document
stringlengths 0
39k
| summary
stringlengths 1
329
| id
stringlengths 8
8
|
|---|---|---|
The Liberal Democrat leader argued that while his party could provide stability, Labour and the Conservatives were in danger of "sleepwalking" towards a "messy" minority government.
Mr Clegg says he will not share power with either the SNP or UKIP.
Polls suggest the Lib Dems will lose some of the 57 seats they won in 2010.
Mr Clegg, who is on the last leg of his "two-day dash" from Land's End to John O'Groats, said David Cameron and Ed Miliband refused to admit that neither of them would win an outright majority.
Confident
He contrasted that position with his own, which is to walk away from government if he cannot get the right deal for his party.
"You should never, in politics or life, want to cling on to power for power's sake," he said.
"We want to do what we think is right for the country. We put the country before our party before - it was the brave thing to do, it was the right thing to do - and we would do it again.
"That contrasts with the attitude of David Cameron and Ed Miliband who are still seeking to claim that they are going to win a majority when they know they are not and are in real danger of sleepwalking towards a messy, unstable, minority government which is basically held captive by the extremes on right and left.
"That is not what our country needs."
Red lines
Mr Clegg said he was confident his party would hold enough seats to make it a key player in any negotiations after polling day.
"I'm really confident that we are going to do much better than all the endless pessimists have predicted. Much better," he said.
What are the top issues for each political party at the 2015 general election?
Policy guide: Where the parties stand
"If you want a stronger economy and a fairer society - if you want a party that won't cut as much as the Conservatives and would borrow less than Labour - then the Liberal Democrats are the only party to provide that stability.
"That's what I think a lot of people in the latter stages of this campaign are looking for."
Mr Clegg has marked out his campaign with a series of "red lines" - non negotiable Lib Dem deal breakers in any post election coalition.
Majority preference
These include a pledge to raise education funding in England from £49bn to £55.3bn over the next Parliament and a "stability Budget" within the first 50 days that would set out detailed tax and welfare plans to balance the books.
Mr Clegg also wants £8bn in extra annual funding for the NHS.
He says his "very strong preference" is for the Lib Dems to form a majority coalition rather than to enter into an alliance that faces daily struggles to get legislation through the House of Commons.
"I have certainly made it quite clear that I am not going to enter into any pacts, deals or arrangements which would in practice mean that a government is on a life support system which can be switched off by Nigel Farage or Alex Salmond," he added.
The best of BBC News' Election 2015 specials | Voters face "the biggest political decision of their lives" on 7 May, Nick Clegg claimed as he continues his 1,000 mile campaign tour. | 32605196 |
Media playback is not supported on this device
Flower was shown a red card after two minutes, having knocked Hohaia to the floor before landing a second punch while the Saints man was on the ground.
Hohaia played no further part as Saints went on to win 14-6 at Old Trafford.
"I don't hold any grudges against Ben," said New Zealander Hohaia, 31.
"In the heat of the moment, people do some things they regret. I've done some silly things on the field myself.
"He's probably disappointed in himself for not being able to play a part in the game as well."
In a statement on Wigan's website, Flower, 26, said he was "devastated" by what he had done.
"I firstly offer my apologies to Lance. I have full respect for him, and have never gone onto a rugby field to injure a fellow player.
"I'd also like to say sorry to my team-mates, our fans and the Wigan Club. I know I've let them down like never before and accept I'll have to live with this for the rest of my career.
"Finally, I'm sorry to the sport of Rugby League. It was a big night and I know I've taken the attention away from what was a special event."
Hohaia was unable to return to the field because of concussion and will have scans this week before hopefully being cleared to fly out with his family for a holiday.
"I wanted to go back on but the doctor wouldn't allow that to happen," added Hohaia. "My health comes before anything else.
"I don't remember the incident. People have told me what happened, I guess I was hit around the head somewhere. Sometimes these things happen in the game."
Wigan coach Shaun Wane said he "will stand by" his player for an incident that attracted wide condemnation.
A Rugby Football League spokesman said it would be up to Hohaia and St Helens to decide whether to pursue legal action but the case would go as normal before the match review panel on Monday.
Flower is set to face a disciplinary tribunal on Tuesday when he can expect a suspension of about eight matches.
RFL chief executive Nigel Wood said: "The matter will be dealt with as with any other Super League fixture." | Wigan's Wales international prop Ben Flower has apologised for punching St Helens' Lance Hohaia, who says he is not bitter about the way his Super League Grand Final ended on Saturday. | 29588474 |
The benchmark FTSE 100 index dipped by 0.62%, or 38.05 points to 6,117.76.
Shares in the pub chain Wetherspoons slipped by 0.56%, giving up early gains, after it posted record sales for the year to July.
However, pre-tax profit fell by 25% to £58.7m in the same period due to higher costs.
Biggest loser on the 100-share index was supermarket chain Morrisons, which slid 3.34% after two days of negative headlines prompted by its decisions to sell off its convenience store chain and close 11 other outlets.
Telecom shares Vodafone and BT both fell, by 1.39% and 2.19% respectively, after the European Commission blocked a merger between two Scandinavian telecom operators.
On the currency markets, the pound fell 0.11% against the dollar at $1.5427 and was 0.55% down against the euro at €1.3622. | (Close): London's leading shares drifted lower on Friday, with investors cautious ahead of next week's US rate decision. | 34218577 |
The 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named because of his age, was sentenced at Norwich Youth Court.
The communications firm suffered the data breach in 2015, when email addresses and bank details were taken.
The court previously heard he had used hacking tool software to identify vulnerabilities on target websites.
More on this and other stories from Norfolk
During November's hearing, where he admitted the offences, he told magistrates: "I was just showing off to my mates".
After giving him a 12-month rehabilitation order, chairman of the bench Jean Bonnick told him: "Your IT skills will always be there - just use them legally in the future."
The boy's computer hard drive was also confiscated.
When officers from the Metropolitan Police seized computers from his home in Norwich, they found he had been using hacking tools against a number of different websites including those of Manchester University and Cambridge University Library.
Two of the seven offences he was charged with related to TalkTalk, whose website was targeted more than 14,000 times after the boy exposed a vulnerability.
The firm said the fallout from the cyber attack had cost it £42m. | A teenager who admitted seven hacking offences connected to the TalkTalk data breach has been given a rehabilitation order and had his iPhone taken off him. | 38304392 |
It is included in a list of "racial micro-aggressions" that has been published in a newsletter by Oxford's equality and diversity unit.
It described micro-aggressions as "subtle, everyday racism" which can be alienating.
Oxford University said the newsletter was one way of supporting its staff in its pursuit of equality of opportunity.
The newsletter said racial micro aggressions might include: "Not making eye contact or speaking directly to people."
'Trivialising racism'
Other examples cited were "not believing someone is British", and jokes drawing attention "to someone's difference, their accent, or nationality".
Emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, Prof Frank Furedi, said the newsletter's authors "need a reality check".
"It is almost as if they have become obsessed with the idea that racism is everywhere... and I think what they are doing is trivialising the real meaning of racism."
He added that the unit's interpretation "represents a new expansion of the meaning of racism", and could intensify conflict in an unnecessary way.
The equality and diversity unit's newsletter said micro-aggressions could be "well-meaning", and that people might be "mortified" if they knew they had caused offence.
But it argued this makes little difference if people feel they "do not belong" as a result, and said awareness of "subtle racism" was now included in its training. | Staff at Oxford University have been told avoiding eye contact with students could constitute "everyday racism". | 39692673 |
The local authority posted a picture of the Harrow and Wealdstone disaster which happened 37 years later.
Events are taking place in Gretna to mark the 100th anniversary of the Quintinshill crash on 22 May 1915.
The council apologised for the "oversight" and said the picture had now been changed.
The error was pointed out to the BBC Scotland news website via its south of Scotland Twitter feed.
More than 200 people died - most of them soldiers - in the accident during World War One near the Scotland-England border.
The Harrow and Wealdstone crash claimed more than 100 lives in 1952. | Dumfries and Galloway Council has apologised over using an image of the wrong accident on website details of events to mark the Quintinshill crash. | 32843083 |
Thompson, 36, was Buddies captain last season but missed much of the campaign due to injury, with St Mirren relegated to the Scottish Championship.
He joined the Paisley club in 2011 following spells at Dundee United, Rangers, Cardiff City and Burnley.
And Thompson, who won 16 Scotland caps between 2002 and 2004, says he is "super motivated" to help St Mirren challenge in the second tier.
"Last season was hugely disappointing missing half the season through injury but with a good pre-season behind me this summer and having worked really hard over the close season I am confident I can be an asset to the team," he told St Mirren's website.
Thompson has made almost 600 senior appearances in club football, scoring 141 goals. He netted three times for Scotland.
St Mirren manager Ian Murray said: "I am delighted to have Thommo on board for the season ahead.
"I know him very well having played together in the past and know he will be a big goal threat for us in the new season, and his experience will be invaluable for the younger players." | Striker Steven Thompson has signed a new one-year contract with St Mirren. | 33291955 |
A jury at Chelmsford Crown Court convicted the 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, of the manslaughter of Arkadiusz Jozwik.
Mr Jozwik, 40, was attacked in Harlow, Essex, on 27 August 2016. He died in hospital two days later.
Rosina Cottage, prosecuting, said the defendant had moved behind Mr Jozwik and used the "whole force of his body" to hit him.
Mr Jozwik hit his head on the ground after being struck by the single punch from the boy.
The defendant, who was in The Stow shopping precinct after going to a kebab shop, said he hit Mr Jozwik "to defend my friend".
He said two Polish men, who appeared drunk, were saying "fight me, fight me" and he felt "scared".
Ms Cottage said: "If you didn't like it, you could have scarpered, couldn't you?"
The defendant replied: "Yeah."
Earlier in the trial the court heard Mr Jozwik, from Poland, had been drinking vodka with two friends and had just bought a pizza when he was set upon shortly after 23:30 BST.
Ms Cottage had told the court the men had sat near a group of teenagers.
She said two boys cycled close to the men, which "seemed to spark a disagreement".
The teenager will be sentenced at the same court on 8 September and was granted bail due to a family illness. | A teenage boy has been found guilty of killing a man with a "superman punch". | 40780931 |
England face India in the third one-day international at Trent Bridge on Saturday bidding to recover from a 133-run loss in the second ODI at Cardiff.
Hales hit 40 on his ODI debut and is set to bat with Cook for only the second time on his home ground.
Media playback is not supported on this device
"I hope our games can feed off each other, and we can get that partnership going," Hales said.
As England seek to level the five-match series, Hales, 25, is bidding to consolidate on his encouraging start.
His half-century stand with Cook offset an otherwise miserable performance from the home batsmen.
Cook's ODI record has come under criticism from former England team-mate Graeme Swann but Hales has backed his skipper.
"I really enjoyed the start we had, and hope there are more of those partnerships to come," he said.
"He's a very technically sound guy and he's the right guy at the top of the order.
"I hope he'll show everyone in this series what he can do."
Hales believes India deserve credit for their skilled and clever bowling last time out but expects them to find it more difficult on a different pitch.
"They were just very cunning," he said. "Once I got past 30, they were one step ahead of me.
"So it's up to me to put that right, and have that game smartness.
"We feel a lot more prepared now, and this pitch will be a lot easier to score on and take the game back to their bowlers."
India have suffered a setback ahead of the the third ODI with the news batsman Rohit Sharma has been ruled out for the rest of the tour of England with a broken finger.
Sharma, 27, was injured during India's win on Wednesday.
Test opener Murali Vijay has been called up as a replacement, but is unlikely to arrive in time for the ODI at Trent Bridge.
Sharma was promoted to the top of the India batting order in January 2013, and made 52 against England in Cardiff.
In a statement, the Board of Control for Cricket in India said: "Rohit Sharma has sustained a fracture on the middle finger of his right hand, and has been ruled out of the ongoing ODI and T20 International Series against England as a result."
The middle-order batsman featured just once in the five-match Test series over the summer, scoring 28 and six in the third Test at Southampton in England's 266-run victory. | England opener Alex Hales hopes to forge a strong partnership with captain Alastair Cook in the one-day game. | 28987021 |
The company said it was consolidating its London offices and moving workers to a new site in Paddington.
"Microsoft reviewed some London-based roles and made the decision to unify some engineering positions," it said.
The move will potentially put at risk a number of "globally-focused" roles at Skype and Yammer, it added.
Skype was founded in London in 2003 and snapped up by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5bn (£6.5bn).
In July, Microsoft said it would be scrapping 2,850 jobs across its business in the fourth quarter of 2016, although it is yet to say when the London Skype office will close.
"Microsoft will be entering into a consultation process and offer new opportunities, where possible," the company said.
"We are deeply committed to doing everything we can to help those impacted through this process."
On the face of it, the closure of Skype's London office says more about Microsoft's problems in managing the business since the takeover than about the UK's attractiveness as a location.
But it is also further evidence that ownership matters. Skype was an Estonian company but founded and rooted firmly in London, and when Microsoft swooped it was assumed that this would continue to be where its future was shaped.
Now it's facing strong headwinds, failing to establish itself as the prime means of business communications, and Microsoft is cutting costs.
If the firm was still controlled from London, the axe might have fallen elsewhere - but with key decisions being made far away in Seattle, there was no room for sentiment about Skype's history.
Foreign buyers always make positive noises about boosting jobs and investment - but sometimes those promises are hard to keep.
Read more: Has the UK got Tech Talent? | Tech giant Microsoft is set to close the London office of its Skype subsidiary with the potential loss of 220 jobs. | 37405177 |
Quite literally - LA-based street Artist Plastic Jesus (famous for his cocaine-snorting Oscar statue) got annoyed with being held up in traffic recently by a paparazzi scrum surrounding one or another of the sisters leaving a shop.
So he decided to do something about it.
He came up with the idea of banning the family from parking in several Los Angeles hotspots.
The artist created several signs which he bolted to other notices around Melrose Avenue, Robertson (near the Ivy restaurant) and elsewhere, reading No Kardashian Parking Any Time.
The artist explained to Newsbeat what the signs were inspired by.
"There is gridlock caused whenever one of the Kardashian family do simple basic things, shopping, eating out or pumping gas.
"The Kardashians have become a media cultural phenomenon, sadly at the expense of real news."
He said that the installation was intended not as an attack on the Kardashians, but on "us, both the media and the consumer".
He went on: "Media is circulation-driven, or more recently by hits on websites. Without our unending desire to consume this content this will continue."
The LAPD reportedly view the signs as vandalism, something Plastic rejects.
"The signs are only intended to be a temporary installation, like many other parking and driving signs around LA, they will be removed in the very near future."
UPDATE: As of Thursday morning, the official Plastic Jesus Twitter account confirmed his team has taken down the signs.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube | You can't move for Kardashians at the moment, they seem to be everywhere. | 32216878 |
The Independent Jersey Care Inquiry has recommended demolishing the Haut de la Garenne children's home.
The report said the States of Jersey "proved to be an ineffectual and neglectful substitute parent".
Chief Minister, Senator Ian Gorst said: "We failed children who needed our care."
Led by judge Frances Oldham QC, the inquiry heard hundreds of witness testimonies.
More on the child abuse report
The report said at the end of the inquiry's hearings in June 2016 "aspects of Jersey's services for children remained not fully fit for purpose".
It said: "Children may still be still at risk in Jersey and children in the care system are not always receiving the kind or quality of care and support that they need."
The inquiry heard 553 offences took place between 1947 and 2004, with more than half said to have occurred at Haut de la Garenne.
The report says the buildings at Haut de la Garenne are a reminder of an "unhappy past or shameful history".
It says they are also a symbol of the "turmoil and trauma" of the early stages of the police investigation, which began in 2006.
Read more of the survivors' stories here
The report says there is no doubt that "many instances" of physical and sexual abuse were suffered by children in the care of the States of Jersey.
It adds that the wellbeing of vulnerable children has been "low on the list" of Jersey's priorities.
It found a "worrying history of both inappropriate and ineffectual state invention and state indifference".
There was no will to invest the resources required in child care services and unsuitable people were appointed to management roles on the basis of local connections, the report said.
Gifford Aubin, who was at Haut de la Garenne in the 1950s, told how "live electrical wires" and "a pre-war stick with a metal end" were used to abuse children.
Mr Aubin said he also suffered mental abuse and had his meals withheld.
Jacky de la Haye was one of a handful of girls at Haut de la Garenne and says she suffered psychological abuse.
"I have nightmares that I'm still there," she said.
A witness, known as "Mrs A" said outside of school hours children were forced to work unpaid in a knitting factory run by the nuns at the orphanage.
In February 2015 one survivor known as "Witness D", now in his 40s, told the inquiry he was sexually abused by two members of staff, William Gilbert and Phil Le Bais. They were never charged and have now died.
The report refers to the use of the phrase the "Jersey way" by witnesses, which was often used to describe a system where "serious issues are swept under the carpet" and "people avoid being held to account for abuses".
There are more than 600 recommendations contained in the report, which include:
Alan Collins, the lawyer for some of the victims, said it was important that the recommendations made in the report are implemented quickly.
He said: "It is interesting to see how much could have been prevented if there had been good government."
Senator Ian Gorst, Jersey's chief minister, apologised to "all those who suffered abuse in our islands over the years".
"Unpalatable truths were swept under the carpet because it was the easiest thing to do," he said.
"People cared more for the status quo, for a quiet life, than for children.
"We failed children who needed our care who needed to be protected and listened to.
"I am shocked I am saddened and I am sorry. I accept every recommendation." | Children may still be at risk in Jersey's care system, a report into seven decades of child abuse has found. | 40485015 |
The two members of the Indian political dynasty were granted bail after a few minutes, and the next court date in the case has been set for 20 February.
The mother and son deny misusing party funds to buy a firm that published the now-closed National Herald newspaper.
The case was brought by a member of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Subramanian Swamy says the Gandhis took over the company to try to acquire more than $300m (£200m) in property assets.
Sonia Gandhi, President of the Indian National Congress, welcomed the decision to grant her and her son bail and said she had no doubt that truth would prevail.
"The current government is deliberately targeting its opposition," Mrs Gandhi said after the hearing. "And it is using government agencies to do that."
The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says hundreds of armed security personnel took up position outside the courtroom as the Gandhis made their appearance, accompanied by party members in a show of strength.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was among the Congress members present to support the pair.
Sonia Gandhi, born in Italy, is the widow of murdered former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi. His mother Indira - assassinated while in office - and grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru had also served as prime minister.
Rahul Gandhi, who is the party vice-president, accused the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of making false allegations against him and his mother and said they would not be defeated.
The National Herald ceased publication in 2008. The party had previously said it wanted to revive the paper, which established in 1938 by Jawaharlal Nehru.
But Mr Swamy has alleged that the leaders used party funds illegally to acquire the newspaper's properties.
The case has also disrupted the current session of parliament, with Congress MPs accusing the BJP of a "political vendetta".
The BJP has rejected the allegations.
"How is parliament involved if some people have been summoned by a court? You [Gandhis] want to silence the judiciary. You want to intimidate the judiciary. You are telling the judiciary, how dare you summon us," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu said.
The Delhi high court had rejected the Gandhis' plea to be exempted from making Saturday's personal appearance in the district court at Patiala House.
Congress lost the general election last year, winning only 44 of the 543 seats after governing India for 10 years.
The BJP won a landslide victory. | The top leaders of India's opposition Congress party, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, have appeared in court in connection with corruption allegations. | 35129365 |
Ibrahim Halawa, the son of Ireland's most senior Muslim cleric, has been in jail since August 2013, when he got caught up in the Cairo mosque siege.
He faces a mass trial and a possible death penalty with 493 other detainees.
Amnesty has described him as an Irish prisoner of conscience and expressed "deep concern" for his welfare.
On Sunday, his trial was postponed for a fifth time and the campaign group has described it as a "travesty of justice".
At the time of his arrest, the Dublin-born teenager was 17 and was on a family holiday to his parents' native country.
Mr Halawa and three of his sisters were caught up in a mass anti-government protests the Al-Fath mosque siege.
The siblings said they took shelter in the building during violent clashes between supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi and the security forces.
The sisters were freed after a few months, but their now 19-year-old younger brother remains in jail, despite protests from the Irish government.
Colm O'Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International Ireland said: "The detention conditions he is being reportedly held in amount to psychological torture given he would be surrounded by prisoners sentenced to death and waiting to be executed.
"Added to this is the psychological impact of being held in a cell which has housed prisoners who were subsequently executed."
Mr O'Gorman said the teenager's conditions and treatment in detention "fall far short of international law standards".
"Egypt's prison environment is harsh and there are grave concerns about the conditions and treatment of prisoners there," he added.
During Sunday's court hearing, Mr Halawa's trial was adjourned until 26 April.
The Irish ambassador to Egypt, Isolde Moylan, was present for the hearing. | Amnesty International has warned that an Irish teenager who has been held without trial in Egypt for more than 19 months could be "at risk of torture". | 32112122 |
Mitchell Butler-Eldridge, 28, had been trying to overtake a lorry before a bend on the A10 in Cambridgeshire on 18 February 2015.
He lost control of his Volkswagen Passat and collided with a Mini.
Butler-Eldridge, of Sydney Terrace, King's Lynn, pleaded guilty to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving at a previous hearing.
The driver of the Mini, Timothy Wildbore, 24, from Victoria Street, Littleport, and his passenger, Andrew Thornewell, 28, from Hollendale Walk, Ely, both died in the crash.
Witnesses described a vehicle overtaking a series of cars and lorries along a five-mile stretch of the 60mph single-carriageway between Littleport and Downham Market.
Prosecutor Sally Hobson told the court that one witness described the driver as being on a "death wish", and another said the motorist was a "bit of a lunatic".
One driver said he and an oncoming motorist were forced to take avoiding action to prevent a crash with the overtaking vehicle in an earlier incident.
Ms Hobson said the car veered back into the oncoming carriageway, smashing head-on into a Mini.
Ian Bridge, mitigating, said Butler-Eldridge was normally a "careful driver". A letter read out in court said: "From the deepest depths of my heart, I'm truly sorry for being the cause of this accident."
Butler-Eldridge was sentenced to five years in prison and disqualified from driving for five years, with the ban to start when he is released from prison.
PC James Thorne, from the Cambridgeshire Road Policing Unit, said: "Butler-Eldridge made a conscious decision to overtake a vehicle when it was clearly dangerous to do so. This incident was clearly avoidable and I welcome the sentence passed." | A driver who crashed head-on into a car, killing two people, has been jailed for five years. | 37524350 |
At least 20 people have been injured and 80 detained nationwide, a local rights group has said.
Images circulated on social media of injured people on the ground. There are reports at least three were shot.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest against President Nicolas Maduro's government.
In Miranda state, a police officer died and two others were injured, the government said, blaming opposition activists.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles is the governor of the state. Police there confirmed the death but did not blame protesters.
The mass demonstrations came after a recall referendum process - an attempt to remove Mr Maduro from power- was suspended.
Opposition activists had gathered about 1.8 million signatures petitioning for a recall referendum, 400,000 of which were validated by electoral authorities.
But the process was halted last week after officials said the signature collection process has been marred by fraud.
The country's opposition-led parliament voted on Tuesday to open a trial against Mr Maduro, whom MPs accuse of violating the constitution.
What's behind Venezuela's turmoil?
Protesters clashed with security forces across the country, particularly in the western cities of San Cristobal and Maracaibo.
"The referendum was our constitutional right, and they have denied it. What are they scared of?" said Grimaldi Lopez at the rally in the capital, Caracas.
Using the hashtag #TomadeVenezuela or "Venezuela takeover", people shared images of injured and bloodied protesters.
Alfredo Romero, leader of a human rights NGO, tweeted a picture of an injured 79-year-old woman, and said more than 20 people had been injured in the city of Merida alone.
Mr Maduro addressed a rival rally of supporters in Caracas, saying: "Let the people decide."
Opposition leaders have called for a mass walk-out on Friday. After the general strike, if the government continues to block the recall referendum process, the opposition threatened to march on the presidential palace - something it has not been allowed to do since a march there in 2002 started a short-lived coup against the former President, Hugo Chavez.
Mr Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, is blamed by the opposition for Venezuela's dire economic situation. The oil-rich country is facing widespread food shortages and spiralling inflation.
In turn, he has accused the opposition of having links to foreign states, the US in particular, and of seeking to overthrow him to "lay their hands on Venezuela's oil riches".
Under Venezuela's constitution, a recall referendum can be held once a president has served half of his term in office and the requisite steps are met.
So far, the opposition has completed the first step of the process. | One policeman has been shot dead and dozens of people injured during anti-government protests in Venezuela. | 37783115 |
Mike Reid, 54, has not been seen since he went to save the gannets stranded on rocks at Porthchapel Beach, near Penzance, at about 14:00 GMT on Sunday.
Gusts of 81mph hit the Isles of Scilly as the Met Office confirmed "phenomenal" sea conditions.
Waves of 19.1m were recorded off St Ives as the storm took hold.
Read more on this story as it develops on our Local Live pages.
Mr Reid's family reported him missing on Monday. His white van was located at the Minack Theatre car park.
He is described as 5ft 8in tall, of stocky build and was wearing black trousers, a white shirt and a black jumper.
Dermot Murphy, the RSPCA's assistant director, said: "We are extremely concerned and urge anyone who may have seen Mike yesterday to contact Devon and Cornwall Police who are leading the search.
"He has not been seen since he responded to a call to our National Control Centre about stricken birds yesterday.
"We are in close contact with his family and will continue to provide ongoing support through the search."
Thousands of homes in Devon and Cornwall are without power after winds brought down power lines and trees.
Russell Cooke was seconds away from getting into his car in Ide, Devon to do the school run when a tree crushed the vehicle.
A Met Office spokesman said the sea conditions were associated with storm force 11 - the most violent on the scale.
Winds are expected to gradually ease through the afternoon and evening said the forecaster. | An RSPCA inspector has gone missing trying to rescue of dozens of sea birds at a Cornwall beach as Storm Imogen lashes the coast. | 35526721 |
In North America, it took 9 million years for ecosystems to recover.
However, in South America - further from the impact - insect life bounced back after about 4 million years, according to scientists.
US experts studied fossil leaves for insect damage at a site in Patagonia, at the tip of South America.
Lead researcher Michael Donovan of Pennsylvania State University said: "Here we're showing in Patagonia - far away from the asteroid impact site - insects recovered much quicker than what we have observed in the past from the western interior of North America.
"It took about four million years for the associations (between plants and insects) to reach levels similar to before the extinction compared to the western interior of the US, where it took about nine million years."
Dinosaurs died out about 66 million years ago, at the time when a giant space rock hit Chicxulub in Mexico.
Fossil evidence from North America - relatively close to the site of the impact - suggests it took around nine million years for life on the planet to recover.
However, experts have suggested that the extinction event was less severe in the southern hemisphere, with the region acting as a refuge for some species.
The US team tested this idea by looking at plant fossils under the microscope for signs of insects which burrow inside leaves.
They found no evidence that insects survived the impact, suggesting there was a major extinction, as has been found in North America.
However, they found that ecosystem recovery was much faster in South America, with the insect/plant interactions restored within only four million years.
Studies on microscopic plankton and pollen have also provided evidence that life bounced back more quickly in the southern hemisphere than in the north.
The research is published in the journal, Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Follow Helen on Twitter. | Life in the southern hemisphere appears to have recovered more quickly than expected from the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. | 37872115 |
Mr Goldsmith, a Tory MP, said voters were being "duped" by the Recall Bill which proposed a Commons committee having power over the whole process.
Mr Clegg said he had settled for a "modest" version because of "Conservative Party resistance".
Mr Goldsmith accused Mr Clegg of "desperate backtracking".
The Richmond Park MP said he wished it was true that the deputy PM was "at one" with him "but it is the opposite of the truth... Nick Clegg is the architect of the current Recall Bill".
The bill was unveiled in the Queen's Speech after years of delays and wrangling between coalition ministers.
The measure was promised in the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems in 2010.
It was seen as part of moves to restore faith in politics after the 2009 expenses scandal.
Under the Recall of MPs Bill, constituents would be able to sack their MP if they are sentenced to up to 12 months in jail. MPs are already removed if they are jailed for more than a year.
Voters could also trigger a by-election if the House of Commons resolves that an MP has engaged in "serious wrongdoing". A by-election would be forced if more than 10% of constituents signed a petition over an eight-week period after the Commons ruled an MP could face recall.
The government said the move would give constituents a direct voice when MPs have behaved badly - but Mr Goldsmith said the final say would still rest with a committee of MPs, meaning it would not be true recall as it is understood in other countries, where any politician can be recalled if a certain proportion of their constituents sign a petition.
Then most famous case of recall being used was in California in 2003, when more than the necessary 12% of voters signed a petition to cause a recall vote that led to Gray Davis being replaced by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mr Clegg was asked about the criticism of the new bill during his regular LBC phone-in.
He said "Zac and I are completely at one" in wanting what he called "a radical California-style recall".
But he said it had "absolutely no hope at all of being passed into law because of profound objections" from Conservative colleagues.
Mr Clegg said he had had to "battle day and night to get even this modest recall measure agreed in the Queen's Speech against Conservative Party resistance".
He said he was a practical man and wanted to get something into law in line with the coalition agreement.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling was asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme whether he would be willing to have a rethink of the recall plans.
He said there would be debates in Parliament and "Zac might win people to his argument".
But Mr Grayling said the bill was designed to tackle MPs who had "significantly broken the rules" or committed acts which had led them to be sent to prison.
"What it is not meant to be is an opportunity for political opponents halfway through a parliament to get a petition together because they don't like their politics. We are all elected, rightly or wrongly, for five years."
He added: "A member of parliament in a government which is taking difficult and unpopular decisions should not be subject to recall for purely political reasons."
The recall plans were designed to be a mechanism to allow electors to say "you're out" if you have done something "fundamentally wrong", he said.
Nineteen MPs from across the political spectrum have signed a Commons motion backing Zac Goldsmith's call for tougher powers, including Tory MPs Douglas Carswell and David Davis, Labour members Kate Hoey and Frank Field and Lib Dem Julian Huppert. | Deputy PM Nick Clegg says he agrees with Zac Goldsmith and other critics of his government's proposals to give people limited powers to kick out MPs. | 27705901 |
Kieran Gillespie, 25, from Birmingham, denies murdering Leon Barrett-Hazle in Handsworth in the city on 23 January, claiming he acted in self-defence.
Mr Gillespie told police he had pulled "a pair of scissors" on his victim after believing he had been stabbed in the face.
Mr Barrett-Hazle, 36, from Smethwick, West Midlands, was found to be unarmed.
Read more news for Birmingham and the Black Country
The jury at Birmingham Crown Court was told the bus's CCTV would show a row breaking out between the men, with Mr Barrett-Hazle punching Mr Gillespie in the face.
Mr Gillespie, of Wellesbourne Road, fled the scene in Rookery Road but returned to the bus to recover his baseball cap after the stabbing, the prosecution said.
After his arrest, he told officers a disagreement arose because Mr Barrett-Hazle kept looking at him on the back row of the 11A bus.
Stephen Linehan QC, prosecuting, said tests showed Mr Barrett-Hazle's multiple stab wounds could not have been caused using scissors.
The barrister said: "He drew that weapon and we say you'll conclude it was a knife of some type.
"In interview, Gillespie said he stabbed him two to three times - it was far more than that."
The trial continues. | A bus passenger was knifed to death during a row with a stranger on the vehicle's upper deck, a court heard. | 40661832 |
Peter Stuart, 75, was stabbed to death last June. The body of Sylvia Stuart, 69, has never been found.
Christy Paxman said her father told her an unknown man approached him in his garden in Weybread, Suffolk.
The defendant, named by prosecutors as Ali Qazimaj, denies murder and claims he is a victim of mistaken identity.
The 43-year-old said he is not the man wanted by police and that his real name is Vital Dapi, formerly of Tilbury, Essex, Ipswich Crown Court heard.
According to Mrs Paxman, the man said "I understand you want to sell up" when he approached Mr Stuart on 28 May.
She added: "Dad was surprised at that, as he hadn't had anyone round to value the house."
Mr Qazimaj was a carer to Mrs Paxman's elderly father-in-law, Sidney Paxman, and, according to prosecutors, had accrued gambling debts.
Karim Khalil QC, prosecuting, said Mr Paxman mentioned the Stuarts to the defendant, describing them as millionaires.
Giving evidence by videolink the 88-year-old said his carer had "started borrowing heavily" from him to the tune of almost £10,000.
Mr Paxman said Mr Qazimaj had looked up the boarding kennel business of his son, Stephen Paxman, online.
He also described an occasion where Mr Qazimaj came to see him after work on 3 June, and was in a "bad temper, a foul mood".
"He seemed very agitated," he said, adding that Mr Qazimaj told him he had left his job.
Asked about what else he had said, Mr Paxman said: "He didn't say what he had actually done, but he did say 'I've done something bad.
"I thought it was related to his job at the time."
The Stuarts were last seen alive at Goodies Farm Shop in Pulham Market, Norfolk, on 29 May last year. They were reported missing five days later.
Mr Stuart was found in a river with nine stab wounds near his home on 3 June. Police are still looking for the body of his wife.
The trial continues. | A woman whose parents were allegedly murdered told a jury that a mystery man accosted her father in his garden a week before he died. | 38911309 |
She took her temperature every day and logged it in an app called Fertility Friend, but soon found herself succumbing to a fertility-obsessed frenzy.
"I constantly analysed the analytics section of the app to see how my month looked and whether there was a temperature spike that indicated I was ovulating," says Kathy, 32, a freelance travel copywriter.
"I based when we actively tried for a baby solely on when the app and ovulation kits told me I was ovulating."
But after six months of "trying", Kathy still hadn't fallen pregnant.
"Some months I think we must have missed the window of opportunity entirely," she explains, "either because I'd built up to it so much that the pressure made me too stressed to conceive, or because the app wasn't accurate."
She decided to quit using the apps "for the sake of my sanity" and became pregnant the following month.
"They definitely serve a purpose," she concedes, "but they aren't the be-all and end-all."
But for some women, they are.
Londoner Sara Flyckt, 35, started using an app called Natural Cycles four years ago after hearing about it in a Swedish podcast.
It analyses the body's temperature to determine whether or not the user is fertile and needs to use contraception.
"I was on the pill before and the hormones made me into quite a nasty person, so when I heard about this natural option it felt like a no-brainer to try it," says Swedish-born Ms Flyckt.
And, after initially using it as a contraceptive, last year she used it to plan a pregnancy.
"It certainly helped me find my fertile days. It's very easy to use, and it's especially helpful as both my partner and I worked full time within hospitality and sometimes we wouldn't see each other for a few days.
"With this app you know when to try and make time to see each other."
Swedish start-up Natural Cycles' app recently won medical approval as a contraceptive.
Technology targeted at women - or femtech as it's been coined - covers everything from birth control and period tracker apps to sex toys and breast pumps.
And the market has been booming in recent years.
"We're seeing really significant growth in funding to femtech start-ups," says Zoe Leavitt, tech analyst at CB Insights.
"The number of deals shot up from 20 in 2014, to 40 in 2015, and in 2016 deals and dollars set a record high, with $540.5m (£433m) across 52 deals.
"Overall, we've tracked $1.26bn in investment since 2009 across 173 deals."
But there are concerns that some women might become enslaved to such apps.
Lea von Bidder is co-founder of Ava, a firm that has developed a wearable bracelet and app for tracking a woman's fertile window in real time.
"When it comes to fertility tracking, the current options require women to make it almost a part-time job to track their fertility," she says.
"They have to pee on sticks multiple times per day, wake up early to take their temperature at exactly the same time each morning, or examine their cervical mucus every time they go to the bathroom.
"By creating a bracelet that is only worn at night and does away with all this work, we firmly believe we are helping women to be less stressed and neurotic about fertility tracking."
Many of the apps in this space aren't just targeted at those trying for a baby.
Ida Tin, co-founder of Berlin-based start-up Clue, describes the firm's menstrual cycle tracker as being "empowering for women".
She adds: "For some, it's the first time they've really been able to get insight into their bodies. People use these apps because they want to understand their body better.
"The app is helpful whether you're trying for a baby or want to know when your next period is."
Many women seem to agree - Clue has about five million active users globally.
But the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) advises users to treat fertility apps with a degree of caution.
"There are probably many examples of new tech companies and technologies in the fertility space that bring the promise of benefits to patients and users, but they must be properly assessed before they are used in a healthcare setting," says Alexia Tonnel, director of evidence resources at Nice.
"Where possible, users should look for an independent review of the claimed benefits."
Some sexual health charities, organisations and experts have also expressed concerns over the efficacy of such apps.
But for millions of women worldwide, they have proved essential as a contraceptive, an aid to pregnancy, and as a way of understanding more about their monthly cycles.
Gemma Moore turned to ClearBlue when she was trying for her second child.
"I used the ClearBlue Fertility Monitor to measure my hormone levels and find out the four days I was most likely to conceive.
"By knowing what was going on with my hormones and realising I ovulate far later than the average woman, I was able to pinpoint when I was most likely to conceive."
In the second month she got pregnant and gave birth to her son, Oscar, last September.
As for the future, it's expected that the femtech sector will continue to thrive.
"We are not only seeing successful innovation in women's health, but also in areas such as personal hygiene, baby care and breast pumps," says Lea von Bidder from Ava.
"This is critical as most of those companies are just catching up with the technological and innovative changes we are already used to in all other aspects of our lives."
Follow Technology of Business editor Matthew Wall on Twitter and Facebook
Click here for more Technology of Business features | When Kathy Beaumont started trying for a baby two years ago, she turned to the many fertility apps on the market to discover when would be the best time of the month to conceive. | 39503947 |
The 23-year-old, a Somali detainee at Australia's detention camp in Nauru, says she became pregnant as a result of being raped in July.
She was allowed to travel to Australia to end the pregnancy, but left on Friday without having done so.
The government said she changed her mind, but she has denied this.
Under Australia's asylum policy, any undocumented migrants trying to reach the country by boat are intercepted and held in centres on Nauru and Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.
The woman - identified by her pseudonym Abyan - was flown to Sydney last week after requesting an abortion, which is not legal in Nauru in most circumstances.
But on Friday night, she was unexpectedly returned to Nauru, alarming her lawyers and rights groups.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Saturday that after seeing doctors, she had "decided not to proceed with the termination".
But in a hand-written note released to the Australian media on Monday, Abyan denied this.
"I have been very sick. I have never said that I did not want a termination. I never saw a doctor. I saw a nurse at the clinic but there was no counselling," the note read.
Abyan said she never saw a doctor, or had any counselling, and and that she was seen by a nurse with no translator present.
"Please help me," the statement said.
Her lawyer, George Newhouse, has said she wanted more time to make the decision, and has accused the government of deporting her before he could seek an injunction blocking it.
Is Australia's Cambodia solution 'an expensive joke'?
Australia's controversial asylum policy
On Monday, Mr Dutton insisted on ABC Radio that the woman had been seen several times by medical and counselling staff, with interpreters on most occasions, and had reached her own decision.
He said he would not allow for women in such a situation to be treated as "political pawns" by opponents of Australia's immigration policy, saying some of the allegations being made were "patently incorrect, if not fabricated".
"I'm very, very concerned about the privacy of this lady, but I'm dragged into this debate to clear up what I think is a political motivation by some of the advocates."
Last week, Mr Dutton said that refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru were asking for medical care in Australia in order to try to have their refugee claims processed on the mainland.
He described the behaviour as a "racket".
The Australian government says its asylum policy deters people-traffickers but there has been been criticism of the conditions at the camps.
In September, a report by a senate committee found conditions on Nauru were not "appropriate or safe". It said allegations of rape and abuse should be investigated. | Australia's immigration minister has insisted the government correctly handled the case of a migrant woman who sought an abortion in Australia. | 34568421 |
When filmmaker Joseph Sims-Dennett suffered a nervous breakdown he channelled his energies into making a horror film. Observance was shot on a shoestring budget in Sydney in just eleven days.
In a concrete anonymous city, a private investigator is grieving the loss of his son. Installed in an empty, dirty apartment, he is ordered to spy on a woman living opposite.
Soon black gunk starts to ooze from the walls, animal corpses appear unexplained and his dreams become more and more disturbed.
While the actors speak with an "everyman" American accent 0 an artistic, rather than commercial decision - Sydney-based Sims-Dennett, 27, was inspired by his reflections on Australia.
"Australia broadcasts this laid-back easiness but it is really a very conservative country," says the British-born director. "Art takes off in those periods when you're being stifled and oppressed. There is a sort of darkness that lurks [here] somewhere."
In Sims-Dennett's eyes Sydney is fast becoming a nanny state, suffocated by draconian lockout laws and surveillance, and he touches on these issues in Observance.
Premiering next month in Australia, industry bible The Hollywood Reporter has already dubbed the film a "chilling experience" that grips "viewers by the throat".
Australia is known as the "lucky country", blessed with perfect beaches and weather. Yet over the last decade it has also started to make a name as one of the world's horror capitals.
A turning point was 2005's Wolf Creek. Made with an estimated budget of just A$1m ($750,000, £530,000), it became a box-office hit, grossing $29m worldwide. Other runaway successes include Saw (2004), shot in America but directed by Australian James Wan and now a lucrative franchise.
Wolf Creek "paved the way in terms of theatrical successes," says Causeway Films' Kristina Ceyton, producer of psychological horror hit The Babadook. "The world is very much looking to Australia for interesting new stories."
Colin Cairnes, co-director of Australian horror-comedy 100 Bloody Acres and this month's new release Scare Campaign, agrees. "We do have a reputation [abroad] ... maybe that's because we have a bit more freedom here [that allows] a more distinctive voice. We're not part of the Hollywood machine."
Before the 1970s, horror films were virtually non-existent in Australia; from 1948-68 most were banned. While the US and Europe drew on authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker, Australia literature was more concerned with exploring brutal tales of pioneer life.
Today that has come full circle. Now much of Australian horror, including Peter Weir's unsettling 1975 masterpiece Picnic at Hanging Rock, taps into "fear of the mysterious and threatening landscape, fear of Australia itself, you might say, a hangover of our colonial past," says Briony Kidd, director of Tasmania's international horror film festival, Stranger With My Face.
Australians, living in one of the world's most urbanised countries, "love but also fear the outback that lies beyond the suburbs," says Cairnes. "In a perverse way, we take some pride in how deadly, how dangerous a place Australia is. If you jump into the wrong creek you could be a goner."
The looming landscape is present across the genre. In Lake Mungo (2008) a clue to a girl's death is found in a famous beauty spot, a vast dry lake. In Black Water (2007) holidaymakers on a fishing trip in the mangroves of northern Australia find themselves prey to a killer crocodile. And in Wolf Creek, based partly on notorious "backpacker murderer" Ivan Milat, travellers in the outback become fodder for gratuitous and violent torture.
"You learn about a culture in a much deeper way because [horror films] are drawing on our own fears," says Sims-Dennett. "The outback is this ancient, flat, eerie piece of land. Its inspires thoughts where you consider yourself and your life and where you are."
But makers of Australian horror films face plenty of challenges. With independent cinemas shutting down, finding distributors domestically is tough. The market for horror remains "underdeveloped" in terms of marketing and theatrical support.
One result is horror films doing poorly at home only to be acclaimed abroad. In the UK The Babadook made more in its opening weekend - $633,000 over three days - than in its entire run in Australia, where it earned just $256,000.
This leaves Sims-Dennett nonplussed. He believes there is something "very specific" about Australian horror. And, like J-Horror in Japan, that it will stand the test of time.
Perhaps Snowtown (2011) sums it up best. The film fictionalises the story of infamous serial killer John Bunting, who stored the bodies of his victims in the vault of a disused bank. In the movie Bunting is asked why he resorts to violence.
His reply? "It's the Australian way." | The eerie and ancient Australian outback lies at the heart of a horror movie wave that's scaring the wits out of global audiences, writes Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore. | 35800175 |
Sam Davies starts at fly-half instead of Biggar, who is joined as a replacement by Wales team-mate, lock Alun Wyn Jones.
Paul James returns at prop following injury and flanker Justin Tipuric leads the Welsh region at open-side.
Former New Zealand full-back Mils Muliaina makes his Zebre debut after joining from Connacht in the summer.
Ospreys lie eighth with three wins from eight competition starts this season while Zebre are 11th win two wins.
Biggar came off in their 13-6 win over Cardiff Blues because of a back problem.
Hooker Baldwin (calf) and prop James (shoulder) missed that game because of injuries suffered in Ospreys' 34-29 European Champions Cup defeat at Clermont Auvergne.
Ospreys' ex-New Zealand scrum-half Brendan Leonard will return to Zebre for the first time since joining from the Italian team before the 2015-16 season.
Head coach Steve Tandy hopes Ospreys' recent form will continue to improve against Zebre.
"They've got an excellent record at their place, are a very dangerous side, and if we are just a couple of percent off our game then we won't get what we need from the game," said.
"Our slow start in the Pro12 means there's no margin for error for us. Our form over the last few weeks, in the league and in Europe, has been better, but there is still some way for us to go."
Zebre: Mils Muliaina; Dion Berryman, Tommaso Boni, Gonzalo Garcia; Kayle Van Zyl, Carlo Canna, Marcello Violi; Andrea Lovotti, Andrea Manici, Dario Chistolini, Valerio Bernabo, George Biagi (capt), Jacopo Sarto, Johan Meyer, Paul Derbyshire.
Replacements: Oliviero Fabiani, Andrea De Marchi, Guillermo Roan, Marco Bortolami, Federico Ruzza, Guglielmo Palazzani, Giulio Bisegni, Edoardo Padovani.
Ospreys: Dan Evans; Jeff Hassler, Jonathan Spratt, Josh Matavesi, Eli Walker; Sam Davies, Tom Habberfield; Paul James, Sam Parry, Dmitri Arhip, Lloyd Ashley, Tyler Ardron, James King, Justin Tipuric (capt), Dan Baker.
Replacements: Scott Otten, Nicky Smith, Ma'afu Fia, Alun Wyn Jones, Olly Cracknell, Martin Roberts, Dan Biggar, Hanno Dirksen.
Referee: John Lacey (IRFU)
Assistant referees: Elia Rizzo, Luca Trentin (Italy)
Citing commissioner: Stefano Marrama (Italy)
TMO: Stefano Penne (FIR) | Dan Biggar has recovered from a back injury to be on Ospreys' bench for their Pro12 trip to Zebre on Sunday. | 35000603 |
The Tories are the largest party with 18 out of 42 members.
But they will have to continue as a minority administration after elections earlier this month left the council under no overall control.
They are four short of a majority, a figure which includes the defection of councillor Steve Hastings from UKIP to the Conservatives.
The Liberal Democrats are the second largest party with 15 members. UKIP and Labour have four each while there is one independent.
At the council's annual general meeting, Conservative Donna Jones was reappointed leader unchallenged.
Ms Jones said there had been discussions with both Labour and UKIP ahead of the council meeting, and support from UKIP was enough to ensure a Conservative budget would get voted through.
She said there had been no discussions with the Lib Dems, who ran the council up until 2014, with whom she remains "diametrically opposed".
Ms Jones insisted there was no coalition arrangement with UKIP and she was forming a "a stand-alone Conservative administration with a Conservative-only cabinet". | The Conservatives will continue to run Portsmouth City Council, following a decision at a full council meeting. | 32807572 |
The company said it would run the normal half-hourly service, which was replaced with buses, from Monday.
It comes the day after its parent company Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) launched a consultation on a massive shake-up of timetables.
The direct services between Brighton and Seaford could be reduced from 2018.
Southern cut 341 trains out of 2,242 from its timetable on 11 July as GTR battled to cope with a dispute with the RMT union over the role of guards on the trains.
Some services were later restored, including five in Transport Secretary Chris Grayling's Epsom constituency.
Inner London and West London Line services were reintroduced on 5 September and the full timetable from Tonbridge and Reigate to Redhill and London Victoria/London Bridge on Monday.
Passenger services director Alex Foulds said Southern was sorry for the "hassle and inconvenience" to Seaford.
"The replacement of many of the Seaford trains with buses was understandably hard-felt by the local community," he said.
"We are pleased now to be able to restore the town's full service.
"We made a commitment at the start of the month to restore the full timetable of services incrementally and we're on track to deliver on that promise and in the coming weeks other services will be back too."
GTR is consulting the public on plans for trains from the south of England to London, Bedford, Cambridge and Peterborough.
Direct trains between London Victoria and Seaford may no longer run with journey times between Victoria and Eastbourne and direct services between Brighton and Seaford reduced.
Other services from Brighton could be increased.
A spokesman for the RMT said the reinstatement of the Seaford service was "another con trick". | Troubled Southern Railway is to restore trains between Seaford and Brighton after the service was cut as part of an emergency timetable 10 weeks ago. | 37416379 |
Actor Michael Sheen and Miriam González Durántez - wife of ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg - will also take the reigns of Today during the guest week.
The guest editors will be live in the studio and will take responsibility for about half the programme's output.
Sir Bradley, who won the 2012 Tour de France, said he wanted to shine a spotlight on "stuff that interests me".
Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP, architect David Adjaye, and human rights campaigner Baroness Campbell of Surbiton will also each edit a programme.
Former No 10 adviser Rohan Silva, a tech entrepreneur, will take over the role of business editor across the week.
Sir Bradley, who will act as editor on Tuesday 29 December, will meet children inspired to start cycle racing by his victories.
During the programme he will also speak to former footballer, and Match of the Day presenter, Gary Lineker about his career after retiring from sport.
"I don't know anything about politics or economic policy. But I've listened to a lot of people having a good old moan over the years. You meet interesting characters when you're out on a bike," Sir Bradley said.
"I told them I'd do this show if I could shine the spotlight on stuff that interests me.
"Like did London 2012 do any good? Where is the next generation of Bradley Wiggins going to come from? What actually happens to you when you retire? And why should anyone bother to vote for politicians?"
Monday 28 December - Michael Sheen
Tuesday 29 December - Sir Bradley Wiggins
Wednesday 30 December - Miriam González Durántez
Thursday 31 December - David Adjaye
Friday 1 January - Baroness Campbell
Saturday 2 January - Lord Browne
The guest editors will take responsibility for their edition of the show with the support of Today producers and reporters.
Jamie Angus, editor of the Today Programme, said: "It's fantastic to have Bradley leading out the programme and to hear his take on the impact of sport on British culture."
He said guest editors were "a great Christmas tradition" for the show.
Public figures have been invited to run the current affairs programme between Christmas and New Year since 2003.
Previous guests include Sir Lenny Henry, Prof Stephen Hawking, Yoko Ono and Sir Richard Branson. | Cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins is to guest edit an edition of BBC Radio 4's Today programme over the festive period. | 35083501 |
Carrick, 35, is the club's longest-serving player, having joined in 2006, and replaces Wayne Rooney in the role after his move to Everton.
"It feels great and it is such a huge honour to captain such a great club," Carrick told MUTV.
"I never thought I could be here for so long and achieve so much. I have grown to love the club over the years and to be in this position is very special."
He added: "I will speak when I need to speak, but I am quite laid back and chilled out really. I will try to lead by example."
Carrick moved to United from Tottenham for £18.6m and signed a contract extension earlier this year, committing to the club until June 2018.
He has played 459 times for the club, winning five Premier League titles, the FA Cup and the Champions League. | Manchester United have named midfielder Michael Carrick as club captain. | 40576089 |
Media playback is not supported on this device
Adams, 32, beat Poland's Sandra Drabik on a majority points decision to win Britain's 13th gold in Azerbaijan.
Duncan Scott added a 14th with victory in the men's 100m freestyle, lifting Britain up to third in the medal table.
The 18-year-old won in 49.43 seconds, with Italy's Alessandro Miressi second and Russia's Vladislav Kozlov third.
Scott returned for the men's 4x200m final where he, Martyn Walton, Kyle Chisholm and Cameron Kurle finished second to Russia, with bronze going to Germany.
Jarvis Parkinson won silver in the men's 200m individual medley, with Walton in third, while Layla Black also claimed bronze in the women's 200m breaststroke final.
Black then joined Rebecca Sherwin, Amelia Clynes and Georgia Coates to win bronze in the women's 4x100m medley relay behind Russia and the Netherlands.
"I'm bringing back a little piece of history for Great Britain," said Adams, whose fellow British boxer Joe Joyce will compete in the men's super-heavyweight final on Friday.
The 29-year-old from London won his semi-final against Tony Yoko of France by unanimous decision and will fight Russia's Gasan Gimbatov. The win means Joyce has secured a place at the World Championships in October, where he will have the chance to qualify for the Rio Olympics.
Meanwhile, Sandy Ryan took bronze at women's light-welterweight after losing her semi-final to Russia's Anastasia Beliakova.
The European Games conclude on Sunday, 28 June. | Olympic boxing champion Nicola Adams won flyweight gold on a day when Great Britain claimed a further six swimming medals at the European Games in Baku. | 33266969 |
More than 7,000 people signed a petition calling for plans for the £395,000 sculpture at Flint Castle to be scrapped.
Flintshire council urged the Welsh Government to talk to the community before any "further action is taken".
Economy Secretary Ken Skates has now announced a "pause" to review plans.
He said: "We have listened and recognise the strength of feeling around the proposed art installation at Flint Castle and feel it is only right that we now take a pause and review the plans for the sculpture.
"Working closely with local partners we will continue to work on proposals for developments at Flint, including reviewing new visitor facilities."
The design, said to represent the relationship between the Medieval monarchies of Europe and castles, was selected by a panel following a nation-wide competition.
The architects behind the design said it demonstrated "the unstable nature of the crown" but it has been criticised for symbolising the oppression of Welsh people. | Controversial plans for an iron ring sculpture accused of "insulting Wales" have been put on hold following an outcry. | 40732061 |
Richard Maycock, who taught at a school in Coventry, denied inappropriately touching the girl in a disabled toilet.
The girl told police the 44-year-old said she would get into trouble if she told anyone. He will be sentenced at Coventry Crown Court next month.
He had previously admitted to two counts of sexual activity with a child.
The court heard tried to remove a piece of clothing from the girl and then inappropriately touched her.
In police interviews played to the jury on Monday, the girl said she was scared. | A PE teacher has been found guilty of sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl. | 34395660 |
The Department for Communities and Local Government said about 37,080 new homes were started in the last quarter of 2015, up 23% on the previous year.
Completions were up by 22% to 37,230.
Ministers said they had "got the country building again" but housing charity Shelter said the increase was "not good enough".
In the year up to December, 143,560 new homes were started, which was up by 6% on 2014 - 22% below 2007's peak but 91% up on the slump recorded in 2009.
Homes built by private developers were up by 8% but those built by housing associations down by 1%.
The report said the highest completion rates were found in a band starting to the north of the London green belt, running through Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, with strong completion levels also around Devon and Gloucestershire in the South West.
Areas with the lowest completion rates include Kingston upon Thames, Southend-on-Sea and Gravesham, it said.
Housing Minister Brandon Lewis said the amount of new homes completed had hit a "seven-year high", adding: "However we're not complacent.
"That's why we've set out the most ambitious housing vision for more than a generation, doubling the housing budget so we can meet our ambition of delivering a million new homes."
But Labour's housing spokesman John Healey said the total was "still falling far short of what the country needs".
"Ministers have talked up the economic recovery, but these figures show that there were more than 20% fewer new homes started last year than before the global financial crisis," he said.
Shelter's chief executive Campbell Robb said only half the number of homes needed were being built. | There have been sharp increases in the number of new homes being started and finished in England compared with a year ago, according to new figures. | 35661771 |
China's foreign ministry said on Sunday that one fisherman was injured and several detained.
The incident happened on Friday near the Natuna islands, off the coast of Borneo in the South China Sea.
Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla said on Monday that China would be asked to respect his country's sovereignty around the islands.
"This is not a clash, but we are protecting the area," Mr Kalla told Reuters news agency.
Indonesian Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti tweeted that the navy "made the right move by maintaining the sovereignty of our seas".
"Stealing fish is a crime," she said.
A spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry described Indonesia's actions as an "indiscriminate use of force", adding: "We urge the Indonesian side to refrain from any action that complicates or magnifies the dispute, or impacts the peace and stability of the region."
The ministry said the incident had happened in a "traditional Chinese fishing ground".
It is unclear whether the fishermen are still being detained by Indonesian authorities.
China claims most of the South China Sea, where it is building islands and extending its infrastructure, and there are often flare-ups with regional neighbours with competing claims.
Unlike other South East Asian countries, Indonesia is not involved in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
China accepts the Natuna islands and the seas around them belong to Indonesia, but the two sides have confronted one another there before, typically over illegal fishing.
Friday's incident was the third altercation between Indonesia and China in waters near Natuna this year.
In March, Indonesia lodged an official protest after an Indonesian patrol ship tried to detain a Chinese fishing boat in the Natuna Sea, but was prevented from doing so by the Chinese coastguard. | China has accused the Indonesian navy of opening fire on a Chinese fishing boat in disputed fishing grounds. | 36573291 |
When it last projected oil and gas revenues, in May last year, it estimated up to £7.8bn in tax could flow from the North Sea in 2016/17.
Its oil and gas bulletin has now predicted the figure will be, at best, £2.8bn and could be as low as £0.5bn.
The bulletin's predictions for total revenue from 2016/17 to 2019/20 range from £2.4bn to £10.8bn.
The May 2014 bulletin put the best case scenario between 2014/15 and 2018/19 at £38.7bn, with the worst being £15.8bn.
The latest bulletin, which is the first to be published in more than a year, takes into account the drop in oil prices since last year.
Oil prices fell from about $110 a barrel in June of last year to about $48 in January 2015. It has since risen to its current price of about $60.
In order for its best-case predictions to be met, the bulletin said oil prices would need to return to $100 a barrel.
Earlier this month Deirdre Michie, the new chief executive of the industry body Oil and Gas UK, said the North Sea must become sustainable in a world where long-term oil prices are about $60 dollars a barrel.
But the bulletin said there was "no consensus" on price.
£10.8bn
Scottish government's best case projection for 2016-2020
£5.4bn
UK budget watchdog OBR latest projection for 2014-2019
The UK's budget watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), painted a very pessimistic picture of oil receipts earlier this month.
In its March 2014 report, the OBR said possible revenue would be £17.6bn over the five year period from 2014 to 2019.
When it examined this same period a year later, it recalculated its forecast down to £5.4bn.
It estimated a total of £2.1bn would be raised in the 20 years to 2040-41.
The Scottish government's bulletin is impossible to compare directly with last year's edition, as the scenarios were constructed differently.
One of them foresaw rising production but also rising costs, a price of $110, and tax take in 2016-17 of £4.5bn.
Another scenario assumes investment would pick up and production would hit the top end of the industry's own forecasts, leading to production of 2m barrels of oil per day (it's now around 1.4m). That would give Holyrood £7.5bn next financial year - rather close, as it happens, to the IFS figure about the Scottish deficit.
So this is uncomfortable for Scottish government ministers, but unsurprisingly so. It was a reckoning they had to reach some time.
Does this suggest they got things wrong last year? Well, the bulletin goes into some detail about how others were getting it just as wrong, with none of the leading forecasts factoring in the sharp fall in the oil price since last summer.
It also reminds us that there are billions of barrels yet to be extracted. But for all the referendum campaign talk of 24 billion barrels, it's clear from this bulletin how much that lies at the top end of possibilities.
A year on, and many barrels having flowed, we're now talking about 23 billion barrels. Of those, 3.5 billion are not currently viable, for either technical or financial reasons, and 9 billion of those barrels are in the 'yet-to-find' category.
Read more from Douglas
Commenting on the new Scottish government figures, Scotland's Finance Secretary John Swinney said: "There is no disputing that the industry has faced a very challenging year and we continue to work relentlessly to safeguard jobs and retain vital skills."
He added: "It is not acceptable for the UK government to sit back and accept low revenues. Both governments and the industry must continue to work together to improve efficiency, production and deliver better results for the North Sea.
"The critical issue is that the UK government needs to deliver on its commitment to consult on incentives to boost exploration in the North Sea, and this consultation must be launched urgently - so that firm proposals can be announced in the Autumn Statement."
Scottish Secretary David Mundell questioned the timing of the release of the oil and gas bulletin.
He said: "To have the latest Scottish government oil figures published 15 months after their last update, and on the last day before the summer recess, leads to suspicion that these figures aren't meant to be fully scrutinised by the Scottish Parliament.
"For such an important industry to Scotland in terms of jobs, skills and our wider economy, this is disappointing. The Scottish government's central estimates on oil revenues published today are over 80% lower than those they published before the referendum.
"This makes their current policy of full fiscal autonomy for Scotland all the more of a full fiscal shambles."
Scottish Labour's finance spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said the figures had "blown the SNP's policy of full fiscal autonomy out of the water" and accused the Scottish government of trying to "sneak the report out on the last day of parliament".
She added: "These projections are bad news for the oil industry, and both the SNP government and the UK government should explore all options to protect jobs that are directly affected and further down the supply chain.
"Last week the SNP trooped through the lobbies with the extreme right wing of the Tory party to vote for full fiscal autonomy. It is as clear as day now that they knew the policy would be a disaster for Scotland - the SNP government's own figures prove it."
Liberal Democrat energy spokesman Liam McArthur also hit out, saying: "Issuing this report on the day parliament rises for the summer recess either shows contempt for parliament or contempt for the oil and gas industry. The strong suspicion is that it is both. Shame on them."
He also claimed that "the SNP government's credibility on oil and gas is falling faster than their own massive downgrades to forecast receipts", adding that the report "blows a massive hole in their proposals for Scotland to scrap the Barnett formula and adopt full fiscal autonomy".
Oil and Gas Bulletin - May 2014
Oil and Gas Bulletin - June 2015 | The Scottish government has lowered its estimates for how much revenue will be generated from North Sea oil and gas. | 33268851 |
The 26-year-old tested positive for a 'fat burner' pill in March.
He served a provisional 30-day ban, missing the Europa League semi-final and final, but that was not extended as European football's governing body investigated whether the substance was actually prohibited.
The France centre-back admits taking the pill, but questions its illegality.
Sakho was eligible for selection for his country for their home European Championship but he was left out of the squad.
He has been in pre-season training with Liverpool and requested the hearing be brought forward in the hope of being free to start the new Premier League season in August.
He made 21 league appearances last season and has made 55 overall since arriving at Anfield for £18m from Paris St-Germain in September 2013. | Liverpool defender Mamadou Sakho will plead his case against a ban for a failed drugs test to Uefa on Thursday. | 36724483 |
Portland Stone Firms Ltd bought the rights to quarry on the Jurassic Coast in 2004.
But it claims a "modification order" in 2009 means there is no longer safe access to the site near Southwell.
The company said it has spent nearly £1m on legal fees ahead of a tribunal due to take place on 4 June.
According to the company's estates manager, Tim Clotworthy, the loss of access north of Southwell means the only other route for quarry vehicles to enter the site is through the village itself.
He said: "The matter will be referred to the Lands Tribunal, this has been a process that has been going on for nearly 10 years.
"It has had a huge impact on the business."
Portland Stone Firms Ltd bought the tract of land in 2004 with planning permission to quarry the area and access the site north of Southwell.
In 2009 the council put a modification order in place, which meant the site had to be accessed through Southwell - an option that Mr Clotworthy thinks is "not safe".
He added: "The compensation won't match the amount of stone that's in the ground, the stone is more valuable."
The Jurassic Coast in Portland is a UNESCO world heritage site and a number of Southwell residents are concerned mining around the village will mean the area will be lost for generations.
Campaigners set up the group Save Our Coastal Strip From Quarrying to lobby the council to not allow quarrying around Southwell.
Resident and campaigner Maxine Frodsham said: "I'm very, very concerned that there's a real possibility the land could be quarried and we could lose it."
She added there has been "nothing" from Dorset County Council and that "they need to start opening their mouths".
A spokesperson from Dorset County Council said: "As this matter is subject to an ongoing legal process, we are unable to make any further comment at this time."
Portland stone has been used in buildings such as Buckingham Palace and St Paul's Cathedral and continues to be mined around the Jurassic Coast. | A Portland quarry firm is attempting to claim £18m in compensation from Dorset County Council following changes to access to a site it owns. | 35661819 |
"I remain a raging bull in relation to China," he told the BBC's Today programme.
WPP saw a 44.5% rise in preliminary pre-tax profit to £710m for the first half. Revenues rose 6.8% to £5.84bn.
He added that Chinese economic growth was fundamental to the company's future.
"China has been the biggest driver of the world economy," he said.
Despite the recent reports of slowing economic growth in the world's second-largest economy, Sir Martin pointed out how far China had come.
"They ain't done too bad with a five-year planned economy since 1985," he said, adding that China's prospects needed to be seen in the light of "30 years of growth and expansion and the hundreds of millions of people that have been taken out of poverty and moved into a lower-middle or middle class".
While China is WPP's third-biggest market, the US is the firm's biggest.
Strong growth in North America and the UK helped to boost the company's bottom line.
Looking forward, Sir Martin said he expected WPP to meet sales targets for the full year.
The world's biggest advertising group owns a host of agencies around the world, including J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather, and employs some 179,000 people in 111 countries. | Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising giant WPP, has expressed optimism about China's growth, despite fears over its economic health. | 34059971 |
In one case, three women and three children were allegedly shot dead after trailing behind while being forced to march from one village to another.
Elsewhere, 15 civilians were reportedly killed and their bodies thrown into a river in an attempt to spread terror.
The UN says this reinforces fears that IS will use civilians as human shields.
About 30,000 Iraqi security force personnel, Kurdish fighters, Sunni Arab tribesmen and Shia militiamen, assisted by US-led coalition air strikes, launched the long-awaited offensive to retake Mosul eight days ago.
The operation is expected to take weeks, if not months, depending on how much resistance they face from the 3,000 to 5,000 militants believed to be inside Mosul.
Speaking after a meeting with coalition counterparts in Paris, the US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the offensive was proceeding as planned.
He said the groundwork was being laid for the isolation of Islamic State in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of the group's self-proclaimed caliphate.
"As we meet here, we are hoping to generate the local forces that will do so," he said, adding that the two campaigns might overlap.
A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, told a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday that it was continuing to receive reports of depredations against children and women, as well as male civilians.
"It is however hard to immediately verify all the reports we are getting, so the following examples should be treated as preliminary and not definitive," he noted.
According to Mr Colville, human rights staff were informed that IS fighters had killed 15 civilians in the village of Safina, about 45km (28 miles) south of Mosul, and threw their bodies in the river.
Last Wednesday, militants reportedly tied six men from the same village to a vehicle by their hands and dragged them around, apparently because they were related to a tribal leader fighting IS alongside Iraqi government forces. They were also allegedly beaten with sticks and gun butts.
The following day, Iraqi security forces reportedly discovered the bodies of 70 civilians inside houses in the village of Tuloul Naser, about 35km south of Mosul.
On Saturday, militants shot dead three women and three children from Rufaila, also south of Mosul, because they were trailing behind a group of other people from the same village who were being forced by IS to relocate to another area.
The victims were lagging behind because one child had a disability. She was apparently among those killed.
And on Sunday, members of IS are reported to have killed 50 former Iraqi police officers they had been holding in a building outside Mosul.
"We very much fear that these will not be the last such reports we receive of such barbaric acts by [IS], and repeat our call on government forces and their allies to ensure their fighters do not take revenge on any of the civilians who escape from areas under IS control, and treat all suspected IS fighters they capture in accordance with international humanitarian law," said Mr Colville.
Iraqi security forces and allied Shia Muslim paramilitary groups have been accused of committing serious violations during previous operations against IS.
Last week, Amnesty International alleged they had subjected Sunni Arabs who had fled IS to arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance and unlawful killing after capturing them or placing them in custody.
Also on Tuesday, a Russian military spokesman accused the US-led coalition of killing more than 60 civilians and injuring 200 others in air strikes in and around Mosul over the past three days.
One jet bombed a school for girls in a southern district of the city on Friday, Lt Gen Sergei Rudskoi said. | UN human rights staff have received reports of atrocities being committed by Islamic State militants as Iraqi government forces close in on Mosul. | 37761088 |
This has led the trade body for major pharmaceutical companies, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), to condemn price rises by some small operators for prescription drugs as "cynical and exploitative".
So what's the problem and could more than £250m a year be saved?
An investigation by the Times newspaper has revealed that a small number of businesses have made big profits after hiking prices for generic prescription drugs, including some anti-depressants and skin medications.
There is a deal between the government and major pharmaceutical companies to cap the annual cost of branded drugs still protected by patent. But no such arrangement exists for generic medicines.
There seems to be a particular problem for some older generic drugs when distribution rights have been bought by smaller companies from the pharmaceutical giants.
These cases usually involve low sales volumes and rival companies deciding it's not worth entering the market. The theory is that when a drug "goes generic" there will be competition which drives down prices. But in these situations there is a monopoly.
Given that NHS tariffs (the prices which pharmacists pay for their supplies before getting reimbursed) are set by average market prices for each drug, the suppliers call the shots and the health service has to accept whatever is charged.
The Times investigation revealed an increase for one drug of 12,500% in five years and, for 32 others, a 1,000% rise.
The newspaper estimated this had added £262m to the annual NHS drugs bill. One industry source described it as market failure and told me it was clear there was a loophole which ought to be closed.
The ABPI condemned the pricing revelations, making clear the companies involved were not members and the examples quoted in the report were rare.
The association's Dr Richard Torbett said official intervention was required.
"The government can step in and question pricing decisions and, through the Competition and Markets Authority, has wide powers to regulate and deal with market abuses.
"The ABPI supports this and is in discussion with government about how best to ensure appropriate pricing throughout the system."
NHS England, while acknowledging that in general the system delivers value for money, is clearly anxious for action to be taken by the government.
A spokesman said: "We are concerned about these type of anomalies at a time when the NHS needs to make significant savings which suggests further regulatory action may be needed."
Ministers are aware of the problem and seem keen that the Competition and Markets Authority takes whatever action is needed.
A Department of Health spokesman said: "These are serious allegations and no pharmaceutical company should be exploiting the NHS.
"The secretary of state has asked the CMA to urgently look at the evidence uncovered by the Times as part of their continuing investigations into excessive drugs pricing."
The intent is there. The government and NHS leaders want any loophole allowing excessive charging to be closed.
But how quickly it can happen, allowing for due process involved with CMA investigations, is another matter.
Any delay will cost the health service millions of pounds more at a time when it needs as much cash as possible for frontline care. | At a time when the NHS is trying to save every penny without undermining patient care, news has emerged that it is being over-charged in one area of its drugs bill. | 36449913 |
Prince William and Catherine visited RAF Valley on Anglesey to mark the end of RAF Search and Rescue (SAR) Force operations after 75 years.
The duke, who was known as Flt Lt Wales, was based on the island from 2010 to 2013.
A disbandment parade was held to formally commemorate the end of 75 years of service on Thursday.
The RAF regiment's band played Auld Lang Syne as the standards of the SAR squadrons marched for the last time.
Wing Cdr Mark "Sparky" Dunlop, of 22 Squardon, said the service had enjoyed a "long and glorious history".
"We have been doing this for 75 years and I think the big point about today is the air crew, the engineers and the other support staff that have all worked together to rescue literally tens of thousands of people through the decades."
He said the duke had "good skills" as a pilot, adding he had "earnt his wings" as much as anyone else.
The duke and duchess will also meet some of those involved in search and rescue operations over the years at a formal reception, with 300 guests present.
The service has been privatised and is now operated by Bristow Helicopters after it was awarded a contract by the Department for Transport in 2013.
During his time at RAF Valley, the duke carried out a total of 156 search and rescue operations as an operational captain, resulting in 149 people being rescued. | The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have returned to the RAF base where he worked as a search and rescue pilot. | 35602046 |
He was flown to Manchester from Spain on Saturday after his condition improved enough to allow him to travel.
The Mirror reported that Healy was taken ill almost a month ago and had been fighting for his life.
An ITV spokesman said the 64-year-old was "feeling much better" and that filming of the show had been "adjusted to accommodate Tim's absence".
It is understood his former wife Denise Welch flew to Spain at one point to visit him in hospital, where his wife Joan has been by his side.
Healy, who was born in Newcastle and found fame in the 1980s' show Auf Wiedersehen Pet, has played the cross-dressing character Les/Lesley in Benidorm since 2010.
The ITV spokesman, who did not confirm the nature of Healy's illness, said the show's team were "currently mid-way through filming the new series", which will air in 2017.
He added that "all the Benidorm cast and crew wish [Tim] a healthy recovery in his own time". | TV star Tim Healy is recovering in hospital after being taken ill during the filming of the ITV show Benidorm. | 36301915 |
Thirty years later, many still bear the scars - they include children with birth and congenital defects and others whose lives have been blighted by chronic illness.
Nazes Afroz travels to Bhopal to meet children born to parents who were exposed to the gas on 3 December 1984 or who were born in the aftermath of the leak.
Aseem Ansari, 15, was born with acute deformities of his facial bones and suffers from chronic weakness, fatigue and frequent nose bleeds. Mother Hanifa Bee has been taking him to hospitals and clinics ever since he was born. He has dropped out of school and works in a furniture factory to help his family financially. He knows little about the gas leak that affected his parents when they were in their youth.
Swati Mishra, 17, was born with partial paralysis of the left side of her body. She suffers from acute weakness and has been visiting hospitals and doctors all her life. Her father was a young boy at the time of the leak but she knows little about the accident. Swati is studying computer administration at a local college and her aim is to find work either at a bank or the railways so she can support her father who has very little income.
Twenty-one-year-old Sheraz Raeen, who was born with severe brain damage, needs constant care. He cannot speak or look after himself. His family sends him to a day-care centre set up by one of the local groups demanding rights for the gas victims. From the time of his birth, his family has been paying for his medical treatment at government hospitals as well as private clinics. Sheraz's full time carer, his mother Firoza Bee, asks: "When will he be categorised as a victim of the gas leak and when will he be paid compensation and get proper medical care?"
Sheraz's younger sister, 17-year-old Gulnar Raeen, was born with a minor defect in her right leg. She also has chronic weakness and breathing difficulties. A school dropout, Gulnar has a vague knowledge of the disaster. She only knows that her parents were affected by a gas leak from the Union Carbide factory.
Both of Faizan Shaikh's parents were affected by the gas leak and he was born with severe problems in his right eye and has been treated for it since his birth. Although the 15-year-old looks healthy, he gets out of breath easily and can't do much physical work. He has dropped out of school and now works as an assistant in a photography studio.
Shaima Shaikh, 15, was born with a minor birth defect in one of her feet. She suffers from chronic fatigue and has frequent headaches and blackouts. Her mother has also suffered acutely from being exposed to the gas since a young age. Shaima has little information about the accident and whatever little she knows, she has heard it from her family.
Asif Shaikh, 29, was born four months after the disaster. His mother, who lived in a slum just a stone's throw away from the factory, was in the final stages of pregnancy when the leak occurred. Mr Shaikh suffers from chronic weakness and has eye and breathing troubles. He can't do much physical labour and hence assists in the family-run flour mill.
Chetna Koli, 21, has heard about the thousands killed and maimed in her slum from her parents who were also victims of the leak. She has also seen photos and films made about the accident. She has chronic eye irritation and suffers from breathlessness. Her 15-year-old brother was born with a tumour on his back and had to undergo surgery three days after birth. After school, she joined a course to be a lab technician and wants a job in a hospital or a clinic so that she can support her father, another gas victim who has a meagre income.
Gas Mohammad was so named because he was born on the morning of 3 December 1984, just hours after the leak. An unusually quiet man, he doesn't communicate much and suffers from severe weakness and breathlessness. Due to poor health, he cannot do work involving manual labour. So, he does odd jobs when he finds them. His aunt, who lives with his family, gave birth to a child exactly a year after the accident but the baby died minutes after he was born.
Gas Mian was also born just hours after the leak killed and maimed tens of thousands of people in his neighbourhood. "Do I look like a 30-year-old man? I look much older. This accident blighted my life," he says when asked about the incident. His seven-year-old son Faran was born with a defective foot. The Mian family still carries the legacy of the accident that ruined the lives of thousands of poor slum dwellers like him. | A poisonous gas leak from the Union Carbide Corporation plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal 30 years ago killed several thousand people and injured more than half a million. | 30227852 |
Appointed second-in-command of Congress in January 2013, Mr Gandhi led the party into the general election and managed its campaign.
He criss-crossed the length and breadth of India, addressing election rallies and holding meetings with party workers and supporters.
But the race was extremely tough for him - Congress bore the brunt of voter unhappiness over a slowing economy, high inflation and a string of damaging corruption scandals.
Mr Gandhi has long been seen as a prime-minister-in-waiting but with the charismatic and populist BJP candidate Narendra Modi having declared his hand, Congress refrained from naming Mr Gandhi as their prime ministerial candidate.
Analysts said the move was aimed at protecting one of the party's main assets ahead of the drubbing the party received.
Many in the party ranks had long clamoured for a bigger role for Mr Gandhi.
But there had also been questions about how eager he was to embrace this role. Critics have often described him as the "reluctant prince" who has been the de facto number two for a long time, wielding the power, but shying away from responsibility.
Also, his campaigning in last year's crucial state elections failed to deliver the votes, raising further questions about his leadership abilities.
In his only television interview earlier this year Mr Gandhi gave the impression he was leading the party because his birth gave him no choice, rather than because of any ambition.
The son of murdered former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and his Italian-born widow Sonia, Rahul has been steadily building up his own political profile as he strives to emerge from his parents' shadow.
He was born on 19 June 1970 and went to the finest Indian schools, going on to study economics in the US and work in London before returning to work in Mumbai in 2002.
Rahul was seen as a shy man whose interests lay more in cricket matches and the outdoors than in political life.
His charismatic and popular sister Priyanka was thought to be more likely to take over the family's mantle of power.
His decision to enter formal politics before the 2004 general election therefore took many by surprise.
That year, Mr Gandhi stood for parliament and won the traditional family constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, which his father had once held.
In September 2007 Rahul was named as the party's secretary general, with his mother Sonia remaining as president, and in January last year, he was appointed the vice-president of the party.
He represents the fourth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has led the Congress party, and India, for much of the time since independence from Britain in 1947.
His grandmother, Indira, was another prime minister, also assassinated, while his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was independent India's first leader.
Why Rahul, rather than Priyanka, answered the party's call for a new generation of Gandhis is still not fully clear.
Many within the Congress party saw his move into politics as positive, although the decision was seen by some as highlighting the party's lack of alternatives and its continuing reliance on the Nehru-Gandhi family for leadership and direction.
Whatever the concerns, expectations were high that he would play a major role in the government and the party. Despite his "dark horse" image, he is said by some analysts to have a detailed political knowledge and to be a practised backroom operator.
Although he turned down previous roles to take a prominent role in the party, by 2008 he had kicked off a campaign called the "discovery of India", aimed at winning over hearts and minds and projecting himself as a future leader.
In his campaigning in Uttar Pradesh in the 2012 state elections, he addressed more than 200 rallies, slept in villagers' huts and even grew stubble to give himself more of a "man of the people" look. | Rahul Gandhi, heir of the powerful Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty that has dominated Indian politics for decades, has accepted responsibility for the party's worst ever election performance. | 17271658 |
The 24-hour walkout - the second in three months - affects bus, train, plane and underground services.
Swathes of the capital Buenos Aires ground to a halt after people were unable to reach their jobs.
The country's powerful transport unions are unhappy with the income tax floor and high inflation in the country.
Strikers set up roadblocks on Tuesday morning on the main roads leading into Buenos Aires, closing the city's Pueyrredon Bridge.
With people unable to access parts of the city or use public transport, many businesses and schools were forced to close.
All domestic flights and some international flights were cancelled.
Tuesday's strike also disrupted waste collection, freight transport and port activity after a number of smaller unions joined the protest.
The three transport unions are protesting against a bid by the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to cap salary increases at 27%, complaining that the figure does not match the forecast 30% inflation expected this year.
They are also calling for tax cuts as they say the threshold salary subjected to income tax has not been updated to keep pace with inflation, hitting lower earners.
Official figures put inflation in Argentina last year at 24%, but private estimates reckon it was closer to 40%. On Friday the value of the Argentine peso declined to a record low of nine per US dollar.
Juan Carlos Schmid, head of Argentina's dredging workers union, said the strike would send a "strong signal" to the government that takes power after December's general elections
Anibal Fernandez, the government's cabinet chief, called the walkout a "political strike designed to generate confusion."
"They are obstructing people who want to go to work, the vast majority of the population," he said.
The trade union movement in Argentina is divided into those who back the government of President Fernandez and those who think it is not doing enough to help workers.
The transport unions - among the most powerful labour unions in the country - are divided among themselves over support of the government. | A major transport strike in Argentina has brought parts of the country to a standstill as unions protest against high taxes and inflation. | 33062165 |
Yet since Donald Trump was elected, the sparsely populated communities and dry valleys of Central Mexico have been inexorably linked to events in Washington DC.
Like so much with President-elect Trump, it began with a tweet.
"Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!" he tweeted at General Motors earlier this month.
The warning may have been aimed at GM but within hours, Ford, which had also been singled out for criticism during his campaign announced that it was withdrawing from a $1.6bn (£1.3bn) car assembly plant in Villa de Reyes.
Some of that money would be reinvested in Michigan in what the CEO of Ford described to the BBC as "a vote of confidence" in Mr Trump's business policies.
Today, that half-finished factory sits idle, gathering dust in the desert. The car plant has gone from a shining example of cross-border free trade to an eerie monument to Mr Trump's aggressive brand of economic protectionism.
Trump supporters heralded the move as evidence that his harder stance towards Mexico will boost US jobs.
For Jesus Oliva, though, it was just evidence that the next four years will be tougher than he'd hoped. He had worked on the site for six months when the entire workforce was told they were fired one morning.
"It was a decent job," he says of his time as a night-watchman. "It was nearby so we could walk to work."
Jesus lives in the shadow of the abandoned Ford construction, in a community of around 500 families called La Presita.
Plus, of course, it was regular pay.
Jesus now harvests cactus to make a living from selling a fermented alcoholic beverage called aguamiel and a typical Mexican food, nopales. At 58, he has few other options, but he fears for the younger generation.
"Many will immigrate north or go to other places to try to build their lives. We need jobs here too so people can live honestly. I think that's where the delinquency and crime comes from - having no work."
The state authorities in San Luis Potosi admit that Ford's decision was "not good news".
"It was very good news nine months ago when we signed the agreement and announced that Ford was coming to San Luis Potosi," said Gustavo Puente Orozco, the state's secretary for economic development.
Still he refrains from criticising the company - at least in public.
"Beyond being disappointed, I have to be very professional and I have to respect what the companies do and the decisions they make. As a former businessman I understand that markets and strategies can change."
"We have to work with them to find the best solution for both parties," he adds, before underlining that Ford have not pulled out of Mexico altogether.
Far from it, in fact.
Their assembly plant in Hermosillo could even end up benefitting from these international movements of investment and capital that have accompanied Mr Trump's arrival in the White House.
The local authorities insist that San Luis Potosi is still in good shape, with or without Ford, ranking fifth out of 32 states in terms of GDP growth per capita.
"We grew 5.4% in 2015 compared to the Mexican average of 2.5," said Mr Puente, which he attributes to a range of industries from mining to food production.
Nevertheless there are likely to be complications ahead.
One of Mr Trump's key election promises was to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta. Added to that is the thorny question of more walls - both "real and through taxes" as Secretary Puente puts it.
As the Trump administration prepares to take office, the idea that Mexico will pay for an extended border wall is roundly dismissed by ordinary Mexicans and politicians alike.
"Mexico isn't going to pay for that wall. Not today, not ever, not even on credit," Senator Luis Humberto Fernandez said in a statement in the final days before Mr Trump's inauguration.
Still, in San Luis Potosi, many fear the worst from the incoming administration. Among them is the community leader at La Presita - an aged rancher called Gregorio Flores, known locally as Don Goyo.
He can see the empty structure from his patch of land as he feeds his pigs every morning.
"We'd hoped to build a school and we urgently need a road as we're so cut off," he says, lamenting the loss for the village.
His neighbour, Jesus Oliva, perhaps one of the first casualties in a US trade conflict with Mexico, says he'd urge the president-elect to "play fair".
"They accuse Mexicans of taking their jobs. But now they're coming in and taking away ours." | The arid desert landscape of Villa de Reyes is a world away from the glitz of the presidential inauguration on Capitol Hill. | 38679914 |
The knowledge of how to craft and design these intricate pieces takes as long as 10 years to amass, and has been handed on from one generation to another, with artisans today working in much the same way as their predecessors two centuries before.
It is in this workshop - which once made all Napoleon's official jewellery including his coronation crown - where all the special order and top collections are made.
Making a product for this market is painstaking and time consuming work. A single piece, such as a necklace or tiara, typically takes six hundred to 1,000 hours to make, but can take as long as 2,000 hours depending on the quality of the stones used.
In the past, Mr Bourdariat says the company, now owned by LVMH the world's largest luxury goods group, spent a year making just one necklace.
The skills required to make unique masterpieces such as these, however, are at risk of disappearing in this modern age of mass production.
Mr Bourdariat estimates the number of craftspeople making such products in Paris has halved over the past two decades as a result of falling demand. He says this has led to a shortage of certain skills, without which it's impossible to make this kind of jewellery, such as moulding, setting stones and polishing.
LVMH, which alongside Chaumet owns some 70 luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Dior and Givenchy, last year set up a training scheme - called "L'Institut des Métiers d'Excellence" - aimed at addressing the skills gap, taking on 28 paid apprentices in different areas of its businesses.
The scheme aims to transmit its "savoir-faire" to the next generation "not only for LVMH's needs but also for the jobs, the art, the craft in itself," says Chantal Gaemperle, vice president of human resources and synergies at LVMH.
"We wanted to make sure that we will still have the craft that we need in the next 10 years. It's one of the ways to make sure that we fill the pipeline of talent, but also we don't lose the craft of very specific know-how in the different metier."
Firms in the UK have done similar. British handbag maker Mulberry, for example, has been running an 18 month apprenticeship course, comprising a leather skills NVQ and technical certificate with a local college, since 2006. As a result, it says it now has a waiting list of young people wanting to join its production line team.
Firms are wise to act. The luxury sector, which includes high end cars, wine and clothing, is one of Europe's most important industries, worth some 17% of Europe's total merchandise exports in 2013, according to industry lobby group the European Cultural and Creative Industries Alliance (ECCIA).
And increasingly where something is made and how it is made are important factors for consumers when they make a purchasing decision.
ECCIA president Michael Ward says 80% of people look at a product's label first to see where it has been made.
"If we look at what's driving the luxury market; it's about craftmanship, originality and tradition. It's all about adding value. How many stitches in a Fendi bag, how long does it take to train a weaver, for example, are all hugely important in terms of the product proposition."
It's also become an increasingly important issue for one of the biggest purchasers of high end goods - those in emerging markets. When my friend Simran, a Malaysian lawyer in her late thirties, visited London for work her first stop was the Mulberry shop.
Although she could buy Mulberry bags in Malaysia, they were more expensive there, and she wanted what she considered something quintessentially British, bought in the country it was made in. A souvenir from her travels but one that she was also certain her friends would appreciate and understand the value of.
Fflur Roberts, head of luxury goods at Euromonitor, says Simran's behaviour is typical.
"We're seeing a complete shift as emerging markets mature. They want to look at the label and see that it is made in the country of origin. Even if they can buy it in their home country, there are concerns over authenticity. Coming back from wherever you've been and showing off what you've bought goes with the theatre of the brand."
Yet despite the apparent glamour of the industry, recruiting people within the brand's home country to make the products can be difficult, even with the eurozone's stubbornly high youth unemployment rate, 22.9% at its most recent reading.
Elisabeth Ponsolle des Portes, the president and chief executive of French luxury goods association Comité Colbert, says many parents try to steer their children away from manual jobs, a trend it is trying to fight.
The body has fought hard to ensure official government recognition for the design houses preserving the skills involved, and it is now trying to get across the message that these skills can offer long term, rewarding careers.
"Our challenge is to show how far these trades are linked to innovation and creativity. They are not just hollow reproductions of old forms. They benefit from the knowledge of the past, but are completely in tune with the present."
Those who doubt it should speak to some of those currently learning the necessary skills.
LVMH apprentice Maxim Fradin says he is proud to work with his hands, likening his work to that of a musician. "It's the repetition of gestures, hours and hours of rehearsal work and then arriving at a convincing final excellence; the perfect object," he explains. | Pascal Bourdariat - just the 12th workshop director in high-end jeweller Chaumet's 235-year history - is watching as a worker gently polishes a tiny gem, so small it's almost invisible. | 31791937 |
The European Red List, drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, found 9.2% of nearly 2,000 species are threatened with extinction.
Another 5% are likely to be threatened in the near future.
Threats include loss of habitat from intensive farming, pesticide use, urban development and climate change.
Jean-Christophe Vié, of the IUCN Global Species Programme, said the assessment was the best understanding so far on wild bees in Europe, but knowledge was incomplete due to "an alarming lack of expertise and resources".
"Bees play an essential role in the pollination of our crops," he said.
"We must urgently invest in further research in order to provide the best possible recommendations on how to reverse their decline."
The new assessment made a number of recommendations, including:
The study adds to growing evidence that multiple environmental pressures are driving the loss of bees both in the wild and in hives.
Commenting on the findings, Prof Mark Brown of the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: "A lot of our bees have been in decline or are at risk of extinction and we need to change how the landscape is managed to deal with that.
"Bees need to be incorporated into how we think about and develop sustainable agriculture."
Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex, said the report highlighted what we have known for some time - that "bees are in trouble, with some types having already gone extinct, and others likely to follow them into oblivion in the near future".
He added: "What is more shocking is the revelation that we actually don't know much at all about the status of the majority of Europe's bee species."
Insect pollination has an estimated economic value of 15bn euros per year in the EU alone.
Boosting populations of pollinators would bring benefits to wildlife, the countryside and food producers, said the report.
"Our quality of life - and our future - depends on the many goods and services that nature provides for free," said Karmenu Vella, EU commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.
"If we don't address the roots of the decline in wild bees, and act urgently to stop it, we could pay a very heavy price indeed."
Follow Helen Briggs on Twitter. | Almost one in 10 of Europe's native wild bees face extinction, according to the most comprehensive expert assessment so far. | 31963056 |
The pontiff said he prayed for the success of recent UN resolutions for peace in Syria and Libya.
The Pope also condemned "brutal acts of terrorism", singling out France, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Mali.
Thousands of pilgrims turned out to see the address, known as "Urbi et Orbi" - to the city and the world.
Heavy security was in place around the Vatican as crowds lined the streets, as it has been since the 13 November Paris attacks carried out by Islamist militants.
This year also saw ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, while Europe grappled with record numbers of migrants arriving on its shores.
Pope Francis began by noting that "precisely where the incarnate son of God came into the world, tensions and violence persist".
He went on to urge Israelis and Palestinians to resume direct peace talks, and back international efforts to end "atrocities" in Libya and Syria.
Such acts, he said, "do not even spare the historical and cultural patrimony of entire peoples", a clear reference to the Islamic State group.
Speaking from the balcony of St Peter's Basilica, he described Christians being persecuted for their faith as "martyrs of today".
On the migrant crisis, the Pope said "may God repay all those, both individuals and states, who generously work to provide assistance and welcome to the numerous migrants and refugees".
He also referenced conflicts in Ukraine, Colombia, Yemen, Iraq, Burundi, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Celebrating Mass on Christmas Eve, Pope Francis called on Roman Catholics not to be "intoxicated" by possessions. | Pope Francis tackled war, terrorism and the migrant crisis in a wide-ranging Christmas message, calling for peace and reconciliation around the world. | 35178557 |
Media playback is not supported on this device
The Jaguars led 23-6 after the third quarter before a Colts comeback.
Indianapolis scored three fourth-quarter touchdowns, but Allen Hurns' 42-yard touchdown catch from Bortles with just over two minutes left ensured Jacksonville's victory.
It was the Jaguars' second win in their fourth NFL appearance at Wembley.
Jacksonville, the designated home team, had lost their first three games of the NFL regular season but looked good for a 17-6 half-time lead, after Allen Robinson touched down in the first quarter and Bortles ran through to score in the second.
The Colts were playing their first overseas NFL game, and only woke up in the final quarter.
Frank Gore rushed for a touchdown and quarterback Andrew Luck threw a two-yard pass to TY Hilton, who made it a three-point game with five minutes left.
However, Hurns collected a pass from Bortles and expertly weaved past several players for a touchdown that meant Phillip Dorsett's 64-yard score for the Colts with three minutes on the clock was in vain.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles told BBC Sport: "The guys played their tails off. It was fun and cool to see, and it was good to get back on track.
"It definitely feels good to come here and win over here as well."
Indianapolis Colts' quarterback Andrew Luck said on www.colts.com: "They played better than us. We didn't play better in the first half. We didn't play particularly better in the second half.
"We made enough plays to almost get them, but almost doesn't cut it in this league. We've got to be better, I've got to be better. It's pretty simple."
More than 83,000 attended NFL's latest Wembley game, and they were treated to a pre-match performance by singer Robin Thicke.
Wembley Way outside the stadium, normally filled with football fans on cup final and play-off match days, was taken over by NFL supporters, some wearing jaguar masks and others with horseshoes painted on their faces.
Both sets of players were given a guard of honour on to the field by members of the armed forces holding the national flags of the United Kingdom and the United States.
There were plenty of sporting celebrities in attendance, including Great Britain's Olympic women's gold-medal winning hockey team.
One of the defining images of this NFL season has been San Francisco 49ers' quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the United States national anthem in recent months, in protest against what he called the oppression of black people in his country.
Several sportspople - both within and outside the NFL - have joined him in support and on Sunday, the Colts cornerback Antonio Cromartie knelt on one knee and raised his right fist as well.
Cromartie later stood up for UK anthem God Save the Queen.
Some fans at Wembley on Sunday were also seen wearing Kaepernick jerseys - the replica kit became one of the top-selling in the days after his stance gained widespread attention.
The Jaguars' win on Sunday made it back-to-back victories at Wembley, after their win over the Buffalo Bills 34-31 in 2015. Jacksonville's first two visits to London had ended in defeats.
London will host two more games this season, with the New York Giants and the Los Angeles Rams playing at Twickenham on 23 October, before the Washington Redskins take on the Cincinnati Bengals at Wembley on 30 October.
The NFL's international series in the regular season first took place in 2005 in Mexico, which will also play host to a game this year - the Houston Texans versus the Oakland Raiders on 21 November.
Wembley will be used as as one of the overseas venues until 2020 after the deal was extended last year. | Quarterback Blake Bortles threw for two touchdowns and rushed for another as the Jacksonville Jaguars beat the Indianapolis Colts 30-27 at Wembley. | 37532344 |
Thousands have signed a petition calling for lifeguards on Camber Sands in East Sussex during the summer.
A 19-year-old man died while swimming at the beach in July. A further five people on a day trip to the area died in August.
Rother District Council said it was looking at "all the options" as part of its review.
Vasanth Koneswaran, whose cousin Kurushanth Srithavarajah was one of the casualties in August, said: "If there were lifeguards there they could have been saved.
"I'm angry. They were all the friends I really had."
A council spokesman said a decision on whether to provide a lifeguard service was yet to be made.
"In light of recent tragic events and the changing profile of visitors to the beach, we are in the process of reviewing and considering all options for next year."
A temporary lifeguard team provided by the RNLI has been in place at Camber Sands since August. It will be in place for the rest of the summer season, handing out safety information to beach-goers.
An RNLI spokesman said: "We have been talking to Rother District Council but no lifeguard service has been agreed for 2017."
Five men from south-east London died on 24 August:
Brazilian Gustavo Silva Da Cruz, 19, died on 24 July | A review is under way into whether lifeguards should be deployed at a beach where six people recently died. | 37498694 |
Robert Carr, 39, from Glenrothes in Fife, also throttled the 20-year-old woman during the attack at a house in Lochgelly on Christmas Day 2015.
A court heard that the victim was found crouched behind a car, covered in blood and shaking.
After the attack, Carr sent her a message saying he loved her.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard that the father-of-10 later sent her a message asking why she had called the police and sent her mother a Facebook message asking if his victim was OK as he had "just not heard from her".
The woman was taken to hospital where her head wounds were stitched and stapled. Doctors noted that rectangular marks on her back and shoulder blades were consistent with her being hit with a table leg.
She had 19 separate injuries.
The attempted murder followed a string of violent offences Carr had inflicted on women. He pled guilty to 10 charges in total.
He has previously served 17 sentences of detention and imprisonment for charges including assault.
In relation to the Lochgelly attack, the court heard that Carr had been drinking at his victim's home on Christmas Eve and fell asleep.
The next morning he began slapping and punching her and calling her names.
Advocate depute Ian Wallace said: "He then picked up a wooden table, turned it upside down and ripped the legs off it. He took a table leg in each hand and repeatedly struck her on the head with them."
The woman tried to get up but Carr grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, pinning her against a wall. The woman was struggling for breath before he released her.
Carr resumed his attack with the table legs and she curled up in a ball to protect herself. He then kicked her full force in the stomach and began beating her on the back with the makeshift weapons.
He left the room but returned and punched her in the face before striking her again on the head with a table leg.
When he went to the toilet, the woman fled from the flat and hid behind a car. Passers-by contacted the emergency services.
Police found table legs stained with the victim's blood at her home.
Mr Wallace said that Carr later sent the woman a message telling her: "Am home love u."
Carr pled guilty to a further nine assault charges committed between 2003 and 2015 at addresses in Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy, Lochgelly and the former T in the Park campsite at Balado, Kinross, against female victims, two of whom were pregnant during some of the incidents.
He had also originally faced rape charges, but those allegations were either deleted or his not guilty pleas accepted.
The court heard that one victim said she still did not feel safe and another said she was terrified of Carr and feared that he would kill her.
Carr told one woman, now 46, that he would "shut her up permanently" after she rejected money he wanted to give her as a birthday present.
He punched her in the face and striking her with a thick church candle until she passed out.
On another occasion, the victim was at a party where children were present when Carr turned up uninvited.
He closed the curtains and brought out a small case containing a gas-propelled pellet gun. After putting the weapon together he shot the woman hosting the party in the hand.
He then turned on his previous assault victim and shot her in the head and shoulder. She lunged at him to try and stop him and he shot her in the head again. The woman said Carr was shouting at her for wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Young, Free and Single".
The woman fled from the house with her baby as Carr followed and continued to shoot at her.
She later had a pellet removed from her head and another from her shoulder, but a third pellet in her shoulder could not be extracted.
Defence solicitor advocate Krista Johnston said the offences were "awful". She added: "He feels deep shame about his behaviour."
Judge Lord Ericht told Carr: "You pled guilty to 10 charges comprising a series of offences involving a sustained and violent course of conduct against women culminating in attempted murder."
Lord Ericht told him that he had to take account of the serious nature of the assaults and ordered that he be kept under supervision for a further three-year period after being released from prison. | A man who admitted trying to kill a woman by attacking her with wooden table legs has been jailed for 10 years. | 38921328 |
Two of the attackers were armed, one with a hammer and the other with a knife.
Household items and a car were also damaged in the incident at Rathmore Drive at about 21:30 GMT on Sunday.
The man is being treated in Antrim hospital. A spokeswoman said his condition was stable. | A man has been taken to hospital after he was attacked by four masked men at his house in the Rathcoole estate in Newtownabbey, County Antrim. | 34897904 |
Mr Magufuli picked up rubbish from the street outside State House as part of the scheme, which he had ordered to replace independence day celebrations.
The move is being seen as symbolic of the president's promise to tackle corruption, our correspondent says.
Thousands of people across Tanzania are reported to have joined the clean-up.
Last month, Mr Magufuli cancelled traditional independence day celebrations, which usually include a military parade and concert, saying it would be "shameful" to spend huge sums of money while the country was facing a serious cholera outbreak.
"Let us work together to keep our country, cities, homes and workplaces clean, safe and healthy," Mr Magufuli told a crowd of surprised onlookers as he picked up rubbish off the street, AFP news agency reports.
"Tanzania has changed - this is a new Tanzania," one resident told AFP, on a break from cleaning up the city's public beach.
Since coming to power in October, Mr Magufuli, nicknamed "The Bulldozer" for his no-nonsense approach, has announced a range of cost-cutting measures, including a ban on unnecessary foreign travel by government officials.
The hashtag #WhatWouldMagufuliDo, coined after the initial cancellation of festivities last month, has been trending on social media in Tanzania and across East Africa, as people come up with their own money-saving initiatives:
Last month, Mr Magufuli ordered the cost of a party to inaugurate the new parliament to be slashed from $100,000 (£66,000) to $7,000.
He also sacked the head of the main state hospital after finding patients sleeping on the floor during a surprise visit to the facility. | Tanzania's new President John Magufuli has joined hundreds of residents in the main city Dar es Salaam to take part in a public clean-up operation. | 35049628 |
Layton passed away at his home in Toronto early on Monday surrounded by his wife and children, his family said in a statement.
His left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) surged to become the official opposition for the first time in May's federal elections.
He stepped down only last month as party leader to fight his illness.
In a letter released by the NDP after his death was announced, Mr Layton said he remained optimistic about Canada's future and its political system.
"Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped," he said. "So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue."
Layton urged readers to "to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer".
He described Canada as "a great country, one of the hopes of the world".
"We can be a better one," he added, "a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity."
Layton called on members of his party to remain committed to their "proud history of social justice", universal healthcare and public pensions.
To young Canadians, he spoke of his "belief in your power to change this country and this world".
Prime Minister Stephen Harper saluted his late adversary's "contribution to public life, a contribution that will be sorely missed".
At Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, the flag was lowered to half-mast on Monday.
Layton announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in February 2010.
He campaigned in spring this year, leaning on a cane after surgery for a broken hip, leading his party to a second-place finish in May's federal elections.
On 25 July, the former Toronto city councillor said he was quitting temporarily as NDP leader to fight a newly diagnosed "non-prostate cancer".
He was elected in 2003 as leader of the left-leaning New Democrats, long the third-place federal party in the Canadian parliament.
Before that, the Quebec native was an activist and community organiser in Toronto, campaigning on issues such as Aids, poverty, violence against women and homelessness.
He was elected MP in 2004 from a constituency in Toronto.
His popularity helped the NDP to overtake the Liberals in May's elections and become the country's official opposition party, when it took 103 seats, up from 37.
He is survived by his Hong Kong-born wife Olivia Chow, also an NDP MP, and his two children from a previous marriage, Michael and Sarah.
Layton is to be buried in a state funeral on Saturday, the NDP said. The ceremony, which was offered by Mr Harper, will be open to the public. | Canadian opposition leader Jack Layton has died after a second bout of cancer, aged 61. | 14618943 |
1492 - The navigator Christopher Columbus claims Cuba for Spain.
Revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro staged a successful revolt against dictator Fulgencio Batista
1511 - Spanish conquest begins under the leadership of Diego de Velazquez, who establishes Baracoa and other settlements.
1526 - Importing of slaves from Africa begins.
1762 - Havana captured by a British force led by Admiral George Pocock and Lord Albemarle.
1763 - Havana returned to Spain by the Treaty of Paris.
1868-78 - Ten Years War of independence ends in a truce with Spain promising reforms and greater autonomy - promises that were mostly never met.
1886 - Slavery abolished.
1895-98 - Jose Marti leads a second war of independence; US declares war on Spain.
1898 - US defeats Spain, which gives up all claims to Cuba and cedes it to the US.
1902 - Cuba becomes independent with Tomas Estrada Palma as its president; however, the Platt Amendment keeps the island under US protection and gives the US the right to intervene in Cuban affairs.
1906-09 - Estrada resigns and the US occupies Cuba following a rebellion led by Jose Miguel Gomez.
US-backed leader who was eventually toppled
On this Day: Rebels edge closer to capital
1909 - Jose Miguel Gomez becomes president following elections supervised by the US, but is soon tarred by corruption.
1912 - US forces return to Cuba to help put down black protests against discrimination.
1924 - Gerado Machado institutes vigorous measures, forwarding mining, agriculture and public works, but subsequently establishing a brutal dictatorship.
1925 - Socialist Party founded, forming the basis of the Communist Party.
1933 - Machado overthrown in a coup led by Sergeant Fulgencio Batista.
1934 - The US abandons its right to intervene in Cuba's internal affairs, revises Cuba's sugar quota and changes tariffs to favour Cuba.
1944 - Batista retires and is succeeded by the civilian Ramon Gray San Martin.
1952 - Batista seizes power again and presides over an oppressive and corrupt regime.
1953 - Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful revolt against the Batista regime.
1956 - Castro lands in eastern Cuba from Mexico and takes to the Sierra Maestra mountains where, aided by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, he wages a guerrilla war.
US accusations - backed up by aerial pictures - that Russia was installing missiles on Cuba brought the superpowers to the brink of war
BBC History: Kennedy and Cuban missile crisis
Timeline: US-Cuba relations
1958 - The US withdraws military aid to Batista.
1959 - Castro leads a 9,000-strong guerrilla army into Havana, forcing Batista to flee. Castro becomes prime minister, his brother, Raul, becomes his deputy and Guevara becomes third in command.
1960 - All US businesses in Cuba are nationalised without compensation.
1961 - Washington breaks off all diplomatic relations with Havana.
The US sponsors an abortive invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs; Castro proclaims Cuba a communist state and begins to ally it with the USSR.
1962 - Cuban missile crisis ignites when, fearing a US invasion, Castro agrees to allow the USSR to deploy nuclear missiles on the island. The crisis was subsequently resolved when the USSR agreed to remove the missiles in return for the withdrawal of US nuclear missiles from Turkey.
Organisation of American States (OAS) suspends Cuba over its "incompatible" adherence to Marxism-Leninism.
1965 - Cuba's sole political party renamed the Cuban Communist Party.
1972 - Cuba becomes a full member of the Soviet-based Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.
1976 - Cuban Communist Party approves a new socialist constitution; Castro elected president.
1976-81 - Cuba sends troops first to help Angola's left-wing MPLA withstand a joint onslaught by South Africa, Unita and the FNLA and, later, to help the Ethiopian regime defeat the Eritreans and Somalis.
1980 - Around 125,000 Cubans, many of them released convicts, flee to the US.
1982 - Cuba, together with other Latin American states, gives Argentina moral support in its dispute with Britain over the Falkland islands.
1988 - Cuba agrees to withdraw its troops from Angola following an agreement with South Africa.
1991 - Soviet military advisers leave Cuba following the collapse of the USSR.
1993 - The US tightens its embargo on Cuba, which introduces some market reforms in order to stem the deterioration of its economy. These include the legalisation of the US dollar, the transformation of many state farms into semi-autonomous cooperatives, and the legalisation of limited individual private enterprise.
1994 - Cuba signs an agreement with the US according to which the US agrees to admit 20,000 Cubans a year in return for Cuba halting the exodus of refugees.
Revolutionary and unchallenged leader for decades
On this Day: Castro sworn in
Profile: The great survivor
BBC Archive: Cuba and the Cold War
1996 - US trade embargo made permanent in response to Cuba's shooting down of two US aircraft operated by Miami-based Cuban exiles.
1998 - Pope John Paul II visits Cuba.
1998 - The US eases restrictions on the sending of money to relatives by Cuban Americans.
1999 November - Cuban child Elian Gonzalez is picked up off the Florida coast after the boat in which his mother, stepfather and others had tried to escape to the US capsized. A huge campaign by Miami-based Cuban exiles begins with the aim of preventing Elian from rejoining his father in Cuba and of making him stay with relatives in Miami.
2000 June - Elian allowed to rejoin his father in Cuba after prolonged court battles.
2000 October - US House of Representatives approves the sale of food and medicines to Cuba.
Argentina-born Che Guevara was a close aide to Fidel Castro and became an icon of revolutionary spirit
2000 December - Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Cuba and signs accords aimed at boosting bilateral ties.
2001 October - Cuba angrily criticises Russia's decision to shut down the Lourdes radio-electronic centre on the island, saying President Putin took the decision as "a special gift" to US President George W Bush ahead of a meeting between the two.
2001 November - US exports food to Cuba for the first time in more than 40 years after a request from the Cuban government to help it cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Michelle.
2002 January - Prisoners taken during US-led action in Afghanistan are flown into Guantanamo Bay for interrogation as al-Qaeda suspects.
2002 January - Russia's last military base in Cuba, at Lourdes, closes down.
2002 April - Diplomatic crisis after UN Human Rights Commission again criticises Cuba's rights record. The resolution is sponsored by Uruguay and supported by many of Cuba's former allies including Mexico. Uruguay breaks off ties with Cuba after Castro says it is a US lackey.
2002 May - US Under Secretary of State John Bolton accuses Cuba of trying to develop biological weapons, adding the country to Washington's list of "axis of evil" countries.
Compay Segundo was part of the 1990s Cuban music revival
Buena Vista legend laid to rest
BBC Music: Compay Segundo
2002 May - Former US president Jimmy Carter makes a goodwill visit which includes a tour of scientific centres, in response to US allegations about biological weapons. Carter is the first former or serving US president to visit Cuba since the 1959 revolution.
2002 June - National Assembly amends the constitution to make socialist system of government permanent and untouchable. Castro called for the vote following criticisms from US President George W Bush.
2003 March-April - ''Black Spring'' crackdown on dissidents draws international condemnation. 75 people are jailed for terms of up to 28 years; three men who hijacked a ferry to try reach the US are executed.
2003 June - EU halts high-level official visits to Cuba in protest at the country's recent human rights record.
2004 April - UN Human Rights Commission censures Cuba over its rights record. Cuban foreign minister describes resolution - which passed by single vote - as "ridiculous".
2004 May - US sanctions restrict US-Cuba family visits and cash remittances from expatriates.
2004 October - President Castro announces ban on transactions in US dollars, and imposes 10% tax on dollar-peso conversions.
Writer Raul Rivero, one of 75 dissidents rounded up in 2003
Cuba frees dissident
2005 January - Havana says it is resuming diplomatic contacts with the EU, frozen in 2003 following a crackdown on dissidents.
2005 May - Around 200 dissidents hold a public meeting, said by organisers to be the first such gathering since the 1959 revolution.
2005 July - Hurricane Dennis causes widespread destruction and leaves 16 people dead.
2006 February - Propaganda war in Havana as President Castro unveils a monument which blocks the view of illuminated messages - some of them about human rights - displayed on the US mission building.
2006 July - President Fidel Castro undergoes gastric surgery and temporarily hands over control of the government to his brother, Raul.
2006 December - Fidel Castro's failure to appear at a parade to mark the 50th anniversary of his return to Cuba from exile prompts renewed speculation about his future.
2007 April - A lawyer and a journalist are given lengthy jail terms after secret trials, which rights activists see as a sign of a crackdown on opposition activity.
2007 May - Castro fails to appear at Havana's annual May Day parade. Days later he says he has had several operations.
Anger as the US drops charges against veteran anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, who is a former CIA operative and Cuba's "Public Enemy No. 1" accused of downing a Cuban airliner.
2007 July - First time since 1959 that Revolution Day is celebrated without Castro present.
2007 December - Castro says in a letter read on Cuban TV that he does not intend to cling to power indefinitely.
2008 February - Raul Castro takes over as president, days after Fidel announces his retirement.
2008 May - Bans on private ownership of mobile phones and computers lifted.
Cuba condemned US "double standards" for freeing ex-CIA operative accused of downing Cuban airliner
US drops Cuban militant's charges
Profile: Cuban 'plane bomber'
2008 June - Plans are announced to abandon salary equality. The move is seen as a radical departure from the orthodox Marxist economic principles observed since the 1959 revolution.
EU lifts diplomatic sanctions imposed on Cuba in 2003 over crackdown on dissidents.
2008 July - In an effort to boost Cuba's lagging food production and reduce dependence on food imports, the government relaxes restrictions on the amount of land available to private farmers.
2008 September - Hurricanes Gustav and Ike inflict worst storm damage in Cuba's recorded history, with 200,000 left homeless and their crops destroyed.
2008 October - State oil company says estimated 20bn barrels in offshore fields, being double previous estimates.
European Union restores ties.
2008 November - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits. Two countries concude new trade and economic accords in sign of strengthening relations. Raul Castro pays reciprocal visit to Russia in January 2009.
Chinese President Hu Jintao visits to sign trade and investment accords, including agreements to continue buying Cuban nickel and sugar.
2008 December - Russian warships visit Havana for first time since end of Cold War.
Government says 2008 most difficult year for economy since collapse of Soviet Union. Growth nearly halved to 4.3%.
Havana in the 1920s. Many Spanish colonial buildings still stand in old Havana
2009 March - Two leading figures from Fidel era, Cabinet Secretary Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, resign after admitting "errors". First government reshuffle since resignation of Fidel Castro.
US Congress votes to lift Bush Administration restrictions on Cuban-Americans visiting Havana and sending back money.
2009 April - US President Barack Obama says he wants a new beginning with Cuba.
2009 May - Government unveils austerity programme to try to cut energy use and offset impact of global financial crisis.
2009 June - Organisation of American States (OAS) votes to lift ban on Cuban membership imposed in 1962. Cuba welcomes decision, but says it has no plans to rejoin.
2009 July - Cuba signs agreement with Russia allowing oil exploration in Cuban waters of Gulf of Mexico.
2010 February - Political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo dies after 85 days on hunger strike.
2010 May - Wives and mothers of political prisoners are allowed to hold demonstration after archbishop of Havana, Jaime Ortega, intervenes on their behalf.
2010 July - President Castro agrees to free 52 dissidents under a deal brokered by the Church and Spain. Several go into exile.
2010 September - Radical plans for massive government job cuts to revive the economy. Analysts see proposals as biggest private sector shift since the 1959 revolution.
2011 January - US President Barack Obama relaxes restrictions on travel to Cuba. Havana says the measures don't go far enough.
2011 March - Last two political prisoners detained during 2003 crackdown are released.
2011 April - Communist Party Congress says it will look into possibility of allowing Cuban citizens to travel abroad as tourists.
2011 August - National Assembly approves economic reforms aimed at encouraging private enterprise and reducing state bureaucracy.
2011 November - Cuba passes law allowing individuals to buy and sell private property for first time in 50 years.
2011 December - The authorities release 2,500 prisoners, including some convicted of political crimes, as part of an amnesty ahead of a papal visit.
2012 March - Pope Benedict visits, criticising the US trade embargo on Cuba and calling for greater rights on the island.
2012 April - Cuba marks Good Friday with a public holiday for the first time since recognition of religious holidays stopped in 1959.
2012 June - Cuba re-imposes customs duty on all food imports in effort to curb selling of food aid sent by Cubans abroad on the commercial market. Import duties had been liberalised in 2008 after series of hurricanes caused severe shortages.
2012 October - Spanish politican Angel Carromero is jailed for manslaughter over the death of high-profile Catholic dissident Oswaldo Paya. Mr Carromero was driving the car when, according to the authorities, it crashed into a tree. Mr Paya's family say the car was rammed off the road after he had received death threats.
The government abolishes the requirement for citizens to buy expensive exit permits when seeking to travel abroad. Highly-qualified professionals such as doctors. engineers and scientists will still require permission to travel, in order to prevent a brain drain.
2012 November - President Raul Castro says the eastern province of Santiago was hard hit by Hurricane Sandy, with 11 people dead and more than 188,000 homes damaged. A United Nations report says Sandy destroyed almost 100,000 hectares of crops.
2013 February - The National Assembly re-elects Raul Castro as president. He says he will stand down at the end of his second term in 2018, by which time he will be 86.
2013 July - Five prominent veteran politicians, including Fidel Castro ally and former parliament leader Ricardo Alarcon, are removed from the Communist Party's Central Committee in what President Raul Castro calls a routine change of personnel.
2014 January - First phase of a deepwater sea port is inaugurated by Brazil and Cuba at Mariel, a rare large foreign investment project on the island.
2014 March - Cuba agrees to a European Union invitation to begin talks to restore relations and boost economic ties, on condition of progress on human rights. The EU suspended ties in 1996.
2014 July - Russian President Vladimir Putin visits during a tour of Latin America, says Moscow will cancel billions of dollars of Cuban debt from Soviet times.
Chinese President Xi Jinping visits, signs bilateral accords.
2014 September/October - Cuba sends hundreds of frontline medical staff to West African countries hit by the Ebola epidemic.
2014 December - In a surprise development, US President Barack Obama and Cuba's President Raul Castro announce moves to normalise diplomatic relations between the two countries, severed for more than 50 years.
2015 January - Washington eases some travel and trade restrictions on Cuba.
Two days of historic talks between the US and Cuba take place in Havana, with both sides agreeing to meet again. The discussions focus on restoring diplomatic relations but no date is set for the reopening of embassies in both countries.
President Raul Castro calls on President Obama to use his executive powers to bypass Congress and lift the US economic embargo on Cuba.
2015 February - Cuban and US diplomats say they have made progress in talks in Washington to restore full relations.
2015 May - Cuba establishes banking ties with US, which drops country from list of states that sponsor terrorism.
2015 July - Cuba and US reopen embassies and exchange charges d'affaires.
2015 December - Cuban and US officials hold preliminary talks on mutual compensation.
2016 January - US eases a number of trade restrictions with Cuba.
2016 March - Cuba and the European Union agree to normalise relations.
US President Barack Obama visits Cuba in the first US presidential visit there in 88 years.
2016 May - Cuba takes steps to legalise small and medium-sized businesses as part of economic reforms.
2016 November - Fidel Castro, former president and leader of the Cuban revolution, dies at the age of 90. Cuba declares nine days of national mourning.
2017 January - Washington ends a long-standing policy which grants Cuban immigrants the right to remain in the US without a visa.
2017 June - US President Donald Trump overturns some aspects of predecessor Barak Obama's policy on Cuba which brought about a thaw in relations between the two countries.
2017 August - US and Canadian embassies in Havana report that staff have suffered health problems possibly as a result of covert acoustic attacks. | A chronology of key events | 19576144 |
Special Report: The Technology of Business
How do businesses cope with Bitcoin?
Tapping into the IT cloud crowd
2014: The year of encryption
Stress test: Are you fit for work?
2013: The year we all went 'mobile'
That was the key message emerging last week from FinTech City London, a series of events for financial services technology professionals organised by the CEO Agenda and Icon Corporate Finance.
Fintech, as financial services technology is modishly called, is enabling nimbler, hi-tech companies to re-engineer most financial activities, from payments processing to personal loan applications, and cut out the middleman.
It's what Clayton Christensen, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, calls "disruptive innovation".
While the things we do with money - save, borrow, invest, spend - have not changed much over the centuries, the way we interact with financial institutions is "drastically changing", said Alex Scandurra, director of innovation strategy and business development at Barclays.
And that's largely to do with mobile, open-source databases and cloud computing. About three-quarters of the UK population owns a smartphone, and there are more than five billion mobile phones globally.
"As a result of the proliferation of technology, digital, and now mobile with it, the barriers to entry have significantly decreased," said Mr Scandurra. "Now we're seeing that teams of 10 to 15 people can actually take on the large incumbents all around the world."
Whereas big financial institutions have to cater for a mass market and try to please everybody, small fintech companies can focus on niche markets, globally spread. They can form what futurist and writer Alvin Toffler called "the micro multinational".
One such company is Funding Circle, the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending service launched in 2010, which aims to provide businesses with access to loan funding while providing investors with a decent return on their money. Its 65,000-plus investors have lent over £208m to UK businesses so far.
In March 2013, the UK government began lending £20m to British businesses through Funding Circle as part of its Business Finance Partnership scheme.
Co-founder and chief executive Samir Desai said that while his company had certainly benefited from the 2008-13 banking crisis and the consequent collapse of trust in High Street banks, it is new open-source technologies and databases that have enabled P2P lending companies to grow.
"Every loan that goes through Funding Circle is funded on average by 700 different people," he said "Those loans can then be bought and sold by other investors through a secondary market. So we have as many mini-loans going through our system as any bank, and thousands of secondary market transactions going through each day.
"We couldn't have done that without these new open-source technologies."
Open-source databases that anyone can access and adapt, such as Hadoop and Cassandra, can process and structure vast amounts of data from a wide and growing range of sources, including social media, helping P2P lenders and other financial companies assess creditworthiness to much higher degrees of accuracy than before.
"Banks haven't started to embrace these new types of technology," said Mr Desai. "So we can lend to businesses they wouldn't even consider."
So now even your Twitter comments could affect whether or not you're granted a loan, and companies like Facebook could end up displacing old-fashioned credit reference agencies.
Giles Andrews, chief executive and co-founder of Zopa, a more established P2P lender founded in 2005 that has lent more than £455m to individuals and sole traders, agrees that customer data - its efficient collection and analysis - is key to success these days.
"The business is not a bank and I'm not a banker," he added. "We're more of a data company."
This is why Zopa has just hired its first ever chief data scientist, he said, who comes not from a bank, but from Amazon, the online retailer.
Newer fintech companies are not encumbered by old technology, the so-called legacy systems that traditional banks struggle to integrate with newer software and hardware.
The Lloyds Banking Group IT glitch, which affected debit card and cash machine transactions at the weekend, is the latest in a long line of big bank technology problems.
"It's an opportunity for the new challengers who don't have that legacy issue," said Sue Langley, chief executive of UK Trade & Investment's Financial Services Organisation, "because it's much easier with a blank sheet of paper to.... come up with something new."
"The banks have an increasing need for technology," said Mark Boleat, chair of the City of London's policy and resources committee. "Some of that comes from their huge IT departments, but an awful lot of it is coming from new and start-up businesses."
Alex McCracken, director of ventures groups at Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm, believes we will see a polarisation in financial services, with global all-you-can-eat banks serving multinationals at one end, and small, technology-driven niche players serving local needs at the other.
"Corporates and small businesses are going to be able to pick and choose their niche service providers," he said.
Mobile payment companies like Square, simpler direct debit providers like GoCardless, and foreign currency specialists like The Currency Cloud, all are offering financial services at lower cost and greater convenience through clever use of the latest technologies.
Are the big banks running scared?
Last week, US banking giant Wells Fargo banned some of its staff from investing in for-profit P2P lending companies, such as Lending Club and Prosper, admitting that they were competitors.
That is the wrong approach, argues Barclays' Alex Scandurra. His bank is collaborating more with tech entrepreneurs and start-ups, as well as offering non-banking products such as Cloud It, an online data storage service.
He calls the approach "amplification through collaboration".
Labour leader Ed Miliband may want to increase competition by forcing big UK banks to offload High Street branches, but to many observers, this is a red herring.
It is technology that is helping the fintech mouse take on the giants and roar. | Big banks beware - innovative technology challengers are coming to eat your lunch. | 25911784 |
Adams, 49, stood down from his position as head coach of Kent in October, after spending five seasons with the county.
The Jamaican played 54 Tests and 127 one-day internationals, scoring 3,012 and 2,204 runs respectively.
West Indies are still to replace former coach Phil Simmons, who was sacked in September having led them to the World T20 title five months earlier. | Former Test batsman Jimmy Adams has been appointed as West Indies' new director of cricket. | 38573902 |
Aftab Alam had worked with the country's largest private broadcaster Geo News.
On Tuesday night, gunmen shot at Geo TV's news van in Karachi, killing a technician and injuring the driver.
A journalist with national broadcaster PTV was also seriously injured when he was shot in an attack in Peshawar.
Police said the motives behind the shootings were not immediately clear, the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad reports.
Aftab Alam was on his way to pick up his children from school when he came under attack from gunmen on a motorcycle.
He had most recently worked for another leading Urdu-language TV news channel, Samaa, but was not currently employed in the profession.
Pakistan's financial capital has seen a spate of attacks on the media.
Arshad Ali Jaffery was named as the Geo News TV technician killed in Tuesday night's drive-by shooting.
In April last year one of Geo's main presenters, Hamid Mir, was seriously injured in a shooting in Karachi. His family blamed the attack on the country's spy agency, the ISI.
In January 2014 three Express Media staff were killed. One of its news anchors narrowly escaped in another shooting two months later but his driver was killed.
Two gun and bomb attacks on the group's office in the city the previous year left at least four people injured.
According to the International Federation of Journalists, Pakistan was the world's most dangerous country for the media in 2014, with 14 journalists killed. | Gunmen in Pakistan have shot dead a former journalist near his home in Karachi, the third such attack on media personnel in less than 24 hours. | 34195950 |
President Jeroen Dijsselbloem said a "major decision" could now be made at a eurozone finance meeting on Saturday.
The proposals are aimed at staving off financial collapse and preventing a possible Greek exit from the eurozone.
Greek PM Alexis Tsipras will put the plan, which contains many elements rejected in a referendum last Sunday, to a vote in parliament on Friday.
The prime minister submitted the proposals to Greece's creditors - the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - by the Thursday deadline they had set.
Follow the latest updates here
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde and Mr Dijsselbloem were scheduled to hold a conference call on the new proposals at 11:00 GMT.
Mr Dijsselbloem said the new Greek paper was "a thorough piece of text" and that support from the Greek parliament would give it "more credibility".
"But even then we need to consider carefully whether the proposal is good and if the numbers add up. We have to make a major decision. Whichever way."
Analysis: Robert Peston, BBC economics editor
Only a few days ago Mr Tsipras won an overwhelming mandate from the Greek people, in a referendum, to reject more-or-less these bailout terms.
And today, on the back of that popular vote, he is signing up to the supposedly hated bailout. This is big politics that would make Lewis Carroll proud.
But here's the point. If a way isn't found to allow the banks to reopen within days - and the ECB simply maintaining Emergency Liquidity Assistance won't come anywhere near to achieving that - the Greek economy will implode so that any bailout deal agreed this weekend will become irrelevant in weeks.
Read more from Robert
Crisis triggers memories of World War Two
Angela Merkel under pressure over Greek bailout deal
All Greek to you? Debt jargon explained
Eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels on Saturday. A meeting of Eurogroup leaders is scheduled for Sunday afternoon, followed by a full EU summit two hours later.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he was optimistic and hoped a deal could be struck on Saturday so that the Sunday meetings would not be needed.
French President Francois Hollande said the new proposals were "serious and credible" and that the "Greeks have just shown their determination to remain in the eurozone".
€320bn
Greece's debt mountain
€240bn
European bailout
177% country's debt-to-GDP ratio
25% fall in GDP since 2010
26% Greek unemployment rate
However Germany, which has been far less upbeat on a deal, would not comment in detail on the new plan.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said it was withholding judgment and waiting for the creditor institutions to give their opinion.
Finance ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said Germany would not accept any reduction of debt that caused it more losses.
"The outcome of the Eurogroup meeting on Saturday is completely open," he said.
In Athens, Mr Tsipras convened a meeting of his Syriza party ahead of the Greek parliamentary debate.
A government official quoted him as telling the party's lawmakers that the referendum had given him a mandate to seek a better deal but not to leave the eurozone.
"We are all in this together," he was quoted as saying.
Syriza parliamentary spokesman Nikos Filis said he was confident MPs would give the government the mandate to negotiate the new bailout package.
The coalition government has 162 seats in the 300-strong parliament, and also has the backing of many opposition MPs.
However, the BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens says that no matter how it is packaged and whatever the positive spin, Mr Tsipras has made a major climb-down, with the measures he has agreed similar to what the creditors were demanding.
Further rallies for and against a new bailout are planned in Athens on Friday.
The measures submitted in the new Greek document include:
Greece's creditors have already provided more than €200bn in two bailouts since a rescue plan began five years ago.
The second bailout expired on 30 June.
Greece's banks are still closed and the €60 (£43; $66) daily limit on cash machine withdrawals for Greeks, imposed on 28 June, remains in force. With a shortage of €20 notes, for many the withdrawal is in effect €50.
Tsipras, Greece's high-stakes gambler
Why Greece sees France as last hope
How easy is it to swap currencies?
Full coverage of Greek debt crisis
European Stability Mechanism explained | The Eurogroup has described new Greek proposals on securing a vital third bailout as "thorough". | 33473779 |
Brosnan caused a stir in India when he appeared in an ad for Pan Bahar, a product many associate with a highly addictive form of chewing tobacco.
He told People magazine he was "distressed" by the row.
He has asked Ashok & Co, the company that produces Pan Bahar, to remove his image from all their advertising.
Many have associated Pan Bahar with pan masala and gutka, a potent mixture of tobacco, crushed betel nut, lime, and clove among other ingredients. It is chewed and then spat out in bright red streams by millions of people, who get addicted to its mildly psychotropic effects.
Both pan masala and gutka have been linked to cancer, with many Indian states banning their sale and running campaigns to discourage people from buying them.
Representatives from Ashok & Co. were not available for comment, and their website displays a sign saying it is "under maintenance".
However, speaking to the BBC when the advert first appeared, the company said the outrage was the result of "public misconception", adding that there was no tobacco or nicotine in the product.
However, such clarifications did little to quell social media anger at the time, with many accusing Brosnan of "promoting cancer" in endorsing Pan Bahar.
Brosnan said that the company had "manipulated" media agencies into thinking he was an ambassador for the product and apologised to anyone he may have offended.
"Having endured, in my own personal life, the loss of my first wife and daughter as well as numerous friends to cancer, I am fully committed to supporting women's healthcare and research programs that improve human health and alleviate suffering," his statement said.
There has been some social reaction to Brosnan's statement, but nowhere near the levels as when the advert first appeared. | Former Bond star Pierce Brosnan has condemned the "unauthorised and deceptive" use of his image to promote an Indian mouth freshener. | 37724893 |
Police said they were called to the Costcutter shop in Great Hampton Row on Saturday afternoon.
Three men remain in hospital for treatment for their injuries, which are not thought to be life-threatening.
West Midlands Police refused to speculate on any motive for the attack. There were no arrests and no direct appeal for witnesses.
Det Sgt Reg Collett said extra patrols were in the area "to provide reassurance".
"Urgent police enquiries in to the incident and what led up to it are continuing," he said.
"The scene was cordoned off yesterday to allow forensic examinations to take place."
The BBC tried to reach Costcutter for a comment. | Four men were taken to hospital with bullet wounds to their legs after an incident in Birmingham city centre. | 34499730 |
The suspect, who was restrained and held on the floor by passengers, is said to have links to the "radical Islamist movement".
He can be held for four days without being charged.
Security measures aboard Thalys trains have been stepped up.
After a meeting of its national security council on Saturday, Belgium said mixed Franco-Belgian security patrols would be increased on board the Thalys trains, which link major cities in the Netherlands and Belgium to Paris.
Patrols and security checks will also be boosted at international train stations, and more baggage checks will be carried out.
The suspect boarded the Thalys train in Brussels, and Belgian prosecutors are carrying out an anti-terrorism investigation of their own.
The suspect, who is being questioned near Paris, was flagged up to French authorities by their Spanish counterparts in February 2014.
He is reported to have lived in France, Spain, and Belgium and to have travelled to Syria.
What we know
The incident happened on a Thalys service near the northern French city of Arras on Friday.
When a French passenger tried to enter a toilet, he encountered the gunman and tried to overpower him. It is thought this passenger may have since requested anonymity.
A gun was fired and a French-American passenger was injured by the bullet.
The gunman was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle, an automatic pistol with ammunition clips, and a box cutter knife, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Saturday.
Two American servicemen, Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos, were hailed as heroes for throwing him to the floor of the carriage, removing his guns and restraining him.
A friend of theirs and fellow American, Anthony Sadler, and Chris Norman, a British man who lives in France, also helped restrain the attacker.
Mr Stone and Mr Skarlatos are members of the US Air Force and the National Guard respectively.
Mr Stone received cuts to his neck and hand but has now been discharged from hospital.
Those who prevented the attack are due to meet President Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace on Monday.
In a telephone call on Saturday, Mr Hollande thanked them for their actions which he said had helped prevent an "extremely serious attack".
The three US citizens and Mr Norman were awarded medals for bravery by authorities in Arras.
The 554 passengers on board the train included French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, who was critical of train staff, alleging they entered a private cabin and locked themselves in when they heard gunshots, leaving the passengers alone. Thalys denies this.
The president of the French railway company, SNCF, Guillaume Pepy, has said he will meet Mr Anglade in coming days to discuss the matter.
France's security services have placed been on high alert since January when Islamist militants killed 17 people in and around Paris - including the attacks at the offices of satirical paper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. | French police are questioning Ayoub El-Kahzzani, a 25-year-old Moroccan accused of carrying out Friday's attempted attack on a high-speed Thalys train between Amsterdam and Paris. | 34032210 |
All sides appear to agree that shifting budgets and decision-making powers from Whitehall to Yorkshire on fundamental economic issues makes sense.
The problem is how to go about it.
Council leaders across Yorkshire have been unable to fully agree on how many mayor-led devolved regions there should be, which neighbours they should join up with or what powers they should have.
Chancellor George Osborne had set a deadline of September for them to come up with their own proposals based on the template of a deal signed almost a year ago with the councils on the other side of the Pennines.
They have all agreed to become part of the Greater Manchester devolved region.
The initial stumbling block in Yorkshire appeared to be wholesale opposition from council leaders to the chancellor's insistence that local authorities who agree to link up had to give the prime responsibility for any new powers and budgets handed down from central government to a directly-elected executive mayor.
Before May's General Election the previous coalition government had promised there would be an option for a "combined authority", made up of council leaders, to direct their devolved region's policies and budgets without a mayor at the helm.
With the added power of a majority behind him it soon became clear that any deal backed by Mr Osborne now hinged on the acceptance of a mayor.
The council leaders had to content themselves with the compromise that a two-thirds majority of them would be able to veto any mayoral decision.
Then comes the sticky issue of which Yorkshire councils can agree to work with each other.
It was a potential problem that even the Prime Minister picked up this summer when he was overheard making that now notorious joke: "We just thought people in Yorkshire hated everyone else - we didn't realise they hated each other so much."
As a September deadline came and went only the four leaders of the big South Yorkshire councils of Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham, together with five smaller district councils, had put together a proposal which has now been accepted.
The Sheffield City Region now has elections for an executive mayor pencilled in for the spring of 2017.
The remaining councils in Yorkshire are still haggling over whether they should ask for the chancellor's blessing for all of them to link up in a single Greater Yorkshire devolved region or split into two or three smaller areas each with their own mayor.
It has created a confusing picture as these rival propositions backed by different council leaders often overlap each other.
The Leeds City Region bid, which many see as the favourite to be given the chancellor's approval, includes all five West Yorkshire authorities together with Selby, Harrogate, Craven and York.
Another suggestion links the County Council and all the districts of North Yorkshire with the East Riding Council and Hull.
That means City of York council is actually included in three separate bids, including two that it's own leader and officials have not had any part in drawing up.
These different permutations are so fiercely contested that in October all the council leaders were "invited" to attend a private meeting in the Westminster office of James Wharton, the minister overseeing devolution,
He told them to set aside any differences and come up with realistic workable proposals that all could accept.
The chancellor himself later said that he did not want to impose any of these devolution deals on Yorkshire as they could only work if they came "from the bottom up".
Yet even the signed South Yorkshire deal is far from a certainty to go ahead.
The council leaders say until they hear firm figures on exactly how much public money their devolved region will be allocated to administer its new powers then, as far as they are concerned, it is still a "proposal".
The chancellors's autumn spending statement scheduled for late November is expected to add more financial detail.
That should give the first indication of whether the sole devolution deal agreed in Yorkshire so far has any chance of getting off the starting blocks. | Yorkshire's dash for devolution is stalling as more questions than answers are being thrown up virtually every step of the way. | 34718574 |
Only two other studies have ever reported recovering fingerprints from foods, but the research was carried out in India and Slovenia.
Those studies both used chemical substances that are not routinely used in the UK.
The technique could prove useful to police forces and the justice system.
Recovering fingerprints from foodstuffs has proved problematic in the past and as such, it is often overlooked as evidence.
However, by modifying an existing technique that was initially designed to recover fingerprints from the sticky side of adhesive tape, the team at Abertay said this need no longer be the case.
Dennis Gentles, a former crime scene examiner and forensic scientist who has worked at Abertay University for the past 10 years, said: "Although there are proven techniques to recover fingerprints from many different surfaces these days, there are some surfaces that remain elusive, such as feathers, human skin, and animal skin.
"Foods such as fruits and vegetables used to be in that category, because their surfaces vary so much - not just in their colour and texture, but in their porosity as well.
"These factors made recovering fingerprints problematic because some techniques, for example, work on porous surfaces while others only work on non-porous surfaces."
He added: "The fact that we've managed to successfully recover prints from such difficult surfaces as foods is another step forward in the fight against crime.
"It may not seem like much, but a piece of fruit might just be the only surface that has been handled in a crime scene so developing a trusted and tested technique to recover fingerprints from such surfaces is something to be valued by crime scene examiners."
The two previous studies, carried out in India and Slovenia, involved chemicals which are not used in the UK.
Instead, the team modified a substance known as Powder Suspension, a thick, tar-like material, and found that it produced a clear, high-quality mark on the smooth-surfaced food items such as onions, apples and tomatoes.
Mr Gentles said: "Although Powder Suspension was initially developed to recover prints from the sticky side of adhesive tape, it's since been found to work on other surfaces, so we wondered whether it would work on foods, as this was something it hadn't been tested on before.
"We found that it out-performed all the other methods we tested.
"Although there's still a considerable amount of research to do before we can recommend techniques for all types of foods, we've shown for the first time that it really is possible to recover fingerprints from them, something that was previously thought to be unachievable."
The publication of the team's research, in the forensic science journal "Science & Justice" means that others will now be able to replicate their results. | Forensic scientists at the University of Abertay in Dundee have become the first in the UK to recover latent fingerprints from foods. | 22107222 |
The GAA's Central Competitions Control Committee imposed the ban arising from an incident involving McGeeney and linesman Joe McQuillan.
McGeeney's initial appeal has been rejected although he has two further appeal avenues.
Armagh face Down in their Ulster SFC opener against Down on 4 June.
As it stands, McGeeney will not be able to patrol the sideline in that game and the same sanction is likely to appeal in Armagh's following championship game, which will either be an Ulster semi-final or an opening All-Ireland qualifier.
McGeeney's suspension is understood to have been imposed after the CCCC viewed referee Niall Cullen's match report.
The ill-tempered match saw Antrim duo Conor Murray and Stephen Beatty and Armagh's Stephen Sheridan being sent off.
Murray has been handed a two-match ban following his red card while a further investigation into the game also saw Antrim's Matt Fitzpatrick receiving a suspension.
2002 All-Ireland winning captain McGeeney is believed to have fallen foul of GAA regulations under the rule which forbids "minor physical interference with, threatening or abusive conduct towards, or threatening language to a referee, umpire, linesman or sideline official".
The penalty for breaching that rule is a minimum 12-week ban.
Armagh beat Antrim at the Athletic Grounds on 25 March but a last-gasp defeat by Tipperary saw McGeeney's side agonisingly miss out on promotion to Division Two. | Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney has been handed a 12-week sideline ban following an alleged incident in last month's Football League game against Antrim. | 39716920 |
Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a 24-year-old Algerian national, was detained on Sunday in Paris after he apparently shot himself by accident and called an ambulance.
He is also being questioned over the murder of a woman on Sunday.
France has stepped up security in the wake of recent attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and a Jewish supermarket.
Ghlam was known to security services as having expressed a wish to travel to Syria to fight with Islamist militants, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
When police arrived at the scene on Sunday, they followed a trail of blood to the suspect's car, where they found weapons and notes on potential targets.
The documents established "beyond doubt" that Ghlam planned on attacking churches, said Mr Cazeneuve.
"Several war weapons, hand guns, ammunition [and] bullet-proof vests," were found in his car and home, the minister added.
Documents linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State were also found at his apartment, the Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. A contact in Syria had advised Ghlam to target churches, he added.
The authorities have carried out security checks on the suspect twice in recent years but did not uncover anything to justify further investigation.
It is not known yet what link the man has to the murdered woman, Aurelie Chatelain, who was found dead in her car in Villejuif, a Paris suburb, on Sunday.
Passers-by discovered her body as smoke poured out of the car from an overheating laptop.
The 32-year-old was visiting the Paris area to attend a training course.
"Our thoughts and sorrow are with her relatives, her family, and her daughter now deprived of her presence." said Mr Cazeneuve.
Hundreds of French citizens have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside militants, with many at home with links to recruitment cells.
"Terrorists are targeting France to divide us," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned on Wednesday. | French police have arrested a man suspected of planning an attack on "one or two churches" in a Paris suburb, the country's interior minister has said. | 32409253 |
Riot police fired tear gas to try to disperse the protesters, many of whom hurled stones at the police lines.
Tahrir Square was the epicentre of February's revolt that led to President Hosni Mubarak being toppled.
Many of the protesters were calling for the prosecution of former officials to be speeded up.
As dawn broke, stones and broken glass littered the streets around Tahrir Square. Witnesses said it was worst violence in the square for weeks.
The confrontation started on Tuesday when police cleared a sit-in outside the state TV building by families of those killed in February's uprising, activists said.
The protesters later regrouped outside the interior ministry and clashes broke out with police.
Fighting escalated and moved to Tahrir Square where lines of riot police carrying shields sealed off the main streets and dozens of security vehicles parked in side streets.
As volleys of tear gas rained down, injured demonstrators were seen lying on the ground, some dazed and bloodied.
"The people want the fall of the regime," some of the demonstrators chanted.
Ahmed Abdel Hamid, 26, who was among the protesters, said people were angry that court cases against senior officials were being delayed.
Last week, Egypt's former Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid was sentenced to five years in prison in absentia for embezzling public funds.
Earlier this month, former Egyptian Finance Minister Yussef Boutros Ghali was sentenced to 30 years in prison in absentia, also on corruption charges.
Former President Mubarak, in custody at a military hospital, is due to go on trial on 3 August alongside his sons, Alaa and Gamal.
Mr Mubarak is charged with the deaths of protesters during Egypt's uprising. | Egyptian police have clashed with hundreds of anti-government protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, leaving several people injured. | 13954250 |
After resuming on 389-7, Kent pushed their first-innings score to 441, with veteran Darren Stevens the last man out for 136.
Hardus Viljoen then took three wickets as Essex struggled with the bat.
Dan Lawrence made 88, but Essex could only close on 289-9, three short of avoiding the follow-on.
It was a crucial error from 19-year-old Lawrence, who looked set to reach a fifth first-class hundred and guide Essex to probable safety before he aimed for a second successive six off James Tredwell and holed out on the long-on boundary.
He had earlier done well to come through a difficult start - he was dropped at third slip off Stevens on five - to play attractive drives on both sides of the wicket.
But Lawrence received precious little support from a number of Essex batsmen who failed to capitalise on starts - six were out for scores between 21 and 36 on a blameless pitch.
By the end, last-wicket pair David Masters - who was given a guard of honour in his final match before retiring - and Matt Dixon came together with 25 required to avoid the follow-on.
They inched closer and three more runs on Friday will probably ensure Essex draw a match that lost its entire first day to a wet outfield. | Kent continued their dominance of County Championship Division Two champions Essex on day three at Canterbury. | 37435362 |
St Mary's University says free meals can be a "misleading" marker for deprivation in schools.
The study warns of the need to support the "hidden poor".
Offiicial figures recently showed two-thirds of children in poverty are now in working families.
Free school meals have been widely used as a way of looking at the social profile of schools - but the research argues that this has failed to reflect changes in the labour market and financial pressures on low-income working families.
The study by St Mary's University in south-west London looks at pupils receiving free meals in Catholic schools in England and Wales.
Faith schools have faced accusations of being socially selective - and in Catholic schools, about 12% of pupils receive free meals, compared with a state school average of about 14%.
But the study from St Mary's, a Catholic higher education institution, argues that such figures have become an "an unreliable indicator" of hardship.
It says if the same schools are assessed by another official measure of poverty - the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index - the outcome is reversed, with disproportionately high levels of pupils in Catholic schools living in the most deprived areas.
The study says that counting poverty by the take-up of free meals can miss the "working poor" who are in temporary and often low-paid jobs, moving in and out of employment.
Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that children in poverty are now more likely to be in working families than non-working families.
Among children identified as being in poverty, 67% are in families with at least one parent working, the highest recorded level.
Prime Minister Theresa May has spoken of the need to help "just about managing families", where parents might be working long hours in multiple jobs.
Such working families might be facing hardship, but might not be eligible for free meals.
Eligibility for free school meals is for families in receipt of a range of benefits and with an income below £16,190 - but families on working tax credits are excluded.
Pupils taking free meals are also used to decide how much money schools receive in the pupil premium, targeting funding at disadvantaged youngsters.
The research by Prof Stephen Bullivant also highlights that the measurement of free school meals pupils is based on take-up, rather than eligibility.
There are parents who might be eligible but who do not accept free meals - because of a stigma around children being identified or because of "cultural" reasons for not wanting to accept welfare.
The research warns that focusing on free school meal eligibility can provide an inaccurate picture of the social intake of the rest of a school.
"Free school meals eligibility is taken as 'poor' children - and any not getting free meals are seen to be affluent and middle class," said Prof Bullivant.
But he says many families face "precarious lives" and are "struggling to make ends meet", but will not show up in free meals figures.
"Class inequality is a real problem in Britain affecting children's attainment. This data fails to understand different degrees of poverty," says Prof Bullivant.
"At a time when schools are facing funding struggles, a multi-faceted approach is needed to ensure that children from deprived backgrounds, who are currently unaccounted for by the system - the 'hidden poor' - receive the targeted support they need." | Counting the proportion of pupils taking free school meals is an increasingly unreliable way of measuring poverty and the fairness of admissions policies, researchers say. | 39479028 |
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
If you want to receive Breaking News alerts via email, or on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App then details on how to do so are available on this help page. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on Twitter to get the latest alerts. | Man charged with murder of Polish national Marta Ligman, whose body was found in a suitcase in a London canal | 32717123 |
Sam Kelly, 26, was driving on the M6 when his car crashed with a flatbed lorry between junctions 19 and 20 near Lymm in Cheshire on Saturday.
Mr Kelly, from Northwich, was airlifted to hospital and later died.
Paying tribute his family said "Sam the Man" was a "beautiful, fun loving, go getter" who "will be sadly missed". | A man who died in a crash that closed a motorway for five hours "lived and loved life to the full", his family has said. | 40877973 |
The 41-year-old from Dungannon was seriously injured in a crash at last year's North-West 200.
Farquhar said the quick response of medics had saved his life and that he was fortunate to be able to look back on his successful racing career.
He plans to remain involved with the sport but also started competing in skeet shooting.
Farquhar will continue to run his KMR team and plans to have riders at the North West 200 in May and the Isle of Man TT races the following month.
Media playback is not supported on this device
The successful racer said skeet shooting provided him with an alternative outlet for his competitiveness.
"I would love to be able to represent my country in a second sport," he said.
"I am 41 years old now and my days of winning races at the North West and TT are long gone.
"Sheeting shooting gives me the adrenalin rush, the competitive thing I need to get out of my system and makes it easier for me as I'll probably never be fit enough again to compete in road racing.
"I can just look back on the career I've had, the wins I've had, and it makes it a bit easier.
"I'm one of the very lucky ones to have a great road racing career and still be here to tell the tale." | Ryan Farquhar has conceded it is unlikely he will ever be fit enough to return to top-level road racing. | 39049937 |
The world's second-largest economy said exports in yuan terms surged 18.7% in March compared with the same period last year.
Investors cheered the data and the benchmark Shanghai Composite index rose 1.4% to close at 3,066.64.
Asian markets were also pushed higher after oil prices jumped on Tuesday.
The rises followed reports that oil producers Russia and Saudi Arabia have reached a consensus about a freeze in output ahead of the producers' meeting in Doha, Qatar on 17 April.
In Australia, the commodities-heavy share index closed up 79 points, or 1.6%, at 5,054.69.
In Japan, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index closed up 452.43 points, or 2.8%, at 16,381.22.
Shares in Japan's Fast Retailing ended 6.5% higher on reports in local media that the company will slash prices at its Uniqlo clothing stores. The retailer last week warned that its profit for the full year to August would fall by 45%, due to slower sales.
In Hong Kong, the benchmark Hang Seng index surged 3.2% to end at 21,158.71.
Elsewhere in Asia, markets in South Korea are shut for a public holiday. Trading will resume on Thursday. | Asian stock markets rose on Wednesday, as stronger-than-expected trade data from China boosted investor sentiment. | 36032193 |
MacArthur, 28, sustained the injury shortly after kick-off in Saturday's defeat by Northampton Saints in the European Champions Cup.
The Scotland cap is expected to be discharged from hospital on Tuesday.
"We look forward to him re-joining the squad when he has fully recovered," said Warriors head coach Gregor Townsend.
"Pat has featured regularly for us this season and has been in good form, while also stepping up as a leader, so it's disappointing to lose him for the next few weeks." | Glasgow Warriors hooker Pat MacArthur faces up to six weeks out after having surgery on a jaw fracture. | 34914911 |
The Syrian Observatory for Human rights has released images from the location that appear to show the tail-section of a typical RBK-500 cluster bomb canister. And the Americans - to put it mildly - are far from happy.
It is not just the use of the cluster munitions - which is controversial in itself. But it is also the target of the attack - a strike that the Russians have subsequently denied any responsibility for.
Immediately after the Russian air strikes on 16 June, the US invoked a high-level agreement to exchange views on the incident via a videoconference. For one thing the Americans were clearly enraged that a militia group they support was hit.
But the Pentagon insists that there were serious safety issues as well. US jets were diverted to the area after the initial strike. They tried to contact the Russian pilots and when they withdrew, more Russian jets appeared to carry out a second strike.
US and Russian warplanes operating in close proximity carries obvious dangers.
The Russians insist that the incident was caused by miscommunication on the part of the Americans. But to add an additional twist to the controversy, they have up to now shown little desire to prevent images of cluster munitions at their Syrian airfield from being distributed.
However Russia Today recently re-edited a news package dealing with the visit of the Russian defence minister to Syria, to remove the frames that showed RBK-500s on the pylons of a warplane.
But after a few hours they seemed to think better of it and - for whatever reason - re-instated the images.
There has been evidence of the consistent use of cluster munitions by Russian warplanes since the beginning of its air campaign in Syria.
Images of the RBK-500 family of weapons in particular have cropped up in several film reports carried by Russian television stations who have had reasonably unrestricted access to the base.
Human rights campaigners such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have spoken out against the use of these weapons by the Russian air force in Syria since last year.
And despite Russian denials, open source intelligence monitors including the Bellingcat web site and the Russia-based Conflict Investigation Team have analysed the imagery, proving incontrovertibly that the weapons are in regular use on Russian aircraft operating out of Russia's base in Syria.
Cluster munitions are a controversial weapon for two main reasons. They are essentially a canister filled with smaller bomblets or sub-munitions. When the canister opens after being released from the aircraft, the sub-munitions are spread over a large area. Arms campaigners insist that they can thus not discriminate between military and civilian targets. Furthermore many of the sub-munitions typically fail to explode, littering the battlefield long after the fighting has moved on, posing a risk to civilians and particularly children.
That is why there have been long-standing efforts to ban them. A convention to this effect entered into force in August 2010 and to date some 119 countries have signed up, agreeing not just to destroy their stocks of these weapons but also to halt their manufacture.
But not all countries have signed up. In particular two of the major military players, Russia and the United States, have so far refused to sign. The US State Department's website declares that "cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility. Their elimination from US stockpiles would put the lives of its soldiers and those of its coalition partners at risk".
Indeed the US military claims that "cluster munitions can often result in much less collateral damage than unitary weapons, such as a larger bomb or larger artillery shell would cause, if used for the same mission". No doubt the Russians would take a similar view.
It is clear that this incident near al-Tanf has further soured relations between Washington and Moscow, underlining once again that the purpose of Russia's air strikes continues to be far broader than simply striking so-called Islamic State.
But quite why Russia apparently chose to bomb this particular US-backed group far to the south in Syria, near to where the Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, still remains something of a mystery. | Just a few days ago Russian warplanes, allegedly using cluster munitions, attacked a US-backed Syrian opposition group based near al-Tanf - a small town close to the border with Iraq. | 36578281 |
The zoo and Wild Place Project are home to around 500 species, from tiny fish and insects to gorillas and hippos.
The count is done at the start of each year to verify audit records and check vulnerable populations are thriving.
John Partridge, senior curator, said: "The last 12 months have been very successful in terms of animal births, so the count is a big job this year." | More than 14,000 creatures are being counted at Bristol Zoo as keepers begin their annual stock-take. | 38471252 |
U's winger Brennan Dickenson drilled wide early on before the hosts took a 13th-minute lead when George Elokobi picked up possession 25 yards out and curled a superb shot over stranded Wycombe goalkeeper Jamal Blackman.
Colchester keeper Sam Walker twice denied Wycombe's Paris Cowan-Hall while Alex Jakubiak's low cross-shot flashed across the six-yard box as the Chairboys pushed for an equaliser.
Wycombe striker Adebayo Akinfenwa blasted over at the second attempt from close range just before half-time after his first effort was blocked.
Walker saved Akinfenwa's weak close-range header just after half-time and Elokobi made an acrobatic goal-line clearance to deny Cowan-Hall while at the other end, Blackman pushed Kurtis Guthrie's low attempt around the post midway through the second half.
Michael Harriman nodded Guthrie's header off the line and Wycombe defender Joe Jacobson was sent off with two minutes remaining after being shown a second yellow card as Colchester claimed victory.
Match report supplied by the Press Association.
Match ends, Colchester United 1, Wycombe Wanderers 0.
Second Half ends, Colchester United 1, Wycombe Wanderers 0.
Attempt blocked. Adebayo Akinfenwa (Wycombe Wanderers) header from the centre of the box is blocked.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by Owen Garvan.
Foul by Kurtis Guthrie (Colchester United).
Max Müller (Wycombe Wanderers) wins a free kick on the right wing.
George Elokobi (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Adebayo Akinfenwa (Wycombe Wanderers).
Attempt missed. Brennan Dickenson (Colchester United) left footed shot from outside the box is too high from a direct free kick.
Second yellow card to Joe Jacobson (Wycombe Wanderers) for a bad foul.
Tarique Fosu-Henry (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Joe Jacobson (Wycombe Wanderers).
Attempt missed. Anthony Stewart (Wycombe Wanderers) right footed shot from outside the box is too high.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by Kurtis Guthrie.
Substitution, Wycombe Wanderers. Sam Wood replaces Marcus Bean.
Attempt blocked. Kurtis Guthrie (Colchester United) header from very close range is blocked.
Corner, Colchester United. Conceded by Max Müller.
Foul by Owen Garvan (Colchester United).
Marcus Bean (Wycombe Wanderers) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Substitution, Colchester United. Tarique Fosu-Henry replaces Sean Murray.
Attempt saved. Sean Murray (Colchester United) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Joe Jacobson (Wycombe Wanderers) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Drey Wright (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Joe Jacobson (Wycombe Wanderers).
Substitution, Colchester United. Drey Wright replaces Chris Porter.
Foul by Adebayo Akinfenwa (Wycombe Wanderers).
Richard Brindley (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt missed. Owen Garvan (Colchester United) left footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the left.
Richard Brindley (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Paris Cowan-Hall (Wycombe Wanderers).
Corner, Colchester United. Conceded by Jamal Blackman.
Attempt saved. Kurtis Guthrie (Colchester United) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the bottom right corner.
Foul by Marcus Bean (Wycombe Wanderers).
Kurtis Guthrie (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt blocked. Paris Cowan-Hall (Wycombe Wanderers) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Corner, Wycombe Wanderers. Conceded by Brennan Dickenson.
Attempt blocked. Owen Garvan (Colchester United) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
Substitution, Wycombe Wanderers. Garry Thompson replaces Alex Jakubiak.
Corner, Colchester United. Conceded by Max Müller.
Chris Porter (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the defensive half. | Colchester moved into the League Two play-off places with a 1-0 win over Wycombe. | 38964958 |
Trish Adudu was walking to her car in Coventry city centre when a man cycled past and made the remark.
The BBC Coventry and Warwickshire presenter said she witnessed the same person abusing an Asian man moments earlier.
Police have vowed to find the perpetrator of the "sickening" attack.
It comes after the West Midlands force's Chief Constable Dave Thompson promised a "zero-tolerance" stance on hate crime following the EU referendum result.
Several racial attacks have been reported in the wake of the decision to leave the EU.
Trish told listeners the attack happened as she was getting into her car at around 09:30 BST on Wednesday.
She said: "He cycled over to what looked like an Asian student and was basically saying 'Get out of here. Go back home. Haven't you heard the vote?'
"And then he cycles around, sees me looking at him in shock, because it was so loud and so angry.
"And then he says to me 'yeah, that goes for you as well'. He starts calling me the N word and told he to 'go home'."
Insp Alastair Orencas appealed for witnesses who saw the abuse to come forward.
"There is absolutely no place for this type of sickening and deplorable behaviour on the streets of our city and we will be doing everything we can to identify the perpetrator," he said.
"I would also appeal directly to this individual - if it was you who shouted these words, do the right thing and hand yourself in."
Trish added: "This type of vile abuse needs to stop and we need to work together to try to get rid of it.
"I would love for the other man who was there to come forward, because this is not just about me.
"If the guy on the bike could be so vile in such a short period of time, then what else could he go on to do? Who's next? Someone is going to get hurt." | A police investigation has been launched after a BBC radio presenter was racially abused in the street. | 36670691 |
However, it was a night of mixed fortunes for the Magpies as Aleksandar Mitrovic, Dwight Gayle and Rolando Aarons all came off injured.
Perez, who was also injured and had his head bandaged, curled in a brilliant opener in first-half stoppage time.
The Spaniard tapped in his second when Gayle pounced on Easah Suliman's back-pass and squared the ball.
Match ends, Newcastle United 2, Cheltenham Town 0.
Second Half ends, Newcastle United 2, Cheltenham Town 0.
Jamie Sterry (Newcastle United) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Foul by Billy Waters (Cheltenham Town).
Attempt saved. Jonjo Shelvey (Newcastle United) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Attempt saved. Jon Smith (Cheltenham Town) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Attempt missed. Koby Arthur (Cheltenham Town) right footed shot from outside the box is close, but misses to the left.
Foul by Jack Colback (Newcastle United).
Asa Hall (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt missed. Mohamed Diamé (Newcastle United) left footed shot from the centre of the box is just a bit too high.
Attempt saved. Amari Morgan-Smith (Cheltenham Town) header from the centre of the box is saved in the top centre of the goal.
Foul by Jamaal Lascelles (Newcastle United).
Amari Morgan-Smith (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Jack Colback (Newcastle United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Amari Morgan-Smith (Cheltenham Town).
Attempt missed. Ayoze Pérez (Newcastle United) right footed shot from the centre of the box is just a bit too high.
Attempt saved. James Rowe (Cheltenham Town) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the top centre of the goal.
Substitution, Cheltenham Town. Amari Morgan-Smith replaces Daniel Wright.
Attempt saved. Billy Waters (Cheltenham Town) left footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Jack Colback (Newcastle United) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Harry Pell (Cheltenham Town).
Substitution, Cheltenham Town. Jon Smith replaces Easah Suliman.
Substitution, Cheltenham Town. Koby Arthur replaces James Dayton.
Attempt saved. Ayoze Pérez (Newcastle United) right footed shot from the left side of the six yard box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Corner, Newcastle United. Conceded by Daniel O'Shaughnessy.
Foul by Jack Colback (Newcastle United).
James Rowe (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Attempt missed. Ayoze Pérez (Newcastle United) right footed shot from outside the box is close, but misses to the right following a fast break.
Attempt missed. Vurnon Anita (Newcastle United) header from the right side of the six yard box is close, but misses to the left.
Attempt blocked. Mohamed Diamé (Newcastle United) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Substitution, Newcastle United. Vurnon Anita replaces Dwight Gayle because of an injury.
Attempt missed. Daniel Wright (Cheltenham Town) header from the centre of the box is close, but misses the top right corner.
Corner, Cheltenham Town. Conceded by Grant Hanley.
Attempt missed. Asa Hall (Cheltenham Town) left footed shot from outside the box is close, but misses the top left corner.
Foul by Jack Colback (Newcastle United).
Billy Waters (Cheltenham Town) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt saved. Grant Hanley (Newcastle United) header from the centre of the box is saved in the top centre of the goal.
Delay over. They are ready to continue.
Delay in match Dwight Gayle (Newcastle United) because of an injury.
Corner, Newcastle United. Conceded by Danny Parslow. | Ayoze Perez scored twice as Newcastle reached the third round of the EFL Cup with a win over League Two Cheltenham. | 37091289 |
The robbery, which happened at a Bank of Scotland branch in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on Wednesday, sparked a bomb scare.
The taxi driver picked up a man from The Avenue in Lochgelly and was then forced to carry out the robbery at the Mitchelston Industrial Estate branch.
Police had been told that some form of explosive device may be present, however nothing was found.
The robber fled with a four-figure sum of money following the incident which happened at 12:40.
Military specialists were called in and people told to stay in nearby homes and businesses as a precaution.
Police said a search of the area "confirmed that no explosives or bombs were present during this incident".
The suspect was described as being as white, 5ft 6in tall, of heavy build. He was wearing a dark green baseball cap, a dark green scarf, a thick, dark blue jacket, tracksuit bottoms and sunglasses.
He spoke with a distinctive Eastern European accent.
Det Insp Charlie Duncan, who is leading the investigation, said: "I want to speak to anyone who may have been in the area of the industrial estate in Lochgelly between 12.15pm and 12.40pm yesterday and saw the man described.
"I am particularly interested to trace any taxi drivers who may have taken a hire to the Lochgelly area yesterday who matched this description.
"We are not certain how this individual came to be in that area, but due to the location it is unlikely that he walked there.
"We would also be keen to trace any taxi drivers or members of the public who may have seen a man fitting this description leaving the Kirkcaldy area anytime from 1.30pm following the incident at the bank."
Supt Derek McEwan said: "I would like to offer a reassurance to the public that all actions of the police yesterday were done to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our communities.
"I would also like to praise the courage and bravery of the taxi driver and staff within the Bank of Scotland who remained calm during this entire incident.
"Officers will be in Kirkcaldy and Lochgelly offering further reassurance and carrying out more inquiries today, and will be available to speak to anyone who has any information which could assist our investigation." | A taxi driver was abducted by a bank robber before being forced to hand over a note to cashiers demanding money. | 34798186 |
Its talk of "newspeak" and surveillance seem to have struck a nerve recently.
Sales of the George Orwell book rose after US president Donald Trump's adviser said the White House was issuing "alternative facts" over the size of the crowds at his inauguration.
The Olivier Award-nominated play will open in New York in June.
The team behind the production said: "There is no piece of literature or art more relevant today than Orwell's seminal work, and the producers are excited to be bringing it to Broadway."
Orwell's novel, telling the story of Winston Smith who works at the Ministry of Truth, was published in 1949 and has not been out of print since, selling nearly 30 million copies to date.
In the book, society is run by The Party which is led by a shady figure called Big Brother - and yes, that's where the phrase "Big Brother is watching you", as well as the name of the reality show come from.
A key part of Orwell's book is the way that the Party uses simplistic slogans to warp reality, like Black is White, 2+2=5, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
But it has seen a recent spike in popularity, topping the Amazon.com bestseller list and seeing a rise in sales in the UK as well.
The last time sales went up was in 2013, at the time of Edward Snowden's spying revelations.
The play, a Nottingham Playhouse and Headlong co-production, premiered in Nottingham in 2013 before transferring to the West End.
It will be performed at the Hudson Theatre in New York. The US cast has not yet been revealed.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]. | Dystopian novel 1984 has been topping US bestseller lists in recent weeks - and now a stage version previously seen in the West End is heading to Broadway. | 38854721 |
Chris Coleman's side fought back from an early Radja Nainggolan goal to triumph thanks to goals from Ashley Williams, Hal Robson-Kanu and Sam Vokes.
The Welsh fairytale in France continues - they now face Portugal in the semi-finals - this is how BBC Sport rated their players at Stade Pierre Mauroy.
Made an excellent early stop from Yannick Carrasco before being beaten from distance by Nainggolan's screamer. Looked like he would be in for a busy evening at that stage but, for all their late pressure, Belgium barely tested him after the break.
Needed help to cope with Eden Hazard down the Welsh right in the first 15 minutes but the Belgian blitz did not last. Kept venturing forward and got his reward with the cross for Sam Vokes' goal.
Another to look shaky at the start, especially when he picked up a booking for fouling Kevin de Bruyne, but like his team-mates he grew in confidence and composure as the game went on. Suspended for the semi-finals after being booked.
Has not looked himself up to now in France but this was the Wales captain at his best. Heading is not his strength but that did not stop him nodding the equaliser and he seemed to be in the right place whenever the ball came into the Wales box.
He and Gunter were given the task of shackling Hazard, and came out on top - the Chelsea forward only cut inside with any real menace once. Made some vital interceptions and blocks.
One of the Wales players to put his body on the line to stop what seemed like certain Belgium goals in the opening minutes. Like Gunter, kept going forward and was unlucky not to score before half-time.
Another tireless tackler who also used the ball simply and effectively to help Wales establish a degree of control in midfield as the game went on.
His passing radar was initially off - he surrendered possession for the move that led to Belgium's opener. But his work-rate never faltered and he gave everything to protect his centre-halves.
Belgium gave him time and space in their half and he punished them for it. Set up two of the three goals and now has four assists for the tournament but his second-half booking for handball means he will miss the semi-final. He did not stop running after that, and Wales will miss him massively too.
An open game suited him and his runs gave Belgium plenty to worry about. He continued to menace their defenders in the second half. No goals or assists this time but he will not care one bit.
What can you say? Amazing. His industry and effort are well-known but the skill he showed to turn half the Belgium defence and put Wales ahead is not. Without a club, for now, but part of Welsh footballing folklore for sure. The fans did not stop singing his name.
Came on to give Wales more legs in midfield when Ledley had used all his energy - did not let anyone down.
Legendary Wales striker John Hartson told me before the game that a Vokes goal was coming and boy was he right. Took the pressure off in the closing minutes with a trademark header.
Too late to earn a mark but will surely play a part against Portugal with Davies suspended. | Wales are into the semi-finals of Euro 2016 after a superb 3-1 victory over Belgium in Lille. | 36691597 |
The 55-year-old former Yeovil Town, Brighton, Leyton Orient and Cardiff boss has agreed a three-year deal at The Valley.
Slade left his role as head of football with the Bluebirds last week.
He replaces Jose Riga, who resigned as head coach on 7 May after the end of the Championship campaign, in which the Addicks finished in 22nd place.
"I am very pleased to be appointed manager of Charlton, a club with a fantastic tradition and history," Slade told the club website.
"I was attracted to Charlton as it has great facilities, passionate fans and a very successful academy. This is a hugely exciting opportunity and I cannot wait to get started."
After four years at Leyton Orient, Slade joined Cardiff as boss in October 2014 and won 32 of his 86 games in charge of the Welsh side, who finished eighth last season.
However, he was replaced by Paul Trollope at the end of the 2015-16 campaign and given the post of head of football - a role which he left on Friday after just 28 days in the job.
Charlton employed three different managers as they suffered the drop back into League One, ending their four-year stay in the Championship.
Chief executive Katrien Meire said Slade's appointment as manager represented the start of "an exciting new era at the club".
She added: "We don't underestimate the challenge of getting Charlton back into the Championship.
"We believe Russell is the man to help us achieve this and ensure that Charlton have a successful 2016-17 campaign."
Charlton owner Roland Duchatelet has made six managerial changes since he bought the south-east London club in January 2014, and Addicks fans held a series of protests aimed at the Belgian businessman and Meire this year. | Relegated Charlton Athletic have appointed Russell Slade as their new manager. | 36460179 |
Charlie, a Border collie, makes weekly visits to the North Wales Cancer Centre at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd as part of the Pets As Therapy (PAT) scheme.
His owner Jane Howatson said patients were able to empathise with him when they heard his story.
Charlie was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes in August 2012.
He is one of 41 PAT dogs and one cat who work across north Wales as therapy for humans visiting hospitals, hospices, homes and schools.
Ms Howatson, from Llansannan, said: "Happily Charlie is in remission at present, he loves coming here to meet the patients and they enjoy seeing him too.
"He comes here and you can see he is concentrating all the time, working in his own little way when he sees the patients.
"When patients stroke Charlie and find out what he has been through, you do see a sense of empathy from both.
"We come here every Thursday and it's nice as Charlie gets to see the same people who are going through regular treatment and it's nice for him and them to get familiar with each other.
"I'm so proud that he is doing this for these patients as they have taken to him so well."
Charlie has been adopted as the honorary mascot for the centre's staff.
Two of the people he visits regularly at Bodelwyddan are Keith and Jen Lloyd.
Mrs Lloyd said: "He's lovely, he is a really relaxing dog. It's lovely to see him here."
Staff have also welcomed Charlie into their midst due to his inspirational support.
Carmel Barnett, acting radiotherapy services manager, said: "He lights up the reception every time he comes in on a Thursday as he's such a friendly happy dog with a wonderful inspirational tale that lifts everyone who meets him." | A therapy dog used to help patients going through cancer treatment has a poignant twist to his tale after he had seven months of chemotherapy himself. | 21946007 |
Kazakhstan's Vassiliy Levit and Ireland's Michael Conlan lost bouts in they both appeared to win comfortably.
Under new rules, they cannot appeal against the judges' decision.
Bunce said the judges will "not work again at these Olympics".
"What happened to Conlan and Levit is heartbreaking and wrong," he said.
"After 200-odd bouts and 11 days of boxing, we have seen two absolute stinkers.
"Appeals were dropped for this tournament and that creates a bit of a problem. At least two decisions would have been appealed and overturned.
"They are semi-isolated but we are in the medal stages - that's when the judges start going crazy."
Russian world champion Evgeny Tishchenko was booed by the crowd after his unanimous points win over Levit in the men's heavyweight final on Monday.
Tishchenko suffered a cut to his head and spent most of the bout on the back foot, but the judges scored all three rounds in his favour.
On Tuesday, Belfast bantamweight Conlan lost by unanimous decision to Russia's Vladimir Nikitin in the quarter-finals.
World, European and Commonwealth champion Conlan was awarded the second round, but the first and third rounds went to Nikitin despite Conlan appearing to win them.
"My dream has been shattered. It's been robbed," said Conlan.
The International Boxing Association (AIBA) has changed several rules for Rio 2016, allowing professionals to compete, removing the headguard, scrapping the appeals process and changing the scoring system.
Five officials judge each bout and a computer randomly selects three whose scores are counted.
Traditionally, judges would use a computer scoring system to count each punch.
But now the winner of each round is awarded 10 points and the loser a lower number, based on a criteria which includes the quality of punches landed, effective aggression and tactical superiority.
"They have changed the scoring after 36 years," said Bunce. "Instead of one person pushing a button, the judges are now sitting at ring side and making a judgement.
"Perhaps the judges are as confused and bewildered as the people in the arena and on TV.
"There is a roster of 60 judges here in Rio. Everyone knows who they are and those six judges will not work again at these Olympics."
Olympic bronze medallist Richie Woodhall added: "This new system of scoring awards points on good defensive skills and going forward, whereas with the other system the judges would press a button when a punch was landed.
"Now the judge refers to the style of boxing. Conlan showed he could box on the front and back foot and he did not get it - it was a poor decision."
Conlan said: "I came for gold and I've been cheated."
However, Tom Virgets, a member of the AIBA executive committee, said the governing body was concerned by the result of Conlan and Levit's fight.
"We have a lot of educating and evaluating to do," Virgets told BBC Sport.
"We are getting better but Rome ain't built in a day. Along the way we have to constantly sharpen the blade with our officials.
"We are changing them from being robots who press a button to being analysts of a bout."
The Irish Athletic Boxing Association has called for a review of the scoring process.
"It is in the best interests of amateur Olympic boxing that the scoring and judging process is reviewed," read an IABA statement.
"We will look to work with other national federations and AIBA to ensure that this happens."
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox. | Olympic boxing judges in Rio are "confused" by a new scoring system and have gone "crazy", leading to controversial decisions which have marred the Rio tournament, according to BBC boxing expert Steve Bunce. | 37100323 |
South Africa-born Strauss, 28, qualifies to play for Scotland before the tournament under residency rules.
Hardie, 27, born in New Zealand with Scottish ancestry, also makes the cut having made his debut in August, as does South Africa-born prop WP Nel.
Back-row forwards John Barclay and Blair Cowan do not make the 31-man squad.
Having lost to Ireland and beaten Italy home and away, Scotland complete their pre-tournament series away to France on Saturday.
Scotland open their World Cup Pool B campaign against Japan in Gloucester on 23 September. They then face United States in Leeds before Cotter's side take on South Africa and then Samoa in Newcastle.
"We're very pleased to name the 31 and we're confident these players will represent Scotland well in the Rugby World Cup," said Cotter.
"It's been a tough but rewarding two months. We're proud of the effort everyone has put in to this point.
"Getting down to 31 has been a difficult process because all the players have represented themselves well in the opportunities given.
"There are some good players and good people who haven't made it. We obviously feel for them and would like to thank them for all their efforts, however we must now move forward to our last preparation match against France before embarking on our Rugby World Cup campaign."
Hardie, who is currently without a club after leaving Highlanders, featured in the 16-12 win over Italy in Turin.
David Denton, Ryan Wilson and Alasdair Strokosch are the other back-row forwards in Cotter's selection.
WP Nel, the South Africa-born prop who made his Scotland debut in Italy after becoming eligible earlier this summer, is one of the five props named and Alasdair Dickinson, Ryan Grant, Gordon Reid and Jon Welsh are the others.
Hookers Fraser Brown, Ross Ford and Stuart McInally and locks Grant Gilchrist, Jonny and Richie Gray and Tim Swinson complete the forwards selection.
In the backs, wing Sean Maitland is picked despite recent injury problems and the London Irish player can also play at 15, with Stuart Hogg the only out-and-out full-back named in Cotter's squad.
Captain Greig Laidlaw is one of three scrum-halves with Sam Hidalgo-Clyne and Henry Pyrgos also selected. The fly-halves are Finn Russell and Duncan Weir.
Sean Lamont, Tommy Seymour and Tim Visser are the other wing options for Cotter while Mark Bennett, Peter Horne, Matt Scott and Richie Vernon are the chosen centres.
Last week, Mike Cusack, Allan Dell, Dougie Fife, Damien Hoyland, Rory Hughes, Ben Toolis and Hamish Watson were released from the initial training squad named by Cotter.
But along with Barclay and Cowan, Adam Ashe, Hugh Blake, Chris Cusiter, Alex Dunbar, Jim Hamilton, Rob Harley, Ruaridh Jackson, Duncan Taylor, Greig Tonks do not make the final squad.
"We felt the split of 17 forwards and 14 backs gives us the best balance," added Cotter.
"We have two games in four days followed by South Africa and Samoa, so we need to be robust and covered in both forwards and backs, while knowing we have players in the group who can play several positions."
"We'll now concentrate our efforts on this group to fine tune a couple of things in detail."
Forwards (17):
Hookers: Fraser Brown (Glasgow Warriors), Ross Ford (Edinburgh Rugby), Stuart McInally (Edinburgh Rugby). Props: Alasdair Dickinson (Edinburgh Rugby), Ryan Grant (Glasgow Warriors), Gordon Reid (Glasgow Warriors), Willem Nel (Edinburgh Rugby), Jon Welsh (Newcastle Falcons). Locks: Grant Gilchrist (Edinburgh Rugby), Jonny Gray (Glasgow Warriors), Richie Gray (Castres), Tim Swinson (Glasgow Warriors). Back-rowers: David Denton (Edinburgh Rugby), John Hardie (Unattached), Josh Strauss (Glasgow Warriors), Alasdair Strokosch (Perpignan), Ryan Wilson (Glasgow Warriors).
Backs (14):
Back three: Stuart Hogg (Glasgow Warriors), Sean Lamont (Glasgow Warriors), Sean Maitland (London Irish), Tommy Seymour (Glasgow Warriors), Tim Visser (Harlequins). Centres: Mark Bennett (Glasgow Warriors), Peter Horne (Glasgow Warriors), Matt Scott (Edinburgh Rugby), Richie Vernon (Glasgow Warriors). Fly-halves: Finn Russell (Glasgow Warriors), Duncan Weir (Glasgow Warriors). Scrum-halves: Sam Hidalgo-Clyne (Edinburgh Rugby), Greig Laidlaw (Gloucester), Henry Pyrgos (Glasgow Warriors). | Back-row forwards Josh Strauss and John Hardie have been named in Vern Cotter's Scotland squad for the World Cup. | 34113092 |
The rescue mission went into full swing in Clacton, Essex, after neighbours told police the man had four pets.
It took a week for officers to find them among boxes and papers reaching up to the ceiling. They found unopened boxes of cat food and evidence the pets had been drinking dirty sink water.
The animals are now at rescue centres.
"Entering the property, it became clear as to why the cats were originally undetected," PCSO Dan Brown said.
"Sadly, the dead man had an extreme hoarding habit, with newspapers and boxes of canned goods reaching up to the ceiling, including boxes of unopened cat food.
"This made the home difficult and dangerous to move around in."
There was evidence to suggest the cats had been scratching at some of the boxes to get at the food inside.
However, as they did not seem keen to leave the property and could not be enticed out, humane traps had to be left.
"The situation at the house was very sad, and of course it was imperative that we got the cats out of the house as soon as possible," Mr Brown said.
"They were desperate for food and had resorted to drinking dirty water from a kitchen sink."
It took a week to rescue all four, now renamed Piglet, Peter, Tigger and Sir Scat Cat - a particularly nervous and frightened feline.
They are being looked after at the RSPCA's Southridge and Danaher shelters, waiting for new homes. | Four cats living in the home of a deceased "extreme hoarder" were rescued after spending a week evading RSPCA and police officers. | 33649490 |
No-one was seriously injured in the crash on Bumblebee Lane in Sharnford, but the lorry driver had to be rescued from his vehicle.
The owner of the house was not injured, but has been moved out of the property.
His son Steve Rowley said: "This is the second time this happened in a year as a car went thought the other end of the building."
"It is a terrible part of the road - I don't know why so many cars seem to come off here - it really does need looking at," Mr Rowley said.
He said the house would probably need to be completely rebuilt. | Part of a two-storey house in Leicestershire has been torn off after a lorry crashed into the property. | 33937031 |
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said 549 miners would receive eight weeks' back pay of up to £3,800 each.
The union claimed miners at the North Yorkshire pit, which closed in 2015, received smaller payouts than workers at Thoresby in Nottinghamshire.
It successfully argued the closure of the two pits had been the same and therefore payouts should be similar.
Miners at Thoresby, which closed in July 2015, were granted a "protective award" when UK Coal, the mine's owner, and the government accepted the mine was closed without proper consultation with workers.
The union successfully argued before an industrial tribunal in Sheffield the same circumstances applied to the closure of Kellingley six months later, yet there was no agreement to provide the same level of financial support to workers.
An NUM spokesman said it was "money the men were entitled to and shouldn't have had to fight for".
Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, whose constituency includes Kellingley, said: "This tribunal judgement proves that the government's decision to deny the Kellingley miners the same support as the Thoresby miners was an outrage and a betrayal of the Yorkshire miners who kept working until the very end."
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has been approached for comment. | Miners made redundant through the closure of Kellingley colliery are to receive additional payments. | 40816746 |
Bridges into Work 2, backed by £5.4m EU cash, will be on offer to over-25s in Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Merthyr Tydfil and Torfaen.
It aims to find jobs for at least 400 people and qualifications for 1,000.
Finance Minister Jane Hutt said the scheme will "help remove the barriers that prevent people getting into work".
The three-year project includes advice on job searching, presentation skills and CV writing, plus opportunities to take qualifications or vocational training.
Extra support is offered to people whose ability to work is affected by health, childcare or transport issues.
The first phase of Bridges into Work, from 2009 to 2015, cost £27m and helped almost 4,000 people find work and more than 14,000 get new qualifications.
The scheme is run by Torfaen council on behalf of five local authorities, with Bridgend replacing Rhondda Cynon Taf in the latest phase. | Two thousand unemployed people in the south Wales valleys will be offered training and mentoring in a new £7m project to get them into work. | 34017141 |
The Edinburgh hooker, 33, will win his 110th cap in Suva on Saturday in the final match of the Scots' summer tour.
Glasgow's New Zealand-born centre Nick Grigg comes in for his debut in one of 12 changes as coach Gregor Townsend seeks to make it three wins from three.
Scotland beat Italy 34-13 in Singapore and followed that a week later with a 24-19 win over Australia in Sydney.
Ruaridh Jackson, at full-back, and Alex Allan, at loosehead prop, see their first action of the series.
Peter Horne deputises for Finn Russell at stand-off and there is a return from an injury-hit eight months for John Hardie at openside.
Townsend's selection means that of the large squad he brought with him, three players will not see any game-time: Edinburgh hooker George Turner, Glasgow prop D'Arcy Rae and Edinburgh scrum-half Sean Kennedy.
At the team announcement overlooking Lami Bay in Suva, Townsend saluted Ford's contribution.
"It's deserved, he's played really well on tour, he's trained well and he's worked very well at driving the standards," he said.
"I definitely think Ross will be able to play for the next two or three seasons at least if he carries on what we've seen from him."
John Barclay continues as captain in Greig Laidlaw's absence with the Lions.
"Greig was going to be captain for this tour," said Townsend.
"He's been an excellent leader for Scotland for the last couple of seasons. John has grown into the captaincy brilliantly. He did it very well in the Six Nations and he's looking more and more comfortable on this tour.
"It's a brilliant position to be in. We've now got two clear leaders that have captained their team to success and we'll see what comes round in November."
Townsend believes Fiji are "the best in the world in terms of individual line-breaking ability, in terms of offloading".
"A lot of it is around their number five, Leone Nakarawa, who we know very well," said Townsend of a man he coached at Glasgow Warriors.
"You've got to make sure you defend well against them, you've got to make sure you have a line that is uniform and that you get your tackles in. When they get unstructured play and the line isn't uniform, that's when they come alive
"Their set-piece has improved a lot over the last few seasons. They're very well coached and they are playing at home. They had a win against Italy last weekend. Italy tried to slow down the tempo at times but that's not something we are looking to do. We'll try to match the pace they will aim to play at.
"They've got some brilliant players. Patrick Osborne plays for the Highlanders and Josua Tuisova plays very well for Toulon.
"They do produce some of the best backs in the world and I believe the best second row in the world in Leone. And the more we are in Fiji we see the reasons why. There's probably no country in the world where rugby is so important to the culture."
Scotland's head coach has "great memories" of trips to Fiji in the 1990s, adding: "I'm sure what the players experienced today, visiting schools and seeing the kids and the welcome they got and the joy for life and joy for rugby, will live long in the memory.
"We've have had a fantastic week, but we're here for a reason and we have to make sure we do well on Saturday."
Teams
Fiji: K Murimurivalu; J Tuisova, A Vulivuli, J Vatubua, P Osborne; B Volavola, S Vularika; P Ravai, S Koto, K Tawake, T Cavubati; L Nakarawa, D Waqaniburotu; P Yato, A Qera (capt).
Replacements: T Talemaitoga, J Veitayaki, M Ducivaki, S Nabou, N Dawai, H Seniloli, J Stewart, B Masilevu.
Scotland: R Jackson; D Hoyland, N Grigg, D Taylor, T Visser; P Horne, H Pyrgos; A Allan, R Ford, WP Nel; T Swinson, J Gray; J Barclay (capt), J Hardie, J Strauss.
Replacements: F Brown, G Reid, Z Fagerson, B Toolis, H Watson, R Wilson, A Price, G Tonks. | Ross Ford is poised to become Scotland's record cap holder after being named in the side to face Fiji. | 40364140 |
The risky therapy involves wiping out the person's immune system with strong cancer drugs and then rebooting it with a stem cell transplant.
Doctors say only some patients will be suitable to try it, particularly because it is so high risk.
Out of 281 people who had the treatment, nearly half benefited, but eight died shortly afterwards.
The work in JAMA Neurology is one of the largest and longest investigations of this aggressive MS treatment.
Mark Rye, 41 and from Surrey, had his transplant just before Christmas 2016. Two months on he is doing well.
"It was a hard decision, knowing what could go wrong. My wife and I discussed it for many, many hours. We've got small children and I didn't want my MS to get worse and end up in a wheelchair.
"I did this to halt the condition and so that I can be there for my children, who are still so young. I want to be able to play rugby and football with them as they grow up."
What is not clear is for how long the therapy might ultimately work.
MS is incurable.
The disease causes the immune system to attack the protective coating of nerves in the brain and spinal cord, which can create problems with a person's vision, walking and balance.
Treatments aim to slow or stop the attack.
Researchers from Imperial College London gathered data from 25 centres in 13 countries that have been trialling the radical therapy known as autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation or AHSCT.
The idea behind the one-off treatment is to reset the immune system to stop it from attacking the body. But it requires toxic drugs to kill off existing cells in the patient's bone marrow, which is unpleasant and hazardous.
The medical trial data gives doctors and patients a better idea about who might benefit from the treatment.
The findings suggest that patients who are younger, who are not responding to other MS drugs and who have relapsing MS, might benefit from AHSCT.
Lead investigator Dr Paolo Muraro said the risks must be weighed up against the benefits.
"We previously knew this treatment reboots or resets the immune system - and that it carried risks - but we didn't know how long the benefits lasted.
"In this study, which is the largest long-term follow-up study of this procedure, we've shown we can 'freeze' a patient's disease - and stop it from becoming worse, for up to five years.
"However, we must take into account that the treatment carries a small risk of death and this is a disease that is not immediately life-threatening."
Advanced clinical trials are already under way to test how well AHSCT works compared to existing treatments for MS.
Last year, the BBC's Panorama programme was given exclusive access to several patients who have undergone the stem cell transplant.
Steven Storey was diagnosed with MS in 2013 and, within a year, went from being an able-bodied athlete to needing a wheelchair and losing sensation in much of his body.
He said: "I went from running marathons to needing 24-hour acute care. At one point I couldn't even hold a spoon and feed myself."
Within a few days of the transplant he was able to move his toes, and after four months he could stand unaided.
AHSCT is not routinely available on the NHS. If anyone with MS is considering it they should speak to their neurologist, advises the UK MS Society, which has been funding this and other research.
Follow Michelle on Twitter | A multiple sclerosis treatment being tested in patients can stop the disease for at least five years, say doctors. | 39026117 |
The Scottish government-owned company said a total of 1,658,423 customers used its airports over the last 12 months - 220,798 more than in 2015-16.
Hial operates 11 sites in the Highlands, Western Isles, Orkney, Shetland, Argyll and Dundee Airport.
Inverness, Sumburgh, Dundee and Barra airports were among its busiest.
However, passenger numbers declined at Wick John O'Groats, Campbeltown and Benbecula.
Flights to London Heathrow and Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport helped to boost passenger numbers at Inverness by more than 23%.
Sumburgh in Shetland has had a 14% year-on-year rise, while Dundee has experienced a rise of 64% - 355,667 passengers - and Barra's beach airport had 16% more passengers.
Hial managing director Inglis Lyon said: "Overall, the past year has been one of significant growth in passenger figures across the Hial group, illustrating customer demand for our air services and the improved connectivity they provide for communities.
"Our regional airports continue to play a key role, enhancing and supporting Scotland's economy and offering great choice for leisure and business passengers.
"Our commitment is to continue to invest in our airports, and further develop our customer service as we attract new business and look to build upon the levels of growth witnessed in the last financial year in the future." | Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (Hial) has reported a 15.4% overall increase in passenger numbers in its latest financial year. | 39518544 |
Mark Ellis, 57, denies carrying out sex attacks on the child in 1991 when he was aged around 10.
A jury heard claims that Mr Ellis, who ran a football team and training school in South Lanarkshire, threatened to kill both the boy and himself if the abuse was disclosed.
His accuser said he now "wanted justice" for the "wee boy" he once was.
Mr Ellis, who now lives in Birmingham, is on trial at the High Court in Glasgow where he denies a charge of behaving in a lewd and libidinous manner.
The jury heard how the alleged victim "just loved football".
He went on to be coached by Mr Ellis, who knew members of the boy's family.
Some of the abuse is said to have happened at their home when he visited, including the first alleged attack on Easter Sunday in 1991.
The alleged victim said he remembered initially being "scared" that day as the coach had turned up appearing "very angry".
He said he was then abused at Mr Ellis' flat in Biggar, South Lanarkshire.
Prosecutor Shanti Maguire asked: "By the time it got to this stage, did you ever want to tell anyone?"
He replied: "No - this was because Mark threatened that he would have to kill the two of us if I told anyone."
The jury heard the boy was also allegedly preyed on at a local sports club.
Another incident is said to have happened after Mr Ellis drove in his Land Rover to outside a darkened ambulance depot.
This was said to have happened after their team had suffered a heavy defeat.
The witness told the trial: "I can remember Mark took me home that night.
"I remember him saying we had got beat, but that I had played well."
He went on to recall the last time he spoke with Mr Ellis around that time, stating he had had "enough".
The alleged victim told the court: "I remember saying 'kill me if you want'.
"I remember looking at Mark and he seemed broken. I really could not stand the sight of him by then."
He then recalled being "delighted" when he found out Mr Ellis had later moved out of the area.
The witness said he did not reveal what allegedly happened until years later when he initially spoke to a friend.
He was described as being "completely broken and distraught".
In around 2005 - joined by a number of relatives - he was said to have then turned up at Mr Ellis's now home in the Midlands to confront him.
The court heard that his mother challenged Mr Ellis stating: "You think you have ruined my son, but you have not."
The accuser told the jury: "Mark said: 'I am sorry'. He kept saying sorry, sorry.
"He also said: 'I knew that this day was coming'."
Miss Maguire asked him if he had any reason to lie about Mr Ellis.
He replied: "No, none at all. I don't know if I even hate him. I just want justice for that wee boy."
The prosecutor went on: "That wee boy being yourself?" The witness said: "Yes."
Louise Arrol, defending, later put to the witness that the jury may hear that he was never abused by Mr Ellis.
Miss Arrol said: "Do you reject that?" to which the witness replied: "I totally reject that."
The trial, before Judge Johanna Johnston QC, continues. | A boys' football coach has gone on trial charged with the abuse of a young player. | 40349351 |
Hedd Wyn was killed on the battlefields of Flanders in 1917, before being posthumously awarded the National Eisteddfod's Bardic Chair for his work.
The event on Tuesday evening will explore his life and work, along with other World War One poets.
It is hosted by Literature Wales at Passa Porta, the International House of Literature.
First Minister Carwyn Jones said: "While the world lost a great Welsh talent when Hedd Wyn was killed aged just 30-years-old, his legacy lives on in his poems and manuscripts.
"It is important to remember the sacrifice made by Hedd Wyn and his fellow soldiers, who were tragically killed on the battlefields of Flanders 100 years ago. They will never be forgotten."
The festival line-up includes:
It forms part of the year-long project Barddoniaeth Colled / Poetry of Loss. | A poetry and music event will be held in Brussels commemorating Welsh poet Hedd Wyn. | 39973657 |
The hosts looked to be in control in Colombo when the Windies managed only 32 from the first 10 overs, with Chris Gayle taking 16 balls to make three.
But Samuels smashed six sixes in his 56-ball 78 to drag his side to 137-6.
"People will rejoice that Darren Sammy has got something to show from his years in charge of the West Indies. He's a delightful man, they've managed to reintegrate Chris Gayle into that side and they've had a wonderful tournament."
Sri Lanka never got to grips with the chase and, although Nuwan Kulasekara's 13-ball 26 gave them hope, they were bowled out for 101 in the 19th over.
The defeat was Sri Lanka's fourth in as many finals after losing the 2009 World T20 final to Pakistan, as well as the 2007 and 2011 World Cups to Australia and India respectively.
West Indies had dominated the game from the late 1970s through to the 1990s, winning the first two World Cups and terrorising batsmen with a seemingly endless supply of world-class pace bowlers.
However, a fall from grace in all formats had seen them not lift a major trophy since ninth-wicket pair Courtney Browne and Ian Bradshaw added 71 to beat England in the 2004 Champions Trophy final, and this comeback was of a similar magnitude.
Darren Sammy's men looked likely to be on the wrong end of a hammering as Sri Lanka's new-ball bowlers applied vice-like pressure, which proved too much for the usually unflappable Gayle.
West Indies are the only team to win the World Cup, World T20 and Champions Trophy outright. India also have their name on all three titles, but shared the 2002 Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka.
After Johnson Charles was removed by Angelo Mathews in the first over of the match, Gayle was trapped lbw by Ajantha Mendis. The spinner went on to benefit from two poor lbw decisions by Simon Taufel - umpiring his last game before retirement - on the way to figures of 4-12.
But Samuels arrived to dish out some brutal treatment to pace bowler Lasith Malinga, with one enormous straight six carrying high in to the top tier of the R Premadasa Stadium.
He was caught at deep mid-wicket off 18-year-old spinner Akila Dananjaya, but the Windies took 29 from the final 17 balls of the innings as skipper Sammy finished unbeaten on 26 from 15 deliveries.
Even then, Sri Lanka looked well placed, only for the Windies to gather more momentum when Ravi Rampaul produced a beautiful delivery to bowl Tillakaratne Dilshan for a duck.
The hosts were able to turn to the experience of Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene but, even though the captains past and present were able to compile a stand of 42, the required run-rate was always rising.
Australia's Shane Watson was named man of the tournament. The all-rounder hit the most runs (249), the second most sixes (15) and took the second most wickets (11).
With the spin of Samuels and Sunil Narine slowing the scoring, Sangakkara eventually dragged Samuel Badree to Kieron Pollard at deep mid-wicket.
Mathews departed quickly before Jayawardene, who had twice been dropped in the deep, buckled under the mounting task, top-edging a reverse sweep off Narine to Sammy.
That began a collapse that saw Sri Lanka lose four wickets for nine runs and, although Nuwan Kulasekara showed some late fight, West Indies' triumph was sealed when Malinga was caught at long on off Narine, who finished with devastating figures of 3-9.
The Windies came together to dance on the square in celebration, celebrations that seemed unlikely before the intervention of the brilliant Samuels. | A Marlon Samuels-inspired West Indies recovered from an awful start to beat Sri Lanka and win the World Twenty20. | 19857255 |
The Rushden Lakes development is due to open in spring 2017, with the 12-screen cinema completed a few months later.
LXB Properties have been granted permission for a bowling alley, climbing structure, cycle hire business and restaurants to replace a planned garden centre.
Local councils had objected, saying it threatened their town centres.
The Rushden Lakes plans have been criticised amid fears the development is could poach shoppers from towns as far away as Kettering, Corby, Northampton and Bedford.
Councils in Kettering and Bedford objected to the cinema and bowling alley.
The amended plans were considered and approved by East Northamptonshire District Council planners on Wednesday night.
A public inquiry in 2013 heard concerns about the development's impact on shops in nearby town centres.
However, council officers recommended that the plans should be approved.
Work on building the main shopping complex, given permission in June 2014 by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, has already begun. | A cinema and bowling alley are to be added to a £140m shopping and leisure complex in Northamptonshire. | 36101833 |
Media playback is not supported on this device
A gutsy run saw Farah become the first Briton to win a world medal at 10,000m.
But it had looked like being gold and not silver as the 28-year-old stormed to the front with less than two laps remaining of a thrilling 25-lap race.
Farah told BBC Radio 5 Live: "At the end I just didn't have anything left. It's agony. You always want the gold."
Farah, the fastest man in the world over 10,000m this year, kept pace with the leaders throughout and looked comfortable as he kicked for home with around 600 metres left.
Media playback is not supported on this device
But Jeilan slowly clawed back Farah's healthy advantage and overtook the Briton as they entered the home straight to win in a time of 27 minutes 13.81 seconds, with Farah just 0.26secs behind.
Jeilan's fellow Ethiopian Imane Merga claimed the bronze but Kenenisa Bekele, winner of the last four 10,000m titles, dropped out with 10 laps still to go.
Three-time Olympic champion Bekele had been sidelined since January 2010 through injury and never looked likely to challenge for a medal.
Farah had said he would be battling his nerves but showed no signs of anxiety as he cruised into contention. The pace varied during the early stages but he made sure he kept in touch.
It appeared as though Farah had got his tactics spot on as he powered to the front in the closing stages, only for Jeilan to move ahead with 35 metres left.
It was a very deliberate strategy by Farah. He ran a 53-second last lap but had the legs run off him. He will only look at his strategy retrospectively and wonder whether he got it right.
However Farah, who has made huge improvements since moving with his family to Oregon at the start of the year to be coached by Alberto Salazar, could not hide his disappointment
He became only the second British global medal winner over 5,000m following a bronze by Jack Buckner in 1987.
But Farah, who also won Britain's first medal at this year's World Championships, said: "You give it 110% and it's not enough sometimes.
"I thought I'd got it right but it wasn't enough. I'll have a chat with my coach, analyse it and see what happened. It's nice to win a medal but I am disappointed with silver."
And Farah denied he burst for home too early.
"I always wanted to go at 400, 500m," he insisted. "That's my best tactics. I thought I had that speed at the end but he was finishing quicker.
That was a gutsy performance. He left nothing on the line, he did everything, he really did, he didn't quite get away from Jeilan and there was a slight opening of the door. That was agony to watch.
"I thought to myself if I could run 52 or 53 seconds (for the last lap) that would be enough. But it wasn't enough."
"It means a lot winning a major medal. It would have been nicer with a gold but the better man won on the day and fair credit to him.
"I'll see how I go from here, hopefully see what I can do in the 5k."
The heats of the 5,000m are on Thursday, with the final on Sunday.
Farah has been in superb form this season, stunning a top-class field to set a new British and European 10,000m record of 26 minutes 46.57 seconds at the Diamond League meeting in June.
Media playback is not supported on this device | Britain's Mo Farah missed out on 10,000m gold in agonising fashion as he was overtaken by Ethiopia's Ibrahim Jeilan just metres from the line. | 14699428 |
Julian Cole suffered a broken neck outside Elements nightclub in Bedford in May 2013.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has examined the circumstances around the arrest.
It said there may be a case to answer for gross misconduct and has made a referral to prosecutors.
Bedfordshire Police has confirmed four of the officers in question remain on active duty and one has retired from the force.
Live: Follow updates and reaction
Four of them could face a charge relating to their honesty and integrity, and one could face a case of misconduct for use of force, which is not believed to be linked to Julian's spinal injury.
Visiting Julian Cole in his care home was a deeply moving experience.
Since May 2013, his life has changed beyond all recognition. Once an energetic and athletic young man, he's now dependent on nursing staff and his devoted parents for everything.
An Arsenal calendar hangs above his bed - a reminder of his love of football - but he will never be able to enjoy a match, let alone play the game, again.
How exactly he sustained the injuries is unclear - and may never be known with certainty.
But his family has moved a step closer to finding out some of the answers with the conclusion of the IPCC investigation.
It means there's the possibility of a criminal trial and misconduct hearings which, under new rules, will be open to the public.
The case is so serious it needs transparency - that does not now seem such a distant prospect.
The IPCC said it had been a "complex and lengthy investigation involving examination of over 900 documents, interviews with witnesses, a number of medical expert opinions, CCTV trawls and forensic analysis".
The Crown Prosecution Service will now decide whether charges should be brought.
The 23-year-old student's mother, Claudia Cole, told BBC News the announcement was "welcome" but had taken too long.
"It has been the hardest three years waiting for the IPCC investigation to conclude," she said.
"Julian is still alive, but it cannot be said that he is really living." | Criminal charges could be brought against five police officers after a man was paralysed following an incident outside a nightclub. | 37372957 |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.