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39805715 | Eman Abd El Aty, said to have weighed around 500kg, was flown to India for treatment on a special chartered plane.
She has left for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, to receive further treatment. She was flying business class on a passenger flight.
Her bariatric surgeon had said it was a "mistake" to move her.
The final days of Ms Abd El Aty's stay in India were marred after her sister, Shaimaa Selim, released a short video on social media alleging that her sister was still unable to speak or move, and had not lost as much weight as the hospital was claiming.
The hospital strongly denied the allegations.
The surgeon, Dr Muffi Lakdawala, told an Indian news channel that Ms Selim had wanted her sister to stay in hospital until she was able to walk again, but orthopaedic specialists had told her Ms Abd El Aty would never walk again.
He said this had prompted Ms Selim to make her allegations and also take the decision to move her to Abu Dhabi.
"I am heartbroken to have Eman leave my care and to be told that I cannot continue my treatment of her in phases, as I had planned to. However, I have confidence in her own ability to heal and we will always wish her the best in our hearts," he said.
Bariatric surgery, also known as weight loss surgery, is used as a last resort to treat people who are dangerously obese and carrying an excessive amount of body fat.
The two most common types of weight loss surgery are:
Gastric band, where a band is used to reduce the size of the stomach so a smaller amount of food is required to make someone feel full
Gastric bypass, where the digestive system is re-routed past most of the stomach so less food is digested to make someone feel full | An Egyptian woman who was believed to have been the world's heaviest has left an Indian hospital where doctors claim she lost more than 250kg. |
29879717 | Murray signed Nicky Featherstone and Dutch winger Schmeltz on Friday, and the latter came on to inspire a second-half comeback against Newport County.
Schmeltz's cross was fired home by Michael Duckworth to seal a 2-2 draw.
"I know what he'll do for the crowd and the other players, getting the best out of them," Murray told BBC Tees.
The 25-year-old played in the Eredivisie in his native Netherlands with Willem II before moving to Oldham in June 2013, where he worked with Murray prior to his release last summer.
"I know the fans were thinking 'what are we taking someone like that for?' but I know what Sidney is capable of," said Murray.
"I'm sure once he gets fully-fit he'll do some damage to the full-backs in this league - but he's not ready to start at the minute."
After defeat by Cambridge in Murray's first match in charge, the point against Newport ended a three-game losing streak for Pools.
And for Murray, the manner in which the draw was earned was another positive.
"When I was here as a player, we did capitulate at times," he admitted.
"To show that spirit and desire to get back in the game and to nearly win it was superb. That has to be the catalyst to get us up the league." | Hartlepool United manager Paul Murray believes Sidney Schmeltz will have a positive influence following his move to Victoria Park last week. |
33121447 | He is to stand down from the Northern Ireland Assembly later this summer but will remain as MP for South Belfast.
The move is in response to criticism of "double-jobbing" but some grandees within his own party have said he cannot lead the SDLP from Westminster.
But Dr McDonnell said he has "robust" support from grassroots SDLP members.
He said he was unfazed by the public criticism from senior SDLP members, who included former party leader Mark Durkan, and former deputy leaders Seamus Mallon and Brid Rodgers.
After last month's Westminster elections, in which Dr McDonnell successfully defended his South Belfast seat, Mr Mallon said he should give up the leadership.
Speaking on the BBC's Inside Politics, Dr McDonnell said his party had the option of challenging his leadership when it holds it annual party conference in November.
"I will put what I've done, my track record and my programme going forward, to the conference and I'm quite confident that I will be re-elected again," he said.
"The grassroots of the party are very, very robustly behind me and I want to deliver for them.
"I believe I've spent all my life delivering on my promises. I don't make a lot of promises but the few I do make, I keep," the SDLP leader added.
Alasdair McDonnell's interview can be heard again on BBC Radio Ulster when Inside Politics is repeated at 13:30 BST on Saturday, 13 June. | Alasdair McDonnell has said he is confident he will remain leader of Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) despite giving up his MLA job. |
29699579 | Media playback is not supported on this device
The Red Devils twice came from behind, with Marouane Fellaini and Daley Blind, late on, cancelling out Stephane Sessegnon and Saido Berahino strikes.
"I'm disappointed because we played our best match of the season and the result is not good enough," said Van Gaal, 63.
"We could have won but that does not count in our world."
United are still without a victory away from home under Van Gaal, who replaced David Moyes in the summer after steering the Netherlands to the World Cup semi-finals.
While the Red Devils had 63% of possession and registered 22 shots, with seven on target, they looked vulnerable at the back as the Baggies exposed their inexperienced backline on numerous occasions, scoring with both of their shots on target.
Despite that, Van Gaal remained positive about his side's display.
"I have to be happy because we created lots of chances and West Brom only had two chances," he said. "We gave it away, which is a pity because we could have had a new start if we had won.
"There were individual errors and they were forced because West Brom were playing more narrow in midfield and we had to push up."
The Dutchman insisted his team would not sacrifice any of its attacking flair in order to prevent similar defensive mistakes.
"I don't think that is the solution," he said. "Football is made to play attractively for the fans.
"And I think today the fans have enjoyed, not only the Manchester United fans but also the West Bromwich Albion fans, because it was a great game.
"I am happy about our style of play but not happy about the result."
Van Gaal introduced Fellaini as a half-time substitute, and the move paid instant dividends when the Belgian netted his first goal for the club with a stinging shot from the edge of the area, equalising after Sessegnon had smashed home the opener.
Berahino restored the home side's lead with a cool finish after being played in on goal but Blind equalised in the 87th minute with a low shot from 20 yards.
United face Premier League leaders Chelsea at Old Trafford on Sunday before a visit to second-placed Manchester City seven days later.
"I don't think it was a good result for us because the next two games will be difficult," midfielder Fellaini, 26, told BBC Sport. "The manager asked me to put pressure on the box and to keep fighting. I did and I managed to score."
West Brom manager Alan Irvine said his side were "disappointed" not to hold on for all three points against a team they beat at Old Trafford last season.
"We were so close to getting a fantastic result and for us to be in our dressing room feeling bitterly disappointed is a feeling we won't experience much," said Irvine. "We thought the three points were there for the taking.
"We scored two fantastic goals with two fantastic moves. Saido Berahino has good role models here. He is a good finisher with both feet and is very composed in those situations, I wasn't surprised when he scored.
"I enjoyed tonight and I'm enjoying the job, the players are so responsive. We're making progress and I can't praise them enough for how they've reacted since I came to the club." | Manchester United produced their best performance of the season in a 2-2 draw against West Brom at The Hawthorns, according to manager Louis van Gaal. |
36161889 | 28 April 2016 Last updated at 14:32 BST
This year's Wray Scarecrow Festival, which has been running since 1993, features an "explorers" theme.
Straw-stuffed spacemen, space dogs and a scarecrow version of Star Wars character Chewbacca were among the attractions.
Another scarecrow paid tribute to the late pop star David Bowie.
BBC North West Tonight finds out more. | Weird and wonderful scarecrows have gone on display at an annual festival in Lancashire. |
26043872 | The protests seek to persuade sponsors of the event to speak out over Russia's controversial laws on homosexuality.
The gay rights protests were organised in 19 cities around the globe.
The Olympic torch has arrived in Sochi, having visited 135 cities in the 122 days since leaving Moscow.
It will spend three days in and around Sochi before arriving in the Olympic stadium to light the Olympic cauldron during Friday's opening ceremony.
Wednesday's protests took place in cities including Melbourne, London, Paris and St Petersburg, with more expected during the evening.
Activists want Olympic sponsors such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Samsung and Visa to speak against Russia's new laws on homosexuality.
Last year, Russia banned the promotion of "non-traditional" sexuality - widely seen as an attack on gay rights.
The law makes providing information on homosexuality to under-18s a crime, punishable by a fine.
Critics say its loose interpretation effectively stops gay rights protests in Russia.
Marie Campbell, a director at the equality campaign group All Out, told the BBC that the new Russian laws went against the spirit of the Olympics.
"All our members, as well as everyone else around the world, want to celebrate the Olympic values of personal strength and endurance and integrity," she said.
"All we are saying is that we can't just ignore the fact that this is happening in Russia where these anti-gay laws are preventing the Olympic values being lived and enjoyed by millions of people."
In a corporate blog post, AT&T condemned Russia's stance, saying it stood "against Russia's anti-LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] law".
The telecommunications giant is not an IOC sponsor but it does sponsor the US Olympic Committee.
Last month, President Vladimir Putin said homosexuals would be welcome in Sochi for the Olympics but added: "Just leave the children in peace."
"We don't have a ban on non-traditional sexual relations," he said. "We have a ban on the propaganda of homosexuality and paedophilia."
Meanwhile, President Putin has arrived in Sochi amid growing disquiet about whether preparations will be complete by Friday.
Hundreds of visitors arriving this week found that their hotels were unfinished.
The BBC's Daniel Sandford in Sochi says that while the venues themselves appear complete, the areas around them still resemble building sites.
Our correspondent says that what President Putin had hoped would be a showcase event is still proving to be a headache.
The estimated cost of the Games has soared from $12bn (£7bn) to over $50bn.
The ratings agency Moody's released a report on Wednesday suggesting Russia was unlikely to receive an overall macroeconomic boost from the event - something which, correspondents say, President Putin had banked on.
It said Sochi and the surrounding area would struggle to maintain Olympic facilities after the event, and it was unclear whether they would receive the hoped-for boost in tourism revenues.
Addressing journalists in Sochi on Tuesday, Mr Putin insisted that the enormous construction effort to prepare the city for the games had greatly improved the environment.
However, environmentalists have accused the Russian authorities of damaging the area during construction for the games. | Gay rights activists across the world have been holding a day of protests against the Russian government, just two days before the Winter Olympics begin in the southern resort of Sochi. |
40290767 | Bellevue FC aims to give foreign nationals access to competitive sport, as well as the chance to make friends from other countries.
The team features players from Poland, Romania, Albania, Portugal, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, and some from Wales.
As well as those studying or working in Wales, the team has also welcomed refugees who have fled their homes.
They include 21-year-old Yacub Amin, from Syria, who said: "I left Syria and came to the UK because of the horrendous troubles in Syria.
"It was really bad. Every day people were killed... we would be in their position if we hadn't left."
He described the team as a "colourful family", adding: "Football is one of the things that brings people together."
Another player, Tamam Lencho, who was tortured during conflict in Ethiopia, said he would have been killed if he had not fled the country.
His journey to the UK took him through Sudan, Libya and Europe.
He said the new club had a "very nice team", adding: "We play together and we share our problems as well."
Co-founder Delwyn Derrick said Wrexham had a Portuguese-only team, a Kurdish team and other nationalities but none that brought different countries together.
He added: "I find it hard to believe no-one has done it before."
The team has been accepted into the North East Wales Football League and hopes to attract sponsors and funding. | A new football team has been launched in Wrexham for players from black and ethnic minority groups. |
37962741 | Emergency services struggled to reach the Shah Noorani shrine in Kuzdar.
Worshippers were performing dhamal - a trance-like dance - when the bomb hit. So-called Islamic State says one of its suicide bombers carried it out.
Sufism, a tolerant, mystical practice of Islam, has millions of followers in Pakistan but is opposed by extremists.
The shrine attracts Sufi devotees from all over the country, as well as neighbouring Iran.
Officials say the bomb blast took place while hundreds of worshippers were present, taking part in the dhamal, which is staged every sunset.
Because the shrine is in rough, hilly terrain, rescue efforts are difficult.
A renowned charity, the Edhi Foundation, says it has sent 50 ambulances which are now carrying people to hospitals in Karachi, 100km (62 miles) away, but officials say they need helicopters to save more lives.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack and called for speedy rescue efforts.
Imran Khan, former cricketer and head of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party, said the attack had targeted the "core of our society".
The BBC's Charles Haviland says that because Sufism includes music and dance and reverence for saints, religious zealots often target its sites in Pakistan.
In June a famous Sufi singer, Amjad Sabri, was assassinated by two gunmen in Karachi.
Extremist groups in the province of Balochistan have frequently targeted civilians this year.
In October, dozens were killed in an attack on a police college in the city of Quetta and in August an attack on a hospital there killed 70 people.
But doubt has been cast over IS claims of previous attacks in the country. | An explosion at a remote Sufi Muslim shrine in the Pakistani region of Balochistan has killed 52 people and injured more than 100, officials say. |
36490923 | Wanderers have been without a full-time boss since Neil Lennon left in March.
It had been thought that former Bristol City head coach Steve Cotterill and ex-Sheffield United manager Nigel Adkins were the frontrunners for the job.
But the League One club have instead turned to Parkinson, 48, who took charge of City in 2011 and helped them earn promotion from League Two in 2013.
The former Colchester, Charlton and Hull boss also oversaw the Bantams' run to the League Cup final in 2013, and led them to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup in 2015.
However, he was unable to guide Bradford to a further promotion in 2015-16, as a fifth-placed league finish was followed by defeat in the play-off semi-finals by Millwall.
Bolton suffered relegation from the Championship last term, having dealt with serious financial troubles off the pitch.
Wanderers appointed academy boss Jimmy Phillips as their interim manager following Lennon's departure, but he won only one of his nine games in charge.
"This appointment is one which makes sense - and despite the challenges which clearly lie ahead for the new manager, it could well turn out to be worth the wait.
"He already has a promotion from League One to the Championship, when he guided Colchester to a higher division, achieved on a relatively low budget.
"Further managerial spells have been with Hull City, Charlton and Bradford, where he guided the Bantams to promotion to League One, a League Cup final, and a never-to-be-forgotten FA Cup win over Chelsea." | Bolton will name Bradford City boss Phil Parkinson as their new manager on Friday, BBC Radio Manchester reports. |
24523310 | One of the first things to strike Staffordshire's incoming PCC, Matthew Ellis, was the escalating cost to his force of dealing with people with mental illnesses.
He tells us: "When you get a couple of police officers taken off an entire shift simply to look after an individual who hasn't committed a crime and is simply ill, but still sees the inside of a police cell with two police officers checking them to make sure they're ok, it's not the right use of resources and it's certainly not something police officers are qualified to do."
What he is not saying is that it is never the job of the police to intervene, especially out of hours, when mental health-related incidents require urgent and decisive action.
But he is convinced that the police are all too often the agency of last resort when ideally other caring services might have prevented problems escalating to crisis-levels requiring the services of the police.
And inevitably at a time when the police are having to make ever more stringent savings, there is mounting concern about the cost of dealing with people who are mentally ill, estimated at nearly £1m in Staffordshire alone last year.
In 2012, the force attended 15,000 incidents and arrested 169 people solely for the purpose of mental health assessments.
But the cost argument works both ways. If Mr Ellis wants NHS teams to take more active roles upfront, they too would need to be funded to do so.
Would he and his fellow PCCs be prepared to contribute to a single pot of money to make this happen?
The North Staffordshire Combined NHS Trust tell us they work closely with the police in custody facilities to help officers deal with mentally ill detainees. But inevitably, they have strict budget limits of their own.
But it's not just the cost or the resources that worry Matthew Ellis.
His other big concern is that when mentally ill people fall through the gaps in the system and into the hands of the police, their paraphernalia of handcuffs and custody cells is not exactly the kind of therapeutic response these unfortunate people really need.
Staffordshire's Mental Health Review, commissioned by Mr Ellis, makes 12 main recommendations. Among them:
Mr Ellis will be with me in the studio for this week's Sunday Politics from 11:00 BST on BBC One.
This is by way of a co-production with our colleagues on Inside Out Midlands who have been out on patrol with Staffordshire Police to experience some of the challenging realities confronting them out on the ground.
See their findings exclusively on Inside Out with Mary Rhodes at 19.30 on BBC One on Monday. | Almost a year since the new-style directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) came into office, some of them are clearly making their mark. |
39744451 | The Welsh region had a bonus point in the bag within half an hour with two tries by Steff Evans and one each for Johnny McNicholl and Liam Williams.
Craig Ronaldson's score for improved Connacht after the break was answered by DTH van der Merwe's 78th-minute try.
It was not the send-off the home team would have planned for coach Pat Lam's last home game in charge.
Scarlets will be away to be away to either Leinster (19 May) or Munster (20 May) in the semi-final having all-but ended Ulster's play-off hopes by winning in Connacht.
Ospreys, who Scarlets play in their final game of the regular season on 6 May, are likely to the other semi-finalists but need a point from that match to be sure.
The 2015-16 Pro12 champions Connacht will face a play-off for a place in next season's European Champions Cup.
Lam had made 10 changes from Connacht's previous outing against Leinster and his new-look side were blown away in the early stages on a windy night in Galway.
Playing into the teeth of the wind, the Welsh region were ahead in four minutes as full-back McNicholl broke down the left wing.
Evans' tries were equally easy on the eye before Williams secured the bonus point in the 30th minute.
However, they rarely threatened the Connacht line with only Rhys Patchell's penalty to show for their efforts after the break unti Van der Merwe's late try after Gareth Davies' sharp break.
Scarlets coach Wayne Pivac said: "It was a good first-half performance, and to get that result and a place in the play-offs is very very satisfying.
"We'll enjoy the fact that we've qualified now with a round to go, and at the start of the season after three rounds it wasn't looking too good, so it's been a great fight-back by the guys and they've been very consistent for the last 18 matches really."
LINE-UPS
Connacht: Tiernan O'Halloran; Darragh Leader, Tom Farrell, Eoin Griffin, Cian Kelleher; Marnitz Boshoff; Caolin Blade; Finlay Bealham, Dave Heffernan, Dominic Robertson-McCoy, James Cannon, Andrew Browne (captain), Sean O'Brien, Jake Heenan, Eoghan Masterson.
Replacements: Shane Delahunt, Denis Buckley, JP Cooney, Quinn Roux, John Muldoon, John Cooney, Craig Ronaldson, Danie Poolman.
Scarlets: Johnny Mcnicholl; Liam Williams, ;Jonathan Davies, Hadleigh Parkes, Steff Evans; Rhys Patchell, Jonathan Evans; Rob Evans, Ken Owens (capt), Samson Lee, Jake Ball, Tadhg Beirne, Aaron Shingler, Will Boyde, John Barclay
Replacements: Ryan Elias, Wyn Jones, Werner Kruger, David Bulbring, Josh Macleod, Gareth Davies, Scott Williams, DTH van der Merwe
Referee: Mike Adamson (SRU).
Assistant referees: Lloyd Linton (SRU), Helen O'Reilly (IRFU).
TMO: Charles Samson (SRU).
For the latest rugby union news follow @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter. | Scarlets secured their place in the Pro12 play-offs with a dominant first-half against a much-changed Connacht. |
35541540 | Moore's last game in charge was a 2-1 loss to Stevenage at Victoria Park on Tuesday, a result that leaves the club four points above the bottom two.
"This is an extremely difficult decision but one we feel is right," said chairman Gary Coxall.
The 63-year-old was appointed manager in December 2014, and saved the club from relegation last season.
Despite a remarkable 'Great Escape', which saw Pools overhaul a 10-point deficit to preserve their Football League status, Moore has been unable to steer the club away from trouble this term.
Four wins in all competitions from the first four games lifted the club up to third, but form has dipped dramatically.
Tuesday's result was their fourth successive game without a win, and their 16th league defeat of the season.
However, a number of postponements mean Hartlepool have played fewer games than any of the bottom six clubs, including five fewer than Stevenage.
"Ronnie has worked tirelessly to bring success to the club and we thank him sincerely for those efforts and wish him well for the future," added Coxall.
Moore, who was Hartlepool's ninth manager of the decade, lost 29 of his 59 games in charge, but admitted the Stevenage loss was critical to his future.
"It's a devastating result for me," Moore told BBC Tees. "This is a game I looked at where I thought we could win this.
"The fans are frustrated, we all want to win. We had enough of this last season and we wanted to kick on, but at this present time we're not having that." | League Two strugglers Hartlepool United have parted company with manager Ronnie Moore by mutual consent. |
39643089 | Media playback is not supported on this device
Thirteen out of the 20 sides are failing to provide the required number of wheelchair spaces, says the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
It says only seven clubs have larger, fully equipped toilets, while seven clubs are breaking Premier League rules on providing information to fans.
The Premier League said clubs were working hard to improve facilities.
A BBC report in 2014 found that 17 of 20 clubs did not provide enough wheelchair spaces.
Clubs later set a self-imposed deadline to meet standards by August 2017 and the Premier League has pledged to publish a report then to highlight the work carried out.
EHRC chair David Isaac said it would launch an investigation into clubs who had failed to meet the minimum requirements and did not publish a clear action plan or timetable for improvement.
"The end of the season is fast approaching and time is running out for clubs," he said.
"For too long Premier League clubs have neglected the needs of their disabled fans
"The information we received from some clubs was of an appalling standard, with data missing and with insufficient detail. What is clear is that very few clubs are doing the minimum to meet the needs of disabled supporters.
"The Premier League itself does not escape blame. They need to make the concerns of disabled fans a priority and start enforcing their own rule book. We will be meeting individual clubs and asking them to explain themselves and tell us what their plans are."
Clare Lucas, activism manager for learning disability charity Mencap, said clubs should have 'changing places' toilet facilities, with more space and equipment including a height-adjustable changing bench and a hoist.
"For too long Premier League clubs have neglected the needs of their disabled fans, many of whom are forced to be changed on toilet floors, because clubs are yet to install proper facilities. It is simply inexcusable," she said.
According to the EHRC, the following clubs have not met requirements in particular areas:
Wheelchair spaces: Failing to provide the minimum number - Arsenal, Burnley, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Everton, Hull, Liverpool, Man Utd, Stoke, Sunderland, Tottenham, Watford, West Brom
Toilets: Without larger, fully equipped toilets, known as 'changing places' toilets - Bournemouth, Burnley, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Everton, Hull, Middlesbrough, Stoke, Sunderland, Swansea, Tottenham, Watford, West Brom
Information: Not publishing access statements to give disabled fans information about their ground - Burnley, Crystal Palace, Hull, Man Utd, Middlesbrough, Stoke, West Ham
"In September 2015 Premier League clubs unanimously agreed to improve their disabled access provisions by meeting the Accessible Stadia Guide (ASG) by August 2017.
"Clubs are working hard to improve their facilities and rapid progress has been made. The improvements undertaken are unprecedented in scope, scale and timing by any group of sports grounds or other entertainment venues in the UK.
"Given the differing ages and nature of facilities, some clubs have faced significant built environment challenges. For those clubs cost is not the determining factor.
"They have worked, and in some cases continue to work, through issues relating to planning, how to deal with new stadium development plans, how to best manage fan disruption or, where clubs don't own their own grounds, dealing with third parties.
"Clubs will continue to engage with their disabled fans and enhance their provisions in the coming months, years and beyond."
2014: A BBC investigation finds that 17 of the 20 clubs in the top flight at that time had failed to provide enough wheelchair spaces.
September 2015: The Premier League promises to improve stadium facilities for disabled fans, stating that clubs would comply with official guidance by August 2017.
September 2016: Campaigners say up to a third of clubs will miss the deadline to meet basic access standards.
October 2016: Leading disability campaigner Lord Holmes tells MPs that legal action against clubs and the Premier League remains an option if standards are not met.
January 2017: A report by MPs says some clubs could face sanctions because they are not doing enough. Manchester United,Liverpool and Everton announce plans to develop their grounds to accommodate more disabled supporters.
February 2017: A Premier League report outlines the detailed work the clubs are undertaking to make sure they meet guidelines but adds that at least three clubs will miss the August 2017 target.
April 2017: Premier League clubs have made limited progress on improving access for disabled fans, says the Equality and Human Rights Commission. | Premier League clubs have made limited progress on improving access for disabled fans, campaigners have said. |
35755732 | Labour is backing the Remain campaign, and Mr Corbyn - who has often been critical of the EU - has been urged to make a more high-profile case.
At a meeting of MPs, he was told the referendum could be "lost" unless the party made a more "passionate" case.
His spokesman said he would be making a "big" speech on the EU "in due course".
Speaking on a visit to Dagenham, Mr Corbyn said there were issues on which the EU should be challenged, but "at the moment we're campaigning because we want this sense of unity across Europe".
Labour is campaigning "on issues of social justice across Europe" including the social chapter, which sets out EU policies on workers' rights, and the Working Time Directive governing the hours employees can work, he said.
Mr Corbyn said he had held meetings with socialist parties across Europe on how they can support his campaign.
During Labour's leadership race, Mr Corbyn refused to rule out campaigning to leave the EU, but after winning the contest he confirmed his party would back Remain after calls from MPs to clarify his position.
At Monday evening's Parliamentary Labour Party meeting, backbench MP Barry Sheerman criticised Labour's campaign so far and warned of the need to mobilise the party's machine.
Speaking on the BBC's Question Time, shadow chancellor and Corbyn-ally John McDonnell said Labour had been "crowded out" with Conservative splits dominating the headlines and said it was time "for us to come out a bit more in terms of explaining our views". | Jeremy Corbyn has defended Labour's campaigning on the EU referendum, saying his party is pushing for "a social Europe". |
39501938 | Glasgow City, who have won 10 Scottish titles in a row, launched a purple and white kit featuring the words "You can't be what you can't see".
Club manager Laura Montgomery said more women on sports pages would create role models for the next generation.
She said female athletes were too often consigned to media lifestyle sections.
In a 2014 TEDx talk, Ms Montgomery said: "Quite simply you can't be what you can't see without visible role models.
"How do girls grow up thinking they can be anything other than sexualised objects, which is how the media currently portrays women."
She said she wanted to inspire future generation of women to be active, healthy and to work hard to achieve their dreams.
Ms Montgomery set up Glasgow City Football Club in 1998 with Carol Anne Stewart.
She said the pair were ridiculed when they pledged to create the best team in Scotland and one of the best teams in Europe.
It is now the most successful Scottish women's team of all time.
She said youth players were supported by the first team and also trained alongside them.
"Every single youth player that we have absolutely idolizes all our first team players and that's because they want to be what they can see," she said.
The strip was launched with a promotional video featuring players Leanne Ross and Jo Love.
The club pointed to Women in Sport statistics which suggested that women's sport makes up 7% of all sports media coverage in the UK.
As a result, it said commercial investment in women's sport was lacking, with women's sport sponsorship accounting for 0.4% of total sports sponsorship between 2011 and 2013. | A lack of media coverage of women's sport has been highlighted in a message on a new away kit for Scotland's most successful women's football team. |
38944110 | But successive defeats by South Africa and Bangladesh have left the Scots with an uphill task to progress to the Super Six stage in Colombo.
They would need to beat Pakistan on Monday by a big enough margin to overtake Bangladesh on net run rate.
Rachel Scholes top-scored with 35 as Scotland made 169 in their 50 overs.
There were useful contributions from Olivia Rae (22), Kari Anderson (26), Fiona Urquhart (24) and Liz Priddle (31) before Abbi Aitken was bowled by Pauke Siaka - who despite being the eighth bowler used, took an incredible 6-19 from seven overs - off the last ball of the innings.
Papua New Guinea - who were bowled out for 40 by Pakistan - enjoyed a 72-run opening partnership at the Mercantile Cricket Association Ground before Kathryn Bryce ran out Tanya Ruma (32).
Anderson (3-35) then took the first of her three wickets, including top scorer Brenda Tau for 46, with Kirstie Gordon grabbing 2-27 and Priyanaz Chatterji (2-22) chipping in with the final two wickets as Papua New Guinea fell seven runs short of their target.
On Friday, Scotland lost to Bangladesh by seven wickets after being bowled out for 140 at the start of their final over.
Anderson, after her half-century against South Africa in the opener, was again Scotland's top scorer with 28.
Fargana Hoque's unbeaten 53 helped Bangladesh reach their target with more than 12 overs remaining.
The top three teams in each group progress to the Super Six stage, from which the top four qualify for the World Cup, which takes place in England this summer.
All matches played in Colombo & start at 04:30 GMT. CCC = Colombo Cricket Club | Scotland recorded their first win of the ICC Women's World Cup Qualifier tournament with a seven-run victory over Papua New Guinea. |
39435541 | He was speaking after Prime Minister Theresa May refused to be drawn on whether she believed in the "principle" of a fresh vote.
The focus on Scotland's constitution comes on the day the UK government formally began the Brexit process.
Mrs May has insisted "now is not the time" for an independence referendum.
However, when journalist Andrew Neil asked the prime minister during a half-hour BBC interview what time would be acceptable, she did not answer the question directly.
Instead, Mrs May said: "If I can just explain why I've said now is not the time because I think this is relevant to the wider question.
"I think now is not the time to focus on a second independence referendum or to be looking at that second referendum.
"Now is the time we need to pull together as a United Kingdom.
"We need to be talking about how we can work together to get the best possible deal for everybody across the whole United Kingdom. Focusing on an independence referendum isn't about that."
Responding to Mrs May's view, Holyrood's Brexit minister Mr Russell said it was "democratically unacceptable" that Scotland could not have a vote on its future.
Earlier this month, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon confirmed she would ask for permission to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence.
Her call was backed by MSPs at the Scottish Parliament this week.
Ms Sturgeon's SNP-led administration, supported by Scottish Green MSPs, argued a new vote was needed in light of last June's referendum when voters north of the border backed the UK retaining EU membership by 62% to 38%.
Voters in the whole of the UK chose to Leave by 52% to 48%.
Asked by BBC Scotland's Gordon Brewer what the Scottish government could do about holding a referendum without UK government support, Mr Russell said: "There has never been a moment in devolution in the last 18 years where the UK government has refused to have a conversation with a devolved administration - so that is a new low we are going to.
"And whatever happens in this there will have to, at the end of the day, be negotiation.
"So, what the first minister said, is first of all we will inform the UK government of the vote - the majority vote of the parliament, two parties voting together based on manifesto commitments - and then if there is no movement on that, the first minister will come back to the parliament - as rightly she should - and outline the options we have."
Mr Russell would not go into detail on the options and he said he would not "escalate it by speculation".
But he insisted "believe me there are options and they will be used" and there would be "proper negotiations".
The politician also confirmed that his counterpart at Westminster, UK Brexit minister David Davis, had rejected the Holyrood government's request for Scotland to be a member of trading organisations EEA and Efta.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said: "What I would say is, however much and however damaging Brexit is going to be to Scotland's economy, it is not going to be anywhere near as a bad as what independence would mean.
"We know that the reality is Nicola Sturgeon has been looking for another excuse, another grievance, any opportunity possible, to pursue a second independence referendum, but what she can't tell us is really what she wants to do with regards to membership of the EU."
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: "We made a clear manifesto commitment that we would stand against independence and another independence referendum. If you look at the mandate that the SNP say they have got, it is based on a campaign where they are using the European Union to get the referendum.
"But they can't guarantee to get the European Union as a result of the referendum. The mandate is not substantial."
Scottish Green Party co-leader Patrick Harvie said: "We very clearly said our preferred means of discussing a future independence referendum was by that public participative measure [gathering a million signatures]. It was never supposed to be the only way that it could happen.
"To be honest, I would still prefer we were in that situation. What the UK government has done over the last year is not only hold a reckless referendum but take a narrow leave mandate as a mandate for had Brexit - that takes us way beyond what they said in their manifesto. Scotland is now stuck between a rock and a hard Brexit." | Scottish government minister Mike Russell has said a date for a second independence referendum "will have to be negotiated". |
37589921 | The numbers raise "serious concerns about the accountability" of the system, said Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee.
More than half of England's secondary schools are run by self-governing academy trusts.
The government said financial oversight of academies was "more robust than in council-run schools".
The DfE's Education Funding Agency investigated one academy trust, Lilac Sky Schools, over its financial governance.
It runs nine primary schools in Kent and East Sussex. The most recent accounts show a deficit of £665,972.
And last year one of its schools was threatened with closure because of poor academic performance.
In the year 2013-14, Lilac Sky Schools Trust (LSST) paid £800,000 to outside companies set up by co-founders Trevor Averre Beeson and his wife Jane Fielding.
The Education Funding Agency has since ordered that payments to these companies cease.
Ms Fielding, who was an LSST managing director, was also paid a salary totalling £200,000 over the years 2014 and 2015.
Mr Averre Beeson's daughter, Victoria Rezaie, who was employed by the trust as a principal, received a salary of £63,298.
Another daughter, Samantha Busch, was employed by LSST for £16,593.
In November, the Regional Schools Commissioner's office for London and south-east England issued a pre-termination warning notice to the trust over "unacceptably low" standards at LSST's Marshlands academy in East Sussex.
The trust now has to hand nine schools to other trusts before the end of the year.
"At first it looked like this would be a good thing," said the parent of a child at a Lilac Sky School.
"Parents were impressed. Very soon the school was flooded with 'Lilac Sky' managers, and 'outstanding achievement coaches', of course all wearing something lilac.
"But soon afterwards problems began to emerge with the departure of experienced staff, and their replacement by less experienced teachers."
The parent added: "All the time the pressure was on results, results, results and that meant the less able got left behind.
"Many of the non-core, fun things that are an everyday part of most primary schools were cut - swimming lessons, music lessons, school trips.
"However money was made available to send children who were soon to sit Sats on Sats booster courses at other Lilac Sky schools in the county.
"As far as I'm concerned this was all about business and making money and little to do with educating children."
Trevor Averre Beeson responded by saying: "We are extremely proud of Lilac Sky Schools Limited.
"Since 2009 we have run over 17 schools and worked in hundreds more, nine of which were removed from special measures in very quick time, four improved significantly and four new schools opened to Ofsted's satisfaction.
"The deficit for the trust in 2015 was due to costs associated with setting up four new primary academies. The individual schools themselves were all in surplus."
He said that his wife and daughter had been employed by the trust "because they were already successful teachers".
And he added: "We voluntarily decided that our companies should stop providing services to the trust when I also resigned as CEO and trustee in early 2015."
The scale of the deficits accumulated by academy trusts was revealed in a Freedom Of Information request obtained by BBC 5 live Investigates.
Perry Beeches, which runs five schools in Birmingham, had a deficit of £2.1m in the last financial year.
Former chief executive Liam Nolan, who quit earlier this year, was criticised for receiving £80,000 a year as a consultant to the trust in addition to his £120,000 salary as head teacher.
Mr Nolan declined to comment.
Meg Hillier said some trusts "show a complete disregard for the use of public money".
She added: "This is not their money they are spending, it's our money. There are rules about how this is done for a good reason.
"This is not about whether the academy system is good or bad for education, it's about how taxpayers' money is spent.
"These figures raise serious concerns about the transparency and accountability of the system."
In a statement, the Department for Education said: "All academies operate under a strict system of financial oversight and accountability, more robust than in council-run schools. Where issues are identified we can and do take direct action.
"All academy trusts must balance their budgets from each academic year to the next. Only a tiny number (4%) of academy trusts reported a deficit at the end of the academic year 2014-15 and we continue to monitor them very closely."
The programme will be broadcast on BBC 5 live on Sunday 9th October at 11:00 BST. Listen online or download the programme podcast | Debts run up by 113 academy trusts in England amount to almost £25m, figures obtained by the BBC suggest. |
38511372 | Visits to university websites also spiked in the weeks following the election.
Some attribute this rise to fears over Donald Trump's looming presidency.
But others say it has more to do with recruitment strategies and the growth of international education, than any political development.
While many celebrities had threatened to flee the US if Trump were to be elected, the biggest export may be students.
"If we live in a country where so many people could elect Donald Trump, then that's not a country I want to live in," 17-year-old Lara Godoff told the Associated Press.
Ms Godoff is applying to a number of Canadian universities, and she's not alone.
The University of Toronto saw a 70% increase in applications from the US this autumn, compared with the same period last year.
At McGill University in Montreal it was an increase of 22%.
US applications to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver increased by 44% compared with the same period in 2015.
McGill University registrar Kathleen Massey says it's too soon to be certain whether this phenomenon is because of the election.
"It is possible that the change in the American political landscape may be contributing to the increase in applicant numbers from the USA," Ms Massey said, but she couldn't confirm such a trend, "because we have not surveyed the applicants to ask them directly".
International applications, including those from the US, were up at many schools in Canada.
Ms Massey said there was also an increase in US applications last year, although not as pronounced.
Ted Sargent, vice-president international at the University of Toronto, attributes the "thousands" of applications coming from the US to both timing and strategy.
"We've been engaging in a kind of crescendo over the past couple of years," he told the BBC, but "evolution of the political landscape could be a factor as well".
Rhonda Lenton, vice-president academic and provost of York University in Toronto, also thinks international recruitment efforts have especially paid off this year.
Website traffic from the US to York's main recruitment webpage has grown 134%.
But, she says, the impact of the US election is difficult to ignore.
"On the one hand I can't necessarily attribute this increase to any particular political situation that might be happening in the US," Ms Lenton said.
"But this is a noticeable increase."
However, Graeme Menzies, director of recruitment for the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, says such numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt.
International recruitment at his school, like others, has been growing for years.
Reports of increased applications this cycle include those submitted before the election, and it's not clear whether the growth was spurred by Trump's win.
"That said, world events like the US election, Brexit, the global economy, regional conflict, currency fluctuations, and natural disasters are among the factors that consistently impact our recruitment plans and activities," Mr Menzies wrote in an email.
He said website traffic also increased in the days before the election, and subsided after it.
But beyond the geographic origin of the web visitor, Mr Menzies said, it's not known if those visitors were prospective students, parents or US citizens, | Canadian universities have seen a rise in applications from US students since the election, school administrators say. |
37053928 | Kenya said sprint coach John Anzrah "presented himself as an athlete" and "even signed the documents" for the doping test.
"We cannot tolerate such behaviour," said Kip Keino, chairman of the National Olympic Committee of Kenya.
Anzrah is the second Kenyan official to be sent home over doping issues after track and field manager Michael Rotich.
Rotich was dismissed following allegations that he was prepared to warn coaches about drugs tests in return for £10,000.
Keino said Kenya's Olympic body had not facilitated Anzrah's travel to Brazil, adding: "We don't even know how he came here."
It was not clear which athlete Anzrah was pretending to be.
However, a senior Athletics Kenya source said he had spoken to the athlete, who claims Anzrah used his accreditation purely to obtain free meals from the athletes' village.
"When the anti-doping officials met him, they assumed he was the athlete and that he was lined up for testing," added the source.
"The coach, for fear of being exposed or discovered, did not explain to the anti-doping guy that he is actually not the athlete. Hence he played along and went for the test."
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox. | A Kenyan athletics coach has been sent home from Rio after allegedly posing as an athlete and giving a urine sample. |
32246440 | In programme notes being released before the U's match on Saturday, Dave Doggett said problems had occurred since promotion to the Football League.
He said the club had identified 10 troublemakers, some aged in their 50s and 60s, and was working with police.
Cambridgeshire Police said it had seen a rise in football-related violence.
The concerns were raised as the club launches its campaign under the national Kick it Out umbrella to stop violence and antisocial behaviour.
Recent fights include a man suffering serious head injuries outside a pub in Southend.
In the match-day programme to be released at the home tie with Accrington Stanley, Mr Doggett says: "Unfortunately football clubs still attract an undesirable element of society that appear determined to ruin the enjoyment of real supporters of football clubs.
"Our promotion to the Football League appears to have encouraged our 'risk' from the 1980s to come out of retirement.
"Many of them are grandparents trying to encourage the next generation to join their 'gangs'.
"It sounds pathetic but unfortunately it is reality. We are working closely with police."
He said problems had mostly occurred at pubs and not at the Abbey Stadium, which he stressed was still safe for families.
Many fans who caused problems in the 1980s are still banned from Cambridge's ground and others internationally.
Insp Steve Kerridge said disorder had risen among a small minority of people, adding events such as that in Southend were "sickening".
"The club is working hard with us to ensure that those who use football as a vehicle for violence and disorder have no place in the terraces or association with Cambridge United," he said. | Football hooligans from the 1980s are out of retirement and encouraging the next generation to join their "gangs", Cambridge United's chairman has said. |
35165038 | Alfred Rouse tried to fake his own death by leaving a man to burn in his Morris Minor in Hardingstone, Northamptonshire, in 1930.
DNA testing based on people with an unbroken maternal line back to a relative from the time have so far failed to identify Rouse's victim.
Techniques that do not require this link will be used to widen the search.
Forensic science expert Dr John Bond, from the University of Leicester, said: "It's looking at more of the genome and it's more sensitive to the nuclear DNA, which means we're not solely reliant on the mitochondrial DNA anymore.
"Hopefully we will at some point reach a positive outcome and be able to put a name on the gravestone finally in Hardingstone Cemetery."
Philanderer Rouse, 36, was in financial trouble when he set his car alight - and was later hanged for the murder.
A DNA profile was found in an archived slide in 2013 and has been used to disprove theories of family connections to the case.
With nine families' claims ruled out earlier this year, Dr Bond said he may have been "somewhat naive" to believe it would be a relatively short search.
"What I hadn't appreciated was just how many families had people who just disappeared around 1930," he said.
Dr Bond said it was believed Rouse, who lived in London, could have tempted the victim to travel with him on the pretence of finding him work in Leicester.
"There were a lot of people at that time of Depression when it would have been difficult to find work, might have had difficulties holding down family life, might have been tempted by the offer of work somewhere else around the country and thought Rouse was doing them a favour," he said.
Dr Bond hopes a renewed appeal based on the next generation sequencing tests in the spring will encourage people with connections to London or Leicester to come forward.
"There's at least two other families who in the past we've had to say no to as they couldn't supply this unbroken maternal line, so in the fullness of time we hope to be able to say 'we'd be able to help you now'," he said.
"He's got to be somebody's relative, we've just got to hit on the right family." | The identity of a man who was burned to death 85 years ago could be revealed through a new batch of DNA tests. |
35490825 | Giulio Regeni, 28, disappeared on the evening of 25 January, after leaving his home to meet a friend.
His body was found beside a road in Cairo's western outskirts on Wednesday.
Senior prosecutor Ahmad Nagi said the cause of death had yet to be determined but Mr Regeni's body had bruises, knife wounds and cigarette burns.
He said the injuries covered "all of his body, including his face". Mr Regeni was found naked from the waist down and appeared to have suffered a "slow death", Mr Nagi added.
Earlier, another Egyptian official had suggested that Mr Regeni, a PhD student at Cambridge University in Cairo to conduct research, may have died in a road accident.
The Italian foreign ministry in Rome summoned the Egyptian ambassador to express its concern on Thursday morning.
A statement said the ministry expected "maximum collaboration", adding that the ambassador "assured us Egypt will co-operate fully in finding those responsible".
Mr Regeni, a PhD student at the department of politics and international studies at the University of Cambridge, was a visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo (AUC).
He is reported to have been carrying out research on trade unions and labour rights in Egypt - a sensitive topic in recent years.
"It has become increasingly difficult and dangerous to conduct research," said Amy Austin Holmes, head of the sociology department at the AUC. She said she knew of researchers who had been denied entry to Egypt or arrested.
Friends said Mr Regeni left his flat at 20:00 local time on 25 January, planning to take the metro to central Cairo to meet a friend.
"Bewilderment" is the word used by the Italian foreign ministry to sum up its furious reaction to the conflicting versions of the circumstances of Giulio Regeni's death.
Initial reports from Egypt said his body showed signs of torture. These were then contradicted by claims that the 28-year-old might have been the victim of a traffic accident. But a prosecutor now says Mr Regeni suffered stab wounds and cigarette burns, pointing to a "slow death".
These contradictions are making headlines in the Italian media and were enough for the government to issue a harsh statement which said it had summoned the Egyptian ambassador - and urged Cairo to "immediately" launch a joint investigation to ascertain what happened to Mr Regeni.
There was a heavy police presence in the capital that day because it was the fifth anniversary of the start of the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak.
Several activists were arrested, while others went into hiding.
The area where Mr Regeni was going to meet his friend was near Tahrir Square, the symbolic centre of the 2011 uprising.
Cambridge University said: "We are deeply saddened to hear news of the death of Giulio Regeni. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.
"The vice-chancellor and the Mistress of Girton College [where Mr Regeni was studying] have been in contact with Giulio's family." | The body of an Italian student who disappeared last week in Cairo has been found and shows clear signs of torture, a senior Egyptian prosecutor has said. |
35116844 | Harlequins flanker Robshaw was captain throughout Stuart Lancaster's reign and in 42 of his 43 England games.
Joe Launchbury of Wasps has been tipped as a future skipper, but it is thought Jones wants a more confrontational character to lead the side.
Hartley was dropped from the World Cup after being banned for a head-butt.
It was the latest in a long list of disciplinary issues for the Northampton hooker, who has been suspended a total of 54 weeks in his career
However, the 29-year-old's total of 66 England caps makes him one of the most experienced players available to Jones heading into the Six Nations, which starts on 6 February.
Hartley, who captained Northampton to the Premiership title in 2014, has been out of action for a number of weeks with concussion.
He will again be absent for Friday's European Cup match with Racing Metro, but director of rugby Jim Mallinder expects him to return to soon.
Although he is unlikely to continue to lead the side, Robshaw remains firmly on the England radar, but as a blind-side flanker rather than on the open side, where he has won the vast majority of his caps.
Meanwhile, Jones met with former head coach Stuart Lancaster on Wednesday and is in the process of finalising his coaching team.
Jones began overhauling his backroom team by getting rid of Mike Catt, Andy Farrell and Graham Rowntree.
Steve Borthwick has been appointed as forwards coach, although the RFU remains in dispute with his club Bristol, while Saracens defence guru Paul Gustard is expected to join the team in the new year.
Jones is also meeting this week with Northampton attack coach Alex King about a possible role, although Jones will be in charge of shaping England's attacking plan himself.
Jones, 55, was named as England's first foreign head coach last month and met Robshaw, who made his international debut in 2009, on Saturday.
The new coach, who led Japan at the World Cup, has previously said Robshaw, 29, was not "outstandingly good in any area" following England's early exit from the recent World Cup.
England won only one of their opening three matches and became the first sole hosts to be eliminated at the group stage of the tournament.
BBC Radio 5 live's Chris Jones:
Hartley's poor disciplinary record is well documented but, at the age of 29 and with 66 international caps, he is hugely experienced.
His ballast and technical ability were badly missed by England during the World Cup.
Although Robshaw may lose the captaincy under Jones, he remains firmly on the radar as a blind-side flanker. | Chris Robshaw will not continue as England captain under new head coach Eddie Jones, with Dylan Hartley a leading contender to replace him. |
32343401 | The city went from Liberal Democrat yellow to Conservative blue in 2010, but that's only part of the story.
The Conservatives are still the biggest party on Herefordshire council but they've lost their overall majority to a combination of independent candidates.
When voters go to the polls on 7 May, they'll have a wide range of independent candidates to choose from on their local ballot paper, but when they look at their general election slip it will be a much narrower choice: Conservative, Lib Dem, Labour, UKIP or Green.
Many of the people at our market stall said they were sceptical about the record of national political parties.
Dorian, from Hereford, said: "We should scale back government, reducing expenditure and tax.
"We should focus only on the police, the military and the court systems. And we should eventually get rid of those too."
The number of women in government is a major issue for Sue, who thinks there should be more.
"They'd do a much better job at running the country than a bunch of men," she told me.
During the afternoon we had visits from people concerned about the future of the NHS, the impact of a possible EU exit on farmers and from people wanting to hear more about how politicians would help encourage tourism into the area.
As with Kidderminster and Worcester, the NHS came out as the top issue among people who visited the stall.
Our 'get on your soapbox' tent was busy with people saying what they'd do if they were prime minister.
Joe from north Herefordshire would prioritise building houses.
"Young people are looking at incredibly high house prices, we could end up renting until we're fifty or older.
"There's a feeling that there just aren't a lot of opportunities around for young people at the moment," he said.
In a county with such a rich independent streak, it wasn't particularly surprising to find such a wide range of issues, opinions and suggestions being thrown around the stall.
You can find a comprehensive guide to the general election in Herefordshire and Worcestershire here - it includes videos and interviews with every one of your candidates and loads of stuff from our market stalls and pub debates. | Our general election 'market stall' pitched up in Hereford this week. |
37237194 | Gray originally had until Wednesday to reply to the Football Association, but now has until 5 September.
One tweet from the 25-year-old striker's account appeared to condone killing gay people.
The tweets from four years ago were posted when Gray was playing for non-league Hinckley United.
Gray, who is charged with bringing the game into disrepute, has apologised and asked "for forgiveness" for the posts, insisting he is now a "completely different person" and did not "hold the beliefs written in those tweets".
The posts, which also contained offensive terms, were deleted soon after being highlighted.
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox. | Burnley have been given an extension for Andre Gray to respond to his misconduct charge over homophobic posts on Twitter in 2012. |
31127704 | Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, made the comments on Monday during a speech criticising business regulations.
"Let them decide" such issues, the newly elected lawmaker said.
His argument was that restaurants which did not require workers to wash their hands would quickly go out of business.
"But I think it's good to illustrate the point, that that's the sort of mentality we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country," Mr Tillis said.
He suggested that restaurants that did not require hand washing would have to alert customers with prominently displayed signs - itself a regulation.
Mr Tillis stood by his comments when interviewed later at the US Capitol.
"Sometimes there are regulations that maybe we want to set a direction, but then let those who are regulated decide whether or not it makes sense," Mr Tillis told the Associated Press news agency.
"They might pay a huge price," he said, but "they get to make that decision versus government."
The comments come as some Republican presidential hopefuls have questioned vaccine regulations amid a measles outbreak.
At least two hopefuls have said parents are justified in sometimes having their children avoid vaccinations generally required for attending school. | A US senator has suggested that restaurants should not have to make their employees wash their hands after toilet visits. |
38213422 | The 21-year-old made his Premier League debut against Burnley in October.
He made his first Saints start against Inter Milan at the San Siro in the Europa League four days later and has now agreed new terms until 2021.
"The last couple of months have been amazing for me and this new contract really just rounds that off," said McQueen.
Southampton's executive director of football Les Reed said: "Having come through the club's academy alongside James Ward-Prowse and Harrison Reed, Sam is yet another example of our philosophy to bring players through from the academy and into the first team." | Southampton defender Sam McQueen has signed a new four-and-a-half-year contract with the club. |
40404021 | A licensing system will be in place for the 10th year running, which limits the number of people allowed to gather cockles.
Recent surveys show "very good stocks" which Natural Resources Wales said was "due in part to the way the fishery was managed last year".
There are 53 licensed cocklers on the Dee.
Before licensing was introduced, there was a "boom and bust" cycle in the industry.
When stocks were high, the beds would be cleared quickly by hundreds of cocklers, which resulted in the beds being closed for several years.
They were also closed for a period in 2015 due to over harvesting and illegal picking. | Fishermen in Flintshire are preparing for the reopening of the Dee Estuary cockle beds on 1 July. |
38951901 | Media playback is not supported on this device
They are one point above the drop zone after Sunday's 2-0 defeat at Swansea.
Foxes boss Ranieri, who was given a vote of confidence by the club's board last week, is now considering changes.
"It is difficult when you achieve something so good you want to give them one chance, two chances, three chances. Maybe now, it is too much," he said.
"It is something I can change because in this way it is not possible to continue.
"I always question myself but I always say: 'Come on, we can do something good.'"
Having confounded the odds to win a remarkable Premier League title last season, Leicester have been in startling decline this year.
The Foxes are the only side in the top four English divisions without a league goal in 2017 and, with defeat at Swansea, they became the first reigning champions to lose five consecutive top flight matches since Chelsea in 1956.
Leicester's decline is embodied by striker Jamie Vardy and midfielder Riyad Mahrez, both of whom are shadows of the players who were so pivotal to the club's title success.
Last season Vardy scored 24 goals, but has just five so far this campaign, while Mahrez scored 17 goals and made 10 assists, compared to three goals and three assists this year.
Despite their current failings, Ranieri has stuck with the vast majority of the players who starred for Leicester last season - and believes they are capable of transforming their fortunes.
"Every time I speak to the players and the players speak to me we are always confident we can change the situation," the 65-year-old Italian added.
"But now there are a few matches in front of us so we have to find a solution very, very soon. There are two matches in front of us, one in the FA Cup and one in the Champions League but our mind is on the Premier League.
"I think the strength of the man is to have the right balance. Not to be so high when you win; not to be so down when you lose. You can remember what we did last season but you need to stay with your feet on the ground and say we have to react together."
Leicester have a two-week break from their Premier League struggles as they turn attentions to the FA Cup and Champions League.
Ranieri takes his team to League One side Millwall in next weekend's fifth-round tie, before a trip to Spanish title hopefuls Sevilla in the Champions League last 16 on 22 February.
The Foxes could be bottom of the league by the time they host Liverpool on Monday, 27 February.
Media playback is not supported on this device | Claudio Ranieri says he may have been too loyal to his Leicester players as their Premier League title defence has descended into a relegation battle. |
40498292 | "Not many people know that lots of our clothes are made of plastic," says Imogen Napper, a PhD student at Plymouth University, "polyester, acrylic."
Ms Napper and Prof Richard Thompson study marine microplastics - fragments and fibres found in the ocean surface, the deep sea and the marine food chain.
And in a recent lab study, they found that polyester and acrylic clothing shed thousands of plastic fibres each time it was washed- sending another source of plastic pollution down the drain and, eventually, into the ocean.
"My friends always make fun of me because they think of marine biology as such a sexy science - it's all turtles, hot countries and bikinis," says Ms Napper.
"But I've been spending hours washing clothes and counting the fibres."
It might not be exotic, but this painstaking "laundry-science" has revealed that an average UK washing load - 6kg (13lb) of fabric - can release:
That is from every load of synthetic laundry from every UK washing machine. "A lot more fibres were released in the wash than we expected," Ms Napper says.
"They're going down the drain, so they are making their way into the sewage treatment works and maybe, from there, into the marine environment."
Prof Thompson says washing clothes could be a "significant source" of plastic microfibres in the ocean.
"When we sample, we find plastic fibres less than the width of a human hair - in fish, in deep sea sediments, as well as [floating] at the surface."
Changes need to happen "at the design stage", he says; better, harder-wearing and less "disposable" clothing would last longer and be good for the environment.
"The garments [we washed] were similar fleecy garments, and some were shedding fibres much faster than others," Prof Thompson says.
"We need to understand why some garments wear out much more quickly than others, so we can try to minimise unnecessary emissions of plastic."
And scientists now have the backing of possibly the most wholesome of British organisations; the Women's Institute, decided just last month to campaign for what they called "innovative solutions" to the problem of microplastic fibres in the ocean.
Prof Richard Blackburn, head of the sustainable materials research group at the University of Leeds, agrees that textile-makers need to think about what happens "in use", when we wear and wash our clothes.
"People don't consider it," he says. "So, potentially, the pollution could be caused by us - the consumers - rather than the manufacturers."
Prof Blackburn's colleague in Leeds, Philippa Hill, was also drawn to the subject of laundry - by chemical coatings being washed off outdoor clothing.
The waterproofing most high-end, rain-proof jackets are treated with consists of perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), which are persistent and potentially toxic pollutants.
Coating textiles and other materials with PFCs makes them resistant to stains, grease, and water. They are also used in some non-stick pans and food packaging.
These molecules sit on top of the (usually nylon) outer fabric like a protective layer of chemical barbed wire - the tip of every barb pushes away water molecules, which are too large to pass through the spaces in between. Air molecules can pass through freely, resulting in a non-sweaty, breathable, waterproof jacket.
But, as Dr Andrew Sweetman, from the Lancaster Environment Centre, points out, lab and field studies have shown that some PFCs can accumulate in the tissues of fish and other wildlife as they consume contaminated food and water - building up a dose that can become harmful.
Essentially, they don't degrade," he explains to BBC News. "So if we take samples from waterways, as a result of their widespread use and persistence, we basically find them wherever we look."
And while textiles manufacturers have to abide by regulations to limit the pollution they release into waterways, Prof Blackburn says, "there are no limits on what we can release from our own homes".
Prof Blackburn and Ms Hill compared PFC-coated fabric with that treated with more benign oil-based coatings that also repel water.
"We took samples of fabrics that had been coated with the different treatments," says Prof Blackburn.
"And we'd carry out industry-standard tests - showering them with water and measuring their performance.
"We demonstrated that new coatings - that are not based on [fluorochemicals, or PFCs,] give just as good water-repellency as the fluorochemical coatings that have been around for decades."
A campaign last year by Greenpeace spurred several outdoor brands to promise to end their use of PFCs in their clothing
And a representative of the European Outdoor Group (EOG) - the body that represents the outdoor industry - said of Prof Blackburn and Ms Hill's research: "This is the kind of data we need to make decisions on.
"It's a real challenge, but brands are very keen to have this information and to move away from PFCs."
However, Prof Blackburn also makes the point that in comparison with the environmental footprint of the natural fibre cotton, many synthetics are actually "pretty clean".
"I always tell my new students that to grow 1kg of cotton consumes the amount of water you've drunk in your lifetime," he says.
And bringing into the mainstream what are currently relatively niche "bio-plastic" fabrics could help clean up the industry further.
These bio-synthetics are available and gradually becoming more popular:
Henry Ford developed soybean-based plastic fibres. Casein fibres - made from milk - have also been developed.
But, Prof Blackburn says, "these never received the research focus or attention, with the advent of the petrochemical synthetic fibre industry".
He cites further examples, of fibres made from fermented food waste and fruit skins.
"Poly[lactic acid] fibre or PLA is made by fermenting waste corn to make lactic acid, which is then polymerised to make this bio-polyester," he says.
"That's a great fibre, but has largely been used for packaging - the [fabric research] has fallen by the wayside."
But while the new research puts pressure on the textile and clothing manufacturers to clean up their act, there is something we can all very easily do to reduce the impact of what we wear on the environment.
"We are unsustainably addicted to consumption," says Prof Blackburn.
"I cannot emphasise enough how much of a step-change it would be for sustainability if we bought fewer items of clothing per year, wore them for longer and threw them away less often."
Follow Victoria on Twitter | In an indoor "Manchester-drizzle-simulating" rain room at the University of Leeds, and in a laundry lab in Plymouth, research is revealing the unexpected environmental cost of the very clothes on our backs. |
41007210 | It happened at about 23:50 BST on Sunday after a fight began on the dance floor.
The suspect is believed to have left in a taxi outside James Street South. He was with a female at the time.
He is described as being 5ft 7in (173cm) tall with short dark hair and a tattoo on his neck.
Police are appealing for anyone with information to come forward. | A man in his 30s has had part of his ear bitten off in a bar on Amelia Street in Belfast city centre. |
39157683 | Olive McIlroy and Elaine Holmes, who both suffered severe complications following mesh implant surgery, claimed the final report had been watered down.
It follows claims that an entire chapter has been removed from the report ahead of its publication.
Scotland's Health Secretary Shona Robison has said she will meet with the women to discuss their concerns.
Correspondence seen by the BBC shows that one expert member of the review group has written to its chairwoman to raise concerns about the report.
The letter states that an entire chapter, which highlighted concerns about the use of mesh in some procedures and contained tables displaying the risks of treatment, had been taken out.
Transvaginal mesh implants are medical devices used by surgeons to treat pelvic organ prolapse and incontinence in women, conditions that can commonly occur after childbirth.
What's the issue with mesh implants?
Over the past 20 years, more than 20,000 women in Scotland have had mesh or tape implants but some have suffered painful and debilitating complications.
There are more than 400 women currently taking legal action against Scottish health boards and manufacturers as a result of mesh implant surgery.
In 2014, campaigners gave evidence to the Holyrood Petitions Committee. Several of them were in wheelchairs, unable to walk because of surgical complications.
As a result Alex Neil, the Scottish government's health secretary at the time, wrote to health boards requesting a suspension in the use of mesh implants by the NHS in Scotland pending the review group's investigation into their safety.
An interim report was delivered in October 2015 and the final conclusions are expected to be published soon.
However, Ms McIlroy and Ms Holmes - who are part of the Scottish Mesh Survivors campaign - have resigned as patients' representatives on the group, saying the report had "changed beyond recognition from the interim report".
The women said they were saddened and appalled to discover that an entire chapter had been removed from the review group's final report.
They said the group and its final report now lacked integrity and independence.
Their resignation letter to the chairwoman of the review group states: "The remit suggests 'consensus' - if patient-friendly, shared-decision tables are destroyed and replaced with clinician's directive counselling then obviously there will not be consensus.
"The ridiculous amount of tables now included in Chapter 5 only serves to confuse, not explain.
"There is no clinical interpretation to explain what the results actually mean to the lay person and if the findings are scientifically and or clinically significant."
Elaine Holmes, from East Renfrewshire, told BBC Scotland she had seen a draft of the final report and it was like "night and day" when compared to the previous one.
She said: "We looked at one chapter and it was completely biased.
"It would speak of the benefits of mesh but not the risks.
"For the non-mesh equivalent, which is called colposuspension, it would talk about the risk but not the benefits. It was just so biased it was unbelievable."
Ms Holmes said that despite contributing to the review group for almost three years her voice had been ignored.
Olive McIlroy, from Renfrew, also said the new report was "unrecognisable" from the one 18 months ago.
She said: "To me it is that they just diluted the content in favour of mesh procedures.
"It seems to me unacceptable that they can risk even one patient suffering severe complications.
"It's not about the numbers, it's about the severity of the complications when things do go wrong."
Ms McIlroy added: "The colposuspension non-mesh procedures have been going on since the sixties.
"There is no litigation with them, there is no campaign of patients who have been severely adversely injured through the procedure."
She said that was not the case with mesh implants.
"Alarm bells are ringing all over the world," she said.
"It's not just us and it's not just here.
"We are not trying to sensationalise or make a point, we are just trying to get at the truth and they don't want the real truth to come out."
Labour MSP Neil Findlay, who has been campaigning on the issue, said: "This is a truly astonishing turn of events.
"Elaine and Olive took part in the mesh review group in good faith and, despite their pain and disability, put their heart and soul into it to try and ensure that no more women would be horribly injured like they were."
He added: "The mesh scandal is a global scandal but in Scotland we had the chance to lead the world in protecting women from life-changing injuries, but instead of doing so the government has shown themselves to be complicit in one of the biggest medical cover-ups in the history of Scotland's NHS."
Scottish Conservative MSP Jackson Carlaw said: "Nicola Sturgeon promised me in parliament only a few weeks ago that the sudden resignation of the previous chair of the review and her replacement with a health board official with a direct interest in mesh implants would have no impact on the independent conclusions reached.
"Now we find that the conclusions in the interim report appear to have been abandoned, even while mesh is reclassified across Europe as a "high risk procedure", in favour of what Elaine & Olive and thousands of Mesh survivors believe is a "whitewash"."
The latest resignations come after the chair of the review group stood down in December.
Public Health expert Dr Lesley Wilkie quit just months before the final report was due to go out.
In December, the BBC revealed that hundreds of mesh implant operations had been performed in Scotland despite ministers recommending their suspension.
Figures obtained by the BBC revealed that 404 women had received mesh and tape implants since the health secretary called for the suspension in June 2014.
The Scottish government said the position had been made clear.
Those boards still using mesh implants said they discussed all the potential risks with patients before surgery.
In a statement, the Health Secretary Shona Robison said: "I have been made aware of the resignations of two of the inquiry's members.
"I intend to meet with them so I can hear their concerns directly.
"The independent review continues its work to produce its final report and we expect them to publish it this Spring. I am grateful to all members for their expertise and considerable efforts over the years." | Two patient representatives have quit the independent review group looking at the safety of mesh implants. |
36690448 | The French quartet of Philippe Rozier, Kevin Staut, Roger Yves Bost and Penelope Leprevost gave France their second equestrian title in Rio after team success in eventing.
The United States were second and Germany third after they beat Canada in a jump-off for bronze.
Defending champions Great Britain failed to reach the final.
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox. | France's show jumpers won Olympic gold in the equestrian team event at the Rio Games. |
39444285 | Tiler, 18, finished 10th at Rio 2016, but UK Sport cut all funding for British Weightlifting as they did not believe they possessed a 'credible' medal chance for Tokyo 2020.
"I want to prove to them I can still be the best," Tiler told BBC Sport.
The championships run from 1-9 April, with Tiler competing on the fifth day.
UK Sport stopped funding for the male weightlifters in 2014, but continued supporting the women's programme for Rio 2016 on the basis that they had the potential to attain success at future Games.
Media playback is not supported on this device
However, after injury saw leading British candidates Zoe Smith and Jack Oliver ruled out of the Olympics, the results achieved by Tiler and Sonny Webster were not enough to convince UK Sport of the athletes' long-term potential.
Tiler, who won European bronze medals in 2016, moved from her family home in Keighley, West Yorkshire, last year to live full-time in Loughborough and be close to the sport's training base.
"It's been really hard and losing the funding has had a really big impact on me," said Tiler,
"I'm not sure what's going to happen and I may have to get a job, which is not something I want to do as I just want to continue training and making improvements."
British Weightlifting chief executive Ashley Metcalfe said the funding loss will "inevitably" cause disruptions, but insisted he will work to "minimise" the impact on the GB athletes.
"We will continue to maximise the investment that is available to us, which includes increased funding from Sport England, in order to give our lifters the best possible opportunity of competing at the highest level," he said.
Find out how to get into weightlifting with our special guide.
Tiler will compete in the -69kg division and is part of a five-strong British squad - made up of all-English lifters - for the Europeans.
Sarah Davies (-63kg) and Emily Godley (-69kg) complete the women's line-up with Rio Olympian Sonny Webster (-94kg) and Owen Boxall (-105kg) in the men's team.
London Olympian Zoe Smith has been ruled out of the event as she continues her injury rehabilitation following shoulder surgery.
The European Championships offer athletes the opportunity to record a top-12 result, which would put them in contention for Team England selection for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia. | Rebekah Tiler aims to show UK Sport were wrong to doubt her Olympic medal credentials, beginning with the European Championships in Croatia. |
37012892 | The 53-year-old took temporary charge of the top-flight newcomers after Steve Bruce left the club on 22 July.
Phelan held lengthy talks with Hull vice-chairman Ehab Allam on Monday. Radio Humberside reports the agreement is for one game but could be extended.
A host of names have been linked with the Hull vacancy, including Wales boss Chris Coleman and Gianfranco Zola.
The Welsh Football Association rejected an approach from Hull to speak to Coleman, while former West Ham and Watford boss Zola has been interviewed.
Hull secured their return to the Premier League by beating Sheffield Wednesday 1-0 in last season's Championship play-off final at Wembley.
But Bruce ended his four-year stay after a breakdown in his relationship with vice-chairman Ehab Allam.
Bruce's departure has been just one chapter in a summer of turmoil at the KCOM Stadium.
Owners the Allam family opened talks with an interested party over the sale of the club in May but put takeover talks on hold until September to "ensure stability during the transfer window".
However, Hull have so far been inactive in the transfer window despite the departure of several members of last season's promotion-winning squad and a long injury list.
Long-term injuries to the likes of Allan McGregor, Alex Bruce, Moses Odubajo and Michael Dawson depleted Hull's ranks in the weeks before Bruce's exit, while Harry Maguire, Jake Livermore and Tom Huddlestone have also spent time in the treatment room.
They have since lost Mohamed Diame to Championship side Newcastle despite offering the Senegal midfielder a new, improved contract.
Curtis Davies is Phelan's only fit senior centre-back on the eve of the new season, while the expected return of Shaun Maloney from a groin injury will still leave the club with just 13 fit senior players.
Hull fans are planning to protest against the club's owners this weekend.
"I wouldn't say this has been my worst pre-season because you always take something from it, but it's certainly been a disruptive one," Phelan said in an interview with the Hull Daily Mail. | Caretaker boss Mike Phelan will take charge of Hull in their Premier League opener against Leicester on Saturday. |
29319465 | The area around Nuns Street, Derby, has been sealed off after the business reported the mistake at 17:30 BST.
Derbyshire police have erected a cordon and evacuated the area while they wait for the bomb squad to arrive.
The University of Derby's Nunnery Court halls of residence is one of the evacuated buildings.
Buildings in Mill Street, Bridge Street and Nuns Street have all been evacuated and residents sent to rest centres.
Chf Insp Steve Pont said: "There's a company on Nuns Street that used chemicals. They have mixed up chemicals in the wrong way and made a substance that may have explosive potential."
Nunnery Court has about 300 rooms. | Hundreds of students have been forced to leave their halls of residence after a potentially explosive chemical was accidentally prepared nearby. |
24378091 | The Bletchley Park Trust has put a "roll of honour" online, with details of over 10,000 people who worked at the Government Code and Cypher School.
Now the museum wants more veterans, whose identities were closely guarded secrets, to add pictures and stories about their work.
A trust spokeswoman has assured them, "you can tell us now".
Workers at Bletchley Park used the Bombe machine, which was developed by a team including mathematician Alan Turing, to break codes generated by the German Enigma machine.
It was used by the German navy, air force and army to send encrypted messages.
Some historians believe the work done at the Buckinghamshire site may have shortened the war by up to two years.
All the workers had to sign the Official Secrets Act when they first arrived, and their stories only started to come to light in the 1970s.
An online database now lists all those believed to have worked in signals intelligence there, and at other locations.
The trust wants those on the list to add pictures and experiences, plus anybody not already mentioned to come forward.
Katherine Lynch from the trust said: "Although the habit of secrecy has remained for some veterans after it was so ingrained into them, it would now help us bring to life this unique heritage site by telling the stories of the people who achieved incredible success and shortened the war.
"The more we know about not only what [veterans] did but who they were and how they lived, the richer this vital archive will become."
Ms Lynch says the archive allows veterans to find out how they fitted in with the rest of Bletchley's work, as they were only kept informed about their own input.
"Many are fascinated to learn what else was going on," she said.
"We have had Bombe operators who only heard about the Enigma machine when its story was revealed in the 1970s." | The home of the World War II codebreakers is trying to name every person who worked there. |
27634553 | The distressed woman was outside the Shropshire Arms pub in Chester when the grey squirrel began to drive her nuts.
Det Con Nigel Thake attended and managed to send the persistent animal on its way.
Police in Chester later Tweeted from an official account: "Welcome to the varied day of a police officer."
The unusual drama was documented on Chester Inner Police's Twitter account, referring to Det Con Thake as "Dr Doolittle".
The officer posted: "Days like today are why we joined the police."
A spokesman for Cheshire Constabulary said: "At around 7.40pm on Thursday, police received a call from a woman at the Shropshire Arms pub in Northgate Street, Chester, reporting that a squirrel had climbed inside her handbag and would not leave her alone.
"DC Nigel Thake attended the incident and released the squirrel back into the wild."
Grey squirrels are not native to the UK and are a threat to the indigenous red squirrel.
Under section 9 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act, it is an offence to release a grey squirrel into the wild.
According to Red Squirrels Northern England, an organisation which works to protect red squirrels: "This means if you trap one, you are obliged to humanely dispatch it.
"You must not let it go as this act would be illegal."
The police spokesman added: "I'm sure the squirrel in this case had managed to escape before a cage could be found." | A mischievous squirrel was the unlikely subject of a bizarre call to police - after the rodent jumped into a woman's handbag and refused to leave. |
40760773 | Floyd Ayite's low cross spun in off Norwich captain Russell Martin's heel to put the hosts ahead at the break, in a really open half.
Neeskens Kebano hit the post as Fulham chased a second to finish the game off.
It proved costly, as Oliviera tucked Wes Hoolahan's ball past David Button to snatch a share of the points.
It looked as though Fulham had done enough to begin the season with a win on the back of last term's Championship play-off disappointment, creating a glut of chances with just Martin's own goal to show for it.
Norwich had Daniel Farke - Huddersfield head coach David Wagner's successor at Borussia Dortmund reserve-team boss - in the dugout for the first time and his side played their part in an exciting and open encounter.
The Canaries too created some decent chances, two of which fell to debutant Marley Watkins, while the encouraging debut in goal of Angus Gunn - the son of former Canaries goalkeeper Bryan Gunn - included some key saves to frustrate the home side.
Fulham boss Slavisa Jokanovic:
"I am frustrated as I could not complain about offside. I'm not sure if it was legal or illegal, simply we have dropped two points.
"I see no point in complaining - it's about looking forward, not about the past.
"It's always disappointing to concede at that late point in the game. We are in a similar situation to last season when we were creating chances but not scoring enough."
Norwich manager Daniel Farke:
"Nelson is from Portugal and very emotional. It was really kind of him to show me the shirt (after scoring the equaliser).
"Hopefully that was not a sign for me because I can't do without him.
"He's a really good guy and has a good character but sometimes emotions burn a little bit in him. But there are no problems."
Match ends, Fulham 1, Norwich City 1.
Second Half ends, Fulham 1, Norwich City 1.
James Maddison (Norwich City) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by James Maddison (Norwich City).
Ibrahima Cissé (Fulham) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt missed. Tom Cairney (Fulham) left footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the left. Assisted by Ryan Fredericks.
Attempt missed. James Maddison (Norwich City) left footed shot from outside the box misses to the left. Assisted by Wes Hoolahan.
Nélson Oliveira (Norwich City) is shown the yellow card for excessive celebration.
Ryan Fredericks (Fulham) is shown the yellow card.
Goal! Fulham 1, Norwich City 1. Nélson Oliveira (Norwich City) left footed shot from the centre of the box to the centre of the goal. Assisted by Wes Hoolahan.
Offside, Norwich City. Josh Murphy tries a through ball, but Russell Martin is caught offside.
Corner, Norwich City. Conceded by Sone Aluko.
Stefan Johansen (Fulham) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Nélson Oliveira (Norwich City) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Stefan Johansen (Fulham).
Attempt missed. Aboubakar Kamara (Fulham) right footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high. Assisted by Denis Odoi.
James Maddison (Norwich City) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Denis Odoi (Fulham).
Attempt saved. Nélson Oliveira (Norwich City) left footed shot from the left side of the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Assisted by James Husband.
Substitution, Norwich City. Wes Hoolahan replaces Harrison Reed.
Foul by Harrison Reed (Norwich City).
Neeskens Kebano (Fulham) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Attempt missed. Nélson Oliveira (Norwich City) right footed shot from more than 35 yards is too high from a direct free kick.
Hand ball by Tomas Kalas (Fulham).
Attempt missed. Harrison Reed (Norwich City) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right.
.
Attempt blocked. Russell Martin (Norwich City) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked. Assisted by James Husband with a cross.
Attempt missed. Ryan Fredericks (Fulham) right footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the right. Assisted by Tom Cairney following a corner.
Corner, Fulham. Conceded by James Husband.
Foul by Nélson Oliveira (Norwich City).
Denis Odoi (Fulham) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Attempt missed. Aboubakar Kamara (Fulham) right footed shot from a difficult angle on the right is close, but misses to the right. Assisted by Stefan Johansen.
Substitution, Fulham. Denis Odoi replaces Ryan Sessegnon.
Attempt missed. Josh Murphy (Norwich City) left footed shot from outside the box misses to the right. Assisted by James Maddison.
Attempt blocked. Nélson Oliveira (Norwich City) right footed shot from the left side of the box is blocked. Assisted by Josh Murphy.
Foul by Mario Vrancic (Norwich City).
Neeskens Kebano (Fulham) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Tom Cairney (Fulham) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
James Maddison (Norwich City) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Tom Cairney (Fulham).
SAM (Sports Analytics Machine) is a super-computer created by @ProfIanMcHale that is used to predict the outcome of football matches. | Striker Nelson Oliveira came off the bench to earn Norwich City a point at fellow pre-season promotion favourites Fulham, who wasted a host of chances. |
36543468 | French police said the arrests had been made throughout Wednesday - adding that 16 people had been taken to hospital.
On Wednesday night, riot police used tear gas and charged at hundreds of England fans, as flares were set off.
Uefa this week threatened to disqualify England, - who play Wales later - from Euro 2016 if there was more violence.
England play Wales in the nearby city of Lens at 14:00 BST.
Thousands of the English and Welsh supporters have been staying in the larger city of Lille ahead of the match.
Russian and Slovakian supporters have also been in Lille for their game at the city's Stade Pierre-Mauroy on Wednesday.
It follows clashes between mainly English, Russian and French fans in Marseilles at the weekend.
The Russian football team was given a suspended disqualification from the tournament following attacks by their supporters on England fans in Marseille.
BBC sports editor Dan Roan, who is with the England team, says concern about the disorder will have "intensified" overnight.
England were now "skating on thin ice" in terms of the team's participation in the tournament and the threat of disqualification will "inevitably" have an effect on the players, our correspondent added.
Darkness brought a dramatic escalation in tensions between English fans and French police.
Hundreds of supporters engaged in scuffles with the police, who used tear gas, flash bangs and baton charges to disperse them.
The fears earlier in the day had been of attacks by hardcore Russian hooligans, but this was very much an English problem.
They sang their chant "Please don't send me home" and threw bottles in challenge at the police.
After funnelling fans down the city's streets, the police withdrew and some fans were left to stay in the city centre, if in a less boisterous mood.
It's unclear what caused the situation to escalate, as earlier in the day the police had been happy to contain the fans and keep them separate.
The city was tense, but disturbances were low-key, with running battles quickly stopped by the police.
Now the fear is what will happen when ticketless fans watch the England v Wales game in the city.
French authorities said those arrested on Wednesday included six Russians involved in the violence in Marseille.
Another five people were arrested for public drunkenness on a train from London that was stopped before it got to Lille and then allowed to continue.
Earlier, some English and Russian supporters had been detained after scuffles. Hundreds of England fans were surrounded by riot police in the city's main square.
They were then pushed back into the corner of the square by police in riot gear, before the square was cleared.
England supporter Oliver Larkworthy, from Norwich, is in Lille and was caught up when police fired tear gas at fans at the city's railway station.
"I saw a massive crowd running down the street - English fans, Slovakian fans and locals mainly, a real mix," he said.
"There is a massive mob of Russian fans standing outside the station just waiting to cause trouble. The whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen. It's like a massive tinder box waiting to go off any minute."
Six England fans, aged 20 to 41, have received jail sentences ranging from one to three months in relation to disorder surrounding the England-Russia game, which finished 1-1 on Saturday.
On Wednesday, Russia's foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador to Moscow, as well as sharply criticised policing at the Euro 2016 tournament.
"Further stoking of anti-Russian sentiments... could significantly aggravate the atmosphere in Russian-French relations," the ministry said.
Michel Lalande, prefect of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Picardy region, said a drinking ban was in place in some parts of central Lille and the stadium.
Shops selling alcohol in the city closed from 18:00 local time (17:00 BST) on Tuesday and will reopen at 06:00 (05:00 BST) on Friday, he said.
However, the BBC's Geraint Owen, in Lille, said small supermarkets were still selling alcohol on Wednesday afternoon, and drinking was taking place openly on the streets.
Vince Alm, of the Football Supporters' Federation Cymru, said the ban was not enforceable. "There are so many outlets around it's impossible," he said.
Fans are being discouraged from travelling if they are without a ticket to the England-Wales game, and the authorities have also asked those with tickets to delay travel until the day of the game.
Those without match tickets can watch the match in the city's fan zone, where lower-strength beer will be sold.
Mr Lalande also said anyone carrying out violence would be removed from the country.
British Transport Police officers travelled with fans on Eurostar trains on Wednesday.
Eurostar is running some alcohol-free services, with no alcohol allowed through check-in or purchased at departure lounges or on board. | At least 36 people have been arrested in Lille following clashes between French police and football fans at the Euro 2016 tournament. |
36748510 | The one-tonne, £2,000 animal was lost for 48 hours in the storm drain on peatland near Ben Aketil Wind Farm on the Isle of Skye.
The bull vanished from the place it was kept last Friday before being found on Sunday.
Firefighters and local crofters took 20 minutes to free the animal, which was hungry but unharmed.
Fifteen people were involved in the operation with firefighters from Portree, Broadford and Dunvegan involved.
Broadford firefighter Martin Benson said: "The bull had been stuck for a considerable amount of time and had lost a lot of weight.
"We cut the peat bank as best we could around the bull which was about three feet below ground level - and stuck at either side when we arrived.
"Eventually we managed to carve out some room for the bull to wriggle itself free."
He added: "The first thing the animal did was shake itself down and go for something to eat.
"In such a remote, agricultural area these rescues are sometimes necessary - and it's nice to have a happy outcome."
Crofter Ian Duncan last saw the animal on Friday morning and began to worry on Saturday afternoon.
He said: "He disappeared on the Friday while searching for cows.
"It's not uncommon for a bull to go missing in such a large area but this bull had never gone missing for such a time before.
"When we found the animal I was surprised at how far he'd travelled.
"I called the fire service right away and they did a magnificent job of digging him out."
He added: "He's been eating a lot more - but apart from that he's looking okay." | A bull has been rescued from a deep, muddy hole it fell into while roaming around looking for cows. |
38314711 | Interim chief executive Bill Barron said the unnamed officials believed they had been unfairly treated in a controversy embroiling the commission.
This year has seen the body involved in a public row with groups of crofters.
Its board has made a public apology for its handling of this row and sought the resignation of its convener, who says he has done nothing wrong.
Wednesday's meeting in Inverness was the first to be held since a private gathering of board members and convener Colin Kennedy last week, and September's formal meeting of the board in Brora when Mr Kennedy was asked to stand down by the board after he had walked out.
Mr Kennedy has argued that the board's vote on asking him to resign was not valid.
In October, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Scottish government ministers had the power to intervene in the affairs of the troubled Crofting Commission.
Ms Sturgeon said ministers would not ordinarily get involved in the internal operations of the commission.
However, during a First Minister's Questions session in Holyrood, she said legislation did give ministers the power to intervene if required. | Two senior officers at the Crofting Commission refused to attend a meeting of the public body in Inverness. |
29697973 | It started out in 1995 as a maker of rechargeable batteries with just 25 employees. Its batteries soon became standard parts for a large number of the world's mobile phones, and it rapidly expanded into cars and solar energy.
By 2009, founder Wang Chuanfu was China's richest man with a net worth estimated at $5.8bn (£3.6bn) and the firm employed some 150,000 people.
World renowned investor Warren Buffett also bought a near 10% stake in the firm.
In less than two decades BYD had come from nowhere to become one of the largest firms in China.
And then it suddenly faltered. Profits fell sharply and in 2011 it was forced to lay off significant numbers of its car sales staff.
"In 2008 and 2009, the growth rate of China's car market almost reached 40%, disguising our problems in retailing. As the growth rate slowed down, we had to face those problems," says Mr Wang.
He admits the firm "grew too fast". Its decision to move into cars meant it had to switch from selling its products to other companies, to selling directly to consumers - a completely different proposition.
It opened too many dealer networks too quickly, many of which made a loss.
Getting its rate of expansion right took three years to fix, but Mr Wang says the firm is now back on track.
"It was a good path, [I] just had to persevere through it," he says.
While it's easy to suggest this is hubris getting its just reward, in China, this extraordinary rate of expansion - or hyper growth - is relatively common.
When the Chinese government began to open up the economy in the 1980s, it rocketed from a small emerging economy to a heavyweight, growing many times faster than its western rivals. Yet as BYD demonstrates, such rapid expansion makes it hard for some companies to adapt quickly enough.
"Once a company is in hyper growth mode it's important not to lose sight of what made the firm a success in the first place," says leadership expert Steve Tappin.
Victor Koo, chief executive of video-sharing giant Youku Tudou, often dubbed China's YouTube, has seen dramatic changes since it launched in 2006.
Initially, its users were accessing content almost entirely on desktop computers, now more than 60% of users access content via their mobiles.
To ensure its firm could react quickly enough to take advantage of the rapid changes, its philosophy used to be "do before we say and think before we do". But now, Mr Koo says, that is just not fast enough.
As a result, it has shaken up its organisational structure to create "quick task teams" which work across different departments, can brainstorm ideas and come up with new ways of doing things.
"If you overthink it or you spend too much time thinking about it the opportunity has already passed. And as you experiment [and] explore, your strategies actually formulate themselves. Don't sit still".
For an eight-year old firm like Youku Tudou, where ways of working are less established, it can be easier to embrace a more flexible approach, but for older firms it's often harder to shake up the status quo.
Online media company Sina Corporation was established 15 years ago and listed on the Nasdaq, the US technology exchange, soon after. This year it listed Weibo - its Twitter-like micro-blogging service - on the Nasdaq in a separate listing.
Chairman Charles Chao says that because Weibo was part of Sina, its value and the fact that it was growing much faster than its existing businesses, had not been recognised by investors. The separate listing was aimed at addressing this.
But right from the very outset, he says they tried to keep the businesses separate, because Weibo was a very different business to Sina and he didn't want the original company to hold back innovation at the new firm.
"I don't think there's a scientific way or a bible you can follow in terms of how to run a high growth company. Our approach is that we separate, we try to create a system that more resembles start-up companies."
Deng Feng, chair of Northern Light Venture Capital, a Chinese venture capital firm, says ultimately what can help firms survive or even thrive in a period of rapid expansion is having the right internal culture.
He started his own firm in Silicon Valley at the end of 1997 and listed it on the stock exchange just four years later.
Despite its ultimate success, he said during the four years there were three occasions when it was close to collapse, due to key people leaving and because at times it had "no money in the bank". At one point it was acquired by another firm which subsequently collapsed. In the end, it managed to get out of the acquisition.
"Head hunters tried to recruit them [the staff]. Here, the Chinese culture actually helped. The key engineers that were Chinese, they stayed together and they helped the company and we solved the problem," Mr Deng says.
This feature is based on interviews by leadership expert Steve Tappin for the BBC's CEO Guru series, produced by Neil Koenig. | Chinese firm BYD, short for Build Your Dreams, has a particularly apt name. |
31881419 | A search operation was launched after a fishing vessel saw the kayak floating about three miles offshore with no-one on board at 17:45 on Friday.
A man was subsequently spotted in the water off Musselburgh, close to where the River Esk flows into the Firth.
Aberdeen Coastguard said that a search and rescue helicopter recovered the man's body from the water.
Police Scotland said that they had been called to Goose Green Place, near the shore in Musselburgh, after the man was found.
A police spokesman said: "Inquiries are continuing to establish the full circumstances surrounding the death."
The RNLI Kinghorn lifeboat, two fishing vessels and search and rescue helicopter 131 from RAF Boulmer had been involved in the search.
The kayak had been found about three miles off Port Seton. | A man's body has been found after an empty kayak was spotted in the Firth of Forth, police have said. |
40451454 | Andy Haldane told BBC Newsnight that businesses had not invested enough to give the productivity improvements necessary to push up pay.
Low pay had contributed to low interest rates, which will remain relatively low for "a pretty long time", he added.
Earlier he told BBC Wales the Bank needed to look at raising rates.
"We've gone through, for most people, a pretty extraordinary, almost unprecedented period of real take home pay having flatlined for the better part of a decade, and that is well beyond anyone's historical experience.
"And understandably people are feeling frustrated and squeezed by that squeeze on their purchasing power in the shops," Mr Haldane said.
UK inflation rate at highest since 2013
Spending squeeze to worsen, warns Bank
Farewell to pay growth
He said productivity - how efficient workers and firms are - was also flatlining, and this was one of the biggest contributing causes to lack of pay growth.
Only between 1% and 5% of firms were "high-innovation" businesses who had embraced "the rise of the robot" and are "taking the productivity high road," he said.
"The root cause of the stagnation in productivity and pay is that long lower tail of firms. They're taking the low-productivity road."
Businesses need to benchmark themselves against other firms to see whether they are performing above average, he said.
Pay growth has been falling rather than rising over the past year, which has taken the Bank and the rest of the world "somewhat by surprise" given buoyant UK jobs growth and falling unemployment.
Nevertheless, lack of pay growth is "a factor that has contributed to rates in the UK remaining at their currently very low levels".
He said the Bank is "watching closely for any signs of pay picking up. That's one of the key indicators we look at when judging the stats."
Over the past 300 years, average interest rates has been about 5%, compared with the current record low interest rates of 0.25%.
Mr Haldane said: "Rates currently, and if you believe financial markets, prospectively, are set to remain pretty low for a pretty long time. I mean not just the lowest in the last 300 years, possibly the lowest in the last several thousand years, I would say."
He added that for people planning getting long-term loans such as mortgages, any future rate rises would be "gradual and to a limited extent".
"By which we mean the numbers that may have been in people's heads from the past are probably on the high side relative to what we might expect in the future. Let me not put a number on that. But limited and gradual is the name of the game."
Interest rates have been held at a record low since last year.
But at its last rate rise meetings, three of the eight members of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee surprisingly voted to raise interest rates, jolting financial markets.
Mr Haldane has also said he expects to vote for rate rise this year.
Earlier he told BBC Wales that the Bank "need to look seriously at the possibility of raising interest rates to keep the lid on those cost of living increases." | People in the UK feel "frustrated and squeezed" because their pay has flatlined for a decade, the Bank of England's chief economist has said. |
33269779 | In 2013 a five-year plan was announced to electrify the route from London to Sheffield through the East Midlands.
The government has now said it can be improved in other ways while the electrification project "is paused".
Experts said the decision will widen the north-south divide and damage the regional economy.
The Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin announced other changes - including "speed improvement works" - which he said would provide better services in the short term.
"Work on electrification will be paused. I want it to be done and done well. It will be part of our future plans for the route," he said.
Malcolm Prentice, chief executive of engineering firm Garrandale Group, said the delay will widen the north-south divide and is at odds with a recent visit to Derby by the chancellor, George Osborne.
He described the region as Britain's "engine for growth".
Mr Prentice said: "Why are we taking away electrification when we want a greener environment [by] removing the diesel engines?"
Nottingham City Council leader Jon Collins said promised investment could be lost.
"The investment in electrification was a centrepiece of investment in infrastructure and it will be very damaging to the East Midlands economy," he said.
Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East, said successive secretaries of state had made personal promises about the line.
"Prior to the general election, David Cameron and Patrick McLoughlin were promising people and businesses all the way along the Midland Mainline that electrification would result in significant improvements... in the lifetime of this parliament.
"It is clear today they already knew that was a promise they were going to break." | The halting of a £500m project to electrify the Midland Mainline is potentially "very damaging" to the economy, experts said. |
39842404 | More than 30 firefighters tackled the blaze at the site near to Rosary Road in Oldham, Greater Manchester, at about 16:45 BST on Sunday.
Nearby residents were told to keep their windows and doors closed as there was suspected asbestos in the derelict building.
The fire service is "damping down" and an investigation into the cause will take place when the site is safe. | A major fire has gutted a disused school. |
33635839 | The company is being spun off from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The firm did not reveal the expected price range or number of the common shares.
UBS Investment Bank, BofA Merrill Lynch and Santander are underwriting the flotation, the company said.
Ferrari intends to list its common stock with a fundraising target of $100m.
The company was set up by former Alfa Romeo race car driver Enzo Ferrari in 1939, and produced its first car, the 125 S, in 1947.
The symbol of the firm, a prancing horse - 'Cavallino Rampante' - was adopted by Ferrari after being used by an Italian World War 1 pilot, Francesco Baracca, who had it painted on the fuselage of his aircraft.
The 'Ferarri red' was the colour assigned by the International Automobile Federation to all Italian grand prix cars early in the 20th century.
In 1969, Mr Ferrari sold the Fiat Group a 50% stake in the company, which was increased to a 90% stake in 1988. | Italian sports car manufacturer Ferrari has applied to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. |
35192055 | Williams, who played a starring role in New Zealand's Rugby World Cup win, was in Lebanon as a Unicef ambassador.
On Tuesday night he tweeted graphic images of two bodies, adding, "What did these children do to deserve this?"
But the UN children's agency objected to his use of the images, and said Williams had not consulted its staff.
"We see it as a fundamental infringement of those children's rights," Unicef spokesman Patrick Rose told the New Zealand Herald.
Although it was clear that Williams had been deeply moved by his visit to Lebanon, Mr Rose said it was better to provide a "positive framework for people to respond" by offering children clean water and counselling.
The rugby player also provoked a mixed response among his 556,000 followers on Twitter, with some users praising him for his honesty and others questioning his judgment.
"Please use trigger warnings by putting 'TW: dead children' in the tweet next time. It's very triggering as someone who has seen dead bodies like this before growing up," one user wrote.
No further details were shared about the location of the photos or the identity of the children.
Williams visited refugee camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley earlier in December, where he met Syrian children and their families.
"This was such an eye-opener… [I was] so ignorant as to what was going on over this way," Williams said in a video.
"It's been an amazing few days, it's definitely changed me for the better, and I'll definitely look at things in a different light when I get back.
"This summer share a thought for the innocent lives lost every day in war."
Williams made international headlines at the Rugby World Cup in October when he gave his winner's medal to a young pitch invader following the All Blacks' 34-17 victory over Australia.
He is a major figure in both New Zealand and Australia, where he played professional rugby league for the Canterbury Bulldogs. | Rugby union star Sonny Bill Williams has posted graphic images of dead children on Twitter after a visit to Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon. |
37697715 | A couple of weeks after using the Royal Prerogative to appoint a new press secretary, was it really the executive's considered media strategy to reveal important correspondence from Downing Street live on Radio Ulster's Nolan Show?
And only in the event that an SDLP MLA happened to ask a DUP MP whether the letter from the Prime Minister had arrived?
Surely if this was the plan, Stormont Castle could have saved themselves a lot of expense by appointing East Belfast MP Gavin Robinson as its press secretary?
The first minister brushed the complaints of opposition MLAs aside, insisting that the prime minister's letter had been published in the assembly library at the same time as it was released to the media.
A couple of hours after Arlene Foster spoke, the assembly library finally tweeted the prime minister's comments.
So much for the "inside the Stormont beltway" focus on how the letter was published.
Its contents appears, in the main, a restatement of UK government policy. The mantra of "no return to borders of the past" is now getting to sound very tired.
But, some Stormont sources pointed to the emphasis on the continued free movement of people and goods across the island of Ireland as worth noting.
Free movement of goods? Is that in the sense that lorries will be free to drive north and south unhindered or an indication that those goods will be free from customs tariffs? If the latter, then how would this equate with the UK potentially withdrawing from the European Single Market?
Certainly the hard Brexiteers aren't happy with the prime minister's letter.
The TUV said any arrangements that "retains free movement of labour and goods only for Northern Ireland should be unacceptable to any unionist, because the practical effect would be to push the border back to the Irish Sea".
"Free movement of goods" the TUV argued "can only be secured for the whole UK, or not at all".
Equally, UKIP described Mrs May's letter as very worrying, claiming it "appears to be a capitulation to letting unlimited border crossing into the United Kingdom from anywhere - via the Irish Republic".
"We must press for clarification on Mrs May throwing open a porous border," the party added.
Coming just a day after MLAs rejected "special status" for Northern Ireland within the EU, the Downing Street letter underlines the fact that - when it comes to the UK's departure from the EU - everything is still extremely tentative.
In England, car manufacturers and city traders are pressing their special cases for exemptions from the worst repercussions of a hard Brexit.
In Northern Ireland, food processors and cross-border businesses need to make their voices heard.
Both London and Dublin may want as little as possible to change on the island of Ireland after Brexit.
But, Theresa May and Enda Kenny will have to persuade other EU leaders of the merits of this approach and how it can be squared with fundamental changes in the UK's relationship with the rest of the EU.
Both leaders may get an opportunity to sketch out their thoughts at a Brussels summit they are due to attend later this week. | The way Theresa May's letter on Brexit to Stormont Castle emerged raised a few eyebrows around the assembly. |
38253323 | Ritchie Sutton's first half header from Jeff Hughes's free-kick proved to be the only goal of the game.
Jordan White should have levelled for Wrexham before the break but his header was acrobatically saved by Scott Davies.
Former Wrexham midfielder Jay Harris could have scored a second in stoppage time but he fired over the crossbar.
Wrexham manager Dean Keates told BBC Radio Wales Sport: "It was a better performance but we're obviously disappointed with the result.
"Jordan White had a great chance in the first half with a great header and if that had gone a yard either side it would have been a goal.
"If we would have got a goal you might have seen a different outcome and score." | Tranmere Rovers progressed to the FA Trophy second round with victory at National League rivals Wrexham. |
35968353 | The Greens and Conservatives campaigned about transport infrastructure, while SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon continued her tour of the northern isles.
Elsewhere, Labour and the Lib Dems promoted their financial policies on education and council tax ahead of the election on 5 May.
Ruth Davidson got behind the wheel at the Knockhill race track, chasing down a red car - symbolising Labour - in her Tory blue vehicle.
The Scottish Conservative leader said Scotland's roads were in a "terrible state", calling for better infrastructure to keep the country moving.
She pledged £20m a year to fix potholes over the next parliament, from a special roads maintenance fund for local authorities.
Ms Davidson added: "It is one of the top doorstep issues and 80% of Scottish drivers say they've had to swerve to avoid a pothole in recent weeks - it's clear we need action to fix our roads infrastructure."
Green party co-convenor Patrick Harvie campaigned at a busy intersection in central Edinburgh while highlighting his party's call for improved bus services.
Mr Harvie ran a campaign called Better Buses during the last session of parliament, and said the Greens were taking the issue seriously.
He said: The SNP has ploughed extra millions into new motorways and dual carriageways while commuters and rural residents without access to a car are left behind.
"We need more electric or hybrid buses to reduce the air pollution harming public health, and we need a renovation programme for bus stations to make them attractive public spaces."
Nicola Sturgeon continued her tour of Orkney and Shetland by visiting Kirkwall.
The SNP leader said she was committed to devolving more powers to the islands, saying: "We want to work with our island communities to further empower them to make sure that the decisions that shape the lives of people living in Orkney and Shetland are taken here."
Ms Sturgeon also defended the memorandum of understanding she signed with a Chinese consortium which has been criticised over corruption allegations.
She said: "There is no agreement to invest, this is about exploring opportunities and if there are any specific proposals for investment then full due diligence will be done."
Kezia Dugdale promoted her plans for a new system of council tax while campaigning in Glasgow.
The Scottish Labour leader said the SNP had broken its promises to "scrap the unfair council tax", but said her party would make good on this pledge with a new system based on recalculated property values.
She said: "People deserve bold proposals from the next Scottish government, not broken promises.
"Labour's fair plans will see 80% of households pay less - that means the average household will be better off by £111."
Willie Rennie visited Step Change, a Glasgow charity which provides people with free financial advice.
The Scottish Lib Dem leader said his party would help families with the cost of early years care and support families through the education system while closing the "attainment" gap in school performance.
Mr Rennie aims to introduce a "targeted pupil premium", worth £1,400 for primary pupils from more deprived backgrounds, paid for by adding 1p to income tax bands.
He said: "We know that putting extra investment into education is crucial to raising attainment across the board and ensuring that people get the skills they need to thrive in the workplace." | Scotland's party leaders have focused on finance and transport during a busy day of Holyrood election campaigning. |
24339815 | The city-state transformed itself from a British colonial outpost into the country with the third highest average income in the world within a matter of decades.
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Not only that, it has become an international financial centre attracting expatriates from across the globe. Foreign workers make up 40% of Singapore's labour market.
Exporting consumer electronics has been the driver of growth for Asia since the 1960s, including for Singapore, which has also made the most of one of its few natural advantages, a deep water sea port.
For Working Lives, the BBC's Linda Yueh has been meeting people around the island.
Wang Han, a young Singaporean design engineer, is the type of highly skilled worker that leads international companies to set up plants in such an expensive country.
She works on the innovative digital motor that powers hand dryers and vacuum cleaners for UK company Dyson. The motor is made in Singapore, but the products using it are assembled in Malaysia and sold around the world.
That international outlook and the government's promotion of skilled workers also attracts foreigners to Singapore.
Frazer Macdonald Hay came to teach young Singaporeans how to integrate design into engineering. He heads a 10-year programme between the Glasgow School of Art and Singapore's Institute of Technology.
Chris Gill was attracted by the government's promotion of the financial sector, and a safe, clean environment to bring up his young family. He is the general manager of a global insurance company's Singapore branch.
Property developer Satinder Garcha, who according to one survey is Singapore's 46th richest person, plays polo each afternoon in the middle of the city, giving him a rather enviable work-life balance.
But it's not just the rich who have a good standard of living. Office cleaner Liew Siew Giok works all day on her feet but goes home to a meal cooked by her Burmese maid. She lives with her extended family, who pay for the domestic help and her flat.
The influx of foreigners has created social tensions and the rapid growth of the financial sector has raised some concerns about the future.
However, what is clear is that Singapore has grown by being at the leading edge of know-how, giving not just the rich, but most people, a good quality of life. | Singapore has achieved what only a handful of countries have - joining the so-called First World from the developing world. |
39035538 | The visitors made the brighter start and almost went ahead in the fifth minute, with Gus Mafuta freed by Danny Johnson to win a corner that James Bolton narrowly put wide.
The Silkmen were having the best of the possession but they were struggling to convert it into chances until two minutes before the break. Chris Holroyd latched on to a long ball and got round Gateshead goalkeeper James Montgomery - but Manny Smith was on-hand to clear.
Defender Smith opened the scoring in the 75th minute, stabbing home after Scott Flinders had initially saved Paddy McLaughlin's effort.
However, the home side rescued a point just seven minutes later when John McCombe rose highest to head home a free-kick.
Meanwhile, Macclesfield have re-signed Bury winger Jack Mackreth on loan until the end of the season.
The 24-year-old, who was previously at the club between 2012 and 2014, spent the first half of the current season with the Silkmen, making 25 appearances in all competitions after returning on a free in June, before leaving for Bury in January.
Match report supplied by the Press Association.
Match ends, Macclesfield Town 1, Gateshead 1.
Second Half ends, Macclesfield Town 1, Gateshead 1.
Substitution, Macclesfield Town. Dan Cowan replaces John McCombe.
Gus Mafuta (Gateshead) is shown the yellow card.
Goal! Macclesfield Town 1, Gateshead 1. John McCombe (Macclesfield Town).
Manny Smith (Gateshead) is shown the yellow card.
Substitution, Macclesfield Town. James Thorne replaces Kingsley James.
Goal! Macclesfield Town 0, Gateshead 1. Manny Smith (Gateshead).
Substitution, Macclesfield Town. Mitch Hancox replaces Jack Mackreth.
Substitution, Gateshead. Tom Beere replaces George Smith.
Second Half begins Macclesfield Town 0, Gateshead 0.
First Half ends, Macclesfield Town 0, Gateshead 0.
First Half begins.
Lineups are announced and players are warming up. | Gateshead's six-game National League winning run was brought to an end as they were held to a 1-1 draw at Macclesfield. |
35059898 | The runner-up is a similar-looking red, white and blue design.
The final result will be announced on Tuesday after late and overseas votes are counted, and may change as the winning margin is narrow.
A second referendum will be held in March to decide whether to adopt the new flag, or keep the existing one.
New Zealanders were asked to choose which of five designs they preferred.
About 48% of eligible voters took part in the first referendum, which has divided opinion in New Zealand over its cost and timing.
The preliminary winner and runner-up flags were both designed by architect Kyle Lockwood, and feature New Zealand icons the silver fern and the Southern Cross.
The second-runner-up was Red Peak, which was added to the ballot after a social media lobbying campaign.
Voting officially closed at 19:00 local time on Friday (06:00 GMT).
The decision to choose a new flag has been backed by Prime Minister John Key, who has said the current one is too similar to Australia's and that it is time to remove the Union Jack from the flag.
He said the turnout, which was higher than had been expected, showed "people are engaging" with the debate, the New Zealand Herald reports.
Four designs were initially announced in September and Red Peak, was added weeks later.
The entire exercise is expected to cost around NZ$27m (£12m, $18m). | New Zealanders have picked a blue and black design with the silver fern as the preliminary winner in a referendum on a possible new national flag. |
38761572 | The 42-year-old, the former coach of Cagliari and Bologna, replaces Eugenio Corini, who resigned on Tuesday.
The Sicilian side have only managed two wins in 21 matches and are one point above last-place Pescara in Serie A.
Palermo president Maurizio Zamparini has overseen about 60 coaching changes in 30 years as a club owner.
Last season alone, there were eight changes and this campaign there have been a further three replacements. | Struggling Serie A side Palermo have made their 11th coaching change in two seasons by hiring Uruguayan Diego Lopez. |
25032180 | Gerald Laing, who spent a large part of his life in the Highlands, created the artwork shortly after the shooting of the US president 50 years ago.
Laing's New York dealer refused to exhibit it and it was put in storage.
The pop artist, who was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, had been living on the Black Isle when he died in 2011.
He spent much of the 1960s working in New York and was a close friend of artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
Lincoln Convertible was considered too controversial to be displayed so soon after Kennedy's death in Dallas 1963.
It was kept in storage for about 30 years before galleries felt comfortable enough to exhibit it.
Almost 3m (9.10ft) long, the painting is based on film footage of the assassination taken by Dallas resident Abraham Zapruder.
The painting - in which Laing used coloured dots for the first and only time in his career - depicts the Lincoln car in which the president and his wife had been travelling.
Jackie Kennedy can be seen in her pink pill-box hat, while her husband leans over having been shot.
The American flag is seen going off the screen to the right and below are the legs of secret service men running across the grass towards the car.
The bottom of the canvas shows in part an earlier frame of the film, where the head of the Kennedy's chauffeur and the American flag are visible.
The painting is owned by the artist's estate.
Laing's most famous works included images of actresses Brigitte Bardot and Anna Karina.
In October 2011, he showcased a series of paintings and drawings of Amy Winehouse in London.
Laing was also a sculptor and created a statue of Sherlock Holmes that stands in Edinburgh and also the Exiles, a statue at Helmsdale that recalls the Highland Clearances in Scotland.
Four Rugby Players at Twickenham Stadium, Ten Dragons at London's Bank Underground Station and The Glass Virgins at Standard Life's building in Edinburgh are among his other sculptures.
He settled in the Highlands and made 16th Century Kinkell Castle, near Inverness, his family's home. | Lincoln Convertible, the only known contemporary painting of the assassination of John F Kennedy, has gone on display at Tate Britain. |
29309307 | It said Tian Tian's hormone levels have returned to normal and a reabsorption of the foetus may have occurred.
The zoo said data gathered since conception took place indicated she was expecting and likely to carry to full term but this did not happen.
Tian Tian is said to be in good health and the outdoor viewing area of her enclosure has reopened to the public.
Iain Valentine, director of giant pandas for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said: "Tian Tian's hormone levels have now returned to normal, so we can confirm that she is no longer pregnant.
"Panda reproduction and biology is complex, all data gathered since conception took place pointed to a pregnant panda likely to carry to full term, sadly this did not happen.
"There is no evidence she has had a miscarriage, so late reabsorption of the foetus could have occurred.
"Although Tian Tian has not successfully given birth, it is important for her individual biology as a female giant panda and for the future of giant panda conservation across the globe that we tried.
"We will also be reviewing all our data and procedures from this year and last." | Edinburgh Zoo has confirmed its female giant panda is no longer pregnant, having warned something was "amiss". |
20020936 | The Hong Kong dollar is fixed against its US counterpart and hit a high of HK$7.75 on Friday, the upper limit of its trading band.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority sold HK$4.67bn ($603m) of foreign bonds.
The Hong Kong dollar acts as a proxy between the US and Chinese markets.
Because of its status as a Chinese financial hub with its own currency and legal system, foreign investors generally consider Hong Kong as a gateway to mainland China and the yuan - a currency that is not freely tradeable.
Investment from people - including wealthy Chinese - fleeing the eurozone debt crisis and weak US economy have parked themselves in Hong Kong, which has seen its stocks and property market surge in value. The local Hang Seng index is close to a six-month high.
The Hong Kong dollar is allowed to trade in a band between HK$7.75 and HK$7.85 against the greenback.
The last time the HKMA intervened in its currency was in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, when it moved to weaken the currency. | Hong Kong has moved to weaken its currency for the first time in three years as demand from investors fleeing Western markets has caused a sharp increase in its value. |
37557466 | "It's hard to say, but I agree a bit," said Tottenham defender Rose.
"I don't want to say it's a mess, but it's not nice for English football."
Allardyce left his role after being exposed for telling undercover reporters posing as businessmen how to "get around" player transfer rules.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Allardyce took over from Roy Hodgson in the aftermath of England's embarrassing Euro 2016 exit at the hands of Iceland.
The former Sunderland boss won his one and only game in charge - a 1-0 World Cup qualifying victory over Slovakia - before his sudden exit.
At the time, Shearer, who scored 30 goals in 63 games for his country, said England had hit rock bottom with Allardyce's departure.
"I didn't think England could stoop any lower from what happened in the summer at the Euros," he told BBC Sport.
"Now here we are, a laughing stock of world football."
Gareth Southgate, who has been England Under-21 boss, will take charge of the senior side for four games, starting with World Cup qualifiers against Malta at Wembley on 8 October and in Slovenia three days later.
"I hope the next England manager will be one for the long term and help us to improve a bit in tournaments," added Rose.
"Everyone - the players, the manager and all the staff - we've got to take it on ourselves to try to lift the opinion of English football over the next few games."
Rose, who played in the win over Slovakia last month, said he had texted Allardyce to thank him for selecting him and to wish him the best for the future.
"He was brilliant when he was there," added Rose. "He was such a good laugh, really approachable and he allowed us to play as well." | England left-back Danny Rose says Alan Shearer was right to call the national team a "laughing stock" following Sam Allardyce's departure as manager after just 67 days and one game in the job. |
39730928 | Deborah Wilkinson, 42, was found with head injuries at a house in the Hemlington area of the town on 19 August in 2016.
A 73-year-old man was arrested and bailed over her murder in August.
Cleveland Police have now concluded there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding her death.
The coroner has been informed, the force said. | No further action will be taken against a 73-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murdering a mother-of-three from Middlesbrough. |
40370416 | He spent the last four seasons with the Gills, scoring 48 goals in 153 league games, after a previous loan spell.
Boss Neal Ardley told the club website: "He has only just turned 31 and he still has years ahead of him.
"He scored 12 goals last season for Gillingham in a team that struggled a bit and his goalscoring record previously has been very good."
The Dons have not disclosed the length of the former Norwich and Coventry player's contract.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | AFC Wimbledon have signed striker Cody McDonald after he turned down a new deal with Gillingham. |
31460934 | First Essex driver Michael Willson, 44, met Denise Ashby about nine years ago, when she stepped aboard his Chelmsford park and ride bus.
They spoke to each other and became friends. But after two years riding on his bus, Denise moved to Basildon.
When they met again last year, Mr Willson told her how much he had missed her.
Mr Willson, who now drives the X30 Southend to Stansted service, said while he had conversations with most of his customers "there was something different about Denise".
"It was just so comfortable to talk to her," he said. "And we ended up very, very good friends."
But when Denise changed jobs and no longer boarded his bus, Mr Willson realised his feelings for her were far more than friendship.
"All of a sudden she was gone," he said. "I was a bit devastated and I tried to reason with myself to the fact I would never see her again."
They bumped into each other again at Chelmsford bus station in March 2014.
Mr Willson initially told the then Ms Ashby he was well and happy. But then he faltered, and told her: "Actually, I'm not fine, I should have told you how I felt about you."
Ms Ashby told Mr Willson she felt the same and they became a couple before Ms Ashby proposed to Mr Willson at the park and ride bus stop where they had first met.
They married at County Hall in Chelmsford, which is near the city's bus station, at the end of January.
They travelled to Norfolk for their honeymoon, not by bus but by train. | A bus driver has married a former passenger after she proposed to him at a bus stop. |
32576752 | David Coburn MEP said he wanted it to look at a number of areas, including the way Scotland is funded.
The party also remains committed to its main goal of taking the UK out of the European Union.
There was no hard copy of the Scottish manifesto available at the launch as it was "delayed in the Bank Holiday post".
Mr Coburn said he wanted to see the Barnett formula, which allocates funds to Scotland, discussed in a constitutional convention after the election.
He said his party wants Scotland to be re-industrialised and accused the SNP of wanting to take Scotland back to "the days of William Wallace" with "people living in mud huts".
Mr Coburn, who was elected as an MEP in Scotland last year, said there were a lot of "quiet UKIP voters" across Scotland who are "frightened of cyber nats" but "quietly voting UKIP as they did when they put me in".
The anti-EU, pro-UK party's policies for Scotland include a move towards federalism, with a constitutional convention to establish a future UK framework for the governance of the country.
Other policies include a pledge for Scottish MPs to abstain from voting on English matters, the retention and renewal of the Trident nuclear missile system and the introduction of fracking if it is proved safe and wanted by local people.
On the issue of fracking, Mr Coburn added: "I think it is essential ... if some people had their way we would still be with William Wallace in a cave.
"If you want to have modern technology, you have to break a few eggs.
"Fracking has to be done safely and must be done properly."
On defence and Trident, Mr Coburn criticised the SNP's policy of not renewing Britain's nuclear deterrent, which is currently based at Faslane on the Clyde.
"I don't want to see Scotland turned into some stripped pine Scandinavian, peacenik sauna republic that the SNP seek to create," he said.
"They can take it and stick it."
Mr Coburn and his colleagues shrugged off suggestions that the party was "amateur" in Scotland, after failing to provide copies of its manifesto at the launch.
He was quizzed on why some candidates had failed to attend hustings events in their constituencies.
Mr Coburn said UKIP's candidates were "real people with real jobs" and added: "I would rather have real people, people like myself, people who actually have a job, rather than folk who are just in it for the game."
What are the top issues for each political party at the 2015 general election?
Policy guide: Where the parties stand | UKIP have launched their Scottish manifesto in Falkirk with a commitment to hold a constitutional convention to debate the future of the UK. |
38894755 | Scotland's Uefa coefficient has slipped from 23rd to 25th.
It means that the Scottish Cup winners as well as the league's second and third-placed clubs will kick off their European campaigns at the end of June.
The Scottish Premiership winners will still start in the second qualifying round of the Champions League.
Teams finishing second and third in the top tier have become accustomed to entering the Europa League at the earliest stage, but the national cup winners have in recent years played in the second qualifying round.
However, the Uefa rankings, which are based on results over a rolling five-year period, are such that whichever team lifts the Scottish Cup at Hampden on 27 May will have only one month to prepare for a European qualifier on 29 June.
Hibernian, who won last season's Scottish Cup, played the first leg of their Europa League second qualifying round match against Brondby on 14 July.
Should Celtic retain their league title, and then also win the Scottish Cup, the team that finishes fourth in the Premiership will take the final Europa League spot. | Scotland's three representatives in the Europa League next season will, for the first time, begin qualifying in the first round. |
25848873 | The guidelines range from practical security advice to more faith-based instructions, including a warning that updates are "transient yet permanent".
The list has been widely shared online, dubbed the "Twitter commandments".
Bath and Wells diocese said it compiled the nine rules to help "spread the word of God in the most effective way".
The guidelines aim to help parish staff "navigate through the social media landscape".
The first rule - "don't rush in" - urges ecclesiastical tweeters to consider the following questions:
Subsequent rules advise on drawing boundaries between public duties and private life, being an ambassador for the Church and maintaining a professional distance.
After feedback to the original rules suggested they were "worthy but a bit on the dull side", some light-hearted advice from a local social media expert was added.
A spokesman for Bath and Wells diocese told the BBC that publishing the resource was what "any good organisation" would do.
"The Church of England is in every community in the UK, so it seems right that we should be in online communities too," he said.
"We're not the first diocese to provide guidelines, but our clergy increasingly use social media.
"A vicar might engage in conversation online in the same way that they do in the street, post office or pub."
Other religious bodies offer faith-driven advice for their representatives communicating online.
The Methodist Church in Britain urges its clergy to "let Galatians 5:22-26", which urges the spirit of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control", guide their behaviour when sharing the "good news of Jesus Christ in the world" on social media.
But the popularity of these new guidelines took Somerset's Anglican clergy by surprise.
"The irony of these guidelines becoming part of a Twitter storm has not been wasted on us," a staff member said.
"We're just pleased that so many people have found it interesting." | A Church of England diocese has issued a list of social media rules to its staff and clergy, urging them to consider God when tweeting the masses. |
31507957 | The majority of the 2,345 viewers who complained about the Booking.com advert said the substitution was offensive.
But the Advertising Standards Authority said the word was used comically.
Booking.com said it was used in a positive tone and to reinforce brand recognition. It is the second most-complained about UK advert of all time.
The online travel agent said there was "no ambiguity" about the use of the word "booking".
It had been used to convey enthusiasm and joy, rather than with any negative or derogatory tone often associated with swear words, it added.
The advert, which screened on television and in cinemas, featured holidaymakers arriving at their destinations while a voiceover said: "It doesn't get any booking better than this.
"Look at the view, look at the booking view."
The word was repeated a number of other times in the advert.
Some viewers said the advert was likely to encourage swearing among children and some reported seeing it during television programmes such as a Harry Potter film, or at cinema screenings of family films.
The Cinema Advertising Association said it had considered both the advert's potential to offend and the long history of word substitution in British humour, which often appeared in family entertainment.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the voiceover artist enunciated the word clearly and that it was "sufficiently distinct" so as not to be confused.
"We understood that a small number of complainants had reported hearing their children swear after seeing the ad, but considered that because the ad did not contain any expletives, this behaviour would not arise from the ad itself," it said.
The ASA concluded that although some might find it "distasteful", it was "unlikely" to cause widespread offence.
Paddy Power's Oscar Pistorius advert, which offered "money back if he walks" during his trial over the death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, remains the most complained-about UK advert of all time.
It was immediately pulled last year and later the ASA upheld the 5,525 complaints and banned it. | A travel website's TV advert that used the word "booking" as an apparent substitute for an expletive has been cleared by the advertising watchdog. |
36902668 | Powered by a bouncy bassline, and a chunky Barry White hook, it's an ode to Jones' romantic prowess with women all over the world.
"She said, 'hola, como estas?' She said, 'konnichiwa'. She said, 'pardon my French'. I said, 'bonjour madame.'"
The singer, who stresses he has "just one lady" in real life, says the song was inspired by his adopted home of Miami, Florida.
"It's a melting pot - Spanish, Haitian, French, Asian," he tells the BBC. "And in that melting pot, I stuck with the greetings that were most comfortable to me.
"You hear a lot of people say 'hola'. Spanish is a language that happens to take a waltz in other people's back yards."
But the 23-year-old concedes his vocabulary is limited.
"I just know the greetings... and some other words that are not appropriate for this interview."
Don't Mind went from inspiration to final mix in just 12 hours - "I was just in the studio making music and it came out" - but Jones didn't realise what he had on his hands.
The song was destined for his debut mixtape - a calling card "with no singles" before his debut album later this year. But even then, the song was initially rejected by his record label (DJ Khaled's We The Best Recordings).
"I was like, 'what's going on?' Not in the sense of, 'this is definitely a hit' because we didn't know that.
"But we took the time to sort out the issues and fix the mix, and they ended up putting it on [the mixtape]. And it's served me well. I'm not going to lie to you, it served me very well."
Indeed, the song has spread like wildfire, hitting the top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic, while Jones has been an opening act on Beyonce's Formation Tour and visited Europe for the first time.
"It's definitely a growing experience," he says. "It's helped me be a sharper man, a sharper artist."
But he insists he's up for the challenge. "There's a lot of people asking about pressure. They say there's so much pressure coming up with another hit after Don't Mind. And I'm unaware of the pressure they ask about. The key is being prepared."
That preparation began in Tallahassee, Florida, when Jones started bashing pots and pans in the kitchen. Eventually, his aunt took pity on him (but not his parents) and taught him to play the drums.
From there, he taught himself piano and Hammond organ, practising with his mother's gospel ensemble in Church, where the music director showed him how to make primitive beats on an electronic keyboard.
By adolescence, he was studying music in high school and found himself drawn towards jazz.
"I really dug into the greats," he says, "the ones I needed to transcribe and study."
"But there's so many styles within that one genre [of jazz]. It forces you to open yourself to different disciplines that allow you to play all those styles."
Playing Don't Mind in Radio 1 Xtra's Live Lounge, he gets the chance to show off those skills, his fingers rippling up and down the piano keys in a blur.
"Who would have guessed from Don't Mind that you could play the keyboards like that?" marvels presenter Trevor Nelson - but Jones insists hip-hop and R&B need to embrace musicianship and live instrumentation.
"Remember, that's all it was at one point," he says. "Everything's a little more generic now."
While his skills are currently parlayed into the synthetically-inclined world of hip-hop, Jones is looking back to Quincy Jones, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder as he prepares his next single, Sit Down, and his debut album.
"You're definitely going to hear a lot of musicality, I'm letting you know that now.
"At the end of the day, mechanical time and human time are totally different. So a computer metronome has nothing like the feel of a live band.
"There's nothing you could sample to replace the feel of the wood in a bass guitar. Same thing with the strings on a lead, or the weight of keys on a piano.
"There are certain elements of instrumentation you can't buy with a loop."
Don't Mind is out now on Black Butter in the UK and Epic in the US .
Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram at bbcnewsents, or email [email protected]. | Certain songs were made for the sunshine - and one of this year's biggest summer jams is Kent Jones' irresistible Don't Mind. |
40836949 | In what has been described as a Scottish first, some of the country's biggest clubs have signed up to the LGBT Sports Charter.
The charter aims to encourage access to the sport for LGBT people.
Equality Network development manager Scott Cuthbertson said the move would help create a "more inclusive" game.
He said: "We're delighted that these clubs, from across all four SPFL divisions, are today making a commitment to LGBT supporters, officials and the next generation of LGBT players.
"Today's message is loud and clear, everyone is welcome at football and we are working for a more inclusive game.
"We don't yet have any openly LGBT professional players in the men's professional game in Scotland but we know there are plenty of LGBT fans."
'Sport for all'
Rangers striker Kenny Miller said: "Rangers is an inclusive club and strives to promote equality and inclusion and we are delighted to sign up to the Scottish LGBT Sports Charter.
"Everyone should be able to take part, enjoy and succeed in sport whatever their sexual orientation or gender identity and we are proud to support this initiative."
Celtic's Scott Brown added: "This is an issue which needs to be addressed and tackled and therefore we are delighted to sign up to the Charter, and promote the very important message that sport is for all."
The clubs backing the charter are Aberdeen, Celtic, Hearts, Hibs, Partick Thistle, Rangers St Johnstone, Dumbarton, Airdrieonians, Albion Rovers, Forfar Athletic, Elgin City and Peterhead.
Partick Thistle managing director Ian Maxwell said: "Football can be a very powerful tool to help fight all types of discrimination.
"Football is a universal language so no matter what your race, religion, background, gender or sexuality, kicking a ball about or watching your team on a Saturday helps put everyone on a level playing field." | Professional football clubs in all four divisions backed an agreement on participation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. |
32322506 | The 48-year-old was arrested on Tuesday after police received reports of a nine-year-old girl being grabbed outside a chemists in Queen Street, Market Rasen.
There were also reports of a four-year-old boy being grabbed in a newsagents on the same road.
No-one was hurt but both children were left shaken, police said.
Det Insp Pete Grayson said: "These incidents will understandably be of great concern to the local community, to parents and to families, and I would like to make it clear that they are isolated and one-off occurrences.
"We have a suspect in custody and are not looking for anyone else in connection with this investigation."
Patrols have been increased in the area to provide reassurance. | A woman has been arrested in connection with two attempted child abductions in a small Lincolnshire market town. |
36937377 | Nor was being diagnosed again at 30.
After receiving his second all-clear, the disease was gone but its psychological effects were not.
Mr Trout, now 37, says he became "gripped by anxiety, and the fear of cancer coming back, or the fear that maybe it hadn't gone".
He struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia and skin problems which were so bad that he hated himself and stayed inside his house.
He calls this fearful phase the "worst part of my journey", and says he did not know how to deal with it.
In a report released on Monday by Macmillan Cancer Support, experts say an "extraordinary" number of people are now alive many years after they were diagnosed with cancer.
But it warns that thousands of people struggle with the physical, emotional and financial effects of a cancer diagnosis and treatment for many years afterwards.
Thousands surviving decades after cancer
People like Mr Trout.
"I felt guilty, angry at myself," he says.
"At times I was thinking 'am I ungrateful for feeling this way after having survived when so many others don't?'."
Looking back, he now feels differently.
"It doesn't really get more traumatic than getting cancer, so it's just a normal reaction to having to go through such a horrific life event," he says.
At the age of seven, having been diagnosed with a Wilms' tumour, he underwent radiotherapy and chemotherapy and had his right kidney removed.
But Mr Trout, from Thames Ditton in south-west London, says getting cancer as an adult was worse.
"As a child I apparently only ever asked my mum and dad once if I was going to die," he says.
"They told me that they loved me too much and they wouldn't let that happen and I never asked again.
"When you're an adult, doctors tell you absolutely everything and you've got things like rent, job, relationships, all these things to contend with."
He was "far more unwell" as an adult - when he had a 10cm (4in) tumour removed from his bowel - but he says the illness also affected him "a lot more psychologically".
Mr Trout says "fantastic" counselling from Macmillan Cancer Support helped him cope.
He went travelling, visiting 23 countries in two years, and set up a website called 101 things to do when you survive.
"I still think about cancer a lot and it coming back, but I'm more equipped now to get myself out of those negative thoughts and it doesn't affect me like it did a few years ago," he says. | For Greig Trout, getting cancer at the age of seven was not the worst part of his battle. |
36508146 | Hong Kong-born Moore, 23, was the last British player in the event, having overcome world number 67 Christina McHale 6-2 6-2 to reach the last eight.
But the world number 280 could not take any of four break-point chances against Johanna Konta's conqueror Zheng.
She also served five double faults as 22-year-old Zheng won in 83 minutes.
Moore revealed she had been hampered by injury and told BBC Sport: "It was there, I could feel it, but I can't fault Saisai for the way she played, she didn't give me much of an opportunity.
"Every loss is a disappointment. It's been a great week and I have to take the positives and look forward to Birmingham next week. I do think I've improved a lot of things I needed to and going forward I am really excited about how things can progress."
Top-seeded Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic and unseeded Alison Riske of the United States won two matches each on Saturday to reach Sunday's final, after Friday's quarter-finals were washed out.
Pliskova beat Monica Puig of Puerto Rico 6-2 6-2 in 54 minutes after earlier seeing off Ashleigh Barty of Australia 7-6 (7-2) 7-6 (9-7).
Riske took three match points to beat Zheng 6-1 7-5 in her semi-final, after earlier beating Anett Kontaveit of Estonia 6-3 6-3.
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox. | British number four Tara Moore was beaten in the Nottingham Open quarter-finals, losing 6-2 6-4 to Saisai Zheng of China. |
36429660 | Another term for it is "relationship addiction". People form and persist with relationships "that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive".
Sitting in the atrium of Trump Tower on Tuesday, as Donald Trump harangued the press - well, you know where I'm going. For all the abuse, for all the belittlement, we as reporters show no sign of ending our relationship addiction with Donald Trump.
Much of our cravenness is easily explained. It stems from the record-breaking television ratings that Trump has generated and, just as important these days, millions of online hits.
A human headline, he more than satisfies the viral requirements of our new media age. At a time when media organisations are struggling still to monetise online news content, and to make the painful shift from print to digital, along comes the ultimate clickbait candidate, a layer of golden eggs.
Understandably, hard-pressed news executives are echoing the words reportedly uttered by Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, at her Brooklyn headquarters: "I've got to get me some Trump."
It has meant that the default setting for cable news channels here is a split screen showing an empty Trump lectern on one side with pundits on the other, bloviating endlessly as they await the billionaire's arrival.
As for a Trump news conference, it is rather like broadcasting one of those freeway police chases filmed from a helicopter: car crash television that you want to stay with until the end - though perhaps the more accurate analogy is of security camera footage that captures a street fighter who has no qualms about reaching for the broken bottle. It is unedifying, gruesome even, but also utterly compelling.
It explains why none of the news channels cut away from the Trump news conference yesterday, even as it degenerated into a one-way slanging match. Or why none of the reporters present, myself included, simply got up and walked out.
Yet the media's Trump relationship addiction is not explained by commercial imperatives alone.
Political reporters have a tendency of writing a campaign narrative that comports with the race they ideally want to cover. It's not an invented narrative, as such - we can't simply make up storylines. But I would suggest it's a slanted narrative, which, rather than betraying a liberal bias, reveals a "great story" bias.
In a reworking of the old newsroom adage "if it bleeds, it leads", candidates tend to be assessed on the basis of their journalistic entertainment value.
My sense, while covering the 2000 campaign for instance, was that reporters handicapped the race in favour of George W. Bush because the possibility of a son following his father into the White House, with all the oedipal complexity that went with it, was a better story than seeing Al Gore become president.
That would have felt like a Clinton third term, absent its charismatic leading man.
This tendency was even more pronounced in 2008, during the Democratic primary campaign, when journalists were more excited by the prospect of the first African-American president than the first female president, Hillary Clinton. Everyone wanted to compose their own first draft of that dramatic historical moment.
Trump is also a beneficiary of great story bias. Never before has there been a candidate with such journalistic entertainment value.
His unexpected emergence meant that we ditched our initial narrative of Campaign 2016, which we had set up a dynastic showdown between a Bush and a Clinton, in favour of a better storyline.
The media didn't create Donald Trump, the basis of the ever more fashionable "Frankenstein's monster" critique of the press. But we have been more willing enablers than we would care to admit.
So while there has been no shortage of critical coverage of Donald Trump, there has been a reluctance to go for his jugular.
This tendency is most noticeable in broadcast interviews. Jake Tapper's interview with Donald Trump, in which the billionaire failed to disavow support from white supremacists and said he needed to do more research on the Ku Klux Klan before condemning it, offered a case in point.
Tapper, who has done some excellent interviews during this campaign, was tough and probing but did not go in for the kill. An obvious follow-up question would have been "do you really need to do more research on the KKK to condemn it" but he did not ask it.
As for the interview between Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump, it provides the textbook case study of campaign co-dependency.
Kelly rocked Trump in a televised debate last year, with a brilliant and legitimate line of questioning about his misogyny. But when she sat down with him at Trump Tower for a prime time special, and talked about his hate-Tweeting, she described how she imagined him doing it wearing "a crushed velvet smoking jacket, chaise lounge, slippers".
Jon Sopel, my colleague and compatriot, wrote a terrific blog on the Trump press conference, observing: "The remarkable thing that has struck me as a British correspondent living in Washington, and who is used to a robust relationship between journalist and politician, is how Trump has been treated with kid gloves."
I could not agree more. The preference in American broadcast journalism is to end interviews on amicable terms. There is not the adversarial tradition of British interviewing, nor a US equivalent of John Humphrys or Jeremy Paxman.
Bikers reveal sickly choice for US voters
Trump: Illegals treated better than vets
What's also striking is that we as journalists do not have the power of old. Trump and other candidates have used Twitter especially, not only to bypass the media but also to become part of the new media themselves.
The billionaire's Twitter account has more followers - 8.5 million - than the Washington Post, ABC News, NBC News, the Huffington Post or Buzzfeed. He has become a self-publisher, and provided an unfiltered commentary of his own. Trump's strength is a measure of the mainstream media's weakness.
That imbalance was evident at the news conference in Trump Tower. He possessed the only microphone. He could drown out every reporter. He controlled who asked the questions, and probably half of the journalists present did not get the chance to do so.
Ever the shrewd media operator, he also knew that the cable news channels would stay with it until the end.
For another illustration of our comparative powerlessness, just witness the number of stories that have been written about Trump, which in an ordinary election cycle would have been disqualifying - his misogyny, his racism, his incitement of supporters to punch protesters in the face, his cussing, his refusal to release his tax returns, his constant flip-flopping on policy, Trump University, etc, etc.
Much has been written about how Trump defies the usual laws of political gravity, but one of the reasons is that modern-day media organisations lack orbital pull.
The Trump obsession has affected our coverage in subtler ways, too.
Had it not been for our fixation with the Republican contest, we would have paid more attention to Bernie Sanders' extraordinary success. Yet we've downplayed that storyline.
This is partly for valid analytical reasons. Early on, it became clear that Hillary Clinton was winning the all-important "black vote" - this race has proven again that it is all but impossible to win the Democratic nomination without it - and had the support of so many super-delegates that her lead became insurmountable.
But I wonder whether another explanation for short-changing Sanders goes to how Trump has impacted our professional pride. We can cope with being proven spectacularly wrong in one race, the Republican contest, but not two.
Absent Trump, journalists would have felt the Bern far more strongly, because it would have been the best storyline on offer. Again, it demonstrates how we as journalists tend to talk up certain narratives and talk down others, of how we are prone to great story bias.
Confessedly, I hated being at that Trump news conference, most of which I spent with my arm thrust skyward trying unsuccessfully to ask a question. But I also admit to being enthralled by the most extraordinary election campaign I have ever covered.
Like every other journalist, I dare say I'll be back the next time he summons us to Trump Tower. Perhaps, if he continues to be so personally abusive, journalists should stage a walkout. That said, I suspect we'll remain planted in our seats, sufferers of co-dependency, fellow Trump relationship addicts. | Co-dependency is commonly defined as "an emotional and behavioural condition that affects an individual's ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship". |
36417177 | The duo helped England complete a Test series win over Sri Lanka on Monday.
Chris Woakes, who played in the second Test at Durham, and Jake Ball - who was included in the squad for the first two Tests - have also been made available.
They will be in contention to play for Birmingham Bears and Notts Outlaws respectively.
All-rounder Woakes can feature for the Bears against Durham at Edgbaston on Friday, while bowler Ball can play in two T20 games and a One-Day Cup fixture against Northants on 6 June.
Yorkshire lost their first T20 game of the season to Leicestershire on 27 May. | England batsmen Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root have been made available to play for Yorkshire in Friday's T20 Blast match against Lancashire. |
28240831 | One of the suspect's daughters is in a critical condition after being shot in the head, but she was able to direct police to him.
After a 20-minute chase, the man's car was surrounded and he gave himself up following a two-hour stand-off.
Police said the incident appeared to have started over a domestic dispute.
"It appears this stems from a domestic issue with a breakup in the family, from what our witness has told us", a police press spokesman said.
The gunman and his wife were estranged and she was not in the state of Texas at the time, police said.
Police described the suspect as a man in his 30s with a beard who was "cool as a cucumber".
When approached by officers he was "just sitting in his car looking out at us," said Sgt Thomas Gilliland.
There followed "two hours of constant talking with a man armed with a pistol to his head and who had just killed six people".
Police had been called to a house about 18:00 (23:00 GMT) and found three children and two adults dead, a Harris County Sheriff's Office statement said.
A fourth child died in hospital. The children ranged in age from 4 to 13. The two adults are also believed to be related to the suspect.
Two of the children who died had been adopted.
The suspect's 15-year old daughter, who alerted police to the shooting, is currently in critical condition in hospital.
She warned police that her father was heading for her grandparents' home, allowing them to intercept him on the way. | A gunman has surrendered to police in the United States after allegedly shooting dead six people, including four of his own children, near Houston. |
38932954 | Traditionally, therapists have shied away from talking about religion as part of treatment - and can often see it as part of the illness.
But an NHS project based on research by Leeds University is "showing some individual signs of success".
Those behind the therapy say many Muslims do not get help because of stigma attached to mental illness.
Samia, who is in her late 40s, has struggled with depression and is taking part in the project.
"I just felt like I had to constantly keep myself strong and put on a brave face. Deep inside I was actually broken," she says.
"When I actually fell apart, when I was at my lowest, I felt that there was something that I might have done to upset Allah, which is God."
Lead researcher professor Ghazala Mir, of the university's Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, says this is a common concern among Muslims, who are under-referred for mental health treatment.
"This stigma does involve the idea that maybe if you need treatment, there might be something wrong with your faith identity in the first place," she says.
"Not only is there under-referral but the outcomes for people who do actually get referred are not as good as the general population."
NHS data assessing the people accessing psychological therapies found depression can be more chronic for British Muslims, who tend to have lower rates of improvement.
The NHS has a statutory duty to provide culturally appropriate care for its patients, but Prof Mir claims it often struggles to do so.
"There are a lot of inconsistencies amongst practitioners about how they interpret culturally appropriate," she adds.
Prof Mir also believes many therapists are mistaken in not considering faith as part of someone's culture.
"We know that in Muslim populations people can get quicker results from faith-sensitive therapies that have been tested elsewhere in the world. They tend to use religion as a coping resource more than people in other religious groups."
Prof Mir has helped to create a new treatment, based on an existing form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) called behavioural activation. Following a successful pilot involving 20 patients, it is being provided by the NHS via a mental health charity in Leeds.
Patients on the course are asked if faith was part of their life when they were well.
Those who stopped their religious practice because of depression are re-introduced slowly using a self-help booklet, which highlights passages from the Koran that illustrate "even people with strong faith" can become depressed and that it does not mean God is displeased.
Samia says her treatment with a traditional therapist "felt like half a journey", but that when she started to use the new booklet her life began to change.
"There are some teachings in here that help me reflect that the Koran actually acknowledges there is depression, there is grief, there is hardship upon you," she says.
"God is actually giving me those tools. So it really strengthened my 'imam', which is my faith.
"I'm happy that I can live my life with my religion and that I've got the support of teachings from the Koran."
Richard Garland runs the team at the Touchstone Mental Health Charity which is providing the treatment to some of its Muslim clients.
He says several therapists left the initial trial of the treatment for a number of reasons.
Some were worried about imposing religion on clients, others said they did not know enough about Islam, were resistant to the idea of using religion in therapy at all, or felt religion was not a helpful framework for treating depression.
However, Mr Garland claims this type of religiously-centred treatment can help.
"What has been produced here is a type of therapy that takes full account of people's faith, this particular faith, and links it to people's value framework. So it's a very practical application of someone's belief system."
The people behind the treatment say they hope it can be rolled out across the country and be extended to other faith groups. | Muslims with mental health issues could be helped by re-embracing their beliefs and religious teachings, it is claimed. |
33987289 | Marvin Couson, 39, was wounded at the Lime in London bar in Shoreditch in May 2002. He was left unable to communicate or leave his bed, and died on 8 August.
Police have launched a murder investigation and appealed for witnesses to come forward.
Mr Couson, who suffered injuries to his internal organs, was cared for at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability.
About 600 people were at the bar on 12 May 2002 when police were called to reports of gunfire. They found Mr Couson lying on the ground outside with a gunshot wound to the chest.
A man was arrested during the police investigation, but later released with no further action.
Det Ch Insp Noel McHugh said: "For 13 years Marvin's family have been at his bedside and now, tragically, he has succumbed to the injuries he suffered.
"We have launched a full murder investigation and, despite the passage of time, are committed to finding the person who shot Marvin that night."
He added: "We know there are potential witnesses who did not speak to police at the time and I would ask them to now please come forward with any information, no matter how small. Do not assume that someone else will contact police."
Until a change in the law in 1996, a murder was only deemed to have been committed if the victim died within a year and a day. | A man who was shot more than 13 years ago in east London has died from his injuries. |
33901809 | Greg Dempster of the Association of Head Teachers and Deputes in Scotland (AHDS) believed change was needed.
His plea came as as figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives showed there were 51 primary school headteacher vacancies in June.
In comparison there were only seven secondary school vacancies.
There are about 2,050 primary schools and 360 secondary schools in Scotland.
The Scottish government said it was increasing its investments in tackling teacher shortages.
The statistics obtained by the Conservatives showed there were more than 850 teaching vacancies across primary and secondary schools.
Of the 51 primary school headteacher vacancies, 16 were in Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen - nearly a third of the national total.
Mr Dempster said there was not enough of a financial incentive for people to become head teachers.
He told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme: "I would say there are three reasons why people go for a particular job: The work itself appeals, the rewards on offer are adequate and they have the skills and abilities to take on the role. We're falling down on the first two of these.
"Head teachers are spending a lot of time in the classroom covering vacant teaching posts and the way that salaries are arrived at doesn't give adequate financial incentive for people to take on the job."
The practice of data journalism - more than anything - requires not only a double-checking of your arithmetic but, above all, context.
The Scottish Conservatives research on the number of headteacher vacancies in the country's schools is a case in point.
They say: "Many Scottish primary schools are struggling to recruit heads." But, what is meant by "many"?
Well, let's take a closer look.
The Conservatives' figures reveal 51 primary schools in Scotland are without a headteacher. Granted, while this situation is far from ideal, bear in mind there are 2,056 primary schools in Scotland.
So, does 2.5% of Scotland's primary schools count as "many"?
Let's dig a little deeper.
The Conservatives include statistics from the local authorities of Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire where the 16 leaderless primary schools account for nearly one third of the national total.
Aberdeen City Council is listed as having the most head teacher vacancies (10) which, when divided by the number of primary schools in the area, equates to 21% of primary schools.
That's a fifth of schools, which is not an insubstantial number.
Read more from Marc....
His comments echoed research commissioned by the Scottish government in 2009 which showed that few teachers actually wanted to become headteachers.
The authors of the research cited problems with the application and interview process, lack of support and "negative perceptions" of the job and called for action to tackle the problems which deter applicants.
Earlier this year Moray Council said some vacant teaching posts posts attracted "no suitable candidates at all".
The Conservatives said that in 2005 the then SNP education secretary Fiona Hyslop "hit out at the Labour-led Scottish government for its failure to recruit more teachers and headteachers".
But it said the pupil to teacher ratio had increased under the SNP government from 13% in 2007 to 13.6% in 2014.
Scottish Conservative young people spokeswoman Liz Smith said the SNP had "continually made bold promises" about education over the past eight years, whether on class sizes, pupil to teacher ratios, teacher numbers and ensuring there were sufficient headteachers.
She said they were "failing on all counts" and said the statistics "lay bare the extent of the problem with recruitment of primary school heads."
The Scottish government's minister for learning, Alasdair Allan, said Scotland would not replicate the English education system and employ non-qualified teachers in a bid to fill the posts that are currently vacant.
Mr Allan told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland: "I accept that the government needs to work with local authorities to ensure they are recruiting teachers and head teachers. Good school leadership makes a big difference to a school and its attainment.
"What I cannot offer to do is to reduce the standards for those that apply for the teaching profession in Scotland and we wouldn't go down the route of England where non-qualified teachers are in the classroom." | Greater financial incentives are needed to overcome difficulties in recruiting headteachers in Scottish schools, a union has claimed. |
40629652 | Between 2008 and 2016 investors quintupled the amount of money they put into such platforms, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said.
Companies such as Hargreaves Lansdown, Nutmeg and Interactive Investor now manage £592bn of savers' money.
The FCA will examine whether such firms help investors make good decisions.
It follows a previous inquiry into those who manage the funds that are sold on investment platforms, which found high levels of profitability.
The study found typical profit margins in the industry of 36% - and concluded that investors should be quoted a single fee, rather than a complex mix of charges.
Savers putting money into investment platforms pay a fee to each fund manager, as well as to the platform itself.
"With the increasing use of platforms, and the issues raised by our previous work, we want to assess whether competition between platforms is working in the interest of consumers," said Christopher Woolard, the FCA's executive director of strategy and competition.
"Platforms have the potential to generate significant benefits for consumers, and we want to ensure consumers are receiving these benefits in practice."
The FCA will look at:
One of the UK's biggest investment platforms, Hargreaves Lansdown, saw its share price hit in May when US firm Vanguard announced a cut-price service for UK investors.
Vanguard plans to charge investors a maximum fee of 0.15% on its tracker funds, capped at £375 a year.
Hargreaves Lansdown charges 0.45% to hold investments in its Vantage service.
The FCA will also look at investment platforms' "model portfolios" where they suggest recommended funds to their clients. | The City regulator is to examine whether savers get value for money from so-called investment "platforms" - otherwise known as fund supermarkets. |
34597678 | Researchers will examine 200 people after a Scottish woman claimed she could detect people with Parkinson's.
Joy Milne's husband Les died earlier this year after being diagnosed with Parkinson's 20 years ago.
In an early test, Mrs Milne, from Perth, managed to identify six people with the disease and six people without just from T-shirts they had slept in.
Read more about Joy Milnes story.
Researchers now believe Parkinson's may cause a change in the sebum - an oily substance in the skin - that results in a unique and subtle odour on the skin, only detectable by people with an acute sense of smell.
The charity Parkinson's UK is now funding researchers in Edinburgh, Manchester and London to study 200 people with and without Parkinson's.
They hope to confirm findings from a pilot study by the universities of Manchester and Edinburgh involving 24 people, which suggested that Parkinson's can be identified by odour alone.
One in 500 people in the UK has Parkinson's, which can leave people struggling to walk, speak and sleep.
It has no cure or definitive diagnostic test, and 127,000 people in the UK live with the condition.
Prof Perdita Barran, one of those who will carry out the research, said: "The sampling of the skin surface will provide a rich source of metabolites which we can mine to distinguish healthy patients from those in the early stages of Parkinson's.
"We are excited to embark on this biomarker discovery project. It is hoped that these results could lead to the development of a non-invasive diagnostic test that may have the ability to diagnose early Parkinson's - possibly even before physical symptoms occur." | A study is being carried out to establish if people in the early stages of Parkinson's emit a particular smell. |
34665569 | "When a generation of hard-working men and women in their 20s and 30s are waking up each morning in their childhood bedrooms - that should be a wake-up call for us," David Cameron said before an audience of the party faithful in Manchester earlier this month.
The Prime Minister said he wanted a "national crusade to get homes built".
The first set of significant house building figures since then have just been published.
They are from the National House Building Council - which provides building certificates for new homes.
And they make for pretty gloomy reading.
Overall, registrations for new homes fell by 2% in the last three months compared with the same period last year.
That figure masks what many see as a more worrying trend.
In the private sector, new building registrations fell by 1%.
While in the public sector - that's largely homes built by housing associations which tend to be more often in the "affordable" category - the number was down a more precipitate 4%.
This morning, one housing association chief executive told The Times newspaper that it would certainly be cutting the number of affordable homes it planned to build this year.
Neil Hadden, of Genesis Housing Association, one of the largest in the UK, said that he was "looking carefully at priorities for spending".
The reason? Uncertainty over how new Right to Buy plans will affect housing associations (the government wants to allow tenants to buy their homes at a discount and cuts to housing benefit which has meant income for many associations has fallen or is at risk.
Now, the NHBC says it is not time to panic. After a robust first six months of the year, it is still predicting that overall new house building - when the full figures for 2015 are collated - will be up.
And it cautions that new build registrations can be "lumpy" - that is, quarter on quarter comparisons can be subject to a degree of volatility.
"We're comparing against what was a very strong quarter in 2014," Mike Quinton, the chief executive of the NHBC, told me.
"It's easy to forget the depths of the recession five or six years ago when the industry was only building 80,000 to 100,000 homes a year. We're now at about twice that rate so we've come a long way."
And there is still a long way to go if we are ever going to meet the target set by organisations such as Shelter that England alone should be building 250,000 new homes a year to meet the demand of those priced out of the present under-supplied market.
It could be a decade, Mr Quinton admits.
In 2007, before the financial crisis led to a sharp downturn in building, around 50,000 new houses were registered to be built every three months.
That figure has now fallen to 36,000 and the full year number is likely to be around 160,000.
The latest figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government released in August said that house building "starts" (that's actually building houses rather than registering a plan to do so) were down 14% compared to the previous three months and down 6% compared to the same period a year earlier.
And that comes against a background of generally poor construction figures as the sector becomes concerned about economic head winds.
It may not be time to roll out the tumbrils for UK house building.
But the latest figures could be making things a little twitchy for a Prime Minister who has made affordable housing one of the key priorities for this Parliament. | It was the centre-piece of his conference speech. |
27101049 | Three more guides are still missing after the accident.
In a statement, the Sherpas demanded compensation higher than the $400 (£238) offered by the government, as well as higher insurance payments.
Friday's was the single deadliest accident in modern mountaineering on the world's highest peak.
The avalanche struck in an area just above Everest base camp at 5,800m (19,000ft).
In the statement, made available to the BBC after a meeting at base camp on Monday, the Sherpas also demanded better measures to ensure speedy rescue and treatment facilities for guides.
Some expeditions have been cancelled as a mark of respect.
Correspondents say that Sherpa guides have an average income of around $5,000 a year - a substantial amount in Nepal - and often support their extended families.
The guides had climbed up the slope early on Friday morning to fix ropes for climbers and prepare the route.
The avalanche struck a passage called the Khumbu Icefall, which is riddled with crevasses and large ice boulders that can break free without warning.
Although relatively low on the mountain, climbers say it is one of its most dangerous points - but there are no safer paths along the famous South Col route first scaled by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
An injured survivor told his relatives that the path was unstable just before the avalanche hit.
Sherpas often make 20-25 round trips to carry kit and supplies to advanced camps, exposing them to greater risk.
It was the first major avalanche of this year's climbing season on Everest, which has been scaled by more than 3,000 climbers.
The rising number of tourists has raised concerns about safety and environmental damage, although Nepal still plans to cut fees from next year for those wishing to make the climb.
Some 250 climbers have died on the mountain, which is on the border between Nepal and the Chinese region of Tibet and can be climbed from both sides. | Sherpa guides in Nepal have demanded more compensation for the families of 13 of their colleagues killed in an avalanche on Mount Everest on Friday. |
38831133 | Canadian firms see an opportunity to lure talent even as they struggle with the impact of the ban on their business, and are seeking a fast-track visa to help them bring top candidates to cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
Kasra Nejatian is among those leading a charge to assist the sector to hire tech workers rejected at the US border due to the recent executive order, which temporarily barred nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.
The Iranian-Canadian chief executive of Kash, a tech company with offices in San Francisco and Toronto, has created an online list of resumes - he has over 180 names so far - to share with tech executives in Canada.
Mr Nejatian, who helped craft Canada's own immigration policies under the previous federal Conservative government as a senior adviser to a former immigration minister, does not mince words when it comes to the executive order.
"It's confusing and irresponsible, with tinges of racism," he said.
"There's great reason to be worried about the security of the US border. Americans should be worried about it. But there are things that help and there are things that hurt. This will hurt."
The order included a 120-day pause on the admission of all refugees and a 90-day pause on entry for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The US policy has had repercussions for the global tech industry.
A group of 97 US tech firms have filed a legal document stating that President Trump's immigration ban affects their operations and "inflicts significant harm" on business.
The amicus brief, which allows parties not directly involved in a case to give their view, includes Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.
There is currently a stay on the ban, issued on Friday by a federal judge, that allows visa holders from the seven countries covered by the executive order to enter the US until the full case has been heard.
But with so much confusion around Mr Trump's order, many have doubts about travelling between the US and Canada.
Mr Nejatian says for the moment, he is staying put in San Francisco.
Stephen Green, a specialist in immigration law, told the BBC that application of the policy "varies from border to border, there's no consistency through the system".
His company has been fielding calls over the past few days from start-ups looking to set up shop in Canada and global companies interested in increasing their presence in the country "because we have predictability here".
Canadian firms say their doors are wide open for the tech talent left out in the cold.
On 29 January, over 150 executives signed an open letter underscoring their support for diversity and pluralism in the workforce. By this week, there were over 3,400 signatories, including executives from domestic companies like Shopify, and venture capital firms like OMERS Ventures.
The letter also called on the Canadian government to institute a targeted visa providing tech workers displaced by the policy with temporary Canadian residency, one that would allow them live and work in the country.
Allen Lau, co-founder of Wattpad and among the signatories, says "Canada always supported inclusive nationalism and we embrace that recipe".
But the sector has struggle to compete with places like Silicon Valley for the best employees, and a talent gap of 200,000 high tech workers is projected by 2020, according to the Information and Communications Technology Council.
The shift in the US could be an incentive for people to look north for work, especially if the ban grows and starts applying to other nationalities and visa categories.
"Canada as a country is in a very unique place on the planet right now, has a unique message, is a unique differentiator. That will allow us to attract the best talent," Lau said. | As US tech giants take steps against President Donald Trump's travel ban, Canada's tech scene is hopeful the executive order will help bring much needed talent to the sector north of the border. |
39214995 | 9 March 2017 Last updated at 05:24 GMT
One of the states that voted is Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically influential. Mr Modi’s BJP party is making a strong push to win the state against an opposition determined to check his growing power.
But as Sanjoy Majumder reports from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, the political battle is also making the state’s Muslim minority very nervous.
Filmed and edited by Varun Nayar | Voting has ended in key state elections being seen as a major test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. |
31832409 | There were 56,725 birth registered last year, up 711 (or 1.3%) on 2013.
The number of deaths registered (54,239) was the fourth lowest number in 150 years. Only 2009, 2010 and 2011 had fewer deaths.
29,070
41,174 Marriages 1974
Marriage levels are still historically low but the number rose by 1,500 in 2014.
Of a total of 29,070 marriages registered, 367 involved same-sex couples following the introduction of same-sex marriage on 16 December.
Most of the same-sex marriages were conversions of civil partnerships as the law allowing new same-sex marriages only came in on the last day of 2014.
Same-sex marriages were fairly evenly split between male and female - 173 and 194.
50.8%
Born to unmarried parents
8.1% Born to unmarried parents in 1971
There were 863 pairs of twins and 11 sets of triplets born in Scotland last year.
The figures show that the rate for stillbirths was the lowest ever recorded in Scotland at 4 per 1,000.
The infant mortality rate (3.6 per 1,000 live births) has increased slightly compared to 2013. However, long-term annual trends show that the infant mortality rate has decreased by two-thirds over the past 30 years. In 1984 it was 10.3 per 1,000 births.
Cancer (15,803) and disease of the circulatory systems such as heart disease and stroke (15,020) were by far the biggest causes of death.
15,803
down 0.3%
4,101 Lung, trachea and bronchus
1,027 Lymphoid
976 Breast
901 Prostate
6,842
Coronary heart disease (-5.9%)
4,125 Stroke (-7.2%)
The figures showed that 1,634 died in accidents. This included 223 in transport accidents, 716 in falls and 483 who were killed by poisoning. | The National Records of Scotland has released preliminary annual figures for births, deaths and other vital events in Scotland in 2014. |
36158837 | Passengers on a British Airways flight from Prague and an Icelandair plane told of their relief after landing safely at Heathrow following the strikes on Wednesday.
One described "a white flash" while others said they felt a "crack" and "bang" as bolts hit the aircraft.
BA said planes were built to cope with lightning strikes and their jet would be inspected before resuming service.
Liz Dobson, a charity worker, told the Evening Standard: "It came out of the blue. There was a really loud bang and a white flash. Not really what you want on a plane.
"The lightning hit the wing."
Catherine Mayer, who is co-founder of the Women's Equality Party, was returning from Iceland.
She tweeted: "The plane got hit by lightning. Big flash and bang. #blimey."
She told the BBC how passengers sitting next to her looked distressed and frightened.
Icelandair confirmed that flight FI454 had been struck.
"The aircraft was of course inspected after landing for safety reasons, and as the lightning did not cause damage, the aircraft was returned to service later last night," said a spokesperson for the airline.
A spokesman for BA said: "Lightning strikes are fairly common and aircraft are designed to cope with them."
On average, commercial planes are struck by lightning about once a year according to Cardiff University's "lightning lab" in the UK, a recently established laboratory where Airbus conducts lightning tests. | Two planes have been struck by lightning over west London. |
24825094 | Fans groups have raised concerns about how the legislation is working.
Holyrood's justice committee now wants the Scottish government, the Lord Advocate and the police to respond to the issues highlighted.
The Scottish government said it would give "full consideration" to any justice committee correspondence.
When the new act came into force last year it was agreed it would be reviewed after two full football seasons.
However, after hearing representations from the fans, MSPs on the committee have raised the possibility of the review being brought forward.
The Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act, which received Royal Assent in January last year, gave police and prosecutors additional powers to crack down on sectarian songs and abuse at football matches.
The legislation also relates to threatening behaviour posted on the internet or via mail.
An agreement was made at the time for the Scottish government to review the operation of the offences after two seasons and to report back to parliament by August 2015.
MSPs on the justice committee have agreed to write to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland and Chief Constable Sir Stephen House seeking a response within two weeks.
They will then make a formal decision on whether or not an early review of how the legislation is working is required.
Independent MSP John Finnie told the committee: "When we're down to a sizeable group of people feeling that a piece of legislation disproportionately impacts on them, then I'd like to have an early review."
Conservative MSP Margaret Mitchell backed his proposal and said: "Clearly there is a lot of concern about how this legislation is operating in practice and about the drafting of it initially. It concerns me too about the amount of resource going to it."
SNP MSP Sandra White, supported by party colleagues, said there was already a provision to review the law after two full seasons.
"I don't think it will serve any purpose whatsoever for us to look at a separate investigation," she said.
Labour MSP Elaine Murray said she received only a small number of letters on the subject.
"But I think there are issues about the operation of the act," she added.
Liberal Democrat MSP Alison McInnes said fans were now putting their heads above the parapet.
"I'd prefer a proper review that let us draw evidence on that," she said.
The committee agreed to support convener Christine Grahame's call for responses from government, the Lord Advocate and police.
She cautioned against splitting the committee on the issue, and said: "It doesn't need to be a long time away. We could get a time-scale of a couple of weeks to get a reply.
"It's not really kicking it into the long grass."
A Scottish government spokeswoman said: "There is a statutory obligation for us to report to parliament on the operation of the act's offences over two full football seasons. Steps are already in hand to collect the evidence necessary to inform that report.
"An independent evaluation of the offence covered by Section 1 of the act "offensive behaviour at regulated football matches" is currently under way and we believe that awaiting that evidence on the operation of the act before reporting to parliament is the best course of action." | An early review of controversial laws intended to stamp out religious sectarian abuse at football matches is being considered by MSPs. |
35780216 | A spokesman said Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, also known as Abu Daoud, had been caught in Iraq in February.
The Pentagon said the capture had "removed a key IS leader from the battlefield".
The US says it has begun more aggressive operations against IS in Iraq.
Daoud divulged details about IS chemical weapons facilities and production, as well as the people involved in it, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said.
The information led to multiple coalition air strikes that disrupted IS's ability to manufacture chemical weapons, he said.
Islamic State: The full story
Can Islamic State be beaten?
Daoud has now been transferred into Iraqi government custody, Mr Cook said.
US media reported on Wednesday the February arrest of an IS chemical weapons expert, but named him as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari.
They quoted Iraqi and US sources as saying he was a specialist in chemical and biological weapons for Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader overthrown by the US invasion in 2003.
He told interrogators how IS loaded mustard gas into shells, US sources told the New York Times.
Last month, sources at the global chemical watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), announced that sulphur mustard had been used last year in an attack on Kurdish forces in Iraq blamed on IS.
If confirmed, it would be the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam. | The Pentagon has confirmed the capture of a chemical weapons expert from the group Islamic State (IS). |
32956937 | Passengers had to be evacuated from the vehicle on the eastbound carriageway between junction 29 at Pant-y-dulath and junction 31 at Caerwys, near Holywell.
The coach was destroyed by the blaze and a replacement was sent to pick up passengers. No injuries were reported.
It is believed the fire was caused by an electrical fault.
Three crews from North Wales Fire and Rescue Service tackled the blaze after being called at 10:13 BST on Monday.
The lane will stay closed while the coach is recovered and the carriageway is repaired.
This footage was captured by motorist James Nicholls. | Traffic delays continue on the A55 in Flintshire and one lane remains blocked hours after a coach caught fire. |
32829751 | It said the two rival cities could offer complementary events which would draw more visitors to the wider area.
It also recommended improving accommodation and transport links.
However, it said the biggest challenge for the festivals, which are held in August. was funding.
The Thundering Hooves report said with public funding shrinking, the festivals' organisers needed to find new and innovative ways of raising cash.
Lady Susan Rice, Festivals Forum chairwoman, said: "Following the publication of the first Thundering Hooves, the results achieved to date are compelling testament to the power of ambition and collaboration.
"We're delighted to share Thundering Hooves 2.0, an important report which sets out the strategic plan and recommended actions for Festivals Forum to take forward during the next ten years.
"While much has been delivered already, this review and re-focus will ensure Edinburgh addresses key challenges and opportunities ensuring the Festival City retains its global competitive edge in the months and years to come."
The 12 festivals the city offers include the Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and Edinburgh's Hogmanay.
The report noted that the festivals were "behind the curve" on digital innovation and risked being overtaken by others despite some important programmes and initiatives.
It said that Edinburgh's festivals should be a "digital phenomenon as well as a physical one" and needed to be leaders in the digital sphere as well as the festival sphere.
The report said that digital should be the next big area of growth in content distribution and audience development, across all festivals.
However, it said that developing the digital area would require significant city and national partnership and investment.
The report also recommended further developing international partnerships to give the nation a voice on the world stage.
On the issue of investment, it urged funders to maintain core and project funding while alternative funding models were considered, and encouraged the wider business community to invest in the festivals.
It also recommended ways for stakeholders to develop the Festivals Forum by adopting new terms of reference and responsibilities.
Richard Lewis, Edinburgh's festivals and events champion, said: "Our festivals are worth in excess of £261m to the Scottish economy.
"While recognising the financial constraints we currently have to deal with as a local authority, we need to work together with festival partners to support their ambitions and ensure our residents, visitors, businesses and educational institutions continue to benefit from them in the future.
"The partnership approach to the first study has clearly paid off and while progress has not been possible in every area, there is a solid foundation from which to work as we all aim to take the findings of the new Thundering Hooves 2.0 report forward." | A report into the future of Edinburgh's festivals said the city should collaborate with Glasgow to ensure it remains the world's leading festival city. |
35411530 | The Rams conceded three goals in 12 second-half minutes at Turf Moor and are now winless in five league games.
Butterfield, whose volley levelled the scores at 1-1, told BBC Radio Derby: "In the first half we were the better team and played some brilliant stuff.
"Before we knew it, we were 3-1 down in a game we have dominated."
The Rams have slipped to fifth in the Championship table and are now six points adrift of the automatic promotion spots, having played a game more than second-placed Middlesbrough.
Midfielder Butterfield, who has scored seven goals for the Rams this season, added: "It was one of those crazy nights. We will have to get it out of our system and move on.
"We were unlucky to go in at 1-1, we should have been 2-1 or 3-1 up. It looked like it was going to be a good night. It's hard to explain.
Media playback is not supported on this device
"But when you are in a bit of bad form these things happen. You can't legislate for individual mistakes. They always happen and unfortunately we have had a couple and it has cost us.
"That will not happen every game - it's a one off. We have had a bad night but we will try to be positive about it."
Derby are in FA Cup action on Friday, 29 January when Premier League side Manchester United visit the iPro Stadium.
The next league fixture is also at home, against Preston North End on Tuesday, 2 January.
"It was only a few weeks ago we were four points clear," said the 25-year-old. "All the top teams have to still play each other.
"I still believe it is in our hands. We showed signs we can put it right. We still have time on our side and we are confident we can win a lot of matches and get right up there again." | Derby County's Jacob Butterfield says there were signs they were getting back to their best at Burnley and described the 4-1 loss as a "crazy night". |
34501458 | The Belfast bantamweight secured a unanimous decision in Sunday's semi-final with a scorecard of 30-27, 29-28 and 29-28.
European champion Conlan, 23, has already qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Ireland's other two remaining hopefuls, Michael O'Reilly and Joe Ward, will also fight in the semi-finals.
Belfast light flyweight Brendan Irvine lost his quarter-final to Joahnys Argilagos on Saturday.
Irvine fought well but had no answer to his Cuban opponent's tight defence and scoring punches.
The Belfast fighter lost each round 10-9, though one judge did award him the final round as he battled hard against elimination one fight before the medal bouts. | Michael Conlan has progressed to the World Championships final in Doha after defeating Belarusian Dzmitry Asanau. |
31981751 | The host was speaking at a charity event in London, where he was auctioning what he described as his "last lap" on the Top Gear race track.
"I don't know when I did my last ever lap of the track, before the BBC sacks me," he said.
An investigation into Clarkson's current suspension following a "fracas" with a producer is still ongoing.
A report over the incident is due to be handed to director general Tony Hall next week, who will consider the evidence and "set out any further steps".
The Roundhouse Gala on Thursday saw Clarkson offer to drive someone round the Top Gear track as part of an experience offered during the auction.
"I didn't foresee my sacking, but I would like to do one last lap," he said.
"I'll go down to Surrey and I'll do one last lap of that track before the [BBC] sack me.
"And I'll drive somebody around in whatever I can get hold of when I'm sacked, so it's probably an Austin Maestro."
The presenter gave an expletive-filled description of BBC bosses, adding Top Gear had been "a great show" but it had been ruined by the corporation.
The BBC said it would "not be offering further commentary" on any issues involving Clarkson until the current investigation was concluded.
The presenter was suspended from Top Gear on 10 March, following an alleged altercation with producer Oisin Tymon.
All remaining shows in the current series of Top Gear were pulled following the incident.
An online petition calling for the star's reinstatement - set up by political blogger Guido Fawkes - has accrued almost one million signatures since the presenter's suspension.
It was delivered to New Broadcasting House on Friday.
The petition was delivered by a man dressed as Top Gear test driver "The Stig" who arrived at the BBC's London HQ in an armoured vehicle bearing the words "Bring Back Clarkson".
Clarkson publicly thanked his supporters on Twitter following the petition's delivery.
He said: "Many many thanks to all of the people who have called for my reinstatement. I'm very touched. We shall all learn next week what will happen." | A video has emerged of Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson saying he expects to be "sacked" by the BBC. |
40635070 | Authorities say traders at different firms used online chat rooms to share information about currency bids without adequate oversight from their banks.
The Federal Reserve alone has issued more than $2bn in fines against seven banks tied to the scandal.
Cases against traders are ongoing.
The scandal has touched banks that include Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, UBS and JP Morgan Chase. It had resulted in billions in fines levied by various regulators related to manipulation of currency markets.
BNP Paribas in May also said it would pay New York regulators $350m to resolve issues relating to oversight of its global foreign exchange business.
"BNP Paribas deeply regrets the past misconduct which was a clear breach of the high standards on which the Group operates," the bank said in a statement after the settlement was announced on Monday.
Jason Katz, a former BNP Paribas trader, in January pleaded guilty - the first person to do so - to violating US competition laws while conspiring over the US and South African Rand in January.
Three former London-based traders on Monday pleaded not guilty to charges that they conspired to rig the prices on the foreign currency market.
The case, concerning actions that occurred roughly between 2007 and 2013, is being tried in New York.
In March 2016 the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) closed its criminal investigation into allegations of price-rigging in the foreign exchange market. | The US central bank has fined BNP Paribas $246m (£189m), the latest punishment in a currency rigging scandal that has led to billions in fines on both sides of the Atlantic. |
33647187 | An Australian radio telescope in operation for more than 50 years will be one of the primary instruments used in a new $100m (A$137m; £64m) search for life elsewhere in space.
The 10-year project - known as the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) - was announced this week by Prof Stephen Hawking in London, and is being funded by Russian billionaire and venture capitalist Yuri Milner.
One of the two main radio telescopes being used in the search is a 64-metre-wide parabolic dish known as the Parkes telescope.
The facility, 380km (236 miles) west of Sydney, belongs to Australia's national science organisation, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
A multi-million dollar agreement has been worked out that will give project scientists access to 25% of the telescope's time over the next five years, says Lewis Ball, chief of CSIRO's Astronomy and Space Science unit.
Mr Ball says its location will allow the project to survey the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, which passes almost directly overhead in the southern sky.
"That's the region of our galaxy that has the highest concentration of stars, and therefore planets… that may support life," he says.
"It's the richest area of our galaxy to search for extraterrestrial intelligence and it's right on our doorstep."
Operating since 1961, the Parkes telescope played an important role in televising the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Its main purpose, however, is astronomy, and numerous upgrades over the past five decades have kept it at the cutting-edge.
"The Parkes telescope is one of the largest, fully steerable telescopes in the world," says Prof Matthew Bailes, an astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology, and the leader of the Australian team taking part in the project.
It has been particularly good at detecting very faint radio signals from small, rapidly spinning stars in our far-flung galaxy known as pulsars, identifying more than half of the 2,500 known, he says.
This track record makes it an ideal instrument for SETI as the "signal processing required to find a pulsar is very similar to what you have to do for aliens," he says.
Radio telescopes are designed to receive radio waves from sources in outer space such as pulsars, or possibly, alien civilisations.
The curved dish, or antenna, redirects the signal to a central receiver. The radio waves are then converted into a digital signal and passed to a computer network for analysis - either in real-time, or down the track.
The new project will survey the one million closest stars to Earth and will scan five times more of the radio spectrum than the next best SETI programme.
But characterising an alien signal is a daunting challenge, says Prof Bailes.
"Unfortunately there's no manual for how to find aliens."
When you know what you're looking for "it's very easy to know the exact pattern recognition algorithms you need to run", he says.
"It's much harder to find something when you're not even sure what it is. There's going to have to be several hypotheses, and it might be quite easy to get them wrong, and to just let these radio waves from aliens wash past us."
The other major challenges are processing the enormous amounts of data the search will yield - close to 30 gigabytes, or a Blu-ray DVD, every second - and dealing with radio frequency interference, which becomes more problematic as you try to detect signals across a broader range of the spectrum.
"Our [potential] alien transmissions are going to be competing with your mobile handset for our attention, and it would be a tragedy if all we end up listening to are people's Facebook transmissions," says Prof Bailes.
To get around this problem, he and other project scientists at the CSIRO and the University of California, Berkeley in the US, are planning on developing new technologies to capture and process the data, and to hopefully eliminate human-generated interference.
He anticipates that the team will also build new processors that are able to make one-million-billion calculations per second - handling what is known as a petaflop of data.
Currently, their most advanced processors can handle a quarter of that, says Prof Bailes.
"These will be very pioneering, and will have applications beyond alien hunting," he says.
And while the chances of making contact are "tiny", he says if it happens it will be "incredibly significant".
"It's a high-risk, high-reward endeavour but I'm old enough to have some fun," he says.
Myles Gough is a science writer based in Sydney. | Australia is playing a key role in the world's biggest search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. |
40863257 | Both are up for the Joe Allen Best West End Debut prize at the inaugural The Stage Debut Awards.
It recognises a debut performance in the West End, with the winner decided by a public vote.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child's Anthony Boyle is also nominated.
The other nominees for the prize are:
"It's great to see such a range of talented theatre makers and gives cause for great optimism about the future of theatre in the UK," said The Stage's associate editor, Lyn Gardner.
Mark Shenton, The Stage's associate editor and one of the judges, said: "While the other categories in The Stage Debut Awards only recognise complete newcomers, the Joe Allen Best West End Debut Award is a chance to celebrate talent making their mark in the West End for the first time.
"We have a really great shortlist that ranges from genuine newcomers like Anthony Boyle, who made his professional debut in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, to Audra McDonald, a legend on Broadway making her belated West End debut in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill."
Boyega made his West End debut as the lead in Woyzeck, with Riley appearing as Effie White in Dreamgirls.
Switching space for the Cold War, Boyega received largely positive reviews for his performance in the modern adaptation of George Buchner's unfinished play set in 1980s Berlin.
Riley took on the role played by Jennifer Hudson in the 2006 Dreamgirls film - having previously performed one of its songs, And I am Telling You I'm Not Going, in the first series of Glee.
After collecting the award for best actress in a musical in April, Riley told The Stage it felt "exceptional" to be in a show where the three leads were black women.
She said: "I think it's incredible. In theatre, I feel like you want to see people that look like you and know that you can do that.
"I'm not necessarily the standard of what the industry may feel is beautiful or could be a star, but I'm doing it anyway because I'm making my own way."
The awards ceremony will take place in London on 17 September.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion, email [email protected]. | You might know them best from Glee and Star Wars - but it's Amber Riley and John Boyega's performances on the London stage which have bagged them nominations for a new industry award. |
34995729 | The money was invested in buying storage units from Lancashire-based Store First Ltd.
Pension holders told Radio 4's You & Yours they were promised high returns for renting the units out, but these have not materialised.
Store First says it was unaware of the allegations and is not responsible for the sales tactics.
The firm operates a chain of self-storage warehouses across the UK and sponsored Accrington Stanley Football Club until August 2015.
The Liverpool sales company Jackson Francis Ltd was paid through an intermediary by Store First to cold call people with "dormant pensions" - savings they had accrued under previous employers.
From 2011, more than 1,000 people were persuaded by Jackson Francis staff to move these pensions into the Store First scheme.
David Griffiths from Sutton Coldfield said: "They brought me glossy booklets, with jolly people shaking hands.
"They told me it was a very good investment, and that many people have had their money back off it, so I looked on their website, and it looked all kosher."
But You & Yours heard former salesmen from Jackson Francis claim their immediate managers told them to lie to get clients signed up. They admitted forging documents, and say they witnessed other staff copying client signatures.
David's entire pension pot of £66,000 was used to buy Store First units called "storage pods", which he's still trying to sell.
Others have failed to sell their units after three years of trying, despite being promised an easy route out of the scheme by Store First.
David added: "I'm annoyed with myself, and I'm even more annoyed with the people who took it off me. It's £66,000 and I want it back."
One former Jackson Francis salesman said he'd seen colleagues fill out paperwork on customers' behalf and forge signatures, adding: "You'd see them practising on a piece of paper until they got it right, and then they'd sign."
Another former salesman said he witnessed the ticking of boxes on forms, which indicated investors were happy with a high level of risk - when the question had never been asked.
Two investors who have received the predicted income are used as testimonials on the Store First website.
Over two years, Store First owner Toby Whittaker paid £33m commission to Transeuro Worldwide Holdings Ltd, which funded Jackson Francis.
Transeuro was controlled by his friend and former co-director of Store First Midlands Limited, Mike Talbot, from Knutsford, Cheshire. Mr Whittaker also lent the Transeuro boss Rolls Royces and two Ferraris while Mr Talbot was based in Liverpool.
The same Liverpool-based sales team persuaded 500 people to invest in the now defunct Capita Oak and Henley Retirement Benefit Schemes.
These two schemes were also invested in Store First, with pensioners promised the same high returns. Toby Whittaker of Store First says he did pass on returns to Transeuro and does not know why the schemes did not receive them.
Toby Whittaker and Mike Talbot had previously operated Dylan Harvey, a property investment company that collapsed owing investors millions.
Toby Whittaker, owner of Store First, maintained that Jackson Francis, now in liquidation, was a sales agent and he was not responsible for their tactics, saying: "My company's sales agents are not employed to give financial advice, they are employed to explain the product, not to advise whether [it] is suitable for an individual's investment portfolio."
Mike Talbot says he had no management or control of Jackson Francis so can't comment on the allegations and the director of Jackson Francis says he is unaware of the claimed sales tactics. Salesmen have told the BBC they lied and forged to persuade investors to part with pensions worth £100m. | Salesmen have told the BBC they lied and forged to persuade investors to part with pensions worth £100m. |
35767315 | The #rideforolivia tribute was launched following the death of Australian Olivia Inglis, 17, in a fall on Sunday.
Hundreds of thousands of social media users from dozens of countries have been posting and sharing photos of their own horses using the hashtag.
Olympic gold medallist Charlotte Dujardin is among the high-profile figures to have joined in the tributes.
Fellow British dressage rider and gold medallist Carl Hester has also paid tribute.
The movement echoes a similar social campaign to mark the death of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes in 2014.
The hashtags #putoutyourbats and #putyourbatsout were tweeted and shared across platforms such as Instagram and Facebook along with photos of cricket bats.
As of 08:00GMT on Thursday, more than 120,000 people had posted photographs and videos for #rideforolivia on Instagram alone.
The images will be used to create a mosaic of Olivia for her family, following a call from the bloodstock company which her family runs.
"We have been overwhelmed by the kindness and sympathy from family and friends throughout the school, equestrian and thoroughbred communities," parents Arthur and Charlotte said in a family statement. | A social media tribute to a teenage equestrian rider killed in competition has become a global phenomenon. |
33497301 | In a statement, Mexico's National Security Commission said Guzman was last seen in the showers of the Altiplano jail late on Saturday night.
He was the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, which smuggles huge amounts of illegal drugs into the US.
His recapture in 2014 was hailed as a victory for Mexico's government.
Officials say that Guzman's escape was discovered when officers checked his cell in the Altiplano prison, which is near Mexico City.
A search operation has been launched and flights have been suspended at a nearby Toluca airport.
Guzman escaped from a Mexican high-security prison in 2001. He hid in a laundry basket after bribing prison officials.
He had been serving a sentence of more than 20 years after being arrested in Guatemala in 1993.
The US has indicted him on federal drug trafficking charges.
His arrest last year was a success story for Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. At the time of his arrest Guzman was paraded before the media in Mexico City.
Guzman was born in the town of Badiraguato, probably 57 years ago, and became an important figure in the drug cartels of the 1980s.
His rise to head of the Sinaloa cartel made him the world's most wanted drug trafficker.
The cartel controls much of the flow of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine to the US.
Before his recapture in 2014, the US state department had offered a reward of up to $5m (£3.2m) for information leading to his arrest.
His wealth is estimated at $1bn (£630m). | Top Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman, known as El Chapo or "Shorty", has escaped from a maximum security prison for a second time, officials say. |
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