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The doors of Llandaff Cathedral will be locked for up to three days this month as a new bishop is elected, it has been announced. | An electoral college of 47 people drawn from all over Wales, including all the bishops, will meet on 21 February to vote on a confidential candidates list.
The election follows the retirement at the end of January of Dr Barry Morgan.
The new bishop will be the 72nd Bishop of Llandaff, a diocese which serves nearly half the population of Wales.
The college is made up of representatives from all six Welsh dioceses.
Once a bishop is elected, he or she will have up to 28 days to accept the position. If he or she accepts, the election will be formally confirmed in April.
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When Allan Beckett woke from a coma, he was unable to understand the meaning of certain idioms such as "rush hour" - which for a long-distance cyclist was a little too ironic for comfort. | By Mary McCoolBBC Scotland news
The 41-year-old from Glasgow says it was as though well-known phrases had been wiped from his memory following a road accident in 2016.
He was told that while pedalling down a slope on Polnoon Street in Eaglesham, East Renfrewshire, his bike crashed. Beyond that details are scarce.
The impact left him out cold for three days with a head injury, while his pregnant wife Nicola visited him in hospital. He still can't remember several weeks of his life surrounding the collision - but otherwise, he says he is fighting fit.
"There were no witnesses," said Allan. "I don't really know anything - whether it was a mistake or mechanical."
Around three months later, having physically recovered, Allan took his bike back to the crash site to tackle another run down the hill - and crashed again.
He said: "I hit a pothole I couldn't avoid, it was so bad it knocked my handle bars out of alignment.
"It gave me a fright, but I did it a third time. People do give me odd looks, but I went back to get my confidence back."
'Riding through pain'
Allan has tried countless different sports from snowboarding to archery, but started endurance racing in 2014.
He has attempted a number of long distance rides including the entire length of the UK - a 270-mile cycle from Dunnet Head to Lizard Point.
A torn ligament in his leg, broken arms and ankles, a broken back and a fractured chin are just some of the injuries he has suffered because of sport - but he remains unflappable.
The year after his coma, he was back on a mountain bike when he crashed on ice and broke two ribs, yet continued to cycle a further 50km.
Be it fearlessness or an appetite for danger, Allan is now preparing to tackle the Tour of Flanders in Belgium - a 260km route with 18 cobbled climbs, notorious for their difficulty.
The terrain causes a terrible pain that Allan likens to breaking his arm all over again.
He said: "It's a shaky pain you feel through your wrists, hands, legs, undercarriage, teeth and head - it'll take me about nine hours.
"The 2017 crash was a bad one since it was my first real crash after the coma - I will admit it did bring back a lot of bad memories, I was a lot more vocal than I would usually be following a crash in terms of distress.
"So when I say that the Ronde Van Vlaanderen will hurt, I am speaking from a position of knowledge of riding through pain."
Allan claims that in addition to keeping him physically and mentally fit, cycling also makes him a better businessman.
A chartered accountant and director at Black and Lizars, he often uses cycling to clear his mind and bring what he calls a "better flow" into his day.
He is a firm believer in the Japanese principle kaizen - which is to do with continuous improvement.
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He said: "A former colleague and I were struggling with how to get round an issue that affected the business and he jokingly said you should get on your bike and go for a ride.
"So I did - I went out for two hours and came up with a concept - the guys thought 'that'll work'.
"The thing I love to practice is flow, how to live your life as well as you can and how to read the situation around you.
"That's what you need to do on the bike - to do those distances you need to flow, you can't constantly stop and change your energy output.
"Think of when you approach a roundabout in a car, do you speed up then hammer on the brakes or do you ease off and glide through?"
In light of his coma, Allan says he does not take as many risks in the name of sport, although his dedication to cycling has raised an eyebrow among friends and colleagues.
But wife Nicola and two-year-old son Finn are fully behind him as he sets off for Belgium.
"I don't think it's an addiction," he said. "I believe there are benefits of setting yourself challenges mentally and physically.
"If you have something that's positive for you then why wouldn't you do it?
"My mental health degrades quite significantly when I'm not exercising; it's just an overall feeling, the lack of space and lack of reflection. That's the key thing about being on a bike."
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The design for the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital has been unveiled. | The new hospital will be built next to the current one, on the same site, and will open in 2017.
Construction company Carillon will work on the project after the funding was approved by the Department of Health and the Treasury earlier this year.
Once services transfer into the new Royal, the current Royal will be demolished and the surrounding area will be landscaped.
The planned research facility, called Liverpool BioCampus, will then be built on the site of the old hospital.
The new hospital will cost about £335m, with funds coming from the government and the private sector.
Cutting edge
Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust said it would be the largest hospital in the country, providing all single en-suite bedrooms for patients.
There will be 18 theatres and 23 wards, with the emergency department being one of the biggest in the North West.
The trust said the equivalent of 750 full-time jobs would be created throughout its four-year construction.
Aidan Kehoe, chief executive of the trust, said: "We are absolutely thrilled to unveil the design for the new Royal today.
"The Royal is at the very heart of our city and the creation of a world-class, cutting edge hospital will transform healthcare in Liverpool.
"It means that we can create the Liverpool BioCampus, which will spearhead the transformation of the Knowledge Quarter into a bustling and cosmopolitan hub.
"It is a unique opportunity to put the city on the world stage, along with cities like Boston and Singapore. This is incredibly exciting for the people of the city."
Helen Jackson, director of strategy and redevelopment at the trust, said: "The new hospital has been designed with patients at the very heart.
"Many rooms will offer spectacular views of the city. There will be lots of natural light, art, colour and it will be much easier for people to find their way round.
"The whole environment will be much more attractive and welcoming. It is for the people of the city."
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Is this the moment the landlords fight back? | Simon JackBusiness editor@BBCSimonJackon Twitter
This afternoon, the landlords to Arcadia - Sir Philip Green's retail empire - will be asked to vote on whether they will accept swingeing cuts to the rent they charge to well-known retailing brands like TopShop and Dorothy Perkins.
This form of insolvency - called a Company Voluntary Arrangement - has been used to keep other struggling retailers (Debenhams, House of Fraser) alive. Up to now, landlords have largely been forced to accept that in the current retail climate, having a tenant paying anything at all is better than having the building stand empty.
But some industry insiders say that many landlords have been looking for a moment to hold the line and there's a chance this could be it.
Even when the landlords vote against a CVA, they are often outvoted by the other creditors - particularly if one of those creditors is a pension scheme many million pounds in deficit.
However, in the case of Arcadia, the landlords have more power thanks to its complex structure. The pension scheme is only a creditor to one of seven interconnected companies. That means its massive voting power does not blow the creditors to the other six companies out of the water.
Even so - the landlords will know that if they vote against today's restructuring, the company could very well collapse - leaving them without a tenant, right?
Well maybe not. If you are landlord to some of the better brands - like TopShop - in some of the better retail locations, you might think it is pretty likely that someone will want to buy it out of administration - so why take a massive hit on your income to prop up a company that has been performing poorly.
That is one of the fundamental objections to the concept of a CVA. Not only are the landlords bearing the brunt of a company's poor performance, but they are in effect making life worse for successful retailers which are well run.
No wonder the boss of fashion chain Next says he wants a CVA clause in all his new rental agreements. Why should I have to compete with a retailer next door to me, who has the same square footage and the same landlord but is paying half the rent I am?
Those comments from Lord Wolfson sent shivers down many a landlord's spine and made a lot think they would need to show some backbone at some point.
The truth is that companies that really need or want to cut their cost base are not going to be able to do it by cutting rents on rubbish units in rubbish locations. They are not paying much rent for those locations. What they need to do is cut the expensive rents in the premium locations - and a CVA allows the company to do that.
It is hard to muster much sympathy for landlords who grew fat off the retail land by charging eye-watering, ever rising rents during the good times. But some argue that rewarding unsuccessful businesses can't be good for competition or the wider economy.
Almost all of the recent CVAs have been passed despite the gritted teeth of landlords. If this does turn out to be the moment they fight back in sufficient numbers, Sir Philip Green will know his high street luck has really run out.
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In his memoirs, Tony Blair wrote that one of the reasons business support for New Labour in the 1990s was important was for the message it sent voters - if businesses agree with us, then that is a powerful, non-political endorsement of our offer to you. | Kamal AhmedEconomics editor@bbckamalon Twitter
And even in an era before the collapse of trust in politicians, the word "non-political" carried a lot of weight.
A similar dynamic has been at play during the European Union referendum campaign.
Both sides have been keen to roll out business leaders to support their cause, believing that voters are willing to listen to people who actually make decisions on employing people and investing in the UK economy.
Reputable polls
For Remain, a series of business big-hitters have backed the UK staying in the EU, saying leaving would risk job losses and threaten economic growth.
They include Sir Roger Carr, chairman of the aerospace giant BAE, Dame Carolyn McCall, chief executive of easyJet, Bob Dudley, chief executive of BP, and Douglas Flint, the chairman of HSBC.
Remain supporters insist that the weight of business opinion is on their side.
And certainly nearly all the reputable polls on the issue have put business support for Remain ahead of support for Leave.
Today's by the British Chambers of Commerce, one of the largest, puts "Remain" leading "Leave" among its members 54% to 37%.
Leave supporters respond by saying that larger businesses tend to be more pro-EU and speak for the "establishment", smaller businesses and those that do not export to other parts of the EU are more negative and that they have some significant business voices on their side.
Ray of sunshine
They include Tim Martin, chairman of pub chain JD Wetherspoons, Luke Johnson, chairman of Patisserie Valerie and the man behind the success of Pizza Express, and Rocco Forte, chief executive of Rocco Forte Hotels.
And one ray of sunshine for the Leave campaign from the BCC survey is that the poll lead for remain among businesses has fallen from 30% to 17%.
Though it is also worth noting that 90% of those that responded to the poll said that their mind was now settled, which suggests there is not much chance of a substantial further shift before the referendum on 23rd June.
'Project fear'
The BCC survey, and today's study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research - which is expected to claim a high economic cost if Britain leaves the EU - kicks off another week where the economy will dominate much of the EU debate.
On Wednesday George Osborne appears before the Treasury Select Committee to be questioned on the Treasury report which said that the UK economy could be 6% smaller by 2030 if Britain left the EU.
On Thursday the Governor of the Bank of England will appear in public for one of the last major economic reports from the Bank on the state of the UK economy before the referendum.
Mark Carney is likely to strike a gloomy note after manufacturing and service growth data suggested that economic growth had fallen to as low as 0.1% in April, down from 0.4% for the first three months of the year.
How much he attributes that to Brexit risk or just general economic gloom will be fascinating.
The week will be rounded off by the International Monetary Fund's annual study of the British economy which is set to say that leaving the EU will carry a significant bill for Britain.
Mr Osborne wants to keep the focus on the economic argument that leaving the EU is bad for Britain.
For those who support Brexit, Project Fear, as they describe it, is in full voice.
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The Brando is one of the most luxurious eco-resorts on the planet, nestling on an atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's the last place you might think to find pioneering technology. But you'd be surprised. | By Jessica BownTechnology of Business reporter
The Brando resort on Tetiaroa - a stunning atoll north of Tahiti - is the epitome of luxurious exclusivity. Two-room bungalows start from €3,700 (£3,200) a night.
Formerly owned by Hollywood legend Marlon Brando, who was keen that it should become an ecological haven, it has now developed in to a hideaway for the rich and famous seeking conscience-soothing holidays that do less harm to the planet.
While some have dismissed the resort as an "island for liberal elites" - Beyoncé and Barack Obama were recent guests - current owner Richard Bailey claims it is close to becoming "carbon neutral and self-sustainable".
Electricity at the complex, for example, is generated from solar panels and coconut oil biofuel, while waste water is used for sustainable irrigation.
And the resort's cooling system uses a "closed loop heat exchanger" that takes very cold sea water from 900m (2,950ft) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean to cool the fresh water and air circulating round the complex.
As the cooling system is powered largely by water pressure, it uses very little energy.
"It is often felt that sustainability is not compatible with the luxury end of the hospitality market, but The Brando proves it is possible," says Prof Graham Miller, who holds a chair in sustainability in business at the University of Surrey.
But, of course, visitors to The Brando have to fly to Tahiti first then take another "20-minute flight to paradise", so their carbon footprint is still significant.
The well-heeled guests are unlikely to be bitten by mosquitoes either, due to a sterilisation programme that has slashed Tetiaroa's mosquito population by at least 95%.
Led by Dr Hervé Bossin of the Institut Louis Malardé, the programme breeds and releases non-biting male mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria that makes wild females - who do bite - sterile.
Similar initiatives, aimed at stamping out diseases such as Dengue and Zika, are underway in countries such as Australia, Colombia and China.
But few countries have enjoyed the same level of success as Tetiaroa, where mosquito levels are now so low "the team is simply not catching any wild females anymore", according to Frank Murphy, executive director of the Tetiaroa Society, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) involved in the sterilisation programme.
"The success of the project recently convinced the local government to fund a much larger breeding facility that could see the programme expand to other Pacific islands," he says.
Mosquitoes are not the only pests the Tetiaroa Society is working to eradicate. Rats are a big problem for the ecosystem of the atoll.
"Rats eat everything from baby turtles to sea birds, and that is bad news for the coral reef too," Mr Murphy says.
Technology could help here, too.
The team wants to use 2.2m-diameter drones to drop poisonous bait designed to attract rats but not other species.
The operation, only the second ever, will be led by Island Conservation, a US NGO that protects endangered species by removing invasive ones.
"Rats can cause the collapse of the entire terrestrial ecosystem," says Island Conservation's Sally Esposito.
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"In the past, we have used helicopters to spread bait, but we recently used drones for the first time on Seymour Norte in the Galapagos Islands.
"Tetiaroa is a more difficult environment, so it's a great opportunity to test the drones further, and should help us to create a haven for endangered native species, such as the Polynesian Ground-dove and the Tuamotu Sandpiper."
Perhaps the most futuristic project on Tetiaroa is the Island Digital Ecosystem Avatar, which uses light detection and ranging (Lidar) surveys to create a 3D model. Other data, about animals, plants, topography, and so on, will be incorporated, to create a model that could be used to predict how the island might react in different scenarios, from flooding to the introduction of new species.
"The Lidar surveys give us a 3D representation of the physical contours of the island, including the soils," says Tetiaroa Society scientific director Neil Davies - a senior fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science.
"It's a bit like putting the island through a scanner."
The team's eventual aim is to capture the atoll's whole ecosystem - "from molecule upwards" - so it can help local governments and communities evaluate future risks and make better decisions.
Eco-tourism is a growing trend that resorts are seeking to exploit around the world, as people seek to make more responsible choices in the face of climate change.
For example, the Parkside Hotel & Spa in Canada, along with The Brando, is one of just a handful of resorts to attain the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certification.
It has a 290 sq m (3,000 sq ft) vegetated roof, and uses ponds and storm water storage tanks as a heat sink for its air conditioning system.
And actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a high-profile environmental campaigner and The Brando regular - is set to open his Blackadore Caye eco-island resort off Belize in 2020.
But with tourism contributing around 8% to global greenhouse gas emissions, according to one recent paper published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, all resorts will need to become carbon neutral, not just those targeting the world's rich.
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There is the popstar Prince, the androgynous, multi-instrumentalist who sings about sex and spirituality in the same breath. And then there is Prince the enigma. It's this second Prince that has created a great pop-culture mystery - the story of a vault holding thousands of unreleased songs. | By Mobeen AzharBBC, Minneapolis
Prince grew up in Minneapolis and that's still where he records most of his music. Following the success of his blockbuster Purple Rain in 1984 he was able to build his own recording utopia, Paisley Park.
Since then, much of Prince's music has been recorded within its walls, making it a place of pilgrimage for fans. The building is at the centre of one particular legend - the idea that if Prince was to die tomorrow, he has so much unreleased music, he could release an album a year for the next 100 years.
Does it exist?
I've been hearing about the legendary vault for years. Some say it's an urban myth. Others claim to have actually seen it. Susan Rogers, Prince's former sound engineer sets the record straight.
What is in it?
Prince once described his creativity as a curse, explaining: "If I didn't make music, I'd die." He records something almost every day.
Hans Martin-Buff, Prince's engineer from 1996-2000: I remember someone asking Prince why he was working on a weekend. He laughed and said, 'This might be work for Hans, but it's not work for me.' I never knew I had a day off, until the day had passed. I carried a pager. It could beep at any time of the day or night. If Prince wanted to record, I would set everything up and he would go for it. He'd move from drums to bass to guitar to keys and vocals. He could start working on a song from scratch and have it completely mixed within one session. It was completely normal to work through the night. In the same way that most people have a conversation about their day, Prince creates music. It's effortless for him.
Eric Leeds, a saxophonist who's performed with Prince on and off for three decades: We would just go into the studio and jam every night and just record everything. We worked on a whole bunch of instrumentals and Prince threw it all to me and said, "Make me an album." I actually sequenced the record. There was one 45-minute jam called Junk Music. The project was going to be called The Flesh and it was the greatest thing in the world in Prince's mind. That lasted about three days. Then Prince got bored and the record got shelved. There's no question about his speed. In 2004 we made an album called NEWS which did make it to release. That entire album was recorded pretty much as you hear it. It probably took an hour.
Susan Rogers recalls Prince's real-life heartbreak being the inspiration for a particularly magical night of recording: He came into studio and recorded this ballad. It starts with spoken word. Prince is speaking to Wally, a dancer in his crew. He's telling him, "I want go out tonight and meet someone new." He goes into this chorus. It's beautiful, just beautiful. There's a crescendo. The song gets huge. It breaks down. He says, "I'm not going out any more." The background vocal arrangements, the expression of it was just gorgeous. Of course he played all the instruments. We finished recording the song and then Prince said to me, "Erase it."' He said it very calmly. I could feel the fan in me screaming "No!" I said, "Think about it. Wait til tomorrow at least." He reached over and hit record. He erased it. It was gone.
There was perhaps a four-year period where every song he would record would make me think, "This is the greatest thing he's ever done." Projects would just bleed into one another. There was Crystal Ball and Dream Factory and at one point he was saving songs for a kind of super-album called The Dawn. Before we'd go on tour I would take a map and plot out a route so I could mark where the closest recording studios would be. It was common for Prince to want to record after performing for two or three hours. He'd either do an after show or go into a studio to record."
How much is there?
Speaking to those who have been in the studio with Prince, it soon became apparent that only a small amount of recorded work has been released.
Brent Fischer, a Grammy-winning composer who has collaborated with Prince since the 80s: "I think over 70% of the music we've worked on for Prince is yet to be released. There are lot of songs that were sent to us clearly with the idea that they would never be released. They were almost comical songs that he would work out with his horn players. There was lot of wild horn parts and experimentation with samples."
What will happen to it?
Alan Leeds, Prince's former manager recalls a conversation with Prince in the early 90s in which Prince said he'd "just burn everything" one day. But there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of the vault too. Prince himself has teased fans, name-checking unreleased songs in his album liner notes and suggesting they could be released at "a later date". In 2012, he released a YouTube clip of new guitarist Donna Grantis auditioning to be part of his band. The clip ended with the text: "Every good thing in the vault… coming 2013." But of course 2013 passed without the flood of music that was promised.
Since his debut, Prince has released an average of one album a year, with two full-length releases coming out on the same day in 2014. But many fans and musical historians want to put together the missing pieces of the Prince puzzle. Only then will anyone be able to truly grasp the breadth of his creative energies.
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The Crown Prosecution Service's decision that there is sufficient evidence to charge six people over Hillsborough - including a former chief constable - is massive. This has been a complicated process and the charges need some explanation.
| Dominic CascianiHome affairs correspondent@BBCDomCon Twitter
The six who the CPS has authorised to be charged are:
What happens next?
Five of the six have been served with a summons - that's a legal procedure ordering them to appear in court for the formal start of their prosecutions. The exception is Mr Duckenfield. He can't yet be summonsed or charged because the CPS must ask the High Court to lift an order preventing a trial following his private prosecution by families in 1999.
The CPS will apply for that order to be lifted and, assuming the High Court agrees, his prosecution on a charge of gross negligence manslaughter of 95 men, women and children will then proceed. Assuming that order is lifted, 95 manslaughter allegations may be something of a record under English law.
Why is he not expected to be charged with the manslaughter of 96? Tony Bland, the final victim, died four years after the disaster after his life support was withdrawn. At the time of his death, an ancient English law stated that nobody could be found guilty of homicide if the death occurred more than a year and day after the date of the injuries.
That law has since been abolished - but it cannot be applied retrospectively, so there can be no manslaughter charge in relation to Mr Bland's death.
What is gross negligence manslaughter?
This offence is an important plank of homicide law. In most cases, someone accused of a homicide will be charged with either murder, meaning a deliberate killing, or manslaughter, meaning a death caused by a criminal action where there was no immediate intention to kill.
The third less common category of prosecution is gross negligence manslaughter. A suspect can be found guilty of this offence if a jury is sure the deaths were the result of a "grossly negligent act or omission". The prosecution must first prove that a defendant in such a case had some kind of "duty of care" towards the dead.
Secondly, the jury must be sure that the individual's decisions - or lack of action - breached that duty and caused the death. It can't just be a case of a simple mistake - prosecutors have to prove that the defendant's behaviour was so bad as to be reprehensible and outside what a reasonable person would do in the same position.
In the case of Mr Duckenfield, the CPS says it will allege in court that his failures to discharge his personal responsibility were "extraordinarily bad".
The maximum sentence for gross negligence manslaughter is life - but in practice it has the widest range of possible sentences.
What allegation does Sir Norman Bettison face?
The twice former chief constable was a chief inspector at South Yorkshire Police at the time of the disaster. He faces four offences of "misconduct in public office" which the CPS says relates to "telling alleged lies about his involvement in the aftermath of Hillsborough and the culpability of fans".
This is a complicated offence, which also has a maximum life sentence. It hit the headlines when it was used to prosecute police officers who had taken payments from journalists.
The only people who can be charged with this crime are those who have some kind of job in public life - such as police officers, civil servants or employees of another public body.
Prosecutors must prove that the public office holder either deliberately neglected their duty or deliberately acted in such a way that they breached the public's trust. This has long proven quite difficult to define but senior judges have previously said the alleged misconduct is only a crime if the actions amount to "an affront to the standing of the public office held."
What is perverting the course of justice?
This is the criminal charge faced by three of the six - Mr Metcalf, Mr Denton and Mr Foster. It's one of the most important and serious criminal laws and covers actions that send an official inquiry, such as a police investigation, down the wrong track.
Mr Metcalf was a solicitor instructed to represent South Yorkshire Police and the CPS says he reviewed accounts provided by officers and made "suggestions for alterations, deletions and amendments ... and for which there appears to be no justification."
The CPS says those changes were allegedly directly relevant to the first inquiry's expected criticism of specific individuals.
Prosecutors say the charges faced by former Chief Superintendent Donald Denton and former Detective Chief Inspector Alan Foster relate to alleged changes to statements made by other officers.
What about the health and safety allegations?
There are a range of laws that cover health and safety at work or in other public places - and people responsible for those locations have a duty under those laws to make sure the location is safe.
Mr Mackrell, the sixth defendant, was Sheffield Wednesday's company secretary and safety officer at the time of the disaster. The two charges he faces concern allegations that he failed to carry out his duties as required under these laws.
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Mauro Prosperi was 39 years old when he took part in the 1994 Marathon des Sables - a six-day, 250km (155-mile) race through the Sahara described as the toughest race of its kind. Following a sandstorm, the former Olympic pentathlete was lost in the desert for 10 days. Here he tells his story. | What I like most about running extreme marathons is the fact that you come into close contact with nature - the races take place in beautiful settings such as mountains, deserts, glaciers. As a professional athlete I hadn't been able to enjoy these surroundings because I was so focused on winning medals.
I found out about the Marathon des Sables by chance. I had already retired from the pentathlon when a good friend said to me: "There's this amazing marathon in the desert - but it's very tough." I love a challenge so I started training immediately, running 40km (25 miles) a day, reducing the amount of water I was drinking to get used to dehydration. I was never home.
My wife, Cinzia, thought I was insane - the race is so risky that you have to sign a form to say where you want your body to be sent in case you die. We had three children under the age of eight, so she was worried. I tried to reassure her. "The worst that can happen is that I get a bit sunburned," I said.
When I arrived in Morocco, I discovered a marvellous thing - the desert. I was bewitched.
These days the Marathon des Sables is a very different experience, with up to 1,300 participants it's like a giant snake - you couldn't get lost if you tried. But back in 1994 there were only 80 of us, and very few who were actually running, so most of the time I was on my own.
I was always the first Italian to reach the next stage and I'd put up a flag on my tent so that we could all get together in the evenings. It was fun.
Things went wrong on the fourth day, during the longest and most difficult stage of the race.
When we set out that morning there was already quite a bit of wind. I had passed through four checkpoints when I entered an area of sand dunes. I was alone - the pacemakers had gone ahead.
Suddenly a very violent sandstorm began. The wind kicked in with a terrifying fury. I was swallowed by a yellow wall of sand. I was blinded, I couldn't breathe. The sand whipped my face - it was like a storm of needles. I understood for the first time how powerful a sandstorm could be. I turned my back on the wind and wrapped a scarf around my face to stop the sand from wounding me. I wasn't disoriented, but I had to keep moving to keep from getting buried. Eventually I crouched down in a sheltered spot, waiting for the storm to end.
It lasted eight hours. When the wind died down it was dark, so I slept out on the dunes. I was upset about the race because, until then, I had been in fourth place. I thought: "Oh well, I can't win now but I can still make good time. Tomorrow morning I'll get up really early and try to reach the finish." You have 36 hours to run that stage of the race - any longer and you are disqualified - so there was still a chance. What I couldn't have imagined was how dramatically that storm would change everything around me.
I woke up very early to a transformed landscape. I didn't know I was lost. I had a compass and a map so I thought I could navigate perfectly well, but without points of reference it's a lot more complicated.
I wasn't worried because I was sure that sooner or later I'd meet someone. "Who knows how many others are in the same situation?" I thought. "As soon as I see someone we can team up and get to the finish together." That was my plan, but unfortunately it didn't work out.
After running for about four hours I climbed up a dune and still couldn't see anything. That's when I knew I had a big problem. I started to walk - what was the point of running? Running where?
When I realised I was lost, the first thing I did was to urinate in my spare water bottle, because when you're still well-hydrated your urine is the clearest and the most drinkable. I remembered my grandfather telling me how, during the war, he and his fellow soldiers had drunk their own urine when their water ran out. I did it as a precaution, but I wasn't desperate. I was sure the organisers would find me soon.
When running the Marathon des Sables you have to be self-sufficient, and I was well-prepared: I had a knife, a compass, sleeping bag and plenty of dehydrated food in my backpack. The problem was water. We were given fresh water at the checkpoints, but when the storm hit I only had half a bottle of water left. I drank it as slowly as I could.
I'm very resistant to heat and I was very careful. I would only walk when it was cool, early in the morning and then again in the evening. During the day, when I wasn't walking, I'd try to find shelter and shade. I was wearing two hats - a baseball cap with a red woollen hat on top - to keep the temperature as constant as possible. Luckily my skin is quite dark so I didn't really suffer from sunburn.
On the second day, at sunset, I heard the sound of a helicopter coming towards me. I assumed it was looking for me so I took out my flare and shot it in the air, but he didn't see it. It was flying so low that I could see the pilot's helmet, but he didn't see me - he flew right past.
The helicopter, on loan from the Moroccan police, was returning to base to refuel. Since 1995, because of my experience, runners have been equipped with the kind of flares they use at sea - which they're not happy about, because they weigh 500g - but at the time the flares we had were really small, no bigger than a pen.
Nevertheless I remained calm, because I was convinced the organisers would have the resources to find anyone lost in the desert. I still thought I would be rescued sooner or later.
After a couple of days I came across a marabout - a Muslim shrine - where Bedouins stop when they are crossing the desert. I was hoping it was inhabited, but unfortunately there was nobody there - only a holy man in a coffin. But at least I had a roof over my head, it was like being home. I assessed my situation: it wasn't rosy, but I was feeling all right physically. I ate some of my rations, which I cooked with fresh urine, not the bottled urine that I was saving to drink - I started to drink that on the fourth day.
The marabout had filled up with sand from all the sandstorms, so the ceiling was very low. I went up to the roof to plant my Italian flag, in the hope that anybody looking for me could see it. While I was up there I saw some bats, huddled together in the tower. I decided to drink their blood. I grabbed a handful of bats, cut their heads and mushed up their insides with a knife, then sucked them out. I ate at least 20 of them, raw - I only did what they do to their prey.
I stayed in the marabout for a few days, waiting to be found.
I gave in to despair only twice. Once was when I saw the helicopter and it didn't see me. The other time was when I saw the aeroplane.
I had been in the marabout for three days when I heard the sound of a motor - an aeroplane. I don't know if it was looking for me, but I immediately started a fire with whatever I had - my rucksack, everything - in the hope the plane would see the smoke. But just then another sandstorm hit. It lasted for 12 hours. The aeroplane didn't spot me.
I felt it was my very last chance to be found. I was very depressed. I was convinced I was going to die and that it was going to be a long agonising death, so I wanted to accelerate it. I thought if I died out in the desert no-one would find me, and my wife wouldn't get the police pension - in Italy, if someone goes missing you have to wait 10 years before they can be declared dead. At least if I died in this Muslim shrine they would find my body, and my wife would have an income.
I wasn't afraid of dying and my decision to take my own life came out of logical reasoning rather than despair. I wrote a note to my wife with a piece of charcoal and then cut my wrists. I lay down and waited to die, but my blood had thickened and wouldn't drain.
The following morning I woke up. I hadn't managed to kill myself. Death didn't want me yet.
I took it as a sign. I regained confidence and I decided to see it as a new competition against myself. I became determined and focused again. I was thinking of my children. I put myself in order - Mauro the athlete was back. I needed to have a plan. I still had quite a lot of energy left, I wasn't tired. As a former pentathlete I was used to training 12 hours a day and I had trained well for the Marathon des Sables so I didn't feel too weak. I still had some energy tablets, too.
I regained my strength and mental lucidity. I decided to get out of the shrine and start walking again, but where to? I followed the advice the Tuareg had given us all before we started the race: "If you're lost, head for the clouds that you can see on the horizon at dawn, that's where you will find life. During the day they will disappear but set your compass and carry on in that direction." So I decided to head for those mythical clouds on the horizon.
I walked in the desert for days, killing snakes and lizards and eating them raw - that way I drank, too. I think there are some instincts, a kind of deja vu, that kick in in an emergency situation: my inner caveman emerged.
I was aware that I was losing an incredible amount of weight - the more I walked, the looser my watch felt on my wrist. I was so dehydrated I couldn't urinate anymore. Luckily I had some anti-diarrhoea medicine which I kept taking.
Surviving in the desert
I wanted to see my family and friends again and I concentrated on that. I wasn't afraid. At the same time, I started to view the desert as a place where people can live. I could see the beauty of the desert. I paid careful attention to every trace - even dried excrement gave me clues about what direction to go in.
I learned that there is food all around you, if you learn to look. As I was walking through the desert I recognised dried riverbeds where succulents grew, so I squeezed their juice out and drank that.
I started to think of myself as a man of the desert. Later, a Tuareg prince dedicated a poem to me - according to him I was a "chosen one" because I survived for so long in the desert.
Meanwhile, the organisers were out looking for me. My brother and brother-in-law had flown in from Italy to join the search. They found some of the traces I had left behind, like my shoelaces. They got to the marabout and found signs of me. But they were sure they were looking for a body.
On the eighth day I came across a little oasis. I lay down and drank, sipping slowly, for about six or seven hours. I saw a footprint in the sand, so I knew people couldn't be far.
The next day, I saw some goats in the distance - it gave me hope.
The song of the Tuareg
Singing springs under the palms of the green oasis, listen to the call of the Tuareg in the night, in the calm/ At the pace of my pale camel I go, I travel without destination/ The desert is a world, a land of thirst and hunger/ The immense dunes stretch out, like an ocean of misfortune, from the waves of stirring sands.
Excerpt from a poem dedicated to Mauro Prosperi by a Tuareg prince
Then I saw a young shepherd girl. She saw me too and ran away, scared. After nine days in the desert I must have looked quite a sight, I was black with dirt. The girl ran towards a large Berber tent to warn the women I was coming. There were no men in the camp - they had gone to market - but the women took care of me. They were so kind. An older woman came out of the tent and immediately gave me some goat's milk to drink. She tried to give me some food as well, but I threw it up. They wouldn't allow me into the tent because I was a man, but they put me on a carpet in the shade of their veranda. Then they sent someone to call the police - they like to camp close to military bases for protection.
The police came and carried me to their Jeep. They took me to their military base, blindfolded, because they didn't know who I was. They thought I might be dangerous. They had guns and I thought at times that they were going to kill me. When they found out I was the marathon runner who had got lost in Morocco they took off my blindfold and celebrated. I discovered that I had crossed the border into Algeria. I was 291km (181 miles) off course.
They took me to hospital in Tindouf, where finally, after 10 days, I was able to call my wife. The first thing I said to her was: "Have you already had my funeral?" Because after 10 days lost in the desert you would expect someone to be dead.
When they weighed me in the hospital I had lost 16kg (35lb) - I weighed just 45kg (99lb). My eyes had suffered and my liver was damaged, but my kidneys were fine. I couldn't eat anything other than soup or liquids for months. It took me almost two years to recover.
Four years later I was back at the Marathon des Sables. People ask me why I went back, but when I start something I want to finish it. The other reason was that I can't live without the desert. Desert fever does exist, and it's a disease that I've absolutely caught. I'm drawn back to the desert every year to greet it, to experience it.
I ran eight more desert marathons and am now preparing for my biggest yet. Next year I'm planning to run 7,000km (4,350 miles) coast-to-coast across the Sahara from Agadir (Morocco) on the Atlantic Ocean to Hurghada (Egypt) on the Red Sea. Sport and nature are part of my life, and these races allow me to experience them first-hand.
My wife was a saint. She coped with me for many years but at a certain point, because of my lifestyle, we decided to split up. We are still best friends, maybe more so now than when we were married. I have a new partner but she knows I am a man on a mission. I can't change.
Mauro Prosperi spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service. Listen to the interview again on iPlayer or get the Outlook podcast.
Photographs courtesy of Mauro Prosperi
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Ten years ago, the trial of Canada's most prolific serial killer opened in Vancouver. Det Con Lorimer Shenher had long suspected the man in the dock, who eventually admitted to nearly 50 murders, but Shenher's attempts to question him had been hindered by red tape. He is still haunted by his failure. | By Joanna JollyBBC World Service
Lorimer Shenher had been working in his new job as head of Vancouver's Missing Persons Unit for only two days when an anonymous caller gave him a name - the name of a man who could be responsible for the disappearance of women from the city's Downtown Eastside district.
It was July 1998 and Shenher had been tasked with finding out what had happened to 17 women missing from the district, also known as the "low-track", because it was where people went to buy cheap sex.
All the missing women were sex workers and drug users, and many were from Canada's indigenous population.
Shenher entered the name he had been given, Willie Pickton - or Robert William Pickton - into the police database.
He saw immediately that his suspect had form. Earlier that year, charges had been dropped against the 49-year-old pig farmer for imprisoning and stabbing a sex worker, almost fatally.
The caller said he had been told women's handbags, identity cards and bloody clothing could be seen at Pickton's farm. And he said he had listened himself to Pickton making disturbing jokes.
"Pickton had a meat grinder he would talk about," says Shenher.
"He would tell his friends, 'If you ever need to dispose of a body…'"
Working out whether Pickton had anything to do with the disappearances would be a straightforward case of issuing a search warrant and bringing him in for questioning, Shenher thought.
"My mantra was you have to either rule him in or rule him out," he says.
But in fact it would be another four years before officers finally searched Pickton's property - on an unrelated charge - and by that time at least another 14 women had been murdered.
A forensic search of Pickton's farm eventually revealed the DNA of 33 women in various buildings, freezers and machines.
As he had boasted, the pig farmer had disposed of his victims in his meat grinder. Others he had fed to his pigs.
He later confessed to an undercover officer that he was one short of hitting his target of 50 kills.
So why did it take so long to catch him?
Shenher began his police career in the early 1990s as Lorraine Shenher - an athletic, hard-working 27-year-old who achieved one of the highest scores ever in the Vancouver Police Department selection process. He has since undergone gender reassignment, changing his name from Lorraine to Lorimer.
For one of his first assignments he worked undercover in the Downtown Eastside. Dressed in a short skirt, he would wait on street corners for men to solicit him for sex so he could arrest them.
The experience gave Shenher an insight into the brutality sex workers routinely experienced. Clients could be violent - one threatened to kill him, another tried to abduct him at gunpoint. He also noticed that police officers who should have been protecting the women often ignored their complaints.
At this time, he had a unique perspective on what he saw happening around him.
"I felt I was a man observing the situation. But also, living as a woman myself, I couldn't put up with the oppression and sexism the women faced," he says.
"I had a lot of anger around it."
A few years later, Downtown Eastside residents began to report that women were going missing.
One, a young drug user and sex worker called Sarah de Vries, described her fears in her diary.
"Am I next?" she wrote in December 1995.
"Is he watching me now? Stalking me like a predator and its prey. Waiting, waiting for some perfect spot, time or my stupid mistake. How does one choose a victim?
"Good question. If I knew that, I would never get snuffed."
In April 1998, Sarah herself disappeared.
She was the 17th person on Shenher's list when he was appointed to the Missing Person's Unit.
Several officers within the Vancouver Police Department had already begun to suspect a serial killer was at work.
One of them was Det Insp Kim Rossmo, who had recently completed doctoral research in criminal profiling.
"I went back 20 years using data and typically we would find either no, or just one or two, unfound people in a year," he says.
"This number started to grow in 1996, 1997 and 1998. I thought the only explanation for this was a serial murder case."
But when Rossmo took his findings to the officer in charge of the Major Crime Section, he was told that because the women tended to live transient lives, it was more likely they had just drifted away.
In fact, this was wrong. Although the women were drug users and poor, they still maintained strong ties to families, friends and their community.
But because no-one had found the women's bodies, Rossmo's boss thought no crime had taken place and that in time the women would show up.
Special Report: On the trail of the murdered and missing
Each year, dozens of indigenous Canadian women are murdered or disappear never to be seen again. Some end up in a river that runs through the heart of Winnipeg.
BBC News App users click HERE.
One of Shenher's first moves was to get in touch with the officer who had arrested and charged Pickton in 1997 for his attack on a sex worker at his farm.
Despite the severity of the victim's injuries, prosecutors had dropped the case because she was a heroin addict and it was felt she wouldn't be a convincing witness.
Shenher found this decision inexplicable, and his views were shared by the arresting officer - from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) - who helpfully opened his files to Shenher.
Because Pickton's farm was outside the city, it fell under the jurisdiction of the RCMP rather than the Vancouver Police Department.
In Shenher's view it made sense for the Vancouver police and the Mounties to work together on the case, but at the highest levels of both forces there was resistance to the idea and full co-operation did not begin for several years.
So Shenher returned to his original phone tip-off.
The caller had mentioned parties held on Pickton's farm in a barn known locally as Piggy's Palace. These late-night gatherings were popular with biker gangs. Sex and drugs were said to be freely available.
A female friend of the informant had attended these parties, and it was she who had seen personal items and bloody clothing that could have belonged to the missing women.
Shenher quickly identified this woman but she didn't want to speak to the police. So Shenher proposed an undercover operation to confirm her story, using a female officer who would befriend her and become her confidante. The plan was refused.
Instead, Pickton was put under surveillance for three days. But as he did little to arouse suspicion, this was discontinued.
"If these women were from any other walk of life, there would be total outrage, search parties, volunteers, roadblocks," says Shenher.
"On a very deep level, a large segment of society and the policing community didn't feel these women were worth searching for and many people questioned whether they even wanted to be found."
In May 1999, the Vancouver Police Department established a Missing Persons Review Team with Shenher as the lead investigator. Although this was an improvement from the Missing Persons Unit, it still lacked the resources of a fully-fledged homicide investigation.
Then another source came forward with a gruesome story that appeared to identify Pickton as the man killing and disposing of the missing women.
The source said he had seen handcuffs in Pickton's bedroom and a special freezer in his barn from which he had been served "strange meat", which he believed could have been human.
He also spoke of a female friend, whom he named as Lynn Ellingsen, who had gone with Pickton to the Downtown Eastside to help him pick up women.
The source said that Ellingsen had told him that she had walked into Pickton's slaughterhouse and had seen what she thought was a female body hanging from a meat hook. Pickton was standing beside it cutting strips of flesh off the body's legs. She said she hadn't realised that human fat was yellow - a detail that lent credibility to her story.
At this point Shenher felt he had enough evidence to bring both Ellingsen and Pickton in for questioning, but because Pickton's farm fell under the jurisdiction of the RCMP, it was up to them to take the investigation forward.
The RCMP questioned Ellingsen twice, but both times she refused to talk.
As for Pickton, Shenher later found that an RCMP officer visited his farm but was told by his brother to "come back during the rainy season" because they were too busy working. Four months later, RCMP officers did interview Pickton, who denied killing the women. He consented to a search of his property - but amazingly, this offer was not followed up.
By now the number of missing women had risen to 30 and Shenher was beginning to experience physical symptoms brought on by what he regarded as his failure to solve the crimes.
He suffered from nightmares and mysterious aches in his body, had trouble eating and developed allergies.
"I've asked myself so many times could I have just physically gone to the farm and tried to execute a search warrant," he says.
"The answer, really, is 'No'. It was not my jurisdiction. What failed us was that someone at a very senior level in my force should have approached someone at a very senior level in the RCMP. But it didn't work that way. We didn't get that support."
By the end of 2000, Shenher was exhausted and demoralised. He was beginning to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder so asked to be transferred to a different unit.
Then, in January 2001, nearly three years after Shenher had received his first tip-off about Pickton, the RCMP and Vancouver Police Department finally established a joint operation to re-examine the cases of missing and murdered sex workers in the province of British Columbia.
Shenher should have been cheered by this. Instead he was depressed.
"What they did was to pull in as many sex offenders and predators that they were aware of in the province and put together a list of 100 men, but not rank them in priority," he says.
"So despite having all our information about Pickton, they didn't put him at number one of the suspect list."
It was only in February 2002 when a junior RCMP officer visited Pickton's farm looking for an unlicensed gun and spotted an asthma inhaler bearing the name of one of the missing women, that he was finally arrested.
Within hours, the Pickton property became the site of the largest crime scene search in Canadian history.
Shenher, when he found out, experienced a wave of contradictory emotions.
"Shock, elation, dread, excitement, sorrow, grief, nausea - it was all there, jumbled up together," he says.
"It was a hollow victory and all I could do was cry."
In 2007, a court found Pickton guilty of six counts of second-degree murder. There was enough evidence to charge him for a further 20 killings, but prosecutors decided not to proceed because he had already been given the maximum life sentence.
Shenher's criticism of the police investigations was shared by family and friends of the victims.
In 2010, in response to popular pressure, the government of British Columbia formally announced a Missing Women Commission of Inquiry to look into the police's conduct.
It ruled that their investigations suffered from a lack of leadership, describing them as a "blatant failure" marked by a deep bias against the poor, often drug-addicted, victims.
At the same time it praised certain officers, like Shenher, for striving valiantly to solve the crisis.
But what could have been an opportunity for genuine soul-searching about the failures of the province's police and justice systems was wasted, Shenher says.
He even accuses the inquiry of suppressing information that would have shed light on why Pickton's farm was not searched earlier.
"My sense was there appeared to be a concerted effort by the provincial government to restrict the amount and type of information that came out," he says, though he admits he has no firm evidence to back this suspicion.
He now hopes a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, announced last year by the new government of Justin Trudeau, will go further towards answering the question why vulnerable women were so badly let down.
"When a missing woman is viewed as inevitable, where the surge of the investigation is not done at the same level as other investigations and women are dying, then we have to do better," the Canadian Minister for Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Carolyn Bennett, told the BBC.
Racism and sexism were still a problem within the country's police forces, she added.
Shenher is now on long-term medical leave from the police. In 2015 he published a book that details his frustrations with the Pickton investigation, That Lonely Section of Hell.
"People think there's police accountability in Canada," he says.
"But there aren't a lot of mechanisms that the government has to oversee their work.
"Without that accountability, I do think a killer like Pickton could get away with it again."
This article was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
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Plans for a barn housing up to 32,000 free-range hens have been rejected by Carmarthenshire council. | The unit on Godre Garreg farm, near Llangadog, would have included space for packing millions of eggs.
There were 79 objections and a 1,300-signature petition, with complaints focusing on smell, proximity to houses and increased traffic.
Despite being recommended to approve the plan, nine of the 12 councillors rejected it.
Chairman of the planning committee councillor Alun Lenny said: "This has been an exceptionally difficult case and I am aware it has caused some discomfort in the area."
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Frode Berge, leader of the Labour Party in the region of Rogaland, Norway, writes about the importance of the party's summer camp held by his party every year on Utoeya island, scene of Anders Behring Breivik's killing spree. Mr Berge, 45, has previously served in several leading positions within the Labour Party and the AUF. | By Frode BergeLabour Party leader, Rogaland, Norway
I am one of thousands of Labour Party officials who, over the years, has developed a deeply personal relationship with Utoeya.
For the last 30 years, I have been actively involved in the AUF (the Labour Party Youth) and in the party itself. Some of my best social and political memories date from being a teenager on Utoeya.
It is such a fantastic place! A tiny, picturesque island located in the Tyrifjorden fjord outside Oslo, it is actually owned by the AUF, received as a generous gift from the trade unions in Oslo after World War II.
Over the past five decades, Utoeya has become a precious and extremely valuable asset for the AUF and the Labour Party - physically, socially and politically.
Utoeya is quite simply beautiful - a perfect place for any summer camp, with tiny beaches, specially designed campsites, and separate facilities for families bringing their children with them.
Utoeya offers the perfect surroundings for teenagers who are seeking to combine their affection for politics with the classic activities of the traditional summer camp: bonfires, football, volleyball, swimming and fishing.
The smell of a bonfire combined with the sound of acoustic guitars, harmonicas, chatting, laughing and banter at 4 o'clock in the morning will stay with me, as immensely precious teenage memories, for the rest of my life.
Indeed, one of the most popular spots at Utoeya is the Love Path, located discreetly in the forest on the south of the island. Utoeya is the perfect place for a teenager to fall in love...
Recruitment base
As well as being just a great place to spend your holiday, Utoeya has over the years developed into a place of significant national political importance.
The Labour Party has been a dominant political force in Norway for the last 60-70 years, and the AUF has been an extremely important base for recruiting and training our political leaders.
Utoeya has served as the main national platform for this recruiting and training.
Every summer, some 700-1,000 Labour youths from all over Norway have gathered for political debate and seminars covering topics like international solidarity, environmental issues, education, vocational training, and how to fight racism and xenophobia.
The AUF is a multi-cultural organisation, with a very clear stance against racism and xenophobia, and the island has always been a buzzing ethnic melting pot.
The AUF summer camp at Utoeya is the place our party leader and other prominent leaders always simply have to attend.
The fact that our present party leader and Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, has spent parts of his summer holiday on the island every year from the age of 14 clearly proves this point.
The summer camps at Utoeya always generate massive media coverage, and regularly set the national political agenda.
Politically motivated
To see this beautiful and precious place being turned into a living hell, the worst political massacre in modern times, rips my heart out.
A staggering number of our remarkable teenagers have been brutally murdered, and an even higher number have been traumatised for life.
It further adds to the pain that this vicious attack had a distinct political and racist motivation.
The losses at Utoeya are greater than any of us can bear alone, and the response from the AUF is based on the best of our values of solidarity: we will live through this together. We will take Utoeya back.
The AUF and the Labour Party are far too robust, and our values are far too strong, to be crushed by this vicious act.
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High winds and heavy rain have been causing disruption in parts of Northern Ireland, with a number of roads closed because of flooding. | County Down was worst affected, with police issuing warnings to motorists in Rostrevor, Warrenpoint and Newry.
In the Republic, hundreds of people were moved from their homes in Limerick, with the River Shannon's banks bursting at several locations.
People were trapped in their homes in a number of housing estates.
Boats were used to rescue several elderly people.
High winds and lightning strikes left thousands of homes without electricity in a number of towns and cities.
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A bomb in a train in the Russian city of St Petersburg killed 14 people and injured 51 others on 3 April. The suicide bomber has been identified as Akbarzhon Jalilov, a naturalised Russian national born in Kyrgyzstan in 1995. | How did it happen?
The bomb went off at around 14:30 local time (11:30 GMT) after a train left Sennaya Ploshchad station, heading south for Tekhnologichesky Institut on the blue, north-south metro line.
Initial reports spoke of two bombs but it gradually became clear that there was a single blast, possibly in the third carriage of the train.
Although the explosion happened in between the two stations the driver continued to Tekhnologichesky Institut to enable victims to be helped more easily. Russia's investigative committee said this decision may have helped prevent further losses.
The St Petersburg metro was shut down and three days of mourning declared. Traffic in surrounding streets and in much of central St Petersburg was brought to a standstill for hours, and volunteers offered lifts via social media to people trying to get home.
At the time of the explosion President Vladimir Putin was just outside Russia's second city, meeting Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko at the Konstantin palace in Strelna.
What caused the explosion?
Early indications were that the bomb was an improvised device made out of the explosive TNT. Pictures from the scene showed mangled doors and bodies on the floor of the platform.
Minutes later another device was found propped up against a wall at another city metro station, Ploshchad Vosstaniya. That was safely defused and reports said it contained 1kg of TNT, more than used in the original blast.
Who are the suspects?
No group has said it carried out the attack.
Russian officials named the suicide bomber as 22-year-old Akbarzhon Jalilov.
Jalilov was born in Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city, and was a naturalised Russian citizen.
Russia's state investigative committee said fragments of his body were found in the third carriage of the train, indicating he was a suicide bomber.
He had also planted the second bomb that did not explode, the investigators added.
The suspect had ties with radical Islamists, law enforcement officials were quoted by Russian media as saying.
Ten other people, all originally from Central Asia, have been detained in connection with the attack.
Russian security services said they believed one suspect, Abror Azimov, had trained Jalilov ahead of the bombing.
However, Mr Azimov has denied masterminding the attack.
He was born in Kyrgyzstan in 1990 and moved to Russia in 2008, reportedly becoming a Russian citizen in 2013.
His older brother Akram, who was arrested separately, is suspected of transferring funds to pay for the attack and establishing links with international terrorist organisations.
Eight other suspects were held for allegedly recruiting for Islamist militant groups and "committing crimes of a terrorist nature", Russia's Investigative Committee (SK) said.
Who are the victims?
One of them is 20-year-old Maksim Aryshev from Kazakhstan, a student of economics at St Petersburg State University, according to the Kazakh embassy in Russia.
Irina Medyantseva, a 50-year-old doll maker, also died trying to protect her daughter, Yelena, from the blast. Yelena, 29, was injured and taken to hospital.
Others victims include Dilbara Alieva, 20, from Azerbaijan, who was taken to hospital but later died from her injuries.
The oldest victim was Yuri Nalimov, 71, and one of the youngest was Ksenia Malyukova, 18, Russia's investigative committee reports (in Russian).
Read more: Who were the victims?
Has Russia been attacked before?
Russia's transport infrastructure has been targeted in several occasions.
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On 28 January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, claiming the lives of seven astronauts.
On the 25th anniversary of the disaster, science reporter Paul Rincon looks back at the events which led up to the accident and its impact on human spaceflight.
| How did the accident unfold?
The seven astronauts of the space shuttle Challenger were to have spent six-and-a-half days in Earth orbit, during which they would have deployed a satellite and carried out a number of experiments.
One of the crew members, Christa McAuliffe, was to have been the first teacher in space - selected from more than 11,000 applicants under a programme announced by US President Ronald Reagan.
After several launch delays, Challenger lifted off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 1138 local time on 28 January. In the first few seconds after lift-off, cameras captured several puffs of dark smoke emerging from a joint in the shuttle's right booster rocket.
About 37 seconds into the flight, Challenger began experiencing severe wind shear conditions - changes in the direction and speed of the wind - which exerted strong forces on the vehicle.
The first flickers of flame from the rocket booster joint emerged 58 seconds into the launch. And these swiftly expanded into a well-defined orange plume. A few seconds later, the shape and colour of the plume changed as the flame pierced the shuttle's huge external tank and began mixing with the hydrogen fuel leaking out.
Some 73 seconds into the 25th US shuttle flight, the external tank tore apart, forming a vast fireball 14km (46,000ft) up as hydrogen and oxygen fuel escaped into the atmosphere. The Challenger shuttle was ripped apart by aerodynamic forces as it was cut loose from the external tank. There were no survivors.
What happened next?
Millions of people following coverage of the launch watched in horror as the vehicle broke apart in mid-air. Within minutes of the disaster, ships and aircraft were despatched to begin the recovery effort in the Atlantic waters where debris fell.
President Ronald Reagan had been due to give the annual State of the Union Address on the evening of the Challenger accident. Instead, he postponed this by a week and gave a televised address to the nation in which he paid tribute to the astronauts.
The speech concludes with President Reagan quoting from the poem High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr: "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God'."
President Reagan - who was said to have been personally affected by the disaster - set up an independent commission to probe the probable cause of the disaster.
On 7 March 1986, a US Navy ship identified the remains of Challenger's crew compartment, sitting largely intact on the ocean floor. Divers were sent to recover the cabin, along with the remains of the crew members. Funeral ceremonies were held for the astronauts over April and May.
Who were the Challenger astronauts?
In 1984, Boston-born Christa McAuliffe was chosen to make the first flight under the Teacher In Space Project, turning her into a celebrity overnight. She was to have carried out two 15-minute lessons from space to be broadcast to schoolchildren. McAuliffe's presence on the shuttle had already raised the profile of this mission in the minds of the public and the media.
The shuttle's commander Francis "Dick" Scobee was a former US Air Force pilot who had flown on Challenger once before. Challenger's pilot Mike Smith had flown attack aircraft during the Vietnam war, but this was his first shuttle flight.
Judith Resnik - a "mission specialist" on Challenger - was an electrical engineer signed up to the astronaut corps in 1978 by Nichelle Nichols - the actress best known for playing Uhura in Star Trek - when Nichols had been working as a recruiter for Nasa. Ms Resnik's group of astronaut trainees was the first to include women.
Mission specialist Ron McNair, from South Carolina, was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated physicist with a black belt in karate. He was one of the first African-Americans recruited into Nasa's astronaut corps and, like Dick Scobee, had flown on Challenger before.
The third mission specialist, Ellison Onizuka, was previously an engineer with the US Air Force and had flown in space once before. Onizuka's background made him a natural choice to fly on the first classified military space shuttle flight in 1985.
Ms McAuliffe was not the only civilian on Challenger. Payload specialist Gregory Jarvis worked for the Hughes Aircraft Corp in Los Angeles. Mr Jarvis was accepted into the astronaut programme under the Hughes company's sponsorship after competing against 600 other employees for the opportunity.
What were the causes of the disaster?
The independent commission set up to investigate the disaster was headed by the former Secretary of State William P Rogers. Among the members were Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon; Sally Ride, the first American woman in space; Chuck Yeager, the test pilot; and Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
The Rogers Commission released its report in June 1986, concluding that the destruction of Challenger had been caused by the failure of the joint in the two lower segments of the shuttle's right solid rocket booster.
More specifically, the failure happened because of the destruction of the "O ring" seals intended to prevent hot gases leaking through the joint while the rocket propellant was burnt during flight.
The commission found that a contributing factor had been the unusually cold temperatures at Cape Canaveral prior to the launch, which had caused the rubber O ring to become significantly less elastic. Richard Feynman memorably demonstrated this effect on television by dipping a sample of the material in ice water to show how it became less pliable.
"I discovered that when you put some pressure on it and then undo it, it doesn't stretch back. It stays the same dimensions for a few seconds at least," Feynman said during one of the commission hearings.
"There's no resilience in this particular material when it's at 32 degrees (F). I believe that has some significance for our problem."
It emerged during the investigation that engineers at Nasa and the booster rocket contractor Morton Thiokol were well aware of flaws with the O ring seals.
The report concluded that Nasa's organisational culture and decision-making processes had been key contributing factors in the accident. Managers had failed to adequately communicate engineers' growing doubts about the seal to senior officials.
What was the legacy of the accident?
Among the recommendations made by the Rogers Commission were design changes to the rocket booster joints and seals.
The investigation also urged Nasa to establish a strong and independent office to look after "safety, reliability and quality assurance". The investigation and the corrective actions undertaken by Nasa led to a 32-month hiatus in shuttle launches.
After the shuttles resumed flying in 1988, the programme continued without a serious accident until 2003, when the Columbia shuttle broke up as it tried to re-enter the atmosphere from orbit.
Nasa had made significant changes, both to its management structure and safety procedures, after the Challenger accident. Nevertheless, the accident investigation report for the Columbia disaster drew parallels with Challenger.
"First, despite all the post-Challenger changes at Nasa and the agencyʼs notable achievements since, the causes of the institutional failure responsible for Challenger have not been fixed," the report said.
As a result of the Columbia accident, the US space agency made many improvements to shuttle safety, including inspections for damage sustained on launch.
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The French far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, has said she won't join other political parties in a march against anti-Semitism on Tuesday, accusing France's leaders of doing nothing to tackle Islamist networks in France and saying she will mark the occasion separately. | By Lucy WilliamsonBBC Paris correspondent
It comes days after a prominent French philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut, was verbally attacked for being Jewish as he walked past the weekly "gilets jaunes" (yellow-vest) protests in Paris.
A small group of protesters shouted a barrage of abuse at him as he passed by the demonstration on his way home from lunch on Saturday, calling him a "dirty Zionist" and telling him to "go back to Tel Aviv".
"I felt an absolute hatred," Mr Finkielkraut told one French newspaper later that night. "If the police hadn't been there, I would have been frightened."
A few days before that, official data suggested there had been a 74% rise in anti-Semitic attacks in France last year.
Now, many here are questioning whether the gilets jaunes movement is providing a new kind of forum for these extremist views, and how central those attitudes are to the movement.
"It's very serious," says Vincent Duclert, a specialist in anti-Semitism in France at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences - one of France's most prestigious colleges.
"The gilets jaunes are not an anti-Semitic movement, but alongside the demonstration each Saturday there's a lot of anti-Semitic expression by groups of the extreme right or extreme left."
"You can be on the streets demonstrating every Saturday, shouting your slogans against the Jews," says Jean-Yves Camus, an expert in French political extremism.
"And as there's no leadership in the movement and no stewarding of the demonstrations, you can be free to do it. I'm afraid there will be more attacks, because the self-proclaimed leaders simply do not seem to care that much."
Jason Herbert, a spokesman for the movement, says the incident on Saturday is a scandal, but not representative of the gilets jaunes as a whole.
"It's the inherent weakness of a movement that lets the people speak," he explained. "Everyone can come and give his opinion - and some opinions are despicable and illegal. To think someone is inferior because of his or her origins is just not acceptable, and it's completely unrelated to our demands. Amongst our demands, I've never heard 'we want fewer Jews'."
The gilets jaunes began life as a protest against fuel tax rises, but have broadened into a loose confederation of different interest groups with no official hierarchy or leadership. Over the past three months, as the movement has appeared more radical, its wider support has dipped.
Vincent Duclert believes that the movement does bear some responsibility for the extremist abuse in its midst, because the violence of the protests - towards the police, state institutions and public property - encourages anti-Semitism by encouraging "transgression".
And, he says, it's possible that the gilets jaunes are also offering "a new space for different kinds of anti-Semitism to come together: from the extreme right and extreme left, but also from radical Islamist or anti-Zionist groups, and some types of social conservatives".
There are signs over the past year, he says, that levels of anti-Semitism have risen within these different groups, because of changes at home, across Europe and in the Middle East, and that French public opinion has been too tolerant.
Politicians here have been quick to condemn Saturday's attack on Alain Finkielkraut. President Macron tweeted that it was "the absolute negation of what we are and what makes us a great nation".
Others tried to blame it on their political rivals.
A member of France's centre-right opposition, Geoffrey Didier, told reporters that anti-Semitism was growing "because radical Islamism is growing in France", while Marine Le Pen said it illustrated "how the anti-Semite far-left is trying to infiltrate the gilets jaunes movement".
Both Ms Le Pen's party and that of her far-left rival, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have been trying to win the support of the gilets jaunes ahead of European elections in May.
Jean-Yves Camus believes last week's attack will help turn public opinion against the movement, saying it has become "a hotbed of radical activity from both sides of the political spectrum and the French do not want that".
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If walls could talk, the iconic Guildhall in Carmarthen would have some colourful stories to tell. | By Polly MarchBBC News, Wales
The court building has been at the centre of some of the most momentous events in Welsh history during its 250-year lifetime.
Gwynfor Evans' landmark victory as first Plaid Cymru MP was announced from its balcony in 1966 - an event which changed the face of politics in Wales forever.
And the court played a pivotal role in the Agrarian 'Rebecca Riots' in 1839-43 when some of the ringleaders were sent to transportation directly from there.
Carmarthen also attracted the national spotlight when Ronnie Harries, one of the last men to be hanged in Wales, was sentenced to death there in 1953 after murdering his relatives Phoebe and John Harries at their home, Derlwyn Farm, in the hamlet of Llangynin.
But despite this rich history, the future of the Grade II listed building looks uncertain.
On Friday, magistrates will retire for the final time as it is one of 10 Welsh courts earmarked for closure by the Ministry of Justice.
For those who have played a part in the court's story, its closure raises serious concerns about the impact it will have on the town.
Carmarthenshire councillor Alun Lenny, who is also a former BBC and Carmarthen Journal reporter, recalls: "As a journalist in the 1970s I sat through literally thousands of cases in the Guildhall over a period of 30 years, for the Journal, TV and radio.
"I remember a time when the magistrates sat for at least two full days a week and the crown court for a week or two every month.
"The crown court in the Guildhall is like a miniature House of Lords and is an iconic building smack in the centre of town.
"It is one of Carmarthen's most prominent buildings and I really hope it can be turned into a heritage and history centre and isn't lost to the people of Carmarthen."
Court closures in Wales- full picture
The court's role in local history is indisputable but in 1966, the national spotlight shone there when Gwynfor Evans won the Carmarthen by-election.
He held the seat twice, eventually losing it in 1979, and also threatened to starve himself in the cause of Welsh language television, leading to the foundation of S4C.
About 2,000 people gathered in the square outside Carmarthen's Guildhall for his shock victory.
'Voodoo ceremony'
One of them was The Reverend Towyn Jones, president of the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society and a local historian who moved to the area 41 years ago.
He said: "The atmosphere was electric at times, people were working themselves up into a frenzy and chanting his name. It was pretty intense, like being in some voodoo ceremony."
Mr Lenny also recalls covering one of the court's most high-profile cases in 1978 when Rhodri Williams and Wynfford James from the Welsh Language Society or Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg were tried for conspiracy to damage a TV transmitter during their campaign for a Welsh TV channel.
"The place was packed, with hundreds of demonstrators both in and outside," remembers Mr Lenny.
"The court case resulted in the pair being imprisoned but there were also numerous contempt of court charges throughout as people interrupted proceedings or banged on the windows from outside."
Mr Lenny was present at the remand hearing for the prolific burglar and serial killer John Cooper, from Milford Haven, who was convicted in 2011 after a cold case review linked him to the double murders of brother and sister Richard and Helen Thomas at their house in Pembrokeshire in 1985.
In 1989 Cooper also confronted holidaymakers Peter and Gwenda Dixon, aged 51 and 52 and from Oxfordshire, on the Pembrokeshire coastal path near Little Haven and shot them at point blank range after demanding their pin numbers and later raiding their bank accounts.
He was also convicted of separate charges of rape, sexual assault and attempted robbery and jailed for life.
Mr Lenny said: "I vividly remember Cooper shouting at me and the cameraman that he was not guilty. The jury disagreed."
As there is no existing interpretative centre for the Rebecca Riots in west Wales, Mr Lenny believes the court building could fill that gap, becoming a tourist attraction and education centre for local school children with audio-visual displays and exhibitions.
Or it could serve as a branch for the county museum at Abergwili, with 'rolling' displays of artefacts.
He also recalls that at one time the tiny adjacent pub, The Plume of Feathers, had a door that opened directly into the magistrates' private rooms.
Mr Lenny said: "The magistrates would retire and you would pop round the corner into the Plume of Feathers and you would buy the magistrates a beer and negotiate your punishment. This was back in the 19th century - I couldn't see it working now, but I have seen the door with my own eyes."
Bryn Jones, now 85, was one of the police officers who escorted Ronnie Harries back and forth to the court from Swansea prison during his notorious trial.
Harries was accused of bludgeoning his aunt and uncle to death with a hammer and burying them in a field. He was the last but one man to be sentenced to hanging from the court and was executed inside the prison.
Mr Jones, who served with Dyfed-Powys Police for 38 years and retired as a Ch Supt in 1988, said: "From 1952-55 I was a traffic officer in Carmarthen. In those days we didn't have security firms ferrying people back and forth from court to prison.
"Ronnie Harries was being held in Swansea prison and he had to appear in court every four days and then be taken back again to his cell.
"I know it's a strange thing to say about a convicted murderer but believe it or not he was a very pleasant sort of person, always very chatty in the car.
"One thing I remember is that he said to me and the other officers 'Boys when this is all over, I will take you out for a slap-up meal". Well that never materialised.
"He was talking all the time and acting in a normal way.
"He had a quite a reputation with the ladies and I can well understand that because there was a certain amount of charm about him."
There are various myths about how police caught Harries - from officers stretching cotton across gateways near the farm to check which lengths had been broken and thus pinpointing where the bodies would be found to a buzzard perching on a fence pole near their makeshift grave.
But Ronnie Harries' cousin, Lynn Hughes, is a local historian who recalls how the bodies were discovered by a police officer he knew personally after a search of a nearby kale field.
He said: "Sgt Phillips of Llandeilo noticed that the crops in one particular area of the field were not prospering and ordered the area to be dug up."
Mr Hughes recalls that his older cousin was a "spoilt only child, who had to have everything he wanted right away".
"My father used to race motorcycles in Pendine Sands and we used to call in on Ronnie and his parents, Muriel and John, on the way back for tea.
"He wanted this USA motorbike and had a terrible accident on it where he jumped off one of the narrow lanes and suffered a severe head injury. However, this wasn't taken into account at his trial.
"The motorbike was abandoned and then he had one of the first Land Rovers in Carmarthenshire. He was so persistent, he wore his parents down.
"I remember him taking me for a drive in it and feeling very uncomfortable in his company. He definitely had mental health issues and in modern times would have been sent to an institution rather than be hanged for what he did.
"I didn't go to the trial as I was just a boy of seven and he was a man in his 20s, but I do remember the devastating impact it had on my aunt and uncle."
Mr Jones told how people were perched on top of local buildings for the Harries verdict, such was the local interest in the case.
"When the judge put his black cap on, there were people in the window putting their thumbs down to signify that Harries was to be hanged."
He has also researched and written about the part the court played in the sensational 'Kidwelly case' in 1920 when solicitor Harold Greenwood went on trial there for poisoning his wife Mabel with arsenic.
Greenwood was largely believed to be guilty by the local community but was cleared due to the defence and skilful cross-examination of his wife's doctor by his star QC, Marshall Hall.
Mr Hall raised the possibility that Mrs Greenwood had died from an accidental overdose of morphine. His closing speech for the defence was described by the author Gerald Sparrow as "the finest ever heard at the English bar".
Mr Hughes said: "His speech in mitigation is famous in Welsh legal history and the case was the best-known in the Carmarthen court's history.
'Guilty as hell'
"The court was packed for the trial, with spectators arriving by the trainload to hear the arguments."
Mr Jones added: "Emlyn Thomas, a former editor of the Carmarthen Journal, now deceased, was a young reporter during the trial and I remember him telling me it was doubtful because of Marshall Hall's health if he would be able to give his closing speech the following day.
"However, he spoke for almost three hours and was totally brilliant. He quoted Othello more than once during the trial and everybody was transfixed, but Greenwood was furious when Mr Hall left court.
"The only person to leave court at the same time was Emlyn Thomas who chased after him.
"I can only tell you what he told me and that was that when he caught up with Mr Hall somewhere around Queen Street, he asked if Greenwood was guilty or not guilty and according to Emlyn, Mr Hall replied: 'he's as guilty as hell' and off he went.
"Imagine the cheek of questioning the defence counsel like that!"
Another famous poisoning case which took place at the court was that of cook Betsy Gibbs in 1851. She was accused of poisoning her mistress Mary Ann Severne of Brixton Farm, Laugharne and Mrs Severne's maid, Rebecca Uphill.
In September 1850 Mrs Severne's body was exhumed and the coroner confirmed that their deaths were due to arsenic poisoning.
Newspaper reports from the time cite a wealth of eyewitness evidence against Ms Gibbs, but the packed public gallery was dumbfounded when the jury returned a not guilty verdict.
The Reynolds Newspaper of 13 April 1851 reported that she was targeted by a mob of angry locals when she returned home to Laugharne: "This circumstance still further aroused the popular indignation, and on the night of the 27 Gibbs's effigy was duly suspended upon a gallows, which was erected in front of her dwelling, and afterwards set fire to, amid the exultation of the mob.
"On the following evening a lengthened mock funeral procession paraded up and down the street where Elizabeth Gibbs resided, which, by the bye, has had its cognomen metamorphosed into that of 'Scape-the-Gallows-Street.
"These reiterated annoyances induced her to leave the town, and accordingly she passed through Carmarthen on her way to Merthyr, again exciting the disgust and indignation of a tumultuous assemblage, who crowded to satiate their curiosity by gazing on the woman whom the law had pronounced innocent of the murders which excited their horror."
Over the past 10 years, the crown court has gradually faded away from the town, with the crown cases transferred to Swansea and the magistrates cases transferred to Llanelli.
The recent closure announcement has prompted magistrate and former Carmarthen mayor Richard Goodridge to resign. His association with the court goes back 40 years as his father Stan used to be hall keeper and as a boy he used to go and open up and close with him.
Mr Goodridge, 55, said: "If you look back at the history of the Magna Carta, the whole purpose of the magistrates' courts was that people would be tried by their peers within the locality.
"What they are looking at now is people being tried by computer to save costs, which changes the whole ethos of being brought to court.
"The principle of having to attend court in front of people to answer for your crimes is a big deterrent and being lectured on your wrongdoings by a magistrate is part of that deterrent. It not being done any more will have a big impact. "
Mr Goodridge said that he has resigned from the bench for his own safety.
"I don't have a car and I don't want to travel on the bus or the train to Llanelli and risk sitting in front of somebody whose case I will be hearing," he said.
"There will be cases where witnesses are standing on the same train platform as the people they are giving evidence against and that can't fail but have an impact for justice."
Mr Goodridge believes the court should be handed back to the people of Carmarthen as it was originally transferred free to the court service.
'Travesty of justice'
He is also concerned about what will happen to the three bronze bells that the town's late chemist Gwynne King Morgan donated to the people of Carmarthen which were installed in the late 80s and early 90s.
He added: "Cardigan, Newcastle Emlyn, Llandovery, Ammanford, Whitland, St Clears, Narberth, Haverfordwest, and others have all had their court buildings closed and sold off to the highest bidder, many since falling into disrepair. This must not be allowed to happen here.
"It's been a travesty of justice and a justice that no longer exists in the local community."
Juliana Hughes, a magistrate in the area for 25 years, who has since retired, said: "It's a really beautiful court which adds to the dignity of the court proceedings and the seriousness of the hearings.
"I've sat in Llanelli several times and it just doesn't have the same feel to it," she said.
"It will take away the idea of local justice which was the main idea behind magistrates' courts, that local justice would be administered by local people.
"It's changed the whole ethos of the magistrates' courts and it's becoming a sphere where the people who practice the law are the only people who have any say."
Mrs Hughes has seen many smaller courts close in her time, including St Clears which was once a miniature version of the Carmarthen court and used to be attached to the police station.
The century-old police court house in Bargoed, near Caerphilly, closed in 1997 but is now a town hall, while a new family-run supermarket is to be built on the site of the former Barry Magistrates' Court, creating 40 jobs in the town.
The operating costs for Carmarthen Law Courts were approximately £162,000 for the financial year 2014-15.
'Urgent reform'
The Ministry of Justice argues that public transport links are good and regular local bus services link Carmarthen to local population centres.
It says that Llanelli is a multi-jurisdictional court, which has the capacity to accommodate Carmarthen's criminal workload.
It also argues that the court building is not compliant with the Equality Act 2010 and there is inadequate separation of victims, witnesses and defendants, inadequate judicial and juror segregation, with poor facilities for witnesses and victims.
Due to the absence at the site of a modern vehicle dock, prisoners are delivered to the building via the public pavement outside of the premises.
Justice Minister Shailesh Vara said: "Our courts and tribunals system is in need of urgent reform. Maintaining our underused and dilapidated court buildings costs the taxpayer £500m million a year but some courts sit for less than half the time available.
"This is simply unsustainable. Closing these courts in poor quality buildings will raise £40m to re-invest in the justice system, and save hard-working taxpayers £27m per year.
"The decision to close a court will never be taken lightly, but in the digital age I am confident we have measures in place to ensure access to justice is not diminished."
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A-list stars - and a furry alien - turned out for the screening of Solo: A Star Wars Story at Cannes on Tuesday. | Cast members Emilia Clarke, Thandie Newton, Donald Glover and Alden Ehrenreich were among the celebs who walked the red carpet.
So who wore what? Here are some of the best pics:
Thandie Newton (plays Val)
Donald Glover (plays Lando Calrissian)
Alden Ehrenreich (plays Han Solo)
Emilia Clarke (plays Qi'ra)
Phoebe Waller-Bridge (plays L3-37)
Winnie Harlow
50 Cent
Chewbacca
Stormtroopers
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Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here.
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Bollywood actor Salman Khan's five-year jail term for a hit-and-run incident in the city of Mumbai in 2002 received huge coverage in the Indian media, with some commentators wondering what awaits him next and others saying his sentencing is long overdue. | Khan has a massive fan base in India and beyond and his sentencing is completely overshadowing other news.
"Salman Khan Gets 5 Years in Jail in Hit-and-Run Case, Breaks Down in Court" read the headline on the NDTV website.
The websites of the leading newspapers in English and Hindi ran live pages with banner headlines and plenty of visuals.
The Times of India's headline read: "Live Blog: Salman Khan sentenced to 5 years in jail in 2002 hit-and-run case".
The Hindustan Times also ran a poll asking readers if the actor will be able to regain his standing after today's sentencing.
"Salman Khan convicted: do you think he can make a comeback after this setback?" the paper asked.
Hindi papers also gave the story top billing, with the daily Navbharat Times asking: "Will the High Court listen to Salman's plea?"
The India Today website said many believed that the actor would not be found guilty.
"In a country where film stars are deemed nothing less than deities, there is no way the most powerful one of them will be convicted - that was the notion almost everyone held till 11.13 am on Wednesday," Vinayak Chakravorty wrote on the website.
The FirstPost website said the punishment was "richly deserved".
"For 15 years Salman tried every possible trick… to escape punishment. He changed lawyers, deceived courts, courted the media, airbrushed his image - from the bad boy of Bollywood he tried Being Human. Yet, he is going to jail, getting the deserved punishment for his karma," Sandipan Sharma writes on the website.
Top Indian news channels have been broadcasting developments in the case as "Breaking News" since this morning.
Even before the verdict was announced, TV channels repeatedly showed visuals of Khan hugging his parents and leaving his residence for the court.
Popular TV news channel Times Now ran a countdown to Khan's sentencing, which came a couple of hours after the verdict was announced.
Meanwhile, #SalmanVerdict has been the top trend on Twitter in India and neighbouring Pakistan with mixed reactions from social media users. While some have expressed sadness over the sentencing, others feel "justice" must be done.
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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Education Secretary Michael Gove has called for children to read more books, again noting that John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men dominates in many schools. Why should one American book be chosen by so many English teachers? | SPOILER WARNING: Plot details are revealed below
Michael Gove says children are reading too few books.
He says that some students only read two books in an academic year, and that a departmental survey in England suggested that "over 90% of schools teach Of Mice and Men to their GCSE students".
But why does a novella written in 1937 about displaced ranch workers during the Great Depression hold such enduring popularity in schools?
The answer is that Steinbeck's classic is short, comprising only six chapters, and that its themes continue to be considered relevant to 21st Century society.
Nicola Williams, a senior English teacher at Charlton School in Shropshire, admits the length of the novella is a factor in its appeal, suggesting that "the reading is not too onerous when we are so pushed for time in the curriculum". But she believes the true draw of the novella lies in its accessibility to students across a range of academic abilities.
"Students often struggle to understand why George shoots Lennie," she says, "particularly at the lower end of the ability spectrum, but once explained they do get it."
"Steinbeck offers a lot for more able students too with his references to light and noise and his presentation of the six clear scenes in a cyclical style."
Williams describes the relationship between main characters George and Lennie as the topic that provokes the most debate. She says: "Interestingly, a lot of students jump to the conclusion that the two main characters must be gay as they travel together, and that, I think, is due to modern representations of male relationships.
"It's really gritty because of the issues it deals with."
Susan Van Kirk, author of the Cliff Notes Revision Guide for Of Mice and Men agrees, commenting: "Thousands of books are written and printed every year, but very few stand the test of time and speak of enduring human values.
"Of Mice and Men has universal themes that can be read in any culture and time. John Steinbeck wrote of lessons of the heart, lessons that teach children what it is to be a human being with compassion for his fellow humans and a social conscience."
Van Kirk believes the theme of bullying is of great relevance to teaching children in society today.
"Currently in Western culture, there is much discussion about school bullying. This book is certainly a bullying antidote. Teenagers often feel lonely and powerless and they can identify with many of the characters in this novel."
50 books a year
With Gove announcing plans to restructure the curriculum, there is a possibility mainstay works such as Of Mice and Men may see their regular position on reading lists placed under threat.
Gove believes that children from the age of 11 should be reading up to 50 books each year and suggests that an over-reliance on longstanding core texts is working to the detriment of the curriculum.
But whether or not Gove's plans become reality, it is difficult to imagine a short, accessible, and perennially relevant novella like Of Mice and Men being abandoned.
Written by Stephen Maunder.
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The goal of reaching one million Welsh speakers will be helped by an extra £2m over the next two years. | In 2016, First Minister Carwyn Jones announced plans to almost double the figure from 562,000 by 2050.
The extra cash will go to Mudiad Meithrin - a charity which gives early years, including nursery, Welsh-language education.
It will now receive an extra £1m in each of the next two years on top of its £2m Welsh Government funding.
The money will help it set up new provisions in areas where there is a lack of opportunity to use the language.
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A man has been remanded in custody over the death of a woman who was found stabbed at a house in Nottingham. | Police found the body of mother-of-one Leighann Wightman, 24, at the property in Norman Street in Netherfield at about 05:30 BST on Saturday.
Andrew Kemp, 48, from Vale Road, Colwick, appeared before magistrates in Nottingham charged with murder and was remanded into custody.
He is due to appear before Nottingham Crown Court on Tuesday.
A post-mortem examination revealed Ms Wightman, who had a daughter aged five, died from stab wounds.
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More than half of flights offered under a new trial service between Alderney and Jersey have been sold, according to the tourism office.
| The trial service, a joint venture between Alderney and airline Aurigny, begins on 20 September.
Neil Harvey, from the States of Alderney, said the route could be important for the island.
The last regular flights between the two islands were in 2009 and run by Blue Islands.
Mr Harvey said: "The people of Alderney have long hoped for a resumption of the direct Jersey route and this gives us an opportunity to demonstrate just how successful it could be."
The trial will run for six weeks and will see flights on Friday and Sunday at a cost of £99 return.
Aurigny last operated flights between the islands in 2004.
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Twenty-five years ago a new church was consecrated in the town of Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria, dedicated to the Armenians killed en masse in 1915. Ironically the building erected in memory of the victims of violence has now been destroyed by bombs. | By Kanishk Tharoor and Maryam MarufBBC News
In the basement of the Armenian Martyrs' Memorial Church in Deir al-Zour lay a shrine - a sunken area filled with sand, and laid on top, a pile of human remains.
"I was so shocked. I just stood and looked at the bones," says British-Armenian writer Nouritza Matossian, who visited the church in 2001.
"Everybody was hushed, it was silent in there. We were all lost in our thoughts. It was really quite an isolated moment. It wasn't pulling at you to cry or weep. It was just very simple and dignified and noble."
A stone pillar rose up through the ceiling, into the church and up to the roof.
"I looked at this beautiful shrine and I thought, 'What an amazing idea to have taken this column which was like a tree, rooted in the ground, and take it right up through the body of the church, right up into the cupola and up into the sky,'" she says.
It was not an old building - the Syrian government had approved its construction in the 1980s and it was consecrated in 1991 in memory of Armenians who died in 1915.
Matossian's ancestors were among those caught up in the events a century ago. As the Ottoman Empire crumbled, hundreds of thousands of Armenians, mainly from eastern Anatolia, were rounded up and sent hundreds of miles away across the Syrian Desert.
Some were forced to walk, while others were taken in trains and caravans to the city of Deir al-Zour.
Matossian's grandfather, Hovhannes, had already left Antep - now Gaziantep in Turkey - after an outbreak of violence in 1910. Although he had moved to Cyprus, the rest of his family stayed behind and were eventually deported.
They were "driven across these deserts starving, without water, stripped naked, their clothes were torn off their backs everything was taken from them," says Matossian.
"Deir al- Zour was the end of the road, it was the last Ottoman outpost into the desert in the eastern part of Syria," says Heghnar Watenpaugh, a Lebanese-Armenian historian at the University of California, Davis. "Beyond that there's really nothing, no settlements.
"Very few people made it there, and once they made it they were killed outright, or just succumbed to disease and starvation."
Find out more
Armenians say 1.5 million people were systematically killed. Turkey maintains the number is closer to 300,000, and denies accusations of genocide, saying that many ethnic Turks also died during World War One.
In the years that followed, Deir al-Zour became "a major pilgrimage site for Armenians," says Watenpaugh, and a shrine was finally built. But the Armenian Martyrs' Memorial Church stood for less than a quarter of a century before it was destroyed.
In 2014, it was blown up during fighting between the so-called Islamic State group and the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front. The central church of the complex was almost completely demolished.
"It's a very dark moment in our life, in our history. I never thought this could be repeated," says Matossian.
Before the Syrian civil war, there were an estimated 100,000 ethnic Armenians in Syria - most of them descendants of those who survived the deportations. There were small communities in cities across the country but the majority, more than 60,000, settled in Aleppo.
For many of them Aleppo "is like a sacred word, a magical incantation," says Watenpaugh. "All of our families went through Aleppo at some point during the deportations. For some, it was a place where salvation was possible, where you could bribe your way out of the deportation or find some way to escape."
She says Armenian women were often taken by Bedouin families, sometimes willingly and sometimes by force.
"They became part of extended Bedouin households and the concubines or wives of various Bedouin men.
"Today, when Bedouin come to Aleppo on business and go to a store run by an Armenian they will often call the Armenians of Aleppo khalo - brother of my mother. That's because there is this very strong connection between the Bedouin who know that their mothers or grandmothers were Armenians."
Nouritza Matossian's great-aunt was one of the Armenian women picked up by local Bedouin. Years later, she was spotted in Aleppo.
"Our relations saw her in the bazaar, and they recognised her, they called out her name - Berjouhi," says Matossian.
"She recognised them but there were children with her, and she swept up her children and disappeared into the crowd. She was married or she was living with these people and she didn't want to leave her children behind.
"Her face was covered in tattoos. In order to assimilate them, the Bedouin made them change their religion, and they tattooed their women - it was a sort of tribal thing."
Deir al-Zour made a deep impression on Matossian and she returned to the city in 2007.
At the shrine, she bought a small box as a memento. Inside is a tiny cross made of olive wood, two ears of wheat, two little candles, incense, and a tube of soil.
"The priest told me that that is the earth of Deir al-Zour. Some people take earth from where they're born and they spread it on their grave when they die. This soil has that significance," she says.
"I always keep this box within eyesight, on my desk. I never expected that one day I would be looking at this box and that church would be gone, destroyed. It's very hard to accept."
The Museum of Lost Objects traces the stories of 10 antiquities or ancient sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria.
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In January Donald Trump will become the first person sworn in as US president without prior experience in elective office or at the highest levels of the military. While his accomplishment is unprecedented, two modern governors who used their fame as a springboard to public office could serve as guides - and cautionary tales. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
Dean Barkley remembers what professional-wrestler-turned-politician Jesse Ventura said moments after learning that he had won his upstart independent bid to be governor of Minnesota in 1998.
"Now what the hell do we do?"
Barkley, who served as the Ventura campaign chair, says he was equally flummoxed. At one point during the evening, he went looking for the briefing books put together by the current governor's office that laid out the post-election transition process.
They were buried, unread, in the trunk of his car.
Mr Ventura's victory was the culmination of an improbable campaign, where the man who goes by the nickname "the Body" prevailed despite being vastly outspent by his Democratic and Republican rivals.
He ran as the straight-talking outsider, gaining national attention with a memorable television advertising campaign featuring Mr Ventura as a children's action figure fighting lobbyists and corrupt politicians.
When he first launched his bid, Mr Ventura was laughed off as a joke. As election day approached, few gave the outsider, anti-establishment candidate any chance of winning. And on election night, even Ventura's own staff was caught flat-footed, unprepared to face a reality that voters had handed their man the reins of power.
"It dawned on me that absolutely no-one knew what to do beginning the next day," says Bill Hillsman, the media consultant who came up with the action-figure advert.
Although he wasn't a governing expert, at 3 am on election night Hillsman found himself alone in a Denny's diner with a sheet of legal paper, making a list of all the things he could think of that the nascent Ventura administration had to do when the sun came up.
And when daylight broke, the phone started ringing off the hook.
"It was a lot of unions, a number of trade groups, people who had business with the government," Hillsman said. "Nobody knew how to go about getting hold of the governor-elect. We were the only connection they could figure out."
In other words, it was situation not unlike the one that reportedly unfolded in Trump campaign headquarters two weeks ago, as aides and advisors scrambled to bring order from the chaos of an improbable victory.
"For the first week or two it was pretty chaotic, just trying to get our feet on the ground of what to do because we didn't have any political insiders to guide us," Barkley says.
He and former congressman Tim Penny hired a team of human resources experts to screen resumes for government positions, then forwarded the top four to Mr Ventura for consideration. They issued a ban on lobbyist involvement and, per the governor-elect's instructions, made selections based on qualifications and not party affiliation.
It's the same advice Barkley says he would give Mr Trump, who he says "pulled off a miracle" by winning the presidency.
"Trust your instincts," he says. "They got you where you are. Don't get side-tracked by political insiders who basically just want you to do their bidding. Pick the best and the brightest regardless of whether they supported you or didn't support you."
So far, that hasn't seemed to be the strategy Mr Trump is following, as he has opted to tap faithful advisors Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Michael Flynn for national security advisor. If he's going to pursue the Ventura model, he'll have to cast a wider net.
According to Hillsman, Mr Ventura's status as a political independent was an advantage that Mr Trump, who often campaigned with little help from members of his own party, should be maximising.
"If you don't owe anybody, you can absolutely pick the best people for the job," he says.
The Ventura administration's goal was to strike a non-ideological balance between the Democratic and Republican parties in the state, Barkley says - and for the first two years of his four-year term, it seemed to work. Mr Ventura had campaigned as a no-nonsense outsider, and he was able to win legislative support for a sales tax rebate, property tax reform and increased funding for mass transit programmes and public schools.
The second half of his term, however, was typified by Mr Ventura's recurring feuds with the media and political dysfunction in the legislature, as an economic downturn led to budget deficits. He moved out of the governor's mansion to live in his private house. He drew sharp criticism for the kind of unscripted remark that had been shrugged off during his campaign and the heady early days of his administration but served as a lightning rod when his fortunes turned south.
Mr Ventura announced he would not run for re-election, which Barkley - who had taken a high-level job in the administration - said made Democrats and Republicans solely focused on the race to replace him.
"No one wanted to give him credit anymore for anything," he said. "The whole mindset changed, and it was basically a nightmare - nothing got done."
As Mr Ventura's political star was setting in Minnesota, in California another unconventional politician was about make his move.
Blockbuster action-film star Arnold Schwarzenegger had always entertained the idea of a political career, but it took a strange confluence of events - the recall election of the unpopular Democratic Governor Gray Davis - to elevate him to the California governorship in 2003.
Like Mr Ventura before him (and Mr Trump years later), Mr Schwarzenegger campaigned as the renegade outsider who would clean up a corrupt political system. He travelled around the state with a broom and took the stage at his rallies to Twisted Sister rock anthem We're Not Going to Take It (a song Mr Trump adopted in 2015 until the band leader asked him to stop playing it).
"Arnold Schwarzenegger drew huge crowds around the state due in large part to his celebrity, along with the frustration people had with government and the status quo," says former Congressman David Dreier, who co-chaired the Schwarzenegger campaign and served as the head of his transition team.
Mr Dreier adds that Schwarzenegger rallies had much of the same drama and excitement that characterised Mr Trump's presidential campaign. For instance, during one rally, the actor-turned-candidate dropped a wrecking ball on an old car to demonstrate his opposition to a car tax imposed by the current governor.
"Arnold Schwarzenegger in many ways blazed the way for Donald Trump," he says.
Mr Dreier says Mr Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, asked him to head the governor-elect transition team at a Starbucks coffee shop about a week before election day. They told him they wanted someone with government experience - but without ties to the state capital in Sacramento.
"I could count probably on two hands the number of times I've been to Sacramento," Mr Dreier says.
Mr Dreier, who is now advising the Trump transition team, says the most important thing an outsider candidate can do during his transition is to use it to set the administration's priorities and bring in veteran political hands - something that Mr Trump did when he hired Republican Party Chair Reince Priebus to be his chief of staff.
"What do you want to accomplish?" he says. "That's what Donald Trump needs to be thinking about."
Upon assuming the governorship, Schwarzenegger faced his own steep political learning curve, as he struggled against an uncooperative state legislature and grappled with reconciling the grand promises he made on the campaign trail. He tried to circumvent the state legislature by offering ballot measures Californians could directly vote on, but all his proposals were defeated.
"Being a political novice meant he didn't understand how difficult some of these things would be and what the limits of the power of the governor are," says Terry Christensen, a political science professor at San Jose State University who co-wrote a book about the Schwarzenegger governorship.
"As an outsider he had a different perspective, and maybe it opened him to ideas that insiders wouldn't entertain, but you still have the challenge of bringing those ideas to fruition," he adds.
Mr Schwarzenegger had his share of legislative accomplishments, such as co-operating with the Democrats to pass more stringent environmental regulations. Like Mr Ventura, however, the final days of his administration were typified by frustration, large budget deficits and sinking popularity, as the political powers that be reasserted control.
"These past seven years," wrote LA Magazine's Ed Leibowitz in 2011, "we Californians have experienced an Arnold Schwarzenegger many of us wish we'd never met: a politician who often seemed in over his head, who prevaricated and bungled, switching sides as it suited him to save his political skin."
The lustre of the outsider delivered powerful public office to Mr Schwarzenegger, as it did Mr Ventura, but the grind of governing eventually brought both men down to political bedrock.
Back in 2000, when Mr Ventura was still near the height of his popularity, Mr Trump - then contemplating a third-party bid for the presidency - travelled to Minnesota to meet with the team that helped secure the governorship for a man who had made his name taunting opponents in the wrestling ring.
According to Barkley, the New York real estate mogul was an attentive listener.
"He's not stupid," Barkley said. "He came to find out how the hell we did it here. And he followed our blueprint pretty well."
It's a blueprint that will put Mr Trump in the White House. It's not quite as clear about what he should do once he gets there.
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Lily Allen has changed her name on Twitter to Lily Cooper. | The 26-year-old singer married Sam Cooper in Gloucestershire at the weekend and has switched her profile from Lily Rose Allen to Mrs LR Cooper.
The couple tied the knot at St James the Great Church in Cranham, near Stroud, on Saturday.
She tweeted: "I had the most amazing wedding, thank you to everyone who went to such extraordinary efforts to make it that way."
It was also revealed on her wedding day that the singer was pregnant after she was photographed with a visible bump under her lace wedding dress.
The singer suffered a second miscarriage, six months into her pregnancy last year.
She also suffered a miscarriage in 2008 when she was with Ed Simons from the Chemical Brothers.
Allen met Sam Cooper at the Glastonbury Festival in 2009 and the couple are thought to be attending this year's event with friends and family, staying in luxury tepees.
Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis said: "I'll set her up a special tent. She'll have the best treatment."
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"I've had a gun held to my head in country. My friends have been stabbed in country. When you're in the countryside it's business, no one's laughing and joking. We're here to make money and not get killed." | By Emma Forde and Jane Deith File on 4
Danielle* was 15 when she was kidnapped and raped in London.
She told the police what happened but claimed she didn't know who attacked her.
She lied because she was scared and so no-one was ever prosecuted.
She was terrified she would be attacked again and, with no family to help her, she turned to a gang on her estate, knowing they could keep her safe.
The group was running county lines all over the country.
'Dangerous people'
"I wanted to be protected by them. Let me go to the scariest, most dangerous people and fit in with them basically. Nobody, nothing could hurt me when I'm in this group of people."
County lines is the term used to describe criminal gangs who move illegal drugs from big cities to more rural locations and sell them via dedicated mobile phone lines.
They often use threats and violence to make children and vulnerable adults move and store the drugs, as well as weapons and cash.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates profits from the trade nationwide are around £500m a year.
Danielle became the girlfriend of one of the gang's senior figures. It was a violent relationship but says she felt safer than being on her own.
Soon she was drawn into their world.
Harder to spot
"I had to make myself useful and my boyfriend at the time, that was what he wanted me to do. I was just prepping the drugs in my house."
It wasn't long before her role grew. She was sent to sell heroin and crack in towns and cities far away from London.
Danielle says girls are seen as assets by the drug dealers for helping them avoid detection. It's harder for police to spot them 'in country'.
"I was told, 'You're small and you're white so you're not gonna get stopped,' which worked for a long time.
"People don't talk about girls in county line gangs, we're just hush hush. We're really in the forefront of these businesses because we fly under the radar, which is why girls are being used."
Death threats
Danielle says seeing extreme violence became normal and she was often made to carry drugs inside her.
"I had to put that inside me. I didn't want to do that, it was like forced on me. It's not pleasant, it hurts.
"I knew in the dark times when I was in my own bed, that this is scary. I didn't know I was trapped until I tried to leave".
Danielle says the fear of being seen as a snitch stopped her from getting out sooner.
"That's why it's so hard to leave, because you never want to be that girl that's told the police anything. I never did tell the police anything. There was the threats, death threats for a long time."
It's not known just how many girls like Danielle are involved in county lines across the UK.
Lizzie's* daughter, Cara*, was a normal teenager living in the West Midlands who was into sports and good at English.
But when she was 13 she made friends with a gang of older girls.
"Her appearance started to change, her social friends started to change, her whole behaviour started to change. She was getting into trouble at school, getting excluded and hanging around with people who were stealing," says Lizzie.
Then she started going missing. The police told Lizzie they were concerned Cara was being groomed and exploited.
On one occasion, she was discovered with an older woman in a flat in Northamptonshire which contained drugs and cash.
She was brought home by police but soon went missing again. Lizzie was terrified.
"You fear that your child could be dead, you just can't sleep, you can't think, you can't focus and it's high levels of stress."
Following a police investigation, Cara was eventually found in a flat in Lincoln.
'Fear of death'
The 14-year-old had been trafficked there by a drug dealer from Birmingham who was running a county line.
She had been made to deliver heroin and crack cocaine night and day, only going out to sell drugs.
Police found her and a teenage boy in the freezing flat surrounded by drugs, syringes and a blooded knife.
"He instilled the fear of death into those children. He had no intention of giving those children anything. They were too frightened even to leave the flat to buy food to eat," says Lizzie.
The man responsible went on to be prosecuted and jailed for 14 years.
Cara is back living with her mum and going to college but Lizzie says the experience will affect her daughter for life.
"She feared for her own life. Even to this day she's still not talking about what happened to her. She says people will kill her, they'll kill me."
In 2018, London's Rescue and Response programme was set up to help under-25s caught in the world of county lines.
It recently identified 4,013 individuals from the capital involved in county lines, 10% of whom were female.
One of the organisations which works with girls and young women referred to the Rescue and Response programme is Abianda.
Its chief executive, Abi Billinghurst, told File on 4: "There are a vast number of young women who go unrecognised, under the radar. They've always been involved; it's just nobody's ever looked under the stone to find out."
The National County Lines Coordination Centre was set up a year ago to map and disrupt the thousands of county lines operating across the country.
So far it's safeguarded more than 2,400 vulnerable people, of whom roughly 10 to 15% were girls and young women. And senior police officers in charge expect the numbers to go up.
The government recently pledged £20m to fight county line gangs.
Kit Malthouse MP, the minister for crime and policing, acknowledges government can do more. "Where we know there's a significant level of vulnerability, I'll be reviewing all of those programs and seeing whether we need to expand them."
Danielle was caught with drugs in her 20s and convicted. She finally managed to escape the gang but had to start her life from scratch.
She's now studying at university and works with a charity called Advance, helping other young women in similar situations.
"I've got a passion for helping girls that were like me, because we're called criminals, we're arrested.
"Not one police officer said to me, "Are you okay, what's going on, what's behind the doors?' I really want people in power to understand - Don't let anyone fall through the cracks."
* Names have been changed to protect identities.
File on 4's Lost on the line: The county lines gangs recruiting girls is on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 15th October at 20:00 BST and available afterwards on BBC Sounds.
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More than a million refugees and migrants from war-torn regions of the Middle East and Africa came to Germany in 2015. It was the news story of the year. But at the same time Germany has been quietly undergoing a radical transformation with another influx of people from closer to home. | By Damien McGuinnessBBC News, Berlin
In my neighbourhood of former communist east Berlin there's an Italian deli with the best ciabattas in town. Glamorous young Italian waiters from the Italian restaurant opposite run across the road for occasional emergency supplies of pecorino or parmesan, shouting extravagantly "buongiorno" to their German neighbours.
On the same street, there's also a stylish Catalan restaurant, round the corner at least three other Italian eateries and on the next block a Spanish restaurant which holds regular Flamenco workshops.
Welcome to the new Germany. Until a few years ago our local cafes were more about wurst and sauerkraut than pizza and pasta.
German stability
But in 2009 the eurozone debt crisis hit, bringing Southern European economies to their knees and pushing a new generation of young Greeks, Italians and Spaniards to the richer North to find work - changing the face, and the food, of Germany.
There are more foreigners living in Germany today than at any time in the country's history. One in 10, or some 8.2 million people in Germany, are non-German. Many of them are young, educated graduates from crisis-rocked Southern Europe.
Of these, some 400,000 from Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are employed taxpayers in Germany. Many more are freelancers, students or self-employed workers.
"There was no work available in Italy, the country was doing really badly economically and there was an uncertain political climate. It was a chaotic moment," explained Luigi Serenelli, a 33-year-old Italian with two masters degrees, who moved to Berlin in 2012 with aspirations to become a journalist.
"Germany represented stability and an opportunity to find work and really do something with your life," he says.
Read and watch more from the Germany Direct season of features and video.
For whom the Bavarian bells toll
Sleepless in a German salt mine
Can cool Berlin survive gentrification?
Your pictures: Germany
How Germany's love of silence led to the first earplug
Living the good life in Berlin's allotments
In Spain and Greece youth unemployment hovers at around 50%. In Italy it is around 40%. In Germany it's only 7%.
The influx is welcome however as many German employers can't fill job vacancies, particularly doctors, qualified care staff and specialised engineers.
Which is where savvy young Southern Europeans come in. Faced with no prospects at home the clever workers with get-up-and-go have just got up and gone and headed to Germany.
They're often prepared to do the demanding jobs that many German workers don't want — particularly in the care sector, where pay is low by German standards, but still much higher than in Southern Europe.
A country of immigration
In fact migration sparked by the eurozone crisis has changed Germany irrevocably, believes Professor Dr. Alexander Kritikos, an economist at the influential Berlin research institute DIW, who grew up in Germany but whose father is Greek.
"Over the last four or five years Germany has changed enormously. We suddenly became a 'country of immigration' without even noticing," he says.
This is radical because the last time Southern Europeans migrated to Germany en masse, they weren't even supposed to stay, let alone change the country.
In December, Germany quietly marked an anniversary. In 1955 Germany signed its first so-called guest worker contract, not with Turkey, as is often believed, but with Italy. Other similar contracts were signed with Greece, Spain and Portugal.
The aim was to bring in manual workers to help support Germany's booming economy.
They were called "guests" as it was assumed they would go back one day. But many decided to stay, and became part of the country, whether Germany wanted them to or not. That was when Germany's first generation of Italian restaurants arrived.
This time round, instead of agricultural labourers and factory workers, it's Southern European doctors, engineers and software designers who have come. As EU citizens they enjoy the same rights as Germans.
So specialist engineers have headed to the wealth-generating manufacturing firms of Baden-Wuerttemberg and science graduates to Bavaria's biotech or pharmaceutical sector.
"It's a win-win situation for Germany," says Professor Dr. Daniel Goeler, migration expert at the University of Bamberg.
"(Germany) gets more out of it than the migrants themselves probably. They come under their own steam, specifically to the parts of Germany that need them.
"They might arrive on a Saturday with a job contract in their pocket, ready to start work on a Monday. They don't need support from the state, they pay their taxes and find their own accommodation. For the German state it's like a gift from heaven."
So they are better accepted by German society than the "guest workers" of the 20th century. And with similar European cultural attitudes they are often seen as easier to integrate than migrants from Africa or the Middle East.
The large luxury hotel chain Steigenberger has recently taken on 13 young Spanish trainees who are learning German and will do the same strict three-year hotel apprenticeship as Germans.
They learn all aspects of the hotel trade and have a take-home pay of 818 euros (£621) a month. If all goes well at the end of their training they will be offered a full-time permanent position.
Roberto Rojas, a spokesman for the hotel chain, says that the chance to employ workers from other European countries is a bonus.
"Having staff with other languages and from other cultures is a real advantage for our guests who come from all over the world. The hotel industry thrives on diversity," he said.
"Our Spanish trainees have a completely different level of motivation. They've left their families behind and are learning a new language. And with youth unemployment at 50 % in Spain, they are really grateful to have this chance. We see that in the way they are prepared to go the extra mile in their work."
"It's given us all the chance to succeed," says Luigi, who has learnt German and is now working as a journalist.
The next chapter
One of his Italian friends has found a job as an engineer in Bremen. Another set up a website in Germany which then gave him enough experience to find work back in Italy.
And that could become the next chapter of the story.
Unlike previous generations of workers from Southern Europe, these latest arrivals are well-educated, mobile and living in a globalised world which makes it easier to move on to the next opportunity.
They've helped Germany. And in many cases Germany has helped them. But now that growth is slowly returning to Italy and Spain, some are wondering whether it's time to return home.
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BBC Global Questions will be heading to Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the 50th anniversary of The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). | Five decades on from its inception, has Asean achieved what it set out to accomplish?
The South East Asia region saw rapid economic growth in the decades after Asean was formed. While growth benefited some, poverty is still endured by the majority.
So what do the people of south east Asia want from their governments and for their future?
For this edition of Global Questions we have assembled a high-profile panel of political figures and key decision-makers to discuss Asean and the future of the region.
Thank you for your questions, this form is now closed.
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Safety measures are being stepped up in Cardiff this weekend after concerns over "planned gatherings of youths". | Police are increasing patrols in the city centre, after being alerted to social media posts.
A spokesman from South Wales Police said: "We'd like to thank the public who have already made us aware of these posts.
"Any anti-social or illegal behaviour will not be tolerated and dealt with robustly."
It comes after increased police powers to stop and search people without suspicion were issued last month in Cardiff.
A 24-hour section 60 order was authorised after two "isolated and unrelated" stabbings in the city.
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Organisers have confirmed that Shakira will be a 'special guest' at this year's Glastonbury festival. | The Colombian singer is to appear on the festival's Pyramid stage before headliners Muse on Saturday 26 June.
Organiser Emily Eavis said: "Shakira is not only an amazing pop star but also socially and politically forward thinking; she's working incredibly hard for good causes around the world."
Shakira added: "I'm really looking forward to playing Glastonbury this year and being a part of their 40th anniversary."
As previously reported the full line-up for this year's Glastonbury has already been confirmed.
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After the prime minister announced schools in England would not reopen to all pupils until 8 March at the earliest, BBC News visited a secondary school in Norfolk to see how its head teacher, staff and pupils were coping.
| The head teacher
Rob Connelly says he has seen a number of positives come out of the way his "amazing" staff at Archbishop Sancroft High School have adapted to lockdown learning.
"We've had to be very agile and improvise and learn new skills," he says.
"Seeing our teachers develop new ways of delivering our curriculum has been remarkable.
"We will use some of the skills that perhaps we would never have considered, when school returns full time, and our teaching will be enhanced."
The school is close-knit, with just 485 pupils from the small Norfolk town of Harleston and its surrounding villages.
"It's a vibrant place and we miss that noise and we miss having the children, and the life of the school within this building," he adds.
"But we've found this has galvanised our community; the amount of pastoral work our staff are doing with students, with welfare checks - we are speaking to students and families every day.
"Those relationships are so important and communication for us has been critical."
His toughest challenge as a head teacher has been uncertainty and he says he welcomes the latest decision by government, as it gives them fair warning and a chance to plan.
"We are hopeful there are some positive elements to this, and we need to convey that message."
The teacher
Throughout January, Lucy Field has been delivering live PE lessons from her living room - not unlike Joe Wicks - to help keep students "up and at 'em".
"It's gone down really well and I try to do something different each week, like 'beat the teacher', where teachers do an exercise, time it, and challenge the students to do better than them," she says.
"It's energised the students and they've loved taking us on, it's all about keeping fit and having fun at home."
But it's not all plain sailing.
"I've been teaching for 15 years and I've never known a year like it," she adds.
"Teachers are designed to be around students, and that's what I've missed - the daily interactions and conversations - but you just have to adapt, think on your feet, and stay positive.
"I can't lie, it's been really challenging, but you have to dust yourself off and do your best for the kids, because that's what you're trained for.
"It's about supporting each other, talking to each other, and just keeping each other going."
The pupil
Melissa, 15, feels very positive about her education since lockdown.
"School is doing a good job at keeping the level of learning up, on a day-to-day level and helping us live our high school lives," she says.
"It would be good if school could go back to normal and we could see our friends face-to-face, and socialise with teachers, other than through a screen.
"The best thing is still being able to see your teachers and friends and communicating through texting on the Zoom calls, but the downside is that if you need help, you have to ask in front of the whole class, it's not like calling a teacher over to your desk.
"But the school has done some really good work making sure the lessons are done properly and we're all at the level we need to be."
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A strike at the 2 Sisters Food Group has been called off after what the union involved called a "much improved offer" from the company. | Unite were due to stage a strike over pay and conditions on Friday at three of the company's sites .
The company said the "necessary foundations" are now in place to create a further 500 new jobs at the sites.
Unite said members will be consulted about the package over the Christmas holiday.
Workers at the group mainly deal with packing chicken, but also supply fish and baked and frozen products to shops including Tesco and Marks & Spencer.
800 staff at sites in Smethwick, West Bromwich and Lincoln Street in Wolverhampton staged a 24-hour strike on 14 December.
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Picture the scene: it is the dying moments of a World Cup match and the score is level. You receive the ball and take a speculative shot which sails straight past the goalkeeper and into the top corner. What do you do next? | Some might run to the touchline and celebrate with a dramatic knee slide. The more acrobatic players may opt for a somersault or a backflip.
But for others, the sheer joy of the moment can lead to some unconventional celebrations that draw the attention of the referee or, even more seriously, football's governing body Fifa.
This is what happened to Switzerland duo Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri, who have been fined for their choice of celebration during a 2-1 victory over Serbia last week.
The families of both players are ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, where a Serbian crackdown on the Albanian population in Kosovo ended with Nato military intervention in 1999.
After scoring, they made a gesture representing the eagle on the Albanian flag which critics said could inflame tensions among Serbian nationalists and ethnic Albanians.
So what are the rules when it comes to celebrating a goal? And how should the authorities respond when a celebration goes too far?
While players are free to show national flags or symbols - Shaqiri himself displays the Swiss flag on one boot and the Kosovan flag on the other - there is a rule against "provoking the general public".
The governing body's disciplinary code makes clear that "anyone who provokes the general public during a match will be suspended for two matches and sanctioned with a minimum fine of 5,000 Swiss francs (£3,800)".
Lawmaking body the International Football Association Board (Ifab) also states that a player must be given a yellow card for "gesturing or acting in a provocative, derisory or inflammatory way".
In the end, Xhaka and Shaqiri were ruled guilty only of "unsporting behaviour". As a result they did not receive bans but fines of 10,000 Swiss francs (£7,632) each, while the team captain Stephan Lichtsteiner will pay a fine of 5,000 Swiss francs (£3,816).
Political punishment
While no player has ever been banned from the World Cup for provocation, club football has seen its fair share of political celebrations that have led to disciplinary action and a ticking off from the sport's higher-ups.
In 1997, Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler showed his support for the city's striking dock workers after scoring against Norwegian team SK Brann.
He lifted his shirt to reveal a T-shirt underneath that read "500 Liverpool dockers sacked since 1995". The player - who would go on to become one of Liverpool's top goal-scorers - was fined £900 for the celebration.
The laws of the game explicitly state that "players must not reveal undergarments that show political... statements or images".
More recently, French striker Nicolas Anelka was punished after celebrating a goal with the "quenelle" gesture - described as an inverted Nazi salute - while playing for West Bromwich Albion.
Anelka said he did it in support of the controversial French comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, who popularised the gesture and has been accused of anti-Semitism.
The player was banned for five games and fined £80,000 by the Football Association (FA) before being sacked by the club.
Rules and regulations
Ultimately, political gestures are likely to land a player in hot water. But some of the creative celebrations at this year's World Cup have still managed to raise eyebrows while abiding by Fifa's rules.
The body states that "players can celebrate when a goal is scored, but the celebration must not be excessive". It adds that "choreographed celebrations are not encouraged and must not cause excessive time-wasting."
Despite this, players are rarely punished for choreographed celebrations. On Sunday, social media praised the Colombian team for showing off their celebratory dance routine during a 3-0 victory over Poland.
England midfielder Jesse Lingard also showed imagination in his celebration inspired by the computer game Fortnite after scoring against Panama on Sunday.
The player's "shoot dance" features as a taunt on the hugely popular game, which the England team are said to be big fans of.
Both of these celebrations abide by Fifa's rules, which state that a player must be cautioned for:
So providing that jubilant players avoid these no-nos, they are free to express their joy however they see fit.
One theory that spread on social media following Portugal's 3-3 draw with Spain and England's win over Panama was that one player must stay on the pitch while the rest of the team is celebrating otherwise their opponents can kick-off.
It came after videos showing Portugal's Jose Fonte and England's Kieran Trippier remaining on the pitch during their teams celebrations were widely shared on Twitter.
But this is incorrect, as Fifa's rules make clear that "for every kick-off, all players, except the player taking the kick-off, must be in their own half of the field of play."
So players can rest easy knowing that - however they choose to celebrate - they can share the ecstasy of scoring with the rest of the team.
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Parishioners in Torteval are being asked what should be included in a time capsule being created to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
| The committee organising celebrations in the Guernsey parish wants to fill a 2ft (60cm) high stainless steel capsule with items from the area.
The capsule will then be put inside a glass cabinet in Torteval parish church and not opened until 2072.
Among the objects inside will be photos from the parish's scarecrow festivals.
The committee has also approved including letters from island dignitaries and artefacts from local companies.
Once it has been filled a date will be set for when the capsule will be sealed.
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The danger may be over but a string of bombings have rattled Austin's belief in itself as a laid-back oasis, as it now confronts the sort of stomach-churning headlines usually associated with bigger American cities. | By James JeffreyAustin, Texas
Around the Texas state capital, the sound of sirens has been more frequent over the past few days.
Hundreds of personnel including police, FBI agents, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and bomb technicians have been working the case.
It appears that investigation has finally proved successful as a man suspected of the bombings detonated a device killing himself on Wednesday morning as officers attempted to arrest him at a hotel north of the city.
If, as seems likely, that brings to an end three weeks of uncertainty and fear, Austinites are still left trying to unravel events and come to a better understanding of what happened to their city usually famed as a liberal oasis.
Three parcel bombs and a trip-wire device exploded over the course of 17 days in early March, then on Tuesday morning a fifth device exploded at a FedEx facility in the city of San Antonio - the package containing it was en route to Austin.
Before the news emerged overnight that the suspect had been killed, there was a sense of unease.
"I drive down the street where the trip-wire one exploded, so to have something like that five minutes from my house is a shock," says 31-year-old Jesse O'Brien.
"You hear about this type of thing with other cities not Austin," says Brittaney Parsons, sitting opposite Mr O'Brien at Caffe Medici in West Austin.
"We're only known for music festivals and people drinking."
A few blocks from the café a UPS van pulls up to make an afternoon delivery to a house.
"It's on my mind obviously," the driver says, adding he can't give his name as management have banned talking to press.
"I'm not that worried about myself, but I don't want to be the one to deliver one of these packages to a family with children and have to live with that."
Meanwhile, at the neighbourhood's Fire Station No 4, two firemen lift weights in the gym.
"We've scaled back our daily tasks such as fire drills and building inspections as in the current climate we don't want to increase public unease by being too visual," says 30-year-old Alex Paranagua.
"Also, it means we are ready to respond more quickly if needed."
In downtown Austin, the normal hustle and bustle continued during Tuesday afternoon, with people sat outside bars, cafes and stores making the most of the sunshine.
"I am not that surprised given the current political climate of divisiveness that is encouraging so much hate and violence," says 68-year-old Don Rypka outside the flagship Whole Foods Market.
Others, however, are more taken aback.
"Texas is so friendly and community orientated," says mother-of-two Camille Carson at Whole Foods. "Of all the places, Austin is the last one where I'd have thought this could happen."
Before the trip-wire device in southwest Austin that injured two white men, the first three bombs targeted African-American households on the city's less affluent east side that historically has housed black and Latino residents.
Austin has a long-chequered past of racial tensions and inequities at odds with its laid-back reputation.
After the first bomb, people began to question whether Austin's police would have more readily sounded the alarm if the victim had been white and it had happened in a more affluent neighbourhood.
"When does a story pick up stream and why - is it simply because of the volume or because the problem left East Austin [and threatened the rest of the city]," says Kevin Foster, a professor in the African and African Diaspora Studies department at the University of Texas at Austin, and who is involved in community programmes on the East Side.
"I don't know the answer, but we need to ask the question. This community is used to institutional neglect and being marginalised."
Others more closely affected by the bombings' aftermath have been left also mulling on the potentially problematic role of the media.
"The coverage could be making it worse, calling it a serial bomber, with the bomber getting a thrill from it," says Adriana, the 25-year-old grand-daughter of the woman living opposite where the second parcel bomb detonated March 12 killing 17-year-old Draylen Mason.
"We've seen it happening with shootings increasing - people can get the idea from media."
Police say they still don't know the overall motive of the individual who blew himself up this morning, and are looking into whether he had any accomplices. They have also warned that people in Austin need to stay vigilant as they don't know how the suspect has spent the previous 24 hours.
"I've been getting lots of messages from friends in other states checking in with me," says 37-year-old Blair Wagonen, walking her dog in East Austin.
"Unfortunately, I'm not shocked by what's happened given the world we live in. But it is a bit weird given how liberal and community-based Austin is, unlike other big cities - most of my friends here have had the same reaction."
As this week began, most Austinites repeated the refrain heard in other cities hit by attacks - life has to go on as normal as possible. That should be easier now that it appears the bombings are over.
But there remains a sense that people feel caught out and almost let down to find that terrible events can happen in Austin too.
"The more time goes by, this world doesn't seem to be getting better," says 57-year-old John Doyle, a retired firefighter, leaving an HEB supermarket on the east side.
"It makes me think of the Bible's words: We live in perilous times."
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Get ready for the good, the bad, the freaks and the emotional journeys - X Factor is about to start again with thousands of wannabes hoping to be the one that ends up with worldwide fame. So what happened to last year's finalists? The twelve acts were everywhere last year, but how have their fortunes fared?
| By Frances CroninNewsbeat entertainment reporter
ALEXANDRA BURKE
Alexandra was the winner. But we've still not heard her new material. Signed to Simon Cowell's label, they've followed the same game plan as previous winner Leona Lewis, giving her time to work on her debutand teaming her up with top producers and writers.
She's been flying backwards and forwards from LA working on the album that is due out on 26 October. She's been hanging out with Jay-Z, Timbaland and Beyonce but admits she's missed home.
She admitted on Twitter she didn't know when the new series of X Factor was starting and still gets emotional if she watches it back.
DIANA VICKERS
Diana was seen as a potential winner but came fourth, going out in week nine. Straight after the show she was signed by RCA and has teamed up with Nerina Pallot, Lightspeed Champion and producer Guy Sigsworth who has worked with Bjork and Madonna.
Her album is out early next year but one song, Jumping Into Rivers, has been leaked online already. We'll soon see her on the West End stage too. She's going to star in the revival of the award-winning play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice for a limited run from October in London.
Diana says she hasn't stopped since the end of the show: "I've been doing a lot of gigs, after the X Factor tour it was straight into the recording studio and I've started rehearsing for the West End. I'm a busy bee, I've had to move to London - got my own little pad which is groovy."
She's still in touch with her mentor Cheryl and has no regrets about going on the show: "Look at me, I'm in the West End, I've got my album coming out, I've met so many amazing people and I'm only 18, it doesn't get better than that."
Find out more about Diana's new LP
LAURA WHITE
There was a massive row when Laura was voted out. Seen as a potential winner, she only made it to week five. Thousands petitioned to get her back in and her name was brought up in Parliament.
Laura is about to release her first single. She's signed to an independent label and has been working with Ian Green who has worked with Madonna. Laura said: "For the past year I really just kept quiet for a while and really focused on my music. I've been working with Madonna's producer who has done all my album which I'm proud of musically.
"I've gone completely different to where a lot of the old X Factor contestants are normally placed."
Find out more about Laura working with Madge's producer
EOGHAN QUIGG
Coming third, Eoghan was quickly signed to RCA and released a self titled album that went to Number 14 in the chart. After impressing Boyzone on the show he was invited on tour with them.
He's now doing gigs and appearances around Ireland and the UK. He's just done a Butlins tour with other X Factor contenders like Austin and Chico. He's trying to decide whether to go back to school.
AUSTIN DRAGE
Austin has been performing at a number of gigs and charity balls and the day X Factor starts will be performing at Lincoln Pride.
He's got no regrets about being on the show. He said: "It's up to you to create the new opportunities. I am going to hopefully release on my own label. I'm writing with the same people who have worked with Lily Allen and Tinchy Stryder."
He says he could soon be back in front of Simon Cowell auditioning again: "On holiday in the States I went for an audition for American Idol. I was kind of thrown into it by my friend and I am seeing about how I can get back over there as there's a lot of work to get visas.
"I won a competition to go straight through to the judges round so I could be back in front of Simon Cowell again."
Find out more about Austin's future plans
SCOTT BRUTON
Former Bluecoat Scott lost out to Daniel Evans in week three. Since leaving the show he's got the role of Bobby in the West End production of Dreamboats and Petticoats which will also tour the country.
He's sorry that Simon Cowell hasn't kept in touch but says he's got no regrets: "The X factor has opened so many doors for me - I could still be working at Pontins now."
And it's not just a theatre career he has got out of the show: "Through this I got a record deal with Universal and I'm going to be releasing a single and an album very soon.
"I'd say to anyone out there that really fancies themselves as a singer, go on X Factor because it is the only way to get noticed these days. Some people say it's an instant fame machine but it does actually set up people's careers."
Find out more about Scott's X Factor experience
RUTH LORENZO
Alexandra's best mate Ruth came fifth in the show. The Spanish singer was a rock chick and took her time being signed up but bagged a big label in the form of Virgin.
She's currently working on her debut album which will have a rock sound. She is rumoured to be working with Slash and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler.
DANIEL EVANS
Widower Daniel got the heart strings going on the show with his backstory as a single dad. Many thought he got further than expected because of public sympathy but he says he's got no regrets going on the show despite struggling to get signed afterwards.
"The labels that normally sign acts from the show didn't want to know, after all, Simon's comments are not exactly the kind of thing you want on your CV," he said.
He's working on an album, funding it himself and says it's likely to be an online release in November. But he says without X Factor he wouldn't be able to pay his mortgage purely by music.
He lives in Spain with his daughter.
RACHEL HYLTON
Mum of five Rachel came to the show as part of turning her life around. She'd had drug problems and spent time in prison. She wowed the judges with her performances but was criticised in early shows for her attitude. She lost out in week 7 to JLS.
Since leaving the show her website says she's been in the States working on her music but there aren't many details. In her last video posting she urged fans to petition record companies to sign her and worries that her past has been holding her back.
JLS
JLS were runners up and have already clocked up their first number one with Beat Again. Big things are expected of their debut album due in November and they told Newsbeat they're met by fan hysteria everywhere they go.
"They've been taking out the electricity in our hotels to try and get us out of our rooms and they try and get some of our hair. There's a lot of crazies but it's all good, we really appreciate the support."
Their next single is called Everybody In Love which is out on 19 October and they've booked in a UK tour for February. They're currently putting the finishing touches to the album and are often in the tabloids at clubs around London.
GIRLBAND
While JLS look set for major success, two girl groups were knocked out of the live finals in the first two weeks. Girlband were out the second week and they've since split up - although Marisa Billiterri from the band has gone solo and we're told she'll be performing alongside Duncan James.
BAD LASHES
Although they were voted out the first week the girls are still together and working hard as a band. They've signed with the same management as Cascada and they're working on an album.
However they aren't signed with a record label and they admit it was tough leaving X Factor: "It was very hard to get record label attention coming out of X Factor, it attaches this stigma on you that scares off a lot of labels - so we have taken this positively as we don't want to be a manufactured girl group. We want to be more of an indie female band."
The girls are juggling jobs in cafes to try and get signed and as for their sound they've already got a name for it: "Vocal Heavy Indie Band - V-Hib - hopefully it'll catch on!"
Find out more about Bad Lashes' indie vibe
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The fire-damaged Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh building is to be "partially dismantled" after latest inspections revealed structural damage was worse than thought. So is it the end for the "Mack"? | By Paul O'HareBBC Scotland news website
'A giant jigsaw' - Prof Miles Glendinning, director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies
He believes the building can still be saved - but it can be taken apart like a giant jigsaw.
Each stone removed from the charred building would be individually numbered in the hope that it could be reused.
He said: "I think it is probably quite prudent to remove any bits that are in danger of collapse.
"If anything collapses then the stonework will be damaged.
"This (way) makes it much easier to deconstruct."
The Edinburgh College of Art academic said such a technique was used to rebuild the Dresden Frauenkirche, which was left a ruin by Allied bombers during World War Two.
It has also been used on parts of the Acropolis in Greece.
Prof Glendinning said: "It hasn't really been used for 19th or 20th Century buildings but I can't see why not.
"It's just really a financial issue."
Describing the current situation facing the Mack, Prof Glendinning added: "It is like a jigsaw and the advantage is that the finished jigsaw is there at the moment.
"They will be taking part of a finished jigsaw to pieces with the aim of putting it together again.
"It will be a long and complicated project."
He said the 3D model of the whole building, prepared by Historic Scotland after the 2014 fire, will be invaluable.
'Fraught with risks' - Prof Billy Hare, deputy director of the BEAM Research Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University.
He believes the architectural significance of the Mackintosh building means every effort will be made to save it.
"If it had been any other building that would not be happening now," he said.
"No-one wants to put their career on the line by giving the order to completely demolish it."
The first stage in the dismantling process is technically known as facade retention.
It is likely that steel trusses and concrete ballasts will be used to secure the Mack, which was left devastated after the fire on 15 June.
Prof Hare said experts will have to guard against "unintentional collapse" throughout this process.
He added: "Some of it could collapse inwards. It is fraught with risks."
The academic estimates it could take six months to complete the process. In the longer-term, a rebuild could cost up to £100m while the bill could rise to more than £200m if the green light is given for a complete restoration.
Prof Hare based his £200m figure on the £500m restoration of the Berlin City Palace, which is much larger than the Mack.
'Always expected' - Labour MP Paul Sweeney, director of the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust.
While the new evidence of extensive damage is disappointing, he believes the partial dismantling of the building is the right way forward.
He tweeted: "This partial deconstruction of the Glasgow School of Art will be done in a controlled and forensic way and is the best way to enable the structure to be consolidated and stabilised for faithful reconstruction and restoration using completely accurate digital scan records.
"Indeed I saw visible movement and spalling of the stonework in sections of the facade - particularly the south side and north east corner gable - when I visited the site on the night after the fire.
"Given the intensity of the fire and the effect this heat has had on the integrity of the stonework, especially on the west library frontage it was always expected that partial deconstruction and stabilisation of parts of the outer walls would be necessary."
'Must be rebuilt' - Turner Prize winning sculptor Martin Boyce
There have been suggestions that the Mack is too far gone to rise again from the ashes - but he believes the iconic building must be preserved.
Speaking to Frieze.com, he said: "Over the last week I have heard people speaking on Mackintosh's behalf, I've heard the terms 'replication' and 'Disneyfication'.
"There has been talk of an opportunity for a new architectural response to this traumatic event.
"There is a strange vanity to the idea that this moment could be an opportunity for new architecture."
Mr Boyce added: "The fire has no meaning or significance, it's not a sign of anything.
"We have an architect and a building and it's one of the greatest.
"It is crystal clear to me that the building must be rebuilt.
"This moment, the fires and the voices around this issue are just a blip in history.
"What matters is that in 20 or 50 years from now people can push open those swing doors, walk in and study art in the Mack.
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A major link road to the M6 motorway from Birmingham has fully reopened following a crash which spilled oil across the carriageway. | A car crashed into safety barriers on the A38(M) Aston Expressway at about 03:20 BST, police said.
Access roads to the M6 North and South were shut for 10 hours to allow engineers to carry out the clean-up.
Police said attempts had been made to get the road partially open before then but drivers had ignored warnings.
It said: "Attempts were made to keep A38M partially open, but stupidity of a few performing U turns and breaching closures was too dangerous."
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Twenty jobs have been lost at a Swansea homeless charity that went into administration following allegations of fraud against two members of staff. | Cyrenians Cymru has shut its office and community centre as well as ending three projects.
Its remaining 35 staff and projects have now been taken over by two other Swansea charities.
Two people have been arrested as part of a fraud investigation by South Wales Police's economic crime unit.
Three Cyrenians projects - Supporting People project, the Cyrenians Furniture Scheme and the Cyrenians Horse and Pony Scheme - have been taken over by Caer Las and the Gwalia Group, where the 35 staff have gone to work.
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A 14-year-old boy has been arrested after a woman was stabbed on a cycle path while running in Bristol. | The 21-year-old was alone on the Bristol and Bath Railway path near Brook Road, Kingswood, when she was attacked at about 17:30 GMT on Monday.
It follows a spate of attacks, with police increasing patrols in the area.
The boy, arrested on suspicion of wounding with intent, has been released under investigation and enquiries are ongoing, Avon and Somerset Police said.
The Bristol and Bath Railway path is a popular walking and cycling route along a disused train line between the two cities.
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More than 300 jobs are set to be created in Scunthorpe if expansion plans by a kitchen firm are approved.
| Wren Kitchens has applied for planning permission to develop a site on the Foxhills Industrial Estate to manufacture doors for kitchen units.
Operations director Armando Sanchez said the plant, a former B&Q warehouse, would employ at least 320 people.
Once up and running it would supply doors to Wren's kitchen unit assembly plant at Howden in East Yorkshire.
Mr Sanchez said the company planned to open the Scunthorpe site "as soon as possible", subject to planning consent.
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Nigel Farage has been accused of "blatant scaremongering" by a fellow Leave campaigner for suggesting there could be a risk of sex attacks on women by migrants if Britain stays in the EU. | UKIP's leader told the Sunday Telegraph the risk of attacks like those in Cologne, Germany, would be "the nuclear bomb" of the referendum campaign.
But Treasury minister Andrea Leadsom, who backs Brexit, said he was wrong.
"Obviously that is just an outrageous thing to say," she told the BBC.
Allegations that hundreds of women were groped, robbed and intimidated at Cologne's central station on New Year's Eve emerged in January.
Victims described chaos outside the city's main station, as the men - some of whom were identified in an official report as migrants or asylum seekers of North African and Arab origin - carried out dozens of attacks with little apparent response from the authorities.
Mr Farage claimed women could be at risk because of "very big cultural" issues between British society and migrants if the UK voted to remain in the EU, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
Asked whether mass attacks on the scale seen in Cologne could happen in Britain, he replied: "It depends if they get EU passports. It depends if we vote for Brexit or not. It is an issue."
The UKIP leader made the comments ahead of a live TV debate on ITV on Thursday. During last year's TV general election debates, Mr Farage sparked controversy by claiming foreign HIV patients were costing the NHS £25,000 each per year.
"The nuclear bomb this time would be about Cologne," he told the Telegraph.
'Really regrettable'
Rather than backing her fellow Brexit campaigner's comments, Tory MP Ms Leadsom told Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live: "I don't like that sort of campaigning at all."
"However we know for a fact that there was an appalling experience for women over in Germany over the Christmas period.
"I do not approve of that sort of campaigning, I do not believe in outright blatant scaremongering so I think it's really, really regrettable.
"I haven't seen it and I wouldn't support suggesting if you vote to remain you'd be raped."
Justice Secretary Michael Gove, a prominent Brexit campaigner, also refused to associate himself with Mr Farage's comments.
"He's made those remarks and I haven't made remarks like that and I won't make remarks like that," he told ITV's Peston on Sunday.
Sal Brinton, president of the Liberal Democrats, said Farage had "sunk to new depths in his scaremongering with these remarks which are completely unacceptable".
And Ryan Coetzee, director of strategy for the official remain campaign, Britain Stronger In Europe, tweeted to say Mr Farage's comments were "disgraceful", adding: "Don't vote for this man's idea of Britain.
But Mr Farage also told the Telegraph the "honesty and straightforwardness" of the prime minister was now being questioned by voters.
Many believed Mr Cameron, who he dubbed "Dishonest Dave", had broken his promise to cut migration and renegotiate the UK's terms of membership of the EU, he said.
'Mean vision'
Mr Cameron's ally, Chancellor George Osborne, took aim at the UKIP leader in an interview published in the Sunday Times.
"This is a battle between Farage's mean vision of Britain and the outward-facing, generous Britain that the mainstream of this country celebrates," he said.
"I say: we don't want Farage's Britain. That means voting to remain."
Meanwhile former PM Sir John Major hit out at the "squalid" and "deceitful" campaign to get Britain out of the EU.
He told Andrew Marr he was "angry about the way the British people are being misled" by fellow Conservative Boris Johnson and Vote Leave.
Mr Johnson stood by Vote Leave's figures and called for an end to "blue-on-blue" conflict.
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A woman has been charged with murder after a man was fatally stabbed in a Cornwall village. | Emergency services were called at 19:50 BST on 28 September to reports a man had been stabbed in Bugle.
James Field, 35, from Truro, was taken to Royal Cornwall Hospital where he was confirmed dead.
Lindsey Gabriel, 31, from Bugle, appeared earlier at Truro Magistrates Court. She was remanded to appear at crown court on 2 October.
More Cornwall stories
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The British man behind the Syrian civil defence group, the White Helmets, found himself at the centre of a battle to control the narrative of the Syrian war. Russian and Syrian propagandists accused his teams of faking evidence of atrocities - and convinced some in the West. The battle for truth formed a backdrop to James Le Mesurier's sudden death in Istanbul in November 2019. | By Chloe HadjimatheouBBC News
With the setting sun reflecting in the water and the lights of Istanbul twinkling on the horizon, the wedding guests sat around lantern-lit tables: diplomats from several countries, military officers, journalists and activists who had flown in from around the world to see James Le Mesurier get married.
A dashing former army officer in his 40s, Le Mesurier had made his name as the co-founder of the White Helmets - the group of several thousand young Syrian men and women who pulled survivors and bodies from the rubble of bombed-out buildings in rebel-held areas of the war-ravaged country.
The woman he was marrying, Emma Winberg, once worked for the UK Foreign Office but had latterly been helping him manage the White Helmets. She was his third wife.
The couple lived in a traditional white wooden house overlooking the Marmara Sea on Buyukada island, off the coast of Istanbul. The small island once had a reputation for hosting subversives and spies - Trotsky lived there in a similar wooden house a few years before his fateful meeting with the icepick in Mexico. These days it's popular with journalists, artists and those wanting to escape the chaos of the city.
The wedding party, in summer of 2018, was held in the garden of the couple's home with the bride and groom dressed like old-fashioned movie stars. Le Mesurier was carried on the shoulders of his Syrian guests as they bounced him around in a traditional arada sword dance - his face flushed and glowing.
It was a romantic setting and it was obvious the couple was very much in love. But if you had been able to listen in to the guests, you wouldn't have heard the usual wedding chatter - the main topic of conversation among the champagne and canapes was the ongoing conflict in Syria.
The war was always present - even on their wedding day. They found it impossible to separate their work and their private lives.
Emma knew their future together wouldn't be stress-free. "We often said, as bad as it gets, we will have each other. We knew it would be an adventure," she says.
And after the fairy-tale wedding things did get bad - far worse than Emma could have imagined. In just 18 months, James was dead.
Spoiler alert: This is the story told in the BBC's 11-part Mayday podcast - if you prefer to listen to the audio please click here, otherwise read on (this story is a 23-minute read)
On 11 November 2019 at around 05:00, a worshipper on his way to morning prayers discovered James Le Mesurier's crumpled body lying on the cobblestones in a narrow alleyway in Istanbul. He had apparently fallen from the apartment above his office, three floors up. Emma was still asleep in their bed when the police banged on the door and woke her.
Turkish detectives questioned her and took her DNA and fingerprints before forensically scouring the scene. There were concerns that Le Mesurier had also been murdered by foreign agents, like the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi a year earlier, almost to the day.
As the news of the 48-year-old's death broke around the world, lots of people - including many friends and associates - assumed he had been murdered. The White Helmets were a thorn in the side of the Syrian and Russian governments, bearing witness to the bombing and killing of innocents and posting the videos online.
In Moscow the television news described his death as a "purely English murder" claiming he had been finished off by his "MI6 handlers" when he stopped being useful. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad later gave an interview where he likened Le Mesurier's death to that of Jeffrey Epstein, saying both men knew too many secrets to be allowed to live.
The British government was quick to dismiss such allegations.
"The Russian charges against him that came out of the Foreign Ministry that he was a spy - categorically untrue," said Karen Pierce, the UK ambassador to the UN. "He was a real humanitarian, and the world and Syria in particular is poorer for his loss."
Digging into his past it seems that at one point Le Mesurier did want to be a spy. After leaving the army he applied to join MI6 and - on paper at least - he looked a perfect fit. He aced the application process, but he was turned down at vetting; it took him months to recover from the disappointment.
An old friend, Alistair Harris, describes Le Mesurier as "Lawrence of Arabia-esque" - an image friends say he liked to cultivate. He had a taste for the finer things in life, and lived in a series of homes on islands. During several years living in the Gulf, he would regularly travel into town from his home on Futaisi island, Abu Dhabi, standing at the wheel of a boat wearing a suit and brogues, his tie flapping in the wind. But he was never in the Security and Intelligence Services says Harris, a former UK diplomat who worked with Le Mesurier on several projects in the Middle East.
The son of a decorated colonel, Le Mesurier earned a degree in international politics and strategic studies before graduating top of his class from Sandhurst military academy. Friends from that time describe him as an incredibly talented soldier, head and shoulders above the others in strategy and communications but "too much of a nice guy for anyone to begrudge him it".
He spent the next decade in the Army but left after becoming disillusioned with the failures of the West to prevent atrocities in Kosovo, where he served as an officer. By 2004 he was working as an adviser to the new Iraqi government, but again he became exasperated by what he saw as wasted opportunities and money squandered on projects which failed to rebuild the country or win the support of its people.
So when, in 2011, he was invited by Alistair Harris to move to Turkey and manage civil society projects across the border in Syria, he jumped at the chance. A democratic uprising, which the Syrian government had attempted to crush by force, had become a civil war, and government-run services were absent in rebel-held areas.
As head of the Istanbul office of Harris's organisation, Ark, one of the projects Le Mesurier's took on focused on training young Syrians to act as firefighters, ambulance drivers and rescuers. Young men and women were already rushing in to help their relatives and neighbours whenever a bomb landed on a residential area, flattening apartments and trapping the residents inside - but often without the necessary skills.
Le Mesurier felt that here at last was an inspiring Western-funded project. In a dark complex war, these were heroes: local people, instinctively trusted by their own communities, doing what they could in a time of crisis. He brought them all together in one organisation and got them professionally trained by the Turkish earthquake rescue specialists, Akut.
One of Le Mesurier's colleagues at Ark, Shiyar Mohammed, remembers that before this vital training, volunteers would rush into a bomb site wanting to help, but without any idea what they were doing - which sometimes made things considerably worse.
"They hadn't even heard of things like maintaining an open airway," says Mohammed. "Somebody with a neck injury would get picked up from his arms and legs and put on the back of a pickup truck."
Le Mesurier and his team pulled in funding from the British, French, Dutch, Japanese, German and Canadian governments: one of his talents was persuading diplomats to part with their country's money.
Once the trainees returned to their neighbourhoods with their new civil defence skills, Le Mesurier began securing funding for equipment - shovels, medical supplies and hard hats. There weren't enough of the red helmets meant for firefighters, so they ordered white ones - and these helmets would eventually earn the rescuers their nickname.
But at Ark the White Helmets were just one of many projects and Le Mesurier wanted to focus on them exclusively, so in 2014 - with Harris's blessing - he set up his own not-for-profit organisation, Mayday Rescue.
Speaking to the BBC in 2014, Le Mesurier described the rescuers as ordinary people: "Former bakers, former builders, former students who... chose to stay with very little equipment, and at the beginning with no training whatsoever, to respond to bomb attacks, respond to shellings and to try to save their fellow Syrian civilians."
While rescue operations were taking place in Syria, Le Mesurier was in Istanbul, hundreds of miles away. The only way he could find out what was happening on the ground was by watching videos of the new trainees in action. So he equipped the White Helmets with Go-Pro cameras attached to their hard hats.
Before long, films of the White Helmets' daring rescues were going viral on social media. You can still find them on their Facebook page: hundreds of videos showing men and women in fleece jackets digging, sometimes for hours, through rubble and blocks of concrete, to the sound of cries from those trapped below. Often they pull out corpses - many of them dead children, whose parents are seen wailing over their tiny bodies. Sometimes they manage to pull people out alive, dusty and blood-splattered, who are rushed into ambulances.
Much of the footage showed the destruction caused by Syrian and Russian war planes. The Syrian Air Force's weapons of choice were oil barrels stuffed with explosives - barrel bombs - which were dropped from helicopters on to rebel neighbourhoods. Occasionally the rescuers themselves can be seen weeping - a reminder that they are local people and that the victims were probably people they knew.
One incident in Aleppo in 2014 was filmed in detail: It's night and a lot of people are panicking, frantically digging for their neighbours who are buried under concrete following an aerial attack. A woman caught in the rubble is rescued relatively quickly, but her two-month-old baby is still trapped under layers of debris.
The White Helmets are filmed removing the concrete piece by piece until they can see the baby's head, but they continue to dig until finally they can access the baby's body and a rescuer called Khaled Omar Harrah is able to pull him out.
"We saved a baby. It was an incredible accomplishment for all of us," says Shiyar Mohammed. He remembers it as a moment of elation, feeling that all their hard work and the training sessions had been worth it. But their joy was tempered by the realities of war.
"This was just one baby out of thousands and thousands of other babies who have died, who couldn't be reached," he says.
That scene of the baby's rescue had a huge impact in the West. It was the first time that a lot of people had seen the work of the White Helmets, and many were very moved.
Le Mesurier explained to the BBC that Khaled was a former painter and decorator, who became a civil defence volunteer after his own street was heavily bombed. The baby was under seven feet of concrete and the rescue took 19 hours to complete. "The work that they do is absolutely humbling," he said.
But for cynics, the baby-rescue drama seemed a little too slick. Could the whole thing have been stage-managed by Le Mesurier and the White Helmets to gain support and extra funding, they wondered? And in some more radical circles - where everything financed by the West was seen as tainted by an imperialist agenda - the White Helmets started being accused of producing propaganda to push for intervention in the war.
The videos were not stage-managed but the rescuers were deliberately documenting what they believed were war crimes, including the indiscriminate bombing of civilian apartment buildings, markets, schools and hospitals. And while the White Helmets were not calling for Western boots on the ground, they were pushing for the declaration of a no-fly zone enforced by foreign governments.
There is also no doubt that the videos were tremendously helpful for fund-raising.
By the time a Netflix documentary about the rescuers won an Oscar in 2017 Le Mesurier's organisation, Mayday Rescue, was receiving millions of dollars from states around the world including the USA, France, Britain, Germany, Holland, Japan and Qatar. The money was used to run training camps for the rescuers and to send equipment across the border into Syria, including fire trucks and ambulances.
But the Syrian and Russian governments insisted that James Le Mesurier and the White Helmets were manipulating the truth. According to their account the Syrian state, with Russia's help, was protecting a loyal and grateful population from evil jihadists, some of whom were dressed as White Helmets.
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad repeated these accusations in televised interviews and Russian diplomats began publishing what they said was evidence of the White Helmets using film sets to produce faked rescues. Two injured children - Omran and Aya - found themselves at the heart of this upside-down story of the war.
In the summer of 2016 a Russian bomb fell on the Al-Qaterji neighbourhood in rebel-held East Aleppo. When it exploded it took out the home of the Dagnish family.
When the White Helmets arrived on the scene they pulled five-year-old Omran from the debris along with his parents and baby brother. His older brother didn't survive.
There's footage of little Omran, being carried by a White Helmet and put into the back of an ambulance. He's tiny and monochrome - covered head to toe in brick dust like a little grey ghost. He sits there, expressionless, utterly dazed.
Omran's photo was on the front page of newspapers around the globe.
Another child whose face appeared on our TVs here in the West, was a little girl called Aya. The eight-year-old was filmed in a hospital in Homs, in western Syria. She had been hiding under a table when the ceiling of her home collapsed on her.
A week after Aya's story was broadcast on CNN, the Syrian president gave an interview to Swiss TV where he was confronted with a photo of Omran. Unflustered, he replied that Omran and Aya were just props, siblings being used by the White Helmets in fake videos. And he claimed the rescuers had used them not just once, but several times in different videos.
When journalists (including Channel 4 and France 24) looked into the claims, they found that they were false. Aya was confused with another child, pictured in the arms of three different people, but that was at a single rescue event where the pictures were taken moments apart. Journalists also tracked down witnesses, including Omran's father, who confirmed they had been involved in real bombings.
In another "discovery" of fake videos, the Russian Embassy in South Africa tweeted a photograph purporting to show the White Helmets mid-shoot, with dressing rooms in the background and a clapper board in front of the camera. The photograph was quickly identified as having been lifted from the set of a real film, called Revolution Man.
In a bizarre twist, the feature film, financed by the Syrian Ministry of Culture, was about a corrupt Western journalist who travels to rebel-held areas of Syria and finds himself helping the White Helmets to fake videos. The White Helmets in the photograph weren't actors working to discredit the Syrian state, they were actors working for the Syrian state.
What the Russian and Syrian governments say about the war is unlikely to have much influence on most people in the UK, but they are not alone in spreading these stories about the White Helmets - a network of sympathetic Western bloggers and activists have amplified their ideas. The most prolific among them is Vanessa Beeley, a British diplomat's daughter who quit her job in manufacturing about a decade ago in order to highlight what she saw as injustices in the Middle East.
Beeley began travelling to Gaza to report on the suffering of ordinary people there. She set up a citizen journalist blog and began posting articles about what she saw. When the war in Syria began in earnest she, along with a small group of other pro-Palestinian activists, became convinced that the uprising had been instigated by Western proxies.
She soon turned her attention to the White Helmets, accusing the organisation of being a Western-created disinformation operation masterminded by a British spy - James Le Mesurier. She took up the allegation that they were faking videos, and also put great emphasis on the idea that they were jihadists, who had been taking part in executions.
The Syrian state granted her visas and offered her government-guided tours of recently captured areas, where Islamist logos on the walls of White Helmets premises were pointed out to her.
What Beeley's videos show is evidence that a variety of groups, some of them jihadists, have operated in the same areas as the White Helmets and possibly used the same buildings - not that the rescuers and Islamists ever worked together.
Nevertheless, there are other photographs and videos online that seem to show individual White Helmets supporting jihadists - from the so-called Islamic State group or the al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda's representatives in Syria) - either cheering their arrival in an area, or appearing to assist in an execution by removing the body afterwards.
"There's no way to deny it," says Nur (not his real name) who helps manage the White Helmets' media online. "Former volunteers were in pictures waving flags."
In the early days, in a few isolated cases, rescuers joined the White Helmets having left jihadist organisations, he says. In other cases individuals might have seen the jihadists as a possible solution to the bombs that were raining down on them from Syrian government aircraft - but he says the organisation quickly sacked anyone who showed such sympathies. Le Mesurier helped put a code of conduct in place which required independence from all armed groups, among other things, and all the rescuers were trained to understand its importance.
As for the executions, Nur explains, one of the jobs of the White Helmets is to replace undertakers in rebel-controlled areas. "Someone has to respectfully deal with the bodies and get them to their families," he says, adding that they were just informed when and where an execution would take place
The White Helmets say their impartiality and adherence to humanitarian principles has been the secret to their survival as an organisation through so many years of war and in so many different areas with different groups in control.
"There have been multiple different examples of White Helmets teams, responding to buildings, not knowing who is trapped inside, and they continue regardless," James Le Mesurier told Dutch TV in 2015.
"They have rescued regime soldiers from under piles of rubble, and they do so neutrally and they do so impartially. For them what is important is saving a life. It doesn't matter who that life belongs to."
One video in 2016 left the White Helmets wide open to Vanessa Beeley's accusations of fakery.
The mannequin challenge was an online fad where people pretended to be mannequins - frozen mid-action before suddenly starting to move, like a mannequin coming to life. The White Helmets had filmed a mannequin challenge of their own. In it they are frozen mid-rescue about to pull a young man out of the rubble. For their detractors this was further proof that the organisation were expert fakers.
Speaking on the Russian state-funded channel Russia Today (RT), shortly after her first visit to Moscow, Vanessa Beeley called the video bizarre. "Whatever reason the White Helmets had for doing this extraordinary event, we've seen a reaction that I believe… massively backfired on them," she said, adding that the stunt made a mockery of the suffering of the Syrian people.
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When the whole scandal broke James Le Mesurier was furious. His wife, Emma, says she had never seen him so angry.
"He just thought it was the most stupid own goal. James was very frustrated because this would keep getting used and recycled on a routine basis by the White Helmets' antagonists."
I managed to track down the young Syrian who filmed the video. He wasn't a White Helmet - he was a media activist. He hoped the mannequin challenge might help people in the West connect to what was going on in Syria. It never occurred to him that it would be used as proof that the White Helmets' videos were fake.
Vanessa Beeley is so convinced that the White Helmets are working for Western intelligence (and with Islamist militant groups) that she has even argued they are legitimate targets for the Syrian military.
"The White Helmets cannot be considered a humanitarian organisation, when they are embedded with a designated terrorist organisation al-Qaeda, and of course, ISIS and various other armed groups... They do not behave in any way like a humanitarian organisation inside Syria, and therefore… they themselves are a legitimate target in a war situation," she said in an interview to UK Column News in October 2020, repeating a view she had expressed before.
James Le Mesurier was horrified when he saw her tweet this idea.
"I don't really have words for it. It was clearly legitimising the targeting of civilians," says his wife, Emma. "And the fact that Beeley was a UK national, and was hosted on Russia Today as an independent investigative journalist, put them at even greater risk."
Even before Vanessa Beeley's comments, Syrian and Russian states had begun employing double and triple-tap strikes in what appear to be deliberate efforts to bomb the rescuers. After a bomb falls the planes circle around waiting for the rescuers to arrive at the site before bombing a second time and sometimes delaying again before bombing a third time. Almost a quarter of all the White Helmets - there were around 4,300 at the height of the war in 2016/17- have been killed or seriously injured in the course of their work; it's one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
But perhaps Vanessa Beeley's most bizarre claim is that James Le Mesurier was involved in an organ-harvesting racket. In 2018 she was invited to speak at a joint Russian and Syrian presentation at the United Nations, sharing the floor with a Russian researcher.
Apparent witnesses were shown in videos being interviewed by the researcher and saying that they had seen the White Helmets return the bodies of injured victims back to their families with all their organs missing. It is impossible to know whether the people who provided these accounts were speaking freely, and no other evidence was presented. The White Helmets say they have never heard any such claims from anyone in the areas where they operate.
The accusation that Le Mesurier was involved in murder and organ theft might sound far-fetched but the fact that the ideas were presented at the UN gave them the veneer of officialdom. Misinformation about the Syrian war has become so ubiquitous it has resulted in what psychologists have called the "illusionary truth effect" where most people end up absorbing some of the false narratives, even on an unconscious level. When I first began looking into the White Helmets I had a feeling they were a bit dodgy, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you why or where I had heard that.
All this was beginning to have a real effect on Le Mesurier. At one point, his colleagues say, when he tried to open a new bank account he was turned down because of concerns he might be involved in organ-trafficking. His wife Emma says he worried that after the war was over his reputation might be so damaged that he would never work again.
Vanessa Beeley has denied being pro-Assad despite singing the praises of the presidential couple and the Syrian Army on social media. These days she lives in Damascus and drives around the city in a bright pink 1970s VW Beetle with a picture of Bashar al-Assad pasted in the back window.
She declined to give me an interview but we did exchange emails. She told me she is not incentivised by any government, that she is self-funded and that her concern is getting to the truth. She also made it clear that she believes the BBC is a mouthpiece for the British government and is engaged in deliberate anti-Assad propaganda.
Beeley sometimes claims to have been a finalist for the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. But when I contacted a member of the prize committee, James Fox, he told me: "There are no finalists of the Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, and no 'runners up'. The prize does not draw up or publish such a list. The judges publish only winners or special commendations."
There are other British Assad sympathisers. One is Peter Ford, the UK ambassador to Syria from 2003 to 2006, who says the White Helmets have faked all but a handful of rescues, have been involved in beheadings, and played a crucial role in the faking of chemical attacks - all of which he believes were hoaxes. He argues that the Syrian revolution was instigated by Western governments with the intention of toppling President Assad.
Ford co-chairs the British Syrian Society with Assad's father-in-law, Fawaz Akhraz, who lives in London and has recently come under US sanctions as one of the state's "enablers… in perpetuating their atrocities". These days the organisation is seen by many as a propaganda operation for the Syrian leadership, though Peter Ford is at pains to make it known that he isn't paid by the society. He has also made it clear he believes the BBC was commissioned "by Le Mesurier's handlers" to whitewash the White Helmets.
Ford has shared a platform with The Working Group on Syria Propaganda and the Media, led by a group of British professors from some of the country's top universities, which also argues that chemical attacks in Syria have probably been faked.
In 2020 three members of the Working Group gave a presentation at Portcullis House, part of the Houses of Parliament complex, focusing on a chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma in April 2018. It argued that dead bodies and gas canisters had been moved and manipulated in photographs that had been presented as evidence of a chemical attack, and that this staging would have required the active participation of the White Helmets.
The Douma attack is one of the most contested events in the Syrian war, with both the Syrian government and their Russian allies claiming it was a "false-flag" attack, perpetrated by the rebels against their own side, so that the Syrian government would be blamed - and on this occasion the US, France and the UK did in fact respond with a punitive missile strike.
(In the view of the Russian and Syrian governments, all the chemical attacks Syria has been accused of are Western-sponsored fakes. The Russian Embassy in London says the White Helmets "have performed a number of cynical actions aimed at discrediting the Syrian authorities and promoting the Western narrative centred around a regime change in Damascus. This includes fake and false-flag chemical attacks.")
An investigation into the Douma incident by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded - in characteristically careful language - that there were reasonable grounds to believe chlorine gas was used and that it was delivered from the sky, which would indicate it had been dropped by Syrian or Russian government forces, as no other parties to the conflict possess aircraft.
But two members of the OPCW investigation team rejected this report, alleging that the US had pressured the organisation to reach this conclusion. They questioned whether the limited amount of gas that had apparently been dropped would have killed people where they lay, and also whether the canisters could have crashed through a concrete ceiling without showing more damage. The OPCW said these former employees had not been involved in the full investigation and had not had access to all the facts and independent reports. Despite this, the Working Group found the whistleblowers' arguments convincing - but then had to explain how the more than 40 victims who had been filmed at the location of the attack had died at the same time from the same cause.
One of the Working Group's members, Prof Paul McKeigue of Edinburgh University - whose area of expertise is genetic epidemiology and statistical genetics - suggested that the most likely scenario was that the victims had been executed in a gas chamber and then carried to the apartment building and posed to look as if they had died there.
I contacted the spokesman of the Working Group - a former professor from Sheffield University, Piers Robinson - who told me they did not accept that their assertions were conspiracy theories. He said their output was objective and rigorous and that they consulted widely when expertise outside their own research areas was needed.
James Le Mesurier's wife, Emma, says attacks like these made during his lifetime were putting him under a great deal of stress.
She believes it is likely that he was also suffering from trauma after years of watching distressing videos of the White Helmets' rescues. Most of those they pulled out of the rubble were already dead, including a disproportionate number of children.
In making the podcast series Mayday I ended up watching dozens of these videos - there are hundreds on their Facebook page. This stuff sticks with you, and it left people like Le Mesurier's colleague at Ark, Shiyar Mohammed, traumatised.
"Because I was subjected to so much graphic footage and so much violence. I ended up with sort of basically horrific scenes stuck in my head. Instead of the victims, I'm imagining myself to be in their place," he says.
There was a macho culture, Mohammed says, in which Le Mesurier and his colleagues saw themselves as too tough to be affected by all the horror of the war. Mohammed admits he was naive. By the time he left Ark he was no longer able to function in his daily life, suffering from panic attacks for three or four minutes every couple of hours.
How close was Le Mesurier to experiencing this kind of trauma? I asked Emma about that and instead of answering me she showed me the photos and videos he had on his mobile phone when he died.
There are happy times at home on Buyukada island, hanging out with his dog Balloo, and weekends spent entertaining his two young daughters from his previous marriage. But interspersed with all these domestic scenes are images the White Helmets sent him, of tiny shroud-wrapped dead children, videos of parents wailing over corpses, a lot of horrifying images of cruelty and death.
And it wasn't just the horror of the war - it was the denial of all that horror that got to him. The Syrian and Russian governments were flipping everything on its head, as he saw it, and turning the war's heroes into villains.
That's why, among all those awful images on Le Mesurier's phone at the end of his life there were also countless screenshots of online messages doubting whether any of it was true and calling him a liar, an organ harvester and a jihadist.
In the end, though, it was misinformation from inside his own organisation that was apparently the final straw.
Although Le Mesurier excelled in wooing donors, finances proved to be his Achilles' heel. He had never been across the books at Mayday Rescue, which was dealing with tens of millions of dollars a year - he left that to his colleagues. And it was the financial fallout following a major rescue mission that proved his undoing.
This time the people being rescued were the White Helmets themselves. In the summer of 2018, rescuers in the south of the country were caught between President Assad's forces and the Islamic State group.
In a daring plan dubbed Operation Magic Carpet Le Mesurier organised the evacuation of 800 White Helmets and their families through three border crossings into Israel - a country which had been at war with Syria for decades. To make this happen he helped orchestrate high-level discussions with the governments of Canada, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as Jordan and Israel. The discussions continued at his and Emma's wedding, attended by some of the key players - a detailed plan was cooked up among the canapes and lamb shanks.
Emma crafted a clever seating arrangement for the reception, grouping together people who needed to speak to each other. Five days later, Le Mesurier flew to Amman, Jordan, to help oversee the huge operation. He was in his element - all his talents in strategising, learned at Sandhurst and honed over his decade in the military, came into play.
White Helmets and their families had been hiding for days in a town near the razor-wire fences and concrete watch towers that marked the disputed border with Israel on the Golan Heights. They had fled their homes as the Syrian military advanced on their towns. Fear of arrest and torture - they had seen videos of "confessions" colleagues had been forced to make - had them running with only the clothes on their backs, carrying crying, hungry children.
Le Mesurier was determined to get them out. Finally, on 21 July 2018, just as the sun was setting, the Israeli military cranked open the huge metal gates at two of the border crossings to let the families through.
It had taken just a few weeks to mobilise the huge international operation but it wasn't fast enough. One exit route had already become too dangerous - in the previous days it had fallen under the control of Islamic State - and half of those they hoped to rescue didn't make it out. It is not clear what happened to these 400 people, but they were advised to burn their uniforms and hide. Senior members of the White Helmets told me they believe many of those left behind were captured and tortured or killed.
Le Mesurier had managed to save 400 White Helmets, but at a huge political cost. Now he and the whole organisation appeared directly connected to Israel and his detractors - ever prone to see conspiracies involving the hidden hand of Zionism - had more fuel than ever.
"It was extremely frustrating, not just that there was this relentless personal attack on him, but that some people would believe it. I remember him saying, 'Will I ever work again after this?' So I think it was a huge strain on him," says Robin Wettlaufer, then Canada's Special Representative to Syria and one of the people who made the rescue happen.
Le Mesurier returned to Istanbul utterly depleted. He hadn't slept for days and in this exhausted state he made a fatal mistake.
To cover any expenses during the rescue mission Le Mesurier had withdrawn $50,000 in cash from Mayday Rescue's safe. In the event, he only spent around $9,000. Months after his return to Istanbul his head of finance, a Dutchman named Johan Eleveld, asked where the remaining cash had gone. James Le Mesurier couldn't remember.
"He might have lost it, he might have left it at the airport. He couldn't remember," admits his wife Emma. "James had made a mistake."
He would make an even bigger one. At a meeting with several senior staff members, including Eleveld, Le Mesurier took the decision to repay the missing cash out of his salary. But fearing he would look unprofessional if he publicly admitted he had misplaced such a large amount, he also decided to fake a receipt making it look as if he had replaced the unspent cash as soon as had returned from Jordan.
In November 2019 an audit firm was checking operational changes at Mayday Rescue, with Johan Eleveld assisting them with their work. At some point they turned their attention to the organisation's cash books and came across the faked receipt. When they questioned Le Mesurier about it he immediately confessed. The audit firm also flagged loans and advances that had been taken by his wife, Emma, and warned Le Mesurier that he was leaving himself open to some difficult financial questions.
Emma Le Mesurier says that their relationship with Johan Eleveld had been deteriorating for some time and he was avoiding their calls. Meanwhile, colleagues at Mayday Rescue say Eleveld was telling them the loan Emma had taken, which she had paid back within days, and the faked receipt amounted to fraud - and that there was a high chance Le Mesurier would face a prison sentence.
Johan Eleveld said a non-disclosure agreement prevented him from talking to me, but in an email he denied saying that James might be jailed.
Two nights before his death Le Mesurier wrote to the governments supporting the White Helmets saying that he took responsibility for any financial wrongdoing and offering to resign. The donors did not accept his resignation but said they would need a forensic audit and that would involve freezing Mayday Rescue's operations until a full investigation had been concluded. This meant the White Helmets' salaries, training and equipment would be withheld at a time when they were facing an escalating bombing campaign.
Emma says Le Mesurier spent three tortured days believing that a stupid mistake he had made would result in harm and suffering to the most vulnerable people in Syria - those he had spent years trying to protect.
He also believed that he would be publicly humiliated, and thought it was true that he might go to prison.
Perhaps after years of fighting an increasingly personal disinformation campaign and seeing the brutality of war close up, James Le Mesurier was too tired to fight any more.
The couple spent the evening of 10 November in their flat above the Mayday Rescue offices in central Istanbul. They had a difficult night. James went to bed and left Emma pacing the flat thinking. Around 04:00 he got up and offered her a sleeping pill and stood by the window smoking a cigarette, waiting for her to fall asleep. An hour later Emma was woken by police banging on her door.
In the end, the Turkish police concluded that James's death was suicide. The detective in charge of the investigation told me a high-tech security system meant no-one else could have entered the apartment, and they found no evidence of a struggle.
Six months later, an extensive independent financial investigation by Grant Thornton would conclude that Mayday Rescue's book-keeping was shoddy - but they could find no evidence of financial mismanagement or fraud by either Emma or James Le Mesurier.
Trawling through years of correspondence, they unearthed emails from Le Mesurier to the finance department in the summer of 2018, soon after he had returned from the rescue mission. It turned out the money had never been missing. The emails show he kept the cash and asked the accountants to offset it from his salary. But he was so tired he had completely forgotten what he had done.
Mayday Rescue went into administration in July 2020 and these days the White Helmets' finances are all managed by an American organisation called Chemonics - but as a commercial operation they charge considerably more for their services than Mayday Rescue did so the White Helmets get less of the funds.
When someone kills themselves, that single act, that one moment in the thousands of moments that made up their life, ends up colouring everything. It inverts their biography so we look back at all they did through the lens of their death. And that is not always fair.
James Le Mesurier was a man who lived several lives. He was a soldier, he was a Middle East traveller and an island dweller, a father and a husband and he was a humanitarian. And, like the people of Syria, he was a victim of disinformation.
These days his wife Emma lives alone in Amsterdam, in an apartment they bought together on an island in the centre of the city. She spends hours sitting by a shrine she has built for James; a photograph of him, holding a bottle of wine with a cheeky lopsided smile, sits on top of the wooden box containing his ashes, surrounded by flowers and candles.
"I talk to him, and he talks back," she says, her voice breaking.
"He was an extraordinarily robust and resilient person. But he was exhausted and we were on the losing side. But I don't want to speculate on what James was thinking [in his final moments]. I don't think anyone has the right to do that."
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A 28-year-old woman has been charged with murder after a man was found dead at a flat in Derbyshire. | Craig Morse, 33, was discovered with a fatal stab wound when police officers were called to Frost Avenue, Langley Mill, at about 02:00 BST on Friday, Derbyshire Constabulary said.
Mr Morse's family has been informed.
Tonia Crabtree, of Frost Avenue, Langley Mill, was charged with murder on Saturday and has been remanded in custody.
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My Money is a series looking at how people spend their money - and the sometimes tough decisions they have to make. Here Thanucha Sooriapatham, 21, from Potters Bar in Hertfordshire talks us through her week's spending during lockdown. | Thanucha is a final year pharmacology student who is living at home with her parents and two sisters. At the start of lockdown both her parents were placed on furlough.
Last year, she started working in her local Tesco and has kept this up during her studies. She also does some tutoring work. Despite having to chip in for rent and extra bills Thanucha has been able to save each month, putting the money towards her master's degree.
Over to Thanucha....
I had online lectures all day today and my sisters had school, so we were all in our study corners doing our work. For breakfast I had some tea and a pain au chocolat and then a couple of oranges as a snack later on. It's final year, and it's getting up to coursework deadline week so I'm feeling pretty stressed. My mum kindly made us lunch - some chicken, rice and vegetables and I had a Snickers bar for dessert.
After uni at about 4:30, I gave a maths lesson to some children online. I started tutoring when I was doing my A-levels, but lockdown has meant that I have more time in the evenings to give more lessons to students. I love teaching so sometimes it doesn't even feel like I'm working.
I try not to spend the money I earn from it, instead I save 25% of it for the trips I'd like to go on and the rest goes towards saving up for my master's degree. In the evening I went for a walk with my family. We took the country roads, and it was lovely watching the sunset. I like taking a lot of photos and videos and so today I also had to pay £2.49 to Apple for my iCloud storage - it's a monthly subscription. I wasn't very hungry during dinner, so I made myself a cheese toastie, watched old episodes of Bake Off with my family and then read my book!
Total spend: £2.49
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I woke up this morning and had some granola and a banana. As I didn't have any lectures until the afternoon, I spent the morning working on my dissertation.
After lunch, I joined some of my university tutorials and group discussions. Later on, in the evening, I gave two online maths tuitions and then had some pasta for dinner (left over from lunch). Although I didn't spend anything today, the bill for the wi-if came out of my bank account. I pay £23.50 per month. It used to be £19 per month but I decided to get fibre optic to get faster broadband.
This has especially become handy as I live somewhere with a very bad wi-fi connection, and it tends to get very slow when five people are using it at the same time.
Total spend: £23.50
This morning I had a quick breakfast before driving to my local supermarket to do some shopping. We usually do a big shop on Friday, but I needed a couple of ingredients for some baking I was going to do later. In total, I spent £22.37 - more than I was anticipating. Usually when I shop, I stick to my shopping list but today I spent a lot of time browsing.
I picked up some books and a lot of snacks for me and my sisters. As I work at the store on the weekends, I get a small 10% discount during my shops. It's not a lot, but I guess it adds up over time.
When I got back home, I baked a coffee and walnut cake and then spent the afternoon working on my dissertation again before spending the evening giving some classes. In the evening I made a vegetable noodle soup for my family and we watched some TV.
Lockdown has made me try out a lot of new healthy recipes that I perhaps would've just bought when I was commuting to uni.
Total spend: £22.37
I let myself have a lie in today as I didn't have any lectures in the morning. My family and I drove to a nearby village and took a long hike through the woods. We had never done that route before and it was great fun as the entire woodland was desolate. For lunch, as a treat we went to a McDonalds drive through today and bought some fries and apple pies. The total came to £3.97. I also had to buy a postage label for a package I was sending to someone through Vinted (an app to sell clothes). It cost 96p but it will be reimbursed by the buyer.
I made some pitta bread triangles and fresh hummus as a snack for my evening lectures. I have a 4-6pm lecture and a revision session with my friends on Thursdays, so I missed dinner. Instead, I made a fruit salad and watched The Devil Wears Prada before bed.
Total spend: £4.93
Today was a big day in terms of spending. This morning I had a quick breakfast of pain au chocolat and a cup of tea and then drove to the post office to send off some letters and a package (£13.70). My mum and I also went to do a big shop today at Tesco. I got paid today which means the colleague discount increases from 10% to 15% for 4 days.
We usually take advantage of this and do the majority of the food shopping for the month. I thought I'd treat myself today and buy some large Easter eggs, candles and ingredients for some food I wanted to make, (£21.04).
Back home, I spent a little while tidying the house and helping with lunch and then worked on my dissertation. I bought some new chopsticks from Amazon (£8.99). I have a subscription to Amazon Prime as I get a student discount on it - it's a good service as it includes video, shopping, library and music only for £3.99 a month. I also bought a birthday card for my friend from Etsy (£3.85).
As its payday, I have a lot of bills which I have to pay, such as the insurance for my car (£90). I only got my driving licence a little over a year ago so it's cheaper for me to just be added a third driver on my parents' car. I also make sure to put away £200 into my Help to Buy ISA at the start of each month which I did today. There's a good interest rate on it and I think it will be really useful when I actually get around to buying a house.
Total spend: £137.58
I spent most of the morning reading and watching TV shows on my laptop. After lunch, I went for my 3-8pm shift at Tesco.
It was really busy today, but I got through it! I only had a 15-minute break so there wasn't enough time to eat a meal, so I bought some chocolate (£0.85) and a bottle of water (£1).
I also grabbed some free packs of pears and olive bread out of the colleague shop at the back. Most of the time it's out of date vegetables or bread but it's still edible and sometimes you find absolute gems for free. I also bought some Surf washing powder. It had been reduced from £8 to £4 but I got it for £3.40 with my discount.
Total spend: £5.25
I had a 10am to 4pm shift at work today. For lunch I bought myself a meal deal (smoked cheddar and ham sandwich, a smoothie and a chocolate) for £2.55 with my staff discount.
I also found some Berliner doughnuts in the colleague shop for free.
When I got home, I ate a quick snack and then did an at-home workout. I can't wait for the gyms to open up again so I can have more space to do my workouts and can do more of a variety of exercises. I then planned out the rest of my week and worked a little more on my dissertation before reading my book and going to bed. £3.99 also came out of my account for my Amazon Prime subscription today.
Total spend: £6.54
Total spent this week: £202.66
How does Thanucha feel about her week?
I think I had a good week in terms of spending. As I got paid, I spent quite a bit of money on things I don't really need but at the same time I stuck to my saving plan of putting 75% of my weekly earnings towards my master's degree.
I definitely spent less than I usually would as some weeks I have to contribute towards the rent and pay electric bills. On the other hand, lockdown has really been a blessing in disguise for me as I was able to work more hours and hit my savings goal - something I wouldn't have been able to do had I continued commuting into London for university.
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Town Commissioners in the north of the Isle of Man have spent almost £1m on improvements to a group of 1950s council houses in the area. | Ramsey town council allocated £900,000 to refurbish 18 homes in Brookhill Road and Seamount Road.
The changes include new roofing, rewiring, new windows and fencing along with fitted kitchens and bathrooms.
Lead member for housing and property, Mary Bruce, said the improvements would free up housing for larger families.
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For five years now, we have been meeting business leaders for the CEO Secrets series, inviting them to share their inspirational advice in short videos. More than 200 chief executives later, series producer Dougal Shaw explains some of the personality traits he’s noticed, from behind the scenes. | We spotted our first guest through a glass wall wandering down a corridor at BBC News HQ, with a flock of assistants around him, back in August 2015.
“Shall we grab him? He would be great to kick off the series!”
Sir James Dyson had just finished a TV interview in a studio. We approached him and explained the idea of CEO Secrets. Could he share some advice he wished he’d known, when he’d started out in business?
He liked the idea, and we filmed it there and then, on the spot.
That was not only my first CEO Secrets, but my first insight into the personality types of CEOs.
Something I’ve observed over time, making the series, is that the very way CEOs approach the filming process itself reveals a lot about them.
What follows are some general observations, rather than scientific rules. Of course CEOs, like the rest of us, are unique individuals.
Founder v ladder climber
Sir James Dyson is a good example of the CEO who is a founder.
A founder builds a company from scratch so is perhaps by definition more of a risk taker. He didn’t hesitate to do our CEO Secrets interview, even though he had to make the decision with little time for preparation. He embraced the challenge spontaneously.
Founders also, arguably, need to be particularly personable and charismatic in order to build companies from nothing, since the early days are all about persuasive skills, elevator pitches.
Many of the ones I have met have had that swashbuckling style; the magnetic, extrovert personality that draws you in. Often you can see that in the videos themselves. A good example of someone like this was Johnnie Boden, founder of the Boden clothing empire. We caught up with him at a London Fashion Week event in 2015. Again, he was happy to do the interview on the spot, and shared his advice off-the-cuff.
Those two examples are men, but female founders exhibit this trait too.
In contrast to this personality type is the chief executive who has slowly risen up the corporate ladder – who didn’t build the company by him or herself. I would say these CEOs come across as more measured, a little more reserved in their demeanour when I meet them for filming.
Quite a few CEOs who fitted this mould came with pre-prepared advice, written down on paper. Some had even memorised it and performed it like an actor, annoyed with themselves when they stumbled over a specific word. They treated the video recording like a job interview.
And in many ways that was a compliment: they took this seriously and had invested time preparing for it.
This breed of CEO is more analytical, careful and research-driven.
Gender divide
A few weeks into the series we settled on one question for the entrepreneur: “What’s the advice you wish you'd had when you started out?” If they want, the answer can take the form of a story. It’s deliberately open-ended. So it’s been interesting to see what approach the guests have taken.
And here I’ve found another pattern: female CEOs often frame their contribution by recalling highly personal, emotional experiences.
In television there is a phrase, “interview for emotion”. The most compelling moments aren’t about people conveying information on camera, they are about people sharing how they are feeling. On this measure, female entrepreneurs have given the best contributions for CEO Secrets. Many of them were willing to open up about their weaknesses and how they struggled to overcome them.
Two really stand out for me in this regard.
Alex Depledge co-founded an online domestic cleaning platform called Hassle.com, and sold it for a tidy profit. She had all the charm of the founder when I met her, but also told a disarmingly honest story that took me aback as we recorded it. She recalled the time, just after she had raised millions in funding, when her husband had found her at home rolled up in a ball, crying on the floor, saying over and again: “I don’t know how to be a CEO”.
That’s a million miles from the kind of Wall Street, Gordon Gekko stereotype of the alpha-male, all-powerful business boss.
In another memorable interview, perfume entrepreneur Jo Malone straight off the bat said she was guilty of taking “the wrong decisions” and advised people never to make important choices on “a bad day”, especially when you are feeling emotional.
There were lots of other examples of this too.
Jessica Butcher of Blippar opened up about how she felt “imposter syndrome” as a business leader. Justine Roberts, the founder of Mumsnet, revealed crushing feedback from early potential investors, who told her “she didn’t look the part” – and how that made her feel. And in a video which went viral on LinkedIn, Amy Golding of recruitment company Opus, revealed how she had been given feedback that she was “too girly to be a CEO”.
None of these guests were revelling in pity. Each one was simply sharing a story about finding resilience, to encourage others if they felt self-doubt too.
Home and away, big or small
When possible we like to film CEOs in their natural environment: their offices or factories. They tend to be more relaxed on their home turf, often delighted to show you round. A good example of this was Will Butler-Adams of Brompton bicycles.
Filming this way also means I get to see how CEOs behave in front of their staff.
And here I’ve noticed a distinction between large and small companies.
In a large company, especially a multinational, most staff won’t have a close relationship with the CEO. In fact, many might be seeing him or her in person for the first time when I’m there. So it’s like a celebrity entering the building. And the fact they are here to do a media interview, only adds to the sense of mystique around them.
But in a small or even medium-sized company, it can be the reverse. It’s often the running joke of the day that the boss is doing a “big” BBC interview and the subject of much office mirth. Colleagues will make fun of him or her about it to their face.
“Ha ha! Are you the next Alan Sugar on The Apprentice?”
There is a nice informality in these smaller companies because the CEO is really just the first-among-equals. He or she knows the team personally and they can laugh at one another. Many of the chief execs in this situation would ask if I also wanted to film other colleagues for their perspective.
They were uncomfortable that all the attention was on them.
Another perspective
I shared my observations with someone who has spent far more time with CEOs than me: Oddi Aasheim, a partner at FirstHuman, a performance consultancy which runs coaching and development programmes for business leaders. While he found my points "totally valid", he reminded me that I was seeing things from a particular perspective, that of the media.
For example, while founders can seem "ebullient" characters when meeting the press or potential investors, many also possess the ability to switch to different modes that fit the particular situation - for example, a more serious mode when meeting with their bankers.
CEOs who have risen up the ranks "have often developed an ability to fit in", and part of Aasheim's job is to help them expand who they can be as leaders and develop a new sense of freedom in how they operate.
What seemed to interest him most was my experience of female leaders who are prepared to show their weaknesses. This is a new trend, says Aasheim.
"Your credibility and success as a CEO is no longer what got you into that position, your knowledge and expertise. It all hinges on who you are as a leader, your ability to create potent environments where there is a real sense of purpose and shared ownership, where people can excel, ideas flourish, and it is safe to speak up - that can often feel like an exposed position."
Final thoughts
I've used my mobile phone to film the majority of the videos that I made for the series over the last five years. Many people have asked me: “Weren’t the CEOs disappointed when they saw you film with a phone, rather than a big, broadcast TV camera? Did it not offend their egos!”
Actually that never happened once (though once a PR was disappointed on their behalf). Certainly many of them did comment on it. They were intrigued and wanted to know more about smartphone filming. Some took pictures and asked me what equipment I used. Others asked me to speak with their team about it afterwards, so they could learn more.
Maybe that’s one trait that all CEOs share: an inquisitive mindset and an appetite to learn anything that will give their business a competitive advantage.
You can follow Dougal on Twitter: @dougalshawbbc
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Leicester's newly elected mayor has reopened the city's main market after a £600,000 revamp. | The open-air market will have 20 gazebo-style stalls and will operate every Friday and Saturday.
The city council-led redevelopment included repaving the area and the addition of power supplies and fittings for the new stalls.
The stalls will be used for arts, crafts and collectables from Mondays to Thursdays.
Leicester Market was named the UK's favourite market for the last two years by the National Association of British Market Authorities.
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Former Wales winger Shane Williams has captained a team which broke the world record for playing a rugby match at the highest altitude. | The 14-minute seven-a-side match was played at 6,331m (20,770ft), near Mount Everest base camp and ended 5-5.
It formed part of an "Everest Rugby Challenge" arranged by children's rugby charity Wooden Spoon, which has raised more than £250,000.
Former England Sevens player Ollie Phillips captained the other side.
Williams said the "inhospitable conditions" had ensured the game was "incredibly tough".
"If you ran during the match it took 10 minutes to recover," he added.
A world record was also broken for the highest touch rugby match, which was played at 5,119m (16,794ft).
Guinness World Records has confirmed both records.
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Tales of heartbreak, elation, rejection and redemption - to mark Valentine's Day, here are four love letters, each telling a unique story. | The reunion
My Dearest Helen,
Here we are in each other's arms at long last, settling into our home, we can't stop talking about our lives and especially those three very precious years we spent together over 65 years ago in the 1950s. We cuddled together when my three-wheeler spluttered to a stop on our way home from Chesterfield College of Art and I would ring my Dad to tow us home. What a good excuse that made to have a lingering kiss, although at times it could be a cold wait!
We got engaged and planned to get married when you were 19 but your parents objected to me, forbidding you to ever see me again. I don't think we knew then how our love would live on. Three years passed before we met again by chance. For your 21st birthday your grandfather bought you a new car and we made a date to meet for a drive the following day. But you never turned up. I was heartbroken but later found out you had discovered I was engaged to someone else, which had broken your heart.
As I seemed unavailable, you had no option but to look elsewhere. A dashing corporal in the Canadian Air Force swept you off your feet and you married him.
A long period of 35 years with the wrong partners ensued but fate still wasn't on our side because at almost the same time, our spouses died and we both married again.
Decades later, quite by chance, you came across a man with my second name, who turned out to be my son. With the help of your daughter you were able to make contact with me, after a wait of 65 years!
My second wife Margaret had recently suffered a fatal stroke and my grief was understood by you when we met some months later. Gradually we both realised we felt the same love we had retained in our hearts for all those years and went ahead with plans to have a quiet wedding last November.
Our home is full of photographs featuring our separate lives and I can't help feeling pangs of envy when I see you as a beautiful lady, happy in another's arms. But you are finally all mine now and you make me very happy. You are still the elegant lady I have always loved. There's a lot of work needed on our small bungalow and quite soon when finished, it will become the love nest of our dreams. We will spend our limited future together very much in love and although we will always regret the circumstances that kept us apart in 1956, we are happy together for ever.
The rejection
Dear Granddad,
It's been nearly eight years since I wrote. I still have your response, telling me my marriage was offensive. Daily I forgive you for the hurt when you rejected my Mark, the day you found out he was black. No-one but Mark and my best friend fully understand how painful it was and still is.
I choose not to see you to protect myself and my family.
But I recently lost someone. A reminder that time is short and there are things I have to say.
Mark says the thing he loves most about me is that I always see the good in people. I always seek the other perspective. What's made you so angry Granddad? What's made you so hateful of black, Asian or anyone who doesn't conform to your standards that you were prepared to sacrifice me? Did I not matter more than your racism?
I like to think you were brought up in a time when men weren't allowed to show their emotions. That the hard and angry exterior hides a deeply sensitive soul. I glimpsed yours the day you told me about meeting Grandma. This beautiful woman with sparkling blue eyes walking down the street. You fell in love.
I don't believe, as others do, in a Hollywood ending. I don't believe that if I turned up at your door with my darling family you'd welcome us as if nothing had happened.
Let me tell you about my tan-skinned children you were so afraid of.
Find out more
These stories are taken from BBC Radio 5 Live's Love Season, which runs from 14-28 February
There are many times I've watched my beautiful, sensitive Daniel playing with his trains, fascinated by engines or taking comfort in the rolling of a toy car and thought of you. My extraordinary boy who could have shared your passion for model trains and methodical construction.
And little Anna who is all emotion and love and - apparently - so like me.
I tell my son people come into our lives for a reason. Sometimes briefly but always for a reason. I think of the times you were my Granddad. The smell of your bungalow when we visited. How you were always waiting at the door as we arrived. You loved birds (and therefore hated cats) and those rescue dogs no-one else loved.
I love you for those memories.
I can't be angry with you because you are in those memories.
There are days I find it hard to believe it's not my fault. I simply fell in love with this amazing man - just as you fell in love with Grandma.
I believe your anger hides a hurting soul. So I'll take your anger and send you love.
The wedding
Dear Joe,
I'm sitting here with my Mum talking about wedding stuff like a fairy tale story and looking at the photo album.
In this one, it makes me feel a bit scared, my eyes, my face and my hands... I really was scared. Excited and scared to begin with. Oh my goodness Dad, I'm going to get married!
Joe, you were already there in the marquee waiting for me. When I was waiting to come down the red carpet, I felt a bit tearful listening to my favourite song... When You Wish Upon a Star.
I walked down the aisle with my Dad, he brought me to you Joe. I never felt this way before our wedding day. Everyone stood up and clapped, it made me happy. Joe, you came up to me from the unicorn throne, you gave me a little kiss on the cheek and put your hands around my waist, it felt really ticklish. You looked like a dream husband looking all grown up in your lovely blue suit. I loved touching the pink rose on your jacket because I love the colour pink.
The unicorn throne was like a fairytale fantasy film. It was fun to sit on it especially when we did our legs kicks to I do, I do, I do.
Now we're looking at the photo of us dancing to Come What May. Joe, did you like my lovely dress? Colourful, big giant pattern like a leaf and a spinny swishy shape. Oh my gosh, my garter slipped down and I kicked if off away and Dad picked it up and put it in his top pocket... It made me laugh!
When Vivienne said: "You're husband and wife, you may kiss now," we both threw our arms around each other and we kissed on the lips. It felt like love's dream. The best thing in the whole wide world.
Once we were married, we're wife and husband with our rings on, everyone's throwing confetti - I'm surrounded in confetti and it's down my top... too much confetti! We look too happy. Holding my bouquet with everyone smiling and cheering.
I like the photos just of us that Leela took in the garden. I like the way you held my hand. I like the way you've put your arms all round my back. You feel like a really strong person and I want to spend my life being with you. All times. I just love the kissing photo.
Joe, it was so much fun at the party. I love the way I spun round with the singing waiters. I liked the pink and blue balloons and the bunting. Our friends and family found it really good fun.
We are going to be happy ever after.
Lots and lots of love from your Polly
The arranged marriage
My Dear Kam,
Before I met you, love hadn't been all it was cracked up to be. Life had knocked me down, then just as I picked myself up, it tripped me at a bend. It was a phone call that revealed all. I discovered my ex was involved with someone else. So that perfect wedding hadn't turned into the marriage I'd expected to have.
And I became lonely. So lonely that loneliness became a thing. It sat with me at work and followed me home at the end of each day. I'd speak to the birds when no one could see, and stare at the bark of twisted old trees. And all the friends in the world couldn't fill the void it formed in me.
Each day I'd walk about, waiting for that lightning strike. An electric shock. Love at first sight. Hoping it would happen to me, perhaps even while shopping at the local Sainsbury's.
But nothing. I realised then that stars aren't obliged to align to make our dreams come true.
And so, on holiday with mum to see my gran in Pakistan, I caved. Mustering all my courage, I challenged my views on arranged marriage and agreed to marry you. This man I hardly knew. It wasn't love at first sight, but your kind eyes and that smile really drew me in. I ditched my search for lightning bolts and now I can see it was the best decision I would ever make.
One year in we were told we couldn't have a baby. Had we considered a pet instead, asked that grey-faced doctor in London? You took me in your arms and, with heartbroken eyes, said it would be ok. That it didn't matter if it wasn't meant to be.
When I was hurt by those closest to me, it was you that made me see straight. You showed me that I already had all the love I could ever need.
We've had joy-filled times when we've danced the jive right in the middle of our living room: the news I was pregnant, the birth of our sons and an amazing book deal with my publishers.
Then last year, I faced the toughest test of all. My dear mum passed with me at her side after weeks in the intensive care unit. Each day and night, you held me tight, tears from your eyes mingling with mine.
So what I'm trying to say to you, is that it may not be a flash of lightning, a six-pack or stubble that makes for perfect chemistry. Love can grow another way. Stars are not obliged to align to make our dreams come true. Except sometimes they do.
And if anyone tells me I'm wrong, I'll tell them they really ought to meet my Kam.
Love from Hina
Hina Belitz is the author of Set Me Free
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Kylie Jenner was just 10 years old when she made her debut on her family's reality television series Keeping up with the Kardashians. A decade on, the show is still going strong and its youngest star is now the famous family's highest earner. | By Kelly-Leigh CooperBBC News
It emerged this week just how vast a chunk of the family's wealth belongs to the 20-year-old. Despite Kim's initial eclipsing fame, Forbes magazine says Kylie is now worth almost three times as much as her sister at an estimated $900m (£680m).
The magazine lauded her for heading towards becoming one of the youngest "self-made" billionaires ever. Given her background, many online scoffed at the title, but the impressiveness of the speed of her business success is harder to mock.
Kylie Cosmetics is by far her biggest earner. It's not sold in stores and does not advertise traditionally, because unlike other competitors it doesn't seem to need it.
After all, Kylie is a social media powerhouse. When she tweeted that she was "sooo over" Snapchat earlier this year, its shares tumbled.
The vast majority of her 110 million-strong Instagram following are young and female, fitting firmly within the brand's target market.
Her success can be viewed squarely within larger trends in the global beauty industry, which has undergone a huge shift as social media influencers and vloggers become more important to a brand's success.
Kylie launched her first set of own-brand lip kits in November 2015. The product choice was not incidental, as the internet had spent much of the previous two years speculating on the teen's noticeably larger lips.
At first the reality star alleged the change was achieved using clever make-up tricks (over-lining the lips and filling in with a natural-looking matte base).
Some mocked and sparked a viral, and painful, challenge to plump their own lips, but beauty bloggers avidly recreated her look. The products she was rumoured to use sold out at MAC outlets across the world.
Kylie and "momager" Kris saw an opportunity to go it alone. She spent months trailing an initial three-shade launch of lip kits - a combination of nude lip liner and matte lip cream combos - on Instagram and Snapchat.
The initial stock launch sold out in less than a minute, crashing the website.
Bloggers offered suggestions of "dupe" options for those not lucky enough to grab their own, and the $29 (£22) dollar sets were bootlegged online for hundreds of dollars.
After launching the debut kits, she relabelled her business Kylie Cosmetics and sales continue to soar, making a reported $19m in one day in late 2016.
In just a couple of years she has amassed a reported $630m (£470m) in sales, diversifying from lip kit duos to other products such as glosses, highlighters and eye-shadows.
The brand has kept people hooked by maintaining the initial FOMO (fear of missing out) exclusivity - using countdowns to reveal products and selling them on limited release, often in collaboration with her famous siblings.
Kylie Cosmetics is not alone; a host of grassroots brands such as Huda beauty and Anastasia Beverley Hills have soared in popularity in recent years. YouTube endorsements in particular have the power to make a product a "must have".
A seismic change
Stephanie Saltzman, beauty editor at Fashionista, says it cannot be overstated how significant influencers and online marketing have been.
She describes the recent change as a "democratisation" within an industry that she believed had gone stale in its approach.
"Maybe historically consumers would use what their Mom used, or would go explore a beauty counter in a department store. Now it's in the palm of their hands through social media," she says.
"It feels more authentic coming from a person and Kylie Jenner is a person as opposed to a blanket, faceless corporation."
Traditional make-up brands are adjusting, though. Some have collaborated with influencers and beauty vloggers on limited-edition lines or have enlisted to use Generation Z celebrities such as Lily-Rose Depp to be their public face.
Charlotte Libby, a colour cosmetics expert at analyst group Mintel, says young consumers are rejecting traditional advertising, instead being drawn to brand transparency, and especially "personality, belief and ethics".
"Crowdfunding campaigns and social media have brought down some of the barriers for new brands and levelled the playing field," she tells the BBC.
"Social media and the success of influencers has proved that personality sells, and partnering with real people, rather than traditional media, offers brand the opportunity to show more personality."
The Forbes cover profile points out that the overhead size of Kylie's company is exceptionally small.
It has only 12 employees, and only seven are full-time. Most of the company's operations and production needs are outsourced to specialist firms.
"As ultra light start ups go, Jenner's operation is essentially air. And because of those miniscule overhead and marketing costs, the profits are outsize and go right into Jenner's pocket," journalist Natalie Robehmed writes.
Kylie's self-driven success and huge profits haven't been lost on sister Kim, who has followed suit by launching a new beauty line of her own and a range of new fragrances.
After a social-media-heavy marketing campaign that involved sending elaborately packaged perfumes to celebrities and influencers, Kim's initial fragrance offering sold out rapidly, raking in $10m (£7.5m) before a single paying customer had even smelt the products.
"I think that was definitely a wake-up call for a lot of others in the industry, and the same can be said with Kylie and everything she has accomplished," says Fashionista editor Saltzman.
"I think they feel threatened and also feel inspired. I interviewed Kim right after that fragrance launch and she was saying some big corporations had come to her for advice."
In the beauty industry in particular then, it seems that the Kardashians might actually be the ones to keep up with.
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A London man has been jailed after being found guilty of trying to take prohibited articles into HMP Swaleside. | Richard Brown, 23, of New Cross, south London, was jailed for four-and-a-half years following his conviction at Maidstone Crown Court.
He was charged with attempting to convey prohibited articles into prison to a serving inmate at the jail on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.
Police said the items were four mobile phone SIM cards and a Class A drug.
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A man has been charged with murdering his mother after she was found strangled at a south-east London home. | Celia Levitt, 68, was pronounced dead at a property on Stoneleigh Road, Bromley, after police officers were called at about 01:00 BST on Friday.
A provisional post-mortem examination found the cause of death to be compression of the neck, police said.
Ms Levitt's son Barry Levitt, 36, of Stoneleigh Road, will appear at Bromley Magistrates Court on Monday.
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Dr Richard Haass is to chair all-party talks set up to deal with some of the most divisive issues in Northern Ireland. | The announcement has been made by the office of the first and deputy first ministers.
Dr Haass served as US envoy to Northern Ireland from 2001 to 2003.
He was the agreed choice among the five parties represented in the Northern Ireland Executive.
The all-party group will try to bring forward a set of recommendations by the end of this year on parades and protests, flags, symbols, emblems and other related matters.
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Paul Joseph Watson, the UK-based editor of far-right conspiracy website Infowars, has donated $2,000 to one of the hundreds of reporters who took him up on his Twitter offer to pay "any journalist claiming Sweden is safe" to stay in Malmo. | The donation comes after Sweden was thrown into the spotlight by US President Donald Trump's reference last week to a security incident which did not actually happen.
President Trump has since sought to clarify his remarks, stating that his comments were "in reference to a story that was broadcast on Fox News concerning immigrants and Sweden".
After many social media users ridiculed the American leader using the hashtag #lastnightinSweden, Mr Watson issued a challenge to journalists.
Malmo has a large immigrant population.
Last October, the so-called Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a fire at a Muslim community centre there, an incident cited by the White House in the list of incidents it claimed had been under-reported by the media.
In a follow-up post, subsequently deleted, Mr Watson wrote: "All you lefty idiots accepting a 'trip to Sweden'. Can you read? I said you'd be staying here. Good luck".
The post featured a number of images to illustrate his point, including a photograph of anti-Israel protesters from the 2009 Davis Cup tennis match between Sweden and Israel.
Hundreds of people offered their services, including comedian Al Murray and journalist Laurie Penny.
Mr Watson has since donated $2,000 to a US journalist, Tim Pool. Mr Pool has pledged to "investigate the claims of 'no-go zones' and a rise in crime that people believe are coming from migrants and refugees".
In a video posted on his YouTube channel, Mr Pool says: "This is a highly politicised phenomenon, with one faction saying it's true and you're denying it for political reasons, and the other side saying it's false and you're pushing the story for political reasons.
"I don't side with anybody. I'm a sceptic."
Malmo's deputy mayor Nils Karlsson has promised any visiting journalists a warm welcome.
By UGC and Social News team
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A preliminary hearing on Thursday sees the beginning of a planning inquiry into a controversial new "super-sewer" under London - which would be 15 miles (25km) long, cost £4.2bn to build and create the UK's biggest sewerage system - but do we need it? | By Tom BatemanReporter, Today programme
Deep below the City of London is a world few people ever see.
Iron girders span the length of a vast subterranean space - the floor is thick with river silt and the Victorian brick walls drip with condensation.
Workers here in the Fleet mainline sewer call this the "viewing gallery" - a space the size of a church hall cut into the earth, from where you can see millions of litres of raw sewage flowing from 500,000 homes on its long journey to treatment works in the east.
The sewers are part of a 20,000-mile network owned and run by Thames Water - and are a unique piece of British history.
They were built in the 1860s by the engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette to intercept raw sewage that previously ended up being flushed straight into the Thames.
It followed a series of outbreaks of cholera that killed 40,000 people in the first half of the 19th Century - the Victorians believed the disease was contracted through airborne "miasma" due to sewage in the open air.
Their solution was a 1,000-mile network of underground sewers, the construction of which caused much controversy thanks to the £4.2m cost (the equivalent of £430m today), but prevented sewage being dumped in the river.
It was not until after the vast project was complete that the Victorians finally understood that cholera was waterborne - the deaths had actually resulted from pumping drinking water straight from the river into which raw sewage had been flushed.
"They got the right answer to the wrong problem," says Dr Stephen Halliday, author of The Great Stink of London.
He says: "One of the things about cholera and typhoid and other waterborne diseases is that they affect everyone - they affect the rich as well as the poor," he says, explaining what drove the decision to build the Bazalgette sewers.
"Waterborne diseases, unlike the diseases of urban filth carried by rats and fleas, [affected] members of parliament and the Royal Family as well as the poorer people, who in those days of course didn't have the vote."
Today Bazalgette's network remains in superb condition - the lack of sunlight, the moisture and the regular temperature are perfect for maintaining the Victorian brickwork, according to one worker.
But there is a problem - the sewers are being deluged.
They were built to take not only waste water from people's homes, but to act as London's drainage system - when it rains, the sewers fill up.
The population they serve has quadrupled since the 1860s and vast areas of land have been concreted or paved over.
Where storm water once drained into the earth, now it surges straight into the sewage system.
The sewers overflow on a weekly basis, flushing 39 million tonnes of raw sewage straight into the Thames each year, according to Phil Stride from Thames Water.
He says: "It is absolutely not consistent for a world-leading city to be using its river as an open sewer.
"We need to build a project that will intercept those flows and take them off to east London for treatment before they are discharged into the river," says Mr Stride, who is overseeing the Thames Tideway Tunnel project.
The 15-mile tunnel would start in Acton, west London, and follow much of the route of the river, capturing raw sewage and taking it to a pumping station in Stratford in the east of the city.
Those in the engineering business call it a "megaproject" - a 200ft (60m) deep tunnel, as wide as the Channel Tunnel, which will take 10 years to build and cost £4.2bn - nearly half the cost of the 2012 Olympics.
It would eventually add up to £80 a year to Thames Water customers' bills.
A preliminary hearing on Thursday will start the Planning Inspectorate's long inquiry process before a final decision could be taken by the government next year. If the tunnel gets the go-ahead, it is due for completion in 2026.
But the scheme faces strong opposition.
Much of the building work will take place around the clock, causing "mayhem" for people who live near the tunnelling sites, says Christian Sarrasin, from the environmental group, Clean Thames Now and Always.
"We've concreted over all the cities and that's why we've got this issue with the Thames Tunnel," he says.
He says there are cheaper, greener alternatives to it that involve preventing storm water flooding into the sewers in the first place.
So-called "green infrastructure" projects - often involving rooftops being covered in soil and plants - are being used extensively in the US city of Philadelphia where officials say they provide a "model" for flood and sewage management.
"You actually get massive benefits from this," says Mr Sarrasin, "it improves everybody's quality of life."
His group claims another green innovation - porous asphalt roads that soak up or store water - are a better alternative, and believe that converting half of the roads in central London would mitigate the entire need for the Thames Tunnel.
Both sides of the argument will be fully aired during the planning inquiry but there is no doubt that without some help the Victorian sewers will continue to struggle to meet the demands of 21st-Century London.
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Children around the world are currently trying to decide which toys to put on their Christmas list. Some browse catalogues for inspiration or look in toy shops and watch TV adverts, while others are turning to toy unboxing videos to make up their minds. What is the appeal of these videos, and are they in any way harmful? | By Charlie JonesBBC News
For nine-year-old Verity, the unboxing videos have been a great way to work out which toys she really wants this Christmas. In these videos, children, or in some cases just a pair of hands, take toys out of their packaging and play with them.
Verity particularly likes watching Shopkins, Lego and Harry Potter toys being opened on YouTube, which is the main platform for this type of content. "It gives you more information than just seeing an advert. It's more interesting because these videos give you more details about how something works and then they show you how it works."
Verity, who lives in St Albans in Hertfordshire, also likes to make her own videos, but only for family and friends to watch. "I don't want everybody to see them because they might make fun of them and make bad comments," she says. "People can be mean."
Ryan Kaji was among the first children to start making these videos in the US in 2015, when he was four years old. An early clip, in which he opened up a giant egg with more than 100 items inside, has been viewed more than a billion times. Ryan was the highest paid YouTube star of last year, when he earned more than £17m, mainly through partnerships with toy firms and his own TV show.
Eight-year-old Ava, who lives near Leicester, is hoping to emulate his success. She started her YouTube channel Ava's Toy Show when she was three. A video showing her unboxing and playing with a Barbie house has had more than 8.6 million views.
Her mother Lynsey Brown, 36, says Ava has always been a performer and loves filming the videos.
"Ava decides which toys to play with and we feel like she is learning a lot from watching her dad edit the videos. Children can relate to her because she's very down to earth."
Ava donates all of the toys to local charities, including a special needs school, and is "very aware" many of her followers, lots of whom live in the Philippines. are not as fortunate as her.
"As a parent, it is so frustrating when you spend a fortune on a toy that turns out to be rubbish, so hopefully we can help people decide what presents are actually worth buying this Christmas," she says.
Cambridge University research associate Dave Neale, who studies early-years play, believes these videos can have a positive impact if they encourage children to play with toys, and explore them more deeply.
"Playing is a vital part of early development, it teaches us language skills and emotional regulation, how to share, and the interaction is a bonding experience, so anything that encourages play is essentially a good thing," he says.
However, he is concerned about the lack of interaction and socialising involved. "When children play with toys they are problem-solving and being creative, figuring out how the toy works, or what other things they can do with the toy and that becomes a reward. Watching these videos just gives them the last bit without the other parts. It is a more shallow engagement."
Mother-of-three Emma Connell-Smith, from Tattingstone in Suffolk, does not like the effect these videos have on her seven-year-old twin boys Oliver and Thomas.
"The toys are very expensive and it makes children feel inadequate if they can't have them all," she says. "I also don't like the fact that these videos are so long and children seem unable to tear themselves away."
Her three-year-old daughter Tilly has also asked to watch them, but Mrs Connell-Smith has decided not to let her. "The toy videos aimed at younger children often use baby language, and the toddler when watching this repeats this language, often forgetting how to use the actual words they have."
Emma Worrollo, who has two children and writes about child culture and play, believes this type of content can be addictive, and says the trend is showing no signs of slowing down.
"It is capturing the eyeballs of kids around the world who are drawn in by the surprise-and-reveal format," she says. "This content has no narrative, no characters and no ending, which means it is hard for a young child to switch off or engage with it in a meaningful way. The experience is hypnotic and many parents report a negative impact on behaviour when young children view this type of content."
In Brazil, where advertising to children is illegal, the public prosecutor's office has filed a lawsuit against YouTube in regard to these videos, accusing the firm of "engaging in abusive advertising practices toward children".
In the US, Ryan Kaji, who is now aged eight, was the subject of a recent complaint filed by a watchdog group with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), alleging he was manipulating children who were too young to distinguish between an advert and a review.
Google, which owns YouTube, has recently created a new system in which content directed at children must clearly labelled, so the site can turn off targeted adverts. It comes off the back of a settlement with the FTC for violating children's privacy.
Here in the UK, a spokesperson for YouTube said it took quick action against any videos that do not declare a paid-for promotion, and videos that do declare this are not available on the YouTube Kids app. However, it has no rules about toys being given to children in exchange for being featured in videos.
While toy unboxing videos continue to rack up millions of views, parents need to make up their own minds whether they are a brilliant way of narrowing down that Christmas list or a tool for manipulating their children.
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Falkirk Council is to raise its council tax by 4.84%. | The council tax rise - the maximum allowable - equates to a Band D increase of £56.58 a year.
The local authority committed to an investment of £265m over the next five years in schools, roads, paths and playpark upgrades.
Council leader Cecil Meiklejohn said the budget was "not easy" given demands for resources, but it delivered services to those who need them most.
He said: "Large-scale investment is being made across all our services most notably extending six of our schools."
Meanwhile, Angus Council has agreed a council tax rise of 3%.
That equates to a Band D increase of £35.14 a year.
The administration said: "On balance, we think that a council tax increase of 3% is fair to our citizens and allows Angus Council to provide for its budget for next year and to plan for the future."
Local government body Cosla warned last week that Scottish councils need an extra £300m of funding just to "stand still".
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When popes travel, there are three levels of communication. | By David WilleyBBC News, Rome
First there are the crowds, the gut reaction and the enthusiasm of the millions of faithful and of the simply curious who turn out to see the new man in white, the latest successor to Saint Peter.
In Rio, the welcome Pope Francis received on the streets and particularly along the Avenida Atlantica at Copacabana beach was rapturous. Three million people gathered on the sands to hear and see him project his image of a poorer, simpler church.
Then there's the religious message.
During his week-long visit to Brazil, Pope Francis laid down a revolutionary blueprint for the future of the Catholic Church, not only in Latin America but worldwide.
Using very simple, direct language - in contrast to the sometimes obscure and wordy "Popespeak" of his immediate predecessors - he challenged common notions of modernity and progress, and asked difficult questions of his more than 1.3 billion followers.
He spoke mainly in the language in which he feels most comfortable, his native Spanish, often eschewing Brazilian Portuguese, the language spoken by his hosts. But his message came across with startling clarity.
He told a crowd of 30,000 young Argentine Catholics attending World Youth Day in Rio to "make a mess" in their dioceses, to "stir things up", to shake up the comfort, self-satisfaction and clericalism of a Church closed in upon itself. "Don't forget to disturb complacency, but please don't water down the faith!" Francis said.
"The Church must be taken into the streets," he said in the cathedral of Rio. "If not, the Church becomes an NGO. And the Church cannot become an NGO."
This was not a call to revolution, simply an endorsement of the frustration experienced by millions of young people, both in the developing world and in industrialised countries, who have no jobs nor any immediate prospect of dignified work.
In the huge beehive-shaped Cathedral of Rio, illuminated by strips of brilliant stained-glass windows, he suggested that the Catholic Church should also slow down its pace a bit.
"People today are attracted by things that are faster and faster, rapid internet connections, speedy cars and planes, instant relationships," Pope Francis told the biggest gathering of Catholic bishops in half a century.
"At the same time, we see a desperate need for calmness, I would say even slowness. Is the Church still able to move slowly, to take the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and reassemble? Or is the Church itself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency?"
Disarming frankness
The third level of communication is when the Pope talks off-the-cuff to journalists. Speaking on the plane which brought him back to the Vatican from Rio, he fielded questions on a wide range of subjects ranging from how he intended to resolve the money laundering scandal at the Vatican Bank to allegations about a "gay prelates lobby" inside the Church's headquarters.
He was disarmingly frank. He said he didn't know yet how the story of the Vatican Bank was going to end. A Vatican accountant is currently in jail being questioned by Italian prosecutors who believe that some Italian businessmen may have been using the Vatican as a sort of fiscal paradise and tax haven.
On the question of the existence of a so-called "gay lobby" inside the Vatican, Pope Francis quipped that he still had to find anyone whose Vatican ID described him as gay. He denied outright Italian media reports about a long-ago gay scandal involving a prelate who is now in charge of the Vatican residence which is the Pope's new home.
Pope Francis, the first ever pontiff from Latin America, has struck an unusual new tone at all levels of communication.
Now that he is back at his desk in his modest Vatican quarters, he has some important decisions to make about the future governance of his Church.
Normally the cardinals who run the Holy See are off on their long summer holidays at this time of year. But Pope Francis' seasons are not the same as those of his predecessors. In the Southern Hemisphere, where the bulk of his international flock now lives, it is winter.
Pope Francis plans to spend the month of August preparing for some radical changes in the future governance of his worldwide Church. Be prepared for some big surprises.
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Plans to build a specialist motorsports college at Silverstone Circuit in Northamptonshire have been submitted. | Silverstone University Technical College would offer full-time courses to 14-19 years olds in engineering, event management and hospitality.
If approved, it would be one of the first in a new wave of specialist university technical colleges (UTCs).
South Northamptonshire Council is due to decide at a later date whether the development can go ahead.
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With his head in his hands, Sajjad Malik sounds dejected. The taxi booking office he manages near Mecca's iconic Grand Mosque, the Masjid al-Haram, is empty. "There's no work, no salary, nothing," he says. | By Faarea MasudBusiness reporter, BBC World Service
"Usually these two or three months before the Hajj (annual pilgrimage) me and the drivers make enough money to last for the rest of the year. But now nothing."
One of his drivers, Samiur Rahman, part of Saudi Arabia's largely foreign private workers, sends the office status updates from the roads around the popular Mecca clock tower. The sea of pilgrims is missing - they usually line the streets, dressed in white, with umbrellas to protect themselves from the intense heat.
Today the drivers' people-carriers are void of passengers and the city looks like a ghost town. Sajjad's drivers send him videos of the pigeons filling the roads instead.
"My drivers have no food and now they are sleeping four or five per room, in rooms designed for two," says Sajjad,
I ask him if he is receiving any government help. "No, no help, nothing. I have savings, which we are spending. But I have a lot of staff - more than 50 people were working with me - and they are suffering.
"One of my friends called me yesterday, saying, 'Please I need some work, I don't even care how much you want to pay me.' Believe me, the people are crying."
There are severe restrictions in place for this year's Hajj. Saudi Arabia has seen one of the biggest outbreaks of coronavirus in the Middle East and has said the two million pilgrims who normally come from around the world to Mecca will not be allowed to do so, in a bid to limit the spread of Covid-19.
Only those already living in the country will be allowed to perform the Hajj - taking the number down to just 10,000.
Pilgrims will not be able to freely drink from the holy Well of Zamzam, the water will all have to be bottled individually. And when it comes to the stoning of the three pillars in Mina, symbolising the rejection of the devil, the pebbles will have to be sterilised.
Away from Saudi Arabia itself, the huge influx of hungry pilgrims usually leads to lucrative import orders for livestock from neighbouring countries like Kenya - many of whose farmers now have herds of unsold cattle.
"The livestock subsector in Kenya is big. It's the mainstay for most of the households in the country, and a way of life for most farmers, especially during the Hajj period," says Patrick Kimani from the Kenya Livestock Producers Association.
On average, his members export 5,000 head of cattle to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj, he says. "Farmers are now diversifying in to cold storage and local markets.
"We are concerned that it could decimate local cattle prices because all that extra produce could be dumped at cut price to local buyers for a quick sell."
Hajj dates back to the life of the Prophet Muhammad 1,400 years ago and there have been few limitations like this in its history.
What is the Hajj?
Making the pilgrimage at least once is one of the Five Pillars of Islam - the five obligations that every Muslim, who is in good health and can afford it, must satisfy in order to live a good and responsible life, according to Islam.
Pilgrims gather in Mecca to stand before the structure known as the Kaaba, praising Allah (God) together.
They perform other acts of worship too, renewing their sense of purpose in the world.
The shock of a sudden withdrawal of an age-old source of income is also leaving many tour companies struggling.
Last year, Pakistan sent the most foreign pilgrims to Saudi Arabia. But today in Karachi, Shahzad Tajj says his firm, Cheap Hajj and Umrah Deals, is on the brink of collapse.
"Basically, business is zero. Even other travel-related activities weren't going on. Like flights, logistics, deliveries - so there was nothing to sell. We were not, frankly, totally prepared for this.
"We had to downsize our staff to minimal numbers. Time has now forced us to sell our assets, cars and some property, to just get through this stage at least. I help out some of my team with emergency funds, but that's all I can offer for now."
Restrictions this year are putting a large financial hole in the cities of Mecca and Medina, which receive billions of dollars worth of business from the travelling pilgrims.
"Although most of the cost to the Saudi government of hosting the Hajj will be saved this year, Mecca and Medina will lose out on around the $9bn-$12bn (£7bn-£9bn) worth of business," says Mazen Al Sudairi, head of research at the financial services firm Al-Rajhi Capital in Riyadh.
Mr Al-Sudairi says the government has stepped in to help. "Maybe the small and medium enterprises were suffering, but the Saudi central bank is trying to support this segment, to give them relief, by deferring their loans for a further two or three months.
"We believe that we are facing a recovery period - we think the worst is behind us."
More than 80% of Saudi Arabia's national income comes from oil but prices have plummeted, forcing the country to diversify. Yet things haven't been going so well, according to Alexander Perjessy of Moody's Sovereign Risk Group.
"The government announced in March 2020 it would postpone collection of various government fees, as well as Value Added Tax, for three months. [But] this is not going to avert a recession in the non-oil sector of the economy - we think it will contract by about 4%," he says.
In Mecca, despite the empty bookings screen in front of him, Sajjad Malik does not want to return to his native Pakistan.
Saudi Arabia has served as an economic last-chance saloon for those in neighbouring countries who were struggling to earn enough.
"Working in Saudi for over eight years has allowed me to provide for my children and family back home. We get free medical benefits, and when the Hajj does happen, there are great earnings," he says.
"The labouring community are struggling now. But this country is still number one for me, praise be to God."
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A woman has been charged with money laundering after £1.9m in cash was found in suitcases at Heathrow Airport. | Tara Hanlon, 30, of Pelham Court, Leeds, was arrested by Border Force at Terminal 2 as she waited to board a flight to Dubai on 3 October.
Ms Hanlon appeared before magistrates and was remanded in custody to appear at Isleworth Crown Court on 5 November.
A 28-year-old woman from Doncaster, who was also arrested, has been released under investigation.
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The mother of police killer Dale Cregan and a police call handler have both been charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office.
| Anita Cregan, 56, and Kathryn Smith, 25, who works for Greater Manchester Police (GMP), were remanded in custody by magistrates.
A third defendant Sean Booth, 30, was also remanded in custody on the same charge.
All three will appear at Manchester Crown Court on 28 June.
A GMP spokesperson said Ms Smith had been suspended since 8 September 2012. An internal investigation has opened and will be completed once the criminal case is dealt with.
Dale Cregan was given a whole life sentence on Thursday for the murders of PCs Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone and of father and and son David and Mark Short.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has issued a much-anticipated statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two. He gave a "heartfelt apology", but as the BBC's Mariko Oi explains, that is only one of the many ways you can express remorse in Japanese. | In English, you either say "sorry" or "apologies". In Japanese, there are at least 20 different ways.
One of the most casual and most frequently used words is "gomen" ごめん. You can make it more formal by saying "gomen-nasai" ごめんなさい or more friendly with "gomen-ne" ごめんね. "Warui warui" 悪い悪い or "my bad" is also a very casual way to say sorry.
"Sumimasen" すみません, which can be translated as "excuse me", also works as an apology depending on how it is used. "Yurushite" 許して is to ask for forgiveness and "kanben" 勘弁 can be used to plead for mercy and both terms are used much more casually than in English.
Viewpoint: Why do Japan’s apologies get disregarded?
More formal ways to apologise include "moushiwake nai" 申し訳ない and "shazai" 謝罪. But I use both terms quite often in business emails not because I really feel bad but just to be polite. For example, I may begin my correspondence with "I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you" and end it with "I apologise for creating extra work for you" even if it only took me a few days to respond and even if I was merely asking them to do what's already in their job description.
'I am reconsidering the past'
If I genuinely want to apologise, at least three or four different phrases would appear in one short email. I may be "too embarrassed to face you" 合わせる顔がない and "I have no excuse" 弁解の余地がない for whatever I did.
For the post-war apologies, Japanese leaders have used the word "hansei" 反省 much more frequently. In the English transcript, it reads "remorse" but I would translate it as "regret" and use it, for example, for failing to be more productive on my day off.
A student would be told to "hansei" for forgetting to do one's homework. Its Chinese or Korean equivalents - "fǎnshè" or "banseong" respectively - also mean "reflection on" or "reconsideration of" the past.
The 1995 statement by former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama was considered landmark because it included the word "owabi" お詫び which is one of the most formal ways of apologising. He said his country had caused "tremendous damage and suffering" through its "colonial rule and aggression" and expressed "deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology".
Ten years later to mark 60 years since the end of the World War Two, the then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also used the term "owabi". Mr Koizumi's apology, however, was overshadowed by his repeated visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine where all the war dead - including Class A war criminals - are enshrined.
The current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also included the word "owabi" in his war anniversary statement but he had indicated that he would not visit the Yasukuni shrine on Saturday.
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When Eritrea gained independence in 1993, Ethiopia suddenly found itself without a coastline and so it took the logical step of disbanding its navy. Now, it is reconsidering its decision and its latest manoeuvres in the region suggest it could be shopping around its neighbourhood to find a naval base it can use. | By Dickens OleweBBC News
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recently said on state TV: "We built one of the strongest ground and air force in Africa... we should build our naval force capacity in the future."
His comments revealed the country's naval ambitions but his plans for how to achieve this goal have not been made public. However, Ethiopia's latest push to enter into deals with its coastal neighbours signals something is afoot.
What is behind the move?
State-linked Fana Broadcasting Corporate quoted Mr Abiy as saying the military reforms should "take into account current fast changing world, socio-economic and political situation in Ethiopia".
After Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bitter border war from 1998-2000, there was little chance that Ethiopia could carry on using Eritrea's ports as it had done previously. So it had to find alternatives.
Ethiopia recently signed a deal to take a stake in the port of Djibouti, which now handles roughly 95% of all its exports and imports.
It is also connected to its small neighbour by a new 472 mile (759 km) railway line - opened last year - which links the capital Addis Ababa to the port of Doraleh, an extension of the port of Djibouti.
The railway line has increased the movement of cargo volumes to and from the port to such an extent that at least 70% of all its activity is now Ethiopian trade.
Roba Megerssa Akawak, head of the state-owned Ethiopian Shipping & Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE), told Bloomberg that Ethiopia was concerned that Djibouti was controlled by foreign naval forces. US, China, Japan and France all have military bases there.
"We are afraid perhaps in the future that even Djibouti may not have its own say to really decide on its own fate. This is quite a threat to Ethiopia," Mr Roba said.
He added that a navy would also help protect the 11 Ethiopia commercial ships in a "very volatile" Red Sea area where Ethiopia has other economic interests "and there are conflicting political interests".
These ships are currently based in Djibouti, from where they sail to ports in the Gulf, the Indian sub-continent, China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, and Indonesia.
Ethiopia also still has a civilian maritime institute which trains more than 500 marine engineers and electro-technical officers each year, with plans to train more than 1,000 officers annually.
According to the Ethiopian Maritime Institute the graduates have skills and knowledge "needed to succeed in the global shipping industry".
Building a navy from the ground up is however a different kettle of fish - it would require massive financial investments and a lot of time to train the forces, as well as a base.
Since coming to power in April, Mr Abiy has also signed deals with Sudan for access to Port Sudan, in a bid to diversify its port outlets and reduce port fees.
Ethiopia has also agreed a deal with the self-declared Somali state of Somaliland for a 19% stake in the port of Berbera which includes a plan to build a road from its border to the port.
Eritrea rapprochement
Mr Abiy also struck a reconciliation tone in his maiden speech - calling on long-time foe Eritrea to resolve their differences, saying the two countries were "not only intertwined in interests but also in blood".
He has since followed up on his reconciliation offer by agreeing to a 2002 border commission resolution which awarded disputed territories, including the town of Badme, to Eritrea. This was one of the war's main flashpoints.
Eritrea has not commented on the move.
Its information minister Yemane Gebre Meskel had previously told the BBC that relations could not be resolved until Ethiopia withdrew "from the occupied territories".
However, the relationship with Eritrea is unlikely to thaw to the extent that Ethiopia could once more rely on its ports in Assab and Massawa. There is also a danger that Ethiopia's naval ambitions could alarm Eritrea.
Former Ethiopian diplomat Birhanemeskel Abebe speculates that strategic and geo-political security concerns could be driving the navy plan.
"Ethiopia's right to use international waters demands it has a naval base," he told the BBC's Newsday programme.
He suggested Kenya, Somaliland and Djibouti as possible locations for the base.
The plan, Mr Birhanemeskel said, was to push for the "unification of the Horn of Africa as an economic bloc and the navy is part of that project".
He said Ethiopia would use its strong cultural and economic ties in the region to push for its naval ambitions.
The Kenyan option
In May, Ethiopia agreed a deal with Kenya to facilitate the acquisition of land in the island of Lamu as part of the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (Lapsset) project, a $24bn (£18bn) transport and infrastructure plan to link the two countries and their neighbours.
The project was signed in 2012 but has been beset by funding delays and security problems in both countries.
In Ethiopia, the government was until recently dealing with large anti-government protests which culminated in the resignation of Mr Abiy's predecessor Hailemariam Desalegn in February.
Mr Abiy has struck a different tone since taking office, calling for reconciliation in Ethiopia. He has pushed for reforms including the release of political prisoners and activists.
His government has also ended a state of emergency.
Deo Gumba, from the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), says Ethiopia's naval ambitions could be targeting the operations of Islamist militant group al-Shabab in Somalia, as well as piracy in the Indian Ocean.
Mr Gumba said that, as a US ally, Ethiopia was likely to get support for its plans.
Is a navy feasible?
Timothy Walker, a maritime researcher at ISS, however cautioned that it would take decades for Ethiopia to have a fully fledged naval unit.
"It may create a maritime branch of its armed forces but not a navy... it would take decades for the procurement of ships and training of the force."
"Many African countries do not have a sufficient navy and if you look at the Horn of Africa, the big world powers are the ones who operate there," Mr Walker said.
"Recorded incidents of piracy and militancy in the region do not justify investment in building a navy from the ground up."
But despite the naysayers, Ethiopia seems determined to press on with its plans.
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An armed robber forced his way in to the home of a man in Essex early on Wednesday and stole a collection of 170 Roman coins.
| The attack happened in Blenheim Close, Braintree, just after 04:05 BST and it left the victim, aged in his 60s, with cuts, police said.
The coins were kept in plastic wallets inside an A4 binder.
"This was a frightening incident and I need to find the person responsible," Detective Constable Red Leeson said.
"Some of the coins taken are rare and quite distinctive and I need to speak to anyone who thinks they have been offered them for sale."
He appealed for anyone with information to come forward.
Related Internet Links
Essex Police
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Shell has announced production has restarted in its Brent field after a seven month shutdown for safety reasons.
| Brent Bravo, which lies 150 miles north east of Shetland, and Brent Alpha are again working.
It is expected Brent Delta will resume in the near future and Brent Charlie will restart early next year.
Production was halted on the platforms to replace heavy protective fenders from the waterline of Brent Bravo.
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On 4 August 1869, the body of three-year-old Annie Collins was lowered into her paupers' grave in what was the very first burial at Belfast Cemetery, later to be known as Belfast City Cemetery. | By Laura McDaidBBC News NI
Exactly 150 years later, her once solitary plot is surrounded by more than 226,000 others.
The abundant wealth of some of those buried in the cemetery's grounds is clear from the beautifully carved monuments and ornamental gates that surround their remains.
Others, like Annie's parents, were too poor to afford a simple headstone.
Annie's short life and hundreds of others like her are only remembered thanks to the work of historians who have, over the years, meticulously poured through public records to uncover their fascinating stories.
In a few months, Belfast City Council will begin a Heritage Lottery-funded restoration project to restore the cemetery to its previous glory.
Author and historian Tom Hartley, who leads guided tours of the cemetery, says the graveyard "sums up the history of Belfast at the height of its power and wealth".
"All the big industrialists are buried here in this ground, alongside those who worked for them and in some cases died for them," he tells BBC News NI.
The Victorian 'big hitters'
It has been said many times that death is a great leveller, but this cemetery highlights the hierarchical systems and sexism that thrived in Victorian cities.
It is no coincidence that some of the most prominent Belfast families of the 19th and 20th centuries lie in raised vaults at the top of the central steps overlooking the vast graveyard below.
Sir Edward Harland, co-founder of the shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff, lies alongside tobacco merchant Thomas Gallaher, a man caustically described by Mr Hartley as "the greatest serial killer of all time".
Ironically, today these once impressive graves are overrun by weeds and surrounded by an ugly wrought iron fence for health and safety purposes, while those less fortunate, whose graves lie in less ostentatious surroundings, are often tended to by strangers.
Nearby is Viscount William Pirrie, former chair of Harland and Wolff. In the months leading up to the Titanic disaster, Lord Pirrie was questioned about the number of life boats aboard his ships.
He responded that the ships were unsinkable and the rafts were to save others, a line that would haunt him to his death in 1924.
Further down the densely populated 100 acre plot of land, there lies a more understated grave, that of 15-year-old Samuel Scott, the first worker to die in the building of the Titanic.
He was a so-called catch boy, who collected rivets, but fell to his death from the side of the ill-fated ship while under construction.
Samuel's descendants later told Mr Hartley that representatives of the shipbuilding giant later offered his family 12 shillings as compensation for the loss of their son.
His parents were also too poor to mark where he lay, but in 2011, a headstone was unveiled as part of the Féile an Phobail festival.
"So you see in just a few of the many graves here that Belfast was a schizophrenic sort of city, with enormous wealth and abject poverty," Mr Hartley says.
Radical
It was also, he adds, a city where Catholics converted to Protestantism and Presbyterians became Irish republicans.
A case in point is Robert Lynd, the son of a Presbyterian moderator, who was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, now known as Inst, who later became an Irish republican writer.
"Robert taught Roger Casement how to speak Irish. He wrote the introduction to James Connolly's pamphlet, Labour in Irish History. He was a friend of James Joyce and when Joyce married Nora Barnacle, they stayed with Robert," says Mr Hartley.
"The cemetery is a great reminder that the political and cultural identity of late 19th century Belfast was complex and layered."
What about the women?
Mr Hartley says women buried in the cemetery were defined by the men they married.
The headstone of Margaret Byers, a renowned educationalist, activist and social reformer who founded Belfast's Victoria College for girls, simply describes her as "the widow of Rev John Byers", her husband who died about 50 years earlier.
"It says nothing about what she achieved in her life," says Mr Hartley.
Behind a nearby oak tree lies a small patch of land, surrounded by an iron fence, with a sign that reads Ulster Female Penitentiary.
This is the unmarked grave of seven women who experienced unimaginable hardship, Mr Hartley explains.
"These women would have been labelled as prostitutes, and as such, we're not meant to know they're even here."
"These women epitomise our need to understand history, because we need to know who they were and how they were treated and the circumstances that brought them to the penitentiary."
Margaret Byers and her friend Isabella Todd - a Scottish suffragist who is buried in south Belfast's Balmoral cemetery - campaigned to help prostitutes and all exploited women by opposing the Contagious Diseases Act, legislation that allowed for the arrest of women suspected of being prostitutes.
Grieving parents
The grief of those who were left behind is evident in some of the more ornate monuments.
The grave of 14-year-old George Sayers, the only son of wealthy landowners in Malone Heights, who died in a sporting accident, is particularly poignant.
"In the roundel, you see two rose flowers in bloom, then you see a sickle, and beneath it, a rose bud broken at its stem," Mr Hartley points out.
"The two roses represent George's parents, the sickle is the grim reaper and the broken rose bud is George - he never got a chance to fully bloom."
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Mud, moshpits, music and mayhem - Glastonbury is gearing up for a gargantuan 2,000+ performances this weekend. | Headliners Adele, Coldplay and Muse will rock the Pyramid stage - which this year is festooned with a giant lightning bolt in honour of the late David Bowie.
And many of the bands will contribute a song from their sets to a live album, which will raise money for Oxfam, in honour of MP Jo Cox.
With more than 100 stages spread across the 1,200-acre site, it can be hard to work out what to watch. So here is a guide to 11 of the suggested best acts making the pilgrimage to Worthy Farm.
And even if you're not attending, you can catch up with the festival on BBC radio, TV, online and the red button.
THE HEADLINERS - Disclosure
Formed in Surrey by brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence, Disclosure's exhilarating sound and light show has quickly become a highlight of festivals around Europe. This year, they graduate from the dance arena to Glastonbury's second-biggest venue, The Other Stage, where they top the bill on Friday night, as Howard explains.
How does it feel to be headlining?
It's an honour to be asked. The Other Stage - especially this slot we've been asked to do - is something we've wanted to do for a long, long time. For us, it's the pinnacle of what we've ever set out to do at Glastonbury.
What acts are you hoping to emulate?
People like The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy. They're some of the few acts we think have done electronic music in a live format and made it a genuinely entertaining show. It's much easier said than done.
Calvin Harris recently told us he'd grabbed Rihanna and recorded her vocals for This Is What You Came For in a caravan backstage at the Coachella festival. Do you ever get up to that sort of thing?
We always write the songs with the person who's singing it. So we've never done it quite as quickly as that. I guess the closest thing would be a couple of times we've bumped into Sam Smith on tour and literally had him on stage within an hour.
Is it really that ramshackle?
Generally we try and organise it at least a day or two in advance. But if it comes to it, we can literally decide 10 minutes before we go on.
For example, at Coachella, AlunaGeorge were playing on a different stage directly before our slot, so Aluna had to jump off stage at their show, get on a little golf buggy and head straight to us for the first song of our set. She only made it by 10 seconds, so that was pretty touch and go!
ADELE'S SUPPORT ACT - Tame Impala
Psych-rocktonauts Tame Impala have broken into the mainstream with their third album, Currents. Fronted by Kevin Parker, the Australian outfit won best international band at the Brits in February. They play the Pyramid Stage immediately before Adele on Saturday night.
You made a guest appearance during Mark Ronson's set last year. Did you have any idea at that point that you'd be coming back as the second headliner in 2016?
Obviously not! What's lucky for us is each year has new surprises in store. Things where, if you'd asked us a year earlier, we'd have had no idea they were coming - and this is one of those. But on a bigger scale.
What's your Glastonbury experience been like over the years?
We actually played the main stage the first time we ever went to Glastonbury. It was about 11:30 in the morning, with people just crawling out of their tents. We were playing mostly to a field of mud.
But each time we've played, I've fallen in love with it more and more.
Last year, Florence + The Machine were booked in the same slot as you, but they ended up headlining when Dave Grohl broke his leg. You must be hoping that Adele watches her step over the next few days...
Ha! Absolutely. We'd certainly be the most... what's the word? The most confusing headliner ever.
Are you looking forward to Adele's set?
I think everyone is... I'm not even English and I feel like it's going to be a religious moment for me. You know what I mean? She's England's girl. She's royalty.
Given your affection for the festival, do you feel like you have to do something special for your set?
I do, I do. We've already put the wheels in motion. But you have to balance doing something special, a one-off, with the nerves of messing that up and ruining the whole show.
THE NEWCOMER - Frances
Self-described "ginger little cookie," Frances is being tipped as one of this year's breakthrough acts, thanks to heart-rending piano ballads like Don't Worry About Me and Grow. She plays the Pussy Parlure stage at 16:30 on Friday.
This is your first Glastonbury. What are you expecting?
I'm expecting chaos. I'm expecting it to be a completely different world.
Are you staying in a tent or the tourbus?
I'm actually staying in a hotel!
Oh, how posh.
I know! But I get back from Australia the day before… and it's also my birthday on the Monday, so it's like my birthday treat. I'll start the celebrations watching Coldplay on the Sunday.
What should people expect from your set?
Well, I've been touring with a keyboard since I was 16 and just recently I've got my own proper, big girl's piano. So that's very exciting. But I just want it to be a nice, relaxing little introduction for people that might not have heard me before.
What's the best, or the strangest, reaction you've had so far?
I played at Wilderness festival last year and people started doing contemporary dance - this sort of capoeira stuff - in the crowd. It was very nice, but it was pretty distracting.
THE HIGH WIRE ACT - The Bullzini Family
Husband and wife Phoebe Bates and Christopher Anaspitos will spend most of Glastonbury 11 metres off the ground, performing their high-wire show Equilibrius. When they're not in mid-air, the couple also give classes in circus skills and invite fans to their caravan for a cup of tea.
What can you tell us about Equilibrius?
It's paying homage to traditional wire-walking and high-wire skills throughout the ages, but with a contemporary twist - there's a theatrical storyline about how we met and hopefully a few laughs, too.
How do you pay homage to your predecessors?
Those with a keen eye will notice my wife Phoebe stepping into buckets, which is a reference to Maria Spelterini, who crossed over the Niagra Falls in the 1800s wearing cherry baskets [strapped to her feet].
How dangerous is it to perform an act like this in Glastonbury's notoriously inclement weather?
We train in different weather conditions, so we know what our limits are. There's always an element of risk, but I'd be lying if I said I thought it was dangerous.
What's your top tip when you're training people to walk the wire?
What I find is that depending on the body that you've got, certain tricks will be easier. So it's easier for me to mount a unicycle on a slack rope than to do a backflip on a tight wire.
Wait... Neither of those sound easy
Easy might be the wrong word - but certainly more achievable. It's a shorter path to success!
What's your greatest Glastonbury experience?
There's so many! But it was probably when I did the Arcadia show in 2010, and I walked across a wire 11 metres in the air, near one of those [flaming] gas jets, and there were about 8,000 to 10,000 people in the field. It was a very simple walk, but the feeling of arriving at the other end of the wire, with the huge cheer from all those people, is something that reverberates in your soul.
THE LEGEND - Cyndi Lauper
With a back catalogue that includes Time After Time, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and True Colours, Cyndi Lauper's set on the Acoustic Stage is sure to be a highlight of the festival. The singer will also perform songs from her new album, the country-tinged Detour.
This is your first Glastonbury. Are you looking forward to it?
Hell yeah, I'm excited! I was with Boy George in the States and he said: 'You're going to have so much fun' so I'm really looking forward to it.
Do you know what to expect?
There's a lot of camping and it's going to rain on Thursday, so bring your galoshes.
And will you be sticking around to see some of the other acts?
I won't be able to see some of the people I'd love to see, because I'm on tour. I think I'm playing on Sunday, so I can't see the people on Saturday like Squeeze or Madness and Adele. That stage is pretty slamming.
Tell us about how you came to record a country album in Nashville?
When you first come out, and you're famous, your job is being famous, I guess. You have to stay on the hamster wheel. Everything you might want to do, people are like: 'Don't do that, it'll ruin your career!'
At this point, it's like how many times can you be ruined? It's never too late to do what you want.
THE BOWIE TRIBUTE - Charles Hazlewood
On Saturday night at The Park stage, an orchestra conducted by Charles Hazlewood will perform Philip Glass's Symphony No 4, which is based on Bowie's Heroes LP. The performance will be accompanied by a light show designed by artist Chris Levine, who has worked with Massive Attack, Grace Jones and Sigur Ros - as Charles explains.
For people who've never heard the Philip Glass Symphony, tell me what it's like.
It's a really remarkable piece. Most people have some sense of what Philip Glass's music is like - it's hypnotic, it's repetitive, it's quite kaleidoscopic. And what he did, was he took the essence of Heroes - the essential melodic and harmonic contours of that album - and turned it into a symphony. It's almost like you're experiencing Bowie through a strange, glassy prism.
Is it right that you have to wait for Adele to sing her last note before you can strike up the orchestra?
Well, absolutely. We don't want to clash with that. So it will be literally at that moment, when all the other stages shut down, that we kick off. There will be something very magical and 'in the midnight hour' about it. I think The Park stage is the perfect place to do it because it's a gorgeous natural amphitheatre. People can just come and lie down, and take in this extraordinary 'son et lumiere' experience.
Apparently the light show will be visible right across the site.
Look, what I've heard is that, provided it's a relatively clear night, you'll be able to see the light from the moon.
So it's literally a Space Oddity!
Yeah, I think we can call it that! And do you know what? I feel in my heart this is exactly the kind of thing Bowie would approve of.
Quite clearly, by the means and the manner of his passing, he didn't want funerals, he didn't want memorials, he didn't want any of that mawkish rubbish. What he would have liked, I think, would be a big old celebration. A very theatrical, very out-there celebration of what it was he meant to all of us. And so, for me, this is a pitch perfect way of saying we're grateful David Bowie ever existed.
THE DIVA - Roisin Murphy
Ireland's Roisin Murphy brings her off-kilter, expansive pop music to the West Holts stage at 20:30 on Friday. Expect to hear songs from her Mercury-nominated album Hairless Toys, alongside new music from the forthcoming Take Her Up To Monto.
You're something of a Glastonbury veteran...
Yeah, I think this might even be my fourth visit to Glastonbury. One time with Moloko, two solo times and back once again like a renegade master.
What are your best and worst experiences?
The sun setting as we were singing The Time Is Now, the first time I played there, was outstanding.
The Ruby Blue set (in 2005) was really difficult because it was just pure muck. It wasn't a pretty sight to look out from the stage and see people all brown and slithering around. You felt pretty sorry for them, to be honest.
How do you approach a festival set, compared to one of your own shows?
The requirement is to bang 'em out a little bit. It's not the opportunity to teach people about my new record.
Unlike a lot of electronic and pop acts, you play with a live band. How important is that?
With our band, it's all live. Anything could happen. Anything could go wrong. But it is musicianship. There's a flair to that, which you don't get any other way.
You're known for your costumes and elaborate staging. Do you have to scale that down when you're playing a festival?
Sometimes festivals aren't really set up for divas like me. My little crew has to set up a tent at the side of the stage to put all my clothes and props in.
It's just you and Grace Jones…
Yes, me and Grace Jones causing all the trouble!
THE INDIE UPSTARTS - Blossoms
Guitar pop band Blossoms were all born in the same Stockport hospital, formed in 2013 and have honed their sound by rehearsing in their bassist's grandfather's scaffolding yard. They play The Other Stage on Friday morning, after coming fourth in the BBC's Sound of 2016.
This is your Glastonbury debut. What do you expect, having watched it from afar for all these years?
It'll just be surreal being there. It'll be like being in the telly.
Why should people get out of their tents to see you at 12:30 in the morning?
Well, they'll still be quite fresh on a Friday, I'd imagine. If we were playing on a Sunday I might have been a bit worried that nobody would come to watch us.
But if the sun's out and we're playing our melodic tunes, it'll be a nice way to start your Friday morning.
What's the song that goes down best in your set?
Charlemagne's the one. People's heads pop up, like: 'Oh, I know this one'. They've heard it subliminally. That catchy riff has gone into their head.
Will you be staying in a tent or a tourbus?
We'll be on a bus with beds, which is only a recent addition.
Paint me a picture of that bus.
To be honest, it's got a chilled vibe. And you can make some toast, which is fun when you're flying down the motorway.
THE GODFATHER OF GRIME - Kano
The Sonic Stage is dedicated to Britain's burgeoning Grime scene on Friday, with sets from the likes of Stormzy, Section Boyz, Charlie Sloth and J Hus. At the top of the bill is Kano, one the genre's original and most distinctive voices, who'll be playing songs from his critically-acclaimed new album, Made In The Manor.
Your album is so heavily rooted in East London - how will it feel performing it in a field down the road from Stonehenge?
Well, we'll find out! But what I've seen at the festivals I've done already, is everyone embraces it. Sometimes I'm on stage rapping about roads in East London and I hear people singing the lyrics back and I wonder: 'Why do you identify with this so much?'
I think it's two things. There's people who are interested in where I'm from, and it gives them a peak into my house, so to speak. And there's people who say: 'Do you know what? It's exactly like where I live'. So people from Birmingham and Manchester and all those inner city places just really embrace it.
This is the first time Grime has taken over a stage at Glastonbury - does it feel like a watershed moment?
Do you know what? It does feel like a real moment. I remember playing Glastonbury about 10 years ago and it was mainly indie bands, with a little section of rap. I remember people would try and spit on an Arctic Monkeys beat to try and do something the audience would recognise. Now you look at this line-up and you feel like: 'Wow, we really have arrived'. It's been a massive year for us. So yeah, it's a proud moment.
You joined Gorillaz on stage when they headlined in 2010. What was that like?
It's just crazy. It's just like a sea of people. Oh man, the emotion and the energy is like nothing you've ever, ever felt before.
Gorillaz' frontman Damon Albarn is playing with the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians on Friday, too. Will you try to hook up with him?
Yeah, I'll try. I think I'll be doing a song with them. So I should be performing twice that day.
To quote one of your own songs back at you, do you think it'll be "t-shirt weather in the manor" this weekend?
I'm hoping so. I wouldn't put money on it. But my venue's a tent so if it rains, it'll get even busier. So I'm glad if it rains, man!
THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK - The Bay Rays
Garage rock trio The Bay Rays were formed in Kent just last year. But their debut single Four Walls and its follow-up, New Home, have blasted onto radio thanks to their combination of dynamic riffs and melodic harmonies. They headline the BBC Introducing stage on Sunday. Frontman Harry Nicoll can hardly believe his luck.
What were you doing this time last year?
This time last year, we were playing small cover gigs in local pubs, just to try and raise money to make some demos and buy a van that could get us on the road.
How did you go from a covers band to headlining a stage at Glastonbury in just 12 months?
I really don't know! We worked quite hard. We started with a bass player that didn't really know how to play bass - but he learned to play 30 songs in a week so we could do some gigs. [From that], we seemed to pick up the knowledge of how to put songs together.
For people who haven't heard you, what's the music like?
We're just writing about everyday life, really. There's only three of us and it's quite a simple sound. There's a bit of a glam feel - but there just seems to be something about it that resonates.
You're on at the same time as Coldplay - so why should people choose you over Chris Martin?
Well, everyone knows what Coldplay are about, because they've been around for a while. If you want to see something fresh and exciting and new, the Introducing stage nurtures that.
How nervous are you, on a scale of totally calm to permanently on the verge of throwing up?
At the moment, I'm fairly nonchalant. But I know that at the time, I'm going to be quaking in my boots.
THE CROWD PLEASERS - Lumineers
US folk-rock trio Lumineers hit it big in 2012 with songs like Ho Hey and Stubborn Love. Their debut album went platinum on both sides of the Atlantic, with President Obama declaring himself a fan, and they became a firm favourite on the live circuit. Frontman Wesley Schultz tells us what to expect from their Glastonbury return.
When you first played Glastonbury in 2013 you jumped off stage and played a song in the middle of the audience. What do you remember about that?
We had just flown in, so I don't know what time it was in my body and mind but I remember feeling like it was all dreamlike. We were just going off instinct and muscle memory. We'd never played in front of that many people at that point. It was just an unbelievable high.
Had you heard of the festival before you played?
We had heard about it through friends but we didn't know what to expect. We had never heard of wellies!
Even the flags reminded me of watching Braveheart. You felt like you were removed from the present day.
How has the set list evolved now the second album's out? You must be pleased to be playing new material.
You can say that again! We used to love festivals because we barely had enough songs to fill 45 minutes! But it's just been really wonderful to turn the page and have all this new material to draw from.
Does that mean you won't be doing any more covers?
Sometimes we cover Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues. We used to play that in little bars, where they'd pay us next to nothing, but it'd be free food and beer. Subterranean Homesick Blues was one that got everyone's attention for a minute. Everyone would stop and say: 'I wonder if they're going to remember all the words?'
At festival it's really important that you take that into account, because there's a lot of people that may never see you again. So you think: 'How are we going to make them stay for one more song?'
There's a tradition of people dressing up at Glastonbury. What would you like to see as you look out at the crowd?
Of all the people in our band, Jerry is the only one who has a signature look. He's like a superhero, he always has to wear the same thing every day. So if people wear some braces and a white shirt, we'll know they're Lumineers fans, so that would be cool.
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A 28-year-old woman has been charged in connection with several incidents of extortion in Aberdeen. | The alleged incidents took place in the King Street area of the city in June and July.
Police confirmed that the woman is expected to appear at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on Monday.
Officers thanked members of the public who had come forward and helped with their inquiries, following an earlier appeal for information.
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Dalian Atkinson's life was cut short at the age of 48 when he died after being Tasered outside his father's home. A police officer has now been charged with the murder of the former Ipswich Town, Sheffield Wednesday and Aston Villa forward, who was remembered at a poignant funeral service in November 2016. | By Richard HaughBBC News
Three decades earlier, it would have been impossible to imagine that this would be how the story would end for the fleet-footed footballer. Speaking shortly after Atkinson's death, those who knew him in his early years at Ipswich Town told the BBC that his talent and raw speed were apparent from the moment he arrived.
"It was all about his blistering pace," said Jason Dozzell, a local boy who was already on Ipswich's books when the teenager first came to the club in 1983.
The 14-year-old Atkinson would travel along with other young talent from around the country to train at Portman Road during the school holidays.
This influx was a strange sight for Dozzell, who, like Atkinson, would go on to have a successful career.
"We had loads of people from up north come down in those days - lots from Newcastle," Dozzell said. "Their accents were intriguing; you couldn't understand them.
"Dalian was a bit like that. He had a little bit of a lisp when he talked - it was quite hard to understand."
Dozzell said that back then Atkinson, from Telford in Shropshire, was "very skinny" and would play as a right-winger - with exceptional pace.
"He made all my balls look good. You put it in front of him and he'd reach it," Dozzell said.
Memories of Ipswich's most successful era were quickly fading - they had won the FA Cup in 1978 and the Uefa Cup in 1981 - as the club tried to get used to life without Bobby Robson, who became England manager in 1982.
Atkinson and Dozzell were to be a key part of the club's revitalisation.
"We had a good understanding going after a while," Dozzell said. "I knew where he wanted it and he knew I was going to put it there - he was on his bike as soon as that ball came in to me."
Along with Michael Cole, Dozzell and Atkinson were referred to in a newspaper report as "The Three Degrees" - the world of 1980s football was not renowned for political correctness.
Also speaking in 2016, fellow forward Cole remembered Atkinson as "raw, pacey, and unpredictable - in a good way" by the time they both became apprentices at Portman Road.
"Dalian was young, exuberant, fun to be around and had a raw talent - if and when he applied himself, he had an abundance of ability," Cole said.
After becoming apprentices, the two teenagers were put up with Maurice and Shirley Crawford, who lived a few miles out of Ipswich in the village of Bramford.
Mrs Crawford recalled how she had applied to the club to house a footballer, as it was a way of "earning good money", and ended up taking both Atkinson and Cole.
"I applied to have one footballer and when (the man from the club) came round to assess us, he said 'can you not put up another one?'" Mrs Crawford said.
"He said 'how do you feel about him being black?' I said it didn't bother me.
"He said 'well could you take another one?' There were a lot of people who wouldn't take them on. I said 'it's going to be a bit squashed, but he said 'oh, you could take two single beds in that room'."
Mrs Crawford has mostly fond memories of her lodgers, who were with her for about five years.
"They went through a stage - I think it was Dalian - where I'd go to the cupboard to get a biscuit and they were gone. We had to tighten up on that - 'you don't take, you ask'."
The fact that they had to be available for Boxing Day fixtures meant the pair would be with the Crawfords on Christmas Day.
"One year I had 26 people for Christmas dinner and I told them they had to come down and join in - they went up to their bedroom afterwards but they did join in. They were quite sociable.
"I looked after them how a mum would look after them. It was the first time they'd left home so I'd cook for them, wash for them, iron for them - did everything else for them."
Mrs Crawford's prevailing memory of Atkinson is of his love for the opposite sex.
"Dale, as we called him, liked the girls," she said. "He was on the phone every Friday evening. He must have got a book of girls' names and if he didn't get one girl he went right down the list."
Cole said he would always appreciate the time they spent together in Bramford.
"We were two young black kids, in an area that didn't have many black kids near us.... growing up together, enjoying playing football, wanting to progress.
"I don't think we would have made it through if we weren't there together. We helped each other get through the early stage."
Cole has similar memories to those of his old landlady about his room-mate's extra-curricular activities.
"As a young person, cars and the fairer sex were the way Dalian looked at things off the pitch," he said.
"He loved a fast car.
"One of the first cars he bought was an Alfasud. We went out to Woodford or somewhere and there was a mechanic working on this car, making additions. It became apparent to me it wasn't a normal road car - there were roll bars and it had a souped-up engine.
"We spent time with him going to places like Norwich on a weekend after a match, hanging on to dear life. It was like rally car driving - but he was a really good driver.
"It was like a reflection of how he was on the pitch - it was fast and pacey."
"He was an absolute lunatic driver," agreed Dozzell.
"He was good fun but you couldn't tell him anything to slow down - he'd just give you a look, 'be quiet'. Everything was fast. Everything was an experience when you were hanging around him."
By now, Atkinson was also beginning to have success on as well as off the pitch.
Having lacked power and confidence in the early stages of his career, he returned to Ipswich one summer for pre-season training with a beefed-up appearance.
"He'd been on a weight programme and had bulked up," Cole said. "He'd grown physically. Now he had not only the pace he had before, he now had power.
"There was something about him when he came back - he had intent. He wanted to be on that team-sheet as a first-team player."
Atkinson made his first-team debut for Ipswich in March 1986, as a substitute in a 3-1 away defeat at Newcastle.
By this time Dozzell was already a regular starter.
"Dalian got so much abuse warming up, and in those days a lot of it was racial," he said. "He took so much stick he was thinking 'what's all this about?' But he came on and terrorised them."
As his success on the pitch led to better contracts, Atkinson was able to exert his independence.
Dozzell said his team-mate bought a house in Ipswich - but spent most of his free time out and about.
"He loved socialising, I'll give him that," said Dozzell. "I was always with him, so I can't say anything. We liked travelling as well - we used to go to Norwich, Romford, everywhere.
"There were no mobile phones or anything in those days to get you in trouble."
Atkinson left Ipswich in July 1989 to join top-flight Sheffield Wednesday.
"Ipswich were in the old Second Division and Sheffield Wednesday at the time were a big club," Dozzell said. "I was pleased for him. He felt he had to move on to progress, to a bigger club, and at the time Sheffield Wednesday were.
"I don't think he was a football supporter, someone who went to watch a team or anything. He just wanted to make it really quick at the best club he could."
He would go on to enjoy even greater success at Aston Villa, scoring in the final of the 1994 League Cup as the Birmingham club beat Manchester United - and of course netted that goal against Wimbledon, which was named the best strike of the 1992-93 season.
But his career would peter out in the late 1990s and Atkinson found it hard to adjust to life after football, something Dozzell can relate to.
"The money was decent, but it's not enough for when you come out of the game," he said.
"There are a lot of people in Dalian's position who you don't hear about - they don't talk to people.
"There was no-one to talk to in those days and it was a bit of an embarrassment you going to talk to someone if you thought you had any problems. I heard he was depressed. I've had hard times, coming out of the game, what the hell do you do?"
Dozzell said he was "devastated" about his friend's death.
"He's died on the street that he probably used to play football on as a kid," said Dozzell. "It's a tragic story. I'd heard he hadn't been well prior to this and hadn't got round to ringing him, which I'm disappointed in myself for.
"I'd heard he was quite ill, that he was in hospital. So I was disappointed in myself, and then this happens.
"We'd carry on where we'd left off the last time we saw each other, we didn't have to ring. That's just how we were.
"What's unfolded is tragic. He's the same age as me. It's so sad."
Dalian Atkinson: Career
This article has been updated since it was first published on 21 November 2016.
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Decades ago they witnessed nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific. Now some veterans hope new DNA testing will prove it was responsible for their subsequent ill health, which they say ruined their lives. | By Sarah CorkerBBC News
"It was awe-inspiring, like another sun hanging in the sky. The blast bowled people over. A few men were on the ground screaming."
Bob Fleming was wearing a T-shirt, khaki shorts and flip flops when the bomb went off.
At just 24, he had just witnessed one of the most powerful weapons on earth detonate on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.
It was 1956 and the Cold War threat was growing.
The RAF serviceman was one of around 22,000 British service personnel who witnessed nuclear weapons tests on mainland Australia, the Montebello Islands off Western Australia and Christmas Island in the South Pacific between 1952 and 1958.
With their backs to the bomb, they felt the intense heat from the explosion first.
Then, after the countdown, they were ordered to turn round and look directly at the huge mushroom cloud in front of them.
"We had no protective clothing," said Bob, who's from Downham Market in Norfolk.
"We were guinea pigs. It was so bright I could see the bones in my hands with my eyes closed. It was like an X-ray."
'Genetic curse'
The veterans say the nuclear tests ruined their lives, causing cancers, fertility problems and birth defects passed down the generations.
Now 83, the great-grandfather believes that three generations of his family are living with the "genetic curse" of those explosions. Sixteen out of 21 of his descendants have had birth defects or health problems.
His youngest daughter, Susanne Ward, has thyroid problems and severe breathing difficulties, and her teeth fell out prematurely.
"It just gets worse as the next generation comes along. Our grandchildren have similar problems," Suzanne said.
"My dad blames himself, but it isn't his fault."
The Fleming family now hope new DNA testing could end decades of uncertainty.
Last week, the UK's first Centre for Health Effects of Radiological and Chemical Agents was launched at Brunel University in London.
One of its projects is a three-year genetic study looking for any possible damage to the veterans' DNA caused by the tests.
Blood samples will be taken from 50 veterans who were stationed at nuclear test sites, and compared with a control group of 50 veterans who served elsewhere.
Blood will also be taken from their wives and any children they have together.
Dr Rhona Anderson, who is leading the study, said a major question to answer is whether "there is a genetic legacy of taking part at these nuclear tests".
"If no differences (in the DNA) are seen between test and control groups then this will be reassuring for the nuclear community."
'No valid evidence link'
Fewer than 3,000 nuclear veterans are still alive today.
They cannot volunteer for the study, as that might lead to bias in the results.
Veterans will be selected using military service records and information available about those who were most at risk of exposure to radiation.
The Ministry of Defence says it is grateful to Britain's nuclear test veterans for their service, but maintains there is no valid evidence to link participation in these tests to ill health.
The UK is the only nuclear power to deny special recognition and compensation to its bomb test veterans.
The veterans took their case for compensation to the highest court in the land and lost in 2012.
The Supreme Court Justices said the veterans would face great difficulty proving a link between their illnesses and the tests.
In 2015 the Aged Veterans' Fund was set up by the government using bank industry fines. It will help to fund a series of social and scientific projects.
Doug Hern, who's 81, and his wife Sandie, from Lincolnshire have been campaigning tirelessly for years.
When Doug was 21 he saw five nuclear explosions on Christmas Island and has suffered ill health ever since.
He said is skeleton is "crumbling". He has skin problems and bone spurs.
His daughter died, aged 13, from a cancer so rare it did not have a name. He believes this was a consequence of her inheriting his "corrupted genes".
Sandie Hern is vice-chair of the British Nuclear Test Veterans' Association (BNTVA)
"The veterans have been treated abominably. They've been forgotten. We need this research to see if anything can be done to help their children," she said.
The overall aim of the new centre at Brunel is to work closely with the veteran community to improve their health and well-being in the future.
After years of personal suffering, the Flemings want to have their DNA tested and are waiting to hear if they have been selected.
Six decades on, nuclear families are still living in the aftermath of the bomb tests, and searching for answers.
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The sweeping approach along a slick set of motorway junctions is convincing enough - although there is curiously little traffic. | By Chris BowlbyBBC News
Then, the main terminal building comes into view - its statement entrance with huge expanses of glass and exits from a large railway station below emerging into a piazza in front. To one side stands a smart hotel.
As a structure, it looks impressive enough.
Until you pause, look around you, and absorb the silence. This is Berlin Brandenburg or BER, the new, state-of-the-art international airport built to mark reunified Germany's re-emergence as a global destination.
It is a bold new structure, costing billions, and was supposed to be completed in 2012.
But it has never opened.
BER has become for Germany not a new source of pride but a symbol of engineering catastrophe. It's what top global infrastructure expert Bent Flyvbjerg calls a "national trauma" and an ideal way "to learn how not to do things".
No passengers have ever emerged from the railway station, which is currently running only one "ghost train" a day, to keep the air moving.
No-one has stayed at the smart airport hotel, which has a skeleton staff forlornly dusting rooms and turning on taps to keep the water supply moving.
Enter the grand terminal building itself and the spooky atmosphere intensifies.
Huge luggage carousels are being given their daily rotation to stop them from seizing up.
There are several of them, designed to process constant arrivals.
Round and round they go, smooth - but pointless. They have never processed a single piece of real luggage.
Find out more
What has gone so wrong in a place supposed to be the capital of efficient engineering? Listen to The Berlin Airport Fiasco.
Indicator boards show flights arriving and departing. But they are using data from other airports, elsewhere in Berlin.
Some of the boards tested since the airport was supposed to have opened have now had to be replaced, worn out without ever having shown a flight landing or taking off from here.
The company running the airport promises it will finally open next year, which would make it at least eight years late as well as billions over budget.
So what on Earth has happened in Germany, meant to be one of the world's leaders in efficiency and engineering?
This is the story of how a noble ambition to transcend a troubled past was slowly suffocated by political wrangling, bungling incompetence, and the world's worst tangle of badly installed cabling.
The story has its roots in the long years of Berlin's Cold War isolation. Divided by a concrete wall, marooned behind the Iron Curtain, its links with the wider world were sharply restricted by tensions between the Soviet Union and Western Allies.
For West Berliners, air links to the West, which had kept their part of the city free from Soviet domination during the Berlin Airlift in the late 1940s, were something precious but precarious, highly limited and expensive.
When I lived in West Berlin the 1980s, I came and went by train.
For East Berliners, imprisoned by their Communist government behind the wall, the idea of flying West or around the globe was nothing more than wild fantasy.
Then, US President Ronald Reagan came to West Berlin in 1987. His headline sound bite was to call on then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall".
Much less noticed by the outside world was Reagan's promise, later in the speech, of a new aviation future.
"We look to the day," he said, "when West Berlin can become one of the chief aviation hubs in all Central Europe."
It was a dream all Berliners could share. And after the wall did come down, in 1989, one of the first political priorities was new infrastructure - to bind Berlin together again, celebrate its status as the capital of a reunified country, and make it a new global destination.
And a lot of highly impressive things were built. From a giant hole in the ground near where the wall had stood emerged a towering new central railway station, linking the city and the rest of Germany and beyond in every direction.
When it came to air travel, most politicians agreed the city's existing airports - Tempelhof and Tegel in the west of the city, and Schoenefeld, in what had been the Communist East - urgently needed replacing. So, they set up a company to build an ambitious new airport.
"The supervisory board was full of politicians who had no idea how to supervise the project," says Prof Genia Kostka, of the Free University of Berlin. "They were in charge of key decisions."
When the global financial crisis in 2007-08 made it harder to attract a large specialist contractor to build and fund the airport, the politicians ploughed on, using public money.
Martin Delius, a former Berlin city politician who later headed an extensive inquiry into what went wrong, says those in charge decided "to give 30 to 40 contracts to smaller companies which they thought they could pressurise into giving them lower prices".
"They built a very complex controlling system which didn't work," he says.
Most disruptive of all were decisions to change the size and content of the new airport - while it was being built.
As he shows me around the interior of the new but unused airport, Michael Dorn from the company running it, FBB, says the capacity inside the terminal building was doubled - after construction began.
One simple problem, bizarrely enough, was the airport architect, Meinhard von Gerkan's dislike of shopping.
Joel Dullroy, a Berlin-based journalist with Radio Spaetkauf, who produced a podcast telling this airport's story, says Mr Gerkan wrote disdainfully about passengers "dragging around unwanted bottles of whisky like a beggar" and wanted to have as few airport shops as possible.
But when the airport company realised this - very late in the day - it insisted on adding whole new floors of shopping into the design, as the company now makes up to 50% of its revenue from retail.
Extra capacity for things such as sprinklers and smoke extraction had to be crammed in, no-one knew any more what exactly had been installed where. It was, says Prof Genia Kostka, of Berlin's Hertie School of Governance, "like fixing an aeroplane while it's flying".
The constructors were also racing to keep up with a low-cost revolution in the airline industry. At first, Dullroy says, "they didn't have any gates intended for low-cost flights", only the much more expensive "jet bridges".
However, the politicians supervising the airport - especially Berlin's then-mayor, the extrovert Klaus Wowereit - hated the idea of scaling things down. They insisted new departure gates were added to accommodate giant Airbus A380 aircraft, whose production has ended before the airport can open.
But as low-cost carriers became increasingly influential, the airport had to add new sections to accommodate them.
All these changes added to chaotic supervision meant the airport builders simply lost control of what was being done, especially the hugely complicated technical infrastructure.
After a first postponement, the airport was set for a grand opening in 2012. Many involved in the construction had begun to warn of fundamental problems. But the politicians in charge, fixated on their dreams of a glamorous party announcing Berlin's new connection to the world, ignored the bad news.
After invitations to an opening ceremony with Chancellor Angela Merkel in attendance had been sent out, the local official responsible for certifying the building's fire safety called a halt. He had discovered that a supposedly sophisticated system of detectors and automated alarmed fire doors was not functioning.
Those running the building had instead been working with makeshift systems, which included temporary employees sitting by doors to raise the alarm with mobile phones.
Mayor Wowereit and colleagues from local, regional and federal government had to announce, in a humiliating press conference, the grand opening could not take place.
Suddenly, the astonishing scale of the new airport's problems emerged.
New construction boss Hartmut Mehdorn made a list of all the faults and failures, Mr Delius tells me.
"Small ones like the wrong light bulbs to big ones like all the cables are wrong," he says.
The final total was 550,000 - more than a half a million problems to fix.
What you might call chaotic cabling has been the curse of this project - and it's still dangling over the whole enterprise.
They have had to put in "many hundreds of kilometres of new cables", Mr Dorn says, to replace what was originally installed.
And costs have gone up all the time, with millions spent each month maintaining the building.
There were some who believed - as the scale of the problems emerged - that it would be best to abandon the new airport altogether and start again from scratch.
Mr Delius was one. But he has changed his mind. "There's a point of no return," he says. "It's public money. If you spend it, you need to get something out of it."
So, the airport of no arrivals has, in financial terms, passed the point of no return.
The management company now says the overall cost of the project will be 6bn euros (£5.3bn) - if it opens as planned next year - up from an original projection of about 2bn euros.
The final sum will be paid mostly by German taxpayers, who have come to view the whole saga with emotions ranging from rage to boredom to very black humour
And some have even turned this black humour into a business opportunity. Philipp Messinger and Bastian Ignaszewski have invented a board game based on the Berlin airport disaster. The main object of the game is to waste as much public money as possible.
I pick up a card saying some of the escalators from the train station were built too short, needing very expensive additions. "Everything on these cards," Mr Messinger says, "has really happened."
Intense attempts are now being made, Mr Dorn says, to ensure all the official permissions are obtained before the planned opening, in October 2020.
And he is hoping if it does finally open, its traumatic history will swiftly fade from memory.
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Passover, one of the most important occasions in the Jewish calendar, begins on Friday. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. And it's also a very busy time at New York's Jewish delis. | By Reggie NadelsonNew York
I am on the phone to Russ & Daughters - trying to order food for a party - and a quiet, familiar voice says: "Hello, Reggie, this is Sherpa Lox. How can I help?"
"Oh, good," I think. Sherpa knows his way around the lox and other delicacies I am hoping to buy at Russ, New York's great, appetising store.
But maybe I had better explain. Sherpas in New York? Lox? Appetising stores?
Joel Russ, a Jewish immigrant from central Europe, started selling smoked and pickled fish on Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1914.
Subsequently, his daughters took over. Then his grandson Mark Federman went to law school.
But Mark heard the call of the lox, it is said, and returned to run the store until - in the last half-decade or so - Mark's daughter Nikki and her first cousin Josh have taken over the business. Lox is in the blood.
In New York, an "appetising store" usually refers to a place that sells those fishy delicacies sometimes defined as "stuff that goes with bagels".
Head into Russ on East Houston Street, where the pink and green neon sign and a couple of neon fish - salmon, I think - wink over the door.
On one side are glass-fronted counters that contain golden-skinned, sweet-fleshed, smoked whitefish, smoked mackerel, smoked sable, smoked sturgeon.
There is home-made cream cheese and, behind the counter, the best bagels in town, also bialys and the onion rolls known as pletzel.
In the back, there is the caviar, pickled herring, herring in cream sauce, herring salad.
Before Jewish holidays, items like gefilte fish, matzo-ball soup and latkes (potato pancakes) are available to crowds who jam the shop.
"Take a ticket, please."
But at the very heart of the place is the lox and the nova.
In New York, almost everyone refers to smoked salmon as lox. Lox in fact is the cheaper, saltier, brined belly salmon.
Its more aristocratic cousin, cold-smoked salmon, often comes from Nova Scotia but New Yorkers use the term nova, to refer to all smoked salmon, except lox. Got it?
At Russ, displayed in all their glory, is smoked salmon from Ireland, Scotland and Norway.
There is even pastrami salmon, salmon spiced with pastrami flavouring.
Everest to Manhattan
And behind the counter are the slicers, princes of the church of lox. Among them is Sherpa.
"How much would you like?" he asks, wielding the slicing-knife as an artist wields his brush, turning smoked salmon into pale pink, paper-thin slices of paradise.
"It takes at least 10 years to become a great slicer," he adds.
It is a long way from the eastern Himalayas to the peaks of fine slicing. And Sherpa did once climb to within six hours of Everest's peak.
"I looked around and thought better of it," he says, "and I headed back down," adds the handsome, soft-spoken man whose people gained fame portering climbers up Everest.
The most famous among them, of course, was Sherpa Tenzing Norgay who went up with Sir Edmund Hillary.
Sherpa Lox's full name is Sherpa Chhapte Panasha, and he was born in Patle, a village with a population of 120 in eastern Nepal.
"At school, there were no chairs and I got tired of sitting on the bare floor listening to teachers for eight to 10 hours a day," says Sherpa.
Restless and ambitious, he made his way to Zarzi where he worked with trekkers, made friends with foreigners, got himself into an English-language school in Kathmandu - his English is pretty perfect now - and then to the USA.
"I've been everywhere in America and did everything, including crushing grapes in the Napa Valley," says Sherpa. "Eventually I made my way to New York."
A job at an uptown appetising store taught Sherpa to slice salmon. Then someone mentioned Russ & Daughters.
"What is Russ?" he thought and - this being before ubiquitous use of the internet - he wandered the streets until he found it and then asked for a job until he got one.
A store manager now, Sherpa has been at Russ for a decade, where he works alongside Italians, Dominicans, Mexicans and Israelis.
Sherpa lives in Jackson Heights in Queens where, he says, "I feel completely at home."
There are now about 7,000 Nepalese in New York and approximately 2,000 Sherpas.
In 1907, when Joel Russ arrived at Ellis Island, it was a long journey, but he came, like millions of others, in search of refuge and maybe a little slice of paradise.
When, long ago, the Sherpa tribe migrated from Tibet to Nepal, it is said they journeyed, first, in search of a Shangri-la.
You might think of Russ & Daughters as a primarily Jewish shop, but this is New York - everyone comes here.
"Do you like the food at Russ?" I ask. Sherpa grins. "Oh, yes, I eat it all. I always say to customers that I am from KathmanJew."
How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent:
BBC Radio 4: A 30-minute programme on Saturdays, 11:30 BST.
Second 30-minute programme on Thursdays, 11:00 BST (some weeks only).
Listen online or download the podcast
BBC World Service:
Hear daily 10-minute editions Monday to Friday, repeated through the day, also available to listen online.
Read more or explore the archive at the programme website.
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"My best friend had a big heart," Diamond Davis says. | By Sarah BaumNewsbeat reporter
When the 19-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, lost the job she had in school, her friend James Scurlock was there for her.
James's family let her move in with them, meaning she avoided becoming homeless.
"When his family took me in, I knew that he was going to be more than just a friend to me," Diamond tells Radio 1 Newsbeat. "I knew he would be like a brother."
Diamond, and James, who was 22, were neighbours.
They met by the swimming pool of their apartment complex in 2018.
James would walk her to her job and help her with homework. She still has the sketches he made in the margins of her school books.
Diamond says James, who was nicknamed "Juju", was silly and adored by his little brothers and sisters.
He had a job as a construction worker, but stopped working to focus on looking after his seven-month old daughter. He was proud to be a father, Diamond says.
It was thinking of his baby daughter's future that made James more politically active, according to news reports.
He started attending the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd, who was killed in Minneapolis after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
But after one protest on May 30, James didn't come home.
Jacob Gardner, a white bar owner, shot and killed him in an incident that was caught on video and went viral on Twitter.
Mr Gardner had been standing outside his bar to guard it and the video shows James clinging to Mr Gardner's back as he fired two shots into the air, then one shot behind his back, which hit James in the collarbone. James died from his injuries.
The county attorney said he wouldn't press charges as he had concluded the bar owner was acting in self-defence.
But some eyewitnesses claim Mr Gardner and his father were threatening protesters and using racial slurs, and James was trying to protect others.
A public backlash led the county attorney to call in a grand jury - a group of citizens who decide if charges should be brought - to investigate the case. They will consider if Mr Gardner should face charges that could include manslaughter and carrying a weapon when his permit had expired.
'We can make a change'
Omaha is Nebraska's largest city. It's mainly white - 77% in the last census.
Nebraskan Governor Pete Ricketts came under fire for addressing black community leaders there as "you people" during a meeting about James' death, causing some to walk out in protest.
Diamond wasn't there the night her friend died. She hadn't been to the protests at all before that.
She says she knew police violence was a problem but she didn't think of herself as politically engaged.
That changed when James was killed. "I loved James like a brother," she says. "Losing him was a different kind of pain I never felt before."
So Diamond broke Covid-19 quarantine guidelines to protest with her friends. "The government is against its own people," she says. "But if the people stick together, then we can make a change in the government."
"I'm still out here protesting," she tells Newsbeat. "My best friend has not got his justice yet."
James' death is one of at least 19 in the US connected to the protests. Most were unarmed black men like him. Some died from gunshot wounds; one died when a counter-protester drove a vehicle through a crowd.
Diamond wants other young people to support Black Lives Matter and says it's important the protests are peaceful.
"I believe that regardless of our situation, we shouldn't be ruining our own home," she says. "I want people to be safe doing it the right way: with non-violence."
Diamond spoke to Newsbeat as she prepared for a party with James's family, to commemorate him - a "Juju world" party with a poolside barbeque and a video montage. They hope it will be a tradition for years to come.
Diamond hopes that charges will be brought in his case: "I want justice for all."
James had plans for his future. He was thinking of becoming a tattoo artist like his brother, or studying in college to be a role model for his daughter.
In the days after his death, his name trended on Twitter. Murals have been put up to honour him.
"He used to tell me that when he died, he was going to die a legend," Diamond says of her friend, who was also an aspiring rapper.
He wanted to be famous, and a role model for his daughter. "Now my best friend is a legend," Diamond says.
"His name will live on."
Follow Newsbeat on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.
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Elections for the European Parliament will be held on 23 May 2019. Voters will choose 73 MEPs in 12 multi-member regional constituencies. Each region has a different number of MEPs based on its population.
| 4 MEPs will be elected to represent Wales. MEPs are elected by proportional representation, in order as listed by their party. The number of MEPs each party gets is calculated using a formula called d'Hondt, except in Northern Ireland, where the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system is used.
Back to introduction
Candidates shown in party list order
Change UK
Jon Owen Jones
June Davies
Matthew Paul
Sally Stephenson
Conservative
Dan Boucher
Craig Lawton
Fay Jones
Tomos Davies
Green
Anthony Slaughter
Ian Chandler
Ceri Davies
Duncan Rees
Labour
Jackie Jones
Matthew Dorrance
Mary Wimbury
Mark Whitcutt
Liberal Democrats
Sam Bennett
Donna Lalek
Alistair Cameron
Andrew Parkhurst
Plaid Cymru
Jill Evans
Carmen Smith
Patrick McGuinness
Ioan Bellin
The Brexit Party
Nathan Gill
James Wells
Gethin James
Julie Price
UKIP
Kris Hicks
Keith Edwards
Tom Harrison
Robert McNeil-Wilson
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Canal boat owners with "continuous cruiser" licences must keep moving to a new place every 14 days. Many people who live on their boats are complaining that the way the rule is being interpreted - having to travel in one direction - means their children can't go to school. | By Andrew BomfordBroadcasting House, BBC Radio 4
It's a scene of very normal domesticity. Mum is preparing the evening meal in the kitchen. Dad is sitting with his seven-year-old son, reading a book of Greek myths together. The two-year-old daughter is playing with a toy, and Pan, the dog, is lying snoozing on the floor.
But for mum Jassy Easby and dad Ted Powles, and children Jem and Alba, home is not bricks and mortar. Home is a 70ft canal boat called Pathfinder and built in 1893.
"We didn't choose to live on boats because it's an easy lifestyle. We chose to live on boats because we love the canal," says Powles.
The family is currently moored at Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, on the Kennet and Avon Canal. It's a picturesque town they know well, and it's where Jem goes to school and Alba to nursery.
And that's the problem.
Like 5,000 of the 32,000 canal boats (more than during the Industrial Revolution) their boat is licensed as a "continuous cruiser", without a home mooring - which can be very hard to come by.
Find out more
You can listen to Andrew Bomford's report on Broadcasting House, BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 17 April at 09:00 or catch up afterwards on the iPlayer.
Under the British Waterways Act 1995 such boats must be used - in the words of the legislation - "bone fide for navigation… without remaining continuously in any one place for more than 14 days or such longer period as is reasonable in the circumstances".
Interpretation of this legal clause is controversial. The Canal and River Trust (CRT), which took over control of the 2,000-mile English and Welsh canal network in 2012 from the old British Waterways, takes it to mean that boaters must be on a continuous journey, mostly in one direction, from one place to another. According to CRT they must travel at least 15-20 miles a year, and usually much further.
Many boaters are falling foul of this ruling when, instead, they shuttle backwards and forwards over one relatively short stretch of the same canal, because of the need to get to a job or school.
For some years the family has been navigating along a 15-mile stretch of the Kennet and Avon Canal between Semington in Wiltshire and Bath. Powles works in Bath and the children are at school and nursery in Bradford on Avon.
"We have various ways of getting to school," explains Easby, "Sometimes we walk, and sometimes we cycle."
"Sometimes I cycle three miles," interjects Jem.
"The furthest cycle Jem can do is about three-and-a-half miles, but it's a stretch," she adds, "You can see he's puffed out at the end of it."
The result of their limited travelling is that over the last year they've been refused a new annual boat licence by CRT, and instead given a restricted licence lasting six months. They are now on their second six-month licence, which effectively serves as a warning that their cruising pattern is not acceptable. Without a marked improvement, they risk losing their licence altogether.
They are not alone. CRT has so far issued 652 restricted licences to boaters it believes are not operating within the spirit of the legislation.
"I've been on this canal for 10 years," says Powles, "I've never felt as unwelcome as this before, as un-listened to, as ill-informed by the people running the canal as to what they actually want."
Is he worried they will lose their licence altogether?
"Of course - to have a grey area around what may or may not have your home taken from you is worrying," he says.
Easby is more forthright. "It feels like anything we do will not be good enough and that they just want us gone. I feel like they are trying to threaten people because they don't want us here, and they will keep threatening people until they move on.
"The first people to go will be the families, and if you take the families off this canal you are ripping the heart out of this community. I think it's very sad."
The Canal and Rivers Trust is currently carrying out enforcement proceedings against 45 boat owners who have been refused further licences because of repeated failures to travel sufficiently. According to CRT, it is currently instructing solicitors to seek court orders to seize the boats in 15 cases. Two canal boats have already been removed from the water and destroyed.
CRT believes the education of children or the need to travel to work are not good enough reasons to allow a reduction in cruising distances.
Published CRT guidance to boaters specifically states: "Unacceptable reasons for staying longer than 14 days in a neighbourhood or locality are a need to stay within commuting distance of a place of work or of study (eg a school or college)."
Info on costs
Easby says as parents they have a duty to give their children the best education they can. "We love living on the boat - that's the frustrating thing because we love taking it out and we love the open fields. But we have our commitments and Jem's education has to come first."
According to CRT, lots of people do manage to raise children on canal boats and successfully get them to school, but it just takes more organisation and planning than normal.
Spokesman Matthew Symonds says they can't make exceptions for one group of barge dwellers.
"We try and support boaters where we can, and we try and listen to individual circumstances," he says, "And we make lots of reasonable adjustments - for example if people are unwell.
"But when you're looking at something like education that could go on for 15 years that a child might be in school, then it wouldn't be reasonable to bend the rules for one group. We have to apply them to everybody and be fair."
The canal network is more popular than ever. CRT calls it a "golden age" for canals. In the last 10 years the numbers of licensed boats have increased from 25,745 to 32,733. On some canals, particularly in cities like London, this has caused great congestion, and prompted the organisation to police the waterways much more proactively than before.
Enforcement officers actively log the position of boats, and those that are not cruising "in good faith" are given advice and warnings. Only after repeated warnings, does CRT begin the enforcement process which could ultimately result in a canal boat being seized and removed from the canal network.
In most parts of the country there are severe shortages of permanent moorings. Apart from places at private marinas, many boaters rent moorings from CRT. But few are available. Currently there are only seven residential moorings available from CRT in the whole of England and Wales.
In London and parts of the south east of England, the housing crisis has prompted some people to look to canal boats as a cheap housing solution because apart from the annual licence, boaters pay nothing for mooring temporarily in one place. CRT, though, is keen to disabuse people of this idea, saying that canal boats are very much a lifestyle choice and can be difficult to operate successfully at the same time as holding down a full-time job.
Many boaters have been objecting to the current enforcement process, and claim it is in part an attempt to cleanse the waterways of a counter-culture of canal boat dwellers in favour of more use of the canals by visitors and holiday-makers.
Members of the National Bargee Travellers Association are planning a protest in London against CRT. And in the absence of new waterways, the jostle for space will continue.
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At the end of the Chinese Communist Party's 19th Congress, the new Politburo Standing Committee was revealed: seven middle aged men in dark suits, without a woman to be seen. There has never been a female member of the Standing Committee. | Of the 2,280 delegates at that Congress, fewer than a quarter were women.
That's got some people asking whether the party should take gender equality more seriously. The New York Times wrote of women being "shut out" - but does the Chinese Communist Party have a woman problem?
Of the 89.4 million members of the Chinese Communist Party, just under 23 million are women - that's 26%.
And women make up 24% of China's National Congress - the sprawling national parliament. You don't have to be a Communist Party member to sit on that.
Women are less represented the higher up the political tree you climb.
After the last Congress in 2012, only 33 women sat on the Central Committee which elects the powerful Politburo - that's 9%.
Only two of the 25 members of that Politburo were women - 8%.
It's evidently difficult for Chinese women to break through the political glass ceiling. That's despite the government's stated commitment to gender equality, and despite the fact that more women than men are entering university in China.
What's holding them back?
Women usually join the party at university or when they join the workforce as a way of advancing their careers.
However, promotion beyond county and township level is especially difficult.
"The long-standing perception that women's place belongs at home and in the kitchen mean they are not meant to be ambitious," explains Professor Lynette H. Ong, Professor of Political Science at University of Toronto.
"Their societal role is to be caregivers to the husbands, children and grandchildren.
"Even though Mao once famously said, 'Women hold up half the sky', women still have a long way to go in their fights for equal representation."
Top-level
Women are also hindered because there is little chance of receiving a national appointment without first holding a provincial government or party position - it takes time to climb that ladder.
A number of women reach mid-level executive positions. However, comparatively few reach a top-level leadership position.
"One needs to build good guanxi (connection) with the people who have the power to appoint and they are predominantly men," explains Dr Ling Li, Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
A lower national retirement age for women also hinders the opportunity for promotion. China's national retirement age is currently 60 years old for men, 55 for female civil servants and state enterprise employees, and 50 for all other female workers.
Some feel the government should be more proactive.
"There is inadequate state intervention to implement policies to alleviate some of the barriers to women's progression in politics. Quota requirements have had the opposite effect because of the way they have been interpreted," explains Prof Jude Howell, Director for the Centre for Civil Society at the London School of Economics.
But is the situation in China unusual? Are Chinese women any worse off than women elsewhere in the world?
Not really.
Women out of power
Comparing the work women do in China's National Congress to the work of British MPs or US Congresswomen is like comparing apples with pears.
But one thing is clear - women make up small percentages of political decision-making bodies around the world, not only in China.
They make up only 32% of MPs in the UK's House of Commons - and that's a record high.
They account for only 11% of members of India's Lok Sabha and 9% of Japan's House of Representatives.
There are some countries with a much better record - women sit in 61% of the seats in Rwanda's Chamber of Deputies, and in communist Cuba, make up 49% of the Asamblea Nacional.
So much for women at the top. How about the grass roots?
Remember, 26% of Communist Party members are women.
But that's unremarkable when you look at ruling parties around the world.
Vietnam and Cuba are also one-party states. In the last available figures for both countries, fewer than 33% of party members are women.
That picture is similar in some multi-party democracies.
Women make up 26% of Angela Merkel's CDU party in Germany, and around 30% of Theresa May's Conservatives in the UK.
Meanwhile, a survey carried out by the University of Sao Carlos suggests that 33% of all party members in the Brazilian state of Sao Paolo are female.
So while women are under-represented in Chinese politics, the issue is not China's alone.
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With less than a week until Christmas many of us will be panic-buying presents in time for the big day. Here are some tips on how to take the stress - and strain on your bank balance - out of last-minute Christmas shopping. | By Jennifer MeierhansBBC News Online
Find more consumer stories and ideas on our Pinterest board
Christmas Eve haul
Katie Burton, from Telford, runs her own business, Maisie Moo gifts, and the run-up to Christmas is the busiest time of year for her.
"Often I can be working 16 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, so finding time for anything other than eating and sleeping is very hard," she said.
"Every year I tell myself I'll finish my Christmas shopping by mid-November ahead of the rush but inevitably things are left to the last minute.
"With a week to go I always manage it. It just takes some planning.
"Keep a list in a notepad or on your phone so every time you think of an idea for someone you can jot it down.
"I get some online shopping done whenever I get a moment, like on a lunch break - click and collect is very handy.
"By Christmas Eve I've normally got a list of well thought out gifts I need to purchase.
"I often find shops have already started discounting things and my Christmas shopping trip is a bit of a smash-and-grab, racing round to get everything."
Crafty solutions
Natalie Oakley, from Sedgley in the West Midlands, manages to stay away from the shops by making gifts at home. She shares her tips on her blog Lady Like Momma.
"There's nothing more warming to the soul than knowing someone will be receiving a gift that you have poured your heart, soul and time into," said Ms Oakley.
"Making your own gifts is a great way to save money as you can usually recreate gifts seen in stores at a much lesser cost.
"You can also relax knowing your gift is unique and your friends and family will not receive one quite like it.
"Crafting is also a great way to unwind and 'take a moment' during this hectic time of year.
"So take an hour, put on some Christmas tunes and get your glitter and glue gun ready and start crafting your way to gorgeous Christmas gifts."
Bargain hunt
Ashleigh Swan, from Walkergate, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was made redundant three years ago. The mother of three set up www.ashleighmoneysaver.co.uk to help other families save money.
Her Christmas shopping technique could help avoid panic-buying next year.
"I try not pay full price for gifts, ever. One way to do this is to start buying gifts in the January sales, then keep this going throughout the year during sale events," she said.
"Buying presents throughout the year is easier to do for adults rather than children.
"This is because children's toys go in and out of style, so you don't know what children will want later in the year.
"A way to get around this is to buy toys that will always be popular. Board games, action figures and dolls are good ideas.
"Some of the best bargains I have ever had include £90 worth of clothes from a high street store for £14.
"I bought 50 boxes of well known chocolates for 2p each - they were perfect for gifts throughout the year, I obviously kept a box or two for myself too!
"I got 75% off many gift sets including Soap & Glory, Jack Wills, Nivea, No7, Estee Lauder and many more.
"I bought these in January sales and put them away for the following Christmas. It saved me tons of money and meant I didn't have to go Christmas shopping later in the year."
This story was inspired by questions sent in by readers of Christmas Markets: Will Brexit have any effect?
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After spending more than a year-and-a-half in a Nigerian jail without trial on treason charges, Nnamdi Kanu is now free on bail. The BBC's Stephanie Hegarty explains who Nwannekaenyi "Nnamdi" Kanu is and why he attracts so much controversy | Nnamdi Kanu founded the Indigenous People Of Biafra (Ipob) in 2014.
The movement wants a group of states in south-east Nigeria, made up mainly of people from the Igbo ethnic group, to break away and form the independent nation of Biafra.
The plan is not new. In 1967 Igbo leaders declared a Biafran state, but after a brutal civil war, which led to the deaths of up to a million people, the secessionist rebellion was defeated.
But the idea of separatism has bubbled away since then and Mr Kanu is the latest in a line of Biafran activists taking up the cause.
He was a relatively obscure figure until 2009 when he started Radio Biafra, a station that called for an independent state for the Igbo people and broadcast to Nigeria from London.
Though he grew up in Nigeria's south-east and went to the University of Nsukka, Mr Kanu moved to the UK before graduating.
Soon after setting up Ipob, he spoke to gatherings of the large Igbo diaspora, calling for Biafran independence. In some of his comments, he urged Biafrans to take up arms against the Nigerian state.
"We need guns and we need bullets," he said in one such address.
And that is what brought him to the attention of Nigeria's security services.
'Frivolous'
However Ipob spokeswoman Amarachi Chimeremeze told the BBC this was not a literal call to arms: "That was a metaphor, to tell the people we are going to fight for this."
If his trial, currently due to begin in July, does actually get underway, that is the question the judge will have to rule on.
In October 2015, soon after arriving in Nigeria for a visit, he was arrested in his Lagos hotel.
He was charged with "criminal conspiracy, intimidation and membership of an illegal organisation" - charges that could amount to treason.
His lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, told the BBC that the charges were "frivolous".
"They were concocted to ensure his detention in prison. These are smoke-screen charges that will never see the light of day."
Biafra at a glance:
Since his arrest, groups of Ipob supporters have gathered in protest around Nigeria and the movement has gained momentum.
They believe that the British vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump's election in the US are evidence of growing international support for the "right to self-determination" which they espouse.
Some have said they are now seeking "Biafrexit".
Organised pro-Biafran protests have almost always been broken up by police, with Ipob saying their followers were injured or even killed, something the authorities vehemently deny.
An Amnesty International report also claimed that at least 150 people were killed by Nigerian security forces in the course of pro-Biafra protests between August 2015 and August 2016.
The violence has led to increased publicity and Cheta Nwanze, a political analyst who has done extensive research on the pro-Biafra movement, says Mr Kanu's "arrest was a mistake because it played into his hands".
"When the 2015 election happened, there was a slowdown in the popularity of his radio station and that's when he decided to come to Nigeria to get arrested."
Mr Nwanze believes Mr Kanu is an opportunist and points to a video of him speaking at an anti-Boko Haram rally in London just months before he set up Ipob, where he spoke about the need to protect Nigeria from breaking apart.
But the Ipob spokeswoman disputes this. She says Mr Kanu simply went to Nigeria to show his commitment to the struggle.
"He came to prove to them that he meant everything that he said. The Nigerian administration were acting as if according to a script and arrested him," Ms Chimeremeze told the BBC.
'Lost tribe of Israel'
Putting his separatist ambitions aside, human rights groups and some senior politicians have been calling for Mr Kanu's release, arguing that his many months of detention without trial was unlawful.
As is common with the Nigerian legal system, the case has been plagued by delays. After a year-and-a-half, no significant progress has been made.
The government ignored several court orders calling for Mr Kanu's bail before bowing to a court order last week, and granting it "on medical grounds".
But the bail conditions are harsh: The Ipob leader is banned from public speaking, granting interviews or being in a group of more than 10 people.
As a condition of that bail Mr Kanu had to bring a prominent Igbo leader, a wealthy resident of Abuja and a senior Nigerian Jewish leader to provide 100m naira ($260,000; £200,000) each as surety to the court.
The Ipob leader says he is an Igbo Jew, part of a group who believe they are descendants of the lost tribe of Israel who settled in West Africa.
It is hard to judge the real strength of a movement like Ipob and its leader.
While the misery of the Biafran war put an end to the separatist ambitions of many Biafrans, a lot of Igbo people still feel that they are not fairly treated in Nigeria.
And some argue that President Muhammadu Buhari is doing little to help that. After all, he was a soldier in the army that defeated the separatists in 1970.
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, on the other hand, was recently celebrated for opening a conversation on what happened during the Biafran war.
What happens to Mr Kanu and Ipob next is not clear.
The movement may go the way of Massob (Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra), an earlier separatist movement. Massob lost some of its influence after its leader was jailed in 2005 and released two years later.
This year marks 50 years since the Biafran war began.
What the interest in Mr Kanu and his movement shows more than anything else is Nigeria's 50-year failure to put the idea of Igbo separatism to rest.
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Police have captured the remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings after a manhunt. Here is how events unfolded in the tense search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who remained at large for more than a day. | Thursday 18 April
17:10 local time (21:10 GMT) Police release CCTV images of two suspects they want to question following Monday's bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon which killed three people. "Suspect no. 1" - wearing a dark baseball cap - is later identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26. "Suspect no. 2" - wearing a white baseball cap - is later identified as his younger brother Dzhokhar, 19.
After 22:30 A major police operation gets under way at Watertown near Boston after a police officer is fatally shot at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
It later emerges the brothers hijacked a car and held its owner for half an hour before releasing him at a petrol station. In a car chase with police, the suspects throw explosives and exchange gunfire.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev is hit during the shootout, taken into custody and later pronounced dead. Dzhokhar escapes on foot.
Friday 19 April
Before 01:00 FBI agents descend on Watertown in a huge manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
03:00 Residents are told to stay indoors as police search house-to-house.
05:30 Public transport systems are suspended.
06:00 Heavily armed state police begin multiple sweeps of streets in Watertown.
08:00 Stay-indoors order extended to entire city of Boston. Search continues throughout the day.
18:00 Stay-indoors order lifted and public transport reopens.
19:00 Gunfire breaks out in Watertown and police converge on house on Franklin Street. It later emerges that the resident exited his home after the lockdown was lifted and noticed bloodstains near his boat. He lifted the tarp covering the boat and found the suspect in the stern.
A crowd near the scene cheer as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is led away by police.
20:45 Police announce the capture of the suspect and he is being treated at a Massachusetts hospital for gunshot wounds.
22:00 President Barack Obama praises the law-enforcement teams for their work. He adds that many questions remain outstanding about the suspects, including whether they had help from others, and urges the public not to rush to judgement about the suspects' motivations.
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Travellers to Wales from Hungary will have to self-isolate for 14 days on arrival from Saturday, but Sweden is to be removed from the quarantine list. | Hungary and the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean join countries like France, Spain and Portugal on Wales' quarantine list.
The new rules will come into force at 04:00 BST on Saturday and will also apply to those returning to England.
Ten Greek islands, Austria and Belgium are also on Wales' quarantine list.
A similar announcement was made by the UK government for England, which also decided to remove mainland Portugal, French Polynesia from its quarantine list.
The countries had already been added to Wales' quarantine list.
Health Minister Vaughan Gething said he made the decision to make the changes following a review of the latest assessments by the Joint Biosecurity Centre.
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We weren't allowed to film it, so I can't show it to you, but a quick off-camera demonstration of Apple's new HomePad speaker confirmed what the company promised on stage: it sounds terrific. | Dave LeeNorth America technology reporter
The company trotted out two "competing" devices, a Sonos Play 3 speaker ($299) and an Amazon Echo ($180), to receive something of an audio beating at the hands of the HomePod ($349). But this should be no means be considered an independent test. Apple controlled all aspects of it, including the settings on the competing devices.
Even so, Apple made a point of touting the device's spacial awareness.
If you put it in the corner of the room, a spokeswoman said, it would quickly recalibrate itself in order to fill the room with sound. Put one in the middle of the room and it'll play sound out in all directions. But stick it in the corner and it will aim its output away from the wall. Pair two of the devices together, and they'll act as stereo speakers.
In the highly-controlled environment, it delivered as promised . Tougher will be how it deals with homes full of objects that make the task harder.
But while Apple's device can claim, in this test at least, to sound the best - that may not be enough to make the product a success.
Homepod hobble
Siri is built in to the device, and though an integration with Apple Music you can ask it requests such as "play Sia". Annoyingly, and one thing that will be frustrating to many, that integration will I'm told only work with Apple Music.
If Spotify is your preferred music service for example, you can't use voice commands. Instead you'll need to resort to treating the HomePod like a bluetooth speaker.
What may hobble Apple's HomePod won't be the noise it makes, but its less impressive listening skills. Siri is in third place behind Google Home and Amazon's Alexa when it come to offering intuitive, natural digital assistant.
But Siri will only improve, and Apple's decision to sell this as a music device makes perfect sense. If I think about my own habits with Alexa and Google Home - and I've been trying them both for months now - I'd say a good 90% of use is for music. The assistant side of things just isn't useful enough at the moment.
So should Amazon and Google be worried by Apple's new gadget? Not yet. There's more than enough room for all of them, and besides, the real casualty in this race will be the likes of Sonos and Bose. Now simply sounding great is no longer enough.
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Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC
You can reach Dave securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +1 (628) 400-7370
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Over the weekend, there was some scary news for the world's biggest social network. Facebook, the story went, was "dead and buried", teenagers were turning away "in their droves", put off by their parents' presence on the network. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
It was "the start of what looks likely to be a sustained decline". The headlines appeared first in the UK, then spread rapidly around the world. But I was sceptical.
I've seen plenty such stories over the years - I wrote my own first piece asking whether Facebook was in decline around Christmas 2007 - and each time the social network has just kept on growing.
But this story emerged not from some dodgy survey promoted by a marketing company or even from a journalist whipping something up in the quiet days between Christmas and New Year. It came from "comprehensive European research", something called the Global Social Media Impact Study.
This EU-funded project, headed by Professor Daniel Miller from University College London, looks like a serious piece of work. Its website tells us that its aim is to study how social media are changing our lives and involves "eight highly trained ethnographic researchers based at UCL... each spending 15 months during 2013-4, in small towns in Brazil, China (2), India, Italy, Trinidad, Turkey and the UK".
There is some interesting material on the project's blog - the researchers have found that 40% of Italians have never changed their Facebook privacy settings - but nothing immediately apparent about the social network's demise among young people.
So, was this a case of journalists taking an academic research paper and overhyping it? No - the man who sold, perhaps oversold, the story turns out to be Professor Miller, leader of the GSMI study. All of the quotes in the opening paragraph of this blogpost came from a piece he wrote on a website called The Conversation, whose catchline is "academic rigour, journalistic flair."
The piece makes it clear that he has drawn his conclusions not from the study as a whole but from its work in the UK. "What we've learned from working with 16-18 year olds in the UK is that Facebook is not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried." They have gone off to cooler places like Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp, he tells us, because they are embarrassed to hang out on a network now frequented by their parents.
What the piece does not make clear is how this research has been conducted, how many teenagers were involved, where they were and how they were selected. Professor Miller is hard to contact right now - his Twitter account (@dannyanth) tells us he's "at work/rest in remote site in Caribbean with intermittent/poor internet access. Back end January."
But he has used Twitter to answer some questions about his research. He says it involves school kids in villages north of London from three schools with a population of more than 2,000, and "the data is ethnographic/qualitative but I strongly encourage people to interview schoolkids to find confirmation," he said.
Now it is obviously true that rival networks and apps are increasingly popular amongst teenagers, and it may also be the case that some of them are leaving Facebook for good.
But do interviews with some 16 to 18 year olds in one small area really tell us that young people are leaving Facebook "in their droves" and herald a "sustained decline"?
That seems quite a stretch - the plural of anecdote is not data, as the man said. And there is plenty of data out there about Facebook - notably from the company itself which now has to update investors regularly about its users. The company's chief financial officer David Ebersman caused a tremor in the share price in October when he indicated that there had been a slight fall in daily activity on Facebook among teenagers.
The shares quickly recovered and have now scaled new heights - but surely when trading begins in New York on Monday afternoon traders will rush to sell in response to the "dead and buried" story?
Or perhaps they will decide that Professor Miller's theories show more journalistic flair than academic rigour.
UPDATE 15:00 GMT, 30 December
Professor Daniel Miller has now written a blogpost responding to this post and defending his research methods.
He reveals that the article in The Conversation which appeared under his name - and which made the story go viral - was in fact written by a journalist. He says he checked her piece for factual errors but "left in elements in her version that perhaps over-simplified the original".
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A plan to bury ash from Jersey's waste incinerator has been allocated £3m of funding in the States' latest budget. | The scheme, which aims to see the ash buried in pits at La Collette headland, has yet to be finalised.
A meeting is due to take place between the Transport and Technical Services Department and environmental group Save Our Shoreline to discuss options.
The draft budget will be debated on 4 December and will come into effect on 1 January 2013.
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Indian PM Narendra Modi made history on Thursday, after he won a second landslide. The BBC's Jugal Purohit spoke to leading political analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta about what this means for India.
Q: You recently said that "something is happening which is mutilating the soul of India's democracy". Now that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has returned with a bigger than ever mandate, what do you see for India from now until 2024? | As I said, what makes this election very distinctive is that it has produced - arguably [and] institutionally - the strongest government India has had, possibly since independence. Even Jawaharlal Nehru did not have as much control over his party as Mr Modi does.
I do think, I worry that there was something surreal about this election. My worry is about the fact that we've reached a point where truth does not seem to matter. And that is a dangerous point for a democracy.
I do think we are in very uncharted territory. That's why this moment does represent a significant danger to Indian democracy because democracy survives on the fragmentation of power.
We are now largely at the whims of one person and what he decides to do with this extraordinary mandate that he's been given.
To me, the most striking aspect is the number of people who are fearful of speaking their minds, including some of India's most privileged and powerful - so the dominant tenor of this election was not that of a nation marching on with confidence.
When people trust each other and distrust their leaders, you get democracy. When people distrust each other and completely trust their leaders, you get dictatorship.
I think we are at the second moment right now.
Q: One significant and persistent feature of the last five years of the Modi government was the spate of lynchings reported from across the country. How do you analyse the role and importance of those lynchings in his re-election and how do you see that situation going forward from here until 2024?
I think it will be a little too quick to say that lynchings were a causal factor in the consolidation of the BJP.
But I think what they did do was very clearly indicate to their core constituency that this is now a country where majoritarianism can rear its head with impunity. I think [the] lynchings were a politically diabolical move because at that point the BJP understood that any major riots just statistically look bad - and they have the possibility of uniting forces against communalism, which makes lynchings a special kind of modus operandi. Because at one level, it looks like a drip, drip, drip - and doesn't concentrate your mind in a way that a large cataclysmic event does.
Yet it manages to send a signal that various communities should know their place. I think the need to periodically remind people that this is a Hindu majority country and the marginalisation of what you might call this composite history - I think that trend will accelerate.
Q: Do you believe that it is time for the Gandhi family and Rahul Gandhi in particular to let go of the Congress party's leadership?
He does not have the moral right and I think he will own up to the responsibility of the defeat. That's not the issue. The issue is what do you do after that - and all I am saying is simply removing Rahul [Gandhi] tomorrow doesn't solve your core problem. I think Congress needs a complete overhaul of its leadership.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta is vice-chancellor at Ashoka University.
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Plans have been approved for an £8 million YMCA hostel. | The building on Freeman Street in Grimsby will have 74 bedrooms, conference and exhibition rooms, a cafe and gym.
The site will replace the centre in the town's Peaks Lane, with 50 members of staff transferring to the new building.
The YMCA's other 26-bed facility on the other side of Riby Square will remain open under the plans.
YMCA Chief Executive Debbie Cooke said: "YMCA Humber has a proud history, with a Christian ethos embedded in all we stand for," she said.
"This ambitious plan is about the YMCA stepping up as a community leader to provide aspirational accommodation and opportunity for our residents and the local community.
The building will be developed on the site of the former House of Holland store.
It is part of a larger redevelopment of the Freeman Street area.
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A mass Covid-19 vaccination site will open in York on Tuesday. | The open-air site at Moor Lane car park, Askham Bar, is currently being used as a flu vaccination site.
A primary care provider will deliver the vaccine to eligible patients working with 11 GP practices in the area.
Patients will be invited to attend for vaccination by their surgery and will have to return for a booster jab at a later date.
York-based primary care provider Nimbuscare Ltd said the vaccine would be given to priority patient groups first.
Professor Mike Holmes said: "This programme is one of the most important moments in the history of the NHS.
"Delivering the vaccine on this scale is a huge task and we're fortunate to have a dedicated and experienced team which is making this possible.
"We have joined with clinicians, volunteers, primary care colleagues and local organisations from across the York area to make this happen and we thank them all for their support.
"We have been working round the clock to get the site ready and await the arrival of the first vaccines."
Prof Holmes added people should not contact their GP practice or hospital to ask about the vaccine and should not come to the site without an appointment.
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The simple fact that most prisoners come out of jail and reoffend is the government's central justification for dismantling the state-provided probation service in England and Wales. The hard part is putting something else in its place that will work better. | Mark EastonHome editor@BBCMarkEastonon Twitter
The Justice Secretary Chris Grayling is determined to cut recidivism but he wants to save money at the same time. His answer is, effectively, to privatise probation. All but the highest risk offenders will be managed by non-state providers.
The government talks about private and voluntary sector bodies running the 16 contracts, but few charitable organisations have the capital reserves or expertise to win the tendering process. There will be a role for not-for-profit bodies in front-line delivery of some services, but it looks almost certain that the people in charge will be hardheaded businessmen out to make a return.
The Ministry of Justice is convinced that the profit motive will deliver a cheaper and more efficient service. Critics argue it will lead to confusion, waste and risk.
Companies like Serco and G4S, which already advertise their willingness to expand into the probation sector, are front-runners for the contracts - a prospect which naturally alarms the 20,000 people employed by the state-run service at the moment.
It is thought that around 14,000 probation officers may lose their state-funded jobs. Many will be re-employed by the private providers but, since one of the key aims of the reform is to save money, a significant number will not.
It is no surprise that the National Association of Probation Officers, the union for the sector, say the government's motives are "purely ideological" and warn that "if this plan proceeds it will be chaotic and will compromise public protection". The association's influence, indeed its very existence, is threatened by the reforms.
What, though, is one to make of the predictions of chaos and public risk? Similar arguments were put forward when the Labour government privatised prisons and introduced payment by results in other public services like the NHS.
Indeed, the concept of "contestability" (market competition) was inserted into the DNA of the National Offender Management Service when it was being created almost a decade ago. The sky did not fall in.
The public risk argument comes down to this: if you have low-medium risk offenders being managed by the private/voluntary sector and high risk offenders by the state sector there will be confusion and error because risk is dynamic.
A survey of probation cases in London has suggested that 24% see a change to their risk status while under supervision. Most, of course, see their assessment go down. But some may suddenly be identified as a much greater risk than originally thought.
The man jailed for reckless driving, a low risk at the outset, may emerge as someone who presents serious risk of domestic violence. How easy will it be for that person to be moved from the non-state provided service back into state supervision?
Here lies the conundrum. The government insists that the new streamlined state-run probation service must not be "constantly looking over the shoulder" of the contract providers. Equally, they say the state-run service must have oversight of all cases. Where is the line drawn? Get it wrong, and confusion and risk increase.
The Ministry of Justice stresses that a lot of the detail is still to be worked out; many of the challenges will be dealt with in the construction of the contracts. But, as ever, the devil will be in the detail.
Putting together payment-by-results contracts often proves much more complex than originally planned. For example, an operation where Serco and the existing state-run London Probation Trust jointly provide Community Payback services for the MoJ took around two years to procure.
One big headache is defining the "result" for which payment will be made. In the context of probation, how much reward, if any, should a contractor get if an offender with a history of violent crime commits no offences of violence while supervised, but steals a chocolate bar from Tesco's?
There is also a concern that private providers might maximise profits by focusing on the less challenging cases. Offenders with complex needs may require high levels of investment which don't make business sense. The contract is key in addressing such questions.
So the most important people in deciding whether these proposals work will not be politicians. Nor will they be businessmen, probation officers or voluntary sector mentors. Success or failure will be in the hands of contract lawyers.
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The forecast contraction in the Scottish economy of 10% is in line with the UK, but worse than most other countries. Paying the bills may continue to weigh on health budgets well beyond this year, say fiscal experts, and we can expect big tax increases by 2025. Scots support higher taxes to support public services, though it's more a "liberal" preference than "authoritarian". | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
Scotland's economy is not expected to return to its pre-pandemic levels of output for more than three years, according to a forecast published on Tuesday by the chief economist at the Scottish government.
That's the central forecast, getting back to early 2020 output by the end of 2023. That is seen as following a dip of 9.8% in output being forecast for the whole of this year.
Unemployment is expected to rise from 4.6%, the most recent figure for May to July, to a peak of 8.2% by this December.
Since lockdown was eased, the recovery of some markets and stabilisation of the economy is not seen as being sustained into the fourth quarter of the year. Some others are talking about a fourth quarter contraction, so possibly a double dip recession.
This forecast comes with a warning from Chief Economist Gary Gillespie: with this level of uncertainty, recovery could be much faster or slower. The chart he has set out displays a wide fan of possibilities.
Brexit turbulence
While it's this "central scenario" that takes Scotland back to pre-Covid output in late 2023, the chief economist in St Andrew's House is focussed on the risk of the downside.
Things could be much slower to recover, depending on the imposition of further measures to control infection, with a knock-on effect for the economy.
UK government policy has shifted from the furlough scheme to a less generous subsidy for employers who can pay at least half of a wage, and policy choices like that could push down the path of the recovery.
Dr Gillespie was involved in drawing up a Scottish government alternative plan that would continue furlough until next June, at a cost of £850m, and 61,000 fewer people in the unemployment queue at the start of next year.
Next there's Brexit, which is expected to be a drag on Britain's recovery, but how much is impossible to know when negotiations with the European Union are far from resolved. The Scottish government's forecast assumes the UK government is true to its intentions of striking a departing trade deal, so that it won't be too turbulent a departure from the single market and customs union.
How would a 9.8% contraction in 2020 compare with other forecasts? The Bank of England and the Treasury have forecasts for UK economic output that lie a few notches to either side of that figure: 9.5% and 10%.
The forecast for the world economy, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), looks like 4.5% contraction, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it might be 4.9% down.
Most economic analysis is agreed that, when compared with most comparable developed nations, the UK is doing relatively badly in economic performance as well as Covid deaths.
'Global Britain'
Of course, forecasting has a nasty habit of being wrong, particularly when in uncharted territory such as that being traversed in 2020.
The performance of the economy was not as bad as Dr Gillespie forecast last April. He thought it was imploding by 30%, and he had good company for expecting that scale of contraction.
As we're reminded in his State of the Economy report, published on Tuesday, the second quarter of the year showed a contraction of 19.4% - coming in less severely because lockdown was eased earlier than expected and some sectors remained surprisingly resilient.
Included in his report is a review of trade figures, which are not the most reliable data, but worth a reminder that both exports and imports have taken a hit.
In the second quarter, the data tells us overseas sales were down £5.7bn, or 31%, with oil and gas, along with beverages (a trade wonk's word for whisky) down by most.
In the context of Brexit and the hopes of a "Global Britain" connecting with markets beyond Europe, it's interesting to note that exports beyond Europe were much less resilient. They fell twice as fast as those to the European Union.
Digging into survey data from the Office for National Statistics, you can get at least a sense of how imports fared by comparison: while 36% of exporting firms said their numbers were below normal in August and September, that was true of 31% of importing firms.
Test, Trace and Pay
Much of my working day is taken up with reading more or less dire surveys and analysis of the economy and the business outlook. Stand by for the latest from the Fraser of Allander Institute, being published on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, we got the view of the Institute of Fiscal Studies about the implications of all this for the choices facing the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, in setting public spending and taxation.
Having postponed a budget from this autumn, due to uncertainty on both sides of the ledger, he may still produce a high-level view of spending priorities by the end of the year. The IFS is recommending he sticks to one year, as the intended three-year spending review would be likely to be (I paraphrase) a work of dystopian fantasy.
The chief concern raised by IFS researcher and author Ben Zaranko is that the health costs of Covid - including Test and Trace, and all that disposable protective equipment - could well linger long after this financial year.
Even if interest rates are low, debt payments will be up, after borrowing more than £300bn this fiscal year. Unemployment will be up, raising the benefits bill.
But even assuming that a quarter of the £70bn extra day-to-day (resource) budget added to NHS spending this year is continued into 2021-22, it could require a devastating cut in non-health budgets, when they have already seen real spending per head fall by a staggering 25% in a decade.
That's unless taxes go up. IFS director Paul Johnson doesn't see that happening next year or possibly the year after, while the priority remains use of borrowing to stabilise the economy. But he told BBC Radio Scotland that significant tax rises should be assumed after the 2024 Westminster election.
Higher taxes?
Decisions such as that have numerous knock-on effects on decisions required at Holyrood, despite (perhaps because of) income tax being devolved. So is there much of an appetite for taxes going up in Scotland?
We got some guide to the mood of the nation, before Covid-19 was A Thing, in the regular survey of Scottish social and political attitudes. It's independently produced and part of it was published on Tuesday as well.
The findings show a gulf between trust in Holyrood to listen and make the right decisions for Scotland, and in Westminster, which lags a long way behind.
On the economy, while a smallish minority believed the economy had strengthened from 2018 to 2019, and that living standards had improved, those people were much more likely to credit the Scottish government than Westminster.
By last year, growing the economy had risen to the top of people's list of priorities, chosen by 23% of people. That was ahead of improving health or education, while the environment and inequality were options seeing the fastest rises.
The appetite for higher taxes, "to pay for health, education and social benefits" (the wording of the survey question can make a big difference) is now well ahead of those who think taxes should stay the same, by 55% to 37%.
That gap was reversed from 2005 to 2015, with '"keep taxes the same" comfortably ahead. Those who want taxes cut, meaning government would "spend less on health, education and social benefits" (see how much the wording of the question matters?) has bobbled along the graph, consistently under the 10% mark.
There's an interesting observation about that from the survey team at ScotCen Social Research. The decline in support for higher taxes to its low point over two decades, around 2009, was clearest among those who wanted Scotland to leave the UK.
However, the subsequent rise in support for higher taxes has not been linked with the independence issue, but with other social and political views. It was people classed as "liberal" who increased their support for higher taxes, but not those with an "authoritarian" outlook.
Asked if government should use taxes to redistribute from the better off to the worse off, 55% agreed and 20% disagreed, predictably split along left-right political lines.
It's possible that those who like the smack of firm authority are also those who anticipate being walloped with those higher tax bills.
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The European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought has been collected on behalf of the jailed Iranian human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh. It comes at a time of what many campaigners say is unprecedented pressure on the legal profession in Iran, reports BBC Persian's Fariba Sahraei. | Kamal is a young Kurdish activist from north-western Iran.
When he was arrested during the post-election protests in 2009 his family started looking for a lawyer to represent him.
"We couldn't find a single person in our whole town who would agree to take on my case," he told the BBC.
"Everyone we approached came up with an excuse. I got the feeling they had been threatened by the security forces."
Eventually Kamal was given a state-appointed lawyer who made little attempt to defend him.
He is now serving a 13-year prison sentence and spoke to the BBC while on day-release using a pseudonym.
Hunger strike
Iranian lawyer Shadi Sadr says stories like Kamal's are not unusual, and they highlight what she says is an increasing campaign of pressure on the legal profession in Iran.
Ms Sadr told the BBC that since the wave of arrests following Iran's aborted 2009 "Green Revolution" many lawyers have been under pressure not to accept politically sensitive cases.
And those that have, have been threatened, called in for questioning and even imprisoned by the security forces.
Several, like Ms Sadr herself, have been forced to leave the country.
One of the most prominent cases is that of Nasrin Sotoudeh, a well-respected and outspoken human rights lawyer known for taking on high-profile political cases in recent years.
A mother of two, she was jailed for six years in 2011 on charges of conspiring to harm state security.
Ms Sotoudeh denied the charges, which the UN said were believed to be linked to her work as a human rights defender.
Last week, Ms Sotoudeh ended a 49-day hunger strike after the Iranian authorities lifted a travel ban on her 12-year-old daughter, Mehraveh.
On Wednesday, five representatives received the Sakharov Prize on behalf of Ms Sotoudeh and Jafar Panahi, the Iranian filmmaker with whom she shared the award. Two empty chairs were put out by the European Parliament to symbolise the prize winners.
Families pressured
Ms Sotoudeh is a former colleague of the Nobel Prize-winning lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, who also now lives abroad.
Ms Ebadi told the BBC that the prison authorities in Tehran were putting Ms Sotoudeh under huge pressure to make a false confession, something which she continues to resist.
"The security services have been trying to force Nasrin to admit that she has been spying for the West, and to make a false confession against me too," she said.
Ms Sotoudeh is not the only Iranian lawyer to find her family targeted.
Maedeh Soltani is the daughter of another leading human rights lawyer, Abdolfattah Soltani, whose past clients have included the dissident journalist Akbar Ganji,
Mr Soltani was sentence to 13 years in prison in 2011, but even before his arrest the security services were taking steps to silence his wife.
"My mum was put under severe pressure by the intelligence services," Ms Soltani told the BBC.
"After calling her in for questioning they gave her a one year jail sentence. It was shocking news for us because she had absolutely nothing to do with politics."
Independence threatened
Iranian lawyers are also concerned about a new bill currently up for discussion in parliament, which they say will deal the final blow to whatever independence the legal profession still has in Iran.
Under the current system, which has been in operation for the past 60 years, lawyers are licensed, regulated and supported by the independent Iran Bar Association.
The bill proposes establishing a new oversight committee for the legal profession, made up of seven people appointed by and answering to the all-powerful judiciary.
Sadeq Larijani, the influential head of the judiciary, is a strong supporter of the bill, which he says is designed to improve co-operation.
Ms Sadr says that the new system would enable the authorities to stop lawyers from getting involved in sensitive cases.
It would also make it even harder for opponents of the current government to hire anyone to defend them, she adds.
"If this bill is passed all independence for lawyers will be history," she warns. "It will destroy us."
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Cameron Thompson is a 14-year-old maths prodigy from north Wales. He passed with high grades at maths GCSE and A-level and is now taking an Open University degree in pure maths. So what does it feel like to be a teenager growing up with raging hormones and a towering intellect? | By Lucy WallisBBC News Magazine
At the age of 11, Cameron sat a school entrance maths test.
"One hundred and forty one out of 140, I broke the system, I think I did well," he says.
At the same age, he sailed through two GCSEs in maths and additional maths, and in the same year passed his maths A-level with flying colours. But being brilliant at maths has become Cameron's entire identity, and trying to fit in at school and develop his social skills has somehow become left behind in a desire to escape mediocrity.
"I have the social ability of a talking potato," he says.
"Most people my age do despise me. I've been like this for years. I'm used to being ignored."
The foundations of his academic success have also been shaken by the fact that his grades for his degree course have been dropping, and he is panicking. In the first year, his marks were up in the 80s, putting him in the top 0.5%. But on a recent assignment, he scored 72%, a healthy grade by most people's standards, but not enough to secure the distinction that he wants.
"I am a bit worried about failing the Open University," he says. "I just am, despite the fact that, technically, I shouldn't be doing it for about another five years."
Fresh start
Although Cameron can easily identify the answers, he has trouble explaining how he came to his conclusion, bringing down his overall marks, and he will only be able to continue with the degree if his marks show signs of improvement.
His parents, Rod and Alison, who live near Wrexham, are unsure whether his struggle to explain is due to his age, or the fact he has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a type of autism that can occasionally combine great mental prowess with communication problems.
"Apparently plenty of people with Asperger's are really intelligent, high achievers," Cameron says. "People like Einstein and Newton, they had supposed Asperger's."
The pressure of making sure his marks improve on his next assignment is a worry for Cameron.
It is not his parents that drive this ambition to achieve, but Cameron himself, and to add to this stress he is also growing up.
"Mum first noticed a moustache, she saw it and told me about it," he explains. Not long after that, one of his younger sisters, 10-year-old Beth, accidentally ripped it off with a piece of sticky tape.
With his family moving house, however, Cameron is facing a fresh start at a new school and the opportunity to try to establish a new social life.
"It gives me a chance to start again, so they reckon [I'll] actually work my way up the social ladder, instead of just staying at the bottom," he says.
"If I can make it to the middle I'm less likely to be bullied there, certainly not physically."
One characteristic of Asperger's is a difficulty to make friends, and Alison worries that her son does not always listen to social cues.
"Sometimes tact goes right over his head. Naive would be the best word for it," she says.
"He is a brilliant kid. He couldn't do enough for everybody. At the same time, while sometimes he is oblivious, he is also very sensitive," she says.
Choosing the right school for Cameron was critical, as his parents want him to develop a full range of skills and not just be an academic success.
"We need to give him a good balance, we need to cater for his emotional needs, we need to cater for his social needs and develop a broad range of skills," says his father Rod.
"Quite where we go when he hits GCSE year and he turns up with an honours degree is going to be a strange one."
Cameron's new high school specialises in looking after children who are on the autistic spectrum and his teacher, Enid Moore, is keen to make sure that he takes his social studies seriously.
She stresses that it is not enough to have examination certificates - Cameron needs to learn how to relate to people his own age and maintain friendships.
On his first day he met Tim, another intelligent teenager who also has Asperger's Syndrome. The two share similar interests and issues, which means they can support each other through the difficult times.
"It's amazing to have a new friend because he's funny... and he is also into the same computer games as me. The main thing that keeps us together is we both agree on the fact that [Justin] Bieber is an idiot," says Tim.
Inspired by his new social life at school, Cameron has also - for the first time in his life - gone on a day out with a friend from his karate class to a computer games expo or "geek convention".
Away from his growing teenage pursuits, Cameron is hoping to complete his degree course by the time he is 16. The mark on his last degree paper shows an improvement. With a total of 77%, Cameron can continue with the course, but is still disappointed with the result.
"I expected above 80," he says. "I'm desperate to achieve, I'm desperate to get high marks. I'm too hard on myself."
Prof Imre Leader, a maths fellow from Trinity College, Cambridge, has assessed Cameron's maths skills, and believes there is no point fast-forwarding through exams and qualifications unless someone is achieving 99% on every exam.
"There's quite an important distinction between progressing, taking lots of exams as fast as you can, getting four or five years ahead of yourself, and relaxing and enjoying the level that you are at - what we call enrichment - doing some harder thinking material on your own level of maths.
"That's often a more fruitful thing in the long run," he says.
He has suggested that Cameron slows down a little and studies for a degree in maths at Cambridge or Oxford University at the age of 18, with those his own age. He also recommends that he takes part in summer camps with talented maths students from other schools.
Although he still wants to complete his Open University degree, Prof Leader's advice has given Cameron another option in life.
"He taught me that you need to go behind the scenes in maths. Not just on the surface but deep within. And as Prof Leader said, there are other people like me, high maths abilities, bad school lives, I am not alone. Spooky."
Since he turned 14, Cameron has a new-found interest in girls and has been on his first date without his parents.
"I started becoming interested in women about a few months ago," he says. "I started to like them instead of being disgusted by them."
So, as Cameron is very happy with his new social life and has more of a plan for his long-term future, the growing pains are definitely easing for this teenage prodigy.
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At least 31 policemen in Indian-administered Kashmir have been killed by militants this year, according to official estimates. Sameer Yasir reports on how the state's police force is bearing the brunt of the insurgency. | Mohammad Ashraf Dar was killed in his kitchen in front of his one-year-old daughter on 22 August. It was the day of Eid-ul-Adha, a holy Muslim festival.
The 45-year-old sub-inspector was posted to central Kashmir but he had come home to spend the holiday with his wife and three children.
His family lives in the tiny village of Larve, surrounded by paddy fields and apple orchards, in southern Kashmir's Pulwama district. The region has witnessed a fresh spiral of deadly violence, sparked by the killing of a popular militant leader, Burhan Wani, in July 2016 by Indian security forces.
And policemen, many of them local Muslims, have become the most vulnerable targets as violence escalates in the region.
In recent months, they have even been advised to avoid visiting their homes. If they do, they should take "extreme precautions", particularly in the southern region, said the Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police, Shesh Paul Vaid.
'Like negotiating mines'
Dar's colleagues said he was asked by his friends and family to stay away from home but he had said he had no need to hide. "Am I a thief? I have never wronged anyone," he had said.
"The life of a local policeman fighting a homegrown insurgency is like walking on a road filled with landmines," said Ghulam Qadir, Dar's father.
Muslim separatists have waged a violent campaign against Indian rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir since 1989. The region remains a subject of bitter dispute between India and Pakistan, who have fought two out of three wars over it. India has long accused Pakistan of fuelling the unrest, a charge Islamabad denies.
The insurgency, which had begun to wane since the late 1990s, intensified in 2016 after Wani's death. When Kashmiris took to the streets to protest, security forces used "pellet guns", a kind of shotgun, against them.
Indian forces had said that the pellets, made of rubber-encased steel, were not lethal but they killed dozens of people and injured more than 1,500 others, blinding hundreds of bystanders including children who were caught in the crossfire.
Since then, the number of militants being killed has also shot up. In 2017 alone, 76 militants were killed - the highest in a decade - according to police. And this year, 66 were killed only in south Kashmir.
For decades, the Indian government did not deploy policemen in their own towns or neighbourhoods in Kashmir in order to protect their identities and their families. But in the restive south - in districts such as Pulwama - as more local youth join the insurgency, the attacks on policemen have grown.
No militant group has recently said it killed any policeman, even in Dar's case, which was a high-profile killing.
Unofficially, police blame militant groups like Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-taiba for such attacks.
'My daughter's innocent eyes saw it all'
The men who killed Dar knew where he lived. They crept into his house - their faces masked, carrying rucksacks and rifles slung over their shoulders - while he offered his evening prayers at the local mosque.
"Keep your mouth shut," they told Dar's wife, Shehla Gani, as they pointed a gun at her. They pushed her and her two sons, Jibran Ashraf, 12, and Mohammad Owaim, 7, into a corner.
"They pulled my hand and asked me where my father was," Jibran recalled.
When Dar returned home, his one-year-old daughter, Iraj, was with him. But the masked men forced him into the kitchen while he still held her in his arms. He refused to let her go but they hit him and snatched her. "You are like my brothers," Dar said to the men. "I have never harmed anyone."
Ms Gani, who could hear everything from the next room, says she then heard a volley of shots. Dar died on the spot.
"My daughter's innocent eyes saw it all," Ms Gani said.
"Is a policeman not Kashmiri?" asked Abdul Gani Shah, 68, a resident of Mutalhama village in south Kashmir. "By targeting policemen, militants are hurting their cause."
In another incident in June 2017, Muhammad Ayub, a police officer in plainclothes, was lynched in the capital Srinagar. He had allegedly fired his gun into a crowd after getting into a brawl with some youths.
In July 2018, constable Mohammad Saleem Shah went missing while he was on a fishing expedition with friends. His bullet-riddled body was found the next day in an apple orchard.
Officials said at least 12 family members of policemen were kidnapped this year.
On 28 August, suspected militants abducted the son of a policeman from his home in south Kashmir. The police traced the kidnapping to Riyaz Naiko, chief of the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group. Naiko had once threatened Kashmiri policemen to "leave their jobs or face consequences".
Muhammad Aslam Chowdhary, a senior police officer, said he felt he was a target not just on the streets when he was in uniform but even inside the four walls of his home. Until recently, he was posted in Pulwama.
"Sometime you even doubt your own family members," he added.
Despite all this, many young Kashmiris want to join the police force. There aren't many jobs in the region because of sporadic violence and a weak economy.
"I would like to join the police because I have to take care of my parents," said Furkan Ahmad, who is currently training to be a police officer.
Meanwhile, the rift between Kashmiris and the police continues to widen. Protesters clashed with police in June after a demonstrator run over by a police jeep died in hospital. Police said they were defending themselves but locals alleged that they had deliberately driven into the crowd.
"Humanity is dead," said Mr Qadrim. "It's been dead in Kashmir for a long time."
Sameer Yasir is an independent journalist based in Srinagar, Kashmir.
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Dwyfor Meirionnydd MP Liz Saville Roberts has been elected Plaid Cymru's leader at Westminster. | She succeeds Hywel Williams, the MP for Arfon, who had been in the post for almost two years.
Ms Saville Roberts became Plaid's first female MP at the 2015 general election, succeeding party colleague Elfyn Llwyd who stood down after 23 years.
Plaid Cymru now have four MPs, after Ben Lake won Ceredigion from the Lib Dems in last week's election.
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They are the hot new trend in finance, and Marius Jurgilas's mission is to lure them to Lithuania. Yet even he has been shocked by the "overwhelming" number of enquiries from UK "fintech" companies in recent months. | By Vicky BakerBBC News, Vilnius
The reason is Brexit.
Financial technology companies are making last-minute plans in case of a no-deal Brexit on 29 March. Many are looking to secure financial licences in other EU states to protect their operations, and this Baltic nation has an eye on helping to fill the gap.
Mr Jurgilas, a Bank of Lithuania board member, has had some notable successes.
Customers of new-age bank Revolut might not know it has acquired its banking licence in Lithuania. Google's parent company Alphabet has one too.
Mr Jurgilas insists his country's new direction is not all about Brexit.
"It was a coincidence," he says. "Mostly we just want innovation to happen here, not 10 years down the road after things are implemented in Sweden."
The start-ups with EU credentials
Marius Jurgilas is not alone. On the seventh floor of a shiny new office block, the Blockchain Centre is on the hunt for hot new fintech markets in Lithuania's name.
Inside, it is silent and the mood intense. Workers in headphones stare at black screens awash with code.
Motivational posters on the walls carry messages such as: "The future will be decentralised."
This one-year-old centre - which offers co-working space and consultancy services to start-ups using blockchain technology - plays to its EU credentials. Its website has an EU rather than a Lithuanian domain.
But chief executive Egle Nemeikstyte says the centre is casting its net far beyond Europe. Australia, Singapore and Israel all want EU partners.
There is still plenty of scepticism about how blockchain should be used, and Ms Nemeikstyte sometimes has to dissuade people from jumping on the bandwagon.
"Lots of people come to us with ideas and we say that's great, but you don't need blockchain for it. Go ahead without it," she advises.
What is blockchain?
How tight will the rules be?
Lithuania's expansion has been compared to Iceland, where the three biggest banks grew too fast and collapsed during the financial crisis of 2008.
Marius Jurgilas insists such comparisons are unfair and Lithuania is far from gung-ho in the field.
"We don't have the framework yet to know how to manage the risks. We don't want to go too fast in that area," he says of blockchain and crypto-currencies.
And yet the Bank of Lithuania offers "no regulatory sanctions for the first year of operations", which some have suggested could be a sign of laxity. Officials will also be keen to avoid the money-laundering cases that befell its neighbours, Latvia and Estonia.
What Lithuania does offer is a regulatory "sandbox", which allows financial technology companies to test products in a limited environment and under supervision.
Such sandboxes are not common, but they are cropping up in places as disparate as Arizona and Kuwait. Critics worry that they mark a race to the bottom, but supporters insist they boost innovation and can be well-managed.
'Using Lithuania as a springboard'
One of Lithuania's biggest coups, or perhaps risks, has been in backing financial technology company Revolut.
Valued at $1.7bn (£1.3bn), it is one of the world's fast-growing app-based banks.
Brexit is a primary reason for its move to Vilnius, but it will still retain its London HQ and the electric money licence it has from UK regulators.
Last year it advertised for its third head of compliance in less than 18 months, and some have argued that it may be expanding too fast.
However, the company insists it is just looking for the right fit.
And there was "no cutting corners" when the company secured its specialised banking licence from Lithuania, insists head of business development Andrius Biceika.
That will allow Revolut to offer full current accounts, pay interest on deposits and issue loans. By choosing Lithuania, it can operate across the EU.
"We are going to pilot all this in Lithuania and then passport to other countries," says Mr Biceika. "We are seeing lots of companies using Lithuania as a springboard."
Gearing up for no-deal Brexit
In the UK, all the talk about Lithuania has travelled the corridors of Level 39 - a three-floor tech hub in London's Canary Wharf, where a number of its residents have been making insurance plans for Brexit.
TransferGo - a money transferring company for migrant workers - received its electronic money licence from the Lithuanian central bank in July 2018.
BABB - a yet-to-launch money transfer company that has no connections to Lithuania - is also midway through the process.
While both made the decision because of Brexit uncertainty, both also cited Lithuania's local talent and helpful regulators as other motivations.
The 'G-spot of Europe'?
Go to an event for fintech start-ups in Vilnius and the room teems with enthusiastic young entrepreneurs.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, various international companies came here to save money. Among them was Western Union, where many Lithuanians learnt the ropes of finance.
"We used to compete over low costs," says Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Simasius. "But now it is more about talent."
Vilnius has certainly been putting itself out there. In mid-2018, it launched a bizarre tourist campaign called "G-spot of Europe" complete with tagline: "Nobody knows where it is but when you find it, it's amazing."
Co-working hub Rise Vilnius is where you will find dozens of the new companies. Backed by British bank Barclays, it is one of seven such hubs in Mumbai, Tel Aviv, London, Manchester, Cape Town and New York.
"There was scepticism that we would find enough fintech start-ups here, but we proved them wrong," says Mariano Andrade Gonzalez, executive director of Barclays' operations centre in Lithuania.
The mayor of Vilnius says companies have discovered that the city's workforce is particularly suited to the new start-ups, because Lithuanians have good mathematical skills.
"Maybe that goes down to the dark times of the Soviet Union. People studied these things instead of social studies.
"It was natural for us to move into fintech, even before Brexit. We are willing to adapt to the future, not fight it."
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The death of transport worker Belly Mujinga following reports she had been spat at by a customer, sparked calls for justice from millions of people. Now a BBC investigation raises questions about the inquiries carried out by her employer and the police. | By Rianna CroxfordBBC Panorama
It was a chilly morning when Belly Mujinga caught the bus to Victoria station in central London. Shivering, the 47-year-old ticket office worker pulled on her favourite gloves and sat down. It was 04:45 and outside the sky was a murky grey; the sun had yet to rise.
It was Saturday 21 March, and fears about Covid-19 were intensifying. The government had advised against unnecessary travel and non-essential contact with others. Schools had closed to all but vulnerable children and those of key workers.
Days earlier, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had announced that by the weekend those with the "most serious health conditions" must be "largely shielded from social contact".
Belly, who had severe health problems that had affected her lungs and throat, was anxious about coronavirus. She'd previously had treatment on her throat after having difficulty breathing.
The 47-year-old had stressed the importance of social distancing in a recent video she had made on the station concourse for her family in Congo. "There's no people. People are afraid. People are home. See the ticket office is empty, everyone is afraid because of Covid. Stay at home," she says, her face peeping out from under her black scarf.
"But we are here, we have to work. I love you and be safe."
The incident
On the morning of 21 March, Belly and her colleague Motolani Sunmola, were working on the concourse. At around 11:20, they were approached by a male customer. What happened next is disputed. Four people were present at the time: Belly, Motolani, a male colleague, and the customer.
Motolani - who is speaking publicly for the first time - says the man, who was casually dressed in blue jeans and a tan jacket, sharply asked them twice what they were doing. She describes him as being agitated and aggressive. "He was screaming and shouting at us," the 52-year-old says.
"We told the gentleman, 'Please we're just here to help you, that's all why we're here'." She said the man then turned and took a few steps towards the ticket office. "Out of nowhere he came back again and said: 'You know I have the virus'," Motolani alleges. As he came closer, Motolani said she and Belly retreated and asked him to "behave" himself.
Motolani says he was "coughing and spitting like an old man who has no teeth," and they ran away. She says Belly rushed into the reception to wash the spray of saliva from her face.
When Belly later returned home, her husband Lusamba says she was unusually quiet. "She was sad. She told me, 'Darling, someone spat on me'. It really shook her."
'Scared'
In the days that followed, Motolani and Belly began to feel unwell.
Belly's last day at work was 25 March. One of her consultants called a manager at her request to say she needed to self-isolate immediately.
Her symptoms started to escalate and on 2 April, when she was struggling to breathe, Lusamba called an ambulance. "On her way out, she waved our daughter and me goodbye," he says.
Belly was diagnosed with Covid-19 at the Barnet Hospital in north London.
Lusamba says she was scared and "knew that was the end".
During a video-call on Saturday 4 April, she spoke to her family but refused to show her face. She didn't want her daughter Ingrid, who was 11 at the time, to see her in such a weak state.
Shortly afterwards, she called her cousin Agnes Ntumba and asked her to look after Ingrid for her. Later that evening, Lusamba tried calling his wife. But she didn't pick up.
Belly Mujinga died from coronavirus on Sunday 5 April.
Lusamba struggled to understand when the doctor told him over the phone. English is not his first language, as he mainly speaks French and the Congolese-dialect Lingala, so Agnes had to break the news to him hours later.
A funeral was held three weeks later, but only 10 people were allowed to attend.
"It feels like she's just gone somewhere and will come back," Lusamba says. "Since I didn't see her body, it's as if my brain can't process it. It will haunt me for the rest of my days."
Police investigation
It would be seven weeks before a police investigation was launched.
It came after the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA) issued a press release on 12 May stating that Belly and a colleague had been assaulted.
Reports that a ticket officer had died of coronavirus after being spat at while on duty made newspaper headlines.
British Transport Police (BTP) opened an investigation, and on 13 May, Boris Johnson mentioned Belly's death in Parliament. "The fact that she was abused for doing her job [was] utterly appalling," he said.
BTP traced and interviewed a 57-year-old man through ticket sales records at Victoria station. He denied spitting and saying he had the virus. He said he had coughed, but not on purpose.
After an investigation lasting 19 days, the police concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime.
Lusamba says this came as a shock. "It was a hard pill to swallow, especially after such a short investigation."
The police decision coincided with the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, while in police custody. Global outrage followed and anti-racism protests that had swept across cities in the US were heading to the UK. Belly's death was caught up in the aftermath.
"Black lives matter. Belly's life mattered," protestors shouted at a march in London on 3 June.
Naomi Omokhua, 21, helped to organise a "Justice for Belly" rally. "We see people like Belly every day when we're going through Victoria station," she says. "She's a black woman, a normal black woman just doing her job."
Lusamba attended with Ingrid and Agnes. "We laughed and cried," he says. "We felt pain and joy. I'll never forget that day."
In the wake of the protests, on 5 June, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was asked by the British Transport Police to review the case.
And as that inquiry opened, so did mine for BBC Panorama.
Looking for answers
What happened at Victoria station has been the subject of a police investigation and an internal inquiry carried out by GTR. The facts remain bitterly contested, so I've been back over some of the evidence and taken expert opinion from doctors, scientists and lawyers.
First, I wanted to know why it took so long for the police to investigate. It's possible that if they had been alerted sooner, they may have been able to secure more evidence.
Motolani has left Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) and begun a claim for constructive dismissal. In her police statement of 13 May, she says she reported the incident to her managers immediately, asking for the police to be called.
Lusamba says Belly told him the man had said he had coronavirus and was going to infect them and that she had reported the incident to a supervisor. Motolani told the BBC she had described what happened as an "assault". She says she did not tell GTR on the day that the man said "I have the virus" but says Belly did.
"I felt the assault was even more serious," Motolani explains. "Belly felt more scared [of the word Covid] because she had respiratory problems."
A GTR spokesperson told the BBC that while a "coughing incident" had been logged on 21 March, a spitting incident had not and that's why the police hadn't been called.
On 8 April, Belly's union wrote to GTR saying there was evidence that a passenger had deliberately coughed in Belly's face. GTR says it started its own investigation. The company did not call the police. An allegation of deliberate coughing can be enough for the police to consider opening an assault investigation.
When BTP was eventually called, the man said he'd had an antibody test - which checks whether someone has previously been exposed to the virus - and that he had tested negative. Police said the man had been tested on 25 March "as part of his occupation" and the result shared with them. Detectives concluded, therefore, that the incident had not led to Belly contracting Covid-19.
I spoke to a number of scientists about antibody tests. They said not all commercially available antibody tests back in March were considered reliable. The NHS didn't start offering antibody tests to all staff until May.
"The quality of the tests available in March were really no better than tossing a coin," says Alex Richter, a Professor of Clinical Immunology at the University of Birmingham, who had studied some of the early tests back then.
A negative result did not necessarily mean there had been no infection.
Jon Deeks, Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, believes the police made a mistake in their interpretation of this part of the evidence.
In a statement, BTP told the BBC: "While the man was able to share a negative antibody test with officers, substantiated by his GP, it is important to be clear that this was not the basis of our conclusion. The test did not change the fact there was insufficient evidence to substantiate any criminal offences taking place."
One of the problems with the case is that CCTV evidence was not sufficiently clear to show whether or not a crime had taken place. There are hundreds of security cameras at Victoria station but Network Rail, which operates them, told the BBC that only one captured footage of the incident.
The footage has not been released, but I've spoken to a number of people who have seen it. I've also listened to a covert audio recording of a meeting in which police officers showed it to Lusamba and two of his friends.
They say it shows a man approaching close to Belly, and her retreating, before running away.
"We're in no doubt that something has happened there," the police officer tells Lusamba. "If nothing had happened, they would have stayed there," the officer continues. "When he comes back it's clear that's when something happens."
CCTV footage at the station is routinely only stored for around 28 days, and the footage from 21 March had been wiped by the time the police started their investigation.
But officers were told that six minutes had been saved at the request of GTR. The BBC has learnt that GTR asked for footage on 9 April as part of its own investigation and received a copy the following day.
The police say that even after they had had the footage enhanced, it was still not clear enough to show whether a crime had been committed.
Internal report
Belly Mujinga suffered from a severe form of sarcoidosis, a rare inflammatory condition that causes small patches of red and swollen tissues to develop in the body's organs.
"We were dealing with people from all around the world," Motolani said. "She was scared of catching the flu, then imagine this happening."
The company told the BBC that on 13 March, local managers had issued a staff questionnaire to identify any health conditions that might restrict their ability to work in public facing areas. But said Belly had only recorded "blood pressure" on her form. According to GTR she had asked Occupational Health to keep her condition confidential.
In its internal investigation report after her death, the company said that her managers were aware she had some health conditions that meant Belly had regular medical check-ups but "did not know the exact details and nature of these".
But in a different version of the report, which had been shared with Belly's union and seen by the BBC, it suggested they may have known more.
"Managers at the station were aware that Mrs Mujinga had undergone surgery on her throat some years previously and that she had regular check-ups in relation to this," it said.
"I think it arouses a degree of disquiet in me because here, there's such a contrast between those versions," says Martin Forde QC.
GTR told the BBC that Belly's sarcoidosis would have been on the records of its in-house medical team, but said it was not at that time on the government's list of high-risk conditions.
Belly was taking immunosuppressants for her sarcoidosis. On the day of the incident itself, the government was issuing guidance for people taking immunosuppressants, saying that they should shield.
Barrister Elaine Banton said she would have expected more collaboration between the occupational health team and managers to identify vulnerable staff.
"It would help them to determine which employees should not be in front-facing, key worker roles, but be placed out of harm's way."
A GTR spokesperson says had sarcoidosis been on the government's shielding list at the time of the incident, it would have told Belly to shield as it did with nearly 400 colleagues.
But was there a need for Belly to be on the concourse that day? Passenger numbers were down.
"She left home thinking she was going to be working in the ticket office," Lusamba said. "When she arrived, her supervisor told her that she must work outside."
Rotas from the 21 March, seen by the BBC, confirm that Belly was due to work in the ticket office. Motolani says she felt safer there.
GTR says all ticket office staff at Victoria undertake concourse duties as part of their normal ticket selling and customer assistance role.
Grievance
Belly loved her job, but I've discovered she wasn't always happy at work.
Eight weeks before she died, she'd raised a grievance against GTR, claiming discrimination and victimisation.
In 2019, Belly had been suspended for six weeks after leaving her cash bag on a supervisor's desk rather than handing it into the cashier.
"She was devastated," recalls Lusamba. "That really broke her." He says GTR conducted an investigation to see whether money was missing but they didn't find anything.
GTR said Belly had a responsible cash handling role, that she was suspended on full pay and later returned to work.
However, Belly claimed a white colleague who had made a similar mistake had not faced the same sanction.
In her grievance letter she wrote, "The whole process has left me feeling stressed, ill, victimised and terrified that I might lose my job."
'May she rest'
Lusamba says Belly was the "centre of his universe", and he believed that fate had brought them together. It later turned out that he had been living very near to one of Belly's close friends in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, where he grew up.
He and Belly met at a church they both attended after she moved to London in 2001. "It was love at first sight," he says.
Their daughter Ingrid turned 12 and returned to school in September. Only this time it was her dad buying her ice-cream, and gently laying out her school uniform on her bed.
Lusamba says all he wants to do is tell her what really happened to her mum.
We may never know what really happened on the concourse of Victoria Station that day. Or whether Belly caught coronavirus then.
Following its review, the CPS agreed with the police that in: "The absence of any persuasive medical or forensic evidence, together with inconclusive CCTV footage and inconsistent witness accounts, no criminal charges could be considered."
But for Lusamba, many questions remain unanswered.
Barristers spoken to by the BBC believe an inquest into Belly's death could help her family in their search for truth. "I feel there are sufficient doubts and conflicts around the facts of this case to justify an investigation," says Martin Forde, QC.
Lusamba says he will keep on fighting. "May she rest wherever she is, but it's really hard."
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Four climate change activists are risking their lives inside a network of manmade tunnels near Euston station in protest against the £106bn HS2 rail project. One of them is 18-year-old Blue Sandford, who has vowed to be underground for as long as it takes bailiffs to evict her. | By Thomas MackintoshBBC News, London
It was early on Tuesday when a group of HS2 Rebellion protesters heard a team of bailiffs marching towards their Euston Square Gardens campsite.
The campaigners have occupied the land since August, but HS2 requires possession of it so it can build a temporary taxi rank outside Euston station.
It was an eviction attempt the protesters knew was coming, so to thwart their forcible removal they have spent the past two months digging a tunnel they claim is 100ft (30m) long.
The tunnel has been widely condemned by officials and drew criticism from Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who said the protesters' actions were "reckless, irresponsible and deeply concerning".
But it was criticism Ms Sandford and her fellow activists knew would be coming.
"I was already awake; we were doing stuff through the night when they came very suddenly," she recalls. "I heard the shout and I just jumped down and stayed down in the tunnel.
"I couldn't really hear people and there was so much adrenaline. Everyone is safe and fine.
"My mum is really scared and worried about me. Both parents feel quite heartbroken that I need to do this but also really proud and [they are] trying to support me and help me in any way they can.
"We have had some communication with them [the National Eviction Team]. They are going to be as safe as possible and say there will be no surprises [while digging the protesters out].
"We have been working on this for so long, getting organised. It has been a secret until the BBC published an article."
Ms Sandford, a published author on climate change, says digging the tunnel - codenamed "Kelvin" - is the activists' "best defence" against being evicted, but admits it is a very dangerous, even life-threatening, thing to have done.
Planks of reclaimed wood have been used to shore up the tunnel, but that hasn't prevented partial collapses already and the authorities have warned that the protesters risk being buried alive.
Ms Sandford, from London, maintains the activists are not intent on "martyring themselves" - their sole intention is delaying - or even stopping - the HS2 project, she says.
"HS2 is a waste of money and time," Ms Sandford adds. "By the government's own admission, it will be heavily polluting and carbon intensive while demand for mass transit is falling and home working is the new norm for many people.
"I'm angry that the government is still effectively ignoring this crisis despite declaring a Climate and Ecological Emergency two years ago. I'm in this tunnel because they are irresponsibly putting my life at risk from the Climate and Ecological Emergency.
"I shouldn't have to do this - I should be in school - the trouble is, they are stealing that future and I have to stop them."
Ms Sandford would only say her school was in London, but that it had "not taught her the truth" about the ecological emergency facing the planet.
In the summer of 2019 she joined thousands of Extinction Rebellion protesters in central London as parts of the capital ground to a halt.
She draws inspiration from her father Roc Sandford, who is the laird of the Hebridean isle of Gometra and describes himself on LinkedIn as an "Extinction Rebellion catalyser".
Located off the west coast of Scotland, the few residents of the remote island live off the grid with no electricity or cars.
"My dad is an environmental activist and has been for some time," she says. "He has been involved in Extinction Rebellion and I went along in 2019 and started hearing all these facts and got terrified and depressed.
"One that I heard was that by 2050, 5bn people will be facing water shortages which was from a UN water report published 2018. I couldn't believe it."
Despite the growing profile of Extinction Rebellion, the teenager still feels that not enough people see climate change as a real problem.
Her activism led her to take part in the second set of Extinction Rebellion protests in October 2019, when police arrested more than 1,100 demonstrators. This time Ms Sandford was one of them.
"It was for obstruction of the highway," she says. "I was on a scaffolding tower glued on in the middle of The Strand and [was] carried down and taken to Dagenham police station."
While in the cell overnight, Ms Sandford turned 17 years old. She used the time behind bars to think about her future and realised this was a fight she wanted to continue with.
She adds: "I thought about it for a long time and just thought I couldn't vote at that time so I felt like voting wasn't working.
"I didn't have any options. I saw these people getting arrested, making a difference, and I just threw myself at it."
In recent months Ms Sandford has joined up with other HS2 Rebellion protesters, spending two months in Euston Square Gardens and also in camps along the line which will link London and the Midlands.
Ms Sandford says she is currently on a long-running school strike - something inspired by an initiative called FridaysForFuture that was started by young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
A Sunday Times article described Ms Sandford as Britain's answer to the famous Swedish campaigner, although it's a comparison she wants to distance herself from.
"It irritates me a bit, but I put up with it," she says. "It is a compliment to be compared to her as she is amazing. But I don't like the comparison because it is not about individuals and that could be detracting from our message.
"I don't want to be a role model, but I think it is an amazing thing to inspire people. What I learned through activism was to break the rules and do what I wanted to do, so I want to spread that."
Breaking the rules might draw attention to the activists' cause, but it can also be dangerous.
Water mains run through Euston Square Gardens and if these are damaged the protesters risk being drowned or suffocated, Department for Transport officials warned on Thursday.
Nevertheless, Ms Sandford and the other protesters have no intention of giving up.
"When we are out I think we will all be arrested pretty quickly," she admits. "There are four of us down here now but I am not chained, although some people are.
"The longest tunnel eviction was six weeks. I'm prepared to stay here for as long as it takes."
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On a recent visit to Newham, home of London's Olympic village, I was shocked to learn that in the past 10 years the incidence of diabetes there has more than doubled. | By Dr Aseem MalhotraCardiologist, London
Dr Chandra Gowda, a local GP, told me that nowadays 40%-50% of all consultations in his practice are either a new diagnosis of diabetes or its complications, such as heart disease, stroke, and kidney failure.
He believes this surge is directly related to the diet of the local population:
"There is overproliferation of fast food restaurants in the area and it's almost every second shop," he said.
The scale of obesity and diet-related disease around the world is alarming. According to the United Nations, diet-related diseases such heart disease, diabetes and cancer pose the greatest global threat to our health; contributing to a staggering 35 million deaths per year, dwarfing the six to eight million smoking-related deaths each year.
In Britain, one in three children are either overweight or obese by the age of nine, with six out of 10 adults in the same category.
Without effective intervention this figure could affect 90% of the UK population by 2050 and cost the NHS and the tax payer £45bn a year.
Unless we get a grip of this public health emergency I believe it will cripple the NHS as we know it.
So what is the biggest culprit?
More and more evidence is emerging that it is sugars, more specifically High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which is added to almost all processed food.
'Slow killer'
Earlier this year, paediatric endocrinologist Dr Robert Lustig
published a paper in Nature
stating that sugar consumption has trebled worldwide in the past 50 years and is so damaging to our health that it should be regulated like alcohol.
According to obesity researcher and author Zoe Harcombe sugar is the only substance that humans regularly ingest that has no nutritional value whatsoever:
"[It has] no essential fats, no proteins, no vitamins, no minerals. It is unique in that respect," she says.
A little is not a problem, but a lot kills, slowly. And since it is added to nearly all processed food, it is extremely difficult to avoid.
We should all be concerned about the processed food that we are eating as 40% of those who develop the metabolic syndrome of diabetes, high blood pressure and fatty liver disease will be of normal weight.
'Wrong message'
As a cardiologist I treat heart disease on a daily basis. At the Royal Free Hospital in London we have one of the fastest treatment times for heart attacks in the UK.
The NHS has made tremendous improvements in providing this type of care to the majority of the population 24-hours-a-day; that is if you are lucky enough to make it to hospital alive - approximately 40% of heart attack patients do not.
But, having seen the unspeakable suffering caused by diet-related diseases, I would much rather these patients did not develop them in the first place.
Of course the Olympic sponsors cannot be held accountable for Britain's poor health, but their connection with the Games sends a dreadful message.
In the context of an obesity epidemic I find it obscene that the Olympics chooses to associate itself with fast food, sugary drinks, chocolate and alcohol.
Labour shadow minister for public health Diane Abbott, whose constituency is in East London close to the Olympic village, is equally scathing:
"I think it's quite shocking that McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Cadbury's, and Heineken are the main food sponsors," she says.
"These are products which are all very well as a treat, but what Olympic sponsorship allows them to do is promote their brand and insinuate themselves into people's daily diet."
Impact on children
I also believe it is wrong for sporting role models to endorse junk food such as sugary drinks, chocolate and crisps. Of particular concern is the negative impact this has on our children.
And it is naive and ignorant of sports men and women to blame obesity on lack of physical activity.
I encourage the health benefits of regular exercise, but this is not the solution in tackling obesity. One would have to run for five hours to burn the calories of consuming a chocolate bar, a packet of crisps and a burger and chips washed down with a fizzy drink.
When I spoke to former British Olympic swimming gold medallist Duncan Goodhew about the issue he told me that when he was training for the Moscow Olympics in 1980 he avoided all processed foods and was aware even back then that sugary surges were bad for the body and would impair his performance.
It is time for regulation that has an impact.
A ban on firms such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola from sponsoring major sporting events and the prohibition on the use of celebrities to sell unhealthy food and drink to children would be a good start.
There is an opportunity for Britain to take the lead by leaving a positive health legacy from the Olympics.
We do not want the Games to be remembered for being associated with the opening of the largest McDonald's in the world, which has been constructed inside the Olympic park.
Watch Dr Aseem Malhotra's Newsnight's report on the obesity and the Olympics on Monday 9 July 2012 at 22:30 BST on BBC Two, then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.
Newsnight put the views expressed Dr Malhotra's report to the International Olympics Committee, the London Organising Committee and a number of key sponsors. Here are the statements they issued in response:
Statement from the International Olympics Committee (IOC):
"The IOC only enters into partnerships with organisations that it believes work in accordance with the values of the Olympic Movement. Before entering or extending any partnership, we have a duty on behalf of all of the stakeholders in the Olympic Movement to consider this partnership very carefully, particularly where we enter partnerships on a long term basis. We are proud to work with both Coca-Cola and McDonald's, with whom we have long term agreements in place through 2020.
"Coca-Cola has been a partner of the Olympic Games since 1928, and has an outstanding heritage in supporting the Olympic Movement, and promoting the Olympic Games and active, healthy lifestyles to billions of consumers. Today, Coca-Cola sponsors more than 250 physical activity and nutrition education programs in more than 100 countries and is committed to sponsoring a program in every country where it operates by the end of 2015.
"For London 2012, the company is focused on using its partnership with the Olympic Games to amplify the importance of active, healthy living. In London, Coca-Cola will deliver a variety and choice, and provide easy-to-understand information about their products so consumers can decide what is most appropriate for them. In fact, they will offer the widest range of drinks they have ever offered at an Olympic Games, including sparkling and still, low- and no-calorie choices, juices, smoothies and water.
McDonald's has supported the Olympic Movement as a sponsor since 1976, and earlier this year we signed an extension to our global partnership with them through to 2020. McDonald's provides a varied menu with a wide choice of high-quality options in its restaurants at the Olympic Games. The company is committed to promoting an active lifestyle, and has implemented well publicised nutrition and active lifestyle programmes around the world. For example, through its Champions of Play programme, McDonald's will bring nearly 200 young people from more than 33 countries to London for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
"McDonald's also launched the 'Happy Meal Mascotathon' in the UK, with unique Happy Meal activity toys to track energy use. McDonald's will offer their most extensive menu at an Olympic Games in their Olympic venue restaurants, and for the first time, will serve Happy Meals which will include fruit, vegetable and dairy options.
"The companies also support many other sporting organisations and events, ranging from major international events to local grassroots sports programmes - including for example, (Coca-Cola) The Fifa World Cup, the NFL, the Rugby World Cup and (McDonald's) The Fifa World Cup, The Football Association.
"Funding from the Worldwide TOP Programme goes directly to over 200 National Olympic Committees, as well as to the Organising Committees of the Olympic Games. Without sponsorship funding, the Olympic Games would not happen in its current format and athletes from a number of nations would simply not be able to compete.
"By showcasing the inspirational sporting achievements of top athletes at the Games, we are able to promote and reinforce the importance of sports as part of a healthy, active lifestyle around the globe. Commercial partnerships play a major role in funding and promoting the Olympic Games, and physical activity initiatives and programmes.
"By supporting the Olympic Games, our Worldwide Partners promote sport and exercise, not only by supporting the Olympians who are able to train and compete at the Games thanks to the funding they receive, but also among the general public, who can draw inspiration from the performances of these athletes. Our sponsors are dedicated to using their marketing expertise and the appeal of their brands to communicate about physical activity in a relevant way.
"We are proud to be working with all of our Worldwide TOP Partners to deliver a successful Olympic Games that will bring with them a wealth of sporting, economic and social benefits."
Statement from London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog):
"Sponsors provide a huge amount of the funding required to stage the Games - without our sponsors, the Games simply wouldn't happen. We have a fantastic group of world class sponsors on board, working with us to stage spectacular Games this summer.
"They also have some great activation programmes which are helping deliver the vision behind London 2012, to use the Games to achieve lasting change.
"There will be sponsor-branded restaurants and products in the Olympic Park. This will be alongside a diverse and full-range of other local food offerings which we are committed to providing. We will cater for the wide range of people attending the Games, from athletes to spectators."
Statement from Coca-Cola:
"As one of the longest, continuous sponsors of the Olympic Movement, we are proud that we are able to use our sponsorship to enable millions of people to experience the Games and believe we have a valid role to play. As well as sharing expertise, without the support of sponsors such as Coca-Cola, many National Olympic Committees would be unable to send athletes to compete.
"People consume many different foods and beverages, so no one single food or beverage alone is responsible for people being overweight or obese. We believe all of our drinks can be enjoyed as part of an active, healthy lifestyle that includes a sensible, balanced diet and regular physical activity.
"We have continually innovated our beverage choices - from one product in one size offered at the 1948 Olympic Games to today more than 500 brands with over 800 low- and no-calorie beverages. At London 2012 we will provide the widest range of drinks and sizes ever offered at an Olympic or Paralympic Games, to suit every lifestyle and hydration need.
"We are also helping people be physically active and our three-year partnership with StreetGames will connect 110,000 young people with sport and create a new generation of coaches. Coca-Cola sponsors more than 250 physical activity and nutrition education programmes in more than 100 countries and we are committed to sponsoring a programme in every country that we operate in by the end of 2015."
Statement from McDonald's:
"Sponsorship is essential to the successful staging of the Olympics and Paralympics. The Games is the biggest catering operation in the world and there aren't many businesses that can rise to this challenge and do so in any country that the Olympics choose to visit. As a London 2012 sponsor, we are using our catering and customer service expertise to provide high quality British food quickly and safely, as well as our experience in people development to help train the 70,000 volunteers needed for the Games in our role as the Presenting Partner for the Games Maker programme.
"We recognise that public health issues like obesity are complex matters that cannot be solved by governments or companies alone. Ultimately it's up to individuals to make the right food, drink, and activity choices for themselves and our broad range of menu options in a variety of sizes, together with the nutrition information, means that customers can make more informed choices.
"At London 2012 we will be serving our broadest ever menu at any Olympics - alongside our traditional options such as burgers and fries, we have many other options such as porridge, wraps, salads and fruit bags. We have also invested in a programme of recipe reformulation to deliver real benefits to our customers, for example reducing the salt in the Chicken McNuggets by 30% and reducing salt in our fries by a quarter. Our average children's meal sold in 2011 contained 31% less sugar compared to 2011 and 46% less salt than it did in 2000.
"We're committed to using our involvement in London 2012 to contribute to leaving a lasting legacy after the Games, whether that's by innovating to make our Olympic Park restaurants the most sustainable in the world, helping to train the 70,000 volunteers, or creating a nationally-recognised qualification for the volunteers that we'll hand over to the hospitality sector after the Games to help drive up customer service standards across our sector."
Statement from Cadbury:
"The sale of confectionery and ice cream is long established at Olympic and Paralympic Games' venues along with many other snacks and treats. It is therefore entirely appropriate for those treats to be made by Cadbury as the Games come to Britain and we are very proud to give our support to London 2012."
Statement from Heineken:
"Heineken is proud to be a supplier and partner to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
"As an industry leader and a global business, Heineken is unequivocally committed to the responsible marketing of its beers and ciders. We have a long track record of harnessing the power of global sporting events such as the Uefa Champions League and the Rugby World Cup to increase consumer awareness of both the Heineken brand and the responsible consumption of alcohol.
"Heineken actively encourages the enjoyment of beer in moderation as part of a healthy balanced lifestyle at all times."
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