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A Hampshire street has been named after the captain of the ship which sailed to the aid of the stricken RMS Titanic in 1912.
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Captain Arthur H Rostron diverted the Carpathia to pick up survivors when Titanic sank in the north Atlantic.
He spent his final years in West End, near Southampton, where Rostron Close was unveiled in a new housing development.
A £15m museum dedicated to Titanic is due to open in Southampton next year.
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In early 2019, Maya was on the run - but happy.
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By M Ilyas KhanBBC News, Peshawar
She was from Nowshera, northern Pakistan, where society is conservative and tolerance for non-conformity runs thin. And Maya didn't conform. She was transgender, born male but identifying and living as woman.
She had escaped abuse at home three times, running far away each time. She'd found happiness and a new community, but then took the chance of moving closer to her family home in Peshawar.
"I wish we had known better," says her childhood friend Mehek Khan.
Because Maya's family tracked her down and within a month of her move, she was dead.
Police suspect her brother and uncle killed her, but they have denied any involvement.
Rights activists allege the police have left many loopholes in the case, meaning justice may never be reached for Maya, as for so many of Pakistan's murdered transgender women.
'We were drawn to each other'
In Maya's home state of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, transgender women tend to identify as being a third gender - they often refer to themselves as "she-males".
A series of court rulings since 2009 have recognised a third gender in law, but implementation is problematic. Socially, transgender individuals continue to be treated as lesser beings, having no right to claim privacy or personal dignity, or even safety.
Maya's story highlights the dark side of these realities.
"We were drawn to each other right from the start," says Mehek. "It may be because we were becoming aware of our common gender."
Maya and Mehek grew up across the road from each other in the rural outskirts of Nowshera. Both were born male, but always felt female, says Mehek. She would sometimes put on a dupatta (a head scarf) or paint her nails.
Mehek's father and uncle considered her a disgrace.
"They would often beat me up, lock me in a room... but I couldn't stop repeating it," Mehek says. Maya faced the same treatment from her male relatives when she experimented with dressing as a woman.
Things became harder as they approached their teens, says Mehek, when "she-males start feeling they are not what people think they are".
"When that happens, life with the family becomes increasingly difficult, and you wait for an opportunity to step out."
The two fantasised for years about running away and becoming great dancers, and then, in 2016, Mehek finally managed to do so. She fled to Peshawar, where a boyfriend found her work at a garment factory.
It was a year before she heard from Maya, who called her saying she was planning to escape.
"I was so happy I cried," says Mehek.
Maya and Mehek moved together to Kamra, in the northern highlands of Punjab province, and into the care of a guru.
Pushed to the fringes of society, transgender women in Pakistan tend to cluster in small communities organised around an older trans woman, a guru, who acts as their guardian and protector in exchange for a cut of their earnings.
The guru will also teach them how to dress and perform, so they have access to one of the few sources of income available for them - as wedding dancers.
Betrayed and dragged home
The year the two spent fulfilling their dream of dancing "was the best year of our lives", says Mehek.
Having transgender dancers at weddings is not only a cheaper alternative but also spares the hosts the censure they would expect from community elders if they invited cisgender women. For dancers, it's a way of avoiding having to beg, or enter sex work.
"We went all over Pothowar region, dancing at weddings and other parties, and making more money than we had seen before."
But it was a brief period of happiness - they were both ultimately betrayed by boyfriends, who tricked them into putting themselves in the path of their families. Both were dragged back home.
Both women had their hair cropped and, Mehek says, were tortured. Maya was badly beaten, she says, and her brother chained her to a bed in the basement of their house for several days.
Undeterred, in March, they both escaped again, eventually ending up in Peshawar, where the trend for "Tommy dancers" - transwomen dancers with a less feminine look - meant they could still get wedding work, despite their shorn heads.
Naina Khan became their new guru. She described how Maya seemed to be settling well in Peshawar.
"She was quite relaxed, and bold, almost over-confident," she says.
But then on Saturday, "the doorbell rang and an old acquaintance walked in, holding a phone in his hand", she says, sitting in the nine-room apartment where she houses nearly 20 youthful chailas, or disciples.
Maya was reclining in a cot in the lounge, she says, talking on phone. The visitor sat in another cot, and kept looking at his phone, sometimes stealing a glance at Maya.
"I now suspect he had Maya's picture in his phone and wanted to confirm her presence," Naina says.
The visitor left abruptly. Minutes later the bell rang again, and three men walked in.
"I saw Maya rush in. She quickly removed her earrings and nose-pin, turned off her phone, put everything in a purse and gave it to me. She was very frightened. She said her brother and uncle had come to get her."
A tall young man barged into the room, walked up to Maya and hit her.
Naina and her chailas rushed in. The man pulled out a gun but Naina refused to be intimidated and, with the help of the others, was able to push all three men out of the apartment.
But within half-an-hour, a police party arrived and the officer ordered Maya to go with him. When Naina intervened, he said Maya had stolen gold from her home.
Left with no option, Naina and her chailas decided they would accompany them to the nearby police station.
Over the next couple of hours, they raised a ruckus, demanding to know why Maya was there since she didn't want to go home. She was an adult, they said, and couldn't be forced to do anything she didn't want.
The head of the police station assured her that they just wanted Maya to have a word with her father, who was on his way from Nowshera, and that after that, Maya would be free to go where she wanted.
Naina and her followers left for a wedding appointment, but when they went back to the police station in the early hours, Maya was not there.
A law that can clear murderers
What happened to Maya that night is not clear, and may never be.
A top police officer of Peshawar city, Zahoor Afridi, told the BBC that Maya had given her consent to leave with her father, uncle and other male relatives. But an undertaking shown to BBC by the Hashtnagri police is written on a plain paper and signed only by her father and uncle, not Maya.
Investigations by Nowshera police showed that the car carrying Maya had stopped briefly at a petrol station owned by her uncle. There, Maya was moved to the car in which her uncle and brother were travelling. The rest of the family was asked to proceed home.
The next morning Maya was found dead, lying in a pool of blood in the woods near Nowshera.
Nearly a dozen people have been arrested so far, including Maya's father, her brother, uncle and other members of the extended family. In statements to court, they all denied having killed Maya. All have been released on bail.
Taimur Kamal, a transgender rights activist, says the circumstantial evidence is strong, but the police are "reluctant to include some relevant clauses in the case that will make it hard for the offenders to avoid punishment".
For years in Pakistan, the heirs of a murdered person had the right to pardon the killers in exchange for blood money, an ancient Arab custom.
However, in 2016, in order to curb so-called honour killings - and letting families get away with murder and walk away with money - parliament abolished this right in all cases classified as "honour crimes".
"Maya's is clearly an honour killing," says Taimur Kamal. "But the police haven't included the honour clause in the case, which leaves the door open for Maya's mother or sister to pardon her killers."
A body unclaimed but paid for
Peshawar-based transgender rights group Transaction says at least 70 trans women have been murdered in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province alone since 2015, when the group started keeping data on crimes against the community.
Among the more recent cases, that of a Peshawar trans woman, Nazo, stands out. She was killed by two friends in July last year. They hacked her body into pieces, stuffed it in plastic bags and were carrying it for disposal when police caught them.
Nazo's family considered it below their dignity to accept her body, so it was buried in a police graveyard in Peshawar. But they did feel they owned Nazo when they were offered blood money by the killers in return for filing a pardon in court.
The two men were acquitted on the basis of that pardon two months ago.
More recently, a trans woman from Mardan was allegedly killed by her family. Though pictures of her dead body were circulated by rights activists on social media, no-one filed a murder case with the police, nor did the police bother to act on the tip.
According to rights activists, a majority of these murders are committed by angry lovers. Murders by family members are rare, mainly because most trans-women leave their homes at an early age and lose all contact with their relatives.
The only "relatives" these trans women are left with are members of the community where they live. And that is where they are missed the most when they are gone.
Naina, Maya's former guru, says she is reminded of her every time she opens her safe.
"I see her purse, and start crying. It's all there; some money, her phone, her national ID, her jewellery. She was so young. You can't look at a young person and imagine death."
For Mehek, Maya's memories run even deeper.
"Naina is kind and protective, and our place is bustling with friendly she-males. But my heart continues to be in pain. I've lost my best friend and no-one will ever replace her," she says.
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As central government, local authorities and charities pick up the pieces of Kids Company, the charity which collapsed insolvent in early August, new details are emerging of the discussions that preceded the Cabinet Office paying a controversial £3m grant to the charity in late July - just days before it closed its doors.
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Chris CookPolicy editor, Newsnight
BBC Newsnight and BuzzFeed News have learned of a document, emailed to civil servants in the name of Alan Yentob, chair of the charity's trustees, on 2 June. It warned that a sudden closure of the charity would mean a "high risk of arson attacks on government buildings".
The document also warned of a high risk of "looting" and "rioting", and cautioned that the "communities" served by Kids Company could "descend into savagery". The document was written in language that civil servants across government described as "absurd", "hysterical" and "extraordinary".
The document was the first part of the case made by Kids Company, which sought to help young people up to the age of 24, for the £3m grant. It was part of a proposal that the financially troubled charity should be restructured into a much smaller "child wellbeing hub", which could survive on a smaller income.
The Cabinet Office has acknowledged receiving a copy of the document, which was also sent to at least two London local authorities. The central government department has, however, declined to comment beyond noting that this document was not the basis upon which the charity was given the £3m grant.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Mr Yentob, also the BBC's creative director, said: "The document... was an appendix written by the Safeguarding Team, who set out all the potential risks to be taken into account in the event of closure."
'High risks' attached to closure
The document sent to the Cabinet Office said: "We have created a structure which acts as a substitute parent and extended family. The endings of these relationships will be therefore potentially equivalent to death of the primary care giver i.e. a mother, a father and/or the whole extended family within a biological familial structure.
"The impact of such termination will be devastating for each child in their own way. In our scenario, these children will have no emergency aid agency or rescue team set up for them to acknowledge the turmoil closure will bring for them."
After explaining the potential trauma for clients, the document then went on to list "risks posed to the public", saying there was a "high risk" of looting, rioting and arson attacks on government buildings. The same section also listed "increases" in knife and gun crime, neglect, starvation and modern-day slavery as possible dangers.
The document also says: "We are... concerned that these children and families will be left without services in situations of sexual, psychological or emotional abuse, neglect and malnutrition and facing homelessness and further destitution."
It continued: "Our cause for concern is not hypothetical, but based on a deep understanding of the socio-psychological background that these children operate within. We know that the referrals will not get picked up and be dealt with. We know that there are not enough voluntary agencies equipped or staffed to deal with the challenging behaviour that our client group possesses.
"Without a functioning space for hope, positivity and genuine care, these communities will descend into savagery due to sheer desperation for basic needs to be met."
Local authority officials and councillors have expressed anger and bemusement at this claim, in particular.
The £3m question
MPs expect a formal investigation into the £3m disbursal to the charity. The money was received by the charity less than a week before its sudden closure on 5 August.
This grant was paid against the advice of the department's lead civil servant. Richard Heaton, the Cabinet Office permanent secretary, sought a "ministerial direction" - a means of registering his dissent - at the payment over concerns about the charity's management.
He wrote a letter setting out his concerns, based in part on Kids Company's failure to meet conditions attached to a grant of £4.3m paid in April.
Oliver Letwin and Matthew Hancock, ministers at the Cabinet Office, decided to give the money to the charity despite Mr Heaton's misgivings.
But as BBC Newsnight and BuzzFeed News revealed in July, they demanded that Camila Batmanghelidjh, the charity's chief executive, step down from her role as a condition of the payment.
Officials now expect to recover only £1.8m - a loss of £1.2m which, according to internal emails from the charity, prolonged the life of the charity by just five working days.
Bigger questions to answer
Officials in central and local government have also told BBC Newsnight and BuzzFeed News that they have been taken aback by the difficulty in establishing how much work the charity actually did. The organisation had claimed to "intensively" help 18,000 young people and to "reach" 36,000.
The charity also said that its records showed that it supported 15,933 young people. Speaking to Radio 4's The Report on August 5, Ms Batmanghelidjh had said that the figure of 15,933 represented "the most high-risk group of kids, that's what's sucking up all our money". All of these clients, she said, had "keyworkers" allocated to them.
However, the charity has handed over records to local government relating to just 1,692 clients in London, of which the charity had designated 331 as "high-risk". Officials in Bristol have been given details of a further 175 clients. Ms Batmanghelidjh has told The Sunday Times that she has kept back some records of clients who are at risk of deportation.
Mr Yentob, in his statement, added: "Despite the support of local authorities, many of those who received support and refuge from Kids Company remain at risk. The welfare and safety of both the young people and the communities in which they live continues to be of great concern."
Investigations by MPs and the National Audit Office are now expected into the Cabinet Office's decisions.
Meanwhile, the Charity Commission is looking into Kids Company's management and governance, while the Metropolitan Police is also conducting an investigation involving the charity. Their inquiry is being led by the complex case team of the Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command.
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A man who absconded from a prison and was the third to go missing in a week has been found and taken into custody, Kent Police have said.
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Paul Stone, 36, who comes from the Medway area, failed to return to HMP Standford Hill, in Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, on Monday.
He was being sought by police after absconding from the prison between 08:00 and 12:15 GMT, officers said.
The force said on Wednesday he had been found and taken into custody.
Two other male prisoners who escaped from the jail last Wednesday are still at large, police said.
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Apple has agreed an out-of-court settlement in a case in which it was being sued by consumers who overpaid for e-books due to price-fixing between the tech giant and publishers.
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A court document filed in New York says a "binding agreement" has been reached.
The amount of compensation offered by Apple is not revealed, but the litigants were thought to have been seeking up to $840m (£495m).
Apple has consistently denied any wrongdoing over e-book pricing.
The impending trial, in which 33 US states and territories were seeking reparations from Apple on behalf of their citizens, was linked to a separate ruling last year, where a judge said Apple had violated anti-trust laws by striking deals to enable them to charge a higher price for some e-books in its online store.
As well as the authorities taking action, several individuals from across the US were also seeking compensation for overpaying in their e-book purchases.
The allegation was that Apple, a distributor of e-books, had illegally conspired with five of the biggest publishers to stop Amazon - a dominant force in the market - selling titles at a loss.
Previously, publishers had sold e-books to distributors at a wholesale price, with retailers such as Amazon and Apple able to set their own sale prices.
But the court case heard that the publishers (Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Group (USA) Inc, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster Inc) had agreed with Apple to move to an "agency model," in which the publishers agree a minimum retail price with distributors, thus preventing them from offering titles at a loss.
However Apple denied that it was involved in price-fixing, accusing plaintiffs of "false accusations", and is in the process of challenging last July's ruling.
The publishers agreed to pay more than $166m to settle charges brought against them.
The out-of-court settlement marks an about-turn from Apple, whose chief executive, Tim Cook, had previously dismissed the idea of reaching an agreement.
The firm declined to comment on the decision.
Any deal is subject to the outcome of Apple's appeal of last year's case.
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In some countries the idea of paternity leave - when a father takes time off work to stay at home with a new child - has yet to take hold. In Sweden, which has been encouraging fathers to take paternity leave since 1974, there is now a new incentive for them to spend a full three months at home.
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By Andrea RangecroftStockholm
"It took 20 minutes to get the kids into their winter clothes this morning," says Fredrik Casservik (above), putting his son, Elton, into a high chair. Next to him, another dad, Rikard Barthon, agrees. "It's the worst time of year," he says, as he carefully helps his 16-month-old daughter, Juni, out of her padded onesie.
The two dads are in a suburban cafe in southern Stockholm drinking coffee and sharing cinnamon buns with their children. They discuss how to spend the afternoon while their toddlers wave enthusiastically at two more small children at the next table.
Groups of fathers lunching together surrounded by toddlers or pushing prams through parks are not an uncommon sight in Sweden. In 1974, the country was the first in the world to replace maternity leave with parental leave, giving both partners the chance of time at home with their children.
"It's a very strong tradition here," says Roger Klinth, a researcher and senior lecturer in gender studies at Linkoping University. "That all political parties voted for it in 1974, was a clear signal from the state that men and women should have the same status as parents and that one gender shouldn't take main responsibility."
The idea was that couples got six months' leave per child with each parent entitled to half the days each. However, men had the option of signing their days over to the women - and most of them did. As a result, two decades later, 90% of the leave days were still being used by women.
A "daddy quota" was introduced in 1995 to resolve this. It allocated 30 days' leave solely to the father on a use-it-or-lose-it basis. If the father didn't take a month off work, then the couple as a whole would lose a month's paid leave. In 2002, this was extended to 60 days. Both reforms had a direct impact on the proportion of leave taken by the father so that by 2014 men were taking 25% of all the days available to the couple. As of 1 January this year, the quota has risen to 90 days.
Today, Swedish couples get around 16 months (480 days) paid parental leave when their child is born. For the first 390 days, the parent who is off work gets paid 80% of their salary by the state up to around US$ 111 (or £76) a day. Many employers will then top up the shortfall, often to 90% of the original salary. After that, parents can take up to 90 days more leave and be paid a lower rate. As a result of the latest changes the maximum amount of leave a mother can take has gone down from 420 days to 390 - or from roughly 14 months to 13.
Rikard is 41 and works at TV network TV4 and Fredrik, 40, is an advertising agency graphic designer. Both are taking at least four months' leave.
There are Facebook groups that help dads on paternity leave meet up with other fathers. While the children play, the dads have coffee or lunch together and exchange stories and childcare tips just as their own mothers once did.
Fredrik's wife Susanne has noticed that Elton has become more attached to his dad since she went back to her job at a recruitment company.
"I'm a bit sad sometimes when I can see that Elton wants to be with Fredrik, but I know it's because they're home together more," she says. "But then it can be a bit hard for Fredrik when the children want to be with him all the time as well!"
Things were very different for Fredrik's father, Jan Casservik, in 1975. He only took a few days' leave from being a head teacher when Fredrik was born, although by law he could have taken more.
"It wasn't that common back then. If someone did take leave, it was almost a bit suspect. It just wasn't what you did as a man," he says.
"Being at the birth was OK, but you wouldn't be home forever. If I had small kids today like Fredrik, then I'd definitely like to be home and take paternity leave."
His wife, Margareta, agrees. She took all of the parental leave when they had their three children and thinks it's brilliant to now see Fredrik spending time with his two children. "The experience that he's getting when the children come to him is something I felt many times and it's such a lovely feeling. I think everyone should experience it."
Swedish Dads
Swedish photographer Johan Bavman made a photo book called Swedish Dads when he was home with his own son, Viggo.
The 45 portraits show men who have chosen to stay home for more than six months to look after their children. Johan says he didn't want to portray the fathers as "super dads", but to show the hard work that goes into becoming a good parent.
"This is something that women have never been recognised for before, and something we men have always taken for granted. It's hard to change history and it takes time to change the mindset of both parents."
Listen to Johan Bavman who spoke to World Update on the BBC World Service.
The dads in the cafe say they have never had any adverse comments from people in the street seeing them pushing prams, though on one occasion a friend of Rikard's overheard a tourist in a cafe asking who all the "gay nannies" were.
Sweden is rated as having one of the world's narrowest gender gaps according to the World Economic Forum.
Niklas Lofgren from The Swedish Social Insurance Agency says equal parenting in the early days has long-term benefits.
"I think it's a natural step that if you've shared the responsibilities more equally when the child is small, there's a bigger chance that you'll take more responsibility later on if the parents separate. We can't show that there's a direct link but it's certainly more common now in Sweden that parents have shared custody and the children live alternate weeks with each parent after a separation," he says.
"From an international, or non-Swedish perspective, it probably seems a bit strange that men go around changing nappies and doing the washing up," says Fredrik. His brother lives in the US with his wife, who stays at home with their two children. Fredrik thinks that his brother, and other fathers in a similar situation, might have a different relationship with their children as they spend less time at home.
Much as they love looking after their children, both men are looking forward to going back to work. "I like working. I see this as a chance that won't come again so it's nothing to do with me not wanting to work," says Rikard.
Most employers are behind them. "Companies need reliable access to competent people to be strongly competitive," says Catharina Back, a social security expert at employers' organisation Swedish Enterprise.
"Therefore it's important that companies are attractive to men and women so that both have possibilities to develop their careers while they have small children."
In 2015 parental leave cost the Swedish state $3.2bn (£2.2bn), largely funded by the relatively high payroll taxes levied on Swedish companies.
In terms of the logistical impact on individual businesses, Back says long periods of leave aren't necessarily a problem. "Of course it's challenging to bring in extra cover when employees are away on parental leave, but so as long as parents forewarn their employers, then companies can plan ahead and then they're happy. It's more when it is shorter periods that it's harder to plan."
According to Niklas Lofgren, when the woman has a higher level of education than the man, the parental leave days tend to be shared more equally.
It has taken 40 years and many political reforms to get halfway to complete equality in parental leave in Sweden. Women are still more likely to work part-time or take longer periods of unpaid leave.
However, if the trend continues as it has in the last few years, the paid leave should be divided 50-50 between the two parents by 2035.
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Ota Benga was kidnapped from what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1904 and taken to the US to be exhibited. Journalist Pamela Newkirk, who has written extensively about the subject, looks at the attempts over the decades to cover up what happened to him.
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More than a century after it drew international headlines for exhibiting a young African man in the monkey house, the Bronx Zoo in New York has finally expressed regret.
The Wildlife Conservation Society's apology for its 1906 exhibition of Ota Benga, a native of Congo, comes in the wake of global protests prompted by the videotaped police killing of George Floyd that again shone a bright light on racism in the United States.
During a national moment of reckoning, Cristian Samper, the Wildlife Conservation Society's president and CEO, said it was important "to reflect on WCS's own history, and the persistence of racism in our institution".
He vowed that the society, which runs the Bronx Zoo, would commit itself to full transparency about the episode which inspired breathless headlines across Europe and the United States from 9 September 1906 - a day after Ota Benga was first exhibited - until he was released from the zoo on 28 September 1906.
But the belated apology follows years of stonewalling.
'He was a zoo employee'
Instead of capitalising on the episode as a teachable moment, the Wildlife Conservation Society engaged in a century-long cover-up during which it actively perpetuated or failed to correct misleading stories about what had actually occurred.
As early as 1906 a letter in the zoo archives reveals that officials, in the wake of growing criticism, discussed concocting a story that Ota Benga had actually been a zoo employee. Remarkably, for decades, the ruse worked.
Who was Ota Benga?
Source: Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga
In 1916, following Ota Benga's death, a New York Times article dismissed as urban legend tales of his exhibition.
"It was this employment that gave rise to the unfounded report that he was being held in the park as one of the exhibits in the monkey cage," the article said.
The account, of course, contradicted the numerous articles that a decade earlier had appeared in newspapers across the country and in Europe.
The New York Times alone had published a dozen articles on the affair, the first under the 9 September 1906 headline: "Bushman Shares A Cage With Bronx Park Apes".
Then, in 1974, William Bridges, the zoo's curator emeritus claimed that what actually occurred could not be known.
In his book The Gathering of Animals, he rhetorically asked: "Was Ota Benga 'exhibited' - like some strange, rare animal?" a question that he, as the man who presided over the zoo archives, would know best how to answer.
"That he was locked behind bars in a bare cage to be stared at during certain hours seems unlikely," he continued, patently ignoring mountains of evidence in the zoological society archives that reveal just that.
An article about the exhibition, written by the zoo director, had in fact appeared in the zoological society's own publication.
Nonetheless, Bridges wrote: "At this distance in time that is about all that can be said for sure, except that it was all done with the best of intentions, for Ota Benga was interesting to the New York public."
'Friendship between captor and captive'
Compounding these deceptive narratives was a book published in 1992 and co-authored by the grandson of Samuel Verner, the man who went to Congo heavily armed to capture Ota Benga and others to exhibit at the 1904 St Louis World's Fair.
The book was absurdly characterised as the story of friendship between Verner and Ota Benga.
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In at least one newspaper account since the book's publication, the younger Verner also claimed that Ota Benga - who had vigorously resisted his captivity - had enjoyed performing for New Yorkers.
So for more than a century, the very institution and men who had so ruthlessly exploited Ota Benga, and their descendants, contaminated the historical record with untrue narratives that circulated around the world.
Even now, Mr Samper has apologised for exhibiting Ota Benga for "several days", and not for the three weeks he was held captive in the monkey house.
The zoo has now posted online digitised documents it holds of the episode, among them letters that detail the daily activities of Ota Benga and the men who caged him.
Many of those letters are already cited in my book, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga, published in 2015.
In the five years since its publication, zoo officials had inexplicably refused to express regret or even respond to media inquiries.
And while I had the opportunity to visit the primate house where Ota Benga was exhibited and housed, the building has since been shuttered to the public.
'Best room in the monkey house'
Now, Mr Samper says: "We deeply regret that many people and generations have been hurt by these actions or by our failure previously to publicly condemn and denounce them."
He also denounced founding members Madison Grant and Henry Fairfield Osborn, both ardent eugenicists who played a direct role in Ota Benga's exhibition.
Grant went on to write The Passing of The Great Race, a book steeped in racist pseudo-science that was praised by Osborn and hailed by Adolf Hitler.
Osborn went on to lead for 25 years the American Museum of Natural History where in 1921 he hosted the second International Eugenics Congress.
Curiously, Mr Samper did not mention William Hornaday, the zoo's founding director who was also the nation's foremost zoologist and founding director of the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
Hornaday had littered the cage housing Ota Benga with bones to suggest cannibalism and had brazenly boasted that Ota Benga had "the best room in the monkey house".
Some feel the conservation society now needs to follow its incomplete apology with rigorous truth-telling befitting a leading educational institution.
The episode offers the zoological society the opportunity to educate the public about the history of the conservation movement and its ties to eugenics.
The Bronx Zoo's founding principals were among the most influential disseminators of specious racial inferiority theories that resonate still.
One suggestion has been that the society might also consider naming its education centre for Ota Benga, whose tragic life and legacy is inextricably bound to the Bronx Zoo's.
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Shropshire Council has announced plans to close nine schools.
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The plans include closing one secondary school and six primary schools and two amalgamations which would result in the closure of two more primary schools.
Under the plans, 20 primary schools will also be federated, which would mean they would share governors and resources with neighbouring schools.
The plans will be discussed when the papers go to a meeting of Shropshire Council's cabinet on 15 February.
As well as the closures, Buntingsdale Infant School, in Tern Hill, would be expanded into a primary school.
The amalgamations would see Ifton Heath School closed and Rhyn Park turned into a school for three to 16-year-olds.
Shawbury School would also close but St Mary's School, also in the village, would be relocated onto the site.
Councillor Aggie Caesar-Homden, Shropshire Council's cabinet member for children and young people's services, said: "I want to stress that at this stage no decisions have been made about the future of education in the county.
"This has been a cross-party project, with all political parties working together to look at education in Shropshire.
"We all recognise the need for change and for long-term solutions that will provide Shropshire children with excellent education for years to come."
She said that if the cabinet agreed to proceed, consultation on proposals for any changes will start on 28 February 2011 and will last for six term-time weeks.
Sue Cooke, head teacher of Stiperstones Primary School, said staff were "anxious" about the proposals.
She said: "We've developed a lot of community cohesion which we feel is all being undermined by the many cuts that we have to face.
"We understand that the council has to save money but we feel disappointed that we've been chosen as one of the school's for closure.
"The staff are all very upset and feel anxious about their futures."
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"Black money is so much a part of our white economy, a tumour in the centre of the brain - try to remove it and you kill the patient," wrote Indian-born writer Rohinton Mistry in his novel Family Matters.
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Soutik BiswasDelhi correspondent
To put it simply, black money is cash that has not been declared or taxed. It also fuels India's bustling underground economy. Politicians are believed to use it to finance expensive election campaigns. Buyers and sellers vastly prefer it in transactions involving land and property . It is near-impossible, for example, to buy both in the capital, Delhi, without paying a substantial amount of the price in funny money. Since the majority of India's jobs are in the informal sector, undeclared cash transactions are common. Essentially, black money rewards the dishonest and punishes the honest.
There are varying estimates about the amount of this illicit money stashed abroad - from $500bn (£297bn) to $2 trillion.
Dev Kar, chief economist at Global Financial Integrity, estimates India lost $213bn (£132bn) in illicit financial flows - or illegal capital flight - between 1948 and 2008 alone. He says this illegal capital was the result of graft, bribery and kickbacks, criminal activities, and tax evasion and accounted for 16% of the India's GDP. Arun Kumar, author of The Black Economy in India and economics professor, estimates the figure is much higher at $2 trillion. If the authorities are able to recover a fraction of this amount, it could fetch the government billions of dollars in revenue in taxes and penalties.
After coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to crack down on people who had not reported money parked in offshore tax havens. So when the new government disclosed the names of seven people and a company on Monday for allegedly stashing away black money in foreign banks, many wondered whether it was making a mountain out of the molehill.
Among those named are a bullion trader, an industrialist and a mining baron. None of them are "big" names. Many believe that the government should "stop playing black money politics and end the ongoing charade of disclosing names" as none of the lists appear to implicate any politician or a leading businessman. Now, an exasperated Supreme Court has ordered the government to disclose all the names.
Also, should the war against black money not begin at home? Many believe that a lot of illegal money abroad may have returned to India through gold imports and investments in the domestic stock market.
India possibly needs to clean up its opaque political funding and the shadowy and corruption-ridden real estate market more urgently than going after illicit money abroad.
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As popular as chat apps have become, they all suffer from the same flaw - if you board an underground train, head into the wild or find yourself in a situation where the authorities block the mobile networks, you're likely to end up cut off.
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By Richard TaylorNorth America Technology Correspondent
Now a new technology is promising to keep such "off-the-grid" smartphone owners chatting.
It has been hailed as having the potential to trigger nothing less than a second mobile revolution.
Mesh networking is the kind of techie term that, quite understandably, would elicit blank stares were one to mention it en passant.
But in the past few months, unprecedented anxiety over state surveillance of internet traffic allied with the incorporation of the technology into Apple's latest mobile software, iOS 7, has meant the novel communications protocol has itself been creating a lot of chatter.
So what's all the fuss about? In short, the technology potentially allows communication "off the grid" from the mainstream internet.
Its potential is huge - ranging from communication during disaster relief efforts through to the promotion of democracy.
At risk of simplification, it is helpful to think of a traditional network as a bicycle wheel - where every spoke connects at some point to a central hub, be it a mobile phone network, internet service provider or computer server.
By contrast, a mesh network has no central connection point to speak of. Instead, each point on the network acts as a "node" in a kind of webbed mesh, able to efficiently route traffic on to any other node within range.
That means messages can pass from one point to another, without the need for the regular internet - incredibly useful in times of disaster, where traditional communications are often limited or severed entirely.
Should even a single node be internet-connected, traffic can be shared with all other nodes to give internet access to all on the mesh.
Secret messages
But a mesh network can also be an incredibly useful tool for those worried about others monitoring their online activity.
Since there is no central authority, it is inherently more difficult to shut down than a traditional network and impossible to monitor unless one is directly connected to the network itself.
Mesh networking is a very well-established idea. Originally established for the military, today it is being used in projects around the globe - in villages, towns and cities, largely to help spread connectivity where only limited internet access exists.
But a little-advertised feature in iOS 7 called "multi-peer connectivity" now means that app developers can easily put mesh technology in the hands of us all, turning our once-humble handsets into makeshift routers - no setup expertise or additional hardware required.
Staying alive
One app, Firechat, is already creating a buzz.
Firechat was only launched in March but already boasts millions of downloads around the world.
In essence it lets users exchange messages, photos and videos among each other, as long as there are intermediary devices nearby to relay the signal along the chain.
The app has just been released on Android too - though here it faces some competition from a well-established though less user-friendly app called the Serval Mesh, which draw attentions to its potential in relief efforts and providing connectivity to underserved rural areas.
Firechat's founder Micha Benoliel says his app is primarily aimed at entertainment, though he concedes it does have other uses.
Some are already being played out - when faced with the threat of internet restrictions and limited cell coverage, protesting students in Taiwan intent on occupying the parliament recently turned to Firechat to keep their lines of communications alive.
If that kind of use-case prevails, there's little doubt apps such as Firechat will attract the attention of governments and law enforcement agencies keen to neuter or at least monitor traffic going to this kind of off-grid network.
But right now its main challenge is to grow its user base to a stage where contemplating that kind of problem even becomes a possibility.
After all, Firechat's technology is essentially "all or nothing".
Without a critical mass of users, Firechat's promise to keep users connected wherever they may be will remain unfulfilled. And all the talk of "a second mobile revolution" may ultimately prove to be hot air.
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It's being promoted as the biggest live immersive game yet. Variant 31 is theatre - there are 150 real-life performers involved. But its creator is hoping it will bring in video gamers - and people who like jumping out of aircraft.
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By Vincent DowdArts reporter, BBC News
If you heard reports of reanimated cadavers roaming at will beneath New Oxford Street you might suppose London had been having a particularly bad day for public transport.
But producer Dalton M Dale is proud to stand in a slightly musty former shop basement and talk of the malevolent band of marauding zombies he's adding to the growing world of immersive theatre.
He's from North Carolina but in 2017 he came to London after a few years working on immersive shows in New York.
"London is the place to push the envelope of what immersive storytelling can do: the point about Variant 31 is that as you move through our really large site you get actively involved in the story. That's instead of standing at a slight distance and observing and admiring, which has often been the case with even the best immersive experiences."
Dale expresses admiration for the work of the Punchdrunk company, especially the immersive show Sleep No More seen in London in 2003. It's been a hit in New York for eight years and opened in 2016 in Shanghai.
Sleep No More is Macbeth reinvented as intense film noir which you walk through. It was the show which proved immersive theatre could make very large amounts of money.
"Punchdrunk really changed the industry and the big thing was they made non-theatre goers excited about shows. That was a real achievement. But there's something I knew needed changing.
"In Sleep No More audience members wear a mask - essentially they're observers. But to me immersive has to mean you see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. If you have all four of those and you also have a great narrative, that's the real and immediate experience which Variant 31 wants to give."
Dale's company Big Dreamer Productions has acquired seven interlocking buildings on New Oxford Street - the kind of undistinguished buildings no one looks at twice. When you enter there's a small box-office (though most places are booked online) and an assembly point for the 90-minute adventure. Groups enter every half hour.
"You start at Patient Intake at Toxico Technologies," Dale explains. "Toxico 25 years ago has manufactured strange and nefarious materials for chemical warfare. You are given a piece of wrist technology which at key points across 35 floors will allow you to do various things: you can alter the lighting and open hidden passages and even change the weather.
"Creatures emerge as you move through. From the moment you step into this world the hunt is on and someone wants to catch you. Oh, and always bear in mind: the only way to kill a zombie is to aim for the head.
Players score points by killing the creatures and at the end of the experience there will be just one winner from your group. "We claim this is the first truly immersive experience: it's not spoon-fed like some other shows. Your presence matters and genuinely changes what goes on."
Dale says the show is the biggest employer of performers in the West End. More than 3000 people applied for 150 roles. How many creatures and other mysterious figures punters encounter depends on the route taken through the adventure - there are potentially 1000 ways through.
Some of the corners and angles you have to navigate are pretty tight - not to mention the crematorium feature which threatens to burn you alive. But Dale says safety is built in at every point. "We have hundreds of cameras and we have security officers and stewards everywhere as well as paramedic staff. We push the boundaries but in a way that's always health and safety conscious.
"We have three types of actors. There are the heroes and the face characters who lead you through and narrate the story. Then there are the creatures, who are the ones who'll rip your throat out."
None of this will feel very familiar to most habitues of the Old Vic or the Donmar. So is Variant 31 theatre? Or is it for gamers who want to take a screen-break and enter a 3D world?
"It's a kind of theatre of course and the performers are important. But we exist for people who play video games and who love going to theme parks or jumping out of aircraft.
"But I think theatre fans will get it too. In traditional theatre, and in fact in many immersive experiences, you're really a ghost. You watch the story unwinding in front of you but you have no way to shape it other than to applaud or maybe to laugh. But people who've grown up as gamers expect to be able to direct or at least influence the experience.'
Dale has huge confidence in the Variant 31 model.
"Video games are huge more or less everywhere. No one's brought them together with live horror like this."
After London the experience will open in a planned 17 cities around the world over the next five years. Dale has just licensed it for locations in China.
"The undead seem to have limitless international appeal. You'll have to decide for yourself what that says about the human psyche."
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
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Bishop of Mannar Fr.Rayappu Joseph once again has pleaded with warring parties to bring an end to the endless war in the country.
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Bishop Rayappu Joseph made this plea at the funeral ceremony of Fr.Nichalospillai Pakkyiaranjith held on Saturday in Mannar.
Fr.Nichalospillai Pakkyiaranjith was killed in a claymore mine in the LTTE controlled area last Wednesday.
Bishop Rayappu Joseph called upon all peace loving people in the country to condemn this and said that the blood that had been shed cries for peace and not vengence.
He also called uopn the international community to condemn this act in no uncertain terms.
The Bishop appealed to warring parties to open the path of political negotiations and seek civilized methods of ushering in much awaited peace in the country.
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A teenager is in a critical condition after being recovered from the water in Cardiff Bay, South Wales Police have said.
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Emergency services went to Mermaid Quay on Friday after reports of an incident at 13:45 BST.
The teenager was taken to the city's University Hospital of Wales by ambulance in a serious condition.
Insp Tony Williams, of South Wales Police, issued a warning against swimming in the area's waters.
Cardiff council posted a tweet to re-iterate "swimming is not permitted in Cardiff Bay" because of "high-speed boats and hidden dangers under the water".
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A 21-year-old woman believed to have been murdered at a house in Nottingham has been identified by police.
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Casey Brittle died in hospital a short time after being found injured at a property in Springfield Street, in the New Basford area, on Sunday.
On Tuesday police were granted an extra 24 hours to question a 26-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder.
Results of a post-mortem examination have not yet been released by Nottinghamshire Police.
Forensic investigators are continuing to examine the house.
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The cost of transforming Kirkcudbright Town Hall into a "gallery of national significance" is expected to cost £3.17m, according to a new report.
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The plan is part of the Kirkcudbright Charter, which aims to make the best use of the town's public buildings.
Council papers have revealed that the design team behind the project will ask Dumfries and Galloway Council for funding of £1.68m.
It exceeds the authority's budget for the entire charter by £195,000.
The team will also apply for funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), which has previously committed almost £1m to the project on a provisional basis.
According to a report to the council's Stewartry area committee, the new plans for the gallery were "very positively received" by HLF.
The authority will also be asked to support an increased funding application to the heritage fund.
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The global rights to Agatha Christie's works have been secured by publishing giant HarperCollins in a deal believed to be worth seven figures.
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HarperCollins, Christie's UK publisher since 1926, now becomes the legendary crime novelist's exclusive English language publisher worldwide.
CEO Brian Murray said the deal would "enable us to take the brand to even greater heights in the decades ahead".
Christie's grandson, Matthew Prichard, said the family was "delighted".
"My grandmother herself valued her relationship with Collins enormously," he continued.
"It is a tribute to both the lasting popularity of Agatha Christie and the professionalism of HarperCollins that such a long and important publishing partnership will be renewed and expanded."
Christie's novels and short stories have never been out of print since her death in 1976.
The popularity of her work in India has made her one of the country's top 10 English language authors.
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An online appeal set up to help those affected by flooding in Cumbria has raised £500,000.
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The Cumbria 2015 Flood Appeal, which was launched on 5 December, has now doubled its target to £2m.
The fund is being run by the Cumbria Community Foundation which has pledged £50,000.
The foundation said grants would help flood victims with cleaning, emergency repairs, clothing, food and basic furniture.
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Opec, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, was set up in 1960 as an attempt by oil-producing states to assert themselves in a market dominated by the major multinational oil companies. It has expanded from its five founding countries to a membership of 12.
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Opec member states currently produce about 40 per cent of the world's crude oil and 18 per cent of its natural gas. By its own reckoning, at the end of 2013, Opec states had proven oil reserves representing almost 81% of the world total, with the bulk of the reserves (66%) in the Middle East.
Opec has often faced difficulties in reconciling demands among its members to stabilise world prices on the one hand or use oil as a political lever on the other. Its influence has waned to an extent since the early 1980s, as importers have diversified their sources of petroleum.
Opec was founded at a meeting in Baghdad in September 1960, attended by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. They were later joined Qatar (1961), Indonesia (1962-2009), Libya (1962), the United Arab Emirates (1967), Algeria (1969), Nigeria (1971), Ecuador (1973), Angola (2007) and Gabon (1975-1994). Opec has been headquartered in Vienna since 1965.
Its stated aims are to coordinate members' policies in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers while ensuring a reliable supply to importers and a fair return on capital to those investing in the industry.
Price crises
The organisation rose to international prominence in the 1970s, as member-states increasingly took control of their domestic petroleum industries from foreign interests and acquired a major say in the pricing of crude oil on world markets.
Opec states were at the heart of two oil-price crises in the decade - the Arab oil embargo of countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the fallout from the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
In this period Opec sought to trade an increase in prices for its product in return for a guarantee of supplies. Nonetheless, market imbalance characterised the relationship with consumers.
After an oil-price peak and subsequent steep decline in the early to mid-1980s, Opec and oil-importers began to cooperate on achieving market stability coupled with reasonable prices.
This strategy proved successful in countering a number of potential crises. By the end of the decade prices had recovered, and Opec members increased output following the US-led war with Iraq over Kuwait in 1991, in order to avert another dramatic increase in prices.
Prices remained relatively stable until 1998, when they fell sharply following the economic crisis in East Asia. Again, cooperation between Opec and some non-Opec producers eased recovery.
Founded: 1960
Resources: Member states produce about 45 per cent of the world's crude oil and 18 per cent of its natural gas. Opec's oil exports represent about 55 per cent of the crude oil traded internationally. At the end of 2010, Opec states had proven oil reserves representing 81.33% of the world total. (Opec website)
Structures: The Opec Conference formulates policy and is made up of delegations headed by the oil ministers of member states. It meets twice a year, in March and September, as well as in extraordinary sessions.
Headquarters: Opec Secretariat, Vienna, Austria
Secretary-General: Abdalla Salem El-Badri
The Secretary General is Opec's authorized representative and Chief Executive of its Secretariat.
As chief administrator of Opec he is answerable to the Board of Governors. The Opec Board appoints the Secretary General for a three-year term, renewable once.
The incumbent, Abdalla Salem El-Badri, is the representative of Libya, and took office on January 1 2007.
Challenges
Opec faces many challenges in the 21st century. Mergers between major multinational companies have strengthened their hand in relation to producer states, and government efforts to cut carbon emissions point to a reduction in oil demand over the long term.
In recent years, strong demand from developing economies such as China and India has kept production levels buoyant. However, in 2008 the world oil market faced considerable volatility, as prices hit record highs before slumping under the weight of the global financial crisis. The price slump came despite Opec's attempts to keep prices up by cutting production.
Within Opec itself there have been tensions between members. Countries with relatively small reserves and large populations, like Nigeria and Indonesia, have in the past lobbied for a rise in production in order to increase their earnings. Countries with relatively small populations and large reserves, like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, have opposed this.
Indonesia announced in May 2008 that it would allow its membership to expire at the end of the year, on the grounds that it has become a net importer of oil, but industry analysts think tensions over production levels also played a part in the decision.
International political problems have not loomed as large as they did during the 1973 oil embargo on Israel's allies, but there were concerns that the European Union decision to halt importing oil from Opec-member Iran over its nuclear programme in 2012 could complicate life for the organisation.
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A man has been charged over the death of a woman who was killed after a three-car crash in Newcastle.
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Ranjit Kaur Grewal, 49, was one of three pedestrians taken to hospital following the crash on Hunters Road on 16 April. She died shortly afterwards.
Northumbria Police said Ionut Mihai, 21, had been charged with causing death by dangerous driving and a number of other motoring offences.
He is due to appear before North Tyneside magistrates on 12 March.
The two other pedestrians suffered non life-threatening injuries.
All three drivers were unhurt.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
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Camilita Nuttall says it was the business lunch from hell.
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By Dave GordonBusiness reporter
It was the first time that she and a new contact had met in person.
Ms Nuttall, a UK motivational speaker, says the man gave no explanation for turning up half an hour late at a London restaurant, and then proceeded to talk purely about himself.
To add insult to injury, she says he then told her that she wasn't qualified to run her own business.
And all this while he ordered the most expensive main course, and told Ms Nuttall that she'd have to foot the entire bill.
"It was the worst," says Ms Nuttall, 42.
Perilous menu
First things first, a business lunch isn't going out for a bite to eat with your mates from the office - that's socialising with colleagues.
It is instead a business meeting, usually in a restaurant, and typically with someone from another organisation, or at least someone who doesn't work in your team.
And the conversation will include business matters - be it talk about a sale, agreement or understanding that benefits both parties.
You might think that going for a business lunch is a simple thing, but it is in fact beset with a whole menu of potential perils and pratfalls.
From the choice of venue, to what food you pick, whether you order alcohol, and how you share the bill, any number of things can go wrong.
Talking politics and religion is almost always a complete no-no, but what if an innocent chat about current affairs quickly turns to President Trump, Brexit or Scottish independence?
We asked some etiquette experts and business coaches to guide us through the minefield.
'Avoid messy food'
The first issue for someone organising a business lunch is the choice of restaurant.
"You need to find somewhere with a careful balance of ambience," says Jenny Flintoft, a leadership consultant based in the north of England.
"I tend to favour a restaurant that is buzzy enough that conversations can be had without being overheard in a deathly quiet restaurant, but not one that has lots of background music, as the voice raising makes having a meaningful conversation very difficult."
Ms Flintoft also notes the importance of choosing the right dishes.
"I personally steer clear of corn on the cob, as it can easily get stuck in teeth," she says. "[I would also avoid] spaghetti or foods with sloppy sauces, or anything that requires a lot of effort to eat, such as shellfish.
"During a business luncheon I want to concentrate on my fellow diner, not battling with the meal."
To drink or not?
You also need to bear in mind the ethical or religious food rules that the other person may follow.
For example, ordering the foie gras followed by the veal might not be a great idea, and booking a restaurant that specialises in suckling pig could cause offence.
When you have reserved a table in a hopefully appropriate restaurant, one of the biggest questions that lunchtime is - to drink, or not to drink?
British etiquette expert Jo Bryant says that alcohol is best avoided because the social atmosphere of a restaurant "can easily let us forget that the lunch is for business purposes".
She continues: "Add in a glass or two and you might be at risk of relaxing too much, and saying or agreeing to do something you might regret.
"It is important to stay sharp and maintain your professional gloss."
However, London-based business coach Phil Jones suggests a middle ground when it comes to the wine list. "Allow the other person to take the lead," he says. "Sometimes it is a loosening of the collar.
"It's a chance to get some deeper issues, to speak a bit freer."
'No sex or politics'
Even without alcohol, conversations over a business lunch can all too easily go awry.
Ms Flintoft says: "Some people launch very quickly into diatribes about a particular hot [political] potato, and there's a lot of those around at the moment, which makes me question their judgement.
"But there needs to be a good mix of genuine conversation versus pitching."
Ms Nuttall says there should be a number of "no-fly" discussions. "There should be absolutely no talking about sex, politics, religion, bad talking other people or companies, or negatives about your own company or theirs."
Mr Jones says people should also guard against venting any personal problems they might be struggling with.
"One man's wife was having an affair, and I was the first person he'd confided in," he says.
"I was given the role of therapist by someone who was a complete stranger to me."
Who pays?
Wherever the lunch, and whatever the topic, William Hanson, a UK etiquette coach advises being mindful of the other person's time.
"The worst ones are where they drag on and your host thinks you don't have anywhere else to be," he says.
When it comes to picking up the tab at the end of the meal Mr Hanson has a simple rule.
"Whoever extended the invitation, and has made the reservation, pays," he says.
To avoid any awkwardness or uncertainty when the bill arrives, Mr Hanson suggests that the inviter goes one stage further, and gives his or her credit card details to the restaurant ahead of the meal.
"It takes away the nasty money dilemma at the end," he says.
Mr Hanson takes a more relaxed approach though if a lunch with a particular client or associate becomes a regular event. Under such circumstances he says that a "turn-taking arrangement can often be struck".
Ms Nuttall adds that she often thinks that if one of the parties has travelled a long distance, they should be treated to lunch. But normally she suggests that the bill should generally be split equally.
Follow Business Brain series editor Will Smale on Twitter @WillSmale1
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A young fallow buck has died after it became entangled in a discarded carrier bag at a park.
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Rangers at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire said the deer was severely injured after it jumped a wall in "blind panic" with the bag "covering its face and strangling it".
The park has urged visitors to take away their rubbish.
In 2016, a deer's stomach was found to be full of plastic poo bags left at the same park.
Bradgate Park Trust added on its Facebook page that as a wild animal, rangers could not approach it to remove the bag.
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
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The case against a teenager accused of the rape of a man on Tyneside has been dropped.
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In June, a 24-year-old man reported that he had been attacked near Skinnerburn Road in Newcastle, directly under the Redheugh Bridge.
Police said the man had suffered a "horrific ordeal" and later charged a 16-year-old boy with rape and robbery.
The crown offered no evidence at Newcastle Crown Court and he was found not guilty on both counts.
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Voters in Shetland are going to the polls in a by-election to elect a new MSP for the islands.
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The by-election was sparked when Liberal Democrat MSP Tavish Scott stood down to take a job with Scottish Rugby.
Mr Scott had held the seat since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
Ten candidates are standing to replace him, with polling stations open between 07:00 and 22:00. The result is due in the early hours of Friday morning.
Who is standing?
The full list of candidates, as they will appear on the ballot paper, is:
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A man who was arrested in connection with the disappearance of Hull student Libby Squire has been charged with seven further unrelated offences.
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Pawel Relowicz, of Raglan Street, Hull, appeared in court last month accused of voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglary. He was remanded in custody.
The latest charges involve similar crimes alleged to have been committed between 2017 and 2019, police said.
Mr Relowicz, 24, is due before Hull magistrates on Thursday.
The seven new charges comprise of two counts of burglary, two of voyeurism, two of outraging public decency and one count of receiving stolen goods.
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A number of houses in Aberdeen were evacuated following the discovery of an explosive device.
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The device - which BBC Scotland understands to be a grenade - was found in a garage in the Craigiebuckler Terrace area on Tuesday.
An army explosive ordnance disposal team was called in to investigate the find.
There were no further details about the incident available.
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US punk rockers Gossip have been added to this year's Wireless Festival line up.
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The American band will join Friday headliner Pink and The Ting Tings in London's Hyde Park on 2 July.
Organisers say more acts will be added to the three-day bill soon with individual day tickets costing £47.50.
Last year's acts included Kanye West, Basement Jaxx, Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris.
Gossip released their fourth studio album last year, called Music For Men.
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Work is starting on a new tram stop at Manchester's Victoria Station, putting the Metrolink stop out of use for the next nine months.
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Metrolink passengers will have to use the stop at Shudehill as the platform and tracks at Victoria are redesigned for the second city tram crossing.
Trams will pass through Victoria in both directions on a single track but cannot stop for safety reasons.
The work is part of a wider £44m refurbishment of the station.
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An eight-mile stretch of the English Channel off West Sussex has been declared safe for swimmers after raw sewage had to be pumped out to sea.
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Samples taken between Ferring and Shoreham by the Environment Agency passed water quality tests.
Southern Water said filtered sewage was first discharged through the storm overflow just over half a mile (1km) out to sea late last Saturday.
It followed a blockage in pumps at its East Worthing works.
There were no further discharges of untreated sewage after Monday.
"We are grateful to the public for their cooperation during this operation and we wish everyone a great weekend in the sunshine," said Paul Yallop, leader of Worthing Borough Council.
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A new harbour office could be constructed in Alderney, if States members give the go-ahead.
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The States General Services Committee is asking members to approve spending more than £600,000 on the demolition of the current office and the construction of a new one.
It said vermin and leaks in the old building had led to damage to electrical and navigational equipment.
The States is due to discuss the issue at its next meeting on 19 December.
The committee said a company had already been chosen to carry out the work, following a tendering process.
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The work of freelance photographer Philip Jones Griffiths was seen as instrumental in turning the tide of American public opinion against the Vietnam War. Ten years on from his death, one of his daughters has told of what motivated him to capture such trauma.
Warning: Contains images some people may find upsetting
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By Caleb SpencerBBC Wales News
"These images burn themselves into your brain," says Katherine Holden.
"There is something profoundly haunting about the images - they stay with you long after you have stopped looking at them."
Her father Philip Jones Griffiths was considered one of the great photojournalists of his era, capturing the true horror of conflict while covering the Vietnam War following the US military intervention between 1966 and 1971.
His photographs and observations - published in his seminal 1971 book Vietnam Inc - gave a haunting and disturbing insight: mothers and children held at gunpoint, babies covered in blood, faces filled with terror and soldiers struggling to survive in often hostile territory.
As the American author and political commentator Noam Chomsky said: "If anybody in Washington had read that book, we wouldn't have had these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan."
Growing up, Griffiths' two daughters were not shielded from the reality of their father's job.
"When me and my sister were growing up, he absolutely made pains to make sure we knew about the work he was doing," said Katherine.
"He never tried to shelter us from it. I mean, maybe in the finer details of the grisly truth of war, but in terms of what was happening, I think he felt a responsibility to let his daughters know what was happening."
Born in Rhuddlan, Denbighshire, and a first-language Welsh speaker, Griffiths started his career as a freelance photographer for the Rhyl Leader in the 1950s.
He was a proud Welshman and drew parallels between the Welsh people and the Vietnamese - who he continued to visit every year following the conflict until he died in 2008, aged 72,
"He had an affinity with the people of Vietnam and I think he saw a lot of similarities between the Welsh and Vietnamese kind of being these smaller, more village-based communities, having a kind of imperial yoke put upon them," Katherine explained.
Philip Jones Griffiths' journey to Vietnam
She said despite his work taking him around the world, Griffiths never lost touch with his roots.
"Although I grew up in London, he made sure me and my sister went to Wales every summer and hang out with our Welsh cousins," she said.
"He always joked that he was a unique Welshman because he didn't drink beer, he didn't play rugby and he didn't sing."
And he felt it was important that his work should stay in Wales, with his archive now in permanent residence in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
William Troughton, who curated the exhibition at the National Library, said: "Philip Jones Griffiths didn't consider himself a traditional war photographer.
"He was interested in showing the effects and injustices of war on ordinary people - his book 'Vietnam Inc.' had a major impact and is considered a classic."
And Randy Kennedy, in his New York Times obituary, said Griffiths's "harrowing" pictures "helped turn public opinion against the war".
Griffiths set up the Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation, to support young photojournalists, of which Katherine and her sister Fanny Ferrato, are trustees.
"He talked of the miracle of being able travel the world and say what you wanted to say through the power of this little magical box that sits around your neck," added Katherine.
"And so for us at the charity that he started, it is our aim to promote that and inspire the young people, particularly the young people of Wales, that you can actually go out and you can help stop a war.
"I think that is incredibly powerful, and that is probably his enduring message in all this."
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It's been a long, emotional summer in Rio.
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Wyre DaviesRio de Janeiro correspondent
The confident, booming country that was awarded the right to host the Games back in 2009 is very different to the troubled, economically challenged Brazil that we see today.
For weeks Brazil and the host city of Rio de Janeiro have been engaged in an epic struggle to convince the world that it was the right choice to hold a first ever Games in South America in a country that, arguably, had more important priorities.
At times the so-called "marvellous city" has absolutely felt up to the challenge. New sporting venues have, by and large, staged great events and many of the things we thought might be problematic issues before the first opening ceremony on 5 August - like the Zika virus and security for visitors - the organisers took in their stride.
At other times, Rio has fallen short. Behind the scenes, Olympic officials talk about too much having been made ready at the last minute, a feeling of "crisis management" and of broken promises.
If the constant stench of untreated sewage in the lagoon that surrounds the Olympic Park wasn't enough to embarrass city and state officials over their hollow environmental pledges, then perhaps nothing can.
Rio de Janeiro's controversial and sometimes outspoken mayor is Eduardo Paes. In many ways he is the political "face" of Rio 2016 and he certainly feels vindicated when challenged about the rights and wrongs of putting on these mega-events in what is a still developing, socially unequal country.
"It's arrogant to say these events don't belong in the developing world," Mr Paes said when we met this week at a new transport interchange in Rio - one of the many Olympic legacies the mayor insists would not have happened, had it not been for the impetus of holding the Games.
"We showed in Brazil that these Games have been for everyone with lots of legacies for the city," he said. "We still have a lot of problems here but people's lives are much better because of the Games so let's not be prejudiced about where we hold these events in future."
Aspiring Paralympian
The Paralympic Games, which finished this weekend, certainly felt more inclusive than their Olympic counterpart.
The prospect of swathes of empty venues forced organisers to slash Paralympic ticket prices, allowing thousands of Brazilians who'd been priced out of the Olympics to witness and be inspired by some top quality international sport.
If the Olympic and Paralympic Games are all about inspiration and encouragement, then in Davi Texeira they could have a future champion.
The 11 year old, from Rio, is sports mad. He is already an accomplished surfer. We met him at a city centre skate park, where he's working on his dream to become a future Paralympian.
"Sport is my life because without sport I'm not Davi. I wouldn't be who I am today," he said, brimming with confidence.
Davi was born without fully developed limbs but he's not been discouraged, despite the haphazard nature of facilities for children like him in Brazil.
"Davi doesn't see any barriers - he does what he wants and has overcome a lot in his life already," said his mother Denise. "He loves the Olympics and knows it's a unique moment in his life."
But, she added, "as a mother it's a constant struggle to get improvements. Transport facilities here are pretty bad and getting around isn't easy, but things have improved in the run up to the Games".
Davi lives in a country where 40% of disabled children don't go to school, where there's a huge gap in equality of opportunity depending on race or social background. That has to change, say campaigners, if Brazil is to build on Rio 2016.
The cost of staging the Games has left the city and state of Rio virtually broke. Providing 80,000 extra security personnel, for example, doesn't come cheap.
And while the tourists may leave happy, what happens in the rest of this notoriously violent city when budgets for policing programmes in Rio's favelas are cut?
In the past few weeks, Brazilians have found new Olympic and Paralympic heroes - Rafaela Silva, Daniel Diaz and Thiago Braz.
But, facing a difficult economic climate, there are tough funding decisions to come which could make or break the sporting ambitions of youngsters, like Davi Texeira, who've been inspired by what they've been part of this summer in their own city.
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Pope Francis is celebrating his first year in office.
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The Argentinean-born pontiff is currently on a week-long spiritual retreat with cardinals and bishops in the Alban Hills near Rome.
Italian opinion polls give Pope Francis the highest popularity rating of any recent pontiff.
However, the BBC's David Willey in Rome says that Francis's papacy so far has shown a change of style rather than of substance.
Pope Francis is the first Latin American - and the first Jesuit - to lead the Roman Catholic Church.
Since taking office, pilgrims have been arriving in Rome in unprecedented numbers.
He is also riding high on social media, with 11 million following him in nine languages on Twitter.
Our correspondent says Francis's approval rating has remained high despite a recent UN report accusing the Catholic Church of systematically covering up for tens of thousands of child-abusing priests reported to the Vatican.
The Pope himself has denounced any cult of personality.
He recently told Corriere della Sera: "Portraying the pope as a kind of superman, a type of star, it seems offensive."
Francis, 77, has appointed new advisers to help him run the Church and is planning major reforms of Vatican finances and of the scandal-hit Vatican bank.
But our correspondent adds that for the moment there is no sign of a change in official Catholic teaching on artificial contraception or on the celibacy rule for priests.
However the Pope's compassionate attitude - especially his outreach to believers who have abandoned going to Mass and to divorced Catholics banned from receiving communion - is not universally admired by traditionalist cardinals.
Likewise his attitude towards gay people - he says that he is not going to judge them - contrasts strongly with that of his predecessor Pope Benedict, who called homosexuality "intrinsically evil".
Thursday's anniversary is not being marked in any official way, a move that Vatican-watchers say is in keeping with the Pope's tendency to eschew pomp and ceremony.
The decision to celebrate the anniversary quietly is a sound alternative to what almost certainly would have been a media frenzy if Pope Francis had decided to mark the anniversary in public, correspondents say.
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Among the findings of a major survey of UK personal finances was the statistic that about 16% of UK adults cannot identify the balance on their bank statement, a figure that rises to more than 25% for those aged 55 and over.
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"Shocking" but unsurprising, is the verdict of Michelle Highman, chief executive of national money education charity Credit Action.
"People just don't understand their balances," she says. "Something like a bank account is quite a technical document and the report does say there has been an increase in full disclosure but sometimes that can be too much information.
"Different bank statements look different, different credit card statements look different. Sometimes they are shown in brackets, sometimes in red.
"If you are not used to dealing with numbers it can be confusing to people."
The financial illiteracy of millions of Britons was highlighted by other findings of the Financial Capability of the UK report, by the Money Advice Service (MAS).
It raised other issues including a lack of understanding of inflation, a misunderstanding that paying into your pension later in life is preferable to starting one early, and trouble with interest rates.
The report said that 12% of adults, rising to 17% of under-35s, believed the current Bank of England base rate stood at more than 10%. The base rate currently stands at 0.5%.
'Significant difference'
Tracey Bleakley, chief executive of Personal Finance Education Group, hopes that plans to teach finances to schoolchildren could begin the work of improving public understanding.
"We're delighted that after years of campaigning, financial education looks set to be taught in secondary schools through the national curriculum from September 2014," she said.
"This is a big part of the long-term solution to this problem and will make a significant difference.
"However, these new figures underscore the scale of the challenge.
"For financial education to be most effective, we need to teach it from a young age - which means including it in all primary schools as well as at secondary level."
Miss Highman stressed the importance of those doing the teaching actually understanding finances.
But she added that teaching children as young as seven about day-to-day finances would have little impact on adults' difficulties.
"Engagement is the biggest problem," she said. "We don't want to talk about money in this country anyway and we certainly don't want to talk about our lack of confidence and understanding about it as we can feel stupid.
"People think this education is 'useful for others, not for me'.
'Worried'
The MAS report, which was based on a survey of more than 5,000 people and followed 72 families closely over the course of a year, is described by its publishers as the "most in-depth piece of research into financial capability in the UK since the Financial Services Authority's similar study in 2006".
It identified what it believed to be a wide range of skills deficiencies required for financial management, including mathematics planning, self-control, decision-making and problem-solving.
It said shortcomings in engaging with financial management ranged from the emotional to the behavioural.
People saving for a rainy day:
75%
2006
62%
2013
16% unable to identify balance on bank statement
35% don't understand impact of inflation
12% believe Bank of England base rate is more than 10%
25% prefer living for today, not planning for tomorrow
The impact of inflation was not understood by a large proportion of the population, with many unable to determine whether 5% inflation eroded the purchasing power of money in an account paying 3% interest: 35% got this wrong, rising to 43% of those aged under 35.
The report concluded: "Skills, knowledge and our attitudes are all core elements of good money management.
"We should be worried that 16% of the population can't read a bank statement and three in 10 can't pick the best out of three individual savings accounts.
"We should be concerned that over a third, 35% of us, don't understand the impact of inflation, which for many erodes the true value of our savings and our income.
"And we should seek to help the near one in five who continue to spend even when they know they can't afford it, both for them as individuals and for those, including family, industry, and the government who often pick up the bill."
A spokesman for the Department for Education said the new national curriculum would make financial literacy compulsory for the first time, as part of citizenship for 11- to 16-year-olds.
He added: "Pupils will be taught the importance of budgeting, of sound management of money, credit and debt, as well as understanding of different financial services and products. The new mathematics curriculum will also ensure that all young people leave school with an understanding of the maths needed for personal finance."
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Fog and low visibility is likely to continue to delay flights to and from Jersey and Guernsey airports for the next couple of days.
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Jersey flights to Southampton and to and from Gatwick were cancelled on Monday due to heavy fog.
Most flights in Guernsey were cancelled with more expected on Tuesday.
Jersey's Meteorological Department said a hill fog was expected over both islands but would not be as bad as Monday.
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An Indian woman who made an unsuccessful attempt last month to enter one of Hinduism's holiest temples has been arrested and charges against her include "exposing her thigh" in a photograph she posted on Facebook while dressed as a pilgrim.
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By Geeta PandeyBBC News, Delhi
Rehana Fathima, 32-year-old telecom technician, activist and model, was stopped by protesters from entering the Sabarimala shrine which has historically been closed to all women of "menstruating age".
Hinduism regards menstruating women as unclean and bars them from participating in religious rituals. The shrine management says the ban on women is also because the temple deity Lord Ayyappa was a bachelor.
In September, India's Supreme Court overturned the ban, allowing women of all ages to visit the temple.
In October, Ms Fathima and a female journalist, protected by more than 100 policemen, had trekked to the hilltop shrine and managed to reach the main temple premises. But they had to return after a stand-off with devotees metres from the temple sanctum.
And two months after the court order, a woman has yet to enter the shrine.
Ms Fathima was arrested at her office in the city of Cochin on Tuesday, her friend and feminist activist Arathy SA told the BBC. A magistrate sent her to prison for 14 days to allow police to investigate the charges against her, she added. Ms Fathima is also accused of hurting religious sentiments.
Her employer, the government-run telecom company BSNL, has suspended her until investigations are complete.
In October, Ms Fathima posted a selfie on Facebook which showed her dressed in black (the colour most Lord Ayyappa devotees wear), her forehead smeared with sandalwood paste in the Hindu tradition, and her knees pulled up in front to mimic the classic Ayyappa pose.
Police registered a case against her after complaints that her photograph was "sexually explicit" and "wounded the religious feelings of Lord Ayyappa's devotees".
Earlier this month, she filed a petition in the lower court, requesting the magistrate to stop the police from arresting her. But the court rejected her plea, paving the way for her arrest.
On Thursday, Ms Fathima's family said they had applied for bail and that her plea would be taken up on Friday.
Her friend Arathy told the BBC that Ms Fathima did not intend to hurt anyone's religious sentiments or do anything that was sexual or offensive.
"What about the men who go to Sabarimala bare-chested or expose their thighs? How come that's not outrageous?" she asked.
Ms Fathima has also angered conservative Hindu groups because she's a Muslim, even though she says she is a devotee of Lord Ayyappa.
Arathy says when Ms Fathima put up the photograph on Facebook, she received many abusive comments and even rape threats.
"It's those people who are creating religious disharmony. Sabarimala allows all men, whatever their faith. It's only women who are not allowed into the shrine," she says.
The opening of the temple to women has divided opinion in Kerala as well as the rest of India.
Feminist activists say barring women from the shrine is patriarchal, while those in favour of keeping women out say they are protecting their deity in accordance with the traditional belief that women of a menstruating age are a threat to his celibacy.
Ever since the ban was repealed, tens of thousands of protesters, including many women, have blocked roads, attacked female devotees and vandalised property to prevent women from entering the shrine.
Thousands of people have been arrested for protesting and although most of them have been since freed, some do remain in jail.
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A blue plaque is being unveiled to mark the moment a suffragette slashed a painting with a meat cleaver.
But who was Bertha Ryland, the woman who carried out what could be seen today as a "domestic act of terrorism" and left a note behind to make sure her voice was heard?
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A wealthy and intelligent young woman and a member of the respectable "Edgbaston elite" in Birmingham, Ms Ryland did not arouse suspicion when she entered the gallery with her "chopper" concealed under her coat in the middle of the afternoon of 9 June, 1914.
It was exactly a year and a day since Emily Wilding Davison died as a result of the injuries she sustained at the Epsom Derby.
Slashing the canvas three times, Ms Ryland caused £50 worth of damage to the painting known as Master Thornhill, by 18th Century artist George Romney.
It led to Birmingham Art Gallery being closed for six weeks, according to University of Birmingham research fellow Dr Nicola Gauld.
In a note left at the scene, Ms Ryland said her actions were a deliberate protest "against the government's criminal injustice in denying women the vote" and "against the government's brutal injustice in imprisoning, forcibly feeding and drugging suffragist militants".
It was not the first time the suffragette had made her views known.
She served six months in Holloway prison in 1912 for her involvement in a London window-smashing campaign where she was force-fed after refusing to eat.
When she appeared before magistrates following her arrest at the Birmingham gallery, she refused to go along with proceedings and was taken to Winson Green Prison ahead of her trial.
She, like many other suffragettes, went on hunger strike and was force-fed again.
Hilda Burkitt, the first suffragette to undergo the "inhumane" practice spoke out against force-feeding while Ms Ryland later described it as a "unutterably hideous experience".
Writing in The Suffragette Newspaper in July 1914, Ms Ryland said she underwent the "torture" nine times in 1912 despite having a diseased kidney which had been displaced for years. Force-feeding exacerbated her condition.
"This mauling of the unprotected kidney, together with the retching and choking, strained and twisted the kidney and caused chronic inflammation", she wrote.
She said she had been "strip searched" and force-fed a further five times.
Eventually, her deteriorating health led to her trial being postponed and the charges against her were dropped in September 1914.
Ms Ryland was born in 1882 and lived in Hermitage Road in Edgbaston. The youngest of five children, she was an active member of the The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) between 1907 and 1914. She never married nor had children and she died in the 1970s.
The painting she attacked is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Dr Gauld said.
"There is no label on the artwork or anything that hints to its radical past, though the damage is still visible if you look at the painting closely", she added.
Lynsey Rutter, of the gallery, said it is not encouraging people to follow in Bertha's footsteps, but does want people to understand her intentions.
"What could be seen as an act of domestic terrorism was bringing to the public's attention the lack of equality women were experiencing," she said.
"We have so many platforms now in which we can make a stand. But for Bertha and women like her, those platforms were just not available. So she made sure her voice was heard in whatever way she could."
*The plaque acknowledging Ms Ryland's actions is unveiled on Friday in the art gallery's Round Room as part of the its Women Power Protest project.
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Tammy Duckworth is used to being a trailblazer.
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A double amputee, she was the first disabled woman elected to the US Congress.
Born in Bangkok to a Thai mother and American father, she was also among the first Asian-American women in Congress.
And now, as confirmed in a gleeful tweet this week, she will be the first woman to have a baby while serving in the US Senate.
It was "about damn time", the 49-year-old said. "I can't believe it took until 2018."
On the day Donald Trump defied the odds to defeat Hillary Clinton in November 2016, Tammy Duckworth made her own journey - soundly defeating the Republican incumbent to become the junior senator for Illinois, the position held by Barack Obama when he won the presidency.
Her election came four days shy of the anniversary of the event that shaped her later life.
"I'm here because of the miracles that occurred 12 years ago this Saturday - above and in a dusty field in Iraq," she said in her victory speech.
Among the people she thanked were her former military comrades: the men who saved her life after the helicopter she was co-piloting over Iraq was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.
You may find some of the following details distressing
Duckworth was a captain with the Illinois National Guard when she was called up to serve in Iraq. It was a war she disagreed with, but she fully accepted the responsibility to go there and fight.
She did not have to go to Iraq. She was no longer in charge of her former unit when they were called to serve, but she asked to go with them.
"You don't want anyone to face danger and you not face the same danger," she told an episode of The Axe Files podcast in December 2016. "You have to face the same risk."
After a day of routine missions in November 2004, she and her crew were asked to pick up some soldiers from Taji, about 20 miles north of Baghdad.
When they got there, the soldiers had already left. The crew decided to return to their base in Balad, about 30 miles further north, and Duckworth handed control of the Black Hawk helicopter to her co-pilot Dan Milberg.
During the journey, as they flew low over palm trees to avoid detection, she heard the "tap, tap, tap" of gunfire against the helicopter.
She leaned forward to get the GPS co-ordinates to report where the helicopter had been shot.
"Right then, bam, the fireball happened in my lap with an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] going off," she told The Axe Files.
"It took off most of the back of my right arm because I had that forward. It blew off my right leg, it basically evaporated.
"My left leg was kicked up into an instrument. The force of that sheared it almost off, it was hanging on a little bit."
Duckworth drifted in and out of consciousness. Every time she became conscious again, she would try to operate the pedals to control the helicopter, but struggled to understand why she couldn't. She did not realise she no longer had feet.
Dan Milberg landed the helicopter and carried Duckworth out. Her crew had assumed she was dead, but by nevertheless moving her quickly from the helicopter to get aid, they saved her life.
Duckworth woke up about 11 days later, in pain and angry. She had lost both legs and most of the use of her right arm.
In later years, she adapted a playful attitude to her amputation - wearing a T-shirt saying "Dude, where's my leg?" and addressing the Democratic National Convention with one prosthetic leg painted in camouflage, the other in the American flag.
In hospital though, one of her first thoughts was revenge against her attacker. "I wanted to hunt him down," she told The Axe Files.
In the end she underwent countless operations and spent 13 months in hospital, much of it at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington DC.
The hospital, packed with soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, became what she called "an amputee petting zoo" for politicians seeking photo opportunities.
It was perhaps inevitable that Duckworth had ended up joining the military, even if she had initially resisted, having hoped to join the diplomatic service instead.
Generations of her family had served in the military, going as far back as the American Revolution. Her father Frank fought in World War Two and the Vietnam War.
A fierce patriot, Frank Duckworth was a Marine and served as a signal officer in Vietnam. But he found himself confronted and spat at when he returned to the US in between tours as the movement against the Vietnam War gathered strength.
He preferred to stay in south-east Asia in between tours, and met Lamai Sompornpairin, who had grown up sewing hats in a Thai factory and was then working in her parents' grocery shop.
The couple, with baby Tammy in tow, stayed in the region after the war while Frank worked for the UN Development Programme and different corporations. Tammy spoke nothing but Thai until she was eight years old.
Her experiences with conflict began at a young age, as the Marxist Khmer Rouge regime took power in Cambodia.
She has said some of her earliest childhood memories are of being in Phnom Penh, watching bombs going off. She said her parents told her to think of them as fireworks, so she would not be scared.
The latter period of her time in Asia, living in Indonesia and Singapore, gave her pride in being American, and in seeing how people abroad viewed her country.
Yet the Duckworths later fell on hard times as Frank Duckworth lost his job. Despite his reluctance to return to a country he felt had rejected him, he had no choice but to go back to the US.
At several points, Tammy Duckworth's story echoes that of President Obama, the man who called her "a tough lady, but with a big heart" as she ran for his old Senate seat.
Both have acknowledged how their mixed-race origins helped form their identities. Both grew up in Indonesia at around the same time, and both left Asia to live in Hawaii.
While Duckworth said the move to a multicultural state like Hawaii was the perfect way for her to assimilate into US life, it was a hard transition for her father.
The family depended on food stamps to survive. In 2013, she reflected on her teenage years while speaking in Congress against possible cuts to food stamps. "They were there for me, so I could worry about school and not about my empty stomach."
Often, Duckworth and her brother Thomas could eat only if their father had found enough coins left in telephone kiosks. When she found work after school, she was the only member of her family to have a job.
Her father, who died in 2005, went on to find work at a chicken factory, and Duckworth was able through grants and loans to make her way to three universities.
In the end, it was her classmates who convinced her that she could achieve her eventual aim of being an ambassador by joining the military first.
"What I didn't expect was to fall in love with the camaraderie and sense of purpose that the military instills in you," Duckworth wrote in Politico in 2015.
"The thing is, when we were exhausted and miserable, my fellow cadets and I were exhausted and miserable together."
Among the other cadets was her future husband, Bryan Bowlsbey. It wasn't immediately obvious the two were destined for marriage.
"He made a comment that I felt was derogatory about the role of women in the Army," she told the C-Span news network in 2005, "but he came over and apologised very nicely and then helped me clean my M16."
It would be far from the last time Duckworth would face a derogatory comment, but it would be the only time she would marry the man who made it.
Duckworth's political career took off as her rehabilitation from her injuries was continuing.
It was an invitation by Illinois Democrat senator Dick Durbin to attend the 2005 State of the Union address that first ignited her interest.
Duckworth had already become an unofficial adviser to younger veterans within Walter Reed hospital, leading Mr Durbin to suggest she should consider running for office.
She ran as a candidate for Congress in Illinois in 2006, barely two years after the attack in Iraq.
But she lost the race to Republican Peter Roskam by only 5,000 votes. "I sat in a bathtub and cried for three days," she said.
Over the following years, she continued her duties with the National Guard and as director of the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs, where she launched a hotline for suicidal veterans and helped improve access to healthcare payments and work for veterans.
In 2008, newly elected President Obama appointed her as an assistant secretary to the federal Department of Veterans' Affairs.
Then in 2012, she ran for Congress again in another Illinois district - this time against an opponent who openly disparaged her military record.
Joe Walsh was hardly the most popular candidate when he ran against Duckworth in Illinois' eighth district.
When the Republican incumbent was sued by his ex-wife over missed child support payments, and when he shouted at a constituent, his chances became even slimmer.
Then when he attacked the service carried out by Duckworth, by this point a recipient of the Purple Heart medal for those injured in service, his fate was perhaps sealed.
"I'm running against a woman who, my God, that's all she talks about," he said at a town hall meeting. "Our true heroes, it's the last thing in the world they talk about."
Duckworth ended up winning 54.7% of the vote, compared with Walsh's 45.3%.
She held on the seat two years later. A month later, at the age of 46 and after several unsuccessful courses of IVF treatment, she gave birth to her first child, Abigail.
Duckworth often reflects back on the day her helicopter was struck, and acknowledges how her time in the military has helped shape the politician she is today.
"That day, and so many others when I served, illustrated the two most important lessons the military taught me," she wrote in Politico magazine. "Never leave anyone behind - not on the battlefield and not in our country. And never put a service member in harm's way without understanding the cost."
But as Duckworth's first race for the Senate was entering its final stretch in October 2016, the Chicago Tribune pointed out that her much-vaunted record on helping veterans had been mixed.
After a decade in public service, the newspaper said, "several" of her initiatives to help Illinois veterans "fell flat", her post in the federal veterans' affairs body "mostly focused on public relations" and her two terms in Congress were "marked by only a few legislative successes".
Duckworth has defended her record, but even one of her headline pieces of policy - a bill she sponsored requiring airports to provide spaces for breastfeeding mothers - has yet to become law.
As a senator, her record will now face even more scrutiny. She reached the Senate after another bruising election campaign in 2016, one that saw her opponent Mark Kirk belittle her family's military history.
She started her time as a senator optimistically, expressing hope that she and fellow Democrats could work with President Trump.
"I am going to start off assuming that he loves this country as much as I love this country," she told The Axe Files podcast just before taking office. "If you start off from that point, I think you can learn to work with anyone."
It has not worked out that way.
Instead, Duckworth has positioned herself as one of the most persistent and vocal critics of the president, on issues relating to the military and immigration in particular.
Last weekend, as Trump attacked Democrats for not helping pass a funding bill that he said was "holding our military hostage", Duckworth attacked him from the Senate floor - noting how he had repeatedly avoided service in Vietnam because of a reported bone spur in his foot.
"I will not be lectured about what our military needs by a five-deferment draft dodger," she said.
"And I have a message for Cadet Bone Spurs: If you cared about our military, you'd stop baiting Kim Jong-un into a war that could put 85,000 American troops and millions of innocent civilians in danger."
Duckworth has been especially critical of Trump over North Korea, warning last month that he and the defence community were gearing up for war.
Amid her criticism of the president, the rumblings of a Tammy Duckworth run for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential race have already started.
While she has not acknowledged any interest in running - at least not yet - Duckworth is surely aware that one significant political 'first' has still not been achieved: the first female president.
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So much for a summer lull in the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the US has seen a resurgence of the disease in numerous states, particularly across the south and west.
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Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
The US nation as a whole has topped 60,000 recorded daily new cases this week.
Did it have to be this way, though?
Other industrialised nations, in Europe and Asia, pursued more rigorous mitigation plans, ramped up testing and contact tracing earlier, and eased restrictions in a slower and more co-ordinated fashion.
They have not, at least so far, seen a resurgence of the virus similar to the one the US is currently experiencing.
The US state of Arizona, for instance, is currently registering as many new cases of coronavirus as the entire European Union, which has a population 60 times greater.
It makes for a gloomy review of what's gone right and (mostly) wrong, as the US enters its fifth full month of a pandemic that has no end in sight.
WHAT'S GONE WRONG
States opened too quickly
A month ago, the coronavirus numbers in the US appeared, at the very least, stable. The spread of the disease had been slowed, as the daily tally of new cases plateaued.
That prompted a number of states - including Texas, California, Florida and Arizona - to move forward with plans to ease off public shelter-in-place and business closure orders.
Many of these states moved ahead despite not hitting the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended benchmarks for doing so, such as a 14-day drop in cases and less than 5% of tests coming back positive for the virus.
It turns out, the overall national numbers were misleading, as states that were hit hard early, such as New York and New Jersey, were experiencing declines, while numbers in other states were beginning to inch up.
They're not inching up anymore, they're surging - and the worst, as far as hospitalisations and fatalities, could be yet to come.
Now Texas, California and Arizona, among others, have re-imposed business closure orders and mandated mask-wearing, which has been determined to reduce the spread of the virus. It may be too little to avoid another public-health crisis, however.
"We opened way too early in Arizona," Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat, said in recent television interview. "We were one of the last states to go to stay-at-home and one of the first to re-emerge."
The 8,181 Covid-19 hospitalisations in Texas on Sunday were yet another record high. In Arizona, 14% of coronavirus tests are positive for the virus.
California, an early success story in limiting the spread of the virus, has seen a 90% increase in cases over the past two weeks, after the state in May allowed local authorities more discretion in businesses re-openings.
The surge in cases is also again leading to delays and shortages in testing - an area that had appeared to be a strength for the US after a halting start.
Without adequate testing, it will be significantly more difficult to identify and isolate new cases and locations where the virus is spreading unchecked.
"We're right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak," former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said during a television interview on Sunday.
At least for the moment, the rate of daily deaths has not reached New York levels - but that may only be a matter of time, as the current cases progress.
"It is already too late," says Luiza Petre, a New York City physician and professor of cardiology at the Mt Sinai School of Medicine. "We're at a point of no return where it will be very, very difficult to restrain this pandemic."
Mask-wearing became partisan
Compounding the decision by some states to prioritise reopening in spite of warnings from public-health officials, one of the best methods of limiting the spread of the virus - wearing a face covering - has become mired in partisan acrimony.
A June survey by Pew Research Center found that only 49% of conservative Republicans said they wore a mask most of the time in the past month, while that number is 83% among liberal Democrats.
Conservative opposition becomes even more entrenched at the prospect of government-enforced mask mandates.
"Kansans don't need Laura Kelly and the nanny state making decisions best left to individuals," Bill Clifford, a Republican congressional candidate in Kansas, said in response to a mask order from his state's Democratic governor. "State mask mandates violate the principles of individual liberty and local control upon which America was founded."
Donald Trump himself has contributed to the division, mocking a reporter who refused to remove his mask during a press conference as being "politically correct" and retweeting a Fox News journalist who suggested a photo of Joe Biden in a mask was damaging to the Democrat's image.
The president has steadfastly refused to wear a mask in public events - a position that has clearly registered with his supporters. At the president's campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, few in the crowd chose to use face-coverings, and most disregarded social-distancing suggestions.
Public-health officials aren't free from blame, either. Early on, they declared that face-coverings were only helpful for front-line medical personnel.
While the real motivation for such statements may have been to reserve limited supplies to those most in need, the end result was a message that was muddled and shifted as the pandemic progressed.
Public complacency
While some state governments have eased restrictions on public gatherings and allowed businesses to re-open, they have frequently accompanied such moves with recommendations that individuals make decisions based on medical advice and common sense.
Those recommendations have been, to put it mildly, not always heeded.
Summer holidays led to mask-less crowds in reopened bars and restaurants, public parks and beaches. And while masks were a fairly common sight during the mass anti-discrimination protests that swept the nation in the past month, social-distancing practices were essentially non-existent.
The numbers behind this new coronavirus surge indicates that many of the newly infected are younger Americans, who have been among the quickest to return to in-personal socialising. Some political leaders, including the president, have essentially encouraged this, asserting that the young and healthy have little to fear from the virus.
"Now we have tested over 40 million people," Trump tweeted on Saturday. "But by so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless."
That flies in the face of public-health studies that have shown that a fifth of Covid-19 cases result in severe respiratory distress.
"We have data in the White House task force," US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn on Sunday, refusing to reject Trump's 99% figure as false. "Those data show us that this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously."
But a president downplaying the severity of the disease can go a long way toward undermining words of warning from his subordinates.
Education approaching crisis
The coronavirus resurgence has also lit the fuse on a bomb that is set to explode in just a few months. September is when American children traditionally head back to classrooms across the nation, and it's becoming clear that nothing close to a normal educational experience is waiting for them.
School administrators are starting to unveil their plans for the coming academic year, and in many cases it's a blend of in-person and distance learning with the hope that it's enough to keep their institutions from becoming staging grounds for spreading the pandemic.
Already some teachers' unions are rebelling at the suggestion that educators - including elderly or those at greater health risk - return to classrooms with what they view as insufficient protection or preparation.
"Our educators are overwhelmingly not comfortable returning to schools," wrote the head of a Washington DC area teachers' union. "They fear for their lives, the lives of students and the lives of their families."
Meanwhile, parents facing the prospect of having to manage more de-facto home-schooling and figuring out how to care for and supervise their children while they, themselves, are being asked to return to their workplaces.
Trump, despite campaigning in 2016 against federal involvement in local education systems, is already pressuring schools to open back up on time. He's called for the CDC to revise its guidance to make it easier to reopen school buildings and threatened to cut off federal funds for those that don't comply.
Florida, a Republican-controlled state currently in the midst of a widespread coronavirus outbreak, already has ordered its schools to open for classes at the end of August.
The president's rhetoric, delivered via Twitter, seems destined to politicise yet another aspect of the coronavirus response, again putting local officials in the unenvious position of balancing community health concerns with demands to return to normal times that seem increasingly out of reach.
WHAT'S GONE RIGHT
New York recovery
Although the coronavirus situation in many US states in the south and west has become increasingly dire, what was once the epicentre of the outbreak - New York - has made remarkable improvements.
Daily deaths, which peaked on 8 April at 799, have dropped to single digits. Only 1.38% of the state's coronavirus testing last Friday returned positive results.
As other areas have re-imposed lockdown restrictions, New York has begun reopening many public facilities and private business such as salons, tattoo shops and youth sport leagues. Indoor restaurants, however, remain closed.
"What happened in New York should have been a cautionary tale for the other states to pay attention and learn to create a more centralised strategy," says Ms Petre, the New York City cardiologist. "New York is a success story."
As the state continues to ease its mitigation restrictions, there is the risk that the virus will return resurgent.
"We've been through hell and back, but this is not over," said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. "This can still rear its ugly head anywhere in this nation and in this state."
Economy stabilised - for now
A funny thing happened on the way to the next Great Depression. The US economy, expected by many forecasters to be in a devastating tailspin, stabilised and began to improve.
May unemployment figures, predicted to top 20%, registered at 13.3% instead. Then, in June, they ticked down to 11.4% - an indication that the workplace haemorrhaging had been stopped much earlier than expected.
Meanwhile, key stock indices have bounced back from their late winter beating. By 2 July, the Dow Jones Industrial Index had recovered 66% of its losses from its February record high. The Standards & Poor's 500 Index, a broader measure of stocks, has made up 77% of its losses this year.
What Anthony wrote in April and May
Other economic indicators offer similar signs of an economic resurgence.
The strength of the recovery has largely been attributed to the push by states to quickly lift virus mitigation orders and federal action to provide economic support for businesses and individuals hit hardest by the virus.
The return of business closures in several states could mean the economic good news will be short-lived.
Meanwhile, most of the stimulus measures passed by Congress have either run their course or are set to expire soon, while there appears little prospect of further action.
"Since it is now clear that the effects of this crisis will be felt at least until the end of 2020, that relief package will not be enough," says Jill Gonzales, an analyst with the personal finance website Wallethub.
Science advancing
While the coronavirus afflicts a growing number of US states, the American medical community continues to grind away at treatments and, ultimately, a vaccine.
Remdesivir, an antiviral drug, has shown promise in limiting the severity of the disease in hospitalised patients (prompting the US government to strike a deal with the drug's manufacturer to prioritise American patients).
A new study indicates that the commonly available steroid dexamethasone cut the risk of death for coronavirus patients on ventilators by a third.
There are also "encouraging signs" from experts that the use of blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients could help those currently suffering from the disease, although clinical research is ongoing.
"Medicine has evolved at lightning speed," says Ms Petre. "The government has teamed up with pharmaceutical companies and a lot has been done, which is good"
On the vaccine front, there are now several pharmaceutical companies reporting positive results from early tests on drugs to boost immunity to the coronavirus.
The president is promising a vaccine by the end of the year, if not earlier, although medical professionals caution that such a timeline is far from certain.
Anthony Fauci, the chief US immunologist, would only say scientists are "aspirationally hopeful" that a vaccine would be ready by 2021.
Given that a return to normal life in the US appears increasingly contingent on a safe and reliable vaccine, a lot is riding on these hopes.
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Coca-Cola has announced it will cut the size of a 1.75l bottle to 1.5l and put up the price by 20p in March, because of the introduction of a sugar tax on soft drinks from April this year.
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However, the company said it has no plans to change its classic recipe.
"People love the taste... and have told us not to change," a spokesman said.
Coca-Cola Classic contains 10.6g of sugar per 100ml. Under the terms of the government's new tax, it will be subject to a tax of 24p per litre.
"We have no plans to change the recipe of Coca-Cola Classic so it will be impacted by the government's soft drinks tax," said a spokesman for Coca-Cola European Partners.
"Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and Diet Coke, our no-sugar colas, are not impacted."
Sugar tax
The sugar tax was announced in March 2016, by the then Chancellor George Osborne, in an attempt to tackle rising obesity among children in the UK.
From April, soft drinks manufacturers will be taxed at 18p per litre on drinks containing 5g of sugar or more per 100ml, or 24p per litre if the drink has more than 8g of sugar per 100ml.
It is estimated, the tax will raise £520m a year - to be spent on funding sport in primary schools.
The tax will apply to one in five soft drinks sold in the UK.
Manufacturers and supermarkets have responded by tweaking recipes - typically upping the volume of artificial sweeteners - to avoid the levy.
The amount of sugar used in Sprite, Fanta, and Dr Pepper - all owned by Coca-Cola - has been reduced - with the new version of Fanta, introduced last year, containing 33% less sugar.
Similarly AG Barr, the makers of Irn Bru, took the decision to dramatically alter the recipe of the famous Scottish drink as a result of the sugar tax.
But the new low sugar version, which sees much of the sugar content replaced by artificial sweeteners, has divided opinion among fans of the drink and even seen a petition launched to save the traditional recipe.
However, the makers of Coca-Cola remain adamant they will stick with the original recipe - perhaps fearing the public backlash they faced in 1985 when they were forced to abandon the 'new Coke' recipe after 79 days and return to the original version.
Coca-Cola said it was in discussion with retailers ahead of the sugar tax: "These discussions include reviewing the pack sizes offered to consumers and our approach to price-marked packs," a spokesman said.
The nature of the tax suggests a 330ml can of Classic Coke may now be more expensive than a can of Diet Coke - which is not subject to the tax.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, a Cola-Cola spokesman conceded the increase in price for cans may be passed on to wholesalers - though it is not clear what will happen on shop shelves.
"As is always the case, our customers will have to decide the retail prices in their outlets."
Tim Rycroft, of the Food and Drink Federation, told Newsnight that he thought the sugar tax was not "the right mechanism".
"If you put a tax on something, you will reduce consumption in terms of purchase. The question is, will you reduce consumption in terms of calories? Will those people who might choose not to buy a drink that goes up in price forego those calories, or will they find them somewhere else?
"Trying to tackle obesity through these very narrow interventions seems to me to be not the right way to do it."
Watch Newsnight's investigation into advertising and sugary products on Monday 15 January at 22:30 GMT or on iPlayer afterwards.
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US President Barack Obama intends to visit Ireland in May.
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He met Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny at the White House in Washington on Thursday, St Patrick's Day.
Speaking at the end of their meeting, the President said: "I wanted to say today that I intend to come to Ireland in May, but the date of the visit has yet to be finalised."
He said he intended to visit Moneygall, the home of his great, great, great, great, great, grandfather.
Records have revealed that Mr Obama's ancestor was a shoemaker in the village of Moneygall in County Offaly. His son Fulmuth Kearney left for America in 1850.
Researchers at Trinity College, Dublin, delved further into Mr Obama's past during the presidential campaign to find an ancestral grand uncle was a prominent Dublin businessman in the 1700s.
Wig-maker Michael Kearney brushed shoulders with Ireland's aristocracy on a daily basis and bought and sold property throughout the country. Mr Obama's political dynasty can also be traced to Kearney, who was heavily involved in the trade politics of Dublin.
There is no official date for the visit yet but Mr Obama is due to travel to the UK in late May ahead of a G8 summit of world leaders in France.
Mr Kenny called the President's visit a "vote of confidence" in the Irish people at a time of difficulty.
He said he could assure the president of a rapturous welcome and said if he wanted to play golf he would be happy to join him.
Earlier, the two leaders talked about how Ireland would bounce back from economic turmoil.
Mr Kenny had breakfast with vice president Joe Biden at about 1230 GMT and met the US President at the Oval Office two hours later.
At an American Ireland Fund dinner on Wednesday night, Mr Kenny said Ireland was "far from finished".
He said the recent election was "a new dawn" for the country.
The American Ireland Fund is aiming to raise $100m for Irish charities by the end of 2013.
Mr Kenny also met US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday. The two men discussed the global economic situation.
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The announcement of the death of Oman's Sultan Qaboos earlier this month was followed by a chorus of praise for the achievements of the "father of the nation" - often tainted with a disturbingly Orientalist flavour - that overlooked the fact his grace period had long since come to an end.
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By Marc ValeriUniversity of Exeter
Many Omanis consider that the late sultan, who had been increasingly isolated and reclusive and who had refused to lay the foundations for governance of a post-Qaboos Oman by appointing a prime minister or by nurturing a successor, had become more of a problem than a solution.
Like his counterparts in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), he had made clear after the "Omani Spring" in 2011 - when thousands of people took to the streets to demand more jobs, better wages and an end to corruption - that the centre of political power, combining both executive and legislative powers, should remain his personal prerogative, closed off from any debate.
The regime perpetuated what a United Nations special rapporteur called in 2014 a "pervasive culture of silence and fear affecting anyone who wants to speak and work for reforms in Oman".
Investments in the security sector were a priority, consolidating Oman's top position in the world for defence and security spending as a proportion of its gross domestic product (GDP).
Thus, tremendous challenges await the new sultan, Haitham bin Tariq, as a result of the stasis that characterised the last two decades of Qaboos' rule.
Born in 1955, the son of Qaboos' paternal uncle, Haitham served as undersecretary, then secretary-general, in the ministry of foreign affairs, before becoming minister of national heritage and culture in 2002.
Haitham, whose oldest son Dhi Yazin is second secretary at the Omani embassy in London, was the UK and Abu Dhabi's preferred choice as sultan.
He enjoys support among Oman's intelligence services and the most influential governmental body, the Palace Office.
He also benefits from proximity with local merchant elite, through personal and business connections he has established with a number of them.
Haitham was among the first Omani royals to set himself as a businessman.
In the 1990s, he became shareholder of Sun Farms agricultural company, a major land owner and top vegetables producer in Oman.
He has substantially increased his involvement in business ventures since then, through a holding company (NTC) he holds and chairs.
In particular, the group partly controls Oman's largest power company, SMN Power, a joint-venture with Abu Dhabi fund Mubadala, which is chaired by Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, and French energy company Engie's UAE-based affiliate.
Haitham also shared stakes in the Blue City project, a mega tourism-devoted new city south of Suhar. However, mismanagement and legal battles between the owners resulted in Oman's most resounding bankruptcy ever and the intervention of the state's sovereign wealth fund in 2011-12 to buy Blue City bonds.
A few hours after the announcement of the old sultan's passing came the heavily choreographed ceremony of the opening of the sealed letter, in which Qaboos is supposed to have named Haitham as his successor.
This was critical to ensure that the new leader, who enjoys limited legitimacy among the broader population, benefited from the authority bestowed upon him by Qaboos.
This staged investiture, followed by pledges of allegiance by other political elites, does not say anything, though, about potential dissension within the royal family and external interference in the succession choice.
Only history will reveal, but the composition of Haitham's first cabinet will give indications about his strategy of family control and, more generally, of elite management.
Haitham's other main challenge is to oversee Oman's transition from over-reliance on oil revenues to a diversified economy.
The Omani population is one of the youngest in the world: 46% of its citizens are under 19.
Policies favouring Omanis in employment for the last 20 years have had limited results, as illustrated by dramatic social inequalities, endemic unemployment, and poverty.
The World Bank estimates unemployment among 15-24 year olds is 49%.
Real GDP growth turned negative (-0.9%) in 2017 and remained low in 2019 (0.3%).
Since 2015, Oman has run high budget deficits and in 2018 rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor's downgraded Oman's credit rating to "junk".
The International Monetary Fund expects Oman's debt to reach 61% of GDP by 2020, compared to 17% in 2015.
This is likely to have a direct impact on the new sultan's regional policy.
While Oman will not lose its title of the UK's oldest friend in Arabia in the near future, given its exorbitant political and military dependence on the UK and the US, Haitham may find difficult to deflect the UAE's increasing infringement on Oman's sovereignty.
The UAE is Oman's primary economic partner and trade between them is only likely to grow further in the years to come. Many citizens from northern Omani regions also work in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, which has prompted concern in Muscat about the allegiance of the regions in the long term. Moreover, Abu Dhabi, Muscat and Riyadh have been competing for influence in eastern Yemen, which borders Oman, by supporting different local actors.
Oman's decision in 2018 to prohibit GCC nationals from owning property in governorates bordering Saudi Arabia and the UAE reflects Muscat's worry towards its neighbours.
There are fears, though, that the new sultan might prefer to turn an unfortunate blind eye to the UAE's imperial ambitions, in the name of Muscat's need for Abu Dhabi's money.
In 2013, Haitham became chair of the committee responsible for developing a new long-term national strategy, Oman Vision 2040.
Inspired by the same international consultancy companies that have force-fed plans across the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia, the preliminary document issued in January 2019 advocated for the privatisation of public infrastructure, education and health services, the reduction of subsidies and the introduction of regressive taxes disproportionately impacting the poor - all measures which have resulted elsewhere in increased inequalities and popular unrest.
Given this track record and Haitham's personal history in business, there are reasons to take a circumspect approach towards the Vision 2040 plans, especially since a further structural issue lies in the number of political decision makers holding business interests.
As everywhere in the world, the government's attempt to justify large-scale austerity measures for the sake of sustainable development, while merchant and royal elites preserve their own economic privileges and a secured flow of rents, has become unacceptable for young Omanis, who are not willing to grant Haitham the same degree of authoritarian paternalism that their parents gave Qaboos.
Indeed, if Haitham does pursue the top-down, neo-liberal reforms that have been announced, pointing towards a deepening concentration of wealth and power instead of promoting a new social contract that would offer a more equitable distribution of wealth from natural resources and a more participatory decision-making process, these are likely to provoke renewed popular frustrations and herald considerable turmoil.
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Former foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera and former minister Sripathi Sooriyarachcho who sat with the opposition in Parliament on Tuesday said they are forming a new political party.
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Crossing over to opposition ranks they said in a statement that the launching of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (Mahajana Wing) will be on Friday the 22nd June 2007 by paying floral tribute at the Bandaranaike Samadiya at Horogolla.
In a letter addressed to the speaker of parliament they said:
"The main coalition partner of the United Peoples' Freedom Alliance UPFA) Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), has seen its principles and political philosophy betrayed by the present Government. They have rejected the party's centrist policies and aretaking our country in an extreme direction"
They said that they are totally opposed to this path of extremism and in order to protect the principles of the SLFP,they have decided to sit in the Opposition benches of Parliament as MPs of the UPFA.
We shall represent the Mahajana Wing of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the MPs said.
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The decision to build a third runway at Heathrow is just the latest chapter in a saga which has gone on for almost 50 years, ever since Harold Wilson's Labour government appointed the Roskill Commission to look at a third airport for London.
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By Tim BowlerBusiness reporter, BBC News
Cublington, Maplin Sands and "Boris Island" have all been considered and turned down, and instead the existing airports at Gatwick, Stansted, Luton - and Heathrow itself - have all been expanded.
However, the UK has built no new runways in the south-east of England since Gatwick's concrete runway was built in the late 1950s (though London City did open, albeit with a much shorter runway, in 1987).
Of course, even after today, things will not be finalised. Following the government's announcement of its preferred option there will be a public consultation process, before a final decision is made and put to MPs for a vote next year.
With Heathrow currently operating at 98% capacity - a much higher level than many of its rivals - many argue that this is affecting the UK's economy.
So what are the costs of this much-delayed decision, and how does the UK compare with other countries when it comes to airports?
What's the delay costing the UK?
Nobody knows exactly how much the years of delay may have cost the UK economy.
Business groups like the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, the British Chambers of Commerce and others - as well as the TUC - have all called for a third Heathrow runway to keep the UK competitive.
The CBI warned that repeated delays could cost the UK more than £30bn by 2030 - with the country losing out on trade to Germany and France.
This summer, a cross-party group of MPs, the British Infrastructure Group (BIG), said the delay in building a new runway at Heathrow was costing the British economy up to £6m a day in lost value.
They argued that following the UK's vote to leave the EU, the need for a new runway was even more pressing.
"Everyone acknowledges we need more airport capacity but indecision is costing the economy dear," said Grant Shapps, who chairs the group.
The MPs based their costings on figures from the government-appointed Davies Commission, which recommended building a new runway at Heathrow after nearly three years of deliberations.
The Davies Commission said this could provide a boost of up to £147bn to the UK economy over the next 60 years - the equivalent of about £6m a day.
However, this £6m-a-day figure is not so much a "cost" as an estimate of the opportunities the UK could lose out on if it doesn't have a runway - and a prediction of what these might be worth.
In its examination of the figures, the independent fact-checking charity, Full Fact, says it is "better to treat the estimates as judgements... with a reasonable degree of uncertainty, rather than facts".
The Davies Commission itself says it is difficult to predict the impact of a new runway on the UK economy and has cautioned against attaching significant weight to the actual numbers.
Indeed the DfT has just said that a new runway at Heathrow will bring economic benefits to passengers and the wider economy worth up to £61bn over 60 years - which is less than half the Commission's figure.
But just looking at the net economic benefits won't tell you who wins and who loses - you also need to look at the social costs.
Passengers might enjoy cheaper travel and a better service, firms might be able to move goods and people in and out of the UK more easily - but those living close to Heathrow will face environmental costs and noise pollution, as well as public health concerns.
International expansion
Everywhere you look, it seems, somebody somewhere is building or extending an airport. While the UK has been in a holding pattern over a third runway at Heathrow, others have pushed ahead.
France has built Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport complete with four runways, Madrid and Frankfurt also have four runways apiece while the Netherlands has effortlessly added runways to Amsterdam Schiphol - it now has six.
The biggest expansion is being driven by the economic development of Africa and Asia - particularly China - and the accompanying growth in world passenger traffic. This has outperformed the growth in global GDP (except for a period between 2008-09) and is currently growing at 6.2%, says the European aerospace giant Airbus.
It reckons that between 2016 and 2035 global air traffic will grow at an average of 4.5% a year, with demand from countries like China outpacing growth in western Europe and North America.
The speed with which these projects have been conceived and implemented is breath-taking. For instance, Turkey's government only announced a third airport for Istanbul in 2013, but it is already about 30% built and is scheduled to open in 2018.
When all construction phases are finished in 2030 it will be one of the world's biggest airports, with six 3,750m runways and handling up to 200 million passengers a year.
By comparison, London's five airports currently handle 150 million passengers a year in total.
China: Major airport programme
Last year, consultants KPMG said that the world's major cities would build 50 new runways by 2036 - a third of them in China alone.
"The emerging markets matter because within about a decade over half the growth in the world will come from these economies," says KPMG's James Stamp.
Yet China's own aviation authority has even more ambitious plans. The aim is to build 66 new airports in the next five years, taking the number of the country's airports to 272 from 206, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said earlier this year.
Air travellers in China took four billion domestic trips and over 100 million international trips last year, says the CAAC, which is also planning to increase the number of domestic and international routes.
The country is spending almost $12bn (£9.8bn) on civil aviation infrastructure this year, and is stepping up construction of important new airports, including those in Beijing, Chengdu, Qingdao, Xiamen and Dalian.
Work on Beijing's second international airport, at Daxing, the largest construction project in Chinese civil aviation history is well under way. Construction began at the end of 2014 and is due to be finished by 2019. It will have seven runways and be capable of taking 75 million passengers by 2025.
Meanwhile, a new runway is also being built at Beijing's existing airport that should help accommodate an additional eight million passengers a year - the airport handled almost 90 million passengers last year.
And yet, sometimes there is such a thing as having too many airports - even in China.
A lot of smaller airports are not doing well in attracting travellers - the most obvious example being Libo airport in south-west China, which was built at a cost of $57m but handled only 151 passengers in all of 2009.
Spain: 'Ghost airports'
In Spain in the boom years, many cities decided that what they needed was an airport, adopting the mantra of "build it and they will come". Sadly it hasn't worked. As the country's economy slowed, many of its regional airports closed.
Out of Spain's 46 publicly run airports, only a handful are now making money - and almost half are "ghost airports" with barely any passengers and empty terminals.
Ciudad Real airport, 235km (146 miles) south of Madrid, was meant to be an alternative to the capital's Barajas airport.
It cost €1.1bn ($1.19bn; £979m) to build, has one of the longest runways in Europe (4,100m) and could handle 10 million passengers a year.
But instead it lies deserted. The last scheduled flight was in 2011 and it closed in 2012 after just three years of operation. It was finally sold at auction this year for €56m, a fraction of what it cost to build.
Germany: Berlin debacle
And then there is Germany, a country often epitomised as the acme of trouble-free planning and efficiency. That's very definitely not the case with the capital's new airport.
Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt International Airport was designed to replace two existing airports. In 2004 it was optimistically estimated that it would cost €1.7bn and open in 2012; it is now years overdue and billions over budget.
The scandal-plagued project has seen changing designs, failures with its fire-control system, as well as high-profile resignations and sackings.
Fast-forward to 2016 and the total cost is now €5.4bn - and that could well rise to more than €7bn, some say. The opening date has now been pushed back to 2017 - and it could be delayed yet further.
"There is still a chance for us to open in the second half [of 2017]," Karsten Muehlenfeld, who was appointed the airport's boss in 2015, told the German newspaper Handelsblatt recently.
"But... there are a lot of risks still in the building," he added. "We have a lot engineers who are working on that, but that doesn't mean you find a solution."
Dubai: World's busiest
Heathrow's most important rival comes not in Europe but in the Middle East, where Dubai has taken advantage of its location to become a major hub airport - overtaking Heathrow as the world's busiest international airport, and could soon become the busiest airport overall.
In addition to its existing airport - Dubai International - the emirate is also developing a purpose-built airport city 23 miles outside Dubai.
Al Maktoum International Airport will ultimately be able to handle 200 million passengers a year. So far it has mainly been used for freight.
The $30bn project is expected to be completed within six years, and is designed to handle up to 100 Airbus double-decker A380s simultaneously.
"Dubai is perfectly placed, being at the crossroads between east and west to take advantage of that growth [in air travel in Asia]," says Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths.
"There's a lot of airports in the world that won't be able to grow at the rates that they will need to grow to take advantage of that."
Perhaps the real challenge to Heathrow - and the UK, if you accept the importance of air travel to the economy - comes not from other airports but geography and changing patterns of global air travel.
Follow Tim Bowler on Twitter@timbowlerbbc
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It's not been a great centenary celebration for British Airways. The operator officially reached the 100-year landmark on 25 August, just as the prospect of this week's two-day pilots' strike was starting to panic tens of thousands of customers.
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By Russell HottenBusiness reporter, BBC News
To rub salt into the wounds, a report by reputation management company Alva placed BA 55th out of 65 airlines. Stranded passengers, IT failures, and lost data from a hack attack were among reasons cited for the airline's low ranking.
Over several years BA's profile has been defined by mishaps and operational issues, said Alastair Pickering, chief strategy officer at Alva.
"What initially may have seemed like bad luck or bad planning, can quickly morph into a narrative of underinvestment; the company putting shareholder interests above those of passengers and employees," he said. The BA name has too many negative connotations.
The days when the airline promoted itself as The World's Favourite Airline have long gone, and Brian Strutton, general secretary of the pilots' union Balpa, has a couple of reasons why: cost cutting and a dumbing down of the brand.
As he told the BBC: "Management want to squeeze every last penny out of customers and staff." This week's strike is about pay, but Mr Strutton says there is a wider context - a lack of trust and confidence in management.
Pilots, and other crew, have long complained about an erosion of benefits, such as poorer accommodation on long-haul stopovers. In the lean years when BA was recovering from the global financial downturn, staff say they gave up pay rises.
The airline's generous pension scheme has been closed, saving hundreds of millions of pounds.
BA, however, contend that the company has been recycling profits into new investment in the airline.
The company says it is spending £6.5bn on new aircraft, new cabins and WiFi on planes.
'Fight for survival'
While a captain's pay starts at about £78,000, according to Balpa, changes to the earnings structure mean it would now take much longer for a cadet to reach that level.
There was an expectation that once the airline recovered financially, staff would benefit. But Mr Strutton says it hasn't happened, which is why people whom he accepts are well paid are taking part in BA's biggest industrial action to date.
BA is part of International Airlines Group (IAG), the parent company for carriers that include Aer Lingus, Iberia, Level and Vuelling. But BA is the biggest and most profitable part of the group.
Last year, BA's operating profits rose 11.6% to £1.95bn. Profits were also up in the first six months of this year. In February, IAG raised its shareholder dividend and also declared a special payout.
In 2009, BA's then chief executive Willie Walsh (who now runs IAG) said the airline was in a "fight for survival". Intense competition on transatlantic routes and the popularity of budget carriers on European routes meant radical action was needed. The recovery cost almost 4,000 redundancies and everyone took a pay cut.
'Deplorable'
But now that those dark days are over, pilots want to share in the success of BA's turnaround, Mr Strutton says. "British Airways needs to wake up and realise its pilots are determined to be heard. They've previously taken big pay cuts to help the company through hard times. Now BA is making billions of pounds of profit, its pilots have made a fair, reasonable and affordable claim for pay and benefits."
BA insists that offering a share in the turnaround is exactly what it is doing. Alex Cruz, BA's chief executive, told the BBC that everyone at the airline, not just pilots, made sacrifices. "The company recognises that. This is why this 11.5% deal, way above inflation... is a very, very generous deal."
The impact on staff is only half the story, of course. Analysts say the reputational damage could be huge. Some 200,000 customers have been affected by the strikes, and with further action planned there will inevitably be lost bookings as travellers go elsewhere. Mr Cruz accepted that the strike would "punish customers" but also "punish our brand".
Duncan Lyon, whose flight was cancelled and who is now trying to get a refund of £400, echoed the feelings of many customers who have complained of having to make numerous telephone calls to BA and feel there has been a lack of communication. His message to British Airways? "You are a disgrace and your customer service is deplorable."
But, though serious, this strike is not the first time BA has weathered a customer storm. In addition to previous industrial action, the gradual dismantling of some of BA's premium services has been a running sore for many long-time customers. Be it the removal of free meals on short-haul flights, introduction of checked baggage charges, or the ending of complimentary newspapers, BA's loyal base has found many things to mourn about the airline.
Yet, passenger growth has continued year-on-year, and the airline and its subsidiaries carried about 45 million people in 2018. That may have a lot to do with BA's dominance of Heathrow Airport and a feeling among some travellers that they lack convenient alternatives.
But BA says it underlines the expansion of its route network and investment in services. Indeed, the airline has a £6.5bn spending programme underway - a four-year investment on 73 new aircraft, training and services. The investment is, Mr Cruz told the BBC, the biggest in BA's history.
For Alva's Mr Pickering, the investment could be key to "revamping the passenger experience" and addressing the "growing customer cynicism", adding: "The situation is by no means terminal."
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Drastically limiting people's contact with others seems to be helping many countries stem the spread of the coronavirus. But as economies slump and people become fatigued with rules, governments are weighing up how to ease lockdowns without risking a second wave of infections.
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By Joshua CheethamBBC News
One option being touted is to allow people to slightly expand the "social bubbles" - meaning they'd be able to see a select few friends and family.
According to a memo leaked to local media, authorities in Belgium were considering allowing residents to gather with 10 other people of their choice every weekend.
To close the network of possible infection, every member of the group would have to include the other nine people in their top 10. And once chosen, each person would be banned from meeting with anyone outside of their preferred 10.
It's unclear how this would be policed. For some, it could also create a new social nightmare - who do you pick? And what if the person you choose for your top 10 doesn't include you in theirs?
This idea was not included when Belgium announced its latest measures for lockdown easing on Saturday, but other countries are pondering similar moves.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told BBC Radio Scotland last week she was considering expanding the definition of "households" to allow small gatherings of people, "encouraging people who live alone to maybe match up with somebody else who is on their own, or a couple of other people to have almost kind of bubbles of people".
Meanwhile New Zealand, one of the earliest adopters of lockdown measures, has settled on an expansion policy. From next week, New Zealanders will be free to slightly extend their bubbles of contact to include close family, caregivers and those living in isolation - so long as they are living in the same town or city.
The country has seen a steady decline in new coronavirus cases in recent weeks. To date, it has had 18 deaths and 1,470 confirmed cases.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has also been praised for her compassionate public messaging during the outbreak, addressing the impact of lockdown on people's social lives and mental wellbeing.
But while a vaccine is being developed, many nations are hesitant to allow more social contact in case it spurs another wave of infection.
So could the UK expand its 'social bubbles'?
England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty has said some socially disruptive measures will have to be in place until the end of this year. But the extent of these steps, and how long they will be enforced, is difficult to predict.
When making their decisions, scientists and policymakers look to a key metric known as the effective reproduction rate (Rt) - the rate at which the virus is spreading among the population. Britain's current Rt is one, according to the latest data from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), meaning every person who contracts it, on average, will transmit the virus to one other person.
In several countries, governments have refrained from easing lockdown measures until their national Rt is significantly less than one. For this reason, the UK has extended its lockdown for the next few weeks.
Stefan Flasche, an associate professor at the LSHTM, agrees it's too early to relax restrictions in the UK. But when it is safe to do so, he says the extended social bubbles may be an important "coping mechanism" for people while the search for a vaccine continues.
"It's not designed to solve the pandemic, but it will help the social component," he says. "We will have the risk of Covid for a long time, so anything to keep society functioning would help."
'People just need a hug'
The lockdown's impact on mental wellbeing is already being keenly felt around the world. In the US, a national mental health helpline has seen a dramatic increase in people getting in touch, with an increase in calls close to 900%. Across the Atlantic, the NHS has opened its own hotline to support health workers during the pandemic, as staff face increasing pressure.
Andy Bell, deputy chief executive of the Centre for Mental Health in the UK, is unsure if a small expansion of social bubbles will be good for the public's mental health.
"It's important to understand that not everyone is experiencing this equally," he told the BBC.
"Lockdown is much harder if you're unsafe, if you're on a very low income, if you are in overcrowded accommodation. The challenges to mental health are far greater when you've got those risk factors anyway.
"We're going to have to learn in real-time now," he added.
But Brian Dow, the deputy chief executive of Rethink Mental Illness, believes such a policy would be beneficial, so long as it is managed well.
"It allows people to release that anxiety they may be feeling by being trapped indoors," he said. "People have been very creative about [socialising] online but frankly, right now, people just need a hug."
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An amateur sculptor who makes 3D pottery versions of classic album covers by The Beatles, Rolling Stones and more, is hoping to stage a public exhibition of his works after a private viewing proved successful.
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By Andrew WoodgerBBC News Online
Simon Buckmaster started evening classes in ceramics seven years ago and his love of music inspired him to create his takes on his favourite LP art.
"I'd always been interested in album covers and thought they would lend themselves to the ceramic form," he said.
"I pick them based on something that could look good in three dimensions - cars, an animal, buildings."
His first effort, currently dismantled and in storage, was Pink Floyd's Animals (featuring a pig flying over Battersea Power Station) and he then moved on to the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed - starting with the cake section, which on the original album was baked by Delia Smith.
"I was only going to do the cake bit and then a friend joked about whether I could finish the whole thing in time for the album's 50th anniversary in 2019," said Mr Buckmaster.
The 63-year-old former farmer, whose studio is at his house in Felsham in Suffolk, chose his favourite 12 pieces and mounted a private view at the John Peel Centre for Creative Arts in nearby Stowmarket, where he volunteers.
"I had no expectations beyond it being a hobby, but it seems album covers are of more widespread interest among friends and beyond," he said.
"It seems to put a smile on people's faces."
Mr Buckmaster was saddened by the rise of the smaller scale cassette and CD, along with downloading and streaming which has meant no packaging is required at all.
"Because the square canvas had gone it felt like it wasn't worth the artistic input anymore," he said.
"But with the renaissance of vinyl we are seeing the return of album art, notably a recent release involving Sir Peter Blake [The Who's last LP]."
The sculptor said that although he would like to exhibit his work further, he did not plan to sell any of his pieces.
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Police have named 18-year-old Mohammed Aman Ashraq as the man killed in a stabbing in Slough.
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Mr Ashraq, from the town, was found stabbed in Benjamin Lane on Saturday shortly before 20:00 GMT. He was taken to hospital where he later died.
A post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as a stab wound to the chest/abdomen.
Three 18-year-old men, also from Slough, arrested on suspicion of murder are in police custody.
Anyone with information, dash-cam footage or CCTV footage is urged to come forward.
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One of Facebook's independent child safety advisers has criticised the firm over a scheme that gave it access to teenagers' highly personal information, without taking more effort to verify their parents had given permission.
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By Leo KelionTechnology desk editor
Facebook said participating teens had provided signed parental consent forms.
But tests by the BBC and others suggested youngsters could easily sign up without getting permission.
Stephen Balkam said Facebook's "rather lax approach" was very worrying.
Facebook is still carrying out the "market research" on Android devices.
But it ended the effort on iPhones because it broke Apple's rules.
"Facebook Atlas is a questionable programme on a number of fronts," said Mr Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute and a member of Facebook's Safety Advisory Board.
"Most concerning is the rather lax approach to getting verifiable parental consent for the teens who participated.
"Given the tech backlash in general and the intense focus on Facebook's privacy policies, this is most unfortunate."
The BBC's North America technology reporter Dave Lee had been able to sign up to the app by registering himself as a 14-year-old boy and was never asked for proof of parental consent.
Facebook has blamed this on a third-party company it had employed to add volunteers.
"We reached out to the vendor in this instance, who explained that based on their initial investigation, an error was made in late 2018 that allowed participants under 18, who they normally would have blocked, to participate in the study," a spokeswoman told the BBC.
"This error has been corrected."
Extensive access
The existence of the scheme was revealed on Wednesday after an investigation by the TechCrunch news site.
It said the app involved had the potential to provide Facebook with "nearly limitless access" to a user's device, including:
Participants were told to keep the existence of the scheme and their involvement in it "confidential", and in return would earn $20 (£15.30) of gift tokens a month.
In an interview with Bloomberg, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said there was "nothing secret about it", despite the fact it caught many company-watchers by surprise.
Mr Balkam said that Facebook had never consulted its Safety Advisory Board about the matter.
Friends' data
Only volunteers based in the US and India were targeted.
But the EU's leading data protection watchdog has shown an interest.
"The Irish Data Protection Commission became aware of this story through yesterday's media reporting," said a statement for the regulator.
"Before we can make any assessment as to whether or not there are any data protection concerns, we will need to understand better to what extent, how and on what basis the personal data in question is being processed and used.
"We have asked Facebook to provide us with this information."
Part of the issue is that the social network may have copied messages and images sent to the volunteers from their friends, who would not have known of the scheme's existence.
However, Facebook has indicated that this was not the case.
"The app was designed to collect data that helps us understand how people use apps, not the content of the messages they send or receive," a spokeswoman told the BBC.
Google app
It has also emerged that Google ran a similar data collection scheme involving an iOS app called Screenwise Meter.
Like Facebook, it circumvented Apple's rules by offering the app to consumers via "enterprise certificates", which are supposed to be reserved for providing software to staff or other limited instances.
Google's programme had been in existence since 2012 but has now been pulled.
"The Screenwise Meter iOS app should not have operated under Apple's developer enterprise program - this was a mistake, and we apologise," it said in a statement to TechCrunch.
"We've been upfront with users about the way we use their data in this app, we have no access to encrypted data in apps and on devices, and users can opt out of the programme at any time."
Unlike Facebook's scheme, Google only signed up under-18s if they were part of a family group involving adults from the same household.
However, TechCrunch said it was once open to users as young as 13 without this caveat.
It is not known whether Apple plans to take any retaliatory action against the search firm.
However, the iPhone-maker did revoke Facebook's enterprise certificates on Wednesday.
That caused the social network's iOS test apps to stop working as well as other iPhone software it offered exclusively to staff, including a workplace chat app and an app to summon transport.
"Our internal apps are no longer operable and we are working with Apple to resolve this issue," the spokeswoman for Facebook said.
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The collapse of the West Coast Main Line bidding process, after the government found significant flaws, has once again sparked calls in some quarters to renationalise Britain's railways - 17 years after they were privatised.
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FirstGroup had been due to take over the running of the line from current operator Virgin Trains in December, but now the competition will have to be re-run after the government scrapped its decision on the franchise.
Here two transport experts argue the case for and against.
AGAINST: Dr Richard Wellings, head of transport, Institute of Economic Affairs
In many ways the railways have been successful over the last 15 years, with significant growth in passenger numbers and freight. Several routes have been upgraded, ageing trains have been replaced and safety has continued to improve.
Taxpayer subsidies have, however, reached unacceptable levels, at around £5bn a year. And costs are much higher than on comparable networks abroad.
In reality, the railways were not privatised properly. Politicians and officials retained tight control. As the current West Coast debacle shows, the government decides who runs the trains. It also decides levels of service, controls prices and determines the priorities for investment.
This is not genuine privatisation. Rail firms are essentially subcontractors for the state. And the high costs of the railways flow directly from these high levels of government involvement.
In particular, the government has imposed a complex artificial structure on the industry. The railways are suffocated by unnecessary bureaucracy. Highly paid lawyers, accountants, consultants and civil servants have benefited at the expense of taxpayers and passengers.
A further shift toward nationalisation would only make this worse. Nationalised industries are hugely inefficient and quickly become a drain on the economy, as we know from bitter experience in the 1960s and 1970s. Politicians would exert even more control over the railways, squandering money to buy off special interests and wasting yet more billions on uneconomic vanity projects.
In the 19th Century private firms built and operated a vast network without massive handouts from taxpayers. A similarly innovative and entrepreneurial private rail industry is the best way to improve outcomes and reduce costs. In particular, the same firms should be free to own the tracks and run the trains, as happened in the past. This is the best way of removing the political interference that is holding the industry back.
FOR: Bob Crow, general secretary, RMT
The sheer scale of the chaos over the botched award of the West Coast Main Line franchise played out in the media must have shocked even those who thought that the insanity of rail privatisation could not plumb any further depths.
Some 3,200 workers on the [West Coast] line, and hundreds more on associated fleet and service contracts, have been left hanging by a thread. Many of them live and work in areas with a rich and proud tradition as a cornerstone of the British railway industry. The reputation of Britain as the nation that gave the railways to the world has been dragged through the mud by this unmitigated and costly shambles.
Leave aside for a moment the corporate Punch and Judy show between First Group and Virgin and the Whitehall farce that even a scriptwriter on Yes Minister would have ditched as too ridiculous. This fiasco shines the spotlight on the greed and self-serving that has robbed billions in profits and dividends from our railways since privatisation two decades ago.
Now, at last, the vast majority of people are waking up to that cold, hard fact. Recent polls show 70% now support the RMT call for full renationalisation. Online polls show that figure at closer to 90%. The entire political class, including the Labour Party, need to be dragged out of their stupor on this central issue.
With fares set to rise by up to 11% in January to boost private profits, thousands of jobs at risk from the McNulty rail review cuts and ticket offices and stations being smashed up by the politicians and their business allies, the time for renationalisation is here right now.
With the East Coast run efficiently and safely in public hands, and contributing hundreds of millions back to the Treasury and investing in services rather than private profits, the West Coast should be next with the rest to follow under one, single, publicly owned and integrated umbrella.
Bring back British Rail? As an alternative to the greed and chaos on our railways laid bare over the past week? You bet.
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Olympic silver medallist Jamie Baulch, who was adopted, had never thought about searching for his birth mother.
He was adopted by a couple from Risca, near Newport in 1973 and was happy with his "marvellous" parents.
But a chance conversation with singer and now television producer Connie Fisher last Christmas left him wanting to say thank you to the woman who chose to go through with the pregnancy and gave birth to him.
After going through the adoption services, Baulch was overjoyed to find Teresa, who gave him up for adoption when she was a teenager.
Their first meeting three weeks ago was tinged with sadness because Teresa has terminal cancer.
But Baulch is overjoyed at being able to thank her for giving him his life. Here's his story.
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"I've never been interested in finding out who my mother was, although I always knew I was adopted. My parents Alan and Marilyn have been marvellous, and my two sisters and brother too. I've had the best possible life with them and they've done everything to support me in my athletics. We're all really close, we'll all be spending Christmas together with our families at my parents home near Risca.
"But I'm 41 now and have two kids of my own - Jay who's 19 and Morgan, 11. When you get older you suddenly realise how important life is, how precious it is, and I wanted to find out about where I came from to be able to leave that legacy for them. So I decided it was time to find my birth mother and just thank her for keeping me and not having an abortion when she found out she was pregnant.
"You know back in the 1970s, having a mixed race kid like I was was a big 'no, no'. Not that I ever experienced any problems growing up where I did in south Wales. I've never had anything like racial tensions - maybe because I'm so happy-go-lucky. What you see is what you get.
"My mum Teresa was a white 19-year-old and my Dad who was Jamaican and in the Army, serving in Germany. Her parents disowned her, she'd been a relationship for two years but my Dad left her.
"I really, really wanted to say thank you to Teresa for what she'd done, for being so strong, for deciding to have me and then to give me up for adoption.
"I'm a patron of Adopt Wales, and I just know that these things can go wrong if you don't follow the proper channels so I'm really pleased that I've done it this way and the people who've helped have been amazing.
"The whole process has been really smooth and I've learnt a lot and I've got a file of information this thick now about both my birth parents. But when the social worker told me that they'd found Teresa and she had got cancer, terminal cancer, I was shattered. You see it on the film, I just couldn't say anything, I just cry and have to walk away.
"We met three weeks ago in Devon, where Teresa, her husband Des - they've been together for years and years - and their daughter Jaya, who's my half-sister, live. Isn't that funny, she's called Jaya and I have a son called Jay.
"We met only three weeks ago. Teresa and I just hugged and hugged and then she just said my name 'Jamie'. You wait 41 years to hear your mum say your name, it's pretty special. She didn't know (before we met) that I was an athlete and everything. I was able to show her my Olympic silver medal, hang it round her neck. That was special.
"We talked and talked, we had so much to catch up on, and it's amazing, we've got the same eyes. And another strange thing, apparently Jaya and I met about 14 years ago when I went to her school promoting athletics. There's a photo of us together somewhere - I'd love to see it.
"Teresa told me she was adamant that she had made the right decision all those years ago - to have me and to give me up. She said that she couldn't have given me all that Marilyn and Alan have, and I wouldn't have had all the success I did. What a strong woman, what a beautiful woman.
"Since that meeting Teresa and I have spoken a lot and there's been some good news about the cancer. But I'm a realist and want to make the most of what time we have.
"It's horrible that she's so ill, but it is what it is. It's brilliant we've met. And the timing of this with us meeting now when she's ill is so strange, it might have been two years later and, who knows, we may never have met.
"I don't know what the future will hold. I'm taking my boys to meet Teresa, Des and Jaya in a couple of weeks time.
"Making the whole programme has not been easy. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
"But what I would say is if you're thinking of adopting, do it because you can find it just leads to beautiful things. And there are 300 kids in Wales waiting to be adopted right now and you could change their lives forever."
Jamie Baulch: Looking For My Birth Mum, 9 October, BBC One Wales, 20:00 BST.
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On Tuesday, Utah will become the first state in the US to have a "free-range" parenting law. Victoria Oldridge takes a look at how the law came to be and the debate over what's an appropriate amount of freedom for children.
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When Alexander Meitiv dropped his two children - 10 and six - off at a local park near their Maryland home to play for the afternoon in late 2014, he was not expecting the firestorm that would follow. A bystander called 911 after noticing the children walking home by themselves. Police stopped them and brought them back to the Meitivs' home.
Shortly after, the family was visited by Child Protective Services (CPS). Danielle Meitiv says they were threatened with arrest and removal of their children.
Months later, the Meitivs allowed their children to play at another park they'd been to "dozens of times" - but didn't come home by their curfew. It was only after the family called emergency services that they learned their children had been taken by police to CPS.
"They have the power to snatch our children from under our noses," Danielle Meitiv says. "That's when I decided to take the story public."
Both charges against the Meitivs were eventually dropped and policy changes were made in their local county, but the experience galvanised Danielle to run for local office. In her campaign material she describes herself as a "free-range mom".
But "there's no such thing as 'free range' parenting," she says. "This is normal parenting."
Cases like the Meitivs - and the debate they spurred about safety and independence for children - have led to the first "free-range" parenting law in the US.
On Tuesday, the Utah law will come into effect. It changes the state's definition of neglect to allow children of "sufficient age and maturity" to engage in independent activities like walking to and from school.
The bill's sponsor, State Senator Lincoln Fillmore, says the measure was inspired in part by a hope his own children "grow up learning how to be responsible for themselves".
Filmore confesses he doesn't yet know if he's a "free range" parent (his children are all under four years old), but that's not the point.
"My law is not an attempt to say that this method of parenting is better than another method; we're not making that judgement in law," he says.
"We're simply saying that for parents who do choose to give their kids some independence, there's protection in the law for you doing so."
While Filmore wasn't aware of any similar incidents in Utah, he says he wanted to be proactive about preventing parents from facing punishment for allowing their kids to do "all the things I did when I was a kid".
"Even though Utah's law was basically the same as the rest of the other states in that we say that neglect is illegal, we don't give guidance about what neglect really is." Filmore says. "We leave it to government agencies to interpret what neglect is."
One of the first mums to advocate "Free Range" parenting, Lenore Skenazy, believes allowing children to be unsupervised at times will help them become more effective adults.
She said she first realised there was a disconnect between what parents want and what they actually do when she was brought on a popular US morning programme to discuss a viral blog post about allowing her nine-year-old son ride the subway alone.
The staff of the programme all remembered having similar freedoms as children, but confessed they wouldn't allow their own children to do the same.
"We're being hypocrites because we're coming to the erroneous conclusion that any time a child is unsupervised they're automatically in danger and it's not true," she says.
So what's changed? "Parents' perception of how dangerous the world is has changed over the years," says Dr Gail Saltz, a professor of psychology at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Parental anxiety, Saltz says, is inflamed by a global, always-on news cycle, as well as increased connectivity on social media platforms, which recycles "over and over again" kidnappings, rape and other threatening incidents.
While violent crime has dropped sharply in the US in the past 25 years, Americans generally perceive crime rates are continuing to climb, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center.
Saltz also says present-day parenting is less communal than it used to be and has turned into a "competitive sport" for many. This results in parents' tendency to "helicopter" their children more often, Saltz says, to appear as though they're "winning" against their peers.
Researcher David Finkelhor, who heads up the Crimes Against Children Research Center, cautions lawmakers against jumping on the "Free Range" bandwagon, urging them to assess the broader picture before passing widespread legislation based on a few known cases.
"A key presumption of the Utah law is that police and CPS are investigating and charging parents for allowing their kids to navigate public spaces on their own," he says.
"We have over 1,000 neglect fatalities every year from kids left unsupervised around drugs, loaded guns and parked cars and in many cases neighbours or bystanders were concerned but failed to act."
Finkelhor believes the focus should be on better training for child protective services.
"The important thing is that when the police or CPS come to check-up, that they are able to distinguish, quickly, the worrisome situations from the false alarms.
"This is a problem better handled by training than legislation."
Whether other states will follow Utah's "free range" parenting precedent remains to be seen, however. Arkansas has already rejected a similar measure.
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Antiga Gahramanova has been waiting two decades for a resolution to the war which forced her from her home - but fears are growing that the so-called frozen conflict of Nagorno Karabakh could spring back to life, more ferociously than ever.
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By Damien McGuinness BBC News, Azerbaijan
A faded portrait hangs on the wall of the tiny room belonging to Mrs Gahramanova, who is now 80.
It shows a beautiful young couple with dark mournful eyes: Mrs Gahramanova's daughter and son-in-law.
Tears roll down her lined cheeks when she explains what happened to them during the war with Armenia two decades ago: "Armenian soldiers tied my son-in-law to a tree.
"And they burnt him alive, screaming. Then they fired a bullet into the side of my daughter's head."
Mrs Gahramanova and her daughter's four young children were forced to watch.
"Then they shot my six-year-old granddaughter dead," she said, wiping the tears away with her patterned headscarf.
"And they shot another granddaughter in the heel. They said it was to teach us a lesson."
She herself managed to escape. She hid under bushes for four days with the remaining three grandchildren before making her way through the snow, dragging the children with her.
For 20 years now Mrs Gahramanova has been living in a small room in a crumbling Soviet-era sanatorium. It is here that she has brought up her three orphaned grandchildren.
"The only thing that I want is to go back to my homeland, to die in the place where I was born. I just want to be able to go home," she says.
An estimated 600,000 Azerbaijanis, or 7% of the country's population, live similar existences in Soviet-era schools, hospitals or university buildings - families of five, six or seven people sharing one tiny room.
Often there is no bathroom - just a couple of foul squat toilets to be shared between hundreds of people.
In Armenia, meanwhile, around 10% of the population are refugees who fled from Azerbaijan, according to the Armenian political analyst, Alexander Iskandaryan.
Horrific atrocities were allegedly committed by both sides.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s hundreds of Armenians were killed in a series of brutal pogroms in Azeri towns. Armenians have accused Azeris of gang rapes, horrific violence, and attempted ethnic cleansing.
Strangers
Today attitudes are becoming more entrenched: a whole generation has grown up being fed a one-sided, and sometimes even false, interpretation of history, without ever meeting people from the other side of the border.
"For my students, Azerbaijanis are like something from the moon," says Mr Iskandaryan.
"They know more about Britain than about Azerbaijan. And the same goes for young people in Azerbaijan."
It was a brutal war over disputed territory, which broke out in 1991 amid the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The region of Nagorno Karabakh was in Azerbaijan but it was populated predominantly by Armenians.
Up to 30,000 people were killed and a million forced to flee their homes before a tenuous ceasefire was agreed in 1994. Most of those who were displaced during the war have never been allowed back.
Their homeland is now a war zone.
The disputed region is controlled by Armenia but Azerbaijan wants it back.
Hundreds of kilometres of deep trenches zigzag along the front line in western Azerbaijan. It all looks like something out of World War I.
At regular intervals there are raised parapets, protected by sandbags, with gaps to shoot through.
On the other side, just a few hundred metres away across no-mans-land and the battered remains of a vineyard, you can see a raised bank of earth, where Armenian snipers are stationed - presumably looking right back at us.
Both countries have signed a ceasefire but an official peace agreement has never been agreed. Peace talks meanwhile have stalled.
Soldiers say that shooting breaks out here on a daily basis, telling us that there was an exchange of fire at this position just a quarter of an hour before we arrived. Both sides blame the other, and say they only shoot in response.
Conscripts
What is clear is that over the past two years at least 60 people have been killed along the front line. Mostly soldiers, who on the Azeri side are often baby-faced conscripts in their teens or early twenties.
"I'm very proud to serve my homeland," says Elham Mammadov, a 19-year-old Azeri conscript, who has been stationed here at the front for eight months.
"And every day, every hour, I want the war to start, so that we can liberate our homeland from the Armenian aggressor."
He may sound like he is ready for a fight but he looks nervous.
Azeri villagers are also regularly fired on by snipers. They tend cattle and plough fields amid the remains of bombed-out villages within metres of the front.
There are fears the situation could again spiral out of control and, with more sophisticated weaponry available to both sides, analysts say a return to war could have even worse consequences.
"There are now offensive missile systems capable of hitting Baku and Yerevan, the capitals of Azerbaijan and Armenia," says Lawrence Sheets from the International Crisis Group.
"This is a conflict which has the danger of pulling in major regional powers."
That would mean Nato-member Turkey on one side and Russia on the other. And with Iran next door, and the region a crucial source of oil and gas for Europe, all-out fighting would have serious implications.
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Campbell Corrigan has been named acting Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police following Stephen House's appointment to head Scotland's new single force.
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The former Deputy Chief Constable was confirmed in the top job at a meeting of Strathclyde Police Authority in Glasgow on Monday.
The post vacated by Mr Corrigan will now be filled by former Assistant Chief Constable Rhuaraidh Nicolson.
In turn, his position will be filled by Chief Superintendent Russell Dunn.
Mr House was appointed last week to head up Scotland's new single police force, which comes into being in April next year.
He has already said that as many as 3,000 support staff could be lost as he seeks to merge eight forces into one.
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The husband of the actress Barbara Windsor revealed on Thursday that she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2014. He told The Sun newspaper that it had become more difficult to hide her condition so he now wanted people to know.
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Deciding how to respond to an Alzheimer's diagnosis can be difficult for families and those suffering from it. Who do you tell and how much?
Three people who have been in that position shared their stories with us:
'My mum tried to hide it from everyone'
Dee lives in Bedford. Her 85-year-old mother was diagnosed six years ago and did not tell anyone except Dee and her brother. Only recently have more people found out, but for years she hid her diagnosis.
"She just stopped going out, she used to go to the bingo three or four times a week and now never goes. She started to talk a lot less as well. It's a shame it's such an isolating illness. They lose their confidence and they won't get anywhere without someone they are confident with.
"She believed that people would think she was 'doolally' so tried to hide it from everyone. Sadly she was right to an extent, some people have reacted badly to hearing she has dementia, they physically withdraw from her and don't talk to her.
"I think this is because they are afraid and it brings it home to them that, as they get older, they might suffer from it themselves. When people react like this it is extremely hurtful to my mother, she is still the same person, she just has a terrible memory and let's be honest don't we all, as we grow older, have problems remembering things?
"I wish she had been more open about it. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's an illness. If I mention it she says she doesn't want to talk about it. It is very hard for her to accept"
Five ways to spot if someone has Alzheimer’s
How diet 'helps with my Alzheimer's disease' - BBC News
'Keep your sense of humour'
Brian Forward lives in Wandsworth with his partner Margaret Rickwood who has Alzheimer's.
"Six months prior to diagnosis, Margaret started to become confused and her personality became off-kilter. Up to then, she had always been a very bright and bubbly person. We'd been together for 36 years and Margaret had done a variety of jobs including working as waitress at Lords Cricket Ground.
"I felt that something wasn't right, but put it down to medication that she was taking for a heart condition. When she was finally diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I wasn't totally surprised.
"We decided not to keep Margaret's diagnosis secret. I'm lucky that with the help we receive from her GPs and social services, we are coping to a degree. The most important thing is to keep your sense of humour.
"The GP has prescribed medication which has controlled the worst symptoms of the condition. Margaret is also able to go to a day centre four days a week which gives me some time for myself. Hobbies such as photography help me to relax as does meditation.
"Imagine shaking a tall shelf of books. The books at the top will fall off and the ones at the bottom will stay. That's how Alzheimer's works, the newest memories will go and the older ones will stay."
'Reactions have been varied'
Trevor Clapp lives in Slough. He and his sister look after their father who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's four years ago
"My sister and I are dealing with my father's dementia following the sudden death of our mother who cared for him. What is apparent now is that she helped him, probably so much, that the disease was somewhat covered up. He now lives in a local home and we have been very open about telling people and sharing his experience.
"Reactions to my father have been varied but it is very clear that there is no public understanding of the disease. He got into an innocent argument at the local shop where he's been going for years. Rather than considering that a man of 85 might be suffering in some way, the owners leapt to the conclusion he was being wilfully problematic and promptly banned him from the shop."
By Bernadette McCague, BBC UGC & Social News
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Foreword - By Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon
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The Scottish government has published what it would like to see happen after Brexit. Here is a summary of the 49-page long "Scotland's Place in Europe" paper.
Chapter One - Introduction
Chapter Two - What is the European Single Market and why does it matter?
Chapter Three - Protecting Scotland's Interests
The Norway Model
Questions and answers
Chapter Four - Further devolution and consequences of Brexit
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Sunderland City Council has proposed a council tax freeze for a third time.
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The measure, part of the council's 2013/2014 budget, was unveiled at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
If approved, it will be the third year running that council tax has been frozen in the city. A final decision will be made 6 March.
Sunderland City Council leader Paul Watson, said the proposal recognised the "challenges" facing all residents of the city.
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The new judging line-up for the UK version of X Factor has been unveiled and Cheryl Cole is absent from the list, despite speculation she would return after her swift and controversial departure from the US show. So who are the key players in the unfolding X Factor drama?
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Simon Cowell
Simon Cowell announced he was quitting his role as judge on the UK show to concentrate on the launch of the series Stateside but took a long time to unveil the much-debated US line-up.
Cole was announced as a US judge on 5 May but three weeks later, and after filming had begun, reports leaked that she had been dropped over concerns about her accent.
The US judging panel consists of Cowell, his former American Idol co-star Paula Abdul, Antonio LA Reid and Cole's replacement Nicole Scherzinger.
Cowell has always been supportive of Cole and was widely seen as a driving force in her move to the US, recently saying of the singer: "You meet someone special a few times in your life and this girl is special."
He hasn't commented on Cole's departure from the US show.
Will.i.am
Black Eyed Peas singer Will.i.am, also known as William Adams, took over Cole's management a month ago, after she parted with her long-time manager Hilary Shaw.
Newspaper reports have speculated that the pair ignored calls from TV bosses about her return to the UK show.
Will.i.am appeared on X Factor last year to help Cole with contestants during the 'judge's houses' stage of the competition.
Cole supported the Black Eyed Peas during their UK tour last year. She also featured on Will.i.am's single Heartbreaker, while he returned the favour on her second single, 3 Words.
He hasn't commented on Cole's departure from the US show.
The UK judges
After much speculation about who would replace Simon Cowell, Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue as judges on the UK show, the four-person line-up was finally announced on 30 May.
Original judge Louis Walsh will be joined by Take That's Gary Barlow, former Destiny's Child singer Kelly Rowland and N-Dubz star Tulisa Contostavlos in the upcoming series.
Cowell said of his new team: "These four are totally up for it, each of them bring a different attitude."
The first auditions will take place in Birmingham on 1 June.
Dannii Minogue revealed that she would be stepping down on 14 May because of clashes with her judging commitments on Australia's Got Talent.
Web of PR people
Trying to find out who's pulling the strings when it comes to X Factor is a complicated affair.
The show is produced by Talkback Thames, who first developed the show with ITV and Cowell back in 2004.
When the UK judging line-up was announced quotes were released from ITV's Director of Television Peter Fincham, Cowell (who owns production company Syco) and Director of Entertainment from Talkback Thames Richard Holloway.
During every X Factor series all the judges have their own PR agents.
Publicist Max Clifford represents Simon Cowell and recently revealed that Cowell wanted Dannii Minogue to stay on as an X Factor judge despite reports to the contrary.
No one has officially commented on Cheryl's position on X Factor.
Media stunt?
Since Cole's very public departure from the US show, some have speculated that the whole scenario is a PR stunt, designed to increase interest in the show.
The announcement about Cole's exit was leaked the same day as rival Simon Fuller's show, American Idol, revealed its winner.
In a similar turn of events Louis Walsh was briefly replaced back in 2007 by choreographer Brian Friedman but after a media furore he returned to the panel.
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Transgender issues are in the spotlight now more than ever before.
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Figures in the world of entertainment and sport, like American television personality, Caitlyn Jenner and boxing promoter Kellie Maloney have come out as transgender in a very public way.
But what about children and teenagers in Northern Ireland facing the same journey?
A new BBC Radio Ulster documentary explores why some young people believe they were born in the wrong body and the impact it can have on their families.
'Difficult journey'
Andrew is 13 and just like any other teenager, except for one thing - he was born a girl.
At the family home just outside Newry, Andrew told the BBC that he realised that he was a boy at about the age of 11.
"I went through a bit of a hard time, my parents went into my school to tell my teachers, so everyone knew," he said.
""I cried because I had to wear a school skirt. I thought it was girly - it just wasn't me."
Andrew has not had any surgery to change his body.
Like all adolescents in the UK, he can not do that until he turns 18.
'Emotional turmoil'
But Andrew looks like - and lives as - a boy. His Mum and Dad - Fiona and Ian - say they have known since he was young.
"He never had to make a choice or a decision about this, it just was," they said.
"It is a difficult journey because he is a teenager, but there was no real emotional turmoil for Andrew."
Stephen McPherson's son, Conor, is further along his transgender journey than Andrew.
Conor was born female but realised as a teenager that he identified as being male.
Now a young adult, his parents have fully supported his decision to transition, but Stephen said it has been tough at times.
'Put on a face'
"I personally don't feel I have lost anything because Conor is still here, but my wife was grieving for a daughter that was slowly disappearing," he said.
"You are grieving for someone who is going to come home that day for their dinner, who is going to sit and chat with you - but you can't visibly grieve, you have to put on a face so your son knows that you are supporting him."
Until 2014 there was no dedicated NHS service in Nothern Ireland for adolescents struggling with or questioning their gender identity.
That changed when 'Knowing Our Identity' (KOI) was set up at Forster Green Hospital in south Belfast.
Since then, 134 young people from across Northern Ireland have sought help from KOI - that's at least one person every week.
Hormone blockers
KOI manager Billie Hughes said the assessment process was long, detailed and about getting the individual "on the right path".
Drugs known as hormone blockers, which delay puberty, can also be given to young people if they want it.
"They do what they say," said Billie Hughes.
"If it is girls, they block the oestrogen and if it is a male they block the testosterone. It stops things like body hair, breast development and periods."
Billie Hughes added: "This kind of intervention can lead to more successful surgery and physical transition down the line."
School
One of the fears some parents have is how their transgender child will cope at school. How will teachers and students respond?
Stormont's Department for Education published guidance in 2015. It is suggested that pupils be taught about gender identity issues in a "sensitive and non-confrontational way".
However it is up to individual schools to decide if they want to raise the subject in classrooms.
Ellen Murray from Genderjam NI, a group that supports young transgender people, said more needed to be done.
'Angry parents'
"Schools could do with more guidance and statutory help from the Department for Education," she said.
"Many of them are afraid that if they accommodate a young transgender person, then they will get angry parents on the phone."
But not everyone agrees.
Peter Lynas from the Evangelical Alliance says trangender people should be treated with compassion but he warns against telling schools and students what they should think.
"We do need to talk about language (around transgender issues) but schools are in a very difficult position because they are being asked to affirm or deny somebody's identity," he said.
"They are not really equipped to do that but nonetheless they are forced into it. I think that is problematic."
The Future
Whatever the moral, medical or educational debates around being transgender, for young people here who have transitioned it is about living a happy and authentic life.
Stephen McPherson says his son Conor is where he is meant to be. An outgoing young man, with a fiancee, friends and family who support him.
As for Andrew, he says he is happy and that life is much easier for him as a boy. Dad Ian has some concerns about his son's future but remains optimistic.
"Our worry as parents is the world that Andrew will grow up in. Hopefully it will be more tolerant and knowledgeable about trans issues."
Transgender Teens: Born in the wrong body airs on BBC Radio Ulster at 12:30 BST on Sunday
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She smiles as she clutches the sustainable packaging of her ethically-sourced dog snacks. Chris, from East Kilbride, put her redundancy money, with some grant funding, into a new firm, Pawsitively Natural.
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Douglas FraserBusiness and economy editor, Scotland
She started by baking biscuits for one of her own dogs which has a sensitive stomach. She uses ingredients of a quality that humans could eat. Back by input from university nutritionists (one of three university collaborations), a key ingredient is seaweed sourced from the Isle of Lewis.
This is hardly the highest-tech of products. The next Google it ain't. But it's not short of ambition. Chris reels off figures for the size of the dog snack market in Britain, and then starts talking billions of dollars in the US. That's where she wants to take the business.
Such ambition is expected, if not required, among the 35 temporary residents now at the Entrpreneurial Spark, a 'hatchery' for business 'chicklets' in Glasgow, which is partnered with similar units in Ayrshire and Edinburgh, each mentored by one of Scotland's more successful entrepreneurs; Sir Willie Haughey, Sir Tom Hunter and Ann Gloag.
They are conditioned into reeling off metrics for their markets. 'Go Do', goes the mantra. "Get comfortable with being uncomfortable."
Although participants were given up to a year of free accommodation and the opportunity to network and learn from each other, as well as mentoring support, the pace of start-ups is being accelerated. From August, each successful applicant will have only five months, before being pushed out the nest.
Spring in the step
This story has become better known due to The Entrepreneurs, two TV documentaries recently broadcast on BBC Scotland, following several people taking part in the E-Spark process. The publicity has brought in a lot of applications for the next intake.
And the mindset is becoming more familiar to more Scots, if the latest findings from Strathclyde Business School are any guide.
Professor Jonathan Levie and his research team have been feeding Scottish data into a giant programme of measuring early-stage entrepreneurial activity across 27 countries.
And until recently, it's been a fairly dismal experience. Two years ago, he was talking about 'a lost generation' through the low and declining level of business start-ups in Scotland. Scotland seemed stuck for keeps in the bottom quartile.
This week, however, he's got a spring in his step. The story from Scotland is showing signs of turning round. It's into the second quartile, while some of its 'Arc of Prosperity' northern European role models have fallen behind.
This is not sufficiently established to be a clear trend, but there have been a couple of years of heading in the right direction. And the 2012 figures look like an acceleration of that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-22787173
Near necessities
There is no definite explanation, but there are some pointers. Graduates are a significant part of the growth. And as the proportion of graduates in the population is itself rising, following university expansion over the past 25 years, there may be built-in growth to come.
That's partly because university courses are encouraged to stimulate students to think in terms of striking out and setting up on their own.
It is also an unfortunate truth that the graduate jobs market has been grim for years, and looks set to stay that way. Setting up in business is not only possible, but a near necessity for many.
It's also being forced on many people who are being pushed out of salaried jobs, often with a reasonably generous pay-off, which - like Chris Louttit - they plough into the Next Thing.
Don't assume they're all living their dreams. The anecdotal evidence is of many mid-career people struggling to make a go of the self-employed or freelance life, perhaps doing what they had already been doing.
Companies can use them as and when they wish, as a means to flex their workforce. But that means it's a job without the security of regular employment. Productivity is poor.
This is not an easy time to be carving a market niche. And it's striking how much the improvement in Scotland's approach to entrepreneurial activity is among those with little aspiration to grow firms and expand employment.
Amid all this good news on business formation, the number of people wanting to grow firms and employ more people hasn't shifted much at all.
Homecoming
And then there are the migrants. These interest me, just as they are a focus of Professor Levie's work. He's a migrant into Glasgow himself, coming from Ireland.
It's no surprise that migrants have more entrepreneurial nous than the stay-at-homes. They've got the get-up-and-got for them to have got up and gone. Making a new start is what they're all about, so a new start in business is natural territory. And there's not so much of a link between degree level education.
In Scotland, you can easily see that Asian-Scots are no strangers to business formation. But it's clear from this research that incomers from within the UK are also much more likely to be setting up in business, or at least to be actively planning to do so. That's particularly true of those over 50.
The reverse effect - of Scots with innovation and success in their sights, heading south of the Border - is also evident. And there's nothing new about that.
But Professor Levie highlights his concern that those aged between 30 to 50 are particularly likely to have left, and he asks us to consider the question of what could be done to keep the 40,000 exiled Scots he reckons could be contributing to the Scottish economy. That's out of 733,000 people born in Scotland most recently counted living elsewhere in the UK.
Contrasting his observation of Scotland with his experience of back home in Ireland, he says emigration is a trauma there. He talks of Irish mothers seeing it as their role to post details of local jobs to get their offspring back to the Emerald Isle. He says that virtually every village will have a Welcome Home Week, with events to entice the wandering Irish back home.
Scotland's emphasis is on more on building a network of those with an affinity and a desire to be involved from a distance. The Homecoming in Scotland, in its second incarnation next year, seems aimed more at tourism spend by the settled diaspora of Scots, with dollars to burn rather than an itch to get back to put down roots in the old turf.
Giant magnet
But what if it were different? What about attracting back those 40,000 exiles? What would that take?
In practical terms, the team at Strathclyde's Hunter School of Entrepreneurship suggest a better focus on growing firms, both in getting the right skills in place and the right finance. That means better exit routes for angel investors, to allow venture capital to step in and move the firm to the next level, while the angel investor returns to help with entry at the ground floor.
They also talk about better connections, and mentoring by role models, all of which seems to me to be rather abundant - if you're not too backward about coming forward.
And then there's that familiar London effect. Not only is it a giant magnet for people with ideas, skills and energy. But it also spins out business activities as they expand, as well as people looking for quality of life. Chris Louttit couldn't be happier, she says. After more than 20 years in an administrative role in the Crown Office, she took redundancy, and now she's living the dream.
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There has been speculation
military cuts
could see the famous names of Scottish battalions - such as the Black Watch - dropped.
Here the BBC website looks at some of Scotland's "lost" martial titles of the past.
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Scots soldiers played a prominent role in the British Army during the American War of Independence.
In his book, Patriot Battles, historian Michael Stephenson said: "They were to become perhaps the finest infantry in the war against America."
He said the
71st Foot (Fraser's Highlanders) saw more action than any other British regiment, fighting skirmishes and in major battles.
Its soldiers fought at the battles of New York 1776, Brandywine 1777 and in 1779 at Stony Point, Briar Creek and Savannah.
Also, at Camden 1780 and Cowpens, Guildford Courthouse and Yorktown in 1781.
The
Lovat Scouts (Sharpshooters) were formed by Highland laird Lord Lovat in 1916 as an element of his Lovat Scouts, which were first raised for service in the Second Boer War.
The sharpshooters were organised into nine observer groups, each made up of an officer and 20 men.
Sent to France, they operated close to enemy positions and gathered intelligence on their strength and movements.
Angus Fairrie, in his book Queen's Own Highlanders (Seaforth and Camerons): An Illustrated History, said the sharpshooters were highly valued for their skills in reconnaissance.
The historian said that after the end of World War I it was suggested an observer group should be attached to every British division.
In World War II, the
Lovat Scouts were posted to defend the Faroe Islands in 1940.
While garrisoned on the north Atlantic islands, Uist-born scout Angus MacPhee took ill.
Mr MacPhee was first sent home to the Western Isles, but his family later sought medical help and he was eventually admitted as a psychiatric patient at Craig Dunain hospital in Inverness.
The former soldier, who died in 1997, said barely a word for 50 years and wove clothing and rope from grass and leaves.
Each autumn Mr MacPhee would watch as his intricate and carefully put together items were swept up in the hospital's grounds and burned along with fallen leaves.
Some of his work, including a pair of boots and a jacket, survived and he is celebrated in a mural on Crown Road in Inverness.
The rest of Lovat Scouts returned to Scotland in 1942 to guard the Royal Family during stays at Balmoral.
However, the scouts were eventually granted their wish to see action on the front line when they were sent to Italy in 1944.
In 1945, they posted to Austria to hunt fleeing Nazi and SS soldiers.
The scouts were disbanded in 1946.
The
Liverpool Scottish was raised to fight in the Second Boer War in 1900 and, at first, mainly recruited Scots living in the English city.
In 1937, it became a territorial battalion of the
Cameron Highlanders, based in Inverness.
Its soldiers wore the Forbes tartan and saw action during World War I. The regiment later became part of the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment.
Items connected to the Liverpool Scottish will be displayed at a revamped museum at historic Fort George, near Inverness.
Actor Hugh Grant launched the public appeal to help raise funds for the museum renovation project in November 2010.
His grandfather Col James Murray Grant, from Inverness, received the Distinguished Service Order for bravery during World War II.
The
Seaforth Highlander was depot commander at Fort George after the war.
Grant's father Capt James Murray Grant also served with a Highlands regiment.
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John Nettles, who has been appointed an OBE for services to drama, will always be associated with the character of Detective Sgt Jim Bergerac, an officer based on Jersey, whose family always seemed to have some sort of link to the crime he was investigating.
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Born in 1943, he was adopted as baby and brought up in St Austell, Cornwall.
His thirst for acting began while he was a history and philosophy student at Southampton University.
He has had two stints at the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in productions of The Winter's Tale and Anthony and Cleopatra.
But he will be forever associated with Bergerac and Midsomer Murders, series where crime seems to gravitate towards him.
Bergerac was set in Jersey, and although the island provided an idyllic setting for the BBC drama, as Bergerac drove around its lush landscapes in a 1947 Triumph Roadster, it often dealt with darker issues, including the lead character's alcoholism.
Reluctant heartthrob
Bergerac was a boon to tourism on the Channel Islands, and Nettles even wrote books on the region, including Bergerac's Jersey and John Nettles' Jersey.
At the peak of the show's popularity, its star became a reluctant heartthrob - with the News Of The World running the headline "All The Girls Want To Grasp Nettles".
His female fans send letters that can be "eye-watering in their detail," he told the Daily Mail earlier this year.
"I have one particularly excitable correspondent, in Norway, whose letters have become fruitier as the years have gone by," he noted.
Bergerac ran from 1981 to 1991, after which Nettles rejoined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and took one-off roles in series including Boon and Heartbeat.
He also published the semi-autobiographical book, Nudity In A Public Place, which talked with dry wit about his status as a "mini-celebrity".
In the 1990s he was approached about appearing in another detective series, this time based on the Inspector Barnaby novels by Caroline Graham.
It was set in and around the fictional county of Midsomer (Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire provided the real-life locations) which on the outside gave the appearance of being a quintessentially English region, but harboured a seemingly endless string of gruesome killings.
Midsomer Murders, which began in 1997, has been a huge hit for ITV, and has sold around the world.
Nettles recently announced he was quitting as Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby at the end of 2010. However, the series will continue without him. Neil Dudgeon will step into the lead role as Tom Barnaby's cousin, DCI John Barnaby.
When he finishes the Midsomer tenure, Nettles will have chalked up 75 episodes.
"I never thought when we were filming the pilot, The Killings at Badger's Drift, in 1996 that I would go on to film so many episodes," he said.
"I looked at David Jason when he said he was quitting A Touch Of Frost and I realised that with him giving up the mantle, I would be the oldest detective in the business. My final episode will be the 82nd. That's enough for anyone.
"It has been a joy to be involved in such a long-running series, with so many good actors and great storylines."
Nettles now lives in Evesham, Worcestershire, with his second wife, Cathryn Sealey. He has a daughter, Emma, from his first marriage.
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Hours after the last chord sounded at Glastonbury the great clean-up has begun.
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The festival was brought to a close by Ed Sheeran on the Pyramid Stage, just six years after his debut at one of the festival's smallest venues.
He attracted a much younger audience than Friday and Saturday's headliners, Radiohead and Foo Fighters.
There is no Glastonbury in 2018, meaning there are 731 days until Worthy Farm opens its gates again.
Pictures from agencies
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A body has been found during a search for a missing 25-year-old Caithness man Stefan Sutherland.
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Police said the discovery was made by a member of the public on the shoreline near Occumster at about 12:17.
A police spokesman said the body has not been indentified. Mr Sutherland's family has been informed.
Mr Sutherland was reported missing from Lybster on 6 September. Police, search dogs and a mountain rescue team have been involved in searches for him.
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Islanders have been asked not to recycle cartons in Guernsey until next week.
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Public Services said a mechanical fault had meant the carton banks around the island could not be emptied.
The department said it was doing all it could to ensure the full recycling facility was back up and running as soon as possible.
People have been asked to store their cartons until normal service has been resumed.
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India's economy is the 10th largest in the world, but millions of the country's workers are thought to be held in conditions little better than slavery. One man's story - which some may find disturbing - illustrates the extreme violence that some labourers are subjected to.
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By Humphrey HawksleyBBC News
Dialu Nial's life changed forever when he was held down by his neck in a forest and one of his kidnappers raised an axe to strike.
He was asked if he wanted to lose his life, a leg or a hand.
Six days earlier, Nial had been among 12 young men being taken against their will to make bricks on the outskirts of one of India's biggest cities, Hyderabad.
During the journey, they got a chance to escape and ran for it - but Nial and a friend were caught and this was their punishment.
Both chose to lose their right hands. Nial had to watch while the other man's hand was cut first.
"They put his arm on a rock. One held his neck and two held his arm. Another brought down the axe and severed his hand just like a chicken's head. Then they cut mine.
"The pain was terrible. I thought I was going to die," says Nial.
Now free, and his injury healing, he is back home deep in the countryside of Orissa. There is no electricity or sanitation. Many of the villagers are illiterate.
"I didn't go to school. When I was a child I tended cattle and harvested rice," Nial says, sitting on the earth outside the cluster of huts which are his family's home.
It is from communities like this that people are liable to be drawn into a system known as bonded labour. Typically a broker finds someone a job and charges a fee that they will repay by working - but their wages are so low that it takes years, or even a whole lifetime. Meanwhile, violence keeps them in line.
Activists and academics estimate that some 10 million bonded labourers are working in India's key industries, indirectly contributing to the profits of global Indian brands and multinationals that operate in the country and have helped to transform India into an economic powerhouse.
Laid out beside Nial are a number of old plastic sacks. His family ekes out a living by unravelling them and turning the individual threads into binding cord. Awkwardly, Nial wedges a wooden spool of thread between his toes, and holds another in his remaining hand. His brother, Rahaso, sits next to him doing the same.
Nial struggles to wind the cord, his brow creasing. His brother works quickly, outpacing him. Then the spool flips out of Nial's hand. Rahaso gives it back him. Disappointment and anger flood through Nial's face.
It was in early December that Nilamber, a friend from a nearby village told Nial about a job in brick kiln for which he would supposedly get 10,000 rupees ($165; £98) up front. It was all being organised by one of Nilamber's neighbours, Bimal, who was trying out working as a broker.
Nial, Nilamber, Bimal, and 10 others travelled by bus to meet the main contractor.
"I knew he was a rich man. He had a motorcycle and wore a tie," says Nial.
The contractor showed them the money, but took it straight back. They would not in fact get it up front, he said, but some time later. Nial nonetheless believed he would still be paid and agreed to work - although illegal, it meant he had technically taken the bond.
The men were taken the next day to the railway station at Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgargh state. Then, instead of being sent on a short journey to a brick kiln as they had been promised, they discovered the train was heading 500 miles (800km) south to Hyderabad, a thriving city and a pillar of India's economic success. But some in the group had already heard stories about forced labour there, and got ready to rebel.
When the train stopped at a station, all except Nial and Nilamber escaped. Instead of continuing to Hyderabad the contractor took them back to Raipur, spending some of the journey on his mobile phone, arranging their reception.
"His henchmen were waiting for us," recalls Nial. "They held us and put their hands over our mouths to stop us shouting."
At this point, Bimal slipped away. Nial and Nilamber were taken back to the contractor's house and held hostage.
"They called our families telling them to pay money for our release," says Nial. "They beat us hard so my brother could hear me crying in pain down the phone."
The contractor demanded that Nial pay him 20,000 rupees (US$330; £196) for his release but his family was unable to raise the money. He and Nilamber were held for five days. During the day they were made to work on the contractor's farm. In the evenings they were beaten.
On the sixth day, his kidnappers were drinking heavily. The contractor and five of his men drove them to remote woodland. First they were held down and beaten. Then, they were made to kneel - and mutilated.
"They threw my hand into the woods," he says. "I wrapped my left hand around my wound and held it tight. I squeezed it to stop the bleeding until the pain became too much and I released it. Then I had to grip it again."
A basic survival instinct took over. They followed a stream to a village, where they were able to bind their wounds and cover them with a plastic bag. Then they took a bus to a nearby town to seek hospital treatment.
Nial stiffens as he tells the story. Often he stops to gather his thoughts.
He has now begun a two-year programme run by a charity, the International Justice Mission (IJM), to help him recover from his ordeal. As part of his rehabilitation, he joins a group of more than 150 people at a counselling session in Orissa - all of whom have been freed from bonded labour in the past few months, mostly in brick kilns.
Among them are dozens of children. Most of the men have been badly beaten. There are women who have been raped, and two who were kicked in the stomach while pregnant - the husband of one was thrown to his death from a train.
In a scene reminiscent of the era of slavery in the US, they sing about their troubles: "We will overcome our pain. We will be free," goes the chorus.
For everyone, the first year of the programme is about re-learning how to express the most basic of human emotions.
"They have been bought and traded as property and that is how they see themselves," explains Roseann Rajan, a counsellor with IJM. "They don't know how to show emotions. They can't smile or frown or express grief."
Activists argue that the Indian government's failure to protect people from forced labour, kidnapping, and other crimes amounts to a serious abuse of citizens' rights.
"There are deep-rooted problems of business-related human rights abuse in India," says Peter Frankental, Economic Relations Programme Director of Amnesty International UK. "Much of that involves the way business is conducted, an unwillingness to enforce laws against companies, and fabricated charges and false imprisonment against activists who try to bring these issues to light."
The Confederation of Indian Industries instructs companies to follow Indian law, which has banned bonded labour since 1976. But the IJM says the courts do little to punish those who break the law, as it takes about five years to bring a case to court and even then a broker or brick kiln owner often gets away with a $30 (£18) fine.
Under UN guidelines introduced in 2011, multinationals operating in India also bear responsibility for any abuse of workers all the way down their supply chains. Most say they are fully committed to upholding human rights and the UN guidelines. But campaigners say they know of no big company operating in India that guarantees its buildings are constructed from legally-made bricks. Because each brick kiln moulds a unique logo on to its bricks, it would be possible to trace them back to their origins.
Slavery in the supply chain
Britain's biggest trade union, Unite, describes the use of bonded labour in India as a scandal - and says it will start monitoring companies that might be using slavery in their supply chains. "It's been going on for too long and must stop now," says general secretary Len McCluskey.
Britain encourages companies to invest in India - it has launched a record £1bn ($1.7bn) credit line for those involved in Indian infrastructure contracts - but advises them to incorporate human rights protection into their operations.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) last month introduced a tough, legally-binding protocol against forced labour, saying it was an "an abomination which still afflicts our world of work". Its 185 member states will incorporate the protocol into their national laws.
Many in government, meanwhile, deny that bonded labour exists.
The Labour Commissioner for Andra Pradesh - the state of which Hyderabad is the capital - told me in December he could give me a 100% guarantee that there was no bonded labour on his territory.
"There's no such thing," said Dr A Ashok.
He cited the brick kilns in Ranga Reddy just outside Hyderabad as a model for the industry. But many of those on Nial's rehabilitation programme have just come from there. Each has a government-stamped certificate stating they have been freed from bonded labour.
Unusually, arrests have been made in connection with Nial's kidnapping and the suspects are in custody. Bimal, the villager who first recruited them, was arrested and has been released on bail.
We find him walking through flat scrubland, peppered with trees, past broken fences and wooden huts. Married with two children, and six years older than Nial, he carries himself with far more confidence.
It's true he recruited Nial, he says, but he denies any involvement in kidnappings and beatings.
"It wasn't only my mistake - we all made the decision to go. I want to apologise and meet Dialu [Nial] again so we can live together as neighbours," says Bimal.
Nial, though, rejects any idea of reconciliation. "Jail isn't good enough for them. They should be hanged," he says.
His hopes for the future? "I really want to get married and have a family of my own."
But with that, his face darkens again. He glances down and covers his stump with his shirt sleeve. In his culture, with his severed hand, finding a wife and starting a family will be very difficult indeed.
He shakes his head sadly. "Of course, I can never forgive them."
Photographs by Dominic Hurst
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It started off on a piece of land about the size of a tennis court, 350 years ago. But now the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh occupies about 70 acres in the city, with other sites in Scotland and abroad, and is a leading research centre for plant science and conservation.
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By Joanne MacaulayBBC Scotland news
As RBGE celebrates its 350th anniversary, it is holding various events to look back at its origins, and forward to 21st Century challenges.
How the garden grew
It all started back in 1670, when two Edinburgh doctors - Robert Sibbald and Andrew Balfour - set up a physic garden, to explore the links between plants and medicine, for the benefit of society.
Today's Regius Keeper - the overseer of the garden who is appointed by the reigning monarch - Simon Milne says that ethos has endured and expanded.
"From the size of a tennis court we now have four gardens in Scotland and are working in 35 countries around the world, and our education programmes go out to 50 countries," he says.
"We've come a long way and we owe an awful lot to our founding fathers."
The herbarium at the gardens in Edinburgh contains more than three million preserved specimens, gathered from around the world over three and a half centuries.
There are thousands of species growing at the Edinburgh site and the other gardens in Dawyck in the Borders, Logan near Stranraer and Benmore in Argyll.
The oldest living plant in the collection is thought to be the Sabal Palm, which came to Edinburgh in 1822.
Cultivating science
The keeper of collections, David Knott, says these are great places to visit, but there is also vital science going on.
"We're cultivating a wide range of plants from across the world and some of these are grown in the research glass houses and perhaps survive in their native habitats and nowhere else," he says.
"We're also cultivating a number of plants that are extinct in their native habitats."
Events had been planned to celebrate the 350th anniversary, but many had to be cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
However, a revised programme will go ahead this autumn, including an online global panel discussion covering issues such as plant extinction, conservation and global biodiversity.
Flower show
Part of the 350th celebrations included the RBGE's first ever trip to the Chelsea Flower Show, which also had to be cancelled.
But Susie Huggins, who is the co-ordinating the anniversary events, says they will get another chance to exhibit in London.
"The Royal Horticultural Society have invited us back next year. We'll go with the same magnificent display we'd been planning," she says.
"We'll focus on our research and conservation work, looking at what we do to save the world's plants, what we do in the world that makes a mark."
Visitors are once again allowed to visit the gardens, although in limited numbers at the moment.
Lockdown has meant a loss of revenue, but Simon Milne is already planning long into the future.
"We're launching the Edinburgh Biomes project which will see the rebuild of a lot of our mission critical facilities," he says.
"The palm house needs to be renovated and restored. There will be new sustainable buildings, new educational facilities that will take us through the next 25, 50,100 years so we can remain at the forefront of plant science and conservation.
"We'll be building a fantastic new glass house which will make an even better visitor attraction."
Visitor memories
As part of the celebrations, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh wants to hear from members of the public about their experiences of the garden.
"We want to know everyone's memories," says Susie Higgins.
"Did you come here as a child, bring your own children, get married here? Is there a favourite spot where you find solace? We want to say it's not just our RBGE, it's your RBGE."
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Plans for a wind turbine development in Northamptonshire are being challenged over claims it could scare horses.
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An application for the 60ft (18.3m) high wind turbine at Longbrook Farm, outside Oundle, will be discussed by East Northamptonshire district councillors later.
The turbine would stand in the middle of an open meadow at the farm.
Wendy Rousell, from the British Horse Society, said: "The blades can cast a moving shadow that could spook horses."
The British Horse Society said it is objecting to the plans because it claims the turbine would be too close to the bridleway network used by riders in the area.
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A person has been murdered in Baltimore almost every day this year, on average - more killings per capita than Chicago. Then a grassroots campaign made an audacious pledge - to orchestrate a 72-hour ceasefire. Did it work?
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By Jessica LussenhopBBC News, Baltimore
Day 1: Friday, 4 August
Erricka Bridgeford stands in the second-storey window of the now-abandoned townhouse where she grew up and looks down on the street below, to the spot where Mike, a neighbourhood kid, fell over 30 years ago. That was the first time she'd ever seen someone shot.
"I actually heard him die, begging God he wouldn't die," she says. "I was 12."
Since media outlets from across the country and globe started requesting interviews with her, asking her to explain her bold attempt to halt homicides for three days in a city where someone is murdered almost every day, Bridgeford started bringing them to her childhood neighbourhood in West Baltimore. After a local television crew packed up and left, the 44-year-old mediation trainer decided to push through the unlocked door of the townhouse and show her three children - aged 17 to 21 - around for the first time.
The family wanders the empty rooms in matching orange #BaltimoreCeasefire T-shirts. The air smells of urine, the walls are pocked with holes and smudged with the dirty outline of missing appliances. Upstairs, a used condom lies on the floor of what was once Bridgeford's parents' room.
"This is the house that made me," she tells her children. "I feel sad that it looks like this. This looks like a light left out."
The empty townhouse is a reflection of some of the underlying causes of the violence in Baltimore. From that second-storey window, Bridgeford watched as drugs moved into her neighbourhood in the 1980s, and the families moved out.
Her friends started dropping out of school and selling dope. The grass turned to dirt. Along with the poverty and drugs came the guns - Mike was the first of nearly 20 people Bridgeford knew who've died from violence.
But on this particular morning, Bridgeford is in high spirits - it's Friday, 4 August, day one of the "Baltimore Ceasefire". Although the campaign is not affiliated with the Baltimore Police Department or any other arm of the city government, a trusted police contact has promised to text her if anyone is killed over the three days. Eleven hours in, the peace is holding.
"The air feels different," says Bridgeford. "Even the sceptics are saying, 'I hope it works.'"
The naysayers have some reason to feel that way. The idea for the weekend was set in motion after Bridgeford had a conversation with her 19-year-old son about the city murder rate, which is on track to be the worst in its recorded history and could rise to the highest in the country. Per capita, it's already surpassed Chicago, Detroit and New Orleans.
Bridgeford bristles at some of the comments that have been made online, mocking her and the city for even needing such an effort.
"We want to purposefully have a pause and a sacred space where everybody's intention is 'nobody gets killed'. A cultural shift, so that it dawns on people that they can make this choice," she says. "I hate the idea that people think 'Oh, Baltimore is violent. Chicago is violent. Detroit is violent.' These places are a reflection of America."
Momentum built slowly, first on social media and word of mouth. The ceasefire has no single group or person as its leader. There is no celebrity headliner, no sponsorships or logos, save one: a stark black, white and red sign that reads "Baltimore Ceasefire: Nobody Kill Anybody for 72 Hours". The idea is to convince the residents of the city to take ownership.
A large part of that involved canvassing the most violent parts of Baltimore, walking into the city's open-air drug markets and making a plea to people working the corners to commit to a weekend free of violence.
One of the first people Bridgeford called was PFK Boom, co-founder of 300 Gangstas, a group of former gang members and ex-offenders who came together after the death of Freddie Gray in 2015 to police and advocate for themselves.
"It was a no-brainer," Boom says of Bridgeford's request for help. "I respect what she does. I seen her work, what she stands for, so that's why I will accept that call and put my men, my reputation, my brand and all that [behind it]."
Bridgeford and the other organisers forbade media from observing the canvassing effort, but she says the outreach was successful enough that people started calling her independently to pledge their commitment.
"There have been people who have called to say 'I am gang affiliated and I'm letting you know whoever I'm responsible for is chilling that weekend,'" she says. "If people get killed that weekend, even if we don't know who did it, we know who didn't do it."
Bridgeford is 5 ft 2. Her right arm ends just below the elbow due to a condition she developed while in the womb. Her small stature, glasses and bubbly personality may contribute to the reasons some people write her off as naive. It doesn't bother her.
"I grew up in West Baltimore. I've been raped twice. My brother got killed … I've lost my stepson. I've lost cousins. Two weeks ago, I lost somebody. Some years I go to two funerals in one day," she says. "It's not that I'm naïve. It's just that my optimism is gangster."
When the people she talks to scoff at her idea of a violence-free weekend, she turns it around on them.
"Are you saying you can't keep your hood safe?" she asks them. "And the answer is always, 'Oh, don't worry about it, it's going to be safe around here.' … I understand male ego."
After three months of canvassing, going on local radio shows weekly, meeting with organisations all over the city, plastering every telephone pole, every boarded-up door and window with Baltimore Ceasefire posters and stickers, the weekend has arrived. There are dozens of public and private events planned throughout the city - cookouts, block parties, peace walks, art shows, vigils.
As one of the organisers flicks through her phone, she sees that dozens and dozens of her Facebook friends have changed their profile pictures to the Ceasefire logo.
And she's noticing other things, too, little symbols. Like, for the first time all summer, she's seeing dragonflies.
As the afternoon turns into evening, people are getting off work, the bars are filling and the parties are starting - it's the real first test of the ceasefire.
Bridgeford and her children head for a busy intersection in southwestern Baltimore where a group of people are waving ceasefire signs, and passing flyers out to motorists. A city bus driver throws open the doors, grabs a Baltimore Ceasefire poster from somebody, and sticks it prominently in the windshield.
At some point a tall, thin man appears in their midst, dressed in papery green hospital scrubs - an ID bracelet on his tattooed wrist and EKG leads still stuck to his chest. He picks up a poster and holds it high in the air.
"I got shot last night," he says, pointing to a piece of gauze taped to his right cheek. "I still got two bullets left in me."
His name is Devrone McKnight - the 23-year-old was driving himself home from the hospital when he saw the ceasefire volunteers by the side of the road. He says he's ashamed. He'd heard about the ceasefire effort but had made no plans to participate.
"Now I'm a victim," he says. "From now on, I'm supporting this."
He charges recklessly into the street in his socks and sandals, passing fliers and posters to motorists stopped at the red light. He seems almost frantic.
"Take it," he pleads with drivers who won't roll down their windows.
Some of the ceasefire events are more private, like on a quiet street called McCulloh across town.
Brittany Oliver gathers with her family in front of the stoop where her uncle David Lamont Hill was gunned down exactly one year ago after he stopped to visit friends after work.
The family, dressed in matching T-shirts with Hill's picture, silently place tea lights near the spot in the street where he fell after being shot seven times. Despite a $5,000 reward for information, no one has been arrested in connection with his death.
"We haven't had a whole lot of information about who did it or what happened," says Oliver.
In the last two years, not only have the number of homicides increased, but the number of cases closed by the Baltimore Police Department - either because they've been solved or the perpetrator is themselves killed or imprisoned on other charges - plummeted to one of the worst rates for large cities in the nation.
Since a low point of about 33% in 2015 when 242 homicides went unsolved, the city says the closure rate has rebounded to a little less than half. But that still means that the city has a backlog of hundreds of open murder cases, as new ones continue relentlessly rolling in.
When Oliver heard that the ceasefire weekend just happened to fall on the first anniversary of her uncle's death, she arranged a canvas of the streets all around McCulloh.
"I thought I was going to be crying a lot more today," she says.
"To be honest with you, that's the ceasefire. For a long time, I wasn't doing anything. This happened and I didn't know what to do. When the ceasefire came up, it gave me an opportunity to find my voice again."
Hours later, in a car park on the east side of Baltimore, the time is nearing midnight. Bridgeford, PFK Boom, and dozens of community members have gathered for an all-night barbecue. A team of lawyers is staying up all night to help anyone from the neighbourhood who stops by with criminal record expungements, child support issues, tenant and eviction situations - there's even therapists on hand.
As the clock strikes midnight, a cheer rises up from the crowd. Rapper Kendrick Lamar's voice booms from the speakers, singing "We gon' be alright".
"We just had 24 hours of no murders in Baltimore, ladies and gentlemen," Bridgeford calls. "Who said we couldn't do it? They said we couldn't do one day! C'mon y'all, we can do another 24!"
Day 2: Saturday, 5 August
Forty-one hours into the Baltimore Ceasefire - after a day of peaceful marches, meat on the grill, basketball games - the spell is broken.
It started with rumours, chatter over the police scanner about a possible shooting in a neighbourhood known as Pigtown. Then the rumours become fact - a 24-year-old man was shot and killed while walking down the street. His friends picked him up and rushed him to the hospital, but he died not long after.
A woman with long dreads braided with purple cloth stands at her doorway just a few houses down from the crime scene, watching as the Baltimore police forensic team take pictures of the blood-stained sidewalk.
She'd heard about the ceasefire, seen Bridgeford on television. She's dismayed that the weekend peace came to an end right at her front door. Neighbours say it's the third shooting on this block in the last year and a half.
"Seven of my girlfriends have lost seven sons [in the last two months]," she says. "Never seen it this bad, never."
"Tell 'em to put a [recreation centre] here," calls a man in the street. "Y'all saying, 'Ceasefire,' but how do you ceasefire? You take the kids out of the streets. The kids got something to do other than being in the streets."
Not long after the police remove the crime scene tape and begin opening the street back up, Erricka Bridgeford and her children arrive. She received the dreaded text message from her contact at the police department and rushed over, just as city firefighters are hosing the blood off the sidewalk.
Staring at the place where the man fell, Bridgeford wears a shattered expression. A television reporter with a microphone asks her for comment, but Bridgeford recoils and refuses.
"This means a lot to her," her son Paul says quietly. "This was very likely to happen. We were hoping for the best, but expecting the worst."
Slowly, more and more ceasefire participants begin arriving - a way to show the community support and to shake up the mundanity of these deaths. Bridgeford calls them over to join hands around the wet spot on the street. A few of the neighbours who'd already gone back to their normal Saturdays filter over, including the woman with the purple dreads.
As an ice cream truck rolls slowly past playing a tinny, lachrymose version of Korobeiniki, Bridgeford makes a point to pray not only for the young man, but also for his killer.
"They were not born with a gun in their hand. Their mother didn't push them out saying, 'I can't wait 'til my baby grows up and shoots somebody on a ceasefire weekend,'" she says.
"What has been done to us?" she cries, her voice breaking. "What has been done to us?"
Darkness settles on the city. At another cookout on the west side, lawyers again gather to help fill out expungement paperwork. Brittany Oliver and some friends burn sage. PFK Boom and bow-tied members of the Nation of Islam stand guard in stony silence.
At 10pm, the police radios crackle to life again - there's been another homicide, a 37-year-old man found dead on an eerily quiet block of south Baltimore.
In the car park, one of the ceasefire organisers who goes by Ogun ponders something a tough young man told him during their canvassing.
"He said a lot of people have a beef with someone where there's no mediation. If they see this person somewhere, they're not going to think," he says. "That's a problem that we can't fix."
There is no victory cry come midnight - the moment passes without comment. There are already articles posted online that the ceasefire has "collapsed" and Twitter trolls crow that the effort has failed.
Around 1am, Bridgeford climbs into the backseat of her car and lets her kids drive her home. In the dark, she switches on Facebook Live.
"That first one - it just knocked the wind out of me. Like it was someone I grew up with got killed. I still don't know the people's names," she says.
"I am extremely blessed and extremely heartbroken."
Day 3: Sunday, 6 August
In 2001, a 27-year-old man named Antoin Lamont McKnight was shot to death on a desolate corner in the Sandtown neighbourhood of west Baltimore. He was transported to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he died of multiple gunshot wounds. His killer was never caught.
Sixteen years later, Antoin McKnight's son Devrone was rushed to the same hospital with a gunshot wound to the face. Unlike his father, Devrone survived.
On the final morning of the ceasefire weekend, he sits in his mother's living room, recalling the moment three days ago when a man charged him and his uncle as they sat on the porch. There's a picture of his father on a desk directly beneath a bullet hole punched through the wall from the attack.
He was only seven years old when his father was murdered, but Devrone remembers carving pumpkins with him on Halloween, he remembers birthday parties. He doesn't know much about what his dad was involved in, but concedes that like many Baltimoreans, he may have been tangled up in some type of criminal activity.
"I didn't want to be like that so I did everything in my power to stay away from the street life," he says.
Devrone works at the same hospital where his father died and attends Morgan State University, studying construction management. Before this point, he'd figured if he just went to school, went to work, and minded his own business, he'd never end up like his father.
But the bullet fragments embedded in his face and neck prove otherwise - the shock of that fact sent him running into the street on the first day of the ceasefire in his thin hospital garments, trying to convince strangers to care.
In 2017, 404 people have been shot and survived according to figures from the Baltimore Police Department. McKnight feels extraordinarily lucky that, unlike the two men who died on Saturday, he has the opportunity to get involved.
"I just want to be the voice of the victims who can't talk right now. It's sad that two days into the ceasefire programme somebody else got killed," he says.
"I kinda feel sorry and bad because I didn't react sooner."
Devrone and his mother head for church, where he thanks God for sparing his life and prays for the hands of the surgeon who will eventually be tasked with removing the bullet still lodged in his neck, close to an artery. Then he heads to downtown Baltimore, where one of the final marches of the weekend is taking place.
About 150 marchers gather at the foot of the 234-foot-tall Phoenix Shot Tower, a 19th-Century edifice where molten lead was dribbled from the top into a cold water bath at the bottom - an early technique for fashioning bullets.
They march solemnly past Baltimore City Hall, and file into a television studio draped in black curtains where the organisers and marchers take turns reading the names of the more than 200 men and women who were murdered in 2017, beginning on the very first of the year.
Sheamon Pearlie
James Williams
Davonte Jackson
Jamal Washington
Timothy Stephens
Men with hand drums strike two beats after each name.
Charles Frazier
Tyrell Matthews
Carlos Montgomery
Channon Simpkins
Tony Tingle
As name after name after name is called in the stuffy room, people start to cry. There are sighs at the reading of "unidentified man".
Timothy Campbell
Tyione Brown
Emmanuel Johnson
Marco Stevenson
Antonio Griffin
Finally, Bridgeford leads the crowd in reading two final names, which are still only partially known, from Saturday:
Trey
Donte, also known as EA
At midnight that evening, the official close of the ceasefire weekend, Bridgeford is home, exhausted, eating pizza. But she is back in high spirits.
"No murders happened in Sandtown. People who called and said my crew won't - their crew didn't," she says. "What Baltimore was able to pull off was a 41-hour stretch of no murder, and then from 10 o'clock last night to 12 am now, that's another 26 hours with no murder. But that five hours in between is what I want you to remember."
The next day, a meeting called Baltimore Ceasefire 365 is planned. The organisers are adamant that their work does not end with the ceasefire - one of the first orders of business is to help pay for the burials of the two men who died.
Although six people were shot over the course of the weekend, two fatally, Bridgeford still declares the ceasefire a success. For one single weekend, she says, some of the most beaten-down communities in Baltimore allowed themselves to hope.
"I was born with one hand … I've had to experience what it's like to be Baltimore. To look broken and have to find wholeness," she says.
"Don't be numb ... We need to remember that feeling of how it was when we cared."
Early the next morning, the Baltimore Police Department finally releases the names of Saturday's victims:
Lamontrey Tynes
Donte Johnson
They also report yet another murder, the city's 212th.
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After what has been called China's "Black Monday", the stock market has continued its plunge, dropping more than 20% from its February peak and taking it into what is technically known as "bear market" territory.
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Linda YuehChief business correspondent
The market's fall, though dramatic, won't necessarily trigger the central bank to change its mind about holding firm on issuing more cash to the banking system.
The market has been fairly volatile during the past decade. The Shanghai Composite index is down 70% from its all-time high in 2007 and down nearly 50% since 2009.
But if the markets start affecting economic growth, the calculus could change.
Domestic bond sales have dropped by more than 50% from last month, according to Bloomberg. They calculate that issuance has dropped to 175bn yuan in June, which is the lowest in 17 months.
Now, some of that increase in debt is what the Chinese government wants to control.
Rising debt
Of particular concern are the loans issued by "trust" companies. They issue wealth management products which offer savers a higher return than the official deposit rate of 3%. But, these products are sold off-balance sheet and are higher risk. That risk and what is really being sold isn't always clear to the buyer.
This is why the shadow banking sector is of such concern.
As I mentioned in my last post, debt has risen rapidly alongside total social financing - which is a measure of credit that includes bonds as well as those trust loans.
This measure has surged by 50% from a year ago to 9.1 trillion yuan, which is more than double what China plans to spend on roads by 2030.
Even though the Chinese market has plummeted, it is a fairly closed market. Only investors with permission to invest, such as those with a QFII (Qualified Financial Institutional Investors) licence, can buy A-shares on the main market.
Nevertheless, the wider impact is felt through shaking the confidence of already-jittery markets, eyeing the looming end of the era of cheap cash.
Global resonance
More than that, for those in the rest of the world, if Chinese constraints on lending end up restricting economic growth, then the global economy suffers from the slowing of one of its twin engines. This at a time when the other one - the US - is just about getting back on its feet.
Plus, China's slowdown has already dragged commodity prices lower. Copper has hit a three-year low, worsening its decline. Commodity companies listed around the world, and mainly in the UK, will continue to feel the pain.
Mining companies comprise about 8% of the main UK stock market, the FTSE 100. Mining stocks have fallen by more than 20% since the start of the year - a steeper fall than the main index, which itself is down more than 10% from its May peak.
China's cash squeeze has perhaps already hit British pockets, including the pensions that are affected by the stock market.
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A woman and a girl have been arrested after a man was found fatally stabbed on a main route into Birmingham.
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The victim, who sustained a wound to the chest, was found "slumped" by the side of the Bristol Road out of the city, police said.
He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.
A 28-year-old and a 15-year-old arrested at the scene, near the junction with Mill Pool Way, remain in police custody.
West Midlands Police has appealed for witnesses to the attack, which happened just before 17:00 BST, to come forward.
The force said Bristol Road was closed while investigations took place.
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It is 250 years since America's Mason-Dixon Line was completed. Hailed as a groundbreaking technical achievement, it came to symbolise the border between the Civil War North and South, separating free Pennsylvania from slave-owning Maryland. But who were the two British men who created it?
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By Phil MawsonBBC News
"It was the equivalent of the moon landings today," according to Mason-Dixon Line expert David Thaler.
Baker's son Charles Mason and lapsed Quaker Jeremiah Dixon were established scientists when commissioned to settle a land dispute in the pre-revolutionary America of 1763.
For 80 years the Calvert family of Maryland and the Penns of Pennsylvania had been locked in a bloody dispute over the boundary between the two colonies they had been granted by the English Crown.
"The stakes were very high," said Mr Thaler, trustee of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore and an expert on the Mason-Dixon project.
"There was about 4,000 sq miles of territory that was in dispute and nobody knew who to pay taxes to. Warfare regularly broke out along the border."
Outdated maps meant fresh measurements were needed, but colonial surveyors had proved inaccurate. So the families hired Mason and Dixon, who were known in England as master surveyors and astronomers.
The Mason-Dixon Line was drawn in two parts. An 83-mile (133.5km) north-south divide between Maryland and Delaware and the more recognised 233-mile (375km) west to east divide between Pennsylvania and Maryland, stretching from just south of Philadelphia to what is now West Virginia.
Mr Thaler said: "This was the most outstanding scientific and engineering achievement, not only of its day, but of the American Enlightenment.
"It was so advanced for its time. The brains were the best and the technology was the best."
Mason and Dixon brought with them some of the most advanced surveying equipment of the day, including tools by renowned instrument maker John Bird, who, like Dixon, hailed from County Durham.
"The map they produced is one of the most important historical documents we have here in America. It's almost the equivalent of the Declaration of Independence," added Mr Thaler.
"The accuracy is so extraordinary that even today it continues to astound. It represents the first geodetic survey in the New World."
Miner's son Dixon from Cockfield, near Bishop Auckland, and Mason, from Oakridge Lynch, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, originally came together in 1761 to map the Transit of Venus - making it easier to calculate the Earth's distance from the Sun.
It would take them almost five years - lugging their equipment across hundreds of miles of wilderness - to complete the survey and cement their place in the timeline of the United States.
Yet despite their groundbreaking achievement, both ended up in unmarked graves thousands of miles apart and remain virtually unknown in their home country.
Dixon's great-great-great-great-great-nephew, John Dixon, still lives in County Durham and is proud of his connection to a "marvellous man" who was of "great significance" in his lifetime.
"Jeremiah was a Quaker and from a mining family. He showed a talent early on for maths and then surveying.
"He went down to London to be taken on by the Royal Society, just at a time when his social life was getting a bit out of hand.
"He was a bit of a lad by all accounts, not your typical Quaker, and never married.
"He enjoyed socialising and carousing and was actually expelled from the Quakers for his drinking and keeping loose company."
An entry in the Quaker minute book of Raby in County Durham, dated October 1760, reads: "Jery Dixon, son of George and Mary Dixon of Cockfield, disowned for drinking to excess."
Mr Dixon added: "Nevertheless, it's marvellous to be connected to such a prominent man."
Mason's early life was more sedate by comparison. At the age of 28 he was taken on by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich as an assistant. Noted as a "meticulous observer of nature and geography" he later became a fellow of the Royal Society.
"Not too much is known about his younger days, but we know his family was not terribly well off and that they ran a baking business," said Royal Society librarian Keith Moore.
"He had a school education, but didn't go to university. However, he did have some local connections and knew James Bradley, who was a very famous astronomer and also from Gloucestershire.
"Bradley got him a job at the Royal Observatory, which is really the start of his career as an astronomer and surveyor.
"While at the Royal Society, he was asked to undertake Transit of Venus observations and recruited Dixon as his assistant."
The pair arrived in Philadelphia to begin work in November 1763. They used Bird's instruments to calculate their path by the stars and had to combat hostile Native Americans, mountains, dense forest, rivers and wild animals.
Limestone markers measuring up to 5ft (1.5m) high - quarried and transported from England - were placed at every mile and marked with a P for Pennsylvania and M for Maryland on each side. So-called Crown stones were positioned every five miles and engraved with the Penn family's coat of arms on one side and the Calvert family's on the other.
"No-one really knows why the stones were shipped from England," said Todd Babcock, of the Mason and Dixon Line Preservation Partnership. "But we know there were nearly 400 of them."
He added: "At the time all Mason and Dixon had in front of them was wilderness.
"There were some settlements, but west of the Susquehanna River and approaching the Allegheny Mountains there were very few roads. It was all mature forest so they had to come through and cut a vista about 30ft wide.
"That required axe-men to cut down the trees, pack mule drivers to get the trees out of the way as well as cows for milk, chain carriers, instrument bearers and tent bearers. It was like a small army moving through the woods.
"They started off with a crew of five, but by the time they got towards the end of the survey the party had grown to about 115.
"When they came into this I think they thought it would take a year or two, but it ended up taking five."
Yet while their achievement has been rightly hailed, modern technology has shown the line was not as accurate as Mason and Dixon thought.
Mr Babcock said: "They thought at the end of the survey that the stones were accurate to within 50ft of where they should be. But what we're finding is that some of them are as much as 900ft off the intended line of latitude.
"Using modern GPS equipment we found they progressively went to the south and then started to come back to the north. The reason for that is not because they were inaccurate or because the equipment was faulty. It was actually gravity.
"Gravity had an impact on the plumb bob they were using. They had a 6ft telescope and it used a plumb bob on a fine wire to set it to true zero so they could measure directly overhead. But gravity varied from location to location because of the influence of things like mountains.
"We have found there was a direct correlation between the local variations in gravity and how far north or south of the line they were.
"The distances between the stones is supposed to be a mile, but what we're finding is that they are anything up to 15ft longer than a mile in places.
"That said, the idea of trying to stay on a line of latitude for 230 miles through the wilderness with equipment that had never been used before is just incredible."
Mason and Dixon
Mason and Dixon began their return journey eastward on 20 October 1767 and later submitted a bill for £3,516.9s - estimated as the equivalent of about £500,000 today. But, according to David Thaler, neither died rich men.
"It was certainly a substantial amount for a world-class scientific effort," he said.
"But it wasn't enough to retire on."
Mason and Dixon are unlikely to have seen their names directly associated with their achievement, as the official report on the survey did not mention them.
The term "Mason-Dixon Line" would become more widely used when the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 to allow slave-owning Missouri and free Maine to join the union.
And of course the line's enduring symbolism was firmly established after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, representing that demarcation between the North and South - and freedom over enslavement.
After the mammoth project was completed, Mason returned to England to work again at the Greenwich Observatory but he ended his days virtually penniless back in America in 1786.
"Many years after the Mason-Dixon line was made, Mason returned to Philadelphia, but became sick during the journey," said John Hopkins, who oversees the burial ground at the city's Christ Church.
"When he got here he knew pretty much that he was close to death, so he wrote to Benjamin Franklin, who he knew, and asked him to give him a place to be buried so he didn't have to burden his wife and family.
"We don't know where he is. If he had a stone it's been lost over time.
"We have a plaque that a bunch of surveyors from around the country paid for with text close to what the inscription might have been at that time."
Dixon returned to County Durham to ply his trade.
"For the last 10 years of his life he did work for Lord Barnard at Raby Castle and surveyed Auckland Castle for the Bishop of Durham," his relative John Dixon said:
"He died at the young age of 45 in 1779. There was no death certificate. We know he'd been quite a steady drinker through his life and there were rumours he died from pneumonia.
"We presume that after having been put out of the Quakers they reconciled and accepted him back. He is buried in the Quaker burial ground at Staindrop.
"We don't know exactly where he is because it was the convention at that time for Quakers not mark their gravestones."
Find out about musician Mark Knopfler's fascination with Mason and Dixon on Inside Out on BBC1 at 1930 BST on 4 September.
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A £5m fund to help businesses and individuals in Jersey with ideas that can create jobs and help the economy has been approved by the States.
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Up to £500,000 will be available to help develop and support individual business ideas.
A board will be assembled to advise on which projects should be awarded public money from the scheme.
Senator Alan Maclean, the Economic Development Minister, said without it the island would risk missing out.
There will be no minimum grant, following a move by Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf to ensure smaller business might also benefit.
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You may think that once Earls Court's caretaker has swept all the ticker-tape away, they've packed up Lily Allen's sparkling zeppelin and herded Florence's army of harpists back into the tour bus that might be it for Brit Awards night.
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By Greg CochraneNewsbeat music reporter
Not the case. Once the curtain goes down a fleet of blank windowed people carriers whisk the great and good of the music world to the hot night spots of London.
Newsbeat spent a long night going with them.
THE OFFICIAL AFTERSHOW
Taking into account the height of Lady Gaga's heels you wouldn't blame some of the girls heading to the official Brits after show as it is literally hosted a short stroll behind the stage.
Whilst the celeb-count is low the entertainment is extravagant. A giant inflatable octopus, crazy golf, a dressing-up stall and, of all things, ukulele karaoke.
Weirdly, shortly after Robbie Williams has wrapped up the official ceremony, a bunch of pearly kings and queens are stood watching a cabaret act.
More of a theme park than a party then, and most people appear to have headed elsewhere.
Best spot:
Radio 1's Aled shouting down a phone.
WAR CHILD
Topping last year's party was always going to be War Child's biggest challenge this year.
2009's bash ended with members of U2, The Killers, Coldplay and Take That all on stage together.
Tonight's show at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire isn't rivalling that - we get La Roux dueting with Heaven 17 and The Mighty Boosh's Noel Fielding joining Kasabian - but it's still an all-star set up.
Tom Meighan arrives will a sore backside after he took a tumble running to pick up Kasabian's award for best British group earlier in the evening.
"I feel human for doing that," he laughs afterwards. "It's like Bambi on ice, it's like a Disney film."
The gig itself is a celebratory lap for one of Britain's biggest rock bands.
Best spot:
Gemma Arterton and Sheridan Smith both dancing to Kasabian's Fire.
WARNER MUSIC
Meanwhile back in central London rumour is there are 800 invites circulating for this 350 capacity venue.
The toilets have more mirrors than Alice In Wonderland, a DJ playing 90s rave and the finger food is exceptional.
All the talk is of whether Jay-Z is going to show - and he does, surrounded by a ring of security but greets fans in a corner.
Others who've turned out? Marina and the Diamonds, sporting a glittering all in one suit, is tucked in a corner eating mini burgers. Foals are here, Friendly Fires' Ed MacFarlane, Mike Bailey (Sid from Skins) and Tom Clarke from the Enemy all making the most of the free bar.
Best spot:
Jay-Z swaying to his own song Empire State Of Mind.
UNIVERSAL
The dozens of paparazzi bun-fighting outside tells you everything you need to know about the Universal party.
It's an oriental themed bash, the room is decorated with bird cages, lanterns and there's a kitchen set up in the middle of it all, churning out duck pancakes.
There's a lot to celebrate too. Florence Welch totters down the carpeted staircase, Lee from Blue, Calum Best, Keith Lemon, Last Shadow Puppet Miles Kane and Geri Halliwell are all milling about in the decadent surroundings.
Louis Walsh, with now familiar bow tie, is the unlikely late entrant to the do, no doubt drinking to the success of JLS.
Nervous recipient of the critcs' choice award earlier in the evening, Ellie Goulding summed up the feeling felt by most people by tweeting: "Lady Gaga held my hand and we talked and I think I died."
Best spot:
Florence and the Machine lovingly clutching her Brit award for best British album.
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Remembrance Sunday memorial services have been held in Greater Manchester.
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In Manchester servicemen and women in uniform marched from the town hall in Albert Square to the Cenotaph in St Peter's Square.
They were joined by representatives from the Navy, Army, Air Force, Royal British Legion, Duke of Lancaster's Regiment and Reserve Forces.
The Lord Mayor of Manchester, Elaine Boyes, and faith leaders also took part in the procession.
After a two minute silence at 11:00 GMT at the Cenotaph the procession returned to Albert Square for the march of service organisations.
Ms Boyes said of the Remembrance Sunday service: "It gives us time to reflect on past and present conflicts and is a chance for us all to express our respect for the men and women that have given their lives in the fight for freedom.
"It is an honour to meet with members of the armed services and faith leaders to mark this solemn day with the people of Manchester."
Metrolink services to Manchester were replaced by buses while the Remembrance services took place.
In Salford a new war memorial has been put up in Prince's Park to commemorate Fusilier Simon Annis from Irlam.
Second explosion
He died with Fusilier Louis Carter, of Warwickshire, while carrying an injured colleague L/Cpl James Fullarton away from an explosion in Afghanistan in July 2010.
All three were killed instantly by a second explosion.
Other services which took place including ones in Bolton and Rochdale.
The Imperial War Museum North hosted the first major performance of music composed by Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess.
The piece by Burgess, who was born in Manchester, was thought lost for more than 60 years until it was re-discovered last year.
He wrote the piece while serving during the World War II and dedicated it "To The Fallen".
Burgess grew up in Manchester's Hurphurey and Moss Side and was educated at Xaverian College and Manchester University.
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A £15m overhaul of health services in west Cumbria is to begin with the building of a new hospital in Cockermouth.
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The £11m complex will replace the 100-year-old building on Isel Road, NHS Northwest said.
Work also begins on Tuesday on a £4m GP-led health centre in neighbouring Cleator Moor.
The healthcare centre is due to open next summer and the hospital in the winter of 2013.
Lead GP for Copeland, Dr David Rogers, said: "This combined investment marks a big step-forward for health care in west Cumbria and will help enable us to plan and provide the best services for our patients."
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An NHS where patients stay at home and rarely attend GP surgeries or hospital out-patient appointments is likely in a decade's time, according to US health expert Dr Eric Topol , who was asked by ministers to look at how technology would change the role of health staff in England.
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Hugh PymHealth editor@BBCHughPymon Twitter
Many patients, according to his report, will be managing their own long-term conditions, for example high blood pressure and lung disease, with wearable devices and sensors, which will be much more effective than occasional appointments with a doctor.
The buzz phrase is the "democratisation of healthcare".
People who might have had to occupy a hospital bed for a few days for observation will be sent home instead.
Elderly patients, including those with dementia, will be monitored at home, with cameras and devices to detect falls built into the floor.
Fewer doctors
A new army of healthcare professionals is set to emerge to help technology-empowered patients.
This will include nursing associates, working alongside registered nurses and trained to interpret blood pressure and temperature checks.
Likewise, more physician associates will support doctors with the diagnosis and management of patients.
Fewer doctors than anticipated will be needed, under this vision of the future, and they will be able to focus on the sickest patients and avoid the risk of burnout caused by an excessive workload.
Better diagnosis
NHS England has already announced a plan to cut the number of out-patients' appointments and encourage remote monitoring and consultations.
The Topol report gives the example of fracture clinics and notes that at Brighton and Sussex University Hospital Trust trained therapists deal with patients over the phone and most are not seen in person, meaning consultants can review them within 72 hours of referral.
No serious complications for patients have been reported.
Dr Topol says the NHS, as an efficient, proven system delivering healthcare for the whole population, is well placed to take advantage of new medical technology and the UK is already leading the world in genomics (the study of an individual's genes), which allows better diagnosis and more personalised care.
Personalised service
Welcoming the report, the Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock, said technology saved lives and opportunities had to be seized - but when it came to sophisticated technology, the NHS was lagging behind Tesco.
"They know who you are through loyalty cards, where you shop, through store IDs, what you buy, the items scanned at the checkout," he said.
"They shape their offers with a personalised service in order to deliver for you, the customer.
"The NHS doesn't have anything like that yet."
It still did not have the data to determine which hospitals patients had been to and what medicines they were taking, Mr Hancock added.
Financial incentive
Sceptics will say this needs money and the NHS in England already has multiple calls on the funding allocated by the government.
Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said: "The deployment of technology will of course require significant resource and investment and we would repeat that this needs to be properly funded by government and not left to already stretched individual NHS trusts to dig even deeper to fund."
On the other hand, the NHS has a powerful financial incentive to adopt the Topol vision.
More patient care in the home in theory means less need for expensive overnight stays in hospital.
Telemedicine means consultants can get through longer lists of patients, using video or phone consultations.
The challenge is to ensure the drive for efficiency does not over-ride the need for human interaction between doctor and patient when required.
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The sleepy village of Bantham in south Devon is waking up to a new era.
After nearly 100 years in the hands of the same family, the picture-postcard seaside settlement is to be sold next year by its owners, Evans Estates.
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By Jonathan MorrisBBC News, Plymouth
Rosemary Jeffrey, 79, was born in Bantham and still lives there, selling lettuces, sprigs of mint and eggs from a table outside her front door.
Apart from the local pub, The Sloop Inn, her honesty box is the only evidence of commercialism in the village.
Bantham, as everyone who spoke testified, is that kind of place.
But selling this 750-acre piece of real estate - with a reported price tag of about £10m - has created uncertainty among villagers about what the future will hold.
At least 20 homes in the village are occupied by people who lease them from Evans Estates, such as Mrs Jeffrey.
The estate's properties are easily identifiable because all the window frames are painted green.
Tenants of a row of thatched estate homes, called The Cottages, were reluctant to talk but include a number of families with young children.
Estate ethos
One tenant, who declined to be named, said: "The Evans family haven't gone for exploitation, but it makes you wonder if the next landlord will be so benign."
The family made their money in coal mining and bought the Bantham estate in 1922.
Since then they have "loved and nurtured Bantham, like their back garden", according to estate manager Ryan Hooper.
The estate's ethos had been "bringing life to the village", which explained why many tenants were young families.
Tim Hunt and wife Helen were walking their dog on the beach, a honey pot for surfers, walkers and families.
And they could probably have spent most of the day walking on the 750 acres of the Evans Estate which takes in the river valley, the golf club on the western side of the River Avon and the river itself.
Bantham had been a centre for smuggling and the tin industry down the centuries with ships sheltering in its natural harbour, shielded from the weather by huge dunes.
On the beach, surfers were making the most of the beach break at Bantham, the best known surfing spot in south Devon.
'Insecure moment'
"It is a really special place, full of artists, surfers, people with businesses, normal people," said Mr Hunt.
He said that keeping local people in the village was "really important for the fabric of the whole area".
"But it's a really insecure moment," he said.
"It could be sold to anyone and it will come down to who has the most money.
"We have taken it for granted that it would stay in the Evans' Estates."
Apart from the £5 summer entry free, the beach is mainly free from commerce which many surfers are grateful for.
'Difficult decision'
Apart from a surf school and a mobile cafe in the summer, there are no cafes, restaurants and bars, unlike many other Devon seafronts.
"It's a wild beach," said surfer Josie Cuffe.
"And we'd like it to stay that way."
James Baker of estate agents Strutt and Parker, which is handling the sale, said that the directors of the estate wanted to sell it one lot.
"The directors had a very difficult decision to sell," he said.
"Our job is to find the right buyer and the directors prefer someone who is going to keep the estate in the manner of the current owners. That is very important to them.
"They have preserved the beauty and tranquillity that everyone enjoys at Bantham and they hope the new buyer will continue in the same vein."
Related Internet Links
Bantham Beach - Evans Estates
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In an age where you can email from your phone or catch up on TV while waiting for a bus, one village has remained in the "dark ages" with no mobile phone or broadband internet.
But Staylittle in Powys finally has a permanent mobile phone mast - which residents say will be life-changing.
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By Lucy BallingerBBC News
When mother-of-two Becky Williams moved to the remote Welsh village it was a dream come true.
She moved to an idyllic small-holding from the Midlands with her husband.
But she was not prepared for the complications which came with the move five years ago.
That is because Staylittle, near Newtown, had no mobile connectivity or broadband internet.
She said: "We live in a stunning, beautiful place but it was in the dark ages. It was a complete nightmare having no mobile signal, and even worse when the landline went down too.
"In the midlands we had broadband and mobile coverage everywhere, but here we have never had mobile signal."
It may sound trivial, but for Mrs Williams, who has two young children and a husband who works abroad half the year, it was isolating.
Staylittle - Penffordd Las in Welsh - is remote, with the nearest market town almost eight miles (12km) away.
Some who live in the village had no mobile phone or reliable internet connection, making life complicated for its 140 residents.
For three weeks in 2015 the landline connection went down as well when the BT line was damaged, leaving residents totally isolated.
When Mrs Williams bought an online designer children's clothing business last year she would drive to a spot a 10 minutes from the village to check her phone messages twice a day, and while at home relied on slow and expensive satellite internet.
"I had to drive down to my mother's house in town to work every day," said Mrs Williams. "I have got a one-year-old son and it was a complete pain having to cart him down to my mother's and do all my business through emails.
"Our six-year-old daughter, Lilly, likes horse-riding and I used to worry so much about her having an accident and the lines being down, as how would I have contacted somebody?"
But last month, a permanent 4G mast was finally installed on a hill overlooking the village - giving mobile coverage across Staylittle.
Mrs Williams said: "Now I work from home, which has been amazing. I'm going to be able do online shopping, which I couldn't do before because the satellite connection would go down in the middle of my shop."
David Penn, 74, said house sales had fallen through in the village once potential buyers realised there was no broadband connection.
"It is one of the utilities people expect now, along with electricity and gas," said Mr Penn.
"Every single organisation under the sun assumes you are online now - if I want to find out about a special offer or sign up for something it has to be done on the internet.
"Instead all we had was a phone line which we had to share between a number of houses - you could hear your neighbour talking on the line sometimes. On other occasions I would be talking to my 98-year-old mother and then the line would go dead as someone from another house started dialling."
Mr Penn is secretary of the Staylittle Community Association, which has been campaigning for the village to have a broadband internet for the last three years.
He said there have been previous failed attempts to get the village online, including one by a BBC programme the Big Life Fix.
"The landline connection itself is unreliable," said Mr Penn. "We have been very lucky that there hasn't been any real emergencies in that time, but since the mast has been put up two people have had strokes and there has been an broken ankle so there have been some 999 calls."
O2, which installed the mast in the village, said it will be erecting 4G masts at a further 395 Welsh villages by the end of the year.
But despite Staylittle's access Mr Penn admitted he was yet to get online.
"I'm still not quite sure how I get my computer connected to the internet," said Mr Penn. "I know some people have managed it, but it is an 120-mile round trip to the nearest O2 shop from here to get the bits and pieces I need, so I will get around to it at some point.
"Those who are connected are are holding on to their BT landlines for the moment as they are worried it is too good to be true."
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Dorset's Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) has appointed an unpaid volunteer as an "advocate" in a suburb affected by crime and anti-social behaviour.
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Helene Bowman-Brown, 46, will represent PCC Martyn Underhill at community meetings in Boscombe.
Mr Underhill said he had created the role to "act as my eyes and ears and to support my work".
Ms Bowman-Brown, a Boscombe resident for 24 years, said she wanted people to "feel safe in their homes" there.
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Thousands are tweeting the challenging message "Sue Me Saudi" to compare the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia to that under so-called Islamic State. It's a reference to an unconfirmed newspaper report that said the Saudi Justice Ministry was threatening legal action after someone made the comparison - although it's not clear that the ministry actually made the threat.
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By BBC TrendingWhat's popular and why
The trend began with a tweet about Ashraf Fayadh, a 35-year-old poet who is on death row in Saudi Arabia. Fayadh was sentenced to death last month for apostasy and has also been charged with various blasphemy-related offences, such as promoting atheism and mocking verses of the Koran in public - allegations he has denied. Leaving Islam is a crime punishable by death by beheading in Saudi Arabia.
Fayadh's case prompted one Twitter user - a prominent Saudi writer and advocate of religious reform - to compare Saudi Arabia to the so-called Islamic State, which regularly performs gruesome executions. The Saudi authorities have executed at least 151 people this year, according to Amnesty International, and recent newspaper reports indicated that a mass execution of at least 50 others would happen soon.
What happened next is unclear: according to a report citing an unnamed source in Al Riyadh newspaper, the Saudi Justice Ministry is considering suing the author for making the comparison to IS. But it's not clear this threat was actually made: there has been no official statement about the incident and the Saudi embassy in London refused to comment to BBC Trending.
Still, the report provoked a backlash online, and in English more than 11,000 people tweeted the hashtag "Sue me Saudi" in protest, challenging the authorities to take legal action against them for making similar comparisons. "Beheading poets because they criticise a regime puts that regime on the same level as Daesh [IS]", one tweet read. Another directly addressed the Saudi authorities: "Your regime is barbaric. Beheading is never justified. The idea of your chairing the UN Human Rights Council is a sick joke." The last comment is a reference to the appointment of a Saudi ambassador as chair of a panel of experts on the council.
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Others questioned the Saudi judiciary. "I doubt fairness and justice of Kingdom's judicial system and doubt whether it can or will guarantee rights and ensure human dignity", one tweet reads. Others slammed the country for denying its citizens basic freedoms.
Blog by Nooshin Soluch
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Scottish Facebook users responded with a mix of bafflement and outrage when the social network apparently suggested people celebrate St Andrew's Day - with the flag of Romania. But an option featuring the saltire, Scotland's national flag, does now appear to be available READ MORE
You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.
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In an era of potent concern over internet pornography, cyber-bullying, and drugs, it is hard to imagine a game being controversial. But 30 years ago Dungeons & Dragons was the subject of a full-on moral panic, writes Peter Ray Allison.
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At the beginning of 1982's ET, a group of teenage boys are indulging in a roleplay game, featuring dice and spells, and sounding a lot like Dungeons & Dragons. They indulge in banter as they wait for a pizza delivery to arrive.
This innocuous depiction was a far cry from the less-neutral coverage that was to come.
Back in 1974, Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) was arguably the first true roleplaying game. Players took on the mantle of adventurers from a multitude of races and occupations. Each game had a Dungeon Master who would act as both a referee and storyteller. By 2004, it was estimated that the game had been played by over 20 million people.
Today, any veteran player from the game's early years would speak of its positive attributes. It was based almost entirely in the imagination. It was social. No screens were involved.
But in the 1980s the game came under an extraordinary sustained assault from fundamentalist religious groups who feared its power over young minds.
In 1979, 16-year-old child prodigy James Dallas Egbert III disappeared from his room at Michigan State University. A private investigator, William Dear, was hired by James's parents to find their son. Despite apparently knowing little about roleplaying games, Dear believed that D&D was the cause of Egbert's disappearance.
In truth, Egbert suffered from, among other things, depression and drug addiction, and had gone into hiding - in the utility tunnels under the university - during an episode of self-harm. The well-publicised episode - referred to as the Steam Tunnel Incident - prompted a number of works of fiction, including the novel Mazes and Monsters and 1982 Tom Hanks film of the same name.
Egbert later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1980. Despite the evidence regarding his mental health problems, some activists believed Egbert's suicide was caused by D&D.
In 1982, high school student Irving Lee Pulling died after shooting himself in the chest. Despite an article in the Washington Post at the time commenting "how [Pulling] had trouble 'fitting in'", mother Patricia Pulling believed her son's suicide was caused by him playing D&D.
Again, it was clear that more complex psychological factors were at play. Victoria Rockecharlie, a classmate of Irving Pulling, commented that "he had a lot of problems anyway that weren't associated with the game".
At first, Patricia Pulling attempted to sue her son's high school principal, claiming the curse placed upon her son's character during a game run by the principal was real. She also sued TSR Inc, the publishers of D&D. Despite the court dismissing these cases, Pulling continued her campaign by forming Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD) in 1983.
Pulling described D&D as "a fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings".
Pulling and BADD launched an intensive media campaign through conservative Christian outlets as well as mainstream media, including an appearance on current affairs show 60 Minutes opposite D&D co-creator Gary Gygax.
In 1985, Jon Quigley, of the Lakeview Full Gospel Fellowship, spoke for many opponents when he claimed: "The game is an occult tool that opens up young people to influence or possession by demons."
These fears also found their way into the UK. Fantasy author KT Davies recalls "showing a vicar a gaming figure - he likened D&D to demon worship because there were 'gods' in the game".
Veteran roleplayer Andy Smith found himself in the unusual position of being both a roleplayer and a Christian. "While working for a Christian organisation I was told to remove my roleplaying books from the shared accommodation as they were offensive to some of the other workers and contained references to demon-worship."
Looking back now, it's possible to see the tendrils of a classic moral panic, and some elements of the slightly esoteric world of roleplaying did stir the imaginations of panicked outsiders.
"Since fantasy typically features activities like magic and witchcraft, D&D was perceived to be in direct opposition to biblical precepts and established thinking about witchcraft and magic," says Dr David Waldron, lecturer in history and anthropology at Federation University Australia and author of Roleplaying Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic. "There was also a view that youth had an inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality."
While the wilder claims about the nature of D&D tended to emanate from evangelical groups, they prompted wider suspicion.
"The memes from this campaign proliferated and, being published largely uncritically in the initial stages, led to a wide-ranging list of bizarre claims," says Waldron. "For example, that when a character died you were also likely to commit suicide."
The claims being made about roleplaying games did not go unchallenged.
Author Michael Stackpole was a vocal dissenter, criticising Patricia Pulling and BADD. In 1990, Stackpole published The Pulling Report, in which he documented numerous errors made by BADD and accused Pulling of misrepresenting her credentials as an expert witness on games.
Studies by the American Association of Suicidology, the US Centers for Disease Control, and Health and Welfare Canada all found no causal link between D&D and suicide.
D&D continues to be debated, in the US at least. In 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a ban on D&D by the Waupun Correctional Institution. Captain Muraski, the institution's gang specialist, testified that D&D can "foster an inmate's obsession with escaping from the real life, correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behaviour".
But public perception has changed. If people have any kind of negative view of roleplaying today, it is much more likely to be about the supposed geekish overtones, rather than fears for the sanity of the players. The students who played D&D in the 1980s are now grown up into respectable careers.
"The view of roleplaying games has changed over time," says Smith, "mostly because the predicted 'streets awash with the blood of innocents as a horde of demonically-possessed roleplayers laid waste to the country' simply never materialised."
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Sunday's elaborate prison escape in northern France sounds like fiction, and for good reason. Redoine Faid - who escaped in a helicopter after an armed diversion - is reportedly a fan of Hollywood crime films.
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Faid has said his lifestyle has been modelled on gangsters played by Robert de Niro and Al Pacino. He was serving a 25-year-sentence over his part in a failed robbery in which a police officer was killed in 2010.
He found notoriety in France after escaping prison for six weeks in 2013.
But Faid is far from the first prisoner to break out in such a dramatic fashion. Here are some other extraordinary tales of escape.
Other airborne plans
There have been quite a few attempted escapes by helicopter, including several in France. The yard where the helicopter landed on Sunday was the only part of the prison without special anti-aircraft netting, AFP news agency reports.
In Greece one convict used a helicopter to escape from a high-security prison not once, but twice - in 2006 and 2009. He remains at large.
Drones are also becoming a security risk for prisons around the world - reports say they may have been used in advance of Faid's breakout.
In 2017, convicted kidnapper Jimmy Causey was able to escape from a South Carolina prison using wire cutters and cell-phones that had been dropped in.
A sticky ruse
Twelve inmates escaped from a county jail in Alabama in 2017 after using peanut butter to trick a guard into unlocking a door that led outside.
The men confused a new member of staff by smearing the spread over a number on an exit door.
The local sheriff admitted the plan had been "very smart thinking", but all of the men soon ended back in custody.
Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman
One of the best-known jail-breakers in history is Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The drug lord has given two Mexican maximum-security prisons the slip.
In 2001 he was reportedly smuggled out of custody inside a laundry basket - though doubt has been cast on this account. He evaded re-capture for another 13 years.
After being sent back to prison, he escaped again through a hole in a shower stall in 2015. A mile-long tunnel system had been built underneath, complete with lighting, ventilation and railing for a modified motorbike
To the further embarrassment of Mexican authorities, El Chapo's shower disappearing act was captured on CCTV.
After several months on the run - and an infamous interview with Hollywood actor Sean Penn - Guzman was eventually recaptured in Sinaloa state.
There were rumours he had escaped again in 2016 - which turned out to be false. He is now in US custody and awaiting trial on drug charges after being extradited.
Foiled by high-heels
In 2012 drug trafficker Ronaldo Silva, 39, was reportedly able to sneak out of a prison in Brazil by swapping clothes with his wife during a visit.
After reportedly shaving and applying lipstick, he was re-captured after being spotted struggling to walk in ill-fitting heels by a nearby bus stop.
Photographs emerged of him wearing the outfit, including a wig, after being brought back into jail.
'Korean Houdini'
Choi Gap-bok became infamous in South Korea after escaping a detention cell in Daegu province in 2012.
A known yoga expert, he got out by oiling himself up and squeezing through a 15cm by 45cm (6x18-inch) window meant for food.
Investigators said the 115lb (52kg) and 5ft 6 in (1.7m) man escaped in less than a minute by "moving flexibly like a octopus".
The 50-year-old was arrested again after six days on the run. He was then locked up in a cell with a smaller, inescapable, food slot.
Escape from Alcatraz
Probably the best-known prison escape of all happened near San Francisco in 1962.
Billed as the ultimate maximum-security prison in the country of its day, Alcatraz sat on a rock in the middle of a frigid San Francisco Bay, and was fortified with strict rules and guarding techniques.
It was billed as so secure that prisoners who had attempted escape elsewhere were sent there as punishment. Despite this, there were over a dozen break-out attempts by inmates during its three-decade tenure as a federal facility.
In June 1962 a routine morning cell check revealed that brothers John and Clarence Anglin and another prisoner, Frank Morris, were not in their beds.
They had made dummy replicas and escaped through air vents and an unguarded utility corridor, before leaving the island on a DIY raft.
What exactly happened next remains a mystery, and has been the subject of deep speculation ever since.
The FBI eventually concluded that the men had probably drowned while crossing, but the bureau's website page on the case still requests public information on the three men.
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A West Yorkshire teenager will appear in court on Friday after allegedly making comments on Facebook about the deaths of six soldiers in Afghanistan.
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Azhar Ahmed, 19, of Fir Avenue, Ravensthorpe, faces a racially aggravated public order charge.
He was arrested on Friday and charged over the weekend, police said.
The soldiers, five from 3 Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, and one from the Duke of Lancaster's, were killed by a bomb in Afghanistan on Tuesday.
Cpl Jake Hartley, 20, Pte Anthony Frampton, 20, and Pte Christopher Kershaw, 19, were killed in the blast.
Pte Daniel Wade, 20, Pte Daniel Wilford, 21, and Sgt Nigel Coupe, 33, also died when their Warrior armoured vehicle was hit on Tuesday.
Mr Ahmed has been bailed.
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A 22-year-old Indian has become the face of massive caste protests which have shut down Ahmedabad, the main city in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat. The BBC's Geeta Pandey meets Hardik Patel.
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Two months ago, no-one outside Gujarat had heard his name, but today Hardik Patel is making headlines across India.
With his controversial demand that the Patels - or the Patidar caste - be given better access to jobs and education through the quota system, he has acquired millions of supporters in a very short span of time.
On Tuesday, at least 300,000 supporters walked miles to get to the sprawling GMDC ground in the centre of the city to hear him talk about the "injustices heaped on Patels".
In his hour-long speech, he invoked India's independence heroes Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, took a dig at Mr Modi and berated Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel.
"It's a fight for our rights. If they grant our demand, we will accept it with humility, but if we don't get our right, we will snatch it by force," he said.
Braving the scorching heat, the massive crowds cheered him on, clapping and responding to his questions with raised fists.
At first glance, there is nothing to distinguish Mr Patel from his teeming supporters. The 22-year-old commerce graduate, dressed in a full-sleeve shirt and trousers, is small built and unassuming.
But he is a brilliant speaker, and has won millions with his fiery oratory. And although Mr Patel says he has no interest in entering politics, his supporters are starting to compare him with the prime minister, who is also seen as a self-made leader and is appreciated for his lively speeches.
Mr Patel tells me he was born in the town of Viramgam near Ahmedabad. His father runs a small business selling water pumps and he lives at home with his parents and a younger sister.
"My sister completed her high school last year and scored very high marks. But she couldn't get a scholarship, whereas students from the castes that are part of the quota system got it with much lower marks."
He began his public career in 2011 when he set up a social organisation to fight "harassment of women and poor farmers" and the idea to demand quotas for Patels in jobs and colleges came to him just a few months ago.
"I was chatting with a few friends and everyone was talking about how even the meritorious amongst us fail to get into colleges or government jobs."
In recent weeks, his supporters have put out a YouTube video where he is seen posing with a rifle on his shoulder and among his influences, he counts fellow Gujaratis Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel.
He says he is particularly inspired by Patel and his war cry is "Jai Sardaar" (hail Sardar) and many at his rallies appear wearing Sardar Patel's masks.
When he addressed his first rally on 6 July, it was attended by 12,000 people. His second drew about 50,000. And then last week, reports said 450,000 people had turned up to hear him in Surat.
On Tuesday, Mr Patel claimed nearly a million people were present at his Ahmedabad rally, although police said they had counted about 300,000 supporters with help from security drones.
His sudden rise to prominence has taken the authorities by surprise - the Gujarat chief minister, herself a Patel, has ruled out their demand for quotas, but she has named a group of ministers to talk to Hardik Patel. The talks so far have failed to yield any results.
Patels, who comprise about 20% of the state's population, control India's thriving diamond cutting and polishing industry and are among the most prosperous businessmen and farmers in Gujarat. As a community they are politically powerful.
They are also thriving on foreign shores where they are known for their enterprise and business acumen - there are more than a quarter of a million Patels in the UK and about 200,000 in the US.
But Mr Patel says it's a myth that all Patels are rich.
"Only five to 10% of Patels are prosperous, that doesn't make the entire community rich. If you visit a village home in the Saurashra region, you'll see people don't have enough to eat. There are so many poor people. And if you look at the farmers who have killed themselves in the past 10 years, the largest numbers are from among the Patels," he says.
With resentment against the quota system growing, and with his largely young supporters getting increasingly restless, Mr Patel has issued a veiled threat to the authorities.
"India and Gujarat are the land of revolutionaries. We believe in peace and love and follow in the footsteps of Gandhi and Sardar Patel. But we are also inspired by revolutionaries like Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh and if need be, we will not hesitate to take the path of violence," he told me, adding that he is in it for the long haul.
"This is not a 100-metre race, it's a marathon. We will call off our agitation only after the demands of Gujarat's 18 million Patels are accepted," he says.
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Attacks of the magnitude of those that took place in Paris, killing 130 people and injuring more than 400, are extremely rare. The authorities do prepare for these emergencies but what advice is there for ordinary people?
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By Camila RuzBBC News Magazine
Be prepared
Many survivors of the Paris attacks have said that they mistook the first gunshots for fireworks. This is typical, says John Leach, survival psychologist and military survival instructor.
People who are not expecting gunshots will assume that they are something else because it does not fit in with their expectations. "We respond to the model in our head and we don't respond directly to the environment and that is what makes us vulnerable," he says.
The time it can take to understand what is happening can be lethal. But if someone has already thought through a few worst-case scenarios then this process will be quicker. "All you need to ask is - if anything goes wrong, what is my first response going to be?" explains Leach.
It's easy to sit in a restaurant or cinema without paying any attention to the emergency exits. But knowing where they are can save lives. In the attack on the Bataclan concert hall on Friday, a security guard led a group of people to safety through the fire exit on the left of the stage.
React quickly
The vast majority of people will be too confused to do anything during an attack. Leach has looked at life-threatening situations around the world and has found that only 15% of people will respond in a way that helps them survive. Up to 75% will just be too bewildered by what is happening around them to react at all. The other 10% will react in ways that reduce their chances of survival and get in the way of other people, he says.
Acting decisively might make survival more likely. But it's also human nature to wait for other people to act first. In a classic experiment, psychologists put people in a room and filled it with smoke to see how they would react. People who were on their own were more likely to take action than those who were with other people.
Make yourself a smaller target
"Where there's cover from sight, there's cover from fire," advises Ian Reed, a former British soldier, military instructor and chief executive of the Formative Group security firm. The first thing is to try to get out of the way and make yourself a smaller target. This can involve simply dropping to the ground but ideally means getting behind some sort of cover.
Hard cover such as a concrete wall is the best option. "Obviously, Hollywood has portrayed cars as being bulletproof but that's not necessarily the case," says Reed. Despite this, even a car is better than nothing at all.
When an attack happens in a tightly packed space, a single bullet can end up injuring several people. Keeping out of sight reduces the risk that you can be targeted deliberately and also the chances of being hit by someone simply spraying the room with fire.
Many survivors in Paris did this instinctively - turning tables over to use as makeshift shelters or hiding behind speakers in the concert hall. But the lack of cover on the main floor of the Bataclan meant not everyone there was able to hide.
An Irish couple survived by playing dead. Another survivor, Theresa Cede, told the BBC: "One guy was badly hurt, and moaning, so we tried to say: 'Shh, be quiet, stay alive and don't move,' because every time there was movement somewhere, there were more gunshots."
"They are looking for movement - it will catch their eye," explains Reed. This is especially true if it's dark. Some people in the Bataclan did run for the exit when the attackers paused to reload. This can be risky, but in some scenarios running away is a good idea.
The UK government's advice, in its document on "dynamic lockdowns", is to run if there is a safe route out. But if there is no safe way to do this it advises hiding. The advice is summarised as "run, hide, tell".
According to eyewitnesses on Friday, several people chose to stay hidden in offices and toilets until help arrived.
In January, 24-year-old Lassana Bathily was hailed a hero after hiding Jewish shoppers in a basement cold store during an attack by an Islamist gunman. He switched off the fridge and the lights and ran to get help. All of those he hid survived.
Fighting back
Rushing a gunman has worked in some situations. In August, a train attack was foiled in France after passengers overpowered the lone gunman. But of the four passengers involved in subduing him, one was in the Air Force and another in the National Guard. The men only made the attempt after the shooter's weapon jammed.
Reed says that it's not a good idea to take on an assailant without training. "It's just risking your life," he adds. It's important to remember that many attackers will be working in teams. Some will be wearing body armour and others could be carrying explosives.
Adel Termos is thought to have saved dozens of lives in Beirut last week after he tackled a bomber from behind. But the suicide vest exploded and both Termos and the bomber died in the blast.
Despite the dangers, some people argue that it's important to be ready to fight if necessary. Members of the Islamic State group are not motivated by taking hostages, says James Alvarez, psychologist and hostage negotiator. "There's nobody to negotiate with. Your value lies in you being dead. If I know that I'm going to be shot, I'd like to think that I'm not going to go down quietly."
After the escape
Once someone has managed to escape the situation it's important for them to remain vigilant. "Get as far away as possible, behind as much hard cover as possible and go to the nearest authority figures for help," says Reed.
It can be dangerous to join big groups nearby and to take public transport. "Always assume that there's going to be a secondary device or action," adds Reed. The key is to take advice from police officers or other officials, as they may have better knowledge of the situation.
Help each other
The chances of being caught up in a major attack are still low. But if it does happen, co-operating with others can increase people's chance of survival, says Chris Cocking, social psychologist and expert in crowd behaviour.
After the 7/7 London attacks, Cocking helped interview dozens of people involved and concluded that the quickest and most efficient way for a group to evacuate is for people to work together.
This is the only way to avoid situations such as a crowd getting jammed at a fire escape. Cocking says that most people are likely to try to help each other even in extreme situations. "There's an assumption that it's everybody for themselves but that just doesn't happen," he says.
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These are difficult days for Britain in Europe. Allies are wary. Old friendships under strain. There is increasing impatience with the UK and what are seen as its incessant demands to be treated as a special case.
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Gavin HewittEurope editor@BBCGavinHewitton Twitter
In the current debate about the next seven-year EU budget the finger of blame is firmly pointed at Britain. The Commissioner for Financial Programming, Janusz Lewandowski, makes the case that more Europe means more money.
Almost in the same breath - and unusually for a commissioner - he identifies the UK as the problem. "Either they see their future in the EU in the long term or they don't," he said.
Then a Polish minister, Elzbieta Bienkowska, was quoted as saying that "the rest of Europe is ready to conclude the budget by the end of this year and the only country that is saying 'no' is Great Britain".
That is, of course, untrue. The French have threatened to use their veto if farm subsidies are threatened. The Danes want a rebate and might also use their veto if they do not get it. The Swedes, particularly angry at the amount ear-marked for agriculture, want deep cuts.
Germany, too, objects to the European Commission's proposal for a 5% increase. It is difficult to be precise with the figures as countries use different starting points and different criteria. Broadly speaking, the Commission wants a budget of 1.1 trillion euros (£880bn). The Germans want about 100bn euros less and Britain aims for a figure about 70bn lower than that.
In fact, the British and German positions are not that far apart. But here is the difference. The Germans expect to compromise. The British cannot. David Cameron is seen as in a bind. It will be difficult for him to return home with anything less than a budget freeze allowing for inflation.
He is most unlikely to get that, and the expectation is of another British veto. On Wednesday, Angela Merkel will visit David Cameron and seek a compromise. It is difficult to see what she can offer.
Mood sours
What irritates so many other Europeans is that Britain shows no enthusiasm for the European idea. Its approach is entirely about what it gets out of the project. This grates because Europe's officials and its political class are beleaguered. Despite outbursts of optimism, the eurozone crisis has not been fixed. Only this weekend, Chancellor Merkel said the eurozone will take at least another five years to recover. It has to be doubtful whether the people of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy will wait that long.
The German and EU prescription for the crisis is "more Europe" . Britain wants "less Europe".
David Cameron wants safeguards for the City of London; many Europeans blame its "casino capitalism" for the crisis. Angela Merkel says more sovereignty will have to be passed to Brussels; the British want to get powers back. Although it is more nuanced, Britain often seems to be travelling in the opposite direction to the rest.
At the highest levels in Germany they want Britain to remain at the heart of Europe. (The two countries share an instinct for free trade and an open economy).
Elsewhere in Europe, however, the mood has soured towards Britain. In a recent conversation I was surprised to hear someone saying they would "relish" a British exit. The key for the Germans is that Britain does not obstruct. Which brings us back to the budget. Britain is being lined up to be the fall guy for failure.
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Avengers: Age of Ultron has topped the US and Canada box office for a second weekend, taking $77m (£50m) - more than five times the earnings of its closest rival, action comedy Hot Pursuit.
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The poorly-reviewed buddy movie, which stars Reese Witherspoon and Modern Family's Sofia Vergara, made $13.3m (£8.6m) to take second place.
The Avengers sequel has now taken $313m (£203m) in just 10 days in the US.
It is the joint second fastest film to pass $300m, tying with The Dark Knight.
The first film in the Avengers series, which features Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America and Black Widow, reached that mark in just nine days in 2012.
'Tough critics'
Warner Bros admitted Hot Pursuit's opening weekend total was "a little lighter" than it had hoped, with the studio having estimated takings of $18m (£11.7m) or higher.
"Critics were very tough on Hot Pursuit," said Paul Dergarabedian from box office analysts Rentrak.
"It was a formula [that] for whatever reason didn't resonate with the critics, and I think that had an impact on its box office."
Mr Dergarabedian added: "Ultron is just so big, it's such a behemoth, it's hard for a newcomer to get attention."
That should all change next week though, when Mad Max: Fury Road and Pitch Perfect 2 open.
Blake Lively's fantasy drama The Age of Adaline was this weekend's third placed film with takings of $5.6m (£3.6m), while Furious 7 took $5.2m (£3.4m) in fourth place.
The action blockbuster, starring Vin Diesel and the late Paul Walker, has earned $1.5bn (£970m) globally to date.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 completed the top five with takings of just under $5.2m (£3.4m).
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A man found seriously injured outside a house in Barnsley, following a suspected assault, has died.
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The 32-year-old was found on Houghton Road in Thurnscoe on Friday evening.
He has not been formally identified and police said the investigation was being treated as a murder inquiry.
Two men, aged 36 and 34, and two boys, both aged 15, were arrested on suspicion of assault and have been bailed. Another man, aged 35, remains in police custody.
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For 36 hours, I have been trying out 4G in two cities where it has been launched by the EE network. Everywhere I've gone in London and Manchester, outside, indoors, on trains and in cars, I've used a speed testing application. And while I've seen some breathtakingly fast results, there has also been some worrying evidence that the speed and extent of the 4G network is being oversold.
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Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
Here is a selection of my results:
Monday 29 October, 14:55 GMT, Oxford Street: Download 53.74 Mbps, Upload 4.72 Mbps, Ping 33 ms
Picking up the 4G phone that I was borrowing from the EE store on Oxford Street, I gave it my first test - and it was very very fast. A 53Mbps download is better than the vast majority of UK broadband users could achieve at home right now - but obviously at EE's flagship central London store, the company had made sure the network delivered.
Oh dear - inside the BBC's new headquarters, things slowed right down. But then again, for some reason most mobile phone networks don't work at all inside the state-of-the-art building so this was better than many colleagues were getting.
Deep inside a chaotic Euston Station, more problems. The Speedtest app could not detect any data signal at all.
But once we took our seats on the Manchester train, 4G leaped back into life. The upload speeds looked startlingly good as we waited for the train to leave. As we headed out through North London, however, the 4G network seemed to disappear even before we had breached the North Circular Road.
Once we had arrived in Manchester, one of the 11 cities that were to go live with EE 4G on Tuesday morning, I was relieved to see that things were working.
At the cafe which kindly opened at the crack of dawn so that we could broadcast into BBC Breakfast and numerous radio stations, another pretty good result. That kind of speed might not look too startling - but if there is plenty of capacity it would make 4G a very attractive option to small businesses looking for an alternative to fixed broadband.
We headed north out of Manchester to see how far the 4G network stretched. As expected it melted away as we crossed the M60, but EE's 3G network proved surprisingly robust. This result from a village on the road to Rochdale looks excellent - but if you can get this on 3G why would you pay more for 4G?
Live from outside the BBC North base at Salford, we were back on 4G at a pretty respectable if unspectacular speed. Note the upload figure though - for anyone trying to send data rather than receive that will look very attractive. Mind you, inside the BBC building the 4G disappeared again. Vodafone has suggested that EE's brand of 4G won't be effective indoors - does that charge stick?
As our train headed out of Manchester, the 4G network seemed to stretch as far as Stockport. Taking advantage of some impressive upload speeds, I uploaded a video to YouTube in under a minute.
But there was a disappointing end to my 4G testing marathon. Arriving at my home in the remote wastelands of west London, I found that EE's network did not stretch this far. True - this 3G result is a lot better than my usual network gives me at home. But if 4G really is supposed to deliver a superfast future, indoors and outside, to 98% of the UK's population, wouldn't you expect it to work right across the nation's capital? Maybe the change of brand to EE is a tacit admission that the network just cannot deliver Everything Everywhere.
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A £1.9m funding package to meet the costs of urgent repairs to Weymouth's Harbour walls has been announced.
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The work will see sheet steel piles, said to be in a critical condition, being rebuilt at Nothe Parade and at the western end of Custom House Quay.
The money will come from reserves, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council revealed.
Councillor Ian Bruce said: "They are well beyond their design life, the repairs are urgently needed."
Nelsons Wharf jetty will be permanently removed as part of the plan.
The authority spent £4.5m repairing its ferry port after the harbour wall collapsed in 2012.
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The number of raptors found dead in a part of Ross-shire has risen to 18, according to RSPB Scotland.
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Thirteen red kites and five buzzards have been found near Conon Bridge, with tests showing several had been poisoned.
All of the carcasses were discovered in a two square mile area to the south east of Conon Bridge around Conon Brae, Balvail, Leanaig and Alcaig.
The RSPB has been working with police in investigating the deaths.
The Scottish SPCA has also been involved.
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Bulgarians go to the polls on 12 May in an early election after nationwide protests against low living standards and widespread corruption forced the government of the centre-right Gerb party to resign in February.
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The election campaign has been marred by revelations of illegal wiretapping of politicians, with prosecutors pointing a finger of blame at Gerb's second most senior politician, former Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov.
Opinion polls have predicted that no party will win an outright majority, prompting fears of a hung parliament and further instability in the EU's poorest country.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. For more reports from BBC Monitoring, click here. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.
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Eight years, 11 months and 21 days. That's how much time has passed since the European Court of Human Rights first told the UK that it had to change the law on prisoners voting. But so far no final bill has seen the light of day in Parliament.
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Dominic CascianiHome affairs correspondent@BBCDomCon Twitter
Now, the saga will go on for yet another year - after a political compromise that, rather usefully to both sides, avoids the row blowing up as the British general election approaches.
To recap: the ECtHR ruled back in 2005 that the UK's blanket ban on prisoners voting must be amended to allow at least some inmates to vote. The case, brought by the convicted killer John Hirst, argued that the ban worked against helping resettle offenders.
The then Labour government repeatedly ducked and dived to avoid dealing with the issue and ultimately dropped a political time bomb in the lap of the incoming Tory-Lib Dem coalition.
But now the coalition has ducked it too - throwing it in the direction of whoever wins next year's election.
Earlier this week, the Council of Europe committee that oversees the court's decisions met to discuss what they were going to do with the UK's failure to implement the judgement.
The council is made up of all the member states, including the UK, that are party to the European Convention on Human Rights - and it had the rare treat of a mitigation plea of sorts from a justice minister - Lord Faulks. Rather usefully, he is a QC so he knows a thing or two about how to beg for mercy for his client.
The peer gave a string of assurances that the UK fully backs the European Convention on Human Rights - and convinced the members to give the UK more time to sort out prisoners votes once and for all.
Most importantly, he told them that the UK would fulfil its obligations.
The committee then published a carefully-worded resolution which raps London's knuckles for not changing the law while, simultaneously, declaring that Europe will take no action until at least September 2015.
So the upshot is that, yet again, nothing is going to happen. Here's why.
While the European Court of Human Rights is a legal body - the Council of Europe is political and has to try to keep everyone onside.
London was one of the most important architects of the post-war human rights system and Strasbourg simply doesn't want to provoke a crisis with a nation so central to improving the rule of law around the world.
The worst-case scenario is the UK, if provoked, would refuse to abide by the judgement - something that no country has ever done. That could then be used by less enlightened member states to ignore far more serious breaches of human rights. The UK could threaten to walk away - as some on the right want it to do - and the system would come crashing down.
But, equally, given that the UK officially supports the human rights convention, another year of delay suits the government as it heads towards a general election in which the rise of UKIP means Europe is going to be a major issue.
In other words, why have a row now...when it could be best put off for another year.
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Call it the gospel according to Mark, or the thoughts of Chairman Zuck, it is an extraordinary document.
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By Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent
The
letter from Mark Zuckerberg
which accompanied Facebook's IPO filing is rather different in tone from the mission statements issued by a conventional chief executive.
So will it inspire or terrify investors?
Let's try a bit of textual analysis:
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A six-year-old girl has died after it is believed she choked while staying with her family at a holiday home in Gwynedd.
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North Wales Police said the girl was treated by paramedics and an off-duty police officer carried out CPR before she was airlifted from Morfa Nefyn to hospital in Bangor.
She is not local to the area, but no details were given of her home address.
Det Insp Lisa Surridge said the death is not being treated as suspicious.
A post-mortem examination is being carried out and the cause of death will be notified to the Coroner for North West Wales, Dewi Pritchard Jones
The girl was flown to hospital by an RAF rescue helicopter.
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Two people have died following a three-car collision.
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Cambridgeshire Police said Terence Oram, 72, of Nightingale Way, Royston, Hertfordshire, and Peter King, 64, of Lichfield Road, Cambridge, were killed on the A1198 in the county on Tuesday.
The collision took place at 11:35 GMT between Whaddon and Bassingbourn.
Police are appealing for witnesses to the crash, which involved a beige Nissan Note, black Kia Sportage and white Volkswagen Beetle.
Emergency services attended, but Mr Oram, who had been driving the Nissan, and Mr King, who was driving the Kia, died at the scene.
The driver of the Volkswagen was uninjured.
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The Jewish festival of lights begins this year on 24 December.
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This date changes from year to year but the duration stays the same. There are eight days of Hanukkah.
But if you've been busy Christmas shopping or binge-eating Twiglets, then you might not be familiar with the celebration.
Here are Josh and Amy Tapper from Channel 4's Gogglebox to present their guide to Hanukkah.
Why does it change?
"This year the first time of Hanukkah is Christmas Eve and the last day is New Year's Day," Josh explains.
"The actual date it's on each year is the same in the Hebrew calendar but it changes in the [Gregorian] calendar."
No matter when it begins, it always lasts for eight days.
"The difference between Christmas and Hanukkah is that all eight nights are even, there's no big day like there is for Christmas."
What's with the candles?
"You have the hanukkiah or the menorah, where you have eight candles. In the middle you have something called the Shamash," says Josh.
"You have to use the Shamash to light all of the candles and you increase the candles lit as the days go on."
The menorah is used to commemorate a group of Jews called the Maccabees who were the most powerful army in the ancient world.
After a three year war with the Syrian Greeks they recaptured a temple and discovered a single cruse of oil with the seal of the high priest still intact.
When they lit an eight-branched menorah they had enough oil to last only a day, but it burned for eight days. This became known as the miracle of the oil.
Do you give presents?
"We're supposed to get presents but because now we're older our parents seem to think they can get away without giving us presents," Josh says.
"My girlfriend celebrates Christmas so she's getting me my first ever Christmas present this year."
"We never have a Christmas tree, or lights, or Santa," Amy explains.
"Our Dad is like the biggest grinch, he's anti-Christmas and says it's so commercialised."
Is there anything special to eat?
"There are two famous foods that you're supposed to eat at Hanukkah - donuts and latkes, which are really nice with salt beef," Josh tells Newsbeat.
"Latkes are basically grated potato and onions that are deep fried," adds Amy.
"In my primary school there used to be competitions where you had to eat your donut without licking your lips once. I always won it."
What about the holiday armadillo?
"That's got nothing to with Hanukkah. It's just classic Ross making up a holiday armadillo," says Josh.
"I can even create an association between the holiday armadillo and Hanukkah."
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From the search for new dinosaur skeletons in the "Badlands" of Wyoming, to the push to return humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972, here's a festive selection of the best science and environment long reads published by the BBC this year.
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Mission Jurassic: Searching for dinosaur bones By Jonathan Amos
This year, a team of scientists began an audacious dinosaur hunt.
They have started to excavate a square mile (260 hectares) of land at a secret location in the "Badlands" of Wyoming - and have already discovered a treasure trove of bones.
The researchers hope it will give them an unprecedented understanding of the dinosaurs that lived 150m years ago, and could help to solve the mystery of how these Jurassic beasts grew so huge.
Read the feature
Electric car future may depend on deep sea mining. By David Shukman
The future of electric cars may depend on mining critically important metals on the ocean floor.
That's the view of the engineer leading a major European investigation into new sources of key elements.
Demand is soaring for the metal cobalt - an essential ingredient in batteries and abundant in rocks on the seabed.
David Shukman visited a ship off the coast of Malaga in southern Spain, where a prototype mining machine was being lowered to the seabed to test the extraction of precious minerals.
Read the feature
Chernobyl: The end of a three-decade experiment By Victoria Gill
After the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, an area of more than 4,000 square kilometres had to be abandoned.
The accident turned this landscape into a giant, contaminated laboratory, where hundreds of scientists have worked to find out how an environment recovers from nuclear catastrophe.
An exclusion zone- covering more than two thousand square kilometres - was established around the plant. Its purpose was to protect the public and reduce the spread of radiation.
But, as the BBC's Victoria Gill found out, talks have been underway to re-draw the boundaries of this zone.
Read the feature
To the Moon and Beyond By Paul Rincon
The White House wants to send Americans back to the Moon by 2024. This mission will be the first to land humans on the lunar surface since 1972.
But this time, Nasa plans to do things differently. The Orion spacecraft, which will carry astronauts on their lunar journey, superficially resembles hardware used in the Apollo era. But it's packed with technology that was unimaginable in the 1960s.
The agency also plans to build a space station in lunar orbit, called Gateway, which could act as an operations control centre.
But can Nasa safely mount a return mission in just a few years, given that some critical hardware has neither been built nor flight-tested?
Read the feature
Twelve years to save the planet? Make that 18 months. By Matt McGrath
In July, Matt McGrath wrote about a growing consensus that the subsequent 18 months were critical for the climate crisis.
More than five months have now elapsed and, after a compromise at the UN climate conference in Madrid, the urgency is even greater.
Among experts on the climate, there's a sense that 2020 is the last chance saloon for protecting our planet from the dangerous effects of climate change.
The UN's climate conference in Glasgow next year - COP26 - could be a pivotal moment.
But because the summit in Madrid failed to clarify so many key issues, the talks in Glasgow have a mountain to climb.
Read the feature
How much warmer is your city?By BBC Visual and Data Journalism team
The world is getting hotter. July 2019 was one of the warmest months ever recorded - and July temperatures almost everywhere on Earth have been higher in the last 10 years compared with 1880-1900.
Find out how the temperature in 1,000 major cities across the world has changed already and how much it could rise by in the coming years.
Go to the page
Climate change: Your choices have a ripple effect. By Justin Rowlatt
Is individual action pointless in the face of climate change?
What difference does one person forgoing a lamb chop for a lentil bake make if the other 7,699,999,999 of us humans here on Earth don't do anything?
But 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg made headlines this year when she opted to travel to climate change meetings in New York on a racing yacht rather than fly there.
Ms Thunberg told the BBC the point was just as much about sending a signal to those in power as it was about individual contributions to tackling the climate crisis.
Read the feature
The teenagers saving Madagascar's wildlife By Victoria Gill
The island nation of Madagascar has a dubious accolade: it is the world leader in deforestation.
In 2017 alone, 500,000 hectares were cut down - half a million football pitches of rich, diverse rainforest.
It is home to species threatened by the pet trade, which will go extinct in the next few years if things don't change.
Now, some of the island's teenagers are mobilising to stop food production from destroying the island's rich rainforest ecosystem.
Read the feature
Microplastics: Seeking the 'plastic score' of our food. By Helen Briggs
Microplastics - defined as plastic chunks that are smaller than 5mm - are found everywhere on Earth. But we know surprisingly little about what risks they pose to living things.
There are many unanswered questions about the impact of these tiny bits of plastic, which come from larger plastic debris, cosmetics and clothes.
What's not in dispute is just how far microplastics have travelled around the planet in a matter of decades.
Scientists are now racing to investigate some of the big unanswered questions.
Read the feature
The vast sand scheme protecting the Norfolk coast. By Rebecca Morelle
A huge "sandscaping" scheme has been carried out in the UK, on the eroding Norfolk coastline.
Engineers created a 6km-long dune to protect Bacton Terminal, which supplies one third of the UK's gas.
The station is teetering just metres from a cliff edge. But the project is also intended to protect two nearby villages.
The Norfolk coastline is losing land every year as part of natural geological erosion. When big storms occur, several metres of coastline can vanish at once.
Read the feature
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Dave MacLeod has struck new climbing routes on some of the UK's most challenging cliff faces. But, in October, a run-of-the-mill climb ended in a bad injury. Recovery has been a rocky road.
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By Steven McKenzieBBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter
Two years ago, MacLeod and fellow climber Tim Emmett completed a gruelling new route live on television.
The pair achieved their feat with barely minutes left before the broadcast had to drop off air.
Later dubbed Usual Suspects, after the 1995 film starring Kevin Spacey, the climb is one of the toughest on Sron Ulladale, a towering rock face on the Harris in the Western Isles.
The following year, MacLeod, now 34, made the first free climb of Longhope Direct, a route on St John's Head, on Orkney. St John's Head is the UK's largest sea cliff and rises to more than 343m (1,128ft).
In free climbing, ropes and equipment are only there as protection against a fall and cannot be used as an aid.
In the months that followed, MacLeod completed a new free climb in Norway and shot a film about bouldering in Switzerland.
Last summer, he struck a new climb at an overhang, or roof, in ancient sandstone cliffs on the isle of Raasay.
Then, in the autumn of that year, the Lochaber-based climber was brought crashing back down to earth in an accident in familiar territory close to his home.
"My backyard for climbing is Glen Nevis," says MacLeod.
"I spend most of the summer there climbing new routes in Steall Gorge and was just on a normal climbing day - I was actually doing a really easy, warm up route - when I fell."
MacLeod had completed the warm up climb with friends and was being lowered on a rope, which was anchored at the top of the climb and controlled by another climber standing on the ground below.
Because his colleague had positioned himself further back than intended, the rope ran out 3m (10ft) from the bottom of the climb.
MacLeod said: "It is a common accident that climbers always have to be vigilant of.
"I was lowered off the end of the rope and I dropped the last 10ft, clipping a ledge with my right ankle, tumbled down a hill and ended up wrapped around a tree."
Through a combination of hopping, crawling and being carried, MacLeod was able to get out of the gorge and to a car and eventually to hospital.
After an examination, it was thought that he had damaged the arch of his foot, but three weeks later a private MRI scan revealed a flap of torn cartilage inside the joint.
MacLeod said: "This was a more serious injury because cartilage doesn't heal. I knew then that I would require surgery on my ankle."
'Was invincible'
It was the second time the climber, coach and writer had been badly injured.
He broke his left ankle when he was 19 and was on crutches for three months.
"Thinking back to what happened 15 years ago, I don't remember being worried about it," he says.
"I was told that it might give me some trouble later on, that I might have arthritis in that ankle in 10 years time, but that didn't seem to register with me. Like many teenage boys, I thought I was invincible."
MacLeod says that he now has a greater appreciation of the impact of injuries, the treatment of them and also rehabilitation. But with that knowledge has come a keener sense of awareness of how injuries might affect his ability to climb.
He said: "This time around, I was absolutely terrified of losing the function that I had."
As well as the potential effects on his climbing, MacLeod worried about not being able to run again.
"I have never really been into running," he said. "It was always something I had done as part of my training. But, after the fall, my attitude changed and, when I was able to run again for the first time, I really enjoyed it."
'Climb properly'
Almost five months since the accident, MacLeod is climbing again and recently attempted a new route on Ben Nevis.
But he said: "For a sportsperson, there is no end to the recovery. You are always recovering from injury. I still have a bit of trouble with that left ankle."
Ironically, at the time of his latest accident, MacLeod was in the process of writing a book about injuries.
"It is not about traumatic injuries, like an injury in a fall, but the injuries climbers get from training. There is not a lot of information available to climbers about injuries to fingers, elbows and the upper body," he said.
"I am also writing about the psychology of injuries and of dealing with injuries."
By the summer, MacLeod hopes to be climbing in the Alps and also exploring the Scottish islands and seeking out new routes.
He said: "Until a week ago, my only current goal was to learn to walk around and climb properly.
"But, just in that last week, I have realised that I am going to be okay and have been able to make plans."
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As the political turmoil brews in Yemen, ordinary women are worrying about running their homes and caring for their families. Here, three women tell their stories. All names have been changed to protect their identity.
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Umm Ali, a mother-of-five, from Aden
"Since the unrest first started, my daughters have stopped going to school. All the schools near here are now closed because of the teachers' strike.
"Food prices have increased sharply - particularly the price of rice, sugar and wheat. My husband is a day labourer. Since the unrest, he has not found any work. He goes out of the house every morning at five looking for work and then comes back at 10 at night empty-handed. This situation makes him very depressed.
"We eat just two meals a day now - lunch and dinner - and some days we only have enough food for lunch. I borrow money sometimes to buy potatoes so I can cook chips and sell them to try to make a bit of money.
"I have seen that some people are stockpiling food. For us though, there is no way we can save enough money or earn enough money to do this. I can hardly pay off my debts as it is.
"We are afraid of going out of the house for a long time. When I have the money to go out shopping I try to rush, so there is no time to look for the best deal or best goods.
"The price of fuel has also increased. I have only one gas container. It should be enough for the next two weeks, but if the crisis lasts for longer, I will use the firewood I have collected and stored before. I have done this before when I have had no money for fuel.
"I am afraid for the future of my kids. I am praying every day for the end of this crisis. We are living day-by-day because we have no choice. We lack money for food, and for services. In fact, we have nothing. All we can do is wait and pray."
Fatima, a tax officer working in southern Yemen
"Every day, I have to travel two hours by bus from my village to our office in southern Yemen. My salary is 1,600 Yemeni rial each month ($70), but I'm the main breadwinner in the family, and have to support my five siblings and parents.
"[Since the unrest began], my sister has stopped going to university, and all government universities are closed. Transportation has also become difficult and it's hard to get around due to the security situation.
"It's been hard to find cheap transport so I can't go to work every day. Nowadays, I may only go twice a week and that has a bad impact on my income. Moreover, traders have stopped paying their taxes, and that has affected my work as well. I often spend hours at my desk doing nothing.
"The price of food has increased sharply, and my life has become unbearable. I've been looking for an additional job to help provide an extra source of income, but my attempts to find work haven't led anywhere.
"I'm unable to stockpile food as my salary can't cover the extra costs. Instead, I have to reduce the quantity of food we eat. We only eat one type of food all day. If we cook rice, then this should be eaten for lunch and dinner.
"If we bake bread then this is served for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We don't cook anything else. Our water is pumped to us every 10 days and stored in big plastic containers for cooking and washing.
"It's natural to be afraid for the future. The security situation is deteriorating along with our standard of living. Today we have food. Tomorrow we may not."
Hana is the head of a child welfare organisation in southern Yemen which runs a rehabilitation shelter for Yemeni street children
"The movement in the city remains close to paralysed due to military checkpoints, and many bus drivers are very afraid they'll be attacked by protesters, the military, or rebel armed groups. People tend to stay home and only go out to buy food supplies. Some employees have stopped going to their offices and schools are closed.
"Many of our staff, including nannies, have stopped attending the centre due to the security situation. The last demonstration was very close to the centre, and the 60 children who we look after heard shots being fired. Many of the staff are concerned there is nowhere to hide. I don't think the children feel safe at the moment.
"At the centre, we've been storing food since the political crisis began. However, it will only be enough for two months. We can't afford to buy more food due to the paralysis in public services and price increases.
"I'm worried that the centre may be attacked by people who want to steal food. Nowadays, many poor people can't afford to buy food and fuel.
"If the situation gets worse and the centre is no longer safe, we are planning to distribute the children amongst the nannies or leave them with their families or relatives. The future is unclear, and we don't have any emergency plans to overcome this situation."
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