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"It's all about modesty for me. As a Muslim, being modest is a major thing and I just wanted to showcase to everyone that you can be modest and be into fashion because the hijab itself - apart from representing Islam - represents beauty."
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By Osob ElmiBBC News
Ikram Abdi Omar was the UK's first hijab-wearing model to feature on the cover of Vogue at the age of 21 and became the face of Burberry in 2019.
The Swedish-born Somali model, now 23 and living in Bristol, said her heritage and religious beliefs have greatly influenced her modelling career.
"I like how everyone can express themselves differently and manage to portray a message with clothing alone," she said.
"I believe my role in this industry embodies women's empowerment itself, because it shows that women have the choice to dress however they like, whether that includes showing skin or not, and still feel brilliant."
"The hijab itself is an extremely significant thing to me as it stands for modesty and beauty, it shows confidence and is a reminder that I have the choice to dress the way I want.
"In a more spiritual sense, I feel closer to God and more connected to Islam when I wear the hijab and that in fact has intensified over the years."
Breaking the news to her relatives in 2018 that she would be quitting her biomedical science degree to pursue a modelling career prompted mixed reactions.
She said: "I feel like when grandparents hear the word modelling, they start to think of modelling that isn't modest and it worries them.
"But with explanations about modest modelling, they are aware now and have seen images which puts them at ease."
While her father, Abdi Omar, wanted her to finish the course at the University of the West of England (UWE), he has been supportive of her choice.
He said: "I think as long as it's not compromising her religious beliefs, it was fine with me.
"There were many people in the Somali community that questioned Ikram's chosen career path but we had to explain.
"When we go back to our traditional roots, the older generation do not approve of anything to do with modelling or involving women being at the forefront in the public eye, but it's important to educate them and highlight that if you have morals and values, the western society respects you."
Being one of the first ever hijab-wearing models, Ikram has paved the way for women from the Muslim community to enter the modelling industry.
She said: "It's exciting to see a new wave of young Somali models because I feel like I have more sisters that I can connect and share experiences with.
"We can all help support, learn and lean on each other because it can be very intense and draining with a schedule in this industry. We can get advice on how each of us copes with everything.
"Stepping into a field where the hijab isn't a common thing to see, it gives hope to younger girls that wear the hijab, showing them that heights can be reached no matter the race, gender, age or religion. As long as you stay true to yourself."
Ikram has walked for the likes of Roland Mouret, Tommy Hilfiger, Molly Goddard, Iceberg, British fashion designer Richard Quinn, Juicy Couture and more.
In November 2019 she was featured in the Burberry festive campaign depicting motherhood.
"I felt honoured to be able to portray how motherhood is the first view of courage and leadership to a child," she said.
"My mother keeps me humble and discussions with her help me stay true to my beliefs.
"I think it's very important for children to feel that bond and have that sense of relationship with their parents."
Her mother, Khadra Egeh, 50, said: "Growing up, Ikram was very talented, she always liked singing and dancing.
"When we were in Sweden and she was in nursery school, her teachers asked me if she could star in a film and I didn't allow her because I didn't want her to mix in the film industry and drift away from her culture and religion."
Somali model Iman and supermodel Naomi Campbell have been Ikram's inspiration.
She remembers the "major adrenaline rush" of walking alongside Campbell on the Tommy Hilfiger runway.
"I felt like I was representing a bigger role than just myself, but a community that has dreams and aspirations of reaching places in different industries, regardless of how they look," she added.
Ikram was born in Husby, Stockholm and moved to Bristol in 2004.
Her modelling career began in the summer of 2018 when a casting director from Premier Models spotted her in Bristol's Cabot Circus shopping centre.
The agency also represents Campbell.
"Growing up as a Somali, I used to look up to my mum and aunties.
"Our culture has such beautiful, colourful and detailed clothing which definitely has had a massive influence on my clothing style today and my interest in fashion as a whole.
"For instance, our traditional clothing called the Dirac - which is one of my personal favourites - and the baati that we wear at home which also has such fantastic patterns and colours."
She says she has not faced any challenges in the industry "yet" due to her religious or cultural identity.
Ikram has a "my rules" segment in her contract which enables her to set boundaries that conform with her religious beliefs.
She was also featured on Nike's modest swimwear campaign, Victory Swim, in 2019.
"This campaign was a nice blend of being fashionable and modest which are both fundamental to my style," she said.
"Being a part of something so revolutionary relating to the history of a company like Nike was right up my alley, full modest wear aimed at Muslim females, as opposed to blending my modest wear in with a brand."
Born in Djibouti, Ikram's father came to England in 2004, having previously lived in Sweden.
He is proud of the "great connection" he has with his daughter.
"She always loved art, henna and at the age of five, she liked style and fashion and photography," he said.
And he remains supportive of her career choice.
"When both parents are educated they are often more open-minded and can share their lived experiences with their children.
"Carrying the name of Islam holds a very deep meaning and although modelling is not culturally accepted in our culture, as her father I had no doubt in her, there is a fine line that cannot be crossed.
"I taught her to love herself because to love yourself means you preserve, protect and respect yourself before anyone else and this is a foundation we built from her childhood.
"You can share your lived experience and try to make your child understand the consequences and reasoning behind why you don't approve of something they may want.
"Understanding is key from both sides."
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For Hannah Dalton, pregnancy meant not being able to drink fluids for eight months without throwing up, going into hospital 27 times for intravenous drips and living off ice lollies and anti-sickness medication.
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By Georgie Bevan BBC News
Hannah, 30, from Thundersley, Essex, had hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), the severe pregnancy sickness the Duchess of Cambridge experienced during her three pregnancies.
She was bedridden for six months, ended up in a wheelchair and, at her worst, her body started to shut down.
"I seriously questioned was this still worth doing," Hannah says.
"We wanted a bigger family but was there a chance that we would lose me. I thought I was dying."
Killing themselves
With support from her family, Hannah continued with her pregnancy and, in April, gave birth to a girl.
The moment she went into labour, the sickness stopped.
More than 5,000 women from across the UK have shared their experience of HG with BBC News:
Last year, UK hospitals saw more than 36,000 admissions for pregnant women needing urgent care because of extreme sickness and dehydration.
Hormonal changes
The causes of HG are unknown. There is some evidence it runs in families. And if a woman had HG in a previous pregnancy, she is more likely to have it in the next.
Now, scientists at King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital are launching a four-year study - the world's largest - in the hope of finding some answers.
Blood samples and medical histories will be taken from at least 1,000 women admitted to hospital with the most severe HG symptoms and others recruited via the charity Pregnancy Sickness Support.
The study will be looking for genetic links and hormonal changes, in particular a protein, GDF15, produced by the placenta, which affects the part of the brain controlling vomiting and nausea.
'Lifelong consequences'
Consultant obstetrician Prof Catherine Williamson says: "The problem we have is that the treatments aren't good enough.
"Our ambition is to identify genetic causes of this condition so we can tell why women have it and identify those at risk.
"We can then develop new treatments that are much more effective so hopefully there won't be any more women with severe hyperemesis, because we can control it."
What is hyperemesis gravidarum?
Ever since the thalidomide scandal 50 years ago, there has been concern about taking anti-sickness drugs during pregnancy.
The sedative, which was found to ease nausea and vomiting in expectant mothers, left thousands of babies with severe birth defects.
But most women with HG do end up taking some sort of medication to control the vomiting.
Only one, Xonvea, is permitted in Britain for use in pregnancy - but alternatives, such as cyclizine, prochlorperazine and ondansetron, are also regularly prescribed and considered safe by doctors who treat the condition.
Women may also be given vitamin B6 and B12 or steroids. If these don't work, women may need to be admitted to hospital for treatment including intravenous fluids.
Here are the words of one woman who terminated three pregnancies because of HG. She now has a young child.
"It's your own personal hell that you can't escape from. It's devastating. It completely takes over your life, your family's life, so it would be easier either to just miscarry or die.
"The vomiting and retching was so violent and so intense, I couldn't breathe.
"I couldn't take a breath while I was retching, so I passed out and woke up on the bathroom floor and I thought, 'Oh my God, I can't do this.'
'Ginger biscuits'
"I did have some dark moments.
"I wanted this baby so badly but I felt like it was killing me and ultimately, out of pure desperation, led me to have three terminations.
"I developed PTSD. I had insomnia and nightmares when I could sleep.
"The senior consultant came round and said, 'Have you tried ginger biscuits and salty crackers?' and I was like, 'Oh my God.'
"It's like saying to somebody with a broken leg, 'Have you tried rubbing lavender oil on it?'... because if the senior consultant didn't understand, what hope did I have?"
Caitlin Dean, from Pregnancy Sickness Support, says not treating HG has serious risks.
"Increasingly evidence suggests that, while the actual nausea and vomiting is unlikely to harm the offspring, the complications of HG, such as malnutrition, dehydration and mental ill health, can cause lifelong consequences for both mother and baby," she says.
"There are many wonderful, compassionate doctors out there providing excellent evidence-based care for people with HG but unfortunately there are also doctors who do not recognise the condition, are reluctant to prescribe appropriate treatment or are unaware of the evidence base.
"This leads to a vast amount of unnecessary suffering, costly hospital admissions and, all too often, terminations of otherwise wanted pregnancies.
"In 2019, there is very little excuse not to provide this basic level of care for pregnant women."
'Living hell'
Felicity Collins, from Northamptonshire, was desperate for doctors to prescribe her stronger drugs to help her cope with HG.
She was already in hospital, and 24 hours away from terminating her twin pregnancy, when she was finally given steroids to ease the constant vomiting.
"It was such a dark time," she says.
"It was a decision we made because I knew without those drugs, I couldn't carry on.
"I couldn't eat or drink. Everything made me sick. It was so bad. That's how close it came."
For the next six months, she injected herself daily with steroids, finally giving birth to twin boys, Arthur and Harry, who are now three years old.
In eight weeks of pregnancy, Laura Anderson lost one stone (6.3kg).
"I dream about eating again and drinking again," she says.
"This illness makes you a shadow of who you were… it's nine months of living hell."
'God forbid'
Laura faces about 20 more weeks of HG before she gives birth.
She says: "I fully intend on getting to the end of this pregnancy with a baby, no matter what it does to my health.
"And when this baby girl is born and the HG has gone, I will spend the rest of my life trying to raise awareness about this awful illness.
"I'm doing it for my daughter, in case she gets it, and God forbid that she does."
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Two teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a 17-year-old boy was seriously injured in a stabbing in Sheffield.
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The victim was injured during an altercation in Winn Gardens on Friday afternoon, South Yorkshire Police said.
He remains in hospital in a "critical but stable" condition, the force added.
An 18-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy were held on suspicion of attempted murder. A 17-year-old boy was detained on suspicion of assisting an offender.
All three have been released on bail.
Any witnesses to the stabbing are asked to get in touch with police.
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Director Christopher Nolan has defended the sound in his film Interstellar.
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Some viewers have complained that sections of dialogue are difficult to hear, but Nolan told the Hollywood Reporter that was intentional.
He said the idea was "to experience the journey the character is going on."
"I've always loved films that approach sound in an impressionistic way and that is an unusual approach for a mainstream blockbuster, but I feel it's the right approach."
In the epic sci-fi film Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey's characters go in search of new habitats for humankind after Earth is devastated by an agricultural crisis.
The Batman and Inception director said he used dialogue as a sound effect at points "so sometimes it's mixed slightly underneath the other sound effects... to emphasise how loud the surrounding noise is."
"I don't agree with the idea that you can only achieve clarity through dialogue. Clarity of story, clarity of emotions - I try to achieve that in a very layered way using all the different things at my disposal - picture and sound."
Explaining about one scene set in the spaceship Nolan said "the experience of being in the cockpit is you hear the creaking [of the spacecraft].
"It's a very scary sound. We wanted to be true to the experience of space travel. We wanted to emphasise those intimate elements."
Nolan spent six months mixing the sound with composer Hans Zimmer, re-recording mixers Gary Rizzo and Gregg Landaker and sound designer Richard King.
Some had questioned whether they could not hear some of the dialogue because of problems with cinema equipment, but Nolan said he has visited screenings in a number of theatres and praised the way the film was being shown.
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A man has been arrested after a woman was raped in a town centre alleyway.
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The victim, in her 20s, was assaulted in Grey School Passage, off High West Street, in Dorchester, at about 05:10 GMT.
A 22-year-old man, from Weymouth, has been arrested on suspicion of rape and is assisting officers with their inquiries, Dorset Police said.
A cordon put in place while an investigation was carried out has since been lifted.
Related Internet Links
Dorset Police
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A new law banning Isle of Man drivers from smoking in their cars if they are carrying children has come into force.
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The move follows similar bans in England and Wales and aims to protect under-16s from second-hand smoke.
Both the driver and the smoker, would typically be fined £50, although this could rise to £5,000, the Manx government said.
The regulations - brought under the Public Health (Tobacco) Act 2006 - were formally backed by Tynwald in February.
The law applies even if doors, windows and sun-roofs are open and prohibits the smoking of all cigarettes, cigars and pipes, but it does not include electronic cigarettes or vaporisers.
Related Internet Links
Department of Health
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Half of local authorities in Wales have handed over the running of their leisure services to outside organisations, with four more councils considering similar moves. Outsourcing is seen as a way to save money without losing leisure centres and swimming pools. But opponents say it is simply passing the buck.
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By Delyth LloydBBC News
"It's been tough, very tough," said Heidi Williams. "We were given a sinking ship and expected to make it float."
Ms Williams chairs Harlech and Ardudwy Leisure (HAL), a community company which took over the running of Harlech swimming pool in 2010, after Gwynedd council said it could no longer afford to run it.
"It's a massive thing to take on," she added. "At the end of the day, if it was making money, the local authority would have kept it open and not handed it over to us."
Her view is shared by Darrell Wright, former chairman of Splash Community Trust, which took over Wrexham's Plas Madoc leisure centre in 2014.
"You have to realise you will never, ever keep the place going from the people coming through the door," he said.
"The overheads are frightening - it costs about £75,000 to £80,000 a month just to pay the bills. We didn't realise that when we took it on. When we finally opened, we sat down and thought, 'dear me, what have we done here?'"
Both groups have had to go cap in hand to their councils, just to keep the doors open, and their money worries are far from over.
But despite the difficulties, these volunteers have managed to save - for now, at least - community facilities which would otherwise have shut.
As they look to cut costs, many Welsh councils see outsourcing as their best - or only - option to keep pools and leisure centres open.
In December, Cardiff council handed over eight leisure centres to GLL, a not-for-profit company which runs 300 such facilities across the UK.
It said the new arrangement would save £31.9m over 15 years, while providing "greater future certainty over the future of leisure provision in Cardiff".
At the other end of the country, in Denbighshire, the council has a different stance.
The authority's head of leisure, Jamie Groves, said there is no "clear rationale" for outsourcing.
"I think councils across Wales have been too ready to consider alternative models because they think the grass is greener.
"If you ask someone else to provide a service for you, it's got to be for betterment, it can't just be for quick-win savings.
Denbighshire was one of the first councils to outsource leisure services - in 2001 it set up Clwyd Leisure - an arms-length trust - to run Rhyl Sun Centre, Prestatyn Nova and the North Wales Indoor Bowls Centre.
It did not end well - the trust went into liquidation in 2014 and all three facilities were shut down.
While the Sun Centre was demolished in 2016, the Nova and Bowls Centre have been refurbished and reopened, this time under council control.
One year in, said Mr Groves, the Nova is already "overachieving".
"The council has invested just under £4m in this place and at the moment, it's on course to pay all that back and more.
Mr Groves is not alone in his doubts about outsourcing - public services union Unison warned it "spells disaster" for local communities and leisure centre staff.
Dominic MacAskill, Unison Cymru's head of local government said outsourced companies would "inevitably... look to make savings by sacking workers or not replacing staff who leave and squeeze wages and employment conditions.
"It is a short-term economic fix and cannot benefit people in the long term."
Flintshire council, which is currently handing over its leisure centres to outside organisations, insists its outsourcing plans are future proof.
Chief executive officer Ian Bancroft vows the authority "will not walk away" from two social enterprises which are taking on facilities at Connah's Quay and Holywell.
"They are cooperative relationships and we will continue to put in 20% of the cost of those centres, so those organisations will get a grant", he said.
"We've also set aside capital funding that they can draw down over a long period of time to deal with building issues.
"If you plan and you do it cooperatively... then I think it can be a success."
The rest of Flintshire's leisure facilities will be handed over to a community benefit society this summer - the first of its kind in Wales and, according to managing director Mike Welch, the only employee-owned one in the UK.
"We've worked really hard to get the employees on board," he said. "Their dedication and hard work will help to achieve some savings because they have a vested interest in it succeeding."
"There will be no pay cuts, no changes to benefits like holidays and pensions - there is no downside for staff at all."
Increased productivity, a more commercial approach and - because it is a charitable organisation - 80% relief on business rates, will result in a £500,000 saving in the first year, Mr Welch added.
"The alternative would have been quite simple," said Cllr Kevin Jones, Flintshire's cabinet member for leisure. "We'd have had to choose which centre to close."
Meanwhile HAL's Heidi Williams has some advice for community groups thinking about taking on a leisure centre: "Don't underestimate how strong your board needs to be. You need accountants, people who have HR and marketing skills.
"But really you can't run a facility like this without proper revenue support."
Six community councils have now agreed to contribute £50,000 to the leisure centre in a move that will mean council tax bills in the area rising by up to £25 a year.
It was a last resort, said Ms Williams.
"The local authority doesn't have the money to contribute so it was either do this or close.
"The most important thing is that local children still have somewhere they can learn to swim.
"Communities have to look after themselves now."
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A public consultation on the planned £2bn Paramount theme park has attracted 1,500 people in its first three days, its organisers have said.
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Exhibitions will be held across the Kent boroughs of Dartford and Gravesham at 10 locations in April and May.
The developers have said the entertainment resort will bring up to 27,000 jobs to the area.
However, more than 50 companies on the Swanscombe Peninsula have said they fear compulsory purchase orders.
The developers said the theme park would have more than 50 rides and attractions based on films and TV programmes.
The plans have yet to get government approval.
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A man aged in his 50s has been found murdered on a grassy area in Hull.
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Police started a murder inquiry following the discovery in the Dane Park Road area of the city on Friday night.
Det Supt Matthew Hutchinson, from the Major Crime Team, said police were currently carrying out forensic examinations of the scene.
"A cordon remains in place and we expect there to be a continuing police presence in the area," he said.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Humberside Police.
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Weeks of heavy rain have brought flooding to Berkshire and Oxfordshire.
Hundreds of homes have been evacuated, residents have been left without power and there has been widespread travel disruption.
BBC News looks at how events unfolded.
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And so it begins (23 December)
Power cuts, road closures and flooding are beginning to cause problems across Berkshire and Oxfordshire after heavy rain and gale-force winds.
About 60 residents at sheltered accommodation in Bicester in Oxfordshire are moved out overnight due to flooding.
The night before Christmas (24 December)
The bad weather means hundreds of homes across Oxfordshire lose electricity supplies on Christmas Eve. Scottish and Southern Energy say a total of 1,400 homes are without power. High winds bring down dozens of trees, blocking a number of roads.
In Berkshire, some 3,700 homes are without power in Reading and Newbury after high winds bring down lines. Newbury Station closes because of flooding and flood warnings are issued for the Loddon, Kennet and Enborne rivers. Abbey Street in Reading closes after a panel on The Blade, Reading's tallest building, comes loose.
Building repairs (2 January)
Workmen start repairs to The Blade in Reading after a panel on its roof was damaged. The damage to the office block caused Abbey Street to be closed due to fears of falling debris.
Dramatic rescue (7 February)
Heavy rain results in roads being closed around Oxfordshire. Near Faringdon, children from King Alfred Academy, Wantage, are rescued from a bus trapped in flood waters. Elsewhere in the county, more than 20 properties in Chalgrove, Grove, and Thames are flooded.
Residents in the Berkshire village of Waltham St Lawrence, near Maidenhead, call for a tanker to pump away water from overflowing sewers. Nicola Goodman, who lives in The Street, describes the water as "bubbling like a jacuzzi".
Military might (8 February)
Soldiers help to lay down sandbags outside the Pingewood substation a few miles from their barracks in Reading in an attempt to halt the relentless progress of flood water. More soldiers fill up bags from a supply of sand at Chieveley.
Sandbag saviours (9 February)
As the bad weather continues, so does the military might. The reservists continue to help laying sandbags in a bid to hold back flood waters threatening the Pingewood electricity substation. About 50 soldiers from the 7th Battalion The Rifles join firefighters to build a dam with hundreds of sandbags. The substation supplies power for about 40,000 homes and businesses in Berkshire.
It comes as a number of severe flood warnings are issued along the Thames between Old Windsor and Datchet. Parts of Caversham are also flooded by rising waters.
Meanwhile 20 residents from a flooded caravan park next to the River Thames in Oxfordshire, are rescued for the second time in five weeks.
Moving out (10 February)
There is no sign of the weather easing up, with 14 severe flood warnings issued along the River Thames in Berkshire and Surrey by the Environment Agency. The village of Datchet, in the shadow of Windsor Castle, is hit by flooding, and some residents are evacuated from their homes by emergency services.
Rising waters at the village's railway station disrupt rail travel while the main road through Datchet becomes impassable. Elsewhere in the county, councillor Colin Rayner speaks to the BBC about the flood situation in Wraysbury, Berkshire, and says "we need help here".
Call for action (11 February)
With the flooding showing no sings of easing, residents in Wraysbury, Berkshire, say not enough has been done to help those affected. Later that day, the army arrives to help. During a visit to the village, Labour leader Ed Miliband says more money needs to be spent on flood defences.
Meanwhile, the prime minister, David Cameron, says money will be no object as flood relief efforts continue in Berkshire. Volunteers, including the RSPCA, are working to help those affected by the floods. Despite hundreds of people being evacuated from their homes along the River Thames, some residents refuse to leave.
Elsewhere, water flowing out of the swollen Thames floods the railway on the Windsor line into London, where it passes through Datchet in Berkshire. While flooding at Maidenhead causes problems on the railway line between London Paddington and Reading. First Great Western advises passengers not to travel.
Transport links in Oxfordshire are faring no better, with one of Oxford's main routes remaining closed because of flooding for the second time in a month. Elsewhere, an Oxfordshire farmer tells the BBC he has lost tens of thousands of pounds because 400 acres (160 hectares) of his land have been under water since mid-December.
Another day, same story (12 February)
Fourteen severe flood warnings are put in place by the Environment Agency in Berkshire and Surrey, while two remain in Somerset. More than 1,000 homes have been evacuated in Berkshire. Of those that did stay, hundreds of residents spend hours without power, whilst many roads remain closed and train services disrupted as the flooding continues. Residents in Wraysbury demand the military be called in, and it comes as a huge relief when about 100 troops help flood victims.
In Oxfordshire, flood barriers are raised and roads remain closed as the flooding continues. Letters are also been sent to some residents in west Oxford, including in Earl Street and Botley Road, warning of potential flooding to their homes.
Flood sightseeing (13 February)
Tens of thousands of homes across the UK start the day without power, and there is renewed travel disruption after hurricane-force winds batter the UK on Wednesday.
Wraysbury resident, Ham Sandhu tells the BBC what it is like living with contaminated flood water, which runs thigh deep through his house. Microbiologist Lance Weaver tests the water and tells Mr Sandhu that the flood water is full of faecal matter. "It's worrying," Mr Sandhu says.
Meanwhile, motorists in Berkshire are urged not to go "flood sightseeing" by police. Drivers trying to see deluged communities are causing extra damage by creating waves of water which then hit flood-affected properties, the force said.
It is not all doom and gloom in Datchet thought. A couple are spotted paddling in a gondola through the flooded central square in the village. A moment of light relief.
The clean-up begins (15 February)
Over the next two days, the waters recede in Datchet and the village green returns to a more familiar condition.
Rail services between Windsor and London Waterloo resume at the village's station.
Residents and businesses begin planning for the clean-up, but businesswoman Julie West remained cautious.
"The water may return, so not everything can return to normal immediately," she said.
"It's a case of looking out for each other and helping who we can as the community comes together."
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With the UK's major energy suppliers bumping up their prices by up to 18% this winter, the belated arrival of the cold winds represents a great opportunity to look at ways of cutting your fuel bills.
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By Richard Anderson and Damian KahyaBusiness reporters, BBC News
The imminent announcement of a consultation on the government's Green Deal, which aims to help you make your home more energy-efficient, should provide an added incentive.
And there are lots of ways you can save money - in some cases a great deal - just by making a few simple upgrades to your home.
Some improvements cost virtually nothing and can take a matter of minutes to install; others require a bit of capital and expert help. Others still require small changes in habits that should more than reward the effort.
All are well worth considering. According to the Energy Saving Trust (EST), the average household could save about £280 a year on its fuel bills by being more energy efficient. Bearing in mind the average bill is about £1,300, that's quite some saving.
This equates to more than a tonne of carbon emissions every year, thus helping to combat rising global temperatures.
There are plenty of schemes around to help you get a better idea of what upgrading your home to make it more efficient actually involves.
Old Homes Superhomes is one such project, which is supported by the National Energy Foundation. Sarah Harrison, head of Eco-refurbishment, says the scheme can help people understand not just the financial benefits of so-called retro-fitting, but also how upgrading homes can improve your quality of life.
Insulation
When it comes to energy efficiency, the smallest measures are often the most effective, so insulation is a good place to start.
For example, a simple hot water tank cover can cost as little as £10-£15 but it could save you three times this much in a single year.
Doors and windows can then be sealed quickly and easily using self-adhesive foam and rubber strips, and draught excluders. Seal up any gaps between your floors and skirting boards and, together, these measure could save you more than £50 a year, according to the EST.
Next look at insulating your loft and walls properly - about a third of an uninsulated home's heat is lost through the walls, and about a quarter through the roof.
Walls will require varying degrees of works depending on their construction, but proper insulation can save hundreds of pounds a year. Just topping up your loft insulation can also shave a substantial amount off your annual bills.
Also look at secondary and double glazing - almost 20% of heat loss from the average home comes from windows.
Heating
Upgrading old electric storage heaters to modern alternatives can save you more than £100 a year, and in some cases considerably more.
Replacing an old, inefficient boiler with an A-rated condensing model could save as much £300 a year, although you will have to decide whether this is worth the £1,000 to £2,000 cost of buying and installing one.
Even fitting a room thermostat could save you more than £50 a year.
Energy-efficient behaviour
You may scoff at the point of turning off appliances when you're not using them, but add up all the savings and they can be worthwhile.
For example, switching plugs off at the wall and avoiding standby mode on TVs, computers, stereos and the like, together with switching off lights when you don't need them, could save you almost £50 a year.
Wash your clothes at 30 degrees instead of 40 and don't use a tumble dryer in the summer, and you could save another £30.
Upgrading appliances/electronics
Replacing an old fridge freezer or dishwasher just to save on energy is not a particularly efficient way to spend your money, but if you need to replace any domestic appliance, then it may be worth spending a little extra to get the most energy-efficient model you can afford.
They are all rated by law, from A to G, so you can tell how efficient they are. However, there is a great deal of variation within these bands, so also make sure you look at the specific figures on energy consumption. Some appliances, such as dishwashers and washing machines, also have grades A+++, A++ and A+.
Very roughly, a new efficient appliance could save you between £20 and £40 a year on energy bills, according to the EST.
More modern consumer electronics are also more energy-efficient. And if you're looking for a new television, bear in mind that LED TVs are more efficient than LCDs, which in turn are a good deal more efficient than Plasmas, according to Which?
Not strictly an appliance, granted, but replacing old incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient versions can save you £3 a pop.
Energy generation and renewables
These measures aren't about upgrading what you already have, but investing in technologies that allow you to generate your own energy.
As a result, they can be quite expensive, which is one of main reasons why the government is launching its Green Deal.
One way is to use wood to heat your home. According to the EST, replacing electric heaters with a wood pellet heating system could save as much as £580 a year.
Carbon emissions would also be reduced, as the carbon dioxide given off when burning is offset by the carbon absorbed by the tree from which the wood was cut.
Solar panels are another popular way to generate power, and can typically provide about three-quarters of an average home's electricity needs.
Wind turbines are an alternative that, if situated in the right part of the country, can provide more than enough electricity to power a typical home.
Government feed-in tariffs mean you get paid to generate electricity, and for selling any excess to the main grid. In fact, one turbine could generate savings and income of more than £3,000 a year including tariffs, the EST says.
Another option is heat pumps, which take heat from the air or the ground but which need electricity to run. In some cases, these are better at saving on carbon emissions than money.
You will need to calculate the payback time carefully when deciding whether to invest in any of these technologies. But remember that if you sell your home, the buyer can also benefit from the cost savings, which can add to the value of your property in their eyes.
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Could this be England's biggest football fan?
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Paul Dubberley, 58, has been travelling the globe watching the national team in World Cup bids for more than 30 years.
His first competition was Mexico in 1986, where he witnessed Maradona use his infamous "hand of God", and he has been to every tournament since.
Mr Dubberley, of Aldridge, in the West Midlands, said the "atmosphere" and the fans he meets bring him back each time - and love of the beautiful game.
He even went to the United States in 94, when England failed to qualify, but said it wasn't just watching the home nation he enjoys.
He also uses the tournaments as a chance to travel, saying: "The World Cup is a great way to do it.
"With Japan, I went overland and we travelled through places like Iran and Pakistan.
"After Mexico, I took a year off work to travel the world."
Joined on the latest trip by fellow West Brom fans, he said: "All the Russians I have met have been really friendly.
"I've met people from Iran, Brazil, you don't get to do that being in Birmingham."
Talking of going to Mexico in 1986, he had no idea how memorable Maradona would make that particular tournament.
"I bought my ticket for the match for £12," he said.
"Out here I got talking to someone and said I saw the 'hand of God' at my first World Cup finals and he couldn't believe it."
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Now he also travels with son Jack, now 19, who went with him to South Africa 2010, for his first World Cup.
"Nelson Mandela came on to the pitch, which was great for him," said Mr Dubberley, "It is always a different experience."
Mr Dubberley said he was "optimistic" about England's chances.
"I think sometimes, when there isn't so much expectation, we do better," he said.
"If we get knocked out, I'll still watch other games."
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An MP who travelled from London to Glasgow after testing positive for Covid has appeared in court charged with culpable and reckless conduct.
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Margaret Ferrier, who represents Rutherglen and Hamilton West, is accused of ignoring Covid regulations when she made the trip last September.
The 60-year-old made no plea during the two minute appearance at Glasgow Sheriff Court.
Ms Ferrier was bailed, pending further examination.
In September, she was suspended by the SNP and apologised after admitting she had taken a test after experiencing "mild symptoms".
But she said she had then decided to travel to Westminster from Scotland by train because she was "feeling much better".
She then travelled home again on a train after receiving the positive test result, and said she "deeply regretted" her actions.
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Debenhams said the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations helped to lift trading in the first half of its financial year, but wet weather hampered clothing sales.
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Like-for-like sales were up 1.4% for the period between last September and March.
The company said that shoppers responded to promotions around the Jubilee, Mother's Day and Easter.
But the department store group said bad weather hit sales of clothing.
But it sold more beauty and health products in the period, alleviating the impact.
Despite the dip in clothing sales, the department store operator said its key womenswear division did grow in the first half of its financial year.
Debenhams had thought it would report broadly flat financial performance for the full year, but has now said that profits would be less in 2012 than last year, although it remains "comfortable" with market expectations for pre-tax profit.
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Parents of children attending Nansen Primary, one of the Birmingham schools caught up in the Trojan Horse claims, remain almost entirely loyal to the school - but they are angry. And some are very worried.
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By Pippa StephensReporter, BBC News
Nansen sits opposite its elder brother, Park View, in a grey, quiet street to the north-east of Birmingham town centre.
As the rain falls hesitantly from the sky during the morning school run, a man with an Alsatian dog on a lead shouts at the TV vans with satellite dishes parked outside the school gates they were the "very worst kind".
Mothers and fathers lead their small children by the hand, blinking, through the media furore.
'Very worrying'
One young mother, Shahedah Shah, whose son is at Nansen, is worried.
She says had been thinking about which secondary school to send her child to. He had a place at Park View.
"These reports about extremism [in Park View] are very concerning," she says. "We don't know what is going on in there.
"When you are deciding what school to send your children to, and you hear these things about the school they are supposed to be going to, it is very worrying.
"I am not going to send my son to Park View now. I will send him elsewhere."
But another young mum, who wished to remain unnamed, says such reports were giving the schools a "bad reputation".
Muslim prayers
"It is unfair. The kids just want to learn and there is no proof or evidence of any of these incidents of extremism," she says.
"You wouldn't hear this about Christian or Catholic schools. Why Muslim? The kids are scared about the attention. They don't know what's going on."
Minaz Murtaza, who has two children at Nansen, says she is "really happy" with the school.
"All children get a good education going in here. I would not be pleased if it shuts down," she adds.
She says she sends her son to Nansen to improve his English.
Ms Murtaza says she has heard about the "speaker business" - rumours of Muslim prayers being played through loudspeakers at some of the schools.
"There is Islamic praying here, but after school, not in lessons," she says, adding after school "all the children" used to pray.
She says during the prayers, there was a leader at the front praying with the children, but that they "know it by the heart, as they do it at home - they are not just doing it in their minds".
"I don't want my kids to learn anything wrong, like how to make a bomb," she says. "Just English and maths.
"They are worried about all the attention, it stresses them out. I am not worried about Park View though.
"If these allegations continue, it will get the wrong reputation and it will affect the kids."
'All completely untrue'
Ismail Abduille, who has three children at the primary school, agrees: "These rumours are not true, we are not worried. My kids are happy.
"Maybe some people are not happy with the school and they are using these stories as a way to show it.
"I haven't noticed segregation. My children would say if there were not happy, but they are. Like any school, there are good and bad bits, but it is mostly good."
Musaddik Ahmed's son is six years old. He says: "My main aim is for my son to learn English and to stay and learn maths and get a good education.
"I think these stories are not true. I am not taking any notice."
A mother of three children, who also did not want to be named, says she has been sending her children to Nansen for 12 years, and attended too when she was younger, and stresses it is a "good school".
"Please don't close this school," she says. "All the parents would like their children to stay in this school. If it closes there will be many problems for kids.
"We don't believe the stories about extremism.
"If we have seen anything in school, the kids would complain and that would be a sign of the problem, but it is all completely untrue."
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Dozens of startled sheep flocked into a garden after they were chased out of their field by a dog off its lead.
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Police were called to a house in Gorefield, Cambridgeshire, after being alerted to the frightened flock at about 11:50 GMT on Tuesday.
They were found hiding in the garden, ignoring a "beware of dog" sign on its gate.
No sheep were injured, but Cambridgeshire Police said "words of advice" were given to the dog owner.
Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]
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Last year Joanne Milne became an internet sensation when footage of her hearing for the first time was posted on YouTube. But, cruelly, she is now slowly losing her sight because of a rare disorder. To build up a visual memory bank, she has taken a tour of three beauty spots in her native North East that were suggested to her by BBC radio listeners.
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"It's like a tunnel which is unfortunately closing in and in," says Joanne Milne of the gradual loss of her eyesight.
More than a year ago Ms Milne, who was born deaf, was fitted with cochlear implants and heard for the first time at the age of 39 - footage of her tears of emotion on hearing a nurse read to her went viral.
But she has known for some time now that she is going blind due to a disorder called Usher syndrome, although she is totally accepting of her fate.
Determined to be positive, she is trying to build up a bank of memories for when the inevitable happens.
Ms Milne, from Gateshead, spends hours looking at old photos of her family, trying to "imprint" them on her memory.
"I can see these photographs perfectly, the colours and the faces, but I can't see my fingers wiggling in front of my face," she says matter-of-factly, without a trace of self-pity.
"This picture is of me in a bonnet as a baby with my father and elder sister, and when I close my eyes I can see this picture.
"It does seem very, very cruel but the positive thing I can say about that is because of the lack of my senses, it makes me appreciate life and admire a view for that little bit longer.
"It's probably the worst thing imaginable for someone who is deaf to be told they are going blind.
"I still have some sight and while I have that sight I'm going to grab every opportunity and live every day like my last."
Recently BBC Newcastle asked listeners to suggest places for the 40-year-old to visit to help her mission to build up a memory bank of images.
Hundreds responded and Ms Milne, who says she feels "overwhelmed" that so many people care, chose three places she had never been to.
First stop was to see radio listener Jane Lancaster, who nominated Low Newton beach, Newton Point, on the Northumberland coast.
Asking Ms Milne to close her eyes, she led her to her favourite coast in all its rocky splendour with views of 14th Century Dunstanburgh Castle.
Ms Lancaster said: "Every time I look at this view my heart skips a beat. The castle leads your eye in and the rocks lead it out to the sea."
Ms Milne describes the view as "breathtaking", adding: "I felt like a child on Christmas morning, not being allowed to open my eyes for a moment."
Next on the list was High Force waterfall in the heart of the Durham Dales.
Ms Milne sits on rocks listening to the torrent of water. She says: "I feel very emotional - it's not just about what I can see but what I can hear, too. It's noisy but it's peaceful, if you know what I mean."
Despite living only an hour's drive away, Ms Milne had never been to the Lake District, which attracts millions of visitors a year.
For her final destination she chose a boat trip on the tranquil waters of Ullswater, the region's second largest lake.
Ms Milne takes several minutes to find the words to describe the view.
"It doesn't matter which direction I look, every view is beautiful and the skyline is so dramatic. I've now got a picture of the Lake District in my memory and the sound of this boat and it's absolutely magical.
"I will never forget this for the rest of my life. It has also been very touching because it's about places the general public has nominated for me."
Joanne Milne's tour will be shown on Inside Out on BBC1 at 19:30 GMT on Monday 28 September.
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It is less than a year since the government launched what came to be known as the pension "freedoms" - the right for those over 55 to take as much money as they like from their pension pots, subject to tax.
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By Brian MilliganPersonal Finance reporter
Now, ahead of the budget on 16 March, the pensions industry is again on the edge of its seat.
Amongst the rumours: The chancellor is about to abolish the 25% tax-free lump sum; the maximum annual contribution could be cut to as low as £25,000; or the whole tax relief system could be abolished, in favour of an Isa-style system of tax upfront, but tax free on the way out.
So what are the chancellor's options - and which is he likely to favour?
Flat-rate relief on contributions
At the moment, basic rate taxpayers who pay into a pension get 20% tax relief. Higher rate taxpayers get 40% - and top rate taxpayers get 45%.
But higher rate tax relief costs the Treasury some £7bn a year, and clearly favours the well-off.
Replacing this with flat-rate relief would be beneficial to most workers, AND save the government money.
The lower the figure is set, the better off the Treasury would be, but the smaller the benefit to savers. Options being talked about are 25%, 30%, 33% or, if the chancellor was in generous mood, even 35%.
But, as has been pointed out vehemently by the pensions industry, higher and top rate taxpayers stand to lose.
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has lobbied hard for this solution, calling it a "savers' bonus". But The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) has said it would produce little benefit to basic rate taxpayers, especially if set at 25%.
Winners and Losers
Clearly basic rate taxpayers would gain from a flat rate of tax relief, while higher and top rate taxpayers would lose out.
But even under the current system, calculating tax relief is a complex matter.
Suppose John, a basic rate taxpayer, wants to contribute £8,000 into his pension. To earn that sum, he would have been paid £10,000 gross - ie before tax. The difference - £2000 - is what he gets back in tax relief. £2000 is 20% of the gross, or pre-tax, amount.
If John were a 40% taxpayer he would need to make only a £6,000 net payment for a gross contribution of £10,000. His tax relief would be £4,000.
The table below provides an indication of how much John would stand to win or lose if we changed to a flat rate system.
Top rate taxpayers (45%) stand to lose even more.
Isa-style system
One idea the Treasury has examined is to make pensions like Individual Savings Accounts, or Isas.
Pension savers currently pay no tax on money they put into a pension, but they do pay tax on the money they take out.
An Isa system would be the opposite: Income tax would be paid before the money was saved, but it would be tax-free when taken out.
If this was chosen, the current 25% tax-free lump sum would also disappear.
The huge advantage to this from the Treasury's point of view is that the government would immediately save billions of pounds in up-front tax relief.
But to run an Isa system alongside the current system would be horribly complex.
And there would be no immediate incentive to encourage people to save more, as the tax benefits would only occur after they had retired.
While the former pensions minister, Steve Webb, thinks this option is still a strong possibility, in practice it is unlikely.
After all, the title of the Treasury's consultation is: "Strengthening the incentive to save". Furthermore one Treasury minister confirmed to the BBC that this will be the main focus of the changes.
Cutting Allowances
The amount anyone can save into a pension - and get tax relief - is already capped in two regards:
Cutting these limits further would save the Treasury more money.
Tom McPhail, pensions expert with Hargreaves Lansdown, thinks a reduction to the Annual Allowance is "highly likely, possibly down to as low as £25,000".
But reducing it would be difficult for savers who make large contributions near retirement, to catch up on earlier under-funding.
As for the Lifetime Allowance, Mr McPhail describes it as a "perverse irrelevance", but believes the government may be reluctant to give it up.
Abolishing salary sacrifice
Many employers offer their staff "salary sacrifice". Employees agree to take a smaller salary, in return for increased benefits, including pension contributions.
This can mean the employee pays less income tax, while the employer saves on National Insurance contributions.
This is widely seen as a loophole, which costs the Treasury a significant amount of revenue. The chancellor could well decide to abolish it, or place restrictions on the way it operates.
Doing nothing
After an eight-month Treasury consultation - which has the potential to save the government money and improve fairness - it is unlikely the chancellor would choose this option.
"Incredulity meters would explode, jaws would drop and hats would be eaten," says Tom McPhail.
But equally well, the chancellor may decide not to do anything too radical. Last year's pension reforms are still bedding in, and the government's big idea of auto enrolment has a long way to go.
Many small employers, and workers, are struggling to understand those changes. The last thing they want - or the industry can stand - will be another upheaval of the pensions system.
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When Liu Jiaomei gave birth to her daughter Miaomiao in March, she was forced to leave the hospital an hour after her labour was over. Ms Liu and her husband, both poor migrant workers, had no money to pay for extra care.
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By Celia HattonBBC News, Beijing
Ms Liu and her husband brought their newborn home, but they knew their child was seriously ill.
Miaomiao has serious hip and leg deformities. A large hole in her mouth makes it difficult for her to swallow. Now six weeks old, she's clearly losing weight.
"I wanted to look after Miaomiao myself," Liu Jiaomei, explains, tears streaming down her face. "But my husband asked: what if our daughter dies because we can't care for her?"
With no money and no government healthcare, this couple faced a heart-wrenching choice: hold on to their daughter or hand her over to the state where - in theory - she would receive treatment.
"No-one wants to abandon their child," Miaomiao's father, Lei Zebao says. "But if we gave her away, at least she would have a slim chance at life."
They decided to take her to a "safe baby hatch" not far from their home. In January, the hatch opened beside the local orphanage, offering parents a place to anonymously abandon children they couldn't care for.
On the evening of 16 March, the couple wrapped their daughter in blankets and travelled to the orphanage gates.
Fate intervened. Overwhelmed with sick children, the baby hatch had stopped accepting new babies hours before the family arrived. Miaomiao stayed in her mother's arms.
"I was secretly hoping they wouldn't take my girl, though I didn't know if we could keep her alive," Liu Jiaomei admits. "I was torn."
Pressures remain. The family are living inside a concrete garage space next to a busy road. They're struggling to pay for basics like baby formula and nappies, let alone expensive medical care.
Struggle to cope
In March, the closure of Guangzhou's baby hatch drew international attention. In the six weeks the hatch was open, an average of five children a day were dropped off there.
In total, 262 children had been surrendered to the state, officials said. All of them had serious health problems, including congenital heart defects and severe cerebral palsy.
Some of the children were as old as five or six. Those who work with seriously ill children say that by that age, adults who are caring for children on their own find it difficult to physically lift them. That's when parents often give up, believing local welfare institutes can provide the care they can't.
The vast majority of children in Chinese orphanages are seriously ill or they're suffering from a disability that requires special care that poor migrant workers cannot offer.
"I've never seen a healthy child in a government orphanage," explains Naomi Kerwin, an American expatriate who has worked as a child advocate for years inside China. "But I've seen quite a bit of spina bifida, I've seen cleft palates with heart problems and lots kids with genital issues."
To be fair, China has made great strides in maternal and infant health in recent years.
Maternal mortality - the likelihood a woman will die during pregnancy or childbirth - has plunged more than 13% a year in China since 1990, the fastest drop in the world according to a new global study from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
A related study showed that children in China are also much more likely to live past the age of five than in previous decades.
But all of these numbers mean little to poor families who are struggling to keep their children alive, despite empty bank accounts.
'I thought of jumping'
One desperate father is getting attention for his radical campaign to fund his daughter's medical care.
A retired soldier from China's central Sichuan province, Cheng Bangjian regularly parades in Beijing's streets holding a sign that reads: "I will work the rest of my life for anyone who funds my daughter's medical care." Few ever make eye contact with him.
Cheng's nine-year-old girl, Siyi, has a blood disorder. Following years of expensive treatment, a bone marrow transplant is her only hope and a donor has been found. The entire family relocated to Beijing because it has the country's only hospital that can treat Siyi's condition. But her parents can't pay for the $96,000 (£57,000) operation.
"I've already borrowed from all my relatives," Cheng Bangjian weeps. "I've even thought of jumping off a bridge. If I died, my daughter could be saved because more people would care for us."
In the future, there is hope that other families won't be driven to the same desperate lengths as Miaomiao's family in Guangzhou and Cheng Siyi's family in Beijing.
Some promising initiatives lie on the horizon.
Many charitable organisations are trying to address infant health concerns early on, preventing some congenital disabilities by handing out free folic acid to pregnant women, for example. Other groups are trying to reach struggling families with sick or disabled babies, offering them early support to help them care for their children at home.
Others in China are lobbying the government to introduce national health insurance for children up to the age of 18. Every year since 2009, children's advocate Melody Zhang has submitted a proposal for a children's health insurance plan to China's parliament through a slew of parliamentary representatives.
It's difficult to know what happens to the proposal behind the scenes, explains Ms Zhang, the founder and executive director of Children's Hope Foundation, one of China's largest charitable organisations offering medical help to orphans. However, she's optimistic a plan like the one she's proposing is inevitable.
"More and more cities are coming up with their own medical insurance plans, so coverage is spreading," she explains. On average, only a few of China's 300 million children would need access to expensive medical care, so her proposal for 100 renminbi (£9.50; $16) annual insurance is realistic, she says.
Until then, millions of parents in China are struggling to hold on to their children, while also keeping them healthy.
In desperation, nine-year-old Cheng Siyi's family recently took out a shadowy high-interest loan. They needed a $40,000 deposit to fund her bone marrow surgery before time ran out.
"Of course what we have gone through is worth it," Siyi's father explains. "Once our kid is healthy, she'll grow up just like a normal girl."
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Imagine the scene. Sober solicitor, probably with half-rim glasses, surrounded by grieving relatives about to read out the last will and testament of Great-Uncle Johnny: "And to my beloved niece, I leave access to my online poker and bingo account and to my great-nephew Frankie, all my iTunes credits."
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By Jane WakefieldTechnology reporter
It might seem far-fetched but as more and more of us amass digital assets, it is exactly the kind of will we might need to consider drawing up.
Online estates
Real-life solicitor Matthew Strain is already advising clients about digital inheritances and says making provision for these things in a will or codicil is "relatively straightforward".
"With more photos, books, music and so on being stored online and in digital format, the question of what happens to these when people are gone becomes more important every day," he said.
"Online possessions - from digital photos and videos to music and apps have monetary and emotional value to their owners, and potentially their loved ones."
People who do not take care of their digital possessions risk losing them when they die and they could leave relatives with unpaid bills.
"Their estate may be liable for ongoing subscriptions to online magazines or newspapers," said Mr Strain.
The bluntly-named iCroak is an online service aiming to help people plan how their digital assets are managed after their death.
For an annual fee of between £10 to £15 or a one-off membership of £150, the user can categorise their assets and create "Guardian" accounts for those assets they want to preserve or bequeath.
The "Guardian" will receive an email with a unique username and password and link to iCroak. When the person who has nominated them dies - and a death certificate must be verified first - they will be able to see what has been left to them.
Of course some people will have accounts of a more questionable or embarrassing nature that they would not particularly want anyone to access so there is also an option to mark them for deletion upon death.
Digital treasures
Cloud hosting firm RackSpace is convinced that, as we store more of our online stuff remotely, we face a real dilemma about what to do with it after we've gone.
It commissioned a study in association with the centre for Creative and Social Technology at London's Goldsmiths University and found that we are sitting on a goldmine of digital assets.
According to the survey, Britons are storing £2.3bn worth of music, film, applications and subscriptions online.
It found that one in 10 have already put their passwords in their wills so that relatives can access their digital treasures.
Nearly a third of the 2,000 respondents to the study said that they have considered their digital inheritance while over half believed some of their treasure possessions were in services such as Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.One of those surveyed, Kelly Harmer, said she had been forced to think about her digital assets following a recent car accident.
"I store many of my most treasured memories online, as digital photos and often don't have printed copies. I also have things online which are worth money, such as my music collection and digital magazine subscriptions.
"I wanted to make sure that, if something happens to me, my family and friends would be able to access these digital possessions," she said.
She has now written down all of her relevant login details and passwords in a document.
"I've given this to my mother for safe keeping and I'm now looking to take this a step further and put instructions in my will regarding my digital assets," she said.
It is advice we could all do with following. Now I just have to work out who to leave my vast collection of armour sets from World of Warcraft to.
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A reunited Blur are to debut two new songs on Twitter.
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The band will play the new tracks, which have not been performed in public, in a live web stream next week.
The performance on Monday comes ahead of their appearance at London's Hyde Park in August, in a show to mark the close of the Olympics.
The quartet will play Under The Westway and The Puritan from a secret location in the UK.
The songs will later be available to download and a limited edition vinyl 7in single will be released by Parlophone on 6 August.
The live stream takes place on Twitter at 6.15pm on 2 July @blurofficial.
There will also be an interview with the band.
Frontman Damon Albarn said: "I wrote these songs for Hyde Park and I'm really excited about getting out there and playing them for people."
The group - made up of Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree - are also playing warm-up dates in August at Margate Winter Gardens, Wolverhampton Civic Hall and Plymouth Pavilions.
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Scottish ministers say they are on track to vaccinate all the country's over-80s by early next month - but despite the assurances it is an anxious time for elderly people and their loved ones.
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Malcolm Murray is 83 and he should be in line to get a first dose of the Covid vaccine before the end of the first week in February.
But he has not yet had a call from his local GP surgery in Edinburgh and he's worried he may have a long wait to get the jab.
The surgery has said it will be in touch to arrange an appointment but he said: "I got the impression it wouldn't be anytime soon".
A total of 13% of over 80s had received their first dose by last weekend.
To meet the Scottish government's revised target, another 234,000 people in that age bracket will have to be vaccinated by 5 February - the equivalent of 70,000 people a week.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Friday that management figures show 34% of over 80s in Scotland had received their first dose.
BMA Scotland says the "ambitious" target is achievable if GPs get adequate vaccine supplies.
The Scottish government remains "very confident" it can meet the deadline providing the supplies are available.
Ms Sturgeon insists the strategy of vaccinating care home residents first - in line with the advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation - is the best way of protecting the most vulnerable.
Focus has now switched from vaccinating care home residents, where about 90% have received their first dose to the over-80s in the community.
However, the Scottish Conservatives have criticised the rollout, claiming doses are sitting in "depots and collection points" rather than being injected into people's arms.
'Dependent on supplies'
Mr Murray said that when he first contacted his surgery in the west of the capital, he was told he was in a group due to receive his vaccine before 31 March.
"I thought this was odd," he said. "Nicola Sturgeon has just announced a date for my age group that was a lot earlier."
When he contacted the practice again, he was told they had started vaccinations "but when I'd get seen was dependent on supplies".
"They said they'll get in touch when they're ready for my vaccination but I got the impression it wouldn't be anytime soon," he said.
"And speaking to other people I know in my position, I can't see it being finished by the start of February."
BBC Scotland also spoke to the daughter of a 92-year-old woman in East Kilbride who has had no notification from her doctor about the vaccine.
Wishing to remain anonymous, she said: "My mum is 92 but she is housebound so she is still waiting for her vaccine.
"I understand that the logistics of delivering the vaccine to people in their own homes is more involved but if she was given a date it would be helpful.
"She is on the shielding list and I haven't seen her since last March.
"She waits by the phone and for the postman every day hoping to hear something. She is worried she has been missed."
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross told BBC Scotland he had been contacted by GPs ready to roll-out the vaccine but they do not have the doses available.
"There are hundreds of thousands of vaccines available in Scotland and they're not getting into people's arms at the moment," he said.
"They are sitting in depots and collection points and we know there are GP surgeries that they are ready to vaccinate but they don't have the supply.
Dr Andrew Buist, who chairs the Scottish general practitioners committee at the BMA, said the over-80s vaccination target could be met "as long as we have improved reliability in vaccine supply".
"GPs stand ready to roll this vaccine out to their patients in the priority groups, but can only do it if they have adequate supplies of the vaccine," he added.
"There have been encouraging promises on supplies reaching GP practices over the next few weeks from the Scottish government - we now need to make sure that matches the picture on the ground and in surgeries across the country.
"We all knew this wouldn't be an easy task, but by working with health boards and the Scottish government on supply, I remain confident we can deliver it."
Speaking at Thursday's coronavirus briefing, Deputy First Minister John Swinney said that the government was "very confident" the mechanisms were in place to meet the 5 February deadline "providing the supplies come through to us".
He went on to say the government would be happy to engage in further discussions to ensure the supply of the vaccine is as "smooth as it can possibly be".
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It is a curse, lurking in our countryside.
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By Steffan MessengerBBC Wales Environment Correspondent
For decades, bovine TB has been ruining livelihoods in rural Wales, leading to the slaughter of tens of thousands of cattle.
It has also been responsible for a fraught and sometimes bitter war of words between campaigners about how best to tackle the threat it poses.
That debate looks set to resurface on Tuesday as the Welsh Government announces a "refreshed approach" to combating the disease.
It promises to target different areas of Wales and use the "most appropriate and effective" control measures.
Farming leaders want to see the inclusion of a badger cull in the new plans, a move fiercely opposed by wildlife groups.
As part of the Welsh Government's most recent TB eradication programme, farmers face regular testing and restrictions on moving their cattle.
Since it was launched in 2008, there has been a 37% reduction in incidents of bovine TB.
But the issue is concentrated, with far higher incidence levels in west Wales and along the border with England.
And a sharp rise in the number of cattle being killed in recent years has caused alarm in farming circles.
In the year to July, 9,492 cows were lost to TB - a trend increasing since 2013.
The Welsh Government said this was as a result of stricter and more sensitive testing regimes.
Farming unions say it is pointless to keep killing cattle without tackling the "reservoir of infection" in badgers.
The issue of whether to initiate a cull has been one of the longest running sagas in the history of the Welsh Assembly.
Plans were abandoned in 2012 in favour of a five-year project to vaccinate badgers in north Pembrokeshire.
But that is now on hold due to a global shortage of the TB jab.
The need for "robust action" to eradicate the disease is all the more urgent given the UK's vote to leave the EU, according to both the Farmers' Union of Wales (FUW) and NFU Cymru.
Their argument is that post-Brexit trade deals relating to Welsh meat could be put at risk without sought after "TB free" status.
In England and Northern Ireland, badger culls are taking place in areas badly affected by TB, while Scotland has been free of the infection since 2009.
Alan Davies, FUW managing director, said there were big expectations within the industry for Welsh Government to deliver a badger cull.
"The farmers of Wales will be expecting to hear something really positive.
"We've had an absolute vacuum in the last 10 months since the cancellation of the vaccination programme - so now there's real expectation that there will be a practical programme for improving the situation.
"But more than that there is an urgent need to address the situation as the state of TB in Wales could be a real threat to negotiations with Europe post-Brexit.
"I don't want our members to feel like they're being let down by politicians when the messages have been so clear for a very long time and a very new, significant threat is on the table that really does in my opinion justify a significant shift in policy."
Opponents of culling argue there is no evidence it is effective.
Prof Rosie Woodroffe, from the Zoological Society of London, said the Welsh Government had taken "a leadership role within Britain in using scientific evidence in developing their TB control polices".
"They've done a fantastic job and are the envy of England in cracking down on cattle-to-cattle transmission, which is estimated to be responsible for 94% of new TB cases," she said.
"I know that there is pressure to cull badgers in Wales, but I think that would be a retrograde step."
A recent study by Prof Woodroffe and her team at several sites in Cornwall suggested the disease spread to cows after they came into contact with infected faeces and urine, rather than directly with badgers.
The findings, she claims, have big implications for how farmers manage the environment on their land.
"Bovine TB is a massive, chronic problem for farmers, causing real suffering. The reason why we're at this relatively early stage in trying to understand how it's transmitted is down to the technology," she said.
"The new work we're doing trying to look for bacteria in the environment is only made available due to modern techniques. Hopefully, this new dawn of research methods will help us solve an age-old problem and hopefully make things better for farmers."
TB TIMELINE
2002 - Mounting concern about TB in cattle, with 127 cases confirmed by May, compared to 150 during the whole of 2000.
2005 - Legal responsibility for animal health and welfare is devolved from Westminster to the Welsh Government. The first chief veterinary officer for Wales - Prof Christianne Glossop - is appointed.
2006 - The principal legislation for TB in Wales comes into force. Mandatory pre-movement cattle testing is introduced.
2008 - The TB eradication programme is launched with the aim of eradicating bovine TB in Wales. A target badger cull is announced by the then coalition government between Plaid Cymru and Labour.
2009 - Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones reveals the cull will take place in a TB hotspot in west Wales - the intensive action area (ITA). She tells the Assembly bovine TB is "out of control" in Wales.
2010 - The cull is quashed in the Court of Appeal because the terms of the cull order apply to the whole of Wales when the evidence of a consultation only supported a cull in the intensive area.
2011 - The newly-elected Labour government puts the idea of a cull on hold and commissions a review of the science.
2012 - The Welsh Government drops plans for a cull - announcing a five-year badger vaccination project in the ITA in south West Wales. Farming unions attack "a cowardly betrayal" while the RSPCA said it was "delighted and relieved".
2015 - The vaccination trial in Pembrokeshire is suspended due to a global shortage of the TB jab.
2016 - Prof Glossop tells BBC Wales bovine TB is "single biggest problem" facing animal health and welfare in a generation. Farming unions renew calls for badger cull.
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Nineteen workers have suffered carbon monoxide poisoning while working overnight in the Channel Tunnel, with one of them in a serious condition, French officials have said.
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The incident happened as some 60 workers were changing rail tracks on the line between Calais, France, and Folkestone, UK.
A welder was taken ill in the early hours of Sunday and carbon monoxide poisoning was later diagnosed.
Tunnel traffic was unaffected.
Eighteen other workers have also been taken ill.
They were sent to local French hospitals to give them "the time needed to remove the carbon monoxide from their system", an official said, adding their condition was not a cause for concern.
The 41 other workers went home.
An investigation has been launched into the cause of the incident.
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The air in much of China is so bad the government has repeatedly declared "war" on it. The enemy are tiny particulates which spew forth from countless cars, coal-fired power stations and steel plants to create a dense, putty-coloured smog.
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Beijing recently issued its first pollution 'red alert', closing schools, factories and construction sites, and ordering half of all private cars off the road.
But these measures were only temporary. In a country where millions of people still look to industrialisation to lift them from poverty, what can China do to clear the air for good?
Four experts talk to the BBC World Service Inquiry programme.
Dr Jim Zhang: Frustrating that Olympic gains have been lost
Dr Jim Zhang, is a professor of global environmental health at Duke University and works in the US and China.
"You can definitely smell the pollution. Your eyes itch, you cough. It's like a very rich, dense soup when the pollution levels are very high: thousands of chemicals, gases that are irritants, carcinogens.
"We have particles that have a diameter smaller than a virus. Human hair is very big compared to these. The larger ones will be deposited into the lung - that's the biggest worry. But recent scientific evidence shows that when the particles are small enough they go into the bloodstream, they can go directly into the brain.
"It's very hard to get data to show whether the pollution is going to have a long-lasting effect, like a cancer, but there is a reason to believe that, because the pollution soup contains chemicals which can induce cancer.
"It's very frustrating to see pollution get worse after the huge effort which went into cleaning up the air in Beijing for the Olympics.
"I did several studies demonstrating that if you do a temporary intervention to bring the air pollution down, [and] measure cardiovascular and respiratory health indicators in young healthy people, all those indicators significantly improve.
"Women whose pregnancy was during those eight weeks of improved air quality got babies with a significantly higher birth weight, and we have a large database to show that in general if your birth weight is higher, your later life is healthier.
"In 2008 the air quality data was considered a state secret. The government was in a denial stage for years until 2013 when those huge episodes happened, and then they started to say 'This is real now'. Because of [prioritising] economic interest over public health interest, the way they implement the existing air quality regulations is very inefficient.
"Although it's now getting much better - the urgency is there - it's still very challenging."
Hongjun Zhan: Legislation is better; enforcement is still weak
Hongjun Zhan used to write China's air pollution laws and now works for a US law firm advising foreign companies operating in China.
"Back in the late 1980s, people didn't really think about air issues at that time. The pressure [to get the legislation right] was not big at all.
"From the late 1980s to, let's say, the year 2000, just about a dozen years, that air quality has been getting worse and worse.
"In many situations, industry discharges pollutants without meeting standards. And very often they are not penalised by the enforcement officers.
"The law drafters today are doing a much better job than I did. The environmental laws today are more aggressive: [more] detailed, accurate, and comprehensive than the law I wrote.
"Enforcement is still not good enough. It is slightly better, but it's still far from where it should be."
Li Yan: 'Red alerts' represent real progress
Li Yan is the voice of Greenpeace in China.
"Actually what's happening in China right now is quite positive. [The red alert] is a sign of progress in government's understanding of how they should react and respond to these extreme conditions.
"Not only is it responding to 20 million Beijingers' demand for clean air, it's also setting a precedent for many other Chinese cities to follow.
"After the 'airpocalypse' in 2011/2012, the central government responded with a National Air Pollution Action Plan. At the core of that is a scheme to cut back coal use in the big metropolitan regions.
"Beijing's extreme pollution and the 'red alert' are connected to China's addiction to coal burning, and it's very energy intensive way of industrial growth. Coal burning is the biggest single source of air pollution in China, and burning of coal, has for the first time in this century declined in 2014 compared to 2013.
"That's a very significant thing. As a result air quality in the major cities like Beijing and regions in the Yangtze River Delta has seen improvements.
"Greenpeace has been capturing the government-released hour-by-hour data of 190 cities, and only 15% of them have seen an increase of their readings, and all the rest of them are more or less improved.
"We're seeing renewable energy picking up and taking larger share of total power use in China, and then it's actually already eating up the market space of coal.
"New coal power plants are still being proposed and still being invested [in] by local government and state-owned enterprises as if it was still the good old days. However I doubt there will be enough demand to support them, and they will very likely become idle plants."
Mun Ho: Economic slowdown is complicating anti-pollution efforts
Mun Ho is an economist at the Harvard University China project, specialising in Chinese environmental policies, and is a visiting scholar at Resources for the Future in Washington, DC.
"The Chinese system is very decentralised: the provincial and local city authorities have a lot of power. And it is not a simple matter of the central government in Beijing pressing a button and all the laws are enforced.
"All the city environmental protection bureaus are in charge of enforcing [pollution] laws, and you can imagine there is a wide range of enforcement standards across the country.
"For the past 30 years, the main criteria of promotion other than maintaining security, is economic growth, the competition to bring jobs and growth.
"We should align incentives so that the environmental officials have the incentive to enforce the rules throughout the system, not just the central government.
"The unexpected economic slowdown and the prolonged global recession has been a new challenge. It is complicating efforts to convince people to put in costly pollution equipment and to think about energy-saving technologies.
"China is officially growing at about 7%, but that hides quite a big range of experience. In some places - in the 'rust belts' - growth has really decelerated, perhaps even to 2%.
"The priority obviously then is to prevent layoffs and factory shutdowns. They have to worry about social stability if there is high unemployment.
"The issue really is spending a bigger part of the government's budget on pollution control equipment. Governments today are rich enough that this is no longer such a very big issue. We are not talking about building houses versus building pollution control equipment. This is no longer the stark choice facing China today."
The Inquiry is broadcast on the BBC World Service on Tuesdays from 12:05 GMT. Listen online or download the podcast.
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On 31 October India will unveil the world's tallest statue, which has cost hundreds of millions of dollars. BBC Gujarati's Roxy Gagdekar spoke to local farmers who say they are aghast that the government has spent so much money on it while they struggle to make ends meet.
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For years Vijendra Tadvi, a 39-year-old farmer in the western state of Gujarat, has been struggling to find water to irrigate his three acres (1.2 hectares) of farmland.
He grows chilli, corn and groundnuts. Like millions of farmers across India, he relies on monsoon rains to water his crops. or he pumps out groundwater, which supports 80% of the rural water supply and farm irrigation. But long dry summers followed by erratic rains have led to frequent drought and shrunk the incomes of farmers like Mr Tadvi.
So in 2015, Mr Tadvi found a job as a driver on a construction site to supplement his income. The Gujarat state government was building a 182m (600ft) high statue, billed as the tallest in the world.
The bronze-clad tribute to Indian independence leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel cost 29.9bn rupees (£330m; $430m). And Gujarat's government is reported to have paid more than half of that amount. The remainder came from the federal government or public donations.
"Instead of spending money on a giant statue, the government should have used it for farmers in the district," Mr Tadvi said, adding that farmers in the area still lack basic irrigation facilities.
The statue is complete and Mr Tadvi has found more work as a driver on construction sites. But he is still unimpressed by the government's largesse.
The "statue of unity", as it is known, is the centrepiece of a sprawling memorial to Patel. A formidable nationalist leader, he was born in Gujarat and went on to become independent India's first interior minister and deputy prime minister under Jawaharlal Nehru.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also from Gujarat, commissioned the statue when he was the state's chief minister in 2010. In recent years, Mr Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has embraced Patel in an attempt to claim his legacy - and they have accused the opposition Congress party of sidelining him to benefit Nehru's descendants, three of whom have served as prime ministers.
Congress ruled India for 49 of its 71 years as an independent nation.
The plan for Patel's memorial includes a three-star hotel, a museum and a research centre that will focus on subjects "close to his heart" - such as "good governance" and "agriculture development".
All of this is about 10km (6.2 miles) from Mr Tadvi's village, Nana Pipaliya, in the largely poor, rural and tribal Narmada district. Many of its households continue to live in hunger, primary school enrolment has been falling and malnourishment persists, according to a report published in 2016 by the state government.
But the government believes the memorial will boost the district's economy, as they expect about 2.5 million annual visitors. "It will lead to employment opportunities for locals and will also increase tourism in the area," said Sandeep Kumar, a senior official involved with the project.
Locals are sceptical. "We want to ask the government: why can't they fund a project to support farmers and improve their standard of life?" said Lakhan, a tribal activist who only goes by his first name. "We were promised water for irrigation but the situation remains the same."
Nana Pipaliya is in what is known as a "command area" of a nearby dam - lands that are supposed to receive water from a designated irrigation project. But, Mr Tadvi said, he and other farmers were still deprived of water.
"I grow only one crop per year, while people with irrigation facilities grow up to three crops annually," said Bhola Tadvi, a farmer who relies solely on rainwater for irrigation.
According to the 2011 census, some 85% of the district's working population is engaged in agriculture, a sector which is dominated by small farmers who own two to four acres of land.
District officials told BBC Gujarati that the government was committed to ensuring that water was made available to them. Lakhan said thousands of farmers were struggling to access water for irrigation.
Half of India's population works on farms, but farming contributes only 15% to the country's GDP.
In fact, agriculture growth in India has dwindled to 1.2%. Farms employ a lot of people but produce too little, and tens of thousands of farmers struggle to repay crop loans taken from banks and money lenders.
Earlier this year, farmers in the neighbouring state of Maharashtra staged a massive protest demanding a waiver on the repayment of loans and better prices for their crops.
In 2017, farmers from drought-affected districts in the southern state of Tamil Nadu brandished human skulls and a held live mice between their teeth to draw attention to their plight.
Here in the shadow of Patel's statue, farmers have resorted to stealing water. They say they can see the water passing by their farms through a canal that transports it from the dam, but it's illegal to divert the water so they are forced to steal it.
One of the farmers said he had laid a pipe underground from the canal to his farm, adding that nearly all farmers in the area did this to survive.
"We don't have any option but to take the water illegally as there are no sources of water left for us."
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UKIP has cancelled its Welsh autumn conference in Swansea in a fortnight.
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The party said the event was not needed following a decision to hold the main UK conference in Llandudno next spring.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage is still due to visit Swansea on 23 October, as part of his Say No to EU tour.
A ticket website said the conference was cancelled due to a lack of sales, but a UKIP official said the message was incorrect and caused by an administrative error.
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"You'll find the airport has changed dramatically, you'll be able to book a taxi using an app on your phone, and you'll see a real spring in the step of many people in India now - people are charged with optimism," one Indian businessman said when I asked what had changed in the five years I'd been away from a city that, in many ways, had been my second home.
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Karishma VaswaniAsia business correspondent@KarishmaBBCon Twitter
Mumbai - or Bombay - has always held a mythical place in my family's history. It was here that my migrant Sindhi grandparents first came to, after they fled post-partition Pakistan, in search for a better life for their children.
And it was to Mumbai that I came in 2006 to report for the BBC on the fast-growing economy. The India that I saw then was in the midst of an unprecedented boom.
Growth rates were soaring, the outsourcing sector had helped to lift the monthly salaries of young Indians to levels their parents wouldn't have seen in a year, and Indian companies such as Tata were going global, buying up assets abroad.
Optimism at the chai-walla
One of the places I reported from frequently was the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The main share index, the Sensex, hit a record 10,000 points within the first few months of my arrival. When it reached 20,000 points in 2007 newspaper headlines at the time shrieked that India had finally hit the major league, as foreign funds rushed to invest in fast-growing companies.
Today when I visited the exchange, the Sensex had closed just under 28,000 points - respectable but hardly dazzling.
The topic of conversation for investors hanging out at the local chai-walla outside the Bombay Stock Exchange was very much the financial turmoil that has infected world markets of late.
The optimism of many of them took me by surprise.
"I think India will be able to withstand this and come out of it even better," said 26-year-old Preeti, a self-proclaimed avid investor. "My father has always told us to buy when the markets are down, and that's what I'm doing."
"When there's a sale at the supermarket, what do you do?" asked one mutual fund trader. "You rush to buy your rice and cooking oil don't you? Well that's what you should be doing now - India's stock markets won't be down for long."
2009 sweet spot
That's a refrain I've heard over and over in my time here in Mumbai over the last couple of days - and not just with regards to the stock market.
"India's economy isn't immune to the slowdown in China, but is more resilient than some of the other countries in the region," India's central bank governor Raghuram Rajan told me.
"Based on what I've seen so far there's no strong reason to believe we're on the verge of another crisis."
When I left Mumbai in 2009 to take on a posting in Jakarta for the BBC, India was still in what many said was a sweet spot. The Congress-led coalition had just been voted back in for a second term because of strong economic growth, defying expectations of an electoral loss.
But a series of corruption scandals and increasing disenchantment with that government saw Manmohan Singh - the man once known as the father of Indian reform for his dream budget in 1991 that opened up the doors to the Indian economy - replaced last year by the populist pro-business politician from Gujarat, Narendra Modi.
Now though there are concerns about how quickly the new prime minister can deliver on some of his economic promises.
'Small steps, not big bangs'
Critics have said essential economic reforms - such as making it easier for businesses to buy land to build factories on - failed to pass through the last parliamentary session because of political opposition.
But some businessmen appear to be willing to give Mr Modi another chance.
One is Leo Puri, the managing director of UTI Asset Management: "I think the process of reforms in India is one of incremental steps instead of big bangs.
"I think there was a dramatic expectation of how much the new government would be able to achieve. Even in the 1991 reforms, they happened incrementally and over time before they started to have an effect."
1991 reforms
A number of reforms were initiated in 1991 which aimed to liberalise India's economy. These included:
As a result, after growing by only 0.8% in 1991-92, India's economy grew by 5.1% in 1992-93.
It is true that economic growth in India is starting to pick up. The government says economic growth is 7% but is aiming for higher growth of 8%. If it achieves that, it could grow faster than China - at a time when the world is looking for a new driver of global growth.
Must act fast
But it is also true that some parts of the real economy have yet to feel that growth.
Some economists question India's growth figures, saying that economic indicators like credit and capital growth have yet to show similar gains. And many Indians say they're not feeling the effects of that growth in their wages or bank accounts.
And then there's the weather - the monsoon is also a big factor in how well the Indian economy does. Although agriculture only makes up 17% of the economy, roughly half of the Indian population makes a living through farming, and the monsoon is a key factor in whether rural demand picks up or not.
The reality is that India is unlikely to replace China as a main driver of global growth - depending on how you measure it, its economy is only a quarter or a fifth of the size of China's.
And regardless of China's current problems, it's also unlikely to completely disappear from the radar of investors. After all it's still a huge manufacturing and trading base and a massive market.
There's no doubt that the slowdown in China provides India with opportunities to expand, but it also means that India must act fast to exploit the advantage.
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If you thought Liberia was dying, think again.
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By Mark DoyleBBC News, Liberia
Yes, the Ebola epidemic was a disaster. Its terrible effects are still present - especially among the poorest in society.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in her recent State of the Nation address that the disease had "threatened our very existence".
Nearly 4,000 Liberians died from the outbreak.
But now, thanks to Liberians changing their behaviour, and a massive international aid effort, there are only six confirmed cases of Ebola left in the country.
Scouting for trade
If it were not for the prominent posters exhorting people to believe "Ebola Is Real!", and glimpses of mostly empty Ebola treatment centres behind high walls, the casual visitor to the capital, Monrovia, would think everything was normal.
Bustling markets and chaotic traffic are back.
Almost every second shop in Monrovia seems to be a building supplier or hardware business.
Their mainly Lebanese or Indian managers have returned, once again sitting in their doorways, scouting for trade.
If bags of cement and scaffolding poles are being bought, it means construction could soon be back up to speed.
But while commerce appears to be normalising, life for many Liberians is still badly affected.
Quite scary
The ruins of the long-abandoned Ducor Palace Hotel offer a panoramic view across the capital.
I visited this place once in the early 1980s when it was the focal point of Liberian high society. Back then, dinner suits and evening gowns were almost compulsory at the Ducor.
Now the place is a mouldering heap of concrete.
The climb up the stairs - with all the handrails long-ago looted - was quite scary.
But from the rooftop of the old hotel I was rewarded with a clear view of the vast slum that is the Monrovia city district of West Point - a sea of low shops and homes covered in rusting zinc roofs.
This community of 80,000 souls has only one government school, the Nathaniel Massaquoi Elementary and Junior High.
Right up to the end of last week it had been planned that all schools would re-open on Monday 2 February, after nearly nine months of enforced closure.
Schools, like hospitals, were places where infection spread so the government closed them all down.
The principal at the Nathaniel Massaquoi school, Momoh Mason, had been hoping that the government would provide him with the resources to reopen to pupils.
But the Nathaniel Massaquoi is an especially sad place.
It was used as an Ebola holding centre at the height of the epidemic.
Local residents reacted violently to the transformation of their school into, as they saw it, a highly infectious dumping ground for the dying.
Huge investments
They attacked it, looting the generator and destroying furniture.
Mr Mason spoke of a lack of resources - books, desks and a lick of paint.
But a major reason why the school lies abandoned is the stigma it now suffers because of Ebola.
"There is fear," he said, "this place is somehow still associated with Ebola and some people are not yet sure about it, especially as the authorities haven't helped me clean the place up".
The reopening of all other schools, including those unaffected by Ebola, has also been delayed by at least two weeks.
The authorities said some did not yet have buckets of chlorinated water for hand-washing and thermometers for checking against cases of fever.
Before Ebola hit, Liberia was one of the poorest countries in the world. It still is.
But it is important to remember that in the late 1990s and early 2000s Liberia registered impressive economic growth rates of 8% - 10% - per annum.
I have not been here for several years, and in the interim a number of large international investments, including iron ore mines and several large hotels, have come on stream.
Impressively resilient
To borrow the economists' phrase, it is obvious that the benefit from these investments rarely "trickles down" to the poor.
But the car-owning middle class is clearly growing. The rush hour traffic jams in Monrovia are horrendous.
Despite Ebola, Liberia is not without hope - it may sound a bit of a cliche, but Liberians really are impressively resilient.
They have to be because they suffered over a decade of blood diamond and tribal wars in the 1990s and 2000s.
Successive governments and waves of aid workers here have often disappointed them.
For me, one man I met symbolised the "can do" Liberian attitude.
Slight in stature and naturally modest, Dr Stephen Kennedy is the top Liberian involved in a historic US-financed Ebola vaccine trial.
The vaccine trial Dr Kennedy is spearheading has the potential, at least, to stop the nightmare suffered by Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea from ever re-occurring anywhere in the world.
Dr Kennedy's intellectual capacity is obvious. But the way he describes his role in the first ever trial is also very human and intensely emotional
"I feel so excited," he told me. "This is something that I have dreamed of - to help my country make a major contribution to international public health."
Ebola virus disease (EVD)
Why Ebola is so dangerous
The basics: What you need to know
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During the coronavirus crisis, many photographers have been taking socially distant pictures of their neighbours or images of the unusually empty streets where they live. For some though it is not about recording the seen world, it is about creating an image that captures their own experiences of the past few months.
Here photographer Aletheia Casey talks about her series To Dance With Shadows.
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A dog howls in the distance. A bird lies dead on the pavement. The sound of a passing train echoing through the unpolluted air seems louder now. There is a silence, an emptiness, and a solitude that I have never experienced before in the city. The world seems to have been thrown into a quiet chaos, and the future suddenly feels messy and uncertain.
The flowers in my kitchen, long dead, still sit in their vase. When I arranged them, florists, like everything else, were still open. I touch the transparent, delicate petals; a reminder of the fragility of human life.
The trees outside have burst into new life, in contrast to the near empty streets below them. In the absence of people, pigeons and foxes have reclaimed the streets. A single masked figure walks by, the only visible reminder that life is all but normal.
I find respite from the anxiety of the situation by making photographic work. I cut into my negatives, damaging and distorting them; overlaying my own grief and fear onto the images.
I manipulate and disfigure the photographs to reflect the way in which the future seems distorted and dark with shadows.
As time passes I rework images of scenes captured when life was predictable and the future more certain. I dissect and scratch the images, separating and isolating the pieces of negatives, the lonely splinters of cut film now sitting apart from one another, disconnected, much as I now feel disconnected from many of those that I love.
I overlay the fragments of the cut negatives on top of ink paintings that my young son and I made together while his school was closed and I was his main companion.
The ink from the paintings slowly stains the film, and as it dries and cracks it seems to resemble a virus under the microscope, spreading and infecting.
Loneliness creeps in under my living room door.
It is an unwelcome guest, but I allow it in to sit with me while I work, a silent companion. My own rhythmic breathing becomes a calming background to the production of these images.
Outside my window, a fragile cherry tree is aflame with delicate blossoms. Several days later, the flowers have fallen to the ground as if in defeat, making the pavement resemble the aftermath of a lost fight.
All photographs courtesy Aletheia Casey, with text by Aletheia Casey and Ben Smith.
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Hmm, how to describe it? A pin cushion? A nail bomb in mid-explosion? A starburst? A thistle maybe? Maybe. Or - and I think this might be the one - a hedgehog caught in a net? Whatever, it's difficult: trying to work out just what it is that is depicted with Scotland's proposed new landmark.
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Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter
The spiky beastie does have one very clear point. And that is to be big. It will be at least 55m (180ft) high and 40m (131ft) across. Once built it will be placed in a field alongside the bridge where the M6 motorway turns into the M74 and England turns into Scotland. It is intended as an iconic welcome.
The current welcome is almost ironic - in that there barely is one. Driving between Scotland and England at the moment is like playing tennis without any court markings; you never quite know when you are in and when you are out.
The X of the Scottish Saltire that marks the spot is a modest road sign easily missed because a) it's quite small and you are going quite fast b) you're gaming, sleeping / tuning the radio and possibly driving too or c) it has been obscured by one of the other five million vehicles that go up and down that stretch of road every year.
And that won't do. The good folk of Dumfries and Galloway say they want to give people driving across the border (the landmark is primarily intended for cars travelling south to north) a hearty welcome to Scotland. And what better way to do that than produce a giant piece of eye-catching, attention-grabbing, in-yer-face public art: a slug of visual Red Bull for the weary driver.
They've seen what the Angel of the North has done for the North of England. They've seen how its enormous arms have gathered tourists from hundreds of miles into the warm bosom of Gateshead. And they've seen that once there, how those tourists have spent their cash on everything and anything. And they've thought: we'll have a bit of that.
According to the notes provided by the Gretna Landmark Trust (the group behind the new landmark) Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North "paid for itself within a month." In terms of global marketing that is. Which is what the new landmark at Gretna is really about: more honey pot than "hello honey".
You know why Grenta Green is famous. Three-quarters of a million people rock up there every year, many with marriage on their mind. It is a Caledonian Vegas. The town has the only high street I've ever walked along where there are more flower shops than estate agents. Watching the ant-like stream of soon-to-be or newly-weds march in and out the The Blacksmiths Shop is like taking a short course in anthropology.
The proposed landmark would be a new photo-op for the snappy couples, while giving the town a chance to be famous for something other than nuptials. It is a branding exercise for the area as well as for Scotland.
It is art and propaganda. Like Tatlin's eponymous Tower (1919-21), which the Russian Constructivist designed to be the HQ for global communism, this new structure is an artistic creation that wants to support and please the state.
It's the work of a dapper American and an ambitious Sri Lankan. Charles Jencks is a land artist who moved from America to Dumfries and Galloway, who is now a "key part of the region" says the blurb. He is responsible for the landmark's swirling, earth plinth.
Cecil Balmomd is a revered engineer who has helped produce some of Anish Kapoor's monumental pieces. He now wants to "do a Brian Eno" - and become an artist. It is his spiky metal design.
Balmond describes the proposed landmark (working title: Star of Caledonia) as a "contemporary symbol of a confident, creative Scotland". Designed to communicate "Scotland's power of invention". In these days of devolvement it is a chance to assert Scottish National identity: a reading of the house rules before you enter.
The designers say the structure communicates the energy, modernity and inventiveness of the Scots. It's a long way from the identity Sir Walter Scott is held responsible for creating: that of a Romantic nation, full of industrious people who wear tartan and stare out meaningfully at their picturesque landscape.
It is also long way from being built. The proposal has not yet been given planning permission or the £3m needed to realise the vision. It could end up like Tatlin's Tower and never be built. That's beginning to look like it might be the case with Mark Wallinger's White Horse proposal for Ebbsfleet in Kent.
The idea is to have the Gretna Landmark ready for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014. I hope they make it. I do like a staging post or something to spot on a long journey. And I'd enjoy the inevitable conversation with any fellow passengers. Is it a contemporary folly? Should they have spent the money on a youth centre (as one local told me) in Gretna? What's Scottish about it? What's the point of it? And stuff.
And after we have talked that through, we could then all agree that it is a lot better than all those smurf-like creatures that pop-up along the roadside when drive through France.
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Jeremy Hunt celebrated his appointment as secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs this week. But he might not have been quite so happy to spend his first day in office hosting a summit about an issue as complex as the western Balkans. Yet, at a high level reception to mark the end of the conference, Mr Hunt was given a few pointers about how to shape British foreign policy in the coming years.
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James LandaleDiplomatic correspondent@BBCJLandaleon Twitter
Standing in the gardens of Clarence House, glass in hand, I was just a few feet from Chancellor Angela Merkel, of Germany, and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, of Greece.
Lurking nearby was UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, her new foreign secretary, and a gaggle of other cabinet ministers. The Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, was just behind me. And mingling in the crowd were six other prime ministers from the western Balkans with their own ministers and ambassadors.
The Prince of Wales, our host, was steadily working the garden, a quiet word here, a joke there. Officials, diplomats and a solitary journalist (me) made up the rest of the numbers. The Sun was dipping in the west, the London traffic a distant hubbub and all seemed well in the world.
I tell you this not as some shameless exercise in diplomatic name-dropping. This is the sort of event I go to - I am the diplomatic correspondent of the BBC.
No, I want to tell you about this reception, one that marked the end of the western Balkans summit in London, for what happened next.
For the Prince of Wales then stepped up to a small podium and began to give a speech. I expected the usual pleasantries and platitudes. I could not have been more wrong.
'Practical, difficult action'
For the prince delivered a short but powerful homily on the importance of reconciliation.
And significantly he spoke from the heart, citing his own experience following the murder of his great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, at the hands of the IRA in August 1979.
"Reconciliation is not simply a theoretical abstract concept," he said. "It is, of course, a matter of practical, difficult action, painful choices, and hard, but essential, compromise.
"Blame, distrust and hatred are natural, instinctive responses to decades, even centuries, of conflict and injustice - but they do not help us to change course. That requires the really difficult business of forgiveness, understanding and, if I may say so, tremendous courage and enlightened leadership.
"I know this because very nearly 40 years ago, my great uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was murdered in a terrible bomb attack.
"Ever since that fateful day, I have been determined to pursue the long, hard road to lasting reconciliation.
"We can, of course, never forget the wrongs of the past, which must always inform the choices we make about the future. But they cannot be allowed to limit our horizons or to constrain the opportunity to which future generations aspire."
He said meaningful reconciliation in the western Balkans was the only way of ensuring that the region's children did not endure the agonies of the generations before them.
"Much progress has been made in this regard over recent years," he said, "But much much more needs to be done."
'Global Britain'
He was speaking to an audience all too aware that this week marks the 23rd anniversary of the massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at the hands of Bosnia Serb forces in the town of Srebrenica, the worst mass killing on European soil since World War Two.
It was a powerful and effective speech.
And it struck me that perhaps here, on this lawn, as the heat of the day slowly dissipated, I had seen a small example of what British foreign policy could become after Brexit.
The government currently espouses what it calls a "global Britain" foreign policy. This was a phrase designed to convince the world that Brexit would not mean Britain withdrawing from the world.
But few claim to know what it means in practice. It has been dismissed as a slogan in pursuit of a policy.
Yet at this reception we had an example of several things that Britain can bring to the party.
First, the UK has strong convening power, the ability to bring all these leaders together.
Who else but the Prince of Wales could persuade Angela Merkel's office that she should spend another hour of her day in the UK at a reception such as this? Who else could lecture a group of heads of government about reconciliation but a future monarch who had suffered personally from the violence of conflict?
There was a tough message here: the six Balkan leaders needed to do more.
Second, politicians talk breezily of British values but here, at this reception and this summit, was the UK urging six relatively new nations to embrace the value of the rule of law, the importance of justice, the prosperity that can come from stability, the advantages of multilateralism and so on.
UK national interest
We often presume these are universally acknowledged: they are not.
Third, this was foreign policy with real edge. Warm words and cold drinks might sound at the fluffier end of diplomacy - but it is in the direct UK national interest for the western Balkans to remain stable.
Parts of the region are riven with ethnic tension, many of the governments are weak, and corruption and organised crime is rife.
It is not just that the UK and the rest of Europe wish to prevent a repeat of the conflicts that tore this region apart in the 1990s. There is also a threat closer to home. Many of the drugs and weapons that are used on Britain's streets originate in the western Balkans.
Now, we should not overstate all this. The Prince of Wales is not about to become our de facto foreign secretary.
And if "global Britain" is to mean anything, then the government will have to provide answers to the big foreign policy questions of the age: the UK's future attitude to a politically unstable Europe, an independent-minded United States, a rising China, the challenge of global migration and Islamist terrorism and so on.
But perhaps here on this lawn, in this heady summer of sporting success and political uncertainty, there was a small cameo performance of what one day British foreign policy could become.
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The analogue television signal in London is being switched off.
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BBC One, ITV1, Channel Four and Channel Five stopped transmitting on analogue overnight. The BBC Two signal was stopped earlier this month.
It means people will need to convert televisions to receive the digital signal and Freeview viewers also need to retune.
An estimated 12 million viewers are affected in the London area, but most homes have already switched to digital.
Roadshows have taken place throughout the city to help people who are yet to make the change.
Advice points, run by volunteers, are also available in local communities and there is a hotline for people who want information.
To mark the switchover the Crystal Palace transmitter, in south London, will be lit up on Wednesday night with 200,000 watts of energy efficient lighting at a ceremony attended by Sir David Attenborough and DJ Chris Evans.
Television broadcasts in London have come from the tower since 1956.
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It's a strange day when German business leaders - hardly known for their Bolshevism - are tentatively raising their glasses to toast a favourable election result for a left-wing, pro-borrowing, high-spending candidate.
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By Joe MillerBBC News
And yet that is what many boardrooms from Berlin to Baden Wurttemberg will be doing this morning, however discreetly, after Jeremy Corbyn outperformed expectations and ate into the Conservative Party's majority.
The reason for this embrace, simply, is the single market.
Initially, there had been little-to-no interest in the UK election in German business circles. Most, like the polls, assumed a comprehensive win for Theresa May, and the size of her majority was seen as being of negligible consequence to the direction of Brexit negotiations.
As one chief executive of a German-based multinational put it: "A weak or strong UK government still really has no negotiation power in the Brexit. The EU will still set the agenda and terms."
Indeed, many firms, especially those in the Mittelstand - Germany's small and medium-sized businesses that often have close links to the UK - had been working on the assumption of a so-called "hard Brexit" for months. Quite a few mentioned that they were courting other growing EU export markets - Poland, for example.
But as the polls began to narrow, there was a last minute scurry to understand what a Jeremy Corbyn-led approach to Brexit would be - with some privately concluding that the chances of keeping Britain in the single market might be higher under Mr Corbyn, even as they disagreed with many parts of his economic platform.
What seemed like a last ditch effort by the head of the BDA, the German Employers Association, to find a solution that would enable the UK government to negotiate some form of single market access after Brexit, suddenly didn't seem as far-fetched.
This morning, Ingo Kramer, the BDA's president, wasted no time in declaring that the UK election results showed "nationalism and anti-EU rhetoric" could not lead to majorities, before adding, somewhat triumphantly:
"We can only hope that more realism and pragmatism will now be injected into the Brexit negotiations."
Jorg Kramer, Commerzbank's chief economist, reacted with similar cheer, saying Thursday's result was a "vote against a hard Brexit".
The head of the BDI, Dieter Kempf, said a "hard Brexit" had been voted out, and that it was time for the UK government to " de-escalate its rhetoric".
The Dax share index in Frankfurt rose by almost 1%.
Yet the reaction has not been unanimously favourable.
Some, including the quietly influential VDMA - which represents German engineering firms, said they feared a hung parliament or minority government would derail negotiations for months, or kick them into the long grass, leading to far greater uncertainty.
"The unclear political situation after the elections in the UK will make the Brexit negotiations even more difficult," said Thilo Brodtmann, VDMA's chief executive.
Mr Brodtmann added that the result was "bad news" for German mechanical engineering firms, who export 7.3bn euros worth to the UK every year, and that there was now an increased risk of no agreement being reached by the 2019 deadline.
Martin Wansleben, who leads the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, or DIHK, struck a similarly downbeat tone.
The lack of a clear majority had led to an increase of uncertainty in the German economy, he said, and the "road map for Brexit negotiations is now obsolete".
A handful of small business owners, whose trade links with the UK are less vital, suggested a swift and smooth Brexit resolution remained paramount, as the act itself had long been priced in, whether hard or soft.
But regardless of the reaction, one thing seems certain. German interest in the intricacies of the UK parliamentary system has never been this high.
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A-level students across Wales opened their all-important results envelopes on Thursday to find out whether their hard work had paid off.
But how does it feel? And what is next? These young people explain:
Rhys Henry, 19, from Neath and Wales Under-20 squad member
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Got two Bs and an A which earned him a place to study history at Swansea University
For Wales Under-20 and Ospreys prop Rhys Henry, results day brought good news after a lot of juggling.
"I'm just really happy that all the hard work has paid off," he said.
The 19-year old Neath Port Talbot College student had his mind on rugby for most of the summer, training with his club team, the Ospreys.
But he is aware that he needs to be prepared for life after rugby, too.
"As much as I want to play rugby professionally and earn a living from it, it's not a guarantee," he said.
When exam time came around he was busy representing his country as a member of the Wales Under-20s squad.
"We went out to the south of France for the Junior World Cup and it clashed with four of my exams out there. We played Japan on the Thursday and I had my first exam on the Wednesday so that was tough, having to come from an exam room and then switching on really for a game," he added.
Being organised and having good relationships with the people he works with had been key to achieving his grades, he said. He planned ahead with lecturers and coaches to be able to sit all his exams.
Good communication had also helped him deal with clashes between training and studying. He made sacrifices too, giving up a cap for Wales to sit one of his exams.
"It had to be done," he added.
Shoruk Nekeb, 18, Cardiff
Shoruk Nekeb has wanted to be an architect ever since she was a girl growing up in Libya.
The 18-year-old, who now lives in Riverside in Cardiff, has secured the next step towards her dream career after she achieved five A-levels at at Fitzalan High School.
But she said it was a difficult journey.
"It was the worst year of my life, but it was worth it. It was a big shock and unexpected," she said.
She will study architecture at Cardiff University this September.
It is a long way from the Arabic TV programme she watched growing up in Libya, which inspired her to consider architecture.
"There was a girl wearing a construction helmet over her head scarf on the TV - it really stuck with me because I didn't think girls could do that," she said.
When Shoruk and her family moved to Cardiff eight year ago, it developed into an interest in the environment and sustainable buildings.
"Often I'd come into school with handfuls of litter I would see whilst walking in," she said.
The most painful part of A-levels were the exams for Shoruk.
"I'm thrilled but still reminding myself to feel human," she reflected.
Ashna Anil, 18, from Cardiff
The 18 year old said: "I'm thrilled and relieved."
"I think all the support from friends, family and my teachers was really key to my success.
"There was a slow build up of revision that came to a big crescendo."
She is going to study medicine at Cardiff University in September.
For her, a career in medicine was something she has been really interested in.
"I didn't want a purely academic career and with medicine there is that part which is hands on," she added.
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Aberdeen City Council has said it did not plan to reprint thousands of polling cards which contain a prominent spelling error.
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The cards, for the Scottish parliamentary election on 5 May, spell Scotland as "Scotalnd".
The error was not spotted until the official notification started to be delivered to voters in the city.
The authority said it accepted the mistake was "disappointing and embarrassing".
A spokeswoman for the Returning officer said: "This is a very disappointing, and of course, a very embarrassing proofing error.
"The 175,000 poll cards distributed will not be replaced as this unfortunate spelling mistake in no way invalidates the poll cards."
Related Internet Links
Aberdeen City Council
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Getting a test to see if you currently have coronavirus isn't very pleasant. You need to stick a cotton swab far enough down your throat you'll likely gag and then attempt to poke your brains out via your nose.
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David Gregory-KumarScience, Environment & Rural Affairs Correspondent
The nasal swab in particular looks so distressing we debated if we could even film one for a recent report.
Then you have to wait for your samples to be sent to the lab, tested and the result to be sent back to you. A rapid response would be getting the final result in 12 hours, but it could take even longer.
Now a team at the University of Warwick say they have created a test for coronavirus that works just like a pregnancy test.
No need for medical staff or labs and with a clear result in about five minutes. At the moment they've been using nasal swab samples to test it, but they are confident it could work with a saliva sample.
Nify chemistry
This test is so similar to a pregnancy test that the team purchased real pregnancy tests online, stripped out the insides and used the plastic cases for their prototypes.
Behind the test is some really nifty chemistry.
Rather than directly detect the virus or antibodies the test instead uses sugars.
These grab on to the virus as it moves along a test strip. In the lab it takes about five minutes for the test to show a visible line indicating the sugars have detected coronavirus and you have a positive result.
Off to 14 days isolation with you.
Ok now some important caveats. Work on coronavirus is moving very quickly right across science. While this work has produced a scientific paper, which I've read, it hasn't yet been reviewed and published.
This approach is all very, very new. When it comes to the accuracy of the test the team are confident they can detect the virus, but it's still too early to say how well it will do in the real world.
Controlling the disease
One reason for talking to a reporter at such an early stage is to see if this new test can work on a much larger scale and for that you need to attract the attention of a manufacturer.
But if it works it will be a really useful tool in our struggle to control this disease.
Imagine a suspected outbreak of coronavirus on a cruise ship. Whereas now you have to send out a medical team for testing and gear up a lab to generate the results, you could instead just send a bag of 600 disposable plastic tests that anyone could use and get a result while they waited.
Or you could test everyone flying from an airport. Even better for developing countries this is a cheap alternative to existing expensive high-tech testing.
And it would also mean a trip to a Covid-19 car park testing station could become much faster and much less invasively unpleasant.
Your nose will thank the researchers.
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In power for 33 years, despite having never been formally elected, Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos is Africa's second-longest serving head of state - trailing Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo by just one month.
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By Louise RedversLuanda
At home he has a firm grip on all aspects of government, is the head of the armed forces and responsible for appointing senior judges.
Overseas, as president of one of Africa's major oil producers he has positioned himself as a regional wise man, receiving weekly visits from various African leaders, and has developed strong links with China, as well as Brazil and the United States.
The 70 year old is never criticised by the country's state media organs, and the remaining few private newspapers that have not been bought up by government ministers and which dare challenge his actions are hit with lawsuits.
He is now hoping to win a new five-year mandate when his country holds parliamentary elections on Friday under a new constitution that elects the president from the top of the winning party list.
Analysts say the election is as much a referendum on Mr dos Santos, who celebrated his birthday on the campaign trail this week, and his record as president as it is about appointing a new National Assembly.
For many Angolans who have endured decades of war and disruption, the president is their one continuity, his face beaming out from T-shirts, posters and framed photographs that hang on walls across the country.
As well as steering his county from one-party Marxist rule into a liberalised free-market economy - now one of the fastest-growing in the world thanks to oil - he is hailed for ending Angola's 27-year civil conflict, albeit militarily, and for keeping the country at peace for the last decade.
Under his leadership Angola has risen from the ashes of war to become sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest economy, after South Africa and Nigeria, and a magnet for foreign investment.
But while Mr dos Santos' long stay in office represents stability to his trading partners, one of the largest of which is now China, for some Angolans, particularly the younger generation, the president has outstayed his welcome.
Scripted speeches
In March 2011 a group of musicians inspired by the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents started a wave of street protests to call for Mr dos Santos to resign.
Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with "32 e muito" (32 years is a lot) the youngsters accused their president of being a dictator clinging unfairly to power and said not enough of the country's vast oil resources is being shared out among the people.
Their cause has been furthered by Angolan journalist and anti-corruption campaigner Rafael Marques de Morais who has published several reports alleging the involvement of members of Mr dos Santos' family and his close political circle have been involved in reportedly corrupt business deals.
Clearly rattled by the new wave of dissent against him, and events in North Africa, the president has hit back at his critics, publicly denying he is a dictator and explaining he too once lived in poverty and that he shares people's frustrations.
The 2012 election campaign has been focused on making Mr Dos Santos appear more appealing to younger Angolans, whom he has addressed directly at all his rallies, promising more university places and job opportunities.
His previously internet-phobic party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), has launched a new website featuring campaign jingles and videos and it runs online media conferences.
Gone are the president's stiff suits and silent public appearances. He is now more likely to be seen in a colourful shirt and baseball cap, offering plenty of bright smiles for the camera.
His party call him the "candidato do povo" - the people's candidate - and has used his nickname "Zedu" - a shortening of his first names Jose Eduardo - on posters and billboards which use soft colours to try and soften his appeal.
Nonetheless, unlike other political leaders photographed mingling with voters on the back of motorbikes, Mr dos Santos still travels with a large blue-light and military entourage that can shut down parts of the already congested capital Luanda for hours.
And while trips outside his luxurious pink palace are becoming more frequent, he always sticks to a scripted speech - and where possible shuns direct interaction with journalists.
Key to success
It has been more than five years since Mr dos Santos took part in a foreign media interview and he rarely attends regional summits of groups like the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) or the African Union (AU), sending ministers in his place.
Analysts say Mr dos Santos' avoidance of the limelight is key to his success because has been able to keep his enemies guessing and he has carefully kept internal rivals at bay.
"Against all odds, he has remained in power since 1979, overcoming challenges of war, elections and at the same time displaying a highly refined political craftsmanship," said Alex Vines, director of Africa Studies at London think tank Chatham House.
Although not considered old for an African president, it is understood Mr dos Santos is looking for a way to step down in the not too distant future.
Earlier this year he appointed Manuel Vicente, his trusted friend and former boss of the state oil firm Sonangol, as minister of state for economic co-ordination and his vice-presidential candidate.
This sent the rumour mill into overdrive that the oilman could become Angola's next president.
"Mr dos Santos is starting to think about stepping down but he will want to ensure his political future is protected first," said Paula Roque, an Angola expert at the University of Oxford.
"He is fearful of being treated like the late Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, who stepped down from office and was then taken to court on corruption charges."
While criticism of Mr dos Santos is growing among small sections of urban Angolans, who are increasingly turning to the internet and social media as an alternative to the heavily censored mainstream media, he still plenty of support.
"I do agree our president has been in power for a long time, but if you think about it, we have only been at peace for 10 years so he's not had much chance to govern," said Henrique Pedro, 25, a bank worker from Luanda.
"For me, he is the best person and the most experienced."
Schoolteacher Manuel da Conceicao, 34, told the BBC: "I think the Angolan context is different. We have only had multi-party democracy since 1991 and we had a very long war after that... I don't think we really have the conditions for a change right now.
"What we definitely don't want is to see our president forced from power violently like how it happened in Libya or Egypt.
"When the time comes, we want a peaceful and dignified transition. Angola does not want any more war," she said.
Fond of music and football, the president is married to Ana Paula dos Santos, who is 18 years his junior, and has several children.
His eldest daughter Isabel dos Santos is regularly cited as one of the most influential businesswomen in Portugal, where she holds shares in energy, telecomms and financial companies.
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During the term of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1983 the DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, requested that a controversial picture depicting "King Billy and the Pope" should be displayed in his room at Stormont, newly released state papers reveal.
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By Eamon PhoenixHistorian
The large oil painting by the Dutch artist, Pieter van der Meulen, perhaps wrongly entitled The Entry Of King William To Ireland, had been acquired by the Unionist government in the 1930s and placed in the Great Hall of Stormont.
The painting caused some concern among MPs because in one corner, above King William III, was a "Popish" figure with a papal tiara, apparently bestowing a Benediction.
However, in May 1933 it was attacked by a party of Scottish loyalists. Before the sergeant at arms could intervene, Glasgow councillor Charles Forrest threw a pot of red paint at the painting while a colleague, Mrs Radcliffe from the Scottish Protestant League, stabbed the canvas with a knife. Apart from the paint stains, the main damage was to the figure of the Duke of Schomberg's horse!
By the 1980s the painting was hanging in the Public Record Office in Belfast's Balmoral Avenue. In May 1983 the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) learned that Dr Paisley was the "prime mover" in a request to have the painting returned to Stormont after 50 years.
On 3 May 1983 H Coote, an official at the Stormont central secretariat, informed a colleague: "Seemingly, Mr Paisley is keen to have it in his room at Stormont."
Coote felt that Dr Paisley should have his wish as "the mere fact of it displayed in Mr Paisley's room would accord the picture an acceptability which it may not have heretofore enjoyed".
He added: "I would have thought the painting, depicting as it does, the Pope and King William III, had a decided ecumenical flavour and was scarcely likely to be embraced as a true 'Orange' work of art." He felt that it "would be more trouble than it was worth to refuse Dr Paisley's request".
The controversial painting now hangs outside the office of the Speaker of the NI Assembly, Donegal man William Hay, at Stormont.
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There are about five million British expats living and working abroad, with the popular destinations being Australia, Spain and the US. Figures from 2011 suggest that about 3,000 British citizens every week move away from the UK on a long-term basis.
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Phil CoomesPicture editor
Photographer Charlie Clift decided to track down a few of those and headed to Spain to meet those living on the Mediterranean coast.
"Immigrants are so often spoken about in terms of statistics or stereotypes," he told me. "I want people to understand the variety within a group showing how different each person can be.
"I thought it would be interesting not to focus on immigrants coming into the UK in the way that much of the British media does, but to look the other way, and focus on British people who are immigrants themselves in other countries.
"Some could not speak Spanish and hardly integrated with the locals, whilst others had married Spanish people and educated their children in local schools. I found a common thread of Britishness running through each and every one of my subjects, but beyond that they varied hugely."
Here are a few from the series so far and you can see more on Charlie Clift's Brits Abroad website.
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Those David Cameron once insulted - but now says he respects - have given him and the Conservatives a bloody nose. Indeed, all the leaders of the big political parties are nursing wounds after so many chose to vote for "none of the above".
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Nick RobinsonPolitical editor
This has been a very English anti-establishment revolt. After all, its leader Nigel Farage is an ex public schoolboy from Kent, the son of a stockbroker who also worked in the City of London. However, like Boris Johnson or Alex Salmond he has found a way to reach those parts of the electorate others cannot reach.
No-one can know how durable his success will be but this election will kill the widespread assumption that UKIP is more a pressure group than a party... that it matters only in European elections... that it is merely a temporary home for disgruntled Tories.
The immediate effect will be to add pressure on the prime minister to sound and act like the sort of Conservative his activists want him to be - tougher on immigration, Europe and crime.
Longer term, today's results leave the next general election intriguingly open - a split vote on the right of politics might allow Ed Miliband to become prime minister with barely more than third of votes. Equally, the fact that Labour are not attracting many of those who are rejecting the Coalition means that its demise is far from guaranteed.
The people have spoken. Now it's time for the political classes to try to work out what on earth they meant.
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A new study indicates that only a third of children in Bradford had sufficient exercise in the first lockdown, last spring - and that a similar proportion were rarely leaving the home. Dr John Wright, of Bradford Royal Infirmary, says this is contributing to a different kind of health crisis, one that began long before the pandemic, but risks becoming worse because of it.
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The Born in Bradford research project, monitoring the health of 13,500 children born in the city between 2007 and 2010, provides a great opportunity to track changes in their behaviour.
Last spring nearly 1,000 of them, aged nine to 13, took part in a survey, telling researchers how much exercise they were getting in lockdown, and the data (a pre-print of which can be seen here) is alarming.
About two-thirds of the children had taken part in an earlier survey, enabling us to compare their behaviour before and after lockdown. Of this sub-group, 69% had been getting the recommended daily average of at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity before lockdown, but once it began, only 29% - less than half - met that target. And when people fill in questionnaires, they are likely to overestimate physical activity rather than underestimate it.
Children from poorer and ethnic minority backgrounds (and there is a big overlap between the two groups in Bradford) were particularly likely to be getting insufficient exercise.
In fact, the survey shows that far too many children were rarely leaving the house. Overall, 30% of the nearly 1,000 participants reported that they had normally stayed at home, or in their garden or yard, in the previous seven days, but there were significant differences depending on ethnic background: among children of Pakistani heritage the figure was 40%, while among White British children it was 16%. (Most children in Bradford belong to one of these two groups.)
Before lockdown all children were leaving the house to go to school, and would benefit from some physical exercise both in class and during breaks from lessons. During lockdown a surprising number were confined to the space between four walls, and their garden if they had one.
This year of the virus has been a throwback to the infectious giants that bestrode the world before the advent of antibiotics, vaccines and public health measures. It has been a harsh reminder of the ever-present risk of new communicable diseases, and a lesson in the consequences of complacency.
But the Born in Bradford research reminds us that there is another malicious pandemic that we must turn our attention to, one that causes far more deaths than Covid ever will. Less visible than Covid, but hiding in plain sight, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer and mental ill-health are the modern epidemics. While we have been like children playing Sunday football chasing after the Covid ball, we have left this particular goal wide open.
Covid has been a complicated problem, but with public health measures, testing and vaccines it has been solvable. Luckily, it has an easily identifiable cause, the infamous spiked virus.
Non-communicable diseases, by contrast, are complex problems that arise from multiple and interacting factors that are often unknown. They are shaped by the houses we live in, the neighbourhoods we play in, the food we eat, the shops we visit, the schools we learn in and the jobs we work at.
Physical activity is a good illustration of this complex problem. We all know that it is an important ingredient in keeping our bodies and minds fit. Efforts to promote more active behaviour have generally borne encouraging results, as evidenced by the number of gyms that have sprung up in recent years, sales of fitbits and the popularity of Joe Wicks. The limitation on focusing on individual behaviour, however, is that it potentially widens inequalities. The comfortably off give up smoking, buy fitbits and eat kale. The poorer have less choice.
Prof John Wright, a doctor and epidemiologist, is head of the Bradford Institute for Health Research, and a veteran of cholera, HIV and Ebola epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. He is writing this diary for BBC News and recording from the hospital wards for BBC Radio.
Telling children and families to go out and take more exercise is all well and good if they have a nice garden or live near a park. If you live near busy roads, without a garden or safe place to exercise, then you are going to be reluctant to let your children go out to play, and thus the seeds of NCDs are sown.
Two boys from an Afghan family, Mehdi and Maseh, aged 11 and nine, say they have rarely been going out to play in the latest lockdown - the only real exception being when it was snowing.
"In the weekends we sometimes play video games together - we love playing computer games - and then we probably will watch TV," says Mehdi.
"We did go to the park at the start of the Covid but both our footballs are busted. There's a park but it's a long walk away, so we don't go. We'd go out and play with friends but because of Covid we don't see them and so we just stay in."
Fortunately, their parents do at least send them to Bradford's Arise Sunday education support group, where learning club tutor Shamsa Aslam organises exercise sessions, as well as educational activities.
Emily, 13, from nearby Leeds, does a lot of sport when she goes to school - football and badminton - but doesn't have the equipment to play at home. She also used to go for runs during her school lunch hour but has now stopped.
"I was doing skateboarding but there have been some attacks and so it's not very safe round here," she says. She does at least get some walks with members of her family.
For those who used to take part in team sports, lockdown has taken away a big part of their lives.
Dawood Nasir used to play 10 hours of basketball a week at the Mandela Centre in Leeds until the pandemic stopped him. For a while he carried alone, but then gave up. "I'd go in my back garden and start dribbling and I'd go to the park but there would be no one there," he says. "I just lost all my motivation."
Daniel Bingham, who led the Born in Bradford research on physical activity, wants to see measures to get young people exercising again once lockdown is over. But he says that by itself is not enough, because even before the pandemic there was a problem. Figures for England as a whole in 2018/19 showed that 53% of children were not getting the recommended daily average of at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise. (Again, this is likely to be an underestimate, as young people may overstate how active they have been when asked to remember what they have done in the last week.)
"Our research shows that Covid has made a bad problem worse," Daniel says. "But how do we make things better? This should be a wake-up call to really ask how we can change our society to be more active."
And the research has also shone a light on the need to pay particular attention to children from ethnic minorities, he argues.
"If they're starting at a different level from the majority white British children, what extra resource and support do they need to be able to do more physical activity?"
There is a lot to learn from the vigour of how we have tackled Covid that we could replicate for NCDs. In particular, it would be helpful if the urgency of public health policy and legislation that has so effectively tackled the virus were transferred to tackle inequalities, urban planning, overcrowded houses, lack of parks, unsafe roads for active travel, poor education and pressures from industry to consume junk food and alcohol.
Follow @docjohnwright, radio producer @SueM1tchell on Twitter
Listen to My Name is... with Hamza Malik, Dawood Nasir's basketball coach from the Mandela Centre in Leeds, at 11:00 on Monday 1 March on BBC Radio 4 - or catch up later online
The programme also features Claire and Westen, youth and community workers from Youthpoint, at the Leeds Cardigan Centre, who have been delivering fruit to the young people who would normally attend their sport and youth sessions.
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Two women and a man have been arrested over the death of a man in Hull.
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Rolandas Poskus, 52, was found dead on a grassed area on Dane Park Road on Friday, prompting police to launch a murder inquiry.
The women, aged 42 and 18, and a 23-year-old man were arrested in connection with the Lithuanian national's death.
Humberside Police said Mr Poskus's family, who are in Lithuania, have been informed of his death.
The force has appealed for witnesses to come forward.
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An "Islamic caliphate" has been declared in the Middle East and the group behind it, Isis, has now rebranded itself simply "the Islamic State". Panorama has spoken to a defector about life inside the feared jihadist group.
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By Paul WoodBBC Panorama
Isis is not an organisation it is easy to leave. We met a man who had - and he was terrified of the consequences. "The brutality of Isis terrifies everyone," he said. "My family, my cousins, my siblings are all still there. I fear for them. If they can't reach me, they will reach my family."
He was nervous, agreeing to record an interview only after several hours of discussion, over customary tiny glasses of scalding hot, sweet tea. He would talk to us only if we would not reveal his identity. He wrapped himself in a keffiyeh for our camera and we promised not to use his name.
He summed up the jihadists' tactics like this: "If you're against me, then you'll be killed. If you're with me, you work with me. You submit to my will and obey me, under my power in all matters."
'Heart impassioned'
There are few accounts of how Isis works. That is no surprise when Isis says it will detain as spies any foreign journalists who enter its territory. So we travelled to Turkey's border with Syria to meet the defector.
The border is a hinterland of safe houses and supply lines for the rebels in the Syrian uprising. Turkey has made clear that Isis is no longer welcome here, so it is possible to meet people who have sought refuge from the Islamic State.
The defector had initially joined an Islamist brigade of the Free Syrian Army to fight the Assad regime. He joined Isis when his whole tribe pledged allegiance to the group - and because he believed in creating an Islamic state.
His first orders, as an Isis fighter, were to attend a course on Sharia, or Islamic law. "Not the principles of Islam, the principles of the Islamic State. So they teach you the Islam they want," he said.
"It appeals to the heart and not to the mind, so that your heart becomes impassioned with their words. This is the first stage. The second stage is military exercises, military training."
He explained that Isis had learned the lessons from Iraq in the early days on the anti-American insurgency. Then, it alienated the Sunni population. In Syria, the defector said, Isis tried to do things differently as it entered each new town.
"In the beginning Isis used goodness with the population in order to attract the people and they provided them with what they needed in order to attract them quickly, because they suffered so much under Bashar and his regime," he said.
"Once Isis succeeded in attracting people they changed dramatically, from being good to being cruel and harsh. You're either with me or against me! There is nothing in between."
Sharia law
In all the towns and villages it controls, Isis has implemented its very conservative version of Sharia. Rules on appearance are strictly enforced: a beard for men, the full veil for women, this is required for the whole population.
"Anything that contradicts their beliefs is forbidden. Anyone who follows what they reject is an apostate and must be killed," the defector said.
Our producer met one woman who had fled with her husband and children to Turkey from Raqqa in Syria. She said an Isis fighter policing the streets had threatened her after she had accidentally shown one centimetre of her trousers.
"I was wearing it [abaya, or cloak] but I just forgot to lift it up, that's while I was getting out of the car. I don't know how he saw me, I really don't know. And he was Egyptian, unfortunately. He is not a Syrian worrying about a woman from his nation."
The defector said it was a deliberate Isis strategy to use outsiders to police the towns it took over.
"The Islamic State have brought in people from other countries, different nationalities who are quite young in age so that they can brainwash or indoctrinate them with their Isis ideology," he said.
"And so they control the areas, not through the local people but with their own forces and their own men whom they prepare for this task."
The jihadists of Isis wish to go back to what they see as a more pure form of Islam from the time of the Prophet and his companions. They believe in a literal interpretation of the Koran.
The lslamic State's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has now proclaimed himself "Caliph", a descendant of Muhammad and of his tribe. He has demanded that all Muslims, everywhere, swear loyalty to him -a ruling condemned by other religious scholars around the region.
But Baghdadi is also spoken of as a cunning tactician. Some reports from Mosul, for instance, speak of confidence-building measures. Security barriers have been torn down to open roads, electricity lines restored, municipal salaries paid… if this does not work, Isis can rely on the whip and the sword, as it has done many times in the past.
Panorama: Isis: Terror in Iraq is broadcast on BBC One at 20:30 BST on Monday, 14 July.
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Fifty years ago a groundbreaking documentary shone a spotlight on to Smethwick, West Midlands, as racial tensions reached boiling point. Two years on from arguably the most racist election campaign in British history, people were continuing to shun their new black and Asian neighbours.
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By Rebecca WoodsBBC News
Smethwick, in 1966, was a community divided. Landlords would not let their houses to them. Churches closed their doors to well-dressed families, so as not to upset the white congregation.
And - as a 1966 BBC documentary showed - even haircuts were off limits as racist barbers refused to let immigrants into their salons.
The programme, Smethwick: A Straw in the Wind, shone a spotlight on the attitudes of people who were furious at the influx of the thousands of foreigners who had travelled over to the Midlands to find work in factories.
"They should live in a district by themselves. They're not clean," one young mother told the documentary.
Another man complained: "They're a nuisance when you've got to walk past them in the street, they won't move. They're a nuisance at work."
Another claimed: "They're content with Kitekat [cat food] and dog food, instead of ordinary meat."
Narrator James Mossman, the BBC journalist behind the film, commented: "So far in Britain, few things could have been so ill-prepared as immigration."
About 75,000 immigrants a year were arriving in Britain in the mid 1960s and yet there had been precious little information given to natives or newcomers about what either could expect.
Echoes of the terrible racial tensions that tore many communities apart in the 1960s are still around today. Could they have been avoided if the authorities had taken the time to prepare people for the sudden changes?
It is a theory first-wave immigrants watching the footage 50 years on believe.
Jaswinder Chaggar arrived with his family in 1966 from India.
"The working-class person had no idea what was about to hit them," he said.
"It does raise the question why, with cinema, TV and radio, why was this information not put forward?"
"[They could have said] 'We're inviting the nig-nogs over because we need them, the factories are empty.'"
Shirley Cooper, who came from the Caribbean to live in Birmingham at the same time, says: "People weren't prepared. They came here and didn't have all the things that they thought they'd have.
"With a bit more planning things might have been different."
Information about the influx of immigrants had been virtually non-existent. The vast majority of West Midlanders did not want to live side by side with them at all.
At the 1964 election, Conservative MP Peter Griffiths infamously won the Smethwick seat after a campaign employing the slogan: "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour".
Mossman, a Panorama journalist known for his acerbic interviewing style, put it to Griffiths that he had exploited the anger surrounding the sudden change in cultures to win votes.
"I haven't exploited it at all," said the MP. "I have been the only political leader in the town that has been prepared to face up to the problems."
The problems were deep in all walks of life.
In what was an innovative approach for the time, an Indian man was fitted with a BBC radio microphone to record his experience of trying to get a haircut.
"We're closed now," he recorded the barber saying. "Will you clear off?"
When his visitor challenged him, insisting there was no sign in the window, and that the salon was not closed, the hairdresser replies: "Well I am. To you."
Immigrant families would arrive for church services in their Sunday best, only to be told by clergymen to come back later so as not to upset the congregation. They were often forced to worship in their own homes.
They were used to seeing signs in windows, reading: "No Blacks. No Irish. No Dogs."
A study by the University of Birmingham at the time suggested 80% of the city's population would not let a room to any of the thousands of migrants who had come to work in Midlands factories.
They had no option but to cram their often large families into tiny homes.
In response to the growing overcrowding crisis, councils demolished cramped back-to-backs and built upwards instead - creating dozens of tower blocks.
With their mod-cons, inside toilets and lifts, they were initially viewed as the height of modern living.
But according to Birmingham historian Prof Carl Chinn, the creation of high-rise flats eradicated community spirit.
"When people first moved in they thought it was great. But soon people started to realise 'where are my neighbours?'
"So what was destroyed were neighbourhoods that had taken generations to build up.
"Neighbourhood building and community building should be organic. Councils and officials can provide facilities... but they were in a hurry.
"Birmingham got 10,000 properties destroyed in the war... you can understand the need to rush forward, but perhaps they went a bit too fast.
"We should be learning lessons. It's about consultation and empowering people in their own neighbourhoods. That's the key lesson."
Mossman's use of undercover recordings to capture examples of racism was "groundbreaking", said Jenny Phillamore, professor of migration and superdiversity at University of Birmingham.
"I have not heard of anything like that happening before and even today that would be quite groundbreaking and controversial," she said.
Fifty years on, Prof Phillamore says the West Midlands has made huge leaps forward - but the same undercover exercise could bring similar results.
"Back in the 60s, racism would have been an everyday experience for migrants," she said.
"Now, actually people feel they fit in, they [live in] quite convivial areas. But if you move out of those very diverse areas, people are still likely to experience racism.
"If you went undercover here I imagine you would still get racist responses but they are more complicated today.
"That tends to make people want to remain in the super-diverse areas. In Birmingham, we do now embrace the fact that we are a super-diverse city."
But Shirley Cooper says she still lives with prejudice five decades after arriving.
"A lot of what they were saying [in the documentary] is still being said now," she said.
"I've been going round trying to use a contactless card for the last month. They're not saying 'we're not going to accept your card because you're black' - they're giving me conversations about fraud.
"Or 'the machine doesn't work' and yet it worked for the person before me and after."
Living in '66, presented by Adrian Chiles, is on BBC One West Midlands on Wednesday, 1 June at 19:30 BST
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China has successfully put another probe on the Moon.
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By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
Its robotic Chang'e-5 mission touched down a short while ago with the aim of collecting samples of rock and dust to bring back to Earth.
The venture has targeted Mons Rümker, a high volcanic complex in a nearside region known as Oceanus Procellarum.
The lander is expected to spend the next couple of days examining its surroundings and gathering up surface materials.
It has a number of instruments to facilitate this, including a camera, spectrometer, radar, a scoop and a drill.
The intention is to package about 2kg of "soil", or regolith, to send up to an orbiting vehicle that can then transport the samples to Earth.
It's 44 years since this was last achieved. That was the Soviet Luna 24 mission, which picked up just under 200g.
Unlike the launch of the mission a week ago, the landing was not covered live by Chinese TV channels.
Only after the touchdown was confirmed did they break into their programming to relay the news.
Images taken on the descent were quickly released with the final frame showing one of the probe's legs casting a shadow on to the dusty lunar surface.
The US space agency congratulated China. Nasa's top science official, Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, said he hoped the international research community would eventually get the chance to analyse any samples sent home.
"When the samples collected on the Moon are returned to Earth, we hope everyone will benefit from being able to study this precious cargo that could advance the international science community," he tweeted.
The 8.2-tonne Chang'e-5 spacecraft "stack" was launched from the Wenchang spaceport in southern China on 24 November (local time). It arrived above the Moon at the weekend and then set about circularising its orbit before splitting in two.
One half - a service vehicle and return module - stayed in orbit, while a lander-ascender segment was prepared for a touchdown attempt.
The Chinese space agency said this lander-ascender element put down at 15:11 GMT (23:11 China Standard Time). The precise position was reported as 51.8 degrees West longitude and 43.1 degrees North latitude.
Chang'e-5's success follows China's two previous Moon landings - those of Chang'e-3 in 2013 and Chang'e-4 last year. Both of these earlier missions incorporated a static lander and small rover.
A total of just under 400kg of rock and soil were retrieved by American Apollo astronauts and the Soviets' robotic Luna programme - the vast majority of these materials coming back with the crewed missions.
But all these samples were very old - more than three billion years in age. The Mons Rümker materials, on the other hand, promise to be no more than 1.2 or 1.3 billion years old. And this should provide additional insights on the geological history of the Moon.
The samples will also allow scientists to more precisely calibrate the "chronometer" they use to age surfaces on the inner Solar System planets.
This is done by counting craters (the more craters, the older the surface), but it depends on having some definitive dating at a number of locations, and the Apollo and Soviet samples were key to this. Chang'e-5 would offer a further data point.
Reports from China suggest the effort to retrieve surface samples may last no longer than a couple of days. Any retrieved materials will be blasted back into orbit on the ascent portion of the landing mechanism, and then transferred across to the service vehicle and placed in the return module.
The orbiter will shepherd the return module to the Earth's vicinity, jettisoning it to make an atmospheric entry and landing in the Siziwang Banner grasslands of the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia. This is where China's astronauts also return to Earth.
"Chang'e-5 is a very complex mission," commented Dr James Carpenter, exploration science coordinator for human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency.
"I think it's extremely impressive what they're trying to do. And what I think is fascinating is you see this very systematic, step by step approach to increasing their exploration capabilities - from the early Chang'e missions to this latest one."
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
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Two Ethiopian soldiers have given BBC Afaan Oromoo dramatic accounts of a co-ordinated night-time raid on their camps at the start of the conflict in Tigray last month by fighters linked to the now-overthrown regional administration.
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The Tigray People's Liberation Front - which previously controlled the government in the northern region - said it had carried out a pre-emptive strike, when the world's attention was focused on the US election, as it believed that it was about to be attacked by federal troops.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed retaliated by ordering a military operation which culminated with the overthrow of the local government, forcing the TPLF to retreat to mountains to fight what it calls "invaders".
It has been difficult to get accurate information about the conflict because of a communication blackout in the region.
The accounts of the soldiers highlight ethnic divisions in the Ethiopian military, with some Tigrayan soldiers accused of siding with the TPLF.
Sergeant Bulcha:
I was at a camp near Adigrat city, near the border with Eritrea. At around 23.30 on 3 November, I, and other soldiers, received text messages from our comrades at the base in Agula town - about 30km (18 miles) north-east of the Tigray capital, Mekelle - saying: "We are surrounded. If you can come and rescue us, come."
Not long thereafter, our camp was also surrounded, with hundreds of TPLF special forces and militias having taken up positions outside. Some of the Tigrayan soldiers - who had left our camp earlier - were with them.
We went to the colonel who held the key to the storeroom where our weapons were kept. We told him to open it.
He refused, saying he did not have orders to do so. He was a Tigrayan, and we suspected he was part of the plan to attack us.
Some soldiers argued with him to open the storeroom; others tried to break open the door. Eventually, we got our weapons. The TPLF forces were already shooting by now.
We took up our positions, inside and outside the camp, using rocks, barrels, walls as shields. It was around 01:00 when the battle started.
There was a distance of no more than 50m (164ft) between us and them.
We killed more than 100 of them. They killed 32 of us. In my unit, one died and nine were wounded.
Most of our deaths were caused by the Tigrayan soldiers who had defected to the other side.
The battle lasted for about 11 hours until noon when our senior commanders ordered us to stop fighting, return our weapons to the storeroom, and to go back to our rooms. We obeyed.
Shortly thereafter the priests and elders of the town came. They negotiated a surrender. At around 16:00, we were ordered to hand over all our army belongings to the TPLF forces. Again, we obeyed.
Then, we were told to collect our personal belongings and made to climb into lorries. We took our wounded with us. We were forced to leave the dead behind.
'I gave a false name'
The TPLF forces transported us to one of their bases in the town of Abiy Addi, 150km south-west of Adigrat.
The wounded soldiers got no medical treatment throughout this period.
Each morning there was a roll call. We had to give our names, ethnicity and role in the army. I used to give a false name.
This was like a desert area, and it was very, very hot. We had little water to drink. Every morning, we were given tea, with no sugar, in a plastic water bottle that had been cut in half. Our food for the day were two small loaves of bread.
Soldiers from other bases were also brought to Abiy Addi. They told us they too had been attacked. Some of them surrendered without fighting; others put up more resistance than us, fighting for four days.
Kalashnikovs, heavy weapons and even short-range rockets were used in the battle. Some of our soldiers fled to Eritrea.
'Uniforms burned'
After about two weeks, the TPLF forces gave us three options - join them, live in Tigray as civilians or go back to our homes. We took the last option.
But our senior commanders, radio operators, female soldiers and those who could use heavy weaponry were not given the option. They were kept at Abiy Addi, thousands of them.
The rest of us were told to take off our uniforms. We refused, saying they could kill us but we would not do it - that our military code did not allow it; that our uniform was our pride.
In the end there was an agreement. We would take off our uniforms, and they would all be burnt [so they could not be used by others]. The TPLF recorded the burning on camera.
They took our personal belongings - rings, watches, money.
More on the Tigray crisis:
It was at around 15:00 on a Friday that we were all made to climb into lorries. Again, we took our wounded with us, but there were none in my lorry.
There were about 500 of us in each lorry, and I'd say about 9,000 soldiers in all the lorries. We sat in the lorries crammed until we left Abiy Addi at around 23:00.
We travelled for hours on back roads until the TPLF special forces - who were escorting our lorries - dropped us off on the banks of the Tekeze River so we could go to neighbouring Amhara state.
The lorries came at different times. We all broke into groups and crossed the river in boats. About six hours had passed before my group reached the other side.
We then walked for about 16 hours to reach Sekota town in Amhara.
We are now in a police station compound in the town. We are being well fed and well looked after. The wounded are being treated in hospital, more than three weeks after the attack.
I heard that some of them died on the way, and their bodies were left behind.
Corporal Ibrahim Hassan:
I have been in the army for about eight years. I was also in Adigrat, but at another camp. I was the guard on duty on 3 November, watching the camp from 22:00 to midnight. Some of the soldiers were already sleeping.
Right after I finished my shift I heard gunshots. I had no idea what was happening. I went to see.
TPLF special forces and militia had already surrounded our camp, and they entered it. Most of us were unarmed.
They ordered the soldiers, including myself, to surrender. We refused, saying federal troops could not surrender to regional troops. But in the end we agreed on the orders of our seniors, who were Tigrayans.
We were kept in the camp until 6 November. The TPLF forces then transported us in lorries to a small town, Idaga Hamus, which is about 26km from where we were. We were kept there for a week and then taken to Abiy Addi.
There, we found many people loyal to the federal government, from the police, army and air force.
We were divided into groups, and kept in three different places - a military camp, a training school and a compound.
There was no water to shower, little water to drink. It was as though we were left to die in that heat.
We slept in small rooms in very crammed conditions.
Then more than three weeks later, we were given three options - if we were married with children in Tigray, we could live as civilians, or we could join the TPLF or we could leave. Most of us chose the third option.
But radio operators, those who could use heavy weaponry and senior commanders had to stay behind.
'Jewellery stolen'
I am a radio operator but I lied about my role so I was able to leave.
My guess is that we left 3,000 to 4,000 behind, and close to 9,000 of us managed to leave.
We were put in about 28 lorries and were driven for hours, through desert areas, until we reached the Tekeze River.
The journey was very difficult. Some soldiers fell off the lorries and broke their legs. Others got sick.
But we are now in Sekota.
Some of the soldiers resent the fact that there was no rescue operation, but they understand that the situation was difficult.
This was an unprecedented attack on the federal army.
Soldiers who were at other bases reported that the TPLF forces stole watches and necklaces from dead soldiers. They even took their uniforms, and left the bodies behind naked.
In the eight years I was in Tigray, I never thought this would happen. Just a week earlier, we were helping farmers to harvest their crops and to fight a locust invasion.
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A pheasant stuck in the front grille of a car after being hit is recovering at a wildlife rescue centre after surviving a 40-mile journey.
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The male bird was hit near the A46 on the road leaving Bath. The driver did not stop and carried on driving to his job in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire.
The pheasant remained "well and truly wedged" until it was spotted and rescued, an RSPCA spokesman said.
It is now at Oak and Furrows Wildlife Rescue Centre near Cirencester.
"We couldn't be more thrilled about how well he is getting on," said RSPCA inspector Rachel Hayward.
"He was quiet on arrival, but now he is much livelier and is eating very well.
"Miracles do happen and I would urge anyone who does hit a bird or animal when they are driving to please stop.
"Either call for help or collect the animal if possible and take it to a local vet."
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An underwater photographer has caught the beauty of a lesser-seen area of Norfolk, just metres from the shore.
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The Sheringham Snorkel Trail, formed on top of a disused Victorian sewage pipe, boasts a "huge array of colourful and interesting sea life".
Photographer Chris Taylor said the recent warm weather had created near-perfect conditions for the reef - only 50m (164ft) off the coast - to be seen.
Divers can make their way along the trail, which features ropes and buoys.
Photos by Chris Taylor
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US tech firm Palantir, known for supplying controversial data-sifting software to government agencies, has fetched a market value of nearly $22bn (£17bn) in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
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By Natalie ShermanBusiness reporter, New York
It's a lofty figure for a firm that has never turned a profit, been hit by privacy concerns and relies on public agencies for nearly half of its business.
But the company, which takes its name from the "seeing stones" known for their power and potential to corrupt in Lord of the Rings, says the need for the kind of software it sells "has never been greater".
The firm, which launched in 2003 with backing from right-wing libertarian tech investor Peter Thiel and America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), builds programs that integrate massive data sets and spit out connections and patterns in user-friendly formats.
Palantir expansion
The firm - sometimes described as the "scariest" of America's tech giants - got its start working with US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now supplies software to police departments, other public agencies and corporate clients.
It is active in more than 150 countries, including the UK, where it was one of the tech firms the government enlisted this spring to help respond to coronavirus.
In the first half of 2020, Palantir revenue rose 49% year-on-year, topping $480m (£373m). And at its direct listing on Wednesday, in which investors sold some of their existing shares to the public, shares opened at $10 each - above the $7.25 reference price - giving it a value of roughly $22bn.
Mark Cash, equity research analyst at Morningstar, who has estimated the firm's value at $28bn - even higher than the valuation reached on Wednesday - said the firm is well-positioned in a growing industry.
"Data integration at this scale for the government is very complex and I think if you tried to stop spending on that and it just goes away, you're going to have some big problems," he said. "We think it's very hard to switch away from once you're in as a customer."
ICE and privacy protests
But Palantir's rise has been shadowed by concerns from privacy experts, who say the firm's tools enable surveillance and analysis of data - everything from drivers licenses and social media posts to DNA swabs - that skirts people's right to privacy and is ripe for abuse.
In the US, the use of its technology by immigration authorities to help round up undocumented immigrants has drawn heated protests and in the UK, the health data handled by the firm has also raised alarms.
Ahead of the firm's listing, Amnesty International issued a report saying the firm was failing its responsibility as a company to protect human rights with inadequate due diligence into who it is working for.
"We have to move away from the idea that data analytics and data collection is objective or clean or immune from all the pathologies that we're seeing play out right now," said Paromita Shah, executive director at Just Futures Law, which focuses on immigration law.
"Our governments are the problem because they don't want to set up oversight, but Palantir takes advantage of it."
'We have chosen sides'
Palantir told Amnesty that it had deliberately declined some work with border authorities in the US due to the concerns.
But the company has also vigorously defended its government work, maintaining that its clients own and control the data. It says it has a team focused on civil liberties issues, but it is the government's job to craft policy, not Silicon Valley's.
It has contrasted its commitment to some other tech firms, such as Google, which stopped work on an artificial intelligence project with the Pentagon after a backlash from employees.
"Our company was founded in Silicon Valley. But we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector's values and commitments," chief executive Alex Karp wrote in the filing announcing its plans to sell shares to the public. "We have chosen sides, and we know that our partners value our commitment."
The outspoken defence is perhaps little surprise, coming from a firm co-founded by Mr Thiel, who famously abandoned Silicon Valley in 2018, decrying its liberal politics.
Mr Thiel, whose estimated $2.1bn fortune was fuelled by the sale of PayPal and an early investment in Facebook, funded the Hulk Hogan invasion of privacy case that bankrupted gossip news site Gawker and has given generously to conservative politicians.
In 2016, he donated more than $1m to US President Donald Trump, though he is reportedly sitting out this election cycle.
By contrast, chief executive Alex Karp, who met Mr Thiel when they both attended Stanford Law School, is a self-described neo-Marxist and "card-carrying progressive", with a doctorate degree in neo-classical social theory from a Goethe University in Germany.
He displays Tai Chi swords in his offices, according to Bloomberg, and the firm's presentation to investors this month opened with a video of him racing up a hill in orange exercise gear.
Prospective investors have to be "comfortable" with the firm's leaders - especially since, under the terms of the listing, they will continue to wield outsize voting power over the firm, even after ownership shifts to the public, said Mark Moerdler, senior research analyst at Bernstein Research.
His team also warned in a recent note that the controversies could hurt the firm's efforts to win private-sector clients.
"Politics has entered business in a way we haven't seen before and you see large companies being influenced by employees and others in interesting ways," Mr Moerdler told the BBC. But, he added, "I don't think it will fundamentally impact their ability to grow the business if the opportunities are as large as they believe they are."
Palantir may be an American company, but it actually employs more people in London - just shy of 600 - than in either its Silicon Valley base or Denver headquarters.
That reflects both the work it does for European clients including BP, Airbus and Ferrari - but also its UK government contracts, which predate the coronavirus pandemic by several years.
These - a source told me - have included work with GCHQ's cyber-spies as well as publicly declared work for the Ministry of Defence.
Big data analytics may sound like a dry subject, but speak to the firm's staff and they can speak passionately about a job that they say has involved helping fight drug cartels, catch child predators and prevent terrorist attacks.
But while Palantir might like to highlight the lives it helps save, it has also been accused of having "blood on its hands" by civil rights protesters. They object to its tech being used to identify places where illegal immigrants are working so the properties can be raided and those arrested deported.
In fact, the firm has effectively become the bogeyman of surveillance tech.
Shareholders will have to be aware that while many states and companies see benefit from using its software, there are also many with an interest in exposing any further controversies it might be involved in.
Palantir financial prospects
Just how big those opportunities are remains an open question.
While its efforts to make inroads in the corporate world were rocky initially, Palantir's commercial business has grown. It now accounts for 53% of revenue and includes customers such as French plane maker Airbus and energy giant BP.
And Palantir has said it is well-poised to continue to win government work, thanks to a lawsuit it won against the US military in 2016, which requires the government to consider commercially available products first.
The firm's finances have also improved in recent years, amid pressure from early backers to list shares publicly and allow them to cash out.
In 2019, the firm brought in $743m in revenue, up 25% from the year before, with some 60% of sales from outside the US.
But Palantir still posted a loss of nearly $580m last year and relies on a relatively small number of clients for the majority of its revenue.
Its nearly $22bn opening valuation was only a bit higher than the $20bn private investors valued the firm when it fundraised five years ago.
And as Palantir starts to trade publicly, scrutiny has only grown. This month, liberal US politicians, including Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, asked financial regulators to investigate the firm, saying the information it had provided to investors lacked transparency on key areas of risk, including data protection and work with foreign governments.
Growth will depend on landing new, large deals every year while retaining their profitable clients - and the firm hasn't shared much about its record, said Mr Moerdler.
"If they can make the product critical to an organisation, it can be sticky, but the road there is long," he said. "In terms of growing, it still needs to be proven."
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The price of parking at two Denbighshire car parks will be slashed to support businesses in the area.
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Nine free spaces have been added at Denbigh's Factory Ward car park and from 1 September all charges will change to long stay rates.
Vale Street car park will have a new subsidised rate of £1 for two hours.
Denbighshire council said it had listened to businesses' concerns about increases in charges.
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A man has admitting being in possession of an air gun at a hospital.
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Police were called to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford shortly after 16:30 BST on 29 August.
Benedict Tanudjojo, 25, of London Road, Headington, pleaded guilty to possession of an air weapon in a public place on Monday.
He was fined a total of £525 at Oxford Magistrates' Court. His air pistol was also forfeited and would be destroyed, the court said.
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Plans to introduce a charge for receiving plastic shopping bags are to be introduced in England in 2015 at the earliest - some time after the rest of the UK. But critics say the law will be much weaker than those in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
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What's the point?
More than eight billion disposable carrier bags are used in England every year. Many are thrown away after just one use, filling up landfill sites, or littering rivers, hedgerows and town centres. They can be a threat to wildlife, especially marine life. Globally, they contribute to the vast floating plastic "islands" in the oceans. Ministers and activists want people to get in the habit of reusing bags, not discarding them.
What should be done about plastic bags?
Big rise in Pacific plastic flotsam
What are long term threats of plastic in our seas?
What difference will a charge make?
Figures from Wales and Northern Ireland show their charges have had a dramatic and immediate effect, reducing bag use by 80% or more, since introduction in 2011 and 2013 respectively. The Irish Republic introduced its 15 cent (13p) plastic bag tax back in 2002 - and estimates a 90% drop in single bag use.
What's exempted and why?
The government wants the 5p charge to apply only in supermarkets and larger stores, with at least 250 employees, but smaller shops and takeaway outlets to be exempted to reduce the admin and financial cost to small business. The plan would also exempt biodegradable bags, paper bags and reusable "bags for life", which are seen as greener.
Axe-men and goldfish buyers exempted
What's wrong with exemptions?
Critics say they confuse the issue, and may give people the impression they do not need to reuse other types of bag. Joan Walley MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), says they are "unnecessarily complicated". "We should keep it simple, learn from Northern Ireland and Wales, and have a level playing field across England," she adds.
The Association of Convenience Stores, or ACS, ("the voice of local shops") says the scheme is "too complex". It says its members are keen to take part and the proposed charge should apply "to all bag types and all retailers".
Convenience stores back charge
What happens to the money?
It is supposed to go to charity. Big stores will be expected to donate it to environmental charities, but there will be no reporting rules for small shops, who may decide to support local causes instead. Although shops currently bear a small cost in providing bags free, the ACS says research suggests shops in Wales have not been covering this cost from the charge, but giving it all to charity.
Are other bags better?
The very thin modern plastic bags used by supermarkets are actually cleaner to produce, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, than paper bags, heavier plastic "bags for life" and textile bags. Those bags are only more efficient when reused a number of times - more than 100 times in the case of a cotton bag - which is, of course, the idea. Thin plastic bags can be made less wasteful if reused, and then used as a bin liner.
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President Trump's first week in office was widely regarded as a whirlwind.
His second week has been no less hectic. Despite the mass protests of week one and falling approval ratings , the administration appears to be doubling down on its pledge to shake up the Washington playbook.
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In a divided America, many people are repelled by the agenda and tone of this administration, while many others are pleased that their president is taking a bold stand and getting things done.
Here are five key things from week two in Trumpland.
1. The travel ban that's *not* a ban
On Friday, a week after his inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order suspending all refugee admissions for 120 days, banning Syrian refugees indefinitely and suspending arrivals from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days.
The immediacy of the announcement, which Mr Trump said was necessary to not allow any lag time for "bad dudes" to sneak in, caused widespread confusion at airports around the world.
Families were separated, and even Green Card holders from the affected countries were initially included in the ban. An Iraqi who put his life at risk as an interpreter for the US army was among hundreds of people detained at airports.
Around the world, travellers were prevented from boarding planes, and in some cases, were pulled off flights. Vetted refugees waiting to travel to the US despaired. An Iran-born BBC reporter with British citizenship was among those temporarily detained.
Demonstrators flocked to airports in protest, with many lawyers offering their services for free and filing emergency motions to have people released.
Mr Trump said the restrictions were required so new security measures could be put in place to protect America from possible terrorist attacks. Things were working out "very nicely", he said.
Steve Gruber, a popular talk-show host in Michigan, summed up the mood among many Trump voters. Listeners, he said, "are encouraged that a politician, albeit a new one, is actually doing the things he said he would do".
Several courts moved to block parts of the order being implemented, but reports said that border officers in some places were not complying with the rulings.
As condemnation grew, including from a few top Republicans, many foreign governments and major US companies, the White House insisted it was not a Muslim ban, pointing to the many Muslim-majority countries not involved.
Thousands join protests across UK
But former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani undermined that claim, admitting to Fox News that Mr Trump had previously asked him how to legally implement a ban on Muslims. He said, however, that the ban implemented was based on "danger", not religion.
Sean Spicer, the White House's combative press secretary, blasted journalists for reporting it as a travel "ban", even though his boss used that very wording on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the world tried to figure out the unique language on display at protests in Scotland.
The immigration order's fallout dominated headlines for most of this week.
"This has proven to be an embarrassing episode in what looks like a not-ready-for-primetime White House," our correspondent Anthony Zurcher wrote.
Amateur hour at the White House?
But President Trump's supporters think he's doing a great job.
2. "You're fired!"
The former reality TV star now in the White House was this week finally given a chance to fire someone.
In the middle of the furore over the immigration ban, acting attorney general Sally Yates ordered justice department lawyers not to enforce President Trump's executive order.
Within hours, she was dismissed and accused by President Trump of "betraying" her department and being "weak on borders".
Some observers and journalists asked whether the dismissal would have a chilling effect across government. But the White House said justice department lawyers had deemed the order legal and thus Ms Yates was not fulfilling her duty.
The move came on the heels of other comments from the administration suggesting that dissent from officials would not be tolerated.
As news spread on Monday that hundreds of US diplomats around the world were planning to use a "dissent channel" to argue that the immigration restrictions would not make the US safer, Sean Spicer said "they should either get with the programme or they can go".
That seemed like a pretty direct message to US government employees with independent views.
3. Showdown over the Supreme Court
On Tuesday evening at a White House ceremony, Donald Trump unveiled his pick to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court - Judge Neil Gorsuch, of Colorado.
The Democrats, whom the administration has chastised for seeking to stymie them at every opportunity, have hinted they will use all means at their disposal to block his confirmation in the Senate.
The Supreme Court has the final say on such divisive issues such as abortion, gun control and gay rights. Since Judge Antonin Scalia died a year ago, the court has been split equally between liberal and conservative justices, at four each.
Whoever holds the ninth seat is thus pretty significant, though justices don't always split on clear ideological lines. Barack Obama tried to replace Mr Scalia with a nominee of his choice, but the Republicans didn't allow it given an election was forthcoming.
Like the late Mr Scalia, the Ivy-League educated Mr Gorsuch is known to support textualism, or the interpretation of law according to its plain text.
He also maintains a strict interpretation of the US Constitution, or how it was originally understood by the Founding Fathers.
Who is Neil Gorsuch?
Why is the US Supreme Court so important?
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called the nominee "a very hostile appointment" and "a very bad decision, well outside the mainstream of American legal thought".
And of course, there were more protests.
4. President Bannon?
Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump's chief strategist, is a man who many people believe is behind much of what has come out of the White House in the past two weeks.
The former executive chairman of populist, conservative news website Breitbart has been described as a "rumpled right-wing agitator" by the New York Times.
On Saturday night, he was given a seat on the National Security Council's inner circle, or principals' committee.
Under the restructuring, the Joint Chiefs and director of national intelligence have been told only to attend when discussions pertain to their areas.
The move shocked many Washington veterans.
"It's completely unprecedented to have a political adviser as a member of that group," Eliot Cohen, director of the Strategic Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, told the BBC.
Mr Bannon has a "destructive" world view and has accumulated an "unhealthy" level of power, he said, describing it as an "ominous" move.
What exactly is his destructive world view? Well, according to the Daily Beast, in 2013 Bannon said he wanted "to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment".
The White House tried to brush the changes off, pointing to the fact that Obama adviser David Axelrod had been included in some council meetings.
Mr Bannon jokingly referred to himself as "Darth Vader" in a recent interview where he described US media as "the opposition party".
Steve Bannon will now sit at a table where issues pertaining to US national security, and thus global stability, are discussed at a very, very senior level.
5. Hung up on refugees
Refugees are very much on President Trump's radar at the moment and it is well known that he likes to talk about deals.
But a phone call on the subject on Saturday between the US president and the Australian PM, which was scheduled to last for an hour, was cut short from the White House after just 25 minutes.
President Trump said the conversation with Malcolm Turnbull, in which they discussed a refugee resettlement deal between the two nations, was not a favourite among calls he had taken with world leaders.
In fact, the Washington Post reported that Mr Trump described the conversation as "the worst by far".
He appeared to be somewhat irritated by the subject matter - a deal struck with the Obama administration which would see up to 1,250 asylum seekers to Australia resettled in the US.
What next? President Trump was so worked up after discussing "the worst deal ever" that he decided to issue a statement in his preferred manner - via Twitter.
Mr Trump tweeted that he would "study this dumb deal".
Later, Mr Spicer gave an official version of his boss's 25-minute call with Mr Turnbull. He said that both leaders had "emphasised the enduring strength and closeness of the US-Australia relationship".
Mr Turnbull later thanked President Trump for agreeing to uphold the deal.
Read more:
Trump's first week: Well, that was intense
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International folk star Joan Baez and chart-topper Passenger have been announced as the headliners for this year's Cambridge Folk Festival.
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The event at Cherry Hinton Hall, between 30 July and 2 August, will also feature singer songwriters Frank Turner and Joan Armatrading.
Folk singer Peggy Seeger, who appeared at the first festival in 1965, is also on the bill.
The festival has a capacity of 14,000.
Other acts appearing at the festival are the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, the John Butler Trio, Wilko Johnson, Show of Hands, Martin Simpson, Andy Cutting and Nancy Kerr, and Keston Cobblers Club.
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In 2017, freelance writer Tom de Castella noticed an elderly woman and her son living on a bench in south London. He discovered they had already been there for two years… which was puzzling. Why hadn't anyone done anything to help them? Why did everyone accept it as normal? The more he investigated, the stranger it seemed.
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A large bulky object wrapped in a bright blue tarpaulin. It is sitting in the middle of the pavement. It could be an old piano, maintenance equipment, a delivery waiting to be unpacked. But then the tarpaulin starts to move, an arm appears and the cover is pulled back to reveal a man and a woman, swaddled in blankets sitting on a bench.
They have been living on this bench on a busy London street for more than four years. By day they sit there watching the world go by. At night they pull the cover over and sleep. The bench has become their home.
When I first saw them, I assumed they were another tragic homelessness statistic, abandoned by society. But the more you know the more complicated it becomes.
So who are they?
As I looked into it, I discovered that the bench people are a mother and her adult son, originally from Somalia. The mother is in her 70s, the son in his 30s, although he looks older.
And bizarrely, it turns out that they have been offered a series of flats by the council. Each offer has been refused - they haven't even gone to have a look. Living on the bench appears to be a choice.
A survey for the Greater London Authority and the charity, St Mungo's, found a total of 3,289 people sleeping rough in the capital at least once between October and December last year, the highest figure since records began. But less than a quarter of London's rough-sleepers have been on the street for two consecutive years. Could it be that the mother and son have lived outdoors, in the same very public place, for longer than anyone else in the UK?
I do some checking and the bench people's backstory is this. For a few years they lived in a council flat in Battersea - about three miles north of Tooting. But after the death of a family member rent arrears built up, and in February 2014 Wandsworth Council evicted them.
Sources close to the council say temporary accommodation had been lined up for them that same day, but the mother and son never showed up.
No-one foresaw what would happen next.
The first bench they made their home was outside a TK Maxx store on Upper Tooting Road, a few hundred metres from where they are now. But in December 2014 they were hospitalised because of the cold - and while they were away the council had the bench removed, claiming this was "in their best interests".
When the mother was discharged - her son remained in hospital for a while longer - she headed home to the bench only to find it had gone. A reporter for the Wandsworth Guardian described the scene: "The woman is now huddled up on a chair, using an umbrella to shelter her from the rain. She is wrapped up in blankets, alone, on the exact spot where the bench once stood."
There was also, for a time, a bench in Balham.
Then, no later than April 2015, the mother and son moved to a bench outside Tooting library. And there they have stayed.
It's 2.15pm on a weekday afternoon. The mother and son are pulling the tarpaulin over their heads to have a rest. A bus is stuck in traffic beside them as they do this. Everyone on the lower deck turns to watch. You can see the curiosity on people's faces: "Is that a shelter? Do these people really live here?"
There's something incongruous about the blue-tarpaulin structure in among the hipster barbers, bao bun places and nearby market stalls serving locally distilled gin. Tooting is rapidly gentrifying. But here are two people with nothing apart from a few blankets.
From a distance, the mother and son appear lost in Zen-like contemplation of their surroundings.
He occasionally reads a book or brushes his hair. She tends to sit and stare. The practicalities are hard to fathom. How do you fit two sleeping bodies on that bench? Do they sleep sitting up? (They do, with the help of cushions to lean back on, and suitcases to support their feet.)
Are they warm enough in sub-zero conditions and can they stay cool at the height of summer? What about noise? There's the beep, beep, beep of the pelican crossing, the bass roar of buses and the screech of food-delivery mopeds that rarely stop, day or night. I am guessing here, but it seems they are able to zone out. Their demeanour suggests they're watching telly in their living room, not feet away from pedestrians and snarled-up traffic.
They never beg. There is no drink or drugs problem, people who work with them say. They don't accept food or blankets from passers-by but seem to enjoy talking to them. They survive by having a huge pile of blankets and an array of food and drinks beside their feet donated by local restaurants and fast-food outlets. They use the toilets and washing facilities in the library or local cafes. I learn that minicabs give them free lifts. The son goes to the local mosque each day to pray. They have become a fixture on Mitcham Road, supported by the community, a part of Tooting. But what do they say about the experience?
It's the end of January and so cold I can see my breath even though it's almost midday. I'm curious to know how they've been coping.
Me: Hi, are you OK? (They smile back.) I can't believe you're in the cold so much. In the night time, is it OK for you?
Son: It's cold. Sometimes very cold.
Me: How long have you been here for?
Son: Long time. Years and years.
Me: Years and years. Why? I saw something in the paper. The council said they've given you a flat but you didn't want to move.
Son: It's impossible.
Me: Why?
Son: I can't tell you… (A bus roars past and I can't hear his full reply.)
Me: Would you like to live in a house or live on the bench?
Son: We stay here.
Me: You stay here?
Son: Yeah.
Me: Forever?
Son: I don't know.
Me: Really?
Son: We can be lucky. (The rest of his answer gets lost in the noise of the traffic. I'm left wondering exactly what he means.)
Me: But if the council gives you a flat would you move into it?
Son: I can't tell you now, I'm sorry.
At this point the mother starts laughing and the son starts chuckling too. It's contagious, something to do with absurdity - I laugh as well. They can tell I find their situation bizarre and I sense they in turn find my questions bizarre, as if their answers are obvious and I am being obtuse. I tell them I'm writing something about them for the BBC. The son says he knows the BBC. I tell them I worry about them being here in such cold weather.
Me: Most people are inside.
Son: Yes, we not inside a flat.
Me: Would you like to sleep in a bed in a house?
Son: House needs heat and outside it's the same.
Mother: Yes! Same! (The mother is emphatic. This is the clincher, she seems to be saying. Everywhere needs heat, it doesn't matter whether you are inside or out.)
Me: It's difficult when there are no walls and no heating though?
Mother: Yes! Same!
I try to elicit more information about what it's like living on a bench but the son is not keen to say more. "No, I'm very sorry," he says with a smile. I ask if they're from Somalia and he says yes. He says it was a long time ago that they came. We part smiling at each other, on good terms but perplexed by each others' questions and answers.
In the couple of brief chats I'd had before, I'd wondered if their English was good enough to talk. Now I don't believe that basic comprehension is the problem. Instead I worry about their ability to understand their situation and the options available to them. They've told me that living in the open and living in a house are the same in winter. And that everywhere is cold in the winter. What's the difference between a bench and a flat? Who needs a bed? It's hard to argue back. Are they aware that their lifestyle may be bad for their health, I wonder.
An hour later I'm in Al Jazeera Coffee, a cafe in nearby Streatham popular with Somalis. Groups of men in coats and scarves are huddled round tables, warming themselves with glasses of black tea and espresso. I'm directed to Abdiaziz Hashi, a man who knows their story well. He went to see the mother and son, he says, but they wouldn't listen to him.
The Somali community feel hurt by the case. They have repeatedly offered the mother and son lodging in people's homes, but, like the council, each time they have been rebuffed. I am shown a Somali language news report on YouTube interviewing Somalis in Tooting about the case. A woman in an embroidered headscarf says: "I am saddened by it. We have tried everything - she (the mother) refused to listen to our advice." A man in a leather cap says: "It's a massive embarrassment. If the Somali community wants to do something about it, they could solve it."
My companion shakes his head. There is not much more the Somali community can do, he says. He is in awe of their resilience but worried about the effect of their lifestyle on their mental well-being. "If it was me I would have died long ago in that situation. I don't know how they survive."
I ask him what should happen. His answer is emphatic and urgent. "They should be moved in a humanitarian way. These people are definitely sick."
Later that night I'm walking home from the tube. It's 9.50pm and the temperature is 5C, the temperature of a fridge. Their blue tarpaulin is pulled down. It's going to be a low of -3C tonight, according to the BBC forecast. Whereas, even with the heating off all day, my house will be 13 or 14C.
Why would a homeless person refuse accommodation?
It may be because the offer "doesn't fit their needs" says Hannah Gousy, policy manager at the charity, Crisis.
They may prefer sleeping rough to sharing a hostel with others who, like them, could have complex needs arising from trauma, abuse, addiction. They may not trust other homeless people, or the agencies who say they want to help.
Having a place of their own could also be a daunting prospect for those accustomed to life on the street. You have to pay bills and get benefits. You have to obey other people's rules.
The best approach for getting people into accommodation, Gousy argues, is Housing First - currently being piloted in Liverpool, Manchester and the West Midlands. It gives homeless people with the most entrenched problems their own home, backed with "wraparound" support. Maybe Housing First would be able to persuade the mother and son to try moving into a flat, but it's not widely available in London.
I find myself pondering another question. Are the mother and son breaking the law by being there? I ask a range of lawyers what would happen if I were to occupy a bench in this way.
Gary Rycroft, a solicitor put forward by the Law Society, says it's a clear trespass. "Trespass will arise wherever there is a landowner whose land is being occupied by an unauthorised party." But can a bench on a public pavement be seen as somebody's property? "There will always be a landowner. If a bench has been placed on the land then whoever did that must feel they have the right to do it. Land which the public have a right to access may be owned by the local authority or may be part of the public highway."
Shelter disagrees. Their legal adviser says it is "not either a criminal offence or a breach of the civil law (not even a trespass) to move your belongings and family on to a park bench, or indeed to pitch a tent in the high street or outside the Council offices - unless there is a local by-law which makes it unlawful". Wandsworth Council later informs me it has no by-law to prevent people sleeping on a bench. The usual offences used to justify moving rough sleepers on are begging, anti-social behaviour or blocking the public highway. None of these apply here.
However, look hard enough and the authorities always seem to find a way, Shelter says. The Vagrancy Act 1824, which refers to "vagabonds and rogues", prohibits someone from "wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or wagon, and not giving a good account of himself". And the legal niceties don't always matter: "The police will often just insist on people 'moving on' because they have been asked by the local authority to clear the street, but without quoting any specific piece of legislation. Naturally (and wisely), people usually don't ask under what legal provision the police officer is asking them to move." To do so could be interpreted as a breach of the peace or obstructing a police officer, the Shelter expert says.
Sources close to the council say it would be cruel and futile to move them on. The mother and son would simply find another bench, if necessary in another borough. So Wandsworth Council has followed a course of tolerance and restraint, perhaps learning from its mistake of removing the previous bench. The same people tell me that they have a designated social worker who visits them every two or three weeks. And that local charities are also involved with them. The number of times they have been offered a flat runs into three figures, the sources say.
I began by thinking that something must be done. I instinctively felt that the mother and son needed help. Now I know they don't want to be moved, and that they may not be breaking the law, I find myself turning to another question that can no longer be dodged. Are they capable of making a decision in their best interests?
By law a person lacks mental capacity if they cannot do one of the following four things: understand, remember, communicate or weigh up information.
I talk to two well-placed sources. They say the pair have not been found to have any serious mental health issue. The mother and son see the bench as their home, the sources tell me. They like being part of the community, having social contact, chatting to passers-by and they would not feel safe living in a flat.
Soon afterwards, Wandsworth Council sends me a statement about the mother and son.
"Over the last few years Wandsworth Council has offered them four different properties to move into, all very pleasant and fully refurbished, including the original property where they used to live, but they turned all of them down without viewing them. Currently, a property is being held vacant for them and our social work team continues to liaise regularly with the family to try and persuade them to accept it."
The statement adds that if people refuse offers of help, "that is their decision and choice - we cannot force people to accept our help."
It goes on: "Wandsworth Council is enormously concerned for their welfare and has done everything it can to try and resolve this issue and get them off the streets. We will continue to work alongside health partners and other agencies, including the police and local charities, as well as the local Somali community, in closely monitoring this situation - including the physical and mental well-being of these two people and their capacity to make decisions."
It is stalemate.
Death on the streets
A sign of how long this has been going on is that Sadiq Khan - elected London Mayor in 2016 - was involved in their case in December 2014 when he was still MP for Tooting. Shortly after the bench outside TK Maxx had been removed, the Wandsworth Guardian reported Khan saying: "Going forward, my priority is to make sure the family have all of the support they need in the long term, and I will continue to work with the council and the police to help seek a solution sooner rather than later."
Khan declined to comment for this story.
Contrary to his hope that this would be resolved "sooner rather than later" there is no end in sight.
It's arguable that this is upsetting for passers-by and the community as a whole. The way I first became aware of them was when my ex's family came to visit. "That's awful," said her dad - and we all agreed - as we saw them there with their suitcases and blankets, seemingly a pathetic indictment of housing policy in Britain. I felt shocked that I had not noticed them up to that day.
The other day I heard three Americans discussing the case as they walked past. One of them, who appeared to live in the area, said: "It's a protest against the council. They want to get housed and won't move until they do. They're here every day." The other two, apparently visiting, seemed to find it hard to understand that this could go on in bustling, increasingly prosperous Tooting. This misreading of the signs must happen a lot. It creates an impression of an apathetic, uncaring society. Imagine trying to explain it to your child.
"I always see people with different opinions, some people want the bench screwed off and them kicked off it," says Anees Kareem who has worked at a fruit and veg stand across the road from the library for the past few years. "My personal opinion is that they need to be taken into care," he says. "Who would want to live like that? Maybe a day if you really had to but four-and-a-half years?"
I tell him that the well-placed sources say they have no serious mental health problems and ask if he's surprised. He pauses, apparently taken aback. "Very much, very much."
My last conversation with them was back on a spring-like February day. The mother smiled in the sunshine and we talked about how nice the weather was.
I asked if she was happy here. A flicker of annoyance spread across her face. Was I intruding? She said she didn't speak English and we said our goodbyes.
I wanted to solve the mystery of what they want from life, but they remain an enigma.
During the summer heatwave, when the temperature reached the high 30s C, they had replaced the tarpaulin with an umbrella, which they used to shelter from the sun. Now they are under cover again as I pass every morning; there has been heavy rain and they are back in hibernation mode.
They seem content on the bench. Their behaviour isn't anti-social, the authorities accept their presence and whatever reservations some local people have, they are mostly treated with kindness and tolerance. Some might regard it as a very British compromise, but can this really be the best place for them to live? I find that hard to accept.
When the council unscrewed their bench in 2014 it said it was acting in the mother and son's best interests. Now it has concluded that it is in their best interest to leave them as they are. It says it respects their choice, but perhaps it's less a choice than a feeling that moving into a flat would be impossibly difficult? Perhaps both sides, in their own ways, are taking the path of least resistance?
If the mother or her son were to become seriously ill or die the community would surely blame itself for doing nothing. But for now it remains numbed to the strange permanence of their blue plastic shelter.
Illustrations by Hello Emma
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Protesters against the burning of a Koran by far-right supporters in Sweden have clashed with police during several hours of rioting.
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Cars were set on fire and shop fronts were damaged in the clashes in the southern city of Malmö which have now been brought under control. There were several arrests.
Earlier on Friday, police barred far-right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan from attending the Koran-burning rally.
His supporters went ahead regardless.
Swedish police turned Mr Paludan back at the border, saying there was a two-year entry ban for him.
The head of the Danish far-right Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party was given a month in jail for a string of offences including racism in Denmark early this year.
He was convicted of posting anti-Islam videos on his party's social media channels.
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An independent UK health watchdog is due to begin a two-year review into the Isle of Man's national health service.
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Thirteen experts from the West Midlands Quality Review Service (WMQRS), will visit Nobles Hospital on Tuesday.
A government spokesman said the team is made up of clinicians, patient representatives and health managers.
The first areas to be reviewed are theatre and anaesthetic services, the emergency department and critical care.
The probe is expected to take about two years and cost in the region of £200,000.
The Isle of Man government said it will cover the whole of the island's health service - not just hospital services.
The report compiled by the WMQRS is expected to be published in full.
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Alongside the main parties, small groups and even individuals are jockeying for political influence by buying micro-targeted ads on Facebook.
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Filter Bubbles of BritainBy BBC Trending
They are not-for-profit organisations, small informal groups and - in at least one case - a student with a personal mission and a bit of spare cash. They're bypassing the political parties and buying political advertisements directly on Facebook.
BBC Trending and Newsnight have been asking people to send in examples of the political ads they have been seeing on the UK's biggest social network. We've seen plenty of advertising put out by the major parties, but also ones promoting about a dozen politically themed pages unaffiliated with any official campaigns.
Given the relatively small size of our sample - a few hundred people have been in touch compared to more than 30 million monthly Facebook users in the UK - it's likely there are many more of what we at BBC Trending are calling "micro-Pacs" (in the US, independent campaign groups are called "political action committees") than our survey has picked up.
Crowdfunding campaign
Chris Henderson runs one of these groups. He's clearly left-leaning, though some of the groups also come from the right of politics. Henderson's Facebook page is called "Stop the Tories 2017". Henderson is a postgraduate psychology student and a former local communications officer for the Green Party, but says that his current initiative is not endorsed by or co-ordinated with the official Green campaign.
Henderson says he's opposed to a number of Tory policies - singling out work capability assessments that were introduced as part of welfare reforms - and that he would like Conservative candidates to be defeated by opponents from the broad left, including Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and the Scottish and Welsh nationalists.
"I think that the landscape that we have in this election is different than anything that's been in the playbook before," he says. "The only way the Tories are going to be removed from office is through some sort of progressive alliance."
Henderson said he has spent around £1,800 on Facebook ads, initially using the site's tools to target people interested in left-wing causes, but later targeting concentrating on 18-25 year olds in marginal constituencies. He says he crowdfunded the money from around 50 people and also used personal funds.
His ads are very different from traditional party campaign material. One campaign featured a disability campaigner who was quoted saying: "If you vote Conservative on June 8th, you are voting to kill people like me."
"Non-party publishers have much greater freedom to tell it like it is without the constraints of working within a political party," Henderson says. "Everybody gets to decide their own framing on social media."
Despite the relatively modest outlay, Henderson says his posts, boosted by the paid ads, have racked up around 8 million Facebook impressions.
More from Trending:
The rise of Tory attack ads on Facebook
The secret yearnings of pro-Tory Facebook groups
Inside the Corbynista Facebook 'army'
Ladies for Davies
Labour seem to have endorsed the "DIY" approach to political advertising. Last year, the party reportedly rolled out a campaigning tool called "Labour Promote" which enabled activists to upload adverts directly to Facebook. Perhaps as a result, most - but not all - of the ads seen by Trending come from a left-wing or anti-Conservative perspective, but there are exceptions.
One such page is titled "Ladies for Philip Davies" - a group of five women who describe themselves as anti-feminists.
The Facebook group was formed, says Natoya Raymond, to support Davies, elected to represent Shipley for the Conservatives in 2015, and a critic of feminism who has argued that men's voices are being "neutered" and that their rights must be more strongly defended. He previously sat on the Women and Equalities Select Committee.
None of the five - the group includes stay-at-home mothers, a self-employed woman, a student and a full-time carer - actually live in Davies' constituency. The Facebook group was formed, by coincidence, shortly before the General Election was called. Raymond says she spent £40 of her own money to promote the page, but that the campaign was not designed to influence the vote in Davies' Shipley constituency.
Ads for "Ladies for Philip Davies" were targeted towards people who, according to Facebook's data and algorithms, are interested in news about women's rights and men's rights.
"The reason we created the pressure group is that we are sick of him repeatedly being called a misogynist," Raymond says. "We are anti-feminist campaigners, we don't have any affiliation with any political party."
Davies tells Trending: "Ladies for Philip Davies are nothing to do with me or my campaign. Naturally I am grateful to them for their support." Other candidates running for Parliament in Shipley are Steve Clapcote, Labour; Caroline Jones, Liberal Democrat; and Sophie Walker, Women's Equality Party.
Concentrated - and anonymous - campaign
Other campaigns are much smaller and even more personal. One campaigner, who did not want to give his name for fear of attracting a backlash, has spent £40 on an ad campaign targeting his local MP, Conservative Caroline Ansell, who is defending her seat in Eastbourne.
The activist, a university student, says he and members of his family have been directly affected by polices that Ansell has voted for. He told us he had no connections to any political party.
"The cuts to tax credits and disability benefits directly affect my family members. When Caroline voted to remove bursary grants from poor university students, she burdened me with £12,000 extra debt over the course of my degree," he says.
His page is called, simply, "Do Not Vote Caroline Ansell" and his ads are simple text messages, with links to more information.
"A donation of £40 to any given political party may have paid for a few leaflets, but my online campaign has reached thousands of people. It's remarkable how much influence such a small investment may hold on the election, particularly at the local level," he says.
Trending has contacted Caroline Ansell for comment, but she declined. Other candidates running in Eastbourne are Alex Hough, Green Party; Jake Lambert, Labour; and Stephen Lloyd, Liberal Democrat.
What does election law say?
Political advertising on TV is banned in the UK, but social media advertising doesn't face the same restrictions. Campaigners outside of a political party who spend or plan to spend more than £20,000 in England or £10,000 in any of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland on campaign-related activities are required to register with the Electoral Commission. Just 11 groups have done so. None of the advertisers Trending saw are registered, but at the same time it doesn't appear that any of them would come close to reaching the financial threshold.
Most of the advertisers we've noticed are very small, but a number of seemingly larger campaigns have been run by groups from the left including Progressive Alliance and Collective Voice. There's nothing to indicate that these "micro-Pacs" are exceeding the spending limit, however.
Henderson, who runs the "Stop the Tories" page, says he follows the Electoral Commission's best practice guidelines and that his Facebook page includes a link to a site where he lists his name and address.
But there's no obligation on independent advertisers to do the same. He says he's concerned about the lack of regulation, but that "clearly the law in this area was drafted well before social media existed."
New political force?
The Electoral Commission said in a statement: "We continue to develop our understanding of how social media is used, and are pro-active in monitoring this type of campaigning, taking regulatory action where the rules are breached in order to ensure transparency on where money is being spent to influence voting."
Some experts think the "micro-Pac" trend could be just the start of a new political force.
"Increasingly as more and more groups, individuals and organisations are trying to get involved in politics, social media broadly is giving them a big microphone to do so," says Andrew Bleeker of Bully Pulpit Interactive, who was a top digital strategist on former US President Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. "And they can do so at the local level for very small amounts of money."
At the same time, Bleeker says: "The future of digital media is that it's very difficult to police."
"There's no ability where any kind of government in real time is going to regulate individual pieces of content, nor do I think they should," he says. "Where I've seen the line be very helpful is some sort of registration or disclaimer to say who this person is, who is behind this. Who are you for? It's really where things are unmarked and undisclosed where there's most potential for error."
Blog by Mike Wendling
We're still keen to get a better understanding of social media advertising during the general election.
If you spot an advert in your social media feed which looks political then please send us a screengrab or a link to the content. Please also tell us your age, gender, location (including constituency), job and general political affiliation (if you are happy to tell us). And please let us know if you're happy to be contacted by a BBC reporter.
You can send us your political messages in the following ways:
Email: [email protected]
Tweet: @bbcnewsnight or @bbctrending
SMS or WhatsApp: +44 7380 405603
The personal data you share with the BBC (age, gender, location, job and political affiliation) will be kept confidential by the BBC and will only be used for the purposes outlined above. Please only share your personal data if your are 18 years old or over. Your personal data will not be shared outside of the BBC. The BBC will retain your personal data for the duration of the election after which your personal data will be securely destroyed. By submitting your personal information you are consenting to the BBC to hold personal and sensitive personal information about you. For more information about how the BBC handles your data please go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/privacy/privacy-policy
All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.
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Oliver was declared the most popular boys' name for the fourth year running, but some readers asked if there were actually more babies called Muhammad. They also wanted to know which names were given to an equal number of girls and boys and when the name Doris was popular. Here are the answers:
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By Jennifer Meierhans & Rob EnglandBBC News
Is Muhammad really the most popular boys' name?
Oliver held its position as the most popular boys' name since 2013, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
A number of readers asked whether adding together all of the different spellings of Muhammad would mean more babies were given that name than Oliver.
Muhammad, the most common spelling given to babies born in 2017, was the 10th most popular name for boys overall.
Oliver topped the 2017 list with 6,259 babies while Muhammad was registered 3,691 times - not including hyphenated names, such as Muhammad-Ali.
If we combine 14 different spellings included in the data we get 7,307 boys, which is more than 1,000 ahead of Oliver.
Variations included Muhammad, Mohammed, Mohammad, Muhammed, Mohamed, Mohamad, Muhamad, Muhamed, Mohamud, Mohummad, Mohummed, Mouhamed, Mohammod and Mouhamad.
However the ONS treats each spelling of a name separately and ranks them according to the number of times that individual spelling appears on birth certificates.
"Combining spellings of one particular name distorts the list - for example combining Sophie, Sophia and Sofia on the 2015 girls list would knock Amelia off the top spot," the ONS said in 2016.
Statisticians say combining names which have a similar spelling would require individuals to make a "subjective decision" about whether certain names are distinctive or not.
For example, they would have to decide whether or not to treat Sara and Sarah as variations of the same name, even though many people would pronounce them differently.
A modern browser with JavaScript and a stable internet connection is required to view this interactive.
How popular is your name?
If you cannot see the baby names tracker, click to launch the interactive content.
You might also like:
Which is the most gender balanced name?
"What name is the most gender-balanced with similar numbers for boys and girls?" asked Gregory Shorter.
There were 28 entries in the list of 6,164 boys' names and 7,508 for girls that were given to an equal number of each gender.
Avery was the most popular gender balanced name in 2017. It was given to 130 children, 65 boys and 65 girls.
The name was ranked 581st for boys and 637th for girls in 2017.
The other 27 identically gender balanced names were given to far fewer babies by comparison.
In joint second place were Lamar and Darby with 11 baby boys and girls with these names.
When was Doris a popular girls' name?
Doris was one of the top 10 most popular names between 1904 and 1944. The name came in at number three in 1904 and 1914, and dropped to seventh most popular in 1924 and 33rd in 1934.
From there it plummeted to the 99th most popular name, before dropping out of the top 100 entirely.
There were just 10 baby girls called Doris in 2017, ranking the name 2,502 out of 7,508 names for girls in 2017.
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Aberdeen City Council is to investigate how it could make a bid to buy the First Aberdeen bus operation.
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Aberdeen-based transport firm FirstGroup is looking at spinning off its UK buses arm.
A motion was passed instructing officers to contact those involved in the sale of First Aberdeen and report back on how the council might bid.
The motion, from co-leader Jenny Laing, said the city needed "high quality, affordable, reliable public transport".
The director of resources will now report back to the city growth and resources committee or urgent business committee about how to move forward its interest in operating a council-run bus service.
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A freshly painted road marking on the Isle of Man will have to be changed after workers made a spelling mistake.
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The words "keep claer" rather than "keep clear" were painted on a section of road on the outskirts of St John's, in the west of the island.
A spokesman for the Department of Infrastructure said it had been made aware of the error.
"We'd like to make it absolutely CLEAR that the issue will, of course, be rectified," he added.
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A £10m shortfall in the Isle of Man's National Insurance fund has signalled a "turning point" in the Manx welfare state, the treasury minister said.
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The government said state pension spending exceeded NI contributions for the second year running.
The fund went into deficit for the first time in 2012/2013, with a shortfall of £14 million.
Minister Eddie Teare said: "It's confirmation the island has reached a turning point in its welfare system."
He added: "We must now start to make changes to ensure that our social security system is sustainable, fair and that it does not put an undue burden on future generations".
A government spokesman said this year's shortfall was covered by a transfer from the fund's investment income.
In May a report from the UK Government Actuary's Department (GAD) estimated that unless changes were made, the Manx NI Fund would be exhausted by 2054.
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"China is betting on AI and investing in AI and deploying AI on a scale no other country is doing," says Abishur Prakash, a futurist and author of books about the effect of artificial intelligence (AI) on geopolitics.
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By Natalie ShermanBusiness reporter, New York
As developments in AI accelerate, some in the US fear that the ability of China's powerful central government to marshal data and pour resources into the field will push it ahead.
The country has announced billions in funding for start-ups, launched programmes to woo researchers from overseas and streamlined its data policies.
It has announced news-reading robots and AI-powered strategy for foreign relations. Perhaps most alarming to the US are its efforts to incorporate it into its military.
In the last few years, Washington has toughened oversight of Chinese investments, banned US firms from doing business with certain Chinese companies and increased criminal prosecution of alleged technology theft.
"What the Trump administration is doing is a sign... the US knows that its geopolitical power will be redefined and reconfigured by this era," said Mr Prakash, who works at the Toronto-based Center for Innovating the Future.
These developments come amid political tension between the two nations. Yet, some analysts worry the US response is counterproductive, arguing that cutting off access to US microchips, for example, could simply accelerate Chinese efforts to develop their own alternatives.
The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods - retaliation for "unfair" practices it says are aimed at giving China an advantage in the field.
The White House has also pressed universities to review their relationships with Chinese partners and threatened to restrict student visas. It is even said to be looking at rules against certain US investments in China - once nearly unthinkable in free-market America.
Rivals is a season of in-depth coverage on BBC News about the contest for supremacy between the US and China across trade, tech, defence and soft power.
Read more here.
The actions are aimed at preserving US leadership in technologies expected to determine economic and military power for generations to come.
"That China will grow to be an economy as large as ours may be inevitable; that we aid their mercantilist strategy through free trade and open investment in our technology sector is a choice," US Department of Defense officials wrote in a widely cited 2018 report.
China advances
As the US and China race to capitalise on advances in machine learning, facial recognition and other forms of artificial intelligence, Tom Mitchell has a front row seat.
The professor of computer science founded the world's first research centre for artificial intelligence at Carnegie Mellon in the US. Since 2018, he has also served as chief scientist at Squirrel, a leading tutoring company in China.
He says the US has more experience building tech companies, but China may have the advantage when it comes to AI applications relying on big data sets - and points to the medical field as an example.
"In the US we've had electronic medical records for over 20 years but we still have not put together all the records in the country to run machine-learning algorithms on those."
He says the US has been inhibited by privacy concerns, as well as a fractured, for-profit industry.
"In China, it's a different situation. If the government decides that it's going to have country-wide electronic medical records... then it's going to happen."
Prof Mitchell, who is working on using AI to improve education, says working in both the US and China puts him in the best position to invent and apply cutting-edge technology.
But that kind of cross-border collaboration is facing increasing scrutiny, given rising political tensions.
Scaling back
Last year, Chinese investment in the US dropped to $4.8bn (£3.7bn) - its lowest level since 2011 - while US investment in China dipped from $14bn to $13bn, according to the Rhodium Group's annual report.
High-profile Chinese firms, like insurance giant Anbang and Kai-Fu Lee's Sinovation Ventures, have reportedly sold or scaled back US operations, while China's Huawei and ZTE have suffered serious losses after being subject to US bans.
In US academic circles, universities are rethinking their ties to China, while US firms doing business in China have also grown more cautious.
Mr Prakash, who works with start-ups, tech firms and governments on questions of artificial intelligence, says while many western firms continue to pursue opportunities in China, current tensions have changed the discussions.
"Geopolitics is now front and centre for all of them," he says. "They're forced to say, hey, we're based in Silicon Valley, we're selling to part of Asia and now as this tech war unfolds we need to understand what's possible, what can we do, what are our options."
More Technology of Business
Will it work?
Prof Mitchell says policymakers need to distinguish between AI applications that are win-win and those that are truly competitive, such as those for the military.
In the meantime, he says Washington's increasingly nationalist tone risks alienating America's foreign students and researchers - many of them Chinese - who have played a critical role in US tech leadership to date.
"To start thinking about putting up export control walls around the US could be as damaging to the US research enterprise as anything that a foreign adversary might try to do to us. I hope we will act rationally and not just out of fear."
While US concerns about technology theft have merit, "I feel like we're over-reacting," says Prof Mitchell.
"The fact that China or the UK or anybody decides they want to be a leader in AI - it would be surprising if they did not. It's not something to be reviled," he says.
American national plans have also called for boosting investment, reforming the immigration system and improving education, but those are much more difficult to achieve, says William Carter, deputy director of technology policy at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Being hard on China is an easy political sell," he says, but warns that, "I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot in a lot of ways".
The race between the US and China is now moving to other countries, which are being pushed to take sides as tech firms from the two compete for turf.
The US has pressed its allies to stop using equipment from China's Huawei, for example, citing concerns that Beijing could use the firm's equipment for hacking. It has also raised human rights concerns.
At a recent conference, a US official argued that Chinese tech companies are "de facto tools" of the state's Communist Party, saying they "have become deeply enmeshed in Beijing's system of oppression at home and its increasingly assertive strategic ambitions globally."
As artificial intelligence technologies drive debates over values like surveillance and privacy, free speech and censorship, conflicts between the two countries are likely to increase, says Nicholas Wright, a fellow at the New America think tank in Washington, who has worked with the US and UK governments.
"To some extent, this is just a generic challenge, where you have a new set of technologies and whomever manages to implement them first and best will gain an advantage... but then there's also another set of issues which is to do with the specifics of these new digital technologies," he says.
For now, it may take artificial intelligence to know how the race will end.
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Almost two years of secrecy surrounding the death of a 13-month-old child in Cumbria must continue because of further police investigations, a High Court judge has said.
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Last week, a coroner took seven minutes to declare the December 2012 death of Poppi Worthington was unexplained.
Many details have not been made public prompting what Mr Justice Peter Jackson called "some concern".
However, the judge said the case must be allowed to be investigated fully.
A 46-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman have been arrested in connection with the death and are on conditional police bail until December.
The judge said he had deliberately not made public his own "fact-finding judgement" into the case.
He said: "As a result of the judgment further police investigations into Poppi's death are now taking place.
"A decision by the Crown Prosecution Service may then follow.
"In the interests of justice it is essential that this process is allowed to take place without interference and that any criminal proceedings are not prejudiced."
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My virtual bagels certainly started some real conversations. Our story questioning the value of "likes" on Facebook pages , and the contribution ads could make, got a lot of reaction - much of it cries of rage from the social media marketing industry.
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Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
They pointed out - fairly enough - that my ad for my imaginary business VirtualBagel was poorly targeted. That may be true, although when I targeted it more precisely at the UK, the results proved very disappointing. And is poor targeting by advertisers any justification for getting them to pay for traffic from thousands of fake customers?
Small businesses that have tried Facebook ads have been telling me of somewhat lacklustre results. One beer retailer who targeted his adverts carefully at UK beer lovers quickly got 600 new "likes", only to find that they were then completely inactive on his own website. "Like 600 wooden soldiers," he told me.
But the social media marketing industry was also united in telling me that chasing after "likes" was no longer considered best practice. On another blog, someone came up with this line: "Any marketing director still chasing "'likes'... shouldn't be a marketing director."
That message does not seem to have reached some major brands. Look at the Facebook page for BMW's Mini. A banner across the top trumpets: "3,000,000! Thanks to all our Mini Facebook fans!"
But look at where those "likes" come from - the Mini page is most popular amongst 18- to 24-year-olds in Bangkok. Is that the campaign's target demographic?
And who told brands that "likes" were a valuable currency in the first place? Err, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg. In a speech in London last year, she told the world that 50 million users liked a Facebook brand page every day.
Still, various people wanted to tell me about their very successful Facebook campaigns, and the social network itself points to companies such as Asos and Ford which have seen good results. Someone got in touch last week to tell me how well the government "GREAT" campaign to promote Britain abroad had used Facebook.
A number of "GREAT" Facebook pages have been set up:
And so on, and in all they have now attracted nearly half a million likes. So who are these fans of our country and its products? The lead page is most popular amongst 18- to 24-year-olds in Rio de Janeiro - perhaps not the target market? - but the music page is hot in Hong Kong, which may be nearer the mark.
But has the campaign delivered value for the taxpayer? I asked the Cabinet Office how much of the campaign's £37m marketing budget had been spent on Facebook ads. I was told that this could not be disclosed, but someone close to the campaign reckons £70,000 has been spent so far with the social network. If true, that works out at about 14p a "like", which sounds reasonable value - if the "likes" are real people delivering that new marketing buzzword, engagement.
Which brings me back to VirtualBagel. I gained about 3,000 "likes" with no content and an advertising spend of £40, but the level of engagement on my page was close to zero. In other words, people weren't posting, or asking questions or even visiting the page at all.
Since I stopped advertising and started adding real content, I've only added about 300 "likes", but the level of engagement has soared, with vibrant discussions about the value of Facebook ads, and many more people listed as actually visiting the page.
Which chimes with what some other small businesses have told me - that Facebook can be a powerful way of having a conversation with your customers, but you don't necessarily need to pay for that.
"Our free marketing tools can be really powerful," a Facebook executive told me last week. I'm sure that is true - but it may not be the best message for a business that needs to convince investors that more and more companies want to pay for its advertisements.
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A Hells Angels biker has been acquitted of partially blinding another man in an attack after a jury in his second trial also failed to reach a verdict.
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Matthew Barnes, 48, denied causing grievous bodily harm with intent in the attack outside a Hastings pub in February 2016.
A formal not guilty verdict was entered by the court after the prosecution said it would not seek a re-trial.
A jury had also been dismissed following a trial in August last year.
Mr Barnes, the president of the Sussex chapter of the Hells Angels, was accused of partially blinding Christopher Harrison after he refused to join the club.
Oliver Wilkinson, 50, of St Leonards-on-Sea was acquitted of the same charge following the first trial.
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Freddie Starr, who has died aged 76, was known for his zany, high-energy performances and impersonations of Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Max Wall and a wellington-boot wearing Adolf Hitler.
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Born Frederick Leslie Fowell in Lancashire in 1943, Starr had a troubled childhood.
In an interview with Devon newspaper the Herald Express, Starr said his father, a bricklayer and part-time bare-knuckle boxer, broke both his legs when he was a child. He said he was taken into care for two years aged six.
He did not mention this in his 2001 autobiography, which its publisher described as depicting him "spending years in a children's home when he'd stopped talking".
In the same year Starr spoke to the Evening Standard about his father, saying: "Never mind slap me, he used to punch me - sometimes spark out."
"He was very Victorian. But he never picked a fight in his life. He always tried to talk to people first and ask for a word in their ear. But if they cornered him, he would let go."
As a teenager, he appeared under his own name as a gang member in the 1958 film Violent Playground, about teenage delinquents, starring Stanley Baker, Peter Cushing and David McCallum.
By the early 1960s, Starr was the lead singer of the Merseybeat pop group The Midnighters.
The band released three records on the Decca label, produced by the legendary Joe Meek but all three failed to make the charts, despite some promotion by the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein.
Starr left the band in 1965. He would eventually go on to have some chart success though, with the number nine single It's You in 1974.
His big break came when he was "discovered" through the talent show, Opportunity Knocks, a precursor to shows like The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent.
But he became a household name on the 1970 Royal Variety Performance where his preening, rubber-legged impersonation of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger had the audiences in the theatre and at home rolling in the aisles.
It led to a period of solid television work.
Between 1972 and 1976, Starr worked alongside the rising stars of British comedy like Russ Abbott, Les Dennis, David Copperfield and Little and Large on the comedy sketch show Who Do You Do? for London Weekend Television on ITV.
The Freddie Starr show was broadcast on the BBC in 1976 and ITV gave him two series of his own in the 90s along with 1996's An Audience with Freddie Starr.
It proved so popular that a sequel, Another Audience with Freddie Starr, was broadcast the following year.
At his peak, the comedian was reported to be earning in excess of £2m a year, often playing live gigs seven nights a week but it played havoc with his personal life.
Hamster story debunked
But as a new generation of subversive, often political British comics began to emerge, work dried up for Starr.
Demand fell for his once edgy and near-the-knuckle brand of comedy, and he become almost as well-known for his colourful personal life as his zany stage performances.
In 1986, The Sun newspaper printed the headline "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster".
The comedian was accused of putting the live pet of a friend between two pieces of bread and devouring it live. The story was a complete fabrication, devised by the disgraced late PR man Max Clifford.
In his 2001 autobiography Unwrapped, Starr said: "I have never eaten or even nibbled a live hamster, gerbil, guinea pig, mouse, shrew, vole or any other small mammal".
Away from comedy, Starr's horse Miinnehoma - ridden by Richard Dunwoody - won the 1994 Grand National at Aintree Racecourse in his home county of Merseyside.
Afterwards, BBC Sport presenter Des Lynam conducted a live phone interview with the winning owner, in front of a crowd of race-goers, as Starr was unable to attend due to prior TV commitments.
Addiction battle
The father-of-six married his first wife Betty when he was 17. His second marriage to Sandy lasted 15 years and he married his third wife, Donna, who was 27 years his junior, in 1998. They married and divorced twice.
He separated from his fourth wife Sophie in 2015.
He was accused of infidelity and violent behaviour, including towards his son and remained largely estranged from most of his children until his death.
Though a teetotaller, Starr battled a 20-year addiction to Valium which he told the Standard "makes you feel you are never wrong".
"When you have a clear mind you can look in the mirror and face your own image. I've done that."
"I was destroying myself, destroying my marriage, destroying a lot of things. And that was self-inflicted. I hold myself totally responsible. Now I am clear and I can see what I have done and I am very sorry."
'Swindlers and villains'
Starr had a brief career resurgence in 2009, when he appeared in the reality ghost-hunting show Living with the Dead, but a 2010 tour was cancelled when he suffered a major heart attack and underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery.
The tour was rescheduled for 2011, the same year he participated in I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here.
He pulled out of the show following a "bushtucker trial" that included eating mouse tails and turkey testicles.
"I was sick not to finish the show. The decision's been made and I have to live with that. I wish everyone on the show all the best," he said.
Writing about his years spent in the showbiz wilderness, he called former agents and managers "smooth talking crooks, swindlers and villains", adding: "As soon as your ratings start dropping and people stop coming to see you when you're touring, you find all your 'best friends' disappearing into the woodwork.
"I'm not saying it's right. I'm just telling that's how the business works."
Arrest and defamation claim
If frustrations over his stalled career were his biggest problems, his life was about to hit a even lower point when, in 2012, he was arrested in the police inquiry investigating sex abuse claims against Jimmy Savile.
The comic was accused of groping a teenage girl backstage on Savile's Clunk Click TV show.
The Crown Prosecution Service decided no charges would be brought against him but in 2015, he took one accuser Karin Ward to court accusing her of defamation.
His legal action failed and in his judgment Mr Justice Nicol said Ms Ward's testimony was found to be true, but too much time had lapsed since the offence.
It landed Starr with a large legal bill and in an interview with the Mail on Sunday, he revealed he was moving to Spain.
In an eerily accurate prediction, he told the paper: "No matter which way I turned there was a... revolver pointing at my head so I thought 'I'm not going to tell anyone, I'm just going to get on a plane and go to Spain, the place I love, and this is where I'm going to die'."
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Donald Trump's old catchphrase was "you're fired" - and while he has been president, his senior team has had a very high turnover.
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Here is a run-down of what they did, and why they left, starting with the most recent.
William Barr, US Attorney General - 14 December 2020
Mr Barr, 70, came out of semi-retirement in 2019 to replace Jeff Sessions for the cabinet role. During his lengthy legal career, he also served as attorney general under President George HW Bush in the early 1990s.
Democratic critics of Mr Barr accused him of shielding his ex-boss from justice.
But despite his support for the president, Trump and many of his supporters turned on Mr Barr over his unwillingness to support the president's election lawsuits.
His resignation comes into effect on 23 December - less than a month before his term is due to end, when President Trump leaves office.
Why did he leave?
Tensions flared between the two after Mr Barr said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in November's election.
He was also criticised by the president for not publicly disclosing during the race that his justice department was investigating Joe Biden's son Hunter.
Mr Barr's resignation letter to President Trump began by saying he "appreciated the opportunity to update" the president on the Department of Justice's review of voter fraud allegations in the recent election and "how these allegations will continue to be pursued".
Time in post?
One year, ten months
Chris Krebs, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency - 17 November 2020
A former Microsoft executive, Mr Krebs had led the agency since its inception in 2018 in the aftermath of alleged Russian interference in 2016's presidential elections.
As director he was responsible for improving cybersecurity across all levels of government, and safeguarding the security of the 2020 elections.
Why did he leave?
Mr Krebs had been praised by both Democrats and Republicans for his handling of the latest election.
But he reportedly incurred the White House's displeasure over a Cisa website called Rumor Control, which debunked election misinformation, much of it amplified by the president himself.
Hours before he was fired, he posted a tweet that appeared to take aim at Mr Trump's allegation that voting machines in various states had switched ballots to Mr Biden.
President Trump said he "terminated" Mr Krebs for "highly inaccurate" remarks on voting integrity.
Time in post?
Two years.
Mark Esper, Defence Secretary - 9 November 2020
Mark Esper was appointed in 2019. He replaced an acting secretary of defence who was standing in after James Mattis left in 2018 over differences with Donald Trump on Syria, among other things.
Mr Esper's relations with the president turned out to be equally rocky, towards the end at least.
He was "terminated" in the post in a tweet from Mr Trump, who announced the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Christopher Miller, was replacing him.
Why did he leave?
The secretary disagreed with the president on a number of issues, most publicly on the use of active-duty military forces to quell street protests.
Mr Esper was also far more conciliatory towards Nato than Mr Trump.
Mr Esper had reportedly been preparing to resign - or to be sacked - since the president's election defeat.
Time in post?
Just short of 17 months.
Kellyanne Conway, senior counsellor to the president - 23 August 2020
Mrs Conway served as Donald Trump's campaign manager in the three months up to his election in November 2016.
She then became senior counsellor at the White House, and one of the president's closest advisers.
She became noted for her colourful and high-profile defences of the president, and her sparring with journalists.
Why did she leave?
She said she wanted to spend more time focusing on her children.
Her decision to step down came hours after one of her daughters, Claudia, tweeted that her mother's job had "ruined [her] life" - a message that later went viral.
Among Mrs Conway's many colourful lines, one of the most famous was "alternative facts", the phrase she used to describe then White House press secretary Sean Spicer's highly questioned figures about the number of people attending Mr Trump's inauguration.
Time in post?
Four years, first as election campaign manager, then senior adviser.
Brad Parscale, Campaign Manager - 15 July 2020
Mr Parscale served as digital media director for Mr Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The 44-year-old was promoted to campaign manager for the president's 2020 re-election bid in February 2018.
He has been a warm-up act for Mr Trump at rallies.
Why did he leave?
Mr Parscale has reportedly been blamed by the US president's inner circle for a poorly attended rally in Oklahoma in June.
He boasted that more than one million people registered to attend the event, but the local fire department said fewer than 6,200 showed up.
Mr Parscale blamed a blocked security gate, protesters and the media for the disappointing turnout.
Mr Trump announced on social media that Mr Parscale was being replaced by Bill Stepien, a former aide to ex-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
The president did not offer any reasons for the decision and praised Mr Parscale's work on digital and data strategies.
Time in post?
Two years, five months.
What is he doing now?
Mr Parscale is still working as a senior advisor to the Trump campaign.
Mick Mulvaney, Acting White House Chief of Staff - 6 March 2020
Mr Mulvaney assumed the role of acting White House chief of staff in January 2019. He previously served as director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Despite his key White House roles, he was never part of the Trump inner circle.
Why did he leave?
My Mulvaney's departure had been long rumoured and followed some high-profile slip-ups.
Most notably, he was perceived to have implicated the president in the impeachment inquiry in an off-the-cuff remark at the White House podium, in which he shrugged off criticism over an alleged corrupt deal with Ukraine by saying: "We do that all the time."
Mr Trump was reportedly outraged by the gaffe.
In a written statement, Mr Mulvaney said: "Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election."
Mr Trump announced on 6 March that Mr Mulvaney was being replaced by North Carolina lawmaker Mark Meadows.
Time in post?
One year, two months.
What is he doing now?
Mr Mulvaney is now working as US special envoy to Northern Ireland.
Gordon Sondland, US ambassador to the EU - 7 February 2020
Mr Sondland was appointed as US ambassador to the European Union in June 2018. Before entering into politics, he was best known as a multi-millionaire hotelier.
He originally backed a Trump rival in the 2016 presidential race, but when Mr Trump was elected, he donated $1m (£781,000) to his inaugural committee.
Why did he leave?
Mr Sondland was fired after testifying against Mr Trump in the impeachment proceedings. In his testimony, he accused the president of seeking a "quid pro quo" with Ukraine.
On 7 February, Mr Sondland said he had been advised that the president intended "to recall [him] effective immediately".
In a statement issued by his lawyer, he said: "I am grateful to President Trump for having given me the opportunity to serve, to Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo for his consistent support, and to the exceptional and dedicated professionals at the US mission to the European Union."
Time in post?
Just over one and a half years.
Alexander Vindman, National Security Aide - 7 February 2020
Lt Col Alexander Vindman is a decorated Iraq war veteran who served as the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council.
He was born in Ukraine, then a Soviet republic, and moved to the US with his family when he and his twin brother, Yevgeny, were aged three.
Why did he leave?
Lt Col Vindman's lawyer said he was fired after testifying as a witness in Mr Trump's impeachment case.
His lawyer said he was escorted from the White House, while his twin brother, a senior lawyer for the National Security Council, was also sent back to the Department of the Army.
During the impeachment proceedings, Lt Col Vindman described a phone call between Mr Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart as "improper" and said it had left him in "shock".
Mr Trump defended the decision to fire him, describing the Ukraine expert as "very insubordinate".
He said Lt Col Vindman had incorrectly reported the contents of a "perfect" phone call.
Time in post?
One year, seven months.
What is he doing now?
Lt Col Vindman announced in July that he had retired from the military after 21 years of service because his future would be "forever limited".
His lawyer said the 45-year-old had been the victim of a "campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation" by the president.
Richard Spencer, Navy Secretary - 24 November 2019
Mr Spencer, a former Marines pilot-turned-investment banker, was sworn in as the 76th secretary of the US Navy in August 2017.
During his time in the post, he also performed stints as acting secretary of defence and deputy secretary of defence.
Why did he leave?
US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said he asked Mr Spencer to resign over "his lack of candour" regarding the case of a Navy Seal convicted of posing with a corpse while serving in Iraq.
The case of Edward Gallagher has sparked tensions between US President Donald Trump and military officials.
The president reinstated Chief Petty Officer Gallagher's rank after he was demoted following his conviction, and later hit out at plans to hold a disciplinary review that could have resulted in him being stripped of his Seals membership.
In a statement announcing the firing, Mr Esper alleged Mr Spencer had proposed a deal with the White House behind his back to resolve the case.
Mr Trump, however, said he was not happy with "cost overruns" and how Gallagher's trial was run, and suggested this was why Mr Spencer was fired.
In his resignation letter, Mr Spencer said it was apparent that he and Mr Trump did not have the same view of "good order and discipline".
"I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took," he wrote.
Time in post?
Two years, three months.
Kevin McAleenan, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security - 13 November 2019
Before joining the cabinet, Mr McAleenan worked as commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection.
He oversaw the president's tough policies aimed at curbing immigration across the Mexican border.
Why did he leave?
In a tweet, President Donald Trump said Mr McAleenan wanted to "spend more time with his family and go into the private sector."
During his tenure, analysts described a turbulent relationship between the two.
Mr McAleenan has also criticised the "uncomfortable" tone of debate about immigration in America.
Time in post?
Six months
John Bolton, National Security Adviser - 10 September 2019
Mr Bolton assumed the post in April 2018, becoming Mr Trump's third national security adviser after Michael Flynn and HR McMaster. At that time, the president's decision to appoint Mr Bolton came as a surprise.
He remained an unapologetic cheerleader of the 2003 Iraq war, which the US president himself once lambasted as "a big mistake". Mr Bolton was praised, however, by conservative admirers as a straight-talking foreign policy "hawk".
Why did he leave?
Mr Trump announced Mr Bolton's departure in a tweet, writing that his national security adviser's services were "no longer needed". But Mr Bolton quickly fired back, writing on Twitter that he had actually offered his resignation, but Mr Trump had told him "let's talk about it tomorrow".
Mr Bolton's exit follows an argument with Mr Trump over the administration's peace talks with the Taliban.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told reporters: "[The president] didn't like a lot of his policies, they disagree."
According to White House sources, the National Security Council - which advises the president - had become a separate entity during Mr Bolton's tenure.
A former senior Trump administration official, who wished to remain anonymous, told the BBC that Mr Bolton did not attend meetings, and followed his own initiatives.
"He's running his own show," said the official.
Time in post?
One year, four months.
What is he doing now?
Just a few days after his departure, Mr Bolton resumed his former job as the head of two political action committees: the John Bolton PAC and John Bolton Super PAC.
So-called PACs promote the views of their members on selected issues, and have become an important tool for funnelling large funds into the political process and influencing elections.
Mr Bolton released a book in June 2020 - The Room Where it Happened -about his time in the White House. In it, he paints a picture of a president ignorant of basic geopolitical facts and whose decisions were frequently driven by a desire for re-election.
The White House had sought to block the book's release citing national security concerns.
Read more: Ten biggest claims in John Bolton's Donald Trump book
Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence - 15 August 2019
As director of national intelligence, Mr Coats oversaw all 17 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA. His office also had the authority to receive whistleblower complaints and decide if they should be referred to Congress.
But Mr Coats' assessments were routinely contradicted by President Trump, who has been critical of the US intelligence community. In January, the president called his intelligence chiefs passive and naive in their assessment of the threat posed by Iran.
On 28 July, President Donald Trump tweeted Mr Coats would step down in mid-August and Texas congressman John Ratcliffe would be nominated to replace him.
Why did he leave?
In his resignation letter to the president, Mr Coats said America's intelligence community had become "stronger than ever" during his two-and-half-year tenure.
"As a result, I now believe it is time for me to move on to the next chapter of my life," he wrote.
Mr Coats, a former senator and diplomat, said in February the president had asked him to stay in the post, yet their differences on foreign policy appeared irreconcilable at times.
But the timing of his removal has been questioned by critics. The announcement came three days after a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, which was the subject of a whistleblower complaint. The White House released a rough transcript of the call which shows Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, a Democratic frontrunner for the 2020 presidential elections.
Time in post?
Two and a half years.
Alexander Acosta, Labour Secretary - 19 July 2019
Mr Acosta, a former federal prosecutor, was sworn in as Secretary in April 2017 - the first Hispanic appointee to the Cabinet. He was chosen for the role after Mr Trump's first choice, fast-food billionaire Andrew Puzder, withdrew.
During his tenure, Mr Acosta oversaw initiatives to expand on promote workplace apprenticeships. But he was criticised for proposing massive cuts to the International Labor Affairs Bureau, a section of the department that combats human trafficking, child labour and forced labour.
Why did he leave?
Mr Acosta had been defending his role in a 2008 plea deal that saw a light sentence for financier Jeffrey Epstein after he pleaded guilty to prostitution charges. Epstein was charged in July with new sex trafficking charges related to that case.
Top Democrats had called on Mr Acosta to resign for engaging in "an unconscionable agreement" with Epstein.
Mr Acosta said he negotiated the deal to ensure Epstein did not walk free, and that he was happy about the new case moving forward.
While announcing his resignation, the former US attorney from Florida said he felt the "right thing was to step aside" so his past controversies would not overshadow the administration's accomplishments.
Mr Trump, who stood next to Mr Acosta while he spoke to reporters, noted: "This was him, not me." He said Mr Acosta was "a great Labour Secretary".
Time in post?
Just over two years.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House Press Secretary - 1 July 2019
Ms Sanders started out as deputy press secretary before replacing Sean Spicer in the top post - the third woman to ever hold the White House role.
While Press Secretary, she was accused of lying to journalists and frequently criticised the media for spreading "fake news" about the Trump administration.
Press briefings also became increasingly rare during her tenure as Mr Trump took charge of his own messaging. Mrs Sanders hosted fewer news conferences than any of the preceding 13 press secretaries, according to the American Presidency Project.
Why did she leave?
Exact reasons are unclear, but President Trump announced her resignation on Twitter and lauded her as a "warrior".
During her resignation speech, Ms Sanders said her role had been "the honour of a lifetime".
Time in post?
Nearly two years.
What is she doing now?
Ms Sanders is a regular contributor on television news channel Fox News, and is active among conservative groups.
Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General - 11 May 2019
Rod Rosenstein eventually submitted a resignation letter, effective from 11 May, after months of rumours about his departure.
It came shortly after the release of the report into claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election - an investigation he oversaw.
Reports say he specially timed his departure to allow for Robert Mueller's probe to wind down first.
Why did he leave?
His relationship with the president was always publicly fraught - with the lawyer frequently coming under fire on Mr Trump's Twitter feed.
There were even reports in 2018 that Mr Rosenstein at one point planned to secretly record the president in order to justify his removal under the 25th amendment of the US constitution.
Despite this, Mr Rosenstein's resignation letter paid tribute to Mr Trump.
In it, Rosenstein said he was "grateful" for the opportunity to serve under him and even signed it off borrowing his campaign slogan of "America first".
Time in post?
Just over two years from his confirmation.
Kirstjen Nielsen, Homeland Security Secretary - 10 April 2019
Kirstjen Nielsen became Homeland Security Secretary in December 2017.
Her sprawling department, responsible for domestic security, covers everything from borders to responding to national emergencies.
She faced criticism for enforcing some of the most controversial elements of President Trump's domestic agenda, such as the separation of children from their migrant parents at the Mexican border.
In a resignation letter she said it was the "right time for me to step aside".
Why did she leave?
There have been tensions between her and the president for months, who blamed her for a rise in migrants at the Mexican border.
Days earlier President Trump withdrew his nominee to lead another key department dealing with immigration, saying he wanted to go in a "tougher direction". It is widely thought he wants someone "tougher" at Homeland Security too.
Time in post?
16 months.
What is she doing now?
Six months after her resignation, the White House announced that she would be rejoining the Homeland Security department as a member of its National Infrastructure Advisory Council.
In June 2020, the Australian government announced that it had hired her to help prepare a cyber security strategy.
Brock Long, Administrator of Fema - 8 March 2019
Brock Long was appointed administrator of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency by President Trump in April 2017 and confirmed by the Senate two months later.
Fema is responsible for co-ordinating the response to disasters and in his tenure he oversaw 220 of them. He was quickly battered by two hurricanes. Harvey hit Texas with catastrophic effect in August 2017, while Maria a month later devastated Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the US.
He was one of those who bore heavy criticism for the response afforded to Puerto Rico.
Why did he leave?
Mr Long gave no explicit reason for his departure, saying in a statement that it was "time to go home to my family".
During his tenure, he was investigated for using government vehicles to commute from his home in North Carolina to Washington. He was later ordered to pay back the government $151,000 (£117,000) for the cost of several private journeys he claimed on expenses.
Time in post?
21 months from confirmation.
What is he doing now?
Mr Long is executive chairman of Hagerty Consulting, an emergency management consultancy firm where he worked before joining FEMA.
Ryan Zinke, Interior Secretary - 2 January 2019
A former Navy SEAL, Ryan Zinke was picked to lead the agency that oversees federal land, including national parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone.
He served as a congressman in his home state of Montana before the cabinet appointment.
Why was he sacked?
President Trump tweeted that Mr Zinke would be leaving the administration at the end of 2018. He did not offer any further details and it is unclear whether he resigned or was fired.
"Ryan has accomplished much during his tenure and I want to thank him for his service to our Nation," Mr Trump said.
Mr Zinke was under a number of investigations for his conduct in office. They include a land deal in Montana involving Mr Zinke and the chairman of oilfield services Halliburton.
Time in post?
Almost two years.
What is he doing now?
In January 2019, Mr Zinke became managing director of Artillery One, an investment firm specialising in the technology and energy sectors.
While details of the role are unclear, the company said Mr Zinke would help to "pursue investing and development opportunities globally".
John Kelly, Chief of Staff - 2 January 2019
The retired Marine general was initially nominated to oversee Homeland Security before Mr Trump promoted him to chief of staff in July 2017, replacing Reince Priebus.
However, on 8 December Mr Trump announced that Gen Kelly would leave his post by the end of the year.
Why is he leaving?
By December 2018 his relationship with the president was said to have deteriorated, with some reports saying the pair were no longer on speaking terms.
Earlier in the year Mr Kelly was forced to deny that he had called Mr Trump an "idiot" after the quote was included in a book by the veteran investigative journalist Bob Woodward.
Time in post?
About one year, five months. (He was previously Homeland Security secretary from January to July 2017.)
What is he doing now?
Mr Kelly serves on the board of Caliburn International, a professional services firm where we worked . The professional services company has several government contracts, including one to operate a migrant detention centre in Florida.
Jim Mattis, Defence Secretary - 1 January 2019
A distinguished former Marine Corps general, Gen Mattis served in the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War.
Before his retirement in 2013 he served as head of US Central Command, and went on to several private sector roles before being tapped to join President Trump's cabinet.
He positioned himself as one of the cooler heads throughout the president's term, and was referenced by Democrats and Republicans alike as a "grown-up" in the room - a far cry from his "Mad Dog Mattis" nickname.
Why did he leave?
The move came just one day after the president controversially announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria.
Although not referring directly to that, in his resignation letter Gen Mattis said the president had the right to have a defence secretary "whose views are better aligned" with his.
The two had diverging public views on a number of subjects, including Mr Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
"My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues," Gen Mattis wrote.
President Trump was so angered with the letter than he accelerated Gen Mattis' departure date and said he was "essentially fired."
Time in post?
Just under two years.
What is he doing now?
Gen Mattis has returned to his former role as Fellow at the Hoover Institution - a think tank based at Stanford University.
As a Fellow, the institute said he plans "to focus his research and writing on domestic and international security policy."
In June 2020, he denounced Mr Trump's use of military force to quell anti-racism protests near the White House, and accused his former boss of setting up a "false conflict" between the military and civilian society.
Nikki Haley, Ambassador to the UN - 31 December 2018
The former governor of South Carolina was the first non-white woman to be appointed to Mr Trump's cabinet, and the first female, minority governor of her state.
She had limited foreign policy experience prior to her role as US envoy and was a vocal critic of Mr Trump during his campaign.
As ambassador, she affirmed sanctions on Russia would continue, and that the US military could be deployed in the response to North Korean missile tests. But she frequently clashed with the president over several foreign policy issues, including a proposed ban on immigration to the US from several Muslim-majority countries.
Why did she leave?
In a news conference with Mr Trump, Mrs Haley announced she was stepping aside after a "rough" eight years as governor and envoy.
She will be leaving her post at the end of 2018, but said she did not yet know what her next steps would be.
Mrs Haley said she wanted to make sure Mr Trump's administration "has the strongest person to fight" for the US at the UN.
While accepting her resignation, Mr Trump thanked her and said she did a "terrific job", making the role "very glamorous".
Time in post?
One year, eleven months
What is she doing now?
In April 2019, Ms Haley began sitting on the board of directors at Boeing. Critics suggested that she received the appointment as a reward for the tax breaks and subsidies which Boeing received while she was governor.
The following March, the company announced that she had resigned because she opposed their move to seek financial support from the government amid the coronavirus crisis.
Jeff Sessions, Attorney General - 7 November 2018
The Alabama Republican was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, in early 2016.
During the campaign, he became one of Mr Trump's closest national security advisers and, in government, was a supporter of the president's policies on immigration and law enforcement.
Why was he fired?
Mr Sessions became a frequent target of the president's ire as soon as he stepped aside, in March 2017, from the investigation over alleged Russian collusion with Mr Trump's campaign. The recusal allowed his deputy Rod Rosenstein to oversee the inquiry, which led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.
At various times, Mr Trump publicly belittled Mr Sessions as "beleaguered", "VERY weak", and "DISGRACEFUL". But Mr Sessions reacted to most of the insults in silence.
US media reported that Gen Kelly had called Mr Sessions to say the president wanted him to step down. Mr Trump did not speak to Mr Sessions himself, and announced the departure on Twitter.
In his resignation letter, Mr Sessions made clear the decision was not his own, saying: "Dear Mr President, at your request I am submitting my resignation."
Time in post?
One year, nine months
What is he doing now?
In July 2020, Mr Sessions lost the Republican nomination for his old Senate seat in Alabama, losing to a candidate backed by Mr Trump.
Mr Trump tweeted his delight at the result.
Conceding defeat, Mr Sessions said he still had no regrets over recusing himself from the investigations into allegations of Russian interference.
Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency - 6 July 2018
The lawyer served as the attorney general of Oklahoma from 2011 - 2017.
He had sued the EPA, the agency which he presided over, a number of times in his role as the state's attorney general.
Why did he leave?
Donald Trump announced that Mr Pruitt had resigned due to "unrelenting attacks" on himself and his family.
Since taking office, Mr Pruitt was mired in series of scandals concerning his spending habits and alleged misuse of office, and is the subject of at least a dozen investigations into his conduct.
He angered many liberals and environmentalists by severely curtailing the agency's activities and repealing many measures designed to protect the environment.
While accepting Mr Pruitt's resignation, Mr Trump tweeted that he had done "an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him".
Time in post?
One year, four months
HR McMaster, National Security Adviser - 9 April 2018
A lieutenant general with the US Army, HR McMaster served in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he worked on a government anti-corruption drive.
He replaced Lt Gen Michael Flynn, who was fired after just three weeks and three days in the job after he misled Vice-President Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Time magazine named him as one of its 100 most influential people in the world in 2014, saying he "might be the 21st Century Army's pre-eminent warrior-thinker".
Why did he leave?
Mr Trump reportedly disliked his "gruff and condescending" manner and the pair reportedly disagreed on the administration's policy towards Russia, North Korea and Iran.
Gen Kelly, White House chief of staff at the time, also had little positive to say about him.
Time in post?
Thirteen months.
What is he doing now?
Gen McMaster works as a fellow and lecturer at Stanford University. He is also a board member of Spirit of America, a charity which "improves the safety and success" of US military personnel and diplomats deployed abroad.
In 2020, he is set to release a memoir called "Battlegrounds".
Gary Cohn, Chief Economic Adviser - 2 April 2018
The former president of the Goldman Sachs bank was appointed as head of the National Economic Council as Mr Trump took office, so becoming the president's top economic adviser.
In his time at the White House, he helped push through sweeping reforms on taxes, one of the most significant policy achievements of the administration.
But the two were not reported to be close, and rumours of Mr Cohn's departure continued to swirl.
Why did he leave?
A staunch globalist, Mr Cohn had reportedly vowed to quit if Mr Trump pressed ahead with plans to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports to the US.
According to US media, Mr Cohn initially planned to resign after Mr Trump blamed "both sides" for violence at a deadly far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
Time in post?
Fourteen months.
What is he doing now?
Since leaving, Mr Cohn has become a fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State - 31 March 2018
Mr Tillerson was the first Secretary of State to be appointed under the Trump administration.
A former oil executive, Mr Tillerson pushed for an end to sanctions on Russia and for the resumption of peace talks with North Korea.
But his tenure was reportedly mired by clashes with the president over policy, and by the resignation of several high-ranking career diplomats.
Why did he leave?
Mr Trump said his differences with Mr Tillerson came down to personal "chemistry".
Indications of the pair's deteriorating relationship first surfaced after reports that Mr Tillerson had called the president a "moron". The comment was allegedly made after Mr Trump had pushed for a tenfold increase in America's nuclear arsenal.
In a subsequent media appearance, the president challenged Mr Tillerson to "compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win".
President Trump announced his departure in a tweet, though Mr Tillerson's spokesperson said he had not told about it beforehand.
Time in post?
Fourteen months.
Hope Hicks, White House Communications Director - 29 March 2018
Ms Hicks served as Mr Trump's press secretary and handled media requests during his campaign.
She became his fourth director of strategic communications for the Trump White House after Anthony Scaramucci was fired after just 10 days in the job.
The fashion model-turned-spokeswoman previously worked as a publicist for Ivanka Trump's fashion label before entering politics with Mr Trump's bid for the White House.
Why did she leave?
Her resignation came a day after she testified to a congressional panel investigating Russian influence on the 2016 election, telling them she had occasionally told "white lies" for her boss.
Her departure came only weeks after another top aide to Mr Trump, Rob Porter - with whom Ms Hicks was reported to have been in a relationship - quit amid allegations by two ex-wives of abuse.
Time in post?
Six years in the Trump Organization, and three years with Mr Trump during his campaign and presidency.
What is she doing now?
After leaving the White House, Ms Hicks became chief communications officer at Fox Corporation, an American broadcasting firm.
In February 2020, she returned to the White House, taking on the role of counsellor to the president and reporting to Mr Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
David Shulkin, Veterans Affairs Secretary - 28 March 2018
A doctor and former healthcare executive, Mr Shulkin had served as undersecretary of veterans affairs for health under Barack Obama.
President Trump had hailed him as "fantastic" when appointing him, and the Senate gave him the only 100-0 confirmation of the Trump team.
Why did he leave?
Mr Shulkin had come under fire for alleged improper behaviour by department staff on a trip to Europe in 2017, including his own acceptance of tickets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament. He denied wrongdoing but agreed to reimburse the government for his wife's air fare for the trip.
Mr Shulkin won praise from veterans' groups, but his lack of action on privatising the Veterans Health Administration had angered conservatives.
In parting, he condemned the "toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive" environment in Washington.
Time in post?
Fourteen months
What is he doing now?
In October 2019, the former VA Secretary published a book tracing his 13 months in the Trump administration.
Rob Porter, White House Staff Secretary - 7 February 2018
A former political aide, Mr Porter was described as Mr Trump's "right-hand man" during his tenure.
As Staff Secretary he helped to manage the flow of paperwork reaching Trump, from policy memos to speeches and news briefing documents. He was also responsible for circulating documents among senior staff for comment.
Why did he quit?
Mr Porter resigned soon after two of his ex-wives publicly accused him of physical and emotional abuse. One, Colbie Holderness, supplied a photo of herself with a black eye to the media.
He denies all the accusations of abuse.
The Daily Mail, which broke the story, reported that Mr Porter did not receive security clearance for his White House job after the FBI interviewed his ex-wives during background checks.
After his resignation, questions quickly arose over how early the president's chief of staff, Gen Kelly, had been made aware of the accusations by the FBI, and if they had played a role in his diminished security clearance.
Time in post?
One year.
What is he doing now?
Since leaving, the Daily Mail reported that Mr Porter was secretly hired to help with President Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. In an interview with The Daily Beast, the campaign's chief operating officer, Michael Glassner, denied the accusation.
Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Director - 29 January 2018
Andrew McCabe, a career FBI agent, served as the bureau's acting director for nearly three months after the president sacked James Comey.
He was sacked days before he could retire with pension rights.
The attorney has faced repeated criticism from President Trump, who claims his ties to Democrats made him partial in the ongoing Russia investigation.
His wife, Jill McCabe, ran a failed Democratic bid for a state senate seat in Virginia in 2015, during which she received $500,000 (£355,000) from a political action group allied with Hillary Clinton - a move which Mr Trump apparently found unforgiveable.
Why was he sacked?
He was fired by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who said an internal review found he leaked information and misled investigators.
Mr McCabe denied the claims and said he was being targeted because of his involvement in the inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Before his departure, he had been under an internal investigation into the FBI's handling of two key inquiries during the 2016 presidential campaign: the revelations that Hillary Clinton had used a private email server while secretary of state; and suspicions that Russia was interfering to help Mr Trump win the presidency.
Time in post?
Two years as FBI deputy director, including a year under Mr Trump's administration.
What is he doing now?
Mr McCabe has retired from the FBI and is a contributor to news broadcaster CNN.
Tom Price, Health Secretary - 29 September 2017
The former Georgia congressman was a long-standing opponent of the Affordable Care Act - known as Obamacare.
Mr Price was confirmed by the Senate along party lines, amid allegations of insider trading while he worked on healthcare laws - which he denied.
As health secretary, Mr Price was involved in President Trump's repeated failures to push through bills repealing Obamacare.
Why was he sacked?
An analysis of transport spending by Politico discovered that Mr Price had, between May and late September, spent more than $1m on flights.
Some $500,000 of that was on military flights approved by the White House, but private charter flights made up at least $400,000 where commercial flights were available. Mr Trump said he was "not happy".
Time in post?
Almost eight months.
Steve Bannon, Chief Strategist - 18 August 2017
Steve Bannon joined the Trump campaign after leading the right-wing Breitbart News website, which rose to prominence through its attacks on mainstream Republicans, as well as those on the left.
The website helped to elevate the so-called "Alt-right", which critics label a white supremacist group.
Like other aides to Mr Trump, he made his fortune as an investment banker, but later turned to financing film and television programmes such as the popular 90s sitcom Seinfeld.
Why was he sacked?
Some of Mr Trump's most influential advisers, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, had been pushing for his departure for months.
His firing came amid a public backlash to Mr Trump's response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which an anti-racist protester was killed by a 20-year-old man with Nazi sympathies.
Time in post?
Fired one year after being named campaign chief.
What is he doing now?
After his departure, Mr Bannon briefly rejoined Breitbart News as executive chairman.
He drew ire from President Trump after the publication of Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury, which detailed several comments made by Mr Bannon that were critical of the administration.
Mr Bannon remains active within politics and has served as an informal advisor to right-wing parties across Europe, Brazil and Israel. As part of this work he co-founded of The Movement, a Brussels-based organisation helping to promote the election of right-wing populist parties across Europe.
Anthony Scaramucci, Communications Director - 31 July 2017
The brash, Wall Street bigwig has known President Trump for years, and defended him in TV interviews.
While in the job, he appeared to accuse then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus of being responsible for White House leaks in a tweet (later deleted) that also appeared to threaten him.
Mr Scaramucci then attacked Mr Priebus and President Trump's senior adviser Steve Bannon in an expletive-filled rant on the phone with a reporter from the New Yorker magazine.
Why was he sacked?
Although he had boasted of reporting directly to the president, Mr Scaramucci's outbursts may have cost him any post alongside Gen Kelly, who was replacing Reince Priebus as chief of staff.
Mr Scaramucci's departure was announced hours after Gen Kelly was sworn-in.
Time in post?
Ten days (although his official start date was 15 August - so possibly minus 15 days.)
What is he doing now?
Mr Scaramucci is a contributor to several media outlets and has founded his own media group, The Scaramucci Post. He is also a trustee of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Foundation.
Mr Scaramucci has been a vocal critic of President Trump since his departure, and has been the target of several visceral tweets by the commander-in-chief.
Reince Priebus, Chief of Staff - 31 July 2017
The former Republican National Committee chairman was one of few Washington veterans given a top role in the Trump White House but was unable to assert his authority.
He grappled with competing powers in an administration where Mr Trump's daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, played key roles.
Why was he sacked?
President Trump lost confidence in him and clearly wanted a shake-up in the White House, opting for a general to replace the Republican Party operative, who was seen as weak.
The announcement also came as the Republicans failed in their efforts to repeal Obamacare in the Senate.
Time in post?
Six months.
Sean Spicer, Press Secretary - 21 July 2017
Mr Spicer famously kicked off his tenure as White House press secretary by defending a seemingly indefensible claim about the crowd size at President Trump's inauguration.
Over the course of his time behind the podium he became - unusually for a press secretary - a household name, and was parodied on Saturday Night Live.
Why did he leave?
Unlike most others on this list, Mr Spicer appears to have left on seemingly good terms with the president.
He stepped down after Mr Scaramucci was appointed to a role he had partially filled, saying he did not want there to be "too many cooks in the kitchen".
Time in post?
Six months.
What is he doing now?
Mr Spicer is a public affairs officer with the US Navy and was appointed by President to serve on the US Naval Academy's Board of Visitors.
He has also written a book called The Briefing: Politics, the Press and the President in which he referred to Trump as "unicorn riding a unicorn across a rainbow".
In a surprise public appearance, he entered as a contestant on popular TV show Dancing with the Stars in 2019.
James Comey, FBI director - 9 May 2017
Mr Comey played a dramatic and controversial part in the closing stages of the election when he announced, a week before the vote, that the FBI had reopened an investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.
He was criticised first by Democrats for the timing, then by Republicans when he said a week later that no charges would be brought.
The president grew less appreciative of him as the FBI director led an investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Why was he sacked?
The Trump administration first claimed Mr Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation rendered him no longer able to credibly lead the bureau and that Mr Trump had acted on the deputy attorney general's recommendation.
However Mr Trump soon contradicted this, calling him a "showboat" in a TV interview and saying he was thinking of the "Russia thing" when he made the decision to sack him.
Time in post?
Three years, eight months. Less than four months under Mr Trump.
What is he doing now?
Since leaving he has been highly critical of the Trump administration.
In August 2019, a Department of Justice report concluded that, after losing his job, Mr Comey divulged unclassified information from a memo he had written on his private conversations with Mr Trump.
It ruled that he broke FBI rules by giving the contents of a memo to a friend so that it could be shared with a reporter. But the inspector general did not recommend Mr Comey be sued for the breach.
Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser - 13 February 2017
Technically, Michael Flynn resigned, but he was asked to do so by the president.
His departure followed weeks of deepening scandal in which it emerged that he had misled White House officials, including the vice-president, over his contact with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
Mr Flynn has admitted to lying to the FBI about their pair discussing US sanctions against Russia with Mr Kislyak before Mr Trump took office.
Why was he sacked?
It is illegal for private citizens to conduct US diplomacy, and once it was established that Mr Flynn had lied about his contact with Mr Kislyak there was no question that he had to go.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that the president needed the time to investigate Mr Flynn and establish his guilt, but the scandal prompted fierce speculation over what the president knew of Mr Flynn's contacts with Mr Kislyak.
Time in post?
23 days.
What is he doing now?
Mr Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI. In June 2020, a federal court moved to dismiss charges against him.
Sally Yates, Acting Attorney General - 30 January 2017
The president fired Sally Yates after she questioned the legality of Mr Trump's travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.
Ms Yates, who was appointed by Barack Obama, believed it discriminated unconstitutionally against Muslims, and ordered justice department lawyers not to enforce the president's executive order.
Why was she sacked?
A White House statement said Ms Yates had "betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States".
It also described her as "weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration".
Time in post?
10 days. She previously served as deputy attorney general from May 2015 until January 2017.
What is she doing now?
Ms Yates is a partner at law firm King & Spalding, and lectures at Georgetown University Law Centre.
Preet Bharara, New York federal prosecutor - 11 March 2017
It is not uncommon for prosecutors appointed by the previous administration to be replaced as the White House changes hands, but the widely-respected Preet Bharara had been told specifically by the Trump administration that he would be kept on.
At the time of his sacking, he was overseeing several high-profile cases, including allegations of sexual harassment at Trump favourite Fox News.
Why was he sacked?
Mr Bharara was one of 46 prosecutors asked to resign by the Trump administration, which contended that it was part of a simple changing of the guard.
But there was speculation among Democrats and others that Mr Bahara's jurisdiction, which included Trump Tower, may have concerned the president.
Time in post?
Seven years, seven months. Less than two months under Mr Trump.
What is he doing now?
Mr Bharara is a Scholar in Residence at New York University Law School, and co-hosts a legal podcast called "Cafe Insider".
Paul Manafort, Chair of Trump's presidential campaign
Paul Manafort, a long-time Republican political operative, was supposed to marshal some of the chaos around Mr Trump but ended up falling prey to it.
He was sacked after five months with Mr Trump's campaign, three of those as campaign chair.
Why was he sacked?
The Trump campaign didn't give a reason for Mr Manafort's departure, issuing only a statement wishing him well.
But a wave of reports in the week before the announcement alleged that Mr Manafort had received secret cash payments from a pro-Russian political party for representing Russian interests in Ukraine and the US.
He has since been jailed for hiding $55m (£42m) from US tax authorities - money he was paid by pro-Russia politicians.
Time in post?
Three months.
What is he doing now?
Manafort is serving a more than seven-year sentence for fraud.
He was released from prison in May 2020 after his lawyers argued that he was at high risk of contracting coronavirus. He is serving the rest of his sentence under home confinement.
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Short term lets of property have boomed in recent years, and are seen as worsening conspicuous pressure points in rural and urban Scotland. Housing shortages, noisy neighbours and safety have become a pressing concern for some. But online lets are good news for the tourism industry, and for household income. A Scottish government consultation has been asking how to better regulate the sector, with pressure from landlords not to use "a sledgehammer to crack a nut".
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Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
It's the height of the tourist season. English schools have joined Scottish schools on holiday.
Anyone waiting to decide on their destination may be encouraged by the burst of heat to stay in the UK, as if the exchange rates for sterling were not reason enough.
So it's peak season for concern about "over-tourism" - the notion that we can have too much of this good thing. While we want to welcome visitors, goes the argument, there are either limits to our hospitality, or the crowds and congestion make for a declining quality of experience for those who visit.
Today sees the close of a Scottish government consultation on what has become one of the most conspicuous pressure points - the sharp growth in short term lets.
It's widely perceived as the problem of AirBnB, though I'm obliged to point out that other online short-term letting brokerages are available.
For most of us, AirBnB is not a problem at all. On the contrary, it's an opportunity to travel with more flexibility, often at lower prices, with a closer sense of the people and the culture being visited. It cuts out many layers of travel brokerage and cost.
Its original role as an online shop for sofa surfers gave way to letting out a spare room, perhaps while a family member was away at university, to help offset that cost. And then it allowed many more people to let out their home while they're away from it.
At astonishing speed, this classic case of a disruptive technology has opened up investment in properties that are solely intended for the short-term let (STL) market. The income for part of the year can make a holiday home affordable, thus pushing up the cost of properties in the second home bracket.
Croft caravan
Scotland is now one of the countries with hot spots of AirBnB activity that have forced the Scottish government to act. The first minister made it one of the stand-out pledges in a recent SNP conference speech. For some, this has become a big and pressing issue.
The two areas best known to face this pressure are Skye and Edinburgh, with very different profiles for the problems caused. Skye has long had housing pressures exacerbated by second homes.
But at least seasonal workers in hotels, restaurants and bars used to be able to rent somewhere, even if it was a caravan on a croft. Less so now.
Rural hoteliers tell me their recruitment problems are worsened because every available space is available for short-term lets, because AirBnB doesn't set a minimum standard but allows for every segment of the market.
Thus, the cost of employment goes up, and the margins for sometimes precariously seasonal businesses become alarmingly thin.
This isn't just about Skye. On a recent visit to east Ross-shire and the Black Isle, I heard growing talk of the impact of AirBnB. In Cromarty, for instance, which has developed as a thriving village community within commuting reach of Inverness, it is reckoned that 50 homes are not occupied permanently.
Second and holiday homes were already an issue, but with AirBnB, it looks to make second homes more financially viable, and therefore more of a housing pressure.
David Ross, a retired journalist colleague in the village, who sits on the local community trust, and used to chair the school board, says the cost of housing for young families means that the primary has gone from 90 pupils to below 50 in his 30 years there. The school could lose another teacher, and looks all the more vulnerable for it.
Edinburgh has parallel problems of rising housing costs, though it's not clear in either case that short-term lets have to take all the blame. The capital's property market has been heating up in recent years anyway - a far cry from the concerns of economic collapse that accompanied its twin bank meltdown 10 years ago.
In the city centre and in the north of the city towards Leith, short-term lets are blamed for undermining community cohesion and making tenement life unbearable for some. There's a visible presence in the key boxes, unlocked by code, padlocked to railings near the each property. In planning speak, it's 'a loss of amenity'.
Strangers
I heard, for a recent report on Good Morning Scotland, from Deirdre Henderson, one of those co-ordinating a new pressure group pushing back at the growth of AirBnB. Her family had a tenement flat in the Powderhall area of Edinburgh.
The flat downstairs was stripped of much of its interior decor, making any activity echo more loudly than it would do in a normally furnished home.
It typically slept more people than a normal flat would have, as bookings were used for parties, with costs widely shared. Several times each week, there would be different strangers using the stair, which made Deirdre worry for the safety of herself and her children.
"It can make you feel very low in a place that should make you happy and secure," she says.
For some, it is impossible to find out who the owner of the property is, so they can be informed of the nuisance caused. For others, the owner becomes aware of complaints to the city council, and makes an intimidating appearance at the front door.
This is in the past tense, because Deirdre and her family moved. Soon after, the owner of the downstairs flat sold up. She reckons they had had enough of the complaints she was making. If there's hassle for "normal" occupants of tenement flats, there can be hassle too for owners.
AirBnB makes some effort to rein in unwelcome behaviour by guests, removing or suspending landlords from its platform if there are multiple complaints.
An enforcement order by a council can be served for a number of reasons, including anti-social behaviour, and after that, the property ceases to work as a business proposition. Deirdre Henderson's complaint about Edinburgh Council is that it was inadequately resourced with staff to enforce the enforcement notices.
Sledgehammer
Could that be the plight of all short term lets - that the law is changed to enforce a tough regime in planning, the use of properties, licensing, regulation and taxation?
Those are among the questions being asked in the St Andrew's House consultation, which has been extended as a result of bringing in an unusually high number of responses.
It raises an unusually wide-ranging set of issues: housing, tourism, business rates and rates relief, safety, the capacity for council enforcement, local pressure points and the interests of the formal hospitality sector. It pits the desire for a stronger tourism sector, and a thriving private rented property market with, on the other hand, the issues of housing availability and cost, in rural and urban areas, and the community cohesion in tourist-heavy pressure points.
While stories such as Deirdre Henderson's are not difficult to find, landlords and those who rely on short-term lets have been fighting a fierce defensive action to ensure the consultation does not lead to "a sledgehammer to crack a nut".
That's the fear of Fiona Campbell, who leads Scotland's short term letting association. For her, ownership of a small number of homes for holiday lets is a legitimate small business, deserving of respect like any other. These lets are not run as merely a hobby or some extra income for the already well-off.
And the economic impact is substantial. AirBnB, by no coincidence, recently issued figures for 2018 that showed owners of Scottish properties who let through the website took £162m from doing so.
They assume every visitor to such a property goes out and spends £100 per day on food, drink, entertainment and visitor attractions, so the value spirals up to nearly £500m. A number like that is not one that ministers, in responding to the consultation, can simply ignore.
Festival lets
Fiona Campbell pushes back at each of the claims being made by those pushing for tighter regulation on STLs.
On claims that it's taking away scarce housing from local people, she counters that councils and central government should have been building or allowing more social housing. Some 79,000 homes are reckoned to be lying empty - though not necessarily in the locations visitors might want to rent, let alone homeless people.
On claims that whole tenement blocks have been changed for the worse, Fiona, says complaints are there but the numbers are low, the data isn't clear, and policy should not be set until it is.
If it's true that there are more than 12,000 AirBnB properties in Edinburgh - half of the Scottish total - they are not all rented all of the time. Some may be a room in a house or flat, some may be let once or twice a year. Around 60% of Edinburgh listings in Edinburgh were for fewer than 30 days last year.
On that, Deirdre Henderson and Fiona Campbell can agree - that people should have a right to let out their home to make some extra income from it, for at least a short time each year - say during the Edinburgh festivals or when the owners are on holiday.
They can also agree on the need for registration, and an effort to ensure that renters are aware of obligations on visitor safety, including hard-wired smoke alarms. There's also a concern that many STL landlords lack public liability insurance, and have mortgage or household insurance policies that do not cover their leasing activities.
Where Deirdre and Fiona diverge is what happens after a month of letting, and particularly if there are numerous turnovers.
City of Edinburgh Council offered its own views to the Scottish government, in a submission published at the end of last week. It has resisted advice to follow the example of Glasgow, in interpreting planning law in such a way that it can and does clamp down on short term lets.
The capital's council cites figures about those not living in a property while renting for more than 90 days a year, at which point the home has probably ceased to be anyone's home.
Bolted
Edinburgh council wants a licensing regime. That's because the planning route to reform has been closed off, for now at least.
Any hopes from campaigners that a much tougher regime on planning controls could be introduced to tackle STLs were dashed in the complex voting frenzy at Holyrood that saw amendments decided on what is now the Planning Act 2019.
The Greens' Andy Whiteman pushed for a change that would require anyone running such a business to have the property recognised as such within planning law.
It was defeated in favour of an amendment backed by Conservatives that allows councils to impose a licensing regime, but only in housing pressure spots. For that, the more detailed legislation had already been put in place, to deal with high rental costs.
So if not planning, registration seems the least that can be expected, and possibly licensing. That's until technology brings along the next disruptive website.
"The horse has bolted," says Fiona Campbell. "Now, we need to train the horse."
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Millions of Indian women have never used their husband's name - it's a way of showing their respect for him. The tradition is strictly observed in rural areas, though much less so in cities. Now, however, some campaigners are urging women in villages to give it up too.
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By Geeta PandeyBBC News, Delhi
What's in a name? A lot, if you're an Indian wife and the name in question is your husband's. I learned this early on in life.
My parents were married for 73 years until my father died last year. At the time of their wedding, my mother was less than 11 and he had just turned 15.
In the decades they were together, first in a tiny village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and later in Kolkata (then Calcutta), she never called him by his name.
When speaking to us children, she always referred to him as "babuji" - the Hindi word for "father" that we used. When addressing him directly, she always said "Hey ho", which means roughly "Hey you".
As teenagers when we became aware of the fact, we made fun of her. We tried to trick her into saying his name just once. But she never did.
All the other women in my home and neighbourhood also avoided saying their husband's name. So did tens of millions of women across India, regardless of their religion or caste.
That's because in traditional Indian society, the husband is equated with god and a woman is taught from a young age that she must respect him.
She is told that naming her husband could invite bad luck and shorten his life. Often the ban extends to other members of his family too - and the consequences of breaking it can be serious.
One woman in the eastern state of Orissa faced retribution that was swift and harsh.
"One day my sister-in-law asked who was sitting outside. I named all the men who were there, including my husband's uncle," Malati Mahato says in a film produced by Video Volunteers, a pressure group.
The sister-in-law complained to the village council, which ruled Mahato's words "reprehensible" and she was banished, with her children, to a home on the edge of the village. For the past 18 months she has been ostracised by the other villagers.
"The patriarchal hierarchy is enforced at many levels," says social anthropologist, Prof A R Vasavi.
"The husband is considered equal to god so he has to be worshipped. In traditional matches he's generally from a higher caste and economically supports the wife so he's the yajman - the owner. And he's generally older, so has to be respected on that count too."
How Indian wives address their husbands (without using his name)
Video Volunteers has now begun a campaign in some rural communities in an attempt to change patriarchal traditions.
Last October, Rohini Pawar, a volunteer in a village near the western city of Pune decided to raise the issue of naming husbands at a women's discussion group in her village.
But before doing so, she decided she had better try it herself.
Pawar told the BBC that she was married at 15 and that in 16 years of marriage had never called her husband Prakash by his name.
"Earlier I'd call him 'baba', because his nephews called him that. Or I'd just say 'aaho' ('you' in the local Marathi language) to grab his attention."
Prakash was relaxed about it but most other villagers weren't happy. Some ridiculed the couple.
The women in the discussion group, however, were delighted with the idea.
"We had great fun. We laughed a lot that day. For the first time in our life, we were shouting out our husbands' names," says Pawar, laughing.
"We decided to make a video and asked the women to say it in three different ways - happily, with anger, and with love.
"One of the women got carried away. She went home giddy with excitement and as soon as she saw her husband, she screamed out his name - and he slapped her.
"He told her that if she ever dared to say his name again, he would give her a solid beating."
In Indian cities, over time, it has become common for wives to name their husbands. With growing female literacy, more and more women joining the workforce, and love marriages often replacing arranged ones, the tradition began to seem out-of-date.
When I married, my husband was a work colleague. I had called him by his name for years, so it would have made no sense to stop after the wedding.
But A R Vasavi says this still only applies to a "very small segment" of Indian households.
"It's the educated, assertive woman in big cities who calls her husband by name," she says.
"It's unthinkable for tens of millions of women in rural India and even in conservative urban homes. If a new bride tries to go against the tide, she's swiftly admonished by her mum-in-law or other elderly women."
Rohini Pawar says the hostile response from many in her village has only strengthened the resolve of the women in her group to continue challenging patriarchal traditions.
"You see, change is not easy. People ask us why is it so important for us to use their names - what's the big deal?" she says.
"I think, until you confront the small issue, how will you challenge the larger, more important issues?"
It may seem like a small step, but it's the first step, she says, and the first step is always a big one.
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In a small complex of nondescript barns set in the flat, snow-covered fields of Ontario is a scientific project which, some argue, represents the new frontier of a technology that could benefit millions of people around the world.
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By Jeremy CookeEnvironment correspondent, BBC News
For others what is happening here is weird, dangerous science.
The pigs they are breeding could be among the first genetically modified farm animal to be approved for human consumption.
The huge controversy over the introduction of genetically modified crops is well documented, but this seems to take that debate a step further, and into even more troubled waters.
The project here is called Enviropig. The animals inside the clean, warm barns look like normal pigs and behave like normal pigs, but they are living, breathing wonders of modern science.
Each one contains genes from mice and E.coli bacteria, which have been inserted into their DNA with absolute precision.
Those genes make a small but important difference to the way these pigs process their food.
Ordinarily, pigs cannot easily digest chemicals called phosphates. That means that the stuff that comes out of the back end can be toxic and damaging to the environment. The phosphates are easily washed into waterways, where they can produce a hugely fertile environment for plants. But the plants grow so rapidly that they choke the stream or river and cause huge damage to the ecosystem.
The genetic modification enables these pigs to digest phosphates, which means they are less polluting and cheaper to feed.
Controversial
Professor Rich Moccia of the University of Guelph is proud of what has been achieved.
"It's the forefront of discovery in the scientific community. It's one of only two animals right now using this kind of technology. It really is mind-boggling when you think of it."
But it is controversial. To those who have campaigned so long and hard against the introduction of Genetically Modified (GM) crops, the notion of genetically engineered animals, such as Enviropig and fast-growing GM salmon, is a new front in a long war.
In Toronto, the Big Carrot supermarket is among the few GM-free outposts in North America. They have been fighting for years to hold back the tidal wave of genetically modified produce.
For anti-GM campaigner Lucy Sharratt, the very notion of transgenic animals is a nightmare.
"This is an absolutely critical time when North America is at the very centre of the global conflict over genetically engineered animals - to break open a whole new area of application of this technology, which we had never imagined would be possible.
"I am very worried and I think people around the world should be worried about what's happening in North America," she says.
Clearly the debate remains deeply polarised. But there are also some indications that the debate may be slowly shifting.
Dr Mart Gross, of the University of Toronto, used to oppose the idea of GM crops and animals. Now he has changed his mind. Feeding the human population, he says, must come first, and GM animals and plants may help.
"We need to double food production," he says. "We currently have a global population of almost seven billion and we are looking at nine, 10 or 11 billion by 2050.
"Where is that food going to come from? We have to produce more from less."
The inventors of Enviropig know that it is by no means certain that government regulators will ever approve GM animals for human consumption.
But the massive challenge of feeding a rocketing global population, and doing it in a sustainable way, could shift the debate and ultimately dictate whether Enviropigs end up on our dinner plates.
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A school music service has been taken over by a new group after it was threatened with closure due to cash cuts by Denbighshire council.
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Parents raised a near 4,000-name petition calling on the council to save the service which provides music lessons in schools and runs ensembles.
The new Denbighshire Music Co-Operative will teach over 2,200 pupils each week from September, said the council.
The not-for-profit organisation has also protected the jobs of 34 teachers.
"We have offered a long term loan of the council's musical instruments to the new co-operative, which means that our children and young people can continue to use their instruments," said Councillor Eryl Williams, the council cabinet's lead member for education.
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Four Remploy factories in Wales are to close on Thursday.
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Sites in Aberdare, Abertillery, Merthyr Tydfil and Wrexham will shut, to be followed at a later date by Swansea, with a total loss of 189 jobs.
The UK government has claimed the £320m budget for disabled employment services could be better spent.
The Welsh government has announced a £2.4m scheme for employers who give jobs to former Remploy workers for at least four years.
Last month, Remploy officials rejected a private bid to take over the Wrexham factory, safeguarding 40 jobs.
It was also confirmed in July that five Welsh Remploy plants will close in total. Two other sites which had been at risk, at Bridgend and Croespenmaen in Caerphilly county, will remain open.
Minister for Disabled People Maria Miller has told the House of Commons: "We are doing everything we can to ensure that Remploy workers will receive a comprehensive package of support and guidance to make the transition from government-funded sheltered employment to mainstream jobs."
Roy Whitney, lead representative for Unite in south Wales, told BBC Wales it was a "heartbreaking day".
"To be honest, the company has not prepared the disabled people at all, it's been like Welsh lambs to the slaughter house.
"They say there are plans in place with the Welsh assembly, they are helping us, they have set up a task force team, but as far as the UK government are concerned they destroyed a family that has been in existence for 60 years."
Mr Whitney was not hopeful for the future.
"There is no work out there for fit people, what makes the UK government think there'll be work out there for disabled people?
"If we're here in 12 months time it'll be through the efforts of Welsh assembly and not through the efforts of the UK government - they don't care."
The factories were established 66 years ago.
And some of the workers have been employed there all their working lives like Nicholas Green, 41, from Wrexham, who started 26 years ago from school.
"I have grown up here with all the lads," he said.
"I have had no experience anywhere else so it's scary for someone like myself as I have no idea what to expect."
The last shift ends at 13:00 BST on Thursday at Wrexham.
Shadow Welsh Secretary Owen Smith said the announcement was a "real blow for those employees who have relied on stable employment in Remploy factories for many years".
"The Remploy factories are an imperfect solution for the employment needs of disabled workers but for many they've been a real lifeline and they remain, in the present climate, a source of employment in areas where jobs are increasingly hard to come by," he added.
Plaid Cymru's Hywel Williams backed the Welsh government's calls to devolve the Remploy budget.
"We can achieve a great deal in creative and worthwhile development in supported employment in Wales if the responsibility, and most importantly the resources, are transferred from London to Cardiff," he said.
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The shadow justice secretary is accusing Boris Johnson of misleading the Commons at Prime Minister's Questions, when he claimed the government had implemented 16 recommendations from his review into the treatment of ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system.
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By Leila NathooBBC political correspondent
In a letter to the prime minister - seen by the BBC - David Lammy urges Mr Johnson to correct what he calls "a catalogue of falsehoods" - and says only six of those 16 recommendations have been implemented.
Mr Lammy was asked by former Conservative prime minister David Cameron to carry out an independent review into the treatment of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities by the criminal justice system in England and Wales.
His report, published in September 2017, contained 35 recommendations.
During Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Boris Johnson said: "Sixteen of the Lammy recommendations have been implemented. A further 17 are in progress; two of them we are not progressing."
Earlier this week, Justice Minister Alex Chalk answered a written parliamentary question saying 16 had been "completed", 17 were still in progress and two were not being taken forward.
In his letter, Mr Lammy says he presumes the prime minister was referring to the same 16 - but says of those, only six have actually been implemented.
They include the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) publishing all datasets held on ethnicity, the MoJ and Parole Board reporting on the proportion of prisoners released by offence and ethnicity, as well as the proportion of each ethnicity who go on to reoffend, and the Youth Justice Board publishing an evaluation of a trial of its 'disproportionality toolkit'.
But Mr Lammy says there are clear examples of measures that have not been implemented - such as the publication of all sentencing remarks in Crown Court in audio or written form, and the renaming of youth offender panels.
He writes that if the government is serious about correcting injustices, "it needs to be honest about the actions it has taken".
He says the effect of Mr Johnson's comments was that the House was misled - a breach of parliamentary rules - and says he must correct the record.
The letter is copied to the Speaker.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "We set out our action plan in response to the Lammy Review in December 2017.
"We have completed the actions we committed to for 16 of the recommendations, and actions for a further 17 will be completed within 12 months."
Downing Street has been approached for a comment.
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Qantas will begin the first non-stop flights between Australia and the United Kingdom on Saturday. The 17-hour trip is a departure from an era when glamorous perceptions masked the tedium of a days-long journey. Now, as Julian Lorkin reports from Sydney, much focus is on the body clock.
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In less than a century, travelling from Australia to the UK has evolved from a six-week sea voyage to just a single flight taking 17 hours.
There will be no stopovers on 24 March, when Flight QF9 leaves from Perth, Western Australia's capital, at 18:45 local time for London.
It returns as QF10 on 25 March, leaving Heathrow at 13.30 local time and arriving the next day.
The 14,498km (9,000 miles) service will be the first non-stop link between the nations.
How long did it take in the early days?
The first trip on the so-called "Kangaroo Route" started in 1935. That journey had 10 major stopovers and 21 more refuelling stops over a distance of 20,525km (12,700 miles).
The co-pilot of the tiny De Havilland 86 handed out sandwiches, and the fare cost the equivalent of around A$18,000 (£10,000; $14,000) today.
By 1938, "flying boats" flew from Sydney for Southampton - a trip that lasted nine days. Cabins were so spacious that passengers could stroll around and smoke.
Over the decades stopovers reduced, but the first flights that modern travellers would recognise started in 1971.
With two stopovers, Qantas Boeing 747 passengers were advised to bring "several books". The "Captain Cook Lounge" bar behind the cockpit provided the only other entertainment, the airline said.
Why can we fly direct now?
The route uses the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, which is twice as fuel efficient as the Boeing 747. It also improves cabin air pressure.
"Non-stop flights have been talked about for many years, but aircraft technology has only just caught up," said Dr Dean Wilkie, a consumer marketing expert from the University of Adelaide.
The flight will be the world's second-longest after Qatar Airways' route from Doha to Auckland, which spans 14,529km, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Other carriers, including Emirates and United Airlines, have also flown non-stop journeys greater than 14,000km.
As technology advances make ultra-long flights more economically viable, other challengers are expected.
Singapore Airlines plans to claim back the coveted longest-flight trophy, with a 15,300km journey between Singapore and New York.
It once flew that route using Airbus A340-500s, but stopped in 2013 because the four-engine plane was inefficient.
Airbus is refining the A350, and its latest model will have a range of about 17,960km. That puts the prospect of an even longer route - such as Sydney to London - within reach.
Who benefits from this route?
The Western Australia (WA) state government is expecting an increase in tourist numbers after an advertising blitz in London that calls on people to "wake up in Western Australia".
The state has entered into a A$5.7m (£3.2m GBP) marketing agreement with Qantas, including screens showing the highlights of WA at London's Liverpool Street station.
According to state Tourism Minister Paul Papalia, "the campaign encourages travel into regional WA, as well as [local attractions] Rottnest Island, Elizabeth Quay and Perth's beaches".
Qantas potentially has an untapped market, according to Dr Wilkie.
"The UK is a standout market for Qantas, but many tourists never consider Western Australia. Now they'll get to see Perth too," he told the BBC. Melbourne will also benefit from a connecting flight.
Fierce competition from Asia-based airlines should also put pressure on fares, Dr Wilkie said.
What's it like flying for 17 hours in economy?
Singapore Airlines abandoned its previous flight to New York after deciding that 19 hours was too much to tolerate in economy. A move to convert the entire aircraft into business class was not financially sustainable.
Now experts are looking at ways to minimise the toll that long-haul flights can have on passengers in economy.
Prof Steve Simpson, from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre, works with Qantas to study the impact of such a long flight on the human body. He describes it a test of human endurance.
"Your circadian rhythm takes cues off food and light, and this flight disrupts it," he said.
He said that's why flight attendants typically lower window shades and serve meals at destination times - a move that often surprises passengers.
Twenty people on the inaugural UK-Australia flight will be wired into monitors to check how their bodies are coping, including their temperature, which is crucial for sleeping.
"It will be 22C (72F) when people board, but 4C lower mid-flight, which tricks the body to change their internal clock," he said.
Passengers can also use strategies to help themselves, he added.
"Get up really early a few days before the flight. Have an early lunch at [the airport], maybe at 10am," he said.
"The first meal on the plane becomes dinner. You'll sleep, even though it's only 4pm."
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Seven public toilets across Cardiff are to shut due to high running costs - estimated at about £16 each time they are used.
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Cardiff council said the automated units would close on 31 March before being removed.
Its 20-year operational contract was meant to run until April 2025.
The seven toilets are on Penlline Road, Ty Glas Road, Albany Road, Four Elms Road, Frederick Street, Delta Street and Harrowby Street.
Cabinet member for environment, Bob Derbyshire, said the running costs could "no longer be justified".
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Now the shock is beginning to subside, attention is moving to how Donald Trump's policies will play out over his four, possibly eight-year stint as president.
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Dave LeeNorth America technology reporter
Barack Obama's policies on technology were considered pro-innovation, with a view to using technology expertise to improve government systems and services.
Aside from a disastrous and expensive roll-out of healthcare.gov, those efforts appear to have been well-received.
With Mr Trump, the future leaves many uncertainties. While we can draw a lot from what he has said in the past, more difficult is separating freewheeling campaigning Trump from measured, lawmaking Trump.
Much of the detail below comes from research carried out by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a US-based non-profit group.
It pulled together a report on what Mr Trump has said and pledged when it comes to technology. When lacking in specifics, the report authors drew from attitudes in other areas in an attempt to predict what may happen. You can read the report for yourself here.
Privacy and encryption
The issue:
In the wake of the shootings in San Bernardino, the FBI called on Apple to weaken the encryption on its iPhone in order to assist the investigation into the shooters. The company refused, saying the personal privacy of its users should take precedent. That stance was backed by the majority of the tech community, but not by Mr Trump. User privacy when using technology is a battleground that will continually rear its head during Mr Trump's term. Today many people are concerned about his views on the surveillance state.
In his own words:
"Boycott Apple until such time as they give that information." (Campaign rally, February 2016)
"I would come down so hard on [Apple chief executive Tim Cook] his head would be spinning all of the way back to Silicon Valley." (Bloomberg interview, February 2016)
The call to boycott Apple over the encryption row seemed very much in the heat of the moment. Indeed, Mr Trump said "I just thought of that" during the rally. It wasn't a boycott that was taken seriously - even tweets on Mr Trump's Twitter account were shown to have come from Apple devices (even if Mr Trump himself is understood to use an Android device).
When speaking about the controversial power of the NSA and its surveillance capabilities, Mr Trump said:
"I assume when I pick up my telephone, people are listening to my conversations anyway, if you want to know the truth. It's pretty sad commentary, but I err on the side of security. When you have people that are beheading [you] if you're a Christian and, frankly, for lots of other reasons, when you have the world looking at us and would like to destroy us as quickly as possible, I err on the side of security." (Speaking on Hugh Hewitt radio show, December 2015)
What it means:
We don't really know. Attitudes towards "America First" and support of the military might have assumptions leaning towards Mr Trump at least maintaining the power of the security services in the US, but we're yet to hear firm policy on the specifics. Mr Trump has said he wants to restore the Patriot Act at which, among other things, used to give the NSA powers to collect bulk data on American's phone records until that power was taken away by Congress. As with previous administrations, we can expect the war on terror to be the primary justification for these powers to exist. When it comes to encryption, the Apple row gave Mr Trump a chance to make his thoughts perfectly clear, and while the boycott may have been flippant, his attitudes seem firmly set on supposed security over privacy.
Bringing foreign talent to Silicon Valley
The issue:
One point of concern for tech firms is the future of the H1-B visa.
The H1-B is considered vital for technology companies that want to fill their ranks with skilled developers and engineers. It's a temporary residency, but companies can choose to sponsor employees to remain in the US indefinitely.
In his own words:
"I know the H-1B very well. And it's something that I, frankly, use, and I shouldn't be allowed to use it. We shouldn't have it. Very, very bad for workers. And second of all, I think it's very important to say, well, I'm a businessman and I have to do what I have to do. When it's sitting there waiting for you, but it's very bad. It's very bad for business in terms of — and it's very bad for our workers and it's unfair for our workers. And we should end it." (CNN Republican debate, March 2016)
Mr Trump has been seen to have done a U-turn. He seems to believe the H1-B visa is being abused to bring in cheaper labour, rather than skilled labour. He cited an example in Florida where he said American workers at a Disney theme park were being forced to train their cheaper, foreign replacements.
What it means:
Mr Trump is in favour of highly-skilled immigration, particularly when immigrants have come in to study at top US colleges. It seems likely he will either alter or abolish the H1-B visa and attempt to enforce an alternative that clamps down on what he sees as abuses of the current system.
America's readiness for cyberwar
The issue:
Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent, more powerful, and more dangerous. Forrester Research on Wednesday predicted that "within the first 100 days, the new president will face a cybercrisis".
And so while much debate in the run up to the election was about Mr Trump's possible control of the nuclear codes, there've been questions over how he'd handle the growing cyber threat from the likes of China, Russia and stateless hacking groups.
In his own words:
"It is a huge problem. I have a son - he's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers. It's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe, it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better. And certainly cyber is one of them." (Presidential debate, September 2016)
The quote above was widely mocked as being utterly incoherent. The New York Daily News called it "an out-of-touch comment that would come from your tech-illiterate grandpa".
Mr Trump was also reluctant to follow the FBI's lead in blaming Russia for hacking the Democratic National Convention - one of several cyberattacks that were arguably pivotal in winning the race for Mr Trump.
But Mr Trump certainly wouldn't be the first person in power to have a lacklustre understanding of how technology works, and so it's broad policy rather than expertise that is most important.
What it means:
Unlike traditional war, where observers can see jets in the sky or tanks rolling across land, cyberwar is much harder to track. It may be that we never learn Mr Trump's precise thoughts on the USA's cyberattack capabilities, and they could be enacted in secret.
His campaign website provides vague descriptions of what his administration would do, including an "immediate review of all US cyber defences and vulnerabilities".
He's also said he wanted to develop the US's offensive capabilities so the country could retaliate against cyberattack. This wouldn't be unprecedented as cyberweapons have been used by the US in the past.
Net Neutrality
The issue:
For some time a debate has raged over the control of internet traffic. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have called for the ability to provide what would essentially be an internet fast-lane for major, data-intensive services like Netflix. The ISPs would seek to charge the companies to be on this fast-lane, a move described by most in the technology community as extremely anticompetitive and against the spirit of the internet itself. As it stands, we have net neutrality - all traffic on the internet is treated equally.
In his own words:
"Obama's attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target the conservative media." (Twitter, August 2016)
This statement appeared to display a deep ignorance of what net neutrality is. The Fairness Doctrine was a policy in the US which required broadcasters to present a range of views on important topics, like politics. It was overturned in 1987, allowing TV channels to push forward whatever view they want (and the rest is history). Mr Trump's linking of the Fairness Doctrine to Net Neutrality is baffling, as strong net neutrality would favour more views beyond the mainstream media he loves to hate.
What it means:
If we take the above tweet as evidence that Mr Trump has probably not spent much time considering Net Neutrality, then it's fair to say it's probably not at the forefront of his mind and therefore not high on his list of priorities once taking office. Lower down the pecking order, the US court system has come out in favour of neutrality principles.
The AT&T-Time Warner mega-deal
The issue:
Telecoms giant AT&T is set to buy Time Warner, thus becoming even more giant.
In his own words:
"As an example of the power structure I'm fighting, AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few." (Speech, October 2016)
It's a fair point about a large concentration of power. AT&T would not only control the biggest network providing information to the masses, but also much of the content they were creating and broadcasting. Time Warner owns HBO and Warner Bros, not to mention CNN, a news outlet attacked repeatedly by Mr Trump and his supporters during campaigning.
AT&T-Time Warner isn't the only deal he's taken aim at, either:
"Comcast's purchase of NBC concentrated far too much power in one massive entity that is trying to tell the voters what to think and what to do. Deals like this destroy democracy and we'll look at breaking that deal up and other deals like that. That should never, ever have been approved in the first place, they're trying to poison the mind of the American voter." (Speech, October 2016)
What it means:
Another "wait and see", unfortunately. At this point, there's just no way of deciphering whether Campaign Trump is the same as President Trump.
If Mr Trump did want to follow through on his words, it wouldn't simply be a case of stepping in and calling a halt. It would be a long, expensive process through the courts that would make Mr Trump look distinctly anti-business. This would especially be the case if the government went after Comcast some five years after it bought NBC.
On Wednesday AT&T offered an olive branch with this rather flattering statement: "From a company perspective, we really look forward to working with President-elect Trump and his transition team.
"His policies and his discussions about infrastructure investment, economic development, and American innovation all fit right in with AT&T's goals."
Amazon's future
This issue:
If Mr Trump and Jeff Bezos were rappers, you'd call this a "beef".
Mr Trump has made no effort to hide his disdain for Mr Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.
Mr Bezos also owns the Washington Post, the newspaper that perhaps did more than any other to take on Mr Trump's campaign.
The newspaper was the first to publish the infamous video of Mr Trump making disparaging remarks about women and bragging about sexual assault.
Mr Trump considers Amazon to be a company that is avoiding tax and is anti-competitive.
In his own words:
"Amazon is getting away with murder tax-wise. [Bezos is] using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don't tax Amazon like they should be taxed." (Sean Hannity Show, Fox News, May 2016)
In various tweets, Mr Trump also suggested that Mr Bezos was using the Washington Post, which like many newspapers loses money, as a way of reducing Amazon's tax bill. However, the Washington Post isn't part of Amazon - it's a company Mr Bezos owns privately, so such a move would not be possible.
That said, Amazon is part of a technology collective that goes to great lengths to pay as little tax as possible, prompting law changes in several parts of the world.
Ironically, using big losses as a way to avoid paying taxes is precisely what Mr Trump has done for much of his professional life, a move he said made him "smart".
What it means:
Mr Trump's tweets were an example of the next president taking the bait. The insults followed Mr Bezos saying he'd gladly fund a rocket that would take Mr Trump on a one-way trip into space.
So while Mr Bezos may now regret starting the #SendDonaldToSpace hashtag, we don't know if Mr Trump will see through his threat to single out Amazon. What's more likely is a clamp down on tax avoidance across the board, with a likely focus on the myriad inventive ways tech companies relocate their earnings.
Regardless, Amazon's stock dropped on Wednesday in anticipation for what might be on the horizon. While other tech stocks also went down, none were quite as pronounced as Amazon.
The future of energy tech
The issue:
A key area of growth in the US is in renewable energies and businesses built around it. But to accelerate growth of companies like Tesla, the US government has long offered attractive subsidies as a way of tempting in customers who ordinarily could not afford renewable energy.
In his own words:
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." (Twitter, November 2012)
One of Mr Trump's strongest areas of support was in the so-called coal country area, traditionally populated by coal mines and industries. The region has suffered as concern about climate change pushed governments to embrace renewable energy instead.
Mr Trump turned that on its head by calling climate change a hoax, playing to a crowd that would not notice, nor care, about the incremental changes in climate the Earth is going through.
What it means:
Mr Trump has pledged to "unleash America's $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves", and the money for it may in part come from ditching subsidies offered to renewable energy efforts.
It may mean that tax credits given to people buying electric cars are no longer be offered. At the moment, a Tesla Model 3, for instance, is reduced from $35,000 to $27,500 when tax credits are factored in.
In the immediate future, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, who said Mr Trump was "not the right guy" for the White House, may have a even tougher job convincing Tesla shareholders to push forward with his plan to buy solar panel company SolarCity. The vote on that takes place later this month.
What all of this means together...
Uncertainty, frustration and an increased fragility for the global home of tech innovation.
Mr Trump certainly won't want to go down as the president who destroyed Silicon Valley, but the concern here is that of the few policies that have been explained in detail, some seem directly at odds with each other.
How do you promote "great" American companies which provide jobs, while simultaneously dragging Amazon, a massive employer and innovator, through the courts? How do you protect innovation at Tesla when taking aim at efforts to curb climate change?
Silicon Valley may be in America, but it's by no means an entirely American success story. The region's success grew out of being an attractive, progressive destination for the best brains in the world.
This industry worries that may be under threat.
Read more:
View from shell-shocked Silicon Valley
New Zealand immigration site's traffic surges
Obama to welcome Trump to White House
Should anyone worry about Trump's victory
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC and on Facebook
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Viral WhatsApp messages spreading rumours have been blamed for a spate of recent lynchings across India. But police in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh used the platform to track down a rape suspect, reports BBC Hindi's Nitin Srivastava.
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The victim, a seven-year-old girl, was reported missing on 26 June by her parents when she didn't return home from school in the town of Mandsaur.
The following morning, a vegetable seller found the girl bleeding and unconscious behind a bus stop in a quieter part of the town.
She was rushed to a local hospital where doctors confirmed that she had been raped. She is still recovering from grievous injuries, including stab wounds.
As news of the brutal attack spread quickly in the small town of some 200,000 people, hundreds of them poured onto the streets demanding justice for the girl.
But the police had no leads because the CCTV cameras at the school were not working and there were no witnesses either. The victim was not in a position to give any statement.
Desperate in the face of mounting public anger, police reached out to people who ran businesses near the girl's school to obtain CCTV footage.
After scanning 400 hours of footage, the police finally ended up with three different clips, which showed a girl in a school uniform walking with a frail, young man. She appeared to have walked away with him after he offered her sweets.
The victim's parents identified the girl in the video as their daughter but the man's face was not clearly visible. But police were able to recognise the brand of his sports shoes.
That's when the police decided to share the three video clips from the CCTV footage widely on social media, hoping someone would recognise the suspect. They realised the risk - rumours of child kidnappings, spread over WhatsApp, had led mobs to lynch strangers across India in the past few months. What if these messages were manipulated to incite people?
Mandsaur was no stranger to communal frenzy either. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims have flared up here in the past over issues related to cow-slaughter and religious processions.
Police admitted that rumours had already begun spreading on WhatsApp and via text messages about the victim's and the suspect's religious identity. "Pictures of her along with fake messages of her being dead began circulating," Manoj Singh, the town's police chief, said.
So, they informed community leaders, local politicians and local residents' associations before they began circulating the video on various WhatsApp and Facebook groups.
Police said, much to their relief, both communities worked together to help identify the suspect.
"We felt this was a criminal case and should not be given a religious colour. It could happen to anyone's daughter," Jitendra Rathore, local chief of the right-wing Hindu organisation Bajrang Dal, said.
The police control room received more than a dozen tips in response, based on which they narrowed their search down to seven suspects.
And they began searching Facebook for accounts that matched one of them.
Three days later, police zeroed in on one main suspect based on his Facebook profile. One of the major clues was the shoes which they had already identified in the CCTV footage.
They have arrested two men in connection with the case. Families of both the accused have said they are innocent.
The police said circulating the video clips was a calculated risk which eventually paid off.
"I didn't sleep the whole night after we began circulating the CCTV footage on WhatsApp groups", Mr Singh said.
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Visitors to the Nigerian village of Kpor, deep in the Niger Delta, are greeted by strange sights: silver frogs blink from gleaming puddles, sunlight bounces from an eerie black lake, and dragonflies hover over cauldrons of tar.
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By Caroline DuffieldBBC News, Niger Delta
This is Rivers State, an area abundant in oil and gas. Environmentalists call the Delta the global capital of oil pollution, but unlike the Gulf of Mexico, there are no underwater robots, flotillas of scientists or oil booms here.
On 12 May 2009, Shell's Bomo manifold blew up, leaking massive amounts of crude. Local people say 39 hectares were contaminated. A second leak - from a derelict oil tap - had already been continuously spilling oil for years.
Shell hired a local company to clean up, but the area remains an oil slick.
Little pollution data
"It kills our fish, destroys our skin, spoils our streams, we cannot drink," says Saturday Pirri, a local palm wine tapper.
"I have no livelihood left."
His father taught him to make palm wine but today the trees yield only a quarter of what they once provided.
Kpor is a world away from the Gulf of Mexico.
In the Niger Delta, there is little independent monitoring of spills, and the companies themselves disclose virtually no data about their own pollution.
But, according to the Nigerian government, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000. Environmentalists believe spills - large and small - happen at a rate of 300 every year.
Site after site visited by the BBC - in both Bayelsa State and Ogoniland - had happened months before, and still not been cleaned up.
In May an Exxon Mobil pipeline in Akwa Ibom sprang a leak - one of several spills involving the company.
Environmentalists, journalists and local people described oil leaking for days in a massive spill.
Exxon dispute that. They say the leak was less than 300 barrels and that it was isolated on the same day.
The claims of the oil company, and the scepticism of environmentalists, are a good example of how little clear agreement there is about the size of spills.
"The Gulf of Mexico has drawn the attention of the whole world," says Erabanabari Kobah, a local environmentalist.
"Even the president of the United States must go there to see it. The people there get compensation. But here, you must go to court. You cannot win against the oil companies in court.'
The oil industry is accused of a sharp double standard in its operations - of taking advantage of Nigeria's lack of environment law and weak regulation, while observing higher standards of safety and maintenance overseas.
Dangerous and unpredictable
"It is a grave situation," says Kingsley Ogundu Chinda, environment commissioner in Rivers State.
"I blame the owners of the facilities. They are economical with the truth. They are not sincere in their practice. They are not sincere with the people."
He also says the government has failed to force companies to observe the law.
The joint ventures operating here are effectively Nigerian companies, operating under Nigerian law.
Shell, for example, owns only a 30% stake in SPDC - the Shell Petroleum Development Company. The rest is Nigeria's national oil company, the NNPC, and smaller stakeholders.
The industry certainly has the spotlight - but not all of the power - nor all of the responsibility.
It is a dangerous and unpredictable business. Oil workers and oil contractors are regularly kidnapped for ransom. Heavily armed militants blow up pipelines, stealing oil in a process known as "bunkering".
Shell says most of the spills are caused by sabotage, and therefore beyond their control. It is impossible to verify.
"We take every precaution that a spill as a result of our operation is kept to an absolute minimum," says Mutiu Sunmonu, Shell's managing director in Nigeria.
"I can tell you that we have been able to achieve that in terms of the spills that are within our control."
Closely guarded?
But oil industry insiders also speak of derelict infrastructure. They talk of decades-old pipelines, rusting oil taps, corroding manifolds, and historic underinvestment reaching back decades.
We decided to examine flow stations and pipelines for ourselves.
"Getting close is not easy," shouts Evangelist Ibinabobo Sanipe, over the roar of the speedboat.
As national secretary of the Oil and Gas Host Communities Association, he is travelling with us.
"The military guard this place fiercely," he warns.
We bounce above the waves towards a column of dark smoke on the horizon, it is the Bille 2 Awoba Flowstation.
Before long, a big military vessel warns us to pull over, with our hands in the air.
But with just a few jokes and handshakes, the soldiers are smiling and joking. We continue our journey, having paid no bribe, and shown no identification.
Closer to the station, orange flames flicker through the trees, and the air is thick with fumes.
Another military patrol is just metres away, behind the station, but we're out of sight. For 25 minutes, we film the roaring gas flares, before two men in a canoe ask us to leave.
"It is very disturbing," says Evangelist Sanipe.
"If Shell is serious about stopping sabotage and oil spills, we would not have got so close."
But protecting oil facilities from attack by armed gangs is the responsibility of the Nigerian military.
In the past, spectacular attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria have threatened the country's energy security, and delivered shocks to the global oil markets.
The ease with which we reached the Awoba Flowstation will raise questions over the security of oil facilities.
It is clear that the desperate efforts to halt the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the US have prompted many Nigerians to look hard at their own environmental catastrophe.
There is a sense of anger, even among those a long way from the Delta.
Shell insists it is misplaced.
"I have no regrets," insists Mutiu Sunmonu, Shell's managing director.
"I am convinced that the oil companies' business in Nigeria, and their participation here, is a force for good."
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A new fleet of buses linking Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire have been officially unveiled by the Welsh government.
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Five new buses on the T5 service will connect Aberystwyth and Haverfordwest via Cardigan and Fishguard.
Transport Minister Edwina Hart launched the new vehicles on the service, which is one of the busiest in Wales, carrying more than 363,000 passengers in the last year.
The buses include free wi-fi internet connections and audio announcements.
The new buses are part of services being rolled out across the TrawsCymru network, taking the number of new vehicles to 15.
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Venezuela's chief prosecutor, Luisa Ortega, has emerged as a key figure in the country's politics in recent months. BBC News takes a closer look at the 59-year-old lawyer and how she went from being seen as an ally of President Nicolás Maduro to one of his most outspoken critics.
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Luisa Ortega was appointed to the post of chief prosecutor by the National Assembly in December 2007, when the legislature was still controlled by the governing socialist PSUV.
One of the most influential politicians in the PSUV, Diosdado Cabello, appointed her and for years she was seen a staunch ally of President Hugo Chávez and his successor in office, Nicolás Maduro.
It was Luisa Ortega who announced in 2014 that opposition leader Leopoldo López had been charged with public incitement and conspiracy over his role in a wave of protests at the time.
Watch: Venezuela crisis: What's going on?
What lies ahead for divided Venezuela?
Mr López was later found guilty and sentenced to more than 13 years in jail, a move widely condemned by human rights groups and international leaders who said it was politically motivated.
But in March 2017 she broke rank with the government when she said that a Supreme Court ruling stripping the opposition-controlled National Assembly of its powers was unlawful.
The news conference she gave, constitution in hand, and with members of her team standing behind her, caught the government by surprise and delighted members of the opposition.
Speaking out
It was just the first in a series of news conferences during which she became increasingly direct in her criticism of the government.
On 19 April, she published a statement defending the right of citizens to hold peaceful protests.
Ms Ortega also publicly contradicted government ministers when she announced that 20-year old protester Juan Pablo Pernalete was killed by a tear gas canister fired by the National Guard.
The foreign minister at the time, Delcy Rodríguez,and Information Minister Ernesto Villegas had said that evidence suggested he was shot with a bolt gun by fellow protesters.
In June, she filed a challenge against President Maduro's plan to convene a constituent assembly.
Labelled a traitor
The Supreme Court rejected it but her legal challenge prompted vitriol from socialist party officials who labelled her a "traitor" and even questioned her sanity.
A lawmaker for the socialist party, Pedro Carreño demanded that she should submit to a "psychological evaluation".
Ms Ortega said that in the wake of her criticism of the government, her family had been threatened. "They harass them. They follow them, patrol cars that look like [the Venezuelan intelligence service] Sebin," she said.
At the end of June, Venezuela's Supreme Court paved the way for a possible trial of Ms Ortega on charges of "threatening public ethics and administrative morals" and of "violating and threatening the fundamental principles of the constitution".
The court also banned her from leaving the country and froze her assets.
Her powers were also curtailed when the Supreme Court transferred some of her post's duties to the ombudsman, a government loyalist.
Ms Ortega said the move was part of an attempt by the government to abolish her office.
She also refused to attend a hearing on 4 July which was called to determine whether she should stand trial for alleged malpractice. "I'm not going to validate a circus whose decision is already made [against me]. I don't recognise them!" she said.
Most recently, she has been highly critical of election held on 30 July to choose members for the controversial constituent assembly convened by President Maduro.
Ms Ortega has called for an independent audit of the vote after allegations the figure for the turnout had been inflated.
Her trajectory from party loyalist to thorn in the side of the government has made her future very uncertain.
A close ally of Mr Maduro, Jorge Rodríguez, said it was only a matter of time until she would be removed from her post.
"She is the past," the influential politician said.
Ms Ortega has insisted that it is not her who has changed but those around her. "I've always been the same. The ones who have changed are the others," she told CNN.
"Look up my stance since I was named as chief prosecutor and you'll see I've always maintained the same position."
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Re-starting the economy also means an end to the vast financial support schemes to help individuals and firms, but they will have to be wound down gradually. Nearly a quarter of employed people are being furloughed. Getting them back to work brings risks for them and for infection, and will require trust and confidence. Government cannot simply unwind restrictions. It will have to offer tax incentives to get money moving round the economy once more.
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Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
It's proving quite easy to spend a gobsmacking amount of money to keep the economy from collapse.
It's more problematic to lend it by the tens of billions. It will almost certainly prove more difficult again to stop splashing government moola.
Applying the brakes to the spending, while firing up the boilers on the battered British economy, is now where the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has turned his attention.
He's looking at the bills for the Job Retention Scheme, or furloughing, which now covers nearly quarter of employed workers. That's 6.3 million pay packets the Treasury is having to flood, in reverse, through the PAYE system.
The number of self-employed people, on a different income support scheme, is yet to become clear. And 1.8 million more people have applied for Universal Credit since the health and economy crisis began.
Looming redundancy
Furloughing is, by a long way, the element of support for both firms and individuals that has been most welcomed.
But it's still got problems and holes in it. The Scottish Tourism Alliance has just published a survey showing half of its respondents are using it, and only 22% of firms in the sector say it works well for them.
Yet however critical they are of the dates for qualifying or any complexity in admin, they know there would and will be a lot of pain without it.
Asked last month, and looking to the removal of furlough payments, the tourism survey by TRKR found 47% of firms won't be able to employ any staff at all.
One question that raises: if the future is bound to involve redundancy, is it good use of borrowed government funds only to be putting off that date?
But such expectations could be confounded if the exit from furlough is well designed and implemented.
Tapered exit
With business and trade unions asked to comment on draft plans for the ways in which businesses can reopen, one theme running through their responses is that spending taps cannot simply be turned off at the end of June, when the furlough and self-employed schemes are currently due to end.
And Mr Sunak gets what they're saying. On Monday, he told ITV News: "There will be no cliff edge to the furlough scheme. I am working to figure out the most effective way to wind down the scheme and ease people back into work in a measured way.
"But some scenarios have suggested we are potentially spending as much on the furlough scheme as we do on the NHS, for example. Now clearly that is not a sustainable situation."
(The Chancellor did not say this to ITV's partner on Channel 3, STV News. Had he linked to the Glasgow newsroom, he would have found that John MacKay, its lead anchorman and the face of the station has... been furloughed. Strange times.)
So exit from furlough will have to be tapered, and for several reasons. One is that people are being asked to take a leap off the rescue boat, and back into some extremely choppy waters. To go from 80% of usual income into a dark void of income uncertainty is a big ask.
Workers do not know the health risks they may face back at work. They may face future illness as infection continues to spread.
With contact tracing now being put in place, we may get a call from a stranger, telling us to go into isolation for 14 days. How is our boss going to feel about that?
Those who rely on contracts from other businesses will find many of those clients shell-shocked and unwilling to commit to new spending.
Where customers are the public, they are being told to be very cautious until there's a vaccine, and that's probably a long way off.
Stretched tight
The other reason for tapering the furlough is to allow employees to do some work. Unlike the self-employed, those on furlough payments are barred from doing anything for their employer.
When the time comes to crank up the office, numerous changes will be required to manage the use of space and impose social distancing.
A lot of yellow tape will be applied to workplace floors to manage one-way flows and keep people two metres apart.
Personal protective equipment will have to be sourced in advance, with supply chains stretched tight. None of that can be done in advance of a restart by staff who are not allowed to work.
And there's another risk of furlough being withdrawn too quickly: some companies will move from furlough straight to redundancy. A careful government policy should seek to minimise that, with tapering and perhaps other incentives to employers.
Nations and regions
Can and will it be done differently in Scotland and England? That question betrays the default position of a pre-Covid-19 mindset.
Yes, it could be done differently. Nicola Sturgeon has said there are good ideas in Whitehall's draft guidelines for easing people back to work, but the first minister also raised trade union concerns that should be addressed: about workplace health precautions being "considered" rather than mandated. The Scottish government will consult on the guidelines/rules, and can adapt them as necessary.
But this is not merely familiar tension between Holyrood and Westminster. "Unlockdown", as the prime minister is reported to call the process, could also be done differently around the regions of England.
In a paper published in London last week, the Institute for Government pointed out that a regional approach has been tried in South Korea and Japan, and now in Italy.
By lifting restrictions in different regions and nations, it allows the path of infection to be tracked, to see what works best. But the institute also points out the risk of confusing the public with a more complex message.
There will have to be some thought given to travel restrictions between high-restriction and low-restriction areas.
And a big complication is how continued support for furlough costs in one part of the UK would be funded, while there's withdrawal from another part.
Liberating women
The divergence will likely be between sectors of the economy. Outdoor work has been flagged up as being at the front of the queue, while hospitality looks likely to be among the last to start trading under the "new normal".
And there could be demographic divergence. Can all those aged over 70 continue to face incarceration when the state of their health varies so much?
Can children - who may yet be proven to have lower infection rates, and less dire escalation of symptoms - be given the opportunity to choose a "bubble" of friends for play as well as learning, so long as they stick to the same bubble members?
As young adults may be at less risk from the virus and at more risk than other groups from the economic impact on their finances and job prospects, can they be given priority for relaxed rules?
And if it's true that women are less susceptible to the life-threatening complications from Covid-19 that afflict men, could there be an easing of restrictions on women without men? I wouldn't bet on it.
It's clear that whichever route is taken - and there could be several such divergences around the UK at one time - the increased complexity risks not only confusion, but a sense of unfairness. And if people don't feel the application of rules is reasonable or fair, that's where the surprisingly high levels of compliance in phase one could be undermined in subsequent phases.
Cash for clunkers
The Institute for Government points out that it will not be sufficient simply to withdraw restrictions, as if economic activity will naturally and quickly flow back into the space occupied by constraints. It won't.
For those reasons of stickiness of purchasing decisions by both business clients and consumers, there will also be a requirement on Rishi Sunak to stimulate activity.
As well as spending, there are tax levers available. Companies could be incentivised to invest in anti-infection measures around workplaces, which will be an added cost to cash-strapped firms.
Or consumer choices can be stimulated. VAT cuts targeted at specific sectors of consumer goods, for instance? In Germany, there's already been an announcement that VAT will have a temporary cut for restaurant meals starting in July. It gives customers and restaurateurs something to book and look forward to.
To boost rehiring of people, one controversial idea from the Institute of Government report is holding back on further increases to the legislated minimum wage, though this would be at a time when low-paid key workers have won a lot of public sympathy.
And could there be a car scrappage scheme, similar to the one we had 11 years ago to help jump-start the economy out of the financial crunch, but weighted heavily towards low-emission vehicles? In the USA, it was known as "cash for clunkers". This could hit the twin objectives of stimulating the economy while lowering emissions from the nation's fleet of vehicles.
Relaxing the rules will have to be complex as well as cautious. It will require encouragement and incentives, and the continuation of a very large bill for government.
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A man fined for plotting to throw manure over Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall has struck again, this time hurling a bucket of mud at a New Zealand MP as he arrived at court to face electoral fraud charges.
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By News from Elsewhere......media reports from around the world, found by BBC Monitoring
TV New Zealand showed what it called a bucket of "foul-smelling" mud hitting MP John Banks on the arm. The incident delayed the start of the trial, while Banks changed into a new suit. The MP is accused of filing a false electoral return after a failed bid in 2010 to become the mayor of Auckland. The court alleges Banks knew about NZ$65,000 (£32,000) of campaign donations from Kim Dotcom, who started the now-closed file sharing site Megaupload, and another media group - which were listed as "anonymous".
The mud-slinger was later identified as Castislav Sam Bracanov, a veteran anti-royalist protester who was fined NZ$200 (£100) for his manure plot when the prince and the duchess visited New Zealand in November 2012. He was previously arrested in 1994 after spraying air freshener at Prince Charles. "I'll do it again and again," Bracanov said after his 2012 conviction. "I'll win one day."
Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter.
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A full review of the Isle of Man's legal aid system will be carried out for the first time in 14 years, the Manx government has said.
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The independent Legal Aid Committee is examining the existing system and how it can be best provided in the future.
Chairman Andrew Swithinbank said their focus is to promote a "fair, equitable and transparent" system.
Legal aid gives access to justice for those without the means to pay for it.
The first stage of the review will be a public consultation in the Isle of Man which will run until 28 November.
Mr Swithinbank said: "The focus of the committee is to promote access to justice in a manner which is fair, equitable, transparent, professional and which uses public resources carefully and effectively. "
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The Good Friday Agreement, The Belfast Agreement.
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By Jordan KennyBBC News NI
An agreement that can't even agree on its own name - the irony.
Northern Ireland has lived with this agreement for 20 years and its name (in whatever form) is never far from the tips of our politicians' tongues.
But do younger people, who have never experienced life without it, even know what it is?
"The talks that ended the Troubles... I think."
That was among the responses offered cautiously when BBC News NI asked young people - some as young as 18 - 'What is the Good Friday Agreement?'
"I know it was a peace agreement," said another.
"It was something to do with the Northern Ireland peace process."
The Good Friday Agreement was signed on 10 April 1998 after intense negotiations between the UK government, the Irish government and Northern Ireland political parties.
Among other things, it set up a power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly.
Other main points in the agreement were:
However, the agreement also came with its own wave of controversy.
Part of it would see the early release of paramilitary prisoners who had been in Northern Ireland jails.
Some 428 paramilitary prisoners from both sides of the community were to walk free, 143 of them had been serving life sentences for things like murders and bombings.
A referendum (similar to Brexit, but definitely not Brexit) was held on both sides of the Irish border for the people to decide whether or not they wanted the agreement.
The result? A resounding 'Yes'.
Some 71% voted in favour of the agreement in Northern Ireland and 94% voted in favour of it in the Republic of Ireland.
After elections in June of 1998, the all-new Northern Ireland Assembly was formed.
It met for the first time on 1 July and David Trimble and Seamus Mallon were elected as first and deputy first ministers.
As one young man said of the agreement: "Erm, I've never heard of it. No idea. Don't know what it is".
Is it any clearer now?
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The Heritage Trust, which runs Jersey's historic buildings and museums, should have more tightly controlled finances, a report claims.
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The States stepped in to support the trust when it announced funding difficulties and also undertook a review of how the deficit came about.
The report found a lack of action and unsuccessful management had contributed to its financial condition.
The States has been asked for £200,000 a year to keep the heritage sites open.
The Scrutiny report recommended a strengthening of financial controls, a service level agreement that defined responsibilities and a review of the funding opportunities of heritage sites.
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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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You only have to look at the lonely hearts column (I have for research purposes) to see how highly human beings value a "good sense of humour". Sadly, it is part of the human condition that we cannot decide what this might look and sound like - each to their own and all that. For evidence of this look no further than the northern reaches of the Tour's first stage. A sign on the route in West Tanfield saying "Welcome to Widowmakers Bend" has prompted criticism from some cyclists who think this is in bad taste. And a little further back in Gunnerside somebody has decorated their front garden with a wheel-less bike that appears to have crashed into a flowerbed. One cyclist described this "depiction of a cycle at odds with the spirit of the area and more like Jeremy Clarkson welcoming the Tour". The sign-owner in West Tanfield is having none of it, though. "It's not that dangerous a bend," he explained. "If you were in soap box derby it might be but not for professional riders."
Full story: Northern Echo
Perhaps the story above is just a case of visitors not getting the locals' dry humour - a cultural misunderstanding, if you will. If that is the case it reinforces the need for different communities to explore each other's customs. So "well done", or "chapeau", to Pocklington Infant School in East Yorkshire for their French-themed sports day. The garlic and spoon race was genius.
Full story: Pocklington Post
Continuing on the "friends-through-sport" theme, Sheffield Eagles and Leeds Rhinos great Keith Senior is riding more than 1,000 miles from Perpignan in the foothills of the Pyrenees, to Leeds on the banks of the mighty Aire, over the course of eight days from this Saturday. He is doing this to raise money for three charities, and to deliver the match ball for Sunday week's Leeds-Catalans Dragons game. Good luck, sir!
Full story: The Star
CYCLING ROUND-UP
Tuesday felt like the day the wheels finally came off the "Wiggo to the Tour" bandwagon, but also the day we got a dress rehearsal of the performance the vast majority of the crowd in Yorkshire will be hoping for on Saturday, 5 July.
Let us deal with Sir Bradley Wiggins' woes first. Having been sent to the Tour of Switzerland with Team Sky's B team, he endured four pretty miserable days of riding which culminated in a crash about 25km from the fourth stage's finish. The 2012 Tour de France champion had been pootling along at the back of a field, struggling with a chest infection, when another rider ploughed into him. He did pick himself up eventually and ride gingerly to the finish, but it put the cherry on top of a bad week. It was no surprise when confirmation came through on Wednesday that he was on his way home. His next ride will be the time trial at the British Cycling National Road Championships in Wales next week.
Far, far better, however, was the news further up the road, because 12 minutes before Wiggins crossed the line in Ossingen, Mark Cavendish did so, arms aloft, celebrating another victory. But what was so special about this one was that it was after a slightly uphill sprint, and he surged past the man who will probably be his toughest opponent on the slightly uphill sprint into Harrogate. A repeat of Tuesday's Swiss display in the Yorkshire spa town would be a real tonic.
TWEET OF THE DAY
"Happy birthday to the greatest of all time - Eddy Merckx."
@lancearmstrong, a man who some once made an argument for in the all-time great stakes, sends 69th birthday wishes to a rider whose status as the sport's greatest is now almost undisputed.
TODAY'S TOUR TRIVIA
I have so far avoided listing any doping-related items in this section but sandwiched between mentions of Armstrong, Merckx, Hincapie and O'Grady it seems reasonable to do it now. Armstrong's and Hincapie's stories are well documented, and O'Grady was named in a French Senate report into blood-doping at the 1998 Tour, but Merckx's three positive drugs tests are less well known these days.
The positives came in 1969, 1973 and 1977, and they were for three different stimulants. In terms of the drugs that were to come into the sport later, these were small beer. It should also be remembered that this was long before the advent of the World Anti-Doping Agency, or serious drug-testing. There simply was not the same stigma attached to doping back then. But Merckx's story indicates just how integral performance-enhancing drugs have been to the sport over the decades. Armstrong did not invent doping.
THE COUNTDOWN - 17 DAYS TO GO
American George Hincapie and Australia's Stuart O'Grady both started 17 Tours during the long careers, although Hincapie "lost" three of those because of his involvement in the US Postal/Lance Armstrong doping scandal. That leaves O'Grady, who retired last year, out in front on his own. An Olympic, World and Commonwealth champion on the track, he also won two stages at the Tour and finished second in the green jersey competition four times.
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Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, is to curate a British music festival next year.
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The Portland cartoonist will choose all of the artists playing the All Tomorrow's Parties festival held at Butlins Holiday Centre, Minehead between 7-9 May.
Bands for the event are yet to be confirmed but tickets for the weekender go on sale on Friday 16 October.
As previously reported, reunited Californian cult rockers Pavement will also curate a version of the festival the following weekend, 14-16 May.
Groening has previously curated the US version of the holiday camp festival in California back in 2003.
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Festival-goers at the sold-out Green Man festival in Powys have had items from their camping tents stolen.
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Police said 20 tents had been targeted in 24 hours at the site on the Glanusk Estate in Crickhowell.
A man has been arrested and is in police custody, they added.
American band Future Islands headlined the main Mountain Stage on Friday, while Grammy-nominated Ryan Adams is to headline on Saturday and PJ Harvey on Sunday.
Police have previously warned motorists to expect extra traffic around Abergavenny and the Brecon Beacons this weekend.
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Staff numbers at a water bottling plant in Pembrokeshire are set to be doubled after a major investment.
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Princes Gate, which produces and bottles organic spring water in Narberth, is investing £5.5m in the hope of expanding its operation.
It aims to create 25 new jobs over the next three years - bringing the total number it employs to 50.
The investment is supported by £250,000 business finance from the Welsh government.
The company will also introduce a new bottling line, capable of producing 37,000 bottles an hour.
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Nasa's Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), is celebrating 2,000 martian days (sols) investigating Gale Crater on the Red Planet. In that time, the robot has made some remarkable observations. Here are just a few of them, chosen by the Curiosity science team .
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Looking back: In the history of the space age, some of the most dramatic planetary images ever taken have been of Earth, but photographed looking back from deep space. This image by Mastcam on the Curiosity Rover shows our planet as a faint pinpoint of light in the martian night sky. Every day scientists from across the world drive the Curiosity rover and study the Red Planet about 100 million miles from Earth.
The beginning: The first image that Curiosity took came back just 15 minutes after landing on 5 August 2012. Getting our imagery and other data relies on the timing of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) overpasses, a pattern which determines the structure of the martian working day, or sol. It shows a grainy Front Hazard Camera image - the team normally use these to help avoid obstacles - of our ultimate goal Mount Sharp. When this image came back we knew it was going to be a successful mission.
River pebbles: Once we had started driving (16 sols after landing), we soon came across these pebble beds. The rounded shape of the clasts shows that they formed in an ancient, shallow river, flowing from the surrounding four-billion-year-old highlands into Gale Crater. The inset Mastcam image shows one of the pebbles in close-up. Contrary to our expectations before MSL, the crust being eroded by the rivers was not all dark, primitive basalt but a more evolved composition and mineralogy. Pebbles caught up in this ancient martian river are causing us to rethink our view of how the underlying igneous crust and mantle of Mars formed.
Ancient lake: Before landing and in the early part of the mission, the team wasn't sure what all of the terrains identified from MRO HiRISE orbital imagery were. They might have been lava flows or lake sediments, without close-up "ground truth" it was impossible to be certain. This image settled the debate and was a seminal stage in Martian exploration. Yellowknife Bay is made of layers of fine grained sand and muds, which were deposited as rivers flowed into an ancient Gale Crater lake. We made our first of 16 drill holes on sol 182 - we do this to get rock in to the spectrometers housed in the body of our rover - here at the John Klein site. The results - including identifying clays, organics and nitrogen-bearing compounds - showed us that this had been a habitable environment for microbial life. The next discovery step - Was There Life? - remains to be determined.
Deep water: The Pahrump Hills section Curiosity encountered around sol 753 was key for developing our understanding of Gale's past environment. Here the rover observed thinly layered mudstones, which represented mud particles settling out from suspension within the deeper lake. The Gale Lake has been a long-standing, deep body of water.
An unconformity: At Mount Stimson, the rover identified from sol 980 a thick sandstone unit overlying the lake deposits, separated by a geological feature called an unconformity. This unconformity represents a time where erosive processes took over after millions of years when the lake had finally dried up - to form a new land surface. This shows evidence of events happening over "deep time", similar to those that the pioneering geologist James Hutton described in his field work in the late 18th Century at Siccar Point on the Scottish Coast.
Desert sands: The Namib dunes encountered close up by Curiosity at sol 1192 is a small part of the great Bagnold dune field. Its the first active dunefield explored on the surface of another planet and Curiosity had to pick its way carefully along and through the field as moving sands are an obstacle for rovers. Although the Martian atmosphere is a fraction of the density of that of Earth's, it is still capable of transporting sediment and is capable of creating such beautiful structures akin to those we see in the deserts of Earth.
Wind sculptures: The Murray Buttes, photographed by Mastcam on sol 1448, formed of the same sandstones observed at Mount Stimson and represent a lithified dune field created by dunes similar to those in the present day Bagnold dune field. These desert-formed sandstones sit above an unconformity, and this suggests that after a long period with a humid climate, the climate became drier and wind became the dominant agent shaping the environment at Gale Crater.
Dried muds: Curiosity is able to perform detailed analyses of the Gale rocks with the ChemCam laser and telescope mounted on its mast. Here on sol 1555 at Schooner Head we came across a set of ancient mudcracks and sulphate veins. On Earth, lakes typically dry up in places around their margins and here on Mars the Gale lake was no different. You can see the red crosses where we fired the laser at the rock, creating a small plasma spark, with the wavelength of light in the spark telling us the composition of the mudstone and veins.
Cloudy skies: This sequence of images was taken with Curiosity's Navigational Cameras (NavCam) on sol 1971 as we pointed them towards the sky. Occasionally on the cloudiest of Martian days we are able to make out faint clouds in the sky. These images are processed to highlight differences, allowing us to see the clouds move across the sky. This sequence shows previously unseen cloud features with prominent zig-zag patterns visible. The three images, from start to finish, cover approximately 12 minutes on Mars.
Obligatory 'selfie': The Curiosity rover has gained a reputation over the years that rivals those of Instagram users for its many "selfies" taken along its traverse. These selfies are not all for show though as they help the team track the state of the rover throughout the course of the mission for changes such as wheel wear and dust accumulation. Curiosity's self-portraits are taken using the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) situated on its robotic arm and are generated by merging a series of high-resolution images into a mosaic. This one taken on sol 1065 at the Buckskin locality shows the main mast of Curiosity with its ChemCam telescope used to determine rock compositions, and the Mastcam cameras. In the foreground you can see that Curiosity has just been drilling, leaving a small grey pile of tailings.
Long drive: This panorama taken with the rover's Mastcam shows Curiosity's 18.4km drive over the last 5 years from the Bradbury landing site to its current location on the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR). VRR was formerly known as Hematite Ridge due to the high concentrations of the iron oxide mineral hematite detected here from orbit. As hematite largely forms in the presence of water, this location was a high-priority target for the Curiosity rover science team to investigate in order to assess how the conditions in Gale Crater changed over its geological history. This key location is the perfect spot for Curiosity to spend its 2000th sol, and for all of us to look back on the many discoveries made so far in the mission.
By John Bridges, Ashwin Vasavada, Susanne Schwenzer, Sanjeev Gupta, Steve Banham, Candice Bedford, Christina Smith, Brittney Cooper & the MSL Team
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The vaccine rollout is now reaching younger adults.
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By Philippa RoxbyHealth reporter
What do they need to know about getting jabbed?
Who can get a vaccine now?
What vaccine will I get and can I choose?
The UK is using Covid vaccines made by:
A single-dose jab made by Janssen has also been approved.
You can't choose what vaccine you get, but you will be allocated one based partly on your age.
If you're under 40 or pregnant you will get Pfizer or Moderna.
But, if you've already had one AZ jab with no after-effects you should have a second dose.
What are the side effects and the risk of blood clots?
Most are mild, completely normal and disappear after a few days.
They happen because the body's defences are reacting to the vaccine, and include:
People aged under 55 are more likely to get side-effects from Pfizer and Moderna.
With AstraZeneca, side effects are more common after the first dose than the second.
Under-40s are being offered alternatives to AstraZeneca because of a possible link between the vaccine and extremely rare blood clots in a tiny number of people.
It's not clear if the vaccine is the cause, but the clots appear to happen slightly more often in younger adults.
For everyone else, the benefits of AZ and the other vaccines far outweigh risks.
Remember 1,900 people in every million have died from Covid in the UK, and blood clots are a common symptom of the disease.
Do I have to have the vaccine?
No. But everyone is being urged to get two doses to protect themselves, their family, friends and wider society.
The vaccines:
Without a jab, you may not be able to travel abroad or do certain jobs.
What about people with allergies?
A very small number of people have experienced a severe allergic reaction, anaphylaxis, after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
This can happen with some vaccines. You should discuss any allergies with your healthcare professional.
What if I am pregnant?
Covid-19 can make some women seriously unwell in late pregnancy and this can increase the risk of babies being born early.
The advice is to have a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, because there is more evidence those jabs are safe in pregnant women.
If you prefer, you can delay vaccination until after your 12-week scan.
If you're breastfeeding, you can still have a vaccine.
Will jabs affects my fertility?
There is no evidence at all the vaccines cause fertility problems in men or women.
Claims to the contrary on social media are false.
In fact, getting coronavirus itself has the potential to affect fertility.
Does the vaccine affect periods?
Some women say they've experienced unusually heavy periods after being jabbed but it's not known if the vaccine was the cause.
If it was, experts say there's nothing to worry about.
What if I've got long Covid?
A recent study, not yet published, suggests vaccination can help improve long Covid symptoms.
The vaccine could press the body's reset button and help it recover, researchers say.
Can I drink alcohol after the vaccine?
You don't need to avoid alcohol but it's best not to overdo it for a few days if you have vaccine side-effects.
What if I hate needles?
When you are jabbed, say you don't like needles. Then look away.
Many people say the injection is painless and hardly notice anything.
Will teenagers get the jab?
Pfizer is currently only approved for UK use in over-16s, with AstraZeneca and Moderna approved for over-18s.
Older teens, rather than younger ones, are more likely to be infected and pass on the virus, although they're unlikely to fall ill.
Some areas with Covid spikes have been vaccinating anyone aged over 18, including in parts of Glasgow, Greater Manchester and Hounslow in London.
Will all children get the jab?
Because children are extremely unlikely to become ill, the argument for vaccinating them would be to keep cases low and protect adults and the vulnerable.
But some say this is unethical with so many at-risk adults still unvaccinated around the world.
Most vaccine developers are testing jabs on children.
Related Internet Links
Vaccine priority groups - UK government advice
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When the UK authorities announced on Wednesday that they suspected two alleged Russian agents in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, they released CCTV images of the suspects arriving at Gatwick airport.
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By Joel Gunter & Olga RobinsonBBC News
Two of the images, framed side by side, began to spread on social media, driven by pro-Russia conspiracy theorists and suspected troll accounts. They showed the alleged agents - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - passing through a non-return gate at the airport.
The images had identical timestamps. How could two men be in exactly the same place at the same time, a flood of tweets asked.
Speaking on state TV, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that either "the date and the exact time were superimposed on the image" or that Russian intelligence officers had "mastered the skill of walking simultaneously".
Her remarks were echoed by pro-Kremlin accounts on Twitter and on the messaging app Telegram, which is popular in Russia. Users suggested the CCTV images had been manipulated. They mocked the British authorities and alleged it was an MI6 operation.
Soon it would not necessarily matter that the background of the CCTV images were not identical; that the camera was at a different angle; that Google Maps shows that the non-return gates at Gatwick are a series of near-identical corridors that the two men could easily have passed down, adjacent to one another, at the same time.
What would matter would be that some people following the story would begin to question what was real and what wasn't. Some might even begin to question the very idea that there was a real, reliable version of events at all.
Russia denies any involvement in the Skripal case, and its embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC, but analysts say the Russian state is now the chief exponent of a new kind of information warfare.
A loosely-defined network of Russian state actors, state-controlled media, and armies of social media bots and trolls is said to work in unison to spread and amplify multiple narratives and conspiracies around cases like the Skripal poisoning. The goal is no longer to deny or disprove an official version of events, it is to flood the zone with so many competing versions that nothing seems to make sense.
"What is really striking is that you no longer see the Russian machine pushing a single message, it pushes dozens of messages," said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies Russian disinformation. "The idea is to confuse people."
Other theories circulating on Wednesday included a claim that the suspects were British actors, stars of a (non-existent) KGB spy series broadcast on British television in the 2000s. Another suggested the attempted assassination in Salisbury, and the deaths of other Russian nationals in Britain, were part of an MI6 plot. "Why do all these horrible events only happen in Britain?" asked Andrei Klimov, a Russian member of parliament, on state TV.
"The more different theories you put out, the more different Google results you're going to get," said Mr Nimmo. "So instead of seeing two or three different versions of the story you're seeing 20 or 30. And for someone who is not following the story regularly that becomes more and more confusing until they give up. And at that point, the Russian disinformation has had its effect."
Early evidence of the tactic can be traced back to the 2000s but it first drew serious international attention in 2014, when Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing 298 people. The available evidence pointed to a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-held territory in east Ukraine.
Russia had already been accused of deploying crude disinformation techniques around its actions in east Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea, but its response to being linked to the downing of MH-17 appeared to be much more co-ordinated - the "tipping point where Russian information warfare kicked into high gear", Mr Nimmo said.
In the days and months after the aircraft was shot down, Russian state media and pro-Kremlin social media accounts pushed out a raft of different and wildly contradictory theories: that a Ukrainian Su-25 combat aircraft had been picked up by radar near MH-17; that video evidence showed a missile being fired from government, not separatist, territory; that Ukrainian fighters had mistaken MH-17 for Vladimir Putin's plane in an assassination attempt; that the CIA was behind it.
"MH-17 is really the classic example," said Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher on computational propaganda at the University of Oxford.
"You saw a whole series of different conspiracies and competing narratives emerge, attached to various hashtags and social media campaigns. The goal was to confuse people, to polarise them, to push them further and further away from reality."
The tactic expanded and evolved in the years after the MH-17 attack, with Russia linked to disinformation campaigns around its actions in Syria, the 2016 US election, the murder of Boris Nemtsov, and a UK inquiry into the murder of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in London.
A key component in more recent alleged Russian disinformation campaigns has been the use of humour and ridicule. When a UK inquiry found in 2016 that Russian president Vladimir Putin "probably approved" the murder of Litvinenko, a hashtag - #putinprobablyapproved - spread through Twitter, with tweets suggesting Mr Putin had "probably approved" the assassination of JFK, the invasion of Iraq, climate change and more.
In the hours after the UK named the suspects in the Skripal case, a flood of near-identical tweets used pictures of comedians, historical figures and Hollywood spies - from Joseph Stalin to Jason Bourne - in place of the suspects, in an attempt to ridicule the UK's announcement.
The official account of the Russian embassy in London even joined in, posting an image of the two Skripal suspects allegedly carrying the Novichok toxin alongside a picture of British police in biohazard suits, asking users to "spot the difference". On Russian state news bulletins, anchors reported the news with a mixture of disbelief and sarcasm.
"The strategy is optimised for the internet, it's meant to go viral," said Mr Nimmo. "That's why mockery and sarcasm and attempts at funny memes are so much a part of this ... It is disinformation for the information age."
In 2015, the European Union was sufficiently alarmed by Russian disinformation that it created a task force - the East Stratcom team - directed solely at counteracting the perceived threat. The small team attempts to debunk fake stories in real time, but it is reportedly vastly outmatched by the amount of material coming its way.
Peter Wilson, the UK ambassador to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said earlier this year the OPCW had counted more than 30 different Russian theories swirling around the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
The effectiveness and reach of this type of disinformation operation in the West is debatable. A YouGov poll conducted earlier this year found that 75% of Britons believed that the Russian state was behind the Skripal poisoning, while just 5% said they thought Russia was innocent. But the sheer volume of Russian disinformation being exported abroad remained a major cause for concern, said one EU official who works on the issue but was not authorised to speak about it publicly.
"Some people like to think this tactic was used around Brexit and it went away, or it was used around Skripal and went away, but it's happening 24/7," he said. "Others also use disinformation, of course ... But this aggression, this exporting of information narratives abroad, this is really something where Russia is number one in the world."
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Thirty years on from the Indian army's raid on the Golden Temple in June 1984, the relatives of those who were "disappeared" in the years after the attack feel their cause has been abandoned, reports the BBC's Jastinder Khera from Amritsar.
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Satwant Singh Manak says he saw 15 people killed by his colleagues when he was serving in the Punjab police - but it was the last that cemented his sense of betrayal, and led him to turn his back on the force.
Kulwant Singh Kanta was a teenager who was detained by the police in April 1992 after a neighbour accused him of having joined a militant group.
"They tortured him for three days. Then they took him to a canal and killed him along with another detainee," Mr Manak recalls.
"They threw his body in the canal."
Mr Manak was in the police in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Rights groups estimate that during this time, alongside the serious abuses committed by Sikh militant groups, thousands of Sikhs were "disappeared" by the security forces.
Mr Manak says the killings he witnessed were "fake encounters" - occasions in which the police would kill detainees and claim afterwards there had been a gun battle.
Costly fight
Mr Manak says he stayed in the police in the hope that the force's conduct might improve. But after Kulwant Singh's killing, he left and later launched legal action against the officers he alleges were responsible for the deaths.
The families of 10 of the dead have joined his petition.
Mr Manak says that after leaving the police, he himself was detained and tortured and that his father also died from the effects of police interrogation.
In 2008 a judge at the Punjab High Court allowed his petition and ordered an investigation into the killings.
However, in November different judges at the High Court upheld an appeal made by the police officers he had accused. They said Mr Manak was motivated by a "personal grievance" against his superiors and ordered him to pay costs of 2,000 rupees (£20; $34) to each of the officers.
His lawyers point out that similar arguments were made against the police whistleblower who testified after the 1995 murder of prominent human rights lawyer Jaswant Singh Khalra. Five police officers were eventually convicted of that murder.
Mr Manak is now taking his case to India's Supreme Court.
It has been a costly fight in many ways - he sold his house to pay the legal fees - and one that he says that Sikh communities abroad have helped him with more than Sikh institutions inside India.
The organisation helping Mr Manak in bringing his case is Ensaaf (Punjabi for "justice"), a human rights group based in California.
Some argue that diaspora Sikh groups are nurturing resentment over abuses that many Sikhs in Punjab itself have now forgotten.
"Those in India who talk about forgetting the abuses and moving on are normally those who were not directly affected," says co-director and co-founder of Ensaaf, Jaskaran Kaur.
"Also we should remember that many of the officers accused in these cases are still in post, and some witnesses have complained of harassment. We in the diaspora don't have that fear to deal with," she adds.
Ms Kaur believes that bringing human rights violators to account "is about strengthening the country. It's good for India to uphold its own laws and human rights provisions in these cases".
Village of the missing
One place where people have not forgotten those years is Sangna, on the outskirts of Amritsar.
At first sight, it is a typical quiet Punjabi village. Birdsong rises above the sound of lowing cattle and children playing in the yards.
But there are absences in the houses here.
Softly spoken Khajan Singh recalls the day in March 1989 when he heard his eldest brother Sukhdev had gone missing.
"He was on a bus on his way to Amritsar. The police had a checkpoint on the road and took him off."
Sukhdev had a full beard and a round saffron turban, both worn by more religious Sikh men, and Khajan believes this was the only reason he was picked out.
He denies that his brother was involved in any militant activity.
Sukhdev was the family's breadwinner and, as with many families of disappeared people, the consequences of his disappearance were felt for years afterwards. Khajan and his other brother stopped school and began working and the family sold some of their land to raise money.
Now only Khajan and his ailing mother are left in the family home.
Latent sentiment
So why have the events of that time slid down the political agenda in Punjab?
Jagtar Singh, a veteran former journalist who has written a book about the insurgency, says that many in Punjab have moved on and simply do not want to remember a very traumatic period in the state's history.
For most of the time since the end of the insurgency, the Sikh Akali Dal political party has been in power in Punjab. It has previously pledged a judicial inquiry looking into various aspects of the period, but quietly shelved this promise once in office.
Jagtar Singh says there is a "latent sentiment" of grievance among some Sikhs which occasionally comes to the fore, most recently in 2012, when widespread protests were sparked by the prospect of the execution of prisoner Balwant Singh Rajoana.
That there is a more general sense of discontent in Punjab with the Akali-led state government is evident from the recent general election results.
Whereas most of the rest of India saw a thumping victory for the BJP - to which the Akali Dal is allied - in Punjab the alliance's share of the vote actually went down.
The new anti-establishment Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won four seats in Punjab, its only victories in the whole of India.
One of AAP's candidates was a prominent Sikh human rights lawyer, but the central plank of its campaign was not historic abuses but instead more current grievances with the Akali-led state government: corruption allegations, lack of healthcare provision and employment opportunities, as well as the state's fast-growing drug addiction problem.
Back in Sangna, the twists of Punjabi politics feel very far removed from Kashmir Kaur's house as she watches her grandchildren play at her feet.
Her husband Surjit Singh went missing in 1992 when two policemen took him away just after dawn, saying they needed him to give them directions. She never saw him again, but his name appeared in a list of people whose bodies had been illegally cremated which came to light in 2006.
"We need justice. When they were little, my children used to ask me where their father had gone. Now these little ones ask me where their grandfather is."
As the legacy of the disappeared recedes from the spotlight, there may still be another generation which will have to contend with it.
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What is it like to raise your kids on the road? Two families describe how they changed their children's lives by showing them the world, while a mum-to-be explains why she plans to do just that with her six-month-old baby.
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By Lauren PottsBBC News
'Our dream is a reality'
Natasha Biran and her husband Yair quit their demanding jobs in 2014 to travel around Israel with their six-month-old son.
"When Maoz was born it clicked - we thought it doesn't need to be like this, we didn't have to do a 9-5," said Natasha, who was director of an internship programme.
"I was starting to think about going back to work and we were looking at nurseries and were both just really sad about it - I didn't want to be away from Maoz and to put him in a framework.
"It made us think, if we didn't want that, what did we want? Do we want to be working and only seeing each other in the evening? I knew that's how it would look; we wanted to live differently. We wanted to feel inspired."
Natasha and Yair, who was a Ministry of Justice lawyer, put most of their belongings in storage and began travelling around the country relying solely on their earnings on the road.
"People told us we were crazy - it was like, 'what are you doing? You're insane; can't you just [live] normally?'" said Natasha, originally from Whitefield, Greater Manchester.
"But Maoz was the most chilled baby and was nursing and just happy. Every baby is different and we're all different mums, and I don't think how I live is right for everyone, but it felt right for us."
For a while they stayed in a yurt before eventually settling in an alternative community, where they stayed for three years and had their daughter, Geshem. Not long after, the couple had a vision to work remotely and travel the world. Then Natasha's dad died.
"We were in the airport and Yair has this moment of clarity and said, 'maybe this is the start of our travelling journey'. We got to England and it was hanging there and we thought we'd just see if the universe was telling us to continue."
That sign came from a cousin in Bournemouth, who invited them to stay. Then they visited Manchester, Wales and London, before going to Germany and Switzerland then back to Israel. Since then, they have spent time in Thailand, Sri Lanka, north India and the Maldives.
"Some travelling families move around a lot, some less - we're the nesting type," said Natasha, who documents the family's travels on her Instagram page, Trusting the Way. "In each place we create routine - we wake up at roughly the same time and eat at the same time, we go to the same cafes or restaurants to create an anchor. There is a feeling of structure, it's just not a rigid one."
Both parents work online doing translating, editing and writing in English and Hebrew - Yair works more regular hours, while Natasha mostly does project work in the evenings.
"You have to be flexible and creative, any place can become a temporary office," she said. "Most places have wi-fi access and you can always use 4G or a hotspot. [Finding a connection] hasn't been an issue for us, even in India with the constant power cuts.
"We even went for three weeks to a little village in the Himalayan mountains that took hours and hours to drive to then a 30-minute hike - we used a hotspot there."
The couple also both home-school Maoz, five, and Geshem, two.
"I'm responsible enough as a parent to ensure [they're] learning, but we think about school in a different way," said Natasha. "Maoz is taking knowledge in all the time, he's learning things kids his age don't usually learn.
"During Diwali he was asking what it means, what the different ceremonies are for - it opened up chats about Hinduism and different religions and beliefs. I went to private school and have a university degree and Maoz already knows things I don't.
"He is learning to read in English and Hebrew and he wants to and it's at his own pace. On the beach, he draws letters and numbers in the sand; the twig is his pencil and the sand is his paper. It's another way to learn."
Currently the family is travelling around south India.
"Sometimes I can't believe this is my life - I feel like we're living a dream and it's a reality," said Natasha. "Nothing is about luck - we went with the flow of life [but] we took action. If you look outside the box, you see how wide the world is. That's what changed - our perspective."
'An admiral taught them angles'
Caspar Craven had sailed around the world already - his wife Nichola had been on a boat twice and was sick both times. It didn't stop them taking their three children on a two-year sailing trip in 2014 which took in 84 harbours, 26 countries and 35,000 miles from Southampton to Grenada.
"We gave ourselves five years to come up with the money and make it happen. The reaction was predictable, people thought it was crazy and told us all the reasons why we shouldn't do it. And they were good reasons - we had never home-schooled, we didn't have the money, what about emergencies?" said Caspar, 47.
"So we wrote down every reason and went through each one in huge detail. Then we had five years of training - we had to get used to being on a boat as a family, being safe onboard, wearing a life jacket. We did training courses and both trained to be ship doctors. We were extremely rigorous."
At sea, Caspar and Nichola, 48, shared the helm, working three hours each at a time, while Bluebell, nine, Columbus, seven, and Willow, two, had set bedtimes, mealtimes and lessons.
One of the most valuable lessons the trip taught their children was resilience, Caspar said.
"We had a power failure in the middle of the Pacific. We had paper charts and some GPS, so we hand-steered the boat by the sun and the moon and the stars and sailed our way out of it. It took us four days.
"In that first instance when everything goes wrong, your emotions go off the charts, but you figure it out. We had two months of food and water and would've ended up somewhere eventually. For the kids, seeing a situation [like that] and having to deal with it, they now have a blueprint for resilience."
Traditional schooling on the trip was tricky, said Caspar, so they changed tack.
"I remember teaching Columbus about Tudors and Stuarts and he has this bored look on his face. So we just found things they were most curious about. Columbus was fascinated by the natural world, so we gave him lots of books about fish and dissected fish that we caught, and wrote about them for literacy and weighed them for numeracy."
That said, the family wanted to come home in time for Bluebell to start secondary school. She had to work hard to catch up in some maths areas, but was much further ahead in things like prime numbers and angles, thanks to a chance meeting with a former US Navy admiral, said Caspar.
"He used to run the Pacific fleet and taught the kids to use sextants. When you've got someone who's one of the best in the world at what they do, they explain things so easily that it just goes in and the kids absorbed it."
The family now has a "normal life" in Weybridge, Surrey, although Caspar still travels for work as an inspirational speaker. Nichola has returned to being a lawyer, while the kids are "thriving" at school.
"They don't think [what they've done is] unusual, they don't really talk about it - it's just one of those things [they did]."
'I want to show its possible'
Pip Stewart travelled a lot with her Forces family as a child and hopes to do the same with her baby.
"When you've had that peripatetic upbringing, travelling is a normal thing to do. I've been a little afraid having children would change that, but my perspective has massively shifted with people showing us it's possible," said the 35-year-old, who is due in February.
"People with kids are probably thinking 'you have no idea', but I'm really excited about being a mum and travelling with a baby."
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'An e-bike changed my life'
Pip and her partner, wellbeing consultant Charlie Hoare, plan to test the waters of travelling with a baby with a month-long European road trip in a camper van.
"Everyone has said around six months old is a good time - they're portable and can't really get away; they're still breastfeeding, so you don't have to worry about sterilising bottles; by that point you're used to the lack of sleep and the upheaval of having everything change," said the adventure travel journalist.
"[Friends who've done similar] said as long as there's structure and routine, it's fine. It's like planning for any expedition - if you're kayaking there's a risk assessment and I get the impression that being a mum who wants to travel, you've got to be the same."
If all goes well, the couple also plan to go to South America later in the year, as well as making shorter trips from their base in East Wittering, West Sussex.
"I say this while pregnant but it might be very different in reality. You can have the best-laid plans, like with any expedition, but if it's not going to plan, it's about stepping back and asking if it's to the detriment of our child and if it is, knocking it on the head. But it's better to try these things - that's my philosophy."
Pip hopes her new son or daughter will share her love of travel and benefit from the experience.
"Travel introduces children to that desire to talk to people and be inquisitive and that's what I want to instil in my child," she said. "While travelling [I've noticed] it's the children that come over to you and ask you what you're up to; it's the babies that get passed around that are the bubbly ones. I'm hoping I'll be happy to let my baby be cuddled and interact with people."
Though she is winding down on long-haul travel in her final trimester, Pip is still active and recently hiked part of the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland.
"A lot of people have asked what I'm going to do career-wise and there has been a bit of negativity about [me] being a mum in the adventure space, being told 'you're not going to be able to [travel with a baby]. It just made me cross - it made me want to show it's possible; that it's more complicated but these things can be worked around."
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The tone of the 2016 presidential campaign can give the impression that many Americans are angry, frightened of change, fearful of Muslims and never more racially divided. All those things may be true. But for an alternative view of how Americans are grappling with the issues they face, a trip to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington might prove instructive.
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By Jane O'BrienBBC News, Washington
Race, poverty, gender identity and immigration are all featured in the work of 43 artists in The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today, an exhibition and competition that attracted 2,500 entries from around the country.
"Portraiture is extremely relevant in the contemporary art world right now," says exhibition curator Dorothy Moss.
"People are thinking about the issues in the news and creating works of art about those issues as a way to allow a conversation that can't be had when reading a newspaper or watching the news."
In a full length photograph of herself, Jess T Dugan stands in a provocative pose reminiscent of a male stripper. The raised t-shirt exposes the scars from surgery to remove her breasts and displays the hair under her arms. The image combines male and female sexuality.
"I thought it was a little brave of the jurors to pick that image because I perceive it as being more confrontational than some of the other works in the portrait gallery," she says. "I was pleased they were willing to include it and address the issues [of gender identity] head on."
Dugan grew up in Arkansas feeling that she was neither male nor female. She now identifies as a female-bodied, masculine-presenting person. Through portraiture she explores the attitudes surrounding gender identity and the rapidly shifting culture in the US.
"People's hearts and minds are changed through knowing somebody individually," she says. "So if people feel that they know someone who is gay or transgender, it becomes so much harder for them to blindly discriminate against them as this abstract group of people."
Hidden portrait 'found under Mona Lisa'
Saatchi Gallery's first all-women exhibition
Racial identity is the theme of the winning portrait by Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald who grew up in Georgia where she was conscious of the way society expected a young African American girl to behave.
Her portrait, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) depicts one of her friends, an African-American woman, wearing a formal dress, white gloves and red hat, and holding an oversized tea cup. Her skin is painted in hues of gray which, Sherald says, "omits" her colour.
"I want my portraits to create a space where blackness can breathe," she says. "It was about creating a space where people could see the humanity of a person of colour and for people of colour to look at a portrait of themselves."
Californian artist Joel Daniel Phillips takes a different approach to race. In contrast to the "respectable" Miss Everything, his Eugene #4 portrays a man he encountered on the corner of Sixth and Mission Streets in San Francisco.
"It was full of drug addiction, poverty, homelessness and prostitution, all the things that cause the vast majority of the population of San Francisco to walk around," he says.
"These are the people we don't know how to respond to in society, who we don't make eye contact with. I wanted to tell the narrative of these people who are social dark matter and bring them into the light."
The anonymity of Eugene #4 is in marked contrast to the many portraits of famous people hanging in the hallowed halls of the National Portrait Gallery.
Presidents mingle with rock stars and America's great and not-so-good peer down at visitors from gilded frames. The museum tells the story of the nation through the pictures of the people who made it.
But that history - and the future - also belongs to those unknown individuals portrayed in this latest exhibition. The paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs show children living in poverty, women with their babies, unnamed immigrants crossing the border, men and women, Africans and Europeans.
Curator Dorothy Moss says all of them merit a place in the museum.
"We were looking at the mastery over the medium, the quality of the work of art and whether it is museum quality. So while these issues are an important part of the work, the work really needed to rise to the occasion as a significant art work."
Amy Sherald receives $25,000 (£17,470) for her winning entry and a commission to create a portrait of a living person for the museum's permanent collection.
The subject has not been decided, but Sherald says the tennis player Serena Williams, the actor Spike Lee and President Obama and his daughters all appeal.
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Police have concluded the search in the grounds of an Edinburgh house and a nearby golf club where body parts were found.
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Earlier police said there was no evidence of suspicious circumstances following the discovery in the grounds of Gogar Mount House on 9 January.
The death of the person is being treated as unexplained by police.
Forensic officers are still working to establish the identity of the remains and an investigation is ongoing.
Forensic examinations at nearby Gogarburn Golf Club have also ended.
A Police Scotland spokesman said: "Inquiries are ongoing to identify the human remains found at Gogarstone."
Related Internet Links
Police Scotland
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Immediately after a long-simmering conflict in the South Caucasus burst into open warfare late last month, Turkey came to the aid of its Turkic allies in Azerbaijan. It has supplied arms and, allegedly, fighters transferred from Syria, although that has been denied in Ankara.
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By Gonul TolCenter for Turkish Studies, MEI
Unlike most outside powers that called for an immediate ceasefire, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev to fight on.
The Caucasus is only the latest venture for a more muscular Turkey, whose military engagements have stretched from Syria across the Mediterranean.
Where has Turkey become involved?
In the last few years, Turkey has:
Turkey also has a military presence in Qatar, Somalia and Afghanistan and maintains peacekeeping troops in the Balkans. Its global military footprint is the most expansive since the days of the Ottoman Empire.
What is behind Turkey's new foreign policy?
Turkey's reliance on hard power to secure its interests is the cornerstone of its new foreign policy doctrine, in the making since 2015.
The new doctrine is deeply suspicious of multilateralism and urges Turkey to act unilaterally when necessary.
It is anti-Western. It believes that the West is in decline and Turkey should cultivate closer ties to countries such as Russia and China.
It is anti-imperialist. It challenges the Western-dominated World War Two order and calls for an overhaul of international institutions such as the United Nations, to give voice to nations other than the Western countries.
The new foreign policy doctrine views Turkey as a country surrounded by hostile actors and abandoned by its Western allies.
Therefore, it urges Turkey to pursue a proactive foreign policy that rests on the use of pre-emptive military power outside its borders.
This is a far cry from Turkey's previous focus on diplomacy, trade and cultural engagement in its relations with other nations. The change is a function of several domestic and international developments.
What changed?
Turkey's new doctrine began to take shape in 2015, when the ruling AKP lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in over a decade due to the rise of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
To regain the ruling party's majority, Mr Erdogan formed an alliance with nationalists both on the right and left.
They backed him when he resumed the fight against the Kurdish rebels.
How focus turned to Kurds
Turkey's conflict with the PKK - Kurdistan Workers' Party - had to a large extent stopped after the group's imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, called for a ceasefire with the Turkish state in 2013.
Despite their ideological differences, both the far-right nationalist MHP and neo-nationalists on the left support a heavy-handed approach to the Kurdish problem. They also prioritise national security at home and abroad and espouse strong anti-Western views.
With their support, Mr Erdogan also switched the country's parliamentary system to a presidential one granting him sweeping powers.
This alliance with the nationalists and consolidation of his power became the key driving factor behind Turkey's unilateralist, militaristic and assertive foreign policy.
The failed 2016 coup played a key role in this process.
How coup changed the narrative
According to President Erdogan, the botched coup was orchestrated by former ally Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric in self-exile in Pennsylvania, and it did several things to pave the way for Turkey's militaristic foreign policy.
It strengthened Mr Erdogan's alliance with the nationalists.
His sweeping purge of civil servants suspected of having links to the Gulen movement led to some 60,000 people being fired, jailed or suspended from the armed forces and judiciary, and some other state institutions.
The void left by the purges was filled with Erdogan loyalists and nationalist supporters.
The failed coup also strengthened the nationalist coalition's narrative that Turkey was besieged by domestic and foreign enemies and that the West was part of the problem. That justified unilateral action, supported by pre-emptive deployment of hard power beyond Turkey's borders.
How approach changed in Syria
The Assad regime's decision to give a free hand to Syria's Kurds in the north led to an autonomous Kurdish zone along Turkey's border and in 2014 the US decided to airdrop weapons to the Kurdish militants, considered to be a terrorist organisation by Turkey. This all fed the narrative that Turkey had to act alone and deploy military forces to protect its borders.
The failed coup also paved the way for consolidation of power in Mr Erdogan's hands.
Through purges he hollowed out institutions, sidelined key actors in foreign policymaking such as the foreign ministry, and emasculated the military, which had put a brake on his previous calls to launch military operations in neighbouring countries.
Before the coup attempt, he had signalled his intention to launch a military operation into Syria to stem the "terrorist threat" emanating from the Kurdish militias there. But Turkey's military, which had traditionally been very cautious about troop deployment outside Turkey's borders, was opposed.
A few months after the coup attempt, President Erdogan got his wish. Turkey launched its first military operation into Syria to curb the influence of the Kurds in the north in 2016 and two more incursions after that.
The move was applauded by the president's nationalist allies, who fear an independent Kurdish state built with US help along its border. To curb Kurdish influence and counterbalance the US presence in Syria he worked with Russia.
How Turkey switched focus to Libya and E Mediterranean
Libya became another theatre for hard-power tactics.
In January, Turkey stepped up military support to Libya's UN-backed government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, to stop an offensive by forces allied with Gen Khalifa Haftar.
Turkey's primary goal in Libya was to secure the Serraj government's support in a matter important to Mr Erdogan's nationalist allies: the Eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey has been at loggerheads with Greece and Cyprus over energy drilling rights off the coast of the divided island of Cyprus and maritime boundaries in the area.
Ankara signed an agreement on maritime boundaries with Mr Serraj in November in return for military support to the Tripoli government.
Mr Erdogan's aim was to redraw maritime borders in the Eastern Mediterranean which, in his opinion, provided disproportionate advantages to Turkey's arch-enemies - Greece and the Republic of Cyprus.
Meanwhile, Turkey sent warships to escort its drilling ships in the Eastern Mediterranean, risking a military confrontation with its Nato partner Greece.
Has it been a success?
Turkey's assertive policy in Syria, Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean has not yielded the results that President Erdogan's ruling coalition hoped for.
Turkey could not entirely clear Kurdish militia forces from its border with Syria. Neither Ankara's maritime agreement with Libya nor its actions in the Eastern Mediterranean have changed the anti-Turkey status quo in the region.
On the contrary, Turkey's military involvement in these conflicts hardened anti-Erdogan sentiment in the West and unified a diverse group of actors in their resolve to oppose Turkish unilateralism, eventually forcing Turkey's leader to back down.
A similar fate awaits Turkey's involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which is already seeing the emergence of a more forceful Russian response and a Russian-Western front against Turkey's support for Azerbaijan.
What next?
But Mr Erdogan's nationalist allies want him to fight on. A prominent neo-nationalist, Retired Rear-Admiral Cihat Yayci, argued that Greece wanted to invade western Turkey and urged Mr Erdogan to never sit down with Athens to negotiate.
And the president has little option but to listen to him. As he loses ground in opinion polls, the nationalist sway over his domestic and foreign policies only increases.
Gonul Tol is Director of the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC
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The infiltration of an agent into the ranks of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula provides a rare insight into the shadowy world of counter-terrorism and the problems for both intelligence agencies and al-Qaeda in knowing whom to trust.
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By Gordon CoreraSecurity correspondent, BBC News
The Yemen operation was carried out amid the highest levels of secrecy, according to officials, and the exact details of the individual's identity remain obscure.
But he appears to have been run by the Saudi intelligence in conjunction with the CIA. Other countries may also have been involved although British officials declined to comment.
The individual has been described by some as a "double agent". In fact, it seems more likely that he is a straightforward undercover agent who infiltrated the group and not a double agent whose loyalties shifted or who told both sides he was working against the other.
The agent managed to convince the Yemen-based al-Qaeda group that he wanted to carry out an attack but then took the device he was given - an underwear bomb impossible to detect by most airport security - and somehow ensured it was delivered it to those it was meant to target.
Public secrets
One report says he is now safe in Saudi Arabia - a key concern over the emergence of the story into the public domain will be whether it compromises his security or those of anyone he knows.
The device is now being analysed at an FBI laboratory and may provide valuable insights into the nature of the device and how it had been improved from the 2009 underwear device that failed to explode.
Crucially, it may help establish whether there is some way of picking up this device through airport security - the lack of metal parts means metal detectors will not find it and even body scanners might miss an underwear bomb if it is well hidden.
As well as handing over the device, the agent is reported to have also passed on other valuable information. This is likely to be details of personalities and operations within al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - thought to be the most potent branch of al-Qaeda at the moment and one determined to strike the US.
That information may also have contributed to the strike that killed Fahd Al-Quso on the weekend - an al-Qaeda operative who had been linked to the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and who had become a senior figure in the group - although the exact linkage is unclear.
There is likely to be concerns over the emergence of details of this operation in the US media. Intelligence agencies never like their secrets becoming public.
Psychological pressures
As well as dangers to the agent, the concern will be that it might make it harder to run similar operations again although al-Qaeda has long been concerned about agents being sent to infiltrate it.
In the past, it often demanded extensive references and other checks before someone would be admitted to training camps to prevent just such an outcome as occurred in this case.
The physical dangers and psychological pressures on an agent working undercover are huge; it requires a remarkable show of nerves with the danger that a wrong word could lead to being discovered and killed.
The operation is in many ways the mirror of the kind of entrapment operations the FBI has run in the US.
In those cases, an individual keen to take part in jihad approaches what he think is a real al-Qaeda linked group and is provided with what he thinks are real bombs or guns. In fact, the group is linked to the authorities and the weapons are inert.
In this case, an agent working with Western intelligence approached a real group and received a real device.
There may even have been concerns over which side the agent was really on, which might explain why airport security was ramped up, including in Europe in recent weeks.
The perils of knowing who to trust were in evidence in December 2009 when an agent the CIA thought was leading them to the highest ranks of al-Qaeda turned out to be working for al-Qaeda all along and killed a number of CIA officers in a suicide attack in Khost, Afghanistan.
That incident - and this latest one in Yemen - show both the potential successes and dangers involved in running agents and working out who to trust.
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