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34793511 | Yousaf Syed, 20, said he understood the sacrifice of soldiers in two world wars, but today all he could see was Iraq and Afghanistan's destruction.
He blamed Tony Blair for the rise of the self-styled Islamic State (IS).
Mr Syed, of High Wycombe, is one of three men who deny preparing for acts of terrorism.
His cousin Nadir Syed and another man, Haseeb Hamayoon, both of west London, also deny the charge.
Prosecutors say the men had bought knives after being inspired by IS to carry out an attack similar to the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby. They were arrested days before last year's Remembrance Sunday.
The defendants accept they shared graphic and offensive material online but say there was no plan to kill anyone - nor would they wish to.
Giving evidence at Woolwich Crown Court, Mr Syed said he was not a follower of IS and a trip to Turkey in early 2014 had been a cultural holiday, including an opportunity to see the Prophet Muhammad's slippers.
Paul Hynes QC, defending, asked him to explain why he had been filmed laughing with his cousin as they stamped on a Royal British Legion poppy.
"It represents British foreign policy that has destroyed two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.
"It does represent World War One and World War Two and Muslims fought in those wars - but today I see Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The poppy represented British foreign policy at the time of Tony Blair, who at the time was the most hated PM in Britain."
"It represents your hatred of British foreign policy?" asked Mr Hynes.
"That's correct."
Mr Syed said he had "no hard feelings" for soldiers who had died in the world wars.
And then he added: "Iraq specifically, they died in an invasion that should not have happened - the individuals [were] just doing their job.
"The person responsible was Tony Blair. Destroyed the country and created Islamic State."
My Hynes asked Mr Syed what he thought about Lee Rigby's 2013 murder and his client replied that the killers had been theologically ignorant.
He denied that some of his online discussions about the killing had demonstrated sympathy and support for the killers.
The trial continues. | A man accused of preparing a terror act around last year's Remembrance Day has told his trial the poppy represents his hatred of British foreign policy. |
39466488 | At least 10 hospitals across the county have been earmarked for closure, or a reduction in beds or services.
The clinical commissioning group (CCG) overseeing the changes, said its aim was to ensure access to "consistently excellent care".
But angry demonstrators said the cuts would "devastate" services and should not go ahead.
Save Our Hospital Services organisers said April Fools Day was chosen to protest against the plans because the threat was "no joke".
Protests have taken place in Ilfracombe, Torrington, Bideford, Ottery, Sidmouth, Seaton, Barnstaple, Torbay, South Molton and Exeter.
A similar protest took place on Friday in Holsworthy, where overnight services have been temporarily closed due to staff shortages.
The proposals are part of NHS Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group's "Sustainability and Transformation Plan" (STP), which opponents claim will cut more than £500m from health spending in the county.
"The STP will devastate the services we all depend on and must be stopped," protester Di Fuller said.
"At a time of black and red alerts with hospitals across Devon in crisis, only a fool can think about introducing the STP."
Tim Burke, a GP and CCG chair, said while the NHS wholeheartedly supported "open and frank" debate, protesters should not prevent access to hospitals for patients, staff and visitors.
"We understand that people are passionate and rightly proud of the NHS and want to express their views," he said.
Dr Burke said services were under severe financial pressure and to ensure everyone had access to consistently-excellent care - whether from a hospital or community-based services - it was essential the NHS and local communities "work together to identify how best to meet rising demand". | Protesters have formed human "red lines" outside community hospitals in Devon over proposed cuts. |
35244416 | George Smith, 55, punched, kicked and stamped on Steven Larkin, 45, before throttling him at Stravanan Road, Castlemilk, Glasgow, in December 2014.
The High Court in Glasgow heard that Mr Larkin was attacked inside Smith's home then dragged from the flat and killed.
Smith denied murder but was convicted by a majority verdict. He was ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years.
Judge Lord Matthews said the death had brought "anguish" to those close to Mr Larkin.
As the sentence was passed, a large group of Mr Larkin's family and friends in court celebrated by clapping as well as exchanging high-fives.
An earlier hearing was told that the brutal beating Mr Larkin suffered was not life-threatening.
His death came from being strangled with his scarf.
It emerged after the guilty verdict that Smith has a number of previous convictions, including one for violence. | A man has been jailed for life for the murder of a father-of-one who was beaten and strangled with a scarf. |
40372497 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Fourth seed Cilic beat 19-year-old American Stefan Kozlov 6-0 6-4.
"Serving well is they key on grass and I did that really well again today," said the 2012 champion, who is yet to face a break point.
American Querrey, the 2010 winner, beat Jordan Thompson - conqueror of Andy Murray - 7-5 (7-3) 3-6 6-3.
Bulgaria's Grigor Dimitrov, champion in 2014, is already through to the last eight, where he will face Russia's Daniil Medvedev.
The 19-year-old beat Australia's Thanasi Kokkinakis 6-2 6-2.
Spain's Feliciano Lopez saw off Frenchman Jeremy Chardy 6-1 7-6 (7-4) in the remaining second-round contest.
In the doubles quarter-finals, third seeds Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares beat Ryan Harrison and Michael Venus 7-6 (7-1) 4-6 10-6.
Croatia's Cilic, 28, is the highest seed left in the draw after Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Milos Raonic all lost on Tuesday.
"It happens quite often," said the former US Open champion.
"We are playing so many tournaments during the year and it's very rarely that all the top seeds are going through.
"So it's not easy, especially at a tournament like this where there's so many great players, great grass-court players.
"Considering also that it's one of the first weeks on grass, it's always very tricky."
Cilic has looked sharp in his opening two rounds and goes on to face American Donald Young for a place in the semi-finals.
Querrey ended the hopes of lucky loser Thompson, the Australian ranked 90 in the world who stunned five-time champion Murray.
"I don't feel like the win from seven years ago has any effect on how I play today," said Querrey, referring to his tournament win in 2010.
"That was fun to win, but seven years is a long time ago."
Find out how to get into tennis in our special guide.
Kokkinakis, 21, had caused a major upset with his victory over Raonic on day two, but could not back up such a strong performance.
The Australian is ranked 698th following a succession of injuries and on Tuesday became the lowest-ranked player to beat a top-six opponent since 1994.
Medvedev proved much tougher opposition, however, repeating his win over Kokkinakis in the Netherlands last week as he fired down 13 aces.
"I'm happy I managed to show a very solid game, I was serving amazing," said the Russian, ranked 60th.
Roger Federer took another step towards a ninth Halle title and boosted his Wimbledon hopes with victory over Germany's Mischa Zverev.
The Swiss, 35, won 7-6 (7-4) 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals in Germany, and ensure he will be seeded at least fourth for Wimbledon next month.
That means he will avoid meeting Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic or Rafael Nadal before the semi-finals at the All England Club.
Federer will play Germany's Florian Mayer in the last eight in Halle. | Marin Cilic and Sam Querrey ensured there will be three former champions in the quarter-finals with victories on day four of the Aegon Championships. |
34808865 | The chart-topping song has sold more than 600,000 copies, earning it a commendation from the British Phonographic Industry.
Hello sold 34,000 more copies than this week's number two, Justin Bieber's Sorry, and was the most-streamed track with 4.7 million listens.
Elvis Presley's If I Can Dream was the number one album for a second week.
Presley's classic songs, reworked with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, had a better run that its first week with 88,600 combined sales.
It is just short of the 2015 record set by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, who sold 89,110 copies of Chasing Yesterday in March.
Former X Factor winners Little Mix's third album, Get Weird, charted at number two, while Ellie Goulding's third solo album Delirium entered the charts at three.
A re-issue of The Beatles' album 1, which originally spent nine weeks at number one in 2000, also made the top five.
Ed Sheeran set a new record as his album x became the longest reigning in the top 10 for a British artist.
It has been in the chart for 73 consecutive weeks after being released in June 2014.
Adele's long awaited new album 25 is due for release on 20 November. | Adele's comeback single Hello has achieved platinum sales status three weeks after it was released. |
35523068 | Cheryl James was treated in hospital after taking "six-to-eight" painkillers in 1992 after the death of her cousin, her father told the hearing.
Des James viewed it as a cry for help at a tough time for the family.
The family's lawyer said the death of 18-year-old Pte James may not have been self-inflicted.
Pte James, from Denbighshire, was found shot dead at the base in November 1995 - one of four deaths of recruits at Deepcut between 1995 and 2002 amid claims of bullying and abuse.
The army said the bullet wound to her head was self-inflicted, but in 1995 a coroner recorded an open verdict.
Mr James, the first person to testify at the new inquest, granted by the High Court in 2014 as a result of the emergence of new evidence, told the coroner he hoped for a "thorough" investigation into his daughter's death.
"As long as at the end of the inquest I'm able to feel confident everything that could be done has been done, I would be satisfied," he said.
Mr James was involved in sharp exchanges with a barrister representing Surrey Police, during which it emerged his daughter had taken six-to-eight paracetamol while at school following the death of her cousin, Rob, in 1992.
He said: "I guess there was an assumption that it was a cry for help and it became a part of what we were all going through."
Mr James also said he had been unaware until after the first inquest of letters from his daughter saying she had wanted to leave the Army.
The Woking Coroner's Court hearing also heard Pte James had been the victim of an alleged rape by two boys when she was 14.
Who were the Deepcut four? Background to the deaths and timeline of events
Mr James told the inquest he and his wife Doreen were not aware of the alleged rape at the time.
"All my wife knew was she wanted to get the morning-after pill," he said. "The alleged assault was something we found out about a lot later."
Earlier, the family's barrister said there was evidence there might have been a "third-party involvement" in Pte James's death.
Alison Foster QC, acting of behalf of human rights organisation Liberty and representing Pte James's family, said: "Now there is distinguished pathological evidence showing that the shot that killed Cheryl James may not have been self-inflicted.
But John Beggs QC, acting for Surrey Police, dismissed such claims as speculative.
He questioned Mr James's assertion that the police investigation had been cursory.
He said the force had been dealing with a serial rapist and the search for schoolgirl Milly Dowler at the same time as looking again at Cheryl's death in 2002.
And he asked him: "Did it ever occur to you that you yourself may have been distracting Surrey Police?"
Coroner Brian Barker QC intervened, saying he was not happy with the line of questioning.
Earlier in the hearing, Mr Beggs said evidence that Pte James was a "troubled young lady who might have had suicidal thoughts " had "intensified" since Nicholas Blake QC's review of the case.
He said the review, in 2006, had heard Pte James had talked about the death of another recruit, Pte Sean Benton, while on lone guard duty and she had "mentioned shooting herself around this time".
"She had personal problems in her private life to resolve," he said. "There was an absence of any reason why this popular young woman would be subjected to an attack by another."
The inquest is expected to last up to seven weeks and hear evidence from more than 100 people. | A teenage soldier found dead at the Deepcut Army base in Surrey 20 years ago took an overdose three years earlier, an inquest has heard. |
35037115 | Irish police believe Ivan Vaughan, whose stage name was Simon Scott, was swept away by flood water after getting out of his car as he returned from Glaslough on Sunday evening.
The victim was 70 and from Caledon in County Tyrone.
He was found at about 11:25 local time at Corraghdown, Glaslough.
Mr Vaughan's body was found about 10 metres from his car.
Vinny O'Donnell was a lifelong friend of Mr Vaughan.
"He was a good friend of mine and a great entertainer and it's a very, very, very sad loss. especially for his loving family who must be feeling it now just tragically coming up to Christmas," he said.
Mr O'Donnell heard about his friend's death from a fellow musician.
"My first thought was pure and utter shock, I couldn't take it in," he said.
"You try to put in your mind what was going through his head hitting that flood at night, we're never going to know.
"It's just another tragic, very tragic accident and for him to be taken from us in such a way. It's just very hard to take in."
He said that in his heyday, Mr Vaughan was "very debonair and very good looking".
"All the women just adored him but he was a very, very talented singer and performer. His one man shows were brilliant, very professional.
"There will be a lot of fans who will be very sad to hear such tragic news.
"Apart from the music, he'll be remembered as a very warm-hearted, very genuine, very warm, well-manned person. He was a pure gentleman, sadly he's gone."
Irish police said Mr Vaughan's death did not appear to be suspicious.
He had been reported missing earlier on Monday morning.
Mr Vaughan performed with the group the Plattermen in the 1960s and 70s and recently worked as a solo artist. | A former showband singer who died in a flood in County Monaghan has been described by a friend as one of "life's true gentlemen". |
38376729 | The 32-year-old Essex batsman took the role in 2012 and led his country to Ashes victories in 2013 and 2015.
However, during last year's 4-0 Test series defeat in India he admitted to having "questions" over his role.
"Stepping down has been an incredibly hard decision but I know this is the correct decision for me and at the right time for the team," said Cook.
"Playing for England really is a privilege and I hope to carry on as a Test player, making a full contribution and helping the next England captain and the team however I can."
The England and Wales Cricket Board has started the process of selecting Cook's successor, with his fellow batsman Joe Root regarded as the favourite.
Director of cricket Andrew Strauss said the ECB hoped to make an appointment before England depart for a three-match one-day international series in the West Indies on 22 February.
Strauss, who Cook replaced as captain, said his successor was owed "a great debt of gratitude" by his country.
"He's led the team with determination, conviction and a huge amount of pride over the last five years and his record stands for itself," added Strauss.
"He deserves to be seen as one of our country's great captains."
Speculation over Cook's future first arose before the winter tour of India, when he said he was looking forward to a time when he was no longer captain.
Although England gained a creditable draw in the first Test, their performances deteriorated.
In the fourth Test they became only the third side to lose by an innings after making 400 or more batting first, a result that sealed a series defeat and after which Cook said he thought Root was "ready" to lead.
The fifth Test saw the tourists again beaten by an innings after hitting 477 batting first, this time with India piling on 759-7, their highest Test total and the largest made by any side against England.
In the aftermath, former England batsman Geoffrey Boycott called on Cook to step aside, while ex-captain Michael Vaughan said he expected the opener to stand down.
Cook always maintained his future would be decided in a regular post-series debrief with Strauss.
The former team-mates met to discuss the India tour in January, but Cook had already indicated he would like more time to consider his position, with Strauss keen to give his old opening partner ample opportunity to come to a decision.
However, despite being publicly backed to stay on by coach Trevor Bayliss and a number of players, the Essex batsman has opted to quit, informing ECB chairman Colin Graves of his decision on Sunday.
More to follow. | Alastair Cook has resigned as England Test captain after a record 59 matches in charge. |
40211461 | Reading East, which has been held by Tory Rob Wilson since 2005, fell to Labour's Matt Rodda with a 9.8% swing.
In Slough, new MP Tan Dhesi increased Labour's share of the vote by 14.4% and became the UK's first turban-wearing Sikh MP.
Conservative MPs were re-elected in Reading West, Maidenhead, Windsor, Bracknell, Newbury and Wokingham.
In a bruising night for the Tories nationally, the party suffered its most damaging Berkshire loss in Reading East.
Labour's Matt Rodda won that - with a majority of 3,749 - overturning Conservative Rob Wilson's previous 6,520 majority.
Mr Rodda said he was "a bit surprised" by his victory and believes Labour "set a new tone for politics in the south" during the election campaign.
However, in neighbouring Reading West, Conservative Alok Sharma held off the Labour challenge and won with a reduced 2,876 majority.
Slough had been a target seat for the Conservatives but Labour's Tan Dhesi held the seat with an increased 16,998 majority.
When asked by the BBC how he felt to be the first turban-wearing Sikh MP, Mr Dhesi said he was "proud and honoured".
"It is a great honour and privilege to serve the town where I was raised," he added.
Elsewhere, Prime Minister Mrs May retained her Maidenhead seat with a 26,457 majority.
Despite her party's disappointing results elsewhere, she said: "My resolve this morning is the same as it always has been."
In Bracknell, Labour almost doubled its share of the vote. However, Conservative Dr Phillip Lee still prevailed with a 16,016 majority.
Dr Lee said the Conservatives now needed to examine why they were "not appealing to young voters".
Former secretary of state for Wales John Redwood held Wokingham with a 18,798 majority, while Richard Benyon won with a 24,380 majority in Newbury.
In Windsor Adam Afriyie held Windsor for the Tories with a 22,384 majority. | Labour have dented the Conservative dominance in Berkshire. |
36551895 | Everybody says go to Kyoto and stare in awe at the place. Nobody says go to Toyota City and walk about in the rain. Nobody says go to Toyota City full-stop.
Scotland are here though. Ahead of Saturday's opening Test against Japan, they're residing in the heart of this hot, humid, unfailingly friendly and, on Thursday, unceasingly wet industrial city - twinned with Derby - an hour and a half by Bullet train from the delights of Tokyo.
You make your own fun in Toyota City and better than most visitors, probably in modern times, Damien Hoyland did precisely that by playing, and training, his way into Vern Cotter's starting team for Saturday - his second cap for his country but his first start.
Toyota City must have seemed like some kind of trippy combination of the world's greatest cities to Hoyland, a place that he will, all going well, remember fondly until the end of time.
To listen to Hoyland's reaction to getting selected was to be reminded of the power of days like these. He spoke with emotion and pride, he called the whole thing surreal, he said that when he stops to think about what Flower of Scotland is going to be like on Saturday then he almost has to fight the tears.
This was a journey into innocence, a player speaking from the heart. And it was lovely.
Scotland are favourites to win on Saturday. It might be a different story if Japan were picking from a full deck of players, but they're not. Far from it.
Too many of the immortals of Brighton, where they beat South Africa in the World Cup, are not around right now. Too many key players missing in too many key positions.
Japan have had the heart ripped out of the team because of injury and Olympics commitments.
Ayumu Goromaru, the full-back who scored 24 points against the Springboks, is injured, as is Michael Leitch, the wonderful captain. Akihito Yamada, a prolific try-scoring wing in Super Rugby this season, is away with the national sevens team.
Male Sa'u, the centre, is also absent. Luke Thompson, the clever second-row, is not around and neither are Michael Broadhurst, the retired openside, and Fumiaki Tanaka, the brilliant, but injured, scrum-half.
Those seven all started against the South Africans. Two more, Atsushi Hiwasa, the scrum-half, and Shinya Makabe, the lock, came off the bench - and both of them are absent as well.
That's a total of 371 caps that Japan have to do without from what was the greatest day in their rugby history and one of the most remarkable days in the history of the game.
On top of that, they have lost their coaching brains-trust led by the irrepressible Eddie Jones. The Kiwi, Mark Hammett, is on stand-in head coach duty with Japan right now before his countryman, Jamie Joseph, takes the reins after the summer.
You could say that Japan are in transition right now. Scotland aren't exactly averse in getting big results away from home. It would be a surprise if they don't overcome their depleted hosts on Saturday.
Japan's wings, Mifi Poseti Paea and Yasutaka Sasakura, have just one cap apiece, won last week against Canada. Their scrum-half, Kaito Shigeno, also has just a single cap. Their outside centre, Tim Bennetts, has three caps, their second-row, Naohiro Kotaki, has five, and their openside, Shoukei Kin, has only four.
On their bench, they have four more players who have six caps or less. This is all a far cry from the glories of the World Cup, where Japan won three of their four games, the only game they lost coming against Scotland - four, brutally short, days after they beat the Springboks. In the history of the World Cup, Japan, unquestionably, are the unluckiest team not to have made the quarter-finals.
Attempting to hold things together on Saturday are the dangerous centre, Harumichi Tatekawa - Cotter singled him out for praise - backed-up by a fearsome, and experienced, front-row and a second-row featuring the remarkable Hitosho Ono, who'll win his 97th cap on Saturday at the ripe old age of 38.
In the back-row, Japan have Amanaki Mafi, a number eight who caused Scotland all sorts of problems in their World Cup meeting in Gloucester. Mafi put in a tour-de-force that day, scoring a try, running into space and making it look like Japan were about to do to Scotland what they'd previously done to South Africa.
The wheels only came off Japan's challenge when Mafi went off injured early in the second half. Cotter name-checked the number eight as well. The memory of him ripping through the heart of the Scottish defence probably causes him to wince even now.
The Gods have ensured that Japan are not the force of the autumn, but this is their first major Test match on home soil since then, so thunder is guaranteed even in the absence of so many go-to men.
That's the cautionary message from Cotter, a coach who would sooner run naked through the streets of Toyota than under-estimate the team he is plotting against. | Seasoned visitors to Japan clear their throat and begin the long list of 'must-sees', the shrines and temples and gardens that you cannot miss, the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, the Shirasagi-jo castle of Himeji, the wonders of Kinkaku-ji and Fushimi Inari-Taishon of Kyoto. |
37873161 | Counsel general Mick Antoniw said the ruling raised questions of "profound importance" on the legal framework for devolution.
The court ruled on Thursday that MPs must vote on whether the UK can start the Article 50 EU exit process.
It means the government cannot start formal exit negotiations on its own.
The three judges looking at the case found there was no constitutional convention of the royal prerogative - powers used by ministers - being used in legislation relating to the EU.
On Thursday First Minister Carwyn Jones said challenging a High Court ruling that MPs should be consulted over leaving the EU would be a mistake.
But on Friday Mr Antoniw said the High Court ruling on Article 50 and a separate ruling in Northern Ireland both "raise issues of profound importance... in relation to the wider constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom and the legal framework for devolution".
"I intend to make an application to be granted permission to intervene in the proposed appeal before the Supreme Court," he said.
"My intention is to make representations about the specific implications of the government's proposed decision for Wales."
The counsel general said the judgements raise questions about the use of prerogative power to take steps which will or may impact on:
Mr Antoniw acts as the senior legal advisor to the Welsh Government and is Labour AM for Pontypridd.
In the Belfast ruling, a judge ruled there was nothing in the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement to prevent the government triggering Article 50. | The Welsh Government is to apply to have a voice in the proposed Supreme Court appeal against the High Court decision on Brexit, it has announced. |
23447401 | Beauly to Fort Augustus is the first part of the 137-mile (220km) transmission circuit to be electrified.
The 400,000 volt line triples the capacity of the existing system.
Six hundred new towers are being built - a reduction of 200 on the existing number. However, some towers are taller and reach heights of 65m (213ft).
Opponents to the upgrade have complained that the new towers will spoil mountain landscapes.
The project is expected to be completed in 2014 at an estimated cost of £600m.
Meanwhile, SSE has reported a substantial rise in total electricity output from renewable sources, which include conventional hydro electric schemes, onshore and offshore wind farms and dedicated biomass plants.
In an interim management statement, the company said output reached 1,756 gigawatt hours in the three months to 30 June - up from 1,331 gigawatt hours in the same period last year.
SSE said this partly reflected "additional capacity being in operation".
The energy firm also reported a dip in the number of its electricity and gas customers in Great Britain and Ireland, from 9.47 million to 9.46 million.
However, it said it remained on course to deliver a full-year dividend increase above RPI (Retail Prices Index) inflation. | The first section of the revamped Beauly to Denny power line has been switched on two-and-a-half years after the project was given the go-ahead. |
38213705 | The 55-year-old man was knocked down at about 09:50 at an industrial site in Dryden Street.
The man sustained serious injuries and was later pronounced dead at the scene.
A Health and Safety Executive spokeswoman said they were aware of the incident and were liaising with police. | A man has been killed after being hit and crushed by a dumper truck in Edinburgh. |
35004643 | Brian Sandells' body was found after firefighters spent five hours bringing the massive blaze at the Kard Bar, on Cross Street, under control on Tuesday.
Northumbria Police said the 81-year-old's remains had now been identified. A force spokesman said detectives were still probing the cause of the blaze.
Mr Sandells was one of the first traders to stock the cult comic Viz.
He lived in a flat above the card and memorabilia shop.
More than 50 firefighters were at the scene at the height of the blaze and thick smoke caused the closure of Westgate Road, Clayton Road and Cross Street.
The irreverent magazine Viz was founded by Chris Donald, in Newcastle, in 1979.
Mr Donald, who is now a presenter for BBC Newcastle, paid tribute and said Mr Sandells, a former graphic artist, used to give him tips on how to improve the publication.
He said: "Brian had found out about the comic and had seen people reading it and he asked if he could stock it.
"So I had to go and see him and he gave me a bit of a business lecture there and then on what could be improved in the comic.
"It was just on the presentation side of things as he been involved in graphic design when he'd been doing his national service."
He also said Mr Sandells helped get the comic off the ground and promote it.
He added: "He was the first person to ever advertise in Viz - he asked if he could put an advert in the comic.
"I was once going through the attic of the shop with him and he said to me: 'Do you want any of these posters to give away with your comic? Unfortunately I don't have any smaller - they might be a bit big.'
"I said: 'That will make it even funnier Brian if we cut them in half and give them half an Osmond's poster - just their legs.'
"So we did that - guillotined them and put them in the comic." | A body found in the remains of a burnt-out shop in Newcastle city centre has been confirmed as the shop's owner. |
34410356 | Health bosses have proposed relocating services between Telford and Shrewsbury, as well as revamping provision across the county.
But a decision to recommend a location for a new A&E unit has been deferred.
Both Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust and Shropshire's Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) are in debt.
At a meeting on Thursday, it was decided that more work needs to be done around the finances of both groups before a decision can be made, Shropshire CCG said.
In 2013, Peter Herring, the former chief executive of the trust, said it was unrealistic to keep A&E departments at both sites.
Three options were initially proposed to replace the two current A&E units in Telford and Shrewsbury, including building a single emergency centre, at either site, or at a newly built hospital somewhere in the county.
The third option was dropped earlier this year due to expense.
A spokesman for Shropshire CCG said on Thursday: "Work will be carried out developing outline business cases based on both Princess Royal Hospital and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital as the single emergency centre.
"We still have an opportunity to create something that will deliver for several decades to come. We plan to be able to say something further within the next month." | Plans to reorganise hospital services in Shropshire have been put on hold over concerns about the finances of the two NHS groups involved. |
35026246 | The militants' activity is not limited to attacking Western capitals, bombing planes or shooting peaceful citizens.
But when fighting such radical groups, governments may also, intentionally or not, strengthen authoritarian regimes and undermine democratic values.
A vivid example of this is Uzbekistan. This Central Asian nation is considered to be one of the most repressive states in the world.
Independent watchdog organisation Freedom House ranks it in the same category as North Korea - the "worst of the worst" when it comes to political rights and civil liberties.
Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov has warned that IS is approaching the country's borders, raising the threat of "belligerent extremism and religious radicalism" in the region.
According to the estimates of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, about 500 Uzbekistan citizens, from a nation of just under 30 million, have joined militants in Syria and Iraq.
But other than some isolated attacks, the threat IS and other jihadist groups pose for Uzbekistan seems to be very limited. Their ideology does not appeal to almost the entire population of Central Asia, where Islam is very secular, a legacy of the atheistic Soviet past.
Many people know next to nothing about the Sunni-Shia split and this sectarian divide is largely absent there.
The growing number of mosques and increased observance of Islamic rituals are often mistakenly taken as signs of radicalisation.
But as John Heathershaw, associate professor at the University of Exeter, and David Montgomery from the University of Pittsburgh argue in a research paper published by the Chatham House think tank, Islamisation does not mean radicalisation and "there is little or no evidence of significant levels of Islamic extremism and political violence" in Central Asia.
Yet a whole campaign focusing on IS has been launched in Uzbekistan, clearly with permission, or perhaps a direct order, from the president's office.
Muslim clergy and government officials discuss the threat of terrorism and religious extremism on TV talk shows. Films and plays illustrate the evils of jihadism. Community leaders appeal to the youth not to join militant groups like IS.
This is all odd because Uzbekistan's government never acknowledges any problems it faces. "Uzbekistan is the state with a bright future" is its main propaganda slogan, so discussing social problems is a taboo.
Uzbekistan country profile
There are no films or plays depicting poverty in the country. There are no talk shows discussing corruption in state institutions. There are no community leaders who openly talk about the use of forced child labour.
So why did the government launch a whole campaign about IS?
It is simple. The government is creating in people's minds an image of the only possible alternative to the existing regime. After watching a video about IS fighters, one Uzbek citizen told me: "If our president leaves, then these crazy Islamists will come to power in Uzbekistan."
This threat from IS justifies tightened security measures. It allows the state to spy on citizens, make illegal arrests and use torture to crush any dissent. It also discourages citizens from challenging the government's actions.
Uzbek police have been increasingly raiding houses to question residents. In November, rights activists in Uzbekistan reported that more than 200 people had been arrested on suspicion of IS membership.
These arrests are not a new development, says Steve Swerdlow from Human Rights Watch. "There is a well-documented pattern of security services of Uzbekistan arresting largely peaceful independent Muslims and sentencing them to incredibly lengthy jail sentences without any evidence of wrongdoing."
What is new, Mr Swerdlow says, is the name of the group they are accused of belonging to - IS.
Indeed, the phrase "Islamic extremism" has been widely used in Uzbek propaganda before. But none of the organisations that appeared in the news until recently were as savage as IS.
And the bigger the danger in the eyes of the population, the easier it is to control them.
The threat of radical groups is not completely imaginary and some of those who were detained last month may indeed be connected to IS. But since Uzbekistan is so closed and does not allow any independent media or human rights organisations to assess the situation "we are left to make conclusions based on the overwhelming evidence of the past", says Mr Swerdlow.
Population 28.1 million
Area 447,400 sq km (172,700 sq miles)
Major languages Uzbek, Russian, Tajik
Major religion Islam
Life expectancy 66 years (men), 72 years (women)
Currency Uzbek som
However, why would the state arrest so many people under fake charges? It is unlikely that all these people were opposing the government, so they could hardly be dangerous for the regime.
Again, these mass arrests help to create fear. The government is trying to convince its people that those jihadists are posing an imminent threat, that they have reached the country's borders and even infiltrated society.
People may not be happy with their impoverished lives and the repressive state but when they believe that the alternative is IS, they accept the existing order. As a result, they do not protest against illegal arrests, rampant poverty or daily problems such as the absence of heating.
And this is exactly what authoritarian regimes want.
It is important to note that fear can corrupt not just authoritarian states but mature democracies too.
It creates an environment where it seems logical to abandon some democratic principles for the sake of national security. But as history shows, this method only creates more problems than solutions. | There is one serious and not so obvious threat that many countries face when dealing with the so-called Islamic State. |
39219494 | Ezekiel Achejene and Emmanuel Baba were convicted of murdering two of the Apo Six - six young civilians who were shot dead in 2005.
Police initially tried to cover up the deaths, saying the victims were armed robbers who had opened fire first.
But an earlier judicial panel of inquiry rejected that story.
The government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo later apologised on behalf of the police for the killings and paid $20,300 (£16,700) in compensation to each of the families.
However, a trial to determine which individuals were behind the killings was repeatedly delayed.
Three other former officers on trial at the High Court in Abuja, who all denied involvement, were acquitted for lack of evidence while a sixth suspect was never brought to trial.
The judge, Ishaq Bello, said the court had had no option but to convict Achejene and Baba after they had confessed to shooting two of the victims on the order of senior officers.
The two men had tried to retract their confessions during the trial but the court rejected this.
"The two defendants have no regard for the sanctity of human lives," Judge Bello was quoted by AFP news agency as telling the court. "They are not only over-zealous but also extremely reckless."
The case, which was investigated by the BBC in 2009, concerned six young Nigerians from Apo, a satellite settlement of Abuja: Ekene Isaac Mgbe, Ifeanyin Ozor, Chinedu Meniru, Paulinus Ogbonna and Anthony Nwokike, who were all car spare parts dealers, and Augustina Arebu.
They came under fire when they approached a police checkpoint in their car.
Four died on the spot and the other two were taken to a police station alive. The bodies of all six were found together later, along with weapons which the panel heard had been planted by police.
The phrase Apo Six has been trending on Twitter in Nigeria, with some tweeters saying they are pleased that someone has finally been held accountable.
Many Nigerians complain that police officers and the military rarely face justice for alleged abuses against civilians. | Two former policemen in Nigeria have been sentenced to death over the most infamous case of extrajudicial killing in the country's modern history. |
39452635 | Insurance firm Prudential and investment firm Blackstone have teamed up to buy the loans.
The government took on the mortgages of Bradford & Bingley after rescuing the lender in 2008.
UK Asset Resolution (UKAR), which has been handling the sale, says that terms and conditions for the 104,000 loans will not change.
The deal is one of the biggest asset sales by a European government.
"The sale of these Bradford & Bingley assets for £11.8bn marks another major milestone in our plan to get taxpayers' money back following the financial crisis," Chancellor Philip Hammond said in a statement.
"We are determined to return the financial assets we own to the private sector and today's sale is further proof of the confidence investors have in the UK economy."
Bradford & Bingley had been a conservatively-run building society, but in 1999 abandoned its mutual status and moved into riskier areas of lending.
That strategy backfired in 2008 when the UK housing market slumped amid the global financial crisis.
When Bradford & Bingley was rescued that year, its branches and deposit accounts were sold to Spain's Santander, while the government took over responsibility for the mortgages.
UKAR was set-up in 2010 to manage that portfolio of mortgages, as well as loans taken on following the collapse of Northern Rock.
It started with £116bn worth of loans on its books and the latest sale cuts those holdings to £22bn - of that £12.7bn originated from Bradford & Bingley and £9.7bn originally came from Northern Rock.
UKAR says the remaining loans are a mix of performing and non-performing loans. Around half are residential mortgages while the rest are buy-to-let.
A non-performing loan is generally classified as one where the borrower has not made a scheduled payment for more than 90 days.
When you sell a bunch of mortgages, what matters to the buyer is who the borrowers are and whether they are likely to pay their loans back.
All of these former Bradford & Bingley borrowers are buy-to-let investors.
90% are on average interest rates of only 1.75% above Bank of England base rate, which is currently 0.25%.
And, typically, they have managed to invest in more than one property, an average of 1.8 each.
In other words, out of the rubble of what remains of the stricken lender, these are the most solid looking prospects.
What's left in the portfolio which remains with the taxpayer? Some more buy-to-letters and, crucially, 56,000 residential borrowers.
They include many stuck on an interest rate of nearly 5%, thousands in financial difficulty and over a thousand who have been referred for help in dealing with debt.
Offloading these loans is likely to be much more difficult. | The government has sold buy-to-let mortgages belonging to failed lender Bradford & Bingley for £11.8bn. |
39108015 | According to a club statement, Villa's operating loss trebled from £26.6m in 2014-15, while turnover fell from £115.7m to £108.8m.
Villa's average home gates were hardly affected despite such a poor season.
The drop in revenue is attributed to a smaller share of Premier League money.
Villa's average home league attendance in 2015-16 was 33,690, a fall of only 1.33 % on the previous campaign, when they averaged 34,133 at their 42,660-capacity Birmingham home.
But finishing bottom last season, compared to 17th the year before, that meant a smaller share of the pay-out from the Premier League's broadcasting agreements.
The club put £79.6m of the £81m loss down to "exceptional items" including the "impairment of tangible fixed assets and intangible assets".
Intangible assets, which include the value of its players' registrations, dropped by £34.8m.
Tangible assets include property and equipment the club owns.
The impact of Dr Tony Xia's takeover of the club for £76m will not show until the 2016-17 accounts are published next year.
The new Villa owner completed his takeover on 14 June 2016, two months after the Football League and Premier League co-founders' first relegation in 30 years. | Aston Villa have reported an £81m loss for the financial year 2015-16, the season in which they were relegated from the Premier League, prior to Dr Tony Xia's summer takeover. |
36697527 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Around 7,000 fans turned up at Etihad Stadium to hear the 45-year-old speak for the first time as City manager
"That is why I am here. I proved myself in Barcelona and after I proved myself in Germany I wanted to prove myself in England," he said.
"I cannot do that alone. I need the players, the staff. We need our fans. Without that, it is impossible."
The Spaniard joins City after three years at Bayern Munich where he won a hat-trick of Bundesliga titles but failed to reach a Champions League final.
Read more: Ex-Arsenal midfielder Arteta joins Man City coaching staff
However, the former Spain international midfielder did win that tournament twice during his four years as Barcelona boss.
He believes that a strong team spirit will be integral to City's success.
"I like the players who don't just think for themselves but think about Manchester City," said Guardiola.
"We are all the people who are working here. The reason we are here is thinking 'what can we do to make this club a better club'.
"I don't want the guys to think about what the club can do for them. We are here to make Manchester City a better club in the next three, four, five years."
He added: "One of the reasons I decided to come to Manchester City is I know from (sporting director) Txiki Begiristain how good they are working with the young players - 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, they grow and grow and imagine they can join us in the first team."
Midfielder Ilkay Gundogan is certain City can become a great team under the "best manager in the world" in Guardiola.
Gundogan, 25, was Guardiola's first signing as manager, arriving from Borussia Dortmund for £20m.
"No doubt everyone will improve his own talent. It will be a really nice time for us," Gundogan told BBC Sport.
"I have no doubt Pep will form a great team, a competitive team. He was the biggest influence in me coming here.
"The team has a lot of talent, and he's the best manager in the world. It's a really exciting time and we are looking forward to it."
City have won the Premier League twice - in 2012 and 2014 - and last season reached the Champions League semi-finals and won the League Cup, but finished 15 points behind surprise champions Leicester.
Gundogan dislocated his kneecap at the start of May, ruling him out of Germany's Euro 2016 campaign, and he could miss the first month of the season.
"Of course it's not ideal but I have to accept it," added the former Nuremberg player. "Right now the target is end of August or start of September, but it is always difficult to say a special date.
"We have to see the development, but at the moment everything looks really good."
City face Sunderland at home on the first day of the new Premier League season on 13 August.
BBC Sport's Simon Stone at Etihad Stadium
"There are questions for Guardiola as he takes his first tentative steps in England, specifically whether his famed tiki-taka style of passing football can overcome the physical nature of the Premier League.
"But in front of 7,000 enthusiastic fans, this was not a day to ask them.
"And, evidently, he has a way with words. He said: 'I need to know my players. I have to hug them, kick their bottoms (or words to that effect).' The fans lapped it up.
"He even responded to a question yelled from below him about the prospect of signing Lionel Messi - not much apparently.
"It was all good fun, the kind of event City are good at doing. The real work starts on Monday of course, when the training begins.
"Guardiola has the reputation. He has the personality. But in the ultimate results business, he also has to win."
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox. | New Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola says he moved to the Premier League to prove himself in England. |
36008772 | The couple talked to survivors and paid respects at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel to those who died in the 2008 assault.
The royals later took part in a game of cricket with local children.
Day one of the visit ended with the duke and duchess attending a charity fundraising dinner with Bollywood and sporting stars.
Later in the tour they will also visit the Taj Mahal in Agra where in 1992 William's mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, was famously photographed sitting alone.
In pictures: Day one of the royal tour
The gala night, to celebrate India's film industry, attracted Bollywood stars including King Khan, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar and actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
The duchess wore a sapphire blue Jenny Packham gown and matching blue earrings created by Indian jewellery designer Amrapali.
During a speech at the event Prince William said: "When Catherine and I were married, India was the first place on Catherine's list that she told me that she wanted to visit. Two children and five years later, we have finally made it - and we are both honoured to be here."
He said they were "on a journey to get to know the vibrant India of the 21st Century".
Earlier in the day the couple laid a wreath of white lilies at a memorial in the hotel commemorating those who died in 2008.
The duke and duchess, who are travelling without their children, later chatted with hotel staff, including chef Raghu Deora, 41, one of the survivors of the attack.
Kensington Palace said the duke and duchess had been informed on their arrival in Mumbai about the explosion and fire at a Hindu temple in Kerala, and sent their thoughts to all who were assisting the victims.
After some unflattering media coverage, the couple that represent the future of the British monarchy will be hoping that this tour will generate more positive headlines.
Prince William, an air ambulance pilot, has been accused of being "work shy" and "throne idle".
His supporters insist he's the heir-but-one to the throne and he's balancing his flying career with his responsibilities as a senior royal and his desire not to be an absent father.
This visit to India and Bhutan will help to establish if the claim of "work shy" sticks - as "Air Miles Andy" has to his uncle - or whether it is replaced by a more favourable appraisal of what the future king is trying to do.
When he gets to Bhutan, the recently-criticised representative of the Windsor dynasty will meet the king and queen of a fledgling democracy where the monarchy is revered.
Read more from Peter
Their next engagement was to visit Mumbai's Oval Maidan public park where they joined children playing cricket and met charity representatives.
The couple were coached by former Indian cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Dilip Vengsarkar.
Tendulkar later tweeted that he was "bowled over by their humility".
Moving on to New Delhi during the week, the couple will pay their respects to India's founding father Mahatma Gandhi at the location of his 1948 assassination.
Their visit will also see them tour the Kaziranga National Park, famous for its one-horned rhinoceroses, tigers and elephants.
In Bhutan, the duke and duchess will meet the king and queen of the remote Himalayan kingdom.
King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Queen Jetsun Pema both studied in the UK, and have even been compared to the duke and duchess. | The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have heard first-hand about the horrors of the Mumbai attacks, at the start of a seven-day tour of India and Bhutan. |
34674183 | The decision follows the freeing of the country's remaining six political prisoners in August.
The US has also said it will ease sanctions, but urged Belarus "to improve its record with respect to human rights and democracy".
Mr Lukashenko is believed to want closer ties with Western countries.
He is reported to be eager to reduce Russia's leverage as he comes under pressure from Moscow to allow a Russian air base in his country.
Russia wants to establish the base to counter what it sees as Nato's eastward advance, but Belarus argues that such a base will not reduce military and political tensions in the region.
In a statement confirming its decision, the EU said that it was taking account of "the context of improving EU-Belarus relations".
From Saturday it will suspend "for four months the asset freeze and travel ban applying to 170 individuals and the asset freeze applying to three entities in Belarus," the Council of the European Union statement said.
However an arms embargo will remain in force as will sanctions against four members of President Lukashenko's security services who are suspected of orchestrating the disappearances of political opponents.
The move will be reviewed at the end of February and sanctions could be re-imposed if the EU sees a deterioration in human rights, the rule of law and press freedoms.
The US Treasury for its part said that from Saturday it would allow most transactions with nine sanctioned entities in Belarus for the next six months.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the US was taking the step "in light of the positive move by the Belarusian government to release all six of its political prisoners on 22 August".
Mr Kirby said that the move "opens the door to expanded commercial ties" while urging the government of Belarus to do more "to improve its record with respect to human rights and democracy".
Correspondents say that EU officials are eager to promote democracy in countries that neighbour the EU in central and eastern Europe.
President Alexander Lukashenko won his fifth term with a landslide 83.5% of the vote on 12 October.
But observers from the OSCE security body said it fell far short of the country's democratic commitments.
Mr Lukashenko, 61, has governed the former Soviet republic almost unchallenged for 21 years.
Still Europe's last dictator?
Why does President Lukashenko take his son to work?
Belarus country profile
L | The EU is to suspend most of its sanctions against Belarus including an asset freeze and travel ban on President Alexander Lukashenko. |
33715071 | It said bookings for the July-to-September quarter had been affected by last month's attack on a tourist beach on Tunisia.
Worries over Greece's possible exit from the euro had also hit trading.
The company added that the strength of the pound against the euro was also likely to affect earnings.
Thomas Cook said the effect of the attack in Tunisia, when 38 holidaymakers were killed including 30 Britons, would cost it £20m.
It said this included the costs of cancelled trips and repatriating customers to the UK, as well as changing routes to alternative destinations.
The Foreign Office now advises against all but essential travel to Tunisia
"Since the end of the third quarter, our business has been impacted by significant external shocks," said Thomas Cook chief executive Peter Fankhauser.
"In response to the tragic events in Tunisia, we acted swiftly and decisively, evacuating more than 15,000 guests on approximately 60 flights and sending special assistance teams to offer logistical and compassionate support to customers and staff.
"In Greece, our local teams have worked diligently to ensure that economic issues do not disrupt our customers' holidays."
Thomas Cook's comments came as it reported operating profits of £3m for the April-to-June quarter, an improvement from a £42m loss a year earlier.
It also said that, despite the impact of the events in Tunisia and Greece, it expected full-year profits to grow once the impact of currency movements was stripped out.
However, it said the impact of the strengthening of the pound against the euro and the Swedish krona would now be £39m, up from previous estimates of £25m.
Last month, Thomas Cook announced that former Sainsbury's boss Justin King would lead an independent review into the travel company after two children died on one of its holidays.
Christi and Bobby Shepherd died from carbon monoxide poisoning at a hotel in Corfu 2006, and Thomas Cook received fierce criticism over its response to the deaths. | Travel firm Thomas Cook has said its full-year profits will be hit by about £25m because of the impact of recent events in Tunisia and Greece. |
40961603 | Prior to the division of India in 1947, Hindus and Muslims had lived together across the country. But Jinnah described them as two separate nations.
"It is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality," he said.
"Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions."
This "Two Nation Theory", as it came to be known, has become the official Pakistani narrative for the creation of the state and key to how Pakistan defines itself.
Pakistan was perhaps the first country to be formed on the basis not of a common ethnicity or language, but religion. Yet at the same time it is not, and never has been, a theocracy.
This dichotomy is behind much of the debate around Pakistan's national identity and issues such as its treatment of minorities.
Before partition, there was real concern among Muslims living in British India at the prospect of becoming a minority in a Hindu-dominated independent India. About one quarter of the population was Muslim.
Despite the Congress Party's assertions of its secular values, many Muslims were sceptical and feared that the Hindu majority would seek to marginalise them. Jinnah himself was an advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity before becoming disillusioned with the attitude of Congress.
But did, for example, a Malayalam-speaking Sunni Muslim from southern India really have more in common with a Punjabi Shia from the North than with his Hindu neighbour? There existed vast differences in language, culture and religious interpretations between Indian Muslims, even if they were united by a common faith.
Jinnah was not the first to articulate the Two Nation Theory, but with the creation of Pakistan he transformed it into a political reality.
The theory is now taught to all school children in Pakistan. It is why many see independence as liberation from India, as opposed to independence from British colonial rule.
At a tutoring centre in Islamabad, I asked teenagers why Pakistan was created.
"Hindus and Muslims had nothing in common other than the fact that they shared a land," one said. "Their religion, their values, and their culture were all different. So that was why a new country was needed to get their rights."
But when Pakistan was created, more Muslims stayed on in India than left. And then in 1971 Pakistan itself split in two, with the creation of an independent Bangladesh.
"If the Muslims are supposed to be one nation - then how come they are living in three different states?" asks historian and author Ayesha Jalal.
She says the official Pakistani narrative favours teaching ideology over history.
But Atta-ur Rahman, a former head of the Higher Education Commission in Pakistan, points to growing levels of intolerance in India towards Muslims as proof that the Two Nation Theory is correct. He claims Muslims who moved to Pakistan have done "far, far better" in terms of literacy levels and economic opportunities than those who stayed in India.
He rejects the suggestion that the independence of Bangladesh following a bloody civil war undermines the idea all Muslims in the subcontinent could be categorised as "one nation".
"It was political interests which led to the division; it doesn't mean the Two Nation Theory was wrong," he said.
It is clear that the theory is key to Pakistan's national identity. Islam is the principal bond between its ethnically diverse inhabitants. The national language, Urdu, is native to a small minority only.
Read more:
To disavow the theory would be to question the strength of the bond holding Pakistan together.
Yet some ethnic groups in Pakistan feel they are treated differently from others. This is particularly the case for people in the western province of Balochistan, where there has been a long-running nationalist insurgency.
Jehanzeb Jamaldini of the Balochistan National Party, which campaigns for greater autonomy, says it would have been better for Pakistan to have recognised different ethnic groups as "four or five different nations" within a federation.
Instead there is a feeling among many in Pakistan that one ethnic group, Punjabis, dominate the rest of the country.
The Two Nation Theory has also led to debate over whether Pakistan was intended as a secular homeland for Indian Muslims or an Islamic state, and what role religious minorities should play.
Most Hindus left Pakistan at the time of partition but there are about two million who stayed.
Ramesh Vankwani, a Hindu member of parliament, says he believes in the theory, yet he also says Hindus and Muslims living in Pakistan "are one nation - Pakistani".
For Mr Vankwani, Jinnah's statements in the lead up to independence are more important.
Just days before Pakistan was created, Jinnah said: "You are free to go to your temples; you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State."
For Mr Vankwani this is proof that Jinnah wanted equal rights for all and that Pakistan was not just for Muslims.
But others in Pakistan ask what the point of creating a homeland for Muslims was if it wasn't to be an Islamic state?
Historian Ayesha Jalal is clear that Jinnah envisaged Pakistan as a "homeland for India's Muslims", as opposed to an Islamic state.
But she says that his theory has been used by Islamists "as an ideological device" to justify claims for Pakistan to be a theocratic state.
And as a result, she says, "clarity has gone of how a homeland is distinct from a country run by the guardians of the faith".
These nuanced distinctions are lost on many ordinary Pakistanis. I spoke to the father of a university student accused of inciting a mob to beat to death one of their classmates for having committed blasphemy with his allegedly "atheist" views.
Sharafatullah asked me: "We are told Pakistan was created on the basis of the Two Nation Theory. If people are free to be atheists and spread atheist views, then what was the point of creating Pakistan?"
Yet at the same time Islamist parties have never been able to garner significant support in elections.
After Bangladesh was declared independent in 1971, then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the Two Nation Theory "dead".
In Pakistan it certainly is not, but it continues to feed into debates about the country's identity. At the same time in India, Ms Jalal notes that the rise of right-wing Hindu ideology seems to be a surreptitious endorsement of the idea from a country that has long rejected it. | In 1940 in Lahore Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the man who founded Pakistan, gave a seminal speech setting out the need for a separate state for Muslims on the subcontinent. |
35918230 | Simpson, 27, started the season as first choice but 24-year-old Robson has started the past nine games after Simpson injured his ankle in January.
Robson scored two tries on Sunday as Wasps won 34-20 at Newcastle.
"I think Dan's been outstanding," Young told BBC Coventry and Warwickshire.
"I don't think he's grabbed as many headlines as some others this season, but he's been excellent for us."
Robson, an England Saxon international, joined Wasps from Gloucester last summer and has scored five tries since Simpson, who has one full England cap, has been unavailable after damaging his ankle in Champions Cup action against Leinster.
"We haven't got a number one and number two scrum-half, we've got two number ones," added Young.
"One's going to have to hold a chair for a while and the other's going to keep pressure on him. I'm sure that'll ebb and flow throughout the next few seasons."
Wasps have won eight of their past nine Premiership games, including three in succession, and sit in third place, one point behind Exeter Chiefs.
They are also seven clear of Northampton Saints, who they play at home on Sunday, in the final play-off place.
"It's a nice place to be," Young said. "We're well in contention to finish in the top six - we'd have to have a disaster for us not to there now. The top four is there as well for us to have a crack at.
"Northampton is a real shoot-out for us - we're in a great position." | Wasps director of rugby Dai Young says he is looking forward to seeing how the battle between the club's two senior scrum-halves, Dan Robson and Joe Simpson, develops in the future. |
30225186 | The pair, aged 20 and 21 who have not been named yet, are thought to have made that error and snorted the drug.
Sold as a "white powder", the drug has traditionally come from south-east Asia and sold in places like Australia.
"It's a really difficult job for someone who's new or naive to opiates to pick [between] heroin and cocaine.
"The main risk with white heroin is people who are naive users is that it's a light, white-coloured powder," says Prof John Fitzgerald, of the University of Melbourne.
He has studied the illegal drug trade in Australia for many years.
"It can be confused with other white and light-coloured powders."
He adds: "For people who don't usually use strong psychoactive drugs, the general advice would be that if you're in an unfamiliar place, don't do it."
Get help and information about drugs at BBC Advice.
He says that even those selling the drug may not always be completely sure what substance they are dealing in.
"It's very possible that you get people who are dealing in quantities or purities that they haven't dealt with before and that accidents happen," Prof Fitzgerald.
Rob van de Veen, a police spokesman in Amsterdam, says white heroin is "much more expensive" than cocaine, but the dealer "sold it for the same price [as cocaine] several times".
"We think he doesn't know what he is selling," he says.
He says that in the past different types of heroin ended up in different markets.
While white heroin tends to be produced in south-east Asia and sold in the southern hemisphere, brown heroin originates in places like Afghanistan and typically makes its way to Europe.
"It's much easier with brown heroin [to tell the difference] because it certainly looks brown and cocaine doesn't come in a brown form," says Prof Fitzgerald.
In recent years however, brown heroin has become more prevalent in Australia and according to Prof Fitzgerald, it is difficult to know whether more white heroin will come to Europe.
"The drug market is inherently unpredictable," he says.
"Whilst there's been a sharp distinction between the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere over decades... I wouldn't be surprised if you start seeing a different mix of the different forms of heroin that are available."
Because white heroin tends to be more soluble in water than brown heroin, users tend to inject the drug.
Prof Fitzgerald points out that this method of taking drugs, comes with increased risks of certain side effects and problems.
"When you inject a drug you increase the risk of hepatitis and HIV transmission," he says. "That is an additional risk to injecting heroin, especially white heroin."
According to the drug advice service Talk To Frank, taking heroin can lead to comas and death. Injecting drugs can cause damage to veins and arteries and cause infections.
The service also says that people have died of cocaine overdoses and that the drug can cause cardiac problems, including heart attacks. It is also linked to depression and mental health problems.
In the UK both cocaine and heroin are a class A drugs, which means possession can result in up to seven years in prison and an unlimited fine.
The police have yet to release the names of the two men who died on Tuesday.
The Foreign Office says it's providing assistance to family members.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube | Typically purer than brown heroin and easily mistaken for cocaine, white heroin caused the death of two young British men in Amsterdam this week. |
33825669 | The billionaire businessman has dominated headlines since descending on an escalator in Trump Tower, New York, to announce his candidacy in June.
Thursday's debate offered his rivals a chance to close the gap on the outspoken populist - but would they seize the opportunity?
First they were forced to stand around looking awkward while the Fox News presenters waited for the green light.
Once the beauty pageant was over, it was presenter Megyn Kelly who took aim at Mr Trump, asking him about derogatory comments he's made in the past about women.
Mr Trump was having none of it though, insisting he'd only taken issue with one woman - liberal actress Rosie O'Donnell - before rallying against political correctness. The crowd loved it.
Ms O'Donnell, presumably watching at home, was less enthused.
Each of the candidates eventually got a chance to speak, although some of them took a less obvious line than others - like neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Jeb Bush, the early frontrunner who has slipped behind Mr Trump in recent polls, was eager to point out he was more than just another Bush. Unfortunately, he chose slightly ambiguous language.
The audience were still scratching their heads when Ted Cruz popped up to say what America really needed was its own version of Egyptian strongman Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, which struck some as a bit odd.
Mr Trump then reappeared to clarify his relationship with Democrat rival Hillary Clinton. Sure, he'd spoken to her husband on the phone and given money to her in the past, he told the audience, but he had an explanation.
Around this point, a few of the candidates were finding it hard to get a word in. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker looked a little lost and Ben Carson seemed to have disappeared.
Chris Christie and Rand Paul, however, were determined to be heard and went into battle against each other over mass surveillance and fighting terrorism. It got pretty personal pretty quickly.
While the others caught their breath, Mr Trump returned to talk about building a wall along America's border with Mexico to tackle illegal immigrants.
This is a favoured topic for the businessman but it was the first time he'd mentioned including "a big beautiful door" on the wall to let legal immigrants through.
Earlier in the night, Rick Perry had been forced to deny saying "Ronald Raven" in the second-tier Republican debate - sending Twitter's meme-makers into meltdown.
So, did anyone manage to deliver a fatal blow? We'll have to wait for the next round of polls to find out.
Meanwhile, in the blue corner... | A total of 10 candidates made the cut for the first televised Republican debate in the 2016 presidential race - but the focus was always going to be on frontrunner Donald Trump. |
40973692 | The exams regulator said an increase in 15-year-olds sitting exams early was mainly to blame.
The A* to C pass rate fell to 62.8% after it had remained stable at 66.6% for three years.
The percentage of the highest A* to A grades also dipped to 17.9%, down from 19.4% in 2016.
Qualifications Wales had warned that an increase in early entries in some subjects was likely to mean lower results.
The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which collates exam data for Wales, England and Northern Ireland, said changes in entry patterns - particularly for 15-year-olds - and the high proportion of pupils who took the two new mathematics GCSEs early in November, had a substantial impact on the results.
It said more students had "banked" a result and not returned to sit the exam again this summer - many whom have achieved a Grade C or above that would otherwise appear in these latest results.
As a consequence, it warned that reliable conclusions could not be drawn from direct comparisons between results this summer and the previous one, or between summer results across the UK.
Education Secretary Kirsty Williams said Wales has seen "some of the biggest changes in qualifications in decades" which had been "really challenging for pupils and teachers".
She said this was reflected in this year's overall GCSE A* to C grade pass rate.
Ms Williams said she was "concerned" about the high number of pupils being entered early for their exams and that the current situation was "unsustainable".
"We have signalled to schools that early entry should only be considered if it is in the interest of individual children, but what we've seen is entire cohorts of children being entered," she said.
Ms Williams added the "perverse incentives" that drive some schools to enter children early "should be taken out of the system".
The overall A* to G pass rate was also down from 98.7% to 96.9%, but the percentage of the highest A* grades remained at 6.1%.
While the fall in grades has been linked to the increase in 15-year-olds sitting exams early, the performance of 16-year-olds also fell by 2.8% for A* to C grades.
This summer's 16-year-olds were the first to complete courses in six reformed GCSE examinations.
But Qualifications Wales said their performance in these exams had either improved or remained stable.
While Welsh pupils were still graded A* to G, students in England received new numerical grades for some subjects.
The new GCSEs are in English language, English literature, Welsh language, Welsh literature, mathematics: numeracy and mathematics, and the regulator said it was confident standards had been maintained.
Mathematics: numeracy was first examined in November and, by collating data for the two mathematics GCSEs from November and this summer, the A* to C pass rate for 16-year-olds was 60% in GCSE mathematics and 58.5% in mathematics: numeracy.
The A* to C pass rate for GCSE mathematics was down on the previous year's figure of 65.6%.
In English language, the JCQ said the lower overall results for English language were explained by the lower outcomes of the large number of 15-year-olds entered for the exam.
About 65% of all Year 10 students were entered for the exam this summer, but the results for 16-year-olds saw an improvement according to the exams board.
There was also an increase in early entries for GCSE Welsh language and results have remained stable for 16-year-olds. Welsh literature saw a small improvement in performance but a substantial fall in entries.
There was also a substantial 44% fall in entries for English literature, but an improvement in results.
The fall in the number of students taking modern languages continued, with a 10.9% drop in entries for French and a 30.8% reduction in German, while Spanish saw a small increase.
The JCQ said French results were considerably lower at the top grades, while German results were up.
It also highlighted a trend towards reduced entries in a range of "optional" subjects.
Meanwhile, girls continued to outperform boys with 67.2% of girls' grades at A* to C compared with 58.2% for boys.
The gap grew this year for the A* grade, with an increase in the percentage of the highest grade for girls to 7.5% while the figure for boys was 4.7%.
Speaking at Cefn Saeson school in Neath, Kirsty Williams said: "We can be proud of the way our pupils and teachers have handled the introduction of these new qualifications that are playing a vital role in raising standards."
Ms Williams also pointed out that for 16-year-olds only, the percentage achieving A* to C was 66.8%.
But she said: "Many of these pupils, who are taking exams before they have completed their two years of GCSE study, have not had the opportunity to reach their full potential.
"This is putting unnecessary pressure on pupils, teachers and also puts an extra strain on school budgets.
"I will respond to Qualifications Wales' rapid review of this issue when I receive it in October, but the current situation is unsustainable and all options are on the table."
Darren Millar AM, the Welsh Conservatives' shadow education secretary, said there had been a "troubling decline" in attainment.
He also called on Ms Williams to rethink her reform of the schools curriculum.
"The drop in attainment of grades A* to C and plummet in uptake of modern foreign languages are particularly disturbing, and do not bode well for Wales' future economic prospects," Mr Millar said.
Plaid Cymru's shadow cabinet secretary for education, Llyr Gruffydd, said: "We know that the new system will take some time to bed down and this will show in the results.
"The Welsh Government now needs to consider these results and what they mean for students who are sitting GCSEs next year and the year after."
There were a total of 334,100 entries for the exams, up from 303,620 last summer.
Emyr George, from Qualifications Wales, said the increase in exam entries was mainly driven by the extra maths GCSE and the increase in Year 10 entries in some subjects.
He said there had been an increase of about 40% in Year 10s awarded grades this summer.
It appears to be the main reason why the overall number of entries for English language this summer is about 24,000 higher than last year at 59,050.
In England, English and maths will be graded numerically this year for the first time from nine at the top end of the scale down to one.
The changes make it more difficult to compare the overall performance of pupils in different parts of the UK.
Scotland has a separate system while Northern Ireland is also keeping the A* to G grading, although some pupils have been taking numerically graded exams.
But the exams boards have published all-UK data which gives cumulative figures for those who achieved A* to C (4 to 9 in England) and A*to A (7 to 9 in England).
It shows that the overall pass rate is stable compared to last year at 98.4%, with slight decreases in the A* to A (20% down from 20.5%) and A* to C (66.3% down from 66.9%).
The regulator says the qualifications remain broadly equivalent across the nations.
Mr George said: "It's quite a significant year and one we've been preparing for to ensure that those students taking the new qualifications in Wales this year can be confident that they've not been unfairly disadvantaged in any way by being the first to tackle those qualifications." | The GCSE A* to C pass rate in Wales has fallen to its lowest level since 2006, after some of the biggest changes in decades to the exams system. |
38241365 | The four-member band, who were aged between 19 and 27, died on 13 February following a gig in Sweden.
Their car crashed into a raised section of a bridge and plummeted into a canal.
Addressing the deceased men's families, Cheshire Coroner Nicholas Rheinberg described the crash as "the most awful tragedy".
He ruled that manager Craig Tarry, 32, and band members River Reeves, Jack Dakin, Kris Leonard - all aged 19 - died due to head injuries.
Bass guitarist Tomas Lowe, 27, died due to drowning, the inquest in their Warrington hometown found.
Mr Rheinberg said: "It's not for me to speculate... I don't think it ever will be known what happened."
He added that "the evidence did not reveal the cause of sequence of events" that led to their deaths.
The inquest heard no alcohol or drugs was found in the blood of Mr Tarry, who was driving the band to the airport hotel where they were staying.
Post-mortem examinations also showed the four band members had not taken drugs and had only consumed small amounts of alcohol.
The group's agent Graham Bennett told Warrington Coroner's Court that the up-and-coming band were in Sweden for the Where's The Music? festival showcasing young artists.
Viola Beach had already played at the Reading and Leeds festivals last year and the event in Norrköping was their first gig outside the UK.
After the performance, they were travelling in a black Nissan Qashqai near the Södertälje Canal, about 18 miles from Stockholm, when a bridge was raised to let a boat pass underneath.
The inquest heard that the car was slightly over the speed limit as it was travelling at 108km/h (67mph) in a 100km/h zone.
Flashing lights signalled that the bridge was about to be raised with the middle section of the road lifted horizontally, the inquest heard.
Mr Tarry drove down a verge past stationary queuing traffic, clipping the wing mirror of a taxi, and through the first set of barriers - about 120m from the bridge - the court heard.
The car then travelled in a "controlled manner" at between 70 and 90km/h (43 and 55mph) down the centre of the road.
It continued through a second set of barriers - 30m from the drop into the canal - and hit the underside of the raised section of the bridge before plummeting 25m, hitting the water within 15 seconds.
The vehicle turned in flight - the back of the car hitting the water at 54mph before sinking eight metres to the bottom of the canal.
A tanker using the canal, which had requested the bridge to be lifted, then passed over the crash spot and "contact" with the car could not be ruled out, the court heard.
The crew of a passing boat saw the car fall but initially thought it was ice.
The alarm was raised when police were informed of car parts and damaged barriers on the road. They then realised a car had gone into the canal.
The court heard that the three band members who were sitting in the back of the car were not wearing seat-belts and were thrown from the car.
Mr Tarry and Mr Leonard, who were seat-belted in the front, had to be cut from the vehicle.
Technical examinations did not find any errors with the car, barrier system or the procedure for raising the bridge.
One warning light on the bridge was out of order but there were at least 10 warning lights and flashing signals, the inquest heard.
Although the road was wet, it was not frozen with ice.
Mr Rheinberg said there were "frustrating missing gaps" and that he was not able to demand information from Swedish authorities as he could from British organisations.
Supt Martin Cleworth, from Cheshire Police, said outside the Warrington court: "We don't know the final answer... in terms of what actually happened at those moments just prior to the final collision and tragic descent into the water."
"We have given a commitment to continue to work with the coroner and the families to try and seek to understand some other issues that came from the inquest.
"Those questions are unlikely to actually ever get to that fundamental fact as to what went on in the seconds leading to the tragic collision."
Speaking on behalf of the deceased men's families, he added: "The families of River, Tom, Jack, Kris and Craig wish to thank everybody for their kind support at this heartbreaking time and the support they have shown over the last 10 months."
The Swedish authorities have recommended improvements to the crossing, including LED signs and cameras on the bridge.
More than 20 relatives of the deceased men attended Wednesday's inquest.
In the wake of their deaths, the band's first single Swings & Waterslides reached number 11, while their song Boys That Sing was performed by Coldplay in a tribute at Glastonbury.
Posthumously, Viola Beach scored a number one album in August.
The self-titled debut was compiled by the band's families, using live sessions and studio recordings, many of which were originally bound for an EP.
After the crash, a statement from the families of the band said: "We are tremendously proud of everything the boys achieved in such a short space of time.
"Craig, Jack, Kris, River and Tom shared a huge passion, talent and dedication to music." | A coroner has said he does not think it will "ever be known" what caused the crash that killed the British group Viola Beach and their manager. |
38459747 | The 31-year-old is set to reach the milestone in Friday's League One trip to Rochdale.
"I've been very lucky and very blessed to have played football," said Sadler.
"I don't for any second take it for granted when I step on a football pitch. I enjoy it so much and will look to the next 100 to 200 games."
Sadler started his career as a trainee at Birmingham City, the club he supported as a boy.
He made 61 appearances, as well as being loaned to Northampton Town, before a £750,000 move to then Championship side Watford in 2008.
After a three-and-a-half-year stint at Vicarage Road, including half a season at Stockport, then a season-long loan with Shrewsbury in his first stay in Shropshire, he moved on again to Walsall in June 2011.
He then made moves to Crawley (twice - the second time on loan), Rotherham and Oldham (loan) before returning to Shrewsbury in May 2015.
"I hold Shrewsbury in real high regard," he told BBC Radio Shropshire. "I love every time I play for Shrewsbury, it's a good club. I love playing here." | Shrewsbury Town defender Mat Sadler says he still takes nothing for granted as he celebrates the 400th appearance of his nine-club professional career. |
39616598 | Matthew Rothery was found at an address in Woodborough Road, Mapperley Park, at about 01:00 BST on Friday.
He was taken to the city's Queen's Medical Centre, but died shortly afterwards.
Nottinghamshire Police has launched a murder investigation and said detectives are continuing to follow up "several lines of inquiry".
Police previously said they believe the incident was "not a random attack". | An 18-year-old man who died following a "serious assault" at a property in Nottingham has been named by police. |
20394242 | Note: Locations of areas hit are based on BBC News reports to 20 Nov
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for an immediate ceasefire.
Israel's offensive began with the killing of Ahmed Jabari, the leader of Hamas's military wing, on 14 November. His assassination followed months of cross-border violence and mounting tensions.
Negotiations to find a peaceful settlement in the region broke down in 2010. Indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ended in January without progress. There have been no direct talks between Israel and Hamas.
Israel is mobilising up to 75,000 army reservists - but Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi has said an Israeli ground invasion would have "serious repercussions".
As of midday on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that militants in Gaza had fired more than 1,400 rockets towards Israel. More than 307 have been intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system (see below).
Israel had launched over 1,500 strikes on the Gaza strip, the IDF added.
Rockets from Gaza have landed as far north in Israel as Tel Aviv, the first time in decades that the city - a major population centre - has come under rocket fire. Rockets have also been fired towards Jerusalem.
It is the first time militants in Gaza have deployed the medium-range Iranian-built Fajr-5 missiles.
Israel has a new missile defence system, called the Iron Dome. Batteries have been deployed in five locations and according to the Israeli army has been very successful at intercepting rockets.
The system uses radar to track incoming rockets and then fires two interceptor missiles to knock them out.
1. Enemy fires rocket or artillery shell
2. Projectile tracked by radar. Data relayed to management and control unit
3. Data analysed and target co-ordinates sent to the missile firing unit
4. Missile is fired at enemy projectile
Each interceptor missile costs about $60,000.
The shield's makers say the radar technology can differentiate between missiles likely to hit built-up areas and those likely to miss their target. Only those heading for cities are targeted and shot down. | The Israeli military and Palestinian militants in Gaza are trading fire with air strikes and rocket attacks amid the latest eruption of violence. |
32080182 | The Supreme Court announced that it was ordering the release of a tranche of letters sent by the Prince of Wales to government ministers when he was lobbying for particular causes.
The release of the so-called "black spider memos" is the culmination of 10 years of legal chiselling by Rob Evans, a reporter at the Guardian newspaper, who sought them under the Freedom of Information Act.
Indeed, in getting to the documents - which got their nickname from Prince Charles's distinctive style of handwritin -, Mr Evans has carved "a very sizeable hole" in the legislation, to use the words of one rather annoyed senior mandarin.
When the FoI Act came into force in January 2005, ministers were worried that there was a risk of public disclosure of documents which, in the view of officials, need to be kept confidential.
That is because, for the most part, final decisions about what should be released were put into the hands of a combination of the Information Commissioner, who regulates the act, independent tribunals and conventional courts.
That created a risk, in the civil service view, that outsiders lacking government experience could open up access to documents that ought to be kept secret. So the drafters introduced a ministerial veto.
This provision in the Act gave the Cabinet the right to simply kill requests, even if a court has ordered that the request be filled. It was used, for example, to block requests for documents from the lead up to the Iraq War and relating to the recent English NHS reforms.
It was used on the Prince Charles letters, too. The Evans judgment, however, has bulldozed the veto. That clause in the Act, the judges have ruled, is a very problematic legal idea and contravenes older, grander principles of public law.
Adam Chapman, head of public law at Kingsley Napley and a former senior government lawyer, said: "The court clearly, very strongly didn't like the prospect of a government minister overruling a decision of a court, which is the effect of the veto in this circumstance."
He continued: "It regards that as clashing with two constitutional principles, and something unique in English law."
So the judges came out against the veto. This feels like something of a moment: the Supreme Court has flexed its muscles and won.
This will have immediate effects. A veto was used to keep information on the HS2 high-speed rail link a secret. A court case on that has been stayed while the judge waited for the Evans verdict. I expect activists will rerequest the Iraq war documents, too.
According to the Supreme Court, it might be possible to reintroduce the veto if the Act were to be clearer about when it could and could not be used.
Mr Chapman said that the judges' problem with the veto was that "the provision in the FoI Act was not explicit enough".
David Cameron, implied he might do that. He said: "If the legislation does not make Parliament's intentions for the veto clear enough, then we will need to make it clearer."
Indeed, one senior civil service lawyer told me that any such clarification might be used as an opportunity to make it easier for officials to refuse requests on other grounds.
In their words, they might try to "sort out a few other things while the patient is on the table". That would almost certainly mean that requests would need to be smaller and less complicated.
The Supreme Court decision has certainly alarmed senior civil servants, who see it as the latest in a string of incursions by judges into transparency law.
Many senior officials in Whitehall are already openly hostile to the Act. The Cabinet Office, in particular, is openly opposed to it. It routinely refuses to comply with the law and its officials offer advice to other departments on how to follow suit.
As if that were not enough grand ramifications for one arcane judicial decision, the documents will open up the issue of Prince Charles's role.
It is worth being clear about what the judges have ordered should be released. An earlier ruling from 2012 set out that Mr Evans should only get so-called "advocacy correspondence". That is to say, when the Prince was not just expressing a view, but advocating specific policies.
This is because, the judges ruled, it will "be likely to concern matters which affect either or both of public policy and the public purse".
The judges continued that they did not want the disclosure of "purely social or personal correspondence" nor "correspondence within the established constitutional convention that the heir to the throne is to be instructed in the business of government".
The documents could have some fairly important examples of lobbying in them. Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, said the documents might mean "he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne". Keep an eye on that.
There will, however, be no further releases. Since the Evans case started, the Prince's correspondence - all of it - has since been granted exemption from the Act.
That's why it matters so much. Not only has Rob Evans punched a hole in the ability of officials to keep public data from the public, he may be about to give us one of the few unguarded sights we will get of the man who might one day be our King. | A landmark legal decision has opened up questions about ministers' rights to keep official secrets and the nature of modern monarchy. |
39844335 | Paramedics found the 17-year-old when they were called to High Street, Walthamstow, shortly after 23:30 BST on Sunday.
He was taken to hospital but died. He is the ninth teenager to be fatally stabbed or shot in London this year.
The Met Police said the victim was walking along the road with friends when they were approached by two men on bikes at the junction of Buxton Road.
The teenager was stabbed during an altercation.
Det Ch Insp Matt Bonner added: "At this stage we are investigating whether the two suspects left the area on bicycles. If you were in the area last night and saw anything that may help us, or you have information that will assist, please get in touch."
Officers are awaiting formal identification, but next of kin have been informed. No arrests have been made.
The victim was the sixth teenager to have died this year from stab wounds, while the other three teenagers were shot.
BBC Home Affairs Correspondent Danny Shaw said there had been 29 fatal stabbings in London this year, including the six teenagers, compared to 23 by this time in 2016.
The latest victim was the second to be fatally stabbed in the city in 48 hours, with the incident coming after the death of a 23-year-old man, who was found unconscious by police in Waterloo Road, Uxbridge, west London, early on Saturday.
Last week, the Met Police launched the latest phase in its campaign to crack down on knife crime.
During the week, 393 arrests were made as part of Operation Sceptre, including 73 for possession of an offensive weapon/knife and 144 stop and search arrests.
The Met Police said the taskforce had been created to tackle an increase in knife crime across London, with about 100 officers deployed to knife crime hotspots.
According to official statistics released last month, knife crime in London increased by 24% in the year up to April, with 12,074 recorded offences.
Knife crime that resulted in an injury also increased, with a rise of 21% to 4,415 recorded incidents.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, said carrying knives on London's streets would not be tolerated.
He said: "My message today is clear: if you carry a knife in London, we will catch you and arrest you." | A teenager has died after he was stabbed in north-east London. |
37726572 | Speaking at a summit in Brussels, she said she felt it could be achieved, despite the continuing deadlock over a landmark EU-Canada trade deal .
Mrs May said she had played an active role in discussions and was not "backwards in coming forwards".
It is her first EU summit since she became PM following the Brexit vote.
At a news conference before meeting European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for a working lunch, Mrs May said Britain would be "a confident, outward-looking country".
She said she aimed to "cement Britain as a close partner of the EU once we have left", with the country able to control its immigration but trade freely with the EU. She said she would seek a "mature co-operative relationship" with the EU.
Analysis by Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
Theresa May is certainly no stranger to getting things done in Brussels.
And she is rarely, if ever, underprepared, arriving into each meeting clutching her folder with carefully colour-coded and prepared sections.
But can anything have really prepared the prime minister for this summit? She came here promising a "smooth Brexit" but it has been a bumpy affair.
There's been anger in some quarters at her insistence that the UK must still be fully included despite the fact we're leaving. And blunt warnings from other leaders that the negotiations will be very hard going.
The prime minister will hardly be surprised, and she is hardly a delicate flower. As she made clear in the last 24 hours she has "not been backwards at coming forwards". And this was never going to be the summit where any details were discussed or any real progress was made.
But it's abundantly clear now that not only will the process of leaving be difficult, but also that Britain's wishes are simply not a priority in the long drab corridors of the EU Council. Read Laura's full blog
"I recognise the scale of the challenge ahead. I am sure there will be difficult moments - it will require some give and take.
"But I firmly believe that if we approach this in a constructive spirit, as I am, then we can deliver a smooth departure and build a powerful new relationship that works both for the UK and for the countries of the EU, looking for opportunities, not problems."
Asked whether the difficulties over Ceta - an EU-Canada trade deal that has stalled because one Belgian region has objected - might affect a UK post-Brexit deal, Mrs May said she was "not looking to adopt a model that another country has" but was seeking a new relationship with the European Union.
"Obviously we have got negotiations ahead... those negotiations will take time, as I say, there will be some difficult moments, it will need some give and take but I'm optimistic that we can achieve a deal that is right for the UK because I actually think the deal that is right for the UK will also be right for the European Union."
But the TUC said the deadlock over Ceta should be a "wake-up call" to ministers.
"Britain will need a trade deal with the EU after Brexit, and it mustn't follow the failed Canadian model," said the union body's general secretary Frances O'Grady.
"We need a new approach to trade that creates good jobs and protects public services and workers' rights. Not one that just prioritises the needs of big business."
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron accused the prime minister of a "haphazard" approach to Brexit in her own cabinet.
"Instead of putting the views of a minority of hardline Tory Brexiteers first, our prime minister should be doing what's right for the British people," he said.
"This means remaining in the single market, maintaining cross-border security and ensuring that Brexit leaves nobody worse off."
Meanwhile the man seen as front-runner to replace French President Francois Hollande, Alain Juppe, has said he would revoke a treaty that allows UK border officials to check passports in Calais - known as Le Touquet - should he be elected president next year.
The former French PM blamed the 2003 agreement for the creation of the "Jungle" encampment and said: "We cannot accept making the selection on French territory of people that Britain does or doesn't want. It's up to Britain to do that job."
He added: "A debate must be opened and a new accord obtained with Britain."
And one of the EU's three main Brexit negotiators, Michel Barnier, has been forced to deny claims that he wanted the talks to be conducted largely in French, saying the "linguistic regime" would be decided at the start of official negotiations.
"Never expressed myself on negotiation language," he tweeted. "Work as often in English as French."
Formal exit negotiations will not begin until Mrs May triggers Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, something she has said will be done by the end of March 2017.
This means Brexit, backed in a UK-wide referendum in June, is likely to take effect by the summer of 2019. | Theresa May has predicted "difficult moments" ahead in Brexit negotiations but said she is optimistic she can get a deal "that is right for the UK". |
38557946 | Chamseddine al-Sandi is described as the "mastermind" behind the attack in documents obtained by Panorama.
He is named in confessions from suspects who were arrested in connection with the shootings.
Seifeddine Rezgui opened fire on the beach and in the Imperial Hotel near Sousse in June 2015.
Rezgui was killed at the scene, but the documents obtained by Panorama say that he was recruited and directed by al-Sandi.
The confessions say al-Sandi ran a militant cell responsible for both the Sousse shootings and the attack three months earlier at the Bardo National Museum in which 22 people died. Both attacks were claimed by the so-called Islamic State.
The documents show how closely Rezgui worked with the Bardo gang - describing how he met with them in cafes and mosques in Tunis and how he trained alongside one of the Bardo gunmen in an IS camp in Libya.
According to the confessions, al-Sandi recruited the attackers, paid for them to go to Libya for training and gave them their orders.
Al-Sandi is now believed to be on the run in Libya. The Tunisian authorities have issued warrants for his arrest in connection with both the Bardo and Sousse attacks, but the documents obtained by Panorama reveal the extent of his alleged involvement for the first time.
Of the 38 people who were killed in Sousse in June 2015, 30 were British, three were from Ireland, two were German, one was from Russia, one was Belgian and one was from Portugal.
The inquests into the deaths of the British tourists starts next week. But the lawyer representing many of the families told Panorama that he was unaware of al-Sandi's involvement and had not seen his picture before.
"I have not seen that," said Demetrius Danas. "If you are right, and the families see that, they will be shocked to see the face of the man who caused them so much sadness."
Tunisia attack: The British victims
What we know about the attack
Terror on the beach
Some of the families who were caught up in the Sousse attack have told Panorama that they were assured by tour operator Thomson that it was safe to travel to Tunisia.
Nicki Duffield said she rang Thomson repeatedly to check on the security situation after hearing about the Bardo museum attack.
"I was just constantly asking: 'Are we going to be safe, can you guarantee we are going to be safe?'" she said. "We were definitely told that there would be increased security."
Alison Caine also called Thomson because she was worried about going to Tunisia.
She said: "We called them after Bardo to make sure that it was still safe to travel and they reassured us it was and security had been stepped up. But I just wanted to make sure again the following month so we called them again just to double-check."
Ms Caine said she felt reassured by Thomson: "Everything was fine, it was safe to travel. They were not doing any refunds or transfers."
The families say they were told by the tour operator that if they cancelled they wouldn't get their money back.
TUI, the travel company that owns Thomson, said it wants to understand the specific circumstances that led to the killings.
"We are cooperating fully with the Coroner and will continue to do so, in order to help ensure that the tragic deaths of those killed can be thoroughly investigated, the relevant facts determined and any lessons learned."
The company said it would be inappropriate to comment further before the inquests but it doesn't accept the accuracy of all the statements that have been made.
You can watch Panorama Terror on the Beach: Why Did It Happen? on Monday 9 January at 20:30 GMT. Or catch up afterwards on BBC iPlayer | A BBC investigation has identified the man accused of organising the terror attack on a beach that killed 38 people in Tunisia. |
32528764 | The firm forecasts operating income of 320bn yen ($2.7bn; £1.7bn) for the year ending in March 2016, which was below analyst estimates for 401.6bn yen.
It also plans to restore a shareholder dividend after scrapping it last year and will pay out 10 yen per share.
Shares of Sony fell by 1.3% in Tokyo ahead of the earnings release.
It has been a tough year for Sony, which saw its movie division and gaming network targeted by hackers earlier this year.
The firm said the cyber attacks cost it $41m in "investigation and remediation expenses".
Sony has cut its profit outlook 15 times in seven years, prompting chief executive Kazuo Hirai to undertake a broad restructuring.
Mr Hirai sold off its personal computer business and spun off its loss-making television division into a separate structure.
The company's smartphone division is also still struggling to compete against Samsung, Apple and cheaper Chinese producers such as Xiaomi and Huawei.
Restructuring charges are expected to be approximately 35bn yen for the new fiscal year, the company said in a statement. | Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony expects operating profit to more than quadruple because of higher gadget sales and cost-cutting measures. |
38835835 | Neil Gorsuch met with the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the President has urged the leaders of Congress to "go nuclear" if need be - that is, change the rules to get his appointment through.
Who is Judge Gorsuch, and what impact might he have on the bench? Watch below. | Donald Trump's pick to be the next US Supreme Court justice has been on a charm offensive here in Washington. |
30451624 | Officers were called to the Blossoms Pub in Holyhead at about 16:00 GMT following reports a 24-year-old man had assaulted another man, aged 46.
The injured man died despite efforts to revive him, North Wales Police said.
The other man then climbed onto the roof of the nearby Holland Inn. After negotiations, he was arrested.
Police said he was being held in police custody and an investigation had been launched.
Supt Andy Jenks-Gilbert said: "I would like to take this opportunity to reassure the public that there is no danger to local residents."
Much of the town centre was sealed off after emergency services were called to the Holborn Road area of the town on Friday afternoon.
Police had warned members of the public to avoid the area and ordered nearby businesses to close.
A Wales Ambulance spokesman said it was called at 16:10 GMT and sent an ambulance.
Speaking earlier on Friday, Tony Pan, from the Happy House Chinese takeaway, said police had told him to close due to a serious incident.
He said: "We have also been advised not the leave the building."
He added that he had seen one ambulance and four police cars in the Rhos y Gaer Terrace area.
Carol Roberts, who works at Roberts Newsagents, said: "A police officer is asking us not to go out. No cars [are] going up and down the road.
"I can hear the police helicopter, never seen so many police cars and policemen." | One man has died and another has been arrested after an attack which led to a man scaling the roof of a pub on Anglesey, police have confirmed. |
39947622 | The Premier League said it supported local authorities in investigations that led to arrests on 11 May.
The men were named as William Lloyd, 39 and William Robinson, 35.
They are accused of causing damages worth more than 100 million baht (£2.2m) to the broadcast rights holders.
A third man, who is Thai, was also arrested and named as Supatra Raksasat, 33.
Agents for the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) also seized nine computer servers, nine computers, 49 set-top boxes and three mobile phones.
The three men allegedly sold illegal broadcasts of football matches on the 365sport.tv website, which is currently offline.
Customers of 365sport.tv have discussed problems accessing the site in recent days via online forums.
In a statement, the Premier League said that it had supported Thai police in efforts to crack down on the illegal use of Kodi and IPTV boxes.
"This included a series of raids in Bangkok that targeted several website operators engaged in selling the devices that are pre-loaded with apps that facilitate pirate broadcasts of Premier League football, across South East Asia," the organisation said.
"The Premier League is currently engaged in its largest ever programme to protect its copyright and the legitimate investment made by its broadcasting partners.
"Their contribution allows our clubs to develop and acquire players, invest in facilities and support the wider football pyramid and communities - all things that fans enjoy and society benefits from."
Deputy chief of the DSI, Suriya Singhakamol, said the suspects may also have been involved in transmissions broadcast via Thaiexpat.tv, Hkexpat.tv, Indoexpat.tv, Vietexpat.tx and Euroexpat.tv.
The UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office is aware of the situation.
In March, the Premier League secured a court order in the UK that gave it the means to block computer servers used to host illegal streams.
At the time, a spokesman said the organisation was prepared to target pirates in a "precise manner". | Two British men have been arrested in Bangkok for allegedly selling online access to illegally streamed football broadcasts. |
32630062 | A youth zone and a new public space are planned for the building, with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) running the contest.
A panel featuring leading architects and council representatives will shortlist the five best designs.
Lancashire County Council (LCC) said the £13m redesign was "to make it more appealing to passengers".
The LCC and Preston Youth Zone plans include a sports hall, arts facilities and 36 bus bays.
Preston Bus Station was considered the largest bus station in Europe when it opened in 1969.
The site, which was under-threat from demolition, was given Grade II listed status in 2013. | More than 90 entries have been submitted in a competition to redesign Preston Bus Station. |
38149264 | The niqab face veil and the burka, which covers the eyes, are included in the ban along with other face coverings such as ski-masks and helmets.
The Dutch Senate must approve the bill, which has government backing, for it to become law.
Supporters of the ban say people should be identifiable in public places.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte's ruling Liberal-Labour coalition described the bill as "religious-neutral".
Offenders would face a fine of up to €410 (£350; $435).
Religious freedom campaigner Karima Rahmani said people should be able to wear what they want without the state interfering. "What is disturbing us about this law is that it is a direct attack on freedom of expression," she told a reporter from German media company ARD.
A previous attempt to pass a law in the Netherlands banning the burka in all public spaces - including on the street - failed because it was deemed unnecessarily wide-reaching but similar laws have been passed in France, Belgium and Switzerland.
The Netherlands faces a national election in March 2017. The opposition anti-Islam Freedom Party, which has been leading in pre-election polls, wants a full ban on face-covering clothing.
Between 100 and 400 Muslim women in the Netherlands are thought to wear the niqab. | Dutch MPs have backed a ban on the Islamic full veil in some public places such as schools and hospitals, and on public transport. |
20323361 | Jackie Ballard said a number of MPs did not accept external oversight and this was at the root of continuing tensions.
She is one of four members to stand down after Commons Speaker John Bercow vetoed their automatic reappointments.
But an ally of Mr Bercow's said the regulator had behaved "disgracefully" in making the dispute public.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) announced on Tuesday that four of its five board members had not reapplied for their posts and would stand down when their terms of office expire in January.
It said they were partly influenced by concerns about how the appointment process - overseen by Mr Bercow but delegated to an independent panel - was being handled.
The watchdog also published correspondence between Ipsa chair Sir Ian Kennedy and Mr Bercow in which the former urged the existing members to be reappointed and expressed his concerns about the perception that the process was being politicised.
Mr Bercow has said the posts must be readvertised and opened to fair competition to ensure the process is lawful.
But in being asked to effectively reapply for their jobs, Mrs Ballard said the Speaker had shown "no recognition of the three years' worth of experience" she and her colleagues had gained in helping establish the regulator.
She also expressed concerns that the panel interviewing candidates included an MP - Conservative politician Peter Atkinson - and a member of the Speaker's Committee on Ipsa which advises Mr Bercow on relations with the watchdog.
One of the five Ipsa board members must be a former MP and Mrs Ballard - who was Lib Dem MP for Taunton between 1997 and 2001 - said she would feel "uncomfortable" in being interviewed by one of her former colleagues for such a sensitive job.
"From the start, it felt like the Speaker's fingerprints were all over it," she said of the process, "and including an ex-MP and a member of the Speaker's Committee was a threat to the independence (of Ipsa)".
Mrs Ballard said a number of MPs from all parties had never accepted they had to give up control of determining their expenses although she believed opponents of Ipsa were in a "small minority".
But Charles Walker, a member of the Speaker's Committee, said the watchdog had been wrong to make details of the disagreement public simply in order to "get our side of the story out first".
"On this occasion really Ipsa has behaved pretty disgracefully," he said.
Mr Walker said it "made sense" to have an MP on the panel and insisted it was independent of the Speaker.
He added: "If Sir Ian Kennedy is uncomfortable about the process why did he participate in the process?
"Sir Ian Kennedy is now suggesting that that independence has been compromised. If he believed that independence had been compromised, which it has not, why is he still continuing as chairman?"
The identities of the new board members are set to be announced soon.
Ipsa took over responsibility for policing MPs' expenses in 2010 after it emerged that a number of MPs had made inappropriate claims under the old system overseen by Parliament and a handful had committed fraud.
It has since clashed with MPs over a number of issues. | The independence of the body which polices MPs' expenses is under threat from a row over the membership of its board, a senior figure has said. |
38766074 | With stable stars Thistlecrack, Cue Card, Native River and Finian's Oscar all hitting jump racing's high spots, not a great deal has gone wrong of late for trainer of the moment Colin Tizzard.
Practically the only blot on an otherwise dreamy season was when expensive French purchase Alary was well beaten in Haydock's Peter Marsh Chase.
Subsequent to being pulled up by his rider, vets' tests on the seven-year-old found he wasn't 100%, and Tizzard and his team have taken no chances.
The trainer, based in deepest Dorset, said: "Alary coughed a couple of times after the race, and he was [stabled] quite close to Thistlecrack and Cue Card and Native River so almost before he was pulled up he was being moved to the other end of the yard.
"We joked: 'We don't want you anywhere near them.'"
All of Tizzard's big names are due to race during late January and February before going for the most glittering prizes at jump racing's Cheltenham Festival in March.
Most immediately, Thistlecrack takes in Saturday's BetBright Cotswold Chase, on Cheltenham's Festival Trials Day, as his final stepping stone towards the Gold Cup, for which he's hot favourite just ahead of, intriguingly, Native River and Cue Card.
The breathtaking, big-jumping winner of Kempton's King George VI Chase, on only his fourth time in a steeplechase, is said by Tizzard to be in "brilliant" and "beautiful" form.
A champion over hurdles, the horse's switch to the chasing big time has been so impressively smooth he's become an almost instant standard-bearer for the sport, and his capture of the public imagination is striking.
Dad's in awe of Thistlecrack; he'd have loved to have ridden him
On board in the Cotswold Chase, wearing the orange silks of owners John and Heather Snook, will be jockey Tom Scudamore, back in the position he's been in for the nine-year-old's past 11 starts. That's every one since April 2015, and all but one a success.
The 34-year-old, the third-generation top jump jockey in his family after father Peter and grandfather Michael, told BBC Sport: "To have a horse like Thistlecrack come along is obviously great, and it's a great position to be in, and one I'm very grateful for.
"A lot of successful jockeys are at one point associated with particular horses - Jonjo O'Neill with Dawn Run; Richard Dunwoody with Desert Orchid; Ruby [Walsh] with Master Minded through Kauto Star to Hurricane Fly - and that's very nice for a jockey, very special.
"Dad rode lots of winners but isn't necessarily associated with one horse, and he's in awe of Thistlecrack; he'd have loved to have ridden him.
"We talk about him a lot, and when I hear the buzz of excitement that he, like so many other people, gets from Thistlecrack, that's gives me great pride too."
Scudamore is famously unflappable in the saddle - "steady as a rock", according to Tizzard - but this horse is gathering fans, and consequently expectations, as quickly as any I can recall.
While acknowledging the clamour around him, the jockey is determinedly keeping his feet on the ground.
He said: "I suppose one thing that has put me in good stead for riding him, which I was brought up on, is that you take every day as it comes.
"You just keep on concentrating and not getting too carried away.
"You're not going out on Thistlecrack and thinking, 'God, I can't wait to ride him in the Gold Cup', because that would be thinking too far ahead down the line.
"It's like a fighter in his prelims going for the world championship; if you take your eye off the ball, you're not going to get to the world championships.
"So, you've got to keep on concentrating, and take every day as it comes, and the rest will follow from there."
The Cotswold Chase, which brings £57,000 to the winner, is the centrepiece of what's now - following the transfer of two races originally called off because of bad weather - a nine-race programme.
Thistlecrack is due to face opponents including the race's past two winners, Smad Place and Many Clouds, the latter a real favourite since success in the 2015 Grand National.
All agree that Thistlecrack, the odds-on favourite, may well be home and hosed, but Oliver Sherwood, trainer of Many Clouds, believes in the old racing adage that you should never be frightened of one horse.
He said: "I don't expect to beat Thistlecrack - he's been enormous this season - but racing is there to have good horses take each other on.
"The Grand National is again our target, and there's no point sitting at home when we need some match practice.
"Prize money for second - £21,370 - is damn good as well. We all want winners but to finish second to Thistlecrack with that prize money is probably better than winning a smaller race somewhere else." | You can't be too careful. |
37044018 | Emily Tabassi-Gill, from East Sussex, discovered the bones in February during a walk organised by the island's Dinosaur Isle museum.
The fossil is approximately 120 million years old and is the left side of the animal's horse-like skull.
Mrs Tabassi-Gill donated her find to the Sandown-based museum.
The mother-of-two said she was "delighted" her fossil would go on display and added: "We will definitely be back to see it."
Dinosaur Isle's community learning assistant, Alex Peaker, said dinosaur skulls are "incredibly rare" because they are fragile and less likely to become fossils than other bones.
He said: "We are really grateful to Emily for her donation.
"Her generosity and that of so many other people is what helps us maintain a fantastic display and helps our understanding of the past progress."
Mr Peaker added that what is most unusual about the fossil is that the remains come from the Cowleaze Chine, made up of layers of clay and sandstone which rarely preserve dinosaur bones. | The remains of an "incredibly rare" fossilised iguanodon skull found by a family visiting the Isle of Wight have gone on display. |
37634952 | Andrew Maling, 47, from Sigglesthorne, near Hull, was jailed for 10 years for the manslaughter of Amy Gough in June.
Miss Gough, 34, from Sandiacre, Derbyshire, died several days after suffering stomach injuries inflicted by Maling in March 2015.
The Appeal Court said his history of domestic violence should be reflected.
More on this story and other news in Derbyshire
Maling, who watched the court hearing via video-link from prison, had inflicted serious injuries to Miss Gough "over a period of several years".
Last year, Miss Gough suffered serious abdominal injuries, which had been caused by "blunt force trauma".
Her heart failed and she died in hospital on 29 March 2015, several days after the attack.
At trial at Nottingham Crown Court, Maling had denied guilt, insisting Miss Gough's injuries resulted from an "accidental drunken fall".
Lawyers for the Attorney General argued there was "no mitigation whatever" for his crime.
Lady Justice Hallett, sitting with Mr Justice King and Mr Justice Dove, said she had no doubt the original 10-year sentence was "too short".
"If a killing results from a campaign of domestic violence, that is a serious aggravating factor which must be properly reflected in the sentence imposed," Justice Hallett said.
The impact of Miss Gough's death had been devastating for her family, the court heard.
Her mother, Christine, had spoken of the void left by her daughter's loss - describing her as a "caring, beautiful and warm person".
Speaking after the hearing, the Attorney General said: "This was a one of many violent attacks the offender inflicted on the deceased over a number of years, and this attack lasted several days.
"I hope this increased sentence gives some comfort to the Ms Gough's family at this difficult time." | A violent boyfriend whose abuse caused the death of his girlfriend has had his "unduly lenient" prison sentence extended by a third to 15 years. |
35956842 | His grandfather was a scout for US military commander George Custer, who lost his life in the Battle of Little Big Horn fighting Native Americans.
Medicine Crow earned the title of war chief in his tribe through stealing horses and other exploits during World War Two.
He later worked as his tribe's historian, lecturing into his nineties.
"When you spoke with Joe Medicine Crow, it was impossible not to be inspired," Montana senator Jon Tester tweeted.
Medicine Crow was raised on the Crow Reservation in the state of Montana where he spent much of his life.
He was the first of his tribe to get a master's degree in 1939, later helping catalogue his people's history through oral testimony.
To become a war chief he successfully performed four daring deeds, including wrestling a weapon from an enemy warrior - in his case a Nazi soldier.
"I never got a scratch," he said decades on, the Billings Gazette reported.
In 2009. President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
"His contributions to the preservation of the culture and history of the First Americans are matched only by his importance as a role model to young Native Americans across the country," the White House said at the time. | The historian, World War Two veteran and chief of Montana's Crow tribe Joe Medicine Crow has died aged 102. |
34304469 | The 46-year-old was on his way to a church in Ashfield Street when he was attacked on Bardowie Street by two men.
He was hit with a glass bottle and punched before the men ran off with his rucksack at about 23:35 on Friday.
Police Scotland are treating the attack as a hate crime. The preacher sustained only minor injuries but was "very shaken", officers said.
The suspects were white and in their late teens. One is described as medium to heavy build, with a short dark crew cut hairstyle and wearing a grey hooded top, black tracksuit trousers and white trainers.
The second man has a slim build with short light brown hair, wearing a black hooded top and red tracksuit bottoms.
The preacher had just got off a bus on Saracen Street before the attack. The two men stole his rucksack which had a Bible and other possessions inside.
Det Con Alan Watt said: "On checking CCTV we can see the two suspects hanging about in Saracen Street a short time before the attack. I would appeal to anyone who recognises their description or who has information that will help officers with their enquiries to contact the Community Investigation Unit at Pollok via 101."
DC Watt said he was keen to hear from the driver of a grey Hackney taxi who was seen on CCTV just before the attack. | A Nigerian preacher has been robbed and racially abused by two men as he walked to his church in north Glasgow. |
40831402 | The suspects have taken "more than a dozen pieces" of the mosaic artworks by French urban artist Invader, a Paris City Council spokeswoman said.
The city was alerted to the thefts after people got in touch to complain about their removal.
The tiled pieces are inspired by the 1978 video game Space Invaders.
Paris council said it "quickly realised that those were not our agents, nor our vehicles or our jackets".
As they were disguised as city workers, Paris "has decided to file a complaint for abuse of functions", the spokeswoman said.
Parisians lamented the removal of the mosaics on social media.
End of Twitter post by @BastienLopez_
Invader, whose real name, like that of fellow street artist Banksy, is not known, has previously pointed out: "Given the type of tiles I use, to steal the work is impossible. These individuals by removing the mosaics destroy the piece and then have to buy ceramics to repair or recreate the work."
However, the work does sell for high prices when he creates replicas, garnering hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.
In a 2013 interview with the BBC, he said his work was influenced by his childhood.
"Space Invaders represents to me a symbol of the beginning of the digital world in which we are living now." | Thieves posing as city workers appear to have stripped Paris's walls of some of its best-loved street art in a matter of days. |
29586847 | But he might be different to how you remember him.
Not because its been years since he stepped foot in the Queen Vic or got his clothes washed at the launderette, but because he'll be played by a new actor.
James Bye is taking over the role.
Who?
The actor has previously appeared in The Great Train Robbery and The Hooligan Factor.
He tweeted: "So proud to be part of the Fowler clan. A massive opportunity."
The role of Martin Fowler has previously been played by Jon Peyton Price and James Alexandrou.
Last month bosses on the BBC One soap reintroduced Ben Mitchell's character using a different actor.
That role has been played by five actors in total, with Harry Reid the latest.
Executive Producer, Dominic Treadwell-Collins told soapsquark.co.uk: "We have recast everyman Martin Fowler after extensive auditions.
"Martin is an EastEnders original - the first baby born on the Square and part of the show's roots - and, as we celebrate 30 years on Albert Square, it's important to look backwards as we move forwards."
No doubt Martin will be trying to sort his marriage with Sonia, played by Natalie Cassidy, when he returns.
She recently returned to the square herself when the couple's relationship hit tough times.
Follow @BBCNewsbeat and on Twitter and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube | EastEnders bosses have confirmed Martin Fowler is returning to Albert Square. |
38921698 | Tigers were hammered 43-0 in their final Champions Cup tie of the season.
Speaking ahead of their return to Premiership action against Gloucester on Saturday, Youngs said the loss provides both pain and motivation.
"It sat very heavy in my heart and a lot of the boys' hearts. It hurt big time," he told BBC Radio Leicester.
"A lot of stuff has been thrown at us as a group. It will make us stronger in the long run, but short-term it will probably knock us a little bit.
"I have never wanted a game to end early in a Leicester shirt, but I really wanted that to end early. Everything we said to do we didn't do."
Hooker Youngs said his side's inadequacies, coupled with facing an in-form Glasgow side, made it difficult to keep their heads up in the days that followed.
"We could have done things better, but they were in one of those bubbles you get in sometimes in rugby," Youngs added.
"They got the momentum and got the squeeze on us. It was very hard, after the losses we have experienced, to keep heads up and keep going.
"It does take it's toll. It was pretty hard. There were lots of disappointed people and we have to take it on the chin."
As well as bowing out of Europe, Tigers are fifth in the Premiership, having lost seven of their past nine games in all competitions.
Youngs added: "I said to guys to watch the game against Glasgow again because you have to learn from that sort of game, and understand, and make sure it doesn't happen again.
"You have to draw a line in some regards, but you also have to learn from it. We need a win against Gloucester." | Captain Tom Youngs says Leicester must continue to learn from last month's record European defeat against Glasgow, to ensure it never happens again. |
35400791 | Titchard, 48, spent eight years at Old Trafford before moving to Derbyshire in 1999 and is currently Lancashire's performance manager.
The Red Rose have also named former bowler Gary Keedy, who retired last season, as spin coach.
Former Derbyshire player and coach Karl Krikken is wicketkeeping coach.
Leading the operation as general manager is Bobby Cross, the brother of England and LCB Thunder seamer Kate Cross, while women and girls' cricket development officer Jenny Barden will work as assistant coach.
The tournament, consisting of six teams, will be played in a Twenty20 format this season, before adding a 50-over competition in the future.
The group stage of the 2016 competition will run from 30 July to 14 August, with the top four teams qualifying for a finals day.
General manager: Bobby Cross
Head coach: Stephen Titchard
Assistant coach: Jenny Barden
Spin bowling coach: Gary Keedy
Fielding coach: Chris Chambers
Wicketkeeping coach: Karl Krikken
Strength & conditioning coach: Cristina Carr
Performance analyst: Chris Highton | Lancashire Cricket Board have named former batsman Stephen Titchard as head coach for their 2016 Women's Cricket Super League campaign. |
35668629 | It said there is nowhere else for them to go because of a lack of specialist facilities.
The Scottish government said it wants people to be treated in their own homes or as close to home as possible.
Minister Jamie Hepburn said it plans to invest £250m a year to "protect and grow" social care services.
Romana was placed in a care home for the elderly at the age of just 23, after suffering a severe brain haemorrhage when she was four months pregnant with her second child.
She couldn't see her children apart from short visits.
"It felt very strange because everyone around me was so much older; I was a very young girl at the time, and I felt I had lost my family," she said.
After two years, the Sue Ryder charity heard of her case and offered her a place at their neurological centre in Aberdeen.
With specialised rehabilitation, Romana learned to walk and live independently.
She is now looking forward to having her own flat, and sleeping under the same roof as her children for the first time in seven years.
Sue Ryder asked every local authority and health board in Scotland how many people with neurological conditions are being cared for in old people's care homes.
Neurological conditions include Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Huntington's disease and brain injuries.
Only a third of local authorities provided figures. They said 63 people under the age of 65 were being cared for in such an environment.
If those figures were replicated across the remaining health boards it would mean about 250 people are in an inappropriate environment.
They said a further 182 people aged over 65 with neurological conditions were in a care home for older people.
The charity said this meant a total of nearly 1,000 people could be missing out on specialist treatment, support and rehabilitation.
Sue Ryder's assistant director Scotland, Pamela Mackenzie, said: "Romana was quite a different lady when she first came. She was withdrawn and depressed and she really had been written off.
"Older people's care homes do a great job for people in their 80s and 90s, but people like Romana need a different environment. Their conditions are quite different.
"It is clear from our research that the needs of people with neurological conditions have largely been overlooked in recent years.
"We urge the Scottish government to take immediate action to address these inequalities so people with neurological conditions get the chance of a better quality of life."
The minister for health improvement, Jamie Hepburn, said: "Our 2016/17 budget sets out plans to invest a further £250m per year through health and social care partnerships, to protect and grow social care services, and invest £11.6m to implement self-directed support.
"We also recognise the vital role specialist nurses play in patient care. This is why we committed £2.5m of recurring funding for specialist nursing and care, including up to £700,000 to specifically target MND care.
"The health boards involved are currently recruiting additional nurses, or increasing the hours of existing nurses in order to fulfil our pledge to double the number of MND nurses in Scotland.
"Some posts have already been filled and the remaining posts are expected to be filled by spring 2016." | Younger people with neurological conditions are being cared for in old people's homes, according to the charity Sue Ryder. |
15315836 | The challenger started fast but the 24-year-old champion found a rhythm by the middle rounds and had a lot of success with left hooks and upper-cuts.
But Bellew found a second wind and hurt Cleverly with some big right hands as the fight developed into a humdinger.
The attritional nature of the fight made it difficult to score.
One judge called it a draw, while two awarded it to Cleverly by wide margins.
However, the scorecards could not disguise what was without doubt Cleverly's toughest day at the office - he is now undefeated in 23 pro fights - and a rematch could be in the offing.
Cleverly was hoping for an eye-catching performance to set up a possible unification match with 46-year-old American veteran Bernard Hopkins, but the WBC title-holder lost his belt to Chad Dawson in Los Angeles in the early hours of Sunday morning, UK time.
In Liverpool, an ill-tempered build-up to the fight culminated in a flare-up at Friday's weigh-in and Cleverly was given a hostile reception by a partisan crowd at the Echo Arena.
And the first round was more of the same, with Cleverly steaming out of his corner on the sound of the opening bell before Bellew was given a stern ticking off by referee Richie Davies for what was deemed a deliberate headbutt.
Bellew, the British and Commonwealth champion, had Cleverly in trouble in round two with a chopping right hand but the champion settled in behind his jab in the third and was landing with the cleaner shots in the middle rounds.
Cleverly landed with a low blow in round five, which Bellew had to walk off, and by round six the challenger appeared to be running out of steam as Cleverly peppered his body with hurtful left hooks.
Round seven followed a similar pattern, Cleverly piercing his rival's defence with crisp hooks and upper-cuts, but Bellew soaked up the punishment and had a restorative eighth round.
Cleverly took a rest in round nine and in the following round Bellew landed with a crunching right cross that had Cleverly, who was fighting on the back foot by this stage, leaning on the ropes and swinging wildly.
But Cleverly, clearly aware he might need a strong final round in order to win a decision, finished the fight on the front foot, although Bellew was still giving as good as he got until the bitter end.
While the bout was tricky in terms of scoring, the lop-sided scorecards of two of the judges betrayed just how competitive the bout had been - indeed, it was a genuine contender for fight of the year, with Bellew playing his part in the proceedings.
A devastated Bellew, who drops to 16 wins and one defeat, will now target a tilt at the European title - unless Cleverly denies him an immediate rematch - while Cleverly will target a unification match early next year. | Wales' Nathan Cleverly retained his WBO light-heavyweight title with a hard-fought points victory over Tony Bellew in Liverpool. |
39974495 | David Sulman of the UK Forest Products Association criticised an apparent lack of "openness and transparency" in the deal.
The deal had been criticised by auditors.
NRW said the contracts were awarded in "extraordinary" circumstances.
In 2014 a company was awarded a series of contracts worth £39m to purchase both spruce and larch timber - the latter from forests where a fungus disease causing extensive damage, Phytophthora ramorum, was present.
The contracts were part of action NRW - which sells timber from publicly opened woodlands - took to deal with the disease, amid a rapid increase in its spread the previous year.
But a report by auditor general Huw Vaughan Thomas in March expressed doubt over whether the decision met state aid rules and said the decision-making process was not transparent.
Mr Thomas revealed that the deal was made without other companies being allowed to bid - but NRW disputed his findings.
The agreements were set to be pulled after the company failed to meet a key promise to build a new processing line for cutting timber.
Mr Sulman, who is executive director of the UK Forest Products Association which represents the domestic timber industry, said: "It's a very serious, disturbing and worrying situation for businesses across the forestry and forest public sector in Wales, and indeed further afield.
"Our principal concern here is that historically businesses who have dealt with Natural Resources Wales… have always been assured that dealings with NRW would be fair, open and transparent.
"In this case, from what we can see there appears to have been a considerable lack of fairness, openness and transparency, and that is really what is giving rise to such serious concern across the sector at the moment."
"There probably are businesses out there who feel they were denied opportunities," he said.
Fears that the market for larch was on the brink of collapse at the time of the deal have been given as one of the reasons why NRW went ahead with the deal - but whether this was the case has been questioned by Mr Sulman.
Evidence given by chief executive Emyr Roberts at a meeting of the assembly's public accounts committee in March said that, at the time of the deal: "We had a real crisis on our hands."
"There was a danger of the timber market collapsing at that time," he said.
But Mr Sulman said the statement was "wildly inaccurate" and "misleading".
"Events have proved, in the intervening period through 2014 through today, that the diseased larch that was harvested has been equally well processed and sold in the market place," he said.
He said a full investigation by the public accounts committee was "probably warranted given the seriousness of the situation".
Mr Sulman will give evidence to the assembly's public accounts committee, which is also calling NRW in again to re-examine the issue, on Monday.
Emyr Roberts, chief executive of Natural Resources Wales, said in a statement: "The long-term contracts were awarded at a point in time when we were dealing with an extraordinary set of circumstances.
"Our prime objective at the time was to secure a market for the diseased larch and we succeeded in doing so following our agreed processes.
"We are confident that the evidence we gave to the previous public accounts committee was accurate and valid."
Neither NRW or the Wales Audit Office have revealed the name of the firm that was awarded the contracts. | A controversial £39m Natural Resources Wales deal to sell timber to a sawmill that was not put out to tender has generated "serious concern" in the timber industry, it has been claimed. |
39706495 | Local authorities have a vital role - and legal obligation - in providing social care, as well as other social services.
But they face challenges in the years ahead:
The Health Foundation last year estimated pressures on social care in Wales would rise by about 4.1% a year over the next 15 years due to population changes, the nature of complex and chronic conditions and rising costs.
This will require the budget to almost double to £2.3bn to match demand which has big implications for councils already dealing with tighter budgets.
An independent research programme, Wales Public Services 2025, led by Cardiff Business School but involving councils, health boards and other organisations, is looking at long term challenges.
Its latest report estimates that on current population projections, local councils need to be spending at least an additional £134m by 2020-21.
This would bring the spending per capita on social services for the over 65s back to levels of seven years ago. This is an equivalent to a year-on-year growth rate of 2.5%.
"Projections suggest that there will have to be a near doubling of spending on local authority social services for older people by 2030," said the report.
Michael Trickey, Wales Public Services 2025 programme director, estimates that under-pressure local councils have already cut back on spending on neighbourhood services by a third - £40m - in areas including sport, leisure, libraries, open spaces and parks.
He believes a "long term" approach is needed by UK and devolved governments to address the social care conundrum.
"A lot of the work into the policies and the options available has already been done but government has not wanted to deal with perhaps some of the difficult decisions needed," he said.
"But it has come back again and now it has to really get a grip or we'll be back into crisis again in a couple of years' time."
But what about the private sector? There are struggles here too - with some residential and home care providers failing.
Last month, the UK Homecare Association reported a "real sense of desperation".
BBC Wales found 13 of Wales' 22 councils had seen contracts handed back to them. The proportion with returned contracts - 59% - compares to a UK average of 48%.
The Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) has welcomed relative protection for social care spending by Welsh Government in recent years - including an extra £20m following the Chancellor's Budget - but is worried it will not keep pace.
Chief executive Steve Thomas said: "For new councillors, in terms of the challenges ahead - the pressures on social care budgets will be the biggest headache you face.
"It's not just about the care of elderly people either, there are also the demands of caring for our looked after children.
"Most people don't use these services; if you've a council with a 175,000 population, it might be only 5,000 using those services - but social care is expensive."
He welcomed the prime minister's intervention in the issue and said it was a time to consider other solutions - whether social care insurance or taxation - so the burden did not fall on local councils or Welsh Government.
"The danger is if this is not addressed over the next 10 or 15 years, local authorities could be left just as social care agencies."
Analysis by Owain Clarke, BBC Wales health correspondent
An ageing population is often talked about in terms of being an extra burden on services but could there also be opportunities?
Far more people aged over 65 now work full-time.
Also, the charity King's Fund estimates older people also contribute financially through a variety of other routes - from their spending power to volunteering.
So one way of mitigating the challenges of an ageing population is to help individuals contribute to society as long as they can - put another way - to live healthily for longer.
It is argued the services councils provide are essential to that.
Housing, leisure centres and libraries have arguably a much greater role to play than the NHS and social services in keeping us healthy in the first place.
So, even if health and social care spending goes up or is protected to meet the needs of an ageing population, councils are worried other "preventative services" will continue to bear the brunt of cuts. And this could mean bigger problems down the line. | You might not think the local elections have anything to do with your health - but beyond schools and waste collection, looking after some of our most vulnerable people is an issue that newly-elected councillors will have to quickly get to grips with. |
37688475 | The 21-month-old, from Sheffield, went missing on the Greek island in 1991.
Police said on Monday they believed he died as a result of an accident on the day he disappeared.
Ben's sister, Leigh-Anna Needham, told ITV's Good Morning Britain the car had been shown to them and her grandmother thought it could have been Ben's.
"She is 90% sure, it is similar but we cannot be 100% sure," she said.
Ben's mum 'would tear up island'
Read more about this and other stories from Sheffield and South Yorkshire
New searches on Kos, where the Needham family were renovating a farmhouse in 1991, were prompted by fresh information given to South Yorkshire Police.
A friend of a digger driver, who was clearing land with an excavator on the day the toddler went missing, said the man may have been responsible for Ben's death.
The driver, Konstantinos Barkas, died of cancer in 2015.
The yellow car is believed to have been found shortly before the searches concluded on Sunday.
Det Insp Jon Cousins, who is leading the inquiry, said after 21 days of searching it was his "professional belief" Ben had died in an accident.
Leigh-Anna Needham said she understood why the police had come to that conclusion but she was not completely convinced.
"Without definite proof there is still hope," she said.
"We were told to prepare for the worst. We thought they were going to find him and bring him back and we would have to deal with the grieving process.
"But there is still hope and I will fight tooth and nail to get to the bottom of this.
"It has destroyed my family and I am determined to find out what happened on that day."
South Yorkshire Police said the investigation remained open and any further leads in the case would be fully investigated.
Ms Needham told BBC Look North: "Every time the phone rings your heart sinks, you don't want to actually admit that they were ever going to find anything to suggest that Ben may no longer be alive.
"I can't say the word [dead], it makes me feel physically sick.
"There's not enough evidence for me as yet to give up and to believe that he died that day. Until I have solid evidence, ie remains, that's when the grieving process will start." | A toy car thought to belong to missing toddler Ben Needham was found during police searches on Kos, according to the Find Ben Needham campaign. |
32442864 | Officers were called to an address in Neyland, Milford Haven, at 14:45 BST on Thursday.
Police said the girl is "recovering well" after being treated for facial injuries at Morriston Hospital in Swansea.
The dog, a cross between a Siberian Husky and Alaskan Malamute, was destroyed with the family's consent.
A police spokeswoman said the attack was an "unfortunate incident that no one could have foreseen" and there will be no further investigation. | A family dog attack which hospitalised a three-year-old girl "came out of the blue", Dyfed-Powys Police has said. |
33429724 | Richard Griffin, 64, William Hammersley, 79, and Harry Cadman, 71, died in the summer of 2012 while many others were affected.
A hot tub on display at the JTF warehouse in Stoke-on-Trent was the "probable source" of the outbreak, the Health Protection Agency said.
JTF declined to comment on the settlement.
Mr Griffin's daughter, Rachel, who now lives in Cumbria, said she was relieved compensation had been agreed without the need for a court battle.
"Nothing can ever bring our dad back but we just wanted to make sure that justice was done and that there was some accountability for his death," she said.
"I truly hope no-one ever has to go through what we have."
The outbreak struck more than 20 people in the summer of 2012.
Mr Griffin contracted the disease while delivering meat to a café in the JTF Warehouse.
He initially suffered headaches and hallucinations and later lost consciousness at his home in Clayton. He died in hospital from multiple organ failure.
The Health Protection Agency confirmed the hot tub on display at the JTF Warehouse, off King Street in Fenton, contained the same strain of Legionella as those who had become ill.
Inquests are set to take place next year and the Crown Prosecution Service has not yet decided whether to pursue charges.
Irwin Mitchell, which has been representing affected families, said JTF had admitted civil liability.
"Nothing can turn back the clock but we are pleased to have finally concluded these cases, allowing those families affected to begin to move on with their lives," said lawyer Amandeep Dhillon. | More than £200,000 has been awarded to families after a fatal outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. |
30340722 | Russians were looking to their leader for reassurance, worried by the near-daily slide of the rouble and warnings of recession under the twin pressures of Western sanctions and a falling oil price.
What they got was another patriotic rallying cry, and more bellicose talk directed at the West.
One adviser called it a show of strength, but critics suggested it was tired and unconvincing. Anyone who expected conciliatory steps over the crisis in Ukraine - to reduce sanctions - was disappointed.
This was the president's own strategic vision for Russia, set out to an invited audience beneath the sumptuous chandeliers of St George's Hall in the Kremlin.
As such, it was telling that he chose to open with a robust defence of his policy in Ukraine - there was "no way we could support this armed coup" - and an attack on the West for its constant "interference" in Russia's internal affairs.
Despite international condemnation and the imposition of sanctions, Mr Putin expressed no regret for annexing the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.
He called it a "historical reunification", making the surprising claim that the region was of equal spiritual importance to Russians as Jerusalem's Temple Mount is to Muslims and Jews.
He seemed tired at times - perhaps more worried by his country's downward spiral than he admits, or maybe just because he was up through the night fine-tuning his text, according to his spokesman.
Mr Putin did not deny Russia's economic troubles, but he did studiously avoid uttering any of the grim statistics, speaking only in the broadest terms. And his message was that none of it was his fault.
He described sanctions as simply the latest in a long line of a Western attempts to "contain" Russia and prevent it flourishing: if the crisis in Ukraine hadn't happened, Russia's ill-wishers would have found another way to hold her back, his argument went.
"President Putin never admits mistakes, so this speech had a sense of [being] right, of confidence and full command of the situation," says political analyst Masha Lipman.
She argues that what it lacked was any sense of empathy for "ordinary" Russians, who are facing 9% inflation and wondering whether it is time to empty their rouble bank accounts and buy dollars.
Still, Mr Putin does remain extraordinarily popular.
After the takeover of Crimea his rating soared over 80%, and even amid the latest economic downturn, it remains at a level most Western politicians could only dream of.
That is partly because state-controlled media have spent months glossing over the gloom.
But it is now impossible to ignore the red figures flashing the fact of Russia's weakening rouble at every currency exchange point.
The rouble has plunged 40% against the dollar this year. This week, fiercely loyal state television even carried a report including complaints about price rises.
That mounting concern is why there was such expectation surrounding this annual address.
But some were clearly disappointed - including one of the anchors on state-run TV channel Russia 24, who wanted to know why the president had placed such stress on foreign policy in his speech, at such a time.
"There were expectations that the president would come out with a huge pill for all Russia's economic woes, that he'd show it to everyone and that would be that," said Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. "But it's never like that in real life."
He added that all the talk of foreign policy was justified at a time when outside forces are having a direct impact on Russia's well-being.
In fact, Mr Putin's speech did contain concrete policy suggestions on the economy, which he wants to see returning to strong growth in three to four years. He called for tax breaks for small businesses, for example, and a one-off amnesty for Russian capital stashed abroad to be returned and invested at home, no questions asked.
There was a bid to double the number of roads built - so helping to create jobs - and a call to end dependence on foreign equipment and machinery, and boost Russian-made equivalents.
But all of that was wrapped in an appeal to Russians' patriotism, to rally round and support their country at a time of difficulty - caused not by its president's ruinous policies, the speech explained, but because Russia is an independent, sovereign force that its enemies fear and want to weaken.
"I'd say up to 40 or 50% of people swallow this at the moment, but I think very soon they won't accept it," argues one-time prime minister turned Putin critic Mikhail Kasyanov.
"In six months, they won't be able to blame the economic problems in every town and village on America," he believes. "People will start asking questions. I think the clock is already ticking."
Vladimir Putin himself remains defiant.
"We are ready to take on any challenge and win," he concluded his speech, after an hour and 10 minutes.
It's a rousing message that might have reassured some about their future.
But Russians are only just starting to feel the pinch from the slowdown. What lies ahead is likely to put their patriotism to a tougher test. | Vladimir Putin's state of the nation address had been billed as the most anxiously awaited speech of his presidency. |
39670708 | The result is a boost for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has sent the union chief a message of congratulations.
Mr McCluskey's chief rival Gerard Coyne - seen as the anti-Corbyn candidate - was beaten by nearly 6,000 votes.
He said Unite, which is Labour's biggest donor, had to change and claimed he faced attempts by officials to "bully and intimidate" him.
Mr Coyne was suspended from his job as a Unite official on Thursday pending an investigation.
He faces accusations of bringing the union into disrepute over claims made during the contest, which saw barbs flying from both sides.
The move did not affect the election as counting was already under way, although it could have put the result in doubt if he had won it.
Speaking after the result had been declared, Mr Coyne said: "It has been a very close count and the ballot sends some very serious messages to Unite.
"I am proud to have run a campaign that faced up to the issues that concerned members.
"Unite needs to change, and it needs to put its focus back where it belongs: on looking after the real interests of the members of the union.
"It's been a hard and robust campaign. The union machine consistently attempted to bully and intimidate me, something that has continued even after the close of polls.
"Nevertheless tens of thousands of members backed my fight to change our union for the better."
Mr McCluskey won 59,067 votes, Mr Coyne 53,544 and Ian Allinson 17,143, in a turnout of just over 12%, Unite said.
Asked for his reaction to the result, Mr Corbyn said: "Congratulations Len McCluskey, well done.
"The democratic process has taken place in the union. I look forward to working with him and indeed I've already sent him a message of well done."
Unite acting general secretary Gail Cartmail said: "I congratulate Len McCluskey on his victory and would urge the entire union to pull together in the interests of our members, and not least to work for a Labour victory in the general election.
"The turnout in this important election can give no cause for satisfaction and, while the tone of the campaign will not have helped, the underlying reason remains the archaic and expensive balloting system imposed on trade unions by law.
"The sooner we can move to secure and secret workplace and online voting, the better for union democracy."
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Mr McCluskey was "now in the driving seat for Labour's campaign".
She referred to the Unite's leader's past suggestion that Labour could form a government with the help of the Scottish National Party and Lib Dems, saying it would amount to a "coalition of chaos".
Speaking on Wednesday, however, Mr Corbyn ruled out any post-election coalition with the SNP.
This result matters because Jeremy Corbyn's man won.
The Labour leader still has an ally in the figurehead at the top of the country's biggest union.
Unite's deep pockets have helped bankroll the party.
Len McCluskey's passionate support helped buoy up Mr Corbyn when most of his MPs decided he was useless.
Mr McCluskey's principal opponent, Gerard Coyne, had argued Unite should stop "playing Westminster politics" and "failed to collect a penny back" from its donations to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership contests.
But Gerard Coyne lost.
And so Mr Corbyn's man is still standing.
The big question now is, if Labour lose the election, whether Len McCluskey will change his mind and call on him to go. | Len McCluskey has been re-elected as Unite's general secretary following a bitter leadership battle. |
40404493 | Darren Cunningham, 39, who has waived his right to anonymity, said he was "happy" Tony and Julie Wadsworth were found guilty.
The couple presented on both BBC WM in Birmingham and BBC Radio Leicester.
They were each jailed for five years for sex offences against under-age boys between 1992 and 1996.
Julie Wadsworth, 60, and her husband Tony, 69, of Broughton Astley, Leicestershire, were convicted of encouraging six boys to take part in sexual activity and outraging public decency by having sex in woodland.
Mr Cunningham who was 14 when he was groomed by the pair, said he came forward to help others.
He said: "If [I'd] told the police, perhaps this wouldn't have happened to anyone else.
"I've got six children, three stepchildren and three children of my own, and just the thought of somebody doing that to them, it just made me feel sick and I thought I've got to tell."
Mr Cunningham said it was "daunting" at court and "while you're giving your evidence, they were just sat opposite me... and Julie just stared at me the whole time".
Mr Cunningham added: "I wanted them to get sentenced so it didn't happen to anyone else. It wouldn't matter if they they got two years or got 20.
"They are at an age now where five years is a big chunk of their life, 60 and 70 years old. So they will feel the punishment and I'm sure people in prison will know who they are."
Julie Wadsworth was convicted of nine indecent assaults against boys and five counts of outraging public decency.
Her spouse, who acted as a "look-out", was found guilty of the same charges.
Prosecutors said the abuse took place at a number of locations, including the couple's former home in Atherstone, Warwickshire, as well as on a nearby golf course and surrounding woodland.
A BBC spokesman has previously said the Wadsworths were last on air in December 2015 and no longer work for the corporation. | A man who testified in court against two ex-BBC radio presenters who sexually assaulted him says it was a "daunting" experience. |
25748292 | The refund agreement settles long-standing complaints over in-app purchases made by children without their parents' consent.
Apple will also be required to change its billing procedures to make sure customers have given consent before they are charged for in-app purchases.
The company said it had settled rather than take on a "long legal fight".
"This settlement is a victory for consumers harmed by Apple's unfair billing, and a signal to the business community: whether you're doing business in the mobile arena or the mall down the street, fundamental consumer protections apply," said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in a statement.
"You cannot charge consumers for purchases they did not authorize."
The FTC's complaint alleged that Apple failed to inform parents that by entering a password they were approving a single in-app purchase and also 15 minutes of additional unlimited purchases their children could make without further consent.
It also said that Apple often presented a password prompt screen for parents to enter their details without explaining that this would finalise any purchase made in the app.
The FTC also noted that Apple received at "least tens of thousands of complaints" about unauthorised in-app purchases by children.
One woman said her daughter had spent $2600 in one app.
This refund settlement only covers customers who have made purchases through Apple's US app store but the BBC's technology editor Rory Cellan-Jones says Apple has previously almost always refunded parents in the UK who have complained about big bills from their children's in-app purchases.
The changes to Apple's billing process, which means express consent must be obtained before in-app charges are made, must be in place by 31 March, said the FTC.
In an internal email obtained by the website 9to5Mac, chief executive Tim Cook told Apple employees that the FTC's proposals were in line with the company's own intentions.
"The consent decree the FTC proposed does not require us to do anything we weren't already going to do, so we decided to accept it rather that take on a long and distracting legal fight," he said.
He also explained that Apple began setting out a process to refund customers last year.
"We wanted to reach every customer who might have been affected, so we sent emails to 28 million App Store customers - anyone who had made an in-app purchase in a game designed for kids.
"When some emails bounced, we mailed the parents postcards.
"In all, we received 37,000 claims and we will be reimbursing each one as promised."
Apple's App Store offers many games for children, a large number of which allow in-app purchases to be made. These purchases can include virtual items or currency, and typically allow faster progression in the game.
In-app purchases can range in cost - from 99 cents to just under $100. | Apple will refund customers at least $32.5m (£19.9m) after a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). |
34809478 | Ross Taggart, 31, denies murdering Carol Anne Taggart between 21 December last year and 11 January this year.
He is alleged to have repeatedly struck her on the head "by means unknown" and compressed her throat.
He is then alleged to have hidden her body under a caravan in Pettycur Bay, Kinghorn.
Mr Taggart is accused of attempting to defeat the ends of justice between 21 December and 14 January this year.
A jury was told in agreed evidence that following a post mortem the cause of death was given as "compression of the neck".
Ms Bristow's daughter Lorraine, 27, told the High Court in Edinburgh her mother had two sons, Ross and Daniel, from a previous relationship.
She said her mother was not always an easy person to get along with and she had had difficult times with her.
Advocate depute Iain McSporran asked if her mother had a favourite child and the dance teacher said: "Yes, her blue-eyed boy Ross."
Lorraine Bristow said her mother was "quite frail" but added her brother was "a big boy" who she thought was 6ft 6in tall.
Jurors heard at about 17:30 on 22 December, Mr Taggart bought a return train ticket at a Dunfermline station and travelled to Edinburgh.
While in the city, he had a meal at the Filling Station in Rose Street and then went to the cinema.
The train ticket, meal and cinema ticket were bought using a credit card in the name of his mother.
She said on 23 December her husband was contacted by her brother Ross. She said she could hear what her brother was saying on the phone.
"I could hear him saying mum was missing. They had an argument and she stormed out the house. It was during the night she had left," she said.
The prosecutor asked if her brother said anything about where she might be or efforts to find her. She replied: "No, he wasn't that upset either."
Ms Bristow said: "My mum wouldn't storm out her own house. I have had many arguments, she would tell you to leave."
She said she kept phoning her mobile but it went to answering machine. She said her mother would have taken her bag and her phone if she had left.
She told the court: "I started to know something was wrong.
"I had texted my brother Ross every day to see if he had any update. I would get one word answers back."
Her father Shaun Taggart, 52, who was the former partner of her mother, was asked if Carol Anne had a favourite child. He said: "Ross was the golden boy pretty much from the get-go. It was always the case."
Mr Taggart is alleged that he hid the body of his mother in a void beneath Caravan 2, Wallace Heights at Pettycur Bay and tidied, cleaned, removed and attempted to remove blood staining and other forensic evidence from 3 Hill of St Margaret and Caravan 4 and the boot of a car.
He is also charged with removing bedding from 3 Hill of St Margaret, where his mother had lived, and Caravan 4.
He is also alleged to have reported her to the police as a missing person and repeatedly stated to friends, family and associates enquiring about her and to officers investigating her disappearance that on 22 December she had left her home address of her own accord and that he was unaware of her whereabouts. | A man accused of murdering his mother and concealing her body under a caravan in Fife was "her blue-eyed boy", a court has heard. |
38920416 | Jeremy Corbyn had claimed text messages showed ministers were prepared to offer a "sweetheart deal" to the council to avoid a referendum on the rise.
But Mr Javid insisted there was "no memorandum of understanding" between the government and the council.
And Surrey County Council said "no deal" had been offered.
The Labour leader raised the issue during Prime Minister's Questions, claiming he had seen leaked text messages intended for a Department for Communities and Local Government official called "Nick" from the leader of Surrey County Council, David Hodge.
"These texts read, 'I am advised that DCLG officials... have been working on a solution and... you [will be] contacting me to agree [a memorandum of understanding],'" he said.
He asked: "Will the government now publish this memorandum of understanding and, while they're about it, will all councils be offered the same deal?"
Noting that Chancellor Philip Hammond and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt are both Surrey MPs, Mr Corbyn said: "But there was a second text from the Surrey County Council leader to Nick - and in the second text it says, 'The numbers you indicated are the numbers I understand are acceptable for me to accept and call off the R.'
"Now, I've been reading a bit of John le Carre and apparently 'R' means referendum. It's very subtle all this."
He added: "He goes on to say in his text to Nick, 'If it is possible for that info to be sent to... myself, I can then revert back soonest. Really want to kill this off.'
"So how much did the government offer Surrey to kill this off and is the same sweetheart deal on offer to every council facing the social care crisis created by this government?"
Business rate pilot
In a statement, Mr Javid said Surrey County Council's budget and council tax "is a matter for the council", adding it "had been clear that their budget decision (setting a level of council tax which is not above the referendum threshold) was theirs alone".
Under the Local Government Finance Settlement, the Department for Communities and Local Government discussed funding with councils across the country "of all types and all political colours", he said.
"Whilst the final settlement has yet to be approved, the government is not proposing extra funding to Surrey County Council that is not otherwise provided or offered to other councils generally," Mr Javid said.
"There is no 'memorandum of understanding' between government and Surrey County Council."
He said Surrey had asked to take part in the pilot of a new business rates scheme, adding that other councils could also apply to take part.
Downing Street said all conversations between the government and Surrey had been "entirely appropriate" and there was no "sweetheart deal".
The proposed 15% rise was mooted by Surrey Council to cover what it said were shortfalls in funding to cover the rising costs of social care.
But plans for a referendum - which are triggered if a local authority proposes a council tax rise of 5% or more - were dropped during a full council meeting on Tuesday.
Councillors will now consider an alternative budget.
Mr Hodge told the BBC: "There is no deal with government, there never was - end of story."
The prime minister said: "The deal that is on offer to all councils is the one that I have already set out."
Councils have been allowed to implement a 3% tax increase solely for social care over the next two years to plug the funding gap in this area.
That is on top of a discretionary general increase of 2%, making a total of 5% before a referendum is needed.
Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson said he was "seeking urgent clarification" about whether Surrey had been "bought off" by the government, adding that cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham had been hit "far harder" by funding cuts. | Surrey County Council's decision not to raise council tax by up to 15% "was theirs alone", Local Government Secretary Sajid Javid has said. |
20308585 | He was released from Long Lartin prison, in Worcestershire. He has spent most of the last 10 years in custody.
A UK court approved his appeal against deportation after deciding witness evidence obtained by torture might be used at trial in Jordan.
The government believes the wrong legal test was applied and is to appeal.
"We had received a number of assurances from the Jordanian government - they had even changed their constitution," a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said.
By Dominic CascianiHome affairs correspondent
Abu Qatada has lived in the UK for almost 20 years - and he might be here a few more yet because the legal roadblock on deportation is very difficult to remove.
Judges say there is a real risk that the preacher's retrial in Jordan would be unfair because it would include incriminating statements made by men who were tortured by the secret police.
They want to see either an unambiguous change to Jordan's criminal court code to exclude such material, or a ruling by its higher courts to the same effect.
So there is little prospect of Abu Qatada being deported unless the home secretary can convince Jordan to change or convince the UK's Court of Appeal that Siac got the law wrong.
If either of those routes were successful - and that's a very big "if" - it wouldn't end there. The cleric could ask the European Court of Human Rights to examine what Jordan is saying - something that could take years.
"We believe that we have got the right assurances from the Jordanian government."
He added: "The Home Office will be ensuring that we take all the steps necessary to ensure that Qatada does not present a risk to national security."
Jordan's acting information minister Nayef al-Fayez told the BBC his government shared UK authorities' disappointment at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) ruling on Monday.
When Abu Qatada arrived back at his home in London, around lunchtime on Tuesday, a small group of protesters - holding a "get rid of Abu Qatada placard" - gathered outside and chanted, "Out, out, out."
Earlier this year, judges at the European Court in Strasbourg ruled the cleric - whose real name is Omar Othman - would not face ill-treatment if returned to Jordan, citing assurances outlined in a UK-Jordan agreement.
Crucially, however, the judge did not believe he would get a fair trial because a Jordanian court could use evidence against Abu Qatada that had been obtained from the torture of others.
On Monday, despite the UK obtaining additional assurances from Jordan, Siac chairman Mr Justice Mitting ruled he was not satisfied Abu Qatada would be tried fairly.
Speaking to ITV's Daybreak, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: "He should not be in this country, he is a dangerous person. He wanted to inflict harm on our country and this coalition governs lived in the UK for almost 20 years - and he might be here a few more yet because the legal roadblock on deportation is very difficult to remove.
Judges say there is a real risk that the preacher's retrial in Jordan would be unfair because it would include incriminating statements made by men who were tortured by the secret police.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said people would be "horrified that Abu Qatada is now out on Britain's streets rather than on a plane", and that government efforts to secure his deportation had "clearly failed".
"Home Office ministers should be setting off to Jordan straight away to discuss what additional action would get this sorted out. The Jordanian government have already been very helpful so ministers should act fast," she said.
David Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, told the BBC: "The key to this case really lies in Jordan.
"What the judge said, what the court said in terms, was that a simple amendment to the Jordanian criminal code so as to remove an ambiguity that is in it at the moment ought to suffice to make deportation possible," he told Radio 4's Today programme.
Home affairs committee chairman Keith Vaz said the visit to the UK of the king of Jordan later this month gave the government "an opportunity to try and persuade him to go that little bit further in terms of the way the criminal code of Jordan operates".
The case had cost taxpayers £1m, he said.
Human rights lawyer Julian Knowles said the case would bring "another year's worth of UK litigation at least".
"And then if Abu Qatada is the loser at the end of the domestic phase, he can then go back to the European Court," he said.
Speaking in the Commons after Abu Qatada's release, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said he was "frustrated" by international court rulings that had led to Monday's decision.
"I do not believe it was ever the intention of those who created the human rights framework that we are currently subject to, that people who have an avowed intent to damage this country should be able to use human rights laws to prevent their deportation back to their country of origin," he added.
On the question of why Abu Qatada had never been prosecuted in the UK, Lib Dem peer Lord Macdonald - director of public prosecutions from 2003 to 2008 - said he had never been shown any evidence to support a criminal prosecution.
"If there isn't any evidence in existence at the moment, it's a little difficult to see how now, 10 years later, anyone is going to be able to acquire any," he told Radio 4's The World At One.
The bail conditions imposed by Mr Justice Mitting on Abu Qatada include being allowed out of his house only between 08:00 and 16:00, having to wear an electronic tag, and being restricted in whom he meets.
Abu Qatada faces a retrial in Jordan for allegedly conspiring to cause explosions on Western and Israeli targets in 1998 and 1999. He was found guilty of terrorism offences in his absence in Jordan in 1999.
The Palestinian-born Jordanian has been described as the spiritual leader of the mujahideen. Security chiefs believe he played a key ideological role in spreading support for suicide bombings. | Muslim cleric Abu Qatada has been freed on bail after a UK court ruled he might not get a fair trial if deported to Jordan to face terrorism charges. |
37287955 | The channel will cover subjects including music, performance, art, literature and cinema from 1 October.
Poet and musician Kate Tempest will lead an evening dedicated to National Poetry Day as part of the season.
Other highlights will include a documentary fronted by Alan Bennett, which will follow the author to iconic locations from his life.
As part of the season on BBC Two:
BBC Two channel editor Patrick Holland said: "Great arts programming has the power to bring audiences to the cutting-edge, as well as to much loved art and artists.
"By focusing Saturday nights around arts, music, performance and cinema, we want to create space for new ideas, authored film-making, and the very best talent."
Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram, or if you have a story suggestion email [email protected]. | BBC Two is to dedicate its Saturday night schedules to the arts during the autumn, the corporation has said. |
38178469 | Glenn Murray put the Seagulls in front from the penalty spot after Kalvin Phillips was sent off for handling on the line midway through the first half.
Despite dominating, the hosts only sealed victory with Tomer Hemed's late penalty after Lewis Dunk was fouled.
Leeds defended resolutely but rarely troubled the division's best defence.
Brighton, who go two points ahead of second-placed Newcastle, were top of the table at the same stage last season following a 21-game unbeaten run at the start of the campaign.
The Seagulls eventually missed out on automatic promotion to the Premier League, finishing third on goal difference behind Middlesbrough and champions Burnley.
However, Chris Hughton's men are now eight points clear of Reading in third, and three of their remaining four league games this month are against teams in the lower half of the division.
Their task against Leeds became easier when midfielder Phillips blocked Dunk's goalbound effort with his arm and Murray stepped up to smash home his 12th league goal of the season - all of which have come at home.
The striker, on loan from Bournemouth, had more opportunities in a one-sided first half, heading just wide and seeing his looping effort tipped over by visiting goalkeeper Rob Green.
Brighton were made to wait until the 83rd minute to add to their tally when Kyle Bartley tangled with fellow defender Dunk in the area - Israel striker Hemed sending Green the wrong way from the spot.
Fourth-placed Leeds had won five of their previous six Championship games before their visit to the south coast, but could drop out of the play-offs if results go against them on Saturday.
Brighton manager Chris Hughton:
"I am delighted with the result and the performance.
"The only negative was that there was too big a gap between the first goal and the second. Anything can happen and in that period we didn't create more opportunities.
"In the last four or five games we have not been at our best but we have kept picking up results."
Leeds boss Garry Monk:
"I'm frustrated. Brighton are a very good side but had we kept 11 men on the pitch it could have been different.
"Brighton deserved to win, but we didn't do ourselves justice.
"It was a tough night and we didn't make it easy for ourselves."
Match ends, Brighton and Hove Albion 2, Leeds United 0.
Second Half ends, Brighton and Hove Albion 2, Leeds United 0.
Foul by Oliver Norwood (Brighton and Hove Albion).
Ronaldo Vieira (Leeds United) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Attempt missed. Chris Wood (Leeds United) header from the right side of the six yard box is close, but misses to the right. Assisted by Stuart Dallas with a cross following a corner.
Corner, Leeds United. Conceded by Shane Duffy.
Attempt missed. Tomer Hemed (Brighton and Hove Albion) left footed shot from outside the box is close, but misses to the right. Assisted by Sam Baldock.
Foul by Jiri Skalak (Brighton and Hove Albion).
Charlie Taylor (Leeds United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Substitution, Leeds United. Liam Cooper replaces Pontus Jansson because of an injury.
Delay over. They are ready to continue.
Substitution, Brighton and Hove Albion. Jiri Skalak replaces Anthony Knockaert.
Delay in match Pontus Jansson (Leeds United) because of an injury.
Foul by Solly March (Brighton and Hove Albion).
Luke Ayling (Leeds United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Goal! Brighton and Hove Albion 2, Leeds United 0. Tomer Hemed (Brighton and Hove Albion) converts the penalty with a right footed shot to the bottom right corner.
Penalty Brighton and Hove Albion. Lewis Dunk draws a foul in the penalty area.
Penalty conceded by Kyle Bartley (Leeds United) after a foul in the penalty area.
Kyle Bartley (Leeds United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Tomer Hemed (Brighton and Hove Albion) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Foul by Kyle Bartley (Leeds United).
Attempt saved. Shane Duffy (Brighton and Hove Albion) header from the centre of the box is saved in the top centre of the goal. Assisted by Anthony Knockaert with a cross.
Dale Stephens (Brighton and Hove Albion) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Ronaldo Vieira (Leeds United).
Substitution, Brighton and Hove Albion. Tomer Hemed replaces Glenn Murray.
Corner, Brighton and Hove Albion. Conceded by Pontus Jansson.
Anthony Knockaert (Brighton and Hove Albion) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Ronaldo Vieira (Leeds United).
Substitution, Leeds United. Stuart Dallas replaces Souleymane Doukara.
Foul by Solly March (Brighton and Hove Albion).
Luke Ayling (Leeds United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Offside, Brighton and Hove Albion. Lewis Dunk tries a through ball, but Shane Duffy is caught offside.
Corner, Brighton and Hove Albion. Conceded by Pontus Jansson.
Attempt blocked. Anthony Knockaert (Brighton and Hove Albion) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Assisted by Solly March.
Substitution, Brighton and Hove Albion. Solly March replaces Jamie Murphy because of an injury.
Delay over. They are ready to continue.
Delay in match Jamie Murphy (Brighton and Hove Albion) because of an injury.
Delay over. They are ready to continue.
Delay in match Anthony Knockaert (Brighton and Hove Albion) because of an injury.
Attempt missed. Jamie Murphy (Brighton and Hove Albion) header from the centre of the box misses to the left. Assisted by Anthony Knockaert with a cross. | Brighton moved top of the Championship and extended their unbeaten league run to 14 games with a win against 10-man Leeds United at the Amex Stadium. |
32760476 | Dolores Kelly was speaking after the former SDLP leader Mark Durkan said the party leadership needs to change in time for next year's assembly election.
Ms Kelly said voters had expressed concerns during the Westminster election campaign trail.
Alasdair McDonnell has made it clear he does not intend to stand down.
"I had every empathy with what he said in relation to the message on the doorsteps because what Mark said was not unique to Derry, it was right across the north," the SDLP deputy leader said.
"But what I do think now in the interests of the party - and that's my only interest - the debate now has to come back into the party itself.
"We need to discuss it in a mature way within the party so that we can give hope to the people that we represent and the people we hope to represent and hope to represent after next year's assembly elections.," Ms Kelly added.
Speaking on BBC One programme The View, Mr Durkan, who stepped down as leader in 2010, said Dr McDonnell's leadership was "a real issue" posed by voters on the doorstep during general election canvassing.
"If Alasdair thinks that just resigning from the assembly deals with the questions, well it won't because these questions will all surface again once he resigns from the assembly," he said.
"As we move towards an assembly election, the questions won't go away and therefore I think if we're going to be in a better position to fight the election, then the leadership needs to change."
Dr McDonnell earlier rejected criticism by party grandees Seamus Mallon and Brid Rodgers that he should step down, telling the programme: "I'm not going to run away from a task half done." | Voters across Northern Ireland have expressed concerns about the leader of the SDLP Alasdair McDonnell, according to the party's deputy leader. |
35747877 | Mr Snyder, a Republican, has rejected claims of inefficiency as thousands of people were left without safe tap water and at risk of lead poisoning.
He has described the crisis as a "massive error of bureaucracy".
Meanwhile, seven families have filed a lawsuit against authorities.
The city's water became contaminated when lead leached from old pipes after a change in supplier in 2014. Some 100,000 people were affected.
Living one bottle of water at a time
The issue came up as the Democratic candidates took part in a televised debate in Flint on Sunday. Both Ms Clinton and Mr Sanders criticised Mr Snyder's response to the crisis and called for him to step down.
The governor took to Twitter to reject the allegations. In a series of messages posted during the debate, he defended his administration's actions, including aid delivery and cleanup efforts.
"I'm taking responsibility as our value system says we should. My track record is getting things done, and I want to get this done," he said.
The switch to a river water source was a money-saving move when the city was under state financial management.
Mr Snyder, however, dismissed allegations that the decision was based on savings, and blamed all levels of government for the crisis.
The water from Flint River stripped lead from the pipes and contaminated the supply. Lead exposure can cause learning disabilities and behavioural problems in children.
Meanwhile, seven families filed a class action lawsuit seeking to hold state and city officials responsible for the crisis.
Lawyers will ask the courts to certify a class action that would cover any Flint children who were poisoned by drinking the contaminated water, NBC News reported.
Authorities have not commented. | Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has stood firm after Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders called for his resignation over the Flint water crisis. |
40563762 | Fletcher was taken to hospital after being hit by a shot from Birmingham Bears' Sam Hain at Edgbaston.
"It is probably a good thing I did not lift my head up, it could've been a lot worse," said the 28-year-old, who is now out of hospital.
"I got away with it and the doctors said I dodged a bullet."
Nottingham-born Fletcher has played nearly 200 games for Notts in all formats and was part of the side who won the One-Day Cup at Lord's earlier this month.
Speaking to Tuffers and Vaughan on BBC Radio 5 live, he said: "It is frightening. I didn't realise how lucky I was until I watched it back.
"I didn't see the ball at all and I just realised when it hit me and I thought, 'I could be in a bit of bother here'.
"When I first went to the hospital the doctor said: 'There's a chance you could miss the rest of the season.'
"I feel quite lucky that nothing worse has happened. I have not even had a headache yet, although I might get one a bit further down the line. I don't think I'll be able to play for a while though because of concussion protocol.
"They said that if that had hit me in the temple or side of the head, anything could've happened."
Fletcher revealed he has been contacted by Hain since the incident in the T20 Blast group game, which the hosts won off the final ball.
"He messaged me yesterday," said Fletcher. "Quite a few of the Warwickshire lads got in touch and he was one of them.
" I told him that it can't really be helped. He said next time he is at Trent Bridge we will go to the pub and have a beer together."
Fletcher, who made his debut for Notts in 2008, says bowlers are "frightened" of being hit by the ball and at Notts they are able to "go off and bowl on our own" during practice sessions rather than in nets.
"There have been so many close calls, certainly in the 10 years I have been playing - balls are just coming back and you have not got time to move.
"Some of the lads still have a bowl in the nets but it is frightening as balls are coming back at way over 100mph.
"I don't know what speed that ball came back at me from Sam Hain, but I did not see it at all." | Notts Outlaws bowler Luke Fletcher says he was "lucky" to escape serious injury after being hit on the head during a T20 Blast match on Saturday. |
30750342 | In Bournemouth, owners gathered on the promenade on Sunday morning before riding from Boscombe Pier to Sandbanks.
The electric tricycles were launched by entrepreneur Sir Clive Sinclair on 10 January 1985 at Alexandra Palace in London.
Enthusiasts also gathered at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, Hampshire, on Saturday.
On Friday, 30 owners travelled to London for a C5 anniversary edition of the BBC's One Show.
Bournemouth C5 owner Paul Grice, who organised the seafront trip, said: "I started collecting them about six or seven years ago because I liked the look of them.
"I was actually looking at Sinclair computers and I was going through the ads and came across one of these Sinclair cars.
"It cost me £100 and now they are worth about £400 to £700 - I guess they hold their value but it's just a good bit of fun.
"You can drive them on the road with no insurance or tax - anyone can drive them over 14.
"I drive mine on the road sometimes to the pub or the chip shop, down the beach or around the gardens.
"I was born in '78 and I had all the Sinclair computers, but it's really only about 10 years ago when I saw these things that I remembered they were out there.
"I had one recently in its box. In the 80s that's how they were delivered by Comet and Hoover - in a big box." | Sinclair C5 enthusiasts have been celebrating the 30th anniversary of the vehicle's launch. |
22297568 | Sunil ÂTripathi, 22, was identified by a forensic dental exam, but his cause of death has not been determined.
Members of a university rowing team found the body on Tuesday evening, a month after Tripathi went missing.
He has been described as the other victim of the bombings after he was wrongly identified a suspect.
On Thursday, the Tripathi family said in a statement they felt "indescribable grief", but were grateful for the outpouring of support.
Mr Tripathi, a Brown University student on leave, was last seen in his apartment in Providence on 16 March. His family had been searching for him with help from the FBI and Brown students.
Brown University's rowing coach called police after spotting the body floating in the Providence River.
On Monday social media website Reddit issued a public apology for its coverage of the Boston bombings after it wrongly named Tripathi and other people as suspects.
His sister, Sangeeta, told the BBC of her family's anxiety at how fast "completely unsubstantiated claims were spreading".
She described how media surrounded their family home after her brother was wrongly named. | The body of a man found in a Rhode Island river is a student mistakenly identified as one of the Boston bombers, medical officials confirm. |
35573002 | Bruce Tasker and Joel Fearon finished fourth, with Germany taking gold and silver and Switzerland the bronze.
It was Tasker's first major global competition as a pilot and he said: "I'm pinching myself.
"The result was far, far better than I could ever have imagined and I'm absolutely over the moon."
Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke were the last Britons to win a World Championship medal when they claimed gold in Lake Placid in 2009.
In the men's competition, Robin Dixon and Anthony Nash won three world medals between 1963 and 1966 as well as winning Winter Olympic gold in 1964.
Britain's last major medal was at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, where the four-man team claimed a bronze medal.
Tasker, who is only in his second season as a pilot and also competes as a brakeman in four-man, added: "It's amazing to know that is our best result since 1998. I've had my ups and downs this season and I'm just glad to get it right on the day."
Fearon added: "It's surreal - it's better than any dream I've ever had - and we can still get better at the start so I hope there's more to come."
World Championship result:
1. Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis (GER) 3:26.09 (51.68, 51.59, 51.32, 51.50)
2. Johannes Lochner and Joshua Bluhm (GER) 3:26.26 (51.57, 51.55, 51.47, 51.67) + 0.17
3. Beat Hefti and Alex Baumann (SUI) 3:26.31 (51.68, 51.66, 51.37, 51.60) + 0.22
4. Bruce Tasker and Joel Fearon (GBR) 3:26:51 (51.83, 51.66, 51.40, 51.62) + 0.42 | Great Britain missed out on their first medal in a men's bobsleigh World Championships for 50 years by just 0.20 seconds in Igls, Austria. |
33984695 | Charlotte Speddy, 17, from Bethesda, Gwynedd, was born with malformed ribs and a severely curved spine which left her struggling to breathe.
In 2001, she flew to Texas with her parents, Angela and Stephen, where doctors fitted metal ribs and carried out operations to straighten her spine.
But Charlotte died on Tuesday after falling ill with pneumonia.
Her aunt, Helen Speddy, paid tribute to the teenager, adding the care she received at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor was "amazing".
Charlotte was born weighing just 1lb 4oz and missing a kidney, a lung, several ribs and endured about 30 operations. | A teenager who travelled to the United States as a child for pioneering spine surgery, has died. |
39395519 | Crolla - unanimously outpointed when the pair met in September - was rarely able to get close enough to his opponent to cause damage and was dropped by a stinging Linares uppercut in the seventh round.
Though he responded admirably, roared on by around 15,000 in the arena, Crolla always looked at the mercy of Linares' variety of shots and even when pockets of promise arrived for the home fighter, he often quickly faced blows in return.
The pair embraced on the bell, Crolla sporting a look of frustration as his opponent's hand was raised with the scores 118-109 on all three scorecards.
The hope was this boxing cauldron could witness a Manchester fighter memorably upset the odds some 12 years after Ricky Hatton stunned Kostya Tszyu here on a night those present still talk glowingly about.
The reality was that Linares' combination of pedigree, experience and will to trade with ferocity if needed, proved too much.
A world champion by 21, Linares has held world crowns in three weight divisions. The 31-year-old's 14 years as a professional showed as he picked his shots with guile, the uppercut finding its target on several occasions as his upper-body movement consistently opened up the shot.
Crolla, who admitted he "lost to the better man", deserves credit. His career has been a rollercoaster from the moment he suffered a fractured skull and broken ankle when trying to apprehend burglars in 2014. A draw and victory against Darleys Perez saw him claim a world title within a year, only for Linares to take it in what was Crolla's second defence.
The rematch was never the same contest. Though those in attendance sang passionately for their fighter - a heavy underdog - they could not shake a man who looked ice cool and has now contested 41 of his 45 fights outside of Venezuela.
He will now seek a Las Vegas payday against WBC champion Mikey Garcia, while Crolla will likely need to rebuild domestically if he is to come again at world level.
As Tony Bellew screamed "show no respect Ant, make it ugly" from ringside, Crolla embarked on a workmanlike opening two rounds. His guard was constantly high, Linares by comparison confident to lower his own when not at close range.
It meant Crolla was unable to get up close to his opponent as Linares' free hands were piston-like to keep his man at distance. His shots were blisteringly quick, a two-shot combination ending with a right uppercut in the third.
Crolla gutsily stepped forward to close ring space - a feat he claims he let slip late in the pairs' first meeting - and he finally smothered Linares in the fourth, landing two uppercuts at short range. But Linares snapped the home fighter's head back with a sublime uppercut of his own in six, dipping his body to the left before launching the shot with thrust.
It drew a collective grimace from the crowd. Linares - at times tip-toeing with grace and constantly exuding confidence - dropped his man with the same shot in seven. Crolla rose and pumped his hands in defiance as the crowd tried to lift him but as both men walked to their corners, Linares sported a grin of satisfaction.
Now cut above his left eye, Crolla responded with the grit which has endeared him to so many in recent years. A left hook to the jaw and later the body landed in the 10th but he was never able to find a pace or land the shots which could fluster an opponent of such class.
"He's a great champion," Crolla said, speaking on Sky Sports.
"Manchester, I am so sorry I couldn't do it for you. Your support means so much to me. He caught me but before that I thought I could get to him. I got beaten by the better man - no excuses.
"I am 30 years old, I am going to rest, but I believe I can go again."
In an interview with BBC Radio 5 live, Crolla added: "I could just not pin him down. I was pleading with Joe (Gallagher) to let me go on (for the last round), and you still believe you can land a shot.
"I'm gutted I couldn't do it in front of these fans."
Crolla's trainer Joe Gallagher told BBC Radio 5 live why he wanted to take Crolla out of the fight after the 11th round.
Gallagher said: "I thought we were not going to win this, but Anthony pleaded and said 'let me go on'. He wanted to go out on his shield.
"Linares was very good and everyone could see what a great world champion he is. You have seen one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world."
Promoter Eddie Hearn told BBC Radio 5 live: "I thought after the first fight Jorge Linares would not perform a career-best performance and he did. He was absolutely brilliant.
"It is so hard when Anthony Crolla comes up to you and says 'I'm so sorry'. You lost on points to one of the best pound for pound fighters.
"We will choose an easier world title. Anthony Crolla will be back 100%, he is an ultimate professional and a credit to himself."
Heavyweight world title contender Hughie Fury on BBC Radio 5 live
Crolla has the heart of a lion. He tried his best to fight him, box him, out-think him, but Linares had too much skill, too much movement.
There is nothing worse than when you miss the shots and then get hit. It is demoralising. He didn't look hurt in there, but he was out-skilled and out-boxed.
BBC Radio 5 live boxing pundit Steve Bunce
The crowd cannot perform miracles and Linares was a magician in there. When you lose to a man like that, there is no shame for Crolla.
BBC Radio 5 live boxing commentator Mike Costello
Linares was simply too good and too classy for the game and the brave Anthony Crolla. | Anthony Crolla was outclassed in his bid to regain the WBA lightweight title as talented Venezuelan Jorge Linares produced a superb display at Manchester Arena. |
39996262 | The three-day summit at Uluru coincides with the 50th anniversary of a vote that allowed indigenous Australians to be included on a national census.
Australia does not mention Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in its constitution.
The summit aims to reach consensus on the best method of recognition.
More than 200 delegates from indigenous groups around Australia are attending the First Nations Convention, which will form the basis of a report to be delivered to the nation's political leaders in June.
The recommendations may result in a referendum to be voted on by all Australians.
The summit follows 12 indigenous meetings around Australia within the last six months.
It is expected to discuss whether recognition should be included in the constitution or covered separately.
Alternatives likely to be floated include the possibility of negotiating a treaty, and removing clauses criticised as racist from Australia's founding document.
Two so-called "race provisions" allow the states to disqualify people on the basis of race from voting, and allow laws to be made based upon a person's race.
There is broad agreement that recommendations from the summit should be "substantive and practical".
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten "respectfully declined" invitations to the meeting, saying they did not want to influence the outcome.
Aboriginal Australians represent about 2.5% of Australia's 24 million people.
Mr Turnbull said this week also marked 20 years since a landmark report about Australia's Stolen Generations, a government policy of assimilation that was in place until the late 1960s.
"Today, we again acknowledge the Stolen Generations - those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their parents simply because they were Aboriginal. Again we say sorry," he said on Tuesday.
"We acknowledge that this removal separated you from your families, from your lands and your languages and cultures that for 50,000 years your ancestors had protected and cared for. We acknowledge the continuing deep personal pain that affects your lives and those of your families." | Hundreds of indigenous leaders have gathered in central Australia for a historic summit on formally recognising the country's first inhabitants. |
29880055 | On Saturday, tens of thousands of people demonstrated across the Republic of Ireland against water charges.
The controversial austerity measure is a key part of the government's plan to pay back the international financial bailout the state had to seek in 2010.
On Sunday night, Drogheda mayor Kevin Callan resigned from the governing Fine Gael party over the issue.
Mr Callan said he did so in light of what he called the overwhelming levels of public dissatisfaction with the handling of the introduction of water charges by the government and Irish Water.
The utility company was set up last month to provide water services throughout the Republic.
However, speaking on Monday, Mr Callan's former party colleague, Mr Coveney said: "There's one certainty, and that's that Irish Water won't be scrapped.
"Irish Water has spent a lot of money to set up a very large new company, which is going to remain in public ownership, and is going to provide water in a much more cost-effective and efficient manner in the future.
"But I think we need to learn from some of the mistakes that have been made over the last six or eight months."
The political debate on the issue has widened with Ireland's largest union and Labour Party politicians calling for a referendum that would guarantee Irish Water remaining in the hands of the state.
Micheál Martin, the leader of the opposition Fianna Fáil party, has described as "utterly bogus" a claim by Prime Minister (taoiseach) Enda Kenny that the top rate of income tax would have to rise by 4% if water charges were not introduced.
SIPTU president Jack O'Connor and former Labour minister of state Joe Costello have both called for a referendum that would guarantee Irish Water remaining in public ownership.
The Right2Water campaign said 150,000 people had turned out to protest on Saturday.
Right2Water campaigner and former member of Unite trade union, Brendan Ogle, has also criticised the Taoiseach's warning that income tax would rise if the government was to abolish water charges.
Speaking on state broadcaster RTÉ, Mr Ogle said the turnout at the anti-charge protests on Saturday sent a significant message to the government over the level of disquiet at local level.
He said his campaign against water charges was not in any way political and described the charges as a form of double taxation.
"We believe water should be paid through progressive general taxation and that is how it should be done.
"This is a double tax on something we already pay for."
Meanwhile, the Economic Management Council is beginning its second week of examining the issues surrounding Irish Water.
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the council, an inner Cabinet comprising the taoiseach and three other ministers, would be addressing the issues of certainty about what charges people would face in the future. | Irish Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has said there is no question of Irish Water being abolished. |
38157499 | Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards said that Longhua had abandoned a deal with FieldMaster Tractors in Betws, near Ammanford, which promised 40 jobs.
He blamed the UK government's "dithering" over Wales' future relationship with the EU single market.
Wales Office Minister Mr Bebb denied the charge but said he was disappointed by the news.
The Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP raised the issue during Welsh Questions in the Commons on Wednesday.
"Last week, the owner [of FieldMaster Tractors] received notification from China that the deal was off due to uncertainty about our future trading relationship with the European Union," Mr Edwards said.
"Does the minister recognise that the UK government's dithering over Wales's future relationship with the single market and the customs union is costing jobs now?"
Mr Bebb said he was "disappointed", adding: "Any loss of investment in Wales is to be regretted.
"He is wrong, however, to talk about dithering," the minister continued.
"We want strong trade relations with the European Union and with the rest of the world.
"Any Chinese investor looking at the UK knows that this country is friendly to investment from all parts of the globe."
FieldMaster Tractors founder and owner Chris Parrott said he was disappointed his Chinese backers had pulled out of the project, citing uncertainty over the UK's future trading relationship with Europe.
He set up the company in 2014 after 30 years in the car industry, and had begun on a small scale assembling tractors from India.
The firm had changed its name to Longhua FieldMaster in anticipation of the deal, Mr Parrott said, which would have seen the operation expand to assembly tractors from China instead.
"You just have to pick yourself up and carry on," he told BBC Wales, saying the company had spent a "small fortune" getting Longhua on board.
"We've just got to rethink our strategy and grow organically." | A Chinese company has scrapped plans to invest in Carmarthenshire due to Brexit uncertainty, MPs have been told. |
36381827 | About half of union members voted, with 74% of those backing industrial action in the dispute over rest breaks.
Thomas Cook Airlines said plans were in place to make sure customers would still be able to go on holiday in the event of strikes.
The British airline flies more than six million passengers a year to the US, continental Europe, Asia and Africa.
A Unite spokesman said union bosses would hold talks with the airline and conciliation service Acas on Thursday and next Tuesday.
He said it was not the union's intention to disrupt holiday plans during half-term, which for most schoolchildren begins this weekend.
For a strike to go ahead, the union would need to give Thomas Cook seven days' notice, and that notice has not been served.
Thomas Cook has reduced its cabin crew's breaks from one 20-minute break every six hours to one 20-minute break every 12 hours worked - the minimum indicated in the Civil Aviation Authority's guidelines.
Unite says crew should have at least two 20-minute breaks every 12 hours.
A spokesman for Thomas Cook Airlines said: "We're disappointed Unite cabin crew members have taken the decision to vote for strike action.
"The safety of both our people and our customers is our top priority and we rigorously adhere to the rules around crew breaks."
He said the airline was "committed" to working with Unite to find a solution to end the dispute.
"Meanwhile, we've put together plans to ensure that our customers will still be able to go on holiday, despite any possible strike action."
Thomas Cook Airlines has a fleet of 31 planes, employs 2,500 people and has its head office at Manchester Airport. | Thomas Cook cabin crew voted in favour of a strike in a row over health and safety, the Unite union has said. |
23395770 | The trouble was sparked by the arrest of a man whose wife was told by police on Thursday to remove an Islamic face-covering veil, banned in public.
He has been accused of trying to strangle the officer.
Up to 300 people attacked a police station in Trappes on Friday night where the man was being held.
One leading Muslim group disputed the authorities' version of events, blaming police "provocation".
The suspect, described as a Muslim convert aged 21, was later released on Saturday pending an appearance in court, French media say.
The ban on wearing the full face veil in public was introduced in April 2011 with the threat of a financial penalty for not observing it.
Reinforcements from the CRS riot police were drafted in and Interior Minister Manuel Valls said they would remain in place until calm was restored. Thirty riot police vehicles were seen outside the Trappes police station.
In the latest violence which erupted in Trappes and several neighbouring areas, bus-shelters and cars were torched and fireworks directed at police, who responded with tear gas and baton charges.
The worst of the trouble took place in the early hours of Sunday. In one reported incident, a car was driven at police but no-one was hurt.
"It's beginning to spread to surrounding areas - Elancourt and Guyancourt," David Callu of the SGP police officers' union told BFM-TV news channel.
Four people were arrested and 20 cars burned, Mr Valls said in a statement.
Tensions in France's high-immigration city suburbs continue to fester, the BBC's Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield reports.
Although there has been no sustained unrest since the 2005 riots, sporadic violence is far from rare, he adds.
In 2005, a state of emergency was imposed when a wave of rioting spread across France, sparked by the deaths of two teenagers in a Paris suburb. | Crowds of youths have thrown stones at French police and set fire to cars in a second night of disturbances in the Paris suburb of Trappes. |
21646863 | Yingluck Shinawatra was speaking at the opening of the Cites conservation meeting taking place in Bangkok,
The legal market in Thailand is said to be fuelling high levels of poaching across Africa.
Critics say that there is a lack of clarity and detail regarding the proposed changes to the law.
There are about 6,500 elephants in Thailand, of which 2,500 live in the wild. Ivory taken from domesticated elephants can be legally sold in the country but campaign groups and scientific experts say that this law is being used to "launder" ivory taken illegally from Africa.
Thailand is believed to be second only to China as a market for tusks, often brutally removed from elephants across the continent. It is estimated that between 50 and 100 African elephants a day are being killed to meet the demand.
Speaking at the opening of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Bangkok, the Thai PM said that no one cares more about elephants than the people of Thailand.
But she acknowledged that the current system was being abused.
The Convention assigns animals and plants to different categories depending on the level of threat they face:
"Unfortunately, many have used Thailand as a transit country for the illegal international ivory trade," she told the meeting.
"As a next step we will forward amending the national legislation with the goal of putting an end on ivory trade and to be in line with international norms."
No further details were given as to the timing and scope of any ban. Some campaigners were delighted with the announcement, saying they understood the proposed changes would protect all forms of elephants including Thailand's wild and domestic elephants and those from Africa.
Stuart Chapman from WWF told BBC News it was a "big occasion."
"We need to see detail in terms of the timeframe but it all starts with a commitment and we've never had that before, today the prime minister made that commitment," he said.
"This is a very important first step."
Others though were more cautious believing that Ms Yingluck was talking about curbing the international flow of ivory into Thailand by beefing up a DNA testing programme to validate the origins or tusks.
And with up to 5,000 stores, boutiques and kiosks selling ivory to tourists across Thailand, many believe it will be impossible to stem the trade, whatever the law says.
Philip Mansbridge is the chief executive of the wildlife charity, Care for the Wild. He told BBC news that the PM's intentions were unclear.
"While it is positive that the host country has recognised the size of the ivory issue and the importance of it, we were disappointed by the lack of a clear commitment to banning the domestic trade," he said.
"We don't feel it has gone far enough."
The Cites meeting runs until the 14th of March and will consider 70 proposals from governments to regulate the trade in species including polar bears, rhinos and several different varieties of sharks.
Follow Matt on Twitter. | Thailand's prime minister says she will amend her country's laws to ban the legal trade in ivory. |
37382224 | The Swede hit six birdies, including three in his first four holes, in a seven-under-par round of 64 at Golf Club Milano in Monza.
England's Chris Wood is six shots off the pace after a two-under-par 69.
Wood is one of seven members of Europe's Ryder Club team playing at the event at Parco Reale di Monza.
The Ryder Cup against the United States, held at Hazeltine in Minnesota, takes place from 30 September to 2 October.
England's Lee Westwood, who went round in 70, said: "Hopefully I can get myself in contention and get the competitive juices flowing.
"Next week is a week off. I'll work on my game at home and do a bit of gym work to keep the body ticking over, but I don't want to overdo it because the Ryder Cup is obviously a long and tiring week, both mentally and physically."
With play suspended twice following heavy rain and lightning storms in Rome, more than half the field did not finish the first round on Thursday.
The other European Ryder Cup players - Germany's Martin Kaymer, England's Danny Willett, Andy Sullivan and Matthew Fitzpatrick, and Spain's Rafael Cabrera-Bello - are set to complete their opening rounds on Friday. | Defending champion Rikard Karlberg leads home favourite Francesco Molinari by one shot after the first round of a rain-affected Italian Open at Monza. |
34967346 | The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said some providers may be breaching consumer laws.
It will look into complaints that prices can go up after a customer has taken out a contract - or that the amount of data storage can be changed.
Earlier this year the ONS reported that 40% of UK adults now use cloud storage.
Users of lap-tops, mobiles and tablets are increasingly taking advantage of such services, to store photos, documents, TV programmes and films.
By storing such files in the cloud, rather than on the device itself, users get more memory, and the ability to access them from anywhere in the world.
Usually cloud storage providers offer a certain amount of memory for free, but can charge up to £40 a month for extra gigabytes.
Amongst the biggest providers are Dropbox, Google Drive and Apple's iCloud.
The CMA said it was particularly concerned about:
"If our review finds breaches of consumer protection laws, we will take further action to address these," said Nisha Arora, the CMA's senior director for consumer.
That could include "enforcement action using our consumer law powers, seeking voluntary change from the sector, or providing guidance to business or consumers."
The law on price transparency has been tightened since the Consumer Rights Act came into force on 1 October.
The CMA's consultation on the issue will be open until 15 January 2016, with an initial report on its findings expected in May. | An investigation is to be launched into whether internet users are being charged unfairly when they use cloud storage services. |
36394321 | Midfielder Barton helped Burnley to the Championship title this season and an instant return to England's top flight.
"I'm gutted that Joey has gone," said Wales striker Vokes, who scored 15 league goals for the Clarets this season.
"I was a bit surprised too because he was a big part of the squad and a key figure for us on and off the pitch."
Barton turned down a lucrative 12-month deal to stay at Turf Moor and has instead joined Rangers on a two-year contract following the Glasgow club's promotion to the Scottish Premiership.
The 33-year-old has had plenty of controversial moments in a career that has also taken in Manchester City, Newcastle United, Queens Park Rangers and Marseille.
But Vokes insisted: "He was good around the place. Even when we had a sticky patch around Christmas, he was a great leader in the dressing-room.
"People spoke about his reputation before he came in, but I didn't see that at all.
"I'm sure he will go up to Scotland and have a good crack at it.
"He was a big part of what we did, but he's made that decision and he'll go up there with the same energy that he had for us."
Vokes, speaking at Wales' pre-Euro 2016 training camp in Portugal, is excited about a return to England's top flight under manager Sean Dyche.
"The club is in a lot better position on the financial side after coming out of the Premier League the last time," suggested the 26-year-old.
"A few lads have signed new contracts and that shows the stability of the club and their intentions.
"The manager has been a massive part of the club's success over the last three or four years.
"I think he'll bring in a few players this summer and the club will have a go.
"We've got a stable group, but he will look to add a bit of quality." | Sam Vokes has admitted to surprise that Joey Barton gave up another shot at the Premier League to join Rangers. |
35209752 | A mass dance warm-up took place at Saundersfoot before the swimmers braved the sea, cheered on by thousands of spectators.
Pembrokeshire-born adventurer Tori James, the first Welsh woman to climb Mount Everest, was on hand to start the swim.
Now in its 32rd year, the event has raised more than £500,000 for charity.
Highlights among the fancy dress included a large Star Wars Millennium Falcon and Mrs Brown's Boys. | More than 1,500 swimmers in fancy dress have welcomed in the New Year at an annual swim in Pembrokeshire. |
34864601 | She also believes that plans to phase out coal fired power plants and replace them by stations run on gas would leave the UK dependent on imported gas.
The plans were part of a major policy speech on Wednesday by the Energy Secretary Amber Rudd.
Coal currently accounts for around 30% of UK power generation.
But in her speech, Amber Rudd said that one of the most cost effective ways of reducing harmful emissions was to replace coal-fired power plants with gas.
However, the Drax chief executive warned that this could leave the UK with the wrong energy mix.
"Coal and gas today produce over half of our electricity. If you replace all the coal stations with gas you would then be dependent on imported gas for over half our electricity," Mrs Thompson said. "I think that's probably the wrong balance."
And she said that being too reliant upon gas could hit household energy bills too.
"We would be so exposed if the gas price soared. Suddenly, the end-consumers' bill would soar and we would have nothing to balance it out with," she said.
Shares in Drax closed down more than 4% on Wednesday after Amber Rudd's speech, wiping tens of millions of pounds the company's value.
Drax's huge power plant, in North Yorkshire, is the UK's biggest coal-fired power generator.
But almost half its output is now from biomass - burning eco friendly wood pellets.
"If you want to replace coal and you want to replace it quickly… the best way to do it and the most affordable way to do it, is to use biomass," said Mrs Thompson.
The company is converting the third of its six units to run on biomass. To do more it will need to win subsidies in three renewables' auctions planned by the government in this parliament.
Failure to win contracts could force the closure of those units over the next decade.
While Amber Rudd's speech made no specific reference of supporting biomass, Mrs Thompson believes biomass can compete in energy generation.
"We are confident that if the government correctly structures the auctions, as they are now planning to do, that we will win," she said.
Mrs Thompson welcomed the Energy Secretary's move to bring clarity to where energy policy is going. "In my industry, which is about long term investment, clarity is important," she said.
But she warned that getting a new generation of gas plants built would not be easy.
She said: "There are an awful lot of gas plants that are going to be required because we have not only got coal closures, we have also got gas closures so it is quite a challenge they are facing.
"They recognise that if there are going to be new gas stations, they are going to need special support contracts because the economics don't work today and have not worked for quite a long time."
Follow John on Twitter @JohnMoylanBBC | Consumers could be exposed to soaring energy prices under new Government plans, says Dorothy Thompson, boss of coal-fired power generator Drax. |
29948865 | This dormitory town of 120,000 people on the northern edge of Barcelona is sharply divided over the 9 November vote on breaking away.
Historically it was a summer retreat for rich people in the city, just across the River Besos. You can still see some of their mansions among the concrete apartment blocks.
But Santa Coloma de Gramenet mushroomed into an urban sprawl under the Franco dictatorship and these days it is one of Catalonia's poorest towns.
At one point in the 1980s it was possibly the least cool address in the Barcelona area, notorious for drug addiction.
With 20% unemployment today, it has a particularly high population of migrants from outside the region, who now slightly outnumber those born locally.
Walk around the town's Fondo area and you will soon see that the newest residents hail from around the world - China, Latin America, Pakistan.
Ask people you assume to be locals, and you will repeatedly find migrants or descendants of migrants from poor parts of southern Spain.
It is no surprise, then, that a Spanish national political party dominates the town's politics - unusual for Catalonia.
Santa Coloma's energetic young mayor Nuria Parlon is firmly opposed to independence, though she backs the right of Catalans to vote, seeking to distance herself from the hard line of the conservative government in Madrid.
The language of public administration at the town hall is Catalan, whatever the politics inside, and Mayor Parlon's party actually sits in a local coalition with the party of Artur Mas, Catalonia's pro-independence leader.
Independence, she argues, is a "placebo" which would not solve Catalonia's underlying problems.
Chief among those problems is the weakness of the economy after the debt crisis, she says, and half of the town's budget of €90m (£71m; $112m) is spent on social services.
A mothballed construction site, that symbol of crisis to be seen all over Spain, looms just around the corner from the town hall.
For the independence-minded Catalans of the old town, living in the streets around the nearby Major church, the challenge is to win over people with more on their minds than building new countries.
Health worker Galdric Arus, my hour-long guide to the old town's charms, used to feel lonely because he had never met another "Galdric" (an old Catalan name).
Then he discovered Facebook, he says laughing, and found a few Galdrics over the border in Perpignan, capital of old northern Catalonia in what is now France.
He sees himself as a patriot, not a nationalist, and his greatest contribution to independence, if it ever happens, may be the teaching of the Catalan language. He does that voluntarily two evenings a week, in classes for recent migrants from outside Spain.
His vision of an independent Catalonia is of a happily integrated, multi-ethnic society living in prosperity, separately from Spain.
But for now he burns with indignation at Madrid's efforts to deny him and other Catalans the right to decide their future.
On Sunday he will have to go to a secondary school just outside the town centre to vote because the organisers are not allowed to use the normal polling stations in the centre.
Heading to a different school on Sunday, though he lives just a street away in the old town, is statistician Manel Pons.
For Manel, the record of Spanish governments of both the right and left, including Mayor Parlon's Socialists, is dismal when it comes to Catalonia. It comes down to too many broken promises of greater autonomy.
We meet at a cafe just outside the town hall, a stone's throw from the voter registration booth set up in a doorway between shops, where activists are busy building an electoral roll of their own.
During my day in Santa Coloma, would-be voters are more a trickle than a stream.
Manel introduces me to Sabina, who will work as an election volunteer on Sunday. She does not want to give her surname - not because she fears repercussions, she says, but because of privacy concerns.
"We have to show the government what the people think," she argues. "They must be made to understand what the people think."
Among those definitely voting is Alonso Romero, an upholsterer who has a workshop in the Fondo area, still busy repairing sofas for the comfort of Santa Colomans at the age of 70.
But Alonso is voting the other way - a very definite "no" to independence.
Since arriving from Andalusia in the 1950s - he still remembers some lonely moments conquering his nerves as a young migrant in Catalonia's dance halls - he has become, in his words, "perfectly integrated" and feels completely Catalan, yet he is still a proud Spaniard.
A more recent arrival from Andalusia is Guillermo Alvarez, who owns a newspaper kiosk just below the town hall.
A Catalan independence flag adorns his kiosk, but the man selling news to Santa Coloma seems to be keeping his options open.
What people want most right now in Santa Coloma is work and a decent standard of living, he argues.
"If the economy doesn't work, nothing works," he says. "It's the economic crisis which has spurred the independence movement and independence is seen as one way out of it.
"Spain is not allowing the Catalan people to decide and people want a free, democratic, constitutional country."
Madrid's efforts to block Sunday's vote effectively mean that only the pro-independence campaign is visible on Santa Coloma's streets in the flags and posters and banners.
As Madrid is ignoring the vote officially there is no anti-independence campaigning.
The town remains outwardly calm, with Spanish-speakers and Catalan-speakers living peacefully side by side, but the tension is palpable in the mayor's office.
In the current atmosphere, Nuria says, she is uncomfortable stating her position in public.
"If I put out a tweet now saying I do not favour independence, because I regard it as a trap, a lot of people will attack me with verbal abuse," she says. "They'll call me a fascist."
It is an insult that hangs in the air briefly, like a ghost from Spain's civil war past, but it is hard to think of the people of this quiet town ever going back to open conflict.
Follow my blog on Tumblr and Twitter as I report on this fascinating vote. Join in the conversation with questions if you see me live-tweeting discussions. | Catalonia's dream of independence from Spain collides with some harsh realities on the streets of Santa Coloma. |
35275029 | The B-52 swooped over an air base close to the North-South border.
Pyongyang said it detonated an underground device earlier this week to widespread condemnation, but experts remain sceptical about the claim.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said the test was an act of self-defence to prevent nuclear war with the US.
"It is the legitimate right of a sovereign state and a fair action that nobody can criticise," he was quoted by North Korean state media as saying.
Following the test, South Korea resumed broadcasting propaganda from speakers mounted on the border and the North countered with similar broadcasts.
The two sides are technically still at war, with the civil conflict that ended in 1953 concluding in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
The US is an ally of the South and said the B-52's flight was a response "to recent provocative action by North Korea".
Lt Gen Terrence O'Shaughnessy said the US was "steadfast" in its commitment to defending South Korea, and that includes "extended deterrence provided by our conventional forces and our nuclear umbrella".
Washington is considering sending an aircraft carrier to the region, Yonhap reported.
There has been no response yet from North Korea to the B-52's flight.
If may take weeks to confirm North Korea's claims to have tested a hydrogen bomb, but several experts said the blast was not large enough to have been from such a device.
The test angered North Korea's main ally China and the UN is working on new measures against Pyongyang, already internationally isolated from previous nuclear tests. | The US has flown a B-52 bomber over South Korea in a show of force after North Korea said it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. |
33590305 | He pledged to tackle extremist ideology and "the failures of integration" which he said had led to hundreds of Britons joining Islamic State (IS) militants.
Among a number of proposals, the PM promised to allow parents to have their children's passports cancelled if they feared they were at risk.
He also pledged to look at social housing to prevent further segregation.
The Muslim Council of Britain urged the prime minister to "put his words into action" and engage with "all sections of the community including mainstream Muslim organisations and those who have differing views".
In a speech in Birmingham on the government's five-year plan to defeat home-grown extremism, Mr Cameron set out four major areas that needed attention: countering the "warped" extremist ideology, the process of radicalisation, the "drowning out" of moderate Muslim voices, and the "identity crisis" among some British-born Muslims.
He said the focus of his speech was Islamist extremism - not Islam the religion - and that moderate Muslims also hated the "sick world view" of extremists.
"I want to work with you to defeat this poison," he said.
He said the government's strategy included plans to:
He spoke about a lack of confidence when it came to enforcing British values, referring specifically to forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
"No more turning a blind eye on the basis of cultural sensitivities," he said.
Analysis by Norman Smith, BBC assistant political editor
"No-one becomes a terrorist from a standing start," said the PM.
And in that one phrase lies the core of Mr Cameron's argument: people become terrorists gradually.
They start with intolerant views towards democracy, freedom of expression and sexual equality. If this is not challenged they often gravitate to even more extreme views.
And this over time can lead to violence and terrorism.
In other words, tackling the ideology of IS involves confronting people over intolerance, prejudice and hostility to British values.
How to do this is much more fraught and Mr Cameron today came forward with relatively few specific policies. Why?
In part because of the fear of a backlash from the Muslim community.
But also because of an understandable wariness of compromising freedom of speech and expression - precisely the values Mr Cameron wants to defend.
The prime minister said the UK needed to "de-glamorise" the extremist ideology and conspiracy theories used by groups such as IS.
"This is a group that throws people off buildings, that burns them alive... This isn't a pioneering movement, it is a vicious, brutal and fundamentally abhorrent existence," he said.
Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Commons Home Affairs committee, said the government needed to engage with Muslim communities.
"We need to understand why a few become isolated from their own communities," he said.
BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said giving worried parents the power to have their children's passports removed was a concrete step.
At present, children can be made a ward of court and then the local authority can prevent them travelling, or parents can go to the police who could act in certain circumstances, he said.
Our correspondent said the emphasis of Mr Cameron's speech was on the "battle of ideas" but added it could be about 10 years too late.
"The people they have to persuade are the young people who are already, to a degree, lost - and that is a big challenge for the government," our correspondent said.
The stories of those who have died, been convicted of offences relating to the Islamic State conflict or are still in Syria or Iraq.
Mr Cameron said it was not enough for groups to say they opposed IS.
This would be setting the bar for acceptability "ludicrously low", and groups should be expected also to condemn conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism and sectarianism, he said.
The Extremism Bill, unveiled in the Queen's Speech to Parliament in May, will include "narrowly-targeted" powers to tackle "facilitators and cult leaders" and stop them "peddling their hatred", said Mr Cameron.
While welcoming aspects of Mr Cameron's speech, the Ramadhan Foundation said "there was a lot about what he thinks and believes but with very little substance on what he is going to do".
Chief executive Mohammed Shafiq also rejected Mr Cameron's use of the term "grievance justification", whereby he said some people blamed the rise of extremism on "historic injustices, recent wars, poverty and hardship".
He said the PM's idea that "somehow we're saying foreign policy is an excuse is really offensive".
Dr Shuja Shafi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the group agreed with the prime minister that Islamic State's causes must be de-glamorised.
"We worry, however, that these latest suggestions will set new litmus tests which may brand us all as extremists, even though we uphold and celebrate the rule of law, democracy and rights for all," he said.
"Dissenting is a proud tradition of ours that must not be driven underground."
In his speech, Mr Cameron attacked the National Union of Students for "allying itself" with the advocacy group Cage.
But the NUS responded by saying it would not work with Cage "in any capacity".
The government is expected to set out a wider counter-extremism strategy later this year which will include more legislation.
Police and security services believe at least 700 extremists have travelled to fight with IS militants who have taken control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria, with half since returned and posing a domestic terror threat.
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has told MPs that five RAF pilots have been embedded with coalition forces carrying out air strikes against IS in Syria in the past year.
Parliament has approved UK involvement in air strikes in Iraq and Mr Cameron has suggested he could soon seek approval to extend the military action to Syria. | David Cameron has set out the government's strategy to defeat the "poison" of Islamist extremism. |
36312517 | He will now start forming a minority government, after the Queen's approval.
But in a fiery Senedd session, Plaid leader Leanne Wood said her party would vote against Labour again if needed, accusing it of "bullying" behaviour.
UKIP's Neil Hamilton also sparked a row calling her and Lib Dem Kirsty Williams Mr Jones's "political concubines".
The comments came after Mr Jones outlined his plans.
He told AMs there would be legislation on public health, additional learning needs and on smacking.
But he said legislation would not be brought forward in the first 100 days so that AMs could establish a new, more collaborative way of law-making.
The Welsh people wanted Labour to proceed with "caution and humility", he told the assembly.
Mr Jones added his government's priorities would reflect "the successful result for Welsh Labour in the May election, and subsequent discussions with the main opposition party, Plaid Cymru".
Labour's main aims include a "relentless focus on securing a successful and sustainable future for our steel industry", and Mr Jones pledged ministers would "campaign vociferously for a Remain vote" in June's EU referendum.
He said Labour would then bring forward "a new Public Health Bill, an Additional Learning Needs Bill, and we will take forward, on a cross-party basis, legislation that will remove the defence of reasonable chastisement [of children]" and "seek to amend the current Welsh language measure".
But Ms Wood issued a warning to Labour not to expect an easy ride over the next five years after Plaid became the official opposition.
"Today is not about coalition," she said. "Today's is a one off vote to allow Labour's nomination to go through.
"And if that party thinks their bullying last week will stop Plaid Cymru from voting in a similar way in the future to hold you to account, then think again."
Ms Wood also refused to apologise for challenging Mr Jones for the first minister post which led to a tied vote and deadlock,
"I'm not sorry for what happened last week and I will do it again if I have to make Labour realise they are running a minority government," she added.
Meanwhile, Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies urged Mr Jones to clarify where he stood on controversial plans for an M4 relief road around Newport, improving the NHS and reducing the number of local councils.
"We will from the benches here hold you to account, on each and every corner that you try and turn", Mr Davies said.
"But we will also seek to be constructive in the way we engage and debate on the points that need to be brought forward."
Any suggestion that there would be a cosying up between Labour and Plaid came to an abrupt end when Leanne Wood wasted no time in laying into Carwyn Jones.
You would never have guessed that the two parties had been working closely together over the past few days on a deal when she described Labour as complacent, arrogant and having a sense of entitlement.
One AM described it to me after as being close to a declaration of war, and something that caused genuine surprise among Labour and Conservative ranks.
The inevitable question is how long the Labour-Plaid deal is likely to last in the light of Leanne Wood's tone.
Throw into the mix Neil Hamilton's description of Leanne Wood and Kirsty Williams as "concubines", and all round we were left with a spiky first session that kept us all guessing. | Welsh Labour leader Carwyn Jones has been reappointed as first minister after a deal with Plaid Cymru ended a week of deadlock in Cardiff Bay. |
35901358 | The bomber detonated the explosives at the end of a football match, wounding more than 60 others, according to police and medical sources.
Iskandariya is a mainly Shia town 40km (25 miles) south of the capital, Baghdad.
So-called Islamic State (IS) said it carried out the attack.
IS, a mainly Sunni group which controls large swathes of northern and western Iraq, has attacked numerous Shia targets in the country recently.
A local police captain said the suicide bomber blew himself up in the crowd as the trophy was being handed to the winners, AFP news agency reported.
The town's mayor was among those killed, the agency added, quoting an unnamed medical source.
Iskandariya is in a region that was once called "the triangle of death" and was badly affected by sectarian violence that followed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Islamic State group: The full story
Crisis in seven charts
Meanwhile, the powerful Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr urged Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to implement government reforms within 24 hours.
Mr Sadr warned authorities they would face street protests if a new-cabinet and fresh measures to fight corruption were not introduced by Saturday.
The ultimatum was made in a statement read to thousands of his supporters staging a sit-in outside the gates of the heavily fortified Green Zone, an area of government offices and embassies in Baghdad.
Plans for a cabinet re-shuffle were announced last month, but Mr Abadi has been slow to implement the changes. | At least 29 people have been killed in a suicide attack in a crowded park in the Iraqi city of Iskandariya, officials have said. |
31631461 | The document describes itself as the EU's "initial offer" in negotiations over the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP).
It includes the wording that UK ministers have said will protect the NHS from privatisation.
Anti-TTIP campaigners say a specific exemption for the NHS is still needed.
The 103-page document is headed "trade in services and investment: schedule of specific commitments and reservations".
It was produced before the most recent round of TTIP negotiations in Brussels were held at the beginning of this month.
On health, the document states: "The EU reserves the right to adopt or maintain any measure with regard to the provision of all health services which receive public funding or State support in any form".
The wording is the same as that used in a similar free trade agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA).
The UK trade minister, Lord Livingston, said last week that this text ensured "publicly funded health services are excluded".
The European Commission has also previously said TTIP would not affect how NHS services are provided, whether in Scotland or the rest of the UK.
But Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has called for the NHS to be specifically excluded from the deal.
She said: "I think this issue has to be put beyond any doubt.
"Our NHS is not for sale and TTIP must have a clear and explicit exclusion for the National Health Service."
The trade union Unite said "real risks" remained because of the dispute resolution mechanism TTIP is expected to include.
The union's Scottish regional secretary, Pat Rafferty said: "Last week Lord Livingston tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the Scottish people.
"Now this leaked document has confirmed Unite's expert legal advice, that NHS services in Scotland and the rest of the UK do fall within the scope of the TTIP.
"This means that American investors in NHS services that are privatised now or in the future will be able to use TTIP to sue the government if it tries to bring them back into public hands".
Labour and the Scottish Greens have also endorsed Unite's campaign.
Ian Murray, who is Labour's Shadow Trade Minister, said: "The EU Commission and Conservative government have been dragged kicking and screaming by the public to exclude the NHS and public services from TTIP.
"If they are so confident that the NHS is protected then why don't they specifically add it to the list of exclusions? By not doing so Scots will be suspicious that TTIP could threaten our NHS and other public services."
BMA council chairman Dr Mark Porter said: "Both the UK government and the European Commission need to ensure that sufficient safeguards will be in place to protect the NHS from further commercialisation arising from the EU/US trade partnership."
In response, European Commission spokesman, Daniel Rosario said: "No existing free trade agreement would prevent any government from renationalising any public services on national or local level.
"Alternatively, negotiations do not force governments to privatise or deregulate. This situation will not change with TTIP or any other trade agreement.
"The EU is currently negotiating and the countries that sign up to free trade agreements can keep public monopolies and regulate public services as they see fit."
Appearing before a Scottish Parliament committee last week, Lord Livingston said he was worried the NHS was being used as a "political football".
He said: "Some people are getting fearful, largely because there are people going around saying 'the Tories are going to sell off the health service to Americans'.
"We are saying 'no, it is not true'. The operation of the health services will not be affected by TTIP.
"The decisions about how they are operated will continue to be that for the democratically elected government of the individual area."
Lord Livingston also highlighted a letter from EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, which offers similar assurances.
She said: "There is no reason to fear either for the NHS as it stands today or for changes to the NHS in future, as a result of TTIP."
The EU document lists reservations from TTIP proposed by the EU as a whole and by individual member states.
It makes clear that "where appropriate" member states can seek opt-outs on behalf of parts of their territory.
In the EU-Canada agreement, Belgium did this in relation to the issuing of taxi licences in the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels capital regions.
That could prompt calls for the UK government to seek a specific exemption for NHS Scotland, even if it chooses not to do so for the NHS more generally | A leaked draft of what the European Union wants excluded from a new trade deal with the United States has been obtained by the BBC. |
35720408 | Off-duty fireman Alan Brown, 46, fell into an outside basement area of Bert's Bar in William Street on 4 April 2014.
At Edinburgh Sheriff Court, Maclay Inns pleaded guilty under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
It admitted failing to ensure staff were aware of the importance of a gate in the railings being padlocked.
The gate was used to allow access to a keg hoist leading to the basement.
Fiscal Depute, Gary Aitken, told Sheriff Kenneth Maciver that Mr Brown, a father-of-two, had been out socialising with friends.
He was making his way home at about 01:35 when he fell into the basement. Mr Aitken said the fall was not witnessed by anyone or on CCTV.
It may have been that Mr Brown had leant against the gate and fallen through, but Mr Aitken said that made no difference as the gate had not been secured by a bolt or padlock.
Investigations had shown the need to secure the gate had been "forgotten about" and from April 2012 it was routine not to lock the gate.
He said this had led to Mr Brown's death.
Advocate Barry Smith said the company wished to record its sincere condolences to the family for the tragic accident.
He said the company had no previous convictions but had gone into administration on 23 January 2015.
Sheriff Maciver said he would not take into account the financial position of the company by imposing a nominal sum.
He added that a financial penalty in a case involving injury or death must not be seen as any sort of measure by the court of the value of a life, nor should it be seen as compensation.
It was to punish a company and deter others.
In this case the breach had not been deliberate or any type of shortcut in work practices.
"Nevertheless" he said "it is a case where there had been, over a number of years, a serious and obviously dangerous omission where the practice of padlocking the gate had been ignored by laziness and inattention. It was an accident waiting to happen." | A firm has been fined £100,000 over the death of a man who fell into a basement at one of its Edinburgh pubs because a gate was not padlocked. |
35152546 | The singer left the stage at the end of her Rebel Heart tour concert on Sunday.
When she returned for an encore of Holiday, Madonna was forced to lead a crowd singalong after finding the power off and floor lights on.
Posting on Instagram, Madonna said: "We don't stop till its over Glasgow! Don't try to silence the Queen." The Hydro said Madonna's own team cut the power.
A spokeswoman for the venue said: "Madonna finished her agreed set and then chose to come on for another song.
"By that stage, all the power and control equipment had already been disconnected by her own production engineers. I would stress that this was not a venue decision."
Videos posted on social media showed Madonna leading a singalong of Holiday at the packed venue.
The Glasgow gig was the last of 25 sold-out shows on the European leg of the 57-year-old's latest tour.
She will perform in Mexico at the start of January. | Pop star Madonna has issued a rebuke after the power was cut during her encore at Glasgow's Hydro venue. |
16337648 | Beidou now offered location, timing and navigation data to China and surrounding areas,announced the project's spokesman Ran Cheng.
China has been working on the system since 2000 to provide an alternative to the US government-run Global Positioning System (GPS).
The move should make China's military less dependent on foreign technology.
A launch earlier this month delivered the 10th of Beidou's satellites into orbit.
Beijing plans to send a further six satellites into space by 2012 to extend the system to most parts of Asia, and then expand the network to a total of 35 satellites offering global coverage by 2020.
Interested parties are invited to study a test version of the project'sInterface Control Document, which has been placed online
Beidou - which translates as the Plough, or Big Dipper - promises to offer civilian users positioning information correct to the nearest 10m, measure speeds within 0.2m per second, and provide clock synchronisation signals accurate to 0.02 millionths of a second.
The Chinese military will be able to obtain more accurate data.
A 2004 study by Geoffrey Forden, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, suggested that Beidou could be used totarget cruise missiles against Taiwanif a war broke out over the territory. Having its own system would protect China against the risk that the US could turn GPS off.
A 2011 report for the website defensepolicy.org suggested the network could also be used toguide drones to destroy foreign naval forceswere China to come under attack.
However, Beidou's developers also stress day-to-day benefits for the public.
They told China Daily that the system could create a400 billion yuan ($63.2bn, £40.4bn) marketin related applications for the automotive, telecommunications, fishing and other industries by 2020.
Mr Ran also noted that the system is compatible and interoperable with the world's other navigation systems.
Beyond GPS, Russia operates the Glonass network. It recently launched a series of satellites to cover gaps in its system and reported earlier this month that it once againcovered 100% of the Earth's surface.
The EU is also developing its own system - Galileo.The first of its operational satellites entered orbit in October. The European Space Agency said the network should be completed in 2019.
Meanwhile, American defence developer Lockheed Martin is working toupgrade the US's system to GPS III.
The firm has begun constructing a prototype next-generation satellite in a facility near Denver.
The US Air Force said the new system would have more power, making it harder for enemies to jam it, and allowing the signals to penetrate deeper into built up cities and dense foliage.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the project will cost $25bn by 2025. | China's satellite navigation system has become operational, according to an official. |
36655420 | The Obama administration was criticised for lax security and a slow response to the 2012 attacks on a US compound, in the report by House Republicans.
But they found no new evidence of wrongdoing by ex-Secretary of State and White House hopeful Hillary Clinton.
The issue has long haunted her on the campaign trail.
Islamic militants stormed the US compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi in 2012, killing four Americans including ambassador Chris Stevens.
Earlier this year, Mrs Clinton said she took responsibility for the attack during an 11-hour hearing before the House Republicans committee on the matter.
Military leaders have said they did not have sufficient intelligence on what was happening or the resources to respond quickly enough.
In announcing the conclusion of the committee's investigation, chairman Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina, said: "Nothing was en route to Libya at the time the last two Americans were killed almost eight hours after the attacks began."
US help was too slow because of "an obsession with hurting the Libyans' feelings," he said.
The report has "not found anything to contradict the conclusions of multiple, earlier investigations," Mrs Clinton's campaign said in a statement.
Democrats, in their own report, said the State Department's security measures were "woefully inadequate" but Mrs Clinton had never refused requests for more security.
They called the Republicans' report a "conspiracy theory on steroids, bringing back long-debunked allegations with no credible evidence whatsoever."
They accused the committee's Republican majority of targeting Mrs Clinton but Mr Gowdy said that was never the committee's aim. | The US military failed to protect four Americans who died in attacks on a US compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi, says a Congressional report. |
37691270 | Number 10 confirmed the comment by a government lawyer in the High Court represented the "government's view".
The vote would take place after negotiations have taken place and with Brexit already triggered using Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
Campaigners have been calling for a vote before Article 50 is triggered.
Open Britain, formerly the Remain campaign, said the government's comments were an "encouraging sign" but renewed calls for a debate and vote earlier in the process, before Article 50 begins two years of formal negotiations.
The UK is expected to leave the European Union in 2019.
Prime Minister Theresa May opposes a vote before Article 50, saying those calling for one are "trying to subvert" the outcome of June's referendum.
The issue is currently the subject of a landmark legal challenge, with the government defending what it says is its right to invoke Article 50 without Parliamentary approval.
It's the question pre-occupying many MPs as Britain prepares to leave the EU. What role will they have in shaping and approving the final withdrawal deal the UK reaches with Brussels? Theresa May plans to begin talks with the EU by the end of March and negotiations will last for two years.
The government's legal team have now clarified what they believe happens then.
James Eadie QC said it was "very likely" the UK and the EU would agree a new treaty that would have to be ratified by Parliament.
A law passed in 2010 gave MPs the power to block a treaty indefinitely. But in practice, would Parliament at that point derail the UK's withdrawal agreement with the EU?
David Pannick QC, acting for one of the claimants in the High Court case, said even if Parliament refused to approve the final Brexit deal, the UK would have to leave the EU anyway - with or without an agreement. That is why, he argued, parliament needed to vote before formal talks began.
Judges who heard the case said they would give their decision "as quickly as possible". An appeal to the Supreme Court later in the year is expected, whatever the outcome.
During the High Court hearing, government lawyer James Eadie QC moved on to what was likely to happen at the end of the negotiations, in 2019, saying: "The government view at the moment is it is very likely that any such agreement will be subject to ratification."
If this vote ends with MPs rejecting the Brexit deal, the UK would still leave the EU, Lord Pannick, who is acting for the campaigners challenging the government, told the court.
"Parliament cannot reverse the notification," he said.
The UK would either leave with no agreement or reach a new one, he said, adding: "But the new agreement cannot restore the rights that are irretrievably lost, and whether there is a new agreement is out of the hands of Parliament."
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: "A vote so late in the day would put MPs between a rock and a hard place. It would ask us to choose between a deal on the government's terms or leaving the European Union with no deal at all."
UK voters opted in favour of leaving the EU by 51.9% to 48.1% in a referendum in June. | Downing Street has said it is "very likely" MPs will be able to vote on the final Brexit agreement reached between the UK and the European Union. |
31012832 | It is believed flammable material was thrown through the front window of Michelle Mulherin's office in Ballina shortly after 19:00 GMT on Tuesday.
The office sustained minimal smoke damage as a result of the blaze.
The street has been closed to traffic and an examination is being carried out in the building.
In a statement, Ms Mulherin said she was thankful that no-one had been injured.
"I await the outcome of the garda investigation and will be making no further comment at this stage," she said. | Irish police have launched an investigation after a fire broke out at the constituency office of a Fine Gael TD in County Mayo. |
32313951 | The house, at Derry Street in the County Armagh town, was attacked shortly after midnight.
A number of shots were fired, damaging the front door and a front window.
Police said a motive for the attack had yet to be established and appealed for anyone with any information to contact them. | A 61-year-old man has escaped injury in a gun attack on a house in Lurgan in the early hours of Wednesday. |
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