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Dozens of "White Student Union" pages have appeared on Facebook, claiming to represent white students at US universities. While many turned out to be hoaxes, some are run by real students hoping to tackle "anti-white belief" on campuses.
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By Insaf AbbasBBC News
The first page created, "Illini White Student Union", was launched in response to a black student solidarity rally on 18 November, according to the University of Illinois' student paper.
The page described itself as "a new page for white students of University of Illinois" committed to working "against the terrorism (students) have been facing from Black Lives Matters activists on campus".
It reportedly asked students to send in photos of "anti-whites" who had taken part in the rally and was quickly removed by Facebook.
But the page started a trend, with at least 30 White Student Union pages appearing on Facebook. Many originated from a post the Daily Stormer, a white supremacist site "attempting to preserve Western Civilization".
The post called on readers to make pages for "various universities" in retaliation for the removal of the University of Illinois' page - even if they are not students.
Others are linked to a similar post on 4Chan, a bulletin-board site allowing users to comment anonymously.
The post encouraged people to create pages "at the most leftist colleges and universities in the western world" and has since been removed.
Fake photos
The University of Missouri's White Student Union page - which has now been removed - claimed the group had met on campus to raise money for Generation Identitaire, the youth wing of a French nativist movement, and Students for Western Civilization, a group that wants to "organize for and advance the interests of Western peoples".
But the photo it used - showing three girls dressed in pink shirts - was of three sorority members from a different university, raising money at a suicide-awareness bake sale.
Jaynie Coffman, the sorority's PR administrator, was sent a link to the photo.
"I couldn't believe that this organisation used our picture for something so horrible. They edited our sorority letters off their shirts," she said.
"Our sorority is out there and associated with this group. If we weren't contacted about our image being used, it could have been on the internet for thousands of people to see without any explanation."
New York University administrators also condemned a White Student Union page created using the school's name, saying it had used the NYU logo "illegally and without permission".
Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo, a professor at the university's School of Social and Cultural Analysis, called the page "a parody" aiming to "belittle the language of black student movements".
'Anti-white abuse'
But while most of the pages are run by internet "trolls", some are managed by students looking to end "anti-white beliefs" on their campuses.
The BBC spoke to a number of them. While they asked to remain anonymous, they agreed to video chat and make contact using their university email addresses.
One student, known only as Ajay, runs the Iowa State White Student Union Facebook page. He says he started the page after experiencing racial discrimination on campus.
"When on campus I will attend rallies of different ethnic support groups to hear their message. A lot of time they tell me to leave because I'm just there to make fun of them, or tell me I will not understand because I have not experienced racism," he said.
The group held a meeting on campus, he added, and plans to contact the university's president to gain official recognition.
While Harvard University's page has received more of a backlash, its admin insists its goals are the same.
Eric - not his real name - studies biology at the university. He created the page with two friends and hopes it will grow into an official union.
The group has met three times and consists of three members, "all white Europeans - although we have also coordinated with a Korean friend of mine," he says.
The group discussed how to gain official recognition on campus and tried to identify sympathetic professors.
Many ethnic minority students say the pages have made them feel unsafe on campus.
Rowa Mohamed, a student living in Canada, says a page using her university's name shared her information after she complained to officials.
"I feel unsafe walking alone on campus and I am always with others. Because they maintain their anonymity while harassing me, I never know who it could be," she said.
"I haven't been comfortable attending classes. It's really increased my anxiety and I've had to rely heavily on my friends of colour for comfort and protection on campus."
The page - which calls itself "Western White Student Union" - is thought to be one of the first in Canada. Others have also been reported in Australia.
Joanna Thompson, a lecturer at the University of Illinois' Department of Criminology, Law and Justice, says media depictions of black people as "violent animals" play a part in the creation of white student unions.
"Young people see so much these days, not just on the news but through social media," she said.
"If they are being bombarded by negative images of blacks, the fear could lead them to need a space where they feel safe and where they can regain that top spot on the racial hierarchy."
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A 32-year-old man has appeared in court charged with raping a 15-year-old girl.
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The teenager was attacked as she walked in a field at St Osmund's CE Middle School in Barnes Way, Dorchester, at about 21:20 GMT on 5 December.
Dorset Police said she was approached by a man who then forced her to the ground.
Adrian Cordery, from the town, appeared before Weymouth magistrates earlier. He was remanded in custody to appear at Bournemouth Crown Court on 12 March.
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The dust has hardly settled after last week's summit, and Jean-Claude Juncker's appointment as president of the European Commission still has to be approved by a majority vote in the European Parliament. But thoughts are already turning to who else will sit on the next Commission and - equally importantly - which jobs they will get.
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By Chris MorrisBBC News, Strasbourg
The current Commission is in office until 31 October, so there is a fair amount of time. But lobbying is fairly intense, and several countries have already put forward suggested candidates - Slovakia and Lithuania among others.
Some sitting commissioners - like Germany's Guenther Oettinger - are expected to stay on for a second term. And among the new faces there are likely to be some former prime ministers, including Jyrki Katainen of Finland and Valdis Dombrovskis from Latvia.
But these national nominees are not absolutely guaranteed a seat at the table. The choice of candidates - under the terms of EU treaties - is a joint task for member states and the president-elect of the Commission. There will need to be a balance between male and female commissioners, and each nominee has to be approved in parliamentary hearings.
The most sought-after jobs are usually the economic ones: commissioners in charge of economic and financial affairs (which will go to a country in the eurozone), the single market, competition policy, or trade, for example. There is a queue of countries hoping to get one of these posts, so some of them will not get what they want and will be disappointed.
There have been suggestions that France would like the competition job (and seeing as we are speculating, its nominee could be former Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, or former Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, or even the mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, the daughter of one Jacques Delors).
The UK would certainly love to have a big economic job too - perhaps the commissioner running the internal market - as it seeks to reform the EU and renegotiate its relationship with Brussels.
Who will the British nominee be, after its failed campaign to block Mr Juncker? The main candidate for several weeks has been the Leader of the House of Commons, Andrew Lansley. But there are suggestions of a change of heart in Downing Street, and talk of a surprise heavy-hitter appointment.
The trouble is that you cannot guarantee which job you are going to get when you make your nomination, but the more powerful the country the more likely that it will get its way.
Plenty of people will be whispering in Mr Juncker's ear over the next few weeks as he tries to put a team together.
Even after the names are sent in, member states will continue to lobby furiously; when the European Parliament has voted on his team, the European Council will still have a final say by qualified majority vote.
Finally, the choice of commissioners is also bound up with the allocation of other top jobs in Brussels during a summer of transition.
Whichever country the next president of the European Council comes from (a decision is expected at another summit in mid-July) will have less leverage to bid for a big Commission job. And of course the EU's foreign policy chief - the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy - is also a vice-president of the Commission.
To sum it up - there is everything to play for.
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France is emerging from one of its worst security crises in decades after three days of attacks by gunmen brought bloodshed to the capital Paris and its surrounding areas. It began with a massacre at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday 7 January and ended with a huge police operation and two sieges two days later.
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Here is what we know about how events unfolded:
Sequence of events: 7-9 January
1. Gunmen attack Charlie Hebdo offices
At 11:30 local time (10:30 GMT) on Wednesday 7 January, a black Citroen C3 drove up to the Charlie Hebdo building in Rue Nicolas-Appert. Two masked gunmen, dressed in black and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles got out and approached the offices.
They burst into number 6, Rue Nicolas-Appert, before realising they had the wrong address. They then moved down the street to number 10 - where the Charlie Hebdo offices are on the second floor.
Once inside, the men - now known to be brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi - asked maintenance staff in reception where the magazine's offices were, before shooting dead caretaker Frederic Boisseau.
One of the magazine's cartoonists, Corinne Rey, described how she had just returned to the building after picking up her daughter from day care when the gunmen threatened her, forcing her to enter the code for the keypad entry to the newsroom on the second floor - where a weekly editorial meeting was taking place.
The men opened fire and killed the editor's police bodyguard, Franck Brinsolaro, before asking for editor Stephane Charbonnier, known as Charb, and other four cartoonists by name and killing them, along with three other editorial staff and a guest attending the meeting.
Witnesses said they had heard the gunmen shouting "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "God is Great" in Arabic while calling out the names of the journalists.
Police, alerted to a shooting incident, arrived at the scene as the gunmen were leaving the building.
A police car blocked the gunmen's escape route down the narrow street Allee Vert and the gunmen opened fire.
Journalists and workers who had taken refuge on nearby rooftops filmed the gunmen getting out of the car and shooting at the police vehicle, before driving off.
The police car's windscreen was riddled with bullets but the officers escaped unhurt.
The black Citroen is thought to have driven south down the Boulevard Richard Lenoir, before doubling back on the northern carriageway. The car stopped and video footage shows the gunmen getting out of the vehicle and shooting police officer Ahmed Merabet who is on a nearby pavement.
One of the attackers then walked up to the injured officer on the pavement and shot him dead at close range. The gunman returned to the car and drove away with his accomplice.
The getaway car was found abandoned - after apparently crashing into another vehicle about 3km (1.8 miles) north of the Charlie Hebdo offices. Investigators found Molotov cocktails and two jihadist flags in the car, French media report.
The attackers then hijacked another car, a grey Renault Clio, and disappeared.
Paris was put on maximum alert and a major security operation was launched with an additional 500 police deployed to the streets of the capital.
2. Policewoman killed
At about 08:45 local time the following day (Thursday 8 January), as police continued their search for the Charlie Hebdo attack suspects, a lone gunman shot two people in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge.
The gunman, armed with a machine-gun and a pistol, shot dead a policewoman and injured a man before fleeing. The French authorities initially dismissed any suggestion of a link between the shooting and the Charlie Hebdo killings, but later confirmed the two were connected.
3. Manhunt: Suspects rob petrol station
A major breakthrough in the hunt for the Charlie Hebdo suspects came at about at 10:30 local time the day after the attacks, when the fugitives robbed a service station near Villers-Cotterets, in the Aisne region, north-east of Paris.
The men - said by the station manager to have been armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers - fired shots as they stole food and petrol from the roadside stop. They drove off towards Paris in the same Renault Clio car hijacked after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices.
The brothers then apparently led police on a chase around north-eastern France, with the anti-terror operation moving to nearby Crepy-en-Valois and the villages of Corcy and Longpont.
In a bulletin informing the public that arrest warrants had been issued for Cherif and Said Kouachi, aged 32 and 34, police said they should be considered armed and dangerous.
French media say Cherif was a convicted Islamist who was jailed in 2008 and had long been known to police for militant activities.
On Friday morning, after commandeering another vehicle in the town of Montagny Sainte Felicite, Said Kouachi was hit in the neck in a shootout with police. A high speed chase ensued as the police pursued the pair along the N2 road towards Paris ending as the brothers sought refuge in a printworks in Dammartin-en-Goele.
4. Printworks siege
On the morning of Friday 9 January, the manhunt entered its final phase as police closed in on the Charlie Hebdo attack suspects at Dammartin-en-Goele, 35km (22 miles) from Paris.
The fugitives were holed up in a printing firm called Creation Tendance Decouverte on an industrial estate on the outskirts of the town.
Hundreds of armed officers surrounded the building, where Said and Cherif Kouachi - the former bleeding from a bullet wound to the neck - had fled following a car chase.
Elite forces deployed snipers, helicopters and military equipment - sealing off any means of escape for the suspected killers and beginning a tense, eight-hour stand-off.
Just before 17:00 local time, the impasse ended as smoke was seen rising from the printworks amid explosions and gunfire. The two brothers - who had told local media they would die "martyrs'" deaths - emerged from the building, firing at police. Both suspects were killed and two police officers were injured.
It later emerged that the brothers had released a hostage and that another man had survived the incident by hiding in the building's cafeteria, unknown to the attackers, apparently communicating intelligence to police by text message.
5. Supermarket hostage-taking and siege
Meanwhile, in Paris, another siege was under way.
While the Kouachi brothers were surrounded at the printworks, the French authorities had confirmed there was a "connection" between the Charlie Hebdo killings and the shooting of the policewoman in Montrouge.
Then a gunman took several people hostage at a kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes in the east of Paris after a shootout. Police quickly surrounded the building.
In an appeal for witnesses to the shooting in Montrouge, police said they were looking for two people: a man called Amedy Coulibaly and a woman called Hayat Boumeddiene (pictured below).
Coulibaly, 32, was then identified as the hostage-taker in the supermarket, who was threatening to kill people unless the Kouachi brothers were allowed to go free.
Minutes after the printworks siege came to an end in Dammartin-en-Goele - at about 17:15 local time - explosions were heard at the Paris supermarket as special forces moved against Coulibaly.
Reports said Coulibaly had just knelt for evening prayers when elite commandos stormed the supermarket, shooting the gunman dead and freeing 15 hostages from the store. They found the bodies of four hostages.
Coulibaly has since also been linked by Paris prosecutors to the shooting and wounding of a 32-year-old jogger in a park in Fontenay-les-Roses, in south-west Paris, on Wednesday - the day of the Charlie Hebdo attack.
His partner, Hayat Boumeddiene, is still wanted by police - although she is thought to have fled France last week. She is believed to have travelled to Syria from Turkey, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. Ms Boumeddiene and the companion of one of the Kouachi brothers had exchanged about 500 phone calls, according to the French authorities.
The victims
Charlie Hebdo
In total 12 people were killed in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices: eight journalists, two police officers, a caretaker and a visitor.
Montrouge shooting
Clarissa Jean-Philippe, 27, was the policewoman killed in the suburb of Montrouge
Hyper Cacher supermarket
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Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Schools in England and head of education watchdog Ofsted, has told BBC Newsnight that schools and local authorities up and down the country should learn from London and "draw a line" below underperformance.
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By Sanchia BergBBC Newsnight
He said they should follow the example of London Challenge, the now defunct Labour policy which improved London schools, and get outstanding schools and heads working very closely with the less successful.
For decades, London secondary schools had some of the worst exam results in the country.
Sir Michael was a teacher in the capital in the 1970-90s. He told BBC Newsnight that if someone had told him then that London would be doing much better than the rest of England, he would not have believed it.
He said the improvement was down to London Challenge - there was the "political will" to make schools better, adding that London Challenge bypassed local authorities.
Little Ilford School in Newham is one school where results have improved dramatically over the last 15 years.
In 1997, just 16% of its students got five GCSES at grades A-C, the league table measure then. Last year, 71% passed at least 5 GCSES at grades A*-C including English and Maths.
Supporting aspiration
Over half of the school's pupils are eligible for free school meals, and 88% speak English as an additional language.
According to the acting headteacher, Katy Episcopo, that change is down to improved teaching, and certain specific initiatives.
They have Study Plus classes, which help students who are behind in reading and writing, and that has had a significant impact. They work closely with pupils' parents. They build confidence and they support aspiration.
Although funding for London Challenge was cut two years ago, results have kept rising. It seems the improvement has developed its own momentum.
Not only are more students passing GCSEs, but more are achieving higher grades too. Temoore Zulfiqar, who is aged 16, has already taken three GCSEs, in maths and science. He got two A* grades and one A.
He wants to go to Oxford or Cambridge and thanks to his school, he has already visited both several times.
Regions falling behind
Students at Little Ilford see no bar to their ambitions. Tanvir, who is 15 years old, told me he wanted to be Britain's first Muslim prime minister.
As London has rapidly improved, some other authorities have not kept pace. Barnsley in South Yorkshire has some of the worst GCSE results in England.
Simon Barber, headteacher of the brand-new Holy Trinity school, is determined to improve standards. Although almost all his pupils speak English as a first language, and only 16% were eligible for free school meals last year, 53% of pupils got five GCSES at grades A* to C, including English and maths, last year.
He told me he was keen to learn from other schools, especially those in London. He took a group of children to Newham last summer, to see the London sights, and to visit another school.
Some of the pupils who had gone on the visit told me the atmosphere was different at the Newham school - the children were more focused on learning.
"If you didn't look out the window, you'd never know it was a rough area," one young teenager told me. "The children looked so smart and ready to learn."
Legacy of unemployment
Mr Barber told me it was hard to overcome Barnsley's industrial past. The town was a mining community, but now unemployment is high, and he said it was hard to raise aspiration.
Sir Michael Wilshaw told BBC Newsnight that comparing Barnsley and Newham shows that "children are children, are children - what makes the difference is the culture of the school".
Ofsted is now turning its attention to local authorities. If it finds them failing, their role could be taken over by another body, possibly another local authority, or an academy chain.
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The prison service in England and Wales is in crisis, amid reports of widespread problems with drugs and violence in numerous jails. Three women explain why they want a job working behind bars in a men-only prison.
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By Siobhann TigheBBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour
The word "misunderstood" is tattooed in pink along Charmaine's arm.
It's in memory of her friend who was murdered. Her friend had the same tattoo done before she was killed.
"I can't really say what it means," admits Charmaine. "Some people think it's from a song, but I think it's more to do with how my friend saw herself as a person."
She describes her as being like a sister.
"We did everything together. She was my world."
'Make a difference'
The tattoo is now motivating Charmaine in her new career. She's just become a prison officer.
"If my friend knew I would eventually become a prison officer, she would have told me I was mad and needed my head testing."
But it was something Charmaine's mother said that stayed with her.
"After my friend's death it took me some time to really think straight but my mother told me once that everyone deserves a second chance.
"I couldn't think about anything else except how much I hated my friend's attacker, but after a year or so I started to think about what my mother said. I decided I would try and make a difference and become a prison officer."
Read more about the prison crisis
We have agreed not to use Charmaine's surname - or the surnames of the other women featured in this piece - for security reasons.
I met Charmaine when she was in training at Newbold Revel, an 18th Century, Grade II listed country house in Warwickshire.
She's 50 years old and a mother and grandmother and used to be a painter and decorator on building sites, where she was the only woman.
Charmaine decided she wanted to try something new after having one too many accidents while painting, so recently she's been working in a prison to get the feel of it, before committing to it completely.
She says she's ready for the challenge and feels confident that she can cope with violence or incidents of self-harm, partly because she's already had some personal experience of it.
"My brother and nephew took their own lives. It's not something I'm scared of. I know I can deal with it and be sympathetic and compassionate to the family, but it's hard."
Motherly instincts
She says her life experience will definitely play a part in her new role.
"You're seeing youngsters come into the prison for the first time and it's nerve-wracking for them. You need someone with motherly instincts who can pick up if someone's upset."
Charmaine has been a victim of crime. She was also in an abusive relationship and ended up at a refuge.
Even so, she prefers to think about prison as a place of rehabilitation rather than punishment.
"Prison teaches them not to go back out and reoffend. We try and teach them that what they've done is not a good thing, and then help them go back into society and be a better person."
Training alongside Charmaine is Sally, 49, and Calypso, 24.
Sally had a career in banking and then local government, while Calypso has been doing bar work as well as an Open University forensic psychology degree.
As trainees, they all spend 10 weeks at Newbold Revel, although the full training is 12 weeks long.
It's a mixture of classroom theory and practical exercises using role play. Recruits learn cuffing, cell-searching, locking and unlocking doors, as well as how to deal with confrontation and communicate well.
Charmaine, Sally and Calypso start their new careers at a point when prisons are feeling the strain.
There's evidence of an increase in sexual violence between inmates and there have been stark warnings about rising violence and drug use behind bars.
Because of the number of people leaving the service, the government aims to train 5,200 new prison officers this year and says it is on track to meet the target.
The trio are also joining a male-dominated industry.
According to the latest figures, there are about 21,600 prison officers in England and Wales. Just over a quarter of those are women.
'It excites me'
Despite the challenges, all three women say they're positive about their next step, insisting they're not naïve.
"I really believe in what I'm doing," Sally says.
"For me, there are no rose-tinted glasses. I'm excited because I know there's a rehabilitation culture in prison. That's what brings change and that excites me. Yes, there'll be challenges, but those challenges are opportunities."
"It is risky," admits Calypso, "but that doesn't put me off because a lot of it is to do with your interpersonal skills.
"It's not about how big and tough you are. If I can help just one person, I've done my job in life."
Listen back to the interviews on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.
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Anna Toumazoff chose a powerful hashtag to highlight sexual abuse at France's top political science college. Sciences Po - the training ground for the country's presidents, politicians and administrators - became #SciencesPorcs (Science Pigs).
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By Lucy WilliamsonBBC Paris correspondent
"This story is very French," Anna told me. "Because it's about great schools; it's about rape culture; it's about the elegance of being silent - that's very French."
Since then, the social media activist has received more than 400 messages from current and former students of Sciences Po. They describe sexual assaults and rapes, mostly by fellow students, that they say were not taken seriously by the college.
"Some were told that 'it's not the worst thing in the world', that life goes on," Anna said. "Others were accused of defamation. Some were considered liars. I haven't received any testimonies of people being well treated."
Stories like this are not new and not unique to Sciences Po. But she believes they are attracting wider attention now because the college is already under the spotlight for something else.
Breaking the incest taboo
France has been shaken by a series of incest allegations involving public figures over the past few weeks, beginning last month with the publication of a book by Camille Kouchner, in which she accused her stepfather, Olivier Duhamel, of abusing her twin brother as a child.
Olivier Duhamel, a political commentator, was the head of Sciences Po's Foundation. He resigned, along with the school's director who, it turned out, had also known about the allegations.
A government investigation into the college found no systematic cover-up, but noted that none of those who knew about the accusations had reported them, and said that the college should reinforce awareness of gender-based and sexual violence.
Sciences Po said in a statement that it "support[ed] the victims of gender-based and sexual violence" and that a specialist monitoring and listening unit, set up in 2015 as part of an action plan on gender equality, was now being extended with a new project involving students.
Alexandre Kouchner, Camille's half-brother, teaches at Sciences Po. It's probably true, he says, that the book has refocused attention on other forms of sexual assault.
"But it would be untrue and unwise to think this started with a debate about incest," he told me. "This started with the MeToo movement."
Other colleges - business and arts schools - are now facing similar pressures.
The Duhamel affair has also reverberated far beyond one family or one college in opening up a conversation about incest. Incest in France is used to mean sexual abuse by relatives, including those not related by blood.
The association Face à l'inceste (Facing Incest) says the number of calls it received this month shot up from 30 to almost 200. Lawyers describe similar jumps in the number of clients wanting to explore legal action.
"I've never seen anything like it," one lawyer told the BBC. "People will often start by saying, 'you know the book by Camille Kouchner? Well, something quite like that happened to me too'."
Earlier this week, a deputy mayor of Paris, Audrey Pulvar, spoke to France Inter radio about revelations that her deceased father had abused three of her cousins as children.
She knew it was true, she said, because "things happened [as a child] that I felt weren't normal. There was a climate I didn't understand."
Even President Emmanuel Macron has spoken about the impact of the Duhamel affair.
"The silence built by criminals and cowardice is finally exploding," he said last month. "It's exploding because of the courage of a sister who could no longer stay silent, then the courage of thousands of others who have told accounts of their lives broken in the sanctuary of their childhood bedrooms... No-one can ignore them any longer."
Complicated history
A study conducted last year suggested that one in 10 people in France have experienced incestuous sexual abuse, yet this outpouring of public testimony and public attention feels new.
France's approach to incest - and childhood sexuality - has been complicated by its history, says Fabienne Giuliani, a historian of incest in France.
"Since the French Revolution, we have designed the family as a sanctuary in which the state does not enter," she explained. "During the 20th Century, French society refused to see incest, refused to pronounce the word 'incest', refused to believe children in the courts."
The importance accorded to psychoanalytic theory in France - the idea that children desire their parents - has also affected attitudes here, as did theories that aimed to legitimise paedophilia in the 1970s.
It is currently legal in France for blood relations to have consensual sex as adults, while incest is an "aggravating factor" in cases of child rape and molestation.
Under French law, a rape charge is only possible if there is proof of "force, threat, violence or surprise" - otherwise it is tried as the lesser offence of sexual assault. That applies to children as well, as France has no legal age of consent.
That may be changing. Two bills already going through parliament have put forward plans to remove the possibility that minors can consent to sex. And President Macron has asked his government to draw up similar proposals, introducing an age of consent.
"There is something new in France, in this conversation," Alexandre Kouchner told me. "And it's the fact that intimacy has become a political subject. We're looking at a movement that puts what happens to individuals at the forefront of the political debate."
Back in 1986, French television audiences watched Eva Thomas speak about her experiences as an incest survivor. It was the first time anyone here had spoken out in this way without the protection of anonymity.
"I want to stop feeling ashamed," Eva told her interviewers.
"Why didn't you tell your mother?" she was asked. And: "Forgive me, but you let him do this?"
Now there are so many voices, so many campaigns, that some have warned about the danger of different issues being merged together: incest; age of consent; sexual assault; sexual harassment; gay and transgender rights.
But, says Anna Toumazoff, "if everything is getting mixed, it's because it belongs to the same system".
The common link, she says, is the pressure on some parts of society to stay silent.
"Victims have always tried to talk, actually," she told me. "The difference now is that, because of the hashtags and social networks, people are obliged to hear and to answer. That's the difference."
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In the UK alone, there are an estimated 12 million households (that's around 44%) with a pet. Expand that to a global scale and there's an extraordinary number of furry, scaled, four- or even six-legged creatures co-habiting with humans.
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By Rebecca ThomasArts and entertainment reporter
Regardless of geography or type, these animals are to their owners much more than an animate object who shares their life. Be they a confidant, comforter, an enabler to life, a worker, or simply a source of boundless fun, they are their owner's personal hero, without whom life would be so much the poorer.
Someone who embraces this special bond is the broadcaster Clare Balding, who grew up surrounded by dogs, horses and ponies and has never really known a time without animals in her life.
Both personally and professionally, as the host of coverage of shows such as Royal Ascot and Crufts dog show, Balding lives and breathes the love of animals. She says she has been "shaped more by the animals in my life than the people".
"They've made me kinder, more patient and more responsible. I think a lot of people feel the same although maybe not a lot say it. But then not many people say they love their pet more than their partner, and I think in some cases that's definitely true."
So in tribute, Balding has written a book of 100 short factual stories taken from across centuries and cultures showing animals' contribution to human life, through astounding deeds and immense loyalty, and our attitude towards them.
And Balding says she thought 2020 was just the right time to pay homage.
"It's a celebration of animals that will hopefully also lift people's spirits and highlight the contribution they have made, and continue to make to our lives, especially in a year when most people's worlds have been turned upside down [because of the pandemic]. I think they have understood what their own animals bring them," she says.
"They really have given them so much joy and a reason to have a structure to their lives and bring in a lot of laughter when there's not a lot of that going on.
"We've needed them and they've needed us and I think people have really benefitted from having more time with their pets."
All sorts of creatures feature, from giraffes and rhinos to rats, dolphins and of course cats and dogs. And Balding includes Attenborough-like information on the factors that make certain species unique. Dogs, for example, have 300 million olfactory receptors compared to our six million.
Some stories are awe-inspiring, some are moving, while others are simply laugh-out-load funny. And, says Balding, it doesn't matter if the heroic actions of an animal are just innate to their species.
"I would rather appreciate and praise them, recognise and thank them for actions that may have been instinctive but which saved so many lives."
Balding was well aware of the tales about race horses, including that of Aldaniti, who with jockey Bob Champion won the heart of the nation when they galloped to victory at the 1981 Grand National, having both recovered from life-threatening conditions.
But for the others, she and a researcher had to delve deep and stretch wide.
"I certainly didn't know about Miracle Mike, the headless chicken in Colorada [who survived around 18 months after being decapitated by his poultry farmer owner].
"Overall, I wanted a good cross-section. You want it to be entertaining but also a way of learning."
Think of the ingenious runaways, the Tamworth Two pigs in 1998 - no one was having their bacon. And then, there's Stoffel the escapologist honey badger who has provided much mirth, with more than 244 million views of his antics online.
But it's often taken the worst of human behaviour towards animals to eventually bring out the best, which is something Balding starkly acknowledges.
"Thandi the rhino was mutilated by horn poachers in South Africa, and has now become a symbol of hope and positivity through her survival and in the work that's now being done in conservation. But she's also a stark reminder of the brutality of human beings towards animals," explains Balding.
"In most cases, that's a behaviour pattern that has changed and is reflective of developing nations' greater understanding, maturity and moral responsibility. The way we treat our animals should almost be a rating for any nation."
Animals nonetheless keep on giving, as is evident in the work of therapy, which sees a wide range people with various conditions and problems, including dementia and addiction, gaining comfort and hope through animals.
Matthew Robinson from the charity Pets As Therapy says: "Dogs and cats, instinctively 'know' when we feel down and often position themselves next to you on the sofa or by gently brushing against your leg as if to say 'everything's OK'.
"The effect these interactions have on us can be incredibly powerful. Stress and anxiety are reduced and we often feel calmer around a dog or cat. The benefits this can have on both mental and physical well-being is something that is now subject to research."
And Balding attests to seeing beneficial work in action, in particular horses at a centre in North London helping teenage boys who have been excluded from school because they can't deal with discipline.
"Horses are so kind. When you think how big and strong they are they don't have to do what we want but if you ask them in the right way they will. They help people find a way of working in a team, teach the art of persuasion and how to deal with structure."
As for herself, Balding says animals have given her huge support. "If I fluff up on air and come home, it's straight back to them and their being pleased to see you. It's the same for everyone.
"Their pets are their escape from the pressures of work and make them feel better. Look at the popularity of videos of kittens or puppies online, particularly this year, that is not an accident and should not be dismissed as a frippery. Look at advertising and how much it uses puppies and kittens, the makers aren't idiots, they know."
Balding's much-loved family dog Archie sadly died over the summer. "He was our family, the central part of our life," says Balding. "He had lots of faults and I'm quite honest about them but we loved him very much."
Now Balding is focusing on her British Blue cat Buttons, who has recently had five kittens, one of which she has kept with the others given to friends, many of whom have been made made through having animals.
Balding says she knows she was very lucky to have been always around animals as a child "but what I thought was normal was that they were higher on the pecking order than us kids. I took it for granted and didn't realise that's not how everyone lives".
And, she adds, the benefits of the experience will stay with her always.
"Animals make me happy and that is infectious as it makes other people happy and it means you end up being a very warm person I hope because you're used to giving warmth from your pet and they give it back.
"It's reciprocal. There's lots of things I've learned from having animals and I'm still learning."
Heroic Animals: 100 Amazing Creatures Great and Small is out now.
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Birmingham has been officially announced as the host for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. It has been a rocky road, with the second city facing competition from Liverpool and then having to wait for the announcement after the Commonwealth Games Federation said it needed clarification on a number of issues.
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By Monica RimmerBBC News
A bitter five-month long bin dispute, costing the council £6m, and recent criticism from Communities Secretary Sajid Javid, who said the Labour-administered city council was badly run, may not have helped.
So can the Brummies pull it off?
It seems Birmingham is continuing the growth that has seen a bid to be Channel 4's new headquarters, the location for the 2018 Gymnastics World Cup and hosting a controversial 100-mile Velo bike race.
The city council's campaign was based on Birmingham being the "heart of the UK" and "soul of the Commonwealth". And now it will stage the £750m showpiece, billed as being the most expensive sports event in Britain since the London 2012 Olympics.
There was also excitement amongst the city's sporting talent, delighted at the promise of a home crowd.
Coventry running legend David Moorcroft, a former 5,000-metre world record holder and ex-head of UK Athletics, thinks the Games are a bonus not just for Birmingham but the wider area.
"I think it's fantastic for Birmingham and it's fantastic for the whole of the West Midlands," he said.
"There's so much more than just sport involved in the Commonwealth Games, it connects with the diverse communities that [make up] Birmingham.
"It'll be a great celebration. Birmingham has a good reputation at putting on big sporting events and it does them really well. It's something for loads of young aspiring athletes from the West Midlands to take part in."
Duncan McKay, editor of Inside the Games, said Birmingham already had a lot of plans in place.
He said: "It's a fantastic city: it's got a very diverse population that encapsulates the Commonwealth. It has many of the facilities already, albeit some of it like Alexander Stadium needs a revamp, but it has the infrastructure.
"I think it's going to be a great occasion for the city and it will really benefit from it in the long term."
A legacy for Birmingham
Evie Tomlinson, 18, a dairy farmer from Leicestershire visiting Birmingham for the day, said: "It's not an area that has a lot of publicity... it's such a good thing for them."
Ms Tomlinson said it could be "the biggest legacy for Birmingham".
Can Birmingham handle it?
However Michael Haile, 46, an economist who works in Birmingham, said: "I'm not sure if they can handle the infrastructure. If you go around Birmingham there are quite a few places that need doing up. I'm not sure they'd be able to handle it.
"If I remember rightly, London had a really hard time pulling together the Olympics, so I'm not sure if Birmingham would have the necessary skill sets and funds. That would be my doubt, but for the city it's great."
'More people involved in sport'
James Harris, 25, from Stourport, Worcestershire, a hockey coach, said: "It's brilliant, it'd get more people involved in the sports. It's just great for the city as a whole.
"We went to the Olympics, that was brilliant. It'd just be good to get people down, loads of people can get into the sport by watching.
"Especially with the hockey, there's nowhere really that has a massive event, you normally have to travel quite far. We had a big [surge of interest] from the Olympics so if they do well here, it'll help even more."
'The Glasgow effect'
Gary Dixon, 56, who commutes from Telford to Birmingham each day for work, said: "I think it's a brilliant thing for Birmingham. Birmingham's having some inward invest at the moment, which is raising the profile.
"It did very well for Glasgow, the Olympic games did brilliantly for London, they redeveloped a lot of areas, I'm hoping the Commonwealth Games will have the same effect here."
Birmingham has a track record of delivering large international sporting events, recently hosting the ICC Champions Trophy and The Ashes at Edgbaston, Rugby World Cup fixtures at Villa Park, Diamond League athletics meetings at Alexander Stadium and the Aegon Classic tennis championships at Edgbaston Priory Club. There was also the Birmingham Marathon and Velo Birmingham.
The council says it has 95% of competition venues already in place, with the only new-build required being the Sandwell Aquatics Centre, which will host swimming and diving events.
Alexander Stadium will be expanded to host the athletics events and ceremonies, and it is hoped that Perry Barr, a suburban area in north Birmingham, will be transformed in the same way that east Manchester was revitalised by hosting the Games the last time they were staged in England in 2002.
And while Birmingham has won the bid, it will be sharing the glory with other locations across the region.
Victoria Park in Leamington Spa is the home of Bowls England and the English National Bowls Championships, so will aptly serve as the venue for lawn bowls and para lawn bowls.
Part of the Ricoh Arena in the newly-crowned City of Culture 2021, Coventry will host netball matches, while Sandwell, just a stone's throw away from Birmingham in the Black Country, will host aquatic events in a newly-built arena.
It may have failed at a bid to host the Olympics in 1992, but Birmingham appears to be fast becoming the go-to hosting city for major sports events.
Additional reporting by Alpha Ceesay.
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The death of a man at house in North East Lincolnshire is being treated as murder, police have said.
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Peter Craven, 46, died of serious head injuries after being found in Oxford Street, Grimsby, just before midnight on Wednesday.
Two men have been arrested over his death.
A 35-year-old man was detained on Friday lunchtime, while a 47-year-old man was held on Thursday. Both remain in custody.
Officer said Mr Craven's family had been informed of his death and were receiving support from specially trained officers.
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Guernsey's government has agreed a new "open skies" policy, meaning airlines will no longer need an air transport licence to fly to and from the island.
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There are still two protected routes which will still require licences, with Alderney and Gatwick being classified as "lifeline routes".
There are only four airlines operating in and out of Guernsey, one of which has suspended flights until September.
The decision was voted through by 22 votes to 14.
More on this and other Guernsey stories
Licensing has previously been strictly regulated to preserve valuable landing slots at UK airports as well as ensuring service levels.
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The first steps to design new dual carriageway on the A9 between Perth and Inverness have been announced.
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The Scottish government has awarded two major contracts to engineering and environmental assessment consultants.
Work to dual the A9 all the way between the two cities is due to be completed by 2025.
Halcrow will carry out preliminary environmental assessment work and Jacobs will then provide preliminary engineering work.
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The owners of one of Europe's largest man-made holes are considering opening it as Scotland's first commercial deep-water inland diving centre.
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The Rubislaw Quarry, which has been credited with giving Aberdeen its Granite City name, was sold to Sandy Whyte and Hugh Black last summer.
The quarry was closed 40 years ago and is now 140m deep with water.
A team of divers recently surveyed the quarry and have said they believe it would make an ideal diving centre site.
The group dived 105m and found some rusting quarry equipment.
The owners have said they would consider the diving venture proposal.
After buying the five-acre quarry Mr Whyte and Mr Black said they wanted to explore ways of sharing with the public the beauty of the landmark.
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Promoter Sam Leach staged more than 40 Beatles gigs in 1961 and '62. He also wanted to manage the group - but says they chose Brian Epstein over him after a mix-up with a newspaper advert for a gig in Aldershot meant only 18 people turned up.
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The band went on to take the charts by storm after releasing their debut single Love Me Do exactly 50 years ago.
"The advert didn't go in and we only got 18 people," Leach says. "On the way back the next day, The Beatles decided to go with Brian instead of me because they thought that cock-up wouldn't have happened with him.
"When we came back from Aldershot, they asked me to come down and see them. I went down to the Grapes [pub in Liverpool] and when I walked in they looked a bit sheepish.
"I knew something was wrong and they said 'Sam, we've got this millionaire who wants to manage us. I know we've got a handshake agreement with you but he's a millionaire.'
"I was a bit annoyed but they asked me to go and see Brian and give them my opinion of him. I went to see him the next day in his office and I realised he was genuine, he's got plenty of money, that that should be all they need.
"I thought I might stay in touch with The Beatles and get them to record for my record label. But on the way back to the Grapes, I thought, 'why should I tell them the truth?' I'll just say to them 'He's no good for you'.
"When I walked into the Grapes, they looked at me so trustingly that I couldn't tell a lie. I said, 'I think you'll make it with him - remember me when you're famous.'
"I've no regrets at all. I did my part. I was an important stepping stone and even in 200 years time I'll still be getting talked about thanks to the Beatles. I've been quite lucky.
"When they came back to Liverpool for the Hard Day's Night premiere [in 1964], Brian sent me three tickets and I was outside. There were a million people lining the streets and as they were getting nearer to the Odeon, where the premiere was, I could hear the roar getting louder and louder. That's when I suddenly realised just how big they'd become.
"It would have been hard to think that it would still be that big 50 years later. Even George Harrison didn't think it would last six months.
"Until they did Sgt Pepper, I wouldn't have believed it would have lasted this long. The Beatles will still be talked about in 200 years time, I'm quite sure of that. There'll never be another band like it."
On seeing The Beatles for the first time in January 1961:
"The first time I saw them, I realised how good they were. They were the best rock band on the planet at that time and I told them so. I said 'One day you'll be as big as Elvis'. John Lennon laughed and said 'We've got a right nutter here, Paul'."
On his Operation Big Beat gigs in New Brighton in November 1961:
"I got 4,100 people the first night and 4,600 the next one. They are still Beatles UK attendance records. I'm quite proud of that. They were absolutely wild. The crowd were absolutely hysterical.
"All the bands were good but The Beatles absolutely took the roof off. You only had to look at them to realise how big they were going to go. They had such charisma on stage. I'm very happy to have been part of that."
On his engagement party in March 1962:
"During the party, John was in the kitchen with this girl and he was rolling eggs down her bird's nest hairstyle and they were breaking on the floor. A dozen eggs, a total mess in the kitchen, and my mother-in-law really got angry with him and told him off.
"He apologised and she made him wipe it up. The party lasted 24 hours and as he went, he put his arms around me and said 'Sam, that was the best party I've ever been to'. And as he went away, I slipped a raw egg into his pocket."
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An Evans Cycles store has reopened after it temporarily closed when the building was reclaimed by its landlord in a dispute over its lease.
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The store in Martlesham Heath, near Ipswich, was closed for a week after a "notice of forfeiture" was put up.
The note said the landlord LondonMetric Saturn "peaceably re-entered" the building "in accordance with the landlord's power under the lease".
Evans's owner Frasers Group has been approached by the BBC for comment.
The lawyers representing LondonMetric Saturn said they did not wish to make any comment.
It is understood the shop reopened on 8 December.
The Martlesham Heath store is understood to have been the only one affected.
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Police have carried out a series of anti-terror raids across the Midlands amid concerns about "extremist activity" and "fraud".
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West Midlands Police counter terrorism unit searched a number of addresses in Birmingham, Coventry and Leicester on Tuesday.
The special operations unit of East Midlands police was also deployed.
The searches followed allegations of extremist activity in India and fraud offences, police said.
No-one has yet been arrested.
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The decision on when to raise interest rates is still likely be at the top of the Bank of England's agenda at the turn of the year, the governor said this afternoon - even though he acknowledged that China's economic slowdown means the world's second biggest economy is likely to be a drag on growth in the whole world.
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Robert PestonEconomics editor
Mark Carney, speaking at the annual Jackson Hole convention in the US of central bankers and economists, said: "The prospect of sustained momentum in the UK economy and the gradual firming of underlying inflationary pressures will likely put the decision as to when to start the process of gradual monetary policy normalisation [or interest rate rises] into sharper relief at the turn of this year."
Which is another way of saying that he stands by the economic timetable for possibly raising rates that he set out in Lincoln Cathedral on 16 July.
He was giving his first response to the rout in shares on the Shanghai stock market over the past few days - a rout which for a couple of days infected stock markets all over the world.
Mr Carney said an interest rate rise was by no means inevitable in the opening months of 2016.
But he wanted to dampen speculation that "developments in China" have changed "the process of rate increases from limited and gradual to infinitesimal and inert".
What the Bank of England has to weigh up, he said, was whether domestic demand - spending by British consumers, investing by British investors - was strong enough to offset the potential for further "material slowing of growth in China and more broadly in non-Japan Asia", coupled with the deflationary impact of falling currencies of China and other emerging markets.
Although Wall Street and European stock markets have since recovered from last week's shocks, central bankers and economists are concerned that a pronounced deceleration of growth in China is having a big negative impact on other emerging market economies, and therefore on the prosperity of the world as a whole.
There has therefore been widespread speculation that the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England would delay the first rises in interest rates since the great crash of 2008 in the US and UK.
Mr Carney made clear that the decision on whether to increase the so-called Bank Rate - the interest rate set by the Bank of England - by 0.25% from 0.5% would depend on economic data between now and then.
But he was making the significant point that he did not believe that last week's China shock made it inevitable that there would be a material delay in interest rate rises.
In that sense he appeared to echo what the vice chairman of the Fed, Stanley Fischer, said yesterday about the possible course of US interest rates - when he said that a rise in US rates could still happen in September.
All that said, Mr Carney and Mr Fischer - although influential - have only one vote each on the interest rate decision, and not all their colleagues will be as sanguine as them that it is sensible to keep open the option of early interest rate rises, in view of the weakening in the global economy.
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Ben Affleck's film Argo tells the bizarre story of how in 1980 the CIA - with Canadian help - sprang a group of Americans from Iran after they escaped a US embassy overrun by protestors.
The film, which has received seven Oscar nominations including one for best picture, is based on real-life events. But how much of it is fiction?
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By Vincent DowdBBC World Service
When Mark Lijek took Tehran as his first posting in the US foreign service, he knew he wasn't opting for an easy life.
"I was asked to volunteer in October 1978 and things in Iran were already pretty bad," he explains.
"There were violent demonstrations on the streets and it wasn't at all clear the Shah could survive. Then in January he abdicated and left the country."
Mark did a six-month course in Farsi before arriving in Iran in the summer of 1979, followed by his wife. Cora Lijek wasn't a foreign service official but was given a contract because the embassy urgently needed Farsi speakers.
The couple couldn't have guessed how quickly they would find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.
The US embassy in Tehran consisted of 26 acres surrounded by more than a mile of wall, with only 13 marines to protect it. Not long before Mark's arrival it had been overrun by anti-American protestors who had left after a few hours.
So when demonstrators again broke in, early on 4 November 1979, Mark initially assumed the same thing might happen.
"Mainly the protest was because America had chosen to admit the Shah for medical treatment. The consular building, where Cora and I worked, was at least five minutes from the main chancery building and had its own door onto the street.
"The people who broke in forgot about us or initially didn't much care."
Mark Lijek, now retired, is impressed with how Ben Affleck stages the taking of the US embassy in Argo, a sequence filmed partly in Istanbul and partly on location in California.
"It was almost the first time I'd thought deeply about what it must have been like for the 50 or so Americans in the main building," he tells the BBC. "Those scenes were quite difficult to watch."
It is after the six Americans slip away from the embassy that Argo becomes a masterclass in reshaping reality into a Hollywood hit.
The screenplay has the escapees - Mark and Cora Lijek, Bob Anders, Lee Schatz and Joe and Kathy Stafford - settling down to enforced cohabitation at the residence of the Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor.
In reality, after several nights - including one spent in the UK residential compound - the group was split between the Taylor house and the home of another Canadian official, John Sheardown.
Mark Lijek says he can see why Argo makes the switch. "That group dynamic builds the tension, I suppose, and makes it seem more dramatic when there's disagreement.
'Books and Scrabble'
"However, it's not true we could never go outside. John Sheardown's house had an interior courtyard with a garden and we could walk there freely.
"But it is true we had little to do except read books and play Scrabble. We drank quite a lot too."
The screenplay ratchets up the tension when an Iranian maid at the Canadian ambassador's residence guesses who his guests are. "Kathy Stafford, who was at the ambassador's, calls that a composite character," continues Lijek.
"I think some Iranian employees probably did work out who the Staffords were, but it was a highly theoretical risk."
The central element of the story sounds incredible but is in fact true. The CIA cooked up a plan to spirit the six out of the country on a scheduled flight from Tehran's Mehrabad airport, masquerading as Canadians working on a non-existent science-fiction film.
Mark Lijek recalls that, of the group, he was the most immediately enthusiastic. "I thought it had the right amount of pizzazz. Who but film-makers would be crazy enough to come to Tehran in the middle of a revolution? I had no problem pretending to be in the movie industry."
The truth - which Argo artfully obscures - is that the cover story was never tested and in some ways proved irrelevant to the escape.
There is a sequence in the film where the six go on a location scout in Tehran to create the impression they are movie people. According to Mark, the scene is total fiction.
"We could never have done that. Our story was to be that the Canadian ambassador had strongly advised us not to scout for locations because of instability on the streets.
Phoney documents
"If asked, we were going to say we were leaving Iran to return when it was safer. But no one ever asked!"
In retrospect, Mark Lijek thinks the value of the cover story was to give the escapees the confidence to get through the ordeal at the airport.
Argo's final scenes are superbly tense, as the six make it onto the plane by the skin of their teeth. The CIA had given them false departure documents for which, of course, there were no matching arrival forms.
The big climax is a heart-pounding chase down the runway as gun-toting members of the Revolutionary Guard try to stop them taking off.
"Absolutely none of that happened," says Mark.
"It's true there could have been problems with documentation - it was our biggest vulnerability.
"But the Agency had done its homework and knew the Iranian border authorities habitually made no attempt to reconcile documents.
"Fortunately for us, there were very few Revolutionary Guards about. It's why we turned up for a flight at 5.30 in the morning; even they weren't zealous enough to be there that early.
"The truth is the immigration officers barely looked at us and we were processed out in the regular way. We got on the flight to Zurich and then we were taken to the US ambassador's residence in Berne. It was that straightforward."
The six were meant to live in Florida under assumed names until the release of other embassy personnel held hostage in Tehran, which came in January 1981. But the plan was dropped when reports of the escape appeared in newspapers.
In 1981, a TV movie called Escape from Iran: The Canadian Caper told the story minus the CIA's involvement. The agency didn't admit its role until 1997.
Mark says it came as a relief when he could finally talk openly about the events in Iran. He's a fan of Argo and takes a wryly amused view of how it burnishes the truth to dramatic effect.
Of course, Mark is wise to the ways of film-makers. Back in the 1980s, he was briefly in movies himself.
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For this sleepy village a summer of protest beckons.
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By Nick TarverBBC News
Balcombe, in West Sussex, has found itself at the heart of a debate over hydraulic fracturing - known as fracking.
Test drilling is due to begin for oil exploration by energy company Caudrilla, however, there are worries locally this will lead to the search for shale gas.
Protesters, police and journalists have descended in their hundreds as lorries drive in and out of the site delivering equipment.
So how have the villagers responded to the test drilling? And do the protests, which could last through August and into September, have the support of the village?
'Standing up against it'
Balcombe has 2,000 residents, one village store, a pub and several small shops.
It is also now home to a drilling company and a large group of impassioned protesters.
This was not always the case.
Three weeks ago Balcombe resident Louisa Delpy stood alone with two others outside the gates of the site.
She said: "We couldn't imagine the protest would be like this now - I thought I was an individual standing up against it."
Speaking at the camp outside the drilling site, which is a 15-minute walk from the village, she said the village was "united" against the drilling but added that Balcombe was "very conservative".
'Nimbyism'
Unsurprisingly, support for the protest is unanimous down at the camp.
However, up in the village, despite it being festooned with placards and posters protesting against the drilling, there is also opposition to the protest.
Michael Dutton, who has lived in the village since 1948, said: "It's all 'nimbyism' along with professional protesters - they're very disruptive.
"I would prefer we get our oil from Balcombe than the Middle East or Russia."
And Balcombe resident Jacky Hall said the protesters were "primarily outsiders".
"They're not fracking - why don't they [the protesters] wait until they've done the exploratory drilling?
"People used to drive through the village and say, 'oh it's a lovely village'. Now they talk about the protesters."
'Don't like outsiders'
So far there have been dozens of arrests since police started to move protesters away from the gates.
Cuadrilla, which had hoped to begin drilling last week but has been thwarted by the protesters, would need fresh permission from the Environment Agency to carry out shale gas exploration.
Kathryn McWhirter, who is from the village and an active member of the protest camp, said she believes support for the drilling among villagers is minimal.
"It's a very conservative village and there's a small element who are against the protests," she said.
"They don't like outsiders and they don't like a fuss being made."
However, with permission to drill currently due to end on 28 September, it is likely protest camp will remain over the summer with the "fuss" set to continue.
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The A1 in North Yorkshire will be closed in both directions for 34 hours from 20:00 GMT on Saturday to enable a road bridge to be demolished.
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The Highways Agency said the closure was from junction 51 (Leeming Bar) to Scotch Corner until 06:00 on Monday.
The demolition of Fort Bridge, Catterick, is part of the £380m upgrade of a 12-mile (19.3km) stretch of the A1 between Leeming Bar and Barton.
The existing dual carriageway is being replaced with a three-lane motorway.
The Highways Agency said the closure was "essential". It said there would be diversions, but warned drivers of delays at peak times.
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It's been seven years since George W Bush and his fellow Texans left the US political stage, but that doesn't mean the Lone Star State is out of the presidential game. If anything, the 2016 Republican nomination battle will have an even more distinct - if unexpected - Texas twang.
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Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
Visitors to the George W Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, Texas are greeted with a quote from the former president shortly after entering the main exhibit hall.
"My background leaves more than an accent, it leaves an outlook," reads an inscription on the wall. "Optimistic. Impatient with pretence. Confident that people can chart their own course."
For many the former president is the embodiment of the Texas political stereotype. Plain-spoken, frontier-style conservatism leavened heavily with the rhetoric of self-reliance and a swagger that borders on arrogance ("In Texas we call that walking," Mr Bush once famously said).
But there's more to modern Texas politics, made clear by the diverse range of candidates with strong state ties currently vying for the Republican presidential nomination.
"There is something about our personalities - we are very colourful people, and we tend to get attention put on us," says Abby Livingston of the Texas Tribune. "So there are no shortage of characters from the state of Texas who elicit national attention."
If Texas is the beating heart of the Republican Party, however, that cast of characters is pulling it in different directions - a reflection of the battle over the very identity of modern conservatism in the US.
Among the candidates, Rick Perry, who announced his presidential bid on Thursday, probably looks and sounds the most like the cowboy hat-wearing Texan of Hollywood central casting. He took over the governorship when Mr Bush became president in 2001 and held the office for a record-setting 14 years.
Unlike his predecessor, however, the fifth-generation Texan is no "compassionate conservative". His stump speech boasts of his state's long record of economic growth combined with tough talk on foreign policy.
Call him the flag-waving, tax-cutting conservative.
Next is Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the darling of the grass-roots Tea Party base that has roiled the Republican party over the past few years.
The Ivy League educated son of a Cuban immigrant rose to power by besting his party's establishment pick for the Senate, and he's made a name for himself with an aggressive embrace of conservative orthodoxy.
He represents the insurgent, uncompromising Republican, who views moderation even in his own party as a lack of moral strength.
"Since he became a senator, every single officeholder in the state is looking over their shoulder wondering if the next Ted Cruz is running against them in a Republican primary," Livingston says. "He has terrified everyone."
Although Senator Rand Paul hails from Kentucky, he's the son of former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, was raised in the Houston area and went to college at Baylor University in Waco.
Like Mr Cruz, he's made his name railing against the Republican establishment - but his embrace of small government, civil liberties and a more modest foreign policy is a world away from his fellow senator's fire-and-brimstone politics.
The Kentucky senator is the libertarian conservative.
And then there's Jeb Bush.
Much has been made of the pending Sunshine State showdown between Florida's former governor and one of its current senators, Marco Rubio. But Mr Bush is just as much a part of the battle over Texan hearts, souls and pocketbooks as any - and his ties run deep.
Mr Bush was born in the oil town of Midland, went to college at the University of Texas and worked in Houston. Both his father and presidential brother call Texas home, and his son, George P Bush, is the state's land commissioner.
Label him what you will - the establishment conservative, the dynasty conservative - Mr Bush harkens back to the kind of Republican who used to firmly control Texas. He's pro-business and pro-immigration, with less interest in divisive social issues.
If you want to cast an even broader Texas net, that's not all.
Former Hewlett Packard head Carly Fiorina was born in Austin and still has family in Texas. While her natural base is the Silicon Valley of California, Texas has a vibrant high-tech industry with its own issues and interests in the conservative movement - including a heavy emphasis on science education, low taxes and regulation, and a steady supply of immigration visas for skilled workers.
And Mike Huckabee, former governor of neighbouring Arkansas, spent two years studying in a Fort Worth seminary. He's the evangelical conservative that has long made uneasy peace with the party's pro-business faction.
So what is it about Texas that has made it such a key player in this year's presidential race? Is it merely happenstance, combined with the state's population and wealth? Perhaps. But other large states, such as California, don't seem to consistently produce presidential aspirants the way the Lone Star State has.
"Texas is a pretty big part of the conversation by virtue of just how conservative the state is, just how much money is here and just how big it is," says James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. "It's hard for people not to look at Texas and see something of a model or at least a laboratory of some sorts."
More than that, however, Livingston says Texas politics creates ties that bind. She points, for instance, to a friend of Rand Paul's dating back to the 1970s who stepped down as head of the Texas Republican Party in January to work for his campaign.
"If you're just around in Texas long enough, you're going to meet people who will help you be successful - donors, political talent, that kind of thing," she says. "It's such a pivotal place in the Republican world that just having ties, being from here, living here - you're going to have some advantages."
Even on the Democratic side, candidates can't ignore Texas. At the same time Mr Perry was preparing to launch his candidacy in Dallas, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was swinging through the city for a $2,700 (£1,750) per person fundraising dinner.
Her state ties go back to 1972, when she and her husband worked in Austin on George McGovern's presidential campaign.
Texas's influence - on Republican politics, at least - is more than just a discussion of dollars and ideology, however. The state's primary is scheduled for 1 March - relatively early in the nomination calendar. According to Henson, that's going to encourage a lot of candidates to try to land a share of the state Richard Nixon once called "the big enchilada".
"If you're somebody from Texas, you really try everything you can do to stay in until that date, if only to get some delegates to bargain with," he says. "It's an expensive proposition, but if you run a campaign on the cheap it makes sense to hang around."
So get ready to see a lot of Texas - and Texans - over the coming months of the presidential campaign, even if it comes from places and people you don't normally associate with the state.
"It's like in Texas, there's different accents," Livingston says. "Most people don't realise that."
An East Texas accent is decidedly different than one from West Texas, she says - just like the distinct strains of Texas conservative politics.
"Obviously we have an image, we have a stereotype, and when you look at us from the outside we all look like cowboys who ride horses to work. But it also is a very, very diverse state. The Jeb Bush strain is very different from the Rand Paul strain, which is very different from Rick Perry and Ted Cruz. They all seem to wear cowboy boots, though, especially when they're in the state."
And they all want to bring their particular bit of Texas with them to the White House in 2016, boots and all.
All photos used in composites are courtesy of Getty Images
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The rhetoric is certainly getting tougher.
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By Jonathan BealeDefence correspondent, BBC News
David Cameron has recently labelled the group known as Islamic State (IS) as "one of the biggest threats our world has faced".
He's described the extremists as a "death cult" and the need to confront them as the "fight of our generation".
In a recent speech, the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, called it "the new Battle of Britain" against "a fascist enemy".
That's the rhetoric. Now the reality.
In 1940, in the real Battle of Britain, the RAF had hundreds of aircraft to defend the nation from a potential Nazi invasion.
Against IS, the RAF has been relying on eight Tornado jets flying from Cyprus.
It has also been using 10 Reaper unmanned aircraft or drones to carry out surveillance and air strike missions.
Together the Reapers and Tornados have flown more than 1,100 combat missions over Iraq and carried out more than 250 air strikes.
In total the US-led coalition has conducted nearly 8,000 air attacks.
'Incoherent' strategy
So while Mr Fallon is keen to point out that the UK is the second largest national contributor to the military campaign, it's still dwarfed by the US effort.
In the words of the former chairman of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Rory Stewart, the UK's contribution is "modest" at best.
His successor, the Conservative MP Julian Lewis, has been more critical.
He has described the UK strategy against IS as "incoherent".
Mr Lewis has accused the prime minister of making policy "on the hoof" and made clear the government will need a proper strategy if it expects his backing to expand the air strikes to Syria. So is he right?
If the UK strategy is incoherent, then so is that of the US. After all, the British contribution is just a reflection of what America is and isn't doing.
Reaper drones:
RAF information on Reaper drones
Both countries are prisoners of their past - their largely unsuccessful previous interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The over-riding strategy appears to be not to get dragged into another long war in the Middle East. So that means a limit to "boots on the ground".
The US has about 3,000 trainers in Iraq. The UK has a total of 135 in the north helping the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
An 'infidel' enemy
The former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Richards, recently argued that the West needed "tens of thousands" of trainers on the ground if it wanted to make a difference.
Like Mr Lewis, he thinks the current strategy isn't working. Earlier this month he told the BBC that the West's efforts against IS were "woefully insufficient".
While it is still possible that the US and the UK could increase the presence of military trainers, the chances of either of them putting combat "boots on the ground" are slim to non-existent.
Many argue it would play into the hands of the extremists who would be bolstered in fighting an "infidel" enemy.
That leaves it largely to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's army, Syrian rebels and Kurdish forces to do the fighting on the ground.
The West has made clear it won't help the Syrian regime while Mr Assad remains in power.
Training "moderate" Syrian rebels is not going according to plan.
The US Defence Secretary, Ash Carter, has admitted that so far America has trained just 60 Syrian fighters.
Turkey joins fight
As for relying on the Kurds, that's just become more complicated.
Turkey may have finally joined the fight against IS. But it appears to be more enthusiastic in targeting its old enemy, the Kurdish separatist group, the PKK.
The PKK have been allies to both the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds. Turkey's actions might end up weakening one of the more effective fighting forces.
So what more might the UK do next?
The government is now contemplating widening its air strikes to include targets in Syria, subject to parliamentary approval.
The RAF is already carrying out surveillance missions over Syria and could easily switch to strike missions if and when the order comes.
But it would probably still be with the same limited number of aircraft.
At the end of the Cold War, the RAF had more than 30 front-line squadrons; today it has just seven.
Speaking last month, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Gen Sir Nick Houghton, warned that the RAF was already "at the very limits" of its fast jet availability, with the ageing Tornados mounting daily strike missions in Iraq and the more modern Typhoons regularly called upon to intercept Russian warplanes near UK airspace and in the Baltics.
Absent from the fight
As it did with Libya, the RAF could send some Typhoons to back up the Tornados at Akrotiri in Cyprus, but the Typhoon still has a limited ground attack capability.
It's also important to note that most US and UK warplanes have been returning to base from their missions without firing their weapons.
Air power may have limited IS's ability to move, but you still need an effective army to secure and hold the ground. And at the moment that army is absent from the fight.
Lord Richards recently told the BBC: "If you want to get rid of them [IS] we need to effectively get on a war footing."
While the government's words suggest that is now the case, its actions do not.
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Mongolian wrestlers have dominated the Japanese sumo scene for years and Bum-Erdene Tuvshinjargal is keen to follow in their footsteps. As a girl, that means challenging centuries of tradition, but that's another fight she's ready to take on. She spoke to journalist Erin Craig at her home in Ulan Bator.
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On one side of the ring squats a formidable, heavyset wrestler, the traditional mawashi wound around his waist. On the other is Bum-Erdene Tuvshinjargal, her loincloth wrapped over black spandex.
The competitors wait, stare, then cannon toward each other. They hit in the centre, straining in a slow dance of raw power.
Then Tuvshinjargal explodes forward, muscling her opponent out of the ring.
She gives a rare, brief smile as she walks off the mat.
"You can't be scared," says the 17 year old sumo world champion. "If you're scared you won't win."
As a child, Tuvshinjargal watched sumo on TV with her grandparents, never dreaming she would be a wrestler herself. She later took up judo, and in 2015 her instructor suggested trying sumo at a competition the following month.
That competition turned out to be the Junior Sumo World Championships. Tuvshinjargal came home with a bronze medal. Last year she went back for the gold.
Her coach, Gankhyag Naranbat, thinks this is just the beginning. As a former rikishi - a professional sumo wrestler - and World Games gold medallist, he knows what to look for in a competitor.
"I think she will be more than three times world champion, heavyweight category," he predicts. That would break a world record - one established only last year by Tuvshinjargal's teammate, Khishigdorj Sunjidmaa.
Pushing the rice paper ceiling
But no matter how many records she breaks, Tuvshinjargal's career is approaching the rice paper ceiling. In sumo, only men can go pro.
Professional sumo is only practiced in Japan where rikishi participate in six annual Grand Tournaments. Sumo began as a religious ceremony and the sport remains deeply ritualistic. Tradition forbids women even entering the ring.
But women have competed at the amateur level since the mid-1990s when Olympic aspirations convinced the sport to go "co-ed". Sumo still hasn't made the Olympics but after 12 World Championships women have become an integral part of landscape.
Unlike many female wrestlers, Tuvshinjargal comes from a country where sumo is incredibly popular. Mongolian rikishi have dominated professional sumo for years; just this month Mongolian superstar Hakuho broke the world record for total career wins.
Wrestling has always been important to Mongolian culture, as one of the legendary Three Manly Sports, and many boys learn sumo alongside traditional wrestling.
According to Naranbat, Mongolians fundamentally changed sumo by bringing in moves from traditional wrestling. While sumo matches can be over in seconds, Mongolian wrestling isn't limited by a ring and requires more time and strategy.
"Before Mongolian wrestlers sumo was only pushing," says Naranbat. "That's why Mongolian wrestlers are high level."
Forging a future
But amateur sumo isn't covered in the Mongolian media, leaving female wrestlers permanently in the dark. People are often surprised to learn they exist.
They're even more surprised to see what these women can do.
"They think that when I'm on this mat I looks like a beast." Tuvshinjargal acknowledges. "But when I step out of this building, I'm just a girl."
And like most people her age she is thinking about the future. After graduating from high school last June, she has been busy applying to universities and considering careers. Most of all, she wants to forge a path as a female wrestler.
"I have given my heart to sumo," she says. "I want to pursue it to the highest level."
It's unclear whether she could make it a career, as amateurs don't usually receive sponsorships. The Mongolian government gives monetary awards to medal winners but with only one major international competition a year even a gold medal isn't enough to live on.
She would love to combine her other passion - acting - with athletics, like her favourite movie star Jackie Chan.
That's not unprecedented - Mongolian sumo champion Ulambayar Byambajav has appeared on several TV programmes. Or she could blaze new territory and become the country's first female sumo coach.
A champion - if allowed to be
Like many of her teammates, Tuvshinjargal can rely on a supportive family. Her grandparents enjoy experiencing sumo through her instead of the TV and their walls are covered in pictures of Tuvshinjargal in her mawashi.
The 2018 World Championship will be Tuvshinjargal's last match in the junior division unless she outperforms the older women to earn a place in the adult division.
She already competed on the Mongolian National Women's Team during 2016 World Championships, which placed second overall.
After that, her eyes are on the 2021 World Games and maybe, someday, the Olympics.
Naranbat is quietly confident in his student's ability. After all, she is already strong enough to beat men. Once she masters the strategy, there will be no stopping her.
And if the rules changed, if women were allowed to go pro, would Tuvshinjargal have the ability to make it?
"Yes," he says. "She would be a champion."
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The sacking of Pakistani Taliban (TTP) spokesman Shahidullah Shahid for supporting Islamic State is the latest sign of divisions in an already fragmented militant movement. Over the years Pakistan's insurgents have spawned a bewildering array of splinter groups and factions, reports M Ilyas Khan.
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Shahidullah Shahid, as he was known, was the third TTP spokesman to part company with the leadership in recent months.
Before him, Azam Tariq left with the Mehsud faction of Khan Said Sajna that quit the TTP in May. Another predecessor, Ehsanullah Ehsan, became the chief spokesman for a group of Mohmand tribesmen that goes by the name Jamaat-e-Ahrar.
This splintering of the TTP shows that like any other social entity, large and geographically inclusive militant groups also contain sub-groups.
Back in September when the spokesman of the Pakistani army blamed an unknown group of militants - the al-Shura - for carrying out the October 2012 attack on education activist Malala Yousafzai, few eyebrows were raised.
After nearly 35 years of conflict involving non-state actors, Pakistanis are used to insurgent groups breaking from the herd to launch an attack which grabs the headlines, often under one of those spiritually inspiring names from the Islamic texts.
In most cases, they disappear from the scene just as quickly.
The trend started in the post-9/11 period, when elements within the militant network that were uprooted from Afghanistan started to hit targets in Pakistan.
These groups comprised fighters from the Pakistani tribal militants, the Punjabi Taliban, Central Asians, Arab fighters and militants from East Asia. Most of them gravitated towards the umbrella militant alliance called the TTP which was formed in 2007.
The earliest such group to make headlines was Harkatul Mujahideen al-Almi, which was blamed for a string of attacks in Karachi in 2002, including an assassination attempt on then President Pervez Musharraf, the bombing of the Sheraton hotel and a car bomb explosion outside the US consulate.
The group's name was similar to that of a major Kashmir-focused Punjabi Taliban group, but the addition of a suffix - al-Almi, or international - appeared to give it wider scope.
It faded away soon afterwards and has not been heard of since.
In 2004, a group calling itself Jundullah surfaced with an audacious ambush of the Karachi Corps commander. Then it took an eight-year sabbatical. Soon after it re-emerged it seemed to fall out with the TTP over who carried out the 2013 killing of nine foreign climbers on Nanga Parbat.
Jundullah claimed the credit for itself, but the TTP said a specially established unit called Jundul Hafsa had done it. Police in Karachi have blamed some recent attacks on Jundullah, but the group itself has made no comment.
As for Jundul Hafsa, it has turned out to be another one-hit wonder, at least so far.
Other short-lived groups include the Asian Tigers and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Almi (LeJA), another group with a familiar name but a differentiating suffix.
Both were briefly in the news during the spring of 2010.
Apparently, the Asian Tigers claimed that they had captured two former ISI officials and a British journalist of Pakistani origin. Later, one of the ISI men was beheaded for "spying".
Some weeks after the killing, there were reports of a series of attacks in North Waziristan in which two top leaders of the Asian Tigers were said to have been gunned down by someone calling himself the chief of LeJA.
This man himself was killed along with two others by unknown gunmen two months later. The killers left a note written on a TTP letterhead accusing the dead men of kidnapping former ISI officials who "during their active service had been kind to Taliban".
Make of all that what you will - it's not straightforward.
More recently, the group calling itself Jamaat-e-Ahrar (JA) has broken away from the TTP.
It is not clear if JA is some kind of successor to a TTP-linked group called Ahrarul Hind, which represented those elements within the TTP who believe in the "final battle for India" in which, according to them, a Muslim victory was foretold by Prophet Mohammad.
The recent launching of al-Qaeda's South Asia wing is seen by many as a continuation of this strand of militant thought.
All these groups seem to have grown from a common source - the Afghan mujahideen of the 1980s and their Arab and non-Arab allies who later morphed into al-Qaeda and the TTP.
This process was born in the shadows of a military regime that ruled Pakistan during the 1980s and hosted a seven-party alliance of Afghan mujahideen - called the Peshawar Seven - to destabilise Kabul under Soviet occupation.
The regime's ideological tilt created room for fundamentalist groups to dominate the Afghan jihad, ultimately giving rise to the Taliban movement in 1994.
By 1996, when Taliban had captured Kabul and put an end to the Afghan civil war, the Arab Wahhabi groups and Salafists who had earlier left for Africa, the Caucasus and the Balkans began to pour back into the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, thereby completing the toxic mix that has characterised local militancy in the region.
Since 9/11, the number and numerical strength of these groups has multiplied, and many of them have Pakistan - an ally in the US-led "war on terror" - near the top of their hit-list.
Earlier this year, Pakistan's interior minister Chaudhry Nisar told parliament the main TTP movement included more than 35 groups. Later, a security policy document listed around 60 groups that successive Pakistani governments had proscribed since the late 1990s.
But there are dozens of others - all vying for limelight and funds.
Most of them have local interests. They are natives of the areas under their control, and tend to organise into regional groups to form territorial entities. They are often named after their top commander or their area of operation, such as the Mullah Nazir group, or the Mohmand Taliban.
Others have broader ideological aims.
They mostly comprise fighters from Punjab province with a background in the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) which exists to wipe out Shia Muslims. These fighters have links with al-Qaeda and its affiliates, especially the TTP and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).
They move in and out of larger groups either due to tactical or operational reasons, ideological considerations or internal group rivalries.
Many shine for brief periods, then fade away only to re-emerge in new avatars.
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More than 50 workers are being taken off a North Sea oil platform following an accident which left a container close to subsea pipelines.
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The incident happened just before 18:00 on Sunday on Shell's Brent Alpha, 115 miles north east of Lerwick.
The container was being winched to a standby vessel at the time.
It remains attached to a crane by rope and has been secured to prevent it sinking onto the seabed. No-one was injured.
A total of 54 people were expected to leave the platform on Monday, with 28 remaining on board.
Shell said the Brent Alpha and Bravo platforms were already shut down as part of ongoing maintenance.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has been informed.
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A 90-year old man, whose car hit and seriously injured a pedestrian, has died.
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The man's silver Mercedes mounted the pavement in Market Square, Penrith on Monday afternoon, crashing into two cars and a woman in her 50s.
The woman is in a critical but stable condition in hospital with life-changing injuries, Cumbria Police said.
The man, from Penrith, was taken to hospital after the crash and died in the early hours of the morning.
Police are appealing for witnesses who may have dashcam footage of what happened.
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Among the thousands of music channels on YouTube there is one like no other. Imlonely started as a musical diary for one person but became a mental health community providing support to thousands of young people going through their toughest times.
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By Drew Miller HyndmanBBC Ouch
"What I'd name them actually is family," says Hunter, of the people who follow his imlonely YouTube channel. "They feel like they're part of something."
Hunter, 23, from Wales, has anxiety and started to remix popular tracks and upload them to his channel depending on how he felt at the time.
"I just started it as a mood board for myself," he says. "My taste in music has always been based on feeling rather than genre."
But what started as a "hobby" rapidly grew. His mixes started to accumulate millions of views and hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to his channel, mostly aged between 13 and 24.
Sometimes his tracks created a relaxed mood like his mix of Best Part by Daniel Caesar while his Ariana Grande mix was uplifting - it was viewed seven million times.
People started to comment on his videos about how the songs resonated with them, sharing how they felt, and providing support to each other.
Almost by accident Hunter had created a space for members to be open about their feelings and mental health.
Just clicking on a video reveals a string of supportive comments: "It gets better", "You are amazing", "Keep going".
You don't have to scroll far to see who they're talking to. People share their struggles openly: "Is it just me who is all happy during the day but, when night comes, you let all of your emotion out? I'm crying every night at the moment and I don't know why."
Another reads: "I stayed up all night overthinking and beating myself up with no control over it but this [Imlonely] helped me calm down and focus."
One of those who turned to Imlonely is Monica, an 18-year-old student from the Philippines, who visited Imlonely for the music but says it got her through one of the toughest periods of her life.
"The community really helped me a lot, especially during 2019. That really was the worst year of my life, so my mental health was so unstable around that time."
At the beginning of 2019, Monica's little sister was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and needed a transplant, which improved her health for a short time.
Soon after, however, her sister's health deteriorated and Monica had to administer dialysis and commit hours every day to her sister's care.
"I barely got sleep, barely got time for myself since I had to do so many things. One of the only things I could do though was listen to music.
"That's probably why the channel really helped me a lot. I couldn't forget the countless nights I had when I was awake at 03:00-04:00 running errands to buy medicine, listening to Imlonely's YouTube videos. It brought comfort to me."
At the end of 2019, Monica's sister passed away, leaving Monica "at the lowest of my lows".
But the channel continued to be a source of comfort and she now says she wants to be happy for her sister.
"I'm really happy to say that the channel has really helped me a lot. It brought me comfort and happiness around the time when I was so depressed and helpless. I've also realised that in the littlest things, one can truly be happy, so I'm glad that I found the channel."
Hunter knows from the statistics YouTube provides that he has a young audience, and he thinks this is what has brought so many people together.
"A lot of people don't have anyone to talk to at home or school," he says. "They'll vent about problems they're having with friends or parents. Personally, if I had something like that, back when I was younger, I feel like I wouldn't have had anywhere near as many problems as I did with feeling anxious and not talking about it."
Dr John Naslund, an instructor in global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, has researched peer-to-peer support on social media and studied groups similar to Imlonely.
"One of the first studies I did was to look at the comments posted on these types of YouTube videos, to break down some of the misconceptions that it's entirely a negative environment, actually, there's really, really positive energy on these groups."
He says interactions like these can help "destigmatise" mental health and that for many people "going online and finding stories of other people who've had similar experiences can be incredibly validating and inspiring".
These experiences are echoed by Morgan, a 17-year-old student from the UK, who came for the music but was drawn in by a community she identified with.
"I kinda (sic) fell down the rabbit hole of reading the comment section and realised there are so many people out there that I can relate to and those who encourage positivity. The comment section just has a nice vibe, it's comfortable, I guess? Like home."
Listening to the music helped her stay calm and have a "healthier mindset" but the comments left by the community helped show her other people were going through similar experiences.
"It opened my eyes a bit more and helped me distinguish between reality and my overthinking as well, because sometimes I assume everything is the worst it can be and my life is a shambles but then I realise it's not so bad after all and what I feel is more common than I thought.
"I'm not alone."
Spending time online talking to people about her experiences also encouraged Morgan to open up to some of her friends outside of the channel.
While Imlonely began life as an outlet for one person to express themselves it has become a global community of support.
For more disability news, follow BBC Ouch on Twitter and Facebook and subscribe to the weekly podcast on BBC Sounds.
Related Internet Links
imlonely - YouTube
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Stalker Callum Blake-O'Brien created numerous fake social media accounts to send women what prosecutors described as "unimaginably horrendous" messages. One teenager left "emotionally numb" by his unrelenting abuse says he "handpicked" his victims to cause maximum distress.
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"When I read it, I felt really sick. It was talking about rape and torture.
"I took a screenshot. It was extremely long and in extremely graphic detail."
Gemma, not her real name, told the BBC how she got her first message from him one night in March 2017, when she was in her bedroom.
"I only read the first few lines; I couldn't read on and my parents read the rest of it.
"My mum said 'you should go to the police'. I was freaked out."
Gemma, who was then 17, initially wondered if the message was "some kind of joke".
She tried to find out who had sent it, but the communication was from an anonymous account that had been deactivated.
"By the time I read it, he had already created another account and starting sending other disturbing messages.
"The messages included one telling me I should not be afraid of dark alleyways because he preferred the daylight."
They then started to include personal information about Gemma's family, including her father's work. One even mentioned her eye colour.
"I wrote back 'who is this?' and asked 'why are you doing this?'"
Blake-O'Brien, from Hereford, sent more abusive messages in response.
Within days, her family had reported the messages to West Mercia Police.
Though Gemma went to the police station armed with screenshots, she was disappointed by the officer's response.
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"He told me the man was not a direct threat to me and that there was no chance of finding him because a proxy server was involved."
She says he suggested deleting her Facebook account, which she was reluctant to do as she used it for her part-time job.
"I felt I was being dismissed as a young girl who was being overdramatic."
The student, from Hereford, said a second officer she saw took "a few weeks" to file a Child Exploitation and Online Protection report.
Reports are made by people or authorities worried about online abuse, or the way someone is communicating online, and should be filed immediately.
"The dismissal by the police made me feel even more isolated," says Gemma, now aged 18.
"I did deactivate my account a few times and kept blocking him but he created new accounts.
"In all, he sent me about 75 to 100 messages from five different accounts.
"I became emotionally numb to the messages but the feeling he could hurt me never went away.
"I felt like I couldn't go out and became anxious - and I've never been anxious before."
After a few weeks, the messages abruptly stopped. April and May passed without incident, but the reprieve was short-lived.
"I was on the phone to my friend when I got another message request in June. I knew exactly what it was and who it was from. I was devastated.
"It had given me a bit of false hope when it stopped between April and June and I thought he had finally got the message."
Gemma reluctantly went back to the police but this time saw a female officer and a detective who she said "took this seriously".
"I think she understood his power and how I was feeling."
The officers soon linked the case to a police report by another woman who had received similar messages.
Two weeks later Blake-O'Brien was arrested.
"When I found out he was arrested in Hereford I completely broke down. It was the thought he could have walked past me multiple times," Gemma recalls.
Her shock was further compounded when officers told her the name of the suspect - it was someone who had known her brother.
"He had handpicked all of us; either he knew us or had come into contact with us."
The Crown Prosecution Service said Blake-O'Brien targeted several women.
The 25-year-old knew some of the victims and was acquainted with others, it said.
At Worcester Crown Court, he admitted counts against 10 women and was last month given a prison sentence of two and a half years.
Seven offences were of stalking involving the fear of violence, while three involved sending an electronic communication of an indecent or grossly offensive nature.
Blake-O'Brien will spend 15 months on licence, and was also handed a 10-year restraining order banning him from contacting any of his victims.
He is further prohibited from using any device capable of accessing the internet unless it has the capacity to retain and display the history of online use.
Though relieved her stalker has been bought to justice, looking back, Gemma feels upset about how the case was handled.
She wants Facebook to introduce a helpdesk so people can easily report online abuse and believes the police, prosecution and defence counsel had a "limited understanding" of how social media worked.
"[That] shouldn't be the case as these crimes will increase in the future.
"I'm a teenage girl and I couldn't enjoy that whole year of my life."
Det Insp Ross Jones, of West Mercia Police, urged anyone dissatisfied with how they were dealt with by officers to lodge a complaint with the force.
He also praised the victims for coming forward.
"Their bravery played a vital role in achieving this custodial sentence.
"Despite this, I know that victims of such crimes can experience long-lasting effects on their mental health and wellbeing.
"All of the people who reported Blake-O'Brien's offences to us have been offered specialist counselling to help them.
"West Mercia Police works hard to ensure all officers know how to deal with reports of offences like this, and will continue to do so."
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How did the biggest cluster in the US emerge in a corner of South Dakota? Infections spread like wildfire through a pork factory and questions remain about what the company did to protect staff.
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By Jessica LussenhopBBC News
On the afternoon of 25 March, Julia sat down at her laptop and logged into a phony Facebook account. She'd opened it in middle school, to surreptitiously monitor boys she had crushes on. But now, many years later, it was about to serve a much more serious purpose.
"Can you please look into Smithfield," she typed in a message to an account called Argus911, the Facebook-based tip line for the local newspaper, the Argus Leader. "They do have a positive [Covid-19] case and are planning to stay open." By "Smithfield", she was referring to the Smithfield Foods pork-processing plant located in her town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The factory - a massive, eight-story white box perched on the banks of the Big Sioux River - is the ninth-largest hog-processing facility in the US. When running at full capacity, it processes 19,500 freshly-slaughtered hogs per day, slicing, grinding and smoking them into millions of pounds of bacon, hot dogs and spiral-cut hams. With 3,700 workers, it is also the fourth-largest employer in the city.
"Thank you for the tip," the Argus911 account responded. "What job did the worker who tested positive have?"
"We are not exactly sure," Julia wrote back.
"OK, thanks," Argus911 replied. "We'll be in touch."
The next day, at 7:35am, the Argus Leader published the story on its website: "Smithfield Foods employee tests positive for coronavirus". The reporter confirmed through a company spokeswoman that, indeed, an employee had tested positive, was in a 14-day quarantine, and that his or her work area and other common spaces had been "thoroughly sanitised". But the plant, deemed part of a "critical infrastructure industry" by the Trump administration, would remain fully operational.
"Food is an essential part of all our lives, and our more than 40,000 US team members, thousands of American family farmers and our many other supply chain partners are a crucial part of our nation's response to Covid-19," Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in an online video statement released 19 March to explain the decision to keep factories open. "We are taking the utmost precautions to ensure the health and well-being of our employees and consumers."
But Julia was alarmed.
"There had been rumours there were cases even before that," she recalled. "I heard about people getting hospitalised from Smithfield specifically. They only know from word of mouth."
Julia does not work at the factory. She is a graduate student in her 20s, stuck back at home after her university shut in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Her parents, two long-time Smithfield employees with whom she is especially close, told her what was happening at the factory that day. She is just one of several adult children of factory workers - many the first-generation children of immigrants, some calling themselves Children of Smithfield - who have taken it upon themselves to speak out about the outbreak.
"My parents don't know English. They can't advocate for themselves," said Julia. "Someone has to talk for them."
Her family, like many others in Sioux Falls, did everything they could to avoid falling ill. Julia's parents used up all their remaining vacation time to stay home. After work, they took off their shoes outside and headed straight into the shower. Julia bought them cloth headbands at Walmart to pull over their mouths and noses while on the line.
For Julia, alerting the media was just the next logical step in trying to keep them all healthy, by creating public pressure to close the plant down and keep her parents home. Instead, it marked the beginning of nearly three anxiety-filled weeks during which her mother and father continued to report to a factory they knew could be contaminated, to jobs they could not afford to lose. They stood side-by-side less than a foot away from their colleagues on production lines, they passed in and out of crowded locker rooms, walkways and cafeterias.
During that time, the number of confirmed cases among Smithfield employees slowly mounted, from 80 to 190 to 238.
By 15 April, when Smithfield finally closed under pressure from the South Dakota governor's office, the plant had become the number one hotspot in the US, with a cluster of 644 confirmed cases among Smithfield employees and people who contracted it from them. In total, Smithfield-related infections account for 55% of the caseload in the state, which is far outpacing its far more populous Midwestern neighbour states in cases per capita. According to the New York Times, the Smithfield Foods case numbers have surpassed the USS Theodore Roosevelt naval ship and the Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois.
Those figures were released one day after the first Smithfield employee died in hospital.
"He got that virus there. He was very healthy before," his wife, Angelita, told the BBC in Spanish. "My husband will not be the only one to die."
The Smithfield pork plant, located in a Republican-led state that is one of five in the US that has not issued any kind of shelter-in-place order, has become a microcosm illustrating the socioeconomic disparities laid bare by the global pandemic. While many white-collar workers around the country are sheltering in place and working from home, food industry workers like the employees at Smithfield are deemed "essential" and must remain on the front lines.
"These jobs for essential workers are lower paying than the average job across America, in some cases by significant margins. So home health aides, cashiers - absolutely essential, on the front lines, have to physically report to work," said Adie Tomer, a fellow at the Brookings Institute. "They are more predominantly African American or Hispanic than the overall working populations."
The workforce at Smithfield is made up largely of immigrants and refugees from places like Myanmar, Ethiopia, Nepal, Congo and El Salvador. There are 80 different languages spoken in the plant. Estimates of the mean hourly wage range from $14-16 an hour. Those hours are long, the work is gruelling, and standing on a production line often means being less than a foot away from your co-workers on either side.
The BBC spoke to half a dozen current and former Smithfield employees who say that while they were afraid to continue going to work, deciding between employment and their health has been an impossible choice.
"I have a lot of bills. My baby's coming soon - I have to work," said one 25-year-old employee whose wife is eight months pregnant. "If I get a positive, I'm really worried I can't save my wife."
Food processing plants throughout the country are experiencing coronavirus outbreaks which have the potential to disrupt the country's food supply chain. A JBS meatpacking plant in Colorado has shut after five deaths and 103 infections among its employees. Two workers at a Tyson Foods plant in Iowa also died, while 148 others were sickened.
The closure of a large meat processing facility like the one in Sioux Falls causes massive upstream disruption, stranding farmers without a place to sell their livestock. About 550 independent farms send their pigs to the Sioux Falls plant.
When announcing the shutdown, Smithfield CEO Sullivan warned of "severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions" for the supply of meat.
But according to Smithfield employees, their union representatives, and advocates for the immigrant community in Sioux Falls, the outbreak that led to the plant closure was avoidable. They allege early requests for personal protective equipment were ignored, that sick workers were incentivised to continue working, and that information regarding the spread of the virus was kept from them, even when they were at risk of exposing family and the broader public.
"If the federal government wants the company to stay open, then whose responsibility is it to make sure these companies are doing what they have to do to keep them safe?" said Nancy Reynoza, founder of Que Pasa Sioux Falls, a Spanish-language news source who said she's been hearing from distraught Smithfield workers for weeks.
The BBC submitted a detailed list of questions and worker allegations to Smithfield, and they did not comment on the allegations put to them on individual cases.
"First and foremost, the health and safety of our employees and communities is our top priority each and every day," the statement said. "Beginning in February, we instituted a series of stringent and detailed processes and protocols in early March that follow the strict guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to effectively manage any potential Covid-19 cases in our operations."
The outbreak left people like Julia, whose mother has underlying, chronic health conditions, overwhelmed by the fear that her parents were putting their lives at risk in an attempt to keep their jobs.
"My parents are all I have. I have to think about potentially not having them in my life," she said, her voice breaking. "I want to share what's going on so there's an actual track record of what the company isn't doing."
Ahmed first saw Neela on the Smithfield floor during one of their shifts. He liked her skin, she liked his laugh. When he started asking around about her, Ahmed learned that they were both from the same village in Ethiopia and they both spoke the same language, Oromo.
"Wow, I'm so excited. In my breaktime, I keep searching where she work," Ahmed recalled. "Right away, I stop by her line. I say, 'Hey, what's up.' I tell her she's beautiful."
Ahmed took Neela to a trendy New American restaurant. They went on a week-long vacation to Wisconsin Dells, a campy Midwest vacation destination known for its water slides and hot springs. They fell in love and got married.
Now Neela is eight months pregnant with their first child. Although she quit Smithfield back in December, Ahmed continued going to work during the outbreak even though he was terrified that he would infect his wife and their unborn baby with the virus. Because Neela started having difficulty walking in her third trimester, Ahmed needed to help her - they can't isolate from one another.
Ahmed says two of his friends in the plant have tested positive. Then he began exhibiting symptoms himself.
"Smithfield - they don't care about employees," said Neela. "They only care about their money."
According to Kooper Caraway, president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO, union officials approached management at Smithfield in early March to request multiple measures to increase worker safety, including staggering shifts and lunch schedules, which can pack 500 workers into the factory cafeteria at once. He said they also requested personal protective gear like masks and overcoats, temperature-checking at the doors and sanitation stations.
"This was before anyone at the plant tested positive," said Caraway. "Management dragged their feet, didn't take worker demands seriously."
Who are Smithfield?
Tim was a new employee going through orientation when he heard about the first case from someone sitting next to him. But he says after that initial announcement, the company got very quiet.
"We didn't really hear nothing more about the coronavirus outbreak," he said. "We thought it was good." Then, on 8 April, the South Dakota State Health Department confirmed there were 80 cases at the plant. Multiple employees told the BBC that they found out from media reports, not from management at Smithfield.
"I've found out about some people having the virus in my department, but other co-workers told me," said Julia's mother, Helen.
A temperature checking station was erected under a white tent at the main entrance to the factory, but Reynoza and Caraway both said that they were told workers with running elevated temperatures were allowed to come into the factory anyway. According to Helen, if workers wanted to avoid the temperature check, they could enter a side door.
Smithfield instituted other changes, like building cardboard cubicles around lunch table seats to create a barrier between workers, staggering shifts, and putting out hand sanitiser stations. But multiple workers said - and photos sent to the BBC seem to confirm - that personal protective equipment came in the form of beard nets to wear over their faces, which do not protect from airborne particles like a surgical or N95 mask would.
"I haven't read anything from the CDC that says a hair net over your face will do much good," said Caraway.
Smithfield did not respond to questions about the beard nets or provide details about what PPE they made available to workers, writing instead that, "given the stress on supply chains, we have been working around the clock to procure thermal scanning equipment and masks, both of which are in short supply".
At a JBS Plant in Worthington, Minnesota, 30 minutes away from Sioux Falls, union representatives said their company provided workers with "gloves, surgical masks, face shields, overcoats", according to the Star Tribune.(On Friday, it emerged that the JBS Plant has 19 confirmed cases). A spokesman for Tyson Foods told the New York Times that their policy is to notify employees if they have been in contact with anyone who is confirmed to have the virus.
In response, some employees started bringing their own masks to the plant. Others began quarantining themselves from family.
Kaleb, who has been with Smithfield for 12 years, told the BBC that for the past two weeks, he's been sealing himself in a room away from his wife, his six-month-old daughter and his three-year-old son because he can't be sure he isn't bringing the virus home with him everyday.
"My little boy you know, I lock the door - he knock on the door. 'Hey, daddy you wanna come out?' I say, 'Go with your mom,'" he says. "I don't have a choice. What can I do? I want to try to save my family."
If employees like Kaleb were to quit, they would be ineligible for unemployment. Advocates are hearing from visa-holders who fret that even if they were to apply for unemployment, they might be considered "public charges" which could render them ineligible for permanent residency under a new rule enacted by the Trump administration last year. (According to a spokeswoman for the Ways and Means Committee, unemployment compensation is an "earned benefit" that would not disqualify visa-holders from residency.)" The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (Cares) Act excludes anyone living in a mixed-status household with an undocumented family member.
"They do not qualify for anything," said Taneeza Islam, the executive director of South Dakota Voices for Peace and an immigration lawyer. "Their choice is between putting food on the table, and going to work and getting exposed."
On 9 April, with 80 cases confirmed, Smithfield released a statement saying that the plant would close for three days over the Easter weekend for deep cleaning, and return to full capacity that Tuesday. "The company will suspend operations in a large section of the plant on April 11 and completely shutter on April 12 and April 13," a statement from the company read.
But the BBC learned through interviews with workers and advocates that Smithfield employees were still being called into work on all three days. Reynoza took videos showing the company parking lot filled with cars, and employees entering the plant. Caraway said he learned subsequently that the plant was running at about 60-65% capacity, meaning hundreds of workers were still coming in.
"I haven't stopped working yet. I worked Friday, Saturday, Sunday and they want me to come back today," Tim told the BBC on the Monday after Easter weekend. "I'm terrified. Terrified. Like I'm at a loss for words. [But] I got four kids to take care of. That income is what provides a roof over my head."
Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, who said he was impressed and satisfied by the mitigation efforts taking place at Smithfield, admitted he felt surprised when he learned that the plant was still partially open.
"There could have been more transparency by them on the measures they were taking," he said. "The message to the public didn't match the actual plan."
Smithfield began offering employees a $500 "responsibility bonus" if they finished their shifts through the end of the month, which Islam characterised as a "bribe" to work in unsafe conditions.
Sara Telahun Birhe, an organiser with Children of Smithfield, said her mother had previously decided she would not return, but changed her mind when she heard about the bonus. "We're devastated by the idea that she's going to go in just for $500," Telahun Birhe said.
In its statement, Smithfield wrote that the bonus is part of Smithfield's #ThankAFoodWorker initiative, adding: "Employees who miss work due to Covid-19 exposure or diagnosis will receive the Responsibility Bonus."
In part due to the incomplete shutdown and in part due to the rising number of cases coming out of the plant, on 11 April both South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and TenHaken sent a joint letter to Smithfield calling for a 14-day "pause" in operations. The next day, Smithfield leadership announced that they would comply - on 15 April, meaning there was still one more day of work in a building.
Caraway said workers who went in on the final Tuesday received roughly double their normal wages but there had been no deep clean. "They're still going into a dirty building."
Smithfield did not respond to questions about when its Sioux Falls factory underwent deep cleaning, writing that "our facilities are thoroughly cleaned and sanitized every single day".
Both of Julia's parents were scheduled to work at Smithfield on Tuesday 14 April, its final day in business before the 14-day shutdown. Then, on Saturday, Helen started to cough. The next day, as fluffy white snow flew over Sioux Falls, Julia insisted that her mother get tested. Helen tried to put it off, saying it was nothing.
"My mom just really hates going to the doctor," said Julia, who eventually won the argument and Helen went to a drive-in testing centre at the local hospital. They stuck a swab into the back of each nostril and sent her home.
"If I were to have Covid-19, I clearly would have gotten it at the factory," she said. "This week I have worked on three different floors. I've eaten in two different cafeterias. Just imagine every place I've been in, touched inside that factory. I've been walking through the whole place."
On the Tuesday they were scheduled to return to work, Julia's parents woke up at 4am like they normally do and called into Smithfield to explain that they couldn't come while awaiting Helen's test result.
The call finally came later that afternoon.
Julia spoke to the medical technician on her mother's mobile phone, while her parents sat watching her face for a reaction. When Julia heard the words "positive for Covid-19" she gave them a thumbs up, which she meant to indicate "positive". Helen and Juan misunderstood, and reached out for one another, a gesture of celebration that horrified Julia as she scrambled to explain that, no, Helen does have the virus. Her father retreated into the kitchen, where Julia glimpsed him trying to hold back tears.
On the same day that Helen received her results, the issue of the Smithfield plant had turned fully political. Mayor TenHaken formally requested that Governor Noem issue a shelter-in-place order for Sioux Falls' surrounding counties as well as an isolation centre. She denied both requests. Despite the steep increase in cases, Noem also continued to decline to issue a shelter-in-place order in South Dakota, specifically saying that such an order would not have prevented the Smithfield outbreak.
"That is absolutely false," she said.
Instead, she approved the first state test of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that President Donald Trump has frequently cited as a possible treatment for coronavirus.
It was also the same day that Agustin Rodriguez Martinez, a quiet, deeply religious man originally from El Salvador, died from the illness, alone in hospital. He was 64, the first known death connected to the outbreak at Smithfield Foods. Reynoza, a friend of his for the past decade, said that he rarely complained about his gruelling job sawing the legs off pig carcasses and that he doted on his wife Angelita, whom he knew for only a month before they married. They were together for 24 years.
"He was her prince."
Angelita says she noticed something was off when her husband started coming home with the lunch she had packed him untouched. He began experiencing symptoms on 1 April, seven days after the first case of coronavirus was reported publicly at the factory. First there were the headaches, then aches and chills. Next came the shortness of breath. According to Angelita, on his final day of work at the factory, he was mopping the floors with a fever.
By that Sunday, he could no longer breathe.
Angelita brought him to hospital, but was not allowed to go with him. She learned through her pastor that he was put on a ventilator almost immediately. He was on it for 10 days before he died on 14 April. "I took him to the hospital and left with nothing," she said. "Now I have nothing."
Alongside her grief, Angelita is also angry at Smithfield Food for not closing the factory earlier. "They care more about their money than our lives," she said in tears. "The owners don't care about our pain. Mothers are crying for their children. Wives are crying for their husbands. There are so many cases of the virus there."
The 73-year-old widow also shared that she has developed a cough.
Two days after her mother's positive coronavirus diagnosis, Julia woke up on the couch with a headache, a cough and a dry throat. For the first time since the pandemic arrived in her life, she had slept through the night but awoke feeling more exhausted than ever.
After calling the Covid hotline and informing them she was the daughter of a Smithfield worker, Julia pulled on her faux fur-trimmed parka, disinfected the steering wheel and gear shift in her mom's car, and set out towards the drive-thru testing site.
She was in relatively good spirits, despite the fact that almost everything she had attempted to prevent when she tipped off the local newspaper nearly a month ago had come to pass. The factory had remained open. Her mother had the virus and her father was exposed. Her city had become the epicentre of the pandemic in the state of South Dakota. People died.
And now, she might be sick, too.
"I just wanna cry," she said, as she steered towards the hospital.
All over the city, Smithfield workers and their families were going through a similar experience. The same day Julia's mother got her diagnosis, Sara Telahun Birhe was relieved to find out that her mother's Covid-19 test was negative. Neela and Ahmed got the call that he was infected, and the couple sealed themselves away from one another in separate bedrooms. They communicate via text. She makes him ginger tea and leaves it for him on the counter. He obsessively disinfects everything he touches.
Tim said he worked his final shift at Smithfield while experiencing symptoms on Tuesday 14 April, and went in for a test the following day. He is still awaiting results. He said 20 people on his crew have tested positive.
At about the same time that Julia set off to get her test, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were entering the Smithfield plant, along with representatives for the state and local health departments. According to the South Dakota governor's office, CDC officials were flown in from Washington DC to "assess" what it would take to safely reopen the plant. Meanwhile, Smithfield announced the closure of two more of its facilities in Missouri and Wisconsin, where "a small number of employees… have tested positive for Covid-19".
Although she arrived just 20 minutes after the testing site opened, Julia was greeted by a line of 15 cars ahead of her. "I hate waiting in line," she muttered, sipping from her water bottle, every now and then emitting a soft cough.
After 30 minutes, she pulled up to what looked like a huge garage and a sign that instructed, "have ID and insurance card ready".
"OK, now I'm anxious," she said. "I don't want to do this."
She and the car ahead of her pulled into the bay, and a healthcare worker in a full protective suit, mask, gloves and face shield plunged a long swab into Julia's right nostril and then her left. She grimaced and shuddered.
"Do you need a Kleenex?" the tester asked. "Yes, please," said Julia.
With instructions to "go home, stay home, don't go anywhere," the bay doors opened and Julia pulled back out into the sunlight. "That was so uncomfortable that I actually am crying," she said, pulling into a parking spot to collect herself.
Julia sat at the steering wheel watching cars go in and out of the parking lot. She lamented the fact that now their household had a new potential infection, the clock on their quarantine had to restart. "I just want to go to TJ Maxx," she said, smiling.
After a few minutes, it was time to turn towards home, her parents, and the house Helen and Juan worked so many hours in the plant in order to afford, where they would all quarantine together for at least the next 14 days.
"Now it's just a waiting game," said Julia. "I guess I can't get too in my head about it. But I will."
She should have her results in five days.
Names have been changed.
Additional reporting by Angélica M Casas; illustrations by Emma Lynch
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Thirty-one people, including nine children, were rescued after getting stranded by tides off the Wirral coast.
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Wirral Coastguard said West Kirby Lifeboat had to make multiple trips to the Hilbre Islands as people were cut off by incoming tides over the weekend.
Two dogs also had to be rescued by crews, it added.
The coastguard urged walkers to check tide times before setting off for the Hilbre Islands after the record number of rescues over 48 hours.
Made up of three tidal islands - Little Eye, Middle Eye and Hilbre Island - they are an important site for bird watchers and offer panoramic views across the River Dee estuary to North Wales and Wirral coastlines.
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Serviceman Mark "Dot" Perkins was seriously injured in Kenya 18 years ago when his vehicle rolled over after spinning out of control on oil. He survived but two of his colleagues died.
The accident brought to an end his career in the Army as a corporal with the Royal Signals.
After going through some struggles, he retrained to become a physiotherapist and one of his clients inspired him to take part in the Invictus Games - an international event created by Prince Harry, for wounded, injured or sick armed services personnel to take part in sports.
And this weekend, Mark, from Cardiff, will lead Team UK out at the 2018 Games in Sydney. Here is his story.
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The Invictus Games is something you don't really want to be eligible to compete in but I got injured in 2000. I was on exercise in Kenya.
We had to travel across Kenya. It was a long 15-hour drive and just near the end our vehicle hit some oil and spun out of control. The vehicle rolled over and landed on three of us, and I was the only survivor.
It was hard enough dealing with my survival guilt but on top of that I had my hip replaced on numerous occasions and I've damaged all the nerve in my leg so I can't feel from my knee below.
I had to learn to walk again numerous times and I also had to think about a new career as I lost my Army career.
I retrained as a physiotherapist and I rehab injured soldiers - one of them was who I saw [taking part] in the 2016 Invictus Games.
It's come full circle for me that someone I've helped recover has helped inspire me to go on to further my recovery as well.
'Lost a part of me'
My life was very active and very fun and then it was all taken away overnight.
It was a real hard one to understand and to take on board really, which for me was the biggest loss. Then to remove myself from the military once my medical discharge came through, I lost all of my group of friends as well, not just my career.
I felt I'd lost part of me and I did turn to drink as an answer to overcoming the pain I was in and overcoming the social situation that I'd lost.
That's where my journey started off and then I concentrated on my new career.
To see a person that I had rehabed in the 2016 Invictus Games was a huge success and a heart-warming feeling that I'd succeeded in my job.
It was that light bulb moment that he caused me to think that I should be putting myself forward.
The Invictus Games is a very unique environment. Elite sport creates a hero by one result but to go to the Invictus Games, everyone is a hero.
We've all done something unique to get there and sadly something has gone a little bit awry.
To find out I got into the team was phenomenal. It's a massive thing for my memories, for my future and for my family. That's what Invictus is about. It's about me and my team representing the UK and having my family there to support.
To find out I've been elected to be captain, I had goosebumps from head to toe.
Whether we've got physical scars or the intangible burden of mental illness, they are our scars as well, but that's our medals. So we're going to be going to the opening ceremony with our Union Jacks [on our tops] and our medals shown proudly.
That's going to be huge, that's going to be quite emotional. Some people are going to be overwhelmed by it because we're not used to going out in front of crowds.
We're used to going out in front of colleagues, comrades and doing the job. Doing the job professionally and doing the job to the best of our ability.
Now we're going to be asked to do something outside our comfort zone and this is what's made it so exciting for everyone. We're enjoying being outside our comfort zones.
During the build-up to Invictus, especially last year, I had a real struggle with thinking about the two that didn't make it that day.
I messaged the ladies, the widows, that I was going for the captaincy and one of them came back with 'do it for yourself and for those who can't'. To read that was completely overwhelming.
The other one said 'tell the story, that's how our boys get remembered' and it's completely true.
When I read those messages you think 'that's the reason I'm doing this'.
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A man has been arrested after he was stopped for driving at 100mph (160km/h) and tested positive for cocaine and cannabis.
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The driver was followed by officers on the A11 at Mildenhall, Suffolk, on Wednesday night.
Norfolk and Suffolk roads police said the man's two-year-old child and partner were in the car.
The arrest happened in the final hours of Suffolk Police's annual Christmas drink- and drug-driving campaign.
Before the incident Suffolk Police said eight people started the new year in custody after being arrested for drink-and drug-driving offences.
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Suffolk Constabulary
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Perhaps the playwright Samuel Beckett was a secret economist.
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By Andrew WalkerBBC World Service economics correspondent
We are about to enjoy (!) the next act in the absurdist drama "Waiting for the Fed" (to raise interest rates again).
Truth be told, we can be fairly sure how this scene will play out. Once again no increase in rates. Perhaps Godot will turn up first.
The Fed is holding a policy making meeting and an interest rate rise is in theory at least on the agenda.
Janet Yellen, the Fed Chair, and her colleagues would like to get rates back to more normal levels. The Fed currently aims to keep its main policy rate (the rates banks offer to lend to each other overnight) within a range of 0.25% to 0.5%.
They raised it to that level in December last year, from practically zero where it had been since the depth of the financial crisis.
But nobody expects they will hike rates at this meeting, largely because of the very weak performance of the jobs market in May.
The number in employment rose by only 38,000, the fewest since September 2010. Because the US population is growing, the number of people with jobs has to rise by more than that just to keep pace. Employment growth in April was better, but still not all that strong.
It's true that the unemployment rate fell markedly in May, to 4.7% from 5%. But this was due to a decline in the number of people looking for work. They are counted as "not in the labour force" rather than unemployed, even if they would like to have a job.
In a recent speech, Ms Yellen described the May jobs report as disappointing and concerning. She did, however, manage to find one encouraging thing; a faster increase in average hourly earnings. After a long period in which the economic recovery has failed to have much of a favourable impact on pay it was, she said, "a welcome indication that wage growth may finally be picking up".
Inflation is another factor that encourages the Fed to feel it has no need to rush the next rate rise. The latest figure for the inflation measure the Fed prefers was 1.1% in April, compared with its 2% target.
One bad month?
That it is so low reflects some transitory factors, including the strength of the dollar (which makes imported goods cheaper) and the decline in energy prices over the last two years. But in time, those factors cease to have a direct impact, so Ms Yellen expects inflation to move back towards 2%.
She also said that it's important not to attach too much significance to a single monthly jobs report. In short, a good report next month could bring interest rate rises a lot closer.
So while investors think the date of the next rate increase has gone further into the future as a result of the May jobs data, the Fed is always ready to change its plans if new figures change the picture.
Long term picture
Looking at the US economy from a longer term perspective, it is a remarkable state of affairs that we should have rates still so close to record lows in a recovery that has been underway for several years.
The US economy started to grow again in the second half of 2009. Since then it has expanded in 25 out of 27 quarters. The production of goods and services, GDP, is 10% higher than the pre-recession peak, and it's 15% up from the low it reached during the downturn.
There has, however, been a slowdown in the growth of productivity in the US, which pre-dates the recession.
The labour market has also gained strength despite May's disappointment. The unemployment rate is now 4.7%, compared to 10% in October 2009. The number of people with jobs has increased by 14 million from its low point in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
But the US has not managed to get back to pre-crisis levels for the percentage of the working age population with jobs. The latest figure is just below 59%. In 2006 it was more than 63%.
Some of the decline is due to long term factors. The US population is ageing; many of the baby boomer generation are retiring. More young people are taking post-secondary education.
The recession and its lingering after effects also had an impact. The Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US publishes figures on the number of people who want to work but haven't looked in the last four weeks, and for people working part-time who would like longer hours.
A long way
This group, plus those who are officially classified as unemployed, add up to what is sometimes called "slack in the labour market"; people who want to work but aren't.
The numbers have declined markedly over the last few years, although one of the concerning things about the May report was a reversal on one aspect; there were more people wanting longer hours.
Nonetheless Ms Yellen said in her recent speech: "I believe we are now close to eliminating the slack that has weighed on the labour market since the recession".
The US economy has come a long way from the panic of late 2008. The Fed's interest rate policy has started the journey back to normality. But it will be very slow. And the US can't be considered immune to turbulence that might hit the global economy.
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Jersey's state pension is to go up by £3.64 per week from October, according to the social security minister.
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Senator Francis Le Gresley said the government had agreed to a new way of working out the pension rate to tie it in to cost-of-living changes.
He said: "We either use the pensioners' RPI index, which was 1.6%, or the midpoint between that and average earnings index, which was 2.2%."
The weekly pension will be increased by 1.9% to £193.40.
There are more than 14,000 people of retirement age in Jersey. The age people can collect a state pension in Jersey is 65.
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Nearly 20 years ago a valuable portrait was stolen, in bizarre circumstances, from a gallery in the northern Italian city of Piacenza. Until recently there appeared to be little prospect of it ever being recovered - but then police received some perplexing new information, and they now think it will be back in the city within weeks or months.
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By Max ParadisoPiacenza
Carabiniere Sgt Maj Salvatore Cavallaro was on a ladder looking out on to the roof of Piacenza's Ricci-Oddi gallery through a partially open skylight.
"It doesn't fit," he shouted to his colleagues below, as he compared the size of a heavy gilded frame on the roof beside the skylight with the narrow opening. "No way the thief could have fished the painting from up here."
You could just about imagine that a thief on the roof had hooked the frame on a line, and pulled it up to the ceiling - but that would have been no use. This was clearly not the exit through which the portrait by the Viennese turn-of-the-century artist Gustav Klimt had left the building.
So why, on 22 February 1997, was the frame on the roof?
Ten months earlier the Portrait of a Lady had been involved in a drama of a different kind, thanks to a sharp-eyed 18-year-old art student, Claudia Maga.
While flipping through The Complete works of Gustav Klimt she had noticed a strong resemblance between The Lady and another Klimt painting, Portrait of a Young Lady, that had not been seen since 1912.
"The Young Lady had a scarf and a hat but they both had in common the same glance over the left shoulder, the same smile and the same beauty spot on the left cheek," Maga says.
She had photocopied and enlarged the two small photographs in the book, had drawn the profile of the Young Lady on tracing paper and put it on top of The Lady.
"And that was it," she says. "The Lady was concealing another portrait beneath it, the only double portrait Klimt has ever painted."
Maga got the gallery's former director, Ferdinando Arisi, interested in her theory. A few weeks later he picked her up from art school, drove her to the gallery, and removed the portrait from its frame. Wrapping it in brown paper they headed for the local hospital, where sure enough a series of X-rays revealed the dim shadow of the earlier work beneath the surface.
The story behind the painting was the next surprise. Klimt had fallen madly in love with a young girl from Vienna, it was said, who had quickly become his muse. Then, when she suddenly died, he painted over her portrait to forget the pain of his loss.
Piacenza was in ecstasy.
A special exhibition was arranged to show off the painting in a new location close to the city hall. At the same time, the gallery was to be renovated, and many paintings started to be packed and moved into storage. Workers were coming and going. And when the Klimt itself went missing, no-one immediately realised. The gallery staff assumed it had been removed deliberately as part of the preparations for the new exhibition.
"Then we received a phone call from the gallery," Sergeant Cavallaro says. "They muttered, 'We can't find The Lady.'"
When he arrived on the scene, he says, "The doors of the gallery were open, people were going in and out, and the security system was switched off."
Faced with the mysterious theft and no leads, the police were stumped. They asked a notorious local art thief for advice, but even he was unable to put them on the right track.
Little progress had been made when, on 1 April 1997, border police intercepted a package on the Italian/French frontier at Ventimiglia. It was addressed to the former Italian PM Bettino Craxi, who was at the time hiding from the law in Hammamet, Tunisia. When they opened it, they found a Klimt.
Stefano Fugazza the then director of the Ricci-Oddi gallery thought it was an April Fool's joke, but Arisi, his predecessor, was optimistic and keen to get to Ventimiglia straight away.
"We drove madly to Ventimiglia," Fugazza writes in his diaries, "but the only thing we came back with was a speeding ticket."
The painting looked convincing, but the smell of the oil paint was fresh. It wasn't the original, it was a high-quality forgery.
There is another strange paragraph in Fugazza's diary.
Days before the painting disappeared, he writes, he had contemplated the idea of talking to the carabinieri and, with their permission, pretending that the portrait had been stolen, in order to draw more attention to the forthcoming exhibition.
"But now The Lady has gone for good," he adds, "and damned be the day I even thought of such a foolish and childish thing."
Soon afterwards Cavallaro was assigned to other work and the case was closed.
It remained closed until 2013, when the carabinieri made a fresh attempt to identify a fragment of a fingerprint found on the frame - in vain, as it turned out.
But last summer a local journalist arranged a meeting between the new carabiniere investigator, Col Luca Pietranera, and an art thief he had got to know in one of Piacenza's many bars. And the thief turned out to be a mine of information.
The thief told the colonel that he was the man the original investigators had asked for advice, back in February 1997, as they searched for the perpetrator of the theft. He then confessed that he was, in fact, the man who had carried out the theft and left the gilded frame on the roof as a coup de theatre.
Then he explained that what he had stolen that day was in fact a copy.
So what had happened to the real painting?
"Oh well, I stole it months before anybody had noticed," the now elderly thief proudly tells me, when we meet in a cafe in Piacenza.
A few months after the discovery of the double Klimt, around November 1996, he just walked into the gallery and replaced the original with a copy, he says.
"Nobody blinked, nobody noticed. It was an easy and carefully planned inside job."
He is now helping the carabinieri with their inquiries into a number of crimes, in return for immunity from prosecution.
But why was it necessary to steal the copy, I ask the chain-smoking thief.
This was done, he says, to hide the fact that it was a copy. The special exhibition would doubtless have brought Klimt experts from far and wide, one of whom would surely have spotted it was a fake - and this might have been disastrous for the gallery insider who had assisted with the theft.
But the thief's most startling claim is that the painting will be returned by the 20th anniversary of the theft (or more accurately, the theft of the copy). In other words, by February next year.
How he can know this is unclear. After all, by his own account, the painting was long ago sold by a dealer for a large quantity of cash and cocaine. But he confidently makes this prediction - and the carabinieri say he may well be correct.
They are currently in contact with police in another European country where the painting is thought to be held in a private collection.
The only thing they are not completely sure of is whether the painting they are now on the trail of is the original, or a copy. This, they say, they will only be able to confirm when they have it in their hands.
Where are the copies?
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The death of a man who was found at his home is no longer being treated as suspicious, police have said.
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A 65-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of the 50-year-old was found on Kingsbury Road, Erdington, on Tuesday evening,
Following a post mortem examination on Thursday, detectives said they believed the man had died as a result of head injuries.
The arrested man will face no further action, West Midlands Police said.
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I'm off to Edinburgh's Book Festival, as I write. It's 30 years old and the biggest of around 40 such bookfests around Scotland, stretching through the year and from Shetland to Wigtown, Scotland's national book town.
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Douglas FraserBusiness and economy editor, Scotland
They have been a big success in bringing authors and readers together, and showing the appetite for public debate on the issues tackled in books and beyond.
Making that link is one of the key ways of selling books these days. The once solitary life of an author is now more often on the road, promoting and building audience for the next book.
That's also one of the ways bookshops are fighting off the cut-throat cut-price battle with online retailers. Author events give readers an authentic experience. Bookshops are adding coffee and scones too, from which the margins are rather healthier than for the average paperback these days.
Tricky time
That much I've learned from researching this week's Business Scotland programme.
Bookselling and book publishing are probably the sector that's faced the biggest impact from the challenge of technology.
It was the first one to face the rivalry of Amazon for printed book sales. That was just as the industry came off the "net book agreement", which had long ensured that books in Britain could not be sold for less than the cover price.
Allied to that has been the arrival of the downloaded e-book, in which Amazon has again been a key player, via its Kindle.
Oh yes, and there's been a recession too. It's been a tricky time in the book trade, taking advantage of the opportunities from technology, while facing unprecedented challenges from it.
Boddice-ripper
Demonstrating the opportunities, EL James found, in publishing Fifty Shades of Grey, that you can by-pass reluctant publishers, fire up your boddice-ripper on free or very cheap software, and go straight to the customer.
Her success has spawned a vast number of imitations, many erotic, and many not. Research recently showed these wannabes are mainly women and mainly over 40. Somehow, that much comes as no surprise.
And hearing from Adrian Searle, publisher of Freight Books in Glasgow, a recent start-up that spun out from his graphic design firm, there's a world of difference between those unsolicited offerings by people who have trained in creative writing, and those who have not.
He says there's also a job to be done by such publishers in letting hopeful first-time authors down gently. The job of the publisher is part-psychological counsellor. These manuscripts are not just commodities: they are the stuff of dreams, and of souls.
Adrian, incidentally, argues that new publishers have to be born digital and born global. He defines himself as an English-language publisher rather than a Scottish one.
Currency of quality
So there are more titles than ever being published, even though self-publishing removes the publishers' role in quality control.
And the cheapness of e-books has expanded the number of books being sold, though often very cheaply, with free offers of tantalising opening chapters, or daily deals for well under £1.
That's great for expanding readership. It's not so good for maintaining the currency of quality writing. It's reckoned that only around 4% of published authors actually make their living out of it, and that's getting more difficult as these e-prices plummet.
Phillip Jones, editor of The Bookseller, told me that e-book sales now account for around 20% of the total, though it's a much bigger share of crime, sci-fi and romantic fiction. Erotic fiction is probably over 50% downloaded.
But even with the unpacking of so many tablets and e-readers last Christmas, Jones says the industry's a bit surprised that it hasn't seen as much growth as expected this year in areas where the printed book remains strong; non-fiction, literary fiction and children's.
Finding niches
Indeed, the resilience of printed children's books explains one response from booksellers; attract the kids in, and the parents and grandparents with them might be cajoled into buying something for themselves too.
The two sides of the new technology ledger - opportunity and challenge - also extend to smaller operators finding niches.
Waterstones, the last remaining national book chain, continues to struggle against Amazon, with yet more shop managers being shed. But indie shops can exploit those niches and reach the world.
Adrian Turpin, director of the Wigtown Book Festival, pointed out that the 20 or so book-related businesses in the south-west booktown, don't have to rely on passing trade through the winter months when they can do their second-hand book sales online.
Anyway, I'm nearly in Edinburgh's Waverley station, bracing myself for the Fringe-time assault of leaflet distributors.
I'll leave you to listen to lots more about the publishing industry on the Business Scotland programme, either via BBC iPlayer or by free download.
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A 20mph speed limit is to be introduced across all residential areas in part of Somerset.
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Bath and North East Somerset Council plans to introduce the £500,000 scheme across its area within two years.
Following a short consultation process in each location, signs will be erected and roads marked.
The limit will be introduced first in parts of Bath and larger towns in the area, followed by smaller towns and villages.
The scheme is already in force in places including Lancashire, Oxford, Portsmouth, Liverpool, Manchester and various London boroughs.
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As you step off the plane at Adler-Sochi airport, you are immediately aware that you are in one of the biggest construction sites in the world. The airport itself is being completely renovated. Outside, near the drop-off area, giant Olympic rings are under construction.
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By Daniel SandfordBBC News, Sochi
From the airport, you can head north on the 40km (25-mile) drive into the mountains, up a once-beautiful valley now dominated by a half-built new highway and railway. Or you can head south to the coast, to the enormous Olympic Park built next to the Black Sea, where huge trucks and cranes are omnipresent.
This is already officially the most expensive Olympics ever. The estimated $50bn (£32bn; 37bn euros) budget is more than the Beijing Olympics, three times the London summer Olympics, and 25 times the last Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
The Russian taxpayer is meeting much of the bill, but parts of it are being paid by the "oligarchs", the country's wealthiest men. For example Russia's 14th-richest man, Oleg Deripaska, has paid for the airport and the new port built to bring in the construction materials. Vladimir Potanin, the fourth-richest, has built a brand new ski resort - from scratch - in a quiet valley in the Caucasus mountains.
Vladimir Potanin made his billions in nickel, but has become well known for his philanthropy in recent years, supporting the arts and sport. But the $2bn he has spent constructing Rosa Khutor puts everything else into the shade.
'Legacy issue'
As he showed off the resort (he is an accomplished skier) his enthusiasm was clear. He said the idea had first come to him more than 10 years ago.
"We were skiing with President [Vladimir] Putin in Austria," he explained, "and there was talk that it would be good to have such resorts in Russia."
At first the proposal was just to build a world-class ski resort, but then came the successful bid for the Winter Olympics. The budget grew from $300m to $2bn. He admitted that he might not get much return on his investment.
"It's more a question of legacy," he said.
"For my colleagues, I also think it is mostly the payback issue because we talk a lot in Russia about the question of whether it is fair or not that we have a lot of rich people.
"It's not possible to change it overnight by paying some kind of fine or whatever. I think that the rich people have to work more for the country. And that's how they can change their image from somebody who is just rich to somebody who is doing something good for the country. Of course it is a payback, a legacy issue."
But he did add that he was hoping to get some of the money back from the government.
"With the hosting of the Olympics of course, the resort - Rosa Khutor - bears a lot of expenses which are not commercial and when and if these expenses are covered, the project is profitable," he said.
Olympics 'hell'
The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics is something of a personal project for President Putin, which perhaps explains the extraordinary no-expenses-spared policy that has allowed the budget to rocket past even Beijing.
But part of the reason is also the lack of pre-existing facilities. There was no ski resort, no ski jump, no bobsled track, no skating rink and no railway or sizeable road joining the beachside Olympic Park,that will host the skating events, to the mountain areas, that will host the skiing and sliding events.
But what has been created is something unique. A men's downhill ski-run with a view of the sea, and a collection of skating rinks set among the palm trees of a Black Sea resort.
It has not been without pain, though.
Lyudmila Yakovenko and her husband and two sons used to live in a house by the beach but the home was demolished to make way for the Olympic Park. Now they live in a scruffy rented garage with blankets hung across the door to keep them warm, and one room upstairs.
"We lived on the beach," she said. "We had our own backyard, a garden, flowers. We could see the sea from our windows. We grew up on the beach. Now our kids are growing up, and we hoped that their lives would be the same. But it all changed. They took away our family home, they took everything.
"My older son keeps asking me: 'Why are we living like this?' and I say: 'Because of the Olympics'."
She claims she has been compensated for only half the value of her old home.
On a hillside with a view of the Olympic Park, Tatiana Skiba surveyed the ruins of her home. She and her husband and son and daughter moved there 18 years ago, and lived in a wooden house while they built an impressive new one. But one night they were woken up by what seemed to be an earthquake. The house was shifting ominously under their bed. When they went outside they realised the whole hillside was on the move. It turned out that further up the hill there was an illegal dump where vast amounts of concrete and rubble from the Olympics site had been tipped.
Her old house is a wreck, and her new one leans dramatically to one side.
"If this hadn't happened, I might have enjoyed the Olympics," she said.
"But now the Olympics is hell for me and for everyone who lives along this street. It is hell and we feel very bitter towards the government. Even if it is prestigious for the country to host the Games it is a calamity, a real calamity."
This winter, athletes have been flooding to Sochi for a series of test events. They can see the disruption, and feel for the residents. But they also understand that next year's Games could be something special.
Elise Christie, the short track speed skater who is one of Britain's best medal hopes in 2014, has just secured her World Cup victory in Sochi and is looking forward to the Games
"I think it will be one of the best ones," she predicted. "Just now it maybe doesn't looks like it's ready, but that is because they are building everything from scratch."
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The Drums have said they'll continue as a three-piece after the departure of guitarist Adam Kessler.
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A statement from the Brooklyn-based band said they were "sad" at the split and that they have been "distressed by recent events".
It added: "Despite recent reports, we haven't replaced anyone."
The Drums, who are currently on tour in the US, added that they have begun work on the follow-up to this year's self-titled debut album.
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Millions of Muslims around the world have found different ways to celebrate Ramadan this year, as restrictions imposed by countries to curb the spread of the coronavirus have closed mosques and banned gatherings.
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This is when the world's 1.8 billion Muslims abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex from dawn to dusk.
Families and friends usually gather to break the fast and many attend prayers.
This year, however, people are having to mark the holy month at home instead.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and it started on or around Thursday. In parts of the world particularly hard hit by the virus, this year's celebrations are tinged with sadness.
Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound has been closed to worshippers since mid-March and will not open during Ramadan. Even Islam's holiest site in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, has been affected by the pandemic.
All images subject to copyright.
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People living near a number of Devon and Cornwall rivers are being warned about flooding on Sunday night with heavy rain expected over the counties.
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The Met Office is forecasting up to 3in (80mm) of rain for parts of the South West over the next 48 hours.
The Environment Agency said the Teign, Dart, Exe, Otter, Axe and Torridge rivers could be affected by the rain.
The Yealm, Tamar and Tavy rivers might also start to rise, the agency has warned.
The Environment Agency said: "Significant disruption, including disruption to travel and flooding of properties and communities, is possible.
"Strong winds will increase the risk of flooding as wind-blown debris has the potential to block watercourses and drains."
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For more than two decades after his asylum application was rejected, Sunny found a safe haven aboard the buses that zigzag across London at night. What's it like to spend every night on the lower decks?
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By Venetia MenziesJournalist and photographer
Sunny waits patiently, wind penetrating his well-worn jacket and the winter cold biting at his extremities.
It's past midnight and his legs are weary but he stands firm and smiles as the bus lunges to a halt, its wing mirror clipping overgrown branches on its way. He moves aside to let other passengers board, greets the familiar face of the driver with a gentle bow of the head and taps his weathered Oyster card on the payment point.
Relieved at finding his favoured spot at the back of the lower deck empty, he slides into place and gets comfortable for the long ride ahead. Sunny hugs his bag to his stomach, feels his wrinkled hands start to thaw, and closes his eyes.
Leaving behind the smell of fried chicken and noise of London's late-night traffic, his mind drifts.
He sees his younger self, kneeling in prayer between the concrete walls of a Nigerian prison, waiting to be executed. His offence: struggling for democracy.
A guard barges into the cell, lifts him to his feet and rushes him down silent corridors, out into blinding sunlight, where a car is waiting.
Family and friends have bought his freedom, paying off everyone from the prison officials to the air hostess on the flight to London.
Sunny is jerked back to the present as a scrum of drunken men, singing tunelessly, trail through the doors and up to the top deck. It must be three or four in the morning, he calculates - the usual hour for trouble.
Around this time, Sunny often notices three distinct groups around him. It's a neat survey of modern London. There are those who came to this country for a better life, rushing to their pre-dawn cleaning jobs. Another group - mostly indigenous Britons - heads home from the nightclubs, talking loudly and cramming down fast food. And finally there are the homeless, those who have nowhere else to go, for whom buses are a place to rest.
Sunny doesn't resent the others; he has learned to enjoy their boisterousness. When they smile, he smiles. When they laugh, he laughs too. It's amazing how a few pints can evaporate class boundaries, stripping reserved Englishmen of their inhibitions so they chat with the homeless as temporary equals.
Sunny tries to recall the last time he felt as happy as these drunken men.
Perhaps it was when his asylum claim was still under review. Back then he was full of gratitude for his second chance at life. He took a course in documentary-making, choosing to report on the lives of London's homeless, never imagining he would soon be in their shoes.
Sunny had dared to hope for a bright future, safe under the protection of Her Majesty the Queen - that figurehead familiar from sun-faded colonial posters across Nigeria. But his request for asylum was refused.
That left him with two options: go home to a country under the iron fist of a military ruler, where his death sentence would finally be carried out, or go underground.
It wasn't a difficult choice.
And so began 21 years as a nomad on London's buses, which Sunny quickly realised were safer and warmer than the streets.
It was a church minister, a woman of unwavering generosity, who first bought him a monthly pass to save him multiple nightly fares. She continued to do so, month after month, and other friends would chip in if she wasn't around.
By day Sunny would volunteer at churches - he would attend several during his time in London. When his work was done, he would often head to Westminster Reference Library where he could catch up on the day's news or pick up where he'd left off in the book he'd been reading.
He might then ask a restaurant manager if they could spare some food, and says he was rarely turned away.
But no later than 9pm he would invariably be stepping aboard a bus for the first of three, maybe four, nightly trips across the capital.
He soon discovered the best buses for a good rest. There was the trusty N29, from Trafalgar Square to the northern suburb of Wood Green. But the 25 - which ran 24 hours - offered the longest uninterrupted sleep. In traffic, it would take two hours to get from central London to Ilford, in Essex, where - if he was really lucky - a driver might take pity and leave him sleeping on board at the terminus.
More often, the homeless passengers - maybe four or five of them - would be woken and turfed off until the next driver arrived.
Most were destitute women, British or African, who used the bus as a sanctuary from the threat of sexual assault. Laden with bags, they would be grateful for Sunny's help lugging them on and off the bus.
Sunny always travelled light. A small tote bag allowed him to avoid the stigma of homelessness during daylight hours.
Some homeless folk would stretch out across seats but he preferred not to inconvenience other riders.
It took a while to learn all the tricks. At first he hadn't worried about where to sit. But then he found himself in a confrontation with two men who had been trying to set light to the hair of an unsuspecting woman in front. He chased them off but resolved to avoid conflict where possible.
The lower deck, he concluded, was the preserve of reasonable people, of families and the elderly. Trouble rarely erupted so close to the driver. The back seats were optimal, not just for the head rest but for peace of mind.
But there were always distractions: the lurching bus, the neon lights, the noisy night-riders and the humming engine. Two hours of proper sleep across an entire night was an achievement.
At dawn - or when he got hungry, whichever came first - he would head to a McDonald's.
He never begged but friendly staff at the Leicester Square branch would give him food and let him shave in the bathrooms. Fellow customers could be kind, too.
Or, if he timed it right, he could hop off at the 24-hour branch in Haringey - halfway along the N29 route. There, he could enjoy a peace that was rare in the central London branches, rest his head on a table and continue his slumber.
For a handful of Christmases, Sunny broke his routine and tried winter night shelters provided by churches.
Seven different churches worked a rota. But they were scattered in different locations across the capital, creating a daily exodus of people - the "walking dead", in his words - trying to reach their next bed before the evening curfew.
Sunny came to realise he preferred the bus to lying on stone floors, packed shoulder-to-shoulder. It was hard to sleep through the smell of tobacco, alcohol and unwashed bodies. And, of course, the screams of the others as they lay there tormented by nightmares.
From the seats of London buses, Sunny watched the changing face of the capital. Slowly, the white population declined as a proportion of the total. The ranks of the homeless expanded.
In this most diverse of spaces, he became adept at matching faces or dialects to places of origin. And he developed a sixth sense for trouble, detecting warning signs in gestures: the smirk of trouble-making teens, the pursed lips of an explosive racist.
There were combinations that could result in confrontation: drunken football fans and a veiled woman; tired commuters and people using speakerphone; gang members and their local rivals. In the months following the Brexit referendum of 2016, hostility to migrants seemed to become more commonplace. "Go back home," became a regular refrain.
Sunny didn't blame the British government for his predicament. Had his own country's not been so bad, he wouldn't have been here in the first place.
Eventually, the refugee centre at Notre Dame de France church, off Leicester Square, made an application for leave to remain on his behalf. If people prove they have continuously lived in the UK for 20 years, they can qualify to settle. But Sunny had spent that time avoiding all records, evading detection. How could he demonstrate he had been there all this time?
"I understand that your client is currently homeless, but we still require documentary evidence to show continuous residence from 1995 to the present date," said a letter from the Home Office. "Evidence such as utility bills, bank statements, tenancy agreements…"
Sunny asked the friendliest bus drivers to write him a letter of support. One obliged, confirming he was "a regular rider throughout the night".
The churches he had volunteered at over the years provided supporting statements and dug out old photographs recording his presence at charity events.
These days Sunny is the one taking pictures. He reaches inside his bag for the disposable camera he's been given to tell his story as part of a photography project.
There are a few frames left. Lifting the viewfinder to his eye, Sunny pushes firm against the flash button and pauses to adjust his composition. Click… He releases the shutter.
The photograph will not simply show rows of mostly empty seats on the lower deck of a bus. It will be a picture of life as a free man.
At the age of 55, in 2017, Sunny was granted leave to remain. It had taken a year but finally he had the right to shelter, to work, to exist. And he was thankful.
It is almost his stop, deep in south London's suburbs - he still isn't used to travelling to a destination. Even now he sometimes sleeps on buses, though more often during the day rather than at night. For so long a sanctuary, they remain a place to empty his mind - their familiarity a comfort.
Sunny's knees click as he hoists himself up. He's getting older, his struggle has aged him beyond his years. He thanks the driver and carefully steps down to the pavement. Leaning into the breeze, he walks towards his bedsit, smiling as the cold cracks his lips.
Sunny, whose name has been changed, collaborated with photographer and journalist Venetia Menzies to document his story for one year. This story is drawn from interviews with Sunny, his own photographs and portraits that preserve his anonymity.
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In 2017, freelance writer Tom de Castella noticed an elderly woman and her son living on a bench in south London. He discovered they had already been there for two years… which was puzzling. Why hadn't anyone done anything to help them? Why did everyone accept it as normal? The more he investigated, the stranger it seemed.
Is it OK if someone wants to live for years on a bench? (October 2019)
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So there we were, standing by for the new-look, no-singing, no-dancing Prime Minister's Questions, where "yah-boo" politics was replaced by a Socratic dialogue on the major issues of the day.
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David CornockParliamentary correspondent, Wales
Yes, was the first time MPs had the chance to question David Cameron, since Commons Speaker John Bercow wrote to the party leaders to ask them to clamp down on "yobbery and public school twittishness" during PMQs.
I suspect Mr Bercow may have been disappointed (although not surprised) as the traditional wall of noise accompanied most questions and answers. Occasionally, but only occasionally, a serious detailed question was listened to in respectful silence but otherwise it was largely business as usual.
There was cross-party consensus on the successes of Team GB at the Winter Olympics but little agreement on anything else. And while some things may change, others stay the same; a Conservative MP offered David Cameron a free hit at the Welsh government's record, one he felt unable to resist.
Charlotte Leslie raised recent correspondence between the medical director of NHS England, Sir Bruce Keogh and his Welsh counterpart. She wanted to know if David Cameron was as astounded as she was by the response of the NHS in Wales.
The prime minister said Sir Bruce's views should be respected and listened to by the NHS in Wales. He then went further, highlighting concerns raised by the Royal College of Surgeons:
"What they've (RCS) said today, what they're saying effectively, is there are people on NHS waiting lists who are dying in Wales because the waiting lists are too long and because the NHS isn't being properly managed, properly funded and properly reformed in Wales. That is a matter for the Labour Welsh assembly government and they need to get their act together."
The NHS in Wales may be devolved but - less than 15 months before the general election - it has seldom been as high on the agenda of the main governing party at Westminster.
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Children of the 1980s, rejoice - the original Bananarama line-up is back together at last. Which got us thinking - lots of 80s bands have reformed over recent years but which ones are we still wishing would reunite?
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By Emma SaundersEntertainment reporter
1. Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Liverpool band Frankie Goes to Hollywood, fronted by Holly Johnson, are still best remembered for their debut single Relax, which was famously banned by the BBC in 1984 due to its sexual lyrics but topped the UK singles chart for five consecutive weeks.
The band went on to become only the second act in the history of the UK charts (after Gerry and the Pacemakers) to reach number one with their first three singles when Two Tribes and The Power of Love also hit the top spot.
But their glory was short-lived. Their second album, Liverpool, released in 1986, failed to live up to expectations and a backstage bust-up between Johnson and bassist Mark O'Toole at their final gig at Wembley Arena sounded the death knell.
While various reincarnations of the band have since reformed, we're still waiting for the original line-up to hit us "with those laser beams."
2. The Smiths
Never gonna happen. Yes, we know. But just imagine! Johnny Marr and Steven Morrissey formed the band in 1982 with bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce.
They went on to release 17 singles and four studio albums, becoming one of the most influential bands of the 1980s.
Hits included This Charming Man, Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, How Soon is Now?, Big Mouth Strikes Again, Panic and Girlfriend in a Coma.
But the dream combo of Marr's melodies and Morrissey's musings was broken with the band's acrimonious split in 1987.
In Marr's autobiography Set The Boy Free, he revealed that the official version of him walking out on the band wasn't the full story.
The tipping point, says Marr, was when Morrissey didn't turn up for the video shoot of the single Shoplifters Of The World Unite, and ordered him to sack their latest manager.
Whatever the truth, Marr also wrote that he and Morrissey discussed the possibility of a reunion back in 2008. We're still waiting.
3. Curiosity Killed the Cat
Ring a bell? We've been wondering whatever happened to the beautiful beret-wearing Ben with the exotic-sounding surname Volpeliere-Pierrot (although Smash Hits preferred to call him Ben Vol-au-vent Parrot), not to mention Julian, Nick and Migi.
The band enjoyed 80s success with soulful pop hits including Down to Earth, Ordinary Day, Name and Number and Misfit.
They split after a last hurrah with a cover of Johnny Bristol's Hang On In There Baby in 1992. While Ben has joined some 80s tours singing solo the band have never reunited as a four-piece.
It's 30 years this year since Misfit and Ordinary Day entered the charts, so perhaps now would be a good time to hit the road again?
4. Style Council
It's well documented that Paul Weller would only reform The Jam if his children were "destitute".
But what about his later band, Style Council, which he formed with Mick Talbot, formerly of The Merton Parkas and Dexy's Midnight Runners?
The Style Council had hits such as Walls Come Tumbling Down!, Shout to the Top, You're the Best Thing and Long, Hot Summer.
The band broke up in 1989. Weller has since said they didn't get the credit they deserved.
"I thought we were quite misunderstood and misrepresented. Yet, at the end of the day, we made some good records and I wrote some good songs around that time, songs I still stand by, and I think that will last as well."
5. The Housemartins
Formed in Hull in the 1980s, The Housemartins line-up changed frequently over the years but most of us will remember its most famous members, Paul Heaton and Norman Cook AKA Fatboy Slim.
Caravan of Love and Happy Hour were probably their best known hits and Heaton and Cook went on to further success with The Beautiful South and Beats International/Fatboy Slim.
In 2009, Mojo magazine got The Housemartins' original members together for a photo-shoot and interview but they said they would not be reforming.
So it looks like we won't be hearing from "the fourth best band in Hull" - as The Housemartins often described themselves - anytime soon.
6. Bronski Beat/The Communards
While Bronski Beat continued following the departure of vocalist Jimmy Somerville in 1985, they are still best remembered for the hits they had with him at the helm, including Why?, Smalltown Boy and It Ain't Necessarily So.
Somerville, of course, went on to form The Communards with Richard Coles, who is now a Church of England priest and Radio 4 presenter.
But will we see either of these bands back together?
Larry Steinbachek, former keyboardist with Bronski Beat, sadly died at the age of 56 in January.
And the Communards? Coles and Somerville fell out, not least because Coles lied when he told Somerville he had HIV.
The two are back in touch now but with Coles' commitments to the Church, a reunion seems unlikely.
7. The Thompson Twins
Yep, it's our wildcard entry - the band that was named after the two bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson in The Adventures of Tintin.
The band had various line-up changes over the years but they were best known as the mid-80s trio consisting of Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway.
Their hits included Hold Me Now, Doctor! Doctor! and You Take Me Up but Leeway left the band in 1986 and Bailey and Currie could never replicate their earlier success (although they did have a dance hit in 1991 called Come Inside).
The pair had two children together and moved to New Zealand. While they did briefly reunite with Leeway on a Channel 4 show in 2001, they have so far resisted the urge to go down the nostalgia road and reform.
In 2014, Bailey began performing the band's hits as The Thompson Twins' Tom Bailey and continues to tour in 2017.
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India's Supreme Court has upheld a law which criminalises gay sex, in a ruling seen as a major blow to gay rights. The court ruling reverses a landmark 2009 Delhi High Court order which had decriminalised homosexual acts.
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According to Section 377, a 153-year-old colonial-era law, a same-sex relationship is an "unnatural offence" and punishable by a 10-year jail term. Here is a cross-section of views from India on the Supreme Court order.
Zafaryab Jilani, Muslim leader and petitioner in the case, Lucknow
The Supreme Court has upheld the moral values of India. Laws are made to protect what is "right" and that is what the court has done today.
Many consensual relationships of this unnatural nature have existed in India for decades, but that does not justify giving them legal or constitutional sanctity.
This is an unnatural phenomenon and it is correct to criminalise it.
We are living in India, this is not America, and according to the morals of our society, this is a correct judgement.
The Supreme Court has understood the feelings of the majority populace of the country and delivered its order accordingly.
Kavita Krishnan, women's rights activist, Delhi
The Supreme Court's decision is a huge embarrassment. It is supporting patriarchal and religious forces instead of siding with constitutional reason.
It is a setback to all minorities in the country.
In a modern democracy, we expect the Supreme Court to protect the rights of the marginalised and underprivileged, whether they are women, children, poor or sexual minorities.
How we live our personal lives, within the four walls of our house, should not be subjected to any moral policing or any mob rule.
We cannot accept the narrow beliefs, understandings and diktats of religious groups to dictate the laws of our country.
What if tomorrow religious groups decide that inter-caste or inter-religious marriages are against the moral values of our society, then would the court make, amend or uphold laws accordingly?
This is setting a very bad precedent.
Vivek Gunpal, student, Nagore, Rajasthan
Homosexuality is against the rule of nature. Gays should not be given any kind of support. They want something that is illegal to gain legitimacy but that is not acceptable. They should be banned.
They are trying to spread filth in the society, but you cannot allow anyone to do anything in the name of modernity.
Homosexuality is a Western import - we have assimilated some good aspects of their culture but this is a bad aspect of their culture. We cannot ape the West blindly, otherwise how will we protect our culture?
The Supreme Court order is very good - it will go a long way in maintaining the rule of nature and protect Indian culture and tradition.
The new generation is very liberal, and so am I, but I do not approve of homosexuals polluting our society. There has to be a limit.
Gautam Bhan, gay rights activist, Delhi
I am a member of Voices Against 377 which is a coalition of LGBT [lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people], women and human rights activists.
Our Constitution guarantees equality and it is the duty of the court to protect this, but in this judgement the Supreme Court has done exactly the opposite.
By taking back this legal status, the court has in a way said that because of the different identity of some citizens, their rights might be violated.
As the world moves to more equal rights for the transgender community, this judgement comes as a setback in the Indian context.
However, the movement is much stronger now than it was when the petition to decriminalise homosexuality was originally filed in the year 2001.
We never thought that this fight for equal rights would be an easy one and our movement will continue with equal fervour.
Subrat Kumar Pati, journalist, Bhubaneswar, Orissa
I welcome the Supreme Court order, it is a correct judgement, it's good for our society. In the name of people's rights, we cannot accept everything.
The court order does not violate anyone's rights. Homosexuality does not belong to our culture, it's not accepted culturally in our society and I don't think it's important for our society to legalise it.
You often read about gay relationships in the West, but such things are not common here. And even if people are gay, they don't come out in the open probably because they themselves believe they are doing something wrong.
I don't know anyone among my friends, relatives and family who is gay and if someone was, I will not be able to accept it.
Arvind Narrain, lawyer and defendant in the case, Bangalore
This judgement is the betrayal of the constitutional history of India as it has betrayed the principle of inclusiveness, betrayed the principle that majorities cannot discriminate against minorities, and it has betrayed the idea that all people irrespective of their sexual preference or gender identity have the right to live with dignity.
But remember in the four years since the Delhi High Court judgement, people have experienced a new sense of freedom, and that freedom no judgement can take away from us.
The Delhi High Court had very rightly said at that time that rights cannot be "conferred", they are merely "confirmed", which means that the right to dignity is an inalienable part of us and no court on Earth has the right to take away the right to dignity from us.
We want to study the detailed order of the Supreme Court, explore our legal options and then go back to the court to ask them to reconsider their opinion.
Interviews conducted by Divya Arya and Geeta Pandey.
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For more than 20 years, Dougie's life was a vicious cycle of drugs, crime and the death of people close to him. But for the past nine months he has been taking a medication that blocks his craving for heroin and helps him break the cycle.
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By Lorna GordonBBC News Scotland correspondent
Drug misuse has claimed the lives of Dougie's brother, two uncles and more than a dozen friends.
And two years ago he lost a leg due to health complications related to his addiction.
"If I hadn't stopped I would have died, simple," he says.
"I don't think my mum would survive losing another boy through drugs."
The 39-year-old Glaswegian has been in and out of prison since he was a teenager, stealing to fund his dependence on heroin and street Valium.
But since the start of the year he has been prescribed Buvidal, a new development in the treatment of addiction to opiates.
Dougie says it has been "life changing".
He was previously taking the opiate substitute methadone but it was not working for him.
"I tried this new drug and it managed to get me clean off methadone and clean off heroin," he says.
More than 100 people in Glasgow are now being prescribed the drug, which is injected once a month, meaning those using it no longer need to visit chemists to pick up methadone prescriptions every day.
It is hoped this will allow patients to focus on improving their lives and overall health rather than managing their dependence.
Scotland, and especially cities such as Glasgow and Dundee, has the worst rate of drug misuse deaths in western Europe.
It is not known how many people died from overdoses in Scotland last year as the figures have been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the figures for 2018 showed almost 1,200 people dying from drug misuse, more than three people every day.
Experts say they think the figures for last year could be even higher.
In response to the crisis, a pilot programme for Buvidal was launched with 14 patients in Glasgow last year.
It found that more than six months after the trial, all of them remained engaged in recovery.
Jennifer Kelly, a prescribing pharmacist for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's alcohol and drug recovery services, said feedback has been "overwhelmingly positive".
She said Buvidal blocks the opioid receptors in the brain which stops the patients having withdrawals and allows them to be comfortable.
Ms Kelly said it works best for patients committed to moving away from opioid use.
It allows patients to engage with the services they need such as occupational therapy, mental health and social services, she said.
"For our patients it's been a game-changer," she said.
"Their lives have improved in many ways, less drug use, better interaction with their families, with their children.
"It's not a case of they go on it and they are on it forever, which is sometimes an issue that people throw at methadone. We have managed to detox a number of patients from Buvidal."
Dougie says the drug has "changed the way I'm ticking".
"I've got a better relationship with my mum and dad whereas when I was doing drugs they wouldn't open the door," he said.
He said the first few weeks coming off methadone were hard because of the withdrawal effects.
"Now that I am free of methadone, the plan is to wean myself off Buvidal and then stay totally clean but that is easier said than done," he said.
"I wish it had been around 20-odd years ago, it would have saved so many lives."
Dougie said he wanted to convince his friends it is better than methadone.
"But a lot of my lads are scared," he says. "How are you meant to change that mindset?"
According to Dougie one of the advantages over methadone is not having to go to the pharmacy every day and risk contact with other users or sellers.
And for the future he says he wants to go back to college to learn the maths and English he missed in his youth.
"I don't want to start that lifestyle being a user everyday, chaotic," he said.
"I don't want that life any more. I have been there, it doesn't work."
Experts are wary of words like "miracle drug" and warn that Buvidal is not suitable for everyone.
But it is already helping to fix some broken lives and they want that to continue.
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It's been a ratings smash, caused meltdown on social media and an online leak of the last episode has made global headlines. But is the success of the TV adaptation of John Le Carre's The Night Manager down to its star names - or the enduring appeal of the spy?
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By Emma JonesEntertainment reporter
The mini series, a BBC co-production with US TV channel AMC and the Ink Factory - the latter company started by two of John Le Carre's sons - stars British actor Tom Hiddleston as the enigmatic Jonathan Pine, who goes undercover to try to expose the activities of billionaire arms dealer Richard Roper, played by Hugh Laurie.
The story also features Olivia Colman as security services figurehead Angela Burr - who was a male character in Le Carre's 1993 novel.
Each episode cost an estimated £3m to make, and one executive producer, the Ink Factory's Simon Cornwell, says the lavish adaptation was "a risk."
"It's a difficult book to adapt," he says, "and there have been quite a few attempts to make it into a film, it just didn't work. It needed six hours to explain the story.
"But to all intents and purposes, it's been written and shot as a film - we just hired one director, Susanne Bier, for all six episodes. I always think of it as a film - just a six-hour one."
Bond audition
Despite widespread critical praise for the story, much of the attention from social media has focused on Tom Hiddleston, speculating that its success can be attributed to his popularity with viewers - particularly when he appears without his shirt.
The actor, already well-known for playing the Norse god Loki in the Marvel comic adaptations, is also currently starring in the Ben Wheatley film High Rise.
A recent sex scene in The Night Manager made Hiddleston's rear a number one trending topic on social media - while other Twitter users have described his part as his "audition for James Bond" - a reference to the sharp suits, glamorous locations and espionage that punctuate the series.
Cornwell believes that "we hired a superstar in the making. I don't think British audiences have ever had so much screen time with Tom Hiddleston before.
"Viewers have been able to tune in week after week to see him and have become invested in his character, and with him.
"What's great for me is when I go and get lunch in cafes and I overhear people talking about him in the latest episode - that's when it hits you how popular the show is."
'Integrity and moral courage'
While the actor has previously stated he'd be interested "if Bond ever came knocking", Hiddleston says "story is key" as far as The Night Manager is concerned in his decision to take the part - and he thinks its appeal is "down to a good spy story never going out of fashion".
"I wonder why that is?" he speculates. "I've always been fascinated by that decision to sacrifice yourself, which is essentially what a spy does.
"There is an erosion of yourself, you have different passports, no attachments, no dependents, no address. You are in the service of something higher and I think that's why most of us are so interested.
"I truly loved the character of Jonathan Pine. I was very moved by his courage. Isn't there a saying that 'evil persists when good men do nothing'?
"Pine is impelled to stand up for something and risk himself for a greater good, and that takes huge integrity and moral courage."
'Essential reboot'
However Hiddleston also wonders if the story would not have been relevant without an "essential reboot".
Writer David Farr and director Bier updated many aspects of the original 1993 post-Cold war novel to include Colman as a female security service agent, but also to set it around the Arab Spring in 2011, with locations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It now has a pertinence and a relevance to today," Hiddleston claims. "I think we can see all too clearly that we live in a dangerous world, and we know that weapons are often sold under the table, and we know that sometimes governments can be involved.
"We don't know where those weapons end up, and we don't know where the enemy is. Isis and Al Qaeda have made the threat to our freedom so intangible, but I feel this story weaves it into a clear narrative and it's something we can believe.
"But we also needed Olivia Colman as Angela Burr - she is very much the heart of the show. I was told that most of the security services these days happen to be female led, we just don't always know their names - but she's a different class, a different sex, and it adds a new dimension to the story."
Danish director Bier, who won an Oscar in 2010 for her film, In A Better World, says before the series aired, "the one danger I was worried about was that audiences would switch off half way through".
But unlike another costly adaptation, War and Peace, audience ratings for the show have actually increased as the series has gone on, rising from six million to a peak of more than eight million viewers tuning in for last Sunday's episode on BBC One, when a major character was killed off.
Leaked episode
However, an online leak of the last episode after DVD and Blu-Ray editions of the series were sent out early, could dent ratings for the series finale this weekend - as well as leaking plot spoilers over the internet, before the series starts in Australia and the United States.
Cornwell says he has no comment on the issue, but believes the show had, overall, "been event television".
"It's the fruit of a golden age of TV where big names are lining up to take part because the stories and the budgets are so good - plus actors and directors can invest in something unfolding before audiences, week after week."
In an unprecedented move for a John Le Carre adaptation, which has also included the films Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and 2005's The Constant Gardener, there's even been speculation that there will be a sequel for The Night Manager. That though, says Cornwell, "is most emphatically a rumour at this point".
The final episode of The Night Manager will be shown on BBC One at 21:00 GMT on 27 March.
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Ethiopian fashion designer Fikirte Addis kneels down and wraps a tape measure around the waist of a customer, before scribbling on a piece of paper on which the outline of a flowing gown takes shape.
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By James JeffreyAddis Ababa, Ethiopia
The customer, Rihana Aman, owns a cafe in the capital, Addis Ababa, and went to Ms Fikirte's shop in the city, Yefikir Design, for a wedding dress fitting.
The dress, however, is actually for her sister, who lives and works in London, but will soon return to her homeland with her English fiance.
Ms Rihana explains how she shares her sister's figure, and that the cotton dress will be ready for when her sister arrives back for her "melse", the Ethiopian wedding ceremony.
"I love the traditional aspect of the clothing," Ms Rihana says of why she chose Yefikir. "So many dresses now are too modern, and use fabrics that lose what it means to be Ethiopian."
Along with other designers, Ms Fikirte is drawing on Ethiopia's rich cultural heritage while adding a modern twist to find success in the fashion industry at home - and increasingly abroad.
As a result, fashion design is proving to be one of the most successful Ethiopian sectors for small business and entrepreneurs, generating profit margins ranging from 50% to more than 100%.
Rich heritage
Companies such as Yefikir have flourished in Ethiopia due to the absence of big chain department stores, and relatively low start-up costs, set against the high prices individuals are willing to pay for quality, traditionally made fashion garments.
All Yefikir's fabrics are made by hand on weaving machines operated using techniques that go back centuries.
Flashes of colour come from strips of tilet and tilf - intricately woven or hand-embroidered multi-coloured patterns - which skirt hems, go around waists or course down backs.
It took Musie Teamrat, a 27-year-old embroider, 10 days to make three tilfs for one Yefikir dress.
As a result of such painstaking work, Yefikir's custom-made dresses can sell for up to 15,300 birr ($850; £530), a sizeable sum, especially in a country where many toil for no more than 50 birr a day.
Despite such apparent inequities, many Ethiopians - especially those in its growing middle class - are happy to pay handsomely for tailored garments with traditional influences, says 25-year-old fashion designer Mahlet Afework.
She adds that Ethiopians take great pride in the country's ethnic diversity - about 84 languages and 200 dialects are spoken - and in displaying allegiances through clothing at special events such as weddings and festivals.
Her clothing line, Mafi, specialises in ready-to-wear garments offering a notably funky take on the country's ethnic melting pot, and one that has proved successful.
In 2012 Ms Mahlet won the Origin Africa Design Award, and showcased her work at African Fashion Week New York.
Home-spun skills
Ethiopia's successful fashion designers are predominantly women who grew up surrounded by traditionally woven cotton fabrics, and did not need to be taught the tailoring and embroidering skills required to make beautiful and delicate clothing.
At the same time, a lack of formal fashion design education is preventing many Ethiopian designers from breaking out internationally, says Ms Mahlet, who is self-taught, and credits Google Search as her primary tutor.
She adds that those few Ethiopian institutions teaching fashion design run courses that are far shorter than the typical three-year fashion degrees taught in the West, and need to better impart the skills needed to compete internationally.
Another problem in the international arena is conducting sales transactions.
Banking restrictions mean there are no foreign banks in Ethiopia, and international customers are often suspicious of paying into African accounts, Ms Fikirte says.
Yefikir currently sells through Africa Design Hub, a US-based online store founded in 2013 by Western expatriates to showcase African designs while bridging markets.
Elizabeth Brown, the store's co-founder, says: "After living in East Africa for several years we saw the potential of African designs in the global market, but also a gap in market linkages, and knowledge sharing, between the industry and global consumers."
International arena
Yet global interest in Ethiopia's fashion scene is undoubtedly growing.
"Ethiopia has some wonderful and interesting craftsmanship," says Markus Lupfer, a British fashion designer who since 2010 has mentored young Ethiopian fashion designers in developing collections.
He adds that growing international recognition for Ethiopia's designers is partly a result of increasing demand for ethically produced fashion designs.
Although for the majority of Ethiopia's fashion designers, there is not yet enough of that recognition.
And while local demand remains buoyant - this year Ms Mahlet plans to open in-store Mafi fashion concession areas in Addis-Ababa-based boutiques; common practice in the West, but a new concept in Ethiopia - designers agree that international demand is essential for significant business growth.
Ms Fikirte and Ms Mahlet plan to bolster their companies' online presences this year, with both sharing a goal of exporting their designs to overseas boutiques and online stores.
"Ethiopia's fashion industry is changing the image of Ethiopia," Ms Fikirte says. "It is showing the diversity and beauty of Ethiopian culture, and providing some of the world's best hand-woven cotton fabrics."
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Warner Music Group (WMG), the record label of Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars, estimates it is worth up to $13.2bn (£10.7bn), as it prepares to list its shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
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That is four times what Sir Leonard Blavatnik paid in 2011 for WMG - the world's third largest record label.
At the time, the music industry was in the depths of a multi-year slump, but sales have improved more recently.
Warner Music said it is hoping to raise $1.8bn via the listing.
The firm had put its flotation plans on hold as the coronavirus pandemic cast financial markets into turmoil this spring.
But shares have been on the upswing recently, as investors cheer relief efforts by governments and central banks, hoping for a quick economic rebound.
Warner Music said existing shareholders would sell 70 million shares priced at $23-$26 apiece. The proceeds would go to Mr Blavatnik's company, Access Industries, which will retain majority voting power.
The firm represents more than 80,000 songwriters and composers, from Beethoven to Madonna. It reported a profit of $256m in its most recent financial year, on revenue of $4.5bn.
The industry's recovery has been helped by the rise of paid streaming services such as Apple and Spotify. In 2019, global music revenues rose 8.2% to $20.2bn - more than half of which came from streaming services, according to industry group International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Ukrainian-born Mr Blavatnik now has joint UK-US citizenship and received a knighthood in 2017 for services to philanthropy.
He sold a stake in Russian oil company TNK-BP for $7bn in 2013 and was an early investor in the Apple-owned Beats music subscription service.
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The BBC's Sally Nabil has been given rare access to Awamiya in Saudi Arabia, a town in the east of the Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdom that has been rocked in recent months by deadly clashes between security forces and Shia militants that were triggered by the demolition of its old quarter.
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"You will have only a few minutes on the ground. When we say 'go', you will have to leave at once," a Saudi police officer told us firmly as we got on an armoured vehicle heading to Awamiya.
As we approached the town, escorted by special forces, officers kept talking to their commanders over the phone to make sure the convoy was safe to proceed.
The security situation in Awamiya remains unstable, although the government says it is in control.
When we got to Awamiya, the scale of devastation was shocking. It looked like a war zone - as if we were in Mosul or Aleppo.
The town, which lies in the Qatif region of oil-rich Eastern Province, was home to about 30,000 people, most of them Shia.
Now, there is nothing left of the once vibrant residential area but bullet-riddled houses, and burned-out cars and shops - a testament to the heavy fighting.
Members of Saudi Arabia's Shia minority have for years complained about what they perceive as discrimination and marginalisation at the hands of the Sunni monarchy.
But their protests have always been met by a crackdown.
"The Saudi regime does not accept opposition, whether it comes from a Sunni or a Shia. They are just intolerant," Ali Adubisi, the director of the Berlin-based European-Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, told me.
As I walked around Awamiya, I saw a few bulldozers standing in the middle of the wasteland.
In May, the authorities started demolishing the 400-year-old al-Musawara area, as a part of what it says is a "development project".
"Eighty houses were demolished, and we still have about 400 more to go. These are dilapidated buildings, they should be modernised," acting mayor Essam Abdullatif Al-Mulla told me.
"Families have been relocated after being generously compensated and offered alternative houses."
As soon as the demolitions started, the confrontation in Awamiya took a violent turn.
Shia groups accused police troops of forcing people to leave, with the aim of crushing dissent.
Activists say security forces sealed off the town's entrances and exits in late July, denying remaining residents access to essential services such as medical care.
The violence has killed more than 20 civilians, among them a three-year-old boy who died on Wednesday, in addition to at least five militants, according to activists.
The Saudi authorities say eight police officers and four special forces personnel have died, but did not release any information on civilian and militant deaths.
The interior ministry has blamed the unrest on "terrorist groups who have been in the area for years".
A statement said government forces had been attacked repeatedly with rocket-propelled grenades, Molotov cocktails and machine guns.
"Terrorists indiscriminately killed civilians, and used them as human shields. People fled because they felt threatened by the militants," it added.
But there is another version to this story.
I managed to find a Saudi man who recently fled Awamiya, and is now seeking asylum in Germany.
"Security forces would shoot everyone - a man, a woman, an elderly person, or even a child," he said.
"For days I couldn't step out of my house. I was too scared."
The man, who asked us not to identify him as he feared for his life, told me he had never personally taken up arms but that he understood why some people had chosen to do so.
"You can be sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia just because you are a Shia and you belong to a different religious sect."
"The people are deprived of their freedom and dignity and might even be executed in unfair trials. They won't remain silent forever. If someone shoots you, you will have to shoot back."
The man recalled the start of the Shia protests in Awamiya in early 2011, when people emboldened by the Arab Spring uprisings across the region took to the streets.
"We were peaceful protesters, but security forces used to disperse us with live ammunition," he said.
Since then, hundreds of people have been arrested. Human rights groups say Specialised Criminal Courts, set up for terrorism cases, have sentenced more than three dozen men and boys to death after convicting them of protest-related crimes following unfair trials.
Activists fear that 14 protesters, including four found guilty of offenses committed when they were children, could be executed at any moment.
They include the nephew of Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric and vocal critic of the government who was convicted of terrorism offensives and executed in January 2016.
Our brief visit to Awamiya was interrupted by gunshots, fired from a distance.
We did not know whether it was the police, or the armed groups. But we had to leave at once, just as the commander said.
On our way back, I looked through the car window, and wondered if life would return to this ghost town any time soon.
It is very difficult to tell, as the reasons for the unrest are still very much present.
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A golden eagle caused a flap after landing on the windowsill of a house in Rhondda Cynon Taff.
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Rebekah Norton, from Ton Pentre, published pictures on Facebook of the huge bird of prey staring through her window.
Appealing for information, she posted: "Has anyone lost a MASSIVE bird? Currently sitting on my window."
In an update, she later said: "Apparently it's a golden eagle. Owner found."
In the pictures the eagle can be seen wearing leather anklets used in falconry.
According to the RSPB, golden eagles can have a wingspan of up to 2.2m (7ft 2in) and weigh up to 6.6kg (14lb 9oz).
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A lorry driver injured in a crash on the M6 has "life-changing" leg injuries, police have said.
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A flat-bed goods vehicle collided with an HGV between J8 for the M5 and J9 for Wednesbury at about 15:30 BST on Thursday.
The motorway was closed for four hours following the crash.
The 26-year-old driver of the smaller vehicle remains in hospital with serious injuries. Police are appealing for witnesses and dashcam footage.
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In a former shop wedged among the candy-coloured buildings of St John's, artisans armed with glue guns and wire, sequins and scissors, are at work to the beat of an infectious soca rhythm.
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By Gemma HandySt John's, Antigua
Haughty-looking mannequins bear the fruits of their labour, a kaleidoscopic array of costumes ready to transform the streets of Antigua's capital into a vibrant spectacle during August's Carnival parades.
Every year, in the run up to the festivities, back rooms and disused offices across the island are cleared out to make way for designers, seamstresses and the florid materials of their craft.
These are the informal mas' (short for masquerade) camps where the bulk of the outfits are still painstakingly created by hand, conceptualised by designers keen to flaunt their talent and secure bragging rights on the road.
Enduring tradition
This year the stakes are even higher as the Eastern Caribbean nation marks the diamond jubilee edition of the much-loved event.
Two hundred years may have passed since Antiguans first hit the streets in a display of pageantry to celebrate freedom from slavery, but time has done nothing to diminish Carnival's electrifying atmosphere and bonhomie.
The costumes remain central to the occasion, first commemorated officially in 1957.
In those days the vivid ensembles included plantation-style dresses and bonnets, witches and skeletons, soldiers and majorettes.
"The costumes used to be larger; some had to be rolled along on wheels," says Calvin Southwell, head designer with the Beautiful People troupe.
"Now the materials are lighter so you can wear them more easily for hours. And they're a lot skimpier too," he adds with a grin.
Brazilian influences
Influences from Rio de Janeiro's parades are evidenced in the bikinis and feathers which characterise contemporary Caribbean carnival garb. But Antigua has maintained many of its indigenous themes and traditional techniques.
An elaborate piece can take several days to put together.
"Back in the day, go-to materials were lamé, reflective paper, cardboard for the frame, and wire to stop it falling apart if it rained. Often they would incorporate cultural elements like the cathedral or a man on a donkey," Mr Southwell, a fashion designer by profession, explains.
"Now I use things like chiffon and lace. I might recycle exotic materials like feathers from an old hat. And that bustier was made from an old evening gown," he says, indicating a shimmering, diamante-studded garment.
From designing the pieces to completion is a six-month process. The Beautiful People troupe has a core team of 10 volunteers who bring 400 outfits a year to fruition.
"We make everything locally; we don't import anything except raw materials, like feathers from China and various bits from the US and Trinidad," Mr Southwell continues.
"We want to keep it totally Antiguan and making everything here preserves our uniqueness. We still incorporate elements of our culture, such as our national 'madras' fabric. We believe in keeping the art form alive; incorporating children into costume production is very important," he says.
Proud 'father'
Mr Southwell has been taking part in Carnival for over four decades.
"I started playing mas' when I was nine; it was a reward for doing well in school and I have done it ever since.
He adds: "Having a band is like giving birth; you nurture it, look after it and watch the costumes come to life on the streets. When you see people's reaction, that's when you feel most proud."
Janna Henry knows what he means. As lead designer with the Insane troupe, she heads a team of 50 people who create more than 600 costumes each season.
"Around 80% of everything we make is by hand, particularly our feather pieces," she says.
"Some people think it's a dying art but that's not our experience. Most of our volunteers are teenagers who come just because they want to learn."
Insane's pieces are constructed on wire frames to ensure durability. Some require simple wire-bending manoeuvres, others welding.
One modern material the group employs is a sturdy foam, similar to the type used in flip-flops and ideal for crafting accessories.
"The secret is coming out of the box and doing something people haven't seen before," Ms Henry says.
"We are all former mas' players so we know what's comfortable, appealing and looks good on the road.
"It's a tropical climate so the sun plays an important role. Metallic fabrics and sequins which reflect the light, and also look good under artificial lighting and flash photography, is a key strategy," she explains, adding: "You have to blend the colours well too; people like lots of vibrant colours to look festive."
For Roger Perry, of the Festivals Commission, the real magic takes place during the final parade on Carnival Tuesday, early each August.
"That's when you get to see all the costumes, craftsmanship and artistry," he says. "Against the lights, the music and the glow, it's just beautiful."
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Chinese shares fell by almost 9% overnight, alongside another broad sell-off across Asia. Global stock markets suffered their worst week in years last week and, so far, Monday has provided no respite.
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Duncan WeldonNewsnight economics correspondent@Duncanweldonon Twitter
The immediate catalyst for China's fall was the lack of a government policy response over the weekend. Investors - both Chinese and foreign - have come to believe that the Chinese government will support prices in the market, and so far they have been right.
Previous sharp sell-offs have been met with a strong response by essentially banning large institutions from selling to interest rate cuts.
The lack of a response could be taken as either a bad sign (that China is running out of policy tools to respond, potentially damaging the credibility of a government that has staked a lot of on its rising market) or as a good one (that the government's commitments to market reform are real and are going to stop trying to manipulate their market).
Although either way, it's not good news for those who have bought Chinese equities which they thought were underpinned by a "Politburo Put".
For years the more cynical investors in the US have believed in a "Greenspan Put", a "Bernanke Put" and perhaps now a "Yellen Put" - all named after successive chairs of the US central bank.
A put option is a financial derivative which protects investors against a fall in share prices: the belief of some is that the US Federal Reserve will act to prop up markets in tough times - essentially providing a free put option and covering investors' downside and limiting any losses.
Stepping back, the economic significance of China's collapsing stock market should not be over exaggerated. The country's financial markets are still relatively closed, limiting the direct cross-border impacts.
But behind the stock market collapse is a seriously slowing economy and the impact of that overseas is a lot more serious.
Still, with many in the markets always on the look out for "the next 2008", it's worth noting that this probably isn't it (and if it is, do feel free to tweet this blog post at me continually for the rest of my career).
As I wrote last week, the big structural drivers of emerging economy growth appear to be slowing or reversing.
Growth - and emerging market asset price returns - are likely to have to be weaker in the years ahead.
With emerging economies representing half of the global economy - and providing around 80% of global growth in the last few years - that matters.
And with corporate revenue growth at many large Western firms being driven by increased sales in the developing world, that slowdown will hit their profits and hence Western stock markets.
But the immediate economic fall out is more containable. Lower asset prices (making it harder for firms to raise money for investment) and lower export growth will slow Western growth.
But that impact could be at least partially offset by much lower commodity prices (and weaker emerging economy growth means a much lower price for oil, copper and the all rest) which means lower prices for things like petrol, boosting household incomes and allowing interest rates to stay lower for longer.
There is a worry that weaker growth and weaker currencies across particularly Asia could export deflation to the West.
That is a risk worth watching, although as long as wage growth in the developed countries continues at a decent clip, it is a manageable one.
You can't have a negative (and damaging) process of wage-price spirals if wage growth remains healthy.
A long lasting emerging economy slowdown would have profound impact on the world economy.
It will obviously have a major effect on the living standards of the billions of people who live in those economies.
But in the West, this isn't a 2008-style crisis but a stage in a ongoing process of the global economy being reshaped.
Still, the turbulence in the US markets may be enough to prevent the Federal Reserve from raising US interest rates in September. In which case there will be some who, rightly or wrongly, begin talking about a "Yellen put".
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For every 100 baby girls born in India, there are 111 baby boys. In China, the ratio is 100 to 115. One other country saw similar rates in 1990, but has since brought its population back into balance. How did South Korea do it? Yvette Tan reports.
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"One daughter is equal to 10 sons," was the message desperately being promoted by the South Korean government.
It was some two decades ago and gender imbalance was at a high, reaching 116.5 boys for every 100 girls at its peak. The preference for sons goes back centuries in Korean tradition. They were seen to carry on the family line, provide financial support and take care of their parents in old age.
"There was the idea that daughters were not regarded as part of their own family after marriage," says Ms Park-Cha Okkyung, the executive director of the Korean Women's Associations United.
The government was looking for a solution - and fast.
In an effort to reduce the incidence of selective abortions, South Korea enacted a law in 1988 making it illegal for a doctor to reveal the gender of a foetus to expectant parents.
At the same time women were also becoming more educated, with many more starting to join the workforce, challenging the convention that it was the job of a man to provide for his family.
It worked, but it was not for one reason alone. Rather, a combination of these factors led to the eventual gender rebalancing.
South Korea was acknowledged as the "first Asian country to reverse the trend in rising sex ratios at birth", in a report by the World Bank.
In 2013, the ratio was down to 105.3, a number comparable to major Western nations such as Canada.
Rapid urbanisation
Monica Das Gupta, research professor in sociology at the University of Maryland who has studied gender disparity across Asia, says factors other than legislation are likely to be the most significant in accounting for this change.
A legal ban can "dampen things a bit", but she points out that "seven years after the law [was instituted] sex-selective abortions continued".
Rather she attributes the change to the "blistering pace" of urbanisation and industrialisation in South Korea.
While the country was predominantly a rural society there was great emphasis on male lineage and boys staying at home to inherit their fathers' land.
But in just a few decades a large part of the population has moved to living in apartment blocks with people they don't know and working in factories with people they don't know, and the system has become much more impersonal, Dr Das Gupta says.
China and India, though, still have a stark gender imbalance, despite India outlawing, and China regulating against, sex-selective testing and abortions. So why is that?
Dr Das Gupta believes that in China this may be because until last year, the rule that your household registration - known as the hukou system - remained in the village where you were from, regardless of the fact that you might work in the city, meant that there was still an emphasis on male lineage and land ownership, but that this should now start to shift.
But she also stressed that the change is not always linear. As people gain economic advantage they have better access to sex-selective testing and have fewer children, which actually then puts greater emphasis on their gender.
In India in 1961, there were 976 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of seven. According to the latest census figures released in 2011, that figure had dropped to a dismal 914 and campaigners say the decline is largely due to the increased availability of antenatal sex screening, despite the fact that both the tests and sex-selective abortion have been outlawed since 1994. They say that in the past decade alone, 8 million female foetuses may have been aborted in the country.
But she argues that several factors in India are slowly having a trickle-down effect on attitudes to women including media representation of women functioning in the outside world, and legislative changes enforcing equal inheritance rules and requiring one-third of elected positions be reserved for women.
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While South Korea may have rebalanced its population, this does not necessarily equate gender equality, Ms Okkyung argues.
"Even though Korea has a normal gender ratio balance, discrimination against women still continues," the 47-year-old says. "We need to pay more attention to the real situations that women face rather than just looking at the numbers."
Women in South Korea face one of the largest gender wage gaps amongst developed countries - at 36% in 2013. By comparison, New Zealand has a gap of some 5%.
"Nowadays women go to university at a higher rate than men in South Korea. However, the problem starts when women enter into the labour market," Ms Okkyung explains.
"The glass ceiling is very solid and there is a low percentage of women at higher positions in offices."
One of the reasons it is harder for women to compete in the workplace is because they are expected to devote their time to both work and family.
"One example is that working mothers have a dilemma, as children in elementary schools come home early after lunch. Therefore, mothers who cannot see a sustainable future in the workplace tend to quit their jobs," says Ms Okkyung.
Dr Hyekung Lee was one of the few Korean women in her generation that did find workplace success.
"I have been very lucky that I was brought up in a very enlightened family. My family had three girls and two boys, and all were given the same support for education," says 68-year-old Dr Lee, who is the chairperson of the Korea Foundation for Women, the country's only non-profit organisation for women.
"But when I became a full-time faculty member in my university, I had to be the only woman professor in my department throughout my 30 years there."
Moving ahead
Generally, attitudes towards women have improved as today's Korean men become more educated and exposed to global norms.
They also inevitably mix with women across all spheres of life, in workplaces, schools or social circles, something that perhaps was not so common decades ago.
It is amongst the older generation that many still cling on to the preference for sons.
Emily [not her real name], 26, recalls that growing up as an only child, she was always treated equally by her grandparents - until her step-brothers were born.
"I only noticed the difference when my brothers came," she said. "Then I realised that they would never do stuff like the housework."
"My birthday is also one day before my father's so my grandparents didn't allow me to celebrate it because as they said: 'How dare a girl celebrate a birthday before her father?'"
"I think Korea is at that transitional phase that people are more aware now than previous generations, but it's still not quite equal compared to Western countries," she says.
"I've had friends tell me I can only keep my career if I stay single, and others tell me I've chased away men because I was too bossy on the dates and took the initiative."
She also notes that there is also a substantial difference in attitudes towards women in bigger cities and smaller towns.
"Cities like Busan are more traditional. I've had friends from Busan get a culture shock when they come to Seoul," she says. "In the capital, things are more progressive."
Yet she believes change will come.
"Women in Korea need to be aware that there is gender discrimination," says Emily, who is now studying in the Netherlands. "I didn't know until I left - I thought the way things were was just how they were."
"It's not until you expose yourself to other cultures that you start to question your own. I think things will change, but it will take a lot of time."
Additional reporting by the BBC's Geeta Pandey and Yuwen Wu.
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And so we come again to that glorious moment, just ahead of what I hope is a restful festive season for you and your family, when I wheel out my favourite prose of the year, under the auspices of an implicit endorsement from my long dead hero.
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Amol RajanMedia editor@amolrajanon Twitter
You know, to give you a bit of holiday reading when you've eaten too many pies.
Welcome to the Russell Prize 2020.
And what a year it's been. No, not the pandemic; I'm talking about the prose. Though I guess the two are related. Pandemics bring out the best in pens. TS Eliot wrote The Waste Land while recovering from Spanish flu. Daniel Defoe's Journey of a Plague Year is his best work, much better than Robinson Crusoe.
Only one of the nominees this year was writing directly about the pandemic and its consequences. The winner of the Russell Prize 2020 certainly was not.
Before we get to them, I should remind you that the Russell Prize is named for my hero, Bertrand Russell, who together with George Orwell wrote the best non-fiction prose in English of anyone alive in the 20th Century. (Ernest Hemingway wrote the best fictional prose, and if you haven't read Joan Didion's 1998 essay on his "mysterious, thrilling" style, you haven't lived; but we'll leave that for another day).
Russell's prose united the unholy trinity of virtues that make the best essayists: plain language, pertinent erudition, and moral force. Orwell achieved it in Shooting an Elephant and several other essays; Russell achieved it through most of his work.
Other truly great, even canonical, essayists often have two out of three. For instance, Christopher Hitchens' best essays combined pertinent erudition with moral force, but lacked plain English, (the moral, intellectual and artistic case for which Orwell himself made peerlessly).
As always, the selection process was watertight, in that nominations were submitted by me, to a rigorous and impartial panel of one, also me, wherein I have self-identified as convenor, founder, chair, president, and - in a new designation for 2020, approved by me - CEO.
Final thing: I'm impartial. I'm not endorsing any of the positions taken by any of these writers. If you want to bombard me with post-structuralist analysis of how I'm reinforcing discourses and hierarchies of oppression, or whatever it might be, honestly, it's not worth your time. I just love great writing.
Enjoy!
5 - Paul Vallely
How Philanthropy Benefits the Rich
In another universe, far, far away - that is, Kensington, London, a decade ago - I used to talk to Paul Vallely regularly. I worked on the comment desk of the Independent, a newspaper, and he wrote editorials.
Editorials, also called leading articles, are the voice of the paper, not the person writing them. Writers of editorials report to the comment desk, which has an editor, who in turn reports to the editor of the newspaper. That is, several people are involved in crafting the voice of the newspaper, though the editor has ultimate say.
Out of this process, various pleasing frictions arise. Debating what the editorial line of the paper should be was a great reason to turn up to work. It would probably be easier if the editor just wrote the editorials, but she or he doesn't have enough time, and likes the ego trip of being able to make the final call on others' work.
Journalists like to think they're motivated by stories but, being human, they're motivated above all by the other members of their tribe. For me, the best thing about working on the comment desk was talking to the likes of Paul, or our columnists, including the late Robert Fisk.
Paul has written a book on philanthropy, one of the most important, but least understood, subjects of our age. The extract in the Guardian was a festival of ideas, argued in clear, cogent prose.
I don't endorse the arguments therein, but it will certainly make you think again about whether philanthropy is being used not just to distract from bad behaviour, but to nullify the possibility of social and economic reforms that might address the many crises we are living through - including several that philanthropists say they're motivated to resolve.
Like Anand Giridharadas's book, Winners Take All, it has the appealing merit of starting out from a counter-intuitive proposition - philanthropy benefits the rich, not the poor - and then sustaining that position through the gradual accumulation of evidence. It's masterfully done, actually.
4 - Ian Leslie
64 Reasons to Celebrate Paul McCartney
Ian Leslie's extraordinary love letter to Paul McCartney is the sort of gift we all secretly - and sometimes not so secretly - hope for before we die. It's a chronicle of legacy. Leslie captures the sheer, astonishing, largely unrecognised range of McCartney's genius, detailing a lifetime's achievement with the affection of a fan and the eye of a crime reporter.
And there are several intellectual crimes that he prosecutes, from the naive casting of McCartney as a bohemian floozy, to the false dualism of his relationship with John Lennon, to the misunderstanding of him as a secondary figure in the most successful band of all-time. Reading this letter, you will learn a huge amount. The listicle format works - nothing downmarket about it - but the sub-headings are a useful addition.
Leslie has joined the Substack revolution. His newsletter, The Ruffian, is excellent, because his mind and voice are so unique. I really admire the profusion of short sentences in this essay: "Why Paul? I don't know. I like his face, I suppose", and constant outbreaks of profundity: "Gifted melodists always risk being dismissed as superficial, yet melody penetrates us to our core." Too true, mate.
My two least favourite words in English, after "cancer" and "malignant", are "Shakespearean" and "Orwellian". These ludicrously imprecise terms always exhibit lazy thinking. Orwellian is generally used to connote something totalitarian, you know, Big Brother is Watching You. I'm not going to commit the very crime I've just called out, but I will say that, in its mixture of brevity and profundity, Leslie writes sentences Orwell would have been proud to call his own.
Let alone dear Bertrand.
3 - JK Rowling
Reasons for Speaking Out on Sex and Gender Issues
JK Rowling is almost certainly the greatest writer of English children's fiction of her generation, and a remarkable humanitarian. It turns out she writes exhilaratingly powerful prose too.
In a blog about the transgender debate, she offended many people. Offence is the price of free speech. Those offended felt she was questioning their identity and even attacking their human rights, which they argue is a form of discrimination or hate speech.
I take absolutely no view whatsoever on the issues that she raises.
I do take an issue on abuse and trolling, and Rowling has achieved the inglorious honour of topping many a league table for those. The deluge of hatred that she faced before writing this blog made it brave, and it was nothing compared to what came after. Talking about bravery, so too, by the way, was Suzanne Moore's engrossing, long, personal essay for Unherd on why she left the Guardian.
We should all applaud bravery in writers - even those with whom we disagree. And Rowling's essay contained moments of both real beauty and piercing honesty, as when she revealed that she is a survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault.
What the judges - that is, the voices in my head - most admired about the writing was the plain English. It is an interesting fact about rhetoric that if you want people to understand something, plain, mono-syllabic words are usually your best bet: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country".
Or think of the final line from Enoch Powell's most notorious speech: "All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal."
I'm not endorsing the argument; but the rhetorical power of that line comes from the fact that there are 16 words, the first 15 of which have one syllable, and the last of which has three.
Compare it with this line in Rowling's essay: "So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe."
The rhetorical power from those two sentences derives partly from the plainness of the English. Only "women" (twice) and "natal" contain more than one syllable.
If you're ever editing copy that seems verbose, go through it and think about cutting syllables while conveying the same meaning. Plain English has power. JK Rowling gets that.
2 - Wade Davis
The Unraveling of America
Throughout this year, I've been doing a project for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, called Rethink. It's an attempt to understand how Covid-19 will, and should, change our world.
There are 64 essays from luminaries including the Pope, Dalai Lama, and Prince Charles. The basic insight is that we are living on the edge of profound change. Not just historic, but epochal.
Which, funnily enough, is an argument I have been making on this blog for years, and long before the pandemic. (See 'The New Epochalists, for instance.)
Huge forces - of technological innovation, Easternisation, and ecological catastrophe - are re-shaping our world at an extraordinary rate. And that was before the pandemic came along. Covid-19 has created new trends and accelerated underlying ones. High on the list of these is the end of the American century; or rather, the end of American pre-eminence.
Nobody has ever captured this quite like Wade Davis, in his seminal essay for Rolling Stone. Others have come close - notably George Packer in his outstanding analysis of the life of Richard Holbrooke for The Atlantic last year (The End of the American Century). But Davis is in a league of his own.
This is my kind of writing. That is, the kind of writing I aspire to. With magnificent historical sweep, and an array of dazzling statistics, he shows how at a particular moment, blessed with particular dividends from demography and high calibre political leadership, America helped to end the World War Two, remake the world in its own image, and earn the moral right to be top dog.
All of that is gone. It's an exhilarating, magisterial essay.
The winner of the Russell Prize, 2020
Decca Aitkenhead: How a Jamaican Psychedelic Mushroom Retreat Helped Me Process My Grief
It is impossible for me - and, I hope, you - to imagine the suffering Decca Aitkenhead has endured.
In May 2014, she was on a beach in Calabash Bay, Jamaica. Her four-year-old boy was in the water, when a big wave dragged him out to sea. Her partner, Tony Wilkinson, swam out to rescue their son, which he did - but at the cost of his own life.
Aitkenhead saw him drown.
To think of how that scene must have etched itself on not just Aitkenhead but her family is itself unconscionable. To describe Wilkinson, a charity worker who was extremely handsome, as a martyr doesn't capture the full, moral power of his impulsive decision to go into the water, or the exchange of life for death that ensued.
Aitkenhead wrote about her experience in a haunting, and haunted, memoir, All at Sea.
I do realise it is the height of vanity to insert oneself in stories of such pain felt by others, but there is a very minor connection which has always made this story particularly affect me. My wife and I spent half our honeymoon in Jamaica, on Treasure Beach, which is just next to Calabash Bay.
We were on the same beach in Calabash just 12 weeks before Aitkenhead and her family. Our son, Winston, is now four, and our daughter is one. Her name is Jamaica.
In January, Aitkenhead wrote possibly the best report I have ever read in a magazine. It chronicled her trip back to Jamaica with a friend - former Sunday Times colleague Eleanor Mills - to try psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
Aitkenhead reveals that a year after Wilkinson's death, she underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy for breast cancer. This unbearable additional trauma, on top of her grief, while raising two children, led her to try therapy, yoga, veganism, and a bit else besides, probably. But nothing worked. A friend said try magic mushrooms. And then she read Michael Pollan.
In the Russell Prize for 2018, I mentioned that a growing band of writers, including Andrew Sullivan, were trying to create new paradigm for thinking about drugs in public life. His "Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs" was riveting. The immaturity, stupidity, ignorance, hysteria and tendentiousness with which we have talked about drugs for most of my life is ceding, giving way to a more nuanced, balanced discussion. There is also, obviously, a very fast growing policy shift across many countries, who are treating drugs mainly as a medical rather than criminal issue.
Pollan's best-seller, How To Change Your Mind, has made him a leader of this new intellectual movement. He also changed Aitkenhead's life.
The magazine report has a perfectly glorious arc: appalling back-story, terror in anticipation, awful first experience and then... well, I won't give it away, but if you're into redemptive narratives, give this one a try. And do so too, please, if you enjoy lucidity, suspense, and powerful metaphors: at times Aitkenhead's evocation of the experience reaches heights that Hunter S Thompson would have read approvingly.
The resulting piece is, well, a trip.
I can't say I have any evidence that dear old Bertrand Russell gave magic mushrooms a try, but I have no doubt that he would consider reading this year's winner an education. I often wonder what he would say about legalising drugs today. "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion," he once wrote, "for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."
Let me repeat, again, in case you're thinking of getting angry, and sat in front of a keyboard, that I am not endorsing any position in relation to drugs, transgender issues, America, Paul McCartney or philanthropy. But I do endorse great writers and great writing.
May plain prose and erudition long outlast the injustices our esteemed writers have sought to vanquish.
I wish you and your family a glorious, restful Christmas - and hope 2021 is the best year yet. It can't be any worse than this year, can it?
If you're interested in issues such as these, you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook; and subscribe to The Media Show podcast from Radio 4.
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Boots worn by Wayne Rooney in the 2007 FA Cup final and a pair of Muhammad Ali's shorts, both owned by a criminal, have been sold by police at auction.
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The items had belonged to Thomas 'Tommy' Scragg, from Solihull, West Midlands, who was jailed for 17 years in 2012 for his part in a £34m fraud.
They were seized along with other items from Scragg under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Rooney's boots sold for £2,000 and Ali's shorts for £2,500.
The items were sold at an auction in Newtownabbey, near Belfast.
Police said the money raised from the auction will be used for public spending.
Scragg's Wolverhampton-based businesses stole tax through PAYE and VAT payments between 2002 and 2008.
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Jacques Hamel, the priest murdered by IS sympathisers during morning Mass at his church in Normandy, has been described as a courageous and dedicated man who had pledged to serve the church "until my last breath".
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Father Hamel, who was 86, retired nearly a decade ago but continued to serve as an assistant priest at the church in St Etienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of Rouen.
When the two attackers burst into the church on Tuesday, he was leading the service in the absence of the regular priest, Father Auguste Moanda-Phuati.
His throat was slit by the two men, who took five people hostage before being shot dead by police. One hostage remains in a critical condition.
"He was a courageous priest for his age. Priests have the right to retire at 75 but he preferred to work in the service of the people because he still felt strong," Father Moanda-Phuati told France's Le Figaro.
"He was very popular, a good man, simple and without extravagance. We benefited greatly from his experience and wisdom at the parish of Saint-Etienne. He served people for most of his life," he added.
Father Hamel was born in 1930 in Darnétal, Seine-Maritime. He was ordained in 1958 and celebrated his golden jubilee - 50 years of priesthood - in 2008, according to the parish website.
Father Aime Remi Mputu Amba, the dean of another local church, described him as a man of "great discretion and great attention" who brought a "ray of sunshine" to meetings.
Speaking to Le Figaro, Father Mputu Amba said: "Despite his advanced age he was still invested in the life of the parish. I often told him, jokingly, 'Jacques, you are getting on a bit, it's time to take your pension.' To which he replied, laughing, 'Have you ever seen a retired pastor? I will work until my last breath.'"
In a parish newsletter sent out last month to mark the holiday period, Father Hamel urged parishioners to spend time with friends and family and to look out for those who are alone. "Be considerate of others, whoever they are," he wrote.
Parishioners said they were shocked by the attack and paid tribute to the priest. Eulalie Garcia, who took catechism classes with Father Hamel as a girl, said: "My family has lived here for 35 years and we have always known him.
"He was someone who was treasured by the community. He was very discreet and didn't like to draw attention to himself."
Pensioner Claude-Albert Seguin told the Associated Press: "Everyone knew him very well. He was very loved in the community and a kind man."
Another parishioner said on Twitter: "The priest who died, he baptised me, taught me the Catechism... I am outraged, shocked, sad."
Mohammed Karabila, the president of Normandy's Regional Council of the Muslim Faith, who worked with Father Hamel on an interfaith committee, described him as "a man of peace" who "dedicated his life to his ideas and religion".
Pope Francis condemned the killing as "barbaric".
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Aberdeen City Council has named its new chief executive.
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Valerie Watts - currently town clerk and chief executive of Derry City Council - will replace Sue Bruce, who has taken on the same post in Edinburgh.
Council leader John Stewart said: "We are absolutely delighted to have chosen Valerie, following a rigorous nationwide recruitment programme."
Mrs Watts said: "This is a very exciting opportunity."
She is expected to take up the post in late February or early March.
Aberdeen City Council said the new chief executive would "bring a wealth of experience" to the post.
Mr Stewart said: "Valerie was the outstanding candidate in a very high-calibre field.
"It was clear to the appointment panel that she has the energy, enthusiasm and the vision to take Aberdeen City Council forward building on the work of Sue Bruce."
Mrs Watts said: "I look forward to the new challenges that a thriving, international city like Aberdeen will bring."
Sue Bruce had replaced Douglas Paterson in Aberdeen in 2008 after he took early retirement.
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Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wuhayshi, a former private secretary to Osama Bin Laden, was the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), formed in 2009 in a merger between two offshoots of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
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Under his direction, AQAP took advantage of the weak central government in Yemen to establish strongholds in tribal regions and become what US counter-terrorism officials described as the "most active operational franchise" of al-Qaeda beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The group claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile attacks in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as well as a failed attempt to blow up a US passenger jet.
In August 2013, it was reported that Wuhayshi had been named al-Qaeda's "general manager", or second-in-command, showing his importance to the jihadist network's efforts to attack the West and suggesting he might be in line to succeed Ayman al-Zawahiri as overall leader.
But in June 2015, AQAP announced that Wuhayshi had been killed in a suspected US drone strike in the south-eastern port city of Mukalla.
Prison escape
Wuhayshi, who is from the southern Yemeni governorate of al-Baida, spent time in religious institutions before travelling to Afghanistan in the late 1990s.
He fought at the battle of Tora Bora in 2001, before escaping over the border into Iran, where he was eventually arrested. He was extradited to Yemen in 2003.
In 2006, Wuhayshi and 22 other suspected al-Qaeda members managed to escape from a prison in Sanaa. Among them were also Jamal al-Badawi, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, and Qasim al-Raymi, AQAP's military commander.
After their escape from prison, Wuhayshi and Raymi were said to have overseen the formation of al-Qaeda in Yemen, which took in both new recruits and Arab fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The group claimed responsibility for two suicide bomb attacks that killed six Western tourists before being linked to the assault on the US embassy in Sanaa in 2008, in which 10 Yemeni guards and four civilians died.
Four months later, Wuhayshi announced in a video the merger of the al-Qaeda offshoots in Yemen and Saudi Arabia to form "al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in the Arabian Peninsula". His appointment as AQAP leader was later confirmed by Zawahiri.
Western targets
AQAP's first operation outside Yemen was carried out in Saudi Arabia in August 2009 against the kingdom's security chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, though he survived.
It later said it was behind the attempt to blow up a US passenger jet as it flew into Detroit on 25 December 2009. The Nigerian man who was convicted in relation with the incident, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said AQAP operatives had trained him.
Two more plots targeting US aviation were foiled.
At home, Wuhayshi's group capitalised on political turmoil in Yemen resulting from the uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011 to capture a string of towns and villages, only to be driven out of many areas in an army offensive in 2012 ordered by Mr Saleh's successor, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
At the same time, US President Barack Obama authorised a significant increase in the number of drone strikes targeting AQAP operatives in Yemen in 2012, resulting in the deaths of a number of senior figures, including Wuhayshi's Saudi-born deputy, Said al-Shihri.
The territorial losses did not, however, stop AQAP from launching a series of high-profile attacks targeting Yemeni security forces and government personnel. This included a suicide bombing at a military parade in Sanaa in May 2012 that killed more than 120 people and a raid on a hospital in the defence ministry compound in the capital in December 2013 that left 56 people dead.
Yemen chaos
In March 2014, Wuhayshi was filmed telling a large gathering of militants that AQAP would fight Western "Crusaders" and their allies everywhere.
That December, the group threatened to kill an American hostage, Luke Somers, if its unspecified demands were not met within three days. Somers was killed during a failed rescue attempt by US special forces.
The next month, AQAP claimed to be behind the deadly attack on the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, which had published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. US officials later confirmed that one of the gunmen had received training at an AQAP camp.
In Yemen, AQAP has recently capitalised on the chaos caused by a rebellion by the Houthi movement and a Saudi-led air campaign to weaken the Zaidi Shia group, expanding the territory it controlled in the south and east of the country.
However, the US drone strikes targeting AQAP did not stop and one was reported to have killed Wuhayshi as he met two fellow militants in Mukalla on 9 June.
On 16 June, an AQAP spokesman confirmed Wuhayshi's death and vowed that "the blood of these pioneers makes us more determined to sacrifice".
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Guatemala's former military leader Efrain Rios Montt was one of the central American nation's most controversial figures, who briefly seized power during one of the bloodiest periods of the country's brutal 36-year civil war.
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In May 2013, he was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, but the conviction was later overturned by the high court.
Legal battles over whether he was fit to stand for retrial endured until his death in 2018.
Born in Huehuetenango, Efrain Rios Montt joined the army as a young man and was an officer by the time President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was deposed in a CIA-backed military coup in 1954.
He rose through the ranks to become a brigadier general and the army's chief of staff in 1970 during the military regime of President General Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio.
He came to power through a coup in March 1982 in the middle of Guatemala's bloody war, in which Marxist rebels battled the military regime.
Civilians - the vast majority of them indigenous Mayans - were caught in the crossfire, and an estimated 200,000 died before a truce was reached in 1996, making the conflict one of Latin America's most violent wars.
Although Gen Rios Montt was overthrown by his Defence Minister Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores in August 1983, he is considered to have had a major impact on the conflict through the so-called Guns and Beans campaign.
The rebels were offered terms through which they would be fed if they supported the regime, but crushed if they continued fighting.
Prosecutors say that during his 17 months in power, Gen Rios Montt and his chief of military intelligence, Gen Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, ordered the deaths of more than 1,700 members of the Ixil Maya ethnic group, whom they suspected were supporting the rebels.
In 2012, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom apologised to the relatives of the victims of a December 1982 massacre in which Guatemalan soldiers killed more than 200 people in the village of Dos Erres, saying it was a stain on Guatemala's history.
'Guatemala was in ruins'
General Rios Montt returned to the political limelight when he ran for president in 2003, despite a constitutional rule that no-one who had overthrown a government could stand for the presidency.
During the campaign, he was accused of orchestrating a violent protest by his supporters against the constitutional ruling.
A journalist died of a heart attack while running away from protesters in what became known as Black Thursday in Guatemala City.
But Gen Rios Montt was cleared of manslaughter charges in 2006, with prosecutors citing a lack of evidence.
He stood for president again in 2006 but was defeated in an election was marred by violence, with more than 22 people connected with political parties killed in the run-up to the vote.
The general returned to public office in 2007 as a member of Congress, which secured him immunity from prosecution over the war crimes allegations.
But that immunity expired with the end of his term in office in January 2012, and within two weeks of leaving office he was summoned to court and formally charged with genocide and crimes against humanity.
Prosecutors called for 75-year sentences to be given to both Gen Rios Montt and his former spy chief.
Although the case was beset with delays, legal loopholes and a temporary suspension, the pre-trial hearing was held in January 2013.
The three-judge tribunal reached its verdict on 10 May, declaring him guilty and sentencing him to 80 years in prison.
Gen Rios Montt did not testify during the court proceedings, but broke his silence to give an impassioned hour-long defence before the three judges retired to consider their verdicts.
On more than one occasion, the 86-year-old apologised for appearing doddery, reminding the judges he was a great-grandfather. But he was crystal clear in claiming that there was no evidence he ordered the extermination of the Ixil ethnic group during his presidency.
"I am innocent," he said. "I never had the intent to destroy any national race, religion, or ethnic group."
He argued that his "mission as head of state was to reclaim order, because Guatemala was in ruins", rather than overseeing the civil war at a local level.
On 20 May, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala overturned the conviction.
A retrial eventually resumed in October 2017, behind closed doors and in special conditions because of his deteriorating mental health.
He died of a heart attack, aged 91, on 1 April 2018.
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Today will see a through the looking glass moment at Davos.
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Kamal AhmedEconomics editor@bbckamalon Twitter
The leader of the world's largest Communist Party will take to the stage at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss ski resort arguing for globalisation and the wonders of free trade.
At the same time as the US - the home of capitalism - has a new president saying that the present free trade rules need to be ripped up.
The Dragon is here to embrace Switzerland's annual rich fest.
And it's keen to be seen as a member of the club.
President-elect Donald Trump wants to take a baseball bat to the club house and build a new one.
'Route to prosperity'
President Xi Jinping is the first Chinese president to visit the WEF.
His message is likely to be uncompromising.
After Chinese officials warned against "nativism" last week - a direct reference to Mr Trump - Mr Xi is expected to say that global free trade has brought prosperity and that moves against it will only harm economic growth.
Yes, he may nod to the need for globalisation to be seen to be working for all.
But he will be clear that more trade is the route to prosperity, for Asia and Western economies.
China is making a very major point via Mr Xi's visit to the WEF.
With other leaders, notably Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, staying away, China is bringing the largest delegation it has ever mustered.
Business leaders such as Jack Ma - the founder of the global internet giant Alibaba - are in Davos, as is Wang Jianlin, another of China's richest men and chairman of the property developer Dalian Wanda.
The message is clear.
America might start looking inward, but China is seeking to extend its influence, and the chosen route is economics.
The big push at the WEF, the launch of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank to rival the US dominated World Bank, the revival of the "Silk Route" trade corridor from Asia to the Middle East and Europe - all point in one direction, and it's towards Mr Xi's enthusiasm for a more expansionist China.
Economics is wielded as a tool of influence.
The WEF full court press from Mr Xi comes at the same time as Mr Trump has made his position on China clear.
Although we have yet to discover what President-elect Trump will actually do when he takes office on Friday, the fact that he hired one of America's toughest China hawks, Peter Navarro, as the head of his new National Trade Council, suggests little change from Campaigning Trump.
And Campaigning Trump accused China of currency manipulation and "raping" America, saying that cheap Chinese exports had led to the loss of US jobs.
I wrote about China's hyper-chilly reaction to that allegation and what Mr Navarro might mean for Sino/US relations here.
So far, Mr Trump is talking tough.
A strong supporter, Anthony Scaramucci, who is set to be hired as another of Mr Trump's business advisors, will also speak at Davos.
And rather than extol the virtues of the present structures of world trade, he is likely to focus on what he sees as the weaknesses.
In the past he has backed Mr Navarro's criticism that allowing China to join the World Trade Organisation under President Bill Clinton was a decision that American industry "has never recovered from".
The contrast with President Xi will be stark.
And will reveal the tension simmering between the two largest economies in the world - a tension that will define the health of the global economy over the next decade.
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"The most macabre travel agents in history" is how Italy's Interior Minister Angelino Alfano describes the people smugglers who charge migrants sums they can ill-afford to cross the Mediterranean in unsafe boats.
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Katya AdlerEurope editor@BBCkatyaadleron Twitter
Italy hopes its EU partners will on Thursday support an initiative to get a military mandate to destroy traffickers' vessels before they use them. The exact details are still unclear but a mandate from the EU - possibly also the UN - would be needed.
A British government source told us that all options were on the table.
Other proposals to be debated also include significantly boosting the EU's maritime patrol to help rescue migrants.
Not quite on a par with Italy's former search and rescue programme but still a huge change.
Libya, too, will be high on the discussion agenda. Italy says 90% of the immigrants washing up on its shores come by boat from there.
It also worries about the organisation calling itself Islamic State, operating so close to Libya's maritime border. There are fears IS could pose a huge security risk for Europe. In the past, it has explicitly threatened Italy.
Add into the mix a German-backed plan to spread migrants out more equally amongst EU countries - an extremely divisive issue - and you can see that the emergency summit will be a challenging one for its participants.
But it's all or nothing according to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. He's demanding a fully comprehensive political - and financial - solution to the migrant crisis, rather than an emotional response by the EU and its member countries.
Italians want their government to put the rest of the EU under pressure. They feel that they are struggling to cope, between their country's steep economic downturn on the one hand and what their media have dubbed "a migrant invasion" on the other.
Anti-immigrant populist politicians here in Italy as elsewhere in Europe are gaining ground on the back of the debate.
That's why so many European governments have, until now, silently looked the other way when it comes to the perils of migrants at sea. They feared that tackling the issue could cost them domestically.
But Europe is now waking up to the realisation that this is a problem for the continent as a whole.
Most migrants arriving in Italy or Greece don't want to stay there, preferring to slip invisibly over national borders until they reach richer destinations like Germany, Sweden or the UK.
Germany had 200,000 asylum applications last year alone. In 2015 the numbers are expected to rise even further.
The face of Europe is changing. Too fast for some.
This is decision time but also a moment for soul searching.
Some kind of common document will certainly emerge at the end of today's summit. The real test will be to see if those plans are then implemented.
Europe made bold declarations on immigration just under two years ago, also following dreadful loss of life in the Mediterranean.
The plans were similar to a number of proposals now being discussed.
Yet here we are again.
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Police say that the gunman who killed almost 60 people at a concert in Las Vegas had outfitted a legal but controversial accessory onto 12 of his semi-automatic rifles to enable them to fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
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Officials say that theses devices - known as bump-stocks - have been found along with 23 guns inside Stephen Paddock's room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
Bump-stocks, or slide fire adapters, allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at a high rate, similar to a machine gun, but can be obtained without the extensive background checks required of purchasing automatic weapons.
Audio analysis of one clip estimated that about 90 rounds were unleashed in only 10 seconds - far faster than a human being could repeatedly pull a trigger.
Lawmakers have questioned the legality of these devices while gun owners - sensing a legislative crackdown - have reportedly begun stockpiling them.
Since Congress passed the Firearm Owners' Protection Act in 1986, it has been relatively difficult for civilians to buy new, fully automatic weapons, which reload automatically and fire continuously as long as the trigger is depressed.
However, thousands of "grandfathered" weapons - those manufactured and registered before 1986 - can still be bought but are very expensive and all sales must be approved by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
It is also illegal to modify the internal components of semi-automatic rifles - which typically manage about 60 aimed shots per minute - to make them fully automatic.
Gun owners can instead legally buy accessories to increase the rate of fire.
One option is a "trigger crank", "hellfire trigger", or "gat crank", which bolts onto the trigger guard of a semi-automatic rifle and depresses the trigger several times with every rotation.
But the bump-stock, which was used by Stephen Paddock in Sunday's Las Vegas shooting, harnesses a rifle's recoil.
It replaces the weapon's stock, which is held against the shoulder, and allows the rest of the rifle to slide back and forward with every shot despite having no mechanical parts or springs.
The motion makes the trigger collide with, or bump, the shooter's finger as long as they apply forward pressure with the non-shooting hand and rearward pressure with the shooting hand.
Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in 2012, California Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill that sought to ban bump-stocks and similar devices, saying that manufacturers were exploiting "loopholes" to circumvent gun laws. However, the bill was defeated in the Senate.
In the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, Mrs Feinstein re-introduced a bill on Wednesday that would outlaw the sale and possession of bump-stock equipment and other similar devices.
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A 19-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the manslaughter of a man who died as a result of a single punch.
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The victim, aged 24, was punched and collapsed in an alleyway off Drapery, Northampton, on Saturday 9 February.
He was taken to University Hospital in Coventry but died on Monday of his injuries.
The arrested man is in custody. Northamptonshire Police have appealed for witnesses.
An 18-year-old man and a 20-year-old man arrested in connection with the attack have been released under investigation pending further enquiries.
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Archbishop Pietro Parolin, a 58-year-old Vatican diplomat, is to take over the key post of top foreign policy adviser and deputy to Pope Francis in October. He replaces Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone who has been a controversial and divisive figure in the Vatican corridors of power.
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By David WilleyBBC News, Rome
Archbishop Parolin's appointment as Vatican Secretary of State marks the beginning of a major reshuffle among the men who run the Roman Curia.
When a Pope dies or steps down, as happened in the case of former Pope Benedict last February, all Vatican senior clerics automatically lose their jobs.
Pope Francis temporarily reinstated all former department heads, including Cardinal Bertone, while he was planning a radical restructuring of the central government of the Catholic Church.
Now, after nearly six months in office, Pope Francis has set in motion a timetable for Vatican administrative reform.
The retirement of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the appointee of former Pope Benedict seven years ago, and his substitution by a much younger and more experienced Vatican diplomat who is also an accomplished linguist, is just the first stage in an ambitious plan drawn up by Pope Francis to bring the slow-moving papal court into the world of the 21st Century.
Greg Burke, a communications strategist at the Vatican commented: "Archbishop Parolin was the Vatican's deputy foreign minister before he became Ambassador and knows how the Vatican works and how the Catholic Church works around the world. Pope Francis will rely on him heavily for everything regarding international relations."
The Vatican has diplomatic relations with over 170 countries.
Lacking co-ordination
The new secretary of state will take over his job in mid October - after Pope Francis has chaired an inaugural meeting on 1 October of a council of eight cardinals from around the world whom he has appointed to advise him on Church policy.
There has been a lack of co-ordination within the various dicasteries or administrative sections which form the Roman Curia or central government of the Roman Catholic Church during the past two decades.
The late Pope John Paul II was in poor health for almost a decade before his death in 2005 and left many decisions to his aides.
His successor Pope Benedict has not been seen as a successful administrator. The "Vatileaks" scandal, when Pope Benedict's butler stole confidential documents detailing cronyism and corruption among top-level Vatican administrators and leaked them to the media, marked a low point in his papacy.
Pope Francis has already set in motion the reform of the Vatican Bank which has allegedly been turning a blind eye to money-laundering by some of its clients. He has also appointed a committee of Catholic economists to advise him on improving accounting methods and financial transparency.
But the appointment of his new secretary of state is by the most important single administrative act carried out by the new Pope since his election last March.
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The Western Isles is to have its first astronomy festival next year.
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The Hebridean Dark Skies Festival will take place on the Isle of Lewis from 8-21 February.
Speakers will include Chris Lintott from BBC's The Sky at Night, science presenter Heather Couper and Astronomer Royal for Scotland, John Brown.
There will be live music performances and screenings of films, including The Rocket Post and the silent movie Wunder Der Schöpfung.
Arts centre An Lanntair, Stornoway Astronomical Society, Calanais Visitor Centre, Gallan Head Community Trust and Lews Castle College UHI are involved in the festival.
Stargazing events will be held at Gallan Head and the Calanais Standing Stones.
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A car has been destroyed after a petrol bomb attack in Donaghmore, County Tyrone.
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The incident happened just after 23:00 GMT on Tuesday.
A man wearing dark clothing was seen running from the scene after the fire had been started, according to a statement from the police.
Detectives want anyone who witnessed the attack or has information about who was involved in it to contact with them.
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When the European Court of Justice made its landmark ruling forcing search engines to listen to people who wanted links about them removed, Google said little in public. But in private the search giant seethed with anger at a ruling it saw as both a threat to free expression and a monstrous bureaucratic burden.
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Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
Two weeks on, Google has adopted a far more pragmatic stance, offering a mechanism to people who want to take advantage of the ruling. There is an online form to allow European users to request the removal of links about them. You have to prove your identity and explain exactly which links you want removed and why.
But the form makes it clear that there are strict limits on exactly what can be removed. Google says it will "attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public's right to know and distribute information".
So it will look at whether there's a public interest in the links users want removed - "for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials".
Google has also set up a commission of the great and good, people like the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, to oversee the whole process.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the company's chief executive Larry Page seemed resigned to the need to bow to the ruling from Europe's highest court, while keen to warn that it could threaten the next generation of internet start-ups and strengthen the hand of repressive governments.
And much of the comment online has been deeply sceptical about the right to be forgotten, particularly in the United States where the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech would make this kind of ruling impossible. Some have pointed out that information won't be removed from google.com, just your local version of the search engine, others question the sheer practicality.
But privacy campaigners say this does give the private individual, who does not want their entire identity defined by a search engine, some small measure of control over how their neighbours see them. In the ongoing battle between Europe and America over the balance between privacy and freedom of expression, this is one case where the European view has prevailed, for now.
And, interestingly, one of the most powerful voices calling for a reassessment of the power of the internet giants over our personal data has been an American writer. In his novel The Circle Dave Eggers paints a dystopian future where a brilliant technology firm - The Circle - persuades the world that the more information we all share, the better our lives will be.
Tiny online video cameras allow the world to see and hear what is happening anywhere in real time, politicians are persuaded to go "transparent", so that every word they say in private becomes public. At a public meeting, three slogans on a screen sum up The Circle's philosophy - "Secrets are Lies, Sharing is Caring, Privacy is Theft."
Now of course this is just a novel - and The Circle is not Google. But American web superpowers, from Amazon to Facebook to Twitter, have acquired enormous power over our online lives, and those who have worried about that have often been told that resistance is pointless in a web with no borders. So today's move by Google is some evidence that if society decides it isn't happy with the idea that privacy is theft, it can do something about it.
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Aberdeen City Council's chief executive has told staff it is likely a number of complaints will be received about letters endorsing a "No" vote in September's independence referendum.
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The Labour-led administration decided more than 100,000 letters would be included in council tax bills.
Valerie Watts has now contacted staff.
She wrote: "I appreciate that it is likely that we will receive a number of comments and complaints from members of the public."
She added: "I would ask that you forward any that you or your team receive to my office."
The letter added: "I fully appreciate that we all have our own views on the current constitutional debate under way."
Aberdeen City Council is run by a coalition of Labour, the Conservatives and independents.
The SNP had called for the letters to be pulped, but the coalition backed the move to send them.
Labour council leader Barney Crockett insisted it was not political campaigning.
SNP and Lib Dem councillors had walked out Tuesday's meeting after it was decided to hold the discussion on the letters in private.
SNP group leader Callum McCaig said it was "beyond pathetic".
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Is Saudi Arabia to blame for the rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIL)? It is commonly claimed that Wahhabism, the strict form of Islam originating in the Kingdom - and the Saudi state's aggressive promotion of it - has fuelled terrorism.
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Saudi Arabia is also accused of funding IS, either directly or by failing to prevent private donors from sending money to the group.
But Saudi Arabia rejects both accusations, and has announced the formation of a new Islamic anti-terrorism coalition.
Five experts share their views.
Professor Bernard Haykel: IS theology directly linked to Wahhabism
Professor Bernard Haykel is director of the Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University.
"The Islamic State's religious genealogy comes from 'Jihadi Salafism', a theological current that is very old in Islam that is quite literalist.
"[Followers are] extremely rigorous, and condemn other Muslims who don't share their theology. That gives them the hard edge when it comes to violence, because they can justify it theologically.
"Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab is in that Salafist tradition. He was a religious reformer in Arabia who was able to create a religious movement that ended up creating a state.
"He saw that Muslims had deviated from the 'true' message of Islam; not praying properly or at all, or engaging in practices that he felt were violations of the faith.
"A lot of scholars of the period started writing treatises against his ideas. They felt that he was not sufficiently educated to teach.
"Eventually he was able to connect with the leader of the al-Saud family in 1744. That alliance had very strong and lasting effects.
"He believed there is a pure version of the faith, and that if one goes back to it, one is guaranteed salvation in the hereafter, but also in life God will give you all the things he promised.
"The first Saudi State, based on this Wahhabi faith, seemed to confirm his message because of the political and military success it had throughout the 18th Century and 19th Century where it conquered most of Arabia.
"Once a town was conquered he would appoint teachers to educate people in his version of the faith. He wrote a number of short books that were the basis for the teaching, books that are used by ISIS today.
"ISIS claims that the Saudi state has deviated from the true beliefs of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and that they are the true representatives of the Salafi or Wahhabi message."
Professor Madawi al-Rashid: Wahhabism led to Islamic awakening
Saudi-born Professor Madawi al-Rashid is visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.
"The Wahhabis were given full control of the religious, social and cultural life of the kingdom. As long as the Wahhabi preachers preached that Saudis should obey their rulers, the al-Saud family were happy.
"In the 1960s and 1970s the Arab world was full of revolutionary ideas. The Saudi government thought the Wahhabis were a good antidote, because they provide an alternative narrative about how to obey rulers and not interfere in politics.
"In the 1980s, King Fahd established a printing press to publish Korans, sent for free to different parts of the world. They established Al-Madinah University to teach religion to students from around the world.
"Wahhabism is definitely an intolerant form of Islam. It is a local religious tradition that has gone global prematurely. We're seeing that it can be a revolutionary language that would inspire someone to commit atrocities in the name of Islam.
"When Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union, Wahhabism was instrumentalised by the Saudi regime. It inspired young Muslim men to go to Afghanistan to fight a jihad against the Russian infidels.
"Wahhabism benefitted from the arrival of the Muslim brotherhood, who were exiled from places like Egypt, Syria and Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s. Saudi Arabia welcomed them.
"A lot of them became religious teachers so the fusion between this Wahhabi tradition, and the organisational skills of other Islamists, led to the emergence of a new trend in Saudi Arabia; the Islamist trend, what is referred to as the Islamic awakening."
Aimen Dean: Salafism has been greatly misunderstood
Saudi-born Aimen Dean left school to fight jihad in Bosnia in the 1990s and subsequently joined al-Qaeda. Disillusioned, he then started working undercover for the British government.
"The traditional Salafism practised mainly in Saudi Arabia and especially by the religious establishment might not have a favourable view of other strands of Islam, but is nonetheless very active in combating political violence because it believes in the sanctity of governance. It is better to put law and order and stability above the pursuit of justice and political ideals.
"The religious establishment in Saudi Arabia hasn't actually done anything in the form of discriminating violently against other forms of Islam.
"I always hear people saying 'We don't hear many Muslims condemn ISIS, standing up against terrorism'.
"How many Saudi security forces died in the fight against al-Qaeda and ISIS? How many ISIS and al-Qaeda prisoners are in the prisons of Saudi Arabia? This year alone 1,850 ISIS suspects have been arrested in Saudi Arabia.
"Just the simple expression of sympathy [for ISIS] could land you in prison in Saudi Arabia.
"Saudi jails are filled with radical Islamists, yet across the Gulf Iranian jails are filled with liberals and human rights campaigners. Who is the moderate and who is the hard-liner?
"If you look at the numbers of Saudis who joined ISIS, there are up to 180 per million.
"In Tunisia - a vehemently secular nation with no religious education whatsoever for more than half a century - it's more than 212 per million."
Matthew Levitt: IS is financially self-sufficient
Matthew Levitt directs the counterterrorism program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"Contrary to conventional wisdom, ISIL derives a relatively small share of its funds from deep-pocket donors. And while terror financing within Saudi Arabia was once a major problem, Riyadh has begun to turn a corner - especially when it comes to financing ISIL.
"ISIL has been financially self-sufficient for years, including its early days as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). A 2006 US assessment determined that AQI created a self-sustaining insurgency in Iraq, raising $70m-$200m (£47m-£134m) a year from illegal activities alone.
"Seized AQI documents indicate that 'outside donations amounted to only a tiny fraction - no more than 5% - of the group's operating budgets from 2005 until 2010'.
"Today, ISIL's primary sources of funding are extortion, oil smuggling, and other criminal activities. A small number of major donors were designated as terrorist financiers by the US Treasury Department, but these were exceptions.
"The Saudis have arrested several hundred ISIL suspects, reportedly including some ISIL financiers, but Riyadh provides no breakdown of the numbers.
Recent polling data suggests support for ISIL within Saudi Arabia hovers around 5%. And yet, those results suggest the Saudis have reason to worry: 5% of the Saudi population represents over a half a million potential donors.
"Authorities worry about ISIL sympathisers' ability to raise and move funds through hard-to-monitor cash transfers, a typical method among Saudi donors.
"Another concern is ISIL fundraising through social media and other communication technologies. Saudi authorities reported that ISIL fundraisers have solicited donors via Twitter and told them to establish contact via Skype. Donors were then asked to purchase international prepaid cards and provide the card numbers via Skype. These would be sold to earn cash.
"In March, Saudi Arabia co-chaired with the US and Italy the inaugural meeting of the Counter-ISIL Finance Group. This working group will get a significant boost this week at a UN Security Council summit of finance ministers focused on countering ISIL financing.
"Doing more to prevent ISIL donors moving money through banks and money exchangers is sure to be on the agenda."
Mohammed Yahya: Saudi Arabia poses a significant threat to IS
Mohammed Yahya is political consultant at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London.
"Accusations that Saudi Arabia funds these groups and supports them ideologically are not only unfounded, they are an extreme disservice to the fight against terrorism, both in Saudi Arabia and internationally.
"Saudi Arabia has some of the strictest financial measures and controls to stop any funding to terrorist organisations.
"There is very strict monitoring on moving money overseas. Some individuals in the past have beaten the system, but the system that's in place is one of the most rigorous in the world.
"Many of these individuals [who may have funded IS] are in jail. Eight hundred people are incarcerated today that have direct links to ISIS.
"The Islamic State has conducted several attacks on Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's counter-terrorism and intelligence programmes are the biggest threat they have both ideologically and on the ground.
"Saudi Arabia is very diverse. There are many different kinds of Muslims of all backgrounds and around 18 million Muslims visit annually for pilgrimage. Saudi Arabia has enacted laws that strictly prohibit religious incitement and calling for the death of innocent people.
"The fact that there is intolerant or controversial speech in Saudi Arabia is not a reflection of government policy.
"Much of Islam's teachings have been misconstrued.
"Just because one Islamic text by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab is used by ISIS does not mean that his teachings are everything that ISIS believes. They will use whatever fits their narrative from any source.
"To blame what is going on today in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere on the teachings of somebody that existed 270 years ago is just misleading."
The Inquiry: Is Saudi Arabia to blame for IS? was broadcast on the BBC World Service. Listen online or download the podcast.
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A Worcestershire couple have begun a 216-mile journey to London on their narrowboat in order to take part in the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant.
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Andrew and Wendy Dyke, both Evesham Town and Wychavon District councillors, started their trip at Workman Gardens, Waterside in Evesham.
Their boat, Lord Toulouse, will be taken through 235 locks on its journey to the event on 3 June.
Organisers expect about 1,000 vessels to take part in the pageant.
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The BBC understands that the prime minister has accepted that it may not be possible to change the EU's treaties - the laws on which it is based - before the UK votes in a referendum on whether to stay in or leave the EU.
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Nick RobinsonPolitical editor
In recent meetings with fellow European Union leaders David Cameron has argued instead for what officials call an "irreversible lock" and "legally binding" guarantees that at some future date EU law will be changed to accommodate Britain's renegotiation.
As recently as January Mr Cameron insisted that he would be demanding "proper, full-on treaty change".
Euro sceptics and those who want to leave the EU altogether have always been suspicious that agreements between political leaders can be later undermined in the courts.
They believe that legal or treaty changes are necessary to deliver the Prime Minister's negotiating objectives - in particular to free Britain from the EU's commitment to build an "ever closer union" of nation states and to ensure that benefits such as tax credits be withheld from migrants who have been in the country for less than four years.
David Cameron's critics may fear that the formula he is now using is a watering down of that commitment and will demand to know who would interpret any legally binding agreement reached between the Uk and the rest of the EU.
Downing Street insists, however, that it is simply a reflection of the fact that any treaty change will require a time consuming ratification process in 28 different countries involving parliamentary votes as well as referendums in France, Ireland and Denmark.
They point out that when Ireland had a referendum in 2009 on the Lisbon Treaty all other EU countries had not yet ratified the proposed changes in EU law.
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When then fashion buyer Santosh Kumari was called into the canteen at the offices of BHS more than four years ago to be told she and her colleagues would lose their jobs, the announcement followed plenty of warning signs.
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By Howard MustoeBusiness reporter
For months before, Santosh says that stock had to be marked down as suppliers hounded the company for payments, later turning down orders because their banks feared that the retailer wouldn't pay up.
"It was really bizarre because we were all looking for jobs," she says. "My assistants and I were talking about jobs, where normally you don't talk to your line manager about going for another job elsewhere."
When the end came, the business was so bereft of resources that she and other staff were told they would not receive redundancy pay beyond the statutory minimum.
"One day I was flying around the world and in charge of millions of pounds in my department, and the next minute, I have nothing and I'm worried about paying my mortgage."
BHS's collapse and the subsequent demise of firms such as Carillion and Thomas Cook have had a common thread in that the outside accountants hired to check their finances have been criticised.
BHS's auditors, PwC, were fined a record £6.5m after signing off accounts the industry watchdog, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), called "incomplete, inaccurate and misleading" in its report into the aftermath of the collapse.
According to the FRC's most recent analysis, a third of UK audits are substandard.
Parliament has been scrutinising the audit industry for some time.
In 2011, a report from the House of Lords said: "The audit of large firms, in the UK and internationally, is dominated by an oligopoly with all the dangers that go with that."
It recommended companies should tender for audit work every five years, and it said that "complacency of bank auditors was a significant contributory factor" to the 2007-08 financial crisis.
Since 2018, three government-commissioned reports have been published about audit reform.
The Kingman review has suggested replacing the current regulator with a stronger one, the Brydon review said auditors should try harder to detect fraud, while one conducted by the competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority, said auditing and consultancy needed to be separate businesses.
Despite all these failings and recommendations, no laws have passed to tighten the rules.
The government insists it knows that reform is needed and has said it "will respond with comprehensive proposals for reform and will then bring forward legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows".
But over the summer the government was criticised by parliament for dragging its feet.
A different approach is suggested by Prem Sikka, a recent entrant into the House of Lords as a Labour peer and a professor in accounting.
"I don't think it can really be fixed," he says. "As long as accountancy firms are paid by the companies they audit, and they also then throw in a bit of a consultancy, there is a conflict of interest. Nobody's going to bite the hand that feeds them."
He says that the best solution would be to have a state body audit the largest companies, just as HMRC oversees the auditing of tax collection.
"I think it matters, because we rely upon auditors to make corporations publicly accountable. And that matters, not only to investors in the stock market, but also to employees, about the safety of their pension schemes and to creditors."
He says the public should have access to basic facts about audits such as the size of the audit team, its contract, hourly rates and how long is spent on the work.
While no rules have been changed, not everyone has failed to act.
In the wake of its $1.9bn settlement with US authorities in 2012 over anti money-laundering concerns, global banking giant HSBC hired more internal auditors and compliance workers and set up more rigorous systems.
Part of its plan included hiring consultants with the goal of encouraging a more inquisitive culture at the bank. Employees at the bank were encouraged to ask questions about where money was being made and how.
One of those hired to do the training was Ian Hynes, a former police officer and investigator and now chief executive of training firm Intersol Global, which has trained internal auditors in the art of conducting an effective investigation.
He says while HSBC's decision to train bankers to do this seems perfectly natural and should be replicated by other businesses, it is hardly the norm among big companies.
"Where we delivered training, a very common theme in the feedback was that they were disappointed that they did not receive the training at the outset of their careers, whatever that career was, whether it was audit or compliance," he says.
It's even less the norm among the largest auditors, he says, who have shunned his investigative training.
"It's been hard work," he says. "We've had little reaction, if any."
A questioning mindset could have stopped many a scandal, he says.
Auditing "should be seen as an asset that's valuable, that adds value to the business that helps secure, protect reputations, lives, careers, save the entities' money".
His business as a trainer in these skills "has been termed the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and it frustrates the life out of me that we ended up getting commissioned when the damage is being done."
Ms Kumari and some former BHS colleagues sued the defunct company's estate and won after a court found it had broken the law in not providing sufficient consultation over job losses.
"The speed of BHS's collapse into administration and the announcement of redundancies shortly thereafter left many employees suddenly and unexpectedly out of work," said her lawyer Carl Moran of SDM Legal.
Ms Kumari, like many others looking for work in the wake of corporate failure, says the blame of the collapse of BHS should lie with its bosses. But she wonders what auditors knew - or could have asked - about the company's books before the end.
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Developers behind plans to turn Edinburgh's old Royal High School into a luxury hotel are to appeal the council's decision not to grant planning permission.
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Duddingston House Properties and Urbanist Hotels want to redevelop the site on Calton Hill, which has lain empty for almost 50 years.
They want to turn the A-listed building into a 127-bedroom hotel.
Conservationists objected to the scale of the proposals.
Last week, the local authority's development sub-committee voted unanimously to reject the revised plans.
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Imagine the energy of eight Suns released in an instant.
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By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
This is the gravitational "shockwave" that spread out from the biggest merger yet observed between two black holes.
The signal from this event travelled for some seven billion years to reach Earth but was still sufficiently strong to rattle laser detectors in the US and Italy in May last year.
Researchers say the colliding black holes produced a single entity with a mass 142 times that of our Sun.
This is noteworthy. Science has long traced the presence of black holes on the sky that are quite a bit smaller or even very much larger. But this new observation inaugurates a novel class of so-called intermediate-sized black holes in the range of 100-1,000 Sun (or solar) masses.
The analysis is the latest to come out of the international LIGO-VIRGO collaboration, which operates three super-sensitive gravitational wave-detection systems in America and Europe.
What is a black hole?
The collaboration's laser interferometer instruments "listen" for the vibrations in space-time that are generated by truly cataclysmic cosmic events - and on 21 May, 2019, they were all triggered by a sharp signal lasting just one-tenth of a second.
Computer algorithms determined the source to be the end-stage moments of two in-spiralling black holes - one with a mass 66 times that of our Sun, and the other with 85 solar masses.
The distance to the merger was calculated to be the equivalent of 150 billion trillion km.
"It's astounding, really," said Prof Nelson Christensen from the Côte d'Azur Observatory in France. "This signal propagated for seven billion years. So this event happened 'just before halftime' for the Universe, and now it's mechanically moved our detectors here on Earth," he explained to BBC News.
Gravitational waves - Ripples in space-time
The involvement of an 85-solar-mass object in the collision has made collaboration scientists sit up because their understanding of how black holes form from the death of a star can't really account for something on this scale.
Stars, when they exhaust their nuclear fuel, will experience an explosive core collapse to produce a black hole - if they're sufficiently big. But the physics that's assumed to operate inside stars suggests the production of black holes in the particular mass range between 65 and 120 solar masses is impossible. Dying stars that might yield such entities actually tear themselves apart and leave nothing behind.
If the science is correct on this point then the most likely explanation for the existence of an 85-solar-mass object is that it was itself the result of an even earlier black hole union.
And that, believes Prof Martin Hendry, from Glasgow University, UK, has implications for how the Universe evolved.
"We're talking here about a hierarchy of mergers, a possible pathway to make bigger and bigger black holes," he said. "So, who knows? This 142-solar-mass black hole may have gone on to have merged with other very massive black holes - as part of a build-up process that goes all the way to those supermassive black holes we think are at the heart of galaxies."
The LIGO-VIRGO collaboration is reporting the 21 May, 2019, event (catalogued as GW190521) in two scholarly papers.
One is in the journal Physical Review Letters and describes the discovery. The second can be found in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and discusses the signal's physical properties and scientific implications.
GW190521 is one of over 50 gravitational wave triggers presently being investigated at the laser laboratories.
The pace of research has increased rapidly since the collaboration made its first, Nobel-Prize-winning detection of gravitational waves in 2015.
"We are increasing the sensitivity of the detectors and, yes, we could end up making more than one detection a day. We will have a rain of black holes! But this is beautiful because we will learn so much more about them," Prof Alessandra Buonanno, director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, told BBC News.
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
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Elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) will be held across England and Wales, including the North Wales force area, on 6 May 2021.
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PCCs are elected representatives who work to ensure police forces are run effectively and efficiently.
They replaced police authorities in 2012 and are intended to bring a public voice to policing.
PCC elections are supposed to be held every four years but were postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Here is the list of declared candidates for North Wales, in alphabetical order by surname:
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Sinn Fein's Francie Molloy will contest the Mid-Ulster Westminster by-election when Martin McGuinness steps aside.
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The veteran republican was selected at a party meeting in Gulladuff on Wednesday.
Sinn Fein is ending the practice of double jobbing and Mr McGuinness will be focusing on his duties as deputy first minister.
Mr Molloy, 62, was the director of elections for the Maze hunger striker Bobby Sands.
He is the current deputy speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Mr McGuinness was elected MP for Mid-Ulster in 1997, but he has never taken his seat in Westminster.
The party has an abstentionist policy, with all of its MPs refusing to attend Parliament.
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The online gambling industry contributed £50m to the Bailiwick of Guernsey's economy in 2009, according to a new report.
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A study by accountants KPMG has revealed that the figure has risen from about £7m in 2007.
The report predicts further growth of more than 40% over the next two years.
Carla McNulty-Bauer, Guernsey's Commerce and Employment minister, said the industry extended the range of jobs available for the local workforce.
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A shopkeeper has admitted having sex with children as young as 12.
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Dilan Amin, 27, of Pear Tree Road in Normanton, Derby, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual activity with a child and two counts of sexual assault.
The four offences took place between 2012 and 2016 and Amin was remanded in custody until sentencing at Derby Crown Court on 27 April.
Judge Jonathan Bennett said to Amin: "It is inevitable you are going to prison."
East Midlands Live: Woman's sudden death leads to arrest; Hostel murders accused 'of unsound mad'
Amin, who ran a shop called the Famous Shop on Pear Tree Road, will be sentenced for these four charges as well as a number of others he had already pleaded guilty to or was convicted of at trial.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
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Logic has signed an exclusive deal with streaming service Twitch.
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"I'm not this rapper guy, man," he told The Verge. "I'm just a nerd. I love video games."
The US rapper, real name Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, has been using the platform for years.
It's the first exclusive deal Twitch has done with a musician, but it's not clear whether he will be streaming music.
It was only last week that Logic said he was leaving the music scene to focus on fatherhood.
Although now, he says he felt "forced" when he made that announcement.
"It's not that the label made me feel that way. I was doing it to myself, because I'm such a businessman, and I was pushing myself to the brink of insanity."
Twitch lost someone who brought a lot of viewers to the site when they banned Dr Disrespect last month.
Logic hopes to bring his fan base with him.
He told The Verge: "I'm going to bring new eyes to their service, they're going to bring new money to my bank account, and - I'm just kidding."
He added: "I'm not going to be on Twitch, having political debates. I'm going to be on Twitch, helping people after they've had a day of protesting or political debates, unwind and laugh and smile."
Logic said the site was the "safest way possible" to interact with fans.
Twitch was recently accused of not doing enough about abuse claims, as well as not banning streamers who used racist or homophobic language.
It announced that it would start issuing permanent bans to certain streamers.
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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A Bengal tiger growls menacingly as it prowls the rehearsal room. A zebra, hyena and orangutan are also on the loose. And a 16-year-old boy is doing his best to stay out of the way of them all.
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By Ian YoungsEntertainment & arts reporter
The tiger is about to pounce, but the despairing boy distracts it by catching a rat and throwing it in the predator's direction.
He's safe. For now.
There's no particular panic among the other couple of dozen people in the room, though. Well, only the low-level panic you get when you're turning one of the best-loved and best-selling novels of the past two decades into a major play, and opening night is approaching.
The tiger growls again. The boy throws the rat again. And again.
The novel is Yann Martel's Life of Pi, which tells the story of an Indian boy who is stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It won the Booker Prize in 2002 and has sold more than 15 million copies.
For the rehearsals, one floor of an empty department store in the middle of Sheffield is doubling as the Pacific Ocean - there isn't enough space in the usual rehearsal room at the city's Crucible theatre, where the show is being staged.
The animals are puppets, but even though the tiger needs three people to operate it, it still appears disconcertingly realistic, especially when it is growling in your direction.
Life of Pi is an enchanting book about survival and religion and what is real and what's not. But for a long stretch, it is just a boy and a tiger. In a lifeboat. At sea.
When it was adapted for a film by director Ang Lee in 2012, people wondered how it would work. But Hollywood has the benefit of CGI wizardry, and it ended up winning four Oscars, including best director and visual effects.
So how on earth will it work in a theatre?
"Loads of people said to me, 'Oh, my God, how are you going to do that?'" says writer Lolita Chakrabarti, who has adapted the book for the stage. "I was like, 'It's just theatre!' And as it's gone on, and I've seen what an enormous story it is, and how theatrically challenging it is, I've got more and more daunted."
Martel says he has been more involved in this theatre version than he was in the film. "If anything, I think theatre will work better telling the story than the cinema," he argues. "The problem with cinema is special effects are so developed that they can imitate any kind of invented reality they want, and we're used to it now.
"Now you have stupendous special effects that cost thousands of millions of dollars, and we just sort of shrug it off. What's wonderful about theatre is that the artifice is so visible. You can see obviously it's a puppet. It's a dorky puppet. But it moves so naturally."
People are asked to use their imaginations and so buy into the magic of a tiger coming to life on stage, he says. "Whereas in the movies, you realise it's just a whole bunch of computers and it seems sweatless and artificial, and you don't buy into it emotionally."
The animals, fashioned from a lightweight, super-strong foam, are being overseen by puppetry director Finn Caldwell, who was in the original War Horse cast and has helped pioneer the use of puppets on stage. Life of Pi is full of "sort-of-impossible staging challenges", he says.
Some of the actors operating the animals have had lots of experience with puppets, while others have had none. In preparation, they studied videos and read about how tigers, hyenas, zebras and orangutans act, and have tried to imagine what might happen when they get together in a confined space. "That level of puppetry choreography is further than I think I've ever done," Caldwell says.
As well as the puppets, the show will use state-of-the-art projections on the stage and backdrop to conjure up an entire Indian zoo, and then swiftly summon up the vast, mighty Pacific.
"Sometimes big physical theatre shows are about the tricks themselves, or showing off about spectacle and images, which can be amazing and beautiful," says director Max Webster. "But this is very much taking all these theatrical techniques to serve a great human, serious, emotional story. It's not just about a magic zebra - it's got a big human point to it."
To help bring the human story to life, Chakrabarti has decided to make 16-year-old Pi, played by Hiran Abeysekera, see visions of his family and other characters as he is helplessly swept across the sea with only the tiger for company.
"If you go through a terrible time in any walk of life, the things that get you through are what you've been taught, and the echoes of people in your life," the playwright says. "So ghosts - elements of people that taught him things and who were significant to him - appear in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and he has a conversation with them, and they help him solve how to eat, how to find water, how to kill a turtle and eat it."
This is the first major stage version of Life of Pi, although it has been attempted once before, by now-defunct theatre-in-education company Twisting Yarn, in Bradford in 2004.
"Just before we signed on with Hollywood, they snuck in," Martel says. "In fact, there had to be huge negotiations between the Goliaths of Hollywood and these little Davids in Bradford to negotiate to allow it, because I'd already committed to them before we'd signed the contract with Hollywood. And Hollywood, when they buy film rights, they get 'all rights in the Universe'. That's the actual language they use."
Twisting Yarn had a tiny budget for their version. "And yet simple stories, reliance on words, great acting and very simple effects - it was very powerful," Martel adds. "So I did have a glimmer of what theatre can do."
Life of Pi is at Sheffield Crucible until 20 July.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
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Safety checks are being carried out on a large oil tanker that was re-floated after running aground on a sandbank in Lough Foyle.
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The Tun Liffey had to be rescued after grounding close to Magilligan Point at the mouth of Lough Foyle about 09:10 BST on Tuesday.
It had been en-route to the Welsh port of Milford Haven, in Pembrokeshire.
The Dutch-owned tanker has been returned to Foyle Port.
"The ship has been brought back to Foyle Port to undergo checks," a spokesman for the port told BBC News NI.
Several tugs from the port had responded to the ship captain's request for help on Tuesday morning, he added.
The tugs "managed the situation to re-float the tanker which was carried out successfully in a short space of time," he said.
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Plans to introduce car parking charges in mid Wales will be reviewed after community concerns were raised.
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Powys council had hoped to bring in the fees at car parks in Brecon, Llanfair Caereinion, Presteigne, Sennybridge and Talgarth.
Councillor Liam Fitzpatrick said he had been contacted by residents who were concerned about the impact on communities of the proposed charges.
Plans to introduce residents' parking schemes will also be reviewed.
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Six years ago, a group of fishermen were convicted for their role in one of the biggest drug smuggling hauls in British history. Campaigners - and one of the original jurors - say that serious doubts remain about the safety of those convictions. Last month, the men lost an official review of their case.
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By Jim ReedReporter, Victoria Derbyshire programme
On 29 May 2010, a small fishing boat left the Isle of Wight on what its crew claim was a routine trip to catch lobster and crab in the English Channel.
At the same time, a major surveillance operation was also under way, led by the Serious Organised Crime Agency - which had intelligence about cocaine being on board a giant container ship sailing from South America.
That night, one of the ships being monitored and the men's fishing boat briefly came close together - though exactly how close is still disputed.
The next day 11 sacks were found tangled around a buoy in Freshwater Bay to the south of the island, each packed with a pure form of cocaine that had a street value of £53m.
The prosecution's case was that the sacks were pushed off the side of the container ship for the fishermen to collect, who then took them to the bay, leaving them there to hide or be collected by another vessel at a later time.
The five men - Daniel Payne, Zoran Dresic, Jonathan Beere, Scott Birtwistle and Jamie Green - were found guilty of conspiracy to smuggle class A drugs and given sentences of up to 24 years each.
Richard Yardley was the only one of 12 jurors in the 2011 trial to find the men not guilty.
When the verdicts were read out, he says his heart "was pounding like it was going to come out of my mouth".
"I was devastated. Even more so when I heard the reaction of the families," he tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.
"There are lots of things wrong about that case. Loads.
"I was convinced beyond reasonable doubt at the time [that they were not guilty]. Now I'm convinced beyond any doubt whatsoever."
The men's case has been taken up by the Centre for Criminal Appeals - a charity run by Emily Bolton, a British lawyer who worked for years on death row and innocence projects in the US.
Ms Bolton says new analysis of navigational data - not seen in the original trial - suggests the container ship, the MSC Oriane, adjusted its course earlier than thought and would never have come into contact with the fishing boat, the Galwad - meaning the drugs could not have been smuggled on board.
"The implication of the tracks not crossing in this case is absolutely fundamental," she explains. "If the tracks didn't cross, they didn't smuggle the drugs."
But for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) - the official body which investigates suspected miscarriages of justice, and decided last month not to refer the men's case back to the Court of Appeal - this isn't nearly enough.
"Their expert is now saying the little boat was 175m away from the big boat," says David James Smith, the CCRC commissioner who has just reviewed the case.
"No-one could say on that basis that the little boat wasn't in a position to collect the drugs. You'd have to remove them [the fishermen] from the area altogether to make a difference."
A detailed forensic search could not find a single trace of cocaine on board the fishing boat. The drugs were wrapped in sealed plastic sacks but there is some evidence water leaked into the powder.
There are also questions over the testimony of two Hampshire Police officers, who - from nearby cliffs - said they saw "six to seven" dark items being dropped off the side of the boat near to where the drugs were later found.
At trial the fishermen claimed, if anything, they may have been throwing waste overboard at the time.
After the cocaine was found the Hampshire Police officers changed their entries in the official police surveillance log to closely match a description of the 11 multicoloured drug sacks and rope.
Altering a surveillance log is allowed so officers can later clarify what was seen. But to the defence it raises serious doubts about the case against the men.
Don Dewer, a retired surveillance officer now working unpaid as an expert witness for the charity's defence team, believes it is "just not possible" that there would be need for officers to change a key fact after the event.
"From my point of view, the [fishermen] have been convicted on one piece of evidence, which I do not believe actually happened," he said.
The Hampshire officers were later cleared of serious wrongdoing by the independent police watchdog and the recent CCRC review could find no evidence of malice or serious misconduct by either the police or the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).
"Believe me, we've looked hard and if it was there we would have found it," says CCRC commissioner David James Smith.
The CCRC points to other parts of the prosecution case which it describes as "compelling".
As the men navigated their way through the Channel, a number of calls were made to the satellite phone on the fishing boat from a mobile handset purchased that day with a fake name.
The fishermen say a new member of the crew, a migrant worker in the UK on a false passport, had fallen ill and was trying to contact the person who set him up with the job.
Health club encounter
Find out more
Watch video journalist Jim Reed's full film about this case on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme website.
Months after the guilty verdicts, Richard Yardley, the only juror to find the men not guilty, wrote a letter to the defence barrister alleging someone at Soca tried to interfere with the trial itself.
In allegations later heard in court, Mr Yardley said a Soca officer aware of the case had got into conversation with another of the jurors at a local health club.
Court documents show he claimed the juror "received extraneous information about the case" during the encounter, which was then passed on to other jurors.
This included the claim that the Soca officer said "although the agency had made mistakes during the operation, the accused were in fact all guilty".
But after an investigation, three judges said there was no support for Mr Yardley's allegation. They questioned his credibility and ruled his evidence could not be relied upon.
Mr Yardley is still adamant the conversation did take place.
"Nobody in that appeal court asked themselves the question, 'What has this guy got to gain by [making these allegations]... by putting himself in a position where he is interrogated for two hours?'," he says.
"Why would he go to the trouble unless what he is saying is the truth?"
'Locked door'
The decision made last month not to send the case back to the Court of Appeal at this stage does not mean the matter is settled.
According to the CCRC's latest annual report, it referred just 12 of the 1,563 cases it looked at last year, the lowest number since it started work 20 years ago.
That figure - less than 1% - has angered some miscarriage of justice campaigners at a time when the organisation's budget has been cut significantly.
"The CCRC is supposed to be the gateway to the Court of Appeal, but at the moment it's functioning as a locked door," says Ms Bolton.
The CCRC rejects any suggestion that funding cuts mean it does not have the proper resources to deal with a complex case like this.
"I think we've been extremely thorough in our work," says CCRC commissioner David James Smith.
"The Court of Appeal, and therefore us when reviewing cases, are always looking for something new and that just isn't here in sufficient depth and detail in this case."
For the fishermen, there is still the chance of fresh evidence emerging which the CCRC will have to look at again.
For three of the five men a different route is available - taking their arguments directly to a judge to make a decision.
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One week ago many dozens of children were killed in Sri Lanka's Easter Sunday attacks. Dressed in their finest clothes for one of the most important church services of the year, this was the first generation in decades to grow up free of violence. Their stories - and the struggle for the surviving children to comprehend the carnage - take the island down a devastatingly familiar path.
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By Ayeshea PereraBBC News, Sri Lanka
When bubbly Sneha Savindri Fernando went along for the Easter Sunday Mass at St Sebastian's church in Negombo, her mind was on something else entirely. She had spent weeks excitedly making plans for her 13th birthday - a day she would never get the chance to celebrate.
"She was like a little bird. She loved to dance. She danced to anything. If you asked her to dance, she would immediately jump into a sari or a long skirt and oblige," her mother, Nirasha Fernando says. Sneha, Ms Fernando and their neighbours Gayani and Tyronne all left together in Tyronne's auto-rickshaw.
Only Nirasha came back.
Sneha was among many children who died when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the church in the Negombo community of Katuwapitiya. At almost that precise moment five other locations, churches and hotels, were hit by bombers.
The softest of targets
It was the first thing that first responders I talked to noticed as soon as they walked into the churches that had been targeted: the large number of children among the dead. The overall number of casualties from the attacks is unclear but officials believe children could end up accounting for more than a fifth of the final death toll.
This is because the bombers' targets were the softest of them all - morning church services on a major religious festival and luxury hotels where families settled down to Sri Lanka's generous breakfast buffets.
Now Sneha's mother Nirasha gazes in anguish at her daughter's photo. Part of the bomb embedded itself in her upper lip - a constant irritant, a permanent physical mark and reminder of her loss.
"We called her duwani (daughter) at home. She was my first. I rocked her to sleep... I held her in my hands... I brought her up with so much love and now she's gone."
They were in the third pew of the church - very close to the front - when the bomb went off. The damage to Sneha's body was so severe she was brought home in a sealed casket.
"I couldn't even see her face," Nirasha says blankly.
A hall in another Negombo home hosts an unbearable scene. Four open caskets lie next to each other. Three contain bodies of children: siblings Rashini Praveesha aged 14, Shalomi Himaya, nine, and Shalom Shathiska who was seven.
Shocked relatives keep walking into the house as though to confirm the truth of what they are seeing.
An elderly relative enters and immediately becomes incoherent with grief. "Shalom! Shalom! Our youngest, our baby," she says, almost falling on to his coffin. "You were always so naughty, you always loved playing tricks on us. Get up my baby, please get up!"
Relatives rush in and take her away, even as she keeps shouting.
It is a similar story in the eastern coastal town of Batticaloa on the other side of the country. Like Negombo, Batticaloa is adorned with banners strung up to commemorate the dead, many of them children.
'He went to get a drink of water'
Among them is the banner for 13-year-old John Jesuran Jayaratnam dressed in his finest red shirt and braces. He had just finished his Sunday school lesson. His mother tells the BBC she had been standing outside with him as they waited to enter the Zion church for Easter service.
He told her he would get a drink of water from the fountain and come back. That was the last time she saw him.
Outside John's house, a basketball hoop attached to a dusty wall sways in the breeze.
"He used to love basketball. I used to sit here and watch him play," his mother says, as she stares out of the living room window. The youngest of three sons, John was her baby and a regular worshipper at the church.
For Sri Lankans the loss of so many children has been one of the most defining features of these attacks. It is not the bombers who are the subject of conversation - but the children. In the days immediately after the attacks, versions of events involving the children began to circulate on WhatsApp and Facebook, in family conversations and even during exchanges in the street.
They were narratives about the children who died. People began saying there were so many of them because bombs exploded as children were called up for a blessing, or because a choir was at the front when the bombs hit, or that they had all been dressed as angels.
It has been difficult to confirm such details - and few of these stories appear to have any foundation.
One survivor of the Negombo attack told me that so many women and children were among the casualties only because they sat inside, where it was cooler, while the men stood outside.
But the narratives about the children kept spreading.
The first 'innocent' generation
Counselling psychologist Nivendra Uduman says such narratives can take hold for a number of reasons - it could be seen as a way of feeling useful at a time of crisis, an important way to connect.
Whatever the reason, it was the images of innocence that gripped the public imagination.
In Sri Lanka, however, these children also represented what could be called the first "innocent" generation. War, division and brutality were not part of their daily diet.
In just a few weeks, the country is due to mark 10 years from the end of a 30-year civil war between government forces and separatist Tamil militants. It was a conflict that saw bomb attacks unleashed across the country and brutal violence meted out by both sides.
The "pre-war" generations witnessed two bloody Marxist insurrections - first in the late 1970s, then in the late '80s and early '90s, which saw massive and violent disruptions to daily life, including months-long shutdowns of schools. A brutal retaliation from the government saw even more bloodshed.
So the deaths of so many of these children on Easter Sunday felt especially poignant because this was the first generation for decades for whom violence wasn't part of their day-to-day lives. That's not to say there wasn't strife - there have been anti-Muslim riots and attacks on churches. Religious tensions were on the rise albeit never on this scale. However, the bloodshed that regularly affected Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims of generations before had all but gone.
For Dr Ajith Danthanarayana, director of Lady Ridgeway children's hospital in Colombo, the aftermath of the bomb attacks are a bitter reminder of the past.
"These are all children. There is no race, no religion. We have faced 30 years of war, and also the tsunami. We faced so many bad things and we managed to tolerate and do the best for our patients. That's all we can do."
On the ward, it's a similar sentiment.
"At least I was used to this. We all either knew or heard of people who had been killed in violence, and we constantly saw pictures on TV and in the newspapers. But how can I explain this to my son? How will he even process it?" Wasantha Fernando asks me, while standing at his son's bedside at the hospital.
Seven-year-old Akalanka was among those injured at St Sebastian's church. An iron ball bearing had ripped into his leg, fracturing the bone and embedding itself into his muscle. He was being discharged that day, but still had no clear idea of why he was in hospital.
"He has heard us use the word bomb and is asking us what it means. I have told him that it is something that makes a loud noise like a firecracker. He doesn't know that it can hurt or cause death. But I will have to say something to him, because so many of his friends and peers are gone," Mr Fernando says.
Rumours worry children
This represents the second big challenge to a population already reeling from the brutality of these attacks. How do they explain it to their children, many of whom are already traumatised?
Dr Gadambanathan, the consultant psychiatrist at the Batticaloa Hospital, visited some of the injured children immediately after the attacks.
His staff had identified a range of immediate challenges - panic attacks, sleep disturbances and nightmares, worries about facial disfigurement due to injuries, parents overwhelmed by grief who were unable to care for their remaining children, or adults who struggled to communicate the loss of a sibling or parent to a child.
A mental health and psychosocial support worker in Batticaloa, who does not wish to be identified, says the most obvious impact was on those children directly connected to the attacks. However, watching videos of the attacks, experiencing the panic induced by rumours or perceiving the fears of the adults around them could also affect children quite distant from events, he says.
"I have been in contact with parents from across the island whose children have been terrified by the thought that bombers may target their homes or towns, who are unable to sleep, who have questions about why this happened, or who are expressing strong feelings of anger towards the perpetrators," he said.
A number of organisations including Unicef have been putting out guidelines to help adults talk to their children about what happened in an age-appropriate way. These have been shared widely on social media and also with parents and medical staff in hospitals as well as teachers.
In fact, returning to school, experts say, is another good way to help children process such events. Dayani Samarakoon, who teaches children between seven and 12 at a Colombo school, describes how she had been preparing for the return of her students. Her approach, she says, depends on the age group.
"The youngest ones may or may not know some of what has happened. I will get them to talk to me about what they know. Some of what they know could be the truth while the rest could be hearsay. But the important thing is to hear them out and listen to their fears," she says.
The extent to which such services are freely available is unclear. In Sri Lanka, seeking help for mental health conditions is still considered taboo and adults - many themselves traumatised - may not have the necessary tools to comfort their children.
'Why couldn't one of you stay?'
But in the meantime, loss and funerals still consume the living.
Back in Negombo, a woman wails in anguish, beating her chest in agony. She has lost her husband and both her children in the St Sebastian's attack. Her daughter Sachini Appuhami was 21, and Vimukthi, her son, was 14.
Her brother-in-law Jude Prasad says both children were bright students. Sachini had finished secondary school and was doing a course in accounting. Vimukthi, apparently never had to be nagged to do his homework.
"We tried so many times to get them interested in sports, but they were much more interested in their books," he says smiling. Yet Vimukthi, he adds, also had a keen interest in music.
"When he passed his standard five examinations, he asked his father for that," he says his voice breaking, pointing to the mezzanine floor above with an elaborate drum set.
"My brother and I went all the way to Wennappuwa (a large town 21km away) to get this for him. He really loved it."
Just then, another relative walks in and heads straight to a wall on which framed photographs of the family are displayed.
She touches the faces of the two children in a photo taken when they were much younger. "Why couldn't even one of you live for your mother?" she demands, growing increasingly hysterical. "Why couldn't at least one of you stay?"
Additional reporting in Batticaloa from the BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan
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When a 15-year-old Malaysian girl voiced her dream of becoming the country's first female prime minister on Twitter earlier this year, she was roundly abused online for not donning the hijab. Surekha Ragavan asks if Malay Muslim women encounter more rage on social media.
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It's no secret that women everywhere are vulnerable to abuse online. In Malaysia, women of all races face abuse, but activists say Muslim women are particularly targeted because of certain societal expectations.
"We are seeing a trend where Muslim women [particularly Malay-Muslims] are targeted in a different way, especially when it comes to how they present themselves," says Juana Jaafar, a women's rights advocate who followed the case of the 15-year-old girl. Ms Jaafar says the attacks became so brutal for the girl, she was forced to delete her account and seek help offline.
"Certainly if you have a Malay name, you become immediately visible."
So what could be uniquely at play here? Well, in many conservative communities here, the "jaga tepi kain" culture, or the culture of minding your neighbour's business, is commonplace.
This idea of "airing one's dirty laundry in public" has noticeably seeped into online spaces as well, encouraged in part by thriving Malay language tabloid and gossip sites.
But it's more a cultural issue than a religious one. Ms Jaafar said, "The religion doesn't encourage the ["jaga tepi kain"] behaviour. There are hadiths that talk about respecting privacy."
'They would find faults on my body'
"These things happen globally, but it does come with an extra layer [in Malaysia], a sense of moral justification that is rooted in quite narrow interpretations of religion," says Dr Alicia Izharuddin, senior gender studies lecturer at Universiti of Malaya.
"People use anonymity on social media as a way of justifying hate speech and cyberbullying."
As more and more young Malaysian women turn to social media - particularly Twitter - to talk about women's issues, these cases of harassment have also become more frequent.
Maryam Lee, a 25-year-old Twitter user who recently decided to stop wearing her hijab, was hit by an onslaught of abuse. Her notifications pinged for days and she fielded threats to her physical safety.
"It's not just about people not liking your views, it's about people bulldozing your entire existence, your self-esteem," she says.
While she's long been a victim of online violence, Ms Lee says the abuse intensified when she publicly identified as a feminist.
"When you give language to a [movement] that questions the status quo, they get much more insecure," she adds.
'The female body is a battleground'
In other cases, wearing too much makeup and clothes that are too tight, or being chubby are "crimes" that make women susceptible to gender-based violence.
Dyana Sofya, executive committee member of the centre-left DAP Socialist Youth party, is no stranger to making news on local gossip sites that have denigrated her clothes and appearance, something she says her male counterparts don't face.
"The female body is a constant battleground for men to argue [about]. A woman may be covered from head to toe, but someone will still complain that the covering is not baggy enough or long enough," she said in an email.
In another case, Twitter user Nalisa Alia Amin was victimised for her anti-patriarchal and pro-LGBT views, as well as for refusing to comply with the widely accepted image of "an ideal Muslim woman in Malaysia".
"People who couldn't stand my views have attacked my appearances, especially my body since I'm on the chubby side," she says.
Users would zoom into hyper pigmentation on her thighs and plaster those screenshots across social media, or post her photos next to an animal for comparison.
Most of the women say that it is mostly Muslim men hurling the abuse at them online.
While in these cases, the victims come away physically unscathed, online violence can take a toll on mental health.
In the case of Twitter and Instagram user Arlina Arshad, she confessed that the abuse she received because of her weight led to thoughts of suicide.
Worse still, her suicidal messages - which she made public - were met with brutal responses from haters accusing her of being an "attention-seeker" accompanied by comments such as "kalau tikam pun tak lepas lemak" translating to "even if stabbed, you couldn't go past her fats".
Currently, there are no gender-based laws in Malaysia that protect women from online violence, in large part because there is still a perception that what happens online isn't considered "real life".
And because lines on the internet are blurry and continually shifting, proposing relevant laws is tricky for activists.
"Law is stagnant, it's conservative, it's centralised. You can pass the law today, but if something changes tomorrow, it doesn't apply anymore," says Serene Lim who does research and resource development for women's Internet freedoms through local NGO EMPOWER.
"But we know that whenever we have laws that are arbitrary, it will lead to abuse of power."
The existing Communications and Multimedia Act sometimes works against internet freedoms by punishing users for messages that are deemed incompatible with the government's line of politics or religion.
Another silencing tool employed by both the ruling and opposition parties is cybertroopers who surveil online activity for "controversial" political dissent.
Juana Jaafar says, "The counter-propaganda method can be extremely hostile and when they're facing women, it becomes a violent exchange where women are attacked, body-shamed, and policed about their Muslim identities."
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The main rail link between Somerset and Devon will be closed for three weeks to repair a 170-year-old tunnel.
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Network Rail said it was "conducting essential engineering works" on the Whiteball Tunnel between Taunton and Exeter.
The repairs include relining the walls of the tunnel to safeguard against brick fall and flood prevention work.
Replacement buses will operate until 8 March for passengers travelling on the affected route.
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Amanda Gorman's The Hill We Climb stole the show at Joe Biden's presidential inauguration but when a renowned Dutch author was asked to translate her work there was an outcry because the translator is not black.
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By Anna HolliganBBC News, The Hague
Critics said it was not just about skin colour but identity too. This was not simply about translation but whether Gorman's poetry could be accurately reflected, interpreted by someone of a different ethnicity, genre, and mother tongue.
One day after accepting the task, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld decided not to go ahead after all.
Who is Rijneveld?
Dutch publisher Meulenhoff described poet Marieke Lucas Rijneveld as a "dream candidate", who at 29 became the youngest author to win the International Booker prize in 2020 with debut novel The Discomfort of Evening. Amanda Gorman had selected Rijneveld herself, as a fellow young writer who had also come to fame early, said the publisher.
Outspoken on issues including gender equality and mental health, Rijneveld identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld initially revealed the news of being chosen to translate Amanda Gorman's works on Twitter, accompanied by two sparkling heart emojis. There was praise too for a poet who had highlighted their own respective struggles, and congratulations on a first translation job.
Why the outcry?
"Incomprehensible" was how Janice Deul described the choice of a white translator. In an opinion piece for the Volkskrant newspaper the journalist and diversity campaigner suggested instead going for someone like Gorman who was a "spoken word artist, young, a woman and unapologetically black".
"I'm not saying a black person can't translate white work, and vice versa," Janice Deul told me when we met near her home in Leiden. "But not this specific poem of this specific orator in this Black Lives Matter area, that's the whole issue."
Unlike written poetry, spoken word is less about the visuals on a page than rhyme, repetition and word-play and can encompass elements of hip-hop and improvisation.
Ethics or ethnicity?
Translators serve as a bridge between two languages and Monica Slingerland, head of the opinion editorial team at Trouw newspaper, believes the Gorman debate has raised significant issues that have not really surfaced before.
"I tried to get out of the skin tone issue for a moment and ask the question again. Can a man translate a book about giving birth? A look into the bookcase shows that this requirement was rarely imposed on the translator in the past, not even with books that are at least as loaded with content as Gorman's poem."
She cites Simone de Beauvoir's feminist pamphlet The Second Sex, translated into Dutch by a man. Or Americanah by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, translated into Dutch by Hien Montijn who is of Chinese-Indonesian descent.
For Quinsy Gario, a black Dutch spoken word artist, Gorman's words need to be handled with care as they involve embodied knowledge and the cultural baggage that come with being black. "The Dutch language needs to have a conduit, a person that's been able to push to the same extent as Amanda Gorman did, and connect to a local understanding of what those words mean, and how those words can resonate."
Why Rijneveld was asked
Although Amanda Gorman did initially agree to the Dutch poet translating her work, none of the Netherlands' black spoken word poets were presented to her as options.
In a statement the publisher told the BBC: "Meulenhoff asked MLR if they wanted to be the translator. They said yes, and then Meulenhoff sent their profile to the American agent as their preferred choice." Three "sensitivity readers" had been included in the contract.
It was a decision that Janice Deul believes perpetuated the marginalisation of black voices in the Netherlands. She wants Dutch publishing houses to expand their horizons and look behind their "white ivory tower". "Why only celebrate Amanda, as we should? Why be blind to all the talents we have in our own country," she asks.
Among the many examples of black Dutch poets are Zaire Krieger, whose work encapsulates the challenges of being a woman of colour in a white country, Rachel Rumai who recently featured in an Afro Lit anthology and spoken word artist Babs Gons, whose Polyglot was chosen as the poem for 2021 Dutch Book Week.
How did Rijneveld respond?
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld answered the critics with a poem, Everything inhabitable, published in a number of newspapers, including in English translation in the UK.
Never lost that resistance and yet able to grasp when it isn't your place,
when you must kneel for a poem because another person can make it more inhabitable;
not out of unwillingness, not out of dismay, but because you know there is so much inequality, people still discriminated against
Excerpt from Everything inhabitable
It was written in Dutch and translated into English by Michele Hutchison. Not surprising for a poet who admitted last year to having "very bad English".
But Rijneveld's decision not to translate Amanda Gorman's poem into Dutch has only heightened the debate in the Netherlands over the ethics of translation and underlined Gorman's original sentiments of the hills that "all other black girls" must climb.
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The Highland's Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival uses art to draw revellers to the event. Here festival organiser Joe Gibbs and artist Emily Fraser explain the thinking behind this year's new-look design featuring a giant woman.
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By Steven McKenzieBBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter
Dubbed Bella by its fans, the festival at Beauly's Belladrum Estate, in the Highlands near Inverness, is to be held for the 11th time this August. The acts performing will include Sir Tom Jones, Razorlight, Billy Bragg and Frightened Rabbit.
For most of the past 10 years, artist Michael Forbes, whose fans include Ricky Gervais and Terry Gilliam, has worked with Joe and festival marketing manager Kris Reid on the artwork for posters and website. For 2014's event, ideas were invited from designers on the theme of "wild life".
Emily Fraser, an illustrator and graphic/digital designer from Inverness, and illustrator/animator Alex Ashman, from Orkney, won the tender with an animal-themed design. Both are based in Edinburgh and have worked on previous projects.
Emily said: "Our initial thoughts were to create an atmosphere akin to the feeling of going to the festival, arriving through the forests and approaching the buzz of the festival." She added: "We developed animals and scenery with a glowing sunset and warm colours to reflect the welcoming nature of the festival. We were delighted when our submission won us the competition."
Joe said: "We chose to work with Emily and Alex because we liked their approach and design. Then we introduced the concept of the 50ft woman."
Bella's team had already been working on adapting 1950s advertising and B movie styling to promote the festival. The idea for Bella's giant came from 1958's science-fiction film, Attack of the 50ft Woman, starring Allison Hayes as a cheated wife who hunts down her husband after she is super-sized by aliens.
Emily said: "After a couple of discussions with Joe and Kris we decided we wanted to merge the style of 50s movie poster design, used in previous Belladrum marketing, with the wildlife theme to create an eclectic blend of wildlife, people and nature."
Emily added: "We wanted to take the theme of wildlife which is indicative of the festival's eccentric and unpredictable nature and present it in a stylised and visually arresting manner." The look of Belladrum's 50ft woman was completed with a Scottish wildcat mask.
Joe and Kris, along with Bella's John Keiller and James Roberts, translated the results of Emily and Alex's work for the festival website, its posters, social media sites and advertising. Another of Bella's team, Paul Graham, also refreshed the event's logo for 2014.
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Drivers are being hit with expensive bills from Highways Agency contractors for emergency repairs. Motorists claim the prices are over-inflated and in some cases they question whether the repairs ever took place.
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By Hannah BarnesBBC News
Sheila Kaur-Patel, who works as a BBC production manager, was shocked when she received an invoice for £3,000 for damage she had allegedly caused during a motorway incident.
Nearly three months earlier she had skidded across the M6 after unexpectedly hitting some liquid on the surface and ended up facing the wrong way on the hard shoulder.
She said: "When the bill arrived, I was devastated. The damages or so-called 'maintenance fees' are worth more than my car."
"The police officer said I was very lucky," she says, "the only damage was a scrape to my bumper."
The police closed the motorway for a matter of minutes so that Sheila could safely turn the car round and continue her journey to see her family.
The charges came from Amey LG Limited, one of several large construction companies which maintain the motorways on behalf of the Highways Agency.
A breakdown of the bill lists items such as a 7.5 tonne tipper hire, repairs to rails and £1,830.91 for the closure of the hard shoulder.
But Sheila insists she has no idea where the idea that any damage was caused has come from. She never saw the tipper or anyone from the company.
Growing trend
Amey LG Limited told Sheila that the bill she received was for inspection work carried out after she left the scene.
A spokesperson for the company told the BBC: "It is important that defects are repaired after an incident to ensure the safety of the travelling public."
"If repairs are necessary, we liaise with any party found to have caused damage to recover the associated costs. A breakdown of these are provided to the relevant parties in an invoice."
The BBC has learned that this is part of a growing trend. Highways Agency contractors are increasingly targeting drivers with expensive bills for repairs.
5 live Investigates has been told of several cases involving drivers who have broken down only to be charged several weeks later for the clear-up of oil spillages.
But when the companies concerned have been challenged about either the level of the charge - in excess of £300 in most cases - or asked to provide evidence of the spill and a breakdown of the charges levied - the amount is reduced or not pursued any further.
This has raised suspicions that some of the bills are not legitimate. In one case, the driver maintains that the oil was cleared by the fire brigade at the time of the breakdown, while another claims that no oil leaked from his car at all.
It is a trend that is surprising those who work on the roads on a daily basis.
"In the past, the charges were never levied," says Paul Watters from the AA. "Now the bills are appearing. We need to know what the policy for charging actually is."
Legitimate costs
People like Sheila question why individual drivers should have to pay anything. "It makes me wonder what our taxes and road tax actually go on?" she says.
"I would have turned my car around myself if I knew I was going to get charged almost £3,000."
The Highways Agency says when repairs are needed after a breakdown or collision it is not right that the costs should be borne by the taxpayer and therefore they or their contractors will seek to recover the cost of repairs from insurance companies or individuals where appropriate.
The cases above highlight a lack of transparency about what is being charged for, the level of the charge and when someone is liable to pay.
Insurance companies have been a target for motorway maintenance contractors for some time and insurers have frequently questioned some of the discrepancies that appear in the charges.
The rates themselves can vary widely between different companies too.
And the prices seem pretty steep. A recent employee of one of the major road maintenance companies told the BBC that he was stunned that drivers were being sent bills of more than £300 to clear up a small oil spillage.
The job would take just five minutes and the materials used cost as little at £12.50, he said.
It is difficult to say why private Highways Agency maintenance contractors have begun targeting individual drivers.
"It is a new development," says Philip Swift of Claims Management and Adjusting Ltd, which fights claims on behalf of insurance companies.
"We see it from the insurers' perspective. What you are telling me is concerning."
But he and others fear that the situation is about to get a lot worse as maintenance companies implement cuts of around 25% requested by the Highways Agency.
And even more so as the Agency introduces a string of new contracts over the next three years, which are considered to be less lucrative.
Some anticipate that companies may try to recoup some of the lost revenue from the new contracts by cracking down on drivers more aggressively and over-inflating legitimate charges.
"We've geared up for an increase in claims," admits Philip Swift, "and trained additional staff in the claims process."
The Highways Term Maintenance Association (HTMA), which represents a number of the private Highways Agency contractors told the BBC that the accusations being levelled at the industry were 'misleading.'
"HTMA members are dedicated to help and support the everyday motorist, by making sure our roads are safe and disruption is kept to a minimum," a spokesperson said.
"Sometimes we have to clean up after incidents, repairing damage caused by motorists, and sometimes the motorist is asked to pay for the damage they have caused."
"We believe this is absolutely fair… We do not believe that our members would ever abuse their status."
You can listen to the full report on 5 live Investigates on Sunday, 7 October at 21:00 GMT on BBC 5 live.
Listen again via the 5 live website or by downloading the 5 live Investigates podcast.
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Monthly inflation figures show how much prices have risen for an average person - but what if your spending patterns are different?
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The annual rate of inflation in January 2015 was 0.3%, but this calculator - developed with Warwick University - will work out how much prices have been going up for households like yours.
To find your household's rate of inflation, fill in the boxes below:
Users of the BBC News app tap here for the inflation calculator.
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Eight Chihuahua/Jack Russell crossbreed puppies have been stolen from their home in Aberdeenshire.
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The puppies are five weeks old, have not been weaned and police are keen to trace them and return them to their mother.
They were stolen from the Fyvie area and the incident is believed to have happened between 20:00 on Wednesday 9 July and 08:00 on Thursday 10 July.
Police are appealing for information.
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Canadian online gaming group Amaya is to buy the owner of Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker for $4.9bn (£2.8bn) in a deal that will make it the world's biggest publicly listed online gambling company.
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The deal for Rational Group will be completed by 30 September, Amaya said.
PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker are the world's most popular and profitable online poker brands.
They have some 85 million registered players on desktop and mobile devices.
Amaya said it expects the deal will "expedite the entry of Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker into regulated markets" in which it already operates, particularly the US.
Online gambling was in effect outlawed in the US until December 2011, when the Department of Justice (DOJ) backed a court decision that said a 1961 law banning interstate sports betting did not apply to other forms of gambling.
Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware offer some form of internet gambling, while eight other states considered legislation last year.
In 2011, federal prosecutors in Manhattan launched a massive crackdown against online poker in the US.
Pokerstars paid $731m in July 2012 to settle a money-laundering lawsuit filed by the DOJ, which argued that the firm used fraudulent means to avoid federal law and deceive banks into processing payments for it.
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Forget Northern Ireland. The hard border issue that's really generating heat in Westminster is the one imposed by MPs across the entrance to one of Parliament's most popular watering holes, the Pugin Room.
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Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent
This is a relatively small, comfortable bar, looking out over the river, where MPs and ex-MPs can take tea, coffee, or something stronger, and entertain guests in quiet civilised surroundings.
But there have been complaints that honourable members have found themselves crowded out by noble Lords, who're not, strictly speaking, supposed to be carousing there.
I'm told there is particular angst about one senior Labour peer's habit of entertaining guests to champagne there, and about one Liberal Democrat peer's regularly sitting alone at a big table.
"The problem is that there are just too many peers," snarled my (Conservative) informant.
A further annoyance is that peers have a large bar of their own, right next door, but seem to prefer to colonise the MPs' space instead.
Now, the Commons authorities have insisted that peers may only use the Pugin room on the same terms as MPs are allowed to use the adjoining Lords guest room….on WTO terms, you might say. That means peers are not allowed in until 8pm on Mondays, and after 6pm, for the rest of the week.
This has provoked quite a spat, with the Lord Speaker protesting to the House of Commons Commission, its ruling body - and influential peers making direct protests to the Chair of the Commons Administration Committee, Sir Paul Beresford.
And might the next move be a ban on MPs using their Lordships' eateries, which parliamentary trencherpersons regard as being a class above the ones in the Commons?
The Commission's expected to discuss the escalating bar wars next week.
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The Royal British Legion is spending over £9m on the biggest restructuring in its history - a move deemed unnecessary by some former managers. So can the iconic charity undergo radical change and remain faithful to its founding principles?
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By Angus CrawfordBBC News
In a park in central London I meet two former soldiers.
At 18 years old, John went to fight in Afghanistan, where his unit came under hostile fire almost every day of their tour.
With him is his friend, 46-year-old Sean. He served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia.
They are both now homeless and living in a hostel. Neither blame their time in the military for their situation, and are now getting training and support to find jobs and get their own accommodation.
But neither have received any direct help from The Royal British Legion (RBL).
John says he has tried to contact the charity: "Many-a-time I've phoned the British Legion [and] to be honest it went through to an answer phone.
"I've not had any help whatsoever from the Royal British Legion. Nothing," he says, speaking to Radio 4's The Report.
"You know, it's one of those things, I still buy my poppy and the money goes towards the British Legion, but as a veteran, I've not seen this money getting used."
Sean says it never crossed his mind to even trying contacting the Legion for help:
"People that I know that have been in the military and come out, I've never heard any of them say 'we were helped by the Royal British Legion to get this, get that, to do this, to do that'."
A new era
According to its accounts the RBL spent £139m in 2011. It runs care homes and lobbies the government, delivers welfare and organises the UK's annual acts of remembrance.
Founded in 1921 to help those who survived the horrors of World War I, it is now having to adapt to the needs of the generation that fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Today there are more than five million veterans and at least another four million family members eligible for help - and as a result the RBL has begun a radical plan to restructure.
Under the old system veterans could approach their local RBL office for a small amount of money - in the form of a grant - to buy, for example, a new hearing aid or a mobility scooter.
The Legion's accounts show the number of such grants awarded has gone down from 40,423 in 2007 to 22,829 in 2011. The amount of money paid out in grants has also gone down - from £24m to £18m a year.
Director general of the RBL Chris Simpkins says the old grant system had to change:
"We must do evidence-based practice. It's no longer 'this seems like a good idea, let's throw money at it'.
"We've shifted that investment into personal care and support for individuals - helping, hand-holding, mentoring, guiding, supporting - rather than saying 'here's a cheque to pay off your rent arrears'.
The RBL says it made 165,000 case work interventions last year, but the BBC programme The Report has spoken to 10 former county office managers who say they have lost confidence in the charity's leadership.
They claim the new system is bureaucratic, unnecessary and diverts money from those who need it most.
Retired Army Major Craig Treeby was the RBL's county manager in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. He left the RBL in 2010, but still approaches the charity to get help for veterans.
"One of the first cases I had to pick up was an amputee soldier who'd lost his leg, who needed some help.
"There were the posters being put up at remembrance time of a soldier with a prosthetic leg. He could have been my guy.
"So I went to them and said 'look, this chap actually needs some help in order to further his career, although he's still serving' - and that was rejected."
This is because the soldier concerned was still serving, and being paid a corporal's wage - which exceeds the RBL's criteria.
"I was totally dumbfounded and frustrated," Mr Treeby says.
Limited resources
The latest RBL guidelines state that anyone receiving means-tested benefits qualifies for a RBL grant, but veterans with savings of more than £11,000 do not. A single man earning £10,600 a year or more, and a couple with two children on an income of just over £16,000, will not be eligible either.
Craig Treeby is horrified by the new plans.
"It blazons itself in these great posters 'shoulder to shoulder' - their banner headline - but there's a lie behind it… shoulder to shoulder it is not!"
The RBL's director general Chris Simpkins rejects this criticism, saying "it must be surely correct, where resources are limited that we direct them to those that are most in need."
So where is the Legion directing its money? A week ago it opened the Battle Back Centre in Shropshire - a rehabilitation facility helping wounded and sick servicemen and women through sport.
Over the next 10 years, the RBL is putting a total of £50m into the new centre and five more personnel recovery centres - it also runs six care homes.
But it is also planning to spend several million pounds on the biggest structural and philosophical change in its history - a project titled Pathway for Growth, which will cost more than £9m to implement.
It includes new systems, new offices and staff redundancies. Most of the former county managers have lost their jobs, or retired - and this is where many of the tensions lie.
Retired Lt Col Martin McAleese worked for six years as the Legion's county manager in Worcestershire, and still works for the charity in another role.
He says the old system was not perfect, but it worked - and he fears the new one will become less effective because of a new layer of management.
"It looks like there may be secondary offices of an unknown quantity in the county, so people will have to go to an area manager, who will have to go to a regional manager, who will have to go to HQ. It's just too much."
But could this improve the delivery of help to former servicemen and women?
"Absolutely not," he replies.
'Die like dinosaurs'
The Report spoke to two of the new area managers who insist the changes will enable them to help more people.
The programme also obtained documents outlining plans for new RBL offices to be built in at least 16 locations across the UK, with a proposed cost of £5.8m over the next 10 years.
Retired RAF Group Captain Nigel Pearson resigned as president of the RBL's Shropshire branch six days before Remembrance Sunday this year, in protest at this new direction, saying the plans are "crazy".
"This is a charity, and I don't believe this is acceptable for a charity to spend its money in this way - and I would have thought that the public would find this abhorrent."
The RBL insists the plans for the offices are just concepts and director general Chris Simpkins strongly defends the changes outlined in the Pathway for Growth plan:
"If we carried on doing what we were doing last year, last month, 10 years ago, we would wither and die like the dinosaurs.
"We can't afford to do that. Because the only people who will be harmed out of that are our beneficiaries."
Hear more on The Report on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, 29 November at 20:00 GMT.
Listen again via the Radio 4 website or The Report podcast.
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Rescuers battled through 70mph gales to help six ill-equipped walkers off a Snowdonia peak.
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Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue team were called to four women and two men who got into difficulty on Tryfan on Friday evening.
The group, in their 20s from London, had ventured up the mountain's north ridge despite a forecast of worsening weather.
Six rescuers who attended the call-out gave them "suitable advice".
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In a detail that was bizarre even by the unpredictable standards of the recent election, James Comey, the 6ft 8in former director of the FBI, while dressed in a blue suit, reportedly attempted to blend in with a matching set of curtains at the White House in January to avoid the attention of the president.
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Unsurprisingly, his hasty attempt at camouflage failed. Mr Trump blew him a kiss from across the room and called him over for a warm handshake. The president had every reason to be pleased with the then-FBI director, who had publicly announced an investigation into Hillary Clinton just a week before the election.
Mr Comey on the other hand was wary of Mr Trump and concerned about appearing too close to the president. Mr Trump had already praised him for his pursuit of the Clinton investigation, saying publicly that it "took guts" and had earned his "respect".
Four months on from that strange encounter, Mr Comey fell sharply out of favour. The president called him a "nutjob" and sacked him. But far from withdrawing to the wings, Mr Comey is now preparing take centre stage. On Thursday he will give blockbuster testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Mr Comey will describe to the congressional panel a series of one-on-one meetings in which the president is said to have asked repeatedly for his loyalty and appeared to lean on him to drop an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and Mr Flynn's alleged ties to Russia.
The former FBI director took meticulous notes directly after the meetings and shared them with senior FBI officials. The notes, detailed in an advance copy of his submission to the committee, conjure a picture of a conscientious lawman troubled by the president's overtures and unsure how best to deal with them.
Regarded as a canny operator, Jim Comey, as he is known, has been moving in political and legal circles at the highest level for three decades. As US attorney for the South District of New York, he attracted a following among many ordinary New Yorkers for his determination to go after the wealthy and powerful.
He was appointed deputy attorney general in 2003 and led high profile prosecutions against lifestyle guru Martha Stewart and Wall Street broker Frank Quattrone.
In 2004, as acting attorney general, he rushed to George Washington University Hospital, where top officials of President George W Bush's administration were attempting to lean on his boss, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in intensive care.
Mr Bush's White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card had pressed Mr Ashcroft to re-authorise a controversial programme allowing federal agents to eavesdrop on phone conversations without a warrant. Mr Comey's intervention drew wide praise.
'A man who stands very tall'
In 2005, Mr Comey left the Department of Justice for the private sector - working first at defence contractor Lockheed Martin and later hedge fund Bridgewater Associates. A spell as a fellow at Columbia Law School followed, before a call from President Barack Obama.
In July 2013, Mr Obama nominated Mr Comey as FBI director, describing him, literally and figuratively, as a "man who stands up very tall for justice and the rule of law". In September he was appointed as the seventh director of the FBI, with a 10-year mandate.
Over the next few years he was rarely a figure of public interest. He met with President Obama just twice - once to discuss policy and once to say goodbye at the end of the president's term. Then in mid-2016, everything changed.
Mr Comey announced in July that year that an investigation into Mrs Clinton's use of a private email server would be closed without prosecution, drawing partisan ire from Republicans. In late-October, just 11 days before the election, in a surprise about-face, he announced that the FBI had reopened the inquiry following the discovery of new emails.
The decision to re-open the investigation, and to announce it publicly so close to the election, was condemned by Democrats. Many accused him of derailing her campaign. Then just two days before the polls opened, another reversal: Mr Comey wrote to congressmen and women to say the investigation would no longer be pursued.
In a Senate hearing in May, he claimed that Clinton aide Huma Abedin had forwarded "hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband Anthony Wiener, "some of which contain classified information". But the FBI later conceded that only two email chains containing classified information were sent by Ms Abedin to her husband for printing.
Hours after that Senate hearing, Mr Comey was sacked. In an extraordinary sequence of events, the FBI director found out about his dismissal from a TV news report while he was addressing staff in California. Embarrassingly, he assumed it was a joke, and had to be taken aside and informed that what he was seeing was real.
White House staff struggled to defend the surprise dismissal, less than halfway into Mr Comey's 10-year term, and a chaotic whirlwind of briefings and conflicting explanations followed. Mr Comey remained quiet during the fallout. Later he made it clear he wanted to testify at a public hearing, and prepared to head into the spotlight once again.
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Retained firefighters are urgently needed in Devon or crews could be delayed in reaching some incidents, the fire service said.
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There are 75 vacancies in the county, with south Devon needing the most, said Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue.
If recruits were not found, towns like Kingsbridge would be covered by crews from other areas at certain times, the service said.
Modury is looking for six recruits and two are needed in Kingsbridge.
A spokesman from the fire service said they could move staff to nearby stations to fill gaps.
But there could be "potential delays" if crews had to cover for other stations and travel a greater distance.
"The service would do everything it could to minimise this [the delays]," he added.
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