area to clear rubble off a bomb site behind St James Street station in Walthamstow.
They formed their own club called the Walthamstow Wolves, complete with branded bibs, team manager and mascot.
Soon they were racing teams across London, including the Warwick Lions in Hackney, the Tottenham Kangaroos, the Beckton Aces and the Portway Penguins. One of the best were the Stratford Hammers, who were based on a large bomb site at West Ham.
"You'd go round and round with your leg out left, racing against each other," Finch recalls. "We all wanted to be motor speedway riders when we grew up, so I suppose we were aping them."
In a time of post-war austerity and rationing, the bombsites offered a "paradise" of freedom for urban teens, says sports historian Simon Inglis.
"It was the birth of youth culture that hadn't existed before, which enabled kids to have a completely separate identity to their parents for the first time - cycle speedway was something that no adult did."
World War Two
The timeline of history's most savage and devastating war
By the early 1950s, the skid kids began to gain official recognition. The National Amateur Cycle Speedway Association was set up to oversee the sport. A few local authorities found the money to build proper tracks. There were inter-city - and even international - races.
Ten thousand people are said to have watched the first international between England and the Netherlands at the Empress Hall in Earls Court, London, in 1950.
The riders might only have been aged 16 and 17, but many became minor celebrities in their local area.
Former Bermondsey Greyhounds and Lynton Lynx rider Joe Foster, now 79, remembers the thrill of competing in front of such crowds.
"It was exciting - it would be absolutely chock-a-block, quite an atmosphere with people cheering you. I'd say there were more than 3,000 people sometimes," he says.
"You had to be outstanding to get on the team. Certain riders were heroes... and you certainly got recognised by young females.
"Of course, there were loads of crashes. You had to be keen, shall we say."
The News of the World's "Speedway Correspondent" Dudley Smith wrote in 1951: "Today if you go to the more devastated areas of London or any of the other big towns on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you are quite likely to see a youth complete with crash helmet, coloured jersey and specially adapted bike, making his way to a bombed-site track just around the corner.
"With him, probably, will be his young girl friend, one of the many fans who hang over the rails and cheer on the juvenile heroes of the backyard arenas."
But not everyone was so enamoured by the new craze. Police warned riders about using their machines on the roads and churches objected on the basis that it enticed boys away from Sunday School.
Councils widely opposed the use of bomb sites for sport, claiming it was "noisy, undignified and unnecessary".
Paddington Borough Council reportedly even burned down a bomb site track because of complaints about "obscene language and hooliganism".
In a letter to the Daily Mirror in 1949, the Taddyforde Cyclists from Exeter complained that "cycle racing will be damaged if the public thinks of it in terms of youth pedalling at a speed of which the slowest novice would be ashamed".
But others defended the sport.
With a sentiment that perhaps rings surprisingly modern, a Mrs Jean Shilllibeer, secretary of the Clapham Panthers, wrote in reply: "It keeps them out of gangs and develops in them a team spirit.
"The boys work hard in maintaining their tracks and each boy seems to find a flair for something - one finds himself good at repairing bikes, another for organisation, another for painting signs and so on."
This heyday of cycle speedway was short-lived. By the late 1950s, bomb sites were steadily being cleared away, potential riders were being drafted into the armed forces for National Service, and most clubs gradually petered out.
What remains of this era is photographs, newspaper cuttings and memories of days spent skidding through the dust. But the sport still exists. There are still thriving clubs and a national league.
And for Finch, cycling has remained a passion.
He still competes in veteran road races despite being 84 years old. And he shows no sign of slowing up - even after more than 70 years in the saddle.
"Everybody says isn't it time you packed up? I always say to the people older than me, 'Time you packed up and gave us youngsters a chance'," he says.
"Why do I keep doing it? It's something that gets in your blood, that's all I can say."
Images courtesy of Len Finch, Joe Foster and Southwark Local History Library.
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Two Pembrokeshire beauty spots have been named among the 10 best places to go in Europe for a family holiday. | Skomer Island and Marloes Sands are included in travel guide Lonely Planet's Best in Europe 2015 list.
Kent was ranked top, followed by County Kerry in Ireland, with destinations in Germany and Hungary also making the top five.
The guide said Skomer's marine nature reserve and 500,000-strong bird population were among its draws.
It also recommended visiting Marloes Sands - "a mile-long sweep of beach that does a vanishing act at high tide".
Europe's 10 Best Places for Family Holidays, by Lonely Planet
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Following the launch of an official Twitter feed for the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram in January, there have been multiple signs that the group's media operation has been influenced by the expansionist Islamic State (IS, formerly Isis or Isil). | AnalysisBy BBC Monitoring
The group, which refers to itself as Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, had not previously maintained an established online channel for its propaganda or any official social media presence in any language.
But on 18 January, an Arabic-language Twitter account purporting to be the official outlet for a new Boko Haram media group called Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa was launched and immediately promoted by key pro-IS media operatives.
Since then, the group has used the feed to publish a stream of propaganda, including several new videos, although there has been some disruption to its media activities following the suspension of the original account by Twitter.
Signs of Islamic State influence
The increased sophistication and organisation of the propaganda that followed the launch of the Twitter account bore signs of the influence of IS, which has honed its social media exploitation over the past year.
This appeared to indicate that the group may have been assisted by IS media operatives, or influenced by IS in an indirect way.
Boko Haram has followed the example of IS by publishing branded photographs of its militants and the areas under its control to illustrate its successes on the ground.
The Twitter feed has also been posting a stream of short statements about the group's activities, claiming operations in a timely manner, in the mould of Islamic State's one-line tweeted claims.
The videos released so far via the new Boko Haram Twitter account have been more slickly crafted than the group's standard grainy offerings, with professionally designed graphics and high-quality opening sequences.
This improvement and the use of multiple languages and well-presented subtitles - using English, Arabic, French and Hausa - suggested the group may have had outside help from IS media operatives.
Arabic-language jihadist anthems have also been used, one of which has been routinely used in IS propaganda.
The latest video, showing the beheading of two Nigerian "spies", bore remarkable similarities to IS beheading videos. The staging, slow motion techniques and sound effects made the film look more like an IS production than a traditional Boko Haram video.
Another of the films was billed as the first in a series entitled Message from a Mujahid, which featured a militant from the group defending the group's ideology, tactics and plans. IS itself has a series of videos with the same title featuring its militants speaking to camera.
Not as sophisticated as IS
But despite the marked improvements in quality, Boko Haram's overall media package remains some way off the sophistication of IS' output.
Boko Haram has also been referring to itself repeatedly as an Islamic State or "Islamic State in West Africa".
However, this did not suggest that Boko Haram was necessarily positioning itself as part of the wider IS caliphate.
The group is still using its traditional Arabic name to promote its material and its branding remains distinct from that of IS.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau declared an "Islamic State" in northern Nigeria in August last year and praised IS for its military advances the previous month. But he has never spoken clearly about any ties between the two groups.
One of the strongest signs of Islamic State influence lies in the concerted efforts to promote the new Twitter feed by a senior pro-IS media operative, known on Twitter as Abu-Malik Shaybah al-Hamad, who claimed to have been in contact with the Boko Haram general command.
His apparent lines of communication with the Boko Haram leadership could point to a media cooperation link between IS and the Nigerian group, although Al-Hamad insisted that he had heard from the group's leaders that it had "not yet" pledged allegiance to IS.
Inconsistencies and disruption
Since the launch of the Boko Haram Twitter account, there have been inconsistencies in the group's media operation, suggesting that a lack of professionalism may persist among those responsible for publishing the group's propaganda.
For example, a new video featuring Shekau giving a speech in Arabic appeared online on 9 February but was not distributed via the new Twitter feed.
The video's Arabic-language credits contained a number of serious spelling mistakes, including the name of the group itself and its new media group Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa, and the overall quality was far lower than the videos released via the Twitter account.
Boko Haram's new Twitter feed has also suffered disruption.
The account has been suspended a number of times, reappearing swiftly but without the original tweets.
Despite general improvements in the timeliness of its output, there have been delays in publishing some videos. The latest beheading video came out five days after being trailed, while an earlier film entitled Ubat al-Daym (Refusers of Injustice) was officially released with a delay of two weeks.
Since the original Twitter account was suspended, the feed has been less prolific.
Links between Boko Haram and Islamic State
The exact nature of any connection between Boko Haram and Islamic State remains unclear.
In a recent edition of its English-language magazine Dabiq, IS acknowledged having received pledges of allegiance from jihadists in Nigeria.
But it made no mention of Boko Haram or any other group and indicated that further conditions needed to be met before IS would consider announcing an official branch in the country.
For its part, Boko Haram has included excerpts from IS leadership messages in its own propaganda videos.
But there has been no evidence of any formal ties between the two groups, and while the signs of media cooperation have been compelling, they remain inconclusive.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.
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Captain Sir Tom Moore has died with coronavirus. | The 100-year-old, who raised almost £33m for NHS charities by walking laps of his garden, was admitted to Bedford Hospital on Sunday.
The Queen led tributes to Capt Sir Tom, "recognising the inspiration he provided for the whole nation and others across the world".
His daughters said they "shared laughter and tears" with their father in their final few hours together.
Announcing his death, Hannah Ingram-Moore and Lucy Teixeira said the last year of their father's life had been "nothing short of remarkable".
He tested positive for Covid-19 last week. His family said due to other medication he was receiving for pneumonia, he was unable to be vaccinated.
The Army veteran won the nation's hearts by walking 100 laps of his garden in Marston Moretaine in Bedfordshire last year during the first lockdown, raising money for NHS Charities Together.
He was credited with lifting the nation's spirits and his saying "Tomorrow will be a good day" trended on social media.
He was knighted by the Queen in July in a special ceremony at Windsor Castle.
A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said: "Her Majesty very much enjoyed meeting Capt Sir Tom and his family at Windsor last year. Her thoughts, and those of the royal family, are with them, recognising the inspiration he provided for the whole nation and others across the world."
In a statement, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "Captain Sir Tom Moore was a hero in the truest sense of the word. In the dark days of the Second World War he fought for freedom and in the face of this country's deepest post-war crisis he united us all, he cheered us all up, and he embodied the triumph of the human spirit.
"He became not just a national inspiration but a beacon of hope for the world. Our thoughts are with his daughter Hannah and all his family."
The flag above 10 Downing Street has been flying at half-mast in tribute and Mr Johnson has spoken to Mrs Ingram-Moore to offer his condolences.
A tweet from the White House said: "We join the United Kingdom and the world in [honouring] the memory of Captain Sir Tom Moore, who inspired millions through his life and his actions."
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tweeted: "This is incredibly sad news. Captain Tom Moore put others first at a time of national crisis and was a beacon of hope for millions. Britain has lost a hero."
The daughters' statement said: "It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our dear father.
"We are so grateful that we were with him during the last hours of his life; Hannah, Benjie and Georgia by his bedside and Lucy on FaceTime.
"We spent hours chatting to him, reminiscing about our childhood and our wonderful mother. We shared laughter and tears together.
"The last year of our father's life was nothing short of remarkable. He was rejuvenated and experienced things he'd only ever dreamed of.
"Whilst he'd been in so many hearts for just a short time, he was an incredible father and grandfather, and he will stay alive in our hearts forever."
Capt Sir Tom's daughters said the care he received from the NHS was "extraordinary".
They said staff had been "unfalteringly professional, kind and compassionate and have given us many more years with him than we ever would have imagined".
Capt Sir Tom joined the Army at the beginning of World War Two, serving in India and Myanmar, then known as Burma.
He was originally from Keighley in West Yorkshire and among the local tributes being paid was Robbie Moore MP who said the town had "lost one of its finest today".
He was made an honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College in Harrogate on his 100th birthday.
In December, he went on a family holiday to Barbados after British Airways paid for his flight.
'Boost'
Capt Sir Tom had initially set out to raise £1,000 for NHS charities by walking 82ft (25m)-loops of his garden.
But he eventually raised £32,794,701 from more than 1.5 million supporters.
NHS Charities Together said that would rise to £39m when Gift Aid was taken into account.
Ellie Orton, chief executive, said the funds raised by Capt Sir Tom had "reached the length and breadth of the UK through every one of our 241 member charities".
She said he was "a one-off and he leaves the world a better place".
Ruth May, chief nursing officer for NHS England, said Capt Sir Tom Moore "has been the model of all that has been good about our country's response to Covid-19".
She said in a statement "for me his biggest achievement and most important contribution to helping my fellow nurses, doctors and all those in the NHS responding to coronavirus, has been how he brought the country together and gave us all a boost when we most needed it".
Fellow charity fundraiser Dabirul Choudhury, who was 100 years old when he raised more than £150,000 for coronavirus relief by walking while fasting for Ramadan, paid tribute to Capt Sir Tom.
"If you want to help mankind you should keep yourself very fit, fit, fit," he said.
Mr Choudrey's son Atique said Capt Sir Tom had "left a massive legacy that will follow on through for generations", adding "even now, my father hasn't actually eaten since he's heard about the news [of Capt Sir Tom's death]".
Capt Sir Tom became the oldest person to have a UK number one single when he recorded You'll Never Walk Alone with Michael Ball last year.
The singer said on Twitter: "A wonderful life so well lived and a hero and fighter to the very end. So very sad".
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Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka have expressed their gratitude to various political parties in the southern Indian state of
Tamil Nadu which have staged number of demonstrations against the Sri Lankan government’s ongoing military offensive. | In a statement issued via e-mail, the head of LTTE's political wing B Nadesan says: “War efforts of Sinhalese government
to annihilate the Ealam Tamils have been scaled up to the unprecedented level. At this point various protest meeting held
by the Tamil Nadu political leaders for the support of our people has given encouragement to our people".
In the past few weeks various political parties in Tamil Nadu including the ruling DMK which is a critical ally to the central
government have held number of protest meetings against Sri Lankan government action in the Wanni region.
Accusing Sri Lanka authorities of killing large number of innocent civilians in the military action, the parties had demanded
Indian intervention to stop the war in Sri Lanka.
Rajiv Gandhi assassination
People in the southern Indian state and the Sri Lankan Tamils speak the same language and in eighties there was even a wide
spread sympathy for the struggle of Sri Lankan Tamils.
But the support had eroded considerably after the ill fated Indian military intervention and the assassination of former Indian
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by Tamil Tigers that led to the banning of the LTTE in India.
Ever since, most Indian political parties refrained from openly supporting the LTTE.
Its leader Pirabhakaran and intelligence wing chief Pottu Amman are the most wanted fugitives by the Indian government.
Recently the spate of killing of Indian fishermen by the alleged firing by the Sri Lankan Navy resulted in a number of anti-Sri
Lankan demonstrations.
The main opposition party of Tamil Nadu, AIADMK, which has maintained an anti-LTTE stand for a long time has softened its
stand regarding the Sri lankan tamil issue.
‘Election propaganda’
Tamil parties are taking up Sri Lankan issue to win votes in the up coming parliamentary election due to be help next year,
according to some analysts.
But for the LTTE these protests have come at a time when it is struggling to hold on to the territories which it controls.
This unexpected support makes it happy.
"Sinhalese government was under the impression that we will never get any help from Tamil Nadu. At this time Tamil Nadu leaders
and people have expressed their anger against the Sri Lankan government,” says B Nadesan.
“The moral support by the Tamil Nadu leaders should translate into political action is the desire of the Ealam Tamils," B
Nadesan urged. But he has not elaborated on this "political action".
The statement added: "Countries hostile to India are among the countries which provides support to the Sri Lankan government
in its war efforts."
Although India's central government has avoided getting directly involved in the Sri Lankan affairs it has given arms and
training to the Sri Lankan government forces.
During the LTTE's attack on the Vavuniya military base two Indian technicians were injured.
India's National Security Adviser M K Narayanan had stated India will provide only "defensive weapon systems to Lanka".
India’s ‘grave concern’
Tamil Nadu political parties however would like to see a complete end to all kind of military support to Sri Lankan government.
How far these protests will influence India's Sri Lankan policy is an open question.
But on Monday, when the state's ruling party DMK held a massive meeting against the war in Sri Lanka, India summoned the Sri
Lankan deputy High commissioner in Delhi and expressed its "grave concern and unhappiness at the growing casualties of unarmed
Tamil civilians as a result of military action".
The Sri Lankan foreign secretary Pallitha Kohona, rejected accusations by the Tamil Nadu political parties.
Dr. Kohona told BBC Tamil service that the Sri Lankan government is not conducting a war against Tamils but against a terrorist
organisation holding territory illegally in the country's north.
He also accused the Tigers of using civilians as human shield.
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The tank, which would go on to dominate 20th Century warfare, first stormed on to the shattered battlefields of the Somme 100 years ago. Rushed into battle by desperate generals with barely any testing, its debut was a messy experiment with questionable results. A select group of young men were the first to feel its terrible influence and have their lives changed by it. | By Greig WatsonBBC News
William Dawson came from Boston in Lincolnshire and was the eldest of four children. His father had drowned at sea in 1898 when he was 10 years old and as soon as he left school, Dawson went to work to support the family.
He found employment with a shipping company but had an interest in engines. In early 1916 he answered an advert in Motor Cycle magazine, in which the Motor Machine Gun Service (MMGS) asked for mechanically-minded recruits for intriguingly vague Army service.
By May he found himself transferred to the "Heavy Section" of the MMGS.
A few days later Dawson was locked into a training ground in Suffolk being given "a very serious talk explaining that the new project was so very very secret that he could give no details but that it was most important".
"The secret camp was very large, roughly circular and some three or four miles across. The perimeter was guarded day and night by 500 or more reservists fully armed with rifles and ammunition," he wrote years later.
"Early one morning just after daylight we were awakened by a rumbling and rattling with sounds of motor engines.
"In great excitement everybody rushed out of tents, just as they had slept, and there they were, the first of the tanks, passing our tents to the practice driving ground which we had prepared."
Describing the appearance as "extraordinary", he added: "We immediately started to learn its mechanism and engine and commenced driving it round the course of three to four feet high obstructions."
The idea of armoured fighting vehicles had been around since Leonardo da Vinci but at the outbreak of World War One, practical battlefield machines were for most soldiers scarcely more than science fiction.
But as the fighting in France and Belgium bogged down into trench warfare, the concept gained supporters.
Having seen conditions on the Western Front as an official Army correspondent, Col Ernest Swinton was in a position to push for bulletproof tractors to crush wire and cross trenches.
He managed to attract support from Winston Churchill. then First Lord of the Admiralty. A "Landships" committee was formed in early 1915.
A machinery company in Lincoln was commissioned to build prototypes, with much of the design work done in a local hotel room.
Tanks went from science fiction to steel fact in the space of six months. In late 1915 an 8m (26ft) long, 28-ton machine crossed a dummy trench system at Hatfield in Hertfordshire.
Lord Kitchener, the Minister of War, felt it was "a toy" and "without serious military value" but a representative of Commander in Chief Douglas Haig simply said: "How soon can we have them?"
By then planning for the Somme offensive was under way. Despite high hopes, the terrible losses of the first day and continued bloody fighting meant the need for a new weapon was greater than ever.
As with the machines themselves, an entirely new part of the Army, for an entirely new type of war, was thrown together in a matter of months.
Formed in March 1916 the Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps was commanded by Col Swinton. Suffolk's Elveden Camp hosted more than 500 men to crew about 50 tanks.
Rushed into service, men and machines were far from battle ready.
Dawson said: "Our commander, Second Lieutenant Macpherson, was a fine and likeable young fellow but he like us had never been in an actual battlefield or in action before.
"The briefing and instructions regarding objectives were quite inadequate."
Basil Henriques was from another part of the social scale. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he was appointed a lieutenant in April 1916, aged 25, and made a tank commander. But the same lack of training dogged him.
He said: "We had no training with the infantry, even at home, and the infantry with whom we had to fight had never heard of us until they actually saw us in battle."
By the time he arrived in France he had only worked with his crew once and had not used the guns on their machine.
One thing was clear to everyone: tanks were hellish to use.
The crew of eight was in a single compartment dominated by a huge engine. Tanks had no suspension and limited views outside. Every journey was deafeningly noisy, fume-filled and batteringly rough.
They were at the limits of technology. Engines were unreliable, armour was thin, tactics were guesswork. Communication was mostly by hand signal and pigeon.
And that was before anyone started shooting.
On 15 September 1916, the shooting would start. Almost every one of the 50 or so available tanks would be used to try to capture the village of Courcelette.
Early indications were not good. Thanks to breakdowns, only 31 machines reached the start line.
The reaction of the German defenders to tanks varied. One trench garrison simply fled. Prisoners interviewed afterwards gave the impression that "German soldiers regarded them with some sort of superstitious terror.... till daylight disclosed their true nature."
Mostly the tanks were attacked with anything and everything. Machine guns, pistols, grenades and artillery.
Dawson recalled his machine blundered about the battlefield before meeting another of the new British tanks.
"Both it and ourselves came up against machine gun fire with armour-piercing bullets and while we had quite a few holes I counted upwards of 40 in the other tank."
The commander, Macpherson, left the tank to report to his superiors and was killed.
Henriques in tank C22 had also moved into the fight: "Squashing dead Germans as we went. We could not steer properly and kept losing the (guide) tape."
Guns blazed at the tank and he had to peer through a narrow glass slit in an attempt to see the enemy.
He said: "A smash against my flap in front caused splinters to come in and the blood to pour down my face. Then our prism glass broke to pieces, then another smash, I think it must have been a bomb right in my face."
With a tank full of injured men, Henriques withdrew.
Not everyone was so lucky.
Cyril Coles, who was born in Canford, Dorset in 1893, enlisted in the Army in February 1916 and was a tank gunner in France by August.
Coles was in tank D15. Supposed to be one of three armoured vehicles, the others became stuck in shell holes before crossing the start line. D15 had reached the first German trench when it was hit be artillery fire.
The official history of the battle states: "The commander and his crew abandoned the burning tank but two of the men were then shot and killed and the others wounded."
Coles was one of the dead. Both men were buried beside the wrecked machine.
Staff at the Tank Museum researching the details of Coles' life believe he was one of the very first tank men to be killed in action.
The badly cratered ground, combined with the enemy onslaught, devastated the tanks.
About 12 machines had punched deep into the enemy defences but most of these were damaged. Only a few were still operational the next day.
Henriques had to have glass splinters removed from his face by medics. One piece was large enough to be mounted as a "stone" in a gold ring, which he gave to his wife as a memento of his brush with mortal danger.
The first fight of the tanks would be named the battle of Flers-Courcelette and, by the standards of the Somme campaign, it was a success. The new machines, though badly flawed, had shown potential.
William Dawson and Basil Henriques survived the battle and the war. They saw the tank develop into an ever more effective part of the Army, playing an important role in bringing victory in November 1918.
David Willey, curator at the Tank Museum, said: "The tanks had limited success on that first day in military terms, however their success in terms of psychology shouldn't be underestimated.
"The German troops were terrified of these machines and for the British, the tanks were a huge morale boost.
"This was a British invention, designed to save soldiers' lives, and it gave people hope, both on the front line and back at home."
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Senegal hosted a landmark global science forum this week, the first of its kind in Africa, bringing together more than 700 leading scientists, mathematicians, entrepreneurs and other key figures from the world of politics and civil society. | The Next Einstein Forum wants to turn Africa into a global hub for science and technology by bringing the continent's top brains together with investors and policymakers.
As part of their quest to ensure the next Einstein comes from the continent, young African scientists were asked to come up with innovations that could "solve a big problem for humanity".
No pressure, then.
Here is a summary of the top three ideas, as chosen by the NEF's panel of expert judges.
Winner: Moses Bangura, Engineer, Sierra Leone
Innovation: Medical drone network
Mr Bangura wants to use a fleet of electrically powered drones, which could be used to deliver treatment to patients in hard-to-reach areas.
The unmanned aerial vehicles could serve a double purpose, both delivering essentials like medicine or emergency fluids, and also taking away blood or other samples for testing.
The drones would be able to bypass traffic congestion, a major problem in many African cities, as well as reach rural areas with poor road networks.
They would be able to fly with an 8kg (17lb) payload for 40 minutes, covering a radius of 40km (25 miles).
"We believe that the geographical location of someone cannot determine whether they receive an available life-saving drug," Mr Bangura says.
Runners-Up:
Moussa Thiam, Mali
Innovation: Transforming rubbish into building materials
Mr Thiam's plan is take plastic waste, the build-up of which is a massive problem for so many cities across the continent, and turn it into something that can be used for the public good, such as building roads or pavements.
Many of the plastics that end up in African landfills or clog up urban drainage systems take more than 100 years to biodegrade naturally.
The project would build on existing research showing that plastic waste can be used to create materials that act as a substitute or part-substitute for cement, when combined with sand and gravel.
"[The innovation would lead to] a healthier environment, with a reduction in both pollution and the cost of building materials," Mr Thiam says.
Sylvia Mukasa, Kenya
Innovation: Mobile health information service for mothers
Ms Mukasa's idea, named Afya Mama, is to use mobile phones to provide women with better information about health issues surrounding pregnancy, immunisation, family planning and HIV/Aids.
Pregnant women, healthcare workers and others would get health advice by SMS, or by making a phone call and selecting pre-recorded audio content.
The messages could be pre-recorded in any language and selected using Interactive Voice Response technology, meaning the service could cover the more than 40 ethnic dialects in Kenya.
"Our objective is to consistently sensitise mothers with information on healthcare and best practices, linking them up with an expert in the case of emergency," Ms Mukasa says.
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Cameroon's President Paul Biya has been in power for 35 years but is seeking another seven-year term. His longevity in office is a talking point at home, while the amount of time he spends out of the country has stirred international comment - as Paul Melly, an associate fellow of Chatham House, explains. | Criticised by some for a supposedly "hands-off" style of rule, Cameroon's President Paul Biya in March held a cabinet meeting for the first time in more than two years.
Mr Biya has been in power since 1982, making him one of Africa's longest serving leaders. Under his rule, Cameroon has survived an economic crisis and moved from being a one-party state to multi-party politics.
But it has also been marked by endemic corruption and reversal of democratic gains, leading to the abolition of term limits in 2008, which allowed the octogenarian to run for re-election in 2011.
Today's Africa is changing. The era of decades-old presidencies is slipping away. Satellite TV and the internet tell a growing urban audience about democratic changes of power in other sub-Saharan countries.
Some 60% of Cameroonians are under 25 and so were not even born when President Biya first came to power. There is massive demand for jobs and viable livelihoods.
The opposition Social Democratic Front has now recognised these generational realities. Earlier this year, the party's leader, John Fru Ndi, 76, stepped aside to make way for a new presidential candidate, 49-year-old businessman and former pilot Joshua Osih.
Swiss hotel
Mr Biya evidently thinks he still has something to give to Cameroon, even though his repeated absences from the country have riled critics.
His foreign travels have been the subject of an online spat between the state-owned Cameroon Tribune newspaper and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which calculated the amount of time the president spent abroad using reports from the daily newspaper.
The OCCRP estimates that the president spent nearly 60 days out of the country last year on private visits.
It also alleges that he spent a third of the year abroad in 2006 and 2009. The Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva is said to be his favourite destination.
The state-owned Cameroon Tribune called their investigation "a clear electoral propaganda".
Back home, President Biya adopts a low-key style, staying out of the limelight and sometimes retreating to his home village.
He entrusts the day-to-day running of the government to the Prime Minister, Philemon Yang, who holds monthly gatherings of a "cabinet council".
The prime minister is accorded wide latitude to manage the work of his ministerial team, while the head of state meets senior figures in private at the presidential palace in the capital, Yaoundé.
Read more about Cameroon:
President Biya's hands-off approach has led critics to talk of an "absent president".
However, this relationship at least partly reflects Cameroon's unusual dual heritage of both British and French colonial rule. President Biya, like his predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo, is from the Francophone regions, while the premier is always an Anglophone.
The president has to be seen to leave the head of government to get on with the job, says one non-partisan Cameroonian analyst.
So when President Biya does summon ministers to a rare formal cabinet gathering, it is usually for a special reason.
The most recent one was the official first meeting of a new ministerial team after a reshuffle earlier in the month. It is similar to the last cabinet meeting, in 2015, which had come soon after the previous government revamp.
Language matters
For more than a year, Cameroon's Anglophone regions in the North-West and South-West have been mired in crisis.
This started as a protest by lawyers and teachers demanding better provision for the use of English.
But tensions rose, leading to confrontation between the security forces, a 93-day blackout of internet services across Anglophone Cameroon, and separatist militants fighting for an independent "Ambazonia", with a rising death toll on both sides.
The government took steps to address the language issues, but the situation still looks dangerous. Both the UK and France have discreetly pressed for dialogue.
President Biya responded with a cabinet reshuffle on 2 March, signalling a carrot and stick approach: firmness on security and law and order was balanced with the creation of a ministry for decentralisation, holding out the promise of greater local control over development and public services.
He used this rare cabinet meeting to show his full backing for his ministers as they pursue this twin-track strategy - a firm stance on security in the troubled Anglophone region, but, at the same time, decentralisation, to give local people more control over their own affairs.
So, the so-called absent president had to show a firm hand while also preparing to loosen his grip.
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Norwegian police have documented 151 cases of sexual abuse, including child rape, in one small community of 2,000 people, north of the Arctic circle. The offences occurred over decades - between the 1950s and 2017 - but were only recently uncovered. How could such serious sex crimes go unchecked for so long? | By Linda PresslyBBC World Service, Tysfjord
Nina Iversen says she has always been someone who talks - and has often talked about what happened to her when she was growing up in Tysfjord.
"I always spoke about it. From when I was 14 years old, I thought: 'I'll write a book about this abuse - I'm going to stop it.' But of course, I wasn't able to."
When she was a teenager, young people confided in each other about the sexual abuse they had experienced, but adults would not listen.
"We were called whores and liars. There were many of us who were treated like that. And we were spat on if we tried to talk about it," she remembers.
Iversen's abusers were her relatives, so as a child she lived family life in a perpetual state of terror.
Now 49, she no longer lives in Tysfjord, but says she still doesn't feel safe.
A remote community dominated by a 900m-deep fjord, Tysfjord is split in two - one part, Drag, lies on the western shore, and the other, Kjopsvik, on the eastern. A car ferry ploughs its way back and forth between the two.
About half of those living here are from the indigenous Sami community - some of Scandinavia's earliest inhabitants, who live in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. But Sami people accounted for about two-thirds of the 83 victims and 92 perpetrators identified in the police report on sexual abuse, and discrimination and racism had an impact on how the story played out.
By 2005, Nina Iversen was a mother. Worried about her children, and the threat to them of sexual abuse, she was in touch with child welfare services. Again she spoke about her own experiences. She told her doctor.
"I told everyone," she says. "But to be listened to, you had to have the right background. Someone like me, who comes from a poor family, just got ignored."
Iversen was not the only one trying to get the authorities' attention. In 2007, desperate Sami parents of a child who had been sexually abused wrote a letter to the prime minister asking for help. The letter gained traction in the media - people expected action.
At that time, Anna Kuoljok, a deacon in the Norwegian Church, and her husband Ingar, a lawyer - both of them Sami - were in touch with 20 families whose children had been sexually exploited. The couple spoke up at public meetings attended by local politicians, health workers, the police and other authorities.
"They thought it couldn't be true there were so many cases - that's what they said to us," remembers Anna. "They thought we were lying."
"They were just not comfortable with these kinds of stories," says Ingar. "They didn't know how to handle it."
The Mayor of Tysfjord, Tor Asgeir Johansen, remembers those meetings too but has a different explanation for what went wrong.
"They didn't get a grip on things because people wouldn't tell," he says, referring to the victims of sexual abuse. "The community isn't the police - we can't go around looking in people's homes. People must come and ask for help."
Reporting sexual abuse is difficult for many victims, regardless of their cultural heritage. But in Tysfjord there was a further reluctance to speak out - in many cases the Sami people did not trust the police or authorities.
At the same time, Nina Iversen - and she was not alone - was trying to tell her story, but was not listened to.
Ethnic divisions were compounded by geography and politics - the more Sami-identifying village of Drag in the west, separated from the more Norwegian village of Kjopsvik in the east, where most authorities were based.
Nearly another decade would pass before the abuse story broke in the press. Those years were difficult and lonely for Nina Iversen. She was depressed, and posted a poem about sexual abuse on Facebook, writing 'TYSFJORD' in angry block capitals.
Another local woman with experiences similar to Iversen's saw it and got in touch. She said she was already talking to two freelance journalists. And then the ball started rolling. Nina contacted other victims she knew, including women in her extended family. On 11 June 2016 a national newspaper, Verdens Gang, published the story of sexual abuse in Tysfjord based on the testimony of 11 survivors - women and men.
Find out more
Listen to A Community in Recovery on Assignment, on the BBC World Service
Click here for transmission times, or to catch up online
The reaction was immediate. Tone Vangen, Nordland Police District's chief, was relaxing at home that Saturday. She abandoned her weekend from the moment she read the press report.
"This was really serious. We had to put it at the top of our priority list - the main aim was to prevent further cases of sexual abuse in Tysfjord. The following Monday we started to build the organisation that could start the investigation."
Vangen asked everyone who had experienced sexual abuse, however long ago, to come forward.
"We said - even if the Statute of Limitations on offences means we can't take the case to court, we want to take you seriously and we want to understand this problem. But we just didn't realise how big it was."
Police officer Aslak Finvik was tasked with making contact with Sami people and creating trust so they would talk.
"It was complicated," he says. "There were many things the police didn't know about before - family ties, religion. And in Sami culture there are elements from pre-Christian times. People believe in healing, and that a shaman can get power over someone by reading their pain. They felt ashamed to talk about it because from a Norwegian point of view, we can't understand it. But it was very important for Sami people that we did."
That understanding would result in the first prosecution in the Tysfjord case - a man who gained access to women by claiming the power to heal and to drive away evil spirits, who sexually assaulted his victims during "treatment" sessions. He was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison.
The Sami in Norway
By 2016, Nina Iversen's abusers were dead, so she would never see justice done in court.
But she was very happy to collaborate with the police. Meanwhile, in the weeks after VG published its story, about 40 victims sought help from the local doctor, Fred Andersen. The youngest was 10, the oldest 80.
"We had to give them huge medical and psychiatric support," he says. "It's been a very heavy burden. The young people will survive and come out of this with new strengths and self-respect. But the elderly, and those of 50 or 60 who are unemployed with psychiatric problems, they suffer."
Inevitably, questions have been asked about why it is Sami people who feature so largely in this story of abuse. But Lars Magne Andreassen, director of Arran - the Sami community centre in Drag - resists a cultural explanation.
"We have to be self-critical, of course we do. But that doesn't mean that we as a people are to blame. We can compare what happened here in Tysfjord to the #MeToo movement. Why did the most powerful women in the world shut up? Should we blame them? Of course not. There were good reasons for not speaking out - they feared something," he says.
"It's exactly the same thing going on here. When people experienced that they were listened to, they started talking, and then six decades of stories came out at one time."
More than 1,000 people - victims, witnesses and perpetrators - were interviewed by the police in the course of their investigation. But of the 151 documented cases in Tysfjord, only a handful will go to court because in most cases the time-limit for prosecution has elapsed. This means many alleged sex abusers still live in this small, close-knit community.
Not long ago, Nina Iversen was thinking about moving back to Tysfjord. One afternoon she went and had a look around Kjopsvik. But while she was there she saw three people who had been accused of abuse close to the primary school gates.
"There were children walking home from school while these people were roaming around. It was just awful," she says.
It is police officer Aslak Finvik's job to monitor these men - and a few women.
"Every one of them we have talked to - Sami and Norwegian - and told them what we know about them. We've told them not to make contact with the victims. If they do, we may prosecute them," he says.
In Tysfjord, it seems everyone knows someone affected by this story - a survivor, a perpetrator. Sometimes perpetrators are themselves survivors.
In her role as deacon in the Norwegian Church, Anna Kuoljok organises meetings in a small church built in the style of a traditional Sami hut in Drag.
"We talk about feelings and how to handle them. There is so much grief and anger," she says.
But rejecting the perpetrators is not an option. Sami culture is inclusive, and belief based on a circle of life that embraces God, people, animals and nature.
"So we must find a way to live together, because everybody is in this circle of life," she says.
When the police report was published in November 2017, police chief Tone Vangen apologised to the people of Tysfjord.
"The job the police did until June 2016 was not good enough," she says. "This crime affected a lot of people for a long time."
Slowly, trust is being nurtured in Tysfjord. Child protection training is in place, and Norway's national government is funding projects to promote cohesion and build resilience. Community events are better attended now by both Sami people and Norwegians - a concert celebrating Sami music and culture was attended by 700 people earlier this month.
The mayor detects another change too.
"Generally, people are much nicer to each other - they take care of each other more than before," he says.
The revelations have taken a huge toll on a vulnerable community. They have left in their wake fractured families, broken lives and at least two suicides. Nina Iversen's experience has been entangled with that bleak history for decades, but as one of the first 11 survivors who told their story, she feels as though life is finally moving in the right direction.
"Today I can say I'm proud of what we did. Now they're listening. We're getting somewhere - people believe us."
You may also be interested in:
Rather than being offered protection, teenagers groomed and coerced into having sex faced criminal charges of prostitution. A major factor was the public - and professional - perception of the abused girls, who were often dismissed as troublemakers.
Read: Child sexual exploitation in England - how the system failed
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Given the circumstances we find ourselves in I am going to take a slightly different approach to the review this week. As opposed to selecting a single subject to critique, I thought it would be more helpful to pick out five 5-star (IMO) hidden gems freely accessible online, which can be enjoyed at home. | Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter
I've tried to mix it up a bit, taking in a classic kids TV series, an amazing speech, a great documentary, magnificent opera, and tip top pod.
First up, Hector's House:
A children's TV series that ran on the BBC from 1968 to 1975.
It's low tech (hand puppets), low concept (a male dog and female cat share a house next door to a frog) and utterly brilliant. It doesn't matter what age you are, Hector's House is a guaranteed five-minute hit of faultless, charming entertainment.
Hector is a doe-eyed, floppy-eared hound prone to pomposity and delusion who lives with Zsazsa, a clever cat who gently teases him with willing help from their friend next door, Kiki the frog.
The show was imported from France (where it was called La Maison de Toutou) and owes plenty to the classic slapstick comedies of Jacques Tati, a genius of post-war French cinema who captured better than most, that off-kilter feeling of being at odds with the modern world.
You can find much of his work online, including the fabulous 1958 film, Mon Oncle (featuring stunning architecture).
While Hector was in his house, the straight-talking Australian art critic Robert Hughes was on the road in New York filing a report on contemporary art in a documentary called Pop Goes to the Hayward (1969), which is available on the BBC iPlayer.
It's a compelling watch, not least for Hughes himself, who gives a masterclass in the art of documentary-making: interviewing with polite scepticism, while delivering his superbly written script with spiky belligerence.
He keeps out of shot unless absolutely necessary (such as being cast for a sculpture by one-time chicken farmer, George Segal), and lets the artists do the talking (Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg), which is what you want because they were depicting a new way of living that would become our way of life.
Like Hector's House, these American artists owed a huge amount to a French genius, in their case the pioneer of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp, who you can watch here in conversation with Dame Joan Bakewell in 1968.
On the shelf to my left are three non-fiction books that I constantly refer to for inspiration, only to put them down again in desperation, realising that I can never come close to the essential talent of the authors.
They are, in chronological order: The White Album by Joan Didion: a collection of her journalistic essays from the 1960s and 70s. The Age of Movies by Pauline Kael: a collection of her film criticism for the New Yorker and others. And, The Most of Nora Ephron: a collection of all her work from early journalism to mid-career movie scripts (inc. When Harry Met Sally).
All three writers are American and share a strong cultural connection, not least the influence of the so-called New Journalism of the 60s - a literary form of reporting pioneered by the likes of Didion, Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese, who wrote perhaps the most famous article in the genre for Esquire magazine called, Frank Sinatra has a Cold (1965), which is very good.
Few have been able to match them, but some do so occasionally. The British writers Olivia Laing and Zadie Smith are excellent non-fiction essayists, as was the late David Foster Wallace, an American writer and academic whose work reads like an ingenious form of stand-up comedy. You can read most of it online.
I'd recommend the essay Federer as Religious Experience. He was also a compelling - albeit nervous - public speaker, who delivered a memorable speech to Kenyon College's 2005 graduating class.
It is called This is Water and should be compulsory listening/reading (the text is also online) for anyone with an ounce of curiosity.
There will be a lot of new content coming on stream in the coming weeks, including contributions from many of the venues that are currently closed but keen to continue to serve their audiences. The BBC announced earlier this week that it would be working with museums, galleries, arts centres, comedians, poets and a whole host of talented folk to help bring their work to the public through TV, online, radio and podcast.
The Met in New York has responded very quickly and impressively. It is uploading an opera a night, filmed to a very high standard and performed by the best singers in the world. The shows are from the Met's back catalogue, for which you would normally have pay but can now see for free.
I have just watched La Traviata and was blown away by the production values and all-round quality of the presentation.
If you're not sure about opera, I think the Met might convert you.
Lastly, a podcast pick.
There are so many, but for this moment in time, I'm going with the award-winning Have You Heard George's Podcast by the London-born performer and writer George Mpanga who goes by the stage name George the Poet.
Admittedly, it is not exactly a hidden gem, but it is a rare jewel. Each episode is presented in his informal, gentle style that lyrically coaxes you into his vividly observed vision of our world.
I like what he sees and what he says and hopefully you will too.
That's my five 5-star nuggets of free content gold but what about yours?
Tweet your suggestions to me @WillGompertzBBC or email me [email protected], and maybe that could make the basis of next week's review.
Recent reviews by Will Gompertz
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The Infrastructure Commission for Scotland (ICS) wants to shift the focus on to cutting emissions and helping the economy become more inclusive. Its latest report says to achieve this an independent, specialist body should be created by the Scottish government to draw up a 30-year infrastructure plan. But the ICS has recommended against setting up a Scottish National Infrastructure Company, an idea with political support. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
Thinking about what Scotland will look like in 30 years time is a tough gig and one, it seems, that should not be entirely trusted to politicians.
The Infrastructure Commission for Scotland (ICS) was created to reach beyond the five-year plans of election cycles, to see what will be required over several decades if the country is to hit its net zero carbon emissions.
This means thinking about energy efficient buildings as well as more and smarter public transport for example.
Instead of using infrastructure to boost growth, its remit was to shift the focus on to cutting emissions and helping the economy become more inclusive of groups that tend to get left behind or not recruited for jobs.
The ICS has issued its final report, saying that the idea of a Scottish National Construction Company would not meet any of its objectives.
That was an idea gained some political traction because the public sector relies so heavily on private companies to build infrastructure.
It does so through competitive bidding and for profit, and that makes for a relationship that does not always work out well.
Building work done at minimum cost and maximum margin is not seen as being likely to result in energy-efficient buildings with long lifespans.
But the commission has come up with recommendations that could help tackle that.
It wants construction companies and both central and local government to agree - in a 'construction accord' - to work together over time, without price being the main consideration in commissioning work.
That feeds into a recommendation that the 'place principle' should apply - that is, contracts are not only to construct a building, but to be part of the wider context of creating spaces and complexes of buildings where communities can thrive.
A lot of planning, particularly around town centres, is currently to boost the role of place and community, and not just get the right buildings put up.
Independent advice needed
That would also require branches of government to work better together. The example of Scottish Water is given, in co-ordinating investment projects over several years.
To tie this together, the commission is calling for a specialist body that sets the course for 30 years of infrastructure building.
Crucially, "the independent long-term advice organisation will need to sit outside the political decision making system," the report says.
The new body would update the plan periodically and issue annual reports on how well government is sticking to the plan.
Being independent of government, and in place from early next year, the plan is for it to be free to criticise as, for instance, the Committee on Climate Change can check the performance of UK and Scottish governments against their targets.
'Covid-19 has amplified the need for urgent action'
The final report follows on findings that were published in January, that set out the scale and types of infrastructure that will be required over three decades of investment.
Under the commission chairman, Ian Russell, work and consultation by the committee has continued through the Covid-19 lockdown.
That stoppage for the construction industry, and close involvement with government support, is being seen as an opportunity to re-set their relationship and get off to a fresh start.
A longer-term approach could help the industry invest in equipment and skills, improving productivity and its capacity.
Digital technology is also seen as one aspect of the industry that could be enhanced through the partnership.
Mr Russell comments on the report: "Infrastructure has a vital role to play in the delivery of an inclusive, net zero carbon economy and Covid-19 has amplified the need for urgent action and change for economic, social and natural infrastructure."
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Some social media users react to Bill O'Reilly's firing with joy while others come to his defence and Pakistanis comment on videos showing a fight between a female constable and two passengers at Islamabad airport. | By Lamia EstatieBBC News
Bill O'Reilly's parting gifts
Some Twitter users are celebrating online following Fox News' decision to drop presenter Bill O'Reilly over sexual harassment claims.
However, many have also criticised the "targeting" of the host as a "typical spineless liberal move".
O'Reilly, 67, said the claims were "completely unfounded" although more than 50 sponsors have withdrawn ads from his show.
Members of the African-American community on Twitter, including author and film maker Tariq Nasheed hit out at the host: "On behalf of the black community, I present Bill with a James Brown wig as a parting gift." In March, O'Reilly made fun of a black congresswoman's hair saying he was too distracted by her "James Brown wig", for which he later apologised.
Previously, O'Reilly convinced Pepsi to drop hip hop artist and actor Ludacris from one of their ads, accusing him of "degrading women". And one Twitter user contrasted this to present day, with Ludacris starring in the "#1 movie in America" the day O'Reilly was fired.
"Bill O'Reilly got fired! Serena Williams is pregnant! Beyonce will deliver Red and Yellow soon! Tomi Lahren is out of a job! GOD IS GOOD," another added.
"Bill O'Reilly is gone and Alex Jones has gone silent. Things are looking up, folks," one continued.
But some had a more measured response: "Sad part is, Bill O'Reilly isn't being fired because he harassed women, it's because we weren't supposed to find out about it."
And political commentator Dave Rubin tweeted: "I don't know what Bill O'Reilly did or didn't do, but the rejoicing of the destruction of public people is becoming increasingly dangerous."
Others lashed out at liberals for focusing on Bill O'Reilly instead of former US president Bill Clinton who was accused by three women of sexual assault in 2016.
"It's not considered rape if you're a democrat...Liberals hate Bill O'Reilly but love Bill Clinton #LiberalLogic," another tweeted.
Islamabad airport scuffle watched by thousands
A video showing a scuffle between two female passengers and a female constable at Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad has been watched thousands of times over on Pakistani social media.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) suspended the female constable over the incident which allegedly broke out over "missing toilet paper".
The footage was initially aired by journalist Shakeel Qarar on privately-owned Pakistani Dawn News TV on 15 April and posted on its YouTube page.
However, several videos of the incident have since appeared online. Some showed a security official hitting and dragging the women while in others, the Norwegian passengers arguing with airport officials.
Politician Imran Khan labelled the altercation as "shocking and condemnable brutality" by the FIA.
One Twitter user added: "Another disgusting act by [the] heaven of terrorists...Land of zero tolerance, inhuman behaviour."
"Officials and others at Islamabad Airport watching this so inhumanly should be punished," news anchor Nadeem Malik continued.
But some said the passengers had "misbehaved" and instigated the argument.
"Too many Pakistanis from the West think they can get away with abusing officials when they travel back to Pakistan," one tweeted.
Another said that the women were "responsible for the chaos" because tissue in toilets are not part of the FIA's "jurisdiction". According to local reports, one of the passengers asked an FIA official at the airport for toilet paper which angered the official.
And one Twitter user shared a different account of the incident: "It looks the Norwegian ladies were fighting with every other person at #Islamabad airport. Though I don't support beating them, but [the] law [comes] first."
Additional reporting by Wais Bashir
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Trump Jr's "very fake news" T-shirt
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In 2013 - the year after the Delhi gang rape - India launched the ambitious $113m Nirbhaya Fund, vowing to reduce violence against women. Hundreds of millions of dollars followed since but a major new report by the charity Oxfam India finds that the fund has not done its job. The BBC's Aparna Alluri and Shadab Nazmi report. | In 2017, Kavita (whose name and those of other survivors in this article have been changed) turned up at a police station in rural Orissa state to allege her father-in-law had raped her. But the police, she says, summoned her in-laws, lectured them and sent her home to her parents. No case was registered. The police said it was a "family affair".
Pinky, 42, arrived late one night at a police station in Uttar Pradesh state in 2019. She says she was visibly injured after a "bad beating" by her husband. Even so, police took hours to register her complaint. When she then fled to her home city of Lucknow, fearing for her life, she went to the police there too. But she says the officer "looked her up and down" and told her she was at fault before eventually registering her complaint.
Late last year, Priya, 18, went to a police station in Orissa, alleging that the man she had eloped with had raped her and then disappeared. She says the officer told her: "You didn't ask us before falling in love with him and now you have come to us for help." She claims she was then forced to change her complaint to say she was married to him and he had abandoned her - a different crime with a shorter prison term.
Anyone who works with survivors of domestic or sexual violence - from social workers to lawyers to policy wonks - will tell you these examples are depressingly common in India. And that the hundreds of millions of dollars in government money that were supposed to make them less so haven't achieved their aim.
The Nirbhaya Fund is so named because of how the media referred to the young woman murdered in the 2012 Delhi gang rape. Indian law prohibits the identification of rape victims, so the media called her "nirbhaya", or fearless.
Her case, which sparked massive protests and headlines around the world, is seen as a watershed moment that led to new anti-rape laws and stricter guidelines for the medical examination and counselling of survivors of sexual violence in India. The fund was meant to kickstart changes that are long overdue.
But a new report by Oxfam India has found that red tape, underspend, obscure allocations and a lack of political will have undermined the Nirbhaya Fund, which was already up against a stubborn foe: patriarchy.
Here's why that has happened.
Women - and services - take second place
Most of the Nirbhaya Fund has gone to India's home ministry, which oversees police. But Amita Pitre of Oxfam India says the money has largely paid for programmes - improving emergency response services, upgrading forensic labs or expanding units fighting cyber crimes - that don't exclusively benefit women.
From railways to roads, money has been directed towards better lighting, more CCTV cameras, safer public transport and even a research grant to test panic buttons in vehicles.
"People want technology-based answers - but that won't help in 80% of cases where the accused are people known to women," Ms Pitre says.
These programmes are also heavily focused on physical resources, something that Nirbhaya's mother, Asha Devi, has criticised.
"The Nirbhaya Fund should have been used for women's security and empowerment but it is being used for works like road construction," she said in 2017.
Training officers in trauma-informed policing and investigation would be of more benefit to women like Kavita or Pinky, campaigners say.
Pinky, for instance, says she waited in the Lucknow police station for an hour-and-half while the inspector played badminton. When he finally agreed to talk to her, he told her: "This is between you and your husband. We only get involved if it's a stranger."
It took Kavita more than three years to finally register a case against her father-in-law. The inspector who discouraged her from filing rape charges told her caseworker that since the accused was the father-in-law, it qualified as a domestic violence charge, not rape.
"I was so shocked I asked him how he had become an inspector without knowing the law," the caseworker recalls.
But changing attitudes is costlier and harder than buying CCTV cameras - and that partly explains why so much of the money has not even been used.
Underspend is a major problem
While the home ministry has spent most of the money given to it from the fund, other government departments and most state governments have largely sat on the cash.
The federal women and child development ministry, for instance, used only 20% of the money it had received up to 2019, accounting for about a quarter of the total Nirbhaya Fund spending since 2013. Its money went to set up crisis centres for rape or domestic violence survivors, shelters for women, female police volunteers and a women's helpline.
"It is not enough to launch a scheme," Ms Pitre says. "It is important to remove bottlenecks to expenditures and effective implementation."
This is where the fund has faltered most, campaigners say. While it's easy to set up centres and teams, sustaining them is much harder. Crisis centres exist in many places and do valuable work, but they often lack staff and money to pay for things from salaries to transport to unexpected charges - such as when a woman turns up in the middle of the night and might need a change of clothes if hers are torn or bloodied.
In Uttar Pradesh, public hospitals don't have enough rape kits or swabs or zip lock bags to collect and transport evidence, says Shubhangi Singh, a lawyer who counsels rape and domestic violence survivors.
By Oxfam's calculations, the Nirbhaya Fund is underfunded - it needs $1.3bn to allow even 60% of women dealing with any form of violence to be able to access services.
So why isn't the money being used up? "One reason is that they create hurdles, through say, daunting paperwork," says Reetika Kehra, an economist. "And there is no guarantee that even if the money is left over, it will roll over to the next year."
This uncertainty is also what could be stopping so many states from applying for or using the funds. They may be reluctant to commit to programmes whose future is uncertain, especially since the money is coming from the federal budget.
It's hard to say if the fund has been growing
It was endowed in 2013 with $113m (£82m) but has had something of a rollercoaster ride in the years since.
The money is split across schemes and categories whose names change each year so the easiest way to track the fund is to trace the amount that was actually released, and not what was allocated.
"Constantly rejigging these classifications is one way of projecting an increase. It becomes harder to compare like with like," Ms Khera says.
The Nirbhaya Fund is part of what the government calls a "gender budget" - money disbursed to programmes that benefit women. And the gender budget has been shrinking.
The gender budget follows the same pattern
More than a third of this year's $21.3bn gender budget went to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship rural housing scheme - it helps the poor build homes, but a woman must be listed as owner or co-owner. The scheme has been a major beneficiary in the last two budgets as well.
While gender rights activists welcome the initiative, they are not so sure it's the best way to spend money from an already underfunded part of the pie.
"Most economics is a political calculation. In some states women vote more than men," says economist Vivek Kaul.
Also among the list of beneficiaries is a scheme to help rural women buy cooking gas (hence, the petroleum ministry received money from the Nirbhaya Fund) and a host of agriculture measures.
What about rights?
Since the fatal Delhi gang rape there has been no sign of crimes against women and girls abating in India, and justice remains out of reach for most.
A series of rape cases since 2012 have made global headlines for botched investigations, which in turn stymie prosecutions. And if the woman is poor - or from a tribe or at the bottom of India's unforgiving caste hierarchy - the odds against her are stacked even higher.
"If there is something worse than corruption, it is callousness," says Vikram Singh, a former director general of police in Uttar Pradesh. "We have not been able to recruit women prosecutors, police officers, judges and get our fast track courts in place. It's tardy utilisation of the Nirbhaya Fund."
He says there is a "cult of masculinity" that goes all the way down to police constables and cannot be dismantled without serious reforms and accountability - such as an independent authority to investigate complaints against police officers.
The apathy and casual misogyny extends beyond the police to doctors and even judges.
There has, however, been no money set aside to train doctors, although doctors play a key role in rape investigations and it's easier for women suffering domestic abuse to reach out to a doctor than a police officer. Education also appears low on the list of priorities but campaigners say it's crucial to change the way young boys think before they become men.
But gender rights advocates say funding is only one part of the challenge. The other is the continued emphasis on protecting women's honour rather than empowering them to exercise their rights.
They point to a growing body of research that shows certainty of conviction rather than severity of punishment is the biggest deterrence against crime. And that will only happen if a woman can walk into a police station and register a complaint.
"You need someone to drive that process," Ms Khera says. "There are ways to kill a programme while appearing to put all your weight behind it."
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A few metres from Berlin's Brandenburg gate, a huge red Turkish flag obscures the summer sky. There are several thousand protesters. There is music, shouting. An old man grins, front teeth missing, and waves a placard: "Germany's Turks reject the accusation of genocide!" | By Jenny HillBBC Berlin correspondent
But Germany's MPs do not.
The "genocide" in question happened more than 100 years ago in a corner of the crumbling Ottoman Empire.
Its forces rounded up the Armenian Christians living in Eastern Anatolia and either killed them or drove them into the desert and left them for dead.
Armenia says 1.5 million people died.
To this day, the Turkish government disputes that figure and denies an organised programme of ethnic cleansing.
But, to Ankara's fury, Germany has joined a list of more than 20 countries which, in effect, officially disagree.
Last week, the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, voted through a resolution that declared the killings an act of genocide.
German MPs recognise Armenian 'genocide' amid Turkish fury
Death threats amid Germany-Turkey 'genocide' row
It has outraged some here - bear in mind Germany is home to almost three million people of Turkish descent.
Eleven of the MPs who voted for the motion have Turkish origin.
Already, a group of Turkish lawyers has reportedly filed a complaint accusing them of "insulting Turkishness and the Turkish state".
It has also ignited an extraordinary diplomatic row.
Following the vote, Turkey immediately recalled its ambassador to Germany (not so unusual: it recalled diplomats from both France and Austria under similar circumstances).
But it's the Turkish president, Reycep Erdogan, who has dominated German headlines.
Those MPs of Turkish descent? They should, he said, be given blood tests to "see what kind of Turks they are".
He has accused them of being terrorists and of having tainted blood.
At least one of those politicians has received death threats - Cem Ozdemir, the co-chairman of Germany's green party, is now under police protection.
The German parliament is horrified; its speaker, Norbert Lammert, declared that an attack on an individual MP was an attack on the whole institution.
And the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, has written formally to Ankara, condemning Mr Erdogan's comments as "absolutely taboo".
Merkel under fire
The timing, for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, looks terrible.
She championed the EU's deal with Turkey (the EU has offered 6bn euros in return for Ankara holding back asylum seekers) and needs it to hold if she is to keep her promise of reducing migrant numbers (the "closure" of the Balkan route may not be enough).
Just before the Bundestag vote, Mr Erdogan warned her that, if her MPs voted for the resolution, there would be consequences.
No wonder, perhaps, she absented herself from the vote.
But she hasn't held back from responding to Mr Erdogan's comments now, describing them as "inexplicable".
Mrs Merkel is still smarting from her decision to allow the prosecution of a German comedian who insulted President Erdogan.
There was widespread outrage here at her decision to take action against Jan Boehmermann apparently at the behest of the Turkish leader.
It was perceived in Germany as not just an attack on press freedom but as capitulation to Turkey in order to keep the migrants deal on track.
Many Germans are uncomfortable doing diplomatic business with Turkey full stop.
Not for the first time since the beginning of the refugee crisis, Mrs Merkel's popularity wobbled.
The question now? How damaging will this row be to long-term relations and the EU deal itself? It's hard to say.
The language is fiery and Mr Schulz's intervention significant.
As one German broadcaster remarked, "the visa liberalisation for Turkey moves far into the distant future".
But here's what the new Turkish Prime Minister, Binaldi Yildirim, is reported to have said: "Germany and Turkey are very important allies.
"Turkey will find an appropriate response to the resolution.
"But it will not risk or jeopardise the close relationship."
After all, commentators point out, Germany is Turkey's most important trading partner.
Last year, Turkey exported goods worth 14.4bn euros to Germany, which is also, incidentally, the biggest foreign investor in the country.
Mrs Merkel may need Turkey's cooperation in the migrant crisis. But Turkey benefits from the deal too.
There is a sense here in Berlin that the parliamentary resolution catalysed an unfortunate yet predictable row that is largely about sabre-rattling.
It is shocking stuff nonetheless. And it is a painful reminder of Germany's past and its present.
The Bundestag resolution also acknowledged that this country - at the time an ally of the Ottoman Empire - did nothing to stop the genocide.
And, after the war, some of those who directed the killings may have been granted asylum in Germany.
At least two men - who were later assassinated on German soil by Armenian hit-men - are buried here.
A mosque - called the martyrs' mosque - now stands over the site of the old cemetery.
So don't expect the ire from Ankara - or the indignation from Berlin - or the protests from some German Turks to die down quickly.
The Bundestag vote was supposed to be about confronting the past, acknowledging guilt and laying ghosts to rest.
Instead, their voices howl, louder than ever, through Europe.
Armenian genocide dispute:
Find out more about what happened
Armenian tragedy still raw in Turkey
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Cornwall Council has supported a proposal to ban sky lanterns from being released. | Members backed a motion put forward by Mevagissey councillor James Mustoe against the small wire and paper balloons.
Countryside campaigners say the items present a fire risk and are a danger to wildlife and livestock, as well as being mistaken for distress flares.
Plymouth City Council has also banned the practice.
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A man arrested after a car, which had been shot at, hit a girl who was trick-or-treating has been released under investigation. | Shots were fired at a car on Sceptre Road, Liverpool, on Thursday. It then struck a 12-year-old girl, who was out for Halloween.
She was taken to hospital where she remains in a stable condition.
A 28-year-old man was arrested and has since been released under investigation.
Shortly after the crash, a man thought to have been driving the car arrived at hospital with a facial injury, Merseyside Police said.
His injury is not believed to be life threatening.
Police urged anyone with information to contact them.
Related Internet Links
Merseyside Police
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A man has appeared in court charged with the murder of a 73-year-old woman. | Edward Small, 75, of Raymond Drive, Bradford was charged with the murder of Sheila Small said West Yorkshire police.
She was found dead at a house on Raymond Drive in the early hours of Tuesday morning, said the force.
Mr Small appeared at Bradford Crown Court and was remanded in custody for trial on 20 May.
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The top official at the House of Commons is paid more than the prime minister - but until now they have been selected without an open recruitment process. Why is the first outside candidate - and the first women proposed to take on the role - causing such a massive row? | By Kristiina CooperPolitical reporter, BBC News
Carol Mills, a senior official from the Australian Senate is being lined up for the £200,000-a-year role as Commons Clerk.
But some MPs are worried that she might not be up to the job.
Why has this blown up now?
It is all about the retirement of the current Commons Clerk, Sir Robert Rogers, who steps down at the end of August. A respected and popular figure - with a much-admired beard - the House of Commons is in his DNA.
He started working at the Palace of Westminster in 1972, becoming clerk in 2011. Educated at Oxford, where he studied Old Norse, mediaeval Welsh and Anglo-Saxon, he is joint author of the standard textbook, How Parliament Works. It is thought that he stepped down because of "clashes" with the Speaker John Bercow.
What does the House of Commons Clerk do exactly?
The job, which dates back to 1363, is to advise MPs on constitutional matters and Parliamentary procedure. The clerk is, in effect, the "village elder" with a bank of knowledge and personal memories about how to tackle problems.
A big chunk of the clerk's day is spent sitting in the Commons chamber giving advice to the Speaker.
He or she is also Commons chief executive. It is a big operation, overseeing around 2,000 staff and the services provided to MPs. There's a big pay packet to match - £200,000 a year, more than the prime minister gets.
How was Carol Mills chosen?
This is the first time the post has been thrown open to candidates from outside Parliament.
A cross-party panel of senior MPs, chaired by Speaker John Bercow interviewed eight candidates, who responded to an advertisement. The only non-politician on the panel was the Parliamentary Ombudsman Dame Julie Mellor.
Carol Mills has not officially got the job yet. Under Parliament's arcane traditions, the clerk is a royal appointment. So the panel makes a "recommendation" to the prime minister, who in turn passes the chosen name on to the Queen.
Who is Carol Mills?
She works for the Australian Senate in the Department of Parliamentary Services, which oversees buildings, catering and staff.
When she started that job in 2012 she vowed to get to the bottom of bullying claims in the department, saying: "There has to be an overarching culture of respect."
In an interview with the Canberra Times she said: "To be a good boss you have to be a good communicator, good listener and not afraid to make decisions where necessary."
Who has a problem with Carol Mills and why?
There has been a steady trickle of politicians criticising the panel's choice, such as former Commons leaders Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett and the Conservative chairman of the Public Administration Committee, Bernard Jenkin.
They say that while she may be a good administrator she does not have the necessary experience to advise MPs on parliamentary matters.
Former Commons Speaker Baroness Boothroyd predicted she would be "totally out of her depth".
They also point to a controversy she is facing in Australia over the use of security cameras to monitor a senator.
But the row could also be a way of getting at John Bercow. His enemies say that after the powerful figure of Sir Robert Rogers, he would like someone a bit more compliant. In defence of the Speaker, he has worked hard to modernise the Commons and wants to bring in people with experience of running large institutions.
With a multi-million pound refurbishment of the crumbling Palace of Westminster on the horizon, intimate knowledge of procedure may not be the most important qualification for the role.
What can the objectors actually do about it?
There do not seem to be any formal levers to overturn the recruitment process. What critics can do though is apply a lot of political pressure.
Bernard Jenkin has said he wants Carol Mills to face a confirmation hearing in front of his committee before the appointment goes ahead.
She is under no legal obligation to agree, although refusing would not get her relationship with MPs off to a good start.
John Bercow has now mooted the idea of creating two jobs - Commons Clerk and chief executive.
But that will not happen overnight and Sir Robert Rogers has warned it is the "wrong answer".
There is another way the situation may be resolved though. Carol Mills might decide that it just is not worth the hassle.
What happens next?
John Bercow has announced a "modest pause" in the recruitment process while MPs' grievances are looked at. While this goes on, existing Commons staff will carry out the clerk's duties.
The prime minister has said the next clerk will need support from MPs across the House to do the job successfully.
So it looks as if he is waiting to see if there is a real head of steam or if it is just a vocal few banging on about Carol Mills.
The BBC understands the cross-party House of Commons Commission - which includes the Leader of the House, William Hague, amongst its members - will discuss whether to create two top jobs when it meets on 8 September.
A Conservative MP, Jesse Norman, has tableed a motion, calling for a pre-appointment hearing. The Public Administration Select Committee will decide whether to ask her to appear before them.
So for the time being, David Cameron will not be asking the Queen to give her stamp of approval.
Still not sure whether to care?
If you value your elected representatives and want them to use their powers to best effect then you might care if they are not getting good advice.
After all, a crucial role of our MPs is to stand up to a powerful government. If, though, you're worried about the cost of politics, plans to create two senior jobs - with substantial salaries attached - might just get you going.
Another way of looking at the row, is to see it as a battle between traditionalists who like the Commons just the way it is and those, principally John Bercow, who are determined to bring in changes.
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The UK's first summit designed to end period poverty and ensure schoolgirls have access to free sanitary products is being held in Bristol. | It had been planned for December but was rescheduled due to the "large number of people keen to attend".
Councillor Helen Goodwin, from Bristol City Council, said people were attending from around the country.
It is estimated about 137,000 girls miss school in the UK each year due to a lack of access to sanitary products.
The city council is aiming for all schools in the city to provide free sanitary products for girls between years five and 13 by September.
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Seven years ago I stood on a bridge over the M40 doing a "piece to camera" for a report about spinal repair. The aim was to come up with a metaphor for how researchers at University College London were trying to overcome spinal cord paralysis. | Fergus WalshMedical correspondent
It went something like this: "Imagine your spinal cord as a motorway, the cars travelling up and down are the nerve fibres carrying messages from your brain to all parts of the body. If this gets damaged the cars can't travel. The messages are blocked, the patient is paralysed.
"Normally there is no way of repairing a severed spinal cord. But the team at UCL took nasal stem cells, and implanted them into the area of damage. These formed a bridge, along which the nerve fibres re-grew and re-connected."
The research at the Spinal Repair Unit at UCL involved rats, not humans. In my TV report we showed rats unable to climb a metal ladder after one of their front paws had been paralysed to mimic a spinal cord injury. But after an injection of stem cells, the rats were able to move nearly as well as uninjured animals.
"Difficult and complex"
The hope then - and now - is that such animal experiments will translate into similar breakthroughs with patients. Seven years on and the team at UCL led by Professor Geoff Raisman are still working on translating this into a proven therapy for patients. He told me "This is difficult and complex work and we want to ensure we get things right."
So it was with a sense of caution that I approached some Swiss research in the latest edition of the journal Science in which paralysed rats were able to walk again after a combination of electrical-chemical stimulation and rehabilitation training.
The research prompted some newspaper reports talking of "new hope" for paralysed patients. The lead researcher, Professor Gregoire Courtine enthused: "This is the World-Cup of neurorehabilitation. Our rats have become athletes when just weeks before they were completely paralysed."
My colleague James Gallagher has reported on the research and you can read his copy here.
A brief summary of the research is this: the team at the Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne injected chemicals into the paralysed rats aimed at stimulating neurons that control lower body movement. Shortly after the injection their spinal cords were stimulated with electrodes.
The rats were placed in a harness on a treadmill which gave them the impression of having a working spinal column and they were encouraged to walk towards the end of a platform where a chocolate reward was waiting. Over time the animals learned to walk and even run again.
Prof Courtine, who holds the International Paraplegic Foundation Chair in Spinal Cord Repair at EPFL said: "After a couple of weeks of neurorehabilitation with a combination of a robotic harness and electrical-chemical stimulation, our rats are not only voluntarily initiating a walking gait, but they are soon sprinting, climbing up stairs and avoiding obstacles when stimulated."
The major question is this: What does this mean for humans who are paralysed?
"Ground-breaking"
Prof Courtine said he was optimistic patient trials would begin in "a year or two" at Balgrist University Hospital Spinal Cord Injury Centre in Zurich.
Other scientists gave a mixed response to the findings. Dr Elizabeth Bradbury, Medical Research Council Senior Fellow, King's College London, described the Swiss experiments as "elegant" and "ground-breaking". But she said questions remained before its usefulness in humans could be determined.
She said: "Firstly, will this approach work in contusion/compression type injuries? These injuries involve blunt trauma, bruising and compression of the spinal cord and are the most common form of human spinal cord injury. Very few human spinal cord injuries occur as a result of a direct cut through spinal tissue (as was the injury model in the Courtine study).
"Secondly, will this technique work in chronic (long-term) spinal injuries? It is not yet known whether it is possible to generate extensive neuroplasticity in a system that has been injured for a long time and now contains many more complications such as abundant scar tissue, large holes in the spinal cord and where many spinal nerve cells and long range nerve fibres have died or degenerated."
That term "neuroplasticity" is crucial. It refers to the ability of the brain and spinal cord to adapt and recover from moderate injury - something which researchers have been trying to exploits for years.
Prof Raisman of UCL said few people, even doctors, were aware that around half of all patients who become paralysed will walk again no matter what treatment they have. He questioned whether the improvements in the paralysed rats might in part be due to spontaneous recovery - neuroplasticity - rather than the combination of interventions.
Prof Raisman is now conducting trials with paralysed patients in Poland, who are all at least 18 months post-injury which removes any doubt that spontaneous repair may be the cause of any improvement.
False hope
Other scientists are scathing about efforts to repair the spinal cord. Dr Jan Gawronski, consultant in rehabilitation medicine, Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, said the Courtine study was "yet another example of research that would lead nowhere". He said scientists had been doing rat studies on neuroregeneration for decades and "not one had led to a breakthrough for patients."
He pointed me to a recent article in the journal Spinal Cord, by neurologist Dr L S Illis in which he states: "There is not a single example of experimental work translating into a therapeutic effect. ...It would be difficult to find any other branch of science with over a century of such sterile endeavour."
Supporters of this field of research would counter with the case of Rob Summers, a paralysed American patient who is now able to stand with electrical stimulation of his spinal cord. We reported on his case last year, which appeared in the Lancet journal. He could walk on a treadmill while being supported. But doctors warned that the research was still very much at the early experimental stages.
There are research teams worldwide trying to find ways of curing spinal cord injuries.
But until there are successful trials involving several patients, scientists and journalists need to be careful about giving false hope to patients living with paralysis.
If you want to see a video release of the Swiss research then you should click on the box below. I should warn you that it shows experiments with rats in a harness walking on a platform while their spinal cord is being stimulated.
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Residents and visitors have been reassured that Pembrokeshire beaches are clean following reports of sewage in the water. | Natural Resources Wales investigated the sightings and confirmed it is a naturally occurring algae.
The algae, called Phaeocystis and Chaetocerus, is often mistaken for pollution because of its oily appearance and seaweed like smell.
It thrives in warm weather and further reports are expected.
Beaches where the algae has been confirmed include Barafundle, Cwm-yr-Eglwys, Freshwater East, Lydstep, Newgale, and Tenby.
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Computer users across the globe are being strongly urged to change all their online passwords because of the Heartbleed Bug. Memory expert Tony Buzan gives tips on how to remember new ones, which should be a long jumble of randomly generated letters and numbers. | Magazine MonitorA collection of cultural artefacts
Changing passwords is something many people avoid at all costs, because they fear they will forget the new password. However, you can make something memorable by simply using the power of association and location. In order to remember a string of online passwords, all you have to do is associate each individual letter and number with a known or fixed item, calling on your imagination throughout. The more you stimulate and use your imagination, the more connections you will be able to make, and the more you will be able to memorise.
When you find that you have to remember a random formation of letters and numbers, devise your own memory image words for each number and letter. Say for example, I need to remember this random mix of numbers and letters: B5g3ars91fPpq1m2bn4d8Vc3. Start with a key image word that starts with the sound of each letter, and make sure the word is easy to imagine and easy to draw. For example, B = Banana. If you can think of several possibilities for a letter, use the one that comes first in the dictionary.
A similar rule is applied to remembering numbers - you devise key memory images for words that rhyme with the sound of the words for the numbers. For example, the key rhyming memory image word that most people use for the number five is "hive" and the images conjured up for it range from one enormous hive, from which emanates a sky-covering swarm of monster bees, to a microscopic hive, with only one tiny bee.
To remember a random string of passwords you need to "translate" each number and letter of the password you have to remember into an image whether it be in a form of a letter or story, devised from a basic code. Use the letters and numbers you have transcribed and make up catchy words and phrases that link you back to both the number and the letter.
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A sculpture made up of thousands of ceramic red poppies to mark the centenary of World War One is set to be unveiled in Cardiff. | The Weeping Window first went on display at the Tower of London in 2014 and has since been on a tour of the country.
It has been erected outside the Senedd in Cardiff Bay.
The assembly building is also hosting an exhibition telling the story of Welsh women affected by war.
Visitors will be able to view the poppies sculpture from all sides, including through the floor-to-ceiling windows inside the Senedd.
It will be officially opened on Tuesday.
The sculpture first went on show in Wales at Caernarfon Castle in October last year.
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A neglected shih-tzu was found with such an overgrown coat that she was almost unrecognisable as a dog, the RSPCA has said. | Named Rosie by staff caring for her, the dog was handed into a veterinary practice, having been found as an apparent stray in Chesham Road, Bury.
The dog, thought to be aged between three and six, had no microchip and no collar or ID tag.
RSPCA inspector Lorna Campbell said the charity had launched an investigation.
She said: "The coat was so bad that the only option we had was to shave it all off.
"Once we'd removed the fur, it revealed a number of sores and wounds to her skin.
"I'd like to hear from anyone who might recognise her or know where she has come from to get in touch by calling our appeal line on 0300 123 8018."
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A man found guilty of the attempted murder of a sex offender in Fraserburgh has been jailed for eight years.
| Gary Martin attacked George Taylor, who had raped a 14-year-old girl the day before.
A jury found him guilty by a majority of the stabbing, which happened in June last year.
Martin had told Taylor: "You know what you are. You know what you done." He was jailed at the High Court in Glasgow.
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Scottish Courts
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A report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham has highlighted examples of victims not being taken seriously by police and the council's child protection service. Although the abuse that took place between 1997 and 2013 may have been identified and investigated on occasions, its seriousness is said to have often been "underplayed" or even "disbelieved". | Some of the more than 1,400 victims of abuse by gangs of men of predominantly of Pakistani origin identified by the report are now speaking out about their experiences.
But what can a child or young adult in a similar situation do if they feel they have exhausted all official lines of help?
Some victims are moved to contact their MP about their case or make an official complaint to the police force they have had contact with.
Victims can also complain about social services, in the first instance through the relevant local authority.
But charities working with victims say having an independent voice to speak on their behalf is important.
"Any children who feel they are not being listened to can turn to a charity which can speak up and lobby on their behalf to get the support they deserve," a spokesman for the Children's Society said.
In cases where victims have reported the matter to police only to be told the case is not being taken further, social services themselves may be a point of contact, the Children's Society spokesman suggested.
"Where a victim has been told there is 'no realistic prospect of a prosecution' it is important to recognise that they could be getting help from social services, which may still be in a position to put child protection measures in place," he said.
Victim Support says the situation highlighted by the Rotherham report is one its case workers have heard all too often.
Karen Froggatt, who is in charge of the charity's specialist work with children and young people, said: "It can be utterly devastating, to have revealed intimate details of sexual abuse, to then find they do not believe you or you are treated with contempt."
She said: "If any crime victim feels they have not been believed by the authorities, then they can come to us for help and support. We will never pass judgement and anything we're told is always kept completely confidential.
"We make sure crime victims get the respect they deserve and the support they need, whether that help is practical or emotional."
She added: "Our case workers will follow up with social services and the police to check if everything is happening as we would expect."
'Long-lasting effect'
The Office of Children's Commissioner for England produced a report last year into child sexual exploitation entitled If only someone had listened.
An abridged version of the document was written specifically for children and young people and suggests they contact a trusted adult, an independent advocacy service or charity such as the NSPCC's ChildLine if they were victims of abuse.
When police or prosecutors decide to stop an investigation, victims can seek a review of the decision through the Crown Prosecution Service's Victims' Right to Review scheme.
The College of Policing, meanwhile, says training is designed to avoid the type of situation that arose under South Yorkshire Police's watch in Rotherham in the last 16 years.
Chief Constable Alex Marshall, chief executive of the college, said: "The guidance highlights warning signs officers should be using to identify risk to children who may be exhibiting behaviour that they are already being sexually exploited and it also provides advice on investigations involving those victims who may not want to pursue an allegation.
"Investigators should also adhere to the Victims' Code which is very clear that victims should be at the centre of police, prosecutors and partner agencies' work.
"The way in which victims are spoken to, the language and terminology used, will have a long-lasting effect on the individual and victims need to sense belief straight away to have confidence in the police."
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More than two million American servicemen and women passed through Britain during World War Two. Many were based here with the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), most of them living in eastern England.
| To mark the reopening of the American Air Museum at Imperial War Museum (IWM) Duxford, photographs of some of those men and women are to be shown alongside some of the aircraft that flew at the time. The pictures are drawn from the Roger Freeman Collection, which IWM acquired for the nation in 2012.
Here we present a selection of the stories of those who found themselves on the other side of the Atlantic fighting against Nazi Germany.
Lt Harry Erickson of the 97th Bomb Group
As bombardier, Erickson's job was to release bombs accurately over the target, using the Norden bombsight device. The Norden helped the bombardier to make complex calculations, but it needed near-perfect conditions to work, including good weather, which proved elusive.
The son of a train driver from Mankato, Minnesota, Erickson completed only eight missions. In October 1942, his friend Lt Ben Rushing recorded in his journal: "Erickson was lost. He went in someone else's plane and happened to [have] hard luck.
"You begin to realise that it is war when they get your best buddies. I can hardly realise that he is definitely lost. May his soul rest in peace."
However, Erickson did not die. He was captured and was a prisoner of war for nearly three years.
Capt Clark Gable
Hollywood star Clark Gable was stationed in Polebrook, Northamptonshire, in April 1943 with a film crew where he produced and directed the film Combat America, which focused on the experience of aerial gunners.
He flew on five missions in order to make the film before returning home to edit. The film was completed in 1944 and Kenneth Huls and Phil Hulse, seen with Gable here, are featured in the film.
Lt Edwin Wright of the 404th Fighter Group
Wright belonged to the Ninth Air Force, which, following the ground invasion of France in June 1944, moved its bases from Britain to mainland Europe in order to provide closer support to the advancing troops. This picture was taken near St Trond, Belgium.
It was not the first time Wright's aircraft had been hit on a mission. By the time this photograph was taken, the 19-year-old had completed 39 missions and survived being hit by flak six times.
Wright was considered a very fortunate man by his squadron, who nicknamed him Lucky for his ability to evade death. The hole here measured eight inches in diameter in an 11-inch propeller. If the damage had been an inch and a half over on either side, the blade would have severed and Wright would have been brought down.
Wright died, aged 34, from lung cancer.
Virginia Irwin, features writer from the St Louis Post-Dispatch
Virgina Irwin joined the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper in 1932. Her request to be sent abroad to cover the war was denied, but in 1943 she volunteered to work for the Red Cross on an air base in the UK. Just before D-Day, Irwin's paper changed its mind. Conveniently close to the action, she was accredited as an official war correspondent and reported on progress in 1944 and 1945 as the Allies pushed east towards Germany.
This photograph was taken during an interview with Moran, a fighter ace who would continue his air force career in Korea and during the Cold War, retiring as a brigadier general. There is a bridge named after him in Missouri.
The scoop of Irwin's career came when she and another journalist drove through Russian lines to Berlin, arriving on 27 April 1945. It was three days before Hitler's suicide and the city was in chaos. Held back until Germany's official surrender, her stories later became headline news.
Irwin was awarded a year's salary as a bonus, but on returning home she was assigned back to the features department. She never succeeded in breaking into the all-male newsroom.
Sgt Leo Teetman Jr celebrates New Year's Eve
Leo Teetman was born in Brooklyn, New York, and joined up in 1942. He was assigned as a gunner to the 384th Bomb Group, based at Grafton Underwood in Northamptonshire.
Teetman completed 25 missions in the early stage of the bombing campaign, when the Eighth Air Force's focus was on occupied Europe. This photograph was taken after returning from an attempt to target a ship in the mouth of the Garonne River in southern France.
The weather was terrible and forced several of the bombers to land away from home. In this picture, Teetman is at Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire, an airfield that lies around 20 miles from his own base. It was his first mission, and he was 20 years old.
Teetman settled in Connecticut, where he worked for a company making optical instruments. He married and had three children.
Pte First Class Barbara O'Brien
Barbara O'Brien enlisted in Dallas, Texas, in December 1942. This photograph was taken a year later; she was part of a Women's Army Corps unit based at Marks Hall, Essex, which had taken over from the British WAAF the duties of plotting, typing and stenography.
O'Brien worked as a plotter and moved with her unit to France, and finally to Bad Kissingen in Germany. As a talented artist, she was in demand with the flyboys to add nose art to their aircraft. The one she is painting here, the Jolly Roger, belonged to the 323rd Bomb Group, based at nearby Earls Colne in Essex.
After the war she attended art school in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
It was there she met her husband of 51 years, Frank Kuzel, who was himself a veteran - he had been part of the 101st Airborne Division and a prisoner of war in Germany. They later returned to the US and brought up two sons in Dallas, both of whom served in the military.
Margaret Holley, GI bride
Margaret Scott married Cpl Milton Holley of the 401st Bomb Group, based at Deenethorpe in Northamptonshire. Ten months after their marriage, she sailed for New York with 520 other GI brides (and one GI baby) on SS President Tyler.
It was a huge step for the approximately 40,000 women who left the UK to make new lives in America, and not all war bride stories ended happily. Many had known their husbands for only a short time before they were sent back to America, and the relationships did not last.
Sometimes the husbands got cold feet, and did not come to meet their wives when they arrived.
Happily, Milton and Margaret's marriage lasted for the rest of their lives. They settled in Michigan and raised a family, living in the house they built. Milton died in 2000 and Margaret passed away in 2002, aged 86.
Lt Col Louis Houck
Louis Houck, from North Carolina, enlisted in July 1940 and served as a pilot with the 365th Fighter Group of the Ninth Air Force, also known as the Hell Hawks. He was commander of the 387th Squadron from May 1943 until October 1944.
Houck wore his customised devil's helmet on missions over Europe, flying his P-47, Screamin' Weemie. The nose art of his plane depicted a demon brandishing a pitchfork. Despite his extravagant appearance he was described by a group member as quiet, introverted and respected.
In 1944 Houck was responsible for almost entirely destroying a retreating German convoy in France. The convoy had been transporting gasoline and ammunition and its smoking wreckage was captured on camera shortly afterwards.
Staff Sgt Jason Smart of the 350th Bomb Group
From Branchport, New York, Smart enlisted in August 1942. He was 20 years old and already married, to Arlene. The day this photograph was taken, Smart had flown as a waist gunner on the B-17, Big Bust, on a mission to the Ruhr Valley in Germany. This was the first daylight operation to the Ruhr, which had acquired the grimly humorous moniker Happy Valley due to the scale of German defences that protected its heavy industry.
The bombers flew unescorted by fighter aircraft, and were badly scattered en route. Enemy fighter opposition and flak damaged 15 of the 20 bombers from the 305th Bomb Group. Ten other men from the group were wounded and a further 10 were missing in action. In all, 83 men from the formation were killed in action.
Lt George Hartman and Lt Robert Belliveau
Both George Hartman and Robert Belliveau were pilots with the 78th Fighter Group which flew out of Duxford in Cambridgeshire, primarily in P-47 Thunderbolts. For the last few months of the war the P-47s were replaced by P-51 Mustangs, which had a longer range.
Belliveau flew 96 missions and survived the war. Hartman was not so lucky.
An eyewitness account by another pilot described the moment his P-47 was attacked by German aircraft returning from a mission over La Rochelle, France, in January 1944: "I made another 360 degree tight turn at 9,000ft and saw Lt Hartman's ship going down in a wide spiral while two enemy aircraft circled around his plane. I could not see a 'chute. I looked back and observed a tall column of black smoke, which was probably Lt Hartman's ship burning."
William Glasscock and his daughter, Pearl
This photograph was taken by a USAAF airman, and may have been intended as a souvenir of what British rural life was like.
Captured here, brandishing a meat saw poised over a leg joint, is William Glasscock. Raised on his family's farm before it folded, Glasscock became a delivery boy for T D Dennis as a teenager. During the war, he joined his local Home Guard unit and like 1.5 million other men too old or young for military service, spent his Sundays training to be the last line of defence in the event of a German invasion.
Glasscock's teenage daughter, Pearl, worked beside him on his deliveries and his youngest son, Roger, would later work in the grocery shop next to T D Dennis.
Technical Sgt Lester Reifeiss and Sgt Jasper 'J D' Taylor of the 78th Fighter Group
Ground crews were responsible for the routine maintenance of aircraft. They included general mechanics and specialists who repaired particular parts, such as instruments or armour. Servicing had to be regular and painstakingly thorough in order to keep equipment battle-ready and safe.
The job could be both monotonous and highly pressured, with work going on around the clock. A ground crew generally worked on the same aircraft and might feel a sense of ownership for it, just as an aircrew often did.
Reifeiss came from Missouri, and Taylor from Oklahoma. Like many young men in the army, they probably had not travelled outside of their home state before the war, and would have been expected to live similar lives to their fathers. Reifeiss had just begun to work as an office clerk for a wholesale hardware firm like his father Otto, and Taylor was employed on the family farm.
Cpl Geraldine Hill of the Women's Army Corps
Hill lived in Texas all of her life and worked for more than 30 years as a book-keeper for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The war brought an interruption to her career when she volunteered as part of Dallas's civil defence and then when she enlisted in the Women's Army Corps - a decision at which her boss "nearly flipped".
Hill served overseas for 27 months, not only in England, but in France, the Rhineland and Central Europe.
After retirement she spent time fishing at the lakeside cottage she owned with her sister. Hill's nephew Don remembers her as "an avid birder … [who] loved to go fishing. She was a quiet woman… [who] smiled often, with a kind nature."
All photographs © Imperial War Museum from the book, Somewhere in England, published to coincide with the reopening of IWM Duxford's American Air Museum. Some of the stories from the book will feature in the newly transformed hangar that reopens on 19 March and you can find out more about the Roger Freeman collection on its website.
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An offshore supply ship detained in Aberdeen on the grounds of non-payment of crew wages has been released, BBC Scotland has learned. | By Rachel MassieBBC Scotland reporter
The Malaviya Seven was detained in June under merchant shipping regulations.
The crew was said not to have been paid for several months.
The Martime and Coastguard Agency said: "The Malaviya Seven was released from detention following the payment of crew wages and repatriation of seafarers with expired employment agreements."
The International Transport Workers' Federation said the vessel would be monitored closely.
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Hillary Clinton has strengthened her position as the Democrat to beat in her quest to become the country's first woman president. But the biggest obstacle in her path to victory could be a young senator who few outside Florida know much about. | By Tom GeogheganBBC News, Washington
If Republican strategists were to assemble their ideal presidential candidate in a factory, a product resembling Marco Rubio would come rolling off the conveyor belts in a perfect package.
Young. Tick.
Clear communicator. Tick.
Good on television. Tick.
American Dream life story. Tick.
Strong Hispanic appeal. Tick.
Keeps gaffes to a minimum. Tick.
While other Republicans have gained far more attention, the 44-year-old Cuban-American has been quietly impressive.
Too quiet to trouble the leaders, one could joke. In the Republican race, he lies a distant third in an average of national polling by RealClear Politics, a long way behind Donald Trump and brain surgeon Ben Carson.
But for some who have closely followed US elections for years, he is the "real" frontrunner.
The top six Republicans
Source: RealClear Politics
He probably has the best chance of anybody of being nominated, says Stu Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report.
"If you gave me [truth drug] Sodium Pentothal and asked me who I thought had the best chance to be the presidential candidate, I would say Marco Rubio. He has charisma, pizzazz, youth and he's a terrific speaker."
But the race is still uncertain and there are question marks about his substance and experience, he warns. Some Republican voters see another Barack Obama, a 40-something senator who got to the White House and was ill-prepared.
Yet Rubio's is the name on the lips of many political insiders. But why, with Trump and Carson so far ahead in the polls?
His path to victory would best be described as slow and steady.
In January as the primary contests loom, Republican voters will ask themselves who can really be president, says Rothenberg.
Those who have backed "outsider" candidates Trump and Carson as an expression of anger with the party's elite will turn to more mainstream contenders, he thinks.
"There could be boredom with Trump, there could be self-inflicted wounds but most likely it will be voters starting to evaluate candidates differently. They have always done that in the past. I can't guarantee they will this time but if they do the field will look much narrower."
They don't want to nominate another "old, white guy" if they want a chance, he says, and Rubio's background would put him ahead of the well-financed but struggling ex-Florida governor, Jeb Bush.
A lot of candidates like to cast their life story as a rags-to-riches American fable, but Rubio has a strong and compelling case to make.
Born in Miami to Cuban immigrants, he lived in Las Vegas for a while as a child, where his father was a barman and his mother a housekeeper. After high school in Miami, his degrees in political science and then in law amassed a $100,000 student debt that he only paid off in recent years.
He scaled the political ladder in Florida at speed, culminating in a Senate seat in 2010 after a race he was never expected to win.
"When I entered that race, the only people who thought I could win all lived in my home. Four of them were under the age of 10," he has said.
Where Rubio stands
Full list of policies on his campaign website
Socially conservative and hawkish on foreign policy, he toes the mainstream party line and appeals to both Wall Street and Tea Party factions of the party. But his powers of address arguably have no equal in the race.
A former Florida House Democratic minority leader, Dan Gelber, once said: "When Marco Rubio speaks, young women swoon, old women faint and toilets flush themselves."
These skills did desert him when it mattered, however. A very dry mouth when delivering a high-profile TV speech sparked water-drinking jokes and memes.
That awkward moment will be forgotten if he wins the Republican nomination, and many believe he is the candidate that Hillary Clinton, if she wins the Democratic race, will fear the most.
It's not just her appeal to Hispanics that he could dent but he offers a generational contrast with a woman who has been in politics for 20 years and who will be 69 come election day.
Clinton's husband Bill is reportedly among those concerned at this threat, and her team have long been preparing a detailed attack plan on how to neutralise his appeal. His harder line on undocumented migrants getting citizenship, a reversal in policy, is sure to figure.
Rubio's connection with young people is the key to Hillary's vulnerability, says Susan MacManus, political science professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, who has followed the senator closely for many years.
He talks their language, listens to their music and has no wealth, she says. The fact he has had debts of his own adds to this kinship.
"Here is a guy who understands their economics. Hillary needs to hold the young vote Obama won and she can't lose any of that."
Others believe, however, he's still a long shot. More like a vice-president pick, says political scientist Shaun Bowler, because he lacks cash.
"The difficulty for him is that there are still other strong - and stronger - candidates who will be left in the race even if or when Trump, Carson and others drop out.
"Rubio is doing OK but he doesn't have the resources these other candidates have."
That could yet change.
A polished performance by Rubio in the next Republican debate on Wednesday could convince Jeb Bush's donors to back the other Florida horse.
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Clashes have erupted again in Hong Kong after the authorities moved in to clear protest camps. For two months pro-democracy activists have occupied various parts of the territory, and protests have occasionally turned violent. | Why are the authorities cracking down now?
Since the street occupations began in September in three key spots - Mong Kok, Admiralty and Causeway Bay - the authorities have largely tolerated protesters.
But the High Court began granting injunctions to businesses and industry groups to clear roads in November, triggering a round of clearances by bailiffs and the police.
The first clearance in Admiralty on 18 November passed off peacefully.
But clashes erupted the following week when the authorities demolished the entire Mong Kok camp.
Student protesters accused the police of violence, and tried to shut down government offices in Admiralty on 1 December, prompting a strong response from the police.
Another injunction has been granted to clear a section of Connaught and Harcourt Roads - the major stronghold of protesters.
Does this mean protests are dying out?
The students have insisted that public opinion is still on their side, but the numbers at protest sites and polls indicate that the public has grown increasingly weary of the disruption and unrest.
At its peak, the pro-democracy movement saw tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents from all walks of life take to the streets. Two months on, just a few hundred remain camped out in tent cities, most of whom are students and young workers.
Meanwhile, a mid-November poll done by the University of Hong Kong's public opinion programme found that a majority of respondents did not support the protests.
A majority also backed the Hong Kong government's clearance of the sites, though some believed that it could allocate other areas for protesters.
Student leaders have also found it difficult to make headway. Earlier talks with city officials proved fruitless, an attempt to travel to Beijing was blocked by Hong Kong authorities, and two leaders - Joshua Wong and Lester Shum - were arrested for obstructing police in Mong Kok and are now out on bail.
On 2 December, three of the co-founders of the Occupy Central movement called for protesters to retreat. The three turned themselves in to a police station the next day, though the authorities have not charged them with any offence.
What is the Chinese government saying?
China's central government has continuously condemned the ongoing street occupations, and state-controlled mainland media outlets have accused pro-democracy activists of "intensifying" the crisis with the latest clash.
One of the Hong Kong business groups that has taken out an injunction to clear the protest sites is a joint-venture controlled by Chinese state-owned Citic Group.
Though it remains unclear whether Beijing had a direct hand in the applications, many in the business sector - which is increasingly reliant on China - have opposed the protests since day one, on the grounds that it would hurt the economy and anger Beijing.
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Flooding on an unprecedented scale ravaged parts of the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire during Christmas 2015. Visually, the devastation has receded - but four years on many people remain traumatised by that catastrophic deluge. | By Alex MossBBC News
Communities in Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd, Todmorden and other areas were badly hit by the floodwaters, which wrecked thousands of properties and caused an estimated £150m in damage.
Millions of pounds have been invested to make the area more resilient against future flooding but the emotional hangover is still palpable with hundreds of people seeking mental health support.
"Every time it rains you can feel the tension," said Hebden Bridge flood warden Andrew Entwistle. "Especially when the sirens go off, you can feel the anxiety radiating from people, asking what the situation is and how bad it's going to get."
Back in 2015, the former firefighter was eating a late Christmas Day lunch when the flood alert was first sounded - signalling the start of heavy rain which led to the River Calder bursting its banks. Some 18 months later, the 76-year-old turned to counselling to help him deal with what he had witnessed.
He recalls: "I've been used to handling floods and disasters but this was on another level. One lady collapsed on the street in front of me. The stress levels and sheer amount of tragedy that unfolded is indescribable and those feelings don't just disappear."
Since the floods, mental health charity Healthy Minds has had teams stationed in Hebden Bridge and Todmorden to support people with anxieties and fears about a repeat of the flooding.
"At first, people were distracted by the clear-up but when that was done the emotional wallop really hit," said the charity's chief officer, Jonny Richardson Glenn, who lives in Halifax.
"When there is heavy rain the fear comes back. People worry that they won't be able to cope, that they can't go through it again."
Mr Entwistle said it was stressful and emotionally difficult seeing the floods batter his home town.
"[Healthy Minds] gave me the chance to talk through things and emotionally off-load," he said. "Community groups are doing some fantastic work and even though there's a fatalistic attitude in terms of flooding will happen again, lessons have been learnt and we aren't half going to deal with it as best we can."
Helping to build coping strategies and resilience is core to the charity's support and over the last year, nearly one in five - about 800 of the 4,500 people in the town - have used the Hebden Bridge team.
Mr Richardson Glenn said: "People deal with adversity in their lives and it's about looking at their capacity to work it through - do they feel they are part of a supportive community? Do they have the personal and financial resources to be able to deal with that?"
The town's narrow valleys are surrounded by steep hillsides carved out by rivers, making the area and its surrounding communities particularly vulnerable to flooding. It has had a warning system since the Environment Agency took over the World War Two air raid sirens years ago and started using them to alert residents to flooding in the area.
Prior to the torrent on 26 December 2015, there had been significant flooding in 2012 and the summer of 2013 resulting in the council, Environment Agency and other organisations working together to reduce the impact of future flooding.
This involved infrastructure repairs, flood risk reduction schemes as well as grants for homes and businesses. But the events of 2015 triggered an even bigger programme of works, known as the the Calderdale Flood Action Plan.
Nearing completion a mile down the road in Mytholmroyd - a village which at the worst of the flooding was completely underwater - is a £30m scheme to help protect 400 homes and businesses. The work involves new, raised and improved walls, relocation of Caldene Bridge, waterproofing of buildings next to the river and widening of the river channel.
"For some people there is a real element of post-traumatic stress," said resident and flood warden Scott Patient. "Some of our older residents especially still feel very vulnerable and that is probably not going to go away."
Mr Patient, who is also a Calderdale councillor and cabinet member for climate change and environment, added: "The work is bringing more reassurance though and I think when that's finished it will be a big relief."
Carole Pollitt, landlady of the Dusty Miller, recalls wading through neck high water in her pub trying to salvage Christmas presents for her grandchildren.
"I haven't had a drop of water in here since the work started so things have definitely improved. I still put my wellies on when it rains, I guess it's like a comfort blanket even though in my head I'm quite confident we we won't see anything as catastrophic again."
Back in Hebden Bridge, the town is awaiting the start of its major flood defence work although smaller scale projects and natural flood management schemes led by community groups such as Slow the Flow have made a difference.
There is however, an inevitable acceptance that flooding will return - but to a town which is much better prepared.
Alison Bartram, Heart Gallery owner and chairman of Hebden Bridge Business Forum, had to close her gallery for six months because of the damage.
"I've made adjustments - I've replaced the wooden floor with a ceramic one and got higher flood gates at the front. But flooding is invasive and water will find a way in no matter what.
"I think it will flood again but at least now we have a plan in place and people will have more time to put their flood barriers up and salvage stuff. Unfortunately you can't change Mother Nature and to a certain extent it's the price we pay for living in the place we love."
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The technology giants of Silicon Valley are among the few winners from the global pandemic. Their share prices are holding up or even surging ahead as investors bet they will come out of the crisis even stronger. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
But Covid-19 has also shone a spotlight on two tech tycoons with radically different attitudes to the battle to control the virus: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
The contrast was seen in the way the two men treated what is usually the sober, perhaps even somnolent, environment of an analysts' conference call after their latest financial results.
For the last few weeks, Tesla's mercurial founder has been tweeting in increasingly intemperate fashion.
First he expressed scepticism about the threat from the coronavirus. Then he condemned what he saw as the excessive measures to combat it.
The lockdown in California has meant the closure of his main production plant in Fremont, and Mr Musk wants it open again.
"Bravo Texas!," he tweeted yesterday, linking to a report about the state easing restrictions.
Then came a big statement in capital letters: FREE AMERICA NOW.
But it was during the analysts' call, following results delivering a surprise profit during the first quarter, that his anger boiled over.
In his opening statement Musk did not mention the virus. But in response to questions, he railed against California's order to residents to stay at home:
"To say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom."
His language became even more extreme at one point.
He said an extension of the shelter-in-place policy was "forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights".
He added: "Breaking people's freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong is not why people came to America or built this country."
He then used a strong expletive - one which it is safe to say I have never heard on a public conference call - before continuing: "Excuse me. But outrage - it's an outrage."
There was a fair bit of outrage in response. Not from the analysts who continued asking about gross margin and the rollout of an app, but from onlookers on Twitter.
Some pointed out that the Tesla tycoon has proved far from prescient in his analysis of the threat from the virus.
On 19 March, he remarked that there had been no new cases in China and added: "Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April."
So far, there have been over more than one million coronavirus cases in the United States and about 60,000 deaths.
Opposing view
Meanwhile, Facebook's founder was talking about his company's latest results, which saw a fall in profits but still managed to please investors despite a warning that the business was "facing a period of unprecedented uncertainty".
Mark Zuckerberg's language on his conference call with analysts was not as colourful as that of Elon Musk.
But he was pretty frank in advancing an opposing view to the Tesla tycoon. A rush to return to normality was a really bad idea for both public health and the economy, he said.
"While there are massive societal costs from the current shelter-in-place restrictions, I worry that reopening certain places too quickly before infection rates have been reduced to very minimal levels will almost guarantee future outbreaks and worsen longer-term health and economic outcomes."
Now you could say it is easier for Mark Zuckerberg to take this stance - his employees can do a pretty good job of keeping Facebook ticking over from home, while Tesla staff won't be building any cars in their backyards.
While the social media firm may be concerned about a fall in advertising, it is far better placed than old media businesses to weather the downturn. Its share price, which is only modestly down since February, reflects that.
Mind you, Tesla shares continue to defy gravity. You might think that with its main factory closed, a low oil price making electric cars look less desirable and a chief executive apparently incapable of self-control, investors would be heading for the hills.
But no, the shares were already back up near an all-time peak and are set to climb higher after the latest results.
Tesla, which sold 367,500 cars in 2019, is now valued by the market at close on $150bn (£120bn). That's nearly four times as much as the giant US manufacturer GM, which sold about 7.7 million cars last year.
All this means that Elon Musk could be about to enjoy a bumper pay-out. He looks on track to hit the targets set by his board for boosting the value of the company, which would trigger the opportunity for him to make a profit of around $740m on stock options.
You might have thought that Silicon Valley hubris and Wall Street hysteria about tech stocks were two things that had gone right out of fashion in the last couple of months. Try telling that to Elon Musk.
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Hundreds of police officers are knocking on the doors of residents of a small coastal village warning them they need to leave their homes in the morning. Some have already said they will refuse to go. Why? | By Laurence CawleyBBC News
"We're not crying wolf," says the district policing commander for Tendring, Ch Insp Russ Cole.
It may seem a strange thing for a police officer to feel the need to say. But Ch Insp Cole admits the response of residents to officers about the planned evacuation of the 2,500 or so homes in Jaywick, Essex, has already been "mixed".
"We have been looking at the forecast for the last week and the best information we have from all of the agencies involved are that we are facing a perfect storm of a spring tide of 4.2m (14ft), a storm surge coming down the North Sea, truly inclement weather of snow and rain and winds of between 40 and 50mph (64 and 80kph)," he says.
"There is a really strong chance of water coming in over the top of the sea wall and round the back of Jaywick from the St Osyth end," adds Ch Insp Cole, who began work at 06:00 on Thursday.
He says he will not make it home until the early hours of Friday.
So why would anybody not heed the police advice and leave their homes for safety?
Matthew Woolston, who lives close to the seafront, says: "My friends say they are going to stay in their houses and see it out.
"They say they have been evacuated so many times they don't believe it [mass flooding] is going to happen.
"I am not going anywhere, I don't think there's a danger and the sea looks too calm."
Ch Insp Cole is aware of such scepticism.
Some of it, he explains, stems from the most recent mass evacuation of Jaywick in 2013 during the last storm surge.
"But in 2013, there was a difference - there was no wind. This time there will be."
Another difference in 2013 was that residents were told to leave their pets.
This time around, the people of Jaywick will be allowed to bring their animals with them.
"As long as people do not bring a 16ft crocodile," he says.
And he reminds people that the absence of casualties in the past few decades has been the result of planning and preparation.
Anybody who doubts the potential devastation rising waters can have need look no further back than 1953, he says.
On the night of 31 January 63 years ago, the North Sea swamped the village not from the sea front but from behind killing 35 people.
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An 82-year-old man has been charged with attempting to murder a woman who was found stabbed at a house. | The 83-year-old was found injured at a property in Worksop Road, Budby, Nottinghamshire, at about 12:30 BST on Thursday.
She is in a stable condition in hospital after it was initially thought her injuries were life-threatening.
The man has been remanded in custody and is due before Nottingham Crown Court on Monday 9 September.
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
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This year marks 25 years since Public Enemy released Fight The Power. | Interview by Sinead Garvan, words by Jimmy BlakeNewsbeat reporters
Despite a quarter of a century passing since the seminal track came out, the New York hip-hop collective is still regarded as one of the most influential acts of its time.
But founding member Chuck D says the world is different for musicians compared to when they started out.
The 53-year-old says performing, touring and hip-hop as a whole have moved on since the 80s.
Public Enemy, whose current and former members include Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, DJ Lord and Khari Wynn, have appeared at festivals all over the world during their career.
This year will see them playing at Manchester's Parklife Weekender and Hertfordshire's Standon Calling, which they are headlining.
"Going around the world always seems to expand your horizons," said Chuck D.
"We were never a group that just stayed in the United States and that has made the longevity of Public Enemy possible.
"We became the first hip-hop group to ever do festivals. Now that festivals seem to be the thing, why stop our pattern?"
Chuck D, whose real name is Carlton Ridenhour, says the growth of social media has added a new dimension to how he interacts with fans.
But the rapper hasn't lost touch of more traditional aspects of music.
Having been named as the ambassador for Record Store Day 2014, Chuck D says there's room for both vinyl and digital music in the market.
That said, he admits Public Enemy's live act has developed a bit since they formed in 1982.
"We were just strictly DJs, turntables and a microphone along with movement," explained Chuck D.
"But we've added a rhythm section since 1999 so that's expanded our repertoire."
The likes of Rage Against the Machine, The Beastie Boys and Run DMC all list Public Enemy as an act they look up to, but Chuck D says he's seen a shift in their influence.
"Rap music is a little bit more individualised now than it used to be. I have to look across the whole hip-hop terrain to see the similarities in individuals."
Other mainstream acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Korn say their sound was shaped by Public Enemy and in 2013 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.
"It was fantastic for the genre as opposed to just ourselves," said Chuck D.
But Public Enemy's anti-establishment views and controversial lyrics haven't always been seen positively.
They have been labelled as homophobic and anti-semitic by the media in the past.
"Once upon a time the genre was considered bad and not official and legitimate music," said Chuck D.
"All genres are based on performance and recording. We were able to be great performers and good recording artists."
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter
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Two men have been charged with murder after a man was stabbed during a fight in Liverpool city centre and later died. | George Bala Lloyd-Evans, 33 from Toxteth, was wounded in the chest in Back Colquitt Street at about 03:00 BST on Sunday.
Ramal Edwards, 19, and Kieran Perry, 24, both of Toxteth, appeared at Liverpool Magistrates Court earlier.
They were remanded into custody until 5 July.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
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A planned strike by workers on the Tyne and Wear Metro strike on 21 June has been suspended.
| Metro's owner, Nexus, said operator DB Regio Tyne and Wear Ltd had come to an agreement with unions over pay.
Staff will be balloted on the pay offer of 2.1% or a £520 pay increase, whichever is the greater, up to 3%.
The rise will be funded from efficiency savings within the organisation and not through any additional contribution from Nexus.
Staff will also receive a £300 payment, plus a one-off bonus payment of £200, plus additional travel benefits.
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A 22-year-old Dunmurry man has been killed after the stolen car he was driving was involved in a collision with a van on the outskirts of south Belfast. | The accident happened on the McKinstry Road in Dunmurry on Friday morning.
Police said they believed the car, a Chevrolet Captiva, was stolen during a creeper style burglary in Harmony Hill in Lisburn earlier on Friday.
A 21-year-old woman in the car and the lorry driver were treated in hospital.
Their injuries were not life-threatening.
The 21-year-old woman was later arrested on suspicion of burglary and allowing herself to be carried - she was later bailed pending further enquiries.
The McKinstry Road remains closed.
Police have appealed for anyone who witnessed the collision or anyone who was travelling on the McKinstry Road around 08:00 GMT on Friday to contact them.
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Non-recyclable waste collected from homes and businesses in Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire is to be sent overseas.
| Ceredigion council said the move will save both authorities £350,000 a year and create 11 jobs on Pembroke Dock.
The rubbish will be exported to Sweden where it will be used at a power station to generate heat and electricity.
It will be processed at sites at Pembroke Port and Lampeter to remove recyclables before being shipped.
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A man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a woman whose body was found at a seaside hotel. | Lincolnshire Police said the body of the 39-year-old woman was discovered at the Links Hotel in Drummond Road, Skegness, on Tuesday evening.
A 43-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder, a spokesperson for the force said.
An area of the hotel is currently cordoned off while inquiries take place.
Officers have appealed for information.
More news from across Lincolnshire
Follow BBC East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire on Facebook on Twitter, and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
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Some island roads are disintegrating due to a lack of repair after the damaging freezing weather, according to an island politician. | In February's House of Keys David Cannan asked when the Department of Infrastructure planned to fix the "extensive" pot hole damage.
Graham Cregeen said the department has nine road repair teams working overtime to address the problem.
He added: "We have also brought in machinery to speed up the process."
Mr Cregeen confirmed that most roads would be fixed within the next two months and that priorities are set by officers who check the roads daily.
Members of the public are still being encouraged to contact the Highways Division to report pot hole damage.
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Plunging temperatures in Moscow failed to dent the enthusiasm of hundreds of cyclists who took to the streets in a mass event. | The organisers ignored warnings to cancel and say some 500 took part in the ride, aimed at promoting cycling.
The participants, some dressed as Santa Claus or the Russian equivalent, braved temperatures of minus 27C.
"Not one of the participants... ended up going to the doctors after it finished," organisers said.
Dubbed Let's Bike It, the course took riders 15km (nine miles) along the banks of the frozen Moscow river with the Kremlin as backdrop.
This man was putting on a spurt on to make it to the start in time.
But some riders could not do it without support from their loved-ones, including this lady with her well insulated pet.
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A man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of a 78-year-old woman was found at a home in Monmouthshire.
| Gwent Police say officers were called to an address in the Usk area at about 18:50 GMT on Saturday.
The force confirmed the woman was local to the area and her cause of death was being investigated.
Her family has been informed while a 48-year-old man is in custody and helping police with their inquiries.
Det Ch Insp Richard Williams said: "This is a tragic incident and our thoughts are with the family of the deceased at this very difficult time.
"Our investigation will establish exactly what happened and I can confirm that we are not looking for anyone else in connection with this incident."
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A 79-year-old pedestrian has died after she was hit by a heavy goods vehicle in Birmingham. | The woman was struck near a Kwik Fit garage on Pershore Road, Cotteridge, at about 18:50 BST on Wednesday.
She was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. But she died a few hours later, West Midlands Police said.
The HGV driver stopped at the scene and was assisting police with their inquiries, the force said.
Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, and sign up for local news updates direct to your phone.
Related Internet Links
West Midlands Police
West Midlands Ambulance Service
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An 81-year-old pedestrian has died in hospital a day after he was seriously injured by a tram.
| The man was struck by the vehicle in Woodbourn Road in Sheffield on Thursday morning.
He was taken to hospital, but died on Friday morning.
South Yorkshire Police has appealed for anyone who has information about the incident, which happened near the Woodbourn Road tram stop at 10:10 GMT, to get in touch.
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Scotland will see new income tax rates and bands come into effect in April 2018. So, will you be paying more or paying less? With the help of tax consultants Deloitte, we put together examples spanning different salaries. | The lower earner
£15,000 salary
If you earned a salary of £15,000 in 2018/19 and had no other income, the personal allowance of £11,850 would be deducted and £3,150 would be taxable.
If you were resident in Scotland, your income tax calculation would be as follows;
Scottish starter rate - £2,000 at 19%= £380
Scottish basic rate - £1,150 at 20% = £230
Total tax = £610
If you earned the same sum of money but were not resident in Scotland the full £3,150 would be taxable at 20% (UK basic rate) producing an income tax bill of £630. Therefore, you would pay £20 less as a resident of Scotland.
The medium to higher earners
£33,000 salary
A salary of £33,000 earned by you would have a tax liability of £21,150. If you were resident in Scotland from April 2018 your income tax would be as follows:
Scottish starter rate - £2,000 at 19% = £380
Scottish basic rate - £10,150 at 20% = £2,030
Scottish intermediate rate - £9,000 at 21% = £1,890
Tax total = £4,300
If you were resident elsewhere in the UK, the full £21,150 would be taxable at 20%, giving an income tax liability of £4,230. A Scottish resident would pay an additional £70 in income tax compared with living elsewhere in the UK.
£45,000 salary
If you were earning £45,000 during the 2018/19 tax year and had no other income you would receive a personal allowance of £11,850 - after which £33,150 would be taxable.
The tax calculation would be as follows;
Scottish starter rate - £2,000 at 19%= £380
Scottish basic rate - £10,150 at 20%= £2,030
Scottish intermediate rate - 19,430 at 21% =£4,080.30
Scottish higher rate - £1,570 at 41%= £643.70
Total tax = £7,134
If you are not resident in Scotland, the full £33,150 would be taxable at 20% (UK basic rate) producing an income tax bill of £6,630. You would therefore be paying £504 more in tax as a resident of Scotland.
The higher earner
£200,000 salary
If you earn a salary of £200,000 in 2018/19 and have no other income you are not entitled to a personal allowance because your income exceeds £123,700. The taxable income is therefore £200,000.
If you are a resident in Scotland, your income tax breaks down is as follows:
Scottish starter rate - £2,000 at 19%= £380
Scottish basic rate - £10,150 at 20%= £2,030
Scottish intermediate rate - £19,430at 21% = £4,080.30
Scottish higher rate - £118,420 at 41% = £48,552,20
Scottish additional rate - £50,000 at 46% = £23,000
Total tax = £78,042.50
If you are a resident elsewhere in the UK, on this salary you would pay £75,600 in tax - £2,442.50 less than north of the border.
The Budget Calculator, devised by Deloitte LLP, is indicative and should not be used to calculate actual liabilities, determine any financial strategy or as a substitute for professional advice.
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