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When nestled behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union could not take part in the Eurovision Song Contest, so it set up a rival competition - and called it Intervision.
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By Steve RosenbergBBC News, Moscow
"The Soviet singer was so eager to win that she did a cartwheel up on stage. But her skirt fell down and she revealed everything to the judges. I'll never forget the face of the Soviet ambassador in the front row. We laughed like hell." - Jerzy Gruza, Polish director of Intervision Song Contest
During the Cold War, Europe was divided by a concrete wall and by rival ideologies. East and West competed in everything.
The Western allies had Nato; the Eastern bloc had the Warsaw Pact.
The West had the Common Market; the East had Comecon.
We had the Eurovision Song Contest; they had... the Intervision Song Contest.
The Soviet Union could not take part in Eurovision. It was not a member of the European Broadcasting Union, the club of Western broadcasters that organised the show. But that did not mean that behind the Iron Curtain people did not want to wear sequins and sing their hearts out. Of course they did. So the communist world created its very own songfest.
Intervision was born in August 1961 - just one week after the appearance of that rather more sinister Cold War icon, the Berlin Wall. With the division of Europe now a physical reality, artists in the East shrugged their shoulders and decamped to the shipyards of Gdansk in Poland for a socialist sing-song.
It was not a Communist Party functionary, though, who had come up with the idea - it was a Polish pianist.
Wladyslaw Szpilman was a Jewish musician who had worked for Polish Radio before World War II. On 23 September 1939, as the Nazis pounded Warsaw from the ground and from the air, Szpilman was performing Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp minor live on air. It would be the last live music on Polish radio until the end of the war.
Decades later Szpilman would become famous as the hero of Roman Polanski's film, The Pianist; he had survived Nazi invasion, desperate conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto and arrest. His family had been put on a train and sent to the gas chambers. But Szpilman escaped from the railway station and spent the rest of the war in hiding. After an experience like that, arranging a song contest must have been a walk in the park.
It soon became clear, though, that a shipyard was not the ideal venue for Szpilman's song contest. In 1964 his musical extravaganza relocated up the coast to the Polish seaside resort of Sopot. A spectacular open-air amphitheatre, the Forest Opera, became the annual home of the Sopot Music Festival.
"Szpilman invited singers from all over world, not just from Eastern Europe," recalls Polish music journalist Maria Szablowska. "The original idea was for them all to sing Polish songs. The festival became very popular in the entire Eastern bloc."
Then, in the 1970s, the director of Polish Television decided to transform the Sopot Festival into something much bigger.
"He wanted to challenge Eurovision," Szablowska says. "He knew about Eurovision's popularity in the West. We in Poland never could watch it, but we knew about it because of the winning songs, like Waterloo or Puppet on a String. The Polish TV chief wanted to have an Eastern Eurovision and this contest became a tool of propaganda for Eastern countries."
In 1977, the competition was officially rebranded the Intervision Song Contest. Behind the name change lay an iron determination - to prove to the West that "anything you can sing, we can sing better".
Not that the Eastern bloc blindly copied the successful format of the Eurovision Song Contest; there were key differences. First of all, the country which won the Intervision Grand Prix was not dumped with the responsibility of hosting the following year's competition: the contest was always held in Poland. What a relief for TV chiefs from the other countries taking part: they never had to worry about footing the bill for an expensive outside broadcast.
At Eurovision, timings were normally very precise. Performers had three minutes to get through their song, then it was all change and on to the next entry. Intervision was less strict, but that could make life hard for the Polish TV director, Jerzy Gruza.
"One Czechoslovakian girl went on the stage and stayed on the stage 45 minutes singing. She was singing, singing and singing," Gruza recalls. "My job was to get her off the stage and I almost had a heart attack. In the end she got tired and walked off."
Sometimes Gruza had even bigger problems to deal with. Like the moment Russian singer Alla Pugacheva had something of a religious experience up on stage. The atheist bosses of Polish Television were not impressed.
"At the end of her performance Pugacheva made the sign of the cross. There was big applause. But the head of Polish Television took me aside and said, 'What a scandal - we're going to cut your pay.'"
Maryla Rodowicz represented Poland in the very first Intervision Song Contest, but she had taken part in the Sopot Festival before. In 1970, her microphone had broken in mid-song and she had burst into tears.
"At the time, there were rumours that one of my competitors had chewed through the microphone cable," says Rodowicz.
She turned up at Intervision with a big bass drum and cymbals fixed to her back. She sang about feathered cockerels and wooden butterflies, of candy floss and rocking horses. Rather bizarrely, her backing singers stood there sharpening knives (perhaps in case anyone tried cutting through the microphone cable again).
Meanwhile a man in a dinner jacket was holding a big stick with a bird cage on top. Towards the end of her song, he opened the cage and released a dozen doves into the night sky. It was a theatrical number, which would not have looked out of place at Eurovision. Sadly Rodowicz did not impress the judges. But she did win the audience appreciation prize.
"I was presented with 40 roses," she recalls with a chuckle. "And that's not all. I also won a small Fiat. That night, though, they only gave me the car key, not the car."
It took Rodowicz weeks before she finally received her little Fiat. But she had no intention of holding on to it.
"My two backing singers told me I had to sell the car and split the cash between the three of us. I did sell the Fiat. But I didn't give them any of the money. My dream was to own a Porsche 911. A famous pianist friend of mine happened to be selling his old Porsche. So I borrowed some extra money and bought it from him. I'd got my dream car, but I lost my backing singers - they walked out on me."
The Soviet singer Roza Rymbaeva also won a prize at the 1977 Intervision. No flowers or car. Just a decanter and six glasses, courtesy of the Baltic Shipping Company.
She was just 19 when the USSR selected her for the competition. Speaking by phone from her native Kazakhstan, she admits to having been extremely nervous.
"That was my first ever trip to Europe. It was a huge responsibility representing such a giant country as the USSR. To return home without a prize would have been very unpleasant."
Participation in Intervision was not limited to the Soviet Union and its satellite states. In a bid to outdo Eurovision and establish itself as the world's premier music festival, the communist competition was open to artists from all over the world. Cuba was a regular.
Curiously, so was Finland.
Perhaps it was the Finns' frustration at always failing in Eurovision which prompted them to look East in search of a song contest they might stand half a chance of winning. Or maybe it was because of their determination to remain strictly neutral in the Cold War that they felt duty bound to participate in both Intervision and Eurovision.
Whatever the reason, at the 1980 Intervision, Finland entered one of its biggest stars. Marion Rung had represented Finland in the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest with the merry little number Tipi-tii (seventh place). She was back again in 1973 with Tom Tom Tom (sixth place).
At Intervision, Rung sang the moving ballad Where is the Love? (a question which may well have been directed at the juries dishing out the points at Eurovision). The international jury in Sopot loved her and she stormed to victory.
"At that time, Intervision was a much bigger festival than the Eurovision Song Contest," Rung tells me by phone from Finland. "I think the artists there were even better in some way. Because today I have the feeling that in the Eurovision it's not very important to know how to sing."
"My winning song, Where is the Love? is one of the biggest hits I've ever had. People still ask for it and I still sing it from my heart. This song means a lot to me because winning the contest gave a big boost to my career."
How many Eurovision winners can claim that?
As well as sharing Finland as a contestant, another thing the two competing song contests had in common was a swirling undercurrent of politics. Eurovision has often accused of being more about playing politics than pop music. And things were not much better the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Take 1971.
That year, the nearest thing the Soviet Union had to Cliff Richard, Lev Leshchenko, had spent months preparing for the Sopot International Song Festival. The Union of Composers of the USSR had chosen him to represent the motherland with the oddly-titled song, Ballad About Colours. But one week before the competition, Leshchenko was summoned to the Soviet Culture Ministry.
"The deputy culture minister told me there'd been a change of plan and that I wasn't going," he remembers. "They said the Polish organisers of the contest had secretly promised to help the USSR win the top prize. And that the last-minute advice of our Polish comrades was to send a female singer, not a male artist."
With just a few days to go before the competition, the Moldavian singer Maria Kodryanu replaced a livid Leshchenko. Only later would the real reason for the switch be revealed.
Before becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev had been local party chief in the southern Soviet republic of Moldavia. It's thought that the surprise decision to send a Moldavian singer to Sopot came either from Brezhnev himself or from his closest aides trying to please the boss. It's like David Cameron intervening to make sure the UK's Eurovision entrant comes from his Witney constituency.
Whoever took the decision, it was a disastrous one - both musically and politically. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Kodryanu was totally unprepared for the contest and needed extra rehearsal time in Sopot to learn the song. That meant less rehearsal time for other countries, including Czechoslovakia and Hungary, sparking rumblings of discontent from across the Eastern bloc.
In his post-contest report, the Soviet consular general in Gdansk, Comrade Borisov, wrote: "The Czechoslovakian and Hungarian delegations expressed their anger at the situation. One of the Czechs made a number of anti-Soviet comments, accusing the Soviet delegation of behaving as if this was their country and of breaking all the rules."
Kodryanu tried her best, but it was not to be. In the main competition, the USSR came an embarrassing fourth. Moscow never liked to admit it was wrong about anything. But the Soviets knew they had messed up.
The following year, Leshchenko was rehabilitated and dispatched to Sopot, where he won the top prize (something the British Cliff Richard himself never managed to do in his two Eurovision appearances). Soviet pride had thus been restored.
Judging by the negative reception that the audience in Sopot gave some Soviet artists, Poland clearly did not enjoy being the USSR's puppet on a string.
"Sometimes even good artists from the Soviet Union were not appreciated and got whistled at by the spectators," recalls Eugeniusz Terlecki, general director of the Baltic Artistic Agency, which helped organise the contest. "Russian people as a nation are fine. But the Soviet Union as a country and as a government did a lot of bad things and we remember that."
Even the presenter of the Intervision Song Contest, Jacek Bromski, took every opportunity to poke fun at Moscow.
"Of course, I knew the rules," says Bromski. "I couldn't say, 'I hate Stalin, Lenin and the rest of you communist pigs,' because they would probably put me in jail. But it didn't prevent me from saying something between the lines, because that gave you a lot of applause from the public.
"For example, we were collecting votes like they do at Eurovision. I was calling every capital and asking for their results. One year when I was calling Moscow, there was no answer. So I said, 'Moscow, Moscow - wake up!' Then I had very big applause from the audience. 'Moscow, are you sleeping? Wake up!' Everyone was laughing. In the end I said, 'Better let them sleep.' That bit was cut out afterwards."
For millions of viewers in the Soviet bloc, it was not the song contest itself that had them glued to their TV screens; it was the interval acts. Big names from the West made special guest appearances in Sopot among them, Gloria Gaynor, Petula Clarke and Boney-M. This was a rare chance for music lovers in the East to get a taste of the West.
"It was a window to a free world for us," says Szablowska. "It was like fresh air coming to us. Because suddenly, for these two or three evenings, we had Western stars, we had concerts in a very beautiful place and we felt free. It was fantastic."
Which is why Intervision became compulsive viewing across Eastern Europe. As a result, Bromski, the presenter, became a household name from Vladivostok to Varna. But he only realised that when he flew to Moscow to attend a film festival.
"The red carpet was set on Red Square and on this red carpet I saw Robert De Niro," Bromski recalls. "So I came up to him and got talking to him. Suddenly, from behind a rope, a young man came running to us with a notebook and pen, obviously going for an autograph. I stepped aside because I thought he was going to ask Robert De Niro for an autograph. But he said, 'Mr Bromski, Mr Bromski, can I have your autograph?' I didn't realise I was popular in Russia and that all Russia was watching the Intervision Song Contest."
In the same way that communism liked to be seen as morally superior to capitalism, so Intervision laid claim to being more uplifting, more cultural and less commercial than the Eurovision Song Contest. Behind the scenes, though, morals sometimes took a back seat.
"One evening after rehearsals we had a late dinner in the Grand Hotel," contest director Gruza says. "On a stage in the restaurant there was a late night show for guests. A girl was dancing and making striptease. Then she took a torch with fire, made different movements and tried to put this torch in different parts of her body. At the end she put the torch between her legs. All of us sitting there were making such eyes. We were all paralysed."
But by the summer of 1980, a songfest was the last thing on the minds of the Intervision organisers.
At the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, thousands of workers had gone on strike. Their industrial action was a direct challenge to the entire communist system, and it was the birthplace of the Solidarity movement. All of this was going on just a stone's throw from Sopot and the Intervision Song Contest.
"I think that the strike in the shipyards started because of Intervision, to get exposure," says Bromski. "They knew there were going to be a lot of international press there, a lot of foreign guests, so they started deliberately."
The song contest went ahead, but nerves were jangling.
"There was big tension," Gruza recalls. "I remember there was a big bang up on stage. A lamp had broken. Two minutes later the entire orchestra was sitting in the bus trying to escape. They were terrified by the sound of the bulb breaking. They thought it was a bomb, or the Resistance, or something.
"That year, one of the Polish singers had a song called Our House is Burning," says Bromski. "I knew that the vice-president of Polish TV responsible for political affairs was at the contest. So I made a joke. I said to him, 'Do you think it's safe to have a song with the title Our House is Burning while we have strikes in the Gdansk shipyards? And later I noticed that they had changed the title of the song."
After 1980 there would be no more Intervision Song Contests. The following year, the Polish authorities declared martial law. There were tanks on the streets and clashes between protesters and riot police. When the competition returned a few years later, it had reverted to its old name: the Sopot Music Festival.
In the Cold War of crooning contests, Eurovision had emerged victorious. It was a sign of things to come. Not long after, the
Berlin Wall
came crashing down and communism was consigned to history. Much of the Eastern bloc became part of a united Europe and of Eurovision.
But to those in the East who had at least tried to create an alternative to the Eurovision Song Contest, I say this.
Thank you for the music, the songs I'm still singing. And all the joy they're still bringing...
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China understands the value of the Commonwealth. Between 2006 and 2016, the country's total trade with the historic organisation of 53 nations grew by 8.4 times and is now valued at nearly £200bn. That's an awful lot of power plants, motorways, food, steel and solar panels.
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Kamal AhmedFormer economics editor@bbckamalon Twitter
This week leaders of the Commonwealth, which accounts for a third of the world's population (and 40% of people under the age of 30), gather in London for the latest Heads of Government summit.
Alongside protecting the oceans and international development support, trade and investment will be high on the agenda.
Prime Minister Theresa May is scheduled to speak at the opening business forum on Monday, and will make much of the commercial opportunities available to the Commonwealth club.
Read more from Kamal here
With Britain officially scheduled to leave the European Union next year, one question has regularly cropped up in the Brexit debate.
If the UK needs to play a greater role on the world stage, isn't the Commonwealth a ready-made springboard - a grouping of countries with broadly the same legal structures and democratic outlooks that are ideal partners for a post-EU Britain?
Shouldn't the UK be seeking out some of the success China has so clearly had? The simple answer is yes.
Trade with "the Commonwealth" - and particularly its substantial African and Asian members such as Nigeria and India - has often fallen short of expectations, given the historic ties between Britain and the rest of the organisation.
But whatever successes may be ahead, it is important to keep the potential in perspective. After all, Commonwealth nations take just 9% of UK exports of goods and services, while the EU takes 43%.
The organisation is also not a formal trading alliance with the same powers as or global heft of the EU.
Critics of those that argue the Commonwealth may be able to replace any lost trade with the EU point out that being a member of both is not mutually incompatible.
Indeed, many Commonwealth countries such as India backed the UK remaining in the EU, seeing it as good for Indian businesses that use Britain as a base for European operations.
According to a recent report by the Bruegel think tank, trade between countries such as India and the 27 nations of the remaining EU has tripled since 2000. At the same time, UK-India trade has stayed "largely static", revealing that the "Commonwealth effect" is often over-played.
'Incredibly important'
The Commonwealth leadership itself is also careful to keep its distance from the Brexit debate.
I asked the Secretary General, Baroness Patricia Scotland, whether leaving the EU might be good for UK-Commonwealth trade as Britain would be freer to sign new free trade deals with members.
Indeed, Canada, the second most valuable Commonwealth member to the UK in terms of trade (Australia is first), has already signalled that any new free trade deal with Britain could have more impact than the Canada-EU agreement.
"I think Britain is an incredibly important member of the Commonwealth," she said. "And whether Britain decided to say within or without the EU, that relationship with the Commonwealth was always going to be there.
"Now there's a strong argument to say that no longer being part of the EU could give the UK - if it chose - greater liberality in the way in which it did deals. But you'll know that there are many advantages and disadvantages [of Brexit]."
Baroness Scotland added: "The good thing is, whether the UK was within the EU or without the EU, the Commonwealth [trade] advantage would and is still there, and I'm delighted that the spotlight now is on the advantage."
The Commonwealth secretariat claims that intra-Commonwealth trade could increase to $1trn (£700bn) by 2020 - well above the $560bn recorded in 2016.
New trade finance facilities to be agreed at this week's summit in London and new free trade agreements between a selection of Commonwealth nations (such as the African Continental Free Trade Area) should help.
And the more free trade there is within the Commonwealth - which is instinctively non-protectionist - the more the UK can gain.
Britain is the leading source of "greenfield investment" funding within the organisation, for example. "I think that's really exciting when you think about what a troubled and troubling time we live in," Baroness Scotland said about intra-Commonwealth trade growth.
"And the fact that all these countries speak the same language, have the same political opportunities in terms of democracy and institutions and share the same common law, it's a real platform to go forward. And I don't think the world has needed the Commonwealth more than it needs it now."
That is possibly especially true for post-Brexit Britain.
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A newborn elephant at West Midlands Safari Park recently pressed a "cute button" across the world when its picture was shared on social media around the world. But why do photos of young animals pull on the heartstrings so much?
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By Bethan BellBBC News
It is a well-known phenomenon frequently exploited in marketing. It is arguably not rational to choose your insurance based on an anthropomorphised meerkat or your toilet roll because you like puppies.
But emotional advertising works. Cuddly creatures turn cute into cash.
Baby animals have the edge - fubsy lion cubs are cute - but their adult counterparts are, no matter how handsome, menacing.
There is an obvious evolutionary explanation as to why we are drawn to human young - they need looking after or our species will die out.
But why do we have the feeling towards most baby mammals?
Nobel prize-winning Austrian academic Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989), who studied the evolutionary and adaptive significance of human behaviours - human ethology - pointed out many animals, for reasons entirely unrelated to enticing humans to be their caregivers, possess some features also shared by human babies but not adults: Large eyes, snub nose, bulging forehead and retreating chin.
Lorenz believed we are tricked by an evolved response to human young and we transfer our reaction to the same set of features in other mammals.
Anthropologist Andrew Marlow argues this reaction boils down to the way we, as humans, develop.
He suggests the bar for triggering the nurturing impulse is very low in humans, because human babies are ill-equipped to survive and need an enormous amount of looking after.
"It is partly an evolutionary battle between the pelvis and the cranium," said Dr Marlow.
"We are the only animal which walks exclusively on two legs. It freed our arms for using tools, weapons and gathering food. But the trade-off is that to accommodate our bipedalism, pelvises shifted position and became narrower.
"A modern woman is not physically capable of giving birth to anything larger than the head of a baby.
"Therefore the human brain has to develop a lot after birth, rather than in utero.
"Human babies are very vulnerable."
Lorenz pointed out we judge the appearance of other animals by the same criteria as we judge our own - although the judgment may be utterly inappropriate in an evolutionary context.
For example, new born chicks - despite appearances - are probably not yearning for a cuddle; and camels, with their noses in the air, are possibly not actually haughty.
Even aquatic creatures provoke the response - many of us see a dolphin, with its bulbous forehead and smiley face, as "cute". Conversely, a shark, which is not a mammal, seems to have a cruel mouth and mean eyes.
Nothing is inherently attractive or ugly, argues evolutionary biologist Simone Fellowes.
"It is our response which interprets it so. If babies began being born with long noses and narrow heads, or even horns, we would start to find those features appealing.
"In a more distilled way, it is why parents tend to believe their own offspring are more attractive than other babies.
"There is an inherent instinct to preserve our own lineage. With a narrow focus, it means our own specific DNA. A wider focus means all human young. An even wider focus means all mammalian young."
It means that although we are unlikely to confuse an infant human with a seal pup, we still have an impulse to care for the little fluffy creature with its big, imploring, black eyes.
This desire can even go as far as inanimate objects.
Cars marketed as "cute", such as the VW Beetle or Mini Cooper, have rounded bodies, prominent headlights and a short front end - or a chubby tummy, big eyes and a snub nose.
"This is deliberate," said designer Ben Crowther. "Especially in a quickly-growing market of female buyers, friendly [looking] cars are increasingly popular.
"It follows on that a significant proportion of these cars are given nicknames, further anthropomorphising them, bringing affections, and therefore loyalty."
With their tough grey skin, beady eyes, flappy ears and visually ridiculous noses, elephant calves should not appeal - but they do.
Again, it could be ascribed to identifying with human babies, said Mrs Fellowes.
Elephant calves, although not similar in looks to human young, have the elements of other behaviours - they look clumsy, playful, fragile (next to their craggy relatives) and innocent.
They stay close to their mothers, a survival instinct, but we interpret it as love.
"We see infantile behaviour, interpret it incorrectly, and transfer our affections," said Mrs Fellowes.
So when we find something adorably cute and aww over an elephant, or coo over a cub - we are not rationally responding to something which needs looking after; we could actually be compensating for a narrow birth canal and a poorly-developed brain.
Which, in terms of human survival, is a very cute trick indeed.
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Can't afford to buy a house? Perhaps you'll be able to afford to buy one of the 400 miniature empty homes in a new sculpture that has been made as a comment on the UK's housing market.
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By Ian YoungsArts & entertainment reporter
Matthew Plummer Fernandez's 3m (10ft) artwork was made with a 3D printer.
It has been unveiled as part of the first York Mediale digital arts festival, and was inspired by the artist's own struggles to buy a home.
The 36-year-old Londoner is planning to put each of his 400 units up for sale.
Anyone who buys one will own a share of the sculpture, and the prices will be pegged to the house prices in the place where it eventually ends up.
Plummer Fernandez wants his artistic housing block, titled Token Homes, to be seen as a comment on the way many homes are built and bought firstly as investments, rather than to live in.
"Housing units and flats become nothing more than a vehicle for investing money and generating a return, or having that as the savings account," he says. "And that value tends to equate to the value of where they're situated.
"So I wanted to create a housing estate where the housing function is removed. No-one actually lives in these homes - they're just financial vessels, they're just these little units that you can buy and sell."
Plummer Fernandez had the idea for the sculpture after scrolling through property websites, he says.
"I'm definitely generation rent. Buying a property is extremely difficult and unfathomably expensive.
"And when you look into it, you realise a lot of it is fuelled by property market speculation, and that a lot of the schemes that are being built are not for us, not for residents.
"I live in London and you see buildings going up everywhere, but a lot of them are aimed at overseas investors, and a lot of these houses remain empty.
"They're just there as financial devices, rather than homes. I've had moments when I've tried to buy a house and then just found it impossible."
In 1995-96, 65% of middle-income 25 to 34-year-olds owned a home, but just 27% did in 2015-16, with the biggest drop in south-east England, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Meanwhile, the number of households in the private rented sector in England rose by 80% in the decade after 2006/07, government statistics show.
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Plummer Fernandez hasn't put the sculpture's 400 miniature homes on the market yet and their price will depend on the artwork's eventual permanent home. "I wish York would adopt it," he says. "That would be great. But there are no plans to fix it there yet."
Anyone who eventually buys one will become a co-owner of the sculpture.
Artworks, like houses, are often bought as investments.
"There's a direct parallel there and I'm playing a little bit with that as well," Plummer Fernandez says, adding that art is "another form of parking money".
The sculpture was 3D-printed by North Yorkshire-based Stage One after Plummer Fernandez spent a six-month residency with the architectural design company.
It has been placed in Kings Square for the duration of York Mediale, which opened on Thursday and runs until 6 October.
The festival was created following York's designation as a Unesco City of Media Arts in 2014.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
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A new film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay, is about to premiere in Bristol. It explores the life of Bill Jay, one of the most influential figures in British photography. Grant Scott, lecturer and writer and one of the film's editors and producers explains why Jay is such an important figure.
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To suggest that Bill Jay was the spark that lit the fire beneath British photography in the late 1960s and helped form the idea of photography as contemporary practice in the 1970s is no exaggeration. His seminal lecture at Manchester Polytechnic in the autumn of 1971 certainly did that for the now established then student photographers Martin Parr, Daniel Meadows and Brian Griffin.
Jay's promotion of the work of Tony Ray Jones, saving of the Francis Frith collection, creation of the Photo Study Centre at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London and involvement in creating the first photographic gallery - the Do Not Bend Gallery - among so many other initiatives cannot be easily dismissed when assessing the photographic landscape of 1970s Britain.
Bill Jay said of himself, in an editor's letter in Creative Camera in 1969: "The fate of photography in this country is at stake. And that is more important than my opinions, or your opinions of me."
Yet as of a couple of years ago I had only the vaguest knowledge of his work and impact.
My own opinion of him came last year when I sat down to read his book, Occam's Razor. It was like someone had switched on a very bright light. Jay's way of writing and beliefs concerning photography were an echo of my own.
What happened next I have no explanation for, but I instantly decided that I would make a film about Bill Jay. I knew nothing about him, his life or his death. All I knew was that I would make a film.
The journey to discover Bill Jay had begun. And during the following months of reading his books and articles and talking to everyone and anyone I could find who had known him, I was presented with a story filled with intrigue, missing links, beliefs, misunderstandings, memories and perhaps most importantly a sense of commitment, passion and enthusiasm for the subject he devoted his life to, that of photography.
Evangelical in his zeal in sharing his passion for the medium and a mercurial force of energy when it came to his teaching and lecturing, he ignited the fire beneath British photography in 1968 with his editorship of Creative Camera magazine and fanned its flames through his self-created Album magazine.
He was the first director of photography at the ICA, in 1970, and an intrepid visiting speaker and arranger of talks at the Royal Photographic Society, local camera clubs and polytechnics across the land before he decamped to the University of New Mexico and on to Arizona State University for a life of academia.
His lectures and teaching created a generation of American photographers, teachers, curators and publishers. While teaching, he wrote 20 books and more than 400 articles on and about his beloved medium. He was addicted to coffee and cigarettes, built cabins in the woods, had a fondness for guns, lived in a nudist colony and was bitten by a rattlesnake.
And so my co-producer and director, Tim Pellatt, and I set out to make a film of his life.
Each time I spoke to someone about Bill Jay another piece in the jigsaw of his life would fall into place or as was more often the case another question for me to answer would be posed. Perhaps the most constant of these questions was just why was he like he was?
What drove his passion and his dedication to the medium of photography? And the answer to that, which we believe we have found, is what takes our film away from being focused solely on photography and perhaps is the one thing that successful films have, a universal connection with all of our personal experiences.
A controversial figure until the end of his life, Bill Jay has provided us with a story to tell - but his is not the only story yet to be explored.
Now is the time to find and tell the stories that interest and connect with you. I can only encourage you to turn those stories into films and share them. A lack of budget does not have to be an issue. Today with filmmaking, anything is possible.
The film, Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay, premieres at the Martin Parr Foundation on Friday, 20 April.
Further screenings with panel discussions featuring Grant Scott and Tim Pellatt will take place in collaboration with the Royal Photographic Society on 8 May at The Frontline Club and the Oriel Colwyn Gallery on 11 May, where an exhibition of Jay's work will be on show until 30 June.
The Scottish premiere of the film will take place in collaboration with Stills, Edinburgh, Street Level, Glasgow and Edinburgh Napier University in September.
You can find out more about the film at www.donotbendfilm.com.
You can follow Grant on Twitter and on Instagram @UNofPhoto.
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When fire engulfed Grenfell Tower nearly six months ago, with the loss of 71 lives, many were astonished that a London tower block could burn so quickly and with such devastating results. But one of the building's residents foresaw it all too clearly - he just couldn't find anyone to listen to his warnings.
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By Gemma NewbyBBC News
Last November, on a grey Sunday with the rain drizzling constantly outside his window, a man sat at his computer on the 16th floor of his West London tower block and began to write a blog.
"It is our conviction that a serious fire in a tower block... is the most likely reason that those who wield power at the KCTMO [Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation] will be found out and brought to justice!"
Six months later, on 14 June, London woke up to the news that a fire had blazed through Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West estate in North Kensington, killing dozens of residents. By the following night the blog had received more than two million hits.
"You know when you just get the pen and just write?" says the blog's author. "That's what happened that day, and looking back it's like a premonition that's so awful. I would never have written that had I known what was going to happen."
The man behind the blog is Edward Daffarn, a 55-year-old social worker who had lived on the estate for 16 years. He was in his flat two-thirds of the way up Grenfell Tower when the fire took hold. Luckily, a neighbour called him in time and urged him to get out. He wrapped a wet towel around his head and ran into the smoke that had already filled the building. That night he lost his home, all his possessions, and the community he loved.
Daffarn is understandably emotional when reflecting on the last few months, but more than that he is angry. Angry with the way he feels Grenfell residents were treated by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation - the people who were entrusted to maintain the estate and keep its residents safe. Angry with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council, which was meant to scrutinise the KCTMO. Angry with a society which didn't seem to care about people like him - people who live on housing estates - until it was too late.
"The reality is if you're on a housing estate it's indifference and neglect, two words that sum up everything about the way we were treated," he says. "They weren't interested in providing housing services, keeping us safe, maintaining the estate. They were just interested in themselves."
Daffarn and fellow Grenfell resident Francis O'Connor had been blogging on behalf of the Grenfell Action Group since 2012. They wrote about issues that concerned their tight-knit community - air pollution, the closure of the local public library, and their fears that corners were being cut during the refurbishment of the tower.
"We wanted to record for history how a community on a housing estate in the fifth richest country in the world could be ignored, neglected, treated with indifference. We never thought we could make change. We just wanted to record what was happening," he says.
Daffarn and O'Connor shared a theory that Kensington and Chelsea - a London borough more widely known for its museums, designer shops and flower shows - actually wanted its council estates to go into decline, so that the residents would leave and expensive flats could be built in this sought-after location. For this they were described as fantasists.
"We weren't fantasists," he says, visibly hurt. "We were trying to raise genuine concerns about how our community was being run down."
The natural consequence, he concluded, would be loss of life. Which is why on 20 November 2016, frustrated and desperate, Edward wrote the blog post KCTMO - Playing with fire!
"It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord."
A few months earlier a fire had ripped through five floors of a tower block in Shepherd's Bush, just down the road. Edward was worried that if a fire broke out in his tower block residents wouldn't know what to do. They had been given no proper fire safety instructions from the KCTMO. There were no instructions on individual floors on how residents should act in the event of a fire, there was only a recent newsletter saying residents should remain in their flats - advice which in the case of the Shepherd's Bush fire would have led to fatalities.
In March 2017 the KCTMO installed fire safety instruction notices in the entrance hallway to Grenfell Tower and outside the lifts on every floor of the building, again urging residents to "stay put" unless the fire was "in or affecting your flat".
It wasn't the first time the Grenfell blog's authors had raised concerns about fire safety.
Before the blog began, when a school was built on the only green space the residents had, they wrote to the borough pointing out that access for fire and emergency vehicles had been compromised.
Later they blogged about the blocking of a fire exit with mattresses during the refurbishment and the power surges in 2013 that manifested in flickering lights, computers and stereos blowing up, and entire rooms filling with smoke. These continued for three weeks, Daffarn says.
"We were tenants we weren't fire safety specialists but we were switched on enough to feel this was important and it was not being dealt with on our estate and that's why we were blogging. It wasn't for us to tell the council what they should be doing., We were just trying to raise an alarm."
An alarm that went unanswered. The November 2016 blog post represented the last moment at which something might have been done to avert the disaster which followed six months later. But why didn't anyone heed or investigate Daffarn's claims?
Hidden within the story of the Grenfell blog is another story of the decline of local media. There simply was no local press on the ground in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea scrutinising the authorities and helping to amplify the voice of people like Edward Daffarn.
The last time he had the attention of a local journalist was in 2014 when Camilla Horrox, the reporter for the Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle ran front page stories about Grenfell residents' concerns regarding the possible presence of asbestos on the site of the new school and about the power surges.
She had met Daffarn several times, and had been concerned about KCTMO's dealings with the residents of the properties it managed.
But when the newspaper was closed down later that year Horrox was made redundant and all her Grenfell articles disappeared from the web. The Kensington and Chelsea Chronicle was incorporated into a website that reports on 29 west London districts. Horrox's replacement was expected to report on three boroughs - Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham - while based in Surrey, an hour's drive away.
Some residents of the borough might have been under the mistaken impression that they did have a local newspaper. In 2015 a free paper, The Kensington and Chelsea News, was established to fill the gap left by the closing of the Chronicle. But when I tracked down its reporter he explained that he was the sole reporter working on the paper, and on two other local newspapers - his salary was £500 a week and he did almost all his reporting from home in Dorset, 150 miles away. He made it to the borough only twice in two-and-a-half years, and the one story he ever published about Grenfell was from a council press release about the installation of the new cladding.
Find out more
Local News: What Are We Missing? was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Listen again on iPlayer.
Though he always searched for a "good front page splash" for each of the three editions, he also made sure to find two pages of royal stories and two pages of entertainment stories.
Edward Daffarn didn't take his concerns to the media in November 2016 because he no longer thought anyone would listen. But the blog was out there for everyone to see, he points out, if only they had been looking.
"We'd been blogging for three or four years and you go back over that time there's a lot of abusive behaviour evidenced forensically about what was happening to our community, but it wasn't sexy so it never got picked up."
For Edward, what was going on at Grenfell wasn't just a local story, but a national one. A story about invisible people in a society that cared more about celebrity and wealth than its most vulnerable residents.
Close to tears, he admonishes the nation's journalists.
"If you look back now our whole community of North Kensington, the policy that the local authority was taking every public space and privatising it, that that could be missed by the BBC, by Channel Four, by these wider news agencies... The question should be for you, why did you miss it?
"Why aren't our lives important enough for you?"
'Our residents deserve answers'
Responding to Edward Daffarn's allegations, a spokesman for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council said:
"The Tenant Management Organisation was responsible for managing and maintaining Grenfell Tower. Our residents deserve answers about what went wrong and the public inquiry will help provide these.
"We're changing our Council and the way we work with our communities, ensuring residents are at the heart of everything we do. We will provide all households from Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk with the best offer of new housing possible - and we are listening to what they want and moving at their pace."
A spokesman for the Tenant Management Organisation declined to respond to specific allegations because of the public inquiry and police investigation into the tragic events at Grenfell Tower.
He added: "As a resident-led organisation we want to fully understand what happened at Grenfell Tower. We recognise our responsibility to ensure that the public inquiry and police investigation processes are not hampered or undermined in any way; to that end we are co-operating fully with them and are determined to continue to help with these processes."
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Britain's departure from the EU is a hard topic to get away from, even at the Edinburgh Fringe. But has anyone in Edinburgh found anything new and, more importantly, anything funny to say about it?
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By Vincent DowdArts reporter, BBC News
Kieran Hodgson admits he's a nerd when it comes to 1970s British politics.
The actor and comedian, who's made a name for himself in BBC Two sitcom Two Doors Down, says that's why he based his Brexit show at this year's Edinburgh Fringe on the largely forgotten first referendum on UK membership of the Common Market.
The 1975 vote came down heavily in favour of continued membership - 67% to 33%.
Hodgson says he's drawn to larger-than-life characters - and "the 1970s were rich in them. My favourite was Tony Benn, but also there were people like Roy Jenkins and Barbara Castle [all originally Labour MPs].
"They'd grown up addressing public meetings, so they were more theatrical than many politicians today."
Hodgson's one-man show, called '75, looks at parallels with the 2016 referendum. It introduces his mother as a pro-Brexit voter to contrast with his own Remain opinions.
"I knew there was a danger of making the piece dryly political, so the family relationship gives a warmth," he explains.
There's a lot more shows about Brexit at this year's Fringe. Many of them feature Remain-inclined performers talking about their parents having voted to leave the EU in 2016.
One of the most extravagant is Jonny Woo's All Star Brexit Cabaret, in which burlesque performer Woo and guests use songs by Richard Thomas, composer of Jerry Springer: The Opera, to explore the 2016 result.
Woo is passionately in the Remain camp, but says he wasn't interested in simply telling off Brexiteers for getting it wrong.
"Pretty much any politicians are fair game for satire and comedy," he says. "But our cabaret's also about how ordinary voters treated each other during and after the referendum.
"My father is a Brexit voter, and the way Remain people can talk about the other side in such a blanket way I sometimes find appalling."
The show applies the glitz of drag and burlesque to both sides of the campaign. Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel are ridiculed equally.
Woo says the drag element helps reassure punters they're not in for a dreary political rant.
Richard Thomas says he tries to avoid the term satire entirely. "Often people mentally file satire away under 'just not funny'," he explains. "We have to make it work as comedy.
"We're hoping to do it beyond Edinburgh. I'd love to see it on TV on the [UK's] last night in the EU next year."
Geoffrey Brown's show It's a Dog's Brexit is a long way from Woo's spangly costumes. But it's a sign of interest in the topic that he's drawing a daily audience to an illustrated lecture on Brexit, delivered with charm and a touch of humour.
"I use slides to set out the story so far and to indicate what may happen after March," he reveals. "I'm a Remainer, but I still try to give all sides of the argument.
"This is the third year I've done the show, and I think people have woken up more to the options ahead of us. The majority of people who come are probably also Remainers - for one thing we're in Scotland which voted 62% to stay in. But we all benefit from being reminded of the facts."
Stand-up Jacob Hawley is a newcomer to Edinburgh. His show, Howl, also draws material from the voting schism in his own family. On stage and off, though, he talks with warmth about his parents' pro-Brexit politics.
"Some left-wing publications blamed working-class people for the referendum and took the view they had to be re-educated," he says. "But my family weren't anti-immigrant and they looked sceptically at the promises politicians were making.
"But they did want to shake up the country, and voting to leave was the way to do it. So I do try to throw some light on why people voted the way they did, and to avoid the cliches."
One show about Brexit - called, er, Brexit - isn't stand-up at all but a comedy drama by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky.
It stars Timothy Bentinck - David Archer in The Archers - as a Conservative prime minister trying to negotiate his way out of a prolonged post-Brexit transitional period.
Salinsky says that while he was sure Brexit was the right topic for 2018, "it was a tough play to write. You want it to be searingly topical, but there's also a danger of writing something that goes out of date.
"That's partly why the play's set in 2020."
Then there's A Very Brexit Musical, an energetic romp presented by students from Cambridge University.
With the luxury of eight musicians on stage, Molly Cook and Anthony Gray's show has "Joris Bohnson" as its comic lead and tells how politics and journalists need each other deep down.
Matt Forde, probably the best-known of the Brexit satirists in Edinburgh this year, has no hesitation in saying he voted Remain.
His one-man show, Brexit Through the Gift Shop, offers sharp political stand-up with choice impressions thrown in.
"There's a natural chaos at the heart of Brexit so it makes for great comedy," says Forde, who hosts the political comedy show Unspun With Matt Forde on Dave and is surely one of the few people who can claim to have appeared on both Mock The Week and Question Time in the same year.
"It's about jealousy and ambition and career, which is often the meat of political satire anyway," he continues.
"I notice people are much keener now to seek out political comedy than they were," he continues. "Compared to the coalition years in the UK, people are just more interested in what's happening.
"Everyone can see how inevitably it will affect their own lives, whether they were pro-Brexit or not. Every few years, when there are these big binary choices being made, it can be a great time for political comedy.
"So in that sense only, long may the chaos continue."
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe continues until 27 August.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
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This is a full transcript of Liz Carr: Silent Witness star reveals film role , as first broadcast on 5 February 2020 and presented by Emma Tracey.
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LIZ - Hello, and welcome to the Ouch podcast. I'm Liz Carr… [music]
EMMA - And I'm Emma Tracey and I'm actually presenting, not you.
LIZ - What?
EMMA - I know you used to do this but this is my gig now.
LIZ - It's just, Emma, I'm looking for work.
EMMA - Why are you looking for work? What's happened?
LIZ - Ah, word's not got around yet then?
EMMA - No, I've been putting the kids to bed and stuff. What's happened?
LIZ - Do you not watch 'Silent Witness' Emma? I thought you were legally obliged as a disabled person.
EMMA - As I say, I fell asleep with my toddler. What's gone on?
LIZ - Well, Clarissa's left.
EMMA - Oh!
[Jingle: The Ouch podcast]
EMMA - Hello, Liz Carr.
LIZ - Hello, Emma Tracey, this is exciting. I'm enjoying this, being back with you.
EMMA - I'm nervous and excited. I haven't interviewed you before for anything.
LIZ - No. You've been behind the glass as my producer when I used to do the podcast with Mat Fraser, but being here at the table with you. Actually sometimes you'd be a contributor as well wouldn't you?
EMMA - Yes, there is a clip on YouTube of me throwing mince pies at you and Mat Fraser.
LIZ - I still have that injury actually. Yeah, well it wasn't really the mince pie, it was the tin foil casing.
EMMA - Oh my gosh!
LIZ - But it's fine, it's all right. It's amazing what foundation can do.
EMMA - I can just imagine safety now going in for the risk assessments and saying, "Oh my gosh, did we sort that out properly?"
LIZ - Disabled people throwing mince pies. Check.
EMMA - At a man with short arms and a lady with less movement in her arms.
LIZ - A frail-looking woman, With brittle bones. [laughs]
EMMA - They were good times, I'd say, good times.
LIZ - They were the best times.
EMMA - The best times. So obviously you were an Ouch podcast presenter for quite a long time, you've been a stand-up comedian, you did law at university.
LIZ - Chained myself to lots of buses.
EMMA - Yeah, so I would now call you an actor and activist. That's what we tend to describe you as. Is that accurate?
LIZ - Yeah, I think the comedian bit has gone. It's funny, you know, not because I don't think I can be funny, but it's a long time since I did stand up now. And I've never been in a sit com, I'm just putting that out there, weirdly, and I would say actor and that's also what I want to be at the moment, and activism is still there.
EMMA - Yeah. So you've left 'Silent Witness'?
LIZ - I have left.
EMMA - That's the last time we're going to see you in 'Silent Witness'?
LIZ - Yeah, I've left.
EMMA - Why?
LIZ - I know. I know it must seem like a ridiculous decision, you know, and when I see people's responses to, you know, "If anything happens to Clarissa." "If Clarissa ever leaves." "I won't watch it if Clarissa goes." So you become very aware of your responsibility as a character. But why? Well, I made the decision, or I started to, I had the first conversation about it in October 2018, you know, and if you think we're now in 2020. So it was a year or so after I'd done that episode with the care home the care home abuse episode. 'One Day', written by Tim Prager. Amazing. But I'd been in the show then six years and that was my first really proper story. And then we get into the next series and nothing really was happening. So in the last series I was in it a bit more and they had some great wardrobes.
EMMA - I've heard about… I'm blind obviously, but I've heard a lot about your wigs over the years.
LIZ - Yeah, absolutely. And the boots. Lots of stiletto boots. But sort of I was just doing the same thing. And as an actor that just wasn't that interesting. You know, I knew I could do the job well. I knew I could turn up and deliver DNA results by the bucket load. I knew I could give Jack a mouthful and give him a bit of side eye and a few sarcastic lines, but I just sort of went, do you know what, life is kind of too short really not to be doing things that are not filling you with joy and as much fulfilment as you need. And that was where I was at. And of course the irony is that then I've made that decision, we get a new producer who heard what my issues were and why I was ready to go and said, "Okay then, regardless of what you do I will give you the most challenging series that you've ever had." And he's delivered, he's completely… Lawrence Till. I've had the best series, but how perfect to go out on such a high.
EMMA - Yes, you've decided to go anyway?
LIZ - Yes.
EMMA - Two episodes in this series called 'Hope'. And for people who don't know, 'Silent Witness' is about a team of forensic pathologists, it's a BBC One show, a very, very long running BBC One show. And 'Hope' kind of undid me a bit because, can you kind of summarise what the episodes were and then tell me a bit more about that?
LIZ - Yeah, so Clarissa, who's the character that I play, so Clarissa's mum has dementia and she's reintroduced into the programme very quickly at the beginning because she ends up in hospital and it turns out that she has cancer, and quite end stage cancer, and so throughout the episode, which has Clarissa doing her usual job and life goes on when someone's dying. A lot of us can identify with that, but at the same time she's faced with a mother with dementia going through treatment and what should she do and what decisions should she make and how she reconciles, how she feels about her mum and the different relationship they now have. She doesn't want to die because she's been the mum who's always looked after Clarissa and, you know, there's a lot of stuff there that we've not seen before I think about that relationship, of an aging parent with a disabled child. But equally seeing a disabled woman as the carer, or caring for another member… We always see disabled people as the cared for, but here you had Clarissa looking after her own mum as well.
EMMA - What really struck me was the mother daughter relationship and the parent relationship, and how in the episodes you said something like, "Look where I am. Look at what I've done," you know, not in a what I've done despite my condition or whatever, but "Look what you've sort of facilitated me to do."
LIZ - Absolutely, yes.
EMMA - It made me think of myself and lots of other disabled people and their parents if they were lucky enough to have a parent like that. I don't think I can talk about it enough, and I probably don't talk about it enough, the kind of role that my mum has made and my dad has played. Was it something that was real to you as well?
LIZ - Oh, completely. I mean, my parents have been so important in my life, I'm very close to them. And my mum, I just put pictures on Twitter of… Actually we brought my mum into 'Silent Witness' during that episode, because I felt really… You know, this was an episode that touched… I can't tell you how tangible the grief was in the four days when we filmed in hospital. There was a difference about the filming that I've never encountered in my eight years of filming. You know, the crew, everyone, was in a different place. And I don't mean that there wasn't joy and we didn't laugh at things and we didn't just do our jobs, but things felt different, you know? And it really felt like we were part of something special and that we could all relate to. And in terms of my dad, that was interesting, because my dad died pretty much a year ago to the day today, and so when people have praised my performance in 'Hope', and I'm very grateful and I really appreciate that, it's amazing to think how it's connected and touched people, but I say I'm not sure that I was acting, I think I was almost re-enacting and reliving being at my dad's bedside when he died. Because he died in hospital, he had Parkinson's and vascular dementia, similar but different to the storyline. And I actually do feel it as a privilege to be at someone's bedside at the end of their life, as much as it is at birth to be there. That's this unique part of their life. And I think to be able to sit with someone and be with them. So I really had, you know, me and Jo, my wife, and my mum, had sat with my dad with lots of family and friends visiting and played music and been there. So the end scene for me where Clarissa hears her mum stirring and she stands up and she goes and… They're very close face to face and Clarissa is touching her mum's hair and her face, it's like that's what I did with my dad. This episode I just knew what to do, I just felt it completely.
EMMA - You didn't film it long after your dad's death, and your experience is so close to my own that it's kind of hard to listen to actually, but a year on sometimes that's when you need to look after yourself more because sometimes that's when the grief comes and bites you. So just look after yourself.
LIZ - Well, it's been amazing being able to read people's comments on Twitter, I've never had such an outpouring for, you know, the show and for me and the portrayal, and people just saying, "I didn't cry after my parent died but I did during 'Silent Witness'" or "I didn't know what I was feeling but some of the feelings you had I could relate to and now I feel I understand it." I'm getting private messages of people telling me what the show has done for them. And then it's yeah, and I'm remembering what it was like being with my dad and losing him and my own sadness. So it's sort of a catharsis at the moment but it's also a really sad time.
EMMA - But, you know, just to say as well, does it feel great to have people contact you about something that's not about your disability on screen?
LIZ - "What's wrong with you?" [laughs]
EMMA - It's not about "Your chair's really loud," which we had once, we had an email once about your really loud chair in 'Silent Witness' or you know, "Oh, you stood up." Or, "She's got a husband," that kind of thing, it was a real, everybody gets this thing. And also the imagery of disabled Clarissa tending to her mum is really, really, really strong. Did you have involvement in that script, and then when you came in eight years ago they were like, "Right Liz, what will we do with Clarissa?" or did things kind of evolve over time?
LIZ - Well, when you have eight years in a show and you're a popular character and you've become one of the four lead characters you do have power. And it's a smallish show in comparison because there's only four of us who are regulars, so you do get a say, and if you're pushy, like I am and you are very opinionated, like I am, and you want to do the work, like I do. So I will go through the scripts, and in this case, so Lena Rae, an incredible female writer, we rarely in 23 years have had a woman writer, and this was her first time for 'Silent Witness' and she wrote 'Hope'. She loved Clarissa and she pitched the idea, it got made, as you know. But she's also incredibly generous and not all writers feel like that. Because it was so about me and about Clarissa I was able to see the script very early and contributed to it. There are little lines in there that were things my dad said that are in there, so my little tributes that only I know about, and Jo and my mum, but one thing that was really I had to have it in there, was just before we get the very end scene of Clarissa sitting by her mum's bedside she's outside and Max, her husband, is sitting in her wheelchair and she goes over to him and she sits on his knee. That sounds weird now, but she rests against him and she's been thinking and she decides this is it really, you know, to stop treatment. And the phrase that she says is, "I don't know how to do this." And that was everything that I had felt about my dad, I remember absolutely breaking down in the accessible toilet. [laughs]
EMMA - They're the best place to cry in the whole world.
LIZ - Best place to cry and Jo was there, because when you know that the trajectory of someone's life is that it's death, of course, and we know that all the time, but when it's so imminent and you just think, oh my goodness, you don't learn this at school, you can't prepare for it. I don't know how to do it, and that was the line that I wanted in there and she let me do that. And so to see things that you've felt. And then I've had people comment and write to me about that line. That's been really special.
EMMA - I want to talk about the disability related things that you've managed to achieve in 'Silent Witness'. Can we talk about that?
LIZ - Yes. When I was in introduced into the show I think they were so terrified, I mean really, BBC and the show, to the point where there's only five episodes of 'Silent Witness' and I was only employed for four. A week in each, I remember that. And so it always made me think I think they didn't know how it was going to go. What was very clever about Tim Prager who wrote and created Clarissa and Jack, is that he made sure that Clarissa and Jack were very connected. So Clarissa and Jack have this bond, this friendship.
EMMA - So Jack's your colleague.
LIZ - Jack's my colleague who, when he joins the Lyell Centre, he said, "If you want me, you have to have Clarissa."
EMMA - The Lyell Centre's like the lab where all the pathologists do their thing, right?
LIZ - And his agenda there was because he didn't want it to be easy for them to get rid of the disabled character, he wanted to make it even tougher. So if you build a bond it's going to be harder to do that. Very clever, you know, and very canny, because he knew that people were nervous about employing disabled people, and us on screen. So to go from that, I mean that's just the very beginnings, but then I was asked recently if I was proud of what we'd achieved in terms of representation in 'Silent Witness'. Oh my goodness, of course I am. I mean, somebody just casually sitting in my chair. My husband in the show just sitting in the chair.
EMMA - Yes, not a random person because that wouldn't be cool.
LIZ - Not a random person, that wouldn't be good, but you know, those moments that are just so our lives as disabled people. And it will pass by a lot of viewers but if you're a disabled viewer watching it or someone that knows a disabled person you'll go, oh I've seen that, but I've never seen that on TV before. So the work to do all that absolutely I'm proud, but I was also getting quite tired, because I think over the eight years I've kind of policed the show quite a lot and worked to make sure it was better and refused to say certain lines that I thought were problematic and pushed to have storylines and caused mayhem when I wasn't getting storylines and insisted that Clarissa got a partner and that they were created properly. Dan Weyman who's the actor who plays Max, Clarissa's husband, he's the most incredible actor and so perceptive. So we worked really, really hard to make sure that those little moments of intimacy and couple-ness were in there. So yeah, I feel that there's been a lot of work, and then with the odd really good writer like Tim, Tim persisted. Every season pretty much he would write an episode and he was the only one who ever wrote for Clarissa to go out on location. You know, nobody, I didn't move…
EMMA - Do you think the others were, I don't even know how, where would we put her?
LIZ - I really think that's it, I think the risk aversion and the fear and they just didn't know what to do. Tim has a disabled son so he just knew how to do it.
EMMA - Clarissa's just left 'Silent Witness', the episode's just gone out. For people who didn't see it how does she leave? Does she go down a mineshaft, or is she just not going to be there next time?
LIZ - This isn't an episode of 'Skippy'. Which really dates me, sorry. But no, it doesn't happen. I really wanted to be killed off but I think that's because I just was desperate for a storyline. I wanted some adventure and I was sort of fed up with being behind the screen and coming up with DNA results, so I wanted to be killed off and I thought that was quite a brave thing to do.
EMMA - But what actually happens?
LIZ - It's really like we've become one and the same. And so bear in mind Clarissa's just lost her mum, life has changed for her massively and she kind of goes life's too short, I want to spend it with the living not the dead and it's just time for a change, even though I love what I do and I'm happy where I am I just know in my gut this is the right thing to do. And I pretty much gave them that because that was really how I felt, and I said it doesn't need to be a big dramatic mineshaft ending, actually what's quite real is just going, do you know what, sometimes things happen in life and you go, I just want to go out there and take a leap of faith.
EMMA - So you could come back then?
LIZ - Apparently I could.
EMMA - Right, good. I'm going to run out of time without asking the really big question. Now that you've finished with 'Silent Witness' and had eight interesting years there what is next for you?
LIZ - So yes, because part of not being… You know, 'Silent Witness' took up from kind of March, you know the series finishes going out being broadcast in February and then very quickly, particularly in March, you start to have conversations about hair, so for me wigs, costumes, storylines, what's coming up, confirming contracts, all of that kind of thing. And then you start filming in April, I think it's even earlier this year, and then we don't finish till mid-November. So it took a real chunk, you know, it was a big commitment, and part of wanting to not have that was part of my decision as well to leave and see what else might come. So there's things I want like more drama and comedy and anything really. I'm a bit of an experience freak. However, I am going to be in 'Who Do You Think You Are?' which I've just filmed, so you're going to find out.
EMMA - That's the history show where you go round and find who your ancestors are.
LIZ - That's it, where you look at your ancestry. Hilarious.
EMMA - Really?
LIZ - Yes. Things I didn't expect. I don't really like surprises so it's a difficult show to do. But actually there are things that happened that have stunned me and I loved it. And so I've done that, but the thing that I'm really excited about I'm going to be in quite a big film, Emma Tracey.
EMMA - Really?
LIZ - Yeah.
EMMA - Please tell me?
LIZ - Argh! So if I say, I mean I can't even say it without just going oh my god. [whispers] It's a Hollywood blockbuster.
EMMA - No!
LIZ - Yeah, yeah. Like when you get an email going, "The director really likes you and now we just need to see what Paramount think." Ha! I mean, I cried. I'm not even a crier.
EMMA - No.
LIZ - But I was like oh my god, Paramount Pictures. So I am in a film that's going to come out in August, I think, in the UK.
EMMA - Are you going to tell me what it's called? [laughs]
LIZ - No, it's called 'Infinite'. The film is called 'Infinite'. Sophie Cookson is in it, she's just been Christine Keeler in the BBC drama. Mark Wahlberg.
EMMA - Oh! Stop it!
LIZ - All my scenes are with these guys.
EMMA - Oh, my goodness.
LIZ - Yeah, it's a great role. I finished it before Christmas so it's now in post-production, so it's all been done and dusted, which I was really scared something would come in the way because I'm always such a pessimist or a realist, because things often do happen. The audition went brilliantly, right? But honestly, I thought, do you know what, I bet you they're just going to audition wheelchair users and then they're going to give the role to Tom Cruise.
EMMA - That's so exciting. So what was it like filming in…? Were you in Hollywood? Did you film in Hollywood?
LIZ - [laughs] No.
EMMA - No?
LIZ - No. No, we were in West London.
EMMA - Okay, oh damn it.
LIZ - You know, I get my big filmic break and we're in West London.
EMMA - Oh, man.
LIZ - But actually that was fine, because you know what, it was such a big deal. Every day I would go to work and just sort of… You know when you have those things where you're screaming inside, going I'm in a big film, I can't believe it. But really, I'm still like that, you know. I sort of fell into acting and here you go, and without 'Silent Witness', without that experience of 80 hours of TV, you know, I haven't done a lot of other shows at all, so I've gone and had the most incredible opportunity to develop and get better and learn and learn and learn. And there are very few disabled actors internationally who have that experience. And you realise when you do do other jobs you realise what you know. It's chicken and egg because how do we get the experience without getting the opportunity? To them, the director, he doesn't know who I am, he's this big Hollywood director, done all sorts of stuff. He usually works with Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington, yeah, and the casting woman is going, "But she's done eight years on a BBC drama, she's done eight years as one of the leads," that, that's impressive to someone that doesn't know your body of work even. Just those words, you know, the BBC has such a great name for drama.
EMMA - Who is this big director?
LIZ - Yes, so he's called Antoine Fuqua and he did things like 'Training Day' and 'Shooter' and 'The Equalizer' and yeah, big action films.
EMMA - Big stuff, big stuff. Okay. I know you've been in like the 'OA' Netflix, you've been in 'Silent Witness'. You've been on the Ouch podcast for goodness sake, but I think one of my favourite things that I've ever seen you in was 'Saturday Kitchen'. You were…
LIZ - Why? Why?
EMMA - It was one episode.
LIZ - It was 2017, so yeah.
EMMA - How did that happen? Because it just seemed…
LIZ - It was chaos wasn't it?
EMMA - Yeah, it seemed wonderfully chaotic. So just to paint a picture, Liz was on the telly while they all cook around her, it's like a Saturday morning live kitchen show, as the name might suggest, and you took over, right? You sort of took over. Can you tell me what happened that day?
LIZ - Well, so 'Silent Witness' was going out at the time, it was its five week stint, but also 'Assisted Suicide: The Musical' that I'd written, we'd just performed it, massive, like 800 audience at the Royal Festival Hall. It was the biggest gig of my life. And in the middle of that gig we had a lot of technical problems. I'm essentially in the middle of the stage and a cast member goes, "We're going to have to stop the show." What happens is then I hold the stage and just chat and do stuff until they get it up and running, right? And if you can do that and then carry on and have the most exhilarating show, forget drugs, alcohol, whatever your buzz is, it was the biggest buzz of probably my career. Now, filming 'Saturday Kitchen' comes two days, three days after that. I don't think I'd come down.
EMMA - No, you were on fire.
LIZ - I was fearless is what I was, and a lot of the time I'm not, a lot of the time I'm quite anxious, so often on panel shows and quiz shows I get massive anxiety, massive panic attacks, so I'm probably not going to do anymore of them, because I sit there thinking I've got to go, I've got to go, I've got to flee.
EMMA - It's not worth it.
LIZ - It's not, I'm not free, right, my mind's running over. 'Saturday Kitchen', it's live, lots of stuff's happening, Matt Tebbutt was a joy and playful and I just had the time of my life. And I remember, a great friend who's sadly died, disabled woman, Sophie Partridge, she contacted me afterwards and she said, "I think that's revolutionary, what you've just done."
EMMA - Yes. Why did Sophie think it was revolutionary? What was her biggest…?
LIZ - Because, you know, you're just on a regular show, 'Saturday Kitchen', people are waking up to seeing that, it's not heavy handed, it's really light, it's very funny, it breaks down so much around disability and fear and who we are. Because very like the episode, 'Hope' that we've talked about, it was everything about disability and it was nothing about disability, and it connected us in a way that said we all experience this, we're all going to lose parents or somebody that we love. And that shared humanity is…
EMMA - We all have to eat.
LIZ - Yeah, is bigger than in a way the fears and the differences between us. And absolutely, and who doesn't like to laugh?
[Jingle: The Ouch podcast]
EMMA - Thank you so much to my guest, Liz Carr. What a lovely chat that was, and what exciting news she's had. I can't wait to see her in 'Infinite' later in the year. I'm Emma Tracey, this has been the Ouch podcast. You can get in touch with us on Facebook on BBC Ouch. On Twitter @bbcouch. And you can email us on [email protected].
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A south Wales university is starting out life under a new name.
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From 1 November, the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (Uwic), will be known as Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Last month the institution rejected a call to form a super-university with the University of Wales, Newport and the University of Glamorgan.
In a statement it said it looked forward to a bright future as a strong, student-centred university.
Uwic can trace its history back to 1865 when the School of Art opened in the Old Free Library Building on Cardiff's St Mary's Street.
In 1996 it became one of the colleges of the University of Wales.
Eleven thousand students from more than 125 countries attend the university which offers over 100 undergraduate courses.
It revealed its plan to re-brand last month in an email sent to staff and students saying it wanted its own degree-awarding powers.
'Recognised brand'
The decision came in the wake of controversies surrounding the University of Wales (UoW). A BBC Wales investigation uncovered a student visa scam at colleges offering UoW-validated qualifications.
The university said that as Uwic was a well-recognised brand in Wales the name would be incorporated with the new name Cardiff Metropolitan University for the foreseeable future.
"By handling the process internally we have been able to keep the costs of rebranding to a minimum," explained the university.
"Overall we look forward to a bright future under the new Cardiff Metropolitan University name as a strong, student-centred university focused on the economic, social and cultural well-being of Cardiff and south east Wales."
The proposed super-university merger was suggested by the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (Hefcw), which said Wales's current 11 universities should be cut to six.
Uwic had previously declined to merge with Swansea Metropolitan University and Trinity Saint David as The University of Wales, announcing in July its "regret" over the decision.
It later rebuffed a possible merger with the University of Glamorgan.
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On the last day of September, India woke up to the disturbing news that authorities had forcibly cremated the body of a 19-year-old Dalit (formerly untouchable) woman who had alleged gang rape and died a day earlier.
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By Geeta PandeyBBC News, Hathras, Uttar Pradesh
The news caused global outrage, leading to accusations that the young woman - who was allegedly raped by four upper-caste men and had fought for her life for two weeks - was treated as shabbily in death as in life.
The police in Hathras district in Uttar Pradesh state, where the attack took place, said the family had consented to her cremation.
But her family and local journalists, who were present in the village when her funeral pyre was lit at around 2:30am, have contested the claim in interviews with the BBC.
I travelled to Bhulgarhi village in Hathras district to find out what exactly happened on the night of 29 September.
What emerges is a story of an unequal balance of power between the might of the state and some of its most disadvantaged citizens, officials' disregard for protocol, and their seeming unconcern for a grieving family trying to come to terms with a tragedy.
Where's the body?
"My sister died at 6:55am on Tuesday [29 September] in Delhi's Safdarjung hospital. Around 9am, they asked us to sign some papers so the body could be taken for a post-mortem," says the victim's younger brother.
"That was the last time we saw her body," he adds as we sit chatting on the floor, our backs to the wall in the outer area of his home. The courtyard is overrun with dozens of journalists and politicians of all hues, who are visiting the family one by one to offer condolences.
The victim's brother, his father and two other male relatives had accompanied the victim when she was moved a day before her death to Delhi from the hospital in Aligarh city where she had been treated since 14 September - the day she was attacked.
A few hours after her death, when they went to the forensic department to check when they could collect the body, he says they received conflicting replies from the policemen and officials.
"One said the body had already been released, another said it had reached Noida [a town on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border], yet another said it was in Hathras.
"I asked them how can you take the body without our permission?"
Soon, their relatives arrived and began a protest outside the hospital, demanding the body be handed over to them. They were joined by activists of the Bhim Army, a party that fights for the rights of Dalits who are at the bottom of the unforgiving Hindu caste hierarchy.
Back in the village, the family had already begun mourning.
"They called in the morning to say she had died," says the victim's sister-in-law. "They were crying on the phone. Everyone began crying here too.
"We asked when will you bring the body home?"
The drive back to the village
At around 9:30pm, the dead teenager's brother says the police forced him into a black SUV along with his father and began driving them back to their village 200km (125 miles) away.
"On the way, our car was stopped and senior police and administration officials came to talk to us. Among them was Hathras district magistrate Praveen Kumar Laxkar who told us that we would be taken directly to the cremation ground."
He says they had no idea where the body was or what time the ambulance carrying it had left the hospital.
Hathras superintendent of police Vikrant Vir told my BBC Hindi colleague Dilnawaz Pasha last week that the post-mortem was completed by 1pm.
"But for some reason her body couldn't be brought back immediately. It was late night by the time the body arrived in the village. Her father and brother had travelled with the body."
Last Friday, the state government suspended Mr Vir for "negligence and lax supervision". Four other policemen were removed too. Calls have also been growing to remove the district magistrate, Mr Laxkar.
Preparations for funeral
While the family was waiting for the body to arrive, police and administration officials had already begun preparations for a late-night funeral.
"They had brought in a generator, lights were installed, logs and fuel were brought in," the teenager's sister-in-law says.
Journalists present in the village say barricades were erected on the roads leading to the family home and the dirt track that led to a small patch of the field where the funeral was to happen.
A white ambulance carrying the body arrived in the village at around midnight.
"Besides the driver, there was a policeman and a policewoman in the ambulance. There was no family member in it," says the victim's aunt.
"It was parked nearby for an hour. We asked them to let us at least see her face," she tells me, tears streaming down her face.
The black SUV, carrying the victim's bother and father, reached the village at around 1am and was driven straight to the cremation ground.
Attempts to claim the body
"Hindus don't cremate at night," the brother says. "I told them we can't have the cremation without rituals and in the absence of our family. When we went home, we heard that the ambulance carrying her body had already arrived in the village."
Officials followed them home and tried to persuade them to go and light the pyre.
"The women of the family fell at their feet, begging them to hand over the body so they could perform the rituals. But they were unmoved," he says.
Videos shared widely on news TV channels and social media show the dead woman's female relatives making several attempts to claim her body.
In one video, her mother is seen weeping with her head on the bonnet of the car. In another, she's sitting on the road in front of the ambulance, wailing and beating her chest.
She's heard repeatedly pleading with officials to hand over the body to her so she could take it home one last time - and perform some rituals.
"We wanted to put turmeric and sandalwood paste on her arms and legs, dress her in new clothes, adorn her with flowers. She wouldn't have seen it, but by doing the rituals we would have been able to say a proper farewell to her," says the teenager's sister-in-law, fighting back tears.
Her aunt shows me bruises on her elbows, "They flung us aside and drove away with the body. Many of us fell down. I fell into a field."
The funeral pyre is lit
Even though the family had refused to cremate the body, the 19-year-old was still consigned to flames that night.
"We didn't want them to take us forcibly and light her pyre so we locked ourselves in," says the young woman's brother. "We had no idea what was happening outside."
Local journalists, who witnessed the cremation from a distance, said the funeral pyre was lit around 2:30am.
The police formed a human chain to keep the villagers and journalists from getting close.
"Why did the police cremate her? Was hers an unclaimed body?" her mother asks. "I carried her in my womb for nine months. Do I not have the right to see her face one last time? Do I not have the right to grieve? Do I not feel pain?"
The hasty cremation has caused outrage in India and abroad. Opposition parties have called it "a gross violation of human rights", "illegal" and "immoral". Protests have been held across India and by Indians in several American cities. The UN, too, has weighed in, expressing "profound sadness and concern at the continuing cases of sexual violence against women and girls in India".
On Tuesday, the Uttar Pradesh government told the Supreme Court that they had cremated the body at night due to "extraordinary circumstances and a sequence of unlawful incidents".
They said there was an "international plot" to cause caste and religious riots in the state and topple the government of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, one of India's most controversial right-wing politicians.
They also claimed that the victim's family was present for the cremation and had "agreed to attend to avoid further violence".
Earlier, too, the police in Hathras had shared a video showing three men throwing wood into the pyre as it burned.
But the family told the BBC that those in the video were neighbours and distant relatives and the authorities were trying to pass them off as immediate family.
A pile of ash
Three days later, anti-rape activist Yogita Bhayana visited the family and persuaded a relative of the 19-year-old to visit the site and collect her remains.
"I'm picking them up because in case these are really my sister's remains, they won't be defiled by stray dogs," he told a news channel. "She had to go through a lot of torture while alive. I want to ensure it doesn't happen to her in death."
A week after her funeral pyre lit up a dark night in Bhulgarhi village, I visited the tiny patch of farmland where the 19-year-old was cremated.
All that remains of the pretty teenager with a shy smile and long dark hair is a rectangular pile of ash.
And her family's hope for justice.
"I want to see all of them hanged," says her sister-in-law. "I am waiting for that day. She used to live with me 24 hours a day. I can't get her face out of my mind."
Read more on our coverage of the Hathras rape case:
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Fifteen new priests and deacons who will serve in Norfolk's parishes are to be ordained by the Bishop of Norwich.
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The Rt Rev Graham James will oversee the ceremonies at Norwich Cathedral on Saturday, 2 July.
Seven deacons and eight new priests will be ordained throughout the day at services starting from 11am.
The new clergy includes Derek McClean, who will serve as a priest for Drayton and Taverham, and Lynn Chapman who will serve as a deacon at Sheringham.
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Unaffiliated councillor David Simpson is on course to become the new leader of Pembrokeshire county council, after his only opponent withdrew.
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The council is due to elect its new leader next Thursday.
Jamie Adams, former leader and member of the Independent Plus Political Group (IPPG), has removed his name from the contest.
The IPPG has led the council since 1996 but lost 20 councillors in the local elections earlier this month.
Mr Simpson left Pembrokeshire's cabinet and the IPPG in 2014 over disagreements about the way the group was being run by Mr Adams.
It followed a row over an investigation into former chief executive Bryn Parry Jones.
Mr Simpson has already won the backing of the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative members in his leadership bid.
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The Isle of Man's horse tram service has begun its 139th summer season, despite fears a £21m overhaul of Douglas promenade would see it stopped.
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Government plans will see twin tracks used by the trams removed from the centre of the promenade and replaced with a single track on the walkway.
The service has been in operation since 1876 and is one of the oldest horse-drawn tram services in the world.
A Douglas Council spokesman said it was "business as usual."
The Douglas Bay Horse Tramway, which was built and originally operated by Thomas Lightfoot from Sheffield, runs along the promenade for 1.6 miles (2.6 km) from the Strathallan terminal to the Sea Terminal.
Horse trams will take the route between 09:00 and 17:20 until 13 September.
About 62,000 passengers used the service in 2014, a 3.6% increase on the previous year, but despite the rise, it ran at a loss of about £250,000.
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British journalist Paul Fauvet came to Mozambique in 1980 just as the country was plunged into a civil war. He has witnessed every key event since. Here he describes the transformation of his adopted country from revolutionary Marxist state to embracing the market and the exploitation of its resource riches.
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After its independence in 1975, Mozambique became known for the colourful and militant murals decorating public buildings in Maputo.
Workers, peasants and soldiers were shown marching firmly towards the socialist future. "Long live Marxism-Leninism!" declared some of the slogans.
The Maputo of the 21st Century also has murals. But now the walls bear images, not of clenched fists or of AK-47s, but of the ubiquitous Coca-Cola bottle, or of smiling faces boasting the virtues of one or other mobile phone company.
Comparing the iconography of Maputo walls today with those of the late 1970s gives some idea of the ideological distance the country has travelled.
'Struggle against the bourgeoisie'
The high-water mark of Mozambican Marxism was in the early 1980s under the single party rule of Frelimo, the successor to the Mozambique Liberation Front, which had won independence from Portugal.
At the Frelimo Fourth Congress in 1983, the call went out to "Defend the Fatherland, Overcome Underdevelopment, Build Socialism".
The national anthem of the time promised to make Mozambique "the grave of capitalism and exploitation".
Frelimo's own anthem described party members as "soldiers of the people, marching forward in the struggle against the bourgeoisie".
It was not to be.
Mozambique faced a powerful enemy in the shape of the South African apartheid regime, which used the rebel Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo) as a surrogate army, to bring the Mozambican state to its knees.
Some would say that when the country's first President, Samora Machel, died in October 1986 in a plane crash at Mbuzini, just inside South Africa, the dream of a socialist Mozambique died with him.
But history is never that simple.
Marxism-Leninism quietly dropped
Unable to obtain sufficient assistance from the Soviet bloc, Mozambique joined the World Bank and the IMF in 1985. Western donors, even friendly ones in Scandinavia, made it clear that a programme with the IMF was a condition for continuing assistance.
The first structural adjustment measures, known as the Economic Recovery Programme (PRE), passed by the Mozambican parliament in January 1987, were clearly drawn up when Machel was still alive.
Some may have viewed it as a temporary diversion, assuming that the march towards a classless society would resume in the near future.
But the deal with the IMF and the World Bank meant major shifts in economic policy, including repeated devaluations, the elimination of most controlled prices, and a wide-ranging programme of privatisations.
But in 1989, Frelimo quietly dropped Marxism-Leninism from its statutes. The following year a new, pluralist constitution was adopted and the very name of the country changed.
It was no longer a "People's Republic", but just "the Republic of Mozambique".
Foreign investment
When a peace agreement between the government and Renamo ended the war in October 1992, the country was in ruins.
Renamo had burnt down schools and clinics throughout the countryside, roads were impassable, bridges and electricity pylons blown up, railways sabotaged and the economy was kept alive with massive injections of aid.
Yet the patient survived.
Contrary to a widely held belief at the time that parties which had run one-party states could not win democratic elections, Frelimo not only won the 1994 presidential and parliamentary elections, but every general election held since then.
The economy grew at a rapid pace, at rates of 7-8% a year. Large-scale foreign investment was attracted - best exemplified by the $2bn invested in the Mozal aluminium smelter on the outskirts of Maputo.
Now the country has made huge mineral discoveries.
The coalfields in the western province of Tete proved much larger than expected - under Portuguese colonial rule, no thorough geological surveys had been undertaken. Despite logistical constraints in moving the coal to port, Mineral Resources Minister Esperanca Bias still talks of exporting, by 2020, as much as 50 million tonnes a year.
Even more impressive are the discoveries of natural gas in the Rovuma Basin, off the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado. The results from wells dug by the Texas-based Anadarko, and the Italian energy company ENI suggest recoverable reserves in excess of 150 trillion cubic feet.
This could make Mozambique one of the world's major producers of liquefied natural gas. Plans are afoot to build LNG plants on the Cabo Delgado shore, and production could start by 2018.
Income from natural resources will greatly reduce Mozambique's dependence on foreign aid.
Already economic growth, and the resulting increase in domestic tax revenues, has reduced dependence. The latest Finance Ministry figures show that in 2012, only 27% of public expenditure was funded by foreign aid. A few years ago, over half of the Mozambican budget depended on foreign grants and loans.
Economic growth
But a growing criticism is that the benefits of economic growth are not being spread throughout society, and that poverty reduction has faltered.
In the decade following the end of the war, very considerable improvements were made in living standards. The household surveys by Mozambique's National Statistics Institute showed that the number living below the poverty line fell from 69% in 1997 to 54.1% in 2003.
But the next survey, in 2009, suggested that the government's efforts to alleviate poverty had stagnated, and that the poverty rate was now 54.7%.
National averages hide severe disparities.
The survey showed that urban households spend twice as much as rural households, and that households in Maputo spend five times as much as households in the poorest province, Zambezia, in the centre of the country.
A growing gap between rich and poor is evident from the boom in luxury housing built in the fashionable parts of Maputo, and the explosion in car ownership. Traffic jams, unheard of 20 years ago, are now a regular feature of Maputo life.
But the majority of Mozambicans still live in huts or shacks, and depend on buses for their transport.
There has been a rapid expansion of the Mozambican electricity grid, and the latest figures show that 36% of the population have electricity, either from the grid or from solar panels, in their homes, a high figure by sub-Saharan African standards. But 64% still have no electricity.
The country remains acutely vulnerable to natural disasters.
Torrential rains and severe flooding on several major rivers, notably the Limpopo, in January and February, cost 113 lives and displaced about 140,000 people who took shelter in temporary accommodation centres set up by the government.
Even in Maputo city, poor drainage and illegal building meant that the rains caused mudslides that destroyed houses and blocked roads.
Electoral success
Poverty occasionally erupts onto the streets. Thus severe rioting against rises in prices, particularly for bread, effectively shut Maputo down for two days in September 2010.
The government broke with economic orthodoxy and introduced a subsidy for wheat flour to keep bread prices low. The World Bank and the IMF did not object. They regarded Mozambique as a success story and had no wish to push it over the riot threshold.
Frelimo policy may have somersaulted in the past three decades, but the party's grip on power remains strong.
President Armando Guebuza, once a Marxist intellectual and now a figure close to the business elite, won the 2009 election with 75% of the vote. He is not eligible to stand again, but, given the weak and fragmented state of the opposition, whoever Frelimo chooses to succeed him is almost certain to win the next presidential election in 2014.
Memories of the country's Marxist past have faded, and even Frelimo's trademark slogan "A Luta Continua!" ("The Struggle Continues!") is rarely heard nowadays.
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The plight of Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar was thrust into the spotlight last month after thousands of migrants were left stranded at sea - but not all the images being shared online are what they seem to be.
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BBC TrendingWhat's popular and why
The Rohingyas are a distinct Muslim ethnic group mainly living in Myanmar, also known as Burma. They are not recognised as citizens of Myanmar and face persecution in the majority Buddhist country, where many live in crowded camps. Powerful and seemingly genuine pictures and videos emerged of what Rohingyas must endure in Myanmar after thousands of migrants were left adrift with low supplies of food and water last month. But BBC Trending found some of the images being shared online don't show Rohingyas at all - but instead come from other disasters and news events.
Many of these images are graphic and disturbing. One of the photos, for instance, that shows up in search results shows Buddhist monks standing among piles of body parts. On Facebook and Twitter, the photograph has been cited as an example of Buddhist violence against Rohingyas. But the picture is not from Burma at all - it was actually taken in the aftermath of an earthquake in China in April 2010.
Another picture shows a man on fire running across the road. One group that shared the photo on Facebook suggesting the man suffered horrific abuse - that he was chopped up and burnt alive. But the real story is much different. In fact, the photo is of Jamphel Yeshi, a Tibetan activist who set himself on fire in Delhi in 2012 to protest against the Chinese president's visit to India.
There are many disturbing pictures of children circulating as well. One shows a boy tied to a wooden pole, with the marks of beatings visible across his back. While online posts call him a Rohingya boy, he's actually a seven-year-old Thai child who was beaten up by a relative for stealing sweets earlier this year.
Then there's this photo which has been widely shared, particularly in India and Pakistan, showing a motorcycle riding across the hands of school students who are lying on the ground with outstretched arms. The incident was actually a stunt by a martial arts trainer in south India:
Other misleading images traced by BBC Trending using online photo search tools include a large crowd of people laying on the ground (actually of protesters being detained in Thailand in 2004), one showing burnt bodies (in reality from an oil tanker blaze in 2010 in the Democratic Republic of Congo) and a grisly photo of children with bloodstained clothes which apparently comes from Sri Lanka's decades-long conflict. These and other images have been shared thousands of times on Facebook mostly by people hoping to support the Rohingyas.
"We appreciate everyone's concern but encourage everybody to always check carefully before using images," says UK-based Rohingya activist and blogger Jamila Hanan. "Whenever the Rohingya hits media headlines these same photos are redistributed with some new ones included."
"There are so many genuine images of tragic scenes of the Rohingya that are genuine, there is simply no need for anyone to fabricate anything," Hanan told BBC Trending. "The most tragic images are the real ones."
Blog by Samiha Nettikkara
Next story: Is it OK to humiliate your child online?
Amidst a deluge of child shaming videos, one American dad's anti-humiliation film has been viewed millions of times. READ MORE
Follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook.
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Canada's governor general has been forced to defend his actions after a "slippy" carpet led to a breach of royal etiquette with the Queen. But how do you avoid a protocol slip-up?
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David Johnston raised eyebrows on Wednesday as he was seen to be lightly touching Her Majesty's elbow as she descended some steps, at an event in London.
Mr Johnston said he was simply concerned about the Queen's safety and made the judgement that a breach of protocol was appropriate "to be sure that there was no stumble".
To avoid any future mishaps, however, here is a reminder of the traditional dos and don'ts.
Do:
Don't:
These rules aren't steadfast and those in breach need not fear exile. The official website for the British Monarchy states "there are no obligatory codes of behaviour when meeting the Queen or a member of the Royal Family". It hastens to add: "Many people wish to observe the traditional forms." The choice is yours.
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A decision on plans for a £14m dairy expansion has been deferred by Wrexham councillors pending a site visit.
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A council report said extra production space was needed to meet demand at Tomlinson's Dairies, Minera, which had outgrown its facilities.
Bosses want to double production to 195 million litres of milk a year. They have said about 60 extra staff would be needed
The dairy currently employs about 170 staff.
Wrexham planners had recommended the proposals get the go ahead.
But councillors voted to hold a site visit on 14 October before making a decision.
The business was established in 1983 by brothers Philip and John Tomlinson, expanding from a doorstep round using milk from the family dairy farm at Minera.
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Corby was the only old council to oppose Northamptonshire's move to replace the two-tier council set-up with two new unitary authorities. With the first ever North Northamptonshire Council elections taking place on 6 May, the BBC asks candidates if they feel the town will have a voice on the new authority.
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By Craig LewisBBC News Online
How eight councils became two
In 2018, after effectively going bankrupt twice and being condemned in a government-ordered inspection, Conservative-run Northamptonshire County Council was told it would be scrapped.
That decision also spelt the end for the county's seven borough and district authorities.
The plan was to replace them with two new unitary authorities, one in the north and one in the west of the county.
In August 2018, the eight doomed authorities voted on whether to adopt this system.
Seven said yes. Only one - Corby Borough Council - said no.
Labour-controlled since 1979, Corby was an anomaly in Northamptonshire, with all the other councils being Conservative-run.
Despite Corby's opposition, the government approved the unitary plans and on 1 April 2021 the two new councils were born.
Residents will vote for the authorities' first-ever councillors on Thursday, 6 May.
Corby has five wards with each returning three councillors to North Northamptonshire, which will have 78 councillors in total.
'Read the Domesday Book'
As Corby Borough Council's Labour deputy leader, Jean Addison had been at the heart of things, rebuilding - she says - the town after the closure of its steel works between 1979 and 1981.
Pointing to projects such as the Corby Cube, international swimming pool and cinema as signs of her party's success, she worries being part of North Northamptonshire Council will see Corby's residents lose their voice.
Although Corby has consistently voted Labour, the rest of North Northamptonshire has been firmly blue.
Mrs Addison fears a Conservative win will mean "facilities we have built will be outsourced".
"I can see them looking at the pool," she says.
"It isn't a money-maker, but it is providing swimming lessons for thousands of children, and for people with disabilities and Alzheimer's."
Mrs Addison says some politicians from outside Corby who could end up in prominent positions on the new council "think this is a run-down place, but they probably haven't even visited".
"I recently spoke to one person who said 'Corby has no history'. I had to remind him to read the [11th Century] Domesday Book.
"We are the fastest-growing borough outside London; we have more council houses than Manchester. That will be lost."
'Corby will be integral'
The BBC approached Conservative councillors in North Northamptonshire and Corby, but were told to speak directly to the party's local association and send questions by email.
In a statement, the party says the town is "an integral part of the new authority".
"For many years under both parties, Corby residents have felt the county council had steered decision-making on significant strategic issues, such as social care, education and transport, by representatives from distant parts of the county," the statement reads.
"That will no longer be the case in Corby and elsewhere - decisions about North Northamptonshire services will be made directly by North Northamptonshire councillors, directly-elected by North Northamptonshire people."
'A united Corby front'
Liberal Democrat Chris Stanbra says he is not prepared to stop fighting for either North Northamptonshire or Corby.
That's despite his conviction Conservative central government's decision to go with two unitary councils in Northamptonshire, coupled with the electoral boundaries it drew up, is an attempt to ensure local counterparts would control the new authorities.
"Undoubtedly the structure of local government we have now was rigged," he says.
"But if opposition parties campaign hard and have a good message - and we will never have a better one - then now could see a different result.
"If you get a decent number of non-Conservatives on the council from Corby, and they have any influence, the council will be more considerate of the political traditions of the town.
"It will be important councillors who represent Corby work together as a united Corby front."
Mr Stanbra fears Corby could be controlled by councillors from East Northamptonshire, Kettering or Wellingborough.
He suggests whoever wins should choose Cabinet members "from a wide geographical area," making sure those with power have experiences of all areas in North Northamptonshire.
'Forty years of Labour'
'It's not Corby against the rest'
The Green Party's Lee Forster does not see himself as political.
"I'm an environmental campaigner," he says. "We have got issues in Corby with incinerators.
"I have been campaigning for cleaner air for about 10 years."
Mr Forster says his efforts fell on deaf ears at Labour-run Corby Borough Council.
"That's why I haven't got a problem with this," he says.
"Other councillors are open to what we are saying."
He admits the new council may end up with "lots of Conservatives," but says it will be up to other parties to provide strong opposition.
"You need strong candidates who have their voices heard for the unitary, not just the town.
"It is not Corby against Kettering, or Corby against Wellingborough. We have to join the dots."
He says Corby will "definitely" maintain its own voice.
"We are the heart of the county. It is a lovely place. The community spirit is brilliant," he says.
A full list of candidates for election is available on the North Northamptonshire Council website.
ENGLAND'S ELECTIONS: THE BASICS
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Why does it matter? When parties win control of a council, they decide policies for your area which could affect services ranging from social care to rubbish collection. Find out more about what councils do.
Who can vote? Anyone who lives in England, is registered to vote and aged 18 or over on 6 May is eligible. Find your local election here.
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It was a year in which dissident republicans developed the expertise needed to detonate large-scale car bombs and the government warned of possible attacks in Great Britain.
BBC NI home affairs correspondent Vincent Kearney assesses the threat posed by Northern Ireland's terror groups.
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It was an easy target. There were no security barriers or checkpoints to negotiate as a car packed with around 250lbs of homemade explosives parked outside Newry courthouse on 22 February this year.
A short time later, as police officers were still trying to clear the surrounding area, the bomb exploded.
No-one was killed or injured, but the shockwaves could be felt more than 40 miles away in the headquarters of MI5 in Holywood and the PSNI in east Belfast.
Two months later, shortly after midnight on 12 April, just minutes after policing and justice powers were transferred to the Stormont Assembly, a similar device exploded outside Palace Barracks, where MI5's huge new offices are located.
Those explosions were described by senior security sources as "game-changing events".
They demonstrated that, after a long period of research and testing, dissident republicans had "got the mix right" - the term used by police to describe the process for successfully constructing and detonating a bomb made from fertiliser.
Capability
The threat posed by dissidents had increased dramatically.
Senior police officers said they regarded it as the most severe since a Real IRA bombing campaign in 1997-1998, when large devices exploded in a number of towns, including Banbridge and Moira, before 29 people were killed in the attack in Omagh in August 1998.
The dissidents' increased technical capability was just one of the issues that alarmed the police and security services during the past year.
There was also increased co-operation between members of the various - previously rival - dissident groups, working together on acquiring weapons, logistics, and planning and carrying out attacks.
The numbers had also grown, with an estimated 600 people believed to be involved.
The PSNI arrested around 80 people in connection with dissident activity during 2010, and Gardai uncovered a number of bomb-making factories and made dozens of arrests, but the dissidents continue to pose a serious threat.
They know that they don't have to mount large scale bomb attacks to have an impact.
Police officer Paedar Heffron lost a leg when a lunch-box sized device exploded under his car last January.
A number of officers and the partner of another had lucky escapes in attacks using similar under-car booby traps.
Real IRA member and alleged informer Keiron Doherty was shot dead, and others suffered shattered legs and arms in a series of paramilitary assaults on alleged drug dealers.
But it was the technical capability that set alarm bells ringing in London. In September, the head of MI5 said the security services may have initially underestimated the threat posed by dissident groups, which he warned might try to extend their attacks to Great Britain.
Just over a week later, Home Secretary Theresa May announced that the official threat level had been raised from "moderate" to "substantial", meaning an attack in Great Britain was a "strong possibility".
"They have wanted to mount an attack in Britain for a long time now, just like the Provisional IRA did," a senior security source said.
"The difference is that they now have the technical ability to cause large-scale damage.
"Whether that means they also have the operational structures to do so is another matter, but now that they can produce the package, the next step is to work on how to deliver it."
Serious
Publicly the police have consistently said the threat is serious and growing, while stressing that it should be kept in context.
The reality is that while dissident groups have demonstrated that they can kill and maim and detonate bombs, they don't have anything like the capability and capacity of the Provisional IRA during the troubles.
Privately, Chief Constable Matt Baggott spent much of the last year lobbying government for access to more than £200m of additional funding from the Treasury's emergency's reserves to combat the threat.
Some of that funding could be used to employ additional police officers to guard stations and provide close protection for individuals considered to be at high risk of attack. MI5 has also devoted increased resources to countering the activities of dissident groups.
There has been little overt dissident activity in recent months, but security sources fear further attacks early in the New Year because targeting and planning have continued, and a number of competent bomb-makers are believed to be operating within their ranks.
The groups may never achieve the level of capability and capacity of the Provisional IRA, but they don't have to. Their continued existence and occasional activities are enough to cause security and political concern, and to be a constant irritation to Sinn Fein.
The police and security services now talk privately in terms of a five-year strategy to combat the threat.
Some look slightly further ahead to 2016, the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, an iconic date in the history of republicanism and one that senior security sources fear will provide a focal point for those groups opposed to the political process.
That level of planning, together with the ongoing discussions about funding arrangements, clearly demonstrate that the dissident threat continues to grow, and could continue to do so for some time to come.
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Channel 4 has officially opened a new base in Leeds, which it says will make it better able to reflect life across Britain. What difference will it make, and why is West Yorkshire currently the hot place for the TV industry?
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By Ian YoungsEntertainment & arts reporter
Channel 4 will have around 250 of its 850-strong workforce in Leeds by next year, based in the nightclub that inspired The Kaiser Chiefs song I Predict A Riot.
Fifteen years on, the banner hanging from the Majestic's facade announcing Channel 4's arrival predicts a media revolution (which doesn't have the same ring to it, granted).
The broadcaster's partial relocation will not only give the traditional home of Emmerdale, Countdown, Jimmy's and Fat Friends more screen time, but has already sparked a flurry of activity in the city's TV and film industry.
Channel 4 will broadcast a new live daily lunchtime show from Leeds, and C4 News will regularly be co-presented from the city. The channel's heads of drama and sport, plus other commissioning editors, are based there, as is a new Digital Creative Unit.
Meanwhile, a number of independent production companies have sprung up in the city, and their trade association Pact has opened its only out-of-London office, saying Channel 4's move made it the "logical" place to be.
There are also plans for a major new film and TV studio, and the National Film and Television School is opening a Leeds branch in January.
Channel 4 is currently in a temporary office until its new "national headquarters" in the Majestic is finished next summer. Smaller "creative hubs" in Bristol and Glasgow, with around 20 staff in each, will officially open in the next two weeks. Another 500-odd will stay in London.
'A broader range of stories'
"Ultimately, we want this to have an impact on screen," says Sinead Rocks, C4's managing director of nations and regions. "We want to be as reflective of life in the UK in its entirety as possible.
"If we have commissioners based in different parts of the country, who are rooted in different communities with different life experience, that's going to give us access to a broader range of stories and different perspectives."
Channel 4 chose Leeds over Birmingham and Greater Manchester - despite the latter being home of MediaCityUK, to where the BBC moved a number of departments eight years ago.
"Leeds took the top spot because it had a very young population and a very diverse population - both things that we want to try to tap into," Rocks says. "There's a very healthy digital creativity sector here. There's also a reasonably strong independent production community here, and one that we think could actually grow further."
Writer Kay Mellor's production company Rollem has been making shows like Fat Friends and The Syndicate in Leeds for almost two decades. When the company started, it was a "solitary" presence, apart from ITV's old regional outpost Yorkshire Television, she says.
Her home city has always been "slightly the poor relation" - but Channel 4's move and developments like the planned studios and a new post-production facility are changing that, she believes. "It's amazing that these things are happening. We are playing Manchester at their own game, and bigger and better."
It all means staff are less likely to need to move to London to further their careers. "The very fact that Channel 4 is here means our students don't necessarily have to leave Leeds to get a job in the media," Mellor says. "It's a growing industry here in Leeds, right on our doorstep. We won't get that talent drain that we've experienced such a lot."
The TV and film industry in Yorkshire had already established solid foundations thanks to people like Mellor and Screen Yorkshire. When a network of subsidised regional screen agencies was abolished in 2011, Screen Yorkshire was among the only survivors. The following year, it used £15m of European Union money to launch a fund to attract productions to the region.
The Yorkshire Content Fund has now invested in almost 50 films and TV shows, on the condition that they are at least partly filmed in the region. The first investment was in the first series of Peaky Blinders - meaning it was mostly filmed in Yorkshire rather than the show's spiritual home of Birmingham.
In fact, after seeing Yorkshire steal a march on his native Birmingham, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight last week announced a new screen agency to lure TV and film producers to the Midlands.
Yorkshire's film and TV industries grew faster than anywhere else in the UK between 2009-2015, Screen Yorkshire has said. With Channel 4 also planning to increase the proportion of programmes it makes outside London from 35% to 50% - worth £250m a year - Screen Yorkshire chief executive Sally Joynson thinks Leeds is the obvious destination for production companies outside the capital.
'London is full'
The TV and film industries are booming in Britain - in fact, they helped prevent the country from going into recession this summer. "London is very busy, and studios are full," Joynson says. "And that means that there is a great opportunity to get some of that production coming out of London by opening really great facilities that can compete with the very best in London, and a workforce that can compete with the very best in London."
Just after Channel 4's announcement last year, Lime Pictures, which makes Hollyoaks and The Only Way Is Essex, announced a new Leeds-based non-scripted subsidiary called Wise Owl.
It is run by Mark Robinson, one of the few TV executives to have always been based in the north of England - although he says he has travelled the equivalent of twice around the world to pitch programmes to executives in London over the past two decades.
His office is walking distance from Channel 4's new HQ. "There's nothing like just nipping down the road to see somebody in Leeds, if you're a production company in Leeds," he says.
Robinson began his career at a time when ITV's regional divisions, including Yorkshire TV, Tyne Tees in Newcastle and Granada in Manchester, were their own mini production powerhouses.
"You could do game shows, sports shows, studio entertainment shows, politics shows, you could do the news, and I learned my trade working on all those sort of shows in regional television," he says. "Now if you're 24, you haven't got the option, because the regional ITV stations have been reduced on the whole to news satellites."
ITV does still have more than 650 staff in Leeds, including Emmerdale, news and factual entertainment plus a number of behind-the-scenes operations.
Robinson, who is currently making a series about the Tyne and Wear Metro for ITV, also hopes C4 is true to its word when it comes to making more shows in the north-eastern quarter of the country. "It's a massive area full of stories. It's often a part of the country that can get underrepresented on TV."
Channel 4's move should redress the balance in the age-old Manchester/Leeds rivalry, almost a decade after the opening of MediaCity, he believes.
"As a Leeds person myself through and through - and I loved working in Salford - I could see that the balance of power had very much shifted to west of the Pennines, and there was an awful lot of TV work in Salford and Manchester and less in Leeds.
"That hasn't always been the case - Yorkshire Television used to be a massive broadcaster. There's a feeling here for all companies that it's our turn to shine, it's our turn to be in the spotlight and to show what we can do."
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Since October, almost 700,000 people have been detained crossing the border from Mexico into the US, a huge jump on previous years.
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The reasons people give for trying to reach the US are varied - family, better economic opportunity, or the chance to escape the threat of violence.
In the interactive bot below, we have focused on the story of one woman, Maria, who represents many of those seeking to make the journey.
Maria is fictional. But everything that happens to her here is based on the real experiences of migrants who have travelled to America, experiences that have been documented by rights groups, journalists and lawyers.
See for yourself the decisions and dangers a migrant like Maria may face.
Follow Maria's journey
Share this chatbot.
Produced by David Molloy and Roland Hughes
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Rishi Sunak has unveiled a £5bn scheme to help High Street shops and hospitality firms recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The BBC went to Bedford to speak to people about what they believe will help businesses survive and thrive after lockdown.
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By Sarah Jenkins & Ben SchofieldBBC East
'The High Street is dying'
Dominic Simmonds jointly runs the oldest shop in Bedford High Street, Harrison & Simmonds, which his grandfather started in 1928.
"The High Street is dying," he says.
"It's sad to see."
He says the business has "diversified" to survive three lockdowns and adapt to the way shoppers' habits are changing.
"Surprisingly, we are keeping going with mail order and click and collect services," he says.
"It's what we are relying on."
The gentleman's emporium owner says the closure of Marks & Spencer in 2019 was "a huge loss".
"We saw a definite fall in footfall," he says.
"With the big names going there's less of a reason for people to come into town."
Mr Simmonds says a big help for his business would be a rates cut.
"We need anything to help small businesses get back on their feet," he says.
"There are so many that have been hit hard and they're not going to survive.
"Even the lucky ones that do - it's going to be a real struggle."
What has the chancellor announced for businesses?
'We must spread the word'
Helen Patterson started a campaign group to save the town's Marks & Spencer, but after its closure she transformed the group to one which champions existing businesses.
She says more needs to be done to "spread the word" about the range of independent businesses, which comprise 60% of shops in the county town.
"We need to do a better job of promoting these. One woman had lived here for 50 years and only recently discovered our butchers," she says.
Ms Patterson adds that she had fought to save the M&S as she believed "flagship stores bring people to a town while the independent businesses keep them coming back".
Speaking about the plan for non-essential shops to reopen from 12 April, Ms Patterson says for many businesses it will be "a struggle".
She fears people may venture out at first, but retreat back to online shopping if Covid-19 infection rates rise again.
Ms Patterson says Bedford has the potential to be as successful as nearby market towns such at St Albans and Harpenden, but more work is needed.
"Some days the High Street feels quite depressing," she says.
"But it is a beautiful town and if we worked on making shop fronts more attractive it could encourage more people to explore the town and its businesses."
'We are confident we can make it work'
Beckie Fry opened Bridges Espresso Bar in Riverside Square in September, after signing the lease two weeks before the country was plunged into its first lockdown in March last year.
The 35-year-old is positive about the future.
"People still want to go out and enjoy nice things," she says.
"They want to have nice food and drink, so we are confident that if we supply that people will keep coming back."
She says she is looking forward to what she hopes will be "a booming trade come summer".
"We have lots of space for outdoor seating and will create a nice al fresco sort of vibe," she says.
Ms Fry adds it has been a "very daunting" experience opening a business during a pandemic.
"Restrictions were changing all the time, but we had no other option that to just go for it and keep changing as we needed to - but it's been great and we are confident we can make it work," she says.
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The first ever Native American saint has been canonised by the Roman Catholic Church in a ceremony at the Vatican. Kateri Tekakwitha - sometimes known as Lily of the Mohawks - died more than 300 years ago, but is thought by some to have performed a miracle as recently as 2006.
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By Cordelia HebblethwaiteBBC News, New York state
"It's a third-class relic," says gift shop manager Joanne Wiesner, wide-eyed as she holds a small Kateri Tekakwitha prayer card in her hand.
Embedded within the card is a little piece of cloth which has touched a fragment of bone, a first-class relic, from the soon-to-be saint.
"I get goose bumps every time I think about it," says Wiesner.
The prayer cards are selling like hot cakes at the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, set amid the beautiful wooded hills of what was once Mohawk land.
It was in a village here, then called Ossernenon, that Kateri Tekakwitha - a Native American Mohawk woman - was born in 1656.
This was a time of huge upheaval, violence and disease, says Allan Greer, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who has written a history of her life, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits.
There was fierce fighting between rival Native American communities - Kateri's mother was an Algonquin who had been captured in a raid by the Mohawks.
But Dutch, English and French colonialists were also competing for control of the territory, bringing with them both guns and disease. When a smallpox epidemic struck, it killed her parents and younger brother. She survived, but the disease left her face scarred and her sight seriously impaired. The Mohawk word "Tekakwitha" roughly translates as "the one who walks groping her way".
Seeing so much death and disease in their midst, the Mohawks believed French Jesuit missionaries were responsible, and held them accountable.
Just a few years before Kateri was born, three were caught, tortured and then brutally killed in her village (they were themselves later canonised).
But when Kateri was young, a peace deal was struck with the French, and part of the deal was that missionaries would be allowed to work within the communities.
By this point, Kateri was living over the river in a small village called Caughnawaga, which is the only Mohawk village anywhere to have been substantially excavated.
Set on a hill for protection, so that the Mohawks could see their enemies coming, coloured poles today mark the plots where they lived in traditional longhouses, with bunks to the side, and fires inside to cook and keep warm in the bitter winters.
"It's a place of peace and healing," says Friar Mark Steed, who is in charge of the site, known as the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine, in the village of Fonda.
"This is where she lived. It's the land where the Mohawk people lived. It's a sacred place," he says.
"Being on this land is like being in a church."
It is a short walk through the woods to the echoey well and the water where Kateri Tekakwitha was baptised into the Catholic Church at the age of 20, on Easter Day 1676.
She is sometimes said to have been one of the only members of her community to convert to Catholicism, but up to half of her village may have converted, according to Allan Greer.
For some, it was as much a practical and strategic move, as a religious one, he says.
"The Mohawks were walking a delicate balance trying to align themselves with allies, without becoming dependent.
"It was a kind of diplomatic alliance in many ways."
But Kateri appears to have been penalised for converting. Her uncle, the chief of the village, is said to have been unhappy with her decision, and her refusal to marry a Mohawk man he had selected for her.
Kateri ended up travelling 200 miles (320 km) by foot and canoe to a Jesuit-run Native American missionary village near Montreal, called Kahnawake.
There she proved herself to be pious in the extreme.
She took a lifetime vow of chastity, and subjected herself to a harsh regime of self-punishment, which included walking barefoot in the ice and snow, placing hot coals from the fire between her toes until they cooled, and lying on a bed of thorns.
Jesuit missionary Pierre Cholenec, who lived in the Kahnawake community at the time, wrote: "She tortured her body in every way she could think of: by toil, by sleepless vigils, by fasting, by cold, by fire, by irons, by belts studded with sharp points, and by harsh disciplines with which she tore her shoulders open several times a week."
The Jesuits felt she was going too far, says Orenda Boucher a Mohawk academic and researcher from Kahnawake, which is still a Native American community today.
Mohawk men would conduct all sorts of tests of strength and willpower before going into battle, she says, and Kateri Tekakwitha was probably influenced by this, effectively fusing her native beliefs with her newfound faith - practising what Greer calls a kind of "intense indigenous Catholicism".
Kateri Tekakwitha died when she was just 24 years old - and it was upon her death that reports of miracles began.
Jesuits at the scene said that the scars on her face vanished entirely, and soon after, a number of people reported seeing visions of her.
The Jesuits believed her to be a saint and catalogued all they could of her life, making her the most well-documented indigenous person in the history of the Americas, says Greer.
But some Mohawks in Kahnawake today are ambivalent about their ancestor, says Boucher. Many people don't identify with her story of life as a virgin - it's a culture where motherhood and caring for children is seen as central to a woman's role - and some associate her with the bitterness of colonisation, loss of land, and Mohawk tradition.
Many in the community there are in fact moving back towards their traditional beliefs, and away from the Catholic Church, says Boucher.
But there is a sizeable Native American Catholic contingent in the US - 680,000 according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, out of a total population of 2.5 million, and in some areas, the vast majority of Native Americans are Catholic.
And for decades, a dedicated group of Native American Catholics across the US have been praying - first for her beatification, which came in 1980, and since then for her canonisation.
"It meant a lot to learn about this young Mohawk woman. She is one of us," says Sister Kateri Mitchell of the Tekakwitha Conference, a body that represents Native American Catholics in the US.
"People have become very intrigued about her life - how this young woman of the 17th Century has influenced the lives of so many in the 21st."
Sister Kateri visited the shrine many times with her parents as a child, and played a part in the recent reported miracle that secured Kateri Tekakwitha's canonisation.
This was in 2006, when Jake Finkbonner, a five-year-old half native Lummi boy from Washington state fell playing basketball and hit his lip against some metal, contracting a potentially deadly "flesh-eating" bacterial infection, necrotising fasciitis.
Sister Kateri Mitchell put the word out for people to pray to Kateri Tekakwitha for his recovery. She then went to his bedside in the hospital in Seattle with a piece of Kateri's wrist-bone - a first-class relic - which she placed against his body, and together with his parents, prayed.
Jake, now 12, still needs some medical attention, but he made a recovery considered by some, including the Vatican, to be miraculous.
At a retreat at the Auriesville shrine almost everyone has a story of help or healing that they attribute to Kateri Tekakwitha - from helping a small burn to heal, to curing someone's mother's kidney disease, or helping a girl born blind to see.
Even some Catholics are sceptical about miracle stories, but since December when Pope Benedict XVI announced that Kateri Tekakwitha would be canonised, busloads of curious visitors have been arriving at the shrines.
"When I came here, it was a very quiet place. And I like things quiet," laughs Friar Mark Steed at the shrine in Fonda.
"Then all of a sudden they make this announcement that she's going to be a saint, and the world explodes around you."
He says he wants to avoid a "circus" developing around the shrine, and to keep it as a simple place of prayer - one that is also true to the saint's Mohawk roots.
"As a child I remember just being in awe of that place. I've always had a spot in my heart for Native American history," says teacher and artist Bob Renaud, who lives just over 100 miles (160 km) north in Carthage, and who has painted images of Kateri Tekakwitha - one of which looks set to become part of the Vatican collection.
"There's a special feeling you get at that place. You can definitely feel the spirit.
"She stood up for what she believed in, and she stood strong.
"She's local. She's not in France - she is of America. We are pretty honoured to have her so close."
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Anastasia Shevchenko spent the past week packing a bag for prison and recording voice messages for her children to listen to in case she was jailed. The prosecutor had requested five years behind bars for the single mother of two, in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
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By Sarah RainsfordBBC News, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
So when the judge declared her guilty but announced a suspended four-year sentence, it came as a moment of relief for the family in court. Her mother, Tamara, cried quietly as the judge read out her ruling.
The opposition activist was placed under house arrest over two years ago, accused of links to a pro-democracy group based in the UK and banned in Russia under a controversial 2015 law on "undesirable organisations". The judge on Thursday also lifted her house arrest.
"I'm not afraid, but I worry about my family," the 41-year old activist had told me on the eve of the verdict, as she sorted through the large bag of items for prison that she was taking with her to court.
She had been banned from entering most shops under the terms of her house arrest, so her teenage daughter Vlada collected everything together - including a notebook to keep a prison diary, warm socks and cockroach traps.
'Threat to state security'
The case against Anastasia Shevchenko stemmed from a political seminar and an authorised protest in 2018, when she stood in a central Rostov park with a banner declaring she was "fed up" with Vladimir Putin.
The investigator claimed that she was acting on behalf of a banned organisation, with "criminal intent", and that her actions constituted a "threat to state security". For months, the English teacher was kept under surveillance with a secret camera installed above her bed.
Her lawyers said no evidence of foreign-backed subterfuge was ever captured as a result.
The defence team also argued that the Open Russia opposition movement Ms Shevchenko belonged to, which is legal, has no formal ties to a very similarly named organisation based in Britain which was founded by the Kremlin critic and tycoon-in-exile Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
"Debates, seminars, political rallies are our right to express our opinion!" Ms Shevchenko argued of the activity that led to her arrest. "I don't know where I committed a crime. I really didn't. But they treat me like a very dangerous person."
Tolerance of open dissent has sunk even lower since Ms Shevchenko's detention in January 2019.
The jailing of the opposition politician Alexei Navalny last month sparked the biggest street protests this country has seen in years.
President Putin now talks even more frequently of foreign agents and outside "meddling": he argues that the West is trying to destabilise and weaken Russia, using the opposition as a tool.
Many people linked to Navalny have been charged with a myriad of crimes.
Anastasia had been steeling herself for the worst, since the prosecutor in her own case asked for a five-year prison sentence - more than expected and even longer than term handed down to Navalny.
"I recorded a message today telling you I love you," she told nine-year old Misha, as he lay on his bunk bed playing computer games.
She had also filmed videos for 16-year-old Vlada with instructions on things like reading the electricity meter and turning on the oven, just in case.
The family have been sharing a bed lately, anxious to be as close as possible for whatever time they've got.
'Be more responsible'
In her final speech to the court last week, Anastasia Shevchenko asked whether the state hadn't "sucked enough blood" from her family and called on the judge to "be human".
Her eldest daughter, Alina, who was severely disabled, fell ill while Anastasia was under arrest and the activist only got permission to see her in hospital shortly before she died.
She still hasn't been able to scatter the ashes.
"I asked them to be more responsible. To realise what they are doing to our family," Ms Shevchenko told me, adamant that the case against her was "absolutely false".
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The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has told the BBC that the Nobel Peace Prize gives the EU authority to lead peace efforts worldwide. Here is his viewpoint on the award, which he and other EU leaders are receiving in the Norwegian capital Oslo on Monday.
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Being in Oslo to jointly receive this award on behalf of the European Union is an honour and a humbling experience.
This is an award for the European project - for the people and the institutions - that day after day, for the last 60 years, have built a new Europe.
It is a good moment to remind ourselves of what the European Union has done:
I know that some have asked why, why now?
Well, Thorbjoern Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, summed it up perfectly on the day of the announcement (and again just now - and I wish to thank him warmly for his words). "This is the right moment to give a clear message to Europe to preserve what we have achieved… This is a prize to have a better organised world, to have stability and peace."
We will honour this prize and we will preserve what has been achieved. It is in the common interest of our citizens. And it will allow Europe to contribute in shaping that "better organised world" in line with the values of freedom, democracy, human rights and rule of law that we cherish and believe in.
The last 60 years have shown that Europe can unite in peace. Over the next 60 years, Europe must lead the global quest for peace.
Mr Barroso spoke to the BBC Hardtalk programme in Oslo. You can watch the full interview on BBC World News on Monday 10 December at 0430, 0930, 1530 and 2130 GMT, on the BBC News channel on Monday 10 December at 0430 GMT and Tuesday 11 December at 0030 GMT. You can also watch the interview on the BBC iplayer and you can download a podcast. .
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As Northamptonshire County Council makes £70m worth of spending cuts, how does it feel for a needy family to have support withdrawn?
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By Hannah RichardsonBBC News education and social affairs reporter
"Mum!!!! Daniel's outside in his pants!" cries Alex at the crack of dawn.
"Is he out the front?" asks mum-of-four Torie Brooks, who had fallen back to sleep.
"No, he's in the back garden," says Alex.
"Well, that's all right then," she says, hauling herself out of bed yet again to attend to the younger of her two disabled sons.
Torie is accustomed to early morning wake-up calls of this sort at the family home in the Northamptonshire village of Woodford Halse.
Daniel and Alex both have a rare disorder called Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, in which the body is unable to produce suitable amounts of cholesterol.
It has affected the way they have developed.
Daniel also has ADHD, a heart condition and probably autism, while Alex has a pronounced curve in his spine.
Like any other child, Daniel also has his interests - his main one being insects.
"He gets up any time from 03:00. Suddenly he'll be in the room asking me where the bees are or something," she says.
"And I don't know where the bees are!"
In most families, it's the toddler who wakes mum and dad at an ungodly hour, but four-year-old Edward, though demanding, is the least of Torie's worries,
"Edward's a handful now, but he will overtake Daniel in ability at some point," she says.
"Daniel will never be able to live an independent life. He will always be at home. I've had to accept that.
"Although he's nearly 12, inside mentally he is about a four or five-year-old."
His interest in wasps and spiders is verging on obsessive. The plastic jar in which he collects them and feeds them is never far from his side.
He claps enthusiastically when he manages to catch a new tenant. We are all asked to admire them.
'To be 'normal''
Older brother Alex, 13, will not grow any taller.
He has had numerous operations on his spine so he can walk and hold himself up properly. Surgeons tried to correct the curve by fusing it.
However, it is still bent and he shrugs in a matter-of-fact way when he shows me.
"He is really quite clever," says Torie.
There is an intensity about the teenager, who also has a rather dry sense of humour.
He loves playing games on his phone and is often to be found in his gaming chair in his bedroom - a "normal" teenager in so many respects. .
Then there's Annabelle, 15, who was struck and seriously injured by a falling tree when she was 10.
This left her with eight fractured vertebrae, a bleed on the brain and a fractured eye socket.
She had an operation on her face during which metal plates were inserted and she was required to wear a brace for six months.
Annabelle came home from hospital needing to use a wheelchair, and started secondary school in one.
She's no longer in the wheelchair but her mental health was affected by the accident and she is waiting for an appointment for support.
Just before the accident, the family had been celebrating a really good start to the year, says Torie, a woman accustomed to bad news, with a smile.
Children in care
It's easy to see why a family like this needs help from its local authority. But since the financial crisis of 2008, councils have had to tighten their belts significantly.
Northamptonshire, where the Brookses live, has fared worse than most. In February, it warned it may not be able to balance its books, and repeated this in July. It recently voted to make radical cuts to jobs and services to fill a £70m void and, as part of a plan to claw back cash, has had to end all further spending above that required by law.
That includes non-statutory children's services.
Northamptonshire County Council has said it is looking after more children in care than similar councils.
This included youngsters who came into its care between 2013 and 2017 and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
A council spokesman cited "unprecedented demand for local services, rapid population growth and reducing levels of funding from central government" as reasons for its strapped finances.
''Such circumstances have meant that all services have had to be reviewed over the past few years to balance budgets," he added.
''However, we are determined to protect services for the most vulnerable in our communities while bringing the council's spending under control.'"
The council has already closed or moved numerous children's centres, including the one attached to the school in the village where the Brooks family lives.
And more are likely to close in the next round of cuts, as some were shifted to local libraries, some of which are now threatened with closure.
In recent weeks, as the council's cash crisis has intensified, the family has been told Daniel will stop having occupational therapy and his autism assessment appointments are being postponed for two years.
It is families like these who are at the sharp end of the cuts in the county. For Torie, the children's centre was a godsend in the early years.
'Heart-breaking'
"I needed to get out with the boys,'' she said. "If I was at home on my own I would start to think about all the negatives.
"Often we would go down there at 09:00 and stay there until it finished at 15:00."
She adds: "There was one time when it had been snowing heavily and they came and got us!"
Torie described how staff at the centre encouraged her to interact and stimulate the boys in different ways because of their developmental needs.
"They actually came to the house and showed me how to play with the children."
As new issues emerged with each boy, she was able to find the right place to go for help through the staff at the centre, she says.
But that all changed with the closure of the centre.
Torie says parents of children with additional needs have to fight for everything and the older boys' schooling was no exception, as Torie told the BBC in 2013.
When Alex was eight, his primary school in the village called her in to say it was struggling to keep up with the boys' needs.
"I came back and I cried. I was really upset. It's heart-breaking.
"For want of a better word - I want the boys to be normal. I want them to be able to do what everybody else is doing. I wanted them to go to the school in the village like the other children."
It was at this point, she says, that it really hit home that her boys were not going to live normal lives.
"When he left mainstream it absolutely ripped my heart out."
After the usual battling, Alex was finally offered a place at a special school over the county border in Oxfordshire.
"We could see straightaway the difference in Alex and we knew we needed to get Daniel in there too," says Torie.
"They have done remarkably well. They have already achieved more than we'd ever hoped for them."
But not long after the boys settled in, letters arrived saying the council planned to move them to other schools.
"We fought that hard.
''I said, 'For every one reason you say they need to go, I will give you one why they need to stay'."
Daniel's heart condition means he needs to be within spitting distance of a hospital and Northamptonshire relented.
Recently the family was told that Daniel's direct payments of £44.72 monthly, for specialist after-school clubs and much-needed respite care, are to stop.
One activity the family uses this money to pay for is an animal-centred club, where Daniel does some gentle horse-riding to help with his core strength.
After complaining, the family's social worker took up their case with the council. They've been told the payments are being reinstated.
But there's another bigger battle ahead.
The Brooks family had been approved for a grant to extend their house. This would have been to give Alex and Daniel the separate bedrooms they require as they grow older.
''Daniel wakes up at any time and just gets out of bed,'' Torie explains.
"The other night he came in at 22:00 asking for breakfast. He doesn't understand the time thing."
When Alex was able to sleep separately, the benefits were obvious, Torie adds.
Both boys have meltdowns borne of the frustrations they face living with their conditions and, Torie explains, need a private, safe space to express those very real feelings.
The council agrees the construction work is needed. Its own quote says the building work will cost £75,000, but the grant offer has dropped to £35,000.
And although Torie's husband is working long hours, the family is unable to find the £40,000 shortfall.
"We could probably get it done a lot cheaper by not going through a council contractor, but that is not allowed," she adds.
"Sometimes," says Torie, it seems "forces are trying to frustrate what we've fought for".
But she tries to keep positive, using her evident patience and sense of humour.
'Guilty feelings'
"Being a parent of children with issues can be very, very lonely. Not everyone understands. Although I am fairly lucky in that I do have close friends.
"But it isn't easy to find childcare when it's urgent. And sometimes you just need reassurance from someone that you are doing a good job.
"There is a great deal of guilt behind it too.
"I think every parent feels like that at some point anyway. But the guilt of wondering, 'Why your children, why you, and what did I do wrong?' is hard.
"Although deep down you know it's just the way life has happened. It doesn't stop those feelings."
'Flame goes out'
With regard to the cuts, it's easy to see how her family will be affected practically.
But how does it feel?
''It takes a lot to pluck up courage and admit you need help," says Torie.
''But when there isn't any help it's like a flame that goes out. You fight and battle to get the help that's needed and it's not there.''
She also worries about the longer-term future.
''What happens when I'm not here to fight for the boys, or when I'm physically not able to look after them any more?''
And she feels angry too.
''Nobody deserves to be treated this way.''
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MPs returned to the Commons on Wednesday after the Supreme Court ruled that Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful.
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Supreme Court president Lady Hale said on Tuesday that it was unlawful because "it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification."
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox told the Commons that he was "disappointed" at the landmark ruling but respected the judgement.
Here are pictures of some of the key political events this week.
.
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Up to 500 homes on the Isle of Man are without power for a second day after "extreme weather" caused damage to the island's electricity network.
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Around 700 properties were cut off after snow fell on Friday, a Manx Electricity Authority (MEA) spokesman said.
He said there had been more overnight faults due to "ongoing severe weather" in Fleshwick, Scard and Earystane.
MEA aimed "to get the majority back on supply over the weekend", he added.
"We are deploying all of our available resource to assess and repair the major damage to our network in those areas of the island affected by this extreme weather," he said.
Some Steam Packet sailings have also been affected by the weather.
All Saturday sailings between Douglas and Liverpool have been cancelled, though those between Heysham and Douglas are running as normal.
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It looks like Vladimir Putin has run out of patience with coronavirus.
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By Sarah RainsfordBBC News, Moscow
On Monday he sent millions of workers back to factories and building sites across Russia, declaring six weeks of full lockdown over.
Regional leaders have been left to manage exactly how and when they lift the remaining restrictions, with the infection rate still stubbornly high - especially in Moscow.
But by Thursday, Mr Putin was telling his government that life was "resuming its normal, familiar rhythm" and urging them to refocus on non-coronavirus priorities.
The message from the top is clear: Russia's president wants to move on.
Why the rush?
"I think for the first time in his active political life, Putin is faced by a problem which is absolutely not under his control and which broke all of his plans," says Chatham House political analyst Nikolai Petrov.
This spring that included a public vote on reforming the constitution, allowing Mr Putin to rule for another two terms.
Instead, the 67-year-old ended up retreating to his residence outside Moscow, after an attempt to keep up his action-man image by visiting a coronavirus-hospital in full hazmat suit became a close-scrape with infection.
The doctor who showed him round later tested positive for the virus.
Tucked away in self-isolation, the hands-on president has been forced to conduct business via video conferences on a giant split screen.
At 59%, his approval rating has slid to an all-time low and his tetchiness, even boredom, during the long calls has been visible.
"Putin's eager to finish his plans," Nikolai Petrov argues, meaning the constitutional reform vote that is still widely advertised on state TV and giant city billboards.
"It's like he was caught mid-jump over a fence. It's not a very comfortable position."
So is Covid-19 really defeated?
The day Vladimir Putin announced a formal end to lockdown, Russia recorded its biggest spike in new coronavirus cases.
Since then, official numbers have fallen slightly each day but the total is now over 250,000, placing Russia near the very top of worldwide ratings.
Politicians here have preferred to highlight another statistic, though: a mortality rate below 1%.
"This shows that the quality of our healthcare is much better than in the USA," the Speaker of Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, gloated on Wednesday, when Russia had reported just 2,212 coronavirus deaths.
"We must give thanks to our doctors and our president, who works day and night to save lives," he gushed, to a smattering of applause from MPs mostly in facemasks.
The low mortality has raised some sceptical eyebrows, but the suggestion that Russia is actively under-reporting fatalities was angrily denied by officials this week as "fake news".
However, figures for the overall death rate in Moscow in April do suggest an excess mortality of up to three times the official Covid-19 death figure, calculated against an average rate over the past five years.
Excess mortality is considered a better measure of Covid-19 deaths, as it includes people who may not have been tested and those dying outside hospital.
At around 1,700 excess deaths, Moscow's tally in April was still considerably lower than many places - including London.
The Moscow Health Department has since clarified that up to 60% of suspected coronavirus cases actually died of other causes, like strokes or heart attacks, a fact established during post-mortem examination.
It denies any cover-up.
What lessons have been learned?
Russia did have more time to prepare for coronavirus to hit.
Widespread testing, now over 40,000 a day in Moscow, early detection and earlier hospital treatment may be helping Russia avoid the distressing scenes of mass graves and overloaded morgues that played out in parts of Europe, though the epidemic here is far from contained yet.
There may also be cultural differences: whilst UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson coughed his way through remote meetings with a raging temperature only to end up in intensive care, Vladimir Putin's spokesman battled his own fever for three days before being admitted to hospital with double pneumonia.
In an interview with Kommersant newspaper, Dmitry Peskov describes falling ill despite extreme precautions at work, where Kremlin staff even disinfect paperwork before passing it on.
Mr Peskov said he hadn't been in direct contact with President Putin himself for over a month.
Delegating responsibility
It's not clear when Russia's leader might judge it safe to return to the Kremlin.
Many others in Moscow are also still "working from home" as most Covid-19 restrictions remain in place.
It's down to the mayor to decide when they're lifted and Sergei Sobyanin is still refusing even to let residents out for a daily run.
On Thursday, he described such decisions as the hardest he's ever made. The price, he said, was "people's health and lives".
That's less about frustrated joggers, than the many workers now struggling.
Official unemployment has doubled since the start of the epidemic and the independent polling firm Levada this month found that one in four people had lost, or were in imminent danger of losing, their job.
A third have had their wages or hours cut.
Russians don't save much, and state handouts to workers under lockdown have been limited, so pressure to ease the restrictions is building.
"[Russia's leaders] know that the policy of no work and no money will provoke collapse, an explosion. So they ruled the pandemic over when it's far from the peak," political analyst Lilia Shevtsova argues.
"They needed a victory over coronavirus, and fast!" she wrote in a blog for Ekho Moskvy radio station.
But the virus, still spreading into Russia's regions, is oblivious to the political wishes of the Kremlin.
And the damage to Russia's strongman leader may also be hard to stop.
"Even if he gets the constitution vote he wants," Nikolai Petrov argues, "it won't change the fact that Putin is now much weaker."
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When Kamala Harris, one of the early frontrunners for the 2020 Democratic nomination, talked about the importance of the university she attended, she shone a spotlight on historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
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By Cache McClayBBC News, Washington
"When the federal government gives attention to HBCUs we end up having a profound impact on black people in America," said the California senator, when asked about her alma mater, Howard University, in an interview following the launch of her presidential bid.
HBCUs like Howard, one of the top ranked and most well known historically black universities in the country, are recognised around the globe.
Dr Gracie Lawson-Borders, dean of Howard's school of communications, says that for a lot of the students "this opportunity to be accepted at Howard, at Bennett or at any HBCU is just a part of their growing war chest of preparation to make a difference in this world".
Why did the US need HBCUs?
Historically black colleges and universities, commonly called HBCUs, were created to provide higher education to disenfranchised African Americans in the United States, who were otherwise prohibited from attending most colleges.
The first and oldest HBCU, Cheyney University, was founded in 1837 in Pennsylvania. At the time, Blacks were not allowed to attend most colleges and postsecondary institutions, as a result of slavery and segregation.
Under the 1965 Higher Education Act, HBCUs were officially defined as institutions of higher learning that were accredited and established before 1964. The act allocated federal grants and funding to those colleges and universities.
These institutions would become largely responsible for the black middle class composed of doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers and other professionals.
HBCUs continue to produce black celebrities, professionals, and leaders.
The two oldest HBCU medical schools Meharry Medical College and Howard University are responsible for more than 80% of African American doctors and dentists practicing in the US today, according to the US Department of Education.
Notable African American alum - like Senator Kamala Harris - aren't far and few. The long list of successful African Americans who attended HBCUs include civil rights leader Martin Luther King, the first African American US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, media mogul Oprah Winfrey and director Spike Lee - to name a few.
Why have HBCUs been in the news recently?
Bennett College, founded in 1873, made headlines in recent months after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges voted to revoke its accreditation due to financial instability.
The university was then faced with a task of raising $5m (£3.8m) by February or permanently closing its doors, leaving only its legacy. Bennett College launched the campaign #StandWithBennett and surpassed their goal by February, raising more than $8.5m(£6.5m).
Bennett College is one of 101 HBCUs, but its struggle to maintain accreditation is not unprecedented.
While some HBCUs continue to thrive, others struggle risk accreditation and enrolment. In fact, five have closed completely since 1989.
Why are they still relevant today?
While the initial mission was focused on educating marginalised African Americans, today these colleges are comprised of all demographics. As of 2016, non-black students made up 23% of enrolment at HBCUs.
Still, historically black institutions are considered safe-havens for African Americans.
Many students at Howard, founded in 1867, say that HBCUs are one of the only places that transcend racism still prevalent in society.
"It is necessary to hone in on black spaces where we can thrive, support and reach each other before stepping out into a society ruled by racism and built on keeping black people in last place," says Autasia Ramos, a recent graduate of Howard University.
The lack of barriers allow students to learn about their history, see their potential through the lens of other successful African Americans who have come before them, and become resilient in a society that still struggles to appreciate them.
Mara Peoples, Howard's student body vice-president who met Ms Harris when she launched her presidential bid, points to the California senator as an example of how HBCUs foster that potential.
"I feel that I've found validation in myself going to an HBCU because I am able to learn more about my background and I have more opportunities that are geared toward me, as a black individual," she says.
Professor Jennifer Thomas, an alumna of Howard University, who now teaches at the school, says she would not be where she is without the education she received at Howard.
"The classes were rigorous, the professors were experienced, but most of all I felt I was in a nurturing environment with people who were committed to my success."
Supporters of HBCUs say they are not only important for African Americans, but for all of society.
Mark McCluskey, a white student at Howard, says for the first time in his life he is considered a minority, but shares his peers' sentiment about the value of preserving HBCUs.
"HBCUs are really relevant in today's society because they can spread a lot of knowledge about the cultures that America has largely ignored over the past couple of centuries."
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The internationally renowned writers, Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy, have lent their voices to a call for equally famous
authors including Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk to boycott a festival of writing that takes place in Sri Lanka next week.
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They say that by attending the Galle Literary Festival, the writers will legitimise what they say is Colombo’s squashing of
free expression. However the festival founder has criticised the boycott call, describing the event as a force for good.
Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky have signed this boycott call launched by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders or RSF
along with Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, a group of exiles.
Disturbing
A week before the Galle Literary Festival starts in southern Sri Lanka, RSF says it is “disturbing” that literature is being
celebrated in a country where, it says, journalists, writers and dissident voices are victimised by the government.
Monday marks one year since the disappearance of a pro-opposition cartoonist and writer, Prageeth Eknaligoda; and two years
ago an outspoken newspaper editor was assassinated.
There’s been no progress in investigating the cases. Dozens of Sri Lankan journalists have been beaten up, fled into exile
or had death threats.
Nobel Prize winner
And RSF says that if the guest authors stay away they will be supporting those in Sri Lanka who cannot speak out.
Among the festival speakers are the Nobel prize-winning Turkish novelist and free-speech campaigner Orhan Pamuk; China’s Jung
Chang; and Nigeria’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
The festival founder, Geoffrey Dobbs, described the boycott call as “badly informed and negative”. He said the festival,
now in its fifth year, encouraged pluralism and free expression and that guest writers should come and judge things and speak
out if they wanted to.
A Sri Lankan website which highlights human rights issues, Groundviews, agreed, saying that if there were to be a boycott,
India’s Arundhati Roy might just as well shun this week’s Jaipur Literature Festival over Delhi’s actions in Kashmir.
The website said that the Galle festival helped to keep Sri Lanka country in the media spotlight.
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The UK has some of the poorest cancer mortality rates in Europe in the over 70s. Recent years have seen efforts to reduce the number of cases of cancer and significant steps to diagnose cancers earlier.
But in Scrubbing Up, Hazel Brodie, older people's expert at Macmillan Cancer Support, warns these measures don't go far enough and that more must be done to ensure older people get access to treatment.
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By Hazel BrodieMacmillan Cancer Support
Cancer survival rates are desperately poor among people over 70 who account for half of people newly diagnosed with cancer in the UK. While mortality rates are improving significantly for the under 75s, around 14,000 cancer patients over 75 are dying prematurely each year in the UK.
But there are barriers to treatment.
Research we have done shows older people are less likely to receive surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy than their younger counterparts.
This difference in treatment rates cannot be entirely accounted for by medically justifiable reasons such as the presence of untreatable co-morbidities.
We are deeply concerned that treatment decisions are too often being made on the basis of age, regardless of how fit patients may be, leading to under-treatment.
'Inadequate support'
The older population is a varied one.
One 85-year-old may tolerate chemotherapy well, while another may experience complications such as severe toxicity.
Similarly, one 78-year-old may be bed-bound, while another may participate in half marathons.
As such, older people must be treated as individuals.
Clinicians require more information on frailty in order to make appropriate treatment recommendations which is why we are calling for more effective assessments to be used to indicate who will tolerate what treatment.
Inadequate practical support to help older people at home, with transport, or with care for dependent spouses and other family presents another barrier to treatment.
We have heard of older people having to turn down treatment because of this.
Time and time again I hear older people recounting the difficulties they have in getting to and from hospital for their treatment or with meal preparation and shopping.
One 81-year-old said "I didn't have chemotherapy, because they thought if I couldn't get to hospital to have it, it wasn't much good.
"They didn't say that they would provide transport for me".
'Age equality'
This is simply unacceptable.
Patients should be provided with information about local services which can offer practical and social support during cancer treatment. An older person should never refuse treatment because they're having difficulties with transport or caring for a relative.
Age discriminatory practices are also a barrier to older people getting the treatment.
Britain is one of the worst in Europe for negative attitudes to the elderly.
A recent survey undertaken by the British Geriatric Society showed that one third of geriatricians believed that the NHS was 'institutionally ageist.
We want "age equality" within cancer services.
Older people are all individuals with differing levels of frailty, mental attitude, and support.
Each will tolerate cancer treatment differently.
It is vital that steps are taken to ensure that the right people get the right treatment at the correct level of intensity, together with the practical support to enable them to take up and complete the treatment.
Writing people off as too old for treatment is utterly shameful.
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Three cars became submerged on a beach in Somerset, prompting a warning for motorists to beware of high spring tides.
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Crews from Burnham-based BARB Search & Rescue said they were called out "multiple times" by people who ran into trouble at Brean beach.
BARB chairman Mark Newman urged people to check the tide times.
One motorist was rescued on Friday while a further two became stuck on Saturday.
Mr Newman added: "Always heed the warning signs and stay away from the muddy areas of the beach."
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The government is consulting on introducing the same sort of targets for people to be seen by a mental health specialist as are currently in place for waiting times in accident and emergency units and for cancer treatment, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has told BBC News - but there are already some targets in place.
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By Reality Check teamBBC News
Psychosis
The percentage of patients starting treatment for psychosis within two weeks of referral increased from 59% in December 2015 to a peak of 80% in February 2017 before dropping to 76% in July this year. And the target, 50%, will be raised to 60% in the next few years.
The percentage of those waiting for early intervention in psychosis for more than 12 weeks fell from 7% to 1% during the same period.
Children's mental health services
The government set a target in 2016 that 70,000 additional children and young people each year should receive treatment for mental health until 2020-21.
This would increase the NHS-funded treatment rate of the children and young people in England with diagnosable mental health issues from 25% to 35%.
Recently, the NHS released a "one-off" data collection that put the rate at 30.5% - on track to meet the target.
But the National Audit Office has raised concerns about "data weakness" around these figures.
"We have further concerns about the equivalence of the 70,000 target to a 10% increase in access rates," the NAO report says.
"It does not yet have consistent and reliable data available on the number and proportion of young people accessing treatment each year, so NHS England cannot be confident about the growth rates in access."
Equally, the target is based on assumed prevalence of mental health problems in young people.
So if more of them have mental health problems than previously assumed, the number required to meet the target will have to rise proportionately.
Children with eating disorders
Another target says children and young people with eating disorders in England should receive treatment within a week of referral, in urgent cases.
This is also a relatively new target, starting in the first quarter of 2016-17, when 65% of children were seen within a week. In the latest quarter, this increased to 75%.
Less urgent "routine" cases should be seen within four weeks. There have been improvements here too - from 65% to 81% since the statistics were published.
Access to talking therapy
For those referred for psychological therapies, there is a standard that 75% should start treatment within six weeks of referral and 95% should start treatment within 18 weeks of referral.
This kind of treatment, for patients with disorders such as anxiety and depression, can range from cognitive behaviour therapy to online self-help courses.
In 2016-17, there were 866,527 referrals to this kind of treatment who had their first appointment within six weeks, 88% of all referrals.
The second target was also met - with 98.2% seen within 18 weeks.
This is an improvement from the previous year - when the target was introduced - when 81.3% waited less than six weeks and 96.2% waited less than 18 weeks.
Before these targets were established, data was given on how many received treatment within 56 days of referral.
In 2012-13, 84% were receiving treatment in that time period. In 2016-17, this had increased to 94%.
Funding
As part of "parity of esteem" between mental and physical health, clinical commissioning groups - the organisations that deal with hospital and community health in a local area - are required to increase mental health spending relative to the amount their budgets increase.
And there has been an increase in CCGs meeting this target - from 81% in 2015-16, when it was set, to 90% in 2017-18.
On average, CCGs are spending 13.7% of their overall budgets on mental health.
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Two men have been seriously injured in a suspected knife attack in Nottingham city centre.
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Both men were taken to hospital after reports of a disturbance in Fletcher Gate at about 18:40 GMT.
Witnesses reported seeing police cars and armed officers nearby, as well as ambulances.
The public was urged to avoid roads around Halifax Place, and police cordons were erected in Fletcher Gate, Pilcher Gate and High Pavement.
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Chris Brown has been released from police custody in Washington DC.
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The R&B singer was arrested early on Sunday morning after a man accused him and his bodyguard of breaking his nose outside the W Hotel.
Prosecutors reduced an assault charge to a misdemeanour, which carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail, as a judge released Brown.
After spending the night in jail, the 24-year-old left court on Monday surrounded by security, press and fans.
The singer's lawyer, Danny Onorato said: "Christopher Brown committed no crime.
"We understand that his security staff acted to protect Mr Brown and Mr Brown's property as he was authorised to do under District of Columbia law.
"We are confident that Mr Brown will be exonerated of any wrongdoing."
According to court documents, the man told police he'd tried to push his way into a picture Brown was taking with a woman and her friend.
Parker Adams, 20 and from Maryland, claimed he was punched by both Brown and his bodyguard Chris Hollosy before Brown boarded his tour bus.
The star is due back in court on 25 November.
Chris Brown is still on five years probation for attacking his ex-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009 before the Grammy Music Awards.
He was cleared of hit-and-run charges in August after the judge ruled the singer and a woman, whose Mercedes he hit with his Range Rover, had reached an agreement over the case.
In January, it was claimed he was involved in a fight with singer Frank Ocean over a car parking space outside a Hollywood recording studio.
At the time, detectives said Brown was under suspicion for punching the victim but the case was dropped after Ocean decided not to press charges.
The singer is set to release his latest album, X, later this year.
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A man has been charged with the murder of a woman who was found fatally stabbed in north London.
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Police said they were called to a seriously injured woman at an address on Tennyson Close in Enfield on Saturday night.
The victim, who was in her 40s, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Criston Preddie, 28, of Tennyson Close, will appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court on Monday charged with murder.
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The Conservative/Lib Dem coalition will soon be a year old - so what do grassroots Tory activists at the Tory spring conference in Cardiff think of it so far? And what do they really think about one of the men who made it possible, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?
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By Brian WheelerPolitical reporter, BBC News
LINDA BLACKBURN
I think it is early days. It is like anybody that lives together. They have to learn about each other and they have to put up with each other's idiosyncrasies. I think it is hard for party members from both sides to come to terms with the fact that neither of them is in charge. I think the Lib Dems feel particularly hard done to because they are seen as a sell-out by some of their supporters. But it is a coalition. They are having to take on some of the views and values of the Conservatives. It's a compromise. We don't live in Utopia. I think Nick Clegg is a very intelligent man who has had to make some great decisions. I think he is being unfairly picked on by the media.
I think they have achieved a lot of things in a short space of time. More than if the Conservative Party had been elected on its own. There are complaints in some quarters in the Conservative Party but when you ask those people 'What is it that you wanted to do that you haven't been able to?' they can't answer. I think Nick Clegg has found it difficult. He has had some difficulties with his own party. Some Lib Dems are particularly left wing.
It's going very well. I am very pleased there was a hung Parliament and I know a lot of my colleagues think that. The parties need to work together in the current economic situation. Cameron would have found it more difficult to do what he has done with a small majority of his own. People would have turned against him. I didn't like Clegg during the election campaign - I thought he was opportunistic. My view of him has changed but I am not sure what the future holds for him. I hope he emerges from this with honour. One option might be to join the Conservatives, another might be to leave politics, a third option is for his party to be taken over by someone else.
I think the Conservatives have done more than they could have done with a small majority. It would have been more difficult to get some of the cuts through. Nick Clegg seems like a nice person. I don't think he is really a Lib Dem. He seems to be more in tune with a lot of Conservative philosophy. I don't think he ever really believed in tuition fees. He is not a proper Lib Dem but it would be difficult for him to defect to the Conservatives because he gets his power from being the Lib Dem leader.
The coalition has had to take some difficult decisions in the national interest and the Lib Dems have been attacked for it, which is unfair and unjust. I have met Nick Clegg and he is a decent man, a brave man. People have suggested he did what he did to just to get power but I think that is unfair. He would be welcome in the Conservative Party any time, as far as I am concerned - as long he wears blue ties!
Natalie: I wouldn't necessarily say the Conservatives have achieved more as part of a coalition than they would have done on their own. Everyone has had to make compromises, although the only thing I really wish hadn't happened is the whole referendum on AV voting.
Emily: I don't think Nick Clegg was the right choice to be Lib Dem leader. They should have chosen Vince Cable. Clegg said a lot of things he thought people wanted to hear but didn't think he would have to follow through on it. A lot of my friends voted for him and they aren't very happy.
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Comics have always been made for children, but what about the children who are making the comics? The BBC spoke to three who will be displaying their work this weekend at one of the UK's most prestigious comic art festivals - and one teenager who is already making a living as a full-time cartoonist.
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By Duncan LeatherdaleBBC News online
'They are people I wish were real'
Fourteen-year-old Abi Kerner,from Wigan, started drawing when she was six, but it was only when she began attending the Lakes International Comic Art Festival with her parents that she fully realised the possibilities for comic book art.
A fan of manga - a style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels - Abi says that meeting artists at the gathering in previous years "encouraged me to see it as a career".
"It's exciting to be going again and exhibiting alongside them," she says.
"I'm hoping to get lots of advice, ideas and encouragement."
Among the stars of the comic book world who will be at the festival this year are Alan Grant and Frank Quitely, as well as a creative talent better known for his crime fiction than his drawing, Ian Rankin.
The process Abi uses to create her art sees her sketching in pencil before scanning her work, which she completes on a tablet.
She has created several characters as one-off sketches but is yet to work out a full story for them.
"They are people I wish were real," Abi says.
She is also designing a window display around the theme of the Land Girls of World War One for the festival, which takes over the town of Kendal for one weekend every year.
'This is what I want to do when I grow up'
Dundee is the birthplace of the Beano and the Dandy, so it is only fitting it also produced Drew Marr.
He started reading comics when he was four years old. By the time he was six, Drew was drawing his own.
"Comics have helped me a lot because of my dyslexia," he says.
"Drawing has helped me organise my thoughts and ideas."
His mother Kelly says: "With his dyslexia, he found looking at comics a really good way to follow a story."
Drew is currently working on a 10-part series, The Rehabilitation of Doctor Eye, which documents the reformation of a super-villain - Kelly says her son has always been more interested in villains than heroes.
He is a big fan of Marvel and wants to emulate comic book doyen Stan Lee - in more ways than one.
"He has said that if one of his comics is ever made into a film he wants to have a small cameo part like Stan Lee does in all of the Marvel films," Kelly explains.
"He has a good imagination and a really great sense of humour."
Is drawing just a hobby or a career plan?
"Both," Drew says.
"This is what I want to do when I grow up because I enjoy it so much as a hobby."
The Lakes will be his second convention having previously launched his comic book at DeeCon in Dundee in April, when he was only nine years old.
"I'm really looking forward to meeting other artists," he says.
Drew's books are currently being sold in six Forbidden stores across the UK and Ireland as well as his local shop Ahoy Comics.
To see his work on a shop shelf "felt really good", Drew says.
"I was quite proud."
'It's like this machine in my head'
In four years of drawing comics, nine-year-old Alec Anderson has produced hundreds of pieces, according to his mum Sophie.
In fact, the youngster from near Keswick in Cumbria is so prolific that his hands have started developing calluses like those of a professional artist.
"He is constantly drawing for hours and hours day," Sophie says. "It's how he expresses himself.
"He is amazingly talented but he really works at it to improve as well."
Most ordinary books don't have enough pictures, Alec says. "Comics are a nice way of visualising the story."
He started trying to draw characters he'd always liked but quickly realised he preferred coming up with his own, such as Wonderwear Woman, Water Man and Bionic Boy.
"It's a bit easier to make it up myself - I do not have to worry about making the characters the same as in other books.
"It's all stuff in my head mostly. It's like this machine in my head constantly spouting a billion ideas an hour which I have to draw."
The Lakes will be the first time he exhibits and sells his work, although he does share some of his creations on Twitter.
"The feedback he gets is lovely especially from other artists," Sophie says.
"That whole community of artists are just a really nice bunch of people, very encouraging."
'It's a hobby I do for my job'
Zoom Rockman had never seen a comic until, at the age of nine, he found a box of old Beanos at a car boot sale.
"I'd always liked drawing and telling stories but had never realised there was a medium that let you do both," he said.
He had soon produced his first comic, a collection of 20 of his best works, which was being sold in local shops in the area of London where he lives.
At 12 he had been invited to contribute a monthly strip to the Beano - his creation Skanky Pigeon - which he did for four years.
At 16 his work was used for the first time in the satirical magazine Private Eye, for which he is now a regular contributor.
His works have won numerous awards and he is now getting high profile commissions, recently producing a series of portraits of Winston Churchill for one of the statesman's favourite restaurants, Simpson's-in-the-Strand.
"It started as a hobby and it still is a hobby, just one I do for my job," he said.
"I love doing it."
Now aged 18, he is already a bona fide cartoonist and satirist.
So what advice would he offer to youngsters wanting to follow in his footsteps?
"Don't just talk about doing something, actually do it," Zoom says.
"If you want to draw a comic, draw a comic. Enter competitions, go to the comic festivals.
"When I first started going to the conventions I was the only young cartoonist around, there were not any others.
"So it is really cool to see so many young cartoonists doing it now."
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When a new sensory den opened at a Caerphilly county primary school on Tuesday, it was the culmination of a journey - at times a very painful one - for a mother driven by the love of her autistic daughter.
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By Gemma RyallBBC News
When Claire reached the 17th mile in her first marathon, she felt a searing pain in her leg.
She did not know it then, but she had broken her fibula and found it hard to stand, let alone run. But rather than pull out, she kept going for the final nine miles - until she crossed the finish line at 26.2 miles in four hours one minute.
Throughout every torturous step, one thought kept Claire going - her 11-year-old daughter Lilly.
Lilly has autism and Claire says every day for her is like a marathon.
"School is exhausting. Just putting on the act almost all day of trying to be as normal as she can and trying to understand the social niceties and all the intricacies of how to behave as a girl - what you should say and what you shouldn't say and all of that - is just absolutely exhausting for her," said Claire, from Machen in Caerphilly county.
"She just likes to come straight home, straight under a blanket with her cats and her animals and her comfort and almost recuperate for the rest of the evening to do it all again.
"And often she will say 'I can't do it again tomorrow, I have done it today, I can't do it again'.
"So when I was running my marathon, that's what I kept thinking. Sometimes I think every day must be like running a marathon for Lilly.
"Life is incredibly hard for her."
Claire pushed on to the end of the race knowing she was raising money to help children like Lilly.
A few months before the marathon last May, she came up with the idea of creating a sensory den at her children's school, Machen primary.
The den, which is in a specially-built pod in the school yard, is kitted out with bean bags, lights and sensory toys and is the culmination of fundraising and the generosity of local businesses and the community.
It opened officially on Tuesday and Claire hopes it will provide a calming space for both pupils with autism and those who might find the school day hard to cope with at times.
For children like Lilly - who has high-functioning autism - things as simple as noisy corridors and crowded halls can cause anxiety.
"She's a clever girl and is in mainstream school but she has barriers to learning," said Claire, 39, who has two other children aged eight and five with husband Richard.
"She has some demand avoidance, which means any demand put on Lilly makes her incredibly anxious, to the degree that she will do anything to avoid doing what that demand is, whether that means going in a book case or under a table.
"It just racks her with anxiety. And children like that can actually come across as very manipulative because obviously they try to manipulate the environment and the situation to mask the fact that they are so incredibly anxious."
Lilly can no longer benefit from the den as she started secondary school in September but Claire said she wanted to ensure other autistic children in the school would be catered for.
"Every child with autism is completely different but they all have their own struggles," she said.
For Lilly, life continues to be hard - she has found the step up to secondary school challenging and is currently only doing two hours there a day.
"I think it's very much the social aspect," said Claire, who gave up her job as a research scientist to care for Lilly and now works part-time as a learning support assistant at Machen primary.
"She doesn't really have a social life or friends and it's quite hard for an 11-year-old girl to go through that.
"She just looks forward each day to coming home and being with her family and her animals."
What is Autism?
Information from The National Autistic Society
Claire would love her daughter to make just one special friend and tries to help her by organising play dates with other children.
But she appreciates that not everyone fully understands autism.
"I think Lilly finds social interactions very difficult. She can over-compensate by coming across very 'ticky' so she will grab people and hug them or she will squeak or she will be over-excited," Claire added.
"She can then misinterpret things that are said so she can think that people are being mean to her when they're not.
"Basically it's all around understanding social interactions and when you're a girl there are so many subtle things - body language, what you wear, how your hair is.
"There are so many things that constitute being popular or not and for her it's very, very difficult.
"She will often think it's easier to stay in her room. She likes looking at things on her iPad. We have to make sure she experiences real life, not just the virtual life - the life that she would love to live that's on You Tube or something like that.
"But I'm so proud of her - she's a lovely girl and she's very unique."
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Did you go to a museum or gallery last year?
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Figures show the number of visitors to the UK's major museums and galleries fell last year for the first time in almost a decade.
The biggest drop in 2015/2016 was seen in educational visits and school groups, which saw a 6.9% decline on 2014/15.
So why are figures dropping? It has been speculated that security fears over terrorism may be a factor.
According to The Guardian, it may also be because there being fewer so-called "blockbuster" exhibitions like the V&A's David Bowie show in 2013 - the most visited show in the London museum's history.
"There has been much speculation about the cause of the small decline in overall visitor numbers to national museums in England," said a spokesman for the Museums Association.
"But it is too early to say for certain what the reasons are for the drop in numbers."
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport's figures are based on attendance at the 15 museums it sponsors that provide free entry to their permanent collections.
They include the British Museum, the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery Group, which includes Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
According to the Museums Association, though, the figures "only cover England's national museums and therefore provide a partial view of the health of the UK's museums".
"In fact, the government's own Taking Part Survey shows that museum visits are at an all-time high in England, with 52.5% of all adults visiting a museum last year."
Tate Britain is expected to see a boost in visitor figures this year thanks to its eagerly anticipated David Hockney retrospective.
The 79-year-old artist marked the exhibition's opening by redesigning the Sun newspaper's logo for Friday's "souvenir" edition.
What else could be the hot tickets for this year?
Here are some suggestions from BBC Arts editor Will Gompertz:
1) Tony Cragg: A Rare Category of Objects
The biggest UK exhibition to date by leading sculptor Tony Cragg opens next month at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield.
2) Jasper Johns
Opening in September, the Royal Academy's major retrospective of the American artist's work is tipped by Will to be "a sure-fire hit".
3) Cezanne Portraits
The National Portrait Gallery brings together more than 50 of the French artist's portraits, including works that have never been on public display in the UK.
4) Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932
Featuring works by the likes of Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich, the Royal Academy's spring exhibition marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
5) Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017
The German artist's first exhibition at Tate Modern includes an "immersive" new installation in the gallery's cavernous South Tank.
And Hull is also 2017's UK's City of Culture, and its offerings include hosting this year's Turner Prize later this year.
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"Everyone will hope Mr Hancock delivers on his promise".
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By BBC NewsStaff
That's the view of the Daily Mirror, which, like many papers, gives a broad welcome to the government's re-vamped strategy to increase testing for coronavirus.
Only through testing can NHS staff know if they are safe to return to work, the paper argues, and only through testing can we judge when it will be safe to lift the lockdown restrictions.
Should Mr Hancock fail, it concludes, the cost will not be his job but lives lost.
The Sun takes aim at Public Health England, saying the crisis has laid bare its complacency and ineptitude.
For years this monument to "bloated, sluggish bureaucracy" has banged on obsessively about obesity but facing the gravest crisis in a century, its failings have been hideously exposed.
The Times believes that the government's call on Britain's extensive network of university and private-sector laboratories to join the national testing effort is the right strategy, but it should have been adopted weeks ago.
It says blame for what it calls "this shambles" lies not with Public Health England but squarely with the government. It has been, the paper argues, consistently behind the curve in its response to the pandemic.
Mr Hancock has made a big promise, it says. If he can't deliver, public confidence in the government will evaporate.
According to the Daily Telegraph, public health officials in charge of defending the country from a major pandemic never drew up plans for mass community testing, despite warnings from the World Health Organization.
It's been told emergency planners "did not discuss" the need for community testing because they wrongly believed a new strain of influenza would be the next outbreak to strike the UK.
The Guardian highlights new data which suggests the coronavirus outbreak took hold earlier in the UK than previously thought.
It says according to NHS England the earliest death occurred on 28 February, almost a week earlier than previously acknowledged.
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The Financial Times leads on the economic shockwaves the virus is continuing to make around the world.
It says about four million French workers have applied for temporary unemployment benefits during the past two weeks, while Spain has recorded the biggest jump in unemployment in its history, with more than 800,000 people losing their jobs last month.
The New York Times says the reported loss of 10 million jobs in the US shows the scope of the unfolding economic disaster.
It says hopes for a dramatic but brief downturn followed by a quick recovery have faded, and in their place are fears that the world may be on the cusp of an economic shock unseen since the Great Depression.
It says the speed and scale of the job losses is without precedent.
And finally, the Daily Mail is among the papers paying tribute to the comedian Eddie Large whose partnership with Syd Little spanned five decades.
The two men met in a pub in Wythenshawe when Eddie heckled Syd during a stand-up routine before joining him on stage.
After winning the talent show Opportunity Knocks, they went on to become one of the biggest acts of the 1970s and 80s.
At their peak, the Guardian says, their weekly television show was watched by an enviable 15 million people.
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The rouble's slump and warnings of a looming economic crisis have come at a bad time for Russians preparing for New Year festivities. But while some may miss foreign luxuries on the list of banned imports - Russia's response to Western sanctions - many remember how to make do, and refuse to be downhearted.
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By Steve RosenbergBBC News, Moscow
On 31 December, Nina will be doing something she has never done before on New Year's Eve.
She'll be staying at home.
"For the very first time I'll be seeing in the New Year in my own country," says Muscovite Nina, a brand manager for a Western drinks company. "All my life my family has flown to France or Germany for the New Year holidays. We have relatives there. But air tickets are so expensive now."
Nina is not alone. The weak rouble has forced many Russians to change their New Year holiday plans.
"In October, tour operator bookings slumped by 50-to-70%," says Irina Tyurina of the Russian Tour Operators Union.
"When the rouble collapsed on 15 December, bookings dried up completely. Foreign tours are not a necessity. They are the first things to be rejected when there are economic problems."
For Russians, 2015 looks like being a difficult year. Real incomes are expected to fall for the first time since Vladimir Putin came to power. People are bracing themselves for a deep recession - the economy is expected to contract by at least 4%. Inflation is forecast to reach 12-15%.
None of this economic doom and gloom will stop Russians breaking open the champagne and celebrating - Novy god (New Year) is the biggest holiday of the year. But it may affect what they buy for the party.
"Budgets are stretched," says Maria Kolbina, a consumer analyst with VTB Capital. "At the start of the year 33% of the household budget was spent on food. We estimate that has now risen to 41%. As a result people are 'trading down': they are buying cheaper versions of the food they normally eat."
That's not good news for confectionery trader Vika. She has a stall in the centre of Moscow selling festive chocolate collections. Her table is packed with sparkly tins and boxes, including packs of vodka liqueurs. But business hasn't been good.
"People aren't buying as much as they did this time last year," Vika tells me. "And when they do buy, they seem to go for the cheaper options."
It's not just inflation that is influencing the festive shop in Russia. So are the "anti-sanctions" Moscow imposed on the West earlier this year. As a result, certain imported products which may have graced some new year tables here in the past are no longer available: like French cheese, Norwegian salmon, German sausage.
But not all Russians seem worried about that.
Elena Vladimirovna is determined to enjoy her New Year party. Elena is an atomic specialist in Moscow. When she talks about Novy god, her eyes light up: with her enthusiasm and optimism, she seems to me to have the energy of a nuclear power station.
"None of these problems are going to affect my family," Elena tells me with a big smile. "For a start, we won't need to spend lots of money on alcohol: we make our own at home.
"Then there's all the food we already have from our dacha. On the balcony of our flat we have a trunk packed with 80 jars - there are strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, marrows and pumpkins."
These may be tough times. But Elena reminds me that they are nothing compared to what Russia has lived through.
"My 88-year-old uncle was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. My mother and my aunt were in Belarus during World War Two. After what they experienced, nothing frightens them.
"What's more, at home we've stocked up with everything we might need, from buckwheat to macaroni. That'll last us till the summer. To be honest, bread and water would do me fine."
Russians are resourceful. Even in Soviet times, when there were regular shortages of certain food products, people usually managed to find everything they needed for their New Year parties.
And Russia is not the USSR. Despite its current economic problems, shops here have plenty on the shelves.
So, as Russians sit down to celebrate, tables will be bursting with traditional Olivier Salad (potato, chicken or sausage, eggs, carrots, cucumbers, mayonnaise) and Herring in a Fur Coat (herring with a layer of vegetables... and more mayonnaise).
As midnight approaches, Russians will drink a toast to the passing year, and then to 2015 - in the hope that the new year will bring them happiness.
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Firefighters were left surprised when a call to a smoke alarm at a house turned out to have been triggered by burning sage during an exorcism.
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Fire crews were called to the house on Kirkstone Court, Long Eaton, Derbyshire at about 12:00 BST on Monday.
They said when they arrived, they saw a man dressed in a religious outfit who said an exorcism had been carried out to get rid of "an unwanted presence".
Crews carried out a routine search but confirmed it was a false alarm.
Watch manager Pete Hopkins, from Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service, who attended the call, said: "We didn't find any fire or ghosts, which was a relief."
The burning of sage is an ancient ritual, which some people believe can cleanse spaces.
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A woman accused of stabbing a man to death at her house in Liverpool has been convicted of murder.
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Farieissia Martin, 22, had denied killing 21-year-old Kyle Farrell, who was knifed in the chest at the house in Charlecote Street, Dingle.
But a jury at Liverpool Crown Court found Martin guilty. She is due to be sentenced on 9 June.
Mr Farrell died in hospital after suffering a single stab wound early on 21 November 2014.
His family said he was a "devoted father and loving son" who will be missed by all his family and friends.
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It is 70 years since a Lancaster bomber crashed at Bicker in Lincolnshire, killing all seven of the crew. Their families were never told where they died, but an appeal has now been launched to trace them.
Here, the widow of one of the airmen explains how she finally discovered and visited her husband's resting place, more than 60 years after he died there.
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By Caroline LowbridgeBBC News
Kathleen Bannan was a newlywed, aged 23 and five months pregnant, when her husband was killed in a plane crash on 10 April 1944.
Only one crew member's body was recovered, and Kathleen's husband is thought to have been buried with the plane when it penetrated the ground.
To add to the tragedy, Flt Sgt Joseph Bannan's family were never told where the Lancaster bomber crashed.
"It was a terrible time, and of course we couldn't find any information then because it was for security reasons," says Kathleen, now 93.
"His parents were heartbroken and distraught because there were no remains to be buried in the family grave."
Kathleen had met Joseph in May 1943 and they married in the September.
"I had only known him weeks when he took me up to Cumbria to meet his parents," says Kathleen.
"We said we would get married in September if he survived."
They met while she was working in the post office at RAF Elsham Wolds in Lincolnshire, where he was stationed.
"It was very romantic," says Kathleen.
"Air crews came in the post office but I didn't meet him then.
"I went to a pub in Scunthorpe, I was with my two WAAF [Women's Auxiliary Air Force] friends and he was with his crew. We sat together.
"After that he came to the post office to see me and he asked me out."
Working at the station meant Kathleen was fully aware of the danger Joseph was in.
"Young men that would come in the post office, they would go and wouldn't come back," she says.
Kathleen remembers worrying Joseph would not return from his operations either.
"I used to go and think about him and think and worry, and in the morning when he was back I would be relieved," she says.
"He did 30 and survived 30 and the last one, I was friends with a little Geordie girl, a WAAF, and she saw them come back in the morning."
When Kathleen heard his plane had come back, she knew they would marry.
Flt Sgt Bannan began training other air crew, and his family were relieved, believing he was out of danger.
But seven months after marrying, Mrs Bannan received a telegram.
"We didn't ask questions when the war was on and the CO [Commanding Officer] and padre both wrote to me and said for security reasons they couldn't give me information," says Kathleen.
"We didn't know anything else, but that he was definitely dead, that the plane had come down and we found out that much.
"We gathered it was in England. But as the years went on you just accepted it."
The Lancaster ND 820 had been on a training flight which set off from RAF Downham Market, in Norfolk.
The plane got into difficulties, possibly because of a problem with the autopilot, and caught fire flying over Swineshead in Lincolnshire.
It eventually crashed at Bicker, 22 minutes into its flight.
A tree took much of the blast from the crashing aircraft, saving a farm worker in the field behind it, and the tree still grows at an angle to this day.
One crew member, who parachuted from the plane, was found hanging from the tree and was buried at Harrogate (Stonefall) Cemetery in Yorkshire.
But the rest of the crew have never been recovered.
Kathleen gave birth to her daughter four months later, in August 1944, and named her Josephine, after her dead father.
She later remarried, becoming Kathleen Farley, and didn't discover where her first husband died until she was in her late 80s.
She only found out because Josephine's son found details on the internet about a memorial at the impact point of the crash.
It had been commissioned in 2004 by Lincolnshire Aircraft Recovery Group (LARG).
"Whenever a plane crashed in the war little was said about it," says Dave Stubley, from LARG.
"It was only the people very close to it that knew about it, or the local schoolboys used to bike out to it and have a look."
Mr Stubley says there is still a dip in the road caused by the force of the crash.
"It went directly down, straight down, and actually moved the road," he says.
"The road was a vital road so they would make the decision, instead of taking weeks digging it [the wreckage and human remains] up by hand, they would have to reinstate the road.
"Rather harsh, but it was wartime and that had to happen."
Kathleen has visited the memorial herself and several members of her family are visiting again on Saturday, for a memorial service to mark the 70th anniversary.
"I just felt so sad and so admiring of those young men who had made such an effort to have a memorial built," says Kathleen.
The discovery has meant so much to her family that one of Flt Sgt Bannan's great-grandsons added Joseph to his own name, in tribute.
"It's just so sad," says Flt Sgt Bannan's daughter, now 69 and called Josephine Maddox.
"All I thought about was my father's parents. If they had only known where he had come down and been able to visit, it would have meant so much to them.
"My grandsons are in their teens and I look at them and think it could have been them."
LARG is legally prevented from contacting relatives of crew members, but the Mayor of Boston, Councillor Paul Kenny, has appealed for them to come forward.
"It is sadly poignant to attend the memorial site and realise that six of the crew are still out there in the fields," says Mr Kenny.
"I won't last much longer, I don't think," says Kathleen, "but for Joe's sake I would like other people to turn up."
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The body of a man has been discovered inside a car in a ditch on a country road.
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Police said the black Peugeot 206 was found at a crossroads at Cliffe Common near Selby, North Yorkshire, at about 07:00 GMT on Saturday.
Paramedics pronounced the 78-year-old local man dead at the scene. The death is not being treated as suspicious.
The road was closed for a number of hours while officers conducted an investigation.
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The islands' broadcasting scene is dominated by two commercial players, the Bermuda Broadcasting Company and VSB.
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As well as home-grown broadcast media, most homes and hotel rooms have access to the multichannel, international offerings of cable and satellite TV services.
There were 61,000 internet users by June 2012 (via Internetworldstats.com).
The press
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Ticket offices on the London Underground could soon be a thing of the past. But, if the days of a uniformed worker sitting behind a pane of glass are numbered, how have other cities embraced the future?
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By Nick TarverBBC News
Transport for London (TfL) has announced that every ticket office on the Tube is to shut by 2015, with the loss of 750 jobs.
The move has provoked the wrath of the RMT union, which has not ruled out strike action in the run-up to Christmas.
Since the construction of the first underground railway line in 1864, other cities around the world have copied London's transport system.
But in the 21st Century, is London's system still the envy of the world and how have other countries embraced the future?
Seoul Metropolitan Subway
It is consistently ranked as the best subway system in the world.
The Seoul Metropolitan Subway introduced one of the first contactless tickets in 1996, whereas London's Oyster Card only began life in 2003.
Commuters can also use their smartphones to pay for travel at ticket barriers.
And, all carriages in Seoul have wifi, 4G access and TV screens. They even have heated seats in the winter.
But despite this seemingly futuristic system, London is similar in one crucial respect - Seoul still has ticket offices at its stations.
Believed to be the second most-used metro system in the world after Seoul, it is also perhaps the most beautiful.
The lavish decorations at stations like Komsomolskaya were ordered by Stalin, intended to inspire awe in passengers.
However, the metro service is not stuck in the past.
It is thought to have been the first to completely phase out paper tickets, favouring the contactless payment system like London's Oyster.
However, even with the latest announcements from TfL, paper tickets seem set to continue at Tube stations for the foreseeable future.
It is unlikely that London's ticket staff, who will be moved out of the office and on to the platform, will be pushing commuters on to trains.
But in rush hour Tokyo, attendants have to forcibly shove travellers into carriages to make the most of available space.
Regular tickets are purchased there with automated vending machines, doing away completely with ticket offices.
However, in a select few stations there are staff available to directly sell you multiple, or special season, tickets.
With its driverless trains, Copenhagen is perhaps the paradise that many would like to see London Underground become.
The fully-automated system operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a new circular line opening in 2018.
A control room keeps watch over the trains as they travel on set arrival and departure times.
Passengers also have the ability to make direct radio contact with the control room from the train.
Despite the driverless Docklands Light Railway being in operation since 1987, other lines in London all have drivers.
Mayor Boris Johnson promised driverless trains in London by 2012 to cut costs, with the current starting salary for a Tube driver being about £44,000.
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Beirut is still shedding glass and tears.
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By Tom BatemanBBC Middle East Correspondent, Beirut
Eddie Bitar takes me into his apartment. Without windows. Strewn with the shattered debris. Deep cracks zigzag along every wall.
He steps over rubble and wrestles the front door aside. It is smeared red and he points it out: "This is the blood of my brother."
We walk in. His wife Yara recounts the day she can never forget, and weeps. This country was already wracked with crisis; people's savings and hopes were evaporating.
Now grief and rage are Lebanon's new currency. "We will stay here, we will raise our kids here, stronger than ever. Nothing like this will ever [be allowed to] happen again," Yara cries.
The explosion was like 15 years of war in 15 seconds, says Lebanon's team at the United Nations, comparing its impact to the devastation from the country's civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990.
Now, amid financial meltdown and political turmoil, Lebanon has to undertake a single recovery effort of unprecedented scale.
The level of destruction is hard to believe and it is everywhere.
At the port, the grain silo that stored much of the country's wheat supplies is a tomb-like wreck rising from vaporised remains of the docks. Where people worked unloading ships there is now a flooded crater more than 40m (130ft) deep.
Among the dead there were at least 43 Syrian workers, according to embassy officials. The homes and savings of many refugee families who lived in nearby industrial neighbourhoods have been destroyed.
Further back in Gemmayzeh, where Eddie and Yara lived, I walk through streets carpeted with broken glass; where beautiful old stone buildings are now rubble heaps that crushed cars when they toppled.
The destruction goes on and on; miles from the blast site apartments are wrecked and families left homeless. It's estimated 300,000 people do not have homes fit to live in.
Many families need sanitation and hygiene supplies until basic services can be restored, according to the UN's humanitarian agency.
Three major hospitals are out of action and less than half of all healthcare centres are able to provide full services.
"The blast took everything," says Marc, who ran a shop near the port. "The metal was torn like paper, it was crazy. Two people died in front of our store."
But the new symbols of Lebanon's famed resilience are everywhere. Squads of people with brooms and shovels are trying to sweep up a broken city.
Near the port I bump into Fadi, a construction engineer who is rallying friends to try to make safe the scores of wrecked buildings. He points to a high-rise block.
"If you take a look, see that balcony over there, that's almost another projectile [that could] fall from 30 floors."
He is working with other engineer friends to photograph danger points, geo-tagging and sending them around so people can try to remove them safely.
But these people will not be enough to restore a country brought even closer to collapse.
Fortitude has its limits after the multiple shocks Lebanon has already endured; a currency collapse, mass anti-government protests, coronavirus.
The explosion of thousands of tonnes of unsafely stored ammonium nitrate has come to symbolise the perceived mismanagement of an entire country.
The political system was established after the civil war in an effort to enable power-sharing in a country of sectarian divides.
But instead many see it as a front for patronage, cronyism and endemic corruption.
When it comes to Beirut's residents the blast did not discriminate.
More on the explosion in Beirut
Gemmayzeh was hard hit. It is a wealthy area where there is strong support for the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian factions.
The Sunni Muslim areas of the Corniche and Ain al-Mraysseh were damaged.
Others have been searching for loved ones lost in the port - many Shia Muslim labourers whose families form a base of support for Hezbollah, the armed movement which dominates Lebanese politics.
Amid growing anger at what many see as a corrupt political elite sharing out jobs and favours based on sect, and not merit, the explosion's aftershocks also risk aggravating divisions.
Lebanese political analyst Sami Nader describes the system as a "cartel of political parties" which take advantage of sectarian division to establish their rule.
In the wake of the blast he believes this establishment "will try their old tricks" to hold onto power.
Anti-government protests are growing. In Martyrs' Square, groups of demonstrators gather each afternoon. They have been surging towards the parliament complex, trying to breach the barricades and met by riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
The mass resignation of the cabinet on Tuesday marked the second fall of a government in a year. But it has done little to quell the fury - MPs must choose a new prime minister; involving the same sectarian politics as before.
Another mass protest is planned for Saturday; the authorities have sent workers to weld giant metal plates to already blast-hit buildings close to the parliament.
Back at Eddie Bitar's damaged apartment I hear how his wounded brother is recovering.
Eddie blames the blast on incompetent "criminals".
"They took our money, they put debts for the generations to come. They killed our forest, they burned them. They are killing our soul. But we are resilient people," he says.
Amid the wreckage, he vows that Lebanon "will be ruled by the youth who did everything... to reconstruct our country".
Follow Tom on Twitter @tombateman
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Sri Lankan authorities are insisting on cremation for coronavirus victims - a practice forbidden by Islam. The nation's minority Muslim community says they are using the pandemic to discriminate, writes BBC Sinhala's Saroj Pathirana.
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On 4 May, Fathima Rinoza, a 44-year-old mother of three from Sri Lanka's minority Muslim population, was admitted to hospital with a suspected case of Covid-19.
Fathima, who lived in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, had been suffering from respiratory problems and the authorities feared she had caught the virus.
On the day she was admitted to hospital, the family was "set upon" by the authorities, her husband Mohamed Shafeek said.
"The police and military along with officials arrived at our door," he said. "We were kicked out and they sprayed [disinfectant] everywhere. We were all scared but they didn't tell us anything. Even a three-month-old baby was tested and they took us like dogs to the quarantine centre."
The family was held for a night but released the next day and told to quarantine for two weeks, Mohamed said. By then, they had received news that Fathima had died, at the hospital, on her own.
Fathima's adult son was asked to go to the hospital to identify his mother's body. He was told that her body could not be returned to the family, he said, as her death was linked to Covid-19.
Instead he was forced to sign papers authorising her cremation, the family said - even though under Muslim law cremation is considered a violation of the human body.
"He was told that her body parts needed to be removed for further tests. Why would they need body parts if she had corona?" said his father Shafeek, who feels the family were not fully informed about what happened.
Fathima's family and others in Sri Lanka's Muslim community say the authorities are violating their rights by forcing them to cremate victims even though coronavirus victims can be buried.
They argue it's the latest step in a pattern of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese population. A petition against the cremation rule has been accepted by the country's Supreme Court, which will begin hearing the case on 13 July.
Many Muslims in Sri Lanka feel they have been demonised since April 2019, when Islamists linked to little-known local groups targeted high-end hotels and churches in Colombo and in the east of the country, killing more than 250 people in a spate of devastating attacks.
Since the death of the first Sri Lankan Muslim from coronavirus on 31 March, some media outlets have openly blamed the Muslim community for spreading the disease, even though only 11 deaths have been officially recorded in the country.
All 11 bodies, including Muslims, were cremated.
Dr Sugath Samaraweera, the government's chief epidemiologist, told the BBC it was government policy that all those who die from Covid-19, as well as those suspected of dying from it, are cremated, as burials could contaminate ground drinking water.
Dr Samaraweera said the government was following expert medical advice, and applying the rule to anyone suspected of dying from coronavirus, regardless of religion.
"The WHO offers guidelines for the whole world. It is our responsibility to adopt or customise those guidelines suitable to our country," he said.
But Muslim activists, community leaders and politicians have asked the Sri Lankan government to reconsider the decision.
Ali Zahir Moulana, a former minister and senior leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress party, said the Muslim community was prepared to accept the rule "if there is evidence or scientific backing to prove that burial is dangerous to public health". But he questioned the science behind it, and accused the government of pursuing a "dark political agenda".
Interim guidance published by the WHO in March says victims of coronavirus "can be buried or cremated", and does not mention dangers to groundwater.
On the same day that Fathima died, 64-year-old Abdul Hameed Mohamed Rafaideen passed away at his sister's house in Colombo. The labourer and father of four had been suffering from breathing difficulties.
His youngest son, Naushad Rafaideen, told the BBC that a neighbour from the majority Sinhala community died the same day.
Because of lockdown travelling restrictions, local police asked the family to take the body of the neighbour, together with their father's body, to the hospital.
At the mortuary, the doctor told Naushad he was not allowed to touch his father's body because of the risks of Covid-19, even though it wasn't clear whether the virus was the cause of death.
Naushad, who cannot read, was asked to sign some papers which gave permission for his father's body to be cremated.
He said he wasn't sure what would happen to him if he didn't sign, but he feared a backlash against his family and community if he refused. He said the Sinhalese family was treated differently, and allowed to pay respects to their relative at a funeral parlour, though the BBC could not independently verify this. Only Naushad and a handful of relatives were allowed to attend the cremation of his father, he said.
Meanwhile, nearly six weeks after the death of his wife, Shafeek is unsure whether she ever tested positive for coronavirus, and he is struggling to come to terms with not being able to bury her body. One thing he was sure of, he said. "We Muslims do not cremate our dead."
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As Pakistan detains an alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, Ahmed Rashid argues that Pakistan needs a broader, better co-ordinated strategy from state institutions and a willingness to face up to unpleasant truths if it really wants to curb resurgent extremism.
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Pakistan faces a renewed threat of rising Islamic extremism, vigilantism, attacks on minorities and a reluctance to face up to how these threats are internally rather than externally inspired.
Also missing is the lack of a comprehensive narrative against extremism, articulated unanimously by all bodies of the state and civil society.
The result of the failure to push forward a clear counter-terrorism and counter-extremism narrative that embraces the entire public domain is that some extremist groups continue to be tolerated by elements of the state.
Just over two years ago, on 16 December 2014, an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar which killed 150 people - the majority of them children - galvanised the civilian government, opposition parties and the military to articulate the need for a comprehensive counter-terrorism plan.
For the first time there emerged a 20-point National Action Plan - a list of pointers of what needed to be done, endorsed by the military and all political parties.
However the 20 points were never turned into a comprehensive winning strategy or a common narrative and the fight against extremism has diminished ever since.
The army's Operation Zarb-e-Azb, launched six months earlier, had cleared out North Waziristan, a key staging area for dozens of militant groups - many of them foreigners.
Other military operations also took place, dramatically reducing terrorist bombings nationwide. But they were always going to be tactical operations, which still needed to be backed by a strategic plan carried through by the government.
It was the task of the civilian government to carry out educational reforms, job creation, co-ordination among intelligence agencies, galvanising the legal system, a ban on hate speech and a clear strategy of de-radicalisation of the nation's youth.
All these aspects of a strategy to be carried out by the government, as opposed to tactical military operations, have been missing, as the government has slipped into inertia and paralysis.
At the same time the state gave a pass to those extremist groups who were supportive of Islamabad's foreign policy towards India and Afghanistan.
The lack of a strategy and the state support offered to some groups has led to a growing mood of defiance among extremist organisations.
In the past few weeks five bloggers have disappeared (three, including liberal activist Salman Haider, have now returned home), some threatened journalists and civil society activists have fled abroad, non-governmental organisations have been accused of being unpatriotic, the Ahmedi community has been ferociously attacked and minority Shia Muslims have been massacred.
Hate speech has become a growing phenomenon in some media outlets, especially television, while increasingly journalists and others are threatened with being charged with blasphemy, against which there is little legal defence. Innocent lives are at risk as public incitement and witch hunts continue.
Earlier this week, Hafiz Saeed, the cleric blamed by the US and India for masterminding the Mumbai attacks, was placed under house arrest. The move is being seen as a response to suggestions by US officials that the Trump administration may ban his Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity, seen by the US as a front for terrorists. However a military official said it was "a policy decision" and had nothing to do with any foreign pressure.
A key aspect of the growing defiance of extremists is the insistence that Pakistan's neighbours are to blame for acts of terrorism rather than recognising that it is a home-grown problem.
When former army chief Gen Raheel Sharif took over the army three years ago, he repeatedly said that the country must look into itself to counter extremism and not blame foreign powers.
That was music to the ears of most Pakistanis, who hoped that the state would tackle the very real threats at home rather than blame outsiders.
Yet over the past year the state has been insisting that all major acts of terrorism have been perpetrated by India or Afghanistan, rather than domestic terrorists.
Meanwhile, the civilian government has been indecisive and hesitant as to who to blame, while in its home base of Punjab it has clearly been allowing extremist groups to flourish.
The conflict between civil and military agencies has left the public bewildered, giving further space for extremist ideas to flourish. This confusion has clouded out the need for a common and united narrative as to how to deal with extremism.
So far, the new army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa has not categorically restated that terrorism is a domestic rather than a foreign creation.
Meanwhile, relations with India and Afghanistan have worsened and other neighbours have distanced themselves from Pakistan, leading to what many experts have claimed is the country's growing isolation in the region.
If Pakistan is to defeat extremism, a comprehensive strategy and common narrative, jointly agreed upon by the military and the politicians, needs to be implemented. Both need to ensure that all parts of the state are fully carrying out their responsibilities.
Most importantly, the narrative that government agencies build up must be consistent and carry forward badly-needed social reforms that will promote de-radicalisation of young people.
Pakistan needs a single, inspired, pragmatic and inclusive narrative that is strictly adhered to and can raise the public's morale instead of adding to their confusion.
Ahmed Rashid
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In the ranking of the 100 highest-paid athletes, there is just one woman - tennis star Serena Williams.
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Valeria PerassoSocial Affairs correspondent, WS Languages
She's in position 51 and has an income that is $66m (£50m) lower than Cristiano Ronaldo's, the world's top earning sportsman according to Forbes.
For the US women's football team, their win in the 2015 World Cup got them a $2m (£1.5m) reward.
Meanwhile in the male version of the tournament, the winners were handed $35m (£26.5m) just a year earlier.
These are just a few examples of a massive gender pay gap in the world of global sports that has been the standard for decades.
Recent research, however, suggests that income disparity between female and male athletes has narrowed vastly over the past few years.
A total of 83% of sports now reward men and women equal prize money, according to a study of 68 different disciplines published by BBC Sport, last June.
Women's remunerations have been on the rise over the past three years, and 35 out of 44 sports that award prize money are paying equally.
It seems like good news, especially compared to previous years - in 2014 only 70% of sports had closed the gender prize gap, and as recently as 1973 not one sport rewarded both genders equally.
"Women are far more visible in sports today than at any previous point in history," says UN Women in a statement.
Yet the pace of change is so slow that it will take "a long journey" to reach pay parity at the top level, experts say.
"We are making progress, but it is happening at a glacial pace," says Fiona Hathorn, managing director of advocacy group Women on Boards.
"The sport world is very, very male dominated still and the disparities in some sports are shocking."
Cricket, golf and football are among the worst offenders, as well as darts, snooker and squash.
The global sport business - worth $145.3bn (£110bn), according to a PwC estimate- is far from a level playing field for both genders.
"I cannot think of any other industry that has such a wage gap, really. Depending on country context and sport, a man can be billionaire and a woman [in the same discipline] cannot even get a minimum salary," says Beatrice Frey, sport partnership manager at UN Women.
Worst offenders
Differences are striking at every level of the multi-billion industry of professional football.
A recent study by Women on Boards highlighted that not only did the US women's team received prize money that is a fraction of the amount the men's game gets, female US footballers also received four times less than their fellow nationals in the male version of the tournament, even though the men lost in their first knockout match.
The gap becomes even bigger if the total payout is considered. The prize money in both tournaments is determined by a single body, Fifa, that handed out $15m (£11m) for the women's World Cup and $576m (£437m) for the men's - an amount almost 40 times larger.
And while former England captain Wayne Rooney took home a massive $400,000 a week (£300,000), the wages of his female counterpart, Steph Houghton, were meagre in comparison - around $1,600 (£1,200) a week, according to Ladbrokes Sports.
Similar pay gaps can be observed across other professional sports. In golf, men in the US Open compete for a chance to take home almost $1.5m (£1.1m), twice as much the prize money for the female champion.
Take the case of Lydia Ko, from New Zealand, who in 2015 became the youngest player of either gender ever to be ranked number one in professional golf.
That year, she pocketed less money than the golfer in position 25th in the male ranking of the PGA Tour, estimates by Newsweek reveal.
Meanwhile, in cricket a victorious male team at the World Cup can make almost seven times more than the women's side.
And the pay gap is replicated also in the world's most prestigious male and female basketball leagues - the NBA and WNBA.
"The highest-paid player in the WNBA (the Women's National Basketball Association) makes roughly one-fifth that of the lowest-paid player," in the super-rich NBA, calculates Newsweek.
'A boys' club'
To achieve equality, experts say, it is not enough that the governing bodies of each sport establish gender-blind prizes - sponsorship and endorsements, as well as contractual conditions, have become some of the main forces perpetuating the imbalance.
In tennis, for instance, the Grand Slams - the four most important events in the global calendar- have already introduced equal pay for men and women from 2007, yet the top male players consistently earn more yearly due to better sponsorship deals.
That is why Serena Williams is alone in the Forbes' list of the 100 richest.
"The top 100 athletes are a boys' club more than ever", wrote Forbes' sports reporter Kurt Badenhausen when the list was released, in June.
"Mainstay Maria Sharapova failed to make the grade after reductions in her endorsement contracts."
Those extras make up 29% of the total pie for the top 100 athletes, according to Forbes.
Ronaldo earned $58m (£44m) in salary and bonuses, but topped that up with some $35m (£26.5m) from sponsors, endorsements and appearance fees.
For golfer Tigers Woods and track star Usain Bolt, sponsorship account for over 90% of their earnings.
"Sexism is widespread from grassroots level to elite level in the sport industry," says Frey.
"At grassroots level it may mean that girls are not able to participate in a sport that is not traditionally considered to be for girls, creating bias at an early age which then follows them through youth and on to elite sport practice."
Then, she says, it translates into uneven opportunities in sponsorships and personal marketing, to the extent that most female athletes around the world are "unable to secure a livelihood from their athletic practice".
And the trend persists after retirement.
"For retired sportswomen it is particularly problematic. Not only have they not ever earned very much money, they've probably got no pension, no house, no security," says Hathorn.
"And that's an issue for girls' aspirations: why would they want to become athletes if that's what the future holds?"
Understanding the gap
The roots of this discrepancy could perhaps be traced back to the origins of modern sport itself.
Different societies viewed physical training as an activity intrinsically linked to the "muscular male", defined against an idea of softer and more physically vulnerable femininity.
The father of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, described women's sport as an "unaesthetic sight" for the human eye and considered their participation would make the competition "impractical, uninteresting" and "improper" (although a few female athletes were allowed to take part after 1900).
Women were only competing in races up to 1,500 metres, because they were deemed physically unprepared to cope with the demands of longer events.
In terms of representation, it took until the 2012 London Games to have at least one female athlete in every country's delegation.
So the sport pay gap may well be linked to a wider imbalance - that of female participation in sport, perpetually lower than that of males.
"The participation is a problem that goes back to the school years: that's when it starts," says Ruth Holdaway, chief executive officer at advocacy group Women in Sport.
It has to do with their awareness of the body, with how they are perceived and the gender stereotypes they encounter, says Holdaway.
UN Women statistics show that a striking 49% of girls drop out of sport by the time they reach puberty, and this has ramifications in professional and elite training later in life, research shows.
Turn on the TV
There is a general acceptance that the breadth of the gender pay gap is also a by-product of the increasingly commercial nature of sport, where media rights play a big part.
According to a study by the University of Minnesota's Tucker Centre for Research on Girls and Women in Sport in 2014, only up to 4% of sports media coverage went to female sports, despite the fact that 40% of all participants were female.
And within the small amount of airtime received, the coverage of women's athletics is also more likely to be sexualised, portraying athletes off court and out of uniform, with an emphasis "on their physical attractiveness rather than their athletic competence", says Tucker Centre's director Mary Jo Kane.
Hence, many would argue that women earn less because the market dictates so, as female sports are "less popular" and "not as good to watch", and as a result they generate less media revenue.
What is 100 Women?
BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. In 2017, we're challenging them to tackle four of the biggest problems facing women today - the glass ceiling, female illiteracy, harassment in public spaces and sexism in sport.
With your help, they'll be coming up with real-life solutions and we want you to get involved with your ideas. Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and use #100Women
It is a self-perpetuating, "chicken and egg" cycle, equity advocators argue - audiences will not get excited about women's sport as it gets minimal exposure in the media, and the media would justify the lack of coverage by saying that female athletics do not generate enough audience engagement.
"That is not a fair argument, you have to invest first at many levels, including marketing and promotion, to get the general public more involved, and then the return of the investment will be better," says Frey.
"Had our culture been used to seeing women rather than men playing rugby or football for generations, we would find the idea of men playing sports rather novel," adds Hathorn.
Sport gaps are in fact a manifestation of wider gender inequality, says the expert, that also translates into other more subtle forms of sexism.
For example, women footballers in international tournaments were required until recently to play on artificial turf, which is often regarded as of lesser quality than the natural grass on which male teams play.
And then there's the language: "the World Cup is assumed to be for men, while women require the qualifying 'Women's' to describe their event", says a UN document on women in sport.
Good record
Despite the "glacial" pace, change is nonetheless advancing and indicates that the gap is getting narrower.
Tennis is usually celebrated as a shining example of this, after all four Grand Slam tournaments established equal prize money to the men and the women in 2007.
In fact, the process started in 1973 at the US Open, thanks to world champion Billie Jean King and other female players, who founded the Women's Tennis Association to fight for gender equality.
Athletics have also become a case study for good practices, particularly over the past five years, with the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World Championships and annual Diamond series offering gender-blind rewards.
Other sports that have reportedly been paying equivalent prizes include skating, shooting, volleyball, diving, sailing, windsurfing and taekwondo, as well as some cycling events.
The appetite for televised female sports is also growing, evidence suggests, with social media playing a part to increase the global popularity of athletes regardless of gender.
And sportswomen themselves have repeatedly stood up against sexism.
Last year, for instance, five of the biggest names in the very popular US women's football league filed a complaint against their employer, the US Soccer Federation, for gender pay discrimination, while the hockey team attempted a boycott in search for fair wages.
But a lot more work needs to be done, advocacy groups say.
To begin with, more women are needed in decision-making positions.
A Women on Boards report found a widespread problem across disciplines, with fewer than 30% of board seats held by women in many governing bodies.
Women are just 18% of all board members across the 28 International Sports Federations assessed. In the 129 National Olympic Committees, the figure is even lower and has actually fallen - women are 16.6% of the board, down from 17.6% in 2014.
The root of the problem lies with how women engage with sport at an early age, experts say, and any attempt to tackle gender disparity in earnings and participation should seek improvements at school level.
Gender-neutral and non-segregated sport practice in school may have a positive impact on the way girls embrace physical activity in the long term and go on to consider a career as professional athletes.
"I would promote that boys and girls play the same sports from primary school, because at that stage there are no major physical differences between them. If within the education system children start to play sports together, it would make a real difference in society," says Hathorn.
"If we are closing the gap in the long term, we should really be working with young girls to help them change their behaviour, understand that sport is fun and it's something they are entitled to just as much as the boys," says Ruth Holdaway.
A change in the model of commercial endorsements and sponsorships is also an important step in the path to pay parity.
There is an untapped market for the promotion of women's events and experts believe it is actually not just fair in principle, but also a good investment.
"It is not a matter of charity, it is a matter of smart business decisions," says Frey.
"Corporations are now very interested in gender equality, if I were a company sponsoring for example the Premier League I would be asking myself 'is this the right image for my company?', 'is being too bloke-y dangerous for my brand?'", says Hathorn.
"'We have 50% of our clients who are women but we spend 99% of our money on sponsoring men's sports, is that right?' It clearly isn't".
Ultimately, experts agree, a cultural shift is needed - in which women are not seen as "second class athletes" as much as they should not be considered second class citizens in society.
"Even with Billie Jean King pushing for equality more than 40 years ago, we still do not have real equality in sport," says Hathorn.
"We are moving, but we are still not there."
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India is the tuberculosis (TB) capital of the world.
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According to the World Health Organization, the country records 2.8 million new tuberculosis cases annually, of which more than 100,000 are multidrug resistant (MDR). The disease kills 485,000 Indians every year, and costs the government around $24bn (£19.2bn).
The WHO also estimates that roughly 40% of India's population has latent tuberculosis - where they are infected with the M.tuberculosis bacterium, but do not have active TB disease. People with latent TB are not infectious, but could develop active TB in the future.
The impact of TB is widespread. Treatment takes a financial toll on families, there are delays in diagnosis of the illness, drug resistant tuberculosis is often misdiagnosed and patients are stigmatised and shunned by society.
Women in particular bear the brunt of this situation. With less access to nutrition and health services as well as emotional and mental support, it is often a harder fight for women. Many end up being abandoned by their families.
The book Nine Lives by Chapal Mehra documents the journey of nine women survivors of tuberculosis. These are some of their views on the illness:
"TB can consume your life. Until my diagnosis I was an extremely focused person who was hoping to stand out and achieve my goals. I felt invincible - like nothing could stop me. With TB I felt everything was slipping away." -Mansi, 22, Mumbai.
"What we need is support, empathy and encouragement for TB patients. It's a physical battle but also a mental one where family and friends matter a great deal." -Durgawati, a 32 year old TB survivor from India's capital Delhi.
"Isn't it worrying that even today we don't know the exact number of multidrug resistant TB cases in this country? Isn't it scary that most MDR patients are misdiagnosed and treated incorrectly? What is worse is that most Indians cannot access the right diagnostics or drugs. Why are we letting a curable disease become so powerful?" -Deepti Chavan, a 32-year-old from Mumbai.
"If I reached a public space people would just leave, or they would loudly say 'she has TB, stay away, leave.'" -Tejal, 26 from Vadodara in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
"I remembered thinking that my child would be motherless if I stopped this treatment. Who would care for her?" -Nur, 29, from Katwa in West Bengal.
"What happens is that you get so frustrated that you are within these four walls, that you don't even have the energy to look outside the window, forget seeing another person. Within two to three months itself I had literally gone mad." -Debashree, 29, from the western Indian city of Pune.
"We could afford the best treatment so we did. But it worries me that millions of Indians are affected by TB. So what happens everyday to them?" -Sarika, 32, from Mumbai.
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Kris Kobach, a hardline conservative, has won the Republican primary for Kansas governor.
He won by only a razor-thin margin - 345 votes out of more than 300,000 - after his rival, existing Governor Jeff Colyer, conceded defeat.
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By Tara McKelveyBBC White House reporter
Trump loyalist Mr Kobach is known for his outspoken views on immigration and voter fraud.
As a US Department of Justice official in 2001, he created a programme that required people from "higher risk" countries to be fingerprinted and interrogated when they came into the US.
Some men who lived in the US - and were from countries that were seen as a threat - were required to register at government offices.
The initiative, which was known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, was criticised by civil rights advocates and eventually dismantled.
More recently he's claimed without evidence that millions of people voted illegally in the US in 2016, costing President Donald Trump the popular vote.
Mr Kobach's positions on immigration and voter fraud may be unsettling for liberals.
But his views are popular among individuals in power.
The US president endorsed Mr Kobach's candidacy shortly before the election and may have determined its outcome.
Mr Kobach, a graduate of Harvard, Yale and Oxford, serves as secretary of state in Kansas and has a history with the president.
After his election, Mr Trump considered hiring Mr Kobach for the US Department of Homeland Security.
On a chilly day in November 2016, I watched him walk across the driveway at Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to present his ideas for a new set of immigration laws.
On that day, a journalist took a photo of the documents that Mr Kobach was carrying. The papers showed his plan to block refugees from Syria, among other proposals, and civil rights advocates denounced him.
Mr Kobach didn't get the job. According to some media outlets, top Trump aides said he was too radical.
Later, though, Mr Trump named him as vice-chairman of a voter fraud commission.
They never did find proof of widespread election rigging, and the commission was disbanded.
While serving on the commission, though, Mr Kobach spent time at the White House.
One afternoon, I ran into him in front of the West Wing.
I was surprised to see him holding a stack of documents in full view of me and other reporters.
The lesson from Bedminster, New Jersey, and the public outcry he'd faced over his proposals had apparently not stuck with him.
He still refused to carry his papers in a discreet manner.
In truth, he's never hidden his views about immigration and voter fraud.
Some people have been appalled by his policies, but others have embraced them.
Yet his candour about his hardline views on immigration and voter fraud has now paid off, winning him the primary.
Some say he's considering a presidential run in the future. In the meantime, he's trying - with the support of the Republican Party - to become the next governor of Kansas.
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Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson has been jailed for 18 months for conspiring to hack phones.
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Ex-News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was cleared of all charges against her as the long-running phone-hacking trial at the Old Bailey came to and end last month.
Andy Coulson and journalist Clive Goodman are to face a retrial on a charge of buying royal telephone directories from police officers after the Old Bailey jury failed to reach a verdict on the charges
The verdicts and sentences for other defendants in the phone-hacking trial are summarised below.
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A free trade deal with China that slashes tariffs on dairy exports could turn Australia into a land of milk - if not honey - and set it up to take advantage of China's addiction to Western powdered milk.
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By Louise EvansBBC News, Sydney
Ever since a milk poisoning scandal in China in 2008 killed six children and left 300,000 seriously ill, the communist giant has had a mania for the Western product.
Demand has been so strong it has caused shortages in other countries and encouraged an illegal trade across the Chinese border.
Infant formula has long been the preferred food for infants in China but more recently Chinese mainlanders holidaying in Western countries have been taking home tins of milk powder as presents for friends and family.
'Milk war'
New Zealand's dairy industry has been a major beneficiary of this love affair with powdered milk. But a major free trade agreement (FTA) signed between Australia and China in November means the Australian dairy industry will likely be the next big winner.
Under the deal, tariff cuts have rendered Australia's dairy market so attractive that even the country's richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, is investing in the industry.
The agreement, almost a decade in the making, put Australian farmers in general on a par with their New Zealand counterparts, according to Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb, and put the country's dairy farmers ahead of their Kiwi cousins.
Chinese tariffs on Australian dairy products that currently range from 10% to 15% will be cut over a period of four to 11 years, and a 15% tariff on infant milk formula will be phased out within four years.
The cuts represent a significant windfall for an industry that has suffered from low exports over the past decade and been hurt by a domestic "milk war" between major supermarket chains.
The benefits flowing from the FTA are substantial, says group manager of trade and industry strategy at Dairy Australia, Charlie McElhone, especially in the dairy industry.
"There is a white gold rush and unprecedented demand and interest," says Mr McElhone. "The FTA is a good outcome. There are tariff savings and growth and investment opportunities, more exports and more profit," he says.
Demand explosion
Along with the milk poisoning scandal, a baby boom stemming from relaxation of China's one-child policy, the spending power of China's growing middle class and a shift towards a more protein-heavy diet have all fuelled China's demand for milk powder and other dairy products.
Infant formula sales there have increased more than tenfold over the past decade and are expected to double again in the next three years, according to London-based market research firm Euromonitor.
A 900g tin of infant formula sells for between A$20 ($16, £10.5) and A$25 in Australian supermarkets. Trade and transport costs mean the same tin can cost up to A$100 when it reaches a breakfast bench in China.
The value of New Zealand dairy exports to China since a free trade deal was signed between those two countries in 2008 shows just how valuable such deals are. It has increased tenfold and is now worth more than A$5bn. By comparison, Australian dairy exports to China were worth A$450m in 2013.
New Zealand's Fonterra Cooperative Group, the world's biggest dairy exporter, estimates the Chinese market for infant formula will rise to A$31bn in 2017 from about A$17bn now.
Mr McElhone says Australia's FTA has prompted a lot of interest from domestic and foreign investors in the Australian diary industry.
For starters, Ms Rinehart has partnered with China National Machinery Industry Corp to invest A$500m in Hope Dairies in Queensland to supply 30,000 tonnes of baby formula to China starting in 2016.
Meanwhile Linear Capital, a Tasmania-based private investment firm with links to Chinese state-owned consortiums, plans to buy 50 dairy farms in western Victoria to create Australia's largest dairy farming company. Together the 50 farms will run 90,000 cows and produce 500m litres of milk.
Linear plans to supply two new consortium-owned processing plants (to be built nearby) to process and export A$700m worth of infant formula to China and global markets.
Quality concerns
But it's not all milk and honey. Victorian farmers fear Australia's reputation as a supplier of premium milk and milk products could be threatened by such Chinese investment, especially if these new operations don't meet Australia's high production standards.
Chris Gleeson, president of the advocacy group Farmer Power, says Australia has "the number one standard in the world and we don't want that to slip away".
"We want to make sure we don't lose our pride in the quality product we produce," Mr Gleeson says.
Dairy Australia welcomes foreign capital and recognises the need for investment, says Mr McElhone, but he says every venture must uphold Australia's reputation and standards for pristine food safety.
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Just a few months after their daughters were born they were snatched away by Hitler's forces in the German-occupied Channel Islands and never returned home. Now after more than 70 years a BBC investigation has helped solve the mystery surrounding the final resting places of two resistance heroes who died at the hands of the Nazis.
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By Patrick ClahaneBBC News
Cambridge University academic Dr Gilly Carr spent a decade searching archives around the world and has uncovered new information about the fate of Joe Gillingham and Joe Tierney.
The men lived on different Channel Islands and were both deported for distributing BBC news reports - a banned practice.
German armed forces occupied the Channel Islands from June 1940 until May 1945.
Pat Fisher's father, Joe Tierney, was arrested five months before she was born and was deported to a prison in Dijon in September 1943.
She said: "He was very, very strong, he must have been so brave. It's very difficult and I just would've loved to have met him."
Jean Harris's father, Joe Gillingham, was one of five members of the Guernsey Underground News Service (GUNS) who were deported and imprisoned for wireless offences and secretly spreading news.
"There was a lot of anxiety for my mum, to spend years trying to find out what happened to him, waiting for him to come back after the war had finished."
Both men were crammed into cattle trucks and sent to prisons in the heart of Nazi Germany but their fates remained a mystery.
As part of BBC investigation Dr Carr took Pat and Jean to Europe to retrace their fathers' steps in the hope of finding clues.
"It definitely drives me when I read these testimonies of what people went through, it makes me want to get justice for them and find out more for the families," Dr Carr said.
In July 1944 both men ended up in the same prison in Naumburg (Saale), Germany, where dysentery and dropsy were rife and deaths were occurring at a rate of 18 men a week.
Frank Falla, a fellow incarcerated Channel Islander, who made it home alive, said inmates were "not allowed to smoke, talk, sing, hum or smile".
After visiting the site Mrs Harris said: "It's like walking in my father's footsteps, I now know what it must've been like for the men, it must have been awful."
In February 1945 her father left the prison but his next destination and fate were unknown.
Dr Carr's research discovered that just 40 miles (60km) away in Halle archives there are paper records of German prisoners which reveal Joe Gillingham died on 11 March 1945 from heart failure in the city's prison.
Unbeknown to his family he was cremated and his ashes were buried in a local graveyard in a section reserved for prisoners of the Nazis.
Mrs Harris said: "At last I have found the closure I have been looking for. I'm at peace now I know how the story ended and where he is."
Pat Fisher's father met a different fate. Not long after he left Naumburg prison in March 1945 he made a desperate escape attempt.
At that time German forces had almost been destroyed by the Allies and the Nazis were trying to cover up their atrocities.
Joe Tierney was being taken to a concentration camp in the Sudetenland, today part of the Czech Republic, when he managed to get away.
Dr Carr said: "The men around him were either being killed or dying of their diseases and hunger and he probably thought, 'what have I got to stay for?'"
His escape wasn't to last, he was captured a couple of days later and died less than a week before the end of the war.
His death was described by fellow prisoner Albert Koch in a letter to Mr Tierney's widow after the war.
"He and I were placed in cattle trucks, and it was not till some days later that your dear husband died in my arms in Kaschitz at 11:30pm on 4th May 1945."
Associate Professor of the University of West Bohemia Pavel Vařeka and his team are currently excavating the mass graves in the area to gain a better understanding of what went on.
He said: "We know that two-thirds of prisoners died of disease or starvation and the rest showed evidence of violent deaths - shootings."
Just a few months after the war German civilians living in the area were forced to rebury Mr Tierney and the other 233 prisoners in consecrated ground.
Pat said it was hugely important to her to finally learn of her father's final resting place
She said: "It's been such a journey, there's been so many highs and so many lows, cries and emotions, but it's ended up the best thing ever - you don't know how I feel."
Finding Our Fathers - Lost Heroes of World War Two is on BBC One South West on Friday 6 May at 19:30 BST and on the iPlayer for 30 days thereafter.
Find out more about World War Two from BBC iWonder:
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US rapper YFN Lucci is wanted by police in Atlanta, Georgia, for his alleged involvement in the murder of a local man last month.
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Two suspects have been arrested over the killing of the 28-year-old victim.
Authorities have appealed for help in locating YFN Lucci, 29 - whose birth name is Rayshawn Bennett.
He is wanted on suspicion of murder, aggravated assault and participation in criminal street gang activity, police told US media.
They say another man was wounded in the incident.
Last month YFN Lucci released new material under the title Wish Me Well 3.
In 2018 rapper Cardi B was forced to defend her then-fiancé Offset against allegations of homophobia after he used a lyric by YFN Lucci that included the word "queer."
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A 47-year-old man has been arrested as part of a murder inquiry in Scunthorpe.
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Raymond Ward's body was found in a disused building in Cliff Gardens in the North Lincolnshire town on Tuesday.
Humberside Police believe the 51-year-old, of no fixed address, was the victim of a "targeted attack" and urged witnesses to contact them.
Police said they had been given more time to question two men, aged 37 and 24, who were arrested earlier in connection with Mr Ward's death.
More stories from North Lincolnshire
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Bird-watchers on the Isle of Man have spotted a record number of bird species during a week-long competition.
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The Manx BirdLife charity said 113 different species were seen between Christmas and New Year compared with 111 last year.
Sightings reported across the island included stonechats, robins and cormorants and a kingfisher.
A spokesman said the Christmas Bird Race will help to build a detailed picture of Manx bird life in December.
The bird conservation charity invented the competition to encourage people to celebrate the island's rich bird life.
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BBC Urdu's Nosheen Abbas in Islamabad speaks to two health workers who have been working on the latest drive to eradicate the polio in Pakistan - one of just three in the world where the disease remains endemic.
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Attacks on teams distributing polio drops during a UN-backed three-day anti-polio campaign this week left nine workers dead and have been blamed on the Taliban.
Tasneem Kausa, Islamabad
I've been working as a lady health worker (LHW) since 1996. I now live with my three sons and two daughters-in-law.
We weren't scared earlier, but since these incidents happened, my family is very scared. My family feels good when they see security guards with us, but our senior officials aren't necessarily good with us.
This morning we were waiting and not leaving until the security personnel arrives, but our boss told us to leave, he told us our lives are in God's hands, and it's not like we're scared.
We are strong just like men when we are out working, but it was officially announced that we couldn't leave without the security personnel.
Later, after we had left, the security personnel were sent to us and they stayed very near us, going to every house with us.
People asked us: "Why are people killing you? You people come here to save our children's lives, you never speak rudely, and you wait hours to give polio drops to our children."
So, people are quite surprised that LHWs are being killed. We just need constant support and we will work to the best of our abilities.
When you earn 200 to 300 rupees a day ($2 to $3), it doesn't make any difference to people if you are killed… The only ones affected are our families.
Munawar Malik, Islamabad
I've been working as a lady health worker since 2004, and I started this job because my husband didn't have a job at the time. I get about 1,000 rupees ($10) for a 5-day programme, and for the campaign I work from 08:00 to 15:00.
Earlier, we didn't have any security, but after the incidents in the past couple of days, we've been given security in the form of police personnel - for every team of two, there are two policemen. Let's just hope this is a permanent change.
It's quite difficult working as a LHW because you go into areas where you don't know who the people are and how they'll react to you.
But what worries us the most is that if, God forbid, anything happens to us, then what will happen to our children? There is no insurance programme.
I am personally not scared, I leave each morning after a prayer, but my family especially my children are very upset about me working.
They heard the news and my 11-year-old daughter cried and asked me not to go, my 10-year-old son also keeps on messaging me on my mobile phone to ask how I am doing.
It's not a safe job anymore, but I believe we must eradicate polio from Pakistan.
We are one out of three countries left where this disease exists and I want to be a part of this campaign.
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China's crackdown on corruption has had an unexpected effect. People in influential positions have realised it might not look good if they and their families wear expensive jewellery or flash large amounts of cash at casinos - and as a result some businesses are suffering.
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By Celia HattonBBC News, Beijing
I had already handed her my credit card, but Jane wanted to chat. She was taking her time ringing up the sale.
When we first met, a decade ago, she had just landed her job in one of Beijing's touristy pearl stores, known for selling earrings and necklaces that cost a fortune elsewhere.
For years, every time I visited, the store was crowded and chaotic. Mountains of pearls would be piled high on tables - so many that loose pearls rolled around on the floor. No-one had time to sweep them up, they were too busy making money.
But now, the store was empty. And not just this one. All the pearl stores in this area had fallen silent.
Unsurprisingly, Jane was bored. She was also eight months pregnant. Instead of her usual uniform suit, she wore the stereotypical outfit for expecting Chinese women - a pair of corduroy overalls with a teddy-bear face on the front.
"Where are all of your customers?" I asked. In the hour I had been in the shop, no one else had entered.
"Look outside," she sighed, gesturing to a distant window. "The tourists have disappeared. They are scared of the pollution."
"But that is not the worst thing," she continued. "Our Chinese customers used to spend the most, by far. Government people bought our best pearls as gifts. But now, they are all scared of Mr Xi!" she whispered, referencing China's leader, Xi Jinping.
"During the anti-corruption campaign, no one wants to be seen wearing pricey jewellery."
This week, it was announced that about 300,000 officials were punished for corruption in the last year alone. That includes 80,000 who received "severe punishments".
The campaign's work takes place internally, so little is known about who those officials are, what they did wrong, and what happened to them as a result.
But the anti-corruption drive has other, more obvious consequences. Spending on flashy luxury items like watches, has dropped. Jane's pearl store fell victim to this.
Gambling has taken a hit too. The Chinese enclave of Macau, the Las Vegas of the East, has seen profits drop 20% in the past year - all due to the absence of worried officials, it is said.
But that does not mean the Communist Party has cleaned up its act. Far from it.
"I do not think this is making a big dent in how many officials are breaking the law," one China watcher tells me. "That is not what this is about."
People outside China are misunderstanding this campaign, she explains.
Ultimately, Xi Jinping is not trying to groom law-abiding officials. No. He is trying to create legions of obedient officials to implement his policies.
This is a bid to ensure loyalty at every level of the Communist Party - from the upper echelons in Beijing, down to the most remote villages, and stretching right across all of the government's financial empire too.
China's state oil companies, the military and the big banks have all been subjected to corruption inspections. Even the corruption bureau has its own internal inspectors.
For every "rogue official" who might have been trying to carve out a personal empire - by setting up a network of bribes and kickbacks - well, he is taken out and replaced with someone promoted from within, someone loyal to President Xi.
A certain amount of corruption and graft is tolerated, as long as the ultimate priority, party unity, stays intact.
In this environment, all sorts of things are still going on behind closed doors.
High-end lingerie sales are soaring. The logic being that communist cadres will still spend money on private pleasures.
Well-connected friends tell me that "secret" restaurants are viewed as a necessity now. On the ground floor they look like shabby teahouses but banquets are served on the upper floors.
Yes, some luxuries are still popular. It is just the consumption that has gone underground - quite literally, in some cases, I found.
In Beijing, I was always puzzled by a very expensive cluster of stores near my home. It was an outdoor shopping plaza, full of the ritziest European labels - and it always seemed to be empty, with almost no-one going in or out of the shops.
That is, until one day, I entered the underground car park below the plaza. Every space was filled with gleaming cars - BMWs, Lamborghinis, a Rolls Royce or two. And behind the cars stood the individual elevators. Each store has its own plushly-carpeted lift. No need to ever venture outside, into the public eye.
"When do you think the current anti-corruption campaign will end?" I ask a respected expert I know.
He laughs. "It will not end until Xi Jinping feels completely in control," he says. "He is totally reliant on his loyal cadres but everyone else hates him and is just waiting for him to stumble. As soon as that happens, the corruption will come flooding back."
No more need for underground parking lots when that happens.
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A £28.5m ($44.5m) cancer research centre has opened.
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The Manchester Cancer Research Centre, in Withington, will "test potential new therapies and different ways of diagnosing cancer earlier".
Director Prof Nic Jones said 150 scientists at the building would work to develop personalised cancer treatments.
It is hoped this would lead to improved diagnosis, more effective treatments and improved survival rates.
Prof Jones said the placement of the centre, opposite The Christie cancer specialist hospital, was "crucial" to enable scientists and clinicians to work closely together.
"What's learned in clinical trials comes straight back to the laboratory, creating a circle between the laboratory and the clinic and that's key in making real progress," he said.
"We will know more about an individual patient's disease characteristics which will help to lead directly to better treatments and outcomes."
He said the facility was "part of the ambition we have to make Manchester one of the top cancer centres in the world."
The centre was jointly funded by Cancer Research UK, the University of Manchester and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust with their More Tomorrows campaign.
Cancer Research UK said 13,200 people are diagnosed with the disease every year in Greater Manchester.
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Firefighters in the West Midlands are to wear body cameras.
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Watch commander Gemma McSweeney said the cameras would help firefighters gather information to review their responses to incidents.
They are being rolled out after a trial at ten Birmingham fire stations earlier this year, during which a suspected gas explosion at a Birmingham home was filmed.
The fire service said 80 cameras would be introduced in early 2017.
In June Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service said its firefighters would wear helmet-mounted cameras, a decision the Fire Brigades Union warned "could compromise neutrality".
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Diagnosing psychiatric illness has always been controversial, mental health experts say. Now some are worried that a new draft of the diagnostic 'bible' for mental health medicine could result in almost everyone being diagnosed with a mental condition.
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By Philippa RoxbyHealth reporter, BBC News
The diagnostic 'bible' in question is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association.
The US manual is used worldwide as a basis for diagnosis, research and medical education.
Its forthcoming fifth edition - known in the profession as as DSM-5 - is set to contain a range of new diagnoses, including conditions such as "mixed anxiety depression, psychosis risk syndrome and temper dysregulation disorder", as well as the more mundane binge eating.
The danger, say experts writing in a special issue of the Journal of Mental Health, is that there has not been enough research to back up these changes.
Even the smallest shift in how to define something like depression could have huge implications.
Self-fulfilling
Dr Felicity Callard, senior research fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, says it is crucial to understand what happens when people are over-diagnosed.
"There are very big potential implications on how people, particularly adolescents, respond to being told they have a mental illness. It's likely there will be harmful consequences," she said.
She cites the "at risk psychosis syndrome" diagnosis as an example of a label which is given to young people who 'might' have psychosis - characterised by abrupt changes in personality. It is a diagnosis of something which could result in a disorder, but only potentially. That can have complicated effects, she says.
"Imagine a young person being told that they are "at risk" of developing a mental illness. How would that affect that individual's behaviour? Could it lead to increased stigma or even discrimination? And how might it affect the parents and family of that person too?"
Jerome Wakefield of New York University's Department of Psychiatry writes: "One of the most frightening scenarios is the potential for medicating people - particularly children - who haven't yet shown any signs of illness in a bid to 'treat' them."
These concerns are shared by a number of clinical experts in the Journal of Mental Health.
The journal's editor, Professor Til Wykes of King's College London, fears that, "most of these changes {to the manual} imply a more inclusive system of diagnoses where the pool of normality shrinks to a mere puddle."
If normal behaviour is increasingly being categorised as mental illness then that creates a burden on individuals, families and on society as a whole.
As well as an emotional and social toll, there are financial implications.
It follows that money has to be set aside to care for the mentally ill and clinicians and carers have to be trained to deal with their 'illness'.
Making sense
Yet some effective system of diagnosis is still needed.
Nick Craddock, professor of psychiatry at Cardiff University, feels it is important to make sense of a person's experience using a classification system like the DSM.
"Diagnosing Bipolar disorder, for example, can be very helpful. It can transform people's lives, make them feel accepted and can give their symptoms meaning," he said.
Previous research has shown that many people enjoy having a label or a name to describe their symptoms. With diagnosis comes relief and it can also be a form of therapy in itself.
Following changes to the previous version of the DSM, there was a rise in rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autistic disorder and childhood polar disorders.
The Journal calls them "false positive epidemics".
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Black Lives Matter protests have gone international this year. Three local organisers in the UK, galvanised by the death of George Floyd in the US and their own experiences of racism, have spoken about the impact of the demonstrations on their own lives and what they plan to do next.
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Nevada Claxton, 18, said the coronavirus lockdown had given her pause for "serious reflection" on what had happened to Mr Floyd in Minneapolis in May, with its ripples felt thousands of miles away in her family home in Luton, Bedfordshire.
"All of a sudden you had to fight it. My friends and I just thought of all the things over the years we'd let slide that were racist," said Ms Claxton.
"For my sister - who was 12 and at that age where they're on social media like TikTok and Snapchat - that footage was hard to avoid.
"We sat down together, but we couldn't speak about it.
"So I said to her 'if it hurts we can talk about it and she burst into tears'.
"What happened to George Floyd has been devastating, but I just hope she doesn't have to be on the phone to her friends when she's 18 saying 'Let's protest [against] this'."
Ms Claxton and a group of 10 friends organised a Black Lives Matter protest in Luton this summer and were overwhelmed when 600 people turned out.
She deferred taking up her place to study journalism at university due to Covid-19 and said she had instead has been devoting her time to fighting prejudice.
After the march, her group was invited to work with Luton Council and, with two friends, she has been appearing on Danny Fullbrook's BBC Three Counties show to talk about a range of topical issues, which had been "amazing".
Nevada - who was brought up in Sheffield, New York and Trinidad before moving back to the UK when she was 12 - said while there were loose plans for a demonstration in 2021, she was hoping to help start pop-up events to tackle prejudice.
"We'd love to do shows as a lot of our friends are creative - singers and dancers," she said.
"Once the pandemic is over we'll be able to do more physical stuff."
Ms Claxton's desire to tackle racism is echoed by Northampton-based model and poet Will Reid, who has a five-year-old daughter.
The son of a Jamaican/West African father and English/German mother, Reid noticed by the time he was 16 that his group of friends had become predominately black.
"How can I be having the same conversations with my daughter - who is mixed race - that my dad had to have with me?" said Reid.
"How can I tell her that certain people won't like her because of the colour of her skin? That friends will no longer come round because their parents don't like the colour of her skin?"
The 31-year-old said while George Floyd's death had "started a conversation" about racism and raised awareness, progress would remain slow.
"It's burst a lot of people's bubbles - especially for the older generation who thought there wasn't any racism here," he said.
Reid said curiosity prompted him to attend the first Black Lives Matter demonstration in Northampton in June, where he ended up delivering an off-the-cuff speech.
Spurred on by the response, it led to him helping to organise the next protest and talking to Anjona Roy and Paul Crofts at the Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council about how it could connect more effectively with younger black and mixed race people.
Reid was voted onto the board, chaired a meeting with Northamptonshire Police about stop and search measures and the use of force.
He plans to hold seminars where youngsters can talk to officers about such issues to "build relationships".
Reid was also in the process of setting up a charity named after his grandfathers to give grants to help local children with their education and other opportunities.
He said education was the key in breaking down barriers at a grassroots level to help promote more understanding about equality and black history.
"When I was in year 10 or 11, I asked about all the black children in World War Two and was told there weren't any," Reid said.
It is an issue that journalism student and campaigner Malaika Gangooly - who helped organise Chelmsford's Black Lives Matter protest - has been trying to tackle.
Ms Gangooly and two friends have distributed resource packs on black history and issues to 50 schools across the country.
The 20-year-old, recently appointed as the equality and diversity representative at her university, City of London, said the project gained traction on Twitter as more and more teachers began contacting her.
"I think they're just happy that someone is doing it," she said.
"It is really rewarding and so much effort goes into those resources to make sure kids get taught about people [who] we didn't [get taught about].
"It's nice to know there seems to be generational change."
She has also given two school assemblies and plans to do more, bolstered by invitations to speak about her activism at a recent Amnesty International conference and academic forum, where she joined a panel of professors.
As the youngest speaker at both, Ms Gangooly said she had used the opportunities to "learn from those who know more than me", and felt the fight for racial equality was now down to "100% our generation and the generation coming".
She said: "I want there to be one moment where I think 'wow, things have really changed for the better'."
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Related Internet Links
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A growing number of people are being hospitalised because of acid attacks, new figures show. The BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme has been given unique access inside Europe's largest burns unit, to see how they help survivors recover.
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By Claire JonesVictoria Derbyshire Programme
Warning: This piece contains images some may find upsetting
Under anaesthetic, Adele Bellis lies on an operating table at St Andrew's Centre at Broomfield Hospital as more than a dozen members of staff prepare for surgery.
She has had so many operations over the last four years, since her ex-boyfriend paid a man to throw sulphuric acid over her, she has lost count.
This time surgeons make a series of diagonal cuts along the scar on the right-hand side of her neck, before stitching back up the area .
The aim is to relieve the pressure and improve her range of movement - before, it had been difficult for Adele to turn her neck.
A CO2 laser is used to make multiple small holes across the scar to help improve the appearance.
After an hour in theatre, it has proved a success. Yet it is only the latest step in a long, ongoing journey.
The original attack took place in August 2014.
Adele had been sitting at a bus stop on the phone to her friend, when she noticed a man in a tracksuit.
"He had a black scarf around him, covering his mouth. He was lightly jogging, shaking a bottle," she explains.
That was when the attack happened, causing life-changing burns to the right-hand side of her body and face.
"From there it went into a blur, I was running in and out of traffic," she remembers.
Adele was rushed to hospital in Suffolk for emergency treatment, before being moved to the specialist burns unit, the St Andrew's Centre for Plastic Surgery and Burns, in Essex.
The advice at this stage was simple - "keep washing and washing".
Only once the wound has reached a normal pH, can further treatment be carried out.
A pH strip test was used to determine the acidity or alkalinity of the wound and the best course of treatment, and - when the time came - surgeons removed all the dead, burnt skin and placed donor skin on top.
"Then I had skin grafts done," she says. "It was taken from my thigh and used on the side of my head, my hand, my arm, my chest."
Following surgery, the scars require round-the-clock care, using special garments to place constant pressure on them to stop the skin becoming raised and lumpy.
"During my recovery I had a mask I had to wear 12 hours a day, a big plastic one," Adele explains.
"Then I'd have pressure garments while I was asleep which would go over my head. That was constant for 18 months."
There are no mirrors in the burns unit, so Adele was not able to properly see her appearance until she left six weeks later.
"Patients' perception of their own image is quite strong, and when they've undergone a trauma they might not be expecting what they actually look like," surgeon Mr Quentin Frew explains.
Adele is one of many patients being treated at the St Andrew's Centre, with 24 dedicated burn beds and a 24-hour operating theatre.
Demand for its services is increasing.
In the past five years, more than 500 patients have been admitted to hospitals across England from assault by corrosive substances, new figures obtained by the Victoria Derbyshire programme show.
"The people we see here are only the tip of the iceberg really," says Mr Frew.
"A lot of patients may not come to A&E.
"They may treat themselves due to the fact of either embarrassment, or being worried about repercussions from gangs or members of family."
'Your world view changes'
It is not only the physical ramifications the unit looks to treat, but the mental scars as well.
Maria Lawford, a senior counsellor at its Psychology Therapy Service, explains that "a trauma means that everything is thrown into the air, particularly with an acid assault".
She adds: "Your whole world view kind of changes very quickly, immediately, and your sense of safety in the world is compromised."
Adele says her counselling helped build her determination to not let her ex-boyfriend "ruin my life".
She had been the victim of domestic abuse, she explains.
"He basically controlled me, manipulated me, and when I didn't want to be with him I ended it.
"I just don't think he wanted anyone else to have me, so in his mind - and by attacking me with acid - no-one would want me. So that's why he paid this guy to do it."
The ex-boyfriend is now in prison.
Adele says she has vowed to have "a normal life again", but it is not only her that has been affected.
While the incident has brought her closer with her family, she says her father is "like a broken man now".
She continues to remain upbeat, however.
"Every time I come to hospital it's a positive thing because I know it's a step closer to helping me, and helping my scars," she says.
"The acid attack is always going to be with me. It's always going to be my past no matter what.
"I can't actually imagine myself without scars," she adds.
In fact, as a testament to her continued recovery, she has begun to embrace them.
"My new scars represent the new me," she says. "The new strong me."
Follow the Victoria Derbyshire programme on Facebook and Twitter - and see more of our stories here.
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A public vote has chosen "Ty Pawb" - Welsh for "Everybody's House" - as the name for the arts centre moving into the old People's Market in Wrexham.
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The council's executive board announced on Tuesday that 897 people voted between three possible names for the £4.5m market and arts development.
Some market traders objected to being relocated temporarily while the work was under way.
The council said it was on track and Ty Pawb should open in Spring 2018.
Voters had the choice of calling the new development "Ty Pawb", "Cartref" or "Oriel M."
The building refurbishment involves adding two galleries, performance areas, a gallery shop and market stalls.
The project is being funded by the Welsh Government, Arts Council of Wales and Wrexham council.
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Laura Marling has revealed new UK tour dates for spring 2012.
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The singer will play 10 dates in total, starting in Cambridge on Thursday 1 March and finishing in Nottingham on Tuesday 13 March.
The tour will include a date at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, which will be Laura Marling's biggest UK headline show to date.
The 21-year-old released her third album A Creature I Don't Know earlier this year.
In February, Marling won the Brit Award for best British female.
She has been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize twice, in 2008 and 2010.
The full dates are:
Corn Exchange, Cambridge - 1 March
Symphony Hall, Birmingham - 2
Colston Hall, Bristol - 3
Sage Theatre, Gateshead - 5
O2 Academy, Leeds - 6
HMV Hammersmith Apollo, London - 7
O2 Apollo, Manchester - 9
O2 Academy, Glasgow - 10
Victoria Hall, Stoke - 11
Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham - 13
Tickets for the shows go on sale at 9am this Friday, 9 December.
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An aircraft has returned safely to Aberdeen International Airport after reporting a problem shortly after taking off.
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The Atlantic Airlines cargo flight left Aberdeen on Monday evening, and had been scheduled to fly to East Midlands Airport.
But it declared an emergency a short time later and returned to Aberdeen, where it landed safely at about 20:20.
It is not yet known what caused the plane to turn back.
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A fourth person has been charged with the murder of a 20-year-old man who was stabbed to death in Hull.
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Abdullah Balouchi was found seriously injured on Peel Street on 7 October and died later in hospital.
Humberside Police said Abdul Al-Amudi, 32, of Cambridge Street, has now been charged with Mr Balouchi's murder.
Three teenagers who were previously charged with murdering Mr Balouchi were remanded in custody after appearing at Hull Crown Court.
Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected] or send video here.
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The results of international school tests in reading, taken every five years, have been published - with a strong showing for the two participating UK education systems, England and Northern Ireland .
As well as this Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls), there are also the Timss maths tests and the OECD's Pisa tests, as well as numerous higher education tables. What do these global rankings show?
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Sean CoughlanEducation correspondent
1. England and Northern Ireland are in the top 10 of a global schools ranking - with Northern Ireland in joint sixth place, in nudging distance of education superstars such as Finland.
It's an impressive performance, with England in joint eighth place, in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study - known as Pirls - taken in primary schools every five years.
2. Russia? The top of global rankings such as Pirls and Pisa usually have a limited cast list - Singapore, Finland, South Korea and particularly clever parts of China usually dominate. But this year Russia is in the gold medal position.
The academics running the tests say this shouldn't be a surprise. Russia has done well before in these tests and has been changing its schools, with a big push on academic excellence and a more rigorous emphasis on standards.
3. Who takes these tests? These global rankings are based on samples of pupils representing the different range of regions, peoples and types of school, whether it's somewhere the size of Luxembourg or the United States.
For the Pirls tests, England's result was based on a sample of about 5,000 students in 170 schools, while top-rated Russia's result was based on about 4,600 pupils in 206 schools. The sample for the United States was 4,425, or the equivalent of less than 100 per state.
4. Comparing like with like? There is something mesmerising about a ranking, it's a hierarchy uncluttered by any complicating factors. They are blazing headlights on the motorway rather than a torch in the study.
But that means not noticing details, such as pupils in the Pirls test being different ages. The flying Finns near the top of the table were on average about a year older than the lower-ranked French or Italians. That's a big difference in primary school.
5. Who should take the credit? It's an iron rule that current governments are responsible for all success, previous governments for all failure. Also, it's a free buffet for drawing conclusions that suit your own views.
England's success could be an argument for a rigorous national curriculum testing system, phonics and league tables. Northern Ireland's could be attributed to not having Sats, schools divided on religious lines and the demands of selective secondary schools.
6. Pick your facts, choose your headline: The same rankings can generate entirely different narratives. The Pirls results have rightly been seen as impressive performances from schools in England and Northern Ireland, well above average by international standards.
But rankings can be used selectively. In absolute terms this year's results put England in 10th place, but because there is no meaningful statistical difference with the two countries above, the Pirls's organisers have said it is the equivalent of joint 8th.
In the past tests five years ago, England was ranked 11th. But the Pirls people say that if the same approximation were applied retrospectively, England would have been joint 6th. So did the results improve or dip? You could produce entirely different interpretations from the same evidence.
7. They make a big impact: Even if you don't believe in education league tables, they make things change around them.
The Programme for International Student Assessment tests run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have been seen as driving education policy and stirring education ministers to measure themselves against international standards.
In Germany, this became known as "Pisa shock", when a country that thought it had the world's best education system discovered it was some way behind many of its Asian competitors.
When the Pisa tests were still finding their feet, the US tried to squash their uncomfortable message about its deeply divided schools - and the OECD's Andreas Schleicher has said that it was the intervention of Ted Kennedy that stopped the US from trying to stop their publication.
8. You rank only what you can measure: It's no coincidence that global rankings focus on maths, science and reading. They are much more straightforward to test and mark than more complicated, culturally defined subjects such as history or literature.
But does that mean that less value is attached to subjects that won't see countries climbing up league tables?
9. Nothing is inevitable: It's no accident that countries such as Singapore, South Korea and Finland are at the top of global rankings. They quite deliberately pursued long-term, multi-generational policies to create excellent school systems, with the aim of rising up the economic food chain.
The OECD has rejected the idea that some countries have a "culture" of education. It uses the examples of Singapore and South Korea to show a country can go from widespread illiteracy and poverty to having some of the highest education standards in the world.
10. Are they fair? It might seem one-sided to compare a wealthy European school system with a developing country, or a huge sprawling country with a compact city state. But the argument of league tables is that it doesn't matter whether it's fair - it's the reality of a globalised world.
Young people in very different and unequal settings are in the same economic race - and their chances of success will be heavily dependent on their access to education.
And if you don't get the right result in an education league table... there will be another one along soon.
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Shelves all over the world are empty, there's slim pickings online and the few suppliers that are selling are pricing at way over the odds. We're being told to wash our hands and use hand sanitiser - but a lot of people are struggling to find any.
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By Stephanie HegartyPopulation correspondent
If everyone in the world had one small bottle of sanitiser we would need 385 million litres of the stuff.
But that's not a lot compared to what healthcare professionals will get through during the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) expects them to need 2.9 billion litres of sanitiser per month. That's about 35 billion litres per year.
Before coronavirus, the world produced just under three billion litres per year, according market analysts Arizton Advisory and Intelligence.
And that perhaps explains why there is now a problem getting hold of it.
On Amazon, if you try buying alcohol-based sanitiser - the type recommended by the WHO - you'll find all of the usual brands are sold out.
Here in the UK, just a few days ago only one seller seemed to have any in stock. A 500ml bottle was priced at £30 ($35) - at least 10 times what it would have been in February. It's since been reduced to £20, but that is still about seven times pre-pandemic prices.
It's easy to accuse sellers like these of price-gouging and many reviews underneath the listing did just that. But the company selling it, Herts Tools, says it's not that simple.
"We've been getting an unfair bashing really," said the friendly man who answered the phone, Paul Stephenson.
"There are people out there saying we're taking the mickey but I can assure you we're not.
"We're in a position where we're making enough profit margin on the hand sanitiser just to keep ourselves afloat."
The company usually sells and rents tools to the construction industry and it only started selling sanitiser because customers were requesting it.
But it has struggled to get hold of supplies and the cost is rising every day. "I can't even guarantee what I paid today I'm going to pay tomorrow," says Stephenson.
And that's because the price of the key ingredient - alcohol - has increased dramatically.
The sanitiser Herts Tools has been selling is made by a UK-based skincare products company called Zidac Laboratories. Its director, Jurica Weissbarth, has been fielding a lot of calls lately.
Zidac can make 150,000 bottles of hand sanitiser a day, but for the past two weeks the production line has been down. It hasn't been able to get ethanol, the alcohol it puts in its sanitiser, and which has to make up at least 60% for it to kill viruses (and bacteria) effectively.
Weissbarth used to pay around £700 ($800) for a tonne of ethanol - enough for 32,000 bottles of hand gel.
Last week a new supplier offered him a tonne for £10,000 - more than 10 times the ordinary price. He politely declined. But this week he was in celebratory mood after buying a batch on Tuesday for only three or four times more than usual.
The BBC called several distributors of industrial alcohol. One woman who answered the phone was close to tears; the company she worked for was closing down due to lack of stock.
Others were so busy that staff were overwhelmed and couldn't talk. One website said requests for orders had gone from 300 a day to more than 6,000. None were taking new orders.
If sanitisers aren't made from ethanol, they're made from isopropyl alcohol, also called IPA. There are a limited number of companies that produce these types of alcohol on an industrial scale. The biggest producers are in China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.
In France the government has ordered all IPA made in the country to stay there. Other countries could easily follow suit.
"That is pretty extreme in Europe, where we are supposed to be all as one," says Steven Willekes from chemical supplier DutCH2 in the Netherlands.
He thinks any country that doesn't have its own supply of these alcohols could run out of sanitiser very soon.
And that explains why drinks companies such as Pernod Ricard, which makes Absolut Vodka, and Diageo, which makes Johnnie Walker whisky - and other smaller companies from London to New York, to Manila in the Philippines - are now providing alcohol to be used for making sanitiser, or are planning to make it themselves.
The Indian government has expressly asked the alcoholic drinks industry and the sugarcane industry to provide ethanol to hand sanitiser companies.
Chad Friese of the Chippawa Valley Ethanol Company in the US says there is enough alcohol out there to make an awful lot of sanitiser, it's just being used in different industries.
His factory is running at full capacity and is sending as much as possible to the sanitiser industry, but it has other commitments too.
"I think there's plenty of production it's just not going into the right channels right now. Somebody that's producing alcohol for Diageo or somebody like that, they have a commitment to send it to them and not to someone who is making hand sanitiser," he says. "It's just about getting the supply to the right people."
So when Britain's third-richest man promised to build hand sanitiser production plants in the UK, Germany and France within days, and to supply hospitals free of charge, it would have been logical to wonder where he would get the alcohol to fill his production lines.
Well, he shouldn't have too much of a problem. Sir Jim Ratcliffe owns Ineos, one of Europe's biggest manufacturers of both ethanol and IPA.
Update 4 April 2020: The original version of this story gave an incorrect figure for the quantity of hand sanitiser produced annually, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, as a result of a mistake in the report by Arizton Advisory and Intelligence.
You may also be interested in:
The coronavirus crisis is throwing many pregnant women's birth plans up in the air - and leading some health trusts to increase home births.
Birth in a pandemic: 'You are stronger than you think'
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The Conservatives on Sandwell Council carried out an "appalling prank" by fielding a candidate with the same name as his Labour opponent.
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Labour's Derek Rowley, who has been re-elected in the Great Bridge ward at Sandwell Council, claimed the Tories had tried to confuse voters.
"They've denied the voters of Great Bridge a credible alternative," he said.
But Ray Knock, who led the Tory group, said the claim was completely untrue.
"This is just another load of Labour spin," he said.
"I take it now Labour are trying to say that just because a guy's called Derek Rowley he's got no legal right to stand."
Mr Knock later lost his seat to a Labour candidate.
· All the latest election results are available at bbc.co.uk/vote2012
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Christmas Day beach walkers in mid Wales had a surprise when they stumbled across a dead whale that had been washed up.
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The mammal, thought to be a minke whale, was discovered at Ynyslas beach, near Aberystwyth, Ceredigion on Friday.
A coastguard spokesman said a marine expert would take samples before the whale was removed.
Walker Shirley Tunley said: "Over 40 years of Christmas morning visits by the Tunley family but this is a first."
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Airline operator Flybe has been given a licence to fly from Guernsey to Luton Airport.
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But a spokesperson for the Exeter-based company said the airline had "no plans to start a schedule to Luton this summer".
The low-cost airline was granted its licence by the Commerce and Employment Department on 13 January.
Travel expert Vaughan Davis said: "A better option would be the introduction of a service to London City."
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Thousands of people using train services in Birmingham and the West Midlands faced major delays after overhead power cables came down.
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Network Rail said a section of cabling between Birmingham New Street and Smethwick came down at about 12:00 GMT.
Services calling at Birmingham New Street faced delays of up to 30 minutes and trains had to queue for platforms.
All lines were reopened at about 20:00 GMT after engineers repaired the problem, the company said.
A spokesperson for London Midland said that the cable problem was "an issue with the infrastructure and not weather related."
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Whitehall officials have told the BBC that contrary to recent announcements, the number of Britons emigrating to Syria to live under Islamic State (IS) rule peaked two years ago. However, the proportion of women among those joining the extremist group has risen dramatically. So what's behind this and what exactly is the IS strategy behind luring women into their ranks? Our Security Correspondent Frank Gardner investigates.
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By Frank GardnerBBC Security correspondent
Islamic State, also known as Isis, has a dual attitude to women.
On the one hand it treats those it considers heretics as almost sub-human, as commodities to be traded and given away as rewards to jihadist fighters.
Shocking footage from a modern-day sex-slave market in Mosul, Iraq, shows militants discussing prices for Yazidi girls, captured last year, many of them underage.
At least 2,000 Yazidi women are still being held, only a few have escaped.
'Corner stones'
"They put us up for sale," said one who did recently escape. "Many groups of fighters came to buy. Whatever we did, crying, begging, made no difference."
But on the other hand, IS has big plans for Muslim women who migrate to their territory to play a key role in building the so-called caliphate.
"They want women to join them," says Dr Katherine Brown, an expert in Islamic Studies at King's College London.
"They see women as the corner stones of the new state and they want citizens.
"What is really interesting is that people talk of IS as being a death cult, but that is the opposite of what they are trying to create... they want to create a new state... and they very much want women to join that as part of this utopian politics."
That utopia includes a treatise published in Arabic in February, setting out a code of conduct that harks back 1,400 years.
It is aimed primarily at Arab women in the Gulf states and the wider Middle East and includes passages that are incomprehensible to most people in the West:
"It is considered legitimate for a girl to be married at the age of nine. Most pure girls will be married by 16 or 17, while they are still young and active," the treatise says.
Putting down roots
A former al-Qaeda member with a deep insight into the jihadist mindset is Aimen Deen. He believes the IS approach to women is very different from that of al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
'Unlike al-Qaeda, Isis is looking to establish a permanent society with roots. They are bringing families from the entire Muslim world, not just from Europe and the US but from Central Asia... providing families for the Islamic State."
Online recruitment messages are pumped out continually, in different languages, telling Muslims to abandon their safe but conflicted lives in the West and come to the caliphate.
Ignored by the vast majority, there are nevertheless a growing number of women heeding the call.
Some are like the British girls from Bethnal Green in east London, who wanted to be jihadist brides, marrying a fighter who will give them status.
"There is a romantic element here," continues Aimen Deen, who warns that it can often end in tragedy.
"The life expectancy of a jihadist is a month or two. So what will happen is that a woman will marry someone, he will die and for four months and 10 days she will be in mourning.
"If she is pregnant then maybe longer, and then she will marry someone else and then there will be another martyred husband, another four months in mourning and she will go through this process again.
"That is not a happy life, that is a miserable one."
Social media role
But unlike the Taliban or al-Qaeda, IS have allowed many of their western female recruits a prominent public role on social media.
Perhaps the best known is the 20-year-old Glaswegian runaway, Aqsa Mahmoud, who calls herself "Umm Laith".
She has become famous for dispensing advice to women thinking of abandoning their families in Britain, from the mundane to the philosophical.
Mah-Rukh Ali, a Norwegian researcher at Oxford University who specialises in women and propaganda in IS, believes it is a deliberate strategy to give women a prominent role online.
"Isis uses women much more actively than we ever saw the Taliban or al-Qaeda using them," she says.
"There are about 100,000 pro-Isis tweets every day and many of these tweets appear to come from women who have joined Isis from western societies."
Researchers say that many of those women who make it across the Turkish border into IS-controlled territory end up frustrated by the roles they are assigned.
Unmarried women are kept in a safe house, usually with others who speak their language and given religious indoctrination and Arabic classes while a husband is found for them as quickly as possible.
Any thoughts of taking part in battles and wielding a Kalashnikov on the frontline are soon dashed. But some join the Khansaa Brigades, a women-only vigilante force that patrols cities like Raqqa and Mosul enforcing strict Islamist rules.
"They've been known to carry out harsh punishments like beatings and whipping someone for not wearing the right clothing," says Dr Katherine Brown.
They have also been known to put animal trap clamps on a women's breasts because they have been breastfeeding in public, she says.
But beyond the cruelty and the shocking practices that have propelled IS to international infamy, the uncomfortable fact is that their so-called caliphate is not going away.
I asked Aimen Deen, the former jihadist, if IS now sees women as essential to the group's chances of survival.
"Indeed, there is no question about it. They are half of the society. They are playing an important role in many departments: the medical department, the educational department and even the tax collection department, so they are essential for the survival of Islamic State."
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Moors Murderer Ian Brady is expected to appear before a mental health tribunal to try to prove he is of sound enough mind to be moved from Ashworth psychiatric hospital to prison, where he wants to die.
BBC north-west health correspondent Nina Warhurst was the first TV journalist to be allowed in to Ashworth for more than a decade.
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Walking through the gates of Ashworth for the first time, anyone would feel a little nervous.
A high-security psychiatric hospital, it's treated some of Britain's most dangerous and disturbed criminals.
Rapists, murderers and paedophiles live here - all 228 of the patients are held under the mental health act.
But inside Ashworth, there are no slamming steel doors. No uniformed guards jangling giant keys. No sinister screams. Because Ashworth is not a prison, but a hospital.
Set in green, open spaces, the buildings have the feel of a retirement village - or even a primary school.
Grouped together
There are 14 single-storey semi-detached wards, each providing a specific type of treatment or care.
Some are used for admission and assessments, others for treatment and rehabilitation.
Patients with similar conditions and at similar stages of treatment are usually grouped together.
As the first TV crew allowed in for more than a decade, we were asked not to record any audio - but if we had, it would only be the sound of seagulls - circling from the Merseyside coast.
I was encouraged to speak to staff. They are employed by the NHS, and like most of their colleagues across the country, incredibly proud of the work they do.
They might be treating men who most see as monsters, but to the workers of Ashworth, these people are poorly - with complex mental health problems. It's their job to try, as best they can, to make them better.
The environment is therapeutic - with art and music workshops, pottery and cooking classes, and social events such as bingo and film nights.
They try to make sure every patient engages in some sort of social activity as part of their treatment. As one member of staff explained: "We all need something meaningful to fill our days."
They told me there wasn't one patient who was made to, or even chose to, sit in isolation all day.
In their comfortable bedrooms, patients are allowed personal items such as CDs, photos and books.
The slim window panels are the only reminder they are being detained. But with a private toilet in each room, this is far from a grim prison cell.
Achievement
On average, patients stay for about six years, and most return to medium-security prisons. And staff feel a massive sense of achievement in helping them move on.
Their most famous patient has been here much longer. Arriving in 1985, Ian Brady has since then been unable to convince psychiatric experts he is well enough to leave.
Now the time has come to try again, but this time in front of the world.
If Brady's mental health tribunal does take place at Ashworth, the press and public will be able to watch via a video-link to the Manchester Civil Justice Centre, a set-up with which he is said to be disappointed, calling it a "parody" of a public tribunal.
Only 7% of patients who leave Ashworth will return. Brady will not want to be part of that statistic.
If he gets his wish, he will stop eating completely. And the questions over whether it's possible to make him stay alive will be passed on from Ashworth to the prison services.
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By BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg and BBC Political Correspondent Iain Watson
For swathes of voters, immigration was the biggest question in the referendum campaign. But details of what to do about it after Brexit have been slow in coming.
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But ministers took a big step towards how the future system will look, with the biggest reboot of the immigration system in decades. The Cabinet on Monday agreed in principle that after Brexit EU nationals and people from other parts of the world should face the same immigration rules if they want to come to live or work in the UK.
Ministers discussed proposals at length around the cabinet table and heard a presentation from the chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, Professor Alan Manning.
Ministers reached what sources described as a "high-level conclusion" that after Brexit people wanting to come to live or work in the UK should be subject to the same rules, wherever they are from.
There was broad agreement on that principle, and the Home Office will now spend weeks working out further details. But the precise details in a future White Paper might not emerge until after a deal is reached with the EU in November.
One insider told the BBC that the system would be based on "skills not nationality".
Although free movement for EU nationals would end, government sources suggest there could still be "light touch migration" from the EU as part of a wider trade deal but they say the EU would not get "something for nothing" and there would have to be the same access for British citizens in Europe.
They said that would not be "preferential treatment" because other future trade partners, for example the United States, could be offered the same kind of thing. In the Chequers agreement there is provision for a so-called "mobility partnerships" with the EU.
It is understood that the Business Secretary Greg Clark raised the prospect of concerns from business at a sudden change, arguing that there could be pressure for a gradual, rather than an immediate, shake-up after Brexit.
The Chancellor Philip Hammond agreed that was likely. But sources are adamant that the chancellor did not push for a delay and that there was a unanimous decision to move to a new system based on the principle of equal access. But the cabinet did accept that some sectors would need low-skilled migrants from the EU.
If there is no deal, insiders have admitted that the new migration system won't be ready and would have to be "tapered in".
EU citizens coming to the UK would have to apply for a work visa after they had arrived. Another cabinet source suggested however that no final decisions had been made. It's been suggested that the prime minister hopes to make an announcement about new immigration rules at the Tory conference next week.
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All roads managed by Islington Council in north London will become 20mph zones after the authority agreed the move.
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The cut from 30mph to 20mph was given the go-ahead at a meeting earlier.
However, roads managed by Transport for London, including Holloway Road and Upper Street, will not be affected by the new speed limit.
Islington Council said the speed limit cut was aimed at reducing serious accidents involving pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.
The council said the changes would be implemented by April.
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Boeing is coming to this year's Paris Airshow, which starts on Monday, facing some difficult decisions in the wake of the two deadly Boeing 737 Max crashes, while its global rival Airbus is widely expected to unveil a long-range version of its best-selling A321 - potentially taking away some of Boeing's customers.
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By Tim BowlerBusiness reporter, BBC News
With almost 2,500 companies exhibiting and 320,000 visitors expected over seven days, the show at Le Bourget on the outskirts of Paris is one of the aerospace and defence industry's key trade fairs for a sector that generates global revenues of some $685bn annually.
Expect most of the press attention to be focussed on Boeing's CEO Dennis Muilenburg, and how the firm is working with aviation regulators to get its troubled 737 Max aircraft back in the air.
Piling on the pressure facing Boeing executives, just this week a US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) official indicated that airlines' fleets of Boeing 737 Max aircraft might be grounded until the end of the year - longer than many had been expecting.
"The highest priority for us is the 737 Max's safe return to service," said Mr Muilenburg recently. Indeed, it has been a key seller for the US firm, which has roughly 4,500 unfulfilled orders for the aircraft.
For Airbus - under new CEO Guillaume Faury - it is the first airshow at Le Bourget since it made the decision to end production of its flagship A380. But the much-heralded unveiling of its A321XLR, is likely to garner positive headlines.
This is a single-aisle long-range airliner which Airbus hopes will generate new orders. Several carriers have already reportedly expressed an interest, including IAG - the parent group of British Airways and Iberia.
For Airbus this is possibly a strategy to counter Boeing's eventual NMA (New Midsize Aircraft) that the US firm has been working on. The twin-aisled NMA, also labelled the 797, has been designed in two variants: a 225-seat plane with a 9,300km (5,700 mile) range and a 275-seater flying 8,300km.
However, unlike Airbus's A321XLR this would be a totally new aircraft - so it would take a lot longer to see the light of day.
Away from the marketing battle between Airbus and Boeing, there will be more focus on unmanned aircraft, lighter and stronger alloys and composite materials - but the most significant developments may well be developments in hybrid and all-electric aircraft engines.
US firm magniX is showing off two of its electric motors at the show. It is working with North America's largest seaplane operator to retrofit the entire fleet with electric engines and magniX motors will also power the new all-electric Alice, a small passenger aircraft from Israeli firm Eviation.
MagniX says it wants to transform the "middle mile" segment of the market - that's cargo and passenger flights up to 1,000 miles (1,600km). "As we debut our propulsion system at the Paris Airshow, we're one step closer to all-electric air transport starting in 2022," says magniX chief executive Roei Ganzarski.
All makers are keenly aware of the need to reduce CO2 emissions - commercial flights account for 2.5% of global greenhouse gasses. But as air passenger numbers double - even with battery-powered aircraft, alternative fuels and lighter materials, the goal of reducing overall CO2 emissions in the aviation sector remains as challenging as ever.
Aerospace
More from the BBC on aerospace and defence:
The sector has also seen significant business changes recently. Canadian-based manufacturer Bombardier has quit the commercial airliner business.
Airbus has taken over its C-Series regional jets, Bombardier has put its Northern Ireland factories up for sale and is talking about the sale of its remaining regional jets business to Japan's Mitsubishi.
Meanwhile, two of the US's major defence giants, United Technologies Corp (UTC) and Raytheon, have proposed a $121bn (£96bn) deal - combining the makers of missiles, electronic warfare systems, and engines for Airbus and the F-35 fighter jet.
When it comes to defence, notable newcomers include Boeing's KC-46 tanker and a PAC JF-17 fighter jet, a joint development between Pakistan and China. Japan is putting its military capabilities on show with its Kawasaki P-1 maritime patrol aircraft.
Yet much interest will centre on fighters, as European nations work out their visions for a next-generation combat plane. The big question is whether Europe can unite around a single design or whether countries will end up developing different sixth-generation fighter aircraft.
But as it took about 10 years of negotiating and talking in the 1970s, which led to requirements for fighters being firmed up in the 1980s - finally leading to Eurofighter Typhoon, Sweden's Gripen and France's Rafale in the 1990s - this year's show is unlikely to give us any quick answers.
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Covid -19 will hit Halloween spending, after several years of spiralling spend, getting close last year to half a billion pounds.
Much of the commercial spectacular has been imported from the USA, and has been adopted in Britain as the second biggest boozing 'event' of the year - until 2020 came along.
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Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
I've never understood why people pay good money to be scared. But they do.
Horror movies are reckoned to be among the most profitable - one reason being that they can be cheaply made.
No-one complains if the zombie apocalypse is badly acted, or if the ghosts are wearing cast-off bedsheets.
One reckoning of this century's American releases found that the 2004 movie Saw had a spine-chilling 11,000% profitability.
It also noted that every other form of cinema release has a strong correlation between commercial success and critics' ratings. In the horror genre, the more a film gets panned, the more people want to see it.
For me, that horror genre ceased having much attraction at around the point Scooby Doo and Shaggy nailed the dastardly monster in the big gothic castle:
Halloween back then was about chiselling out a turnip to make a lantern. But even in my distant youth, we were already absorbing America's Halloween.
Linus, the insecure sidekick to kindergarten philosopher Charlie Brown, each year, late at night on Halloween, could be found in the pumpkin patch, waiting.
Of course, the Great Pumpkin never arrived - a valuable early lesson in disappointment being guaranteed.
Soupernatural
But the Great Pumpkin has since landed on these shores. America's Halloween has put down deep commercial roots in Britain.
The turnip turned into a pumpkin, which somehow infected your cafe latte. Guising became trick or treat - a way to develop children's skills in running a protection racket.
And there was a lot of money to be made.
When Harry Potter cast his spell, it all got more expensive. Along came Instagram, and the pressure was building to look the part, with creepy costumes.
They're to help scare the wits out of unsuspecting adults, who need to fob them off with lots of sweets, preferably shaped as eyeballs and amputated body parts.
Some of the biggest spending on Halloween - including well over half of pumpkins - is by adults with no children at home - grandparents, neighbours of kids, and those indulging in nostalgia. Retro-sweets are big.
Biggest of all is the pumpkin. Tesco's pumpkin supplier, in Cambridgeshire, grows five million of them a year. Quarter of households are expected to buy one this year, at a total cost of nearly £30 million.
While very agreeable and colourful in soups and pies only around half the contents are likely to be eaten. On the lookout for family activities that are socially distanced, a day out at the pumpkin farm, to pick your own, has been a fast growing attraction.
Creepy cocktails
The American way also meant this infected adult behaviour. The night when the spirits are shaken and stirred from the underworld became the trigger for a big booze-up down at the pub, with creepy cocktails. Alcohol marketers see Halloween, in a normal year, as second only to Hogmanay as a drinking event.
Adult party costumes are encouraged but optional, because at this level, it's nothing to do with tradition, it's merely an excuse.
One Scottish company that relies heavily on Halloween sales is Morphsuits. Three Edinburgh chums gave up conventional professional careers more than a decade ago, and last year turned over £15m.
Most of that is in selling Lycra that stretches from head to toe in bright colours or ever more terrifying designs. Halloween accounts for 60% of revenue - £9m last year.
For retail, it's also a major happening on the calendar - nowhere near Christmas, and still lagging Father's, Mother's and Valentine's Day. But check out the seasonal goods aisle of your local hypermarket, currently swathed in orange, black and plastic spiders' webs. That shelf space has gone spookily Halloween tat, because it's profitable.
Those who claim to be able count such things reckon the British spend on Halloween roughly doubled between 2013 and last year, and wasn't that far off £500m.
Fiendish festival
Of course, America still leads the way. Those who marked Halloween last year spent nearly $90 on average. Total, nearly $9 billion. And an obscene amount of candy consumed.
That spend was on course to fall by about 8% this year, with the Covid virus playing a gruesome and terrifying role as this season's invisible doorstep killer.
For a company that sells party gear, Morphsuits is finding this a very tough year, certainly in Britain, with demand down by at least half, according to co-founder Fraser Smeaton. Parents are buying costumes for kids, trying to keep things normal and fun.
In the US of A, with mixed messages about infection risk, Morphsuit demand is holding up, and may even be ahead of last year.
Many, though, will keep observing this fiendish festival behind closed doors. More than half of Americans told market researchers they planned to decorate their homes for the big day.
Nearly half will carve a pumpkin, and nearly a fifth of Americans will dress up their pets. To me, that's really scary.
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So we've finally got here. That bit in an Olympic marathon where the runners enter the stadium for the last 400 metres on the track, straining aching muscles and tired bodies to sprint to the finish.
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Jon SopelNorth America editor@bbcjonsopelon Twitter
It's been an extraordinary, sometimes unsettling, certainly unimaginable (who had global pandemic on their bingo card?) election campaign and trying to figure out what happens next it is all crystal clear to me.
There are three possible scenarios, and I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if any of them came to pass (actually there's a fourth scenario, but I'll get to that later).
Having reported on this president's effort to buy Greenland, and when the Danes refused to sell to the former property developer, watched as the president cancelled a state visit in revenge; having learnt that he paid off a porn star just before the last election; having been in Helsinki and listened to him saying he preferred to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin who was standing next to him than he did his intelligence agencies; having seen him investigated, impeached and then cleared; having watched him drive past me outside the Walter Reed Hospital when he was infectious with coronavirus; having been called "another beauty", just for saying I was from the BBC, I really have come to realise that anything can happen, and frequently does.
So let's come to the three possible scenarios.
1. Biden wins with ease
The first is that the polls are right and Joe Biden gains a comfortable victory on Tuesday night.
Listen, being a pollster in this election season has had all the excitement of being a Saudi Arabian TV weather forecaster: "Today will be hot and sunny, and looking forward tomorrow will be hot and sunny too."
For all the turmoil and tumult of this campaign - and very unlike four years ago - the national polls and crucial state polls have been unbelievably consistent. Nothing has happened. Nothing has moved. Biden has enjoyed a big lead nationally, a smaller one in the sunbelt states of Florida, Arizona and North Carolina, and a similar margin in the northern industrial ones - Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
If you go to the FiveThirtyEight blog, where they keep a running average of all the mainstream polls, they say there has been a tightening in the race of 0.1%.
When we report polls we normally say there is a 3% +/- margin of error. Only a 0.1% change over several weeks is incalculable. So if on Tuesday night this turns out to be the result, I won't be in the least bit surprised.
2. Shock win for Trump
Which brings me to the second possible outcome. It is that like 2016 (although I could bore on for some time about why this is not quite true) the polls are wrong and Donald Trump wins a second term. Key to his success is what happens in Pennsylvania and Florida.
No one believes polls showing Biden three or four points ahead in the Sunshine State - it is far tighter than that in Florida. And in 2020 Trump is doing far better with Latinos than he was in 2016.
Likewise Pennsylvania, where in the west of the state white working-class voters could be what pushes the president over the line.
In this Covid-restricted election, I've been to Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. And wherever you go, you find Trump supporters that don't just like the 45th president - they adore him.
And the Trump campaign calculation is that just as in 2016 - when they brought many people out to vote who were "off the grid", so beyond the pollsters' radar screens - they will do the same again.
Also, I want to say a word about these rallies the president has been holding.
Democrats have piled in saying how irresponsible he is to bring thousands of people together when there is no social distancing in a pandemic. I don't want to get into that argument. But you'd better believe there is smart calculation in doing this.
To attend these events you have to sign up online, there then follows a sophisticated data-mining operation to see whether you are on the electoral register - and if you're not, they will sign you up. Thousands and thousands of people have been registered to vote as a result of this and in a tight election, removing that barrier to casting ballots might make all the difference.
The one other reason that a Trump victory would not surprise me in the least is that Joe Biden is hardly an inspiring campaigner.
If ever anyone represented an old guard, it is him. The aging process is cruel to everyone, but the president seems so much more vibrant and vigorous than Biden, even though they are only three years apart. It is not as if Biden is "hope" to borrow the Obama 2008 slogan. All he offers is "nope", he's not Donald Trump.
But "nope" in 2020 is hugely powerful.
There is a surging "negative partisanship" which looks as though it might be a decisive factor in this election. It's not that people want Biden, it's that they've had enough of this noisy presidency which has seen America become so bitterly divided.
3. Shock landslide win for Biden
Which bring us to the third scenario. And it is the same as the second - the polls are wrong. Except this time the polls are wrong in the opposite direction. And this is the possibility that not only does Biden win, he wins big; it is a blowout election, akin to Ronald Reagan's victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980. Or George HW Bush's victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988.
The president has seen in the final week of the campaign coronavirus cases surge to all-time highs, with hospitalisations rising, deaths ticking upwards to a thousand per day. He's also seen the stock market having its worst week since March - a barometer of economic health this president cares passionately about.
Unlike 2016, when Donald Trump had a very clear message to the American people - he wanted to build a wall, he wanted to keep Muslims out, he wanted to renegotiate trade deals, he wanted to bring back manufacturing - in 2020 he's struggled to articulate what a second term would be about.
So if the "blowout" came to pass, Biden doesn't only win the states I've listed in the first scenario, he takes Texas (Texas!), Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, possibly even South Carolina.
Unlikely maybe, but if you follow the money, look at the polls, look at the patterns of early voting, look at where the Democrats have intensified campaigning, look at the extraordinary number of new voters, it is not impossible.
...and an unlikely outcome (but it is 2020)
I mentioned at the outset there is - conceivably - a fourth scenario. And don't ask me to go into the mechanics or the consequences, but… because of the way Nebraska splits its electoral college votes, it is conceivable that in the race for 270 electoral college votes - the magic number that secures you the presidency, you end up with Biden on 269 and Trump on 269.
And after billions of dollars spent, you end up in total gridlocked, legal quagmire, America divided hell.
It's never happened in the modern era, and I say it is unlikely.
But impossible?
Come off it, this is 2020.
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Worcestershire County Council is to bid for £7m of government money to go towards the construction of a third railway station in Worcester.
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Worcestershire Parkway station has been proposed close to junction 7 of the M5.
The government has set aside a total of £20m to pay for 75% of the cost of either building or renovating stations in England and Wales.
The county council has until 25 February to submit its bid for the fund, which is managed by Network Rail.
The Conservative-led authority has said it wants Worcestershire Parkway completed by summer 2016 if it is given money from the New Stations Fund.
The plans form part of the Worcester Transport Strategy, which requires £200m of investment.
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Plans for a multi-million pound redevelopment of a former marine laboratory on the Isle of Man have been given the go-ahead.
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The six-storey complex in Port Erin would include 83 flats, shops, a restaurant and exhibition space.
At least 14 of the apartments would be for visitor accommodation, and the site would also include 159 parking spaces.
Developers Delgatie bought the land from the Isle of Man government for £500,000 last year.
Approving the development in principle, planners said the "considerable benefit" to the village "outweighs the few issues" raised over the size of the proposed building.
The marine laboratory was closed and partly demolished in 2006.
Some of the remaining buildings were badly damaged by fire in 2016.
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On 13 April the US dropped one of its largest non-nuclear bombs on a tunnel complex used by so-called Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan. It was the first time such a weapon had been used in battle.
The BBC's Auliya Atrafi has been to the area to see if it really had any impact in the battle against IS.
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The view from the hills overlooking the Mamand Valley is beautiful. Green fields and trees fill the valley floor. Ahead, the valley narrows and hills become mountains. In the distance rises the magnificent Spin-Ghar, the White Mountain, which marks the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But there was no chance of quiet contemplation when I visited this area of Nangarhar province. Above, three types of American fighter planes were circling and dropping bombs.
One bomb hit the narrow part of the valley. It was there, a young soldier told me, that the weapon known as the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB) had been used.
I was confused. Reports of the bomb had made me think that it had wiped out the IS stronghold here in Achin district. I assumed that US and Afghan troops would have sealed off the area and that IS (or Daesh, as it is known here) would be in disarray.
An Afghan officer corrected me. "For a start this bomb wasn't as powerful as you think," he said.
"There are still green trees standing 100m away from the site of the impact."
A large number of IS militants were killed by the MOAB, but it is hard to know how many. The Achin district governor, Ismail Shinwary, says at least 90.
Either way, the battle against IS continues.
"Daesh hasn't gone anywhere; there are hundreds of caves like the one the Americans bombed," the officer says, adding that strikes have continued since the bomb was dropped. "They can't get rid of them like this."
The fighting appeared to be taking place along a huge area in the mountains. The bombardment was relentless, filling the valley with smoke and noise.
But IS were taking casualties. Over a breakfast of eggs and green tea, the district police chief, Major Khair Mohammad Sapai, showed us pictures of dead IS fighters. They had beards and long hair.
In death they looked pitiable, quite unlike the image they try to portray in their propaganda videos - riding horses, carrying their black flags or making the local Shinwari people sit on bombs and then blowing them up.
Major Khair said some of them were foreigners, but from their disintegrating, dust-covered faces it was hard to tell.
He showed us hand-written lists of Afghan telephone numbers seized during operations, and some of the names on the list were indeed Arabic or Pakistani.
The major's claims were backed up by Hakim Khan Momand and his friends. They are members of the so-called "people's uprising" - new militias made up of local people that help with security in the area. They cooperate with state security forces but their existence is seen as a sign of weak central government and instability.
The bearded men lay on portable cots, drinking strong green tea and relishing the sight of IS fighters being bombed by American planes.
"They are all sorts - Uzbeks, Tajiks, Arabs and Wahhabis from Kunar Province. They have nowhere to go; best to bury them in the caves where they happen to be hiding," Hakim Khan said.
His house lies in the Mamand Valley, in an area still under the control of IS. He adds: "God willing, the Americans have given us their word that they would clear the entire valley of Daesh fighters."
Unlike the Taliban, who tend to have many supporters in their core areas, IS seem to have angered a lot of people. Few seemed unhappy about the US bombardment.
A couple of kilometres from the frontline, ordinary life was continuing. Women carried water, boys played cricket and people went about their daily tasks.
However, there was anxiety. One man, Khaled, said local people were pawns in a US game.
"[Dropping the bomb] was a trick to show the world that their mission was going well. But this wasn't the type of bomb they showed in the media. The bomb did nothing."
"Will IS come back?" I asked.
"Yes, as soon as the government leaves, the locals won't be able to fight them. If the government makes permanent bases in the area and helps us, then we will be happy," he answered.
Another local resident suggested IS could do with something a little stronger.
"Let Americans bring down a bigger one, this one was small," he said.
Back in the hills, Hakim Khan and his friends were listening in to IS fighters communicating via walkie-talkies with the help of their radio. The fighters were reassuring each other and communicating with their comrades in a neighbouring district.
A border police officer wondered aloud if the commitment of the Trump administration would match that of IS.
"The more we kill, the more they come from the other side of the Durand line, in Pakistan," he said.
How successful has IS been in Afghanistan?
The new 'Great Game' in Afghanistan
After a night back in the safety of Jalalabad, we returned the next morning.
There was no fighting so we drove into the valley until we were stopped near the bomb impact site by Afghan special forces, who agreed to show us around.
They said that IS fighters saw the district as their own. After most locals fled, IS banned poppy cultivation and began farming wheat, turning the valley green.
Now the lush allotments were their battlefields. Bodies lay next to hollow trees that fighters had been sleeping inside.
Shear, a tough-looking special forces soldier, said that IS fighters were "crazy" and very committed.
"They make the most of their basic Russian guns; they are technical fighters," he said.
"You can't hear them coming in the mountains: they will wear six pairs of socks and get within striking distance without you hearing them.
"In the mountains they fight individually or in groups of two or three. They don't leave their positions, so you have to kill them. And their friends don't come to collect their bodies; they lie where they die."
We waited for permission to visit the impact site, surrounded by crates of military supplies dropped from the air.
Our escort was Haji Beag, a unit commander, who first showed us a smaller "IS command base and prison".
One door opening into a spacious courtyard led to a room which led to a small cave that could house around 10 people.
It was dug into the rock and felt very solid. It was clear why finding and killing IS militants in these mountains took so much time and energy.
At the entrance to the cave stood an improvised cage, made of mesh frames. It held two tight spaces which Haji Beag said were used as prison cells.
He said he believed the US made a good decision to use the MOAB to target caves used over decades by different militant groups - from the Mujahedeen, to the Taliban, and most recently IS.
"We found about 20 bodies around the site after the explosion. The cave system has been destroyed," he said. "It's possible that most of dead are buried inside those caves."
Read more:
How powerful is 'mother of all bombs'?
What will Trump do about Afghanistan?
The drive to the impact site with Haji Beag and his unit was a short one. American planes were still flying above us, targeting the next valley a kilometre away. The mountainous terrain was hard on our four-wheel drive and as we approached the site a rocket landed 200m in front of us.
No one was hurt, but it made Haji Beag cautious, and we weren't allowed to set foot on the impact site.
But we could see it, and it was unremarkable. There was no big crater. Trees had been burnt and a few rooms had been flattened. Not far from it, houses still stood and there were green trees around.
As we left the valley, the bombardment continued. It seemed clear that the bomb that was dropped on 13 April had not come close to delivering a knock-out blow to IS militants entrenched in the area, and the locals certainly expect more conflict ahead.
To me, at least, the Mother Of All Bombs failed to live up to her reputation.
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Playboy magazine is stopping publishing pictures of totally nude women because the internet has made them outdated, its US owners say. It's a break with a 62-year format that has had a significant impact on American culture.
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By Vanessa BarfordBBC News Magazine, Washington
Every month since 1953, fold-out spreads of fully nude women have filled Playboy.
The glossy adult men's magazine boasts a plethora of celebrity conquests in its portfolio. Madonna, Sharon Stone and Naomi Campbell were photographed at the peak of their fame. Kate Moss posed for its front cover in a bunny outfit. Lindsay Lohan and Pamela Anderson have also graced it.
The magazine may have offended some who see it as sexist and demeaning to women, but the idea of Playboy dispensing with nudity would once have been unthinkable.
But in March 2016, that will happen. "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passe at this juncture," Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders is quoted by the New York Times as saying.
The redesigned Playboy will still feature "sexy, seductive pictorials of the world's most beautiful women," but full nudity will be banished.
It ends a cultural phenomenon that was a rite of passage for a generation of American men - an illicit thrill in adolescent bedrooms or garden sheds - and helped spark America's sexual revolution.
From its beginnings editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner founded the magazine on full nudity. Marilyn Monroe famously appeared on the magazine's first cover and centrefold.
Hefner didn't hide the magazine's intentions.
"If you're a man between the ages of 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for you," he wrote in the first issue. "We want to make it clear from the very start, we aren't a 'family magazine.' If you're somebody's sister, wife or mother-in-law and picked us up by mistake, please pass us along to the man in your life and get back to your Ladies Home Companion."
He also described the "pleasure-primer" he wanted to create.
"Most of today's 'magazines for men' spend all their time out-of-doors - thrashing through thorny thickets or splashing about in fast-flowing streams. We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d'oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex," it said.
The 50,000 copies - which were sold for 50 cents each - flew off the shelf.
Dian Hanson, author of a six-volume history of men's magazines and an editor for Taschen, says Hefner tapped into a new consumer attitude that emerged at the end of World War Two.
"America came out the war relatively unscathed, it did not suffer like Europe. Many young men didn't see battle but had experienced more adventurous things, more nudity, and wanted something different when they came back.
"It wasn't the first nude magazine, but rather than showing a macho Hemingwayesque way of life that many men didn't relate to, it showed scrawny intelligent guys they didn't have to be rough, tough guys to be a playboy. It was a nerds' way to sexuality - which is what Hefner himself did to get girls," she says.
During Playboy's heyday, readers could plausibly claim they read it for its writing and journalism.
The magazine published stories by Jack Kerouac, Joseph Heller, Haruki Murakami and Margaret Atwood among others, and interviewed culturally and politically significant figures such as Frank Sinatra, Malcolm X and Jimmy Carter.
But nudity was always a big selling point of the magazine, which attracted or coaxed well-known female public figures into gracing its pages.
"Some of the pictures were pretty amazing and became pop culture references. Naomi Campbell in her white trap outfit. American actress Bo Derek," says Hanson.
"Esquire magazine was the template. They had painted pin-ups but they didn't have nudes. Hefner basically reconfigured a magazine made by older men to fit a younger man's need, and then took it a step further," she says.
Playboy's circulation peaked at more than 7.16m copies in 1972, with a quarter of all American male college students reportedly reading it in the 1970s. It literally explained sex to a generation of American men.
The success of Playboy magazine gave way to the rise of the Playboy lifestyle, allowing Hefner to build a Playboy mansion, create Playboy clubs with cocktail waitresses decked out in Bunny outfits and endless Playboy merchandise.
The rise of feminism led to some criticism that women were being objectified. US feminist and journalist Gloria Steinem worked undercover at the New York Playboy Club to write "A Bunny's Tale," which showed conditions waitresses faced in 1963.
But Hanson argues Playboy magazine was a respectable, even desirable, place for women to "show themselves off". "It was a poor girl's pageant, grandmothers would approve," she says.
It also ushered in a new era of women's magazine publishing. Cosmopolitan famously published a nude photo of Burt Reynolds as a centrefold in 1972 and the debut issue of Playgirl appeared in June 1973.
More raunchy US competitors like Hustler and Penthouse soon arrived, while so-called lad mags such as Maxim, Stuff and FHM followed later.
But it was the internet era - which made pornography more readily available - which the magazine blamed for the circulation plummeting to its current 800,000.
The company no longer makes most of its money from its racy photos. Instead it's made from licensing its logo on merchandise.
Playboy's website has already banished nudity, and web traffic has quadrupled.
Magazine executives hope the print version will follow in its footsteps.
But Hanson isn't convinced. "Unless a new breed of hipster manages to get retro magazines back in fashion like vinyl records, without nudity Playboy is a limping beast," she says.
More from the Magazine
Burt Reynolds nude: 10 facts about the Cosmo centrefold (April 2012)
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There's no recycling like the recycling of ideas.
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By Neil PriorBBC News
A push by UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove to help build a greener future with a financial incentive for people to return bottles and cans bears a striking similarity to a money-making concept enjoyed by hundreds of Welsh school children in times gone by.
Under the new plan, shoppers will be able to avoid a new levy on single-use cans and bottles if they return them for recycling… sounding familiar?
Not so very long ago, generations of Welsh children would hurriedly gather up their empty glass bottles when they heard the clink of the Corona Pop Man's van… (or even his horse-and-cart, for those with longer memories).
In the 1920s each empty yielded a ha'penny, but by the 1980s it had risen to the princely sum of 10p.
As Jason Hughes recalls, growing up in Caernarfon, north Wales in the 1970s, those deposits soon added up.
"The pop man was a God-send. If you'd blown your pocket money, or if you'd been naughty, you could always hunt around the house for some empties.
"I think it took five or six of them to have enough for a full one, which you'd have to down before your mum got home, then hide the bottle under your bed for the next time."
As with so much in Wales, the idea of door-to-door pop deliveries was tied up with the late 19th Century Temperance movement.
South Wales valleys-based Corona, along with dozens of similar soft drink brands, were created as a rival to beer, in order to slake the thirst of miners after a shift underground.
While they failed to prove a panacea for drunkenness, they were a massive hit in their own right; so much so that by 1934 Corona spread out opening further factories in Pengam, Maesteg and Bridgend, with over 200 delivery drivers serving the whole of south Wales.
However, with the introduction of plastic bottles and customers preferring to shop in supermarkets, Corona's Porth plant closed in 1987, to be transformed into - fittingly enough - The Pop Factory.
In west Wales however, Tovali kept up the tradition until 2001, but they too were forced to bow to the modern trends.
They now manufacture squash and cordials for the retail sector, and managing director Eurwyn Harris is sceptical about any attempts to turn back the clock.
"Don't get me wrong, I loved the face-to-face contact we had from collecting customers bottles, but we couldn't do that again," he said.
"We had a washery cleaning 5,000 bottles a week in the 1970s, but all that's gone now because we were told plastic was the future."
He added: "The levy is a great idea in theory, but how is it going to work? We don't have a plastic recycling plant, so who's going to collect the empties, and where are they supposed to take them?
"I think it would be far better if the money they collect was spent on educating households about reducing conspicuous usage, and increasing the amount local authorities recycle."
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English Defence League (EDL) founder Tommy Robinson has announced he will stand in the upcoming European Parliament elections.
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Mr Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is expected to stand as an MEP candidate in the North West England constituency.
He pledged to represent "the working class of England" if elected as an Independent MEP.
Anti-extremism campaigners Hope Not Hate called for voters to oppose him.
There are nine parties and two Independent candidates standing in the North West MEP elections as follows:
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There won't be a red box brandished on the steps of Number 11, a pint won't be up a penny or down a couple, and the chancellor certainly won't have to reach for a stiffener under the despatch box, like some of his predecessors who had a whiskey stashed there for the odd sip or two to get through a marathon Parliamentary statement.
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Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter
What there also will not be in Philip Hammond's spring statement are grand gestures of new spending; no big cheques being signed by Mr Hammond to portion out your money.
With the balance of the books improving, the chancellor might sound a bit cheerier than at his last big outing.
The public spending numbers appear much healthier than before Christmas.
Unless he undergoes a personality transplant overnight, however, he's hardly going to be chucking money about with abandon.
Expect instead a focus on paying down the debt and taking a "balanced approach" - that's the government's code for carrying on with tight public spending to pay off the public debt.
The argument over the deficit may be over, mostly.
But the government wants now to focus on the debt.
The Hammond case is that we might have cleared the overdraft, but we still have a hefty mortgage that needs to be paid down.
But just because Tuesday's spring statement will be skimpy, it doesn't mean there aren't bigger conversations about the future of the public purse going on.
In fact, senior figures in government have told me there are discussions going on in government about one of the biggest political priorities of all - the NHS.
Several senior sources say that, at the end of January, the cabinet discussed ways of getting more money into the health service in the long term.
That included the foreign secretary's by now familiar argument about the hoped-for but disputed Brexit dividend.
But more intriguingly for a Conservative government, I'm told that the cabinet discussed the possibility of tax rises to fund more spending for the NHS, even a hypothecated tax, as spelled out by senior MPs like Nick Boles.
This does seem to be rather a change of heart.
For months last year, and on the general election trail, the prime minister maintained, time and again, that the NHS has the money that it needs - the funds that it requested.
With the opposition and senior Tories calling for a long-term look at the levels of cash, the line seemed to stay the same.
In January this year, the prime minister repeated that "we have put money in that was asked for in that review, and we've actually put some extra money in, in the spring statement and the Budget last year to deal with this.
"You keep talking about the money but actually what you also need to look at is how the NHS works."
Behind closed doors however, that position is shifting.
One cabinet minister told me "most of us accept now that something has to happen - we have to find a way".
Another said: "It's hard to see how healthcare won't need more money".
A different cabinet minister accepted that "conversations are very live" about the best way to make sure that the NHS is getting what it needs.
There is no consensus in government yet about the right way to go.
Number 10 isn't suddenly about to turn the spending taps on and flood the health service with money.
But at the highest levels of government there is a growing acceptance that the NHS will need more cash, even if the government is far from settling when or how.
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With the world's biggest bike race starting in Leeds on 5 July, BBC Yorkshire's Tour de France correspondent Matt Slater rounds up the best of the gossip, opinion and stories, on and off the bike, and also tries to explain some of cycling's unique lingo.
TOP STORIES
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Two wheels good, four wheels bad: We have known the broad brushstrokes of the road-closure plan in Leeds for some time, now we can see the fine detail. While it might not make for a pretty picture for some, for most it remains a magnificent spectacle that will be remembered and talked about for years to come. And even for those who do not appreciate the Tour's aesthetic charms, this is not a permanent piece, although its effect should linger.
Full story: Yorkshire Post
For the greater good: On the short-term pain/long-term gain front, the Post's sister tabloid, the YEP, says the "inconvenience caused by the road closures will be worth it". An editorial in the paper points out that with proper planning, common sense and a sense of perspective any disruption to people's lives should be outweighed by the overall benefits to the region. Hear, hear.
Full story: Yorkshire Evening Post
Foxed in: That is not to say, however, that some people will not be paying a bigger price in terms of inconvenience than others, and they deserve a fair hearing. John Flowers, a railway signalman from Sheffield, is one such person. With his home in the Fox Hill part of the city "cut off" by the Tour for most of Sunday, 6 July, he has launched a website to raise awareness of the area's predicament. "Deep down, everyone in Fox Hill is quite proud of how Sheffield will be in the spotlight, but they just feel that being cut off for so long is over the top," says Flowers.
Full story: The Star
Public service announcement: But let us end today's press pickings with some typically good sense from the people behind the Dalesman's visitor guides. Here you will find lots of sound advice on where to watch the race, when to get there and how to do it. Fail to prepare; prepare to fail.
Full story: Dalesman
CYCLING ROUND-UP
A quieter day news-wise as pundits get their heads around the idea that the 2012 Tour de France champion Sir Bradley Wiggins really might not be on the start line in Leeds, or perhaps ride a Grand Tour for Team Sky again. As discussed on Tuesday, this is all still to be decided and we all really are just speculating at the moment, but even Chris Froome admitted to me on Saturday that "it's a hot topic".
Away from Team Sky's three pipe selection problem, Mark Cavendish's Omega Pharma-Quick Step team seem a much more settled bunch. The Manx sprinter joined his colleagues on Monday for a look at the cobbled sections of stage five on the Belgian/French border.
The bumps have been added to the route this year as the Tour's way of marking the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, with stage five beginning in the Belgian town made famous (and flattened) by the conflict, Ypres. For a man who had been shaken about for a bit, Cavendish sounded very chipper: "We're the strongest cobbled classics team in the world and we can win every one."
One man who definitely will not be in Yorkshire this summer is the Giro d'Italia champion Nairo Quintana. The organisers of the Tour had been quietly optimistic that the Colombian might be tempted to go for the Giro/Tour double this year, adding another big name to their field. But he has now admitted he is cream-crackered and needs a rest, with his next target being the Vuelta a Espana. He will be back at the Tour next year, though, determined to go one better than last year's second place.
TWEET OF THE DAY
"Want to get paid to ride to work? Move to France where 25c/km payment is being trialled."
@roadcc reports on a scheme being trialled by the French government to encourage people to commute by bike. This could be quite lucrative if, for example, your work commute is, ahem, Macclesfield to Leeds. The days would be quite long, though.
A TO Z OF LE TOUR
U is for…
UCI - Cycling's Fifa, and for many years almost as newsworthy as football's governing body. The Union Cycliste Internationale, or International Cycling Union, is based, like most of its sporting counterparts, in Switzerland, but is led by Lancastrian Brian Cookson, the former head of British Cycling.
Much maligned in recent decades due to its inability - some say wilful refusal - to tackle the sport's doping problems, its reputation is on the up again thanks to a sense that the worst of those problems are in the past, cycling's rising popularity and a new focus on issues such as women's cycling. The UCI's main function at the Tour is to supply the commissaires, or referees. And to use that football comparison again, there is nearly always a refereeing controversy at the Tour.
TODAY'S TOUR TRIVIA
To pick up on that point, one of the most memorable recent controversies involved our very own Mark Cavendish. The year was 2009 and the green jersey competition had come down to a straight, and very tight, battle between the rising British star and his more experienced Norwegian rival Thor Hushovd. The contest had ebbed and flowed between them for a fortnight when Cavendish beat Hushovd in a sprint at the end of stage 14 in Besancon. This was not for the victory - although Cavendish had already claimed four of those - it was for 13th place, as a breakaway group had already claimed the top 12 places. But Hushovd claimed Cavendish had veered across him, forcing him to brake or hit the barriers. The commissaires agreed, and relegated the Manx Missile to last place, giving Hushovd the 13 points on offer.
Cavendish was furious, but Hushovd did not back down and would go on a few days later to launch a solo attack on a day in the mountains to claim all maximum points in the intermediate sprints. Cavendish would hit back with two more sprint wins, to beat Hushovd 6-1 on that count, but the Norwegian would win the green jersey for his greater consistency but by only 10 points.
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France is recovering from its defeat by Portugal in the final of the European Championships in Paris. But despite the loss of the trophy, the host nation walked away from the National Stadium on Sunday with a more highly-prized achievement.
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By Lucy WilliamsonBBC Paris correspondent
It is France, after all, so there was applause for the winner. Good manners count for a lot here. Scattered applause, to be sure, and understandably half-hearted, but the gesture was there, and many of those gathered in front of TV screens in the bars around the Bataclan on Sunday night were determined to be philosophical rather than bitter.
"Of course we wanted to win," said Floris, leaning against the railings of a nearby metro station as he absorbed the news. "We are very disappointed, everybody is sad…
"But we were all together tonight. All the country was together behind France, and that's the sort of thing we will never forget: even if we lose, we are together, we are French, we are happy to be French."
Portugal stun hosts to win Euros
We threw away great chance to win title - Deschamps
The coming together of this country was a poignant moment for many, because this tournament was always about more than football for France.
It was about lifting the sense of gloom that has permeated the nation since the terror attacks last year; it was about healing the divisions running through the nation; and it was about proving that France could keep its people secure.
On that last point, the authorities here will be enjoying a moment of relief. In the run-up to the games, 100,000 security personnel were drafted in to provide protection, and public excitement here was muted amid fears of another attack.
But aside from some inter-fan violence in the early stages, few of the security fears around the Euros have materialised, and the Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said on Monday morning that the tournament had been "a success" despite the high security threat.
Neither have long-running strikes and protests affected games too badly, nor the floods, nor any of the other grim cycle of challenges that France has faced over the last 18 months.
But the terror attacks, economic crisis and worsening social division here have taken their toll, and it has sometimes felt as if everywhere the French looked, the picture seemed dark.
The traces of last year's attacks were woven through this competition too: the appearance of the president to watch the national team at the Stade de France brought back memories of the night they played there on 13 November, when suicide bombers blew themselves up outside.
The sister of France's star striker, Antoine Griezmann, survived the siege at the Bataclan that night.
The Bataclan itself, just down the street from where Floris and his friends were commiserating on Sunday night, is still boarded up. But all along this boulevard, the terraces were packed, the crowds refusing to give in to their fears.
"I was very happy that everything went well during this Euro," said Floris. "We were all outside, you know, we weren't at our homes. We go outside, watching the game, because we are free, we are French and we are happy to be here."
Striking comments from a losing fan, but then from where France stands, almost everything did go well during the Euros. They did not get the trophy, but they stayed safe.
The games, billed as a prime target for terrorism, showed that attacks weren't always inevitable, and that it wasn't only disaster that could bring the country together.
If only for a month, this tournament gave France permission to feel good again.
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Huawei has denied that it has any links to the Chinese government.
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By Mary-Ann RussonBusiness reporter, BBC News
Huawei's cyber-security chief John Suffolk told MPs on Monday that the tech giant had never been asked by China or any other government to "do anything untoward".
Mr Suffolk said Huawei welcomed outsiders to analyse its products and detect engineering or coding flaws.
"We stand naked in front of the world, but we would prefer to do that, because it enables us to improve our products."
He added: "We want people to find things, whether they find one or one thousand, we don't care. We are not embarrassed by what people find."
Huawei was invited to the Technology and Science Select Committee to answer questions from MPs on the security of its equipment, and its links to the Chinese government.
The US has encouraged allies to block Huawei - the world's largest maker of telecoms equipment - from their 5G networks, saying the Chinese government could use its products for surveillance.
"We've never had a request from the Chinese government to do anything untoward at all," said Mr Suffolk.
"We have never been asked by the Chinese government or any other government, I might add, to do anything that would weaken the security of a product."
MPs raised concerns about Chinese human rights abuses, such as reports that up to a million Muslims are in detention centres in Xinjiang province.
They asked whether Huawei was required to provide equipment to Xinjiang province, especially in light of the 2017 Chinese intelligence law, which requires individuals and associations to comply with Chinese intelligent agencies.
Mr Suffolk said: "We have had to go through a period of clarification with the Chinese government, that has come out and made it quite clear that that is not the requirement of any company.
"We've had that validated via our lawyers and revalidated by Clifford Chance...according to our legal advice, that does not require Huawei to undertake anything that weakens Huawei's position in terms of security."
Remote access
MPs asked whether Huawei would be able to remotely access the UK's 5G mobile networks via its equipment.
In reply, Mr Suffolk stressed that Huawei is a provider of telecommunications equipment to mobile network operators.
"We don't run networks, and because we don't run the network, we have no access to any of the data that is running across that network," he said.
He also explained that Huawei is only one of about 200 vendors who would be providing various different bits of equipment that would eventually make up a 5G network in the UK.
However, if an operator were to have a problem with Huawei equipment, a support centre based in Romania would be able to remotely access the equipment to fix the problem.
MPs wanted to know whether it would be possible for a 5G network to be used to track an individual user.
In response, Mr Suffolk explained that mobile phone technology requires the mobile operator to constantly track a user's phone, in order to be able to connect them to the mobile network.
By that logic, the operator is constantly tracking all of its customers, all the time.
He also told MPs that only about 30% of the the components in Huawei products are actually made by the company - the rest of the components are obtained from a global supply chain that Huawei closely monitors in order to prevent security breaches.
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Armistice Day is remembered as the day World War One ended, but for naval historians Britain's greatest victory came 10 days later. Operation ZZ was the code name for the surrender of Germany's mighty navy.
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By Marek PruszewiczBBC World Service
For those who witnessed "Der Tag" or "The Day" it was a sight they would never forget - the greatest gathering of warships the world had ever witnessed.
It was still dark in the Firth of Forth when the mighty dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet began to raise steam and one by one let slip their moorings.
The huge shapes of more than 40 battleships and battlecruisers began to ease out, course set due east. As the procession of steel headed for the open water of the North Sea, more than 150 cruisers and destroyers joined them. The mightiest fleet ever to sail from Britain's shores was heading for a final rendezvous with its mortal enemy - the German High Seas Fleet.
Victory would be total. But there was to be no battle. After four years of naval stalemate, this was the day when Germany would deliver her warships into British hands, without a shot being fired.
The date was 21 November 1918. World War One had ended on land 10 days earlier, but this was to be the decisive day of victory at sea.
After tense negotiation, Germany had agreed to deliver its fleet - the second biggest in the world behind only the Royal Navy - into the hands of the British. The mighty assembly steaming to meet the Germans was a reception committee so overwhelming that it would brook no changes of plan.
"The Royal Navy perceived something that others did not. They wanted to underline to the Germans that they had truly been defeated, and nothing does that better than having to surrender your fleet into the enemy's hands," explains Andrew Choong, Curator of Ships, Plans and Historic Photographs at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
Operation ZZ saw the mightiest gathering of warships in one place on one day in naval history.
It was a sight those who saw it would never forget. The unnamed correspondent for the Times, watching from the deck of the British flagship the dreadnought HMS Queen Elizabeth, was overwhelmed:
"The annals of naval warfare hold no parallel to the memorable event which it has been my privilege to witness today. It was the passing of a whole fleet, and it marked the final and ignoble abandonment of a vainglorious challenge to the naval supremacy of Britain."
Two days earlier nine German battleships, five battlecruisers, seven cruisers and 50 destroyers had set sail, heading west. Under the terms of the Armistice which had ended the war they were to hand themselves over in the Firth of Forth, before being brought to the lonely Orkney anchorage of Scapa Flow.
It was a fleet built to challenge Britain's dominance at sea. Its construction had sparked a naval arms race which helped turn the two countries against one another.
As an island nation, dependent on imports to feed itself, Britain had to rule the waves. Defeat at sea by Germany could have led to blockade, possible starvation and surrender.
The commanders of the Royal Navy knew it was not an option. As Winston Churchill had said, Sir John Jellicoe, the admiral who led the Royal Navy until 1916, was "the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon".
To avoid that possibility Britain built more warships and bigger warships than Germany. Throughout the war she held an advantage of roughly two-to-one in battleships and battlecruisers. Superiority in numbers was designed to make defeat in battle impossible, and bottle up the Germans on the other side of the North Sea.
It worked.
"A lot is said about how close Germany's U-boats came to strangling Britain in 1917, but if you turn it around, by early 1915 the seas were empty of German merchant ships," explains Andrew Choong.
"Germany's overseas trade was effectively shut off overnight. It ended up causing her major problems later in the war."
The blockade of Germany meant that by 1918 it was the Germans who were hungry, not the British. Unrest followed, then a clamour for peace. For maritime historians like Andrew Choong, the strategic defeat of Germany at sea was an even greater British contribution to victory than the battles fought on land.
"I personally think the maritime contribution was our most important one, but not in battle. It was the quieter strangulation by blockade," he says.
As he led his fleet out of the Firth of Forth, Sir David Beatty, Jellicoe's successor as commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, could count on an overwhelming superiority to forestall any final show of German defiance. As well as his ships, he was joined by five American battleships and three French warships.
Nevertheless, he was taking no chances. His orders issued the night before were clear - ships were to be ready for action:
"Turrets and guns are to be kept in the securing positions, but free. Guns are to be empty with cages up and loaded ready for ramming home. Directors and armoured towers are to be trained on. Correct range and deflection are to be kept set continuously on the sights."
As the Grand Fleet sailed into the North Sea, it formed two massive columns, one to the north, one to the south, six miles apart. Just before 10:00 it met the Germans, being led to their surrender by the British light cruiser HMS Cardiff. The Allied columns swung round to due west, forming an overwhelming escort on either side of the Germans.
The Times correspondent described the scene:
"Between the lines came the Germans, led by the Cardiff, and looking for all the world like a school of leviathans led by a minnow. Over them flew a British naval airship. First came the battlecruisers, headed by the Seydlitz."
By late morning it was over. The German ships, missing one destroyer which had struck a mine and sunk, lay at anchor off the Isle of May in the outer reaches of the Firth of Forth, surrounded by their jailers. Beatty rammed home the message with a curt signal:
"The German flag will be hauled down at sunset today and will not be hoisted again without permission."
Before holding a service of thanksgiving on board HMS Queen Elizabeth, Beatty thanked the sailors of the Grand Fleet.
"My congratulations on the victory which has been gained over the sea power of our enemy. The greatest of this achievement is in no way lessened by the fact that the final episode did not take the form of a fleet action."
The Royal Navy stood at the apex of its power. Britannia truly ruled the waves. "As of that date, Britain was still the world's predominant naval power, and the world's second naval power had just placed its ships in our custody," Choong explains.
But it was not to last. Within a few months the German fleet would be at the bottom of Scapa Flow, scuttled by skeleton crews in a final act of defiance.
With no enemy left to face, and Britain desperate to slash military budgets, the Royal Navy could not justify the expense of its massive ships.
"The majority were scrapped between the 1920s and the early 1930s. A handful of the most capable went on to serve in World War Two," explains Choong.
At least one of the British battleships, HMS Hercules, was towed across the North Sea to meet her fate in a breakers yard in the German naval port of Kiel.
But as darkness fell on 21 November 1918 that was still in future. As buglers played "making sunset", cheers rang out from the sailors of the Grand Fleet. The Times correspondent knew he had witnessed a unique spectacle.
"The plan of the operation will not convey to the mind any conception of the scene, but it must be placed on permanent record, for it indicates a disposition of hostile fleets such as has never been seen before and will in all likelihood never be seen again."
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Boris Johnson said his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, "followed the instincts of every father and every parent" when he drove his wife and child to County Durham during lockdown, rather than isolating at his London home.
But there has been anger from members of the public who did not travel to be closer to their families amidst the crisis.
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Kathryn de Prudhoe, from Leeds, and her husband had coronavirus in the first two weeks of lockdown.
But despite having to take care of their two children - aged five and eight-years-old - and her step-father falling ill, they stayed at home and "followed the guidelines".
She told the BBC that her mother was "left on her own" when her stepfather went into hospital, leaving her isolating alone for 14 days.
And when she went to drop shopping at her mother's door, Kathryn discovered her stepfather had taken a turn for the worse.
"We had to stay three metres apart when she got the news that life support was being turned off," she said.
"I sat on a camping chair three metres apart from her. I didn't hug her. We knew that was the right thing to do and we did what we had to do to keep ourselves and others safe."
When Kathryn's stepfather was laid to rest, only five people were allowed to attend the funeral.
"To now see what Dominic Cummings did, to make a completely new set of rules for himself when we have sacrificed so much, it's completely disrespectful," she said.
"To see somebody who's made the rules flouting them so blatantly is really insulting to families like mine."
'Rest of the country has been staying away'
Alison Gee, from Guildford, has two grandchildren who she has not been able to see - or help - in the lockdown.
"My children have all had symptoms and are trying to work from home, with one child of 16 months and another of nine months," she said.
"But I have not, as their grandmother, been allowed to help them out by looking after their grandchildren."
Alison said the situation with Mr Cummings was "ridiculous", adding: "The rest of the country has been staying away from relatives, even when fully fit or recovered from Covid-19 as advised, with grandparents not seeing their children or grandchildren - not even newborns.
"Yet this man who advises the government to implement these rules decided to travel with his family, who have symptoms."
Alison said had she known it was "justifiable and reasonable" to do so, she would have travelled the five miles to look after her grandchildren when their parents were ill.
"That would have saved our family an enormous amount of anguish and heartbreak," she said. "[It is] yet another ludicrous situation this government has brought about."
'Emotional cost'
Tony Bryson from Ayr said he was "livid" about the actions of Mr Cummings after he missed a family funeral due to the lockdown.
His uncle, Ryan Storrie, died 10 days after first showing symptoms of coronavirus.
"I couldn't go to my uncle's funeral because only a certain number of people could go," said Tony.
"He was only 40. There would have been a lot of people there.
"Missing the funeral is something I'll regret for a long time. It's got an emotional cost."
Tony said Mr Cummings' trip was "such a clear breach of the guidelines".
He added: "There have been all these stories about people being stopped driving to places and this guy's driven further than any of them.
"He gets away with it because he's part of the government."
He also worried it would "put the whole situation at risk", saying: "If the guidelines don't apply to him, why should they apply to anyone else?"
'Everyone local was there for us'
Mick Carter from Surrey has been self-isolating due to having COPD and Asthma, so stuck to the rules by shielding at home.
But while he was staying indoors, his mother passed away in a care home just one mile from his own house.
"When the lockdown came into full effect I couldn't see her at all," he said. "We got the phone-call saying she was unwell and then a few hours later [she died]."
Mick's mother did not have Covid-19, but because of social distancing, he still could not say goodbye, and he still hasn't been able to see his 15-year-old daughter either.
"I have been watching every update," he said. "I am on the vulnerable list, but all I wanted was food deliveries.
"Everyone local was there for us - my family is all over the place, so I couldn't go to them."
He said his family were "staunchly following the lockdown" because "this is what Brits do".
"When you see [Mr Cummings' actions] being defended by the PM, I feel cheated out of seeing my mum for the last time," said Mick.
"I feel like Dominic Cummings has no respect for the living or the dead."
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Fermanagh business man Sean Quinn has been declared bankrupt at Belfast High Court despite the majority of the 64-year-old's holdings and debt being from the Irish Republic. So why has this happened?
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By John CampbellBBC News
The personal bankruptcy laws in the Republic are onerous - it typically takes 12 years to be discharged from bankruptcy, though in some cases it can be five.
In the Republic you will also lose your pension. As a result there are a tiny number of bankruptcies in the Republic - just 30 in 2010.
In Northern Ireland and the UK you can be discharged from bankruptcy after a year.
You will also keep your pension.
As a result the courts would process 30 bankruptcies in a slow week.
This means that people with huge debts in Ireland are moving to the UK to take advantage of those differences.
The Cork developer John Fleming who owes about 1bn euros was discharged from bankruptcy this week. He had moved to live in Essex.
Contracts for Difference (CFD) were Quinn's undoing - in essence they are financial products which allow you to bet on shares without having to own the shares. In that respect they are a derivative - they derive their value from the underlying share.
CFDs have three main advantages:
Privacy - your name does not appear on the share register
Tax - you don't have to pay stamp duty as you would if you bought the shares
Leverage - As you are not buying the shares you don't have to put down the full amount of the money. You can 'lever- up' with borrowings.
But with leverage always lies danger.
Quinn was betting that the price of the shares would rise and he would profit from the difference between the price at which he bought the derivative contract and the new price. Hence 'contract for difference'.
But when the Anglo Irish Bank share price nosedived Quinn was in trouble. He was hit with a series of 'margin calls' which meant he had to keep putting up more and more of his money.
Eventually things got so bad he had to crystallise his losses by buying the shares outright - which he did by borrowing the 2bn euros from the Anglo Irish Bank.
And it's due to those borrowings that he's bust.
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Berkshire's economy will be over £150m better off if Bracknell Forest gets superfast broadband, the council's chief executive has claimed.
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Broadband providers are expected to provide 80% of Berkshire homes with the service before the end of 2015.
However, over 37,000 homes will be left without it.
Victor Nicholls, from Bracknell Forest Council, is urging people to support online campaign Superfastberkshire to campaign for the service in the area.
Mr Nicholls said that council research estimates that superfast broadband would help create 2,300 new jobs in the area in the next five to seven years and generate £150m.
"Fast broadband is hugely beneficial for businesses and makes the area attractive to commercial investors," he said.
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Ethiopia is suffering its worst drought in 30 years, but the country is better equipped to cope than the crisis in 1984, writes the BBC's Clive Myrie, who has visited one of the worst affected areas.
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It is a hard-scrabble life being a farmer in northern Ethiopia.
Normal years are tough. In some areas the soil is poor for farming. There is little or no application of manure, so it is low in nutrients and crop yields are not as high as they could and should be. Any failure of seasonal rains spells big trouble, because reserve stockpiles of food will never be plentiful.
Bertukan Ali has lived such a life like many of the rural poor in the district of North Wallo, the most drought-prone region of Ethiopia.
Earlier this year she and her family waited patiently for the spring "belg" rains to fall.
Day after day they waited. Their fields, full of sorghum seeds, were thirsty. But the rains never came.
"OK", she said to herself, "we'll survive. The spring 'belg' are notoriously unreliable anyway, the summer 'kiremt' rains will shower the sorghum seeds in warm water."
So they waited, and waited, but again the rains did not come.
'Everyone is suffering'
When I met Bertukan a couple of days ago, she had just buried her five-year-old son Abdu Mohammed. He was a sickly child, not in the best of health, but when the family ran out of food because the rains did not come, he just got weaker and weaker.
Bertukan and I visited his grave, crowned with a vibrant green canopy of vine leaves.
We stood in front of it, and suddenly she began to cry. I did not know what to do. I did not know how to console her, help take away her pain. So I put my arm around her, it seemed to make sense at the time.
Bertukan told me that when Abdu Mohammed died, she felt as if she'd lost everything.
"Everyone is suffering," she told me. "We all have so little to eat because there was no harvest this season."
The UN says that in one area, two babies were dying every day. So Bertukan had joined a growing list of other mothers who had been left inconsolable.
As bad as 1984?
Many Ethiopians still remember the famine more than 30 years ago that spawned a global humanitarian response.
I met a man this week in North Wallo, less than 50 minutes drive from Korem, the area where so many people died in 1984, who recalls a "famine of biblical proportions".
Abera Weldu is now 68 and he has a face full of character. Like someone out of a pulp fiction novel, he had seen it all, done it all.
Every crease, every line, betrayed a life full of experience, and one of those experiences is having lived through the worst drought in a hundred years.
He looked me right in the eye, and like the man from a pulp fiction novel, gave it to me straight, both barrels blazing.
"Although this drought has just started, it's going to get worse," he said.
"It's already really severe. Some people have died of hunger, others are sick in their beds - right now it's just like 1984."
"Hang on," I thought to myself, "some estimates put those dying in the drought of 31 years ago at 100,000 to 200,000 people."
But the UN confirmed what Abera knew in his gut, from experience. The failure of the rains in 2015 were indeed as bad as the failure of the rains in 1984.
Much has improved
But much has changed in the intervening years.
In the 1980s, money that may have helped ease the effects of the drought, was instead used to fight a war to keep the country together, with the province of Eritrea wanting to break away.
Eritrea gained independence in 1993 but later fought a bitter border war with Ethiopia, which ended in 2000.
Ethiopia's economy is now one of the fastest growing in the world according to the International Monetary Fund - a far cry from the 1980s.
So much so that the government is now able to set aside $192m (£127m) to help deal with the current emergency, although the UN says far more is needed.
Poorer farmers in rural areas have for several years now been able to take advantage of a sort of social security safety net, where in lean times they have received money for public works, like digging water holes for animals.
That has meant that fewer people have starved when harvests have been poor.
And crucially Ethiopia has moved to a much more federal system of government since 1984. This means local officials have more autonomy to assess regional needs and mobilise resources more quickly to deal with hunger.
When I spoke with Bertukan Ali, by the grave of her son, she was carrying one of her other little boys in a sling on her back. He looked fit and strong.
Maybe he will survive this drought.
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