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Drugs with an estimated street value of £1m and nearly £100,000 in cash were seized and the operation led to 30 people being convicted.
The drugs haul included 11,000 ecstasy tablets, 14kg of cocaine, 330g of heroin, 2kg of amphetamine and 11kg of BZP (Benzylpiperazine).
Devon and Cornwall Police said the investigation, codenamed Operation Greaves, had links to Plymouth, Cornwall, Manchester and also Wales.
It began in 2009 when suspicions were raised about a gang based in Greater Manchester regularly supplying large quantities of Class A drugs to people in Devon and Cornwall.
One of the officers involved, Det Con Neil Albrechtsem, described the people involved as "large-scale gangsters".
"As it went along, it really developed into a complicated creature with lots of tentacles," he said.
In May 2009, police found 4kg of cocaine, which had been prepared for sale at a property in Plympton, Plymouth.
Five months later, another major seizure was made when £37,500 was found during the search of a car at Exeter Services.
One of the most significant seizures came in April the following year when, with the help of automatic number plate recognition and mobile phone data, police were able to track a van to Newton Abbot.
There they found 4kg of cocaine, 1kg of amphetamine and 1kg of BZP.
A police spokesperson said the real significance of that seizure was that it suggested similar sized shipments were being brought into the area at least once every two weeks.
The linchpin of the drugs operation, according to police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), was Blake Donnellan, who was from Manchester but was living in Cornwall.
CPS spokeswoman Ann Reddrop said: "Primarily Blake Donnellan was the mover and shaker that showed drugs were coming down from Manchester to the Plymouth area for onwards transmission in most cases into Cornwall."
Earlier this year, 26-year-old Donnellan, from Downs View, Bude, was jailed for 15 years at Plymouth Crown Court for his part in the drugs operation.
He was sentenced on Friday to a further six years to be served consecutively.
During the same hearing at Plymouth Crown Court, his final nine co-conspirators were also sentenced to nearly 40 years in prison.
Jon Palmer, 23, and his 67-year-old father Leslie Palmer, both of Mannamead Road, Plymouth, were sentenced to eight years and three years respectively.
Three other people from Plymouth - Dean Martin, 38, from Stonehouse; Peter Griffin, 33, from Southway and Gemma Jefferis, 25, from Mount Gould - received eight, three and three years respectively.
The city court also sentenced four people from Manchester, aged between 24 and 50, to jail terms between two and five years.
Officers from Devon and Cornwall Police said the case was "enormous by our standards".
Senior investigating officer Det Insp David Dale said the people convicted had profited financially from drugs and confiscation orders were now being sought. | It took 18-months for police to unravel a massive drug-dealing network which one officer described as "a complicated creature with lots of tentacles". | 16177335 |
Jason Barnard was speeding in his BMW 5 Series on the A46 in Lincolnshire when officers spotted him and checked his speed using a hand held device.
The 43-year-old, of Tudor Walk in Watford, admitted dangerous driving and was banned from driving for 15 months.
He was also fined £500 and ordered to pay costs adding up to £315.
Ch Insp Phil Vickers said the officers on patrol were "quite taken aback" when they realised how fast he was driving.
"It's certainly the fastest that we've seen in Lincolnshire, not one that we would want to repeat, and just highly, highly irresponsible," he said.
The fastest two drivers caught by speed cameras in England and Wales last year were both travelling at 146mph, according to figures compiled by the Institute of Advanced Motorists.
In 2013, a driver was caught on a speed camera travelling at 149mph.
Barnard pleaded guilty at Lincoln Magistrates Court.
He was caught speeding in the Swinderby area, where the A46 has a 70mph speed limit, at 21:57 BST on the evening of 28 April.
Ch Insp Vickers said even police officers who are trained to drive at high speed would not have driven at 157mph on this road.
"The A46 on that stretch has side turnings and obviously it's got the roundabout and slow moving traffic as well, and the stopping distances involved at that sort of speed are quite huge," he said.
"To drive at this speed is unbelievably dangerous and irresponsible." | A man has been banned from driving after being caught travelling at 157mph on a dual carriageway. | 33994785 |
The decision by the military-backed, civilian-led government - the latest in a series of reforms since last year - reduces the list by about a third.
No other details of who had been taken off the list were provided.
The move came a day after the president announced a major cabinet reshuffle.
The reshuffle is the largest since President Thein Sein's government took office in March 2011, after the military junta ceded power.
"These relaxations are in line with the country's transformation," presidential spokesman, Nay Zin Latt, was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.
He added that more names would be eventually removed, and "only those who were put on the blacklist due to criminal and other economic misdemeanors will remain on the blacklist".
State media said the removal of names from the list gave a green light to Burmese citizens abroad to return home.
"In the past, companies and persons from all fields including media men were blacklisted and banned by the government in the national interest," reports the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
"But the government is lifting the ban on them in accord with the reforming system."
The blacklist - which the newspaper said included a total of 6,165 names - has also been known to include government critics, foreign journalists and public sector workers who went abroad during military rule.
Actress Michelle Yeoh, who played Burma pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the film The Lady, was among those previously blacklisted.
Author Benedict Rogers, who wrote the biography of former military leader Than Shwe, was also included several times.
During nearly five decades of military rule thousands of people - foreigners and Burmese - were blacklisted by the authorities. Some were expelled, others living overseas, especially political activists, assumed they could not return, or that they would be arrested if they did.
Since the new government's reforms, some Burmese living overseas have tested the restrictions and been allowed to return. Observers say a measure of the extent of the reforms will be whether prominent exiled activists are allowed back into the country. | Burma has announced the removal of 2,082 names from its blacklist, which bars people deemed a threat to national security from entering or leaving the country. | 19399612 |
Malahide will host Sri Lanka on 16 and 18 June, and Pakistan on 18 and 20 August.
Ireland have lost both their completed ODIs against Sri Lanka, while their only win in six attempts against Pakistan came in the 2007 World Cup.
Ireland also face South Africa on 25 September and Australia on 27 September, with both games in Benoni. | Ireland will play one-day series against Sri Lanka and Pakistan in Dublin in 2016. | 35063370 |
They will have to declare publicly how much tax they pay in each EU country as well as any activities carried out in specific tax havens.
The rules on "country-by-country reporting" would affect multinational firms with more than €750m in sales.
The plans come amid heightened scrutiny of the use of tax havens following the Panama Papers revelations.
And it follows increasing pressure on multinationals such as Starbucks and Google to pay more tax in the countries where they operate.
More than 6,000 of the world's biggest companies will be covered by the proposals, representing approximately 90% of the turnover of all multinationals, a third of them with their headquarters in the EU.
It is estimated that EU states lose at least €50-70bn (£40-56bn; $57-80bn) each year to corporate tax avoidance.
Under the proposals multinationals would have to disclose for each country within the EU:
Multinationals will also have to report how much tax they paid in tax havens, or what the EU calls "jurisdictions that do not abide by tax good governance standards".
What is being done to tackle tax-dodging?
The Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said: "We welcome the proposals coming out from the European Commission today, which will further enhance our ability to make sure that companies are paying taxes owed."
The rules will not apply to companies' other activities outside the EU.
But the European Network on Debt and Development, an association of trade unions and non-governmental organisations, says companies should be forced to adopt country-by-country reporting for inside and outside the EU.
In a letter to the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the association said multinationals should also publish more information: "The proposal... would effectively allow multinationals to continue shifting their profits out of the EU while still keeping citizens in the dark.
"It would also make the measure useless for developing countries as they would not be able to get any country-specific information."
An EU source said that getting the rules applied outside the EU would be politically impossible. She said: "We'd never get [that] passed. We need it to have political backing."
Lord Hill, the EU's financial services commissioner, said: "The main risks of having disaggregated information outside the EU is that businesses in other jurisdictions could get important business data on European businesses that they could use to their competitive advantage, and third-country tax jurisdictions might see information that could lead them to double-tax firms.
"Our economies and societies depend on a tax system that's fair, a principle that applies both to individuals and to business.
"Yet today, by using complicated tax arrangements, some multinationals can pay nearly a third less tax than companies that only operate in one country.
"The Panama Papers have not changed our agenda, but I think that they have strengthened our determination to make sure that taxes are paid where profits are generated."
German and French press pundits have cast doubt on the potential impact of the EU proposals.
Les Echos business daily Brussels correspondent Renaud Honore says the Panama Papers row prompted Brussels to "revise its ambitions upwards", but reports that some in the Commission worry about a "certain coolness" from France.
Edouard Pflimin in centre-left Le Monde agrees that the Panama Papers have "piled the pressure" on Europe to "combat the scourge of multinationals' fiscal opacity".
In Germany, the EU proposals attract less attention than Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's own 10-point plan for tackling tax havens.
Munich's liberal Sueddeutsche Zeitung thinks his measures - like those of the European Union - are "well-intentioned, but capable of solving only part of the problem".
It sees a "conflict of interest" arising over the amount of "dirty money" that enters the German economy each year, and notes that the stringent Mr Schaeuble's proposals would lead to Britain being classed as a tax haven.
Dorothea Siems, the economics correspondent of the conservative Die Welt, thinks the proposals are an over-reaction, given that few German names have cropped up in the Panama Papers.
"Privacy must be respected in dealing with wealth issues. It is up to the state to prove that a crime has been committed, not for citizens to prove their innocence," she concludes. | The European Union has unveiled plans to force large companies to disclose more about their tax affairs. | 36025133 |
The visitors went in front early on when defender Hayden White stabbed Zeli Ismail's angled drive into his own net.
Chris Forrester levelled after a neat one-two in the box and two goals soon after half-time put Posh on top.
Marcus Maddison slotted home for his sixth of the season and Bury defender Antony Kay put through his own net as he tried to cut out Tom Nichols' cross.
Peterborough's victory lifted them from 13th to eighth, just one point outside the top six, while Bury's defeat was their third in a week.
The home side were all at sea at the back initially and could have conceded a second after White's own goal, although Bury soon lost striker Tom Pope with a rib injury.
But their midfield diamond gradually took control and Shaquile Coulthirst hit the post with a low near-post header before Forrester combined well with Nichols and netted the equaliser.
Maddison ran onto Gwion Edwards' pass to put them in front with an easy side-footed finish and Bury's defence were caught napping again as Nichols retrieved a free-kick and played the ball low into the middle where it came off the sliding Kay's thigh and went in via the crossbar.
Match ends, Peterborough United 3, Bury 1.
Second Half ends, Peterborough United 3, Bury 1.
Hayden White (Peterborough United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Hayden White (Peterborough United).
Danny Mayor (Bury) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Andrew Hughes (Peterborough United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Zeli Ismail (Bury).
Attempt saved. Zeli Ismail (Bury) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the top centre of the goal.
Leonardo Da Silva Lopes (Peterborough United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Leonardo Da Silva Lopes (Peterborough United).
Danny Mayor (Bury) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Substitution, Peterborough United. Paul Taylor replaces Tom Nichols.
Shaquile Coulthirst (Peterborough United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Shaquile Coulthirst (Peterborough United).
Zeli Ismail (Bury) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Corner, Peterborough United. Conceded by Kean Bryan.
Attempt missed. Shaquile Coulthirst (Peterborough United) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right.
Substitution, Peterborough United. Callum Chettle replaces Chris Forrester.
Ryan Tafazolli (Peterborough United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by James Vaughan (Bury).
Attempt missed. Ryan Tafazolli (Peterborough United) header from the centre of the box misses to the right.
Foul by Andrew Hughes (Peterborough United).
Kean Bryan (Bury) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Substitution, Peterborough United. George Moncur replaces Marcus Maddison.
Foul by Tom Nichols (Peterborough United).
Antony Kay (Bury) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Attempt missed. Chris Forrester (Peterborough United) right footed shot from outside the box is too high.
Attempt missed. James Vaughan (Bury) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right.
Corner, Bury. Conceded by Chris Forrester.
Niall Maher (Bury) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Gwion Edwards (Peterborough United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Niall Maher (Bury).
Delay over. They are ready to continue.
Delay in match Marcus Maddison (Peterborough United) because of an injury.
Marcus Maddison (Peterborough United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Danny Mayor (Bury).
Hayden White (Peterborough United) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Hallam Hope (Bury).
Danny Mayor (Bury) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Substitution, Bury. Tom Walker replaces Neil Danns. | Peterborough United ended a run of six league games without a win as they came from behind to beat third-placed Bury. | 37526811 |
The first minister said Scotland was now "leading the UK" with its progressive policies.
But she admitted that the SNP had not got everything right over the past decade.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said the anniversary marked a "missed opportunity".
And she said the Scottish government could have achieved much more "if they hadn't spent so much time trying to rip Scotland out of the UK".
Ms Sturgeon was marking the 10th anniversary of her predecessor Alex Salmond becoming first minister on 16 May 2007.
Speaking to SNP activists in South Queensferry, she said the country had "come a long way" since then.
She added: "The SNP has only reached the milestone of 10 years in government because we have worked hard - each and every day - to repay the trust of the people of Scotland and deliver on their priorities.
"I know we are not perfect. We haven't got everything right and there is much more work still to do - work to grow our economy, get more people into employment and drive up standards in our schools even further.
"But we can be proud in Scotland that when it comes to progressive policies, we are leading the UK."
Ms Sturgeon was speaking shortly after Labour launched its manifesto for next month's general election, which she said "directly lifts policies that the SNP is already delivering" including free university tuition, ending hospital parking charges, and the abolition of the so-called Bedroom Tax.
Meanwhile, she said the Tories "who for years have mounted ideological attacks on policies as diverse as free prescriptions and council house building have now - albeit belatedly and with little credibility - decided that they are both a good thing".
The SNP leader said: "They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But in this case the imitation shown by both Labour and the Tories is anything but sincere.
"The fact is that they have had the chance to back the SNP's progressive policies - but instead they opposed them tooth and nail."
However, opposition parties insisted the SNP's record in government had proven to be a "disappointment".
Ms Davidson, who was campaigning in Dumfries ahead of the 8 June general election, said the country's school were "going backwards" and its economy was "one quarter away from recession, whilst the rest of the UK is growing."
The Tory leader added: "I think people, if they stop and think about a Scottish government that's got more powers than any previous Scottish government, that's got a bigger budget than any previous Scottish government, what they could have done in 10 years if they hadn't spent so much time trying to rip Scotland out of the UK and continuing to do so.
"There will be people in Scotland thinking it is a real missed opportunity."
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said people were "getting tired of the SNP and all their promises".
He argued: "They haven't been anywhere near as good as many of their supporters had hoped back in 2007. They have let education drift down the international rankings. Literacy has tumbled. They have turned their back on transformative investment.
"In the NHS, young people still have to wait up to 600 days to get the mental health treatment they need. The Scottish economy is on the edge of recession.
"All this is because SNP ministers have been distracted by their obsession with independence."
Meanwhile, Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has described her party's UK manifesto as "a radical vision for the country".
Ms Dugdale said that while the SNP "has done nothing to stop austerity", Labour's proposals would redistribute wealth across the UK.
She added: "A Labour vision for our country is one where the rich and the powerful pay their fair share.
"Labour's manifesto gives voters a real choice: a fairer Scotland for the many, not the few; or a Scotland caught between the two extremes of Tory and SNP nationalism." | Nicola Sturgeon has hailed the SNP's "decade of delivery" as she marked the 10th anniversary of her party coming to power. | 39938402 |
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The 34-year-old, capped 116 times for his country, was out of contract after four years at the French champions.
He will link up again with his former Inter Milan boss Jose Mourinho at Old Trafford.
"Time to let the world know. My next destination is Manchester United," he wrote on social media.
United, who finished fifth in the Premier League last season and failed to qualify for the Champions League, have yet to confirm the move.
Ibrahimovic is yet to complete a medical and sign a contract with the Old Trafford club.
Ibrahimovic made his debut for hometown club Malmo in 1999 and went on to play for Ajax, Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona and AC Milan before joining PSG.
He has scored 392 goals in 677 games and last season was his most prolific, with 50 goals in 51 matches - a record for the French club. His tally of 38 league goals was also a club record.
The player - who retired from international football after Sweden's exit from Euro 2016 earlier this month - has won a trophy every season of his career since 2001, including 13 league titles.
In his four seasons at PSG, Ibrahimovic won 12 trophies, including the domestic quadruple twice.
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Ibrahimovic had earlier said he had "many options" for next season, including a return to Italy - but the lure of working with Mourinho has proved too strong.
He played under the 53-year-old Portuguese at Inter in 2008-09, helping them win the Serie A title, before joining Barcelona.
In his book I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he described Mourinho as a manager he was "willing to die for".
Speaking recently on Mourinho's appointment at United, he said: "He is the man to bring them back to the top. I had a fantastic time working with him. If we will work again I don't know."
However, Ibrahimovic is not so complimentary of the new Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola, whom he played under for two seasons at Barcelona.
He referred to the Spaniard as a "spineless coward" in his autobiography, and Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu revealed Ibrahimovic said he "might punch Pep" during his time at the Nou Camp.
Football finance expert Rob Wilson, of Sheffield Hallam University, says Ibrahimovic would be United's most marketable player since Cristiano Ronaldo, with shirt sales alone topping £50m - enough to cover the cost of failing to qualify for this season's Champions League.
"Zlatan has a global profile and global appeal," Wilson said. "Fans will buy shirts with Ibrahimovic on the back in Africa, South East Asia - markets United had a foothold in but not the leverage.
"Only a few select few players can do that: Gareth Bale, Neymar, Lionel Messi and Ronaldo."
Ibrahimovic has an ego to match his footballing talents and is renowned for some outrageous statements, which might - or might not - be tongue in cheek.
When Arsene Wenger wanted the then teenage Ibrahimovic to have a trial for Arsenal in 2000, he instead chose to join Ajax saying: "Zlatan doesn't do auditions."
On another occasion, after Sweden missed out on the World Cup finals in Brazil in 2014, he said: "One thing is for sure, a World Cup without me is nothing to watch."
BBC Sport's Simon Stone
The imminent arrival of Ibrahimovic looks to be perfect for Manchester United.
Their history is littered with temperamental big-name players: George Best, Eric Cantona and Cristiano Ronaldo to name but three.
The big question is whether, at 34, the striker can adapt to the physical demands of the Premier League.
Delve into the past of this contradictory forward and it seems he is at his best when questions are at their fiercest.
But, as every stockbroker will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of what will happen in the future. | Former Sweden striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic has confirmed he will sign for Manchester United after leaving Paris St-Germain. | 36528778 |
Most Palestinian commentators welcome the deal, though some urge caution in the light of the failure of previous attempts at reconciliation.
Writing in the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority's newspaper, Al-Hayat al-Jadidah, Yahya Khalaf says that the deal invalidates an argument regularly used by Israel, which can "no longer talk of the absence of a partner representing the entire Palestinian people".
In the rival Palestinian camp, an adviser to the Hamas-led government in Gaza points out that the agreement still has to be tested on the ground. Writing on the Hamas website Filastin Online, Youssef Rizqa says that the deal will strengthen Palestinian dealings with Israel only if it is "a genuine partnership that will take our people out of a dark tunnel".
Two commentators in the pro-Fatah paper Al-Ayyam are also cautious. Talal Awkal says further progress will require "very strong determination on the part of the Palestinians", while Abdul Majid Suwaylim predicts that many difficulties still lie ahead, as there are "no easy solutions to complicated problems".
Some Palestinian papers also refer to the reactions of the US and Israeli governments.
The Jerusalem-based paper, Al-Quds, notes Washington's expression of "disappointment" that the deal could seriously complicate peace talks, while Al-Hayat al-Jadidah says that Israel's immediate reaction to the announcement was to bomb Gaza.
The announcement is covered prominently in the Israeli press, with several papers highlighting the Israeli government's profound unease at a deal that could signal the end of disunity in the Palestinian camp.
Alex Fishman, writing in the centrist paper Yedioth Aharonot, speaks of the Israeli leadership "exploding with anger". He goes on to say that Benjamin Netanyahu's government will find it impossible to accept Hamas as a negotiating partner, and that it will insist that the US takes a firm line to ensure that the Islamist movement is not granted international respectability.
"Now the ball is in the United States' court - if there is no blunt American reaction, this will be the start of a diplomatic landslide that will lead to the recognition of Hamas by Western countries," Mr Fishman warns.
Commentators in the liberal paper Haaretz take a rather more positive view of the Fatah-Hamas deal, pointing out that the new alignment could help to kick-start the Middle East peace talks after years of stalemate.
Zvi Barel says that the agreement "passes a sharp message to Israel and US that the division of Palestine is over" and that they must deal with Hamas.
And Barak Ravid says that Israeli should "rejoice" at any deal that has the potential to bring all the Palestinian factions on board. He argues that any Israeli government that is sincere about wanting to achieve a two-state solution should "see the reconciliation agreement as an opportunity, not a threat".
A commentator in the pro-Netanyahu paper Yisrael Harom, on the other hand, sees the deal as an act of desperation on the part of the leaders of Fatah and Hamas. Eyal Zisser says that it is hard to see how the long-standing differences between Fatah and Hamas can be reconciled, and that "one must not assume that the unity government - if it is formed at all - will survive".
An Israeli Arab commentator, Khaled Abu Toameh, is also of the opinion that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decided to go for a reconciliation deal only after all other attempts to move the peace talks forward failed.
"Realising that his moves have had almost no impact on decision-makers in Israel and the US, Abbas finally resorted to the issue of reconciliation and unity with Hamas... Abbas has only one thing in mind: how to extract concessions from Israel and the US," Mr Toameh writes in the English-language Jerusalem Post.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. For more reports from BBC Monitoring, click here. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook. | Palestinian and Israeli media have very different perspectives on the announcement that the rival Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, have agreed to form a unity government. | 27143129 |
The 22-year-old son of former Newport director of rugby Lyn Jones started his career with the Dragons, playing in 25 games for the Pro12 club.
His last appearance came as a substitute in a 27-11 defeat by Treviso on 23 September.
"We are pleased to be able to bring in someone with Luc's ability," Quins director of rugby John Kingston said.
"Following an unfortunate injury to Calum Waters, it was important to secure the necessary depth at scrum-half ahead of a period of international unavailability." | Harlequins have signed former Newport Gwent Dragons scrum-half Luc Jones on a three-month deal. | 37610639 |
About 70,000 adults in the city are classed as obese according to the council, with the local NHS spending £50m a year on weight-related illness.
"Motivational" texts include: "Use the stairs more", "Eat fruit and veg" and "Keep a check on snacks and drinks".
The 10-week project will cost £10,000 and will be available to 500 people who sign up with the council.
Cabinet member for health Adrian Knapper said: "On average it costs the same amount [£10,000] to perform just one intervention operation to help people manage their weight.
"Our programme means people who already want to lose weight and have signed up with us to get support will receive a cheap and effective nudge to help keep them motivated."
But the leader of the opposition, Conservative councillor Abi Brown, said although she appreciated the sentiment behind the idea, she thought the money could be better spent elsewhere.
"I think we could get more for £10,000," she said.
"If the money went to community groups it could be used to support people losing weight but also for other projects.
"The money could just be used more fruitfully."
Nathan Troni, 55, from the Cheadle area of the city, said he had a body mass index (BMI) of 32, and would consider signing up for the scheme.
"It would be a reminder, I suppose, just to keep on track," he said.
"I don't know whether it would feel like nagging, though.
"I've already got my wife to do that."
Hope Chang, from Chell Heath in the city, said: "To be honest, I can't see it will make a difference.
"You need to have willpower, and if you don't have it, an automated text message won't help.
"If I needed a reminder when I was losing weight, I would look in the mirror," Mrs Chang added.
But fellow of Staffordshire University's health faculty Phil O'Connell said the project was "pioneering".
"This is a really cost-effective use of funds, helping people before they reach the stage of needing massively expensive treatment for a range of obesity-related problems including diabetes, cancer, heart disease and disability," he said.
"This is what public health action should be all about."
The budget of £10,000 includes the setting up of the project as well as the cost of text messaging.
A council spokeswoman said: "This is all about getting people on board and taking action before they need medical support, which is so expensive and personally upsetting.
"This saves both money and suffering." | Obese people in Stoke-on-Trent will be sent text messages to encourage them to lose weight, the city council has said. | 26021215 |
Eight large panes of glass were dislodged in a storm last weekend, with some falling on to the inner concourse of the Grade II-listed station.
The Tithebarn Street and the city centre-facing sides have been cordoned off by Lancashire County Council and will remain closed into the New Year.
Stands on the opposite side have now been closed after surveyors found problems with the window frames.
It is hoped the stands will reopen on Tuesday. | More stands at Preston bus station have been closed following gale-force winds. | 35015050 |
The officers were convicted of killing 13 inmates in the city's Carandiru jail during an operation to end a revolt.
In all, 111 prisoners died, and prosecutors argued that most of them were shot dead at close range.
The officers' lawyers said they would appeal. Three other policemen were acquitted during the trial.
The 23 convicted officers - most of whom are now retired - had originally been accused of killing 15 inmates, but two of the victims were later thought to have been killed by fellow prisoners.
Dozens more officers are expected to be brought to trial in connection with the case in the coming months.
In 2001, Col Ubiratan Guimaraes, who led the police operation to regain control in Carandiru, was convicted of using excessive force. But he was acquitted on appeal in 2006.
'Self-defence'
The riot began on 2 October 1992 after an argument between two inmates quickly spread, with rival gangs facing off in what was at the time one of South America's largest prisons, housing 10,000 inmates.
Inmates said riot police brutally repressed the riot.
"We never thought they would come in and kill people randomly, as not everyone had joined the rebellion," former prisoner Jacy de Oliveira told BBC Brasil's Luis Kawaguti.
"The policemen began shooting everyone; I was on the fifth floor, if you looked a policeman in the eyes, you were dead," he said.
The officers' lawyer, Ieda Ribeiro de Souza, argued they were only doing their duty and acted in self-defence, as many of the inmates were armed.
While prison riots are not uncommon in Brazil, the number of those killed at Carandiru and the slow pace of the Brazilian justice system in bringing the accused to trial has shocked the public.
Carandiru was closed in 2002, shortly after inmates co-ordinated simultaneous uprisings in 27 jails across Sao Paulo state during which thousands of visitors were held hostage. | A court in Brazil has sentenced 23 police officers each to 156 years in jail for involvement in a notorious 1992 prison massacre in Sao Paulo. | 22240536 |
The Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust (RUH) may have perverted the course of justice, coroner Maria Voisin heard.
It emerged lawyers for the trust had removed crucial evidence from a witness statement.
Benjamin King, son of British actor Jamie King, died on 10 May at the RUH.
The hospital has offered its condolences to Benjamin's family.
Ms Voisin, the coroner for Avon, said "the realisation that factual evidence had been removed by a solicitor" was a "very serious matter indeed".
The inquest into the death of Benjamin is now due to resume early next year.
Benjamin was born - by emergency caesarean section - on the 5 May at the RUH.
He died five days later from severe brain damage having been starved of oxygen, it's thought shortly before his birth.
His mother Tamara Podemski, a Canadian actress, had been due to have a caesarean procedure at the hospital the previous day but it had been postponed.
An investigation into the incident, found that postponing the operation was the incorrect decision.
Speaking shortly after the inquest adjournment, Mr King said: "In his short life our son Benjamin has had a profound effect on our family.
"He's taught us the true meaning of love, he asked us to be most courageous, resilient and forgiving versions of ourselves."
He added the family was "horrified" to hear a statement had been altered and the delay to the inquest was "significantly prolonging" the family's suffering.
In a statement Helen Blanchard, director of nursing and midwifery for the RUH, offered her "sympathy and condolences" to Benjamin's family.
"We regret the delay in this extremely distressing process," she said.
"We respect the Coroner's decision to adjourn the inquest and will cooperate fully with her directions.
"We are unable to comment further while proceedings continue."
The inquest is now expected to take place on 16 January. | A coroner has unexpectedly adjourned an inquest into the death of a baby and is considering whether to call for a criminal investigation. | 38004295 |
West Midlands Trains Ltd will take over routes currently operated by London Midland from December.
The company is a joint venture between Dutch firm Abellio and Japanese partners.
The deal will see almost £1bn of investment and new, longer trains, the DfT said.
West Midlands trains: Your takeover questions answered
The franchise covers routes in the West Midlands, as well as from London Euston to Crewe, and Liverpool to Birmingham.
It also runs services between Northampton and London Euston - connecting lines between Bedford and Bletchley, between St Albans and Watford and Crewe to London - via Stoke-on-Trent, Stafford, Lichfield and Milton Keynes.
It had been run by Govia, which owns London Midland, since 2007. The Govia bid to continue running the services was unsuccessful.
London Midland's contract was extended by the government in 2013, despite criticism for record delays to its services.
The company was forced to offer a £7m package of compensation to season ticket holders affected by the disruption.
More on this and other Birmingham and Black Country news
Abellio UK managing director Dominic Booth said: "We are delighted to have been announced as preferred bidder for the West Midlands franchise, driving growth in one of the most exciting regions in the country.
"We will be investing nearly £1 billion into the network, delivering new trains, better stations and a whole host of other benefits for passengers."
Passengers can see how their lines will change on the Department for Transport website.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said it was "great news" for passengers.
"This shows we are delivering on our commitment to build a railway that works for everyone," he said.
Trains running only in the West Midlands area will be jointly managed by the DfT and West Midlands Rail (WMR), a consortium of 16 local councils.
Direct services will continue from Birmingham New Street to London Euston under the new franchise, the Dft confirmed. A direct service from Stoke-on-Trent to Euston will cease.
The overall pricing of tickets will be determined by the operator, but it will retain the right to sell cheap tickets, the Dft said.
The deal with West Midlands Trains will run until March 2026.
Passengers reacted to the news on social media:
The current workforce of 2,400 will pass to the new operator when the franchise is taken over, a spokesperson for Abellio confirmed.
The company has also pledged to invest £13m on staff training and development and will create more than 900 new apprenticeships over the course of the franchise.
West Midlands Trains Ltd said the new franchise would bring "much welcomed investment in new services and extra capacity across the network".
Managing director Patrick Verwer, said: "We have created a strong foundation for the new operators to build on.
"During the months ahead we will continue to work with West Midlands Trains Ltd, the DfT and all our stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition into the new franchise."
What questions do you have about this story? Submit them in the form below and we could be in touch. | A new rail operator has been awarded a contract to run the West Midlands rail franchise, the Department for Transport (DfT) has announced. | 40885118 |
The local authority's cabinet made the decision on Tuesday evening in a bid to make an annual saving of £286,200.
It voted to approve a report that recommended closing five of the city's 11 libraries if volunteers and other organisations do not take them over.
Cabinet member for culture Satvir Kaur said the move had been forced on the council by "savage cuts" to its budget.
But she said: "I am confident no libraries in Southampton will close, and I urge community groups to work with us to ensure that."
The proposals have faced opposition with an estimated 150 people staging a silent protest through Southampton in March.
The report recommends Bitterne Library, Central Library, Portswood Library, Woolston Library, Shirley Library and Lordshill Library remain open.
But it says Burgess Road, Cobbett Road, Millbrook, Thornhill and Weston libraries should no longer be funded and managed by the council.
Southampton's mobile library service is also under threat.
Ms Kaur said a consultation showed two thirds of Southampton residents supported the council's plans.
Earlier this year BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham said making cuts to the city's library service would be a "damaging mistake". | Five Southampton libraries are at risk of closing after councillors voted to stop running them from next year. | 33982997 |
Mr Trump helped create the show and starred on it until 2015, when his political career took over.
But he will keep an executive producer credit when the new series, which is owned by MGM and aired by NBC, begins in January with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
However, his involvement has raised questions about conflict of interest.
Mr Trump will be sworn in as US president on 20 January, 18 days after the new series begins.
Variety magazine, which first reported the story, said he would be paid at least "in the low five-figures" per episode. MGM declined to comment on the financial arrangements.
The president-elect's spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said: "Mr Trump has a big stake in the show and conceived of it with Mark Burnett."
Some observers have questioned whether the connection will affect the reporting on Mr Trump by NBC's news division.
In June 2015, NBC said it had ended its business relationship with Mr Trump because of "derogatory statements" he made about immigrants during his presidential campaign.
After news of Mr Trump's continued link with the show emerged, the liberal Media Matters blog wrote: "NBC will invite scepticism into how NBC and MSNBC can fairly cover the sitting president when there is a financial incentive to protect his reputation and the ratings of the Celebrity Apprentice.
"Furthermore, Trump and NBC should address the conflict of interest concerns raised by the fact advertisers may help to personally enrich President-elect Donald Trump by purchasing ads during Celebrity Apprentice."
However, the new series was recorded in February, before NBC severed its ties with Mr Trump and before his election.
Mr Trump's supporters have defended the president-elect, comparing his Apprentice credit to royalties received by Barack Obama from his books.
An unofficial Twitter account for Republicans in Tennessee wrote: "Media freak out about Trump remaining an EP for Celebrity Apprentice. But hasn't Obama collected millions in book royalties as president?"
Mr Trump is due to hold a press conference next week outlining how he plans to leave his business "in total in order to fully focus on running the country."
The new series of Celebrity Apprentice features stars including singer Boy George, Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil and Jersey Shore personality Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi. | Donald Trump is to remain as an executive producer on the new series of reality TV show Celebrity Apprentice after becoming US president. | 38261374 |
Previously called the Whitbread award, the prize is worth £30,000 and aims to honour outstanding books by authors based in the UK and Ireland.
The winner will be one of those that won the prize's individual awards - for novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book - on 5 January.
Nick Higham spoke to four of the winning authors for the BBC News channel's Meet the Authors strand.
The fifth, Ali Smith, declined to be interviewed, though she did speak to the Costa awards' organisers.
Edwards, a teacher from South Wales, won the Costa poetry prize for My Family and Other Superheroes, which features comedic verse about Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren and a recalcitrant hippo.
The poet revealed to Higham that some of his work had been inspired by episodes of animated sitcom The Simpsons, but admitted he had never taught his students about his poems.
Former bookbinder Healey won the debut novel prize for Elizabeth Is Missing, about a woman in her 80s who tries to solve the mystery of her sister's disappearance while struggling with memory loss.
The author, who is also a budding animator, told Higham she had been thinking about dementia "for a while" and revealed she deliberately wrote her novel out of sequence.
Poet and historian Macdonald won the biography prize for H is for Hawk, a memoir about how becoming a falconer helped her come to terms with her father's death.
Macdonald, whose book also won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, told Higham she had had an "astonishing" year and said she had often been "brought to tears" by her readers' own stories of grief and bereavement.
Journalist and broadcaster Saunders won the Costa children's prize for Five Children and the Western Front, a reworking of E Nesbit's 1902 children's classic Five Children and It.
"When you add the First World War it becomes a different story," she told Higham, insisting she had not tried to "consciously ape" Nesbit's writing style.
Scottish author Smith, a previous recipient of the Whitbread novel of the year prize, was made a CBE in the New Year's Honours shortly before receiving the Costa novel award for How To Be Both.
The book tells of a grieving 15-year-old girl in the present day and Francesco del Cossa, a long-forgotten 15th Century Renaissance artist. | One of five books will be named Costa Book of the Year on 27 January. | 30956745 |
Patients are suing Dr Arackal Manu Nair, who it is alleged gave prostate cancer treatment to patients who did not have the disease.
Heartlands NHS Hospital in Birmingham and the Spire Parkway private hospital in Solihull, where Dr Nair practised, have recalled the affected patients.
The General Medical Council said it was investigating.
About 170 men who had their prostate removed have been contacted, the Heart of England NHS Trust said.
More on this and other Birmingham stories
Dr Nair is also alleged to have given some patients laser treatment - a high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) - which was yet to be approved by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice).
The GMC put restrictions on the consultant urologist's work while the allegations are investigated. These restrictions include not working in private practice and all work being supervised.
Medical negligence lawyer, Adam Wright, said his firm has been contacted by 57 of Dr Nair's former patients.
Spire Parkway Hospital said Dr Nair had not worked there since 2014 and Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, which manages Heartlands NHS Hospital, said he had been "excluded from the trust since April 2014".
He worked at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust between February and July as a locum surgeon. The trust said he declared the GMC's restrictions imposed on him and he "gave [them] no cause for concern". | Legal action is being taken against a surgeon who is accused of carrying out unnecessary operations. | 37046646 |
While the second Test against New Zealand looms large, first the midweek side are tasked with lifting squad morale when they face the Hurricanes.
For some, this will be the last time they wear the Lions jersey; for others, it is a chance to play their way into Test contention.
As Elliot Daly and Liam Williams will testify, it is never too late.
Surplus to requirements twice last week, George North and Jonathan Joseph have a chance to revive their tours with a big performance in the Kiwi capital. Both would have had high hopes of being Test starters before boarding the plane.
Courtney Lawes - arguably the form lock in the northern hemisphere in 2017 - again starts as he looks to sneak into the Test squad, while the versatile Jack Nowell is at full back.
Having played 80 minutes at Eden Park, George Kruis is on the bench, while Rory Best captains as the midweek side look to build on their impressive victory over the Chiefs.
But the Hurricanes - Super Rugby champions - will be considerably stronger than the opposition in Hamilton, with a handful of All Blacks released, such as the prolific Julian Savea.
While many of the Lions midweek team may feel their chances of making a significant impact on the tour are almost over, head coach Warren Gatland has shown he is prepared to pick on form.
Joe Marler, Dan Cole, James Haskell, Dan Biggar and Jack Nowell all excelled in the win over their Chiefs, and will be looking for more of the same on Tuesday.
A good performance and a victory would show a united front in the Lions squad, despite the deflating defeat in Auckland.
But sources at the Hurricanes have spoken privately of a determination not to fold in the way the Chiefs did last week, and have picked their strongest possible side.
Victory for the Lions' midweek team at this stage of the tour would be a significant achievement.
Lions head coach Warren Gatland: "A few players put their hands up for selection from the Chiefs game and played their way into the Test team, so they know that there is another opportunity for them on Tuesday against the Super Rugby champions."
Hurricanes coach Chris Boyd: "It's a fantastic event for our club, but also for the city of Wellington and the region."
Hurricanes wing Cory Jane: "To get on the field would be pretty cool. I'm showing my age - I'm 26 now."
4: Number of players released from the All Blacks squad back to the Hurricanes for the match: Vaea Fifita, Julian Savea, Ngani Laumape and Jordie Barrett.
232: Number of international caps in the Lions front row of Joe Marler, Rory Best and Dan Cole.
"$30m roaring into town" - The Dominion Post on the financial boost the army of Lions supporters will provide to Wellington.
"Laumape 'pumped' for chance to flex his muscles" - The Hurricanes centre has a point to prove.
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British and Irish Lions: J Nowell (England); T Seymour (Scotland); J Joseph (England), R Henshaw (Ireland); G North (Wales); D Biggar (Wales); G Laidlaw (Scotland); J Marler (England), R Best (Ireland, captain), D Cole (England), I Henderson (Ireland), C Lawes (England), J Haskell (England), J Tipuric (Wales), CJ Stander (Ireland). Replacements: K Dacey (Wales), A Dell (Scotland), T Francis (Wales), C Hill (Wales), G Kruis (England), G Davies (Wales), F Russell (Scotland), J Payne (Ireland).
Hurricanes: J Barrett, N Milner-Skudder, V Aso, N Laumape, J Savea, O Black, T Toiroa-Tahuriorangi, B May, R Ricitelli, J To'omaga-Allen, M Abbott, S Lousi, V Fifita, C Gibbins, B Shields (captain). Replacements: L Apisai, C Eves, M Kainga, J Blackwell, R Prinsep, K Hauiti-Parapara, W Goosen, C Jane. | The British and Irish Lions were beaten in Auckland; now the challenge is not to be broken in Wellington. | 40403261 |
The general secretary of Unite said Mr Corbyn was being "slaughtered" by the media for putting forward policies to build a "different... better Britain".
He said Mr Corbyn himself would want to look at the party's direction if there was no change within 15 months.
Mr Corbyn says Labour is ready for a general election if one is called.
He has twice been elected party leader on a landslide of votes from party members but has faced opposition from many of his own MPs and a mass walkout from his front bench last year.
The party has recently suffered defeat in the Copeland by-election - a seat it had held for more than 80 years - and poor poll ratings has led the Fabian Society think tank to warn the party is on course to win fewer than 200 seats for the first time since 1935 at the next general election.
The latest Guardian/ICM polling figures suggest the Conservatives have a 19-point lead over Labour.
Mr McCluskey, whose union is Labour's biggest financial backer, told BBC Radio 5 live's Pienaar's Politics that Mr Corbyn was a "decent man" who had upset the establishment by putting forward "alternative" policies for a "fairer" Britain and had been "slaughtered unmercifully" by the media since becoming leader.
Pressed on whether Mr Corbyn could take Labour to victory in the next general election, he said: "The reality is that I'm hoping that he's given an opportunity to put the alternative that Labour are building to the British electorate and hopefully we'll see if he can break through and the opinion polls begin to change.
"I would suggest that the next 15 months or so will give us the answer to that. "
"I think it will give us an answer. In the meantime Unite as we always do - because we're the biggest affiliate - will support the Labour Party."
He added: "Please give him a chance... I believe that there is a chance that [things can turn around]."
He said Mr Corbyn "doesn't have an ego, he's not on a power trip". The Labour leader "himself would be involved in debates and discussions about where the party's going" if, after 15 months, there was no change.
But asked what he would do if Mr Corbyn had not made a significant impact within 15 months, he added: "You have been at me for months and months to come up with timescales - I'm not going to do that."
The Labour leader appeared on ITV's Peston on Sunday and said the party would not block a government bid to repeal the Fixed-term Parliament Act - allowing a general election to take place before 2020.
He said: "We are developing our policies but clearly if an election is called we can bring all that forward and we are ready, yes... We would not block it, of course not, because if that's what is on offer, I don't know if that's in [Prime Minister Theresa May's] mind or not."
Mr McCluskey has been involved in a row this week with his former flatmate - and Labour's deputy leader - Tom Watson, who has said Unite has plans to pump cash into left-wing campaign group Momentum, which Mr Watson says would threaten Labour's existence "as an electoral force".
Mr McCluskey told Pienaar's Politics there had been a "shameful campaign of lies, innuendo and smears", warning: "It strains the relationship between unions and the Labour Party."
He is up for re-election at the end of next month and those close to Mr Watson are believed to see it as an opportunity to weaken both him and the current party leader. His main opponent is the West Midlands organiser Gerard Coyne, who is politically to his right. | Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn should be "given a chance" and allowed 15 months to prove he can turn around opinion polls, says union boss Len McCluskey. | 39398544 |
Taylor, 18, captained England at the recent Under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh, where the team finished fifth overall.
The off-spinner, who made his Hampshire debut in August 2013 aged 16, is looking to make a big impact in 2016.
"I'd definitely like to be pushing my way into that team with a few solid performances," said Taylor.
Taylor failed to make a first-class appearance last season and faces competition for a slow bowling place with all-rounder Liam Dawson and leg-spinner Mason Crane.
"With potentially Liam Dawson being away on England duty early season, it might bring up an opportunity, " Taylor told BBC Radio Solent.
"I'm batting well at the minute, if I can put some performances in with the ball too, who knows?"
Taylor took just two wickets in six games in the Under-19 World Cup, but admitted leading his country was "an amazing opportunity".
"It was a bit disappointing to go out in the quarter-finals with the ability and potential we had," he added.
"Going to a country you've never played before, I definitely think it makes you a better player in terms of dealing with pressure.
"I definitely enjoyed the captaincy. It was a brilliant learning curve for me and I took a lot out of it, especially seeing what other captains did, in an environment you're not used to." | Hampshire slow bowler Brad Taylor is targeting more appearances in first-class cricket this summer. | 35602887 |
Campbell was killed instantly on Coniston Water when the craft flipped over while travelling at more than 300 MPH during a 1967 record attempt.
Divers recovered the wreckage in 2001 and it is now being restored.
About a third of the boat is being moved to the Ruskin Museum in Coniston, where it will be shown in a wing dedicated to Campbell.
It includes two massive spars, originally clad in lightweight aluminium fairings to give Bluebird her sleek shape, which have been fully restored.
There are also replicas of the boat's four-metre long outer hulls, or sponsons, from the original drawings.
The originals were ripped away in the accident, and recovered floating but subsequently scrapped.
A team of volunteers at a workshop in North Shields will now fit the centre hull with its engines and systems.
Vicky Slowe, curator of the Ruskin Museum, said: "There's about one and a half tonnes of Bluebird going on show.
"We have a life-sized footprint of the Bluebird on the floor of the Bluebird wing, where the complete boat will go in due course, and the idea is to display these pieces on top of that so people can see how they fit together."
The parts will be fully reassembled at the Ruskin Museum and Bluebird will then be taken for a run on Coniston Water, before going on permanent display at the museum. | A large part of Donald Campbell's Bluebird is set to go on display at a museum in the Lake District. | 33288493 |
In the UK, common scoters breed at only a few locations in the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland and lochs in the hills and glens near Inverness.
A key cause is now thought to be rising numbers of trout which eat the ducks' main food source, freshwater insects.
RSPB Scotland and others have raised concerns the bird could become extinct locally because of poor breeding.
The charity suspects declining angling on the lochs has helped boost brown trout populations.
Dr Mark Hancock, from the RSPB's Centre for Conservation Science said: "Of all the lochs we investigated during this work, scoters bred most often at those with the shallowest water and the most large, freshwater invertebrates.
"It soon became clear that there were more insects where there were fewer brown trout, so it looks like scoters are being limited by a lack of food in places where the fish are eating it all."
"We're now using these results to design new ways of helping scoters.
"For example, in areas of the north Highlands where angling activity has dropped off and fish numbers have increased, more trout angling is potentially one way to boost freshwater insect life."
The common scoter project was supported by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) and The Conservation Volunteers (TCV).
Dr Andy Douse of SNH and co-author of the study, said: "Scotland is the only part of the UK to have breeding scoters, many of which nest in legally-protected nature conservation sites.
"This study highlights promising management options for restoring populations of this declining species."
Another of the co-authors, Hannah Robson, of WWT, added: "Scoters are amazing birds: an arctic species finding a haven in remote Scottish lochs.
"This research points to the ways in which we might be able to save them as a fascinating part of our Scottish wildlife heritage." | Conservationists believe they have identified the cause of a decline in numbers of a rare duck. | 35756352 |
Twelve-year-old Ria Shaheena was pushed over and her dog, Mika, taken in Reddings Lane Park, Tyseley in Birmingham, on Thursday afternoon.
Following appeals for information a woman in Selly Oak who suspected she had bought the three-month-old Akita dog contacted police.
Mika was taken back to her home on Tuesday morning, none the worse for wear.
Police said the woman had bought the dog, valued at £1,000, in good faith and urged the teenagers who had stolen the dog to contact them soon.
A vet checked Mika over and her microchip confirmed it was the stolen dog.
A tearful Ria was overjoyed to see the dog again.
"I am just so happy to see her," she said.
"I didn't think she'd come back." | A girl has been reunited with the puppy that was stolen from her in a park. | 33974756 |
The incident happened on the A5 Victoria Road between Derry and Strabane on Thursday night.
Police received a report of the collision at about 23:50 (BST).
The Victoria Road was closed but has since re-opened. | Police say the woman who died after the car she was travelling in crashed in County Londonderry, was 23 year old Caoimhe O'Brien from County Tyrone. | 37653067 |
Neil Hamilton said that with Brexit achieved, UKIP's aim now was to inform the Welsh electorate of its domestic policies.
And he denied the party had outlived its purpose, following the vote to leave the European Union.
His comments come despite UKIPs loss in Stoke-on-Trent Central's by-election on Friday.
The party had hoped to capitalise on voters' leanings towards Brexit - the area voted strongly to leave the EU in June - but Labour held its seat.
UKIP was founded in 1991 with the sole aim of getting the UK out of the EU.
But Mr Hamilton defended the role of his party post-Brexit while speaking to Sunday Politics Wales.
"In the last 20 years, UKIP has become an essential, particularly in Wales, part of the domestic political scene and we now have to refocus our attention upon other issues," he said.
"We have serious work now in order to show people we do have other policies which can benefit them in their daily lives."
With six assembly members, UKIP are hoping to establish a further foot-hold in Wales in the up-coming local elections.
"Carywn Jones doesn't hold a majority in the assembly, he can only do so with the combination of other parties," Mr Hamilton said.
"We are an important voice in Wales, we got the best part of 15% of the vote in the assembly election last year and all the current opinion polls show that we would actually do better in Wales today than we did last May." | UKIP has become an "essential voice" in Welsh politics, the party's leader in the assembly has insisted. | 39097350 |
The Briton, who had a first-round bye, was sluggish throughout the match against the Canadian world number 129.
Murray, 29, was broken four times as he struggled with Pospisil's serve-and-volley style.
It was the first victory for Pospisil, 26, in five meetings with Murray.
Although he is a qualifier here, Pospisil has been ranked as high as 25th in the world and beat both Kyle Edmund and Dan Evans in Britain's Davis Cup victory over Canada in February.
After Murray took a 4-2 lead early on, the Canadian hit back to win six successive games, claiming the first set before finally winning the second 7-5 in a tie-break, hitting a cross-court winner on his fourth match point.
"It was obviously a disappointing one as I had opportunities in the first set but I didn't serve well enough," Murray told BBC Sport.
"I served a few double faults, especially in the first set at important moments, which didn't help things.
"He definitely started to play better in the second set, he was being aggressive and coming to the net and played some great reflex volleys at important moments and deserved to win."
Murray claimed his maiden Dubai Championships title last week, but defeat here continues a poor run for the Scot at Indian Wells, having lost in the third round last year. His best result at the tournament was when he was runner-up to Rafael Nadal in 2009.
However, he remains in this year's doubles alongside fellow Briton Evans as they face Dutchman Jean-Julien Rojer and Romanian Horia Tecau in round two.
Pospisil plays Dusan Lajovic in the third round of the singles after the Serbian qualifier upset 30th seed Feliciano Lopez of Spain 6-2 4-6 7-6.
Elsewhere, French seventh seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was beaten by Italy's Fabio Fognini but there were wins for third seed Stan Wawrinka, 10th seed Gael Monfils and 11th seed David Goffin.
BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller in Indian Wells
World number one or not, Murray has often struggled in the desert. His serve let him down - he hit seven double faults and was broken four times in a row - and was ultimately second best to a man who is having a great year against the Brits.
Pospisil may be a qualifier ranked 129 in the world but his serve-and-volley game is mightily effective, as Dan Evans and Kyle Edmund learned to their cost in last month's Davis Cup tie with Canada.
Unusually for Murray, he is now out of the singles but still in the doubles so he will stay in Indian Wells to partner Evans and to spend "lots of time" on the practice courts. | World number one Andy Murray made a shock second-round exit at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, losing 6-4 7-6 (7-5) to qualifier Vasek Pospisil. | 39247329 |
Goals from Shaun Harrad and a brace from Gerry McDonagh proved enough for the home side.
Darren Carter had pulled one back for the visitors on 68 minutes, but despite pressure Rovers could not find another.
Early on Carter had seen his penalty saved by impressive Wrexham goalkeeper Luke Coddington.
Wrexham manager Dean Keates told BBC Radio Wales: "It's been long overdue. They were outstanding first-half, magnificent. In the second-half we were put under a lot of pressure, but they were brave.
"They did everything we asked of them and I am very proud of the lads."
Match ends, Wrexham 3, Forest Green Rovers 1.
Second Half ends, Wrexham 3, Forest Green Rovers 1.
Goal! Wrexham 3, Forest Green Rovers 1. Gerry McDonagh (Wrexham).
Rob Evans (Wrexham) is shown the yellow card.
Substitution, Wrexham. Leo Smith replaces Paul Rutherford.
Drissa Traoré (Forest Green Rovers) is shown the yellow card.
Gerry McDonagh (Wrexham) is shown the yellow card.
Substitution, Forest Green Rovers. Fabien Robert replaces Christian Doidge.
Goal! Wrexham 2, Forest Green Rovers 1. Darren Carter (Forest Green Rovers).
Substitution, Wrexham. Callum Powell replaces Shaun Harrad.
Substitution, Forest Green Rovers. Emmanuel Monthe replaces Daniel Wishart.
Second Half begins Wrexham 2, Forest Green Rovers 0.
First Half ends, Wrexham 2, Forest Green Rovers 0.
Goal! Wrexham 2, Forest Green Rovers 0. Gerry McDonagh (Wrexham).
Goal! Wrexham 1, Forest Green Rovers 0. Shaun Harrad (Wrexham).
Penalty missed! Bad penalty by (Forest Green Rovers). should be disappointed.
First Half begins.
Lineups are announced and players are warming up. | National League leaders Forest Green Rovers lost out as Wrexham boss Dean Keates earned his first win since taking charge last month. | 38036495 |
The 22-year-old grew up in north west London, starting his career at QPR.
A fire that engulfed the block of flats killed at least 17 people, a figure expected to increase.
Sterling told the BBC: "This is a deep and sad situation, one that's close to my heart and hard to swallow. I would like to help in the best way I can."
He added: "It is only a small step, but small steps lead to big changes if we all come together.
"My condolences to the affected families, also the individuals who lost their homes."
Queens Park Rangers' Loftus Road Stadium is a mile away from Grenfell Tower. | Manchester City and England winger Raheem Sterling is to make a substantial donation to those affected by the Grenfell Tower fire. | 40297310 |
This is China was posted onto micro-blogging site Weibo on Tuesday by China's Communist Youth League and has been shared more than 40,000 times.
It features a mix of traditional Chinese elements against modern rap.
It says China has "terrible problems" but is peace-loving, affluent and at the forefront of scientific research.
The song opens by saying that it wants to "restore the impression you have on my country, China", saying a false image had been fabricated by the international media.
It then explains that China is a "developing country and is really hard to manage", and acknowledges the many incidences the country has gone through, such as the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, where dairy products were found tainted with melamine.
However, its chorus concludes that its people still "love the country".
The power of Chinese people in China are gradually proving
That we can make a better world as we love peace and harmony.
Meanwhile we can trust the public security
Cuz the policemen are kind to citizens but crucial to our enemies.
....
This is China
We love the country we the Chi-phenomena
The red dragon ain't no evil
But a peaceful place
The beautiful land with rich culture remain
"This is a song for Westerners to understand China," Wang Zixin of CD Rev, a rap group from Chengdu who collaborated with the Youth League to produce the video, told news outlet Sixth Tone.
"We want Westerners to know that Chinese know our problems and we are trying to make a change."
The music video also mentions the political status of Taiwan, saying "for normal citizens, we just want to be united as one, cause we think we are from one family".
Issues like gun control are also referenced in the lyrics.
Last year, CD Rev released a music video - The Force of Red - which commented strongly on the independence of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
China officially considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province, which will eventually be reunited with China, by force if necessary.
The rap has received mostly positive feedback on Weibo, with comments ranging from users saying how much they loved the country, to others saying they had been reduced to tears.
"Although we have many shortcomings, little by little, we can make our country stronger and our lives better," said one such comment.
However, others questioned why the song wasn't in Mandarin, saying that they were unable to understand parts of it.
Others took a more light-hearted jab at it, with one user saying "this is definitely China, we wake up to pandas every day", a reference to the clips in the video showing pandas in the woods. | A rap song in English aiming to tell foreigners "the truth" about China has been released by a faction of the Chinese Communist Party. | 36670095 |
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The two come head to head in the Euro 2016 semi-final, with Bale's Wales facing the biggest game in their history, and Ronaldo, at the age of 31, running out of time to win an international trophy with Portugal.
How do the two compare - and who has been more effective at Euro 2016?
Bale, 26, has had more joy during the tournament than his Real colleague - so far at least. He has scored three goals to Ronaldo's two and they came in three different group games, whereas Ronaldo's two came in a 3-3 draw with Hungary.
Bale has scored two of his five free-kicks, with Ronaldo, 31, failing to score from 10, meaning he has zero goals from 41 free-kick attempts at major tournaments.
Ronaldo has had more shots than anyone else in the tournament (36), with Bale joint second - all the way down on 21 and level with Belgium's Kevin de Bruyne. Poland's Arkadiusz Milik and Ronaldo's team-mate Nani are joint fourth on 19.
Ronaldo has attempted more passes, with a much better passing accuracy than Bale - but the Welshman has had much more success with his dribbles.
If one of these players does prove to be the hero, when is the damage likely to be done? Bale tends to do his scoring at international level earlier on, while Ronaldo leaves it late. Some 60% of Bale's goals for Wales come in the first half, compared to 38% for Ronaldo.
Bale has scored three of his 22 goals in the opening 15 minutes, compared to two of Ronaldo's 60. Ronaldo has scored four goals in the last minute, something Bale has never achieved for his country. Yet.
There is no doubt whose trophy cabinet is bigger. Neither player nor their team has won an international tournament but Ronaldo has won everything at club level.
The Portuguese has won 12 major trophies for Manchester United and Real, to Bale's three. And that's not to mention Ronaldo's three Ballon d'Or awards for the world's top player and four Golden Boots in England and Spain. Bale has none.
They are level, however, on PFA player of the year awards - two each.
The two have played against each other five times in total at club level, with Ronaldo being on the winning side every time.
Is this the perfect time for Bale to seek revenge against his Real Madrid team-mate?
Create leagues and play against your friends in BBC Sport's new Euro 2016 Predictor game | Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo may be prolific team-mates for Real Madrid but on Wednesday they will become enemies for 90 minutes - or maybe more. | 36698779 |
The unrivalled dominance of the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the Socialists (PSOE), who have alternated in power for 32 years, always with parliamentary majorities, is over.
The ball is in the PP's court. Protocol dictates that the party that wins the most votes has the right to try to form a government. But the key word there is "try".
On paper at least the PP will struggle, because during the election campaign so many parties ruled out going into government with it.
It is the PP's worst election result since 1989. Its share of the vote fell from 45% in 2011 to 29% this time.
Even if you add the PP's seats to those won by the new liberal party Ciudadanos (Citizens), with which it has some common ground - mainly on the economy - such an alliance would still be 13 seats short of 176 - the majority needed to govern.
A key player in the process will be Spain's King Felipe, who has only been on the throne for 18 months following the abdication of his father.
The king will oversee the process and ask a party leader, probably incumbent Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, to attempt to form another government.
But if Mr Rajoy cannot get enough other parties to join him, then in theory the king should turn to another leader, probably the Socialists' Pedro Sanchez.
His PSOE came second with 22% - that is, 90 seats in parliament.
It was the PSOE's worst result since Spain's transition to democracy at the end of the 1970s.
Compromise and co-operation, so fundamental in that transition, but generally absent from political discourse since, will have to become the new watchwords of Spanish politics.
The PSOE could team up with the anti-austerity party Podemos ("We can") which, standing at its first-ever general election, came an impressive third, fractionally behind the Socialists with 21%.
But Spain's electoral system favours the traditional parties, so Podemos's 21% translates into 69 seats.
Even if Podemos is open to a deal with the PSOE, and Spain's former Communist party (United Left), then this coalition of the left would need either the support of Ciudadanos or of a Basque nationalist party and Catalan pro-independence parties to reach a majority.
The latter would possibly demand a referendum in Catalonia on independence from Spain, as part of a deal. Podemos promised that in its election manifesto, but the PSOE remains opposed.
In either scenario - a PP-led government, or PSOE-led - long, complicated negotiations will be necessary.
The new parties would surely demand radical changes in the way Spain is governed and in economic policy, before risking being a junior partner in any government.
Spanish politics set for new era
Spain's new faces in election campaign
Spanish PM's rival picks corruption fight
Taking back Barcelona's apartments
Podemos won by a distance in Catalonia, won the most votes in the Basque Country and came second in Madrid.
The party was formed from the "occupy" protest of the so-called Indignados ("indignant ones") at the end of 2011. The grassroots movement, known in Spain as 15-M, involved people camping out for weeks in Madrid's main square in protest against the economic crisis.
It tapped into the widespread dissatisfaction among a large, mainly young chunk of Spain that is fed up with the traditional way of doing politics, and the corruption scandals which have tarnished the old parties.
Podemos consolidated its success at regional elections in May this year, when its allies took control in Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza and Cadiz.
Podemos's success is also a message to EU leaders: that many Spaniards want the politics of austerity to change.
The fact that so many Spaniards are worse off now than they were four years ago was a big factor in the way many cast their vote.
Ironically the relatively new liberal party Ciudadanos, which sells itself as a "centrist" force, could play a key role in negotiations - even though it fell short of expectations in this election. It won 40 seats.
However, the clock is ticking. Spain has two months to form a new government.
If no leader can put together the necessary number of deputies in parliament then Spain could face fresh elections.
That is a realistic possibility.
Spanish politics used to be predictable. For outsiders the dominance of the PP and PSOE made things almost boring.
Overnight the landscape has shifted and things are infinitely more unpredictable, because a lot of Spaniards voted for new parties and for change.
Since its transition to democracy Spain has always had deep divisions under the surface. The political split is now wide open. | It is the beginning of a new, multi-party era in Spain. | 35150752 |
An Ivorian government lawyer said the judgement "sends a signal" that animal trafficking is being taken seriously.
The men were arrested while trying to sell an infant chimp to a BBC reporter posing as the representative of a wealthy Asian buyer.
Chimpanzees are in such sharp decline they are listed as endangered.
Those in West Africa are judged to be critically endangered.
Since Ibrahima and Mohamed Traore have remained in prison since their detention last December, they are deemed to have already served their sentences and are therefore free.
Infant chimpanzees are in huge demand as pets in homes and commercial zoos in the Gulf states and China.
The dealers were arrested in a dramatic raid staged by Ivorian detectives working with international police organisation Interpol, acting on information shared by BBC News.
During the operation, a baby chimpanzee later named Nemley junior was freed and taken into the care of wildlife officials.
After becoming used to the keepers at the zoo in Abidjan the baby chimpanzee showed signs of recovery.
However he has since become unwell with wildlife experts raising concerns for his future.
According to a local charity, although Nemley junior is feeding, he remains thin.
One major concern is that he is too small to join older chimps at the zoo but becomes stressed if kept on his own.
In the wild, baby chimpanzees usually stick close to their mothers for four to five years.
A secret network of wildlife traffickers selling baby chimpanzees was exposed by a year-long BBC News investigation.
Nemley junior was seized by poachers who would have killed his parents and other members of his family.
During our investigation, Ibrahima Traore sent us videos of baby chimpanzees for sale, some were only a few months old.
He boasted of his ability to evade international export controls.
One technique, which he demonstrated in a video, was to hide a chimp in a secret compartment in a shipping case with other less rare animals, which can be legally exported, placed above it.
Another smuggling method that he outlined to us was to obtain forged or fake copies of international export permits.
These are issued under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and are only supposed to be used for legitimate transfers between registered institutions.
During our investigation, Ibrahima sold us one of these permits, apparently issued by the National Parks department of Liberia.
"We are delighted that the first ever wildlife crime prosecution in Ivory Coast has resulted in a conviction, a custodial sentence and a fine," Cites secretary-general John Scanlon told the BBC.
He also commended the authorities in the Ivory Coast for pursuing the prosecution of the criminals, thereby sending an important message to the community that wildlife trafficking was a criminal offence.
Currently under Ivorian law, the maximum penalty for wildlife crime is one year in prison. A new law with tougher penalties is being prepared.
The lawyer acting for the Ivory Coast government, Mohamed Lamine Faye, said:
"Even if we would have liked a harsher sentence, we can only function within the limits of our laws on the protection of endangered animals, which date back to 1965."
He also pointed out that chimps were kept as pets by thousands of Ivorians, and the national and international trade is lucrative.
"In court the Traorés admitted they could receive $1,400 (£1,100) for a chimp. If they sell 10 in a year, that is more than enough to have a comfortable life," Mr Faye pointed out.
Our changing attitudes to chimpanzees
'Staggering' extent of great ape trade
Cheetah now 'running for its very survival'
During our investigation, we reported on the lack of funding for Interpol to act against people trafficking chimpanzees - their main priority now is fighting the trade in ivory and rhino horn.
Since our reports, which were picked up around the world, Interpol is now in addition focusing on chimp smuggling and recently brought together detectives and wildlife officials from half a dozen countries to share information and coordinate action. | Two men have been sentenced to six months in prison in the first case of wildlife trafficking brought in Ivory Coast. | 40222022 |
Hundreds of fans stood and cheered as the first part of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child came to a dramatic close at London's Palace Theatre.
Throughout the show there had been gasps at the various plot revelations and stage illusions.
As the 1,500 audience members left the show they were given badges asking them to "keep the secrets".
Earlier they had queued around the block - many dressed as witches and wizards - as they waited to clear the strict security in place at the theatre.
The Cursed Child plot digs deep into the world presented in the Potter novels and involves an artefact from Harry's past.
One minor glitch during the first preview involved an owl flying around the auditorium after it failed to return to its handler.
Speaking to the BBC after the show, audience members said the first part of the play had surpassed their expectations.
Raam Suresh, a student in London from Singapore, said: "I can't wait for the next one. I'm hoping it's the first of many more."
Katie Bitter, from Washington DC, said: "I was a little worried it wouldn't meet my high expectations but tonight was absolutely amazing. It didn't feel like a preview at all."
Natalie from Ohio said: "I really liked the character of Scorpius Malfoy and seeing Harry, Ron and Hermione grown up. I think they did the magic on stage really well."
Audience member Julia, from Milan, added: "It was really cool. I wish they would do all seven books in the theatre."
Although not an official reviews night, several papers have published their verdict on the first preview.
The Telegraph's Hannah Furness said: "The audience came wanting magic and they got in spades."
The Mirror's Clare Fitzsimons said: "Spells and hexes combined with laughs and drama mean Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will be every bit the hit everyone expects."
The New York Times added: "The three main characters remained true to their younger selves... The audience cannot be more thrilled or more appreciative or more ready to be caught up in the spirit of the undertaking."
Members of the audience also tweeted their appreciation, describing it as "brilliantly staged" and "potentially the best thing I have ever seen".
Tuesday night's preview marked the first time a Harry Potter story has been presented on stage.
Part two will get its first outing on Thursday night. The show does not have its official opening until 30 July.
The play, written by Jack Thorne and directed by John Tiffany, is set 19 years after the seventh and final book in the series by JK Rowling.
Picking up from where the Deathly Hallows epilogue left off, it portrays Harry, played by Jamie Parker, as an "over-worked" employee at the Ministry of Magic.
His youngest son Albus (Sam Clemmett) has to deal with the "heavy burden" of the Potter family legacy.
Other characters include Hermione Granger (Noma Dumezweni), Ron Weasley (Paul Thornley), their daughter Rose (Cherrelle Skeete), Ginny Potter (Poppy Miller) and Draco Malfoy (Alex Price).
Earlier, Rowling had tweeted a good luck message to Anthony Boyle, who plays Draco's son, Scorpius.
When tickets went on sale last October the first 175,000 sold within 24 hours. The script is already topping bestseller lists, although it will not be published until after the play's official opening on 30 July.
The Harry Potter books have sold more than 450 million copies since 1997 and been adapted into eight films. | Harry Potter fans have given a new play about JK Rowling's famous wizard an ecstatic reception. | 36471047 |
Denbighshire council said there were 10 applicants for every vacant council home in the county and right to buy "threatened investment in new homes".
The authority follows Anglesey, Flintshire, Carmarthenshire and Swansea councils.
Last year, eight council homes in the county were sold under right to buy.
Barbara Smith, Denbighshire's cabinet member for housing, said: "There clearly is a case in the county for this to happen."
The authority will now apply to the Welsh Government for approval to stop right to buy for the next five years. | A third north Wales council has voted to stop people buying their own council houses after losing more than 4,000 homes to the policy. | 36267137 |
Terry Morgan, a recently retired publican from Cockwood in Devon, set his alarm to drinking up time, 22:55.
He said he scoured his home before realising the timepiece had been swallowed by Charlie the dog.
Charlie was taken to the vet but "coughed" the watch up before an operation became necessary.
"At first I thought he was lying on it," said Mr Morgan.
"Only when I rolled him over did I realise it was inside him.
"The watch was always set to go off at ten-fifty-five to remind me to call last orders.
"Luckily, I'd never bothered to change it."
Mr Morgan said a surgical operation to retrieve the timepiece would have cost £1,000.
The episode still cost Mr Morgan £200 because vets had to X-ray Charlie to make sure the animal had not swallowed anything else.
"I've also had to put up with the endless 'Time' jokes from the regulars," said Mr Morgan.
A spokesman for the St David's Veterinary Group in Exeter said: "It was the talk of the surgery. We had a real laugh about it." | A dog owner discovered his pet Newfoundland had swallowed a £500 watch when the alarm went off inside the animal. | 28532283 |
Shire won over Baxalta, the maker of treatments for rare blood conditions, cancers and immune system disorders, after six months of talks.
It is the first major healthcare deal of 2016 and suggests high-profile takeovers are likely to continue.
Health firms struck $673bn in deals in 2015, according to Thomson Reuters.
Announcing the deal, Shire chief executive Flemming Ornskov said the merged group would generate $20bn in revenue by 2020.
"Together we will have the number one platform in rare diseases with a strong foundation for future growth," Mr Ornskov told reporters.
Shire prizes Baxalta's pipeline of new treatments, which it believes will contribute to an extra $5bn in revenue in the next four years.
The firms also estimate $500m in cost savings, partly from Baxalta benefiting from Shire's lower corporation tax in Dublin.
Shire shares dropped 6.7% to 3,990p.
An initial bid of $30bn, made up entirely of Shire stock, was rejected by Baxalta in August for "significantly undervaluing" the company.
But Shire won over Baxalta's shareholders in part with a sweetener of $18 cash per Baxalta share.
The deal is now due to go through by mid-2016, Shire said. | UK pharmaceutical firm Shire has struck a $32bn (£22bn) deal for US rival Baxalta to create one of the biggest treatment providers for rare diseases. | 35283600 |
Gellinudd Recovery Centre, in Pontardawe, Swansea, is not-for-profit and developed by charity Hafal.
Part-funded by Big Lottery and the Welsh Government, staff say it will take a more rounded and fulsome approach to treatment.
This includes people's physical health and social lives as well.
The centre's design is based on the ideas and shared experiences of adults with mental health illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia.
It has a large living space with an interactive touch screen TV, a kitchen, a crafts room and 16 bedrooms.
There is also a treatment room and a play room for guests who have children.
Director Alison Guyatt said it would be "a world-class facility and the only service of its kind in Wales and the UK, which we hope will set new standards of best practice".
People will be asked to set out recovery goals in different areas of their lives as part of their treatment plan.
Sian Shortman from Maesteg, Bridgend county, struggled with serious depression from a very young age and self-harmed as a teenager.
She said: "If there had been somewhere like this around when I was younger it would have been a lot better and I don't think I would be where I am today with my mental health problems if I had somewhere like Gellinudd to go.
"It really means a lot to me that in future people will finally get the help they deserve."
The centre is close to beauty spots like the Gower Peninsula and Brecon Beacons, with trips forming part of the therapy.
Health Secretary Vaughan Gething will be at the opening and the Welsh Government has invested £500,000 in the scheme in the hope it will save the NHS an estimated £300,000 each year through the care it provides.
Gellinudd was developed with the NHS to ensure it meets clinical governance standards.
Hafal trustee Mair Elliot said: "It works because it is based on the experiences of hundreds of people who have been through mental illness and recovery." | A "UK first" £1.5m mental health centre which has been designed with the input of people who have experienced an illness will officially open later. | 38747333 |
By then, twice as many mammals as now will be at risk of extinction, say conservationists.
Climate change, loss of rainforest and hunting is a threat to many rare mammals on the island.
But there is hope for species like the orang-utan if action is taken to focus conservation efforts on upland areas, scientists report in Current Biology.
Borneo is the world's third largest island, accounting for 1% of the world's land yet about 6% of global biodiversity.
The island has already lost over half its forests, a third disappearing in the last three decades.
A team led by researchers at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, UK, used modelling and satellite images to predict where rainforest will be lost over the next 65 years, based on predictions of climate change and changes in land use.
Working with institutes in Germany, Australia and Indonesia, they mapped the likely suitable habitat for each of 81 Bornean mammals.
They found that deforestation and climate change would lead to 30-49% of mammals losing at least a third of their habitat by 2080.
This would put at least 15 carnivores, 8 primates and 21 bat species at risk of extinction by 2080, almost doubling the proportion of threatened mammals on the island, according to the research.
But there is hope that better forestry management for conservation outside existing reserves could curb this loss, said lead researcher Dr Matthew Struebig.
"Only a modest amount of additional land on Borneo (~28,000 km2, or 4% of the island) would be needed to safeguard many mammal species against threats from deforestation and climate change."
The logging industry had a major role to play in conservation, given that they manage much of the land, he added.
And since deforestation and climate change is likely to have the biggest impact on lowland forests, it made sense to target efforts to forests at higher elevations.
Special efforts are needed for species like the flying fox and otter civit that would be unable to adapt to higher altitudes, said Dr Struebig.
"It is not so much that species would be doomed, but more that their area requirements would unlikely be met in the land available for conservation," he explained.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, the researchers described the outlook as "pessimistic", but said improving conservation outside existing reserves could help meet biodiversity goals. | Half of Borneo's mammals will see their habitats shrink by at least a third by 2080, according to a study. | 30924523 |
The founder of the seized Megaupload websites is seeking to have the hearing broadcast on YouTube.
The US - which wants New Zealand to hand over Dotcom and three former colleagues - has opposed the proposal.
The request was made by Dotcom's lawyer on the first day of the appeal hearing in Auckland, which is expected to last up to eight weeks.
The FBI took control of Megaupload.com and other domain names belonging to the business in January 2012. Federal prosecutors accused the files-sharing site of having cost movie studios, music labels and other copyright-holders more than $500m (£382m) in lost revenue.
Last December, a New Zealand court ruled that the German-born entrepreneur could be extradited to face charges of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering.
Dotcom's lawyer, Ron Mansfield, claims the site should not be held responsible for the actions of its users, and said that his client did not get a fair hearing last year.
Mr Mansfield said there were "unprecedented issues of public and international interest" raised by the case and added that coverage should not be limited to traditional media.
The defence lawyer suggested that there could be a 10-minute delay to an online stream to let the court prevent any sensitive details being broadcast.
The High Court judge, Justice Murray Gilbert, criticised the fact the request had not been made in advance but said he wanted to hear the views of local media outlets before making a decision.
In a related development, it has emerged that one of Megaupload's websites is now hosting advertisements for pornography.
The news site Torrentfreak reports that an unknown party appears to have "hijacked" the domain despite it still being registered to the FBI. | A judge in New Zealand is considering Kim Dotcom's request to have his extradition appeal livestreamed online. | 37212453 |
Stephen Cannon, 39, made an arsenal of incendiary devices from fireworks and potassium carbonate.
He filmed himself blowing the bombs up in woods to test their effectiveness.
He earlier pleaded guilty to making the devices on numerous occasions between 27 April and 5 June last year.
Livingston Sheriff Court was told he planned to target West Lothian firm, Ruskim Seafoods, because one of his friends had a job dispute with the company's bosses.
The court was told he taught his friends how to make and ignite the firebombs which he planned to use against employees of the firm.
Police said his campaign was uncovered after five homemade incendiary devices were found under a car parked in Dechmont, West Lothian.
It is understood the car belonged to an employee of the Livingston-based fish company.
The discovery sparked panic and led to the village's Main Street being evacuated and the main road closed for two hours.
Police acting on information called in the bomb squad before raiding Cannon's council house home in Armadale, West Lothian, on Tuesday 14 June 2016.
They discovered a stash of "potentially explosive and flammable materials" in the flat and arrested Cannon and his two flatmates.
Rebecca Swayles, prosecuting, said Cannon's targets were all employees of Ruskim Seafoods.
Cannon and his flatmate Stuart Clark, 22, earlier had not guilty pleas accepted to culpably and recklessly putting five "hydrogen bombs" under a car in Dechmont, West Lothian, on 6 June last year.
The charge alleged they knew the bottles filled with potassium carbonate and aluminium foil would explode, damaging the Mazda 6TS and placing members off the public living nearby in danger.
Another flatmate, 19-year-old John Clark, had a not guilty plea accepted to placing Michael York, a sales director at Ruskim Seafoods, in a state of fear and alarm for his safety.
He denied making threatening and menacing comments to Mr York in an earlier incident on 31 March 2016.
Det Insp Steven Bertram, of Police Scotland, described Cannon's actions as "reckless and dangerous".
He added: "These devices could easily have caused burns or other injuries.
"Cannon's conviction should serve as a warning that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated by Police Scotland." | A bomb maker has been jailed for 21-and-a-half months for turning his West Lothian flat into an explosives factory in a feud against a fish company which employed his friend. | 40379950 |
Her mother, 27, was given a nine-month suspended sentenced for initially lying about how her daughter was injured.
The pair, who have since separated, cannot be named to protect the identity of the child.
The attack happened in the home they shared in County Antrim in November 2013 while the girl's mother was at an evening class.
The judge at Antrim crown court said that despite being found guilty by a jury the man continued to deny the offence.
He said this was an aggregating factor in determining the sentence.
The judge said the girl's injuries were not accidental and the man's sentence reflected his lack of remorse.
He will serve a minimum of seven years in prison with the remainder on licence.
The judge requested a further three years be added to his licence period to protect the public from "a high-risk reoffender". | A 26-year-old man has been sentenced to 14 years for raping his partner's four-year-old daughter. | 32991258 |
Schmidt's current contract as the Irish head coach runs until summer 2017.
Ireland will be keen to retain the 50-year-old who has led them to two Six Nations victories in three years.
"It is something I have committed to making a decision on once we get back from Africa," said Schmidt, when asked about his future.
"It's really important there is a clear pathway for players and to know there is some continuity there, or if that continuity is going to be with someone else.
"I am conscious of my responsibility there."
If he decides to leave the Ireland post, former Leinster boss Schmidt could seek a Super Rugby coaching role in his native New Zealand and start a quest to coach the All Blacks.
Schmidt explained the decision on his long-term coaching future was down to far more than simply the enjoyment factor he gets from leading Ireland.
His son Luke suffers from epilepsy and Schmidt suggested his next move will have as much to do with what best suits his family as anything else.
"There are some factors outside of rugby that tend to dictate for me," said Schmidt. "We will be a little bit further down the track with some of those decisions as well."
Schmidt was appointed Ireland coach in April 2013, taking over from Declan Kidney.
Ireland can salvage a third-place finish from their lacklustre Six Nations with victory over Scotland in Dublin on Saturday.
Schmidt's men drew with Wales and lost in France and England before thumping Italy 58-15 last weekend. | Joe Schmidt says he will decide whether he will coach Ireland to the 2019 Rugby World Cup after this summer's tour to South Africa. | 35840758 |
27 February 2016 Last updated at 13:05 GMT
Scott Ellis reports on the soldiers and air crews from the region were in the battle. | West Country veterans of the first Gulf War will take part in the unveiling of a memorial in Staffordshire to the 47 personnel who died in the conflict. | 35671941 |
BBC Wales was told the first minister believes any interference from the UK party with the way Welsh Labour is run would be "absolutely unacceptable".
WalesOnline suggested earlier this week that two Welsh Labour staff may be sacked if Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected.
Mr Jones said the individuals concerned helped "defy expectations" in election results.
The spokesman said: "Carwyn has made it clear he won't be publicly backing any candidate - he's stuck to that in previous leadership elections, and he's set out the reasons why on numerous occasions.
"However, it is right to say that he's extremely angry about the briefing against Welsh Labour staff.
"These are loyal, hard-working, committed individuals who recently helped defy all expectations with another clear Welsh Labour victory in the assembly elections.
"Carwyn is very clear that any interference with the way Welsh Labour is run would be absolutely unacceptable, and he will be writing to both leadership candidates asking for their public support for Labour staff."
The statement came after ex-minister Leighton Andrews told the BBC Good Morning Wales programme: "Carwyn must be furious about the briefing, the Corbyn-inspired briefing against senior Welsh Labour staff this week.
"This Welsh Labour staff have delivered two election victories for Carwyn Jones, and I can only imagine how angry he will be at the briefing that's been taking place suggesting they should be removed."
During the radio interview Mr Andrews, who is backing Mr Smith, said: "I don't think myself that Carwyn is going to come out of this as a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.
"I imagine, I don't know, he hasn't told me this, but I imagine he would vote for Owen Smith."
But Mr Andrews, who previously served as education minister and public services minister under Mr Jones, said he would be "surprised" if Mr Jones would take a position on the leadership contest.
He said: "I think if Jeremy Corbyn wins again the Labour Party will not win a general election again for 15, maybe 20 years."
Mr Jones has not stated who out of Mr Corbyn or Mr Smith he would back in the current contest. However he has said it would be very difficult for him to carry on as a leader if he faced the same situation as Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Corbyn lost a no-confidence vote of Labour MPs in June.
Mr Jones told The Wales Report that in the current situation Labour had "no chance" of winning a general election.
A Welsh Conservative spokesman said: "The first minister is taking a craven stance in not nailing his colours to the mast and picking a candidate for the leadership race."
They pointed out that London mayor Sadiq Kahn and Scottish Labour leader Keiza Dugdale had come out in support of Owen Smith. He added: "So the first minister's silence on this critical issue seems strange, and betrays a lack of leadership."
Until this point, Welsh Labour has largely managed to avoid getting sucked into much of the blood-letting currently on display among the different wings of the Labour Party.
There must now be a risk that it might.
Carwyn Jones has refused to give any endorsements to the contenders.
But his former Welsh Government colleague Leighton Andrews has said "why look into the crystal ball when you can read the book".
In other words, he believes it is obvious that Mr Jones is not a supporter of Mr Corbyn if you read between the lines of what he has said in recent months.
The briefing earlier in the week has clearly caused bad feeling. The message from Welsh Labour to the Corbyn camp is to stay well away from the way the party is run in Cardiff.
Jeremy Corbyn supporters say he is not a vindictive man and that while there may be some casualties within in the party in London if he wins the contest, it is unlikely that any purge would stretch to Wales.
More from Nick | Carwyn Jones is "extremely angry" about briefing against Welsh Labour staff, his spokesman has said. | 37173429 |
Frederick Boyd was on leave at his home in Glasgow when he failed to return to Castle Huntly jail in Dundee on Tuesday.
The public have been warned not to approach Boyd and contact police if they see him.
Police said he was thought to have connections in the Clydebank, Knightswood and the Drumchapel areas of Glasgow.
He is described as being of medium build, clean shaven with short brown hair. | A 54-year-old prisoner has gone on the run from an open prison. | 39600628 |
But the UK prime minister said there was "detail to be worked on" before a crunch summit on 18-19 February.
The deal, which includes an "emergency brake" on migrant benefits, paves the way for the UK's EU referendum to take place as early as June.
EU exit campaigners said it did not come close to what the PM had promised.
But the prime minister says it is a deal "worth fighting for" and he is launching a fresh round of diplomacy to persuade other EU leaders to sign up to it.
The draft deal was published by European Council president Donald Tusk after months of negotiations between UK and EU officials.
Mr Cameron's proposed four year ban on in-work benefits for EU migrant workers could come into force immediately if the UK votes to remain in the Union.
But it would have to be agreed by other EU nations and it would be "graduated", with more money from tax credits paid to migrants the longer they remain in the UK.
It says Mr Cameron's demand to exempt Britain from the EU principle of "ever closer union" between member states would be written into a future treaty.
There are also measures relating to protection for non-euro countries in the EU, a new way for member states to club together to block some new EU laws and on business regulations.
Migration: The prime minister got his emergency welfare brake. But it is not clear how easy it will be to pull that brake or how long it will last, writes deputy political editor James Landale.
Benefits: While the in-work benefits of EU migrants will be curbed for four years if other countries agree, they will be gradually restored the longer they stay in the UK. EU migrants will be able to send child benefit back home, but would get a lower level if the cost of living in the country where the child is is lower. Mr Cameron had wanted to block all of it.
Sovereignty: The PM has secured a clear legal statement that the UK is not committed to further political integration and that the phrase "ever closer union" cannot be used to integrate the EU further. But it is not yet clear when or how this will be incorporated into the EU treaties. He has also got new powers for national parliaments to block new EU laws but the thresholds are pretty high before those powers can be used.
Competitiveness: The PM has got some language that commits the EU to strengthen the internal market and cut red tape. But they have been promising to do that for years.
Protecting non-euro countries: There will be a new mechanism to get the eurozone to think again about decisions that could hit the City of London.
Security: The PM has got some unexpected gains, making it easier for countries to stop terror suspects coming into the country even if the threat they pose is not imminent. There will also be a crackdown to stop people using sham marriages and other loopholes to gain access to the EU. Read more: Gavin Hewitt on what PM wanted v what he got
Mr Cameron will visit Poland and Denmark on Friday, as he embarks on a whirlwind charm offensive to persuade the other 27 EU leaders to sign up to the Tusk package in Brussels on February 18-19.
If Mr Cameron can get an agreement in February, he is expected to hold a referendum in June on whether Britain should remain in the EU.
Mr Cameron has until the end of 2017 to hold a referendum. A July or September referendum remains a possibility but a repeat of last summer's migrant crisis in the Mediterranean and eastern Europe could make Mr Cameron's job of making the case for remaining in a reformed EU more difficult.
A cross-party group of MPs, led by the SNP, has warned Mr Cameron against holding the EU referendum in June, arguing it will be too close to elections in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, London and local authorities. Labour has said it will not block a June referendum.
The prime minister said "more work" needed to be done to "nail down" details but added: "We said we needed to deliver in four key areas, this document shows real progress on that front."
He said the proposals were some "something worth fighting for", and were good enough that he would back Britain joining the EU under these terms, if it was not already a member.
He said Britain could have the "best of both worlds" by giving it access to the single market and a voice around the top EU table, while retaining its status as a "proud independent country not part of a superstate".
He said ministers would be free to campaign for either side in a personal capacity, but the government would "not be taking some sort of neutral position".
"If we get this deal in February or in March or later and if the cabinet agrees to this deal the government's position will be to campaign for Britain to stay in a reformed European Union."
Asked by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg if he could guarantee the reforms would cut immigration and had not been watered down, he said: "I can say, hand on heart, I have delivered the commitments made in my manifesto." Read more from Laura Kuenssberg
Richard Tice, co-founder of Leave.Eu, accused Mr Cameron of "trying to deceive the British people by saying that there's substantial change - there is nothing except a restatement of the existing status quo".
The Vote Leave campaign said Mr Cameron had broken a key Conservative manifesto pledge to insist on a four year ban on in-work benefits, saying that the ban was now conditional.
Former defence secretary Liam Fox said the proposals did not "come close" to the changes voters had been promised.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage said Mr Cameron's deal was "pathetic" and "hardly worth the wait".
President of the European Council Mr Tusk said the package was "a good basis for a compromise", adding that "there are still challenging negotiations ahead - nothing is agreed until everything is agreed".
Two of the favourites to succeed David Cameron as Conservative leader, Boris Johnson and Theresa May, have also been touted as possible figureheads for the campaign to leave the EU. Mr Johnson, the London mayor, said he had "doubts" about the red card mechanism, saying there was "much, much more that needs to be done" on European reform.
Home Secretary Mrs May also said more needed to be done, but added: "This is a basis for a deal." BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said she appeared on the verge of backing the prime minister and that her reaction would come as a blow to the Out campaign.
Mr Cameron may have to spend the next two weeks twisting arms in Europe, there may be no guarantee of a deal and everyone is agreed that nothing is agreed until everything agreed.
But the prime minister is already in campaign mode, bouncing around tiggerishly in his shirtsleeves, selling his deal almost as if it had been agreed. Read more: James says Cameron in campaigning mode
The BBC's Europe Editor Katya Adler says: "My first instinct is that this is something everyone can work with.
"Eastern and Central European countries will continue to complain about the suspension of migrant in-work benefits.
"They are likely to argue that the EU has sold its principles down the river in an attempt to keep the UK in the EU.
"However it can be argued from this text that the so-called 'emergency brake' is not discriminatory because it's available for any country to use." Read more: Katya's blog in full
Guide: All you need to know about the referendum
National parliament powers: What do the red and yellow cards plans mean?
More: BBC News EU referendum special | David Cameron says the draft deal aimed at keeping Britain in the EU will deliver the "substantial change" he has been demanding to how it is run. | 35467479 |
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Competitors plummet head-first down a steep track at speeds of 80mph in what is considered the world's first sliding sport, which became a regular fixture at the Winter Olympics following the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.
The aim is to push your sled from a starting point as quickly as possible over a 20-to-30-yard runway, before jumping on the sled and letting nature take its course, using bodyweight to 'steer' as best possible on the way down.
Imagine controlling your body down the chute at speeds you shouldn't reach on a motorway, with only a plastic board for comfort. Now, you can decide whether that's "good for you", but the sport will certainly tone your body and mind.
You will definitely need power and pace at the start - the fine margins in the sport are often decided by who has the quickest, strongest start to their race.
The G-forces on the neck are tremendous in skeleton, so your core and skeleton (indeed) will be strengthened dramatically as you develop in the sport.
The UK does not possess its own skeleton track, but the University of Bath has a small start-track often used by skeleton and bobsleigh athletes for training purposes.
British Skeleton offers a membership package that costs as little as £25 and give members the chance to become eligible to compete at the British Championships. There are also regular Talent ID days if you think you have what it takes.
The North American countries are skeleton's world leaders, though Britain is right up there with Amy Williams the Olympic women's champion at Vancouver 2010 and Shelley Rudman a silver-medallist four years earlier.
Men's skeleton was first introduced as an Olympic sport in 1928 and then again in 1948. It became a permanent fixture in 2002 ahead of the Salt Lake City Games, at which point the women's event also gained Olympic status.
Are you inspired to try Skeleton? Or maybe you are a keen enthusiast already? Get in touch and tell us your experience of the activity by tweeting us on @bbcgetinspired or email us on [email protected].
See our full list of activity guides for more inspiration. | Skeleton is a true daredevil sport. | 23197168 |
Jack Clifford's try gave Quins a 15-14 lead at the break after Neil de Kock and Billy Vunipola crossed for Sarries either side of Rob Buchanan's score.
Owen Farrell kicked three penalties after the break but Ben Botica's boot got Quins back ahead after Sarries prop Rhys Gill was sent off.
Lock James Horwill scored late on to confirm victory for Quins.
The Australia international's late intervention not only sealed Harlequins' first win over their north London rivals since March 2012, but brought to an end to Saracens' 15-match winning streak, which stretched back to last season.
Sarries got the game's first try through De Kock after Horwill had been sent to the sin-bin for striking England second row George Kruis, who had to be stretchered off the field with concussion following lengthy treatment.
Director of rugby Mark McCall confirmed Kruis was knocked out in the incident, adding: "George is fine. There is nothing wrong other than the concussion...he'll do the normal checks."
Smart work from Danny Care allowed Buchanan to reply for Quins but trademark scrummaging from Saracens set up Vunipola for their second try.
After Clifford's late score gave the home side a slender advantage at the break, Farrell and Botica traded penalties in the early stages of the second half.
The turning point came on 65 minutes with Sarries leading 23-18, as Gill was initially shown yellow for a tip-tackle on George Lowe - only for referee Craig Maxwell-Keys to decide to show the prop red instead after consulting the television match official.
Botica put Quins back ahead with two more penalties before Horwill secured victory at the death.
Harlequins director of rugby Conor O'Shea:
"A huge turning point was Rhys' sending off, but I don't think you could argue with that.
"I'm really thankful that there was nothing wrong with George Kruis but when you look at the actual play, James is coming in and he is going to clear a ruck.
"Kruis is going down and there is nothing malicious in it but we have to protect players so we will take the yellow.
"It was a great game of rugby between two teams who will hopefully be fighting it out towards the end of the year."
Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall confirmed:
"I think it was a red card. There are no complaints. Rhys has just come on to the pitch, he's trying to make a good tackle and someone else is involved.
"It made it look worse than it is, but you always run the risk in those situations.
"In general we didn't deserve to win. Our discipline wasn't good enough. They won the scraps and were really up for it.
"All those 50-50 battles that we're pretty good at, we weren't so good at. It's disappointing to lose."
Harlequins: Brown; Yarde, Lowe, Roberts, Chisholm; Evans, Care (capt); Marler, Buchanan, Jones, Horwill, Matthews, Robshaw, Wallace, Clifford.
Replacements: Ward, Adeniran-Olule, Gray, Merrick, Sloan, Dickson, Botica, Walker.
Sin bin: Horwill (3)
Saracens: Goode; Ashton, Bosch, Taylor, Ellery; Farrell, de Kock; M Vunipola, George (capt), du Plessis, Hamilton, Kruis, Wray, Fraser, B Vunipola.
Replacements: Saunders, Gill, Lamositele, Itoje, Burger, Wigglesworth, Hodgson, Tompkins.
Red card: Gill (65).
Referee: Craig Maxwell-Keys.
Attendance: 14,800.
For the latest rugby union news follow @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter. | Premiership leaders Saracens lost for the first time this season, ending with 14 men as Harlequins won at The Stoop. | 35234195 |
Willstrop had not beaten his domestic rival since the 2007 English Open final but won 11-6 7-11 5-11 11-7 11-4 at New York's Grand Central Station.
"It's been tough over the years," said Willstrop. "His game makes it very hard for me."
Matthew said: "He's a class player and we've played some massive matches, so that win was coming some day."
Willstrop, 33, and 36-year-old Matthew have met 35 times down the years, with Matthew now holding a 26-9 overall record.
Willstrop now faces Paul Coll of New Zealand in the quarter-finals of the JP Morgan Tournament of Champions. | British number two James Willstrop ended a run of 10 years and 19 defeats by beating number one Nick Matthew. | 38636761 |
That was the recommendation given by the rather creepy Polonius to his son Laertes, who was about to head off to the temptations of Paris in the play Hamlet.
Sage advice as it may appear, the truth is that each and every one of us is a lender - often without even realising it - and our economy would not function nearly so well if that were not the case.
That's because your bank account is a loan, from you to your bank.
You may think of it as money - akin to cash, one cash-machine trip away from banknotes - but it is nonetheless a loan.
And, as most of us are well aware by now, the bank takes this borrowed money and re-lends it to businesses and homebuyers.
But while you have the right to withdraw your money from the bank at a moment's notice, the bank, of course, does not have the right to demand that mortgage borrowers and companies repay the loans it has made at the drop of a hat.
And this makes all banks vulnerable to a sudden collapse. Because if everyone turned up one day and tried to empty their bank account - in other words, asks for their loans to be repaid - the money would not be there to repay them.
It is an inherent vulnerability.
Even a solvent bank - one that has made sensible loans and investments that will eventually be repaid in full - does not have the cash readily available to pay out even a fraction of its deposits.
Fortunately, people don't normally do that. Indeed, a bank's very business is predicated on the fact that only a fairly predictable minority of its many depositors ask to withdraw their money from one day to the next.
But occasionally, people do queue up outside the bank - or empty their accounts electronically - if they suddenly become afraid that the money in their bank account is no longer safe. It is what is known as a bank run.
If the bank is solvent - which, during a crisis, can be near-impossible to judge - then in most countries, the central bank will throw it a lifeline - an emergency loan that will provide the requisite cash until the depositor panic subsides. That way the cash machines of a healthy bank are guaranteed never to run empty.
Precisely such fears over Cyprus' banks have already led them to borrow some 9bn euros of so-called Emergency Liquidity Assistance from their central bank, to replace money withdrawn by more savvy depositors in recent months.
But what if the bank is not solvent? What, for instance, if it has lent a bunch of money to the Greek government that will never be repaid in full?
In that case - as the European Central Bank made clear last week - the bank could no longer rely on largesse from the central bank to keep its doors open. The central bank has no interest in making a loss on its emergency lending, or in propping up banks that have no future.
And that is where capital controls come in.
A capital control is when the government tells you that you are no longer allowed to move your money around freely.
In this sense, Cyprus has already had capital controls in place for over a week. Because, for over a week, the government has declared special "bank holidays", during which the country's banks have been shuttered, and there have been strict limits on how much people can withdraw each day from cash machines.
The island's two biggest banks - Laiki Bank and Bank of Cyprus - had made such big losses on the loans they made, that they probably no longer had enough money to repay all their depositors - not now, not ever.
And somebody would ultimately have to bear those losses.
And, once the Cypriot government made clear that the "somebody" was going to be the banks' depositors, then bank runs seemed all but inevitable.
Consider a hypothetical Russian oligarch. He owns various shell companies in Cyprus in order to take advantage of a treaty between Cyprus and Russia that enables him to pay zero tax on the profits made by his various Russian businesses.
Why would he choose to stash his tens of millions in loose change in Laiki Bank if it becomes apparent that about 40% of that money was about to be effectively confiscated in order to cover the bank's losses?
Of course he, and everyone else, would try to withdraw his money immediately - something that would hasten and worsen the bank's collapse, and which must therefore be blocked by the Cypriot government.
There are many types of capital control, and they don't just have to be applied at the bank's doors and cash machines.
Most controls allow people limited access to their bank account, in order to let them meet their day-to-day needs and maintain a minimum level of activity in the economy.
In the case of Cyprus, the detail of just how much access people will be given is still frustratingly absent.
The controls will remain in place so long as there remains a popular belief that money in one bank account is more at risk than money in another bank, or in another country, or just stashed under the mattress. Such popular beliefs are what sustain bank runs.
It appears that special controls will remain at the two most Cypriot troubled banks, at least until the exact losses for their depositors have been calculated and imposed.
Cyprus may well also introduce international capital controls, to head off a collapse of the entire Cypriot banking system.
In other words, people may not be allowed to transfer their money out of a Cypriot bank account into, say, a German bank account, in which case they may also have to bar people from ferrying bulging suitcase-loads of euro banknotes on flights to Athens.
All such moves fly in the face of the founding treaties of the European Union and the eurozone, which declare that money should be free to flow throughout the entire single currency area.
Indeed, one of the main reasons for European monetary union was to enable such free flows of money.
But the measures are supposedly temporary only, lasting only "a matter of weeks".
The assumption is that once the dust has settled, the panic will end, and the controls can be lifted again.
That's the theory. Unfortunately, human psychology does not necessarily work that way.
People tend to look back to the recent past as much as forwards to what they can rationally expect in the future.
Why, as a foreign investor, would you choose to keep your money in any Cypriot bank, bearing in mind the following three recent events:
All of these things may set a terrible precedent - not just for Cyprus, but for the rest of the eurozone too.
For example, what might happen if Greece asks for yet more leniency and bailout cash from the rest of the eurozone in the coming months?
Would you feel confident leaving your money in a Greek bank account, knowing that capital controls and losses for depositors had been part of the deal for Cyprus?
The precedent of Cyprus surely heightens the risk of future bank runs elsewhere in the eurozone, especially considering the mixed messages from the European authorities.
What's more, in Cyprus itself it remains far from clear that there will not be further losses to be meted out to depositors out in the coming years, providing ample incentive for them to move their money elsewhere as soon as they get the chance.
As the BBC's business editor Robert Peston recently pointed out, the problems at its banks, the probable death of its large offshore banking industry, not to mention a good dose of government austerity, all mean Cyprus may face a nasty recession.
Cyprus's devastating rescue
Few winners in Cyprus deal
Q&A: Cyprus deal
Cyprus banks reassure UK customers
And recession usually means more losses for the banks and more debt problems for the government further down the line. Just ask Greece.
Having said all this, capital controls are not always a terrible idea. So long as they are imposed to stop an irrational and damaging panic, they can actually be quite helpful.
Malaysia, for example, imposed capital controls during the 1997 Asian crisis, at a time when international investors were pulling their money out of many East Asian countries, causing their currencies to collapse.
The country was roundly criticised by international policymakers, financiers and economists at the time, and was told that the measures were counter-productive, because of the terrible precedent they would set.
But, in retrospect, they seemed to do a lot of good. The Malaysian banks avoided collapse, the economy rebounded quickly, and international investors eventually regained full access to their local bank accounts intact.
So the litmus test for Cyprus may be what happens over the coming months. If the economy stabilises, and the finances of the Cypriot banks and government start to look manageable again, confidence should return and the capital controls may be safely removed.
But so long as the outlook for Cyprus remains bleak, the fear will remain of more losses in the future. In that case it may prove impossible to convince wealthy non-Cypriots to keep their money in Nicosia and Limassol, given the choice.
And the capital controls will surely have to remain in place. | "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be." | 21937615 |
PCs Sian Smith and Rick Lewis were in full ceremonial uniform before a passing out parade for South Wales Police recruits on Friday.
They were patrolling the road between Pontcanna and Llandaff fields and came across two men acting suspiciously.
When they started to do a police check on the men one made off on foot, with the horses in pursuit.
Horses, Rubin and Bodie, caught up with the suspect who was wanted after being recalled to prison.
PC Smith said: "We don't expect to make arrests when we are dressed in that uniform.
"But more importantly I guess the criminal didn't expect to be chased and arrested this way either." | Police officers on horseback chased a man across Pontcanna fields in Cardiff to make a Wild West-style arrest. | 30116028 |
Mitchell was over 20 seconds ahead of second-placed Anna Tait as she won in 4:16.20 - cutting 0.88secs off her previous best.
Her time was only 1.20 outside the qualifying mark for the European Indoor Championships in Belgrade in March.
Given that it was a solo run, Mitchell looks capable of achieving the mark.
Meanwhile, Kerry O'Flaherty finished fourth in the 3,000m at Sunday's City of Manchester Indoor meeting.
Running after being bothered by a virus for close to a month, O'Flaherty clocked 9:18.06 - just under seven seconds outside her indoor personal best set last year.
Swansea runner Elinor Kirk won in 9:00.59 which left her well ahead of Charlotte Arter (9:12.47) and Lauren Howarth (9:15.83). | Banbridge athlete Emma Mitchell continued her impressive winter form as she set a new personal best in winning the Scottish Indoor 1500m title. | 38791842 |
Football's governing body revealed the contracts of ex-president Blatter, fired ex-secretary general Valcke and sacked former finance director Kattner one day after a Swiss police raid.
Fifa's lawyers said there was evidence that the trio made "a coordinated effort" to "enrich themselves" between 2011 and 2015.
Documents and electronic data were seized from Kattner's old office during Thursday's operation, which relates to investigations into Blatter and Valcke, according to sources close to Fifa's internal investigation.
Suspected of criminal mismanagement of Fifa money, Blatter and Valcke were banned for six and 12 years respectively by the governing body's ethics committee in February. Both deny wrongdoing.
A statement for the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG), which carried out the investigations, read: "Documents and electronic data were seized and will now be examined to determine their relevance to the ongoing proceedings."
Fifa said the evidence uncovered by its own internal investigation would be shared with the Swiss Attorney General's office and the US Department of Justice.
Richard Cullen, Blatter's lawyer, said: "We look forward to showing Fifa that Mr Blatter's compensation payments were proper, fair and in line with the heads of major professional sports leagues around the world."
Meanwhile, Blatter's long-time public relations advisor Klaus Stoehlker told BBC Sport he would be ending their professional relationship, adding: "The Fifa volcano is exploding now."
Fifa has been in turmoil since May 2015, when a US investigation exposed widespread corruption at the top of the organisation.
Richard Conway, BBC sports news correspondent
"Fifa has "victim status" right now from the US Department of Justice and the Swiss authorities. It acknowledges that the institution itself is not at fault for the corrupt acts of its senior members in recent times.
"But that could easily change and it's why Fifa's own legal team have been digging through millions of documents to uncover any previously unknown historic wrongdoing.
"Over the past few days they say they uncovered information which revealed the secret deals that allowed Blatter, Valcke and Kattner to gorge on huge multi-million dollar bonuses.
"Some of the provisions in the contracts could breach Swiss law.
"Now they've gone public with the information in an attempt to demonstrate to the legal authorities and fans they are serious about long term reform and regaining trust." | Former high-ranking Fifa officials Sepp Blatter, Jerome Valcke and Markus Kattner awarded themselves pay rises and bonuses worth $80m (£55m) over five years, say Fifa lawyers. | 36445879 |
Firefighters had to work quickly to free the elderly man because of the incoming tide at Aberporth.
The incident happened at the beach's car park at about 16:15 GMT on Friday.
A Mid and West Wales Fire Service spokesman said the driver appeared to have driven through railings before ending up on the beach.
"The tide was coming in but crews were able to scramble down and work on the car," the spokesman said.
"One person was trapped and removed by the fire service." | A driver has been rescued after his car crashed through railings and fell 40ft over a cliff on to a Ceredigion beach. | 34749550 |
The arrests of at least 25 people on Tuesday also included organ buyers and middlemen, the country's Administrative Control Authority said.
Authorities also found "millions of dollars and gold bullion".
It is illegal to purchase organs in Egypt, but poverty drives some to sell their body parts.
The Administrative Control Authority, a powerful anti-corruption body, claimed the network targeted on Tuesday was "made up of Egyptians and Arabs taking advantage of some of the citizens' difficult economic conditions so that they buy their human organs and sell [them] for large sums of money".
The statement on the government website added that the group was "the largest international network for trading human organs".
It is said the investigation, which also involved the health ministry, focused on a group of private hospitals and health centres, both licensed and unlicensed, where transplants and organ-harvesting took place, according to the Reuters news agency.
Authorities have also seized computers and documents from the 10 centres.
The arrests follow years of concern over the illegal organ trade in Egypt.
In 2010, it was named as one of the top five countries for illegal organ trade by the World Health Organization's co-ordinator at the time, Luc Noel.
Egypt passed laws to try to curb the trade, but according to the United Nations, hundreds of poor Egyptians still sell kidneys and livers each year to be able to buy food or pay off debts.
There have also been concerns over the fate of migrants who come into contact with the traffickers.
In 2012, then UN refugee agency chief, Antonio Guterres, said some migrants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula were being "killed for the traffic of organs", while earlier this year a people smuggler told Italian prosecutors that those who could not pay their debt were sold to the organ traffickers.
The allegations have not been proven, however. | Egyptian authorities have arrested doctors, nurses and professors suspected of being involved in an international organ trafficking ring. | 38224836 |
Thirteen received jail terms of between one and eight years, some suspended, according to Belgian news service Belga.
One member of the group was sentenced to community service.
The group are said to have made around 2,000 fake documents.
The documents were used by Salah Abdeslam, a suspect of the November 2015 attacks in Paris, and Najim Laachraoui, who blew himself up at Brussels Airport in March 2016.
The Islamic State group took responsibility for the attacks in both countries.
However, the ID forgers were not prosecuted for terrorism as they were not known to have been aware of the intentions of those who bought their work.
Abdeslam, the main surviving suspect from the Paris attacks, fled France after 130 people were killed in a series of coordinated suicide bombs and shootings.
Following an international manhunt, Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels in March and, the following month, transferred to France, where he has kept silent.
His precise role in the attacks is unclear, although investigators believe he may have driven the three bombers who attacked the Stade de France stadium.
A passport for a 25-year-old Syrian was found at the stadium after the explosions, and authorities later said they believed it to be a fake.
A passport bearing the same name and data - but a different image - was later found on another migrant, suggesting the documents originated from a counterfeiter.
It is not clear if these documents were produced by the same gang.
The Belgium attacks - consisting of two suicide bombs at Brussels Airport and one at Maalbeek metro station - killed more than 30 people and injured hundreds. | A Belgian court convicted 14 people on Thursday of falsifying identity documents, some of which were sold to Islamist militants involved in terror attacks in Paris and Brussels. | 38683199 |
Hall, 24, finished in 59 minutes 34 seconds, pipping Learmonth by a second.
"I turn 25 next week and I always said that if I can get a World Cup podium before that I'd be happy," said Hall.
Richard Murray won the men's race at the second-tier event, heading a South African top three in Cape Town.
The World Triathlon Series - the sport's premier event - begins on March 3, with live coverage and highlights across the BBC Sport website and the Red Button. | Great Britain's Lucy Hall won her first triathlon World Cup race in South Africa, beating compatriot and training partner Jessica Learmonth in a sprint finish. | 38946849 |
Jack Harrington discovered the bottle on Silver Bay beach in February 2015 while dog walking with his parents.
Researchers believe the bottle came from a Xiamen University student.
The story has been featured on the front pages of Chinese newspapers, and a journalist is trying to arrange for the pair to visit.
"It's quite amazing," said Jack's mother, Nancy Harrington.
"A journalist [from China] asked us some questions about what we knew about China and whether we would be interested in going there, and we said 'yes'."
Georgia Bradbury, who has been researching the bottle and message, said it most likely came from a restaurant on the Gulangyu island - which is more than 6,000 miles (9600km) away from Silver Bay.
She said she had received emails from the UK and China, and theories about its content include it telling the tale of two students going their separate ways after university and choosing between their love and their dreams.
"I think the fact that the message in a bottle has the university song on it only strengthens this idea," Ms Bradbury said.
"[The island] is a really small place that you can walk around in its entirety in three to four hours, and there's also no vehicles on the island apart from one fire engine."
Ms Harrington said a love letter in the bottle had also been translated.
"It reads like it was written from a man to a woman, it talks about 'the most precious months or weeks' which was a 'magical time', and then he gives her advice.
"He tells her 'don't get too skinny because you're beautiful as you are'."
Ms Bradbury added: "We're hoping some of the Chinese papers will be able to track down who sent the message, apparently Nancy and her son are quite famous in China now." | An 11-year-old boy who found a Chinese message in a bottle on an Anglesey beach could be flown to China to help trace its origins. | 35323095 |
Researchers asked people to switch diets for two weeks - 20 US volunteers moved to a low-fat, high-fibre diet while 20 volunteers from rural Africa were asked to eat more "junk" food.
Although the swap was brief, its impact was visible, Nature Communication says.
The Americans benefited from less bowel inflammation, while the African volunteers' bowel health deteriorated.
It is not possible to make any firm conclusions based on such a small study, say experts.
But the findings do support the belief that modern Western diets - which are high in fat and sugar and low in fibre - are bad for us.
Other studies with Japanese migrants to Hawaii have shown that it takes only one generation of Westernisation to change their low incidence of colon cancer to the high rates seen in native Hawaiians.
And research shows a high intake of dietary fibre, particularly cereal and whole grains, reduces bowel cancer risk, while eating red and processed meat increases the risk.
In the diet swap study, the Western-style diet given to the native African volunteers was typical junk or fast food - burgers and fries.
The US volunteers, meanwhile, where switched to a diet containing lots of pulses and beans.
All the participants had a barrage of medical tests before and after the diet change.
The dietary swaps appeared to cause significant changes to the cells lining the gut as well as the bacteria that live in the bowel - with the US volunteers faring better.
Lead researcher Dr Stephen O'Keefe, from the University of Pittsburgh, said: "In just two weeks, a change in diet from a Westernised composition to a traditional African high-fibre, low-fat diet reduced these biomarkers of cancer risk, indicating that it is likely never too late to modify the risk of colon cancer."
Experts estimate that up to a third of bowel cancer cases could be avoided by eating more healthily.
A spokesman for Cancer Research UK said larger and longer term studies were still needed.
"The diet swap was also fairly drastic whereas we know that making small changes you can stick with long-term is far more effective to maintain a healthier lifestyle." | A two-week diet swap experiment hints at just how damaging a Western diet might be to our guts. | 32494846 |
While it's better than not having a strategy at all, what Mr Obama described is not likely to achieve the objective he identified, even if everything works as he hopes.
Mr Obama detailed a "comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy" for a broad regional and international coalition to "degrade and ultimately destroy" IS.
The caveat "ultimately" suggests degrading IS in Iraq first - a process that has already started - and Syria later.
Mr Obama said he would not hesitate to take military action in Syria, but did not indicate this was imminent. He encouraged congressional support for his approach, but believes he has the authorities he needs.
The destruction of IS, or more accurately its demise, requires a combination of actions. Mr Obama outlined several of them, including restricting IS' finances over time, countering its ideology, restricting the flow of combatants to and from the conflict, as well as stronger and more inclusive regional governments.
The formation of a new Iraqi government this week is a necessary step, but it's unclear if the new government can unify the country.
But the president admitted there is not yet a viable political solution to Syria.
He again committed to greater support for the so-called moderate Syrian opposition, but interestingly characterised them as a "counterweight" to IS, not a force that can defeat Bashar al-Assad.
Mr Obama spoke on the eve of 9/11. Several aspects of his strategy speak to the evolution of American thinking since 2001.
He recognised he needed time to stitch the strategy together and seemed to feel he had it.
Mr Obama characterised IS as a brutal successor to al-Qaeda, but still within the boundaries of the existing understanding of a terrorism threat. IS, he said, is "a terrorist organisation, pure and simple".
In a sense, he was pushing back on some within his own national security team who have characterised IS as more virulent and more dangerous than its predecessors.
While it threatens Americans and other Western citizens and personnel serving in the region, he suggested IS was not yet a direct threat to America.
It is primarily a danger to the Middle East, and that is where Mr Obama insists the primary solution must come.
"American power can make a decisive difference," he said.
"But we cannot do for Iraqis what they must do for themselves, nor can we take the place of Arab partners in securing their region."
In other words, the boots on the front lines will be Iraqi and Syrian, not American.
While the United States builds a broad coalition, it will not take primary ownership of the problem. This is a change in the conception of American leadership, serving to "rally other nations" to do what needs to be done, rather than leading the charge.
The American cavalry is not coming.
After lengthy campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is an understanding that the presence of large numbers of American soldiers both dispatches adversaries and generates them. And the costs are unsustainable, both economically and politically.
Mr Obama avoided characterising his proposed actions as "war".
In fact, he went to great lengths to assure the American people this strategy for Iraq was fundamentally different. He no longer sees military action by itself as the primary instrument in combating terrorism.
There is little doubt that American air power, working in support of Iraqi and potentially Syrian opposition forces, and greater international counter-terrorism co-operation will degrade IS over time.
But defeating them requires effective boots on the ground and better governance.
It is far from certain key regional players are up to the task.
Over the past year, the Syrian opposition has lost ground to both the Assad regime and IS.
Iraqi security forces, due primarily to weak leadership, have punched well below their weight. Mr Obama is committed to help with better training, but this will not happen quickly.
Just as Mr Obama recognised that success requires a more inclusive and effective government in Baghdad, the same is the case in Damascus.
He will chair a special session of the UN later this month and may try to see if a new political path can be constructed from the ashes of the failed Geneva II process.
But that requires co-operation from Iran and Russia, both of whom still see Mr Assad as part of the solution, not part of the problem.
This is the US president's dilemma - until he has a political solution to Syria, he does not have a strategy to destroy IS.
PJ Crowley is a former Assistant Secretary of State and now a distinguished fellow with the George Washington University Institute of Public Diplomacy & Global Communication. | On Wednesday, President Barack Obama outlined the elements of a strategy to confront Islamic State (IS) that he hopes to build on the fly in the coming months. | 29168779 |
The Belfast boxer, 29, outpointed Quigg in a unification fight in Manchester to add the WBA title to his IBF belt.
Frampton had been ordered to defend his WBA title against Guillermo Rigondeaux by 27 July but looks set to fight Leo Santa Cruz for his featherweight crown.
"It's disappointing to have the title taken away but that's boxing," he said.
"The world hasn't come to an end and my career continues to move in the right direction. In boxing, you can't get away from the politics of the sport," Frampton added in the Sunday Life newspaper.
Frampton's manager Barry McGuigan had consistently ruled out the Cuban Rigondeaux as a possible opponent, while saying a showdown with Mexican WBA featherweight champion Santa Cruz was an "obvious fight".
Showtime indicated last month that Frampton and Santa Cruz have "agreed to a championship match-up to be scheduled for late summer".
"Talks are ongoing for a fight between me and Leo Santa Cruz and that would be massive," added Frampton.
In a statement issued on Friday, the WBA said: "In light of Frampton's announced intention to face an opponent other than his mandatory, and for failing to respond to WBA inquiries as to his intent, Frampton's recognition as champion is removed." | Carl Frampton says he is ready to "move on" after being stripped of the WBA world super-bantamweight title he won by beating Scott Quigg in February. | 36005538 |
Despite his illustrious career in the dugout, Fullone had fallen on hard times and died in abject poverty in Casablanca, Morocco.
The Argentine was nicknamed 'The White Magician' by fans in Ivory Coast where he turned Asec Mimosas into one of Africa's leading clubs.
His finest hour with Asec came in 1998 when he led them to the African Champions League, beating Dynamos of Zimbabwe.
A year later, he won African club football's flagship tournament with Raja Casablanca of Morocco.
He also led another Moroccan side Wydad Casablanca to the African Cup Winners' Cup title in 2002.
Four years later, he underlined his status as one of the most successful foreign coaches in Moroccan football history by winning the Arab Champions League with Raja.
Aside from coaching several high-profile African sides, Fullone was also a familiar figure on the Middle East coaching circuit. | Oscar Fullone, the Argentine coach who won back to back African Champions League titles in 1998 and 1999, has died aged 78. | 40017189 |
More than 80 of those at the concert were killed when several gunmen stormed the Bataclan concert venue.
The band members were unhurt but Nick Alexander, a Briton selling merchandise at the gig, was among those killed.
On Friday, the group issued a short Facebook statement saying: "Our thoughts are with all of the people involved in this tragic situation."
Eagles of Death Metal were playing in the French capital as part of a European tour.
The band have now cut the tour short and have returned to the US.
The raucous rock 'n' roll band were formed by Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and his childhood friend Jesse Hughes. Homme was not on the tour.
Their support act Red Lemons posted a message saying: "Guys... I don't know what to say. We're more than lucky."
They added: "Thinking about those who passed away and who were having such a love (sic) time & happiness with all of us just a minute before."
Eagles of Death Metal released their first full LP in 2004 and have been described as "a mash-up of punk, rockabilly and Rolling Stones-style boogie".
The group's latest album Zipper Down, which came out last month, reached number 59 in the US Billboard chart and number 32 in the UK. Their songs have been used in advertisements for the likes of Nike, Acura and Microsoft.
Jesse Hughes is a hard-living frontman who is also an ordained minister and a former journalist and speechwriter for the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, U2 cancelled their concert in Paris on Saturday.
In a statement, the Irish band said: "We watched in disbelief and shock at the unfolding events in Paris and our hearts go out to all the victims and their families across the city tonight.
"We are devastated at the loss of life at the Eagles of Death Metal concert and our thoughts and prayers are with the band and their fans. And we hope and pray that all of our fans in Paris are safe."
Foo Fighters, who were due to perform in Paris on Monday, have also called off the remaining dates of their European tour.
"In light of this senseless violence, the closing of borders, and international mourning, we can't continue right now," the band said in a statement.
Motorhead have also announced the postponement of a Paris concert scheduled for Sunday. | US rock band Eagles of Death Metal were not injured in the attack on their Paris concert, it has been confirmed. | 34819608 |
The 32-year-old former Malmo left-back has Champions League experience with the Swedish club and was most recently with Azerbaijan club Gabala FK.
"I've always had a dream to play in England," he told BBC Radio Oxford. "I'm really looking forward to enjoying the atmosphere at this club."
Ricardinho has the option to extend his Oxford deal by a further year and is available to face Oldham on Saturday.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | Oxford United have signed Brazilian defender Ricardinho on a one-year deal. | 40813177 |
The impromptu surgery was done in the open air by a family member with razorblades outside the maternity ward of Douala's Laquintini Hospital, because medical staff refused to help.
One of the babies was dead, but witnesses said the second baby was still alive when it was removed, though it died shortly afterwards.
As the hospital staff refused to help, this has not been corroborated by medical officials.
Marie Sen, Ms Koumateke's mother:
"The mortuary attendant even came and said the babies were still kicking inside the stomach"
About an hour earlier, Monique Koumateke, 31, was nearly full term when her family rushed her to hospital in a taxi after she had become ill.
The midwife on duty told her relatives she was already dead and should be taken to the mortuary.
Then an attendant, Monga Luc, noticed the twins might still be alive.
"The mortuary attendant even came and said the babies were still kicking inside the stomach," her mother Marie Sen told the BBC.
"We went to the maternity ward [again] but they chased us away."
However, when they went back to the main hospital, they were told no-one would help.
This is when a relative of Ms Koumateke's partner, Takeh Rose, rushed to find some razorblades to see if she could rescue the twins.
Onlookers at the hospital two weeks ago filmed the scene and the footage was shared on social media.
In the subsequent uproar, police arrested the midwife and nurse on duty that day, as well as Ms Rose and the mortuary attendant. All four have been released on bail as investigations continue.
Hospital officials have not commented, but Health Minister Andre Mama Fouda, speaking after the arrests, said the staff at the state-run institution had done nothing wrong.
A Supreme Court judge has also become involved in the heated debate about the issue online.
Justice Ayah Paul Abine posted on Facebook that the minister's exoneration of the hospital staff needed to be investigated.
Protesters in Douala have been calling for Mr Fouda to resign.
"Hospitals now are just money-making businesses," one resident told me.
Cameroonians do not receive free health care and have to pay for consultations as well as medicine, which can be costly.
It is not uncommon for people to be detained at hospitals until their bills are paid.
According to the UN, 28% of Cameroon's population live below the income poverty line.
The recent death of a pregnant medical doctor in Douala caused similar outrage.
Dr Helene Ngo Kana had an ectopic pregnancy and was unable to pay for medical assistance - and so died in Douala's General Hospital without getting any help.
"This is a regime of shame. You have to pay before they deliver you; pay before you are treated," said opposition leader John Fru Ndi, condemning the poor treatment of patients at state-run hospitals.
He made the comments after visiting the Koumateke family at their run-down house in Douala's Mboppi slum. Ms Koumateke leaves behind her partner and two children aged three and five.
More than a dozen lawyers have now clubbed together to fight for justice for those who came to Ms Koumateke's aid.
They are offering their services free of charge to help win compensation for Ms Koumateke's children and her partner, as well as defending Ms Rose and the mortuary attendant.
"We are first of all humans, then lawyers. This sad incident could not leave anyone indifferent," said attorney Guy Olivier Moutin.
"It's a fight for the widower and the two children left behind. And we will defend two of the four arrested… we will fight for their total freedom."
And civil society leaders in Doula, like Ferdinand Ndifor, are calling for a full investigation into Cameroon's health system.
"Are the hospitals equipped? Are there enough doctors on duty?" he asked.
"We want to know - will this happen again tomorrow?" | Mobile phone footage of a woman without medical training cutting open the belly of a dead woman in a desperate attempt to save her unborn twins has provoked an outcry in Cameroon. | 35877272 |
Cornwall Council's cabinet has voted to spend £536,000 on a bid to win the title for the city of Truro in 2023.
Truro Mayor Rob Nolan said he was only made aware of the "pie in the sky" project when he read about it in the local newspaper on 19 January.
Cornwall Council said the title could "boost the Cornish economy by £100m".
More on the culture bid and other stories from Cornwall
It is still not known whether the EU will proceed with letting the UK host European Capitals of Culture as a consequence of Brexit.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which launched the contest in December, said it was continuing under the assumption that a UK city will host the event in 2023.
Mr Nolan, also a member of Cornwall Council, said he was "astounded" he had not been informed of the bid in the name of Truro.
He said: "It seems to have come out of the blue and off they go spending half a million pounds."
The mayor said he would rather see money spent on supporting existing festivals.
The UK was already lined up to host in 2023 before the country voted to leave the European Union in June.
Cornwall Council did not respond to questions regarding communication with the mayor.
The council was previously awarded £350,000 in 2008 by the European Union in an unsuccessful attempt to lobby for a European Region of Culture designation.
Julian German, the Cornwall Council cabinet member for economy and culture, said: "Cornwall consistently punches above its weight and there has never been a better time for us to celebrate our success." | A mayor has claimed he was "not told" of his city's £500,000 bid to become European Capital of Culture. | 38739208 |
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said they "regularly and systematically" exchanged information and discussed prices.
The biggest fine was given to the Storm agency, which has used models such as Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne.
Three of the agencies - Storm, Models One and Premier - said they would appeal against the fines.
The CMA said the five agencies got together regularly to agree on a minimum level of prices - which is against the law.
It also accused the Association of Model Agents (AMA), the trade association, of sending round emails to its members telling them to keep prices high.
However, the CMA stressed that big name "top models" were not involved in the price-fixing.
The CMA investigation looked at a wide range of modelling assignments, from small magazine shoots to big advertising campaigns.
It said that the customers affected included well-known High Street chains and online fashion retailers.
"Strong competition benefits consumers, the economy and society," said the CMA's John Wotton.
"In this case the agencies and the AMA colluded with each other over their approach to pricing and, in some instances, the agencies agreed to fix minimum prices."
Storm Model Management was fined £491,000; Models One was fined £394,000, and FM Models has been told to pay £251,000, although it has since gone bust.
Smaller fines were given to Viva Model Management and Premier Model Management.
The AMA was fined £2,500.
John Horner, the managing director of Models One, said they had decided to appeal against the fines without hesitation.
"It is clear that even after a 20-month investigation the CMA has failed to understand our complex industry.
"The CMA is penalising modelling agencies for seeking to maintain professional standards within the industry, whilst also protecting the interests of young and vulnerable people."
He said the level of the fine was out of line with the CMA's own guidance.
The agencies said that any communication between them was more about usage and publication rights, rather than prices.
How much do models really get paid?
Yasmin Le Bon was among the models who spoke out in defence of the agencies.
"Had it not been for the knowledge, experience and professionalism of the agency I would not have sustained a career in the industry," she said.
Hannah Cassidy, another well-known model, said she found the guidance offered to her by Storm was essential.
"Agents promote, but also protect, models from unfair contract and exclusivity terms which could harm their careers. They also make sure I get paid on time," she said. | Five top modelling agencies and a trade association have been fined a total of £1.5m for colluding to fix charges. | 38339367 |
The firm also unveiled a large tablet and an online store from which its UK customers will be able to purchase HD, but not 4K, content - it had only sold rentals before.
Its pay-TV rivals BT and Sky already offer 4K services of their own.
One expert suggested Virgin's initial line-up of content might disappoint.
"Virgin Media will hope that this well long overdue move will help boost its declining TV base," said Paolo Pescatore from the technology consultancy CCS Insight.
"For the first time in a while its total TV subscribers grew in the last quarter, reversing a worrying trend seen over the last couple of years.
"But despite claims that the box is future-proof, it lacks premium 4K content such as live sport and on-demand movies, unlike rivals, which is something that it needs to address.
"However, its hands are tied due to the high fees BT Sport and Sky will most likely command [for their content]."
Virgin's chief digital entertainment officer has played down the issue.
"The box is 4K capable and therefore future-proof," David Bouchier told the BBC.
"Do we see a significant demand sitting here in 2016 for a large amount of 4K programming by the majority of our subscriber base? No we don't.
"We would quite happily put the 4K football matches on if we felt that this was something that our customers were saying.
"I'm not saying that it's like 3D [which failed to catch on], but we need to wait and see exactly what people think.
"It's not something that is a must have.
"What is a must-have is six-times recording [where the new box records six shows simultaneously], that's what they really want."
For now, the V6 box also lacks HDR (high-dynamic-range) playback, a technology that allows images to reveal more detail and display a wider range of colours.
But Mr Bouchier said he hoped to add the facility some time next year when the chip-maker Broadcom released new firmware for the processor inside the device.
Virgin is charging a one-off fee of £99.95 for the box, but it does not require subscribers to take out a new contract or pay more per month than otherwise.
Virgin has also introduced the TellyTablet, which runs the old Marshmallow version of Android, and is an optional extra purchase.
It features a 14in (35.6cm) touchscreen, making it larger than both Apple and Amazon's biggest tablets, but smaller than Samsung's Galaxy View.
Fitted with four speakers, the new device is being pitched as a way to watch TV around the home.
It contrasts with Sky's approach, which involves offering a small wi-fi equipped box that extends its service to multiple TVs.
The TellyTablet is limited to 1080p HD playback, which has helped keep down its cost.
"It's not a service enhancement that we would have guessed before we heard it because tablet sales have already started slowing," commented Ed Barton from the consultancy Ovum.
"The two things that stood out are that it's big and it's relatively cheap.
"But the question is: how much of an overlap is there between Virgin subscribers and those that want a big £300 tablet? I'm not sure it's going to be huge."
Virgin is also adding new services including a Kids app, which brings together cartoons, TV shows, interactive games and picture books in one place.
It is targeted at children aged three-to-six years old and guarantees no advertisements or in-app fees. However, it is limited to the firm's premium subscription options.
The company's new online store will let people buy digital copies of movies shortly after their cinema run, and then be sent a physical disc-based copy when it becomes available.
Mr Bouchier acknowledged that Virgin was adopting a practice pioneered by Sky in April 2015.
"Sky was very successful and within a very short space of time had a bigger market share than iTunes," he said.
"One of the major reasons for that was that it had the DVD-to-the-home as an integral part of the proposition.
"So, we will be one of only two places where you will get the electronic version in your digital locker... and also a DVD in the post."
But Mr Barton said Virgin might find it harder to succeed.
"What Sky has is its own TV channels on which it has run adverts very aggressively promoting the release of movies in its Store," he explained.
"It worked very well for tent-pole releases, such as the recent Star Wars movie.
"So one wonders what Virgin's marketing and communications will be, as it won't work just by setting the store up." | Virgin Media has launched its first 4K TV set-top box, offering four times the resolution of high definition broadcasts. | 38155715 |
An area of the pit in Ermenek, Karaman province, was flooded with water while miners were working. The miners are said to be stuck 300m (980ft) underground.
More than 20 miners had been rescued, Karaman Governor Murat Koca said.
Turkey suffered its worst mining disaster earlier this year, when a fire killed 301 workers at a mine in Soma.
A mine official told Turkish media the trapped workers' chances of survival were slim unless they had managed to reach a safety gallery.
Sahin Uyar also said the rescuers had yet to make contact with the miners.
Turkey's emergency management agency, AFAD, said a broken pipe in the mine caused the flooding, the Associated Press news agency reported.
Energy Minister Taner Yildiz and Transport Minister Lutfi Elvan are heading to the mine to oversee the operation.
The deaths at Soma in May raised questions about safety standards in Turkish mines, with hundreds of miners killed since 2000.
Anti-government protests also followed the disaster, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then prime minister, under fire for what demonstrators saw as an insensitive response to the deaths. | At least 18 workers have been trapped underground after an accident at a coal mine in southern Turkey, officials say. | 29806252 |
The UK's fourth-largest supermarket said like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, rose 0.7% in the three months to 1 May compared with a year earlier.
Morrisons said prices were down 2.6% from a year earlier as the supermarket price war continued.
Chief executive David Potts, who has now been in charge for a year, said there was "still much to do".
But he added he was encouraged by the progress being made by the company following a long period of declining sales and profits, which led to the resignation of former chief executive Dalton Philips at the start of last year.
"Customers are responding and satisfaction levels remain ahead of last year. We are of course pleased with a second consecutive quarter of positive like-for-like sales, which demonstrates our aim to stabilise trade is taking effect," he said.
Morrisons said it was helped by a 17% rise in sales from its Food to Go range, which includes freshly-made sandwiches.
Total sales fell 1.8% after Morrisons closed unprofitable supermarkets and sold its convenience stores.
Shore Capital analyst Clive Black said Morrisons had taken another step forward under Mr Potts, adding the supermarket was on a journey that was "taking the business to a better place for investors in our view".
"If Morrisons sustains robust ongoing trading and if industry conditions remain rational, albeit demonstrably competitive, then there may yet be scope for us to consider nudging up our pre-tax profit forecasts; when was the last time that such a comment was made about this company?" he added.
Morrisons shares rose 1.9% to 191.1p in early trading.
The figures from Morrisons come a day after Sainsbury's reported a fall in annual profits as a result of lower food prices.
Food price deflation has been prompted, at least in part, by intense competition between the "big four" supermarkets and so-called discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, which have been gaining market share in recent years.
Sainsbury's said underlying profits, which strip out one-off charges, fell to £587m for the year to 12 March. That was down from £681m in the previous year.
In March, Morrisons reported underlying pre-tax profits of £242m in the year to 31 January, down from £345m a year earlier. | Morrisons supermarket has reported a second quarter of rising sales as it continues to cut costs and prices. | 36210319 |
Previously it has not been possible to drop down from the WSL into the third tier, the Women's Premier League (WPL).
The league have also revealed that applications for WSL licences from 2018-19 will initially only be open to the existing WSL clubs, not new teams.
But should any club fail to meet the criteria, then other clubs may apply.
Meanwhile, WSL clubs are to receive an increase in funding from the Football Association, up by as much as 79% for second-tier sides, as follows:
There will be one relegation spot in WSL 2 from the end of the first winter season to drop out of the WSL.
One club will continue to be promoted from the WPL up to the second tier, via a play-off, each season, with the winners of the WPL Northern Division facing the Southern champions.
In between WSL 1 and WSL 2, one team will continue to be relegated each season, while one team will be promoted.
This one-up, one-down system throughout the top three tiers means there will a total of 20 teams in the WSL, with 10 teams in each division, bringing a halt to the WSL's expansion, which started in 2014.
These changes do not apply to the 2017 Spring Series - a one-off, transitional competition where there will be no promotion or relegation, while the WSL switches to the winter calendar.
With an initially closed process for licence applications, the existing WSL clubs - plus those promoted to WSL 2 by right - will have priority over any new teams wishing to join the league.
This reduces the likelihood of new women's clubs joining the WSL without working their way through the lower divisions of the women's football pyramid.
But should any WSL club fail to meet the criteria for renewal, in any future season, then the door could be open for a club that does not currently have a top-level women's side to enter. | Relegation from Women's Super League Two will be introduced for the first time in the 2017-18 season when the WSL adopts a winter calendar. | 38263809 |
The store on Glenesk Road in Langholm was broken into at about 02:35.
It follows similar incidents last month at a Co-op petrol station in Lockerbie and a supermarket in Moffat.
Police are gathering and studying CCTV footage in an effort to identify and apprehend the people responsible for the latest break-in.
Det Insp Scott Young said: "I would urge anyone who saw anybody acting suspiciously in the area to come forward to police as a matter of urgency.
"In particular I would like to trace two men who were seen in the Waverley Road area around 11.30pm on Wednesday evening.
"They were wearing dark coloured clothing and baseball caps."
Police are want information on two vehicles seen between 23:30 on Wednesday and 03:00 on Thursday.
One was a light coloured Transit-type van and the other was a small white hatchback car.
"The police investigation is continuing into similar incidents at the Co-op petrol station in Lockerbie and the Co-op in Moffat last month," added Det Insp Young.
"We believe that these previous incidents are linked to this break-in." | Police believe a cigarette raid at a supermarket in southern Scotland is linked to two previous incidents at Co-op premises. | 36100966 |
The county council ordered an independent review of children's services on Wednesday after "serious and widespread failures" were found.
Four councillors were spotted nodding off, including the deputy leader.
Ray Theodoulou blamed his heart medication for making him "a little drowsy".
"Much as I would rather not discuss my medical issues in public, I have a serious heart condition, which requires me to take a range of medication," the Conservative councillor said.
"After five or so hours of meetings, that sometimes makes me a little drowsy.
"It doesn't make me sleep and I continued to listen throughout."
Fellow Conservative Rob Bird said he "didn't think he fell asleep", but added: "It was a very warm room, I think I might have closed my eyes for a moment."
He insisted he was "absolutely" able to perform his duties.
Opposition councillors were not immune from a bout of democratic doziness.
Liberal Democrat member John Cordwell admitted he "might have nodded off very briefly, but I was aware of what was going on the whole time".
Labour's Graham Morgan was more forthright though, stating: "Those meetings drag a bit and I'm 66.
"I don't need to concentrate at that point because I've read it all beforehand and I don't work on that kind of thing.
"Nothing needs to be done differently. It's not out of disrespect. You've only got to look at the House of Lords; they're all asleep."
Their soporific stories did not placate commenters on social media.
Charlotte Stirling described Councillor Morgan's comments as "disrespectful and arrogant", while Patricia Havard called on the quartet to resign.
"Totally unacceptable, no matter what they put forward to explain their poor performance," she said. | Councillors in Gloucestershire were spotted falling asleep during one of their most important meetings in recent years. | 40451896 |
Fruitfield Reids Farm food hall has invested £5m in new premises at its site on the Armagh Road in Richhill.
The business was opened in 1998 by the Reid family. In recent years the business outgrew its old premises and has now relocated to a bigger site.
Part of the investment was funded by Danske Bank.
The company currently employs 70 staff. | Forty new jobs are being created in a family-run retail business in County Armagh. | 34581481 |
Robson beat world number 117 Klara Koukalova in the first round but fell 6-2 6-2 to Oceane Dodin, ranked 151.
Robson, 22, returned from 17 months out in June but had a relapse and did not play until Indian Wells last month.
The former British number one has slipped to 465 in the world.
She will use her protected ranking of 58 to gain direct entry into the French Open main draw in May.
British number one Johanna Konta, the world number 22, is in the main draw in Stuttgart and will play Anna-Lena Friedsam in the first round. | Laura Robson failed to build on her best win since wrist surgery two years ago as she lost in the second round of qualifying for the WTA clay court event in Stuttgart. | 36062376 |
The accident happened on the A914 at Drumoig near Leuchars.
Scottish Fire and Rescue said they had no reports of casualties from the bus. | Firefighters are trying to free a woman from a car following a crash involving a bus in Fife. | 40105257 |
Kembo-Ekoko, a striker with UAE side Al Nasr, and Lorient midfielder Mulumba are in line for their first cap.
Both had previously rejected a number of call-ups to the national team.
Chancel Mbemba of Newcastle United and Crystal Palace winger Yannick Bolasie are also in the 26-man squad.
But there is no place for Dieumerci Mbokani, who is at loggerheads with Dynamo Kiev over his desire to quit the Ukrainian club after being heavily linked with a move to the English Premier League.
The Leopards will also be without their captain and Norwich midfielder Youssouf Mulumbu, who is recuperating after breaking a metatarsal bone in his foot early this month.
DR Congo will face a tricky game on 6 September in Bangui as CAR seek redemption following a 4-0 crushing defeat by Group B leaders Angola in their opening 2017 Nations qualifier in June.
Firmin Mubele Ndombe and Joel Kimuaki Mpela scored a goal each as DR Congo made their home advantage tell by beating a stubborn Madagascar side 2-1 on the opening day of qualifying round.
The two-time African Champions beat hosts Equatorial Guinea 4-2 on penalties to finish third at the 2015 Nations Cup.
DR Congo squad:
Goalkeepers: Joel Kiassumbua (FC Wohlen, Switzerland), Nicaise Kudimbana (Royal Antwerp, Belgium), Parfait Mandanda (Charleroi, Belgium)
Defenders: Issama Mpeko and Joel Kimwaki (TP Mazembe) Chris Mavinga (Troyes, France), Cédric Mongongu (Eskisehirspor, Turkey), Fabrice Nsakala (Anderlecht, Belgium), Gabriel Zakuani (Peterborough, England), Christopher Oualembo (Academica Coimbra, Portugal), Bobo Ugenda (Kabuscorp, Angola)
Midfielders: Chancel Mbemba (Newcastle United, England), Cedric Makiadi (Werder Bremen, Germany), Neeskens Kebano (Charleroi, Belgium), Jordan Nkololo (Caen, France), Remi Mulumba (Lorient, France), Paul-José Mpoku (Chievo Verona, Italy), Wilson Kamavuaka (Sturm Graz, Austria)
Forwards: Cédric Bakambu (Villarreal, Spain), Yannick Bolasie (Crystal Palace, England), Jeremy Bokila (Guangzhou, China), Junior Kabananga (FC Astana, Kazakhstan), Firmin Mubele (Al Ahli SC, Qatar) Jires Kembo-Ekoko (Al Nasr, UAE), Cedric Mabwati (Columbus Crew, USA), Jordan Botaka (Excelsior Rotterdam,Netherlands). | DR Congo have called up former France youth internationals Remi Mulumba and Jires Kembo-Ekoko for next month's 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Central African Republic. | 34052190 |
It was packed with workers and schoolchildren eating breakfast.
A cooking gas cylinder exploded, causing explosives illegally stored nearby to detonate, police said.
Rescue efforts have now ended - officials say they have pulled all the bodies out of the wreckage. At least 35 people are in hospital with injuries.
After the gas cylinder exploded, onlookers and people looking for their relatives gathered at the scene.
The explosives then went off, worsening the toll from the blast.
The explosives were mining detonators which were stored illegally in a room next to the restaurant, officials said.
The restaurant was close to a busy bus stop. The blast knocked down a neighbouring building and damaged several others.
"It looks like someone had stored those explosives, the ones used in mining, in one of the buildings. But only further investigation will reveal the exact details," the AFP news agency quotes senior district police official Seema Alava as saying.
Petlawad is in Jhabua district, where there are several manganese and bauxite mines and, according to AP, many mine workers are hired on contract from the town, which is about 850km (530 miles) south of the capital, New Delhi. | At least 89 people have been killed in a powerful explosion that tore through a restaurant in Petlawad in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, officials say. | 34231885 |
Reprimanded for failing to obey a call to order, he was thrown out of the chamber by house speaker David Carter.
Mr Carter said Mr Key had ignored several of his warnings: "He is to be treated no differently to any other in this house," Mr Carter said.
It is not the first time John Key has been thrown out of the chamber as PM.
Parliamentary records show he has been expelled on three other occasions while MP, the New Zealand news website Stuff reports.
Nor is he the first New Zealand prime minister to be ejected from the chamber: he follows in the footsteps of Helen Clark, in 2005, and before her, David Lange in both 1986 and 1987. | Being New Zealand's prime minister granted John Key no special favours during a heated parliamentary debate about the Panama Papers. | 36264258 |
George Bush, 63, of Riverdale Road, Erith, south east London, also possessed sexual images of animals, Woolwich Crown Court heard.
He was sentenced to 14 months in prison, suspended for two years.
Bush admitted four charges relating to listings on the online auction site which included more than 130 body parts of endangered species.
Among them were leopard skulls and the hands and heads of monkeys. Bush also admitted possessing 71 images of bestiality.
Bush was arrested on suspicion of illegally importing protected species following information from UK Border Force.
Det Con Sarah Bailey, of the Met's Wildlife Crime Unit, said: "This case shows that strong controls are in place to protect endangered species and the police will take action against anyone found to be trading illegally.
"Illegal trade threatens many species' survival. I would urge anyone who sees specimens from protected wildlife for sale to contact police. We are committed to ensuring that anyone in London who is trading illegally in endangered animal parts is stopped."
Grant Miller from the border force agency CITES said the illegal movement of endangered species was "often cruel" and those trading in illegal wildlife products would be targeted "at the UK border and beyond".
He said Bush's supplier in Indonesia had been referred to the East Java police.
A confiscation hearing is due to take place in April. | A man who tried to sell the heads of monkeys and leopards on eBay has been sentenced. | 35294862 |
It is the latest debilitating blow to a sport that over the past decade, if not longer, has become increasingly synonymous in the public mind with drug taking.
Despite previous scandals, many inside and outside the sport recognise the Armstrong case has been a watershed moment, and in December a pressure group of former cyclists and others in the industry was formed to demand radical reform of the sport's anti-doping approach.
Called Change Cycling Now (CCN), the driving force behind it is Jaimie Fuller, chairman, and until last year chief executive, of sports compression-wear firm Skins.
He says he launched CCN because of the sluggish response of world cycling body the UCI to the report by the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) into Armstrong's drug regime.
Usada labelled Armstrong a "serial" cheat who led "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen".
"The media was going gaga, all hell was breaking loose, and I was waiting for the UCI to do something, but nothing happened," says Mr Fuller, whose firm, based in Steinhausen, Switzerland, has sponsored cycling for the past five years.
Just over a week later, the UCI accepted the findings and sanctions of the Usada report.
But Mr Fuller says this was inadequate in light of the damage that had been done to the sport over many years, and something more had to be done to prevent a repetition.
"I sat back waiting for someone else to do something, and they didn't, so I thought… I will do it myself," he says.
After a lot of phone calls he had enough people involved, including former riders - most notably three-times Tour winner Greg LeMond, journalists, anti-doping experts, and others from within the cycling industry.
Funding to get CCN off the ground came from Mr Fuller's own pocket. However he is at pains to point out that this "coalition of the willing" is not a Skins-led organisation, or some sort of publicity stunt.
"My aim was to bring together as many different stakeholders as possible," he says.
"At our first meeting, we came up with four outcomes that we want to see, that are incorporated in our charter."
These call for a "truth and reconciliation" committee to probe doping practices in cycling, an independent commission to investigate the UCI and senior cycling management, independent doping controls, and "a cultural change at the UCI".
There has been some progress - a UCI commission, tasked with investigating its handling of the sport during the Armstrong era, and allegations of corruption within the organisation, has been disbanded, to be replaced with a truth and reconciliation committee.
It is all a far cry from when the Australian entrepreneur started out in business, at his parents printing firm, and when he went on to launch his own print brokerage, outsourcing work to other companies.
"I then moved into property development, and as with printing it was very successful, but there was no satisfaction," he says.
In 2002 he was then asked by Skins, which had been founded six years earlier by Australian physiologist and ski enthusiast Brad Duffy, to come in as the firm's US distributor.
"I then had my Victor Kiam moment, and I bought the company," he says, referring to the US entrepreneur who bought Remington after his wife bought him an electric shaver.
At first he took a 49% holding, but by the end of 2004, after putting in much of his own money in a desire to take Skins "to the next level", he bought up the whole firm.
The firm launched in the UK in 2006, the US in 2007, and now - from initially selling one product, a pair of tights - sells more than 160 compression products, and has other regional offices in Australia, France, Germany and China.
It has distributors in another 14 countries.
A major development, and one which explains his current stance, came at the end of 2007, when he was introduced to a London brand consulting firm called Eatbigfish.
"We started this incredible brand values process, we wanted to define what we stood for, and looked for ways we could implement that in our culture as well as in our consumer facing, so that there was a degree of consistency.
"We defined the essence of our brand as standing for the true spirit of competition - not cheating, not taking drugs, not crossing the line."
Clauses to this effect were subsequently put into contracts that Skins signed with athletes and teams, and the firm vowed that if any of its sportspeople or teams were caught "systematically cheating" - on a regular and calculating basis - then the firm would "terminate the contract, and terminate it very loudly".
And that is what happened in 2010 when Australian Rugby League team the Melbourne Storm were caught systematically breaking the competition's salary cap.
Skins dropped the team, and Mr Fuller says he felt the fall-out both financially, and from fans.
"I got flak, I got death threats," he says. "The deal to us was worth millions, it was a good deal, but I said we could not be hypocritical, and we terminated the contract."
As part of his anti-cheating stance and continued dissatisfaction with the UCI, Skins is suing the governing body for $2m, claiming its alleged inability to run a clean sport has caused the company to suffer.
This is the sum the firm feels it could legitimately claim - in terms of monies spent on things like sponsorship, advertising, research and development - if it was forced to withdraw from cycling.
Meanwhile, any new cycling sponsorship deals are now for one year, rather than the previous four, while Mr Fuller decides whether to continue his involvement with the sport.
"We are only signing short-term deals while we consider our position," he says.
"If things don't change, we will consider leaving cycling." | The major sport story of the past six months has been the fall from grace of cyclist Lance Armstrong for extensive doping offences, and the subsequent stripping of his seven Tour de France titles. | 21333899 |
Barnaby Cork, from Thame, was struck by a car outside a sports centre on the town's Oxford Road shortly before 10:30 GMT on Saturday.
He died on his way to hospital.
In a statement, his family said: "We're truly devastated at the loss of our precious Barnaby. We're absolutely heartbroken."
They added: "There's no words that can even begin to describe the sadness we're experiencing now that Barnaby isn't with us. He was our world."
Police have appealed for witnesses to the accident.
Barnaby's family added: "We are so very very lucky to have such close and strong family, as well as such great friends and neighbours, and your support means everything to us.
"We know the people of Thame have us in their thoughts and prayers and this gives us strength when we need it the most." | The family of a four-year-old boy who died after being knocked down by a car in Oxfordshire have said they are "absolutely heartbroken". | 38293019 |
Vincent Hill, 60, admitted sexually and indecently assaulting the boy at addresses in Paisley, Inchinnan and Erskine, all Renfrewshire.
The abuse began when the boy was aged 12 and lasted from 1998 until 2002.
The High Court in Glasgow heard that Hill was arrested in 2013 after his victim revealed the abuse to his wife.
Jailing him, judge Lady Scott told Hill he had "systematically abused" and "deliberately groomed" his victim.
The judge said the prison term would have been eight years, but for the guilty plea.
The court previously heard that the victim first got to know his abuser in 1997, when Hill worked as a market trader, selling computer games and consoles at a car boot market in Glasgow.
Prosecutor Shirley McKenna told how, in an attempt to keep the boy quiet, Hill would often take the boy to watch his favourite football team, Rangers.
The court also heard that the child lived a "chaotic life" - a factor Hill took advantage of.
Ms McKenna said the abuse had a "profound effect" on the victim, and had led to him attempting suicide and requiring counselling. It was said that this had led to an "impoverished" life.
The court heard Hill later sent a text to the victim claiming he wanted to "cut a deal" and that he would plead "guilty". Hill also claimed he was "sorry" and asked for the man to "forgive" him. | A man who groomed and abused a schoolboy then took him to football matches in a bid to buy his silence has been jailed for seven years. | 32116334 |
The crew of 24 is raising money for the Donna Louise Trust, a hospice in Stoke-On-Trent.
Other oarsmen include actor and comedian Hugh Dennis and TV presenter Nick Hancock.
It will take about 15 hours to row down the Thames before attempting the channel crossing.
The 450 nautical mile challenge has been branded the "Everest of open-water rowing", and fewer than 100 people have completed the route.
The two Cornish Gigs are expected to arrive in Paris on Monday 1 June. | A team including West Bromwich Albion head coach Tony Pulis has embarked on a non-stop six-day row from the Tower of London to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. | 32874134 |
The 26-year-old centre-back played every minute of the Cherries' league campaign this season.
"It has always been my plan to stay here as long as possible, so to be given the chance to do that is really pleasing," he said.
Cook has made 231 appearances for the club since joining from Brighton in the summer of 2011.
"Myself and Bournemouth have been the perfect match," Cook added. "Since the manager came in, things have been forever moving upwards and that has matched my own ambitions." | Bournemouth defender Steve Cook has signed a new four-year contract with the Premier League club. | 40042295 |
The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains, marking 50 years since the release of the band's first single, will include a laser light show and previously unseen concert footage.
The "immersive" show will feature 350 objects and artefacts, including instruments and original artworks.
It will run from May to October 2017.
The V&A promised "an immersive, multi-sensory and theatrical journey through Pink Floyd's extraordinary world" which will "chronicle the music, iconic visuals and staging of the band, from the underground psychedelic scene in 1960s London to the present day".
Pink Floyd were formed in 1965 by four students - Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason. Waters, Wright and Mason had met while studying at the Regent Street Polytechnic.
Barrett left three years later after one album and was replaced by guitarist David Gilmour.
The band has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide - including 1973's The Dark Side Of The Moon, which stayed in the US album chart for more than a decade.
Drummer Mason attended the launch at the London museum, which flew a giant inflatable pig over its roof for the occasion - like the one pictured above Battersea Power Station on the cover of the 1977 album Animals.
Mason said the other remaining members of the band are collaborating with the show - despite the fact he was the only one present at the launch.
"There was a school of thought that I'd been not enormously excited about it but that's not quite true," he said. "Maybe it was one of the others. I'd always seen it as possible.
"I did think we'd be short of material. That's turned out to be entirely incorrect. I can't tell you how much stuff won't fit in.
"We seem to have a bit of everything. My favourite drumkits. Quite a lot of the old machinery that we used for recording - that's now completely obsolete with all the digital technology."
Hipgnosis, Pink Floyd's creative director which designed the cover for The Dark Side of the Moon, and Stufish, which created the band's sets, are working on the show.
V&A director Martin Roth said: "The V&A is perfectly placed to exhibit the work of a band that is as recognisable for its unique visual imagery as for its music.
"Pink Floyd is an impressive and enduring British design story of creative success. Alongside creating extraordinary music, they have for over five decades been pioneers in uniting sound and vision, from their earliest 1960s performances with experimental light shows, through their spectacular stadium rock shows, to their consistently iconic album covers."
The exhibition will also include items from stage performances, as well as instruments, handwritten lyrics, architectural drawings and psychedelic posters.
After it was announced in 2012, the V&A's David Bowie exhibition became the fastest-selling in the museum's history.
The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains runs from May 13 to October 1 next year. Tickets are on sale now.
Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram, or if you have a story suggestion email [email protected]. | The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is hoping to replicate the success of its David Bowie exhibition with a major retrospective of Pink Floyd. | 37228496 |
Researchers analysed the concentration and distribution of particular types of atoms in the granite to show it must have been recycled from something that existed 4.2 billion years ago.
This "parent rock" was very probably basalt of the sort produced on the ocean floor, they say.
The team reports its work in this week's Science Magazine.
With most rock on Earth being broken down by weathering or taken back into the planet's interior just a few hundred million years after production, there is very little, truly ancient material to look at.
Geological genealogy offers a very useful alternative in the circumstances, says Dr Jonathan O'Neil from the University of Ottawa, Canada.
"To put everything into perspective, the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and I would say that rocks that are 3.8 billion years and older - we can count them on the fingers of our hands.
"We have very limited places to learn something about the first billion years of Earth history. That's our challenge," he told the Science in Action programme on the BBC World Service.
Dr O'Neil and colleagues examined samples of rock from the "Canadian Shield", a swathe of territory moving east of Hudson Bay in Canada.
The specific pieces they took into the lab were relatively young - "only" 2.7bn years old.
But by looking at an atomic tracer in the minerals, the team could determine the parentage.
This tracer takes the form of a radioactive decay chain centred on versions, or isotopes, of the chemical elements samarium and neodymium.
The isotope of samarium with an atomic mass of 146 is unstable and decays very rapidly into the isotope of neodymium that has a mass of 142.
In fact the decay is so rapid that any samarium-146 that was present on Earth at its formation 4.6 billion years ago is all but gone within 500 million years. But even though "the clock" stops running, it leaves the mark of its existence in the concentration and distribution of the neodymium.
When the scientists take into account the known age of their granite samples, the time it would take for these granites to form from a recycled parent rock, and the neodymium isotope record present in the samples - they conclude the pre-cursor material must be older than 4.2 billion years.
"We can also say something about [the parent rock's] nature," said Dr O'Neil.
"Were they granites or basalts? Were they continental crust or were they oceanic crust? We think they were oceanic crust. So, the primitive earliest crust on Earth - at least the evidence we have in our samples - was oceanic crust at approximately 4.3 billion years old."
Does any of this original material still exist? Dr O'Neil points to a nearby sliver of rock on the shore of the Hudson Bay called the Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB). This is presumed to be oceanic volcanic rock and has been dated to be between 3.7 and 4.3 billion years old. It is an age bracket that also relies on a neodymium analysis.
"The younger rocks that we have analysed are around [the NSB], so it makes sense that this is the piece of crust that has been recycled to form our continents," said Dr O'Neil.
"It fits the bill. It has exactly the right composition and the right mineralogy to be it."
The Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt was reported earlier this month by a team led from University College London (UCL), UK, to contain the fossilised remains of tiny lifeforms.
However, it has to be said that there is significant debate over the exact age of the NSB, which may not quite fit with this genealogy story.
"The neodymium isotope compositions in the volcanic rocks of the NSB do indeed yield an age of 4.28 billion years, but this has been interpreted both as the true age of this rock (the age of when the lava froze into rock) and alternatively as an older signature inherited from the early mantle of the Earth in these younger rocks, that have a minimum age of 3.77 billion years," explained UCL's Dr Dominic Papineau.
"This debate can possibly be settled using new approaches and techniques, as well as using careful microscopy-based observations of rocks from key geological relationships in the field," he told BBC News.
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos | Scientists have tracked the "family history" of a rock back to some of the earliest times on Earth. | 39292460 |
The 41 black and white photos taken by Rupert Potter include one believed to be of his daughter sitting in the porch of Broad Leys house in 1909.
The image was captured by Lake Windermere at the time she was working on The Tale of Ginger and Pickles.
David Brookes from 1818 Auctioneers said the collection was sold to an online buyer in Canada for £1,000.
Mr Potter, a keen amateur photographer, had some of his work exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The photos were sold on Monday by an anonymous vendor whose family once worked for Beatrix Potter's mother in Windermere. | A collection of photographs taken by Beatrix Potter's father have been sold at auction. | 39489937 |
The seals were the medieval equivalent of modern-day signatures and credit cards, and the imprint team is hoping they will provide insights into British society at that time.
The research will use material from cathedrals, the National Library of Wales and Westminster Abbey.
The study is due to take three years.
Dr Elizabeth New from Aberystwyth University said: "Seals were not just the preserve of kings and great nobles. Men and women from all levels of society also set their seals on documents.
"Medieval seals contained a variety of images and words, providing strong statements of identity and very valuable sources of information about people, culture and society.
"The images can tell us what things actually looked like, and provide glimpses of humour, piety and family pride. They also enabled otherwise illiterate men and women the means to 'write' their name." | Researchers from Aberystwyth University will investigate finger and palm prints on the wax seals of documents dated between the 12th and 14th centuries. | 35232021 |
Antoine Denive, 27, was detained in a joint Franco-Spanish raid on a house in Malaga, Madrid authorities say.
The Frenchman is suspected of fleeing France weeks after the 9 January supermarket siege.
In all, 17 people were killed in three days of Islamist violence in Paris.
Spain's interior ministry said two other suspects from Serbia and Montenegro were detained during the raid on a building in the Rincon de la Victoria area of Malaga on Tuesday.
The French suspect, from the Pas de Calais region of north-west France, was said to have had ties to Serbs who may have provided him with arms and ammunition.
He appeared before a judge in Madrid on Wednesday and denied the charges. Unconfirmed reports said he had agreed to be extradited to France.
Paris attack victims
Three days of terror in Paris
Charlie Hebdo offices: 7 Jan 2015
Montrouge shooting: 8 Jan 2015
HyperCacher supermarket: 9 Jan 2015 | Spanish police have arrested a man suspected of supplying arms to Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly, who murdered four people at a kosher supermarket in January 2015. | 36035174 |
Real were again without the injured Cristiano Ronaldo, who also missed the goalless first leg of their Champions League semi-final at Manchester City.
Striker Karim Benzema was also absent but Bale filled the void with his 19th goal of the season.
Real play the return leg against City on Wednesday night.
Relive how Real Madrid kept their title hopes alive.
Bale had missed a number of chances as Zinedine Zidane's side chased a 10th successive league win to keep the pressure on title rivals Atletico Madrid, who later beat Rayo Vallecano 1-0, and Barcelona, who went back to the top after beating Real Betis 2-0.
But the Wales international, 26, who scored twice as Real beat Rayo Vallecano a week earlier, enhanced Real's chances of a first title success since 2012 when he powerfully headed home a cross from Lucas Vazquez.
Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane: "I am happy for him (Bale) because he has had problems this season with injury. But when he is fit you notice.
"We could have scored earlier in the first half, but we had to work until the end against a difficult side.
"I am happy with the performance and to get three points once again." | Gareth Bale headed in a late goal as Real Madrid won 1-0 at Real Sociedad to briefly go top of La Liga. | 36125967 |
The 46-year-old had been engaged in sexual activity with David Andrew Jeffers, 47, at a Stockport hotel in January when she was shot.
Jeffers admitted possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life and was jailed for 10 years.
The two had been engaged in a "sex fantasy" when the weapon fired, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Greater Manchester Police branded the scene "shocking" and "horrifying".
Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard the shooting happened at the Britannia Hotel in Dialstone Lane in the early hours of 31 January.
When officers arrived at the scene they found the victim in a pool of blood and suffering from serious abdominal injuries.
She was taken to hospital and required extensive surgery, police said.
The woman, who was too unwell to be fully interviewed at the time, told officers from her hospital bed that Jeffers was a "bad man".
Police said Jeffers, of Berkley Terrace, Leeds, claimed to have found the gun in a pub toilet in Leeds. He said he took the gun to Manchester to dispose of it.
Jeffers was spotted on CCTV leaving the hotel and going to Piccadilly Station to catch a train back to Leeds.
Armed officers raided a property on Amberton Grove, Leeds, two days later and arrested Jeffers.
A search of the house found a partially scrawled note denying knowledge of the shooting, the court heard.
Det Insp Roger Edwards said: "This was a horrifying incident that has left a woman with life changing injuries that will affect her for the rest of her life."
He said the crime was "one of the most shocking" he had encountered, adding: "Jeffers left the victim badly bleeding in a hotel room, showing no regard for her life.
"I know that this has been a traumatic time for this woman, having to relive the horror of that day." | A woman was shot in the vagina and left with "life changing injuries" in a sex game gone wrong, a court has heard. | 40828564 |
Research from China and the US suggests that the innermost core of our planet has another, distinct region at its centre.
The team believes that the structure of the iron crystals there is different from those found in the outer part of the inner core.
The findings are reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Without being able to drill into the heart of the Earth, its make-up is something of a mystery.
So instead, scientists use echoes generated by earthquakes to study the core, by analysing how they change as they travel through the different layers of our planet.
Prof Xiaodong Song, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said: "The waves are bouncing back and forth from one side of the Earth to the other side of the Earth."
Prof Song and his colleagues in China say this data suggests that the Earth's inner core - a solid region that is about the size of the Moon - is made up of two parts.
The seismic wave data suggests that crystals in the "inner inner core" are aligned in an east-to-west direction - flipped on their side, if you are looking down at our planet from high above the North Pole.
Those in the "outer inner core" are lined up north to south, so vertical if peering down from the same lofty vantage point.
Prof Song said: "The fact we are discovering different structures at different regions of the inner core can tell us something about the very long history of the Earth."
The core, which lies more than 5,000km down, started to solidify about a billion years ago - and it continues to grow about 0.5mm each year.
The finding that it has crystals with a different alignment, suggests that they formed under different conditions and that our planet may have undergone a dramatic change during this period.
Commenting on the research, Prof Simon Redfern from the University of Cambridge said: "Probing deeper into the solid inner core is like tracing it back in time, to the beginnings of its formation.
"People have noticed differences in the way seismic waves travel through the outer parts of the inner core and its innermost reaches before, but never before have they suggested that the alignment of crystalline iron that makes up this region is completely askew compared to the outermost parts.
"If this is true, it would imply that something very substantial happened to flip the orientation of the core to turn the alignment of crystals in the inner core north-south as is seen today in its outer parts."
He added that other studies suggest that the Earth's magnetic field may have undergone a change about half a billion years ago, switching between the equatorial axes and the polar axis.
"It could be that the strange alignment Prof Song sees in the innermost core explains the strange palaeomagnetic signatures from ancient rocks that may have been present near the equator half a billion years ago," he added.
"For the moment, however, the model proposed in this paper needs testing against other ways of analysing the seismic properties of Earth's innermost core, since no other researchers have previously considered evidence for the same conclusions in their studies."
Follow Rebecca on Twitter | Scientists say they have gained new insight into what lies at the very centre of the Earth. | 31322817 |
Keiron Lavery, 20, from Meadowbrook in the Tullygally area, made the calls between May 2013 and January this year.
He also admitted two counts of placing an article with intent to cause a bomb hoax in the Craigavon areas.
He was sentenced to 34 months, half of which will be served in prison and half on supervised licence upon his release.
Belfast Crown Court was told Lavery had asked to be moved from Hydebank Young Offenders Centre to the dissident republican wing of Maghaberry Prison after he was attacked in his cell by three inmates.
Passing sentence, a judge said the cost of policing Lavery's offending amounted to almost £30,000.
He said due to the threat posed to police officers by dissident republicans, he could not dismiss the hoax calls as "pranks", especially given Lavery's interests in dissident republican activity.
However, he told Lavery: "It is clear you are a suggestible person and you may not have had the ability to resist suggestions made to you by other more sinister elements." | A Craigavon man has been jailed after he admitted making 16 hoax bomb calls on seven separate occasions. | 30300243 |
Justice Elena Kagan said Timothy Foster's case seemed as clear a violation "as a court is ever going to see" of rules meant to prevent racial discrimination in jury selection.
Foster was sentenced to death in 1987.
He argues that excluding black people from the jury made his sentence more harsh.
The prosecutor in his case had asked for a death sentence to "deter other people out there in the projects".
The Supreme Court will determine whether prosecutor Stephen Lanier and his team violated the constitutional rights of Foster.
Mr Lanier has denied any intentions to discriminate against Foster.
There is still much concern that African Americans are being struck from US juries at a higher rate than whites.
A 2011 lawsuit argued that 82% of black jurors were denied in death penalty cases in Houston and Henry counties in Alabama. A 2015 study of jury strikes in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, showed that prosecutors struck black jurors at three times the rate they struck non-blacks.
Potential jury members are selected from a large pool, then whittled down to 12 members. Each trial lawyer is given a number of "peremptory strikes". If a peremptory strike is challenged as being racial in nature, the lawyer must give a so-called race-neutral reason.
This can be a low bar to clear. An Equal Justice Initiative study found a "startlingly common" reason for striking black jurors was "low intelligence". Other reasons included living in "high crime" areas, or being on food stamps.
The US's highest court had ruled in 1986 that jurors could not be excluded due to race.
In 2006, the case was re-opened when the state of Georgia made public notes that showed prosecutors had singled out black people during jury selection - the world "black" had been circled next to the "race" option.
One handwritten note said "Definite No's" with six people, five of whom were black.
Three prospective black jurors were labelled on the notes as "B#1", "B#2" and "B#3". | The US Supreme Court is determining whether racism played a role when an all-white jury put a black teenager on death row for killing a white woman. | 34703088 |
He starts with the opening games in each group, which include the repeat of the 2010 final between holders Spain and the Netherlands, and England's tough-looking start against Italy.
Lawro also picks his two teams to go through from each group into the knockout stage.
He is backing Argentina to win the World Cup, and believes England will reach the quarter-finals.
Lawro was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan.
Brazil 3-1 Croatia
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Mexico 1-0 Cameroon
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Lawro's pre-tournament picks to go through: Brazil and Mexico.
Spain 1-5 Netherlands
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Chile 3-1 Australia
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Lawro's pre-tournament picks to go through: Spain and Netherlands.
Colombia 3-0 Greece
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Ivory Coast 2-1 Japan
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Lawro's pre-tournament picks to go through: Colombia and Ivory Coast.
Uruguay 1-3 Costa Rica
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England 1-2 Italy
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Lawro's pre-tournament picks to go through: England and Italy.
Switzerland 2-1 Ecuador
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France 3-0 Honduras
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Lawro's pre-tournament picks to go through: France and Switzerland.
Argentina 2-1 Bosnia-Hercegovina
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Iran 0-0 Nigeria
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Lawro's pre-tournament picks to go through: Argentina and Nigeria.
Germany 4-0 Portugal
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Ghana 1-2 United States
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Lawro's pre-tournament picks to go through: Germany and the United States.
Belgium 2-1 Algeria
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Russia 1-1 South Korea
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Lawro's pre-tournament picks to go through: Belgium and Russia. | BBC Sport football expert Mark Lawrenson is predicting the outcome of every game at the 2014 World Cup. | 27712282 |
The so-called Six-Day War in 1967 arguably had its origins in a water dispute - moves to divert the River Jordan, Israel's main source of drinking water.
Years of skirmishes and sabre rattling culminated in all-out war, with Israel quadrupling the territory it controlled and gaining complete control of double the resources of fresh water.
Any country needs water to survive and develop. In Israel's history, it has needed water to make feasible the influx of huge numbers of Jewish immigrants.
Therefore, on the margins of one of the most arid environments on earth, the available water system had to support not just the indigenous population, mainly Palestinian peasant farmers, but also hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
In addition to their sheer numbers, citizens of the new state were intent on conducting water-intensive commercial agricultural such as growing bananas and citrus fruits.
Israel says the 1967 war was forced upon it by the imminent threat of hostile Arab countries and there was no intention to occupy more land or resources.
Sources in million cubic metres per year:
Israeli allocations:
(Source: Israeli government)
But the war's outcome left Israel occupying an area not far short of the territory claimed by the founders of the Zionist movement at the beginning of the 20th Century.
In 1919, the Zionist delegation at the Paris Peace Conference said the Golan Heights, Jordan valley, what is now the West Bank, as well as Lebanon's river Litani were "essential for the necessary economic foundation of the country. Palestine must have... the control of its rivers and their headwaters".
In the 1967 war Israel gained exclusive control of the waters of the West Bank and the Sea of Galilee, although not the Litani.
Those resources - the West Bank's mountain aquifer and the Sea of Galilee - give Israel about 60% of its fresh water, a billion cubic metres per year.
Heated arguments rage about the rights to the mountain aquifer. Israel, and Israeli settlements, take about 80% of the aquifer's flow, leaving the Palestinians with 20%.
Israel says the proportion of water it uses has not changed substantially since the 1950s. The rain which replenishes the aquifer may fall on the occupied territory, but the water does flow down into pre-1967 Israel.
But the Palestinians say they are prevented from using their own water resources by a belligerent military power, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to buy water from their occupiers at inflated prices.
Moreover, Israel allocates to its citizens, including those living in settlements in the West Bank deemed illegal under international law, between three and five times more water than the Palestinians.
This, Palestinians say, is crippling to their agricultural economy.
With water consumption outstripping supply in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, Palestinians say they are always the first community to be rationed as reserves run dry, with the health problems that entails.
Not surprisingly, during the era of Arab-Israeli peacemaking in the 1990s, water rights became one of the trickiest areas of discussion.
They were set aside to be dealt with in the "final status" Israel-Palestinian talks, which were never concluded.
Israel 'denies Palestinians water'Photo journal: Water use
Israeli settlement activity continued in some of most sensitive water areas in the West Bank, despite Israel's undertaking not to act in ways that prejudice final status talks.
Stalled negotiations on Syria's dispute with Israel over the Golan Heights - occupied by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1980 - also foundered on water-related issues.
Syria wants an Israeli withdrawal to 5 June 1967 borders, allowing Syria access to the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers. Israel wants to use boundaries dating back to 1923 and the British Mandate, which give the areas to Israel.
By contrast, the Jordan-Israel treaty of 1994 produced notable agreement on use of wells in the Wadi Araba area in the south and sharing the Yarmouk in the north.
In the 21st Century Israel has tried to solve the Palestinian problem unilaterally, pulling troops and settlers from Gaza and building a barrier around West Bank areas with the largest concentration of Palestinians.
Although Israel says this is a temporary security measure, the barrier encroaches deep onto occupied territory - especially areas of high water yield.
Middle Eastern rhetoric often portrays the issue of water as an existential, zero-sum conflict - casting either Israel as a malevolent sponge sucking up Arab water resources, or the implacably hostile Arabs as threatening Israel's very existence by denying life-giving water.
Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali may not have been right when he said in the 1990s that the next war in the Middle East would be about water not politics, but a future war over water is not out of the question.
Demand for water already outstrips supply, requirements are rising and current supply is unsustainable.
Hydrologists say joint solutions need to be found, because water requirements are interdependent and water resources cross political boundaries.
That necessitates improved conservation and recycling by both sides.
Improving the political atmosphere would allow supplies to be piped from neighbouring countries. Also crucial, experts say, are investment in desalination and other technical advances.
Such solutions are desperately needed in the medium to long term. In other words, Israel and the Palestinians must work together, because they cannot survive as combatants. | The Arab-Israeli dispute is a conflict about land - and maybe just as crucially the water which flows through that land. | 11101797 |
As one of the most influential writers of the 20th Century, George Orwell's impact is still felt decades after his death.
Big Brother, the ominous leader of Oceania in his chilling dystopian novel 1984, is mentioned frequently whenever CCTV or surveillance is on the agenda, while the concept of Room 101 has become a shorthand for people's pet hates and biggest fears.
But Orwell's influence is not restricted to debates about the security state, as a trip to a local pub can show.
On 9 February, 1946, Orwell wrote an article for the Evening Standard warmly describing his favourite pub, the Moon Under Water, a small backstreet establishment with no music, china pots with creamy stout and that crucial ingredient: a welcoming atmosphere.
The Moon Under Water may itself have been a fiction, a composite of Orwell's favourite London pubs, but its importance as a symbol of the friendly local lives on.
DJ Taylor, who has written an acclaimed biography of the author, said the essay shows Orwell's love of the pub as a traditional institution.
"The whole question about Orwell and pubs is very interesting," he said.
"It was a symbol of working class life that he tended to sentimentalise."
What constitutes the perfect pub was the topic of Orwell's last essay for the Evening Standard, with previous articles covering other aspects of typical British life, such as how to make a good cup of tea.
And, despite never existing, Moon Under Water left a sizeable legacy.
Seventy years on the essay's criteria for the perfect pub - which includes old-fashioned Victorian decorations, a snack counter, barmaids who know their customers and a garden - are still cited by ale aficionados looking for the ideal spot for a pint.
And landlords running a new breed of pub say Orwell's rules are key to a revival in real ale drinking in the UK.
The micropub does what it says on the label: it's a small pub, often only one room, and it focuses on providing good beer, a good atmosphere and a quiet, friendly place for people to talk, perhaps while nibbling a light snack (though it's not likely to be the liver sausage or mussels favoured by Orwell).
The majority have no music, television, games machines or other features of pubs that go against the criteria set out by the author, who railed against "modern miseries" like glass-topped tables, "sham roof-beams" and fake wooden panels. Many don't even have wi-fi - naturally, this was not a concern for Orwell.
In 2005 only one - The Butcher's Arms at Herne in Kent - was in existence, with only a handful around the UK in 2010, but the popularity has exploded in recent years, with the Micropubs Association saying 162 establishments were up and running by the end of 2015.
Martyn Hillier, who still runs The Butcher's Arms and was awarded last year by the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) for his role in reviving pubs, said the reasons for their success were similar to the principles laid out by Orwell.
"When I started the concept people asked what the rules are, and it's basically about having a good pub that gets everyone talking to each other," he said.
"It's all about selling good beer and meeting interesting people."
Four years after opening his pub in an old butcher's shop, Mr Hillier gave a presentation at Camra's annual general meeting in Eastbourne, where he showed people how easily they could set up micropubs.
The talk proved influential, and since then micropubs have popped up in former barbers, post offices and other empty premises.
Tansy Harrison and Graham "Grum" Newbury, who also hail from Kent, opened Bridge Street Ale House in a former antiques shop in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, in the summer of 2014, having previously run bigger pubs for larger pub-owning companies.
It was the first micropub to open in North Staffordshire, and has since been followed by three more, all of which focus on real ale, cider and encouraging conversation.
Mr Newbury says the move has been a success founded on sticking to the principles of "proper" pub fans, and giving licensees a better chance at achieving a balance between work and their private lives.
"All I want in a pub is a guarantee the beers are good, I don't have to be looking over my shoulder and I don't have to compete with a TV or jukebox," he said.
"With everything these days people can just stay at home and entertain themselves with films, computer games or whatever - people come to the pub for social interaction."
The rise of micropubs has been welcomed by Camra, which has been campaigning for more pubs to focus on traditional cask beer for more than 40 years.
Tim Page, chief executive of the organisation, sees direct links between them and the cherished ideals of Orwell.
"Much of what he was describing is characteristic of what micropubs seek to represent," he said.
According to Camra, 29 pubs are closing across the UK every week, down from more than 50 about 10 years ago.
Mr Page sees the rise of micropubs as "a positive development" after many troubling years for the industry.
Echoes of the Moon Under Water may be visible in the modern micropub, but how do the pubs that helped inspire the author 70 years ago fare when compared to his criteria today?
Lizzie Arnold is the manager of the Hen and Chickens Theatre Bar in Islington, one of several back-street London pubs used by Orwell to come up with his criteria for the perfect pub.
It may play music on the weekend, but she says its focus on atmosphere and beer means its old patron would still enjoy it.
"It's always busy in here, it can get quite crazy, but we don't do food and we've got a good few regulars. I like it that way," she said.
"People come here for the atmosphere, they don't come in shouting or whatever, even on match-days [Arsenal's stadium is nearby]."
Seven decades on not all of Orwell's ideas on pubs have endured: the smoking ban has done for the tobacco-stained roofs of old, few pubs sell aspirin behind the counter (though some double up as village shops), and boiled jam rolls have fallen out of culinary favour.
However, Mr Hillier hopes the micropub's focus on quality beer and a convivial atmosphere will continue in much the same way as Orwell set out in his 1946 essay.
"At first I didn't know that much about the history of pubs, so it was quite interesting to see that I related to what he was saying," he said.
"I'm just going back to how pubs used to be."
For DJ Taylor, Orwell's attachment to his own era - not to mention a contrarian streak - makes it difficult to predict if we would have seen him in a micropub, a pink china mug of stout in hand.
"He was very much a traditionalist when it came to licensed premises," he said.
"It's hard to say what he would have thought about them, but he would have certainly taken a serious interest."
And regardless of whether Orwell would have approved of the micropub, Mr Page believes that its future is rosy.
"The pub is a really great meeting place, because it's one of the few places where people can go that goes across the class divide," he said.
"It's more than a place to go and have a drink - that's what Orwell was saying, and it's what micropubs are saying." | Seventy years after George Orwell published an essay on what makes the perfect pub, BBC News examines how the author's views are influencing the micropub movement. | 35235234 |
Subsets and Splits