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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47786958 | The Rolling Stones' US tour is likely to take place in July, following news that Mick Jagger had to postpone 17 dates due to ill health.
The band are working with promoters to reschedule the shows, amid reports that Jagger will have heart surgery later this week.
"I really hate letting you down like this," tweeted the star after the tour was postponed at the weekend.
"I will be working very hard to be back on stage as soon as I can."
US gossip website Drudge Report was the first to report that Jagger would need surgery to replace a heart valve. The story was subsequently confirmed by US music magazine Rolling Stone.
The 75-year-old is expected to make a full recovery and return to touring this summer.
"We're beginning to look at the rescheduling options and we're going to try and do this as quickly as we can," said John Meglen, of the Stones' promoters Concerts West.
"Everyone's health and happiness comes first," he told Billboard, adding that new dates could be announced "in the next couple of weeks."
The US leg of the band's No Filter tour was expected to kick off in Miami's Hard Rock Stadium on 20 April; wrapping up two months later in Ontario, Canada.
Fellow Stone Keith Richards tweeted following the postponement, "A big disappointment for everyone but things need to be taken care of and we will see you soon. Mick, we are always there for you!"
Band-mate Ronnie Wood added, "We'll miss you over the next few weeks, but we're looking forward to seeing you all again very soon. Here's to Mick - thanks for your supportive messages. It means so much to us."
Although the main shows will all be rescheduled, the band's headline performance at the New Orleans Jazz Festival has been cancelled, with organisers currently seeking a replacement. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-20957845/ces-2013-transparent-3d-tv-from-hisense | Hands-on with a transparent 3D TV Jump to media player Chinese electronics firm HiSense shows off a transparent television at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Online plants a growth area? Jump to media player Theodore Sean goes through Parrot's Flower Power app, a program and tool that lets gardeners put their plants online.
NY fireman introduces 'life saver' app Jump to media player Charismatic former New York fireman Billy O'Connor tells the BBC why he think his company's mobile protection app is vital to stay safe.
Will.i.am 'excited by what's not there' Jump to media player Musician-turned-tech entrepreneur will.i.am talks to the BBC about what excites him at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Can 'goo' protect your phone? Jump to media player A firm showcases a "goo-like" material for protecting mobile devices at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Chinese electronics firm HiSense is occupying the space at CES normally reserved for Microsoft.
The company is making the most of the Windows-maker's absence by displaying its wares - including this transparent 3D television.
The company says it could potentially be used by museums and other attractions to create exciting displays that combine real objects - such as artefacts - with 3D imaging.
Hisense spokesman Payton Tyrell said the screen was still a prototype.
Go to next video: Online plants a growth area? |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-11558007/meet-the-author-robyn-young | Meet The Author: Robyn Young Jump to media player Historical novelist Robyn Young talks about her latest book, Insurrection, the first of a trilogy to feature Robert the Bruce.
Meet the Author: Karl Marlantes Jump to media player In the latest in the BBC News Meet The Author series, Nick Higham speaks to Karl Marlantes, a Vietnam veteran and ex-Marine who, 40 years on from the conflict, has written his first book about it.
Meet The Author: Justine Picardie Jump to media player In the BBC News' Meet The Author series, fashion writer Justine Picardie talks to Nick Higham about her biography of Coco Chanel.
Meet The Author: Quentin Letts Jump to media player In the BBC's Meet The Author series, veteran journalist Quentin Letts talks to Nick Higham about the art of political sketch writing.
Meet The Author: DBC Pierre Jump to media player Booker Prize winner DBC Pierre speaks to Nick Higham about getting over his early success, his "junked" novel (still too personal to publish) and his bizarre nocturnal writing habits.
Meet The Author: Tim Butcher Jump to media player Nick Higham visits the Frontline Club to talk to Tim Butcher, the former foreign correspondent and veteran of danger zones all over the world.
As part of the BBC's Meet The Author series, historical novelist Robyn Young talks about her latest book, Insurrection, the first of a trilogy to feature Robert the Bruce.
The author, best known for her Brethren trilogy, spoke to Nick Higham about the central character of her new series, the importance of research to her writing and how she became interested in history. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20327991 | The "Pandora's box" of unmanned aircraft in the UK has been opened, according to the Astraea consortium.
Yet many technology and ethics issues surrounding civilian drones are yet to be solved, journalists at London's Science Media Centre were told.
The UK-led, £62m Astraea project - which has participation of the UK Civil Aviation Authority - is attempting to tackle all facets of the idea.
Later in November, they will carry out a crucial collision-avoidance test.
Unmanned aircraft or UAs is something of a new name for drones, which have gained notoriety principally in the theatre of war where remotely operated aircraft are used for surveillance or air strikes.
But the same technology put to use for civilian purposes is already a hot topic of debate in the UK and abroad, most recently surrounding their use by London's Metropolitan Police.
A recent report by the UK's Aerospace, Aviation and Defence Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) found that applications for unmanned aircraft are said to be worth some £260bn - replacing costly or dangerous work done by manned planes, or opening up new applications that are currently out of reach.
Crop or wildlife stock monitoring, search and rescue, and check-ups on railway lines are some of the envisioned uses of UAs.
"All these things are currently done by manned aircraft, and they're done in currently quite hazardous environments," said Ruth Mallors, director of the Aerospace KTN.
"We want to use unmanned aircraft in these applications, but to be able to do that we have to demonstrate that were complying with the Civil Aviation Authority regulations, which are for manned aircraft.
"There's not going to be any new regulations - we'll comply with the regulations in place."
That is what brings about the technological challenge. The project involves sensors to be the "eyes" of a UA, the software to carry out manoeuvres and collision avoidance, and the aircraft themselves.
Plans for UAs envision that a pilot will always be on the ground controlling them, but they must have on-board technology that can perform in an emergency - in the eyes of aviation law - as well as a pilot.
"These things are going to have a level of self-determinism, particularly if you ever lose the communication link with the ground control," said Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal, Astraea project director. "They've got to be able to operate fully safely and take the right decisions.
"But we're not talking about unthinking drones, we're not talking about irrational and unpredictable behaviour, and we're not talking about something that gets itself up in the morning, goes off and does its own things and comes home without any human oversight."
The project has the participation of major contractors including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Thales UK. But they are also working closely with the Civil Aviation Authority, who will ultimately control the licensing for UAs when they pass stringent safety tests.
Gary Clayton, head of research and technology for EADS Cassidian, another project partner, said the CAA's publication CAP722 is being held up internationally as a template for aviation legislation around UAs.
But Mr Dopping-Hepenstal said the project is aiming much further than the technology and safety legislation.
"What this programme is trying to do is look at this holistically," he said. "It's not just the technology, we're trying to think about the social impact of this and the ethical and legal things associated with it. You've got to solve all this lot if you're going to make it happen, enable it to happen affordably."
Chris Elliott, an aerospace engineer and barrister, is acting as consultant to the project. He told reporters that the licensing and privacy questions were points "to debate, not to pontificate".
"We have a very robust privacy regime now for aviation, and I don't see much very different. A lot of it comes down to what society thinks is acceptable," he said.
"I find it interesting that Google has got away with its [Streetview] because we love Google and we all use it. If this technology positioned to something that is good for us, that we like, then people will accept that kind of behaviour.
"Pandora's box is open - these things are going to fly. What we need is to engage everybody, the public and the specialists, with understanding the good and bad sides."
For now, though, safety is paramount. The Astraea project will carry out real-world collision-avoidance tests using three planes in two weeks' time, putting their autonomous control software through its paces and ensuring that unmanned aircraft can independently avoid a crash. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45674139 | The first vote by a Senate committee is due over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.
It follows Thursday's testimony by Mr Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexual assault.
Dr Ford, close to tears, described the alleged 1982 attack in detail, saying it had "drastically" affected her life. Judge Kavanaugh angrily denied he had assaulted her or anyone.
President Donald Trump has urged the full Senate to approve his nominee.
That vote is expected next week. Republicans currently have a majority of 51-49 in the Senate, but a number of senators on both sides are said to be undecided.
Judge Kavanaugh's appointment would tilt the balance in favour of conservatives for years to come.
For this reason, Republicans accuse the Democrats of seeking to delay the confirmation until after the mid-term elections in November when they hope to win enough seats to stop it altogether. Democrats counter by accusing Republicans of trying to "railroad" the process.
The Supreme Court plays a vital role in US political life - appointed for life, its nine members have the final say on US law.
This includes highly contentious social issues, such as abortion, and challenges to government policy.
Republican Senator Jeff Flake, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who was believed to be wavering, issued a statement shortly before the committee began sitting on Friday morning stating that he would back Judge Kavanaugh.
On his way to the committee room following the release of the statement, he was berated by two women who said they were victims of sexual violence and urged him to change his mind.
As the committee began, the bitter political divide was clear as an attempt by Democrats to call a further witness - Mark Judge, who Dr Ford said was present during the alleged sexual assault - was defeated by the 11 Republicans voting against the 10 Democrats.
A subsequent motion to move to a vote on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination was passed despite vocal Democratic objections. Some Democratic senators refused to vote on that and walked out of the hearing.
In a letter after Thursday's hearing, Robert Carlson, head of the American Bar Association - the body representing US lawyers and students of law - urged a delay of the vote to enable the FBI to check the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.
The association had previously supported Judge Kavanaugh for the role.
What did Christine Blasey Ford say?
Thursday's hearing, which lasted for nine hours, brought an outpouring of support for Dr Ford - a university professor - from the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault.
Prior to Thursday, no-one had heard from the 51-year-old publicly since the allegations arose.
"I am here today not because I want to be," Dr Ford said. "I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school."
She alleged he and his friend Mark Judge had locked her in a bedroom during a small gathering at a house in a Washington DC suburb in the summer of 1982, when she was 15 and Judge Kavanaugh was 17.
Dr Ford said Brett Kavanaugh had tried to remove her clothing, pinned her to a bed and groped her. Both men were "drunkenly laughing", she said.
She added: "Brett's assault on me drastically altered my life. For a very long time, I was too afraid and ashamed to tell anyone the details."
Under questioning by a Democratic senator, she said her most vivid memory was "the laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense... They were laughing with each other - two friends having a really good time with one another".
In an answer to a question from another Democrat about claims of mistaken identity, Dr Ford said she was "100%" certain that Judge Kavanaugh had assaulted her.
How did Brett Kavanaugh respond?
The 53-year-old federal judge took a combative approach but occasionally became emotional.
"This confirmation process has become a national disgrace," he told the committee.
"The constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy.
"Since my nomination in July there has been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything to block my confirmation."
He insisted he would not be "intimidated" into withdrawing from the process.
"You may defeat me in the final vote but you'll never get me to quit. Never."
Judge Kavanaugh said he did not doubt that Prof Ford had been assaulted, but insisted: "I've never sexually assaulted Dr Ford - or anyone."
He admitted he had drunk beer while at high school, but said he had never got so drunk as to forget events.
He added that his calendars for 1982 - which he had kept - showed he had not attended a party at the location Prof Ford had described.
The Democratic senators on the committee have called on President Trump to "immediately withdraw" Judge Kavanaugh's nomination.
Moments after the hearing ended, however, President Trump tweeted that he was standing by his nominee and said he found Judge Kavanaugh's testimony "powerful, honest and riveting".
Mr Trump has repeatedly defended the judge's character, saying he is "one of the highest quality people" he has ever met.
Thousands of protesters against the nomination took to the streets on Thursday and 59 people were arrested near the Supreme Court in Washington, DC.
The Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation could result in a recommendation that the candidate should be confirmed or rejected, or in no recommendation at all.
After Friday's panel vote, the full Senate could start taking procedural votes at the weekend.
A final vote by the full chamber could come as soon as Tuesday.
A simple majority of those present is needed for the confirmation. If there is a tie, the vice-president, who presides over the Senate, casts the deciding vote.
Judge Kavanaugh denies these allegations, and on Thursday called Ms Swetnick's allegation "a joke" and "a farce".
The US Supreme Court: Who are the justices? |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/1319578.stm | England's schools are beginning to use computers more in teaching - but teachers are making "slow progress" in learning about them, school inspectors have said.
Millions of pounds is being spent on putting computers into schools and on training - �657m over four years from 1998 for hardware and, more recently, �230m from the lottery for training.
But the inspectorate, Ofsted, has criticised the fragmentary nature of the funding and choice of services available.
It said this had meant individual schools, training organisations and local education authorities separately reinventing the wheel.
When the government announced its plans to encourage the wide use of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools in 1997, it set targets to be achieved by 2002.
Among these, teachers were to feel confident and be competent to teach using ICT across the curriculum.
Ofsted looked at what had happened in visits to 128 primary schools, 44 special schools, 401 secondary schools and 10 local education authorities (LEAs) between June 1999 and December last year.
It said there had been recent improvements in pupils' abilities in the information technology part of the curriculum - but that standards were still lower than in most subjects and varied widely.
The investment in hardware seemed to be paying off, with "emerging evidence" of a link between high standards across the curriculum and good ICT provision - but this varied from subject to subject.
Primary schools were using ICT more in their teaching, and things were slowly improving in secondary schools - but there was a weakness in special schools.
Oftsed said half of the secondary schools did not meet the national curriculum requirements for information technology - with teachers finding it hard to get access to the technology except for specific information technology courses.
LEAs had often underestimated the funding needed, with small support teams fully stretched trying to meet demand for support.
Smaller schools - including most primary schools - could not afford proper technical support.
The government computer agency Becta approved "managed services" offering a complete solution for schools' ICT needs, usually from private companies, but the take-up of these was low because they cost too much, Ofsted said.
Most teachers had not completed the training programmes. Only half had enrolled and most had not completed the training.
Computer use among those who had been on the courses had increased - but rarely their teaching expertise.
"The need for teachers to use their own time for training, together with the lack of information about the range of training programmes from which to choose, has hindered progress," said Ofsted's report.
In response, the Teacher Training Agency said training had been provided or arranged for three quarters of 415,000 eligible teachers and librarians in England and the rest had until March next year to sign up.
The Department for Education said take-up of computer training by teachers had been "unprecedented", with more than 250,000 now having started a course.
It had been decided that they should attend outside school hours so as to cause the minimum disruption to pupils, a spokeswoman said.
In a commentary on their findings, the inspectors said there had been a flexibility in the approach to getting ICT into schools - but this had led to a fragmentation of effort, "with training organisations, LEAs and schools independently seeking solutions to the same problems".
This was "in stark contrast" with the more uniform approach of the national literacy and numeracy strategies, they said.
Funding had also varied widely between schools.
Long-term planning was also a concern, as regards linking curriculum developments to staff competence and replacing out-of-date equipment.
Ofsted's chief inspector, Mike Tomlinson, said: "As can be seen, there are messages for all who have responsibilities for ICT, at any level, if the initiative is to have maximum impact on standards of work." |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/506195.stm | President Rakhmonov said he had voted for "peace and harmony"
President Emomali Rakhmonov has been re-elected by an overwhelming majority to a new seven-year term in the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan.
Mr Rakhmonov won 96% of the ballot in what was the country's first presidential election since the end of the civil war in 1997.
The Central Election Commisssion said early on Sunday that 98% of Tajikistan's 2.8 million electorate turned out to vote.
President Rakhmonov said after casting his ballot that he had "voted for peace and national harmony in Tajikistan".
However foreign observers and opposition parties had been critical of the organisation of the elections, saying that candidate registration had been flawed and media access restricted.
There were also allegations of voting irregularities.
At least one western observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he noticed electoral violations at several polling stations in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, as citizens cast more than one ballot.
"There was multiple voting at every site we visited," he said.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had refused to monitor the election, although around 100 monitors from 14 countries - includingTurkey and Iran - were in the country.
"If none of the candidates from the opposition were able to collect the required number of signatures, it was due to difficulties they faced when trying to gather them," said the head of the OSCE mission in Tajikistan, Marin Buhoara.
President Rakhmonov's only challenger - Economics Minister Davlat Usmon of the Islamic Revival Party - had earlier said he was withdrawing from the race in protest at official obstructions to his campaign.
But Said Abdullo Nuri, the leader of the Islamic-led United Tajik Opposition (UTO), met President Rakhmonov on Friday and the two agreed that the Islamic Revival Party would not boycott the ballot.
"After I received guarantees of full-scale participation for movements that comprise the UTO in the forthcoming parliamentary elections, I took the decision to resume our participation," Mr Nuri said.
Mr Usmon said he and two other potential candidates were hampered in their attempts to gather the 145,000 signatures necessary for registration.
Officials later registered Mr Usmon's candidacy even though he lacked the required number of signatures.
The UTO had boycotted the elections and had suspended its activities on the National Reconciliation Commission, set up in 1997 to implement a peace accord between the government and the Islamic opposition.
Mr Nuri later said that the UTO would start co-operating again from Monday.
Mr Usmon was a UTO field commander during the five years of civil war which claimed 55,000 lives before the 1997 peace settlement. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/essex/3107596.stm | Villagers in Essex have found an unusual way of fundraising - by filling up on desserts from around the world.
Rather than run another village fete, residents in Terling, near Chelmsford, host the "International Trifle Festival".
The event started last year with villagers using recipes from as far afield as Wales and Australia in the hope to impress the judges and raise money for the local church.
Organisers said they expected Sunday's festival to again have a worldwide flavour as well as a large number of villagers and visitors ready to put the trifles to the test.
Organiser Hetty Taylor said "This year we're going to have a French trifle and certainly a New Zealand trifle entering the competition."
However, she also warned there could be some trifles which may not suit everybody's taste.
"I don't know if we're going to have any bizarre trifles - last year we had a breakfast trifle with bacon and eggs," she said.
"The same person was threatening to do a Sunday roast trifle but she thinks the Yorkshire puddings might go soggy."
Money raised from the festival is donated to the village's All Saints' Church. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tees-12083042 | Details of a £2.2m project to protect homes in Darlington from flooding will go on display to residents.
Northumbrian Water is inviting customers to view plans to upgrade the sewerage network around the Bedford Street area of the town.
The scheme will begin on 24 January and take eight months to complete.
The work will involve installing new sewer pipe at South Park and Polam Lane and upsizing sewer pipe at Bedford Street.
The water company will also build an underground storm water storage tank in land at South Park.
Residents are invited to find out more about the work at a customer information session being held on 12 January at the Fire Station and Community Fire Safety Centre in Darlington.
Graham Watson, project manager for the Northumbrian Water scheme, said: "This scheme will offer some protection for the 32 properties on Bedford Street, George Street, Herbert Street, Rockingham Street and Victoria Embankment that have suffered flooding in times of extremely heavy rainfall."
Traffic management will be in place during the course of the work. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-tyne-45491554/darlington-school-ensures-free-breakfast-for-pupils | A Darlington primary school has joined forces with a charity to ensure its pupils get free breakfasts every day.
The headteacher of Corporation Road Community Primary School wants to ensure every child is fed and ready for a day's learning during registration.
The school is working with a nationwide charity called Magic Breakfast, which along with Family Action is delivering the government's school breakfast programme. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47469071 | Analysis suggests the 40cm-long mole mechanism, which will measure Mars' temperature, has barely got out of the tube that was guiding its descent.
The instrument is also now tilted away from the vertical.
Prof Spohn said there would now be a break in operations of two weeks while the situation was assessed.
The Insight probe is sitting on flat terrain close to the equator in a region referred to as Elysium Planitia.
Tests back on Earth prior to the mission getting under way demonstrated that the mole could handle coarse gravel and, given plenty of hammering time, even move larger stones out of the way. So this stoppage is by no means the end of the matter.
"Planetary exploration is not as easy as pie," stressed, Prof Spohn.
The good news is that HP3's sensors can proceed with the first temperature measurements.
The idea of the experiment is to find out how heat from the interior of the planet is being dissipated.
This will give "insights" into how much natural radioactive decay is occurring inside Mars, and how much energy the planet still retains from its formation more than 4.5 billion years ago.
Two other instrument packages on the probe are conducting complementary investigations.
A seismometer system is checking the ground for "Marsquakes" - vibrations that could come from ongoing geological activity or from meteorite strikes. And a radio experiment is being used to check if the planet is wobbling on its axis - an indicator that it might have a liquid metal core like the Earth. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31039137 | Keeping cyber thieves at bay is hard. They are busy, well-motivated and well-financed.
Just one example serves to show just how prolific they are. Every day, come rain or shine, they crank out about 250,000 novel variants of viruses.
Their vigour has helped them steal data from some really big companies, Target, Home Depot and eBay, in the last few months.
And, what is a problem for the big companies is even more acute for the smaller firms. They have an even tougher time keeping the bad guys out.
"They are exposed to many of the same attacks as much larger enterprises, yet they don't have the security expertise and resources available to those larger firms," said Maxim Weinstein, a security advisor at security firm Sophos.
While attacks on the eBays and Sonys of the world make the headlines there's no doubt that smaller firms are getting hit. And getting hit hard.
Figures from Sophos suggest about 30,000 websites a day are being compromised by cyber bad guys - most of those will be the public face of one SME or others.
Becoming a victim of a hack or breach costs smaller firms between £65,000 and £115,000, according to the PWC survey of the worst data breaches among small firms. Those worst hit will suffer up to six breaches a year, PWC suggested, so the total cost could be even higher.
For a smaller firm finding that much cash to clean up after a breach could mean the difference between keeping trading and going bust.
This lack of focus on cyber security is understandable, said Mr Weinstein, as most small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) spent most of their time on core commercial activity such as keeping customers happy, seeking out new clients and engaging in all the basic day-to-day admin needed to keep their enterprise afloat.
Worrying about computer security comes a long down their To Do lists, he said.
But they do need to worry because the nature of commerce in the 21st century means that there are relatively few SMEs that do not make heavy use of technology, said Steven Harrison, lead technologist at IT services firm Exponential-e.
"You do see a knowledge gap," he said "in that you have these smaller companies that are smaller in terms of people and revenue but they are not smaller in terms of the IT they use."
Ecommerce, websites, apps, smartphones, tablets, social media and cloud services were all now standard ways of doing business in the 21st century, he said.
And, he added, there were some SMEs that were based entirely around technology but that did not make them experts in how to keep their digital business secure.
"There are some businesses that are much more than just users of technology," he said. "They have huge computing requirements as well as massive storage and bandwidth requirements - far more than their head count would suggest."
Either way, he said, everyone is a target and they all need to look externally to security firms for help.
"In the same way they don't run your own bank or accountancy firm they shouldn't run their own security operation," he said adding that SMEs often need help to understand the sheer range of threats arrayed against them.
Everyone is familiar with attempts to penetrate internal networks to steal payment information or customer data records but may be less knowledgeable about invoice fraud, ransomware, malvertising, or even attacks that "scrape" websites with automated tools to steal all the information about prices and products they contain.
And that was where they hit their first problem, he said. How much do they spend? Estimates vary on how much SMEs spend on IT security.
The most recent government figures published 18 months ago suggest SMEs with 100 or more employees spend about £10,000 per year. The smallest small firms, with less than 20 staff, spend about £200. Other estimates put the spend at about £30 per employee.
Mr Weinstein from Sophos said SMEs should start with the basics.
This includes anti-virus software, firewalls, spam filters on email gateways and keeping devices up to date. This, he said, would defeat the majority of the low level threats that those busy cyber thieves are churning out.
Government advice on how SMEs can be safer revolves around a 10 steps programme that emphasises basic, good practice. It's big on those simple steps such as keeping software up to date and applying the widely used software tools that can spot and stop the most prolific threats.
But it also stresses that smaller firms understand more about how they use data and how it flows around their organisation.
This is important, said Greg Hanson from services firm Informatica, because security is no longer about setting up a fortress around your systems, servers and staff to keep the bad guys out. Now, he said, the way data flows between SMEs, their supply chains and customers has made it impossible to maintain the fortress-like security stance.
Having a good sense of where data goes and who uses it can help limit the damage if it goes astray, he said.
"There's a proliferation of data flowing through organisations that really needs to be controlled better," he said.
Having control of that data, knowing its value and where it is going, can help a company guard against it leaking out accidentally and maliciously. For instance, having that control might help a firm spot that a server was accidentally exposed to the net and private information was viewable by anyone.
It can also help SMEs keep an eye on their suppliers and partners to ensure that data is handled appropriately.
And finally, said Mr Harrison from Exponential-e, firms need to put in place a plan for what happens when a breach or security incident does occur.
"It's not a question of if something bad will happen," he said. "It will, but it's all about what they do about it." |
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-39737547/iran-elections-six-facts-about-the-crucial-vote | Iran elections: Six facts about the vote Jump to media player Here are six things you need to know ahead of Iran's presidential elections on 19 May.
Marandi: Iran crucial in stopping IS Jump to media player Prof Mohammad Marandi says Iran has been crucial in stopping the advance of so-called Islamic State.
US: Iran 'misconduct' must be addressed Jump to media player US Defence Secretary hits out at Iran but says he sees no need to boost US troops in the region.
Iran 'will not instigate hostilities' Jump to media player The Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, has called on the United States to stop threatening Iran.
Here are six things you need to know ahead of Iran's presidential elections on 19 May. The incumbent Hassan Rouhani is fighting for a second term along with several others. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/brits_abroad/html/n_america.stm | 1.3 million ex-pat Brits live in the USA and Canada – the same number as can be found in Australia.
24% of Brits in the USA are thought to be pensioners.
2,500 Britons live part of their year in Mexico.
*Total and including part-time figures are estimates only. See links below for more information. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-39037715/un-14m-children-face-starving-to-death | '1.4m children' face starving to death Jump to media player The UN's Justin Forsyth says 1.4m children are at risk in four countries including Somalia.
The United Nations' children's agency Unicef is warning that almost one-and-a-half million children are at risk of starvation in South Sudan, Nigeria, Yemen and Somalia.
UN assistant secretary general Justin Forsyth tells the Today programme the problem is largely the result of conflict and war. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_div_1/8324784.stm | Managers Neil Warnock and Billy Davies were angered after Crystal Palace's Clint Hill and Nottingham Forest's Paul Anderson clashed in their 1-1 draw.
Hill appeared to elbow Anderson during the match but was unpunished, although he was booked for squaring up to Chris Gunter in the subsequent melee.
"It was a red card and when Neil Warnock doesn't complain to you then you know he also knows," said Davies.
Warnock argued: "It was a yellow card. It was reckless but not deliberate."
When the incident took place on the stroke of half-time, Davies leapt off the bench to protest.
The atmosphere became even more charged when the Crystal Palace radio commentary was fed through the stadium public address system just as the commentator described the visiting manager as being "out of his pram".
Hill and Forest right-back Gunter were booked but the Palace man escaped further punishment after referee Graham Horwood decided his challenge on Anderson was not deliberate.
"He (Warnock) is a very fortunate manager and he (Hill) is a very fortunate player because it was a very blatant elbow in my opinion," said Davies.
"The referee says there was no malicious intent which I find quite staggering. Paul Anderson is okay, but he's a lucky boy. The medical people wanted him to come off straight away and he didn't look too comfortable.
"I was out of my pram because I'm trying to protect my player, 21 years of age who had just been hit in the head. And I'm really sorry if I've upset this tannoy guy. Tell him I'm sorry!"
But Warnock believes Horwood got his decision right and was furious to discover Davies had described his side as physical and hard to handle.
"I think that's a disgraceful statement. If I'd spent nearly £4.5m on players, I'd probably say a bit less than that," said Warnock.
Forest will be keen to avoid a Football Association investigation having already been fined £25,000 - of which £10,000 is suspended - for failing to control players and officials after beating Derby in August.
The sanction will be automatically activated if Forest are found guilty of similar offences before the end of the 2010-11 season. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47915798 | Police and protesters have clashed in Algeria as marches against the ruling elite show no sign of ending.
Police used water cannon and tear gas in the capital Algiers as demonstrators called for the removal of new interim President Abdelkader Bensalah.
Largely peaceful protests have been held every Friday in cities across Algeria for the past two months.
Police arrested 108 "infiltrators" towards end of the march after 27 officers were injured, officials say.
Former leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned last week. He was replaced by Mr Bensalah, who has pledged to hold free elections on 4 July but many see him as too close to the former president.
Hundreds of thousands reportedly marched in Algiers on Friday, many chanting "No to Bensalah" and using the slogan "They will all leave" on social media.
Mr Bensalah will be in office for a 90-day period as set out by the constitution and is barred from running in the upcoming poll, but demonstrators are still demanding his resignation.
Placards and online posts have been demanding an end to "le pouvoir", or the establishment.
Image caption Demonstrators carried signs protesting against the ruling elite on Friday, including one saying "We are going to continue to victory without you"
In a televised speech, he cautioned protesters about demands that could undermine the country's constitution. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-22103659/pompeii-of-north-being-unearthed-in-london | Archaeologists working on a site in London are calling it "the Pompeii of the north" after they have managed to find Roman artefacts dating back nearly 2,000 years.
Just yards from the River Thames, in what is now the capital's financial district, archaeologists have found coins, pottery, shoes, lucky charms and an amber gladiator amulet.
Sonja Jessup has been finding out the secret to their remarkable survival. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/w/west_ham_utd/2917775.stm | West Ham's Glenn Roeder has won the Barclaycard manager of the month award for March following an unbeaten month in the Premiership.
The Hammers boosted their chances of avoiding relegation to Division One with wins over Tottenham (2-0), Sunderland (2-0) and a draw against Everton (0-0).
Roeder picked up his first ever manager of the month award, narrowly ahead of Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson and Liverpool chief Gerard Houllier.
Nic Gault of the Awards Panel said: "These awards are often given out to those at the top of the league so it's especially nice to be able to recognise Glenn Roeder who has done a terrific job of turning around the fortunes West Ham.
"They have gone four games unbeaten and only conceded two goals in their last five.
"His coaching ability and determination have served him well this season and there can be little doubt, he will be doing all he can to guarantee the Hammers Premiership survival."
The last West Ham manager to receive the accolade was Harry Redknapp for in November 1998/99. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47946256 | The UK will take part in May's European elections and British MEPs could sit for "months or even longer", European Council President Donald Tusk has said.
Mr Tusk said the decision to delay Brexit to 31 October meant British voters would be going to the polls.
But Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt said the six-month extension was too short for change and too far away to prompt action.
The UK PM has said she wants to leave the EU before 22 May to avoid the poll.
But Theresa May needs to get her withdrawal deal - which has been rejected three times by Parliament - approved by MPs.
Cross-party talks between the government and the Labour Party are continuing this week to find a way through the impasse.
On the European elections, Mr Corbyn said he was "very confident" that Labour would win support for its message that the UK needed a close economic relationship with the EU.
Elsewhere, in an interview with the Financial Times, Germany's foreign minister Heiko Maas has said there will be no Brexit extension beyond October.
"They (the UK) will have to decide what they want by October," he said. "You cannot drag out Brexit for a decade."
Speaking in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Mr Tusk insisted that if British MEPs were elected in May, they should be treated as "full members".
Image caption European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Brexit was "not the future of the EU"
"One of the consequences of our decision is that the UK will hold European elections next month," he said.
"We should approach this seriously as UK members of the European Parliament will be there for several months - maybe longer."
He said they will have "all the rights and obligations" of full members.
"I have strongly opposed the idea that during this further extension the UK should be treated as a second category member state. No, it cannot," he said.
He said the EU had not given into "fear and scaremongering" that the UK would act in an obstructive way, saying the UK had been a "responsible and constructive member state".
BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said this was a "clear swipe" at French President Emmanuel Macron and others who had warned the UK could disrupt the functioning of the EU during a long extension.
The extension of Article 50 - the process by which the UK leaves the EU - gave the UK time to cancel its departure if that was what the British people wanted, Mr Tusk said.
He said he knew both sides of the Channel were "exhausted with Brexit" and this should not be "an excuse to say, 'Let's get it over with,' just because we are tired".
"We must continue to deal with Brexit with an open mind and in a civilised manner," he said.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reiterated that there would be no renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement.
"Brexit is not the future of the EU," he said. "The future of the union will go well beyond Brexit."
The European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt said the extension risked importing the "Brexit mess into the EU" and "poisoning" the European Parliament elections.
He urged the UK government and the Labour Party to reach a cross-party consensus in the "coming days".
Works and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd told BBC Radio 5 Live that "leaving the EU is harder than a lot of people thought it was going to be".
She said the prime minister was right to request a Brexit delay and had "done the right thing in reaching out to Labour" for cross-party talks.
"You can't just give up, you have to find a different approach," she said.
Amid speculation about Theresa May's future, Ms Rudd said it was "entirely possible" she could be a candidate in a future leadership election, telling BBC Radio 5 Live "I don't rule it out".
Earlier in the interview, she said: "I'm not planning to run" but "I've kept the door slightly ajar." |
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-the-papers-41674515 | A year on from the Brexit referendum, says the Financial Times, the government has still not spelled out what that will mean for the economy.
The paper sees division in the two main parties, the House of Lords, and across the UK.
If things turn nasty, it thinks the government should resist the "petulant and reckless" option of walking out.
But the Sun tells Theresa May "the time for niceties is over."
It says the PM has now assured every EU citizen here that they can stay, come what may - and it's time for other EU leaders to be "equally forthcoming".
And four former Conservative cabinet ministers tell the Daily Telegraph that she should walk away if the EU won't move on to discussions about trade and the future.
The Daily Mail and the Daily Express both see signs that Germany, at least, might want a comprehensive free trade accord.
Several of the papers are struck by - and concerned about - the figures showing how many people are financially exposed.
Millions of people, says the Financial Times, have to borrow from friends and family "to make ends meet."
"More than four million people are living on the brink of financial meltdown," says the Daily Mail, "figures that add up to a crisis."
The i believes half the adult population are at risk, with 15 million of them failing to pay anything into any kind of pension.
A headline in the Times calls that a "retirement timebomb ticking for millions".
The switch to universal credit, says the Guardian, was a sensible idea "on paper".
But in practice, the paper argues, it has been anything but.
The old system, it believes, "was baggier and more accommodating" - for all its flaws - and the new one just doesn't take account of the actual circumstances of many claimants.
The paper fears that pressing on with the change "will leave families to celebrate Christmas on the contents of a food parcel".
The Mirror says Mrs May is "still pig-headedly making life worse for struggling individuals".
The Times is concerned by the limitations which have been imposed on free speech at several universities since the start of the academic year.
And it therefore commends the Universities minister, Jo Johnson, for telling higher education institutions that they will face penalties if they deny a platform to people whose views might upset some.
The paper says free speech is central to what universities do.
The Daily Mail wonders whether Prince Harry's girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has already had a meeting with the Queen.
It says the actress appears to have been whisked into Buckingham Palace a week ago - in a Ford Galaxy with blacked out windows.
The paper says she spent almost an hour with the Queen having tea and cake. The Palace declined to comment.
The Times reports that "the tree that first brought Bramley apples to the world is dying."
The 200-year-old tree, at Southwell in Nottinghamshire, has an incurable honey fungus infection.
Scientists, says the Daily Express, believe they can save it.
The Daily Telegraph hopes they succeed - saying "if Eden's apple gave the world sorrow, Southwell's brought it only wholesome delight".
The Express thinks their mission is a "project with core a-peel." |
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36656039 | Vodafone has warned it could move its headquarters from the UK depending on the outcome of Britain's negotiations to leave the European Union.
The telecoms giant said in an emailed statement it was important to retain access to the EU's free "movement of people, capital and goods".
It was too early to "draw any firm conclusions regarding the long-term location for the headquarters".
But Vodafone said that it would "take whatever decisions are appropriate".
Last week, chief executive Vittorio Colao told the BBC - ahead of the referendum vote - that Britain risked exclusion from plans for a giant new single market in digital services if it left the EU.
Vodafone said in the email to several media organisations that EU membership, including the free movement of people, had helped drive its growth.
The firm employs 13,000 people in the UK. It has an operating division at Newbury, Berkshire, but the group headquarters are in London.
Vodafone said that 55% of group profits in the last financial year came from its European operations, with the UK providing just 11%. The company is also to start reporting its financial results in euros, rather than pounds.
Vodafone said the single legal framework spanning all member states, as well as freedom of movement, capital and goods, were "integral to the operation of any pan-European business".
The company said: "It remains unclear at this point how many of those positive attributes will remain in place once the process of the UK's exit from the European Union has been completed," it said.
Vodafone said it would strengthen its regulatory and public policy activities in Brussels "to ensure the group's substantial businesses within the European Union continue to be represented appropriately".
Vodafone is the seventh largest company listed on the FTSE 100, with operations in 26 countries. It employs 108,000 staff outside the UK.
Other businesses have expressed alarm at the vote to leave the EU and the consequences of not being part of the European single market.
Business Secretary Sajid Javid hosted a meeting of business representatives on Tuesday to discuss the issues.
Mr Javid said: "The biggest issue raised was the need to secure continued access to the single market. While I am not in any position to make promises, I assured everyone that my number one priority will be just that in the negotiations to come," he told a news conference after the meeting.
After the meeting, the head of the CBI employers organisation said the government was "a long way off" having a plan.
"There are very high levels of real and genuine concern in the business community," CBI Director-General Carolyn Fairbairn told reporters. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25362244 | Syria crisis: Time to rethink a future with Assad?
Three months ago, the US was on the point of carrying out bombing raids on Syria.
Washington's rhetoric about the Syrian president was increasingly harsh. Secretary of State John Kerry said that by using chemical weapons against his own population, Bashar al-Assad had joined a list including Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
A few weeks later, Mr Kerry was praising Damascus for co-operating with an ambitious international agreement to rid Syria of its chemical weapons, while still saying Mr Assad had to go.
At the same time, reports from across the country started to focus more and more on the violence perpetrated by the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), hardline Islamic radicals linked to al-Qaeda.
As the year draws to a close, and the West's chosen allies in Syria suffer one setback after another, have policymakers started to ponder the unthinkable - that there's more to be gained from working with Mr Assad than against him?
It's not a thought being openly voiced by the US State Department or the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but a week ago the highly respected former US diplomat Ryan Crocker told the New York Times that it was time "to start talking to the Assad regime again".
"As bad as he is," Mr Crocker said, "he is not as bad as the jihadis who would take over in his absence."
The former ambassador to both Iraq and Syria made it clear he was talking about a dialogue over specific issues and said it would have to be done "very, very quietly".
But other observers go further.
"Someone has got to bite the bullet and say Assad stays," says Prof Joshua Landis, Director of the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at Oklahoma University whose views are frequently sought by policy makers in Washington.
"We don't have another game in town."
Prof Landis has consistently opposed arming Syria's rebels, a policy which he says "blew up in our face."
He doesn't think tentative contacts with the Islamic Front, a recently formed coalition of Islamist groups not aligned with al-Qaeda, are likely to yield better results.
Ambassador Crocker may be speaking for himself, Prof Landis says, but he knows what the state department is thinking.
US lawmakers are voicing their own concerns.
Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has spoken about his anxiety over an unprecedented pooling of al-Qaeda fighters in Syria.
"We don't have a good operation to vet rebels on the ground," he told a conference at Johns Hopkins University last week. "This is a recipe for disaster."
Against this backdrop, President Assad starts to look indispensable again. A man who can deliver up his country's chemical weapons and, perhaps, take on and defeat the hardliners of the Nusra Front and ISIS.
Progress on the first objective - dealing with Syria's chemical stockpile - has been encouraging but may be stalling. It seems fairly clear that the 31 December deadline for removal of the most toxic material won't be met.
The Syrian army claimed to have taken control of the last contested stretch of the key Damascus-Homs highway earlier this week, but says it needs additional heavy equipment to ensure that convoys reach the Mediterranean port of Latakia.
Put simply, the success of this critical phase of the deal depends almost entirely on the Syrian government's ability to control events on the ground.
In the long run, the second objective - dealing with Islamist hardliners - is likely to prove even more crucial.
On the face of it, this also suggests a convergence of interest with the Assad government, which has long talked about this as the real danger.
But Syria's leaders have always been disingenuous, sounding alarm bells long before al-Qaeda was a genuine threat in Syria and conspicuously failing to take on al-Nusra and ISIS when they finally appeared on the scene.
Critics of the Obama administration say nothing good can come of seeking President Assad's help.
"We've made Assad our partner, rather than seeing him as the problem," says Kurt Volker, the former US ambassador to Nato.
But for all his apparent indispensability, the West is clearly unwilling to rely too heavily on a leader with so much blood on his hands.
"It's very difficult for people to go there," says Daniel Levy of the European Council on Foreign Relations, who believes that the limits of the West's reliance on Bashar al-Assad have already been reached.
"The US is already having an uphill struggle with the Saudis over Iran," he says, referring to the recent interim deal over Tehran's nuclear programme.
"It's unlikely to want to pick another fight by saying, Assad's the man."
President Assad may never be "the man" again, as he briefly was in the wake of the invasion of Iraq.
But his recent success on the battlefield, combined with the West's urgent need to secure his chemical weapons and stem the tide of jihadism means we are going to be dealing with him, one way or another, for a while. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/19/newsid_2520000/2520581.stm | Doctors treating Hillsborough victim Tony Bland can disconnect feeding tubes keeping him alive, a judge at the High Court in London has ruled.
The president of the Family Division, Sir Stephen Brown, said there was no "reasonable possibility" that after three years Mr Bland would emerge from a coma known as a "persistent vegetative state" or PVS.
Mr Bland's parents, Allan and Barbara, supported the doctors' court action and said they were "relieved" at the ruling.
Tony Bland, 22, suffered severe brain damage when he and hundreds of other football supporters were crushed in an overcrowded stand at Hillsborough stadium in April 1989.
Ninety-five fans died in the disaster.
In the High Court Mr Bland's doctors at Airedale General Hospital, near Keighley in Yorkshire and other experts in the field said he could survive for up to five years but he would never recover.
If food were withdrawn he would die within days.
Sir Stephen ruled, for the first time in an English court, that artificial feeding through a tube is medical treatment and that to discontinue treatment would be in accordance with good medical practice.
The true cause of Mr Bland's death would be the Hillsborough disaster, Sir Stephen added.
But the lawyer appointed by the Official Solicitor to act on Mr Bland's behalf argued that to withdraw food from him would be tantamount to murder and said he would be appealing against the decision.
Doctors have agreed to continue feeding Mr Bland until after the appeal is heard on 30 November.
A spokesman for an anti-euthanasia group, Keith Davies, also announced its intention to contest the ruling.
Mr Davies from Life said: "We believe this decision is unsafe and unsatisfactory and we will be using every legal, legitimate and democratic means to oppose it."
The Official Solicitor appealed the ruling all the way to House of Lords but in February 1993 the Law Lords ruled in favour of Tony Bland's doctors.
His life support machine was switched off on 22 February and he died on 3 March.
In April 1994 the High Court rejected an attempt by a pro-life campaigner, Father James Morrow, to get the doctor who withdrew food and drugs from Tony Bland charged with murder.
Up to October 2000 there had been 18 cases brought before the English and Welsh courts by doctors or relatives asking to withdraw food or water from comatose patients. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/politics/35856.stm | The British Government is calling on the United States to do more to protect the world's environment, on the eve of a crucial climate summit in Japan.
Britain's Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, said he appreciated that the American authorities faced a difficult battle against the country's industrial lobby but believed they could do more.
Key talks on climate change open in Kyoto on Monday when countries will try to agree legally-binding targets on so-called greenhouse gas emissions.
Britain wants carbon dioxide from transport and industry cut by 20% by 2010 because many scientists believe the gas is contributing to a global warming.
The US, which is wedded to the car economy, proposes only to peg its carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Mr Meacher told BBC1's Panorama programme, to be broadcast on Monday night in the UK: "We are, in effect, leading the world. We are taking the toughest line over carbon dioxide not because we want to be arrogant or to make a political point, simply because we feel it is necessary.
"They [the United States] certainly ought to be making, in our view, a bigger effort.
"But I do think you have to take into account that in America, as opposed to Europe, there is an extremely hostile political and industrial climate."
Mr Meacher says President Clinton has probably gone as far as he can for the moment.
"I believe that in future years, and indeed I hope at Kyoto, he is going to be pressed to go further, and indeed the whole world is going to have to go further," he said. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30338889 | Taxi booking firm Uber has completed the latest stage of a fundraising, valuing the fast growing business at $40bn (£25.5bn).
The San Francisco company has raised another $1.2bn from investors in a deal that confirms its status as one of most highly valued new technology start-ups.
In June, a sale of shares to investors valued Uber at $17bn.
In a blog post on Thursday, Uber's co-founder Travis Kalanick said the new money would help expansion in Asia.
The company, which a year ago operated in 60 cities in 21 countries, is now in 250 cities in 50 countries.
At its current valuation Uber, which was only founded in 2009, is worth about three times as much as either ITV or Marks and Spencer, says BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.
Last month, the company was forced to issue an apology after being accused of planning smear tactics against journalists and of tracking its users without their permission.
In his blog, Mr Kalanick said: "Events of the recent weeks have shown us that we also need to invest in internal growth and change."
"Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps," he added.
Uber does not own cars or employ drivers, but connects customers and vehicles through its app, bringing what the company says is much needed competition to the taxi industry.
But it has faced opposition from some governments and established taxi firms, including from London's "black cab" drivers and in cities across Europe and the US.
Uber is also facing increased competition. On Wednesday, Softbank announced it had invested $250m in GrabTaxi, a service in Southeast Asia.
Details of Uber's new investors were not disclosed, although previous backers of the business include Goldman Sachs, Google Ventures, Blackrock, and Amazon's founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-30751518 | Thousands of Saudis took to Twitter to share their reaction to news of prominent Saudi blogger and activist Raif Badawi getting flogged by authorities in Jeddah on Friday for "insulting Islam."
Two Arabic hashtags that translate to "Raif Badawi's public lashing" and " lashing Raif Badawi" trended in Saudi Arabia with more than 250,000 tweets after news of carrying out the first round of lashes on Badawi was announced.
Badawi was arrested in June 2012 and sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes after being charged with offences ranging from cybercrime to disobeying his father and insulting Islam on his "Saudi Liberal Network" website - which is now offline.
The punishment has been condemned by the US and human rights organizations. But the online conversation is far less united on the matter.
Saudi Arabia adheres to a strict interpretation of Islamic law and it is still taboo to have open discussions about religion. Apostasy - renouncing Islam - carries the death penalty, and in 2008 Badawi was arrested and accused of that crime (although he was later released). So it came as little surprise to Saudis that the authorities would carry out the lashing.
"He established a network to spread apostasy and to offend religion and the prophet's verses and some people cry for him, I say he deserves more than this," one Saudi twitter user commented.
But there were many who expressed their anger and dismay at the sentence, especially at a time when Saudi Arabia is battling with extreme fundamentalism.
"It's religious extremism that deserves punishment because it's what brought us the Islamic State and not liberalism which fights extremism" commented another Saudi on Twitter.
And while #JeSuisCharlie trended worldwide after the Charlie Hebdo attack, some of those who support Badawi started #JeSuisRaif to raise awareness about his case.
Maryam Namazie tweeted "All those tweeting #JeSuisCharlie should also tweet #JeSuisRaif. @raif_badawi sentenced to 10 years prison & 1000 lashes. Saudi Govt STOP".
Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haider, who is currently living in Canada, said she was hoping the authorities wouldn't carry out the sentence.
"I've been in shock since hearing the news yesterday. My husband doesn't deserve this," she told BBC Trending.
But Haider was less surprised with the reactions online.
"I found supporting messages from around the world more than I did from Saudi Arabia. I suppose people are scared of the authorities," she said.
Elham Manea, an associate professor of politics at Zurich University, believes that there could be a possible number of reasons why the punishment was carried out.
"It could be because Saudi Arabia wants to show that it will not submit to international pressure," said Manea, who has been campaigning for Badawi's release. "It could also be about an internal struggle and rivalry inside the ruling family."
"But I'd say the most likely possibility is that the ruling family needs the support of the religious establishment against the tides of Arab Spring and dissident voices inside the kingdom, so this is what they are offering in exchange for their support," said Manea.
Both Manea and Haider are sceptical about the authorities responding to international pressure.
"I hope that our efforts to try to free Badawi will succeed but I cannot tell if Saudi Arabia will feel it needs to respond to international pressure now that it sees itself as vital ally in the fight against terrorism," Manea said. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-birmingham-40326726 | M6 West Midlands northbound severe disruption, between J10 for A454 and J11 for A460.
M6 West Midlands - One lane closed on M6 northbound between J10, A454 (Wolverhampton) and J11, A460 (Cannock), because of a broken down vehicle. Traffic is coping well.
M42 West Midlands southbound severe disruption, at J5 for A41.
M42 West Midlands - M42 lane blocked on exit slip road southbound at J5, A41 (Solihull), because of a broken down vehicle. Traffic is coping well.
M40 Warwickshire northbound severe disruption, between J15 for A46 and J16 for A3400.
M40 Warwickshire - Slow traffic on M40 northbound between J15, A46 (Longbridge Island) and J16, A3400 (Henley In Arden), because of a rolling road-block and animal transfer between horseboxes.
M40 Warwickshire southbound severe disruption, between J16 for A3400 and J15 for A46.
M40 Warwickshire - Slow traffic on M40 southbound between J16, A3400 (Henley In Arden) and J15, A46 (Longbridge Island), because of a rolling road-block and facilitating animal transfer between horseboxes.
M6 West Midlands southbound severe accident, between J6 for A38 and J5 for A452.
M6 West Midlands - Three lanes closed and queuing traffic on M6 southbound in Birmingham between J6 A38(M) Aston Expressway and J5, A452 (Castle Bromwich), because of an accident.
West Bromwich Albion sign England international striker Jay Rodriguez from Southampton for a fee of about £12m.
M6 West Midlands southbound severe disruption, at J6 for A38 affecting J7 for A34.
M6 West Midlands - M6 lane closed on exit slip road and very slow traffic southbound at J6 A38(M) Aston Expressway, because of a vehicle fire. Congestion to J7, A34 (Great Barr).
M6 West Midlands southbound severe accident, between J10 for A454 and J9 for A461.
M6 West Midlands - One lane closed on M6 southbound between J10, A454 (Wolverhampton) and J9, A461 (Wednesbury), because of an accident. Traffic is coping well.
M6 Staffordshire southbound severe accident, between J10A for M54 and J10 for A454.
M6 Staffordshire - One lane blocked and queuing traffic on M6 southbound between J10a M54 and J10, A454 (Wolverhampton), because of an accident.
M6 Warwickshire northbound severe accident, between J3 for A444 and J4 for M42.
M6 Warwickshire - Stationary traffic on M6 northbound between J3, A444 (Nuneaton) and J4, M42 (Coleshill), because of an accident and a rolling road-block.
Championship club Wolves sign Konyaspor defender Barry Douglas on a two-year deal for an undisclosed fee.
It is believed Nala the husky got on to the roof after climbing on furniture in the loft of the house.
The men from Leicester and Birmingham are detained having landed on a flight from Turkey.
M40 Warwickshire - One lane closed and slow traffic on M40 northbound between J15, A46 (Longbridge Island) in Sherbourne and J16, A3400 (Henley In Arden) in Warwickshire, because of barrier repairs.
M40 Warwickshire southbound severe accident, between J16 for A3400 and J15 for A46.
M40 Warwickshire - Very slow traffic and one lane closed on M40 southbound between J16, A3400 (Henley In Arden) and J15, A46 (Longbridge Island), because of an accident.
M6 West Midlands - Very slow traffic on M6 southbound between J10, A454 (Wolverhampton) and J9, A461 (Wednesbury), because of an accident.
He is detained on suspicion of attempted murder after two street shootings.
Video caption: Was lawn tennis born in this Birmingham back garden?Was lawn tennis born in this Birmingham back garden?
According to sport historians, it is a quiet spot in Birmingham that made a racquet.
M5 Worcestershire northbound severe disruption, between J4 for A38 Bromsgrove and J3 for A456 Halesowen.
M5 Worcestershire - One lane closed on M5 northbound between J4, A38 (Bromsgrove) and J3, A456 (Halesowen), because of a broken down lorry. Traffic is coping well. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2891261.stm | German car firm BMW has finally agreed a long-awaited deal with China's biggest van maker to produce luxury cars for the Chinese market.
Brilliance China and BMW are between them putting 450m euros ($483m; £307m) into the 50-50 joint venture, which they said should produce about 30,000 3 Series and 5 Series BMWs a year.
The signing ceremony to seal the partnership, in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, brought years of talks between the two companies to a conclusion.
China's car market is growing rapidly, with sales up 60% last year to 1.2 million cars to become the fourth biggest market worldwide.
One reason for the elongated courtship is that Brilliance, one of a handful of Chinese companies whose shares are listed in both New York and Hong Kong, has had its share of legal troubles.
Its founder and ex-chairman, Yang Rong, is thought to have fled China for the US in 2002, just as the authorities sought to arrest him.
Listed in the Chinese media as the country's third richest man, Mr Yang has said he fears arrest after disputes with the government over the ownership of Brilliance, after almost 40% of the company was sold to the Liaoning provincial government at a discount of more than 90%.
But official statements say he is accused of tax evasion.
BMW, already a strong Asian presence thanks to operations in Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, is only the latest in a long line of Western carmakers to try to sell to China's car-hungry customers.
Audi, a unit of German rival Volkswagen, is already selling 35,000 cars a year built through its own joint venture with First Auto Works, which holds China's number one position in passenger cars.
US vendors GM and Ford are other recent arrivals.
Chinese trade rules will only allow Western manufacturers to build in China via joint ventures, although its membership of the World Trade Organisation could mean easier market access in the future. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-11417906 | Ed Miliband said his "new generation" would take Labour back to power, in his first big speech as party leader.
He praised the party's achievements but said they had to face "painful truths" - such as the Iraq war being "wrong".
In an hour-long speech he pledged to be a "responsible" opposition leader and not oppose every proposed spending cut.
But he said David Cameron offered a "miserable" view of what could be achieved and said Labour were the "optimists" who would change Britain.
Ed Miliband was greeted by enthusiastic applause from delegates in the packed hall at the Manchester Central venue as he arrived with his pregnant partner Justine.
He struck a very personal tone at the start of his speech, talking about his upbringing and how his parents' experience as refugees fleeing the Nazis had shaped his values and paying tribute to his "extraordinary" brother David.
Activists cheered as he said Labour had appeared "casual" about civil liberties and said he would not let the Tories or Lib Dems "take ownership of the British tradition of liberty". And they applauded his comment that Labour's foreign policy should be "based on values, not just alliances".
However his comments about Iraq appeared to annoy his brother David, whom he narrowly beat for the party leadership.
Mr Miliband has only been an MP since 2005 and was not part of the government during the invasion of Iraq - a decision which proved divisive for the Labour Party.
"I do believe we were wrong. Wrong to take Britain into war and we need to be honest about that," he said.
But David Miliband was filmed asking Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman: "You voted for it, why are you clapping?"
BBC political editor Nick Robinson said it suggested the older Miliband brother, who has returned to London, would almost certainly announce on Wednesday that he was stepping down from front-line politics.
On Tuesday night, David Miliband's aide confirmed the former foreign secretary would make a statement on Wednesday afternoon.
He, Alistair Darling and Andy Burnham all voted for the war in 2003.
Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time of the invasion, told the BBC the new leader was not an MP at the time so had "greater freedom to say we didn't get it right, but I don't agree with his view".
In the wide-ranging speech, Ed Miliband pledged to vote "yes" in a referendum on changing the voting system to AV, said Labour should have recognised concerns about jobs and wages resulting from immigration. He said he supported reducing the deficit but growth should be the priority.
The former energy secretary, 40, was named Labour leader on Saturday having won the ballot of MPs, party members and trade unionists by just 1%.
Since then he has been fending off criticism that he owes his leadership to the unions because his brother David got a higher percentage of votes from MPs and party members.
He got a standing ovation when, referring to the label some newspapers have given him, he said "Red Ed? Come off it," and urged a "grown-up debate" on politics.
And he warned that while he said trade unions were important, he had "no truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes" and Labour had to be careful not to alienate the public.
He said the party had to face facts about its general election defeat and go on "our own journey", show humility and learn some "painful truths" about where they had gone wrong.
"This country faces some tough choices and so do we. And we need to change," he said.
"This week we embark on the journey back to power."
Ed Miliband praised Labour's achievements in office, saying Britain was "fairer and stronger than it was 13 years ago" but said that the party had to ask how it lost five million votes between 1997 and 2010 and "shed old thinking".
He said he understood voters' anger that Labour had not stood up to City demands for deregulation and, in what will be seen as distancing himself from his old boss Gordon Brown, "at a Labour government that claimed it could end boom and bust".
Although he is only three years younger than Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, he said in ideals and values he was from a new generation.
That generation would now be running Labour with "different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics".
He attacked the prime minister for offering a "miserable, pessimistic view of what we can achieve" telling Labour members: "We are the optimists and we together we will change Britain."
The speech was welcomed by union leader Derek Simpson as one "worthy of the next prime minister". He said: "Ed demonstrated he can break free from the worst of Labour's past and present a realistic alternative to the coalition's cuts."
But Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, questioned Mr Miliband's stance on new employment regulations for agency workers and minimum wage increases.
"Both measures would hurt small and large businesses, not support them. It is early days, but we detect a drift away from New Labour's efforts to talk up a pro-enterprise agenda," he said.
Just after the speech David Miliband said he thought it was "really strong": "It was the speech of a conviction politician and also a nerveless speech. His personal qualities came through."
Labour's shadow cabinet is elected by its MPs - and as nominations close at 1700 BST on Wednesday, so David Miliband must enter his name into the ballot by then if he is to stay on Labour's front bench. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47651170 | Image caption Party on, dudes!
Most excellent news for fans of the Bill and Ted films - the comedy duo will definitely be going on a third adventure next year.
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, the stars of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, revealed the news in a video message.
The sequel will be released 31 years after the 1989 original, which followed two slackers travelling through time.
Titled Bill & Ted Face the Music, it will hit cinemas in August 2020.
Reeves (Ted) and Winter (Bill) thanked "you, the fans" for getting the project off the ground.
Image caption Will the original slackers still be Wyld Stallyns in their 50s?
Now ageing rockers, Bill and Ted's inability to fulfil their prophecy to save the universe with rock and roll will be tackled in Face the Music.
News that a script had been written for a third film was revealed at the Cannes film festival last year.
The first two movies were big hits, with the original following the journey of two American high school students travelling back in time to get help passing a history class.
Blade Runner 2049 - released 35 years after Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi classic.
Mad Max: Fury Road - came out nearly 30 years after Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Ghostbusters reboot - arrived 27 years after 1989's Ghostbusters II.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - Michael Douglas reprised his role as Gordon Gekko 23 years after the original.
T2 Trainspotting - it took 21 years for us to be reunited with Ewan McGregor's Mark Renton.
Independence Day: Resurgence came out two decades after the original which debuted in 1996. But the sequel returned without Will Smith.
Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey reprised their roles in Dumb and Dumber To, 20 years after their first outing as a pair of dimwits.
Incredibles 2 - it was a mere 14 years before Pixar rewarded fans of The Incredibles with Incredibles 2.
Last year, Winter said making the Bill and Ted movies had been "therapeutic" and proved "helpful" to him, while he was coming to terms with childhood sexual abuse.
Winter, now 53, says he was sexually abused as a child actor in the 1970s by a man who is now dead.
"I absolutely feel like a survivor," he told BBC Radio 5 live's Adrian Chiles.
Speaking about making the first Bill and Ted film in 1989, he said: "The movies are what they are, they're silly and all that, I don't hold them in overly high estimation as works of art or anything, but we had a lot of fun making them.
"But for me personally, in terms of the experience... it was really, really helpful for me mentally. And it was a great environment.
"The world of Bill and Ted is a very sweet and fun place to run around in."
The news that Bill & Ted 3 is officially a go follows an intriguing report on the Forrest Gump sequel that never was.
In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, screenwriter Eric Roth revealed the unmade film would have featured OJ Simpson, Princess Diana and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing had it not been axed in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Bill and Ted: A bodacious return or bogus idea? |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/8103276.stm | Hearts winger Andrew Driver could yet switch allegiance to Scotland even if he plays for England at the European Under-21 Championships this week.
Driver was an unused substitute as England beat Finland 2-1 in their opening match on Monday.
But a draft Fifa proposal would allow players like Driver to switch as long he has not played a full international.
The home nations are awaiting approval for extending their own eligibility rules to five years schooling.
Only if world football's governing body gives the green light to both proposals would 21-year-old Oldham-born Driver be eligible to play for both England and Scotland at full international level.
Even then, it would require the Scotland manager to choose a player who has recently been quoted as saying that he feels more English than Scottish, despite having moved north of the border as a child.
Present rules mean players have to declare their allegiance once they have reached the age of 21.
The Fifa proposal, issued as a draft on Tuesday, would allow a player to decide on his country of allegiance at any time during his career as long he was still uncapped.
Fifa would allow countries to call up any player as long as he has five years residence, but England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are opposed to loosening blood ties to that extent.
The possibility of Rangers' Spanish-born striker, Nacho Novo, playing for Scotland was ruled out on that basis.
Scottish FA chief executive Gordon Smith therefore proposed the five years schooling rule to ensure that players choosing the home nations have some emotional tie to the country for which they want to play.
Meanwhile, Driver, who had previously indicated that he would be happy to play for Scotland if eligible, will hope to make his debut for England Under-21s in their next match, against Spain on Thursday.
England opened the tournament with an unconvincing victory over Finland, Micah Richards giving Stuart Pearce's side victory despite being reduced to 10 men and having Lee Cattermole's opener cancelled out by Tim Sadek. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-35202424 | Rwanda's High Court has sentenced a pastor to life in prison for his role in the 1994 genocide.
Jean Uwinkindi organised and participated in attacks on the minority Tutsi ethnic group, the court ruled.
Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by militias from the majority Hutu ethnic group.
The 64-year-old Hutu pastor was the first genocide suspect to be sent back to Rwanda for trial by the Tanzanian-based UN tribunal.
The tribunal shut down this month after sentencing 61 individuals and acquitting 14 others.
Uwinkindi - the former head of a Pentecostal church on the outskirts of the capital, Kigali - had opposed his transfer.
He said he would not get a fair trial in Rwanda, where there is now a Tutsi-led government.
His lawyers said he would appeal against the High Court's ruling.
"The court finds that there were killings of the Tutsi at Rwankeri and Kanzenze hills and that the attacks were led by Uwinkindi," said Judge Kanyegeri Timothee, Reuters news agency reports.
The prosecution alleged that in investigations after the genocide, some 2,000 bodies were found near the church in Kanzenze, just outside Kigali, where Uwinkindi was pastor.
He was indicted in 2011 after he was arrested in 2010 in neighbouring Uganda.
Another key suspect, Ladislas Ntaganzwa, who has a $5m (£3.2m) US bounty on him, was arrested two weeks ago in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47936101 | A Canadian tourist has fallen to his death after a zipline cable snapped in northern Thailand, authorities say.
Authorities in Chiang Mai say the 25-year-old man was on holiday with his girlfriend.
The cable gave way soon after he was released from the start of the zipline course on Saturday, local media report.
The attraction, Flight of the Gibbon, has reportedly been closed while police investigate.
Earlier reports suggested that the man, who has not been officially named, fell 100m (328ft) from the zipline. However, police now say he fell from a height of 12m.
He is then said to have tumbled down a hill, a source told the BBC.
Thai authorities are investigating several issues, including whether the weight limit was exceeded and any potential negligence on the part of the operators.
A spokesperson for Canada's Department for Global Affairs told BBC News: "Our thoughts and sympathies are with the family and friends of the Canadian citizen who died in Thailand. Consular services are provided to the family and loved ones of the Canadian."
Flight of the Gibbon's zipline course in Mae Kampong village, Chiang Mai, is about 5km long with 33 different platforms, making it one of the longest in Asia.
It was temporarily shut in 2016 after three Israeli tourists collided with each other and fell to the ground, suffering non-fatal injuries.
A company representative told AFP news agency that they were awaiting permission to resume activity. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tees-12097834 | A man who was injured in a car crash in County Durham on Boxing Day has died in hospital.
Ian McCrone, 24, from Spennymoor, suffered head injuries after the car he was driving left the A167 and ended up in a field in Croxdale.
Police said severe weather conditions were to blame for the incident, which happened as Mr McCrone tried to overtake another car.
A Durham Police spokesman appealed for witnesses to come forward. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4239628.stm | Hollywood and other parts of Los Angeles were left without power for two hours on Monday after workers accidentally overloaded a power line.
Police declared an emergency as traffic lights went blank and lifts stopped. The city's international airport had to switch to emergency power.
After initial confusion and fears of a terror attack, the fault was traced to a power surge from a receiving station.
Al-Qaeda has reportedly made a recent threat to attack the Californian city.
Ron Deaton, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said city maintenance workers had accidentally cut a line at a receiving station.
They then connected it to another line "that was not expecting that amount of electricity".
The surge which hit at 1237 local time (1937 GMT) disrupted service to more than half of the Los Angeles region.
Police and fire services were put on "tactical alert", meaning staff could not leave work when their shifts were over, and only life-or-death emergency calls would be answered.
The biggest impact seemed to be on the roads, where chaos ensued as drivers tried to negotiate the city without functioning traffic lights, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
The US has suffered severe strains on electricity supply in recent years.
In 2003, 50 million homes in New York and the north-eastern US lost power.
California had to restrict its supply during a 2001 power crisis in the state, imposing rolling cuts. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7788180.stm | There was no Christmas cheer in the unemployment figures.
There was no ray of starlight to illuminate the blanket of gloom in the labour market.
This looks like the continuation of a grim process of attrition with job losses announced weekly and the unemployment total rising relentlessly throughout next year.
The headline figure of 1.86 million unemployed covers the period up to the end of October.
Job loss announcements by companies gathered momentum in November. Those will swell the next set of official figures published in January.
The respected Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development predicts "an annus horribilis" for the jobs market in 2009.
The narrower claimant count saw its biggest monthly increase, nearly 78,000 in November, since the depths of the last recession in 1991.
But the October figure was revised up 15,000. So nearly 100,000 more people are claiming Jobseekers' Allowance than the reported level in early November.
The number of jobs in the economy has declined.
The fall in financial and business services jobs, down 1.1% in the quarter, was almost as big as the decline for manufacturing where the number of posts fell by 1.4%.
This is indeed a widespread downturn with few areas of the economy escaping the effects.
Total employment fell by 0.4% in the quarter. But it would have been more if there had not been a rise in public sector employment.
Recruitment in the NHS was the main reason for the increase in the number on the government payroll.
It's worth noting, though, that employment levels are still higher than a year ago.
Government sources make clear there can be no disguising the extent of the downturn.
They point out, however, that Jobcentres are better resourced than before and well positioned to advise people on new routes back to work.
They argue that there are more than half a million vacancies in the economy.
The claimant count of 1 million, officials argue, is not a static pool of people facing long-term unemployment.
Many will find jobs within a few months, to be replaced by others who have been made redundant.
This feels like a defensive position ahead of a long and painful process.
Ministers acknowledge that unemployment will be one of the defining issues of 2009.
They won't give their own predictions. They won't be drawn on forecasts of 3 million unemployed on the wider measure.
But tucked away in the pre-Budget report is an assumption that the claimant count will reach 1.5 million.
Whitehall is clearly braced for many more announcements like today's. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1267034.stm | Teen sensations S Club 7 have been signed up to promote Pepsi after promising they will not be involved in any more scandals.
Last month the group's clean-cut image was tarnished after the three male singers were cautioned by police for possessing cannabis.
Pepsi announced that pictures of all seven members will feature on cans and bottles in about six weeks' time.
"Pepsi have been assured by the band that this was an isolated, one-off incident," said a Pepsi spokeswoman.
"Pepsi has chosen S Club 7 as the new faces of Pepsi as they are huge fans of their musical and performing abilities.
"They do not condone the use of drugs but are taking the band at their word."
The group will also be heavily involved with in-store promotions, but will not appear in television commercials.
S Club 7 will not replace US pop singer Britney Spears as the official face of Pepsi.
The group said: "It's going to be weird to open the fridge and see ourselves staring back at us.
"When we think of the huge music stars who have been involved with them in the past it makes us really excited about the deal."
Michael Jackson earned a reported $5m (�3.4m) for his Pepsi collaboration in 1984.
Other recent Pepsi promoters include British pop stars Robbie Williams, the Spice Girls and Boyzone.
On 20 March the three male members of S Club 7, Bradley McIntosh, 18, Paul Cattermole, 24, and Jon Lee, 19, were arrested and cautioned by police for possessing cannabis in Covent Garden, central London.
They later released a statement apologising for being "stupid".
S Club 7's female members - Rachel Stevens, 21, Tina Barratt, 24, Hannah Spearitt, 19, and Jo O'Meara, 24 - were not involved.
The group have proved attractive to advertisers, and have sponsorship deals with BT and Cadbury's. Both sponsors said last month they were "disappointed" to learn of the drugs cautions.
Cereal firm Quaker Oats played down reports it axed S Club 7 from its Sugar Puffs adverts after the arrests.
It said talks had been held about a link-up, but there had been no definite deal on the table.
S Club 7's first UK tour is due to start in Sheffield on 31 May.
A big-screen film is also in the pipeline, following their successful TV series Miami 7 and LA7.
A new single, Don't Stop Moving, is out in the UK on 23 April. Past hits include Reach and Never Had A Dream Come True. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39423053 | A new breeding population of the critically endangered Indochinese tiger has been found in a national park in eastern Thailand, conservationists say.
Camera traps discovered a small population with at least six cubs in the jungle.
Poaching and the loss of habitat has reduced the global population of the sub-species to under 250.
Conservationists said the success was due to the stepping-up of anti-poaching efforts in Thailand.
Counter-trafficking organisation Freeland and Panthera, the wild cat conservation group, conducted the survey with the support of the Thai park authorities.
Until this find, only one other breeding population of Indochinese tigers - also in a Thai national park - was known of.
"The extraordinary rebound of eastern Thailand's tigers is nothing short of miraculous," said John Goodrich, tiger programme director at Panthera.
The director of Thailand's national parks, Songtam Suksawang, said: "The stepping up of anti-poaching patrols and law enforcement efforts in this area have played a pivotal role in conserving the tiger population by ensuring a safe environment for them to breed.
"However, we must remain vigilant and continue these efforts, because well-armed poachers still pose a major threat."
Numbers of tigers in the wild have dwindled from 100,000 a century ago to 3,900 today, the groups said in a joint statement.
Thailand was the first country in this region to deplete its forests, to such an extent that by the 1980s it had banned logging. It was also among the first to establish national parks, but initially these were also badly stressed by illegal logging and hunting.
At the time, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and even Vietnam had a lot of pristine forests left, with healthy populations of tigers. Tigers had declined in Thailand to the point where in the early 2000s it was thought they were very small and fragmented.
But since then, massive illegal exploitation has badly depleted the forests and tiger populations in the other countries - even Myanmar - to the point where Indochinese tigers are believed to be extinct in Cambodia, down to just a handful in Laos and Vietnam and with unknown, but almost certainly greatly reduced numbers in eastern Myanmar.
Meanwhile, improved conservation strategies have allowed the tiny population of Indochinese tigers in Thailand to recover in some areas, although they have disappeared in others. So, with its reasonably well-run national parks, Thailand finds itself unexpectedly the last stronghold of the Indochinese tiger. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24362141 | President Barack Obama has postponed two stops on his four-nation Asian tour because of the government shutdown.
The White House said it was "logistically... not possible" to go ahead with the trips to Malaysia and the Philippines at the end of his tour.
But he would still be attending regional summits in Indonesia and Brunei, the White House added.
The US government has partially shut down after the two houses of Congress failed to agree a new budget.
More than 700,000 federal employees face unpaid leave, and national parks, museums and many buildings are closed.
Mr Obama on Tuesday vowed not to allow Republicans to undermine his signature healthcare legislation as a condition to restart the US government.
"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," he said at the White House.
"In other words, they demanded ransom just for doing their job."
The president truncating his Asia trip suggests the shutdown won't be over soon. All the signs are that neither side is preparing to blink.
But Obama has a strategy - the Republicans have a problem. First they wanted to stop Obamacare, then delay it, then delay part of it. The messy, shifting Republican message won't get through, except to their hardline base.
But Obama has firmly linked this crisis to a much worse one. The threat not to raise the US debt ceiling is appalling and terrible for the world economy. It is likely Democrats will tie both issues together and insist there is no point reopening the government unless the debt ceiling is sorted.
Being invited to take part in grand negotiations about the whole of the government's finances could give Republicans a face-saver. For the president, dealing a fatal blow to "government by crisis" would be a big prize.
Mr Obama had been scheduled to begin his four-nation Asian trip on Saturday, heading to Bali for an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit and Brunei for the East Asia summit before travelling on to Malaysia and the Philippines.
National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden called the cancellation of the trip "another consequence of the House Republicans forcing a shutdown of the government".
"This completely avoidable shutdown is setting back our ability to promote US exports and advance U.S. leadership in the largest emerging region in the world," she said.
The White House said that "logistically, it was not possible to go ahead" with the trips to Malaysia and the Philippines.
"Because they are on the back end of the president's upcoming trip, our personnel was not yet in place and we were not able to go forward with planning," the White House said in a statement.
"Unlike the Apec and East Asia Summits, these trips can also be rescheduled, and President Obama looks forward to visiting Malaysia and the Philippines later in his term."
Earlier, the office of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Mr Obama had called him to inform him that Secretary of State John Kerry would address an entrepreneurship conference in Kuala Lumpur on 11 October in his place.
"I empathise and understand," Mr Najib told the media. "If I were in his shoes, I would do the same."
Mr Obama has been forced to call off trips to Asia before because of issues at home.
In 2010, a vote on healthcare and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill forced separate cancellations in March and June, though he did make it to India, South Korea, Japan and Indonesia in November of that year.
One group of elderly military veterans managed to bypass the shutdown when the WWII Memorial in Washington DC - that they had travelled from Mississippi to see - was opened for them.
Treasury department employee Peter Gamba told the BBC he was worried by the turn of events.
"For whatever reason I cannot fathom, you're asking me to again give up my pay and give up service to the American public," he said.
"It's a nightmare for me financially, it causes me a lot of anxiety and stress and I don't sleep well at night."
President Obama has blamed conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives for the government shutdown, saying "one faction of one party" was responsible because "they didn't like one law".
Late on Tuesday the White House rejected a Republican plan to fund only a few portions of the government - national parks, veterans' programmes and the budget of the District of Columbia.
The Republicans have called for more negotiations.
A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner called the White House's position "unsustainably hypocritical".
Media captionWhat does shutdown mean for two million federal employees, agencies and tourist destinations?
Rory Cooper, a spokesman for Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, accused Mr Obama of "hyper-partisan speeches".
An opinion poll released on Tuesday suggested the American public disagreed with the Republican strategy.
An estimated 72% of voters oppose Congress shutting down the federal government in order to block the health law, according a poll by Quinnipiac University.
The healthcare law passed in 2010, was subsequently validated by the US Supreme Court, and was a major issue in the 2012 presidential election.
The next key deadline in the US is 17 October, when the government reaches the limit at which it can borrow money to pay its bills, the so-called debt ceiling.
House Republicans have demanded a series of policy concessions - including on the health law and on financial and environmental regulations - in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
President Obama is due to meet the heads of some of Wall Street's biggest banks - including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America - to discuss the debt ceiling and other economic issues.
The bankers are members of the Financial Services Forum, a lobbying group which has, along with 250 other businesses, sent a letter to Congress urging it to raise the debt ceiling. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-40787527 | What do Beyoncé, her hit All The Single Ladies and an Australian lawn bowls club have in common?
Well, up until recently, absolutely nothing.
But that changed when the Chadstone Bowls Club in Melbourne decided the song would be the perfect way to promote their campaign to save the venue from demolition.
In just three days, their adapted rendition and resulting video, complete with the moves that made it a favourite on dance floors across the globe almost a decade ago, has had a million views.
It is fair to say the reaction has taken the Chadstone bowlers by surprise.
"We had no idea that it would have the following that it did," Wyn Hewett, 72, told the BBC, before admitting that, when the idea was first suggested, she had not heard of Beyoncé Knowles.
"My six-year-old granddaughter had to explain to me - but I'll never forget her name now," she said.
Wyn and her fellow dancers, Terry Foster and Janine Hall, both 82, are hoping it might encourage the City of of Stonnington to rethink its plans to knock down the bowls club to make way for indoor netball and basketball courts.
"[Chadstone is] a second home for a lot of the elderly people," she explained. "Personally, I've been a member for seven years since I retired and if somebody is unwell, there are at least 10 people on the phone to see how you are.
"So if you demolish the club, you would break up the very tightly-knit community which has become a big family for us."
But Mayor of Stonnington, Councillor Jami Klisaris, said the new courts were important "particularly... to meet the needs of women's sport".
However, she added: "The council is listening to the community and we want to assure residents that no final decision has been made. The feasibility study is vital to helping the council make a decision that's in the interests of all Stonnington residents, sporting clubs and sportspeople."
In the meantime, it seems the video is only going to grow in popularity. But Wyn only really wants one person to spot it.
"We now have Beyoncé as our favourite singer, and we'd love for Beyoncé to send us a message that she'd seen it," she said, adding, with the knowledge of one who has done the dance: "We think for her do those dance moves in those high heels is amazing." |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/462003.stm | Police in Japan are questioning officials from the company which runs the uranium fuel processing plant at the centre of the country's worst nuclear accident. The authorities say Tokaimura, where the plant is situated, is now safe and radiation levels have returned to normal.
"A major accident resulting in a radioactive leak has happened. We apologise from the bottom of our hearts," said company President Koji Kitani, bowing deeply at a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday.
Three workers saw a blue flash and were overcome with nausea. They were taken to hospital barely conscious and with low blood pressure. Several other colleagues are also suffering from radiation exposure.
Workers were taken a hospital at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba.
Those closest to the plant were evacuated and given radiation checks.
Children are particularly vulnerable to radiation. They were given thorough checks.
On Friday, residents were told it was safe to go outdoors again - most chose to stay inside their houses though. The police remained cautious, too, and continued to don protective gear.
Protesters staged a demonstration at the Science and Technology Agency in Tokyo. The banner reads: "Denounce Tokaimura nuclear processing facilities and development of Japan's nuclear power plants." |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2055968.stm | Big Brother contestant Jade Goody's observations have kept viewers amused over the 64 days of the reality TV hit.
The 21-year-old dental nurse is the youngest contestant to feature in the UK version of Big Brother.
Some of what she said indicated she had experienced little of life outside her native Bermondsey, south London.
Indeed, her school in nearby Rotherhithe was moved to declare she was not a typical pupil.
But she kept herself at the centre what went on in the house - not least thanks to her brief liaison with fellow housemate PJ Ellis.
Her honesty also ensured she would be held in great affection by many viewers - even if it also guaranteed a harsh ride from the press.
Here is a selection of Jade's more memorable quotes.
Jade asks Spencer if he punts boats on the River Thames.
Spencer: "No, I work in Cambridge."
Jade: "I know I'm from Bermondsey and I know that's London, but where is Cambridge?"
Spencer: "It's in East Anglia."
Jade: "Where's East Angular [sic] though? I thought that was abroad."
"The Union Jack is for all of us, but the St George is just for London, isn't it?"
"I knew Lynne was from Aberdeen but I didn't realise Aberdeen was in Scotland."
"What's asparagus? Do you grow it?"
"I am intelligent, but I let myself down because I can't speak properly or spell."
To PJ after he revealed he knew someone who kept pet peacocks: "You see those things... don't think I'm being daft... but them things that look like eyes, are they their real eyes?"
Jade picks up a photo of PJ on holiday by the sea.
Jade: "Is that where you live?"
Jade: "Have they not got seasides in Birmingham?"
"Jonny, I'm not being tictactical in here"
Tim suggested Jade move to the US, to which she replied: "They do speak English there don't they?"
"It's Mona Lisa who's symmetrical, innit?"
When asked by Big Brother to name two vegetables in the garden: "Strawberries and spuds".
"Rio de Janeiro, ain't that a person?"
"They were trying to use me as an escape goat."
"Do they speak Portuganese in Portugal? I thought Portugal was in Spain."
On the final day, in the garden: "Are they really filming us out here? I look like a state." |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-12057324 | Motorway drivers have been affected after heavy snow fell overnight in Worcestershire.
The main carriageway on the M5 northbound was blocked for a time due to snow between junction 5 for Droitwich and junction 4A for the M42.
Bus and rail services in both counties have been affected and the Met Office has issued a warning of heavy snow for Wednesday.
Droitwich and Stourport have seen between six and eight inches of snow.
Rail passengers could also face delays and disruption as the freezing temperatures continue.
London Midland is operating a reduced service between Redditch and Lichfield while the service between Hereford, Worcester and Birmingham is not calling at Bromsgrove.
A spokesman said the line between Droitwich and Bromsgrove was closed. Cross Country trains are calling at Bromsgrove.
First Great Western cancelled early services from Malvern to London due to weather conditions and some late evening replacement bus services between Oxford and Worcestershire will not run.
Herefordshire Council said the north of the county had been hit by heavy snow and said gritters and ploughs were trying to keep main roads open.
Motorists are being advised to keep away from the area, north of Leominster, if possible.
In Worcestershire, some bus services in the Kidderminster area are suspended. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28640835 | With his flowing blond locks, denim gear and Fender Telecaster, Rick Parfitt was one of rock's most recognisable guitarists.
His partnership with Francis Rossi became the core of Status Quo, one of Britain's most enduring bands.
Their brand of boogie-woogie rock survived changes in musical fashion and made them one of the best-loved live acts of their generation.
As well as driving the Quo sound on stage, Parfitt penned many of the band's biggest hits.
Richard John Parfitt was born in Woking, Surrey, on 12 October 1948.
He began playing a guitar when he was 11 and, on leaving school at 15, got a job performing at Sunshine Holiday Camp in Hayling Island, Hampshire, earning £5 a week.
However, much of his new income went to his father, who was a committed drinker and gambler.
"He was forever getting in trouble and coming to me crying," Parfitt later recalled. "I probably ended up giving him a couple of thousand quid in total. Back then, that was a lot of money."
Parfitt met Francis Rossi in 1965 when they were both playing with their respective bands at a Butlin's holiday camp in Minehead.
Two years later Parfitt, along with Rossi, Alan Lancaster, John Coghlan and Roy Lynes came together to form Status Quo.
The band's first hit, Pictures of Matchstick Men, released in 1968, embraced the psychedelic movement of the time and went to number seven in the UK charts.
Their follow-up, Black Veils of Melancholy, failed to chart but they did get to number eight with Ice in the Sun, written by Marty Wilde.
But the band were becoming disillusioned with the direction they were taking. They abandoned their flowery clothes, embraced denim and T-shirts and settled down to a more traditional style of rock.
Parfitt co-wrote two of the tracks on their breakthrough album, Piledriver, released on the Vertigo label in 1972.
In an interview in 2014, Parfitt said of the record. "You know what? I love every track on that album! I think All The Reasons is just such a beautiful song. I wrote that about my wife at the time."
The album became the template for subsequent releases, with Parfitt receiving a number of writing credits.
Whatever You Want, co-written by Parfitt and Andy Bown, became one of the band's biggest hits and a staple of their increasingly popular live shows.
Outside the Quo tent the musical landscape was changing, from prog to punk, and into the '80s with the New Romantics.
Inside the tent, the band continued to play their 12-bar blues style maintaining an ever loyal fan base.
The band set off on a farewell tour in 1984 but decided to carry on after Bob Geldof persuaded them to open the Live Aid concert the following year.
"God, I'm so pleased we did it now. Quo opening Live Aid, it was meant to be."
They also embraced the hedonistic rock lifestyle with gusto. Parfitt admitted spending £1,000 a week on cocaine and another £500 on vodka.
His addictions, coupled with the tragic drowning of their two-year-old daughter, Heidi, led to the breakdown of his first marriage to Marietta Broker.
"It's not buying the drugs that is the most expensive thing," he later said. "It's the divorce which taking drugs eventually leads to."
He later married Patty Beedon, who had been his childhood sweetheart. The couple divorced and reunited again, before finally going their separate ways.
It was an acrimonious separation, with Patty later describing him as "a selfish child who never grew up".
Parfitt's experience of paying millions in divorce settlements made him vow never to marry again, but he tied the knot again in 2006 with Lyndsay Whitburn, a fitness instructor.
In 2010, Parfitt and Rossi were awarded the OBE for services to music, posing together with their gongs after the investiture ceremony.
By this time Parfitt had suffered a number of health problems including undergoing quadruple heart bypass surgery in 1997. He made a full recovery and was performing with the band within a matter of months.
Doctors warned the musician that he would have to leave behind his rock lifestyle, although he admitted at the time that he still enjoyed "the odd pint".
By 2014 he was living a relaxed life in Spain.
"I haven't smoked a joint for 27 years and I haven't done any cocaine for 10 years. I just do normal stuff - the kids keep me busy and I go shopping with the missus."
Other band members came and went over the years but Parfitt remained, with Rossi, the definitive face of Status Quo.
While Rossi officially remained the band's frontman, the musical partners were hard to separate on stage.
In contrast to the rows that are part of many rock bands, the two remained good friends throughout the decades.
When Status Quo had embarked on what they hinted would be their final tour, Parfitt offered an explanation for the longevity of veteran rock bands.
"Why do you think all these bands like the Stones and Deep Purple stay on the road? We're having fun and I love being up there on stage. Once the lights go down and the crowds roar, something magical happens. All your aches and pains go."
He added: "It would be weird to just stop because I would have nothing to do." |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-41107519 | Healthcare workers in the Highlands have held a protest against a 1% cap on public sector employees' pay.
The union Unison said workers on lower pay at NHS Highland are having to use food banks because of the cap.
The protest was held as NHS Highland chiefs gathered in Aviemore for the health board's annual review meeting.
As she arrived for the meeting, public health minister, Aileen Campbell, told the protesters the government was listening to their concerns.
The minister added: "We all value the NHS and we all want it to function the best we can."
About 50 NHS Highland employees took part in the protest.
Ahead of Thursday's meeting, Unison's Highland healthcare branch secretary Jeanette McQuiston said workers felt they were being "badly treated".
She said: "People on lower wages are finding it extremely hard.
"They are having to go to foodbanks for help.
"We are coming into the winter now and, with rising electricity and gas prices, people are going to have to make a choice of whether to eat or heat.
"In 2017 that is not acceptable."
NHS Highland said the pay cap was a matter for the Scottish government to make a comment on.
Finance Secretary Derek Mackay said the Scottish government has committed to ending the 1% pay cap in future years.
He said: "We have always sought to offer a distinctive pay policy, being the first government to pay the real living wage and ensuring higher increases for those on lower salaries.
"As we work towards the next Scottish budget we are engaging with trade unions across the public sector on a future pay policy that reflects rising living costs as well as the need for sustainable public finances.
"This includes working with NHS trades unions to assess the effect of pay restraint on NHS staff. The outcomes of that process will inform the evidence submitted by all parties to the pay review body." |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-47677792 | A teenage boy has been stabbed to death by a group of men who chased him and then attacked him in west London.
The men pulled up in a vehicle near Syon Park, Isleworth, and chased the 17-year-old boy before catching up with him and stabbing him, police said.
The boy, who had been with a group of other people, was found injured outside a block of flats in Union Lane at about 22:35 GMT on Friday.
Officers gave first aid but he died at the scene. No-one has been arrested.
The Metropolitan Police has started a murder investigation but officers said they were "keeping an open mind" about a motive.
Post-mortem tests and a formal identification are due to be held later.
A section 60 order, granting police increased stop and search powers across the area, is in place.
A couple who called the police said there was "blood everywhere".
The 35-year-old woman, who did not want to be identified, said the teenager was still alive when she and her husband saw him.
"There was someone else there trying to help by checking his pulse. He was responding but he couldn't speak," she said.
A second witness said the teenager was assaulted by two people, one wearing a mask.
"It was one guy who was massive with a mask on his face and another small guy. They were kicking him, but it was dark so it was hard to see exactly what was happening."
Halima Abubaker, 22, said she saw two males "running for their lives" around the time of the incident.
She said: "I just heard loads of people, then there was seven police cars and two vans."
Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, described the teenager's death as "heartbreaking".
"This is a 17-year-old boy who has lost his life because of a knife attack," he said.
"My thoughts and prayers, as I'm sure are those of all Londoners, are with his family."
There have been 28 deaths classed as "homicides" in London this year. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4255156.stm | Sir Richard Branson plans to hold talks with the government about paying for a new oil refinery.
The Virgin Atlantic boss told the BBC he wanted to reduce his airline fuel bill, which has increased by £300m a year over the last two years.
He said there was an "enormous shortage" of oil refineries and said he was looking at building one.
Fuel prices have been hitting record highs due to the knock-on effect of Hurricane Katrina in the US.
Sir Richard's comments came as a price war broke out between petrol retailers as oil supplies returned to normal following the chaos caused by the hurricane.
Esso confirmed it was lowering its UK petrol and diesel prices on Friday by up to 4p a litre, following similar moves by supermarkets Asda and Tesco.
Meanwhile, BP and Royal Dutch Shell also said they planned to cut prices.
The hurricane hit oil rigs and refineries in the Gulf coast of America, causing worldwide supply shortages in both crude oil and petrol.
That caused a hike in prices, which have risen rapidly over the last few years.
Sir Richard said oil refineries were "very expensive" adding: "This is not something I particularly want to do."
But, he said: "At the moment there's an enormous shortage of refineries in the world.
"Every one of the refineries is at capacity, the oil companies are not building new refineries, and we have put a team on trying to raise money to build at least one."
The fuel bill for Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Express was in the region of £750 million a year, he said.
"If we could just bring that fuel bill down by just a tiny amount that would make a big difference to us and our customers.
"If we can encourage governments to confront this issue, if we can get western governments together to work out how to deal with the issue, we think we can make a real difference."
Sir Richard said it would take at least four years to build a refinery and he was also looking at ways to find oil.
Governments should aim to build 10 refineries as soon as possible to counterbalance oil companies and the oil cartel, Opec, which kept prices high, he said.
"Opec is effectively an illegal cartel that can meet happily, nobody takes them to court," he said. "They collude to keep prices high.
"The western world should have a counterbalance to that. If $20 billion was put aside to build 10 new refineries, oil prices would start to collapse again.
"The oil companies realise that and they are not getting out there investing the money to build those refineries.
"In a sense, as free marketeers why should they? But governments should intervene to make sure that happens."
A "two-pronged" government attack was needed to tackle the problem, he said.
"If they intervene in the short term and do something too radical to stop growth, we will have an incredible recession."
Governments should encourage companies to buy fuel efficient planes and trains and give tax breaks to companies which produced fuel efficient hybrid cars, he added.
It would be better to tax "fuel-inefficient" airlines than to tax all airlines for the fuel they used, he said.
On Thursday, Opec said the rise in fuel prices was not the fault of producers, who had accelerated output in recent years.
It told the BBC's Newsnight programme that everyone, including producers and consuming nations, had to do their part to solve the problem. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7192330.stm | Geography as a subject is in decline and needs to be made more relevant with a greater focus on global issues, England's schools inspectors have said.
Climate change, sustainable development and trade disputes could all be studied to increase interest, Ofsted said.
Its report, based on inspections and surveys between 2004 and 2007, said geography was the worst-taught subject and that pupils saw it as "boring."
The government said teaching of the subject was being revitalised.
The report concluded that growing numbers of pupils were opting to drop the subject after the age of 14, when it is no longer compulsory.
It was especially critical of geography teaching at Key Stage 3 (age 11 to 14), saying lessons at this level were too often taken by non-specialists because schools focused more on the GCSE years.
Inspectors have called for a shake-up with more fieldwork plus lessons on climate change, trade and the concepts of sustainable living and environmental footprints.
Chief inspector of education Christine Gilbert said: "Geography is at a crucial period in its development.
"More needs to be done to make the subject relevant and more engaging for pupils."
The report was based on inspections from 2004 and 2005 and from specific surveys of geography in schools between 2004 and 2007.
"Recent annual subject reports by Ofsted have highlighted weaknesses in geography in primary and secondary schools and have provided some evidence of decline in the overall quality of provision," the report said.
Most primary and secondary schools surveyed did not recognise the value of fieldwork and "did not fulfil the requirement to provide it".
Schools were concerned about health and safety, time, expertise and budgets, inspectors found.
The report said: "It is important that the citizens of tomorrow understand the management of risk, appreciate diversity, are aware of environmental issues, promote sustainability and respect human rights and social inclusion.
"If the aspiration of schools is to create pupils who are active and well-rounded citizens, there is no more relevant subject than geography."
Schools Minister Jim Knight said: "Last year we made radical reforms to the geography curriculum to make it more engaging and more relevant to young people's lives - bringing in topics like environmental change and sustainable development, but keeping the essential basics of maps and globes and atlases.
"An innovative new GCSE is being piloted that captures the relevance and excitement of contemporary geography.
"Geography is an important subject which helps young people analyse, explore and question the world in which we live. We know we need to enthuse young people about geography."
The director of the Royal Geographical Society, Dr Rita Gardner, said many of Ofsted's concerns were already being addressed.
"Fundamentally, the provision of good geography teaching lies with the teachers themselves," she said.
"Whilst there are many examples of good geography teaching, we need non-specialist and the less-motivated specialist teachers to be encouraged to raise their game.
"We will do all that we can to support teachers in achieving that."
Liberal Democrat children, schools and families spokesman, David Laws, said a lack of specialist teachers and a failure to recognise the value of fieldwork was turning pupils away from the subject.
"Geography can be a practical and varied subject, but this report suggests it is at risk of becoming too dry," he said.
"Overly bureaucratic health and safety concerns should not be allowed to prevent schools from involving pupils in engaging and interesting fieldwork projects." |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/4562600.stm | A Collins John brace helped Fulham come from behind to consign 10-man Sunderland to their 16th league defeat.
Sunderland started brightly when Liam Lawrence fired home a left-foot volley from 20 yards after just seven minutes.
But John found the equaliser just before the break, heading home Brian McBride's flick-on.
In the 58th minute, defender Steven Caldwell was sent off for bringing down Heidar Helguson, who crossed for John to head in the winner soon after.
Rooted to the bottom of the Premiership table on six points, Sunderland have struggled to get goals on their return to the Premiership this season.
Danny Collins sent in a seemingy innocuous cross from the left but Knight's attempted clearance fell into the path of Lawrence, who fired home his second goal of the season.
Fulham attacked the other end with some vigour with Papa Bouba Diop coming close when he failed to connect with Luis Boa Morte's square ball at the far post.
But the west London outfit rarely challenged Sunderland keeper Kelvin Davis until John's equaliser two minutes before the break.
With some surprise, the goal came shortly after the home side lost star midfielder Diop who was still struggling with injury and replaced by Helguson in the 40th minute.
Three minutes later, Tomasz Radzinski crossed to McBride on the edge of the box with the striker's flicked-on header finding John who prodded home his first of the day.
Caldwell added to Sunderland's misery shortly before the hour mark with his sending off for a professional foul on Helguson.
The visitors were fortunate to narrowly avoid handing Fulham a penalty as Caldwell charged down Helguson just outside the area.
Helguson crossed from the left to the far post, where John drifted between Gary Breen and Julio Arca and headed in at the right corner.
Sunderland valiantly tried to create chances and were unlucky when Lawrence and Jonathan Stead, still seeking his first goal for the club, both shot wide.
Keeper Davis also did well to keep out a McBride free-kick with a fine fingertip save but his efforts were to no avail as Fulham picked up the much-needed three points.
"I don't think it was a great performance from us in terms of quality of possession but we showed courage.
"It was a scrappy game, a battle, but they held strong and I was delighted with them."
"In terms of his work-rate, I don't think Collins John had a good game, but he hit the back of the net twice and that's what he does best."
"I think it's a bit harsh. If it was a free-kick, you could understand it, but he's not intentionally brought him down.
"It's not a professional foul and I think it's the striker's movement that caused it.
"Steven Caldwell clipped his legs but that's the striker running across him."
Fulham: Warner, Leacock, Pearce, Knight, Rosenior (Niclas Jensen 75), Boa Morte, Diop (Helguson 40), Legwinski, Radzinski, McBride, John (Malbranque 69).
Subs Not Used: Drobny, Rehman.
Sunderland: Davis, Hoyte (Murphy 64), Breen, Caldwell, Arca, Lawrence, Whitehead, Collins, Le Tallec (Nosworthy 64), Stead (Gray 65), Miller.
Subs Not Used: Alnwick, Woods. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-11911441 | Image caption Police said the gas pipe fed through the mosque window was "clearly visible"
Four teenagers have been arrested after a gas pipe was put into a Stoke-on-Trent mosque in an attempt to set light to the building, police said.
The incident is being treated by police as a deliberate racist attack.
Officers were called to Regent Road at 0630 GMT after live CCTV footage showed smoke emerging from inside the building.
Three males aged 16, 18 and 19, and an 18-year-old female remain in custody. All are from the local area.
A Staffordshire Police spokeswoman said there was no structural damage, but the fire was being treated as a case of criminal damage.
Police said the attackers fed a gas pipe from a nearby building through a mosque window.
Ch Insp Wayne Jones said: "It's clearly visible for people to see.
"A gas meter on an external wall has been interfered with. That's gone into the mosque and the damage could have been significant.
"At this stage we are treating this incident as a racist attack on a religious building.
"I am sure the community are as appalled as we are at this behaviour."
Stoke-on-Trent CID are examining the scene and CCTV footage of the area. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47772604 | Sibeth Ndiaye: Who is the French government's new spokeswoman?
The newest member of the French government has been a citizen of France for less than three years - but now, she will speak for the country.
Sibeth Ndiaye, the new government spokeswoman, was born in Dakar, Senegal, and only obtained her citizenship while helping to run President Emmanuel Macron's election campaign in 2016.
But the 39-year-old's close connection to the president - and some of her comments in her time as his media advisor - have made her a target for criticism by opposition politicians.
She famously once told a newspaper that she was "perfectly comfortable lying to protect the president".
Ms Ndiaye was born in 1979 in the former French-colonised republic of Senegal, to a family who engaged her in politics from a young age. Her father was heavily involved with the Senegalese Democratic Party, while her mother was a high-ranking judge on the country's constitutional council.
Educated in Senegal and in Paris, she was involved in the French national students' union - later telling news outlet Jeune Afrique that she felt a desire to make changes to the lives of other students.
She said her leap to national politics was prompted by the 2002 French presidential election, in which the far-right National Front's Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round. She joined the Socialists - and began her career in politics.
She first met Mr Macron when he was the deputy secretary general at the Élysée, and she was working for the economy minister - a job that Mr Macron would take over in 2014.
When he declared his presidential ambitions, she joined his campaign team. That decision led to her becoming a media advisor to the President of the Republic.
"My professional career was mainly built around beautiful encounters, with people who knew to trust me, and I always tried to be worthy of this trust," she told Jeune Afrique.
Her appointment to the government in the weekend's minor reshuffle has been met with a great deal of criticism and debate in France.
Her time as a media advisor to Mr Macron saw journalists ejected from the Élysée, and a hardening of policy about staff members speaking with journalists.
Much of the criticism surrounds a report carried by French newspaper L'Express in 2017, when she said she would lie to protect Mr Macron.
Opponents have questioned what such a statement - which she had previously denied saying - meant coming from the government spokeswoman.
Ian Brossat, spokesman for the French Communist Party, tweeted: "With the practices of this government, it actually seems to be fitting for the position of spokesperson."
Julien Sanchez, spokesman for the far-right National Rally, echoed the sentiment, saying: "The liar officially becomes the government spokesperson".
Speaking at her first official press conference on Monday, Ms Ndiaye said the quote had been taken out of context.
"It was my job at the time to defend and protect the President of the Republic... today, I have new responsibilities," she told journalists.
Others take issue with the president appointing a close ally to a government position.
Earlier, Ms Ndiaye spoke about the importance of her role in government as a naturalised citizen.
"I take this step with pride in serving France, the country I chose for myself," she said.
"Even before I was French, I was one of the people involved in this country, especially in [Paris suburb] Seine-Saint-Denis, where nothing is simple, but where everything is possible."
"France has given me a lot, today it is my turn to give something back," she said. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47679192 | "Basically it will mean that my son will not have money for his future".
The depressing reality for Amanda Cunningham, and thousands of others, is that a lifetime of savings have been mostly wiped out, almost overnight.
She is one of 11,605 people who invested a total of £236m with London Capital and Finance PLC (LCF).
It collapsed into administration in January following an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) into misleading advertising.
"He [her son] suffers with autism, I don't even know if he'll be able to hold down a job. That money was there to give him the life he should have," Amanda says.
"I can't afford to keep him forever and if anything happens to me that money was there for his future".
She had spent decades saving up thousands of pounds.
"That money to me is lost, I can never see me being able to save that amount of money in my lifetime again.
"I won't be able to afford the extra help for my son.
"If anything happens to me and he has to go into assisted living then there's no money for that now."
The FCA, the UK's financial regulator, first raised questions about LCF's advertising, much of it done online and via social media, in December 2018.
LCF was offering rates of around 8% on three year mini-bonds, which are high-risk investments.
But investors say they believed they were putting their money into safe, secure fixed-rate ISAs, so the FCA ordered LCF to withdraw its marketing.
Following further investigation the FCA then froze LCF's assets later that month, then in late January the company collapsed into administration.
Many people who put money in to LCF were first-time investors - inheritance recipients, small business owners or newly retired.
The company's administrators, Smith and Williamson, has now published its proposals about what it thinks is the best way for investors to get as much of their money back as possible.
Finbarr O'Connell, one of the administrators, told BBC Radio 4's Money Box that he hopes to recover about 20% of the £236m that people had invested with the firm. However, he added that it would probably take at least two years before people saw any of that money.
"They [investors] thought this was a safe option, they were comfortable their capital was safe and they thought they would get a good rate of interest so they're completely devastated," he says.
"We have some real, but complex assets, to realise. They could take up to two years to turn into cash.
"The plan is that we continue in hot pursuit of the money and of the assets."
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which is also investigating LCF, says it has arrested four people, who have all been released pending further investigation.
The names of the people arrested have not been confirmed yet, which is standard practice for the SFO.
What did the regulator know - and when?
Questions are being asked in Parliament too about what the FCA knew - and when - about possible misleading marketing.
Nicky Morgan MP, chair of Parliament's Treasury Committee, has written to the FCA's chief executive asking what it knew about possible concerns over LCF's advertising and, crucially, when.
Several independent financial advisers have said they warned the FCA, some as far back as 2015, about what they felt were "misleading, inaccurate and not clear" adverts, often promoted on social media.
For its part the FCA has released a statement saying its immediate priority is to "investigate and assist in the recovery of any assets. We will then be looking into this matter carefully and will consider what lessons can be learned".
Andy Thomson, the chief executive of LCF, has not responded to requests for comment.
You can hear more on BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme on Saturday at 12pm or listen again here.
Follow Money Box and Dan on twitter. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-10708737 | SSL International, the maker of Durex condoms, is set to be sold to Reckitt Benckiser - the firm behind Cillit Bang cleaner and Finish dishwasher tablets.
The two companies have agreed a deal that values SSL, which also makes Scholl footcare products, at £2.54bn.
Reckitt Benckiser, whose other brands include Nurofen and Gaviscon, said the purchase would offer a "step change" in its health division.
It added the deal would boost its business in China and Japan.
Anglo-Dutch group Reckitt will pay 1163 pence per share for SSL under the agreed takeover deal - and will also pay a final dividend due for SSL investors.
The offer is a 32% premium on SSL's closing share price on Tuesday, and when trading got underway on Wednesday SSL's share price jumped 33%.
Reckitt said the deal would increase sales in its health and personal care arm by about 36% to £2.8bn.
Both Reckitt and SSL warned that the takeover was likely to lead to job cuts as savings were found.
SSL employs about 10,000 people worldwide. In the UK it has headquarters in London and manufacturing bases in Manchester, Peterlee in County Durham, and Redruth in Cornwall.
It has operations in more than 30 countries - and manufactures goods in China, India and Thailand as well as the UK.
Slough-based Reckitt employs almost 25,000 people globally. Its other well-known brands include Strepsils, Vanish and Dettol. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-37698300/bruce-springsteen-on-music-depression-and-trump | Springsteen on music, depression and Trump Jump to media player Singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen speaks to BBC arts editor Will Gompertz about his music, depression and the state of US politics, as he launches his autobiography.
Bruce Springsteen: 'Trump is a conman' Jump to media player Bruce Springsteen has told the BBC's Will Gompertz that he thinks Donald Trump is a conman.
Springsteen thrills fans during concert Jump to media player Up to 25,000 fans braved the heat to attend a Bruce Springsteen concert at the Balmoral Showgrounds in Belfast on Saturday.
Protests in North Carolina over LGBT law Jump to media player In America, there has been a fierce debate over a new law affecting gay, lesbian and transgender people in the state of North Carolina.
Fans react to Stewart's final Daily Show Jump to media player Audience members leaving the final Daily Show with Jon Stewart gave their reactions.
Singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen speaks to BBC arts editor Will Gompertz about his music, depression and the state of US politics, as he launches his autobiography. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7313251.stm | With permission Mr Speaker I should like to make a statement about our programme of constitutional renewal. With this Statement are published a White Paper, the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, and an analysis of the responses to our consultations. Copies of these are available in the Vote Office and on my ministry's website.
Mr Speaker, the accountability of government is fundamental to the health of our democracy. Arbitrary action and lack of transparency can subvert that. But, for decades, the royal prerogative has been used by successive governments to sustain executive power.
Last July, my Right Honourable Friend, the prime minister announced his determination that the government he leads would reverse this process and surrender significant executive powers to Parliament or otherwise limit them.
Following my Right Honourable Friend's July statement and the accompanying Governance of Britain Green Paper, five consultation papers were issued. I am grateful to all who responded. We have taken account of their views in the White Paper and the draft Bill.
1. Protest around Parliament: In July the prime minister undertook to consult widely on managing protests around Parliament to ensure that people's right to protest was not subject to unnecessary restrictions.
Our view is that Parliament itself is best placed to decide what needs to be secured to ensure Members are able freely to discharge their responsibilities. Clause 1 of the draft Bill therefore repeals sections 132-138 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. We invite the views of Parliament on whether additional provision is needed to keep open the passages leading to the Palace of Westminster and to ensure that, for example, excessive noise is not used to disrupt the workings of Parliament.
Part 2 of the Bill sets out major reforms to the role of the Attorney General, and the management of prosecutions, to make the arrangements more transparent and to enhance public confidence. The proposals involve recasting the relationship between the Attorney and the prosecuting authorities.
In particular the Attorney will cease to have any power to give directions to prosecutors in individual cases, save in certain exceptional cases which give rise to issues of national security. The Attorney will have to report to Parliament on any exercise of that power.
By clause 3 there would be a protocol which will set out how the Attorney and the prosecuting authorities are to exercise their functions in relation to each other. This will be laid before Parliament, as will an Annual Report. We do not propose changing the Attorney's role as chief legal adviser to the government or his or her attendance at Cabinet.
Part three of the Bill builds on the significant reforms introduced by my Right Honourable and Noble Friend Lord Falconer to reinforce the independence of the judiciary. The Bill proposes to remove the Prime Minister entirely from making judicial appointments, and the Lord Chancellor from appointments below the High Court.
Part 4 of the Bill makes it a statutory requirement that treaties must be laid before both Houses of Parliament before ratification. If this House were then to vote against ratification the Government could not proceed to ratify it.
Whilst this is obviously a matter for Parliament, the White Paper suggests that a valuable role could be played by committees of either or both Houses in the scrutiny of treaties prior to ratification. I should just say these proposals do not affect the current arrangements for EU and tax treaties which already have a statutory procedure attached to them.
Part 5 of the Bill will for the first time put the Civil Service on a statutory footing by enshrining the core values of the Civil Service - impartiality, integrity, honest and objectivity - into law, as well as the historic principle of appointment on merit.
The Bill makes provision for special advisers and the Civil Service Commission. The Bill has benefited from the detailed comments on the draft Civil Service Bill in 2004 and from the work of the Public Administration Select Committee. I am grateful for their help.
Mr Speaker, may I now turn to the other key proposals in the white paper.
There was a widespread welcome in July for my Right Honourable Friend the Prime Minister's proposals that the government should limit the executive's powers to deploy Her Majesty's Armed Forces into conflict situations. As well as from those who responded to the consultation document we have also benefited from earlier Select Committee reports from both Houses. In the event there was significant support for the recommendations from the Lords' Constitution Committee.
What we are now proposing is that Parliament's role should be both enshrined and guaranteed by a Resolution of this House. A detailed draft of this is set out in the White Paper (on pages 53 - 56). It would require the Prime Minister of the day to seek the approval of this House before deciding to commit forces into armed conflict abroad. It requires him to lay a report before this House setting out the terms of approval sought and information about the objectives and legal matters relating to the armed conflict.
There are exceptions to this in relation to emergencies and operational secrecy, with a requirement in such cases to inform but not to seek retrospective approval. Special Forces would be exempt from any of these provisions. These changes, if agreed, would define a clear role for Parliament in the most critical of all decisions to face a nation, whilst ensuring that our nation's security is not compromised.
Last July's Governance of Britain Green Paper contained proposals on increasing parliamentary scrutiny of some public appointments. Since then, this has been considered by the Liaison Committee. We will respond to their recommendations shortly.
On the dissolution and recall of Parliament, proposals have already been made to the Modernisation Committee. We look forward to hearing their views.
The White Paper sets out these arrangements in detail.
The government is committed to reviewing the prerogative power with regard to issuing passports. Draft legislation will be published in due course.
The government is also reviewing the remaining executive prerogative powers, for example the prerogative to grant mercy. The government will consider the outcome of this work and will consult on how we plan to proceed.
Mr Speaker the government remains committed to the establishment of the Church of England, and greatly values the role played by the Church in our national life. Appointments to senior Church positions will continue to be made by Her Majesty the Queen, who should continue to be advised on the exercise of Her powers of appointment by one of Her Ministers, which will usually be the Prime Minister.
We are very grateful to the General Synod for its proposals on how new appointments procedures should work and the government is discussing with the Church future long-term arrangements.
The government received over 300 responses to the consultation on the flying of the Union Flag. In line with the majority of responses we have decided that the interim change made to the guidance to allow Government departments to fly the Union Flag whenever they wish, should now become permanent. There are no plans to change the arrangements for flag flying in Northern Ireland.
Mr Speaker, good law is imperative to accessible and modern constitutional arrangements.
For 40 years the Law Commission has played a vital role in this regard. I intend to strengthen its role by placing a statutory duty on the Lord Chancellor to report annually to Parliament on the government's intentions regarding outstanding Law Commission recommendations and in providing a statutory backing for the arrangements underpinning the way government works with the Law Commission. These changes sit alongside those the Leader of the House announced last week which will strengthen the scrutiny of laws after they have been enacted by Parliament.
We are ensuring our constitutional arrangements are continuing to meet the needs of the public we serve. On reform of the House of Lords I should tell the House that discussions in the cross-party Working Group are proceeding well. We are on track to publish a White Paper before the summer recess.
Over the coming months we will be publishing a Green Paper on a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities and on the values which should bind us together as citizens.
And today my Right Honourable Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has announced that Professor Sir Kenneth Calman has agreed to serve as Chair of a Commission to Review the Scotland Act. Such a Commission was proposed in and approved by the Scottish Parliament.
The government welcomes that Parliament's support for the aim of strengthening devolution, and securing Scotland's place in the Union. We are giving our full support to this cross border, cross party review.
Mr Speaker the proposals in the White Paper and draft Bill go to the heart of how power in a modern democracy should be exercised. They are not a final blueprint, but part of the much wider programme towards a new constitutional settlement.
They will strengthen the role of Parliament in our democracy.
For it is Parliament, the seat of our democracy, which is central to this programme of constitutional renewal.
I commend this statement to the House. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-47721025 | Image caption Victim Glyn Rouse made music that "brightened and improved a lot of people's lives"
A man who stabbed a stranger to death near a playground has been detained indefinitely at a secure hospital.
Musician Glyn Rouse, 61, was "minding his own business" in Cherry Lane, Crawley, when he was attacked by Vladimir Ivanov on 28 November 2017.
Ivanov, 23, of Juniper Road, Crawley, denied murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility at Lewes Crown Court.
He was given a hospital order under the Mental Health Act.
The Bulgarian warehouse worker was also given a life sentence with a minimum of four years imprisonment.
He will be detained in a secure psychiatric unit until cleared for release by the parole board and Justice Secretary.
Mr Rouse's family paid tribute to the "extremely talented man who loved the arts".
They said: "He was extremely dedicated to his music and excelled at guitar playing.
"His music brightened and improved a lot of people's lives, and all of his family and friends will remember Glyn when they hear a guitar being played well."
Mr Rouse was attacked by Ivanov on a footpath close to the playground at about 10:30 GMT and discovered by passers-by with serious wounds to his neck, head, chest and left arm, Sussex Police said.
His killer was found in the area shortly afterwards.
During police interview, Ivanov told officers he had taken a kitchen knife from his home and put it in his jacket pocket when he went jogging.
Det Ch Insp Mike Ashcroft said: "Mr Rouse had been out walking and minding his own business that morning when he was subjected to an unbelievable, highly unusual, unprovoked attack."
He said the motive for the killing remains unknown, adding: "It appears to be borne from the mental state of Ivanov at that time." |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-47854848/getting-south-asians-into-graphic-novels | Is it time for a South Asian superhero? Jump to media player Frustrated by the lack of South Asians in comic books, Sha Nazir founded BHP Comics, Scotland's only independent graphic novel publisher.
The African comic hoping to take on Disney Jump to media player Fed up of non-Africans telling African stories, three friends decided to create their own anthology.
African women 'inspire comic book heroes' Jump to media player You've heard of Wonder Woman and Black Panther, but what about Queen Amina and Ireti Moremi?
Frustrated by the lack of South Asians as leading characters or as illustrators, Sha Nazir founded BHP Comics, Scotland's only independent graphic novel publisher in 2013.
Since then he has been championing emerging British Asian talent, including Ny Ali and Shazleen Khan.
A BBC Stories and Asian Network co-commission. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-30726537 | New Banco Santander chairman Ana Botin has moved to strengthen the eurozone's largest bank with a huge fundraising.
The bank is asking shareholders for €7.5bn (£6bn), about 10% of its capital value.
Shares in the bank were temporarily suspended on the Madrid stock market pending the announcement.
Santander comfortably passed a recent bank stress test, but there was speculation about its capital strength and whether it might float its UK arm.
There was also speculation on Thursday that the cash-call might herald a big acquisition. Shares in Italy's Monte Paschi bank jumped 8% on the news.
Monte Paschi, the world's oldest bank with roots dating back to 1472, is looking for a buyer after a poor showing in the stress tests.
Mrs Botin, who took over from her father Emilio Botin in September following his death after nearly three decades at the helm, has said the bank faces tougher competition and stricter regulations.
Two months after taking the helm, Mrs Botin, former head of the UK division, replaced the chief executive Javier Marin with Jose Antonio Alvarez, the finance director.
She has also made other senior board changes in a bid to stamp her mark on the bank.
Santander also said on Thursday that it was cutting the dividend, another move that will strengthen the balance sheet.
Despite Spain's economic and property crash, Santander was one of the few major banks to keep its dividend unchanged with the financial crisis.
Although the cash-call was a surprise, analysts said strengthening the balance was the right thing to do given that the eurozone economy is under pressure.
But Yohan Salleron, an equity manager at France's Mandarine Gestion, told Reuters: "We met Santander one month ago and they didn't say they needed a capital increase. We need to understand why they need (it)." |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4686826.stm | The blue sky seemed to vanish in an instant, as wild, grey thunderclouds raced across the mountains. Rays of sunlight broke through in places, brightening spots in the forest like searchlights.
There are few landscapes more dramatic than Yakushima, and few places with more weather; within seconds we were being pelted by our 12th rainstorm of the day. But none of this bothered Sachito Fujimoto, one of Honda's top engineers.
"It's the perfect climate for us," he said with a grin, and we climbed into the dumpy little blue car he was testing.
The Honda FCX isn't much to look at, but it's the closest thing to a genuine car of the future you can drive on public roads.
Underneath the bonnet - and under the passenger seats as well - is a revolutionary fuel-cell engine that produces no pollution and, in effect, runs on nothing more than the enormous amounts of rain that fall on Yakushima.
Which is why Honda has chosen to test it on this remote southern island - a Unesco World Heritage Site better known for its sheer mountains and ancient forests.
Fuel cells don't run literally on water, but on hydrogen, which is forced through membranes inside the fuel-cell stack, producing an electric current that powers the car. You can make hydrogen from water, but that also requires electricity - and it so happens Yakushima has abundant quantities of that, too.
The reason lies 170 metres (yards) down a steep tunnel, which takes you deep under the mountains, on a funicular railway.
That is where the local electricity company has built turbines to harness the enormous hydro-electric potential on Yakushima - and it has done that so successfully that it produces far more electricity than the island's 15,000 inhabitants can use.
Surplus electricity cannot be stored, so the company has joined forces with Kagoshima University and Honda, to make hydrogen for the fuel-cell FCX.
So some of Honda's top engineers have to spend several weeks a year on the island, running the FCX along its twisty mountain roads, and putting up with the endless rain.
"Actually it's a very good testing ground," says Mr Fujimoto, "we want to show that our car can perform well in all kinds of extreme weather conditions".
It doesn't hurt the car-maker's image, either, that it is associated with one of the most pristine natural environments left in Japan.
Hiroshi Ishii, the president of the electricity company, has grander dreams, of an island entirely powered by renewable energy.
He pulls out a colourful leaflet showing how the hydrogen could fuel all the cars, buses and boats on the island. It could even, he thinks, be shipped to a neighbouring island where Japan's space programme is based, to power its rockets.
For the moment, though, this is just a dream; his main customer is still Honda.
The people of Yakushima have now got used to seeing the little blue car swishing silently around their island.
It is an impressive machine, with surprisingly good acceleration for a car that runs on water.
The technology is still too expensive for mass-production, but Honda has loaned other prototypes to city governments and individuals in the United States, in the hope that one day, they may be the first to produce a truly affordable fuel-cell car.
And the islanders, who are very proud of their World Heritage status, say playing host to such a clean-living car, seems quite appropriate for Yakushima. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-47864177 | Bodyguard star Richard Madden has spoken out against the "unrealistic" demands he and his fellow actors face regarding their weight and body image.
"I've done numerous jobs where you're told to lose weight and get to the gym," he told British Vogue.
"It doesn't just happen to women, it happens to men all the time as well."
His comments follow singer Sam Smith's recent admission on Instagram that "I have starved myself for weeks" in advance of photo shoots.
Smith's revelation was accompanied by a shirtless photo that was described as an effort to "reclaim my body".
Madden said he and his actor friends had found themselves bemoaning the "barely eating, working-out-twice-a-day, no-carbing thing" required for certain scenes.
He said they would find themselves "looking at each other going: 'We're just feeding this same [expletive] that we're against.'"
Madden, whose other roles include Robb Stark in Game of Thrones and the Prince in Cinderella, said he had sometimes been given restrictive costumes that had made breathing difficult.
The Scottish actor will next be seen in Rocketman, a musical biopic about Sir Elton John starring Taron Egerton.
Madden is not alone in highlighting the pressures placed on the modern leading man.
Last month, Australian actor Chris Hemsworth - soon to be seen reprising his Thor role in Avengers: Endgame - admitted keeping in shape for the camera "can start to become a drag".
"The roles I've taken on have shaped my physique," he told Men's Health. "It just goes hand in hand with the parts I play.
"But occasionally I'll see paparazzi poking out of the bushes and I'm like, 'How's my rig look? Am I on point, or have I slacked off lately?'" |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47461511 | The skull of an 800-year-old skeleton known as the Crusader, which was stolen from the crypt of an Irish church, has been found.
Vandals decapitated the skeleton, which was interred beneath St Michan's Church in Dublin, during a break-in last week.
On Tuesday, gardaí (Irish police) said they had recovered the skull along with another stolen from the crypt.
The crypt is a popular tourist attraction but tours were cancelled after the break-in.
A Garda Síochána (Irish police force) spokesman told BBC News NI that the stolen skulls were recovered in Dublin but he would not give more details about the circumstances of the find.
He merely said the items "were recovered as a result of information that came into the possession of the investigating gardaí".
He added that National Museum of Ireland was "acting in an advisory capacity" during the recovery.
St Michan's is a functioning church, which hosts regular Anglican services.
Its crypt was badly damaged in last week's break-in and several of the mummies - including the 400-year-old remains of a nun - had been desecrated in the incident, according to the Church of Ireland.
Crusaders fought in a series of religious wars known as the Crusades, which were sanctioned by the Church in the medieval period.
The most commonly known of the crusades were campaigns in the eastern Mediterranean aimed at recovering the Holy Land from Muslim rule.
There were seven major crusades as well as many less significant ones.
The Crusader's body was turned over and his head was removed.
A solid steel internal gate was also stolen.
After it was confirmed that the skulls had been found, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Dr Michael Jackson said the emphasis would "turn to consideration of future security and display of the remains in the crypt of St Michan's".
He described the remains as "a priceless part of the heritage of the city of Dublin and its citizens", according to Irish national broadcaster RTÉ.
The crypt was previously vandalised in 1996, when a group of teenagers broke in and took a number of mummified bodies from their coffins.
At that time, the Irish Times reported that the intruders dragged the corpses on to the ground and "seemed to be playing football with their heads". |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_7840000/newsid_7841700/7841789.stm | A new Nato-trained security force has been launched in Kosovo, opposed by Serbia and some Kosovan Serbs.
The 2,500-strong Kosovo Security Force (KSF) is meant to include some minority ethnic Serbs, but is expected to be dominated by ethnic Albanians.
It replaces the Kosovo Protection Corps, which consisted mainly of veterans of the independence struggle against Serbia.
Kosovo's February 2008 independence declaration was rejected by Serbia.
The KSF will be engaged in tasks such as civil protection and crisis response. It is being overseen by Nato, which has 15,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo and will retain ultimate responsibility for security.
"We're at the beginning of a new phase; this force has become a reality," said its commander, General Sylejman Selimi.
But Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic called the force "an illegal paramilitary group" and "a direct threat to national security, peace and stability in the entire region".
Kosovo's independence has been recognised by about 50 nations, including most, but not all, EU states. More than 140 countries have not recognised it.
Kosovo's population is 90% Albanian, with a minority of Serbs, who mainly occupy northern Kosovo, bordering Serbia, and some other areas.
In December the European Union launched its long-delayed mission to strengthen the rule of law in Kosovo, called Eulex. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10944196 | I keep coming back to Silicon Valley in California because it is such an instructive place to think about how businesses are created - and maybe thrive.
For decades now, a stream of start-up companies have grown big and influential in the Valley, built around the silicon chip and the new economy created by computing.
Clustered around all the skills a start-up business needs - the backers, advisers, lawyers, and venture capitalists - the little towns that make up most of the Valley are a magnet for the brightest minds from all over the world, drawn by instinct to a place where things happen.
Fascinating, therefore, to stumble on a building which is a microcosm of Silicon Valley as a whole.
It's run by Saeed Amidi, whose family fled from the Iranian revolution in the 1970s. He went to business college in the Valley and was shocked when his father suggested that he should start working for a living.
The family had opened a Persian rug shop in the main street in the rich little city of Palo Alto, just down the road from Stanford University and the vast concentration of wealth controlled by the venture capitalists in Sand Hill Road.
The shop, Medallion Rugs, is still there. It's a good place to run into start-up business people who have just made a fortune by floating their new companies.
They need floor coverings for their new house - one of the things that newly wealthy people buy.
Saeed Amidi got on with starting his own businesses: real estate, investment, and a water bottling company.
When I first saw it - something like 10 years ago - it still had a sticker on the front from a recent tenant: Google.
Eventually he bought the nondescript premises further up the street that he was running his operations from - 165 University Avenue.
Before Google, it was the offices of the global computer peripheral specialists Logitech, originally from Switzerland, and famous still for their webcams, keyboards and mice.
Successful start-ups don't stay very long at 165 University Avenue. The premises, laid out round an upper floor courtyard, are fine when you have only 20 employees but get crowded if you grow to 60, which is what new businesses tend to do, fast.
After Google moved out, the internet payments company Paypal and the mobile phones developer Danger came along. Both made their founders and backers hundreds of millions of dollars a few years after they moved on from 165 University Avenue, by selling themselves to bigger companies.
And the savvy landlord Saeed Amidi insisted on taking a small stake in Paypal along with the rent.
With a record of canny investment behind him, he's now leasing office space to even more start-ups in larger premises nearby, hoping that the luck of 165 University Avenue can rub off on a new generation of entrepreneurs.
When it comes to starting a business, you can't neglect the influence of luck.
Listen to In at the Start, Peter Day's report on 165 University Avenue for In Business on BBC Radio 4. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6687667.stm | From the soup-eating habits of the middle classes to the application of face cream - a pioneering study of everyday life in Britain is celebrating its 70th birthday... and was the inspiration for Victoria Wood's double Bafta-winning drama.
A common criticism levelled at reality TV shows such as Big Brother is how they have fetishized the tediousness of daily life and turned it into a spectator event. But, as far back as 1937, the belief that mundanity had a currency for historians spurred three young men to start an ambitious and radical project.
When Mass Observation began, members of the public were invited to help with a new research project on daily life in Britain - a "science of ourselves".
As well as asking volunteers to keep diaries, Mass Observation's researchers interviewed people in the street, listened in to conversations, and observed public behaviour in places like pubs and factories.
It wanted to thwart the tendency in modern society to live our daily lives deadened by habit, "with as little consciousness of our surroundings as though we were walking in our sleep".
Mass Observation, or MO, churned out millions of words on mundane subjects such as filling in the football pools, the contents of sweet shop window displays and the way that smokers held their cigarettes.
For a brief period, Mass Observation's interest in our daily lives captured the public imagination. One of its early books, simply called Britain, shifted 100,000 copies in its first 10 days.
After World War II, though, the project petered out as its volunteers dispersed and its founders moved on. For years MO's findings were largely forgotten. But 70 years after it began, it is re-entering public consciousness - and Victoria Wood's ITV drama is not the only sign.
The Magazine is compiling a People's History of Modern Britain - send your memories of the 1960s, in text, pictures or short videos.
Some of the other diaries written by MO volunteers during and just after World War II have been collected in three bestselling anthologies by Simon Garfield. Such writings seem to anticipate our current interest in personal testimony, be it ghost-written celebrity autobiographies or memoirs of ordinary people.
The MO archive at the University of Sussex has also informed books such as David Kynaston's Austerity Britain, 1945-1951, which is currently riding high in the bestsellers' lists, and Jon Savage's recent Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945.
These files are the perfect resource for the growing trend for "history from below" - the story of ordinary people rather than of political and cultural elites.
But MO's observations can also teach us something about our own lives today. One of its original aims was to challenge what it called "the voicelessness of everyman". It wanted to make ordinary citizens' lives and opinions better known to the people who governed them.
When it began in the 1930s, opinion formers made no real attempt to find out the views of voters. Ordinary people were rarely seen or heard on film or radio.
MO's founders were annoyed by the lazy assumptions about "the man in the street" by the media and political elite - "a tiny group, with different habits of mind, ways of life, from those millions they are catering for".
MO's most significant legacy is that it made ordinary people visible and audible, perhaps for the first time. Nowadays, ordinary folk are seen everywhere, from reality TV shows to street-corner vox pops. Their opinions are endlessly canvassed about everything from political leaders to ice-cream flavours.
So it's fitting that MO is still going - revived in 1981 with a smaller-scale version of the panel of volunteer-diarists. These people, who number about 400, continue to send in their writings today, in response to questionnaires about mundane subjects such as junk mail, the National Lottery and, most recently, the ban on smoking in public places.
Joe Moran's book Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime was partly inspired by the Mass Observation project, and has just been published by Profile.
It was the decade of the Beatles, the Post Office Tower and the UK's first shopping centres. Send your memories of the 1960s using the form below. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26359210 | The government will hold a summit of drugs experts and police later as it attempts to tackle the issue of so-called "legal highs".
Home Office minister Norman Baker said the substances, mostly created in laboratories in East Asia, were a "very serious issue" for public health.
They were dangerous because people buying the hallucinogenic drugs did not know what was in them, he added.
The government has imposed bans on more than 250 legal highs.
They are officially known as "new psychoactive substances", with several new types coming on to the market each week.
Substances that produce similar effects to illegal drugs (such as cocaine and ecstasy) but are not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
This is because there is not enough research about them to base a decision on.
Legal highs are marketed at young people and presented in bright packaging.
Mr Baker said they were readily available, even reportedly being sold from ice cream vans outside schools, adding: "That's not at all acceptable."
He will be meeting experts on Thursday to discuss the best ways of keeping up with the influx of legal highs.
He told the BBC that the Home Office had been looking at models around the world, such as Ireland, where a blanket ban on new substances has been brought in, and New Zealand, where legal highs are dealt with as a health issue.
The latest official UK figures show 68 deaths were linked to legal highs in 2012, up from 10 in 2009.
Mr Baker said: "This is a growing problem. Some of these substances are very dangerous and can and do lead to deaths.
"The way they're marketed and presented suggests to people that they are legal and safe. But sometimes they are not legal and they are certainly not safe."
He also said there were "no simple solution".
Mr Baker said the summit and a separate review would inform government policy, which was expected to be turned into legislation at some stage.
The government announced in January that the UK was opting out of planned European Commission rules on legal highs, arguing that they would make banning them slower and "fetter" efforts to deal with the problem. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/s/stockport/8230654.stm | Stockport County have signed teenage Reading striker Nicholas Bignall on loan until January.
The 19-year-old has signed in time to play in the Hatters' Johnstone's Paint Trophy tie at Crewe on Tuesday.
Bignall played in both of Reading's Carling Cup ties this season, scoring twice in the Royals' 5-1 win over Burton Albion.
He spent time on loan in League One with Northampton and Cheltenham last season, scoring once for both clubs. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-47138450/paris-fire-survivor-jumped-across-balconies-to-escape | More than 50 people had to be rescued from a fatal fire in an apartment block in Paris on Monday.
Claire spoke about her escape from the fire, which was one of the most deadly in the French capital in years.
Investigators believe the fire may have been started deliberately. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-47761231 | A Belfast man has died after a one-vehicle crash in County Antrim.
Jim McGranaghan, who was 52, died after the vehicle he was travelling in crashed near Nutt's Corner on Friday.
The crash happened at the junction of Ballyutoag Road and Ballyutoag Hill shortly before 05:30 GMT.
Two other men who were in the vehicle were taken to hospital.
Police are appealing for anyone who witnessed the crash to contact them. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46996875 | Sportswear brand Asics will recycle used clothing to make the official uniforms for Japan's Olympic and Paralympic teams.
The uniforms will be worn by the home team at next year's games in Tokyo.
Asics hopes to gather 30,000 items through collection boxes in stores and at sporting events.
It comes as the fashion industry faces increasing pressure to make more sustainable clothing.
Asics said the uniforms will be made from polyester extracted from donated items.
Other recyclable materials extracted from the items collected will be turned into fuel, among other uses, the firm said.
The fashion industry more broadly has been under increasing pressure to make its practices more sustainable.
A parliamentary committee in the UK last year raised concerns about the waste the fashion industry generates, as well as its growing impact on climate.
Some brands, such as Burberry, have troubled environmental groups by destroying unsold clothes and accessories in an effort to prevent them from being stolen or sold cheaply.
The UN said the global fashion industry contributes around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
To grow enough cotton for a single pair of jeans requires about 10,000 litres of water, which is enough to supply a person with drinking water for ten years, the UN said.
Cumulatively, the fashion industry produces about 20% of global waste water.
About 85% of textiles end up in landfills or are incinerated.
However, the 2018 Pulse of the Fashion Industry Report found a 6% improvement over the previous year in general sustainability efforts across the industry. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25647057 | A jihadist rebel group in Syria has called on its supporters to attack rival opposition factions that do not support its cause.
The call by the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) follows days of rebel infighting that has left scores dead.
It came hours after another rebel group called on ISIS to observe a ceasefire.
The al-Nusra Front said the factional fighting benefited the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Opposition activists say some 270 people have been killed in factional fighting since Friday. Clashes are continuing in Raqqa, a city under full rebel control and previously an ISIS stronghold.
BBC world affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge says the damage being done to forces opposing President Assad was clearly recognised in an audio message from Nusra Front chief Abu Mohammed al-Julani, in which he called for a truce.
"The regime will gain new life when it was close to collapse," he said in an audio message posted on Twitter.
"(The fighting) risks costing us dearly on the ground if it continues."
He accused ISIS - also known as ISIL - of having a "flawed policy" that had played "a key role in fuelling the conflict".
The al-Nusra leader proposed an initiative to end the fighting that would include a ceasefire, a prisoner exchange and setting up an Islamic committee to mediate disputes.
However, a defiant ISIS audio message later urged its fighters to attack other rebel groups.
Spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani - although making no reference to the al-Nusra initiative - called on the militants to "crush them (the rebels) totally and kill the conspiracy at birth".
He also threatened all members of the main opposition political grouping, the National Coalition.
"Everyone who belongs to this entity is a legitimate target for us, in all places, unless he publicly declares his rejection of that group and of fighting the mujahideen," he said.
ISIS, formed in April 2013, grew out of al-Qaeda's affiliate organisation in Iraq and has since become one of the main jihadist groups fighting in Syria. It has gained a reputation for brutal behaviour in the areas it controls.
The SNC is itself deeply divided and on Tuesday postponed a vote on whether or not to attend a peace conference in Geneva planned for 22 January.
Earlier on Tuesday, activists in Aleppo told the BBC that militants from ISIS had summarily executed at least 50 captives who included medics, local journalists and members of rival rebel groups.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that at least 34 foreign jihadists had been killed by rival rebel groups in Jabal al-Zawiya, in north-western Idlib province.
None of the reported killings can be independently confirmed.
Since last Thursday, large-scale attacks by an alliance of rebel groups have been taking place across northern and north-eastern Syria on ISIS strongholds and strategic positions. Scores are said to have died, including civilians.
The alliance says the offensive is driven by public anger in ISIS-controlled territories over practices including strict interpretation of Islamic laws as well as the kidnapping of journalists and torture of prisoners. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21911842 | Xi Jinping has said China's friendship with Russia guarantees "strategic balance and peace" in the world, on the second day of his trip to Moscow.
Mr Xi, on his first official overseas trip as leader, has already met President Vladimir Putin.
He described the Russian leader as a "good friend".
On Friday, Russia's state-owned energy firm Rosneft agreed to triple oil supplies to China in return for a $2bn (£1.3bn) loan.
The two countries also agreed a preliminary deal for a gas pipeline to be built, although analysts say they are still a long way from agreeing terms.
Russia is one of the world's biggest energy producers, and China is the world's top energy consumer.
Bilateral trade reached a record $88bn last year, but the figure is still a fraction of China's trade with the EU and the US.
In recent years, the two nations have also been closely aligned on global political issues.
They have vetoed attempts by other members of the UN Security Council to authorise tougher action against Syria's government.
And they have been largely in agreement over North Korea's nuclear programme.
Mr Xi told students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations that China would continue to oppose interference in the internal affairs of other countries.
"We must respect the right of each country in the world to independently choose its path of development," he said.
"Strong high-level Chinese-Russian ties not only meet our interests, but serve as an important, reliable guarantee of international strategic balance and peace."
During the Cold War the two countries, while both nominally Communist, were bitter rivals.
But both sides have been full of praise for each other during Mr Xi's visit.
"We can already say this is a historic visit with positive results," Mr Putin said.
Mr Xi was confirmed as China's president last week, concluding a lengthy transition process that saw him assume the Communist Party leadership in November 2012.
Commentators say he is much more charismatic than his predecessor, Hu Jintao.
On the first day of his trip to Russia, Mr Xi stepped off the plane with his wife, well-known singer Peng Liyuan.
Ms Peng's appearance was widely reported in China's state media, and caused an outpouring of debate on microblogs.
One message on the Sina Weibo website said: "China's quest for a graceful first lady is over." |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/7341190.stm | Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks has written to the club's chief executive Rick Parry calling for him to resign.
Hicks is thought to feel that Parry is siding with co-owner George Gillett in the club's ongoing power struggle.
The latest twist comes on the day Dubai International Capital said it will wait for the saga to be resolved before pursuing its interest in the club.
BBC Sport understands Parry is highly unlikely to resign and that Hicks lacks boardroom support for his shock move.
With the club ownership split 50-50 between the two Americans, Hicks would need approval from Gillett to force Parry out of his position.
But in a brief statement, Parry, who has yet to see the three-page letter, said: "It is my intention to remain focused on the job of serving Liverpool Football Club to the best of my abilities at this very important time of our season."
DIC is said to be unwilling to do business while there is so much turmoil at the club.
"You have two partners who do not see eye to eye. And we decided that we pull out completely. Let them sort out their problems," DIC chief executive Sameer Al Ansari told Arabian Business Magazine.
He added: "We will continue to be interested and would love to own the club but we are not going to put ourselves in a difficult situation where we make the investment but we have no control over the destiny of the club and we cannot influence the success of the club.
"Unfortunately, the terms that have been put on the table do not allow us to do that."
Only last month, Parry asked for the Liverpool co-owners to resolve their differences.
"If they're not able to co-exist then there needs to be a solution where one buys and one sells, or both sell," Parry told BBC Radio 5 Live's Sportsweek.
Hicks is said to be unhappy with those comments and was not at Anfield on Tuesday night to watch Liverpool defeat Arsenal in the quarter-final of the Champions League.
Gillett was shown on TV world-wide sitting next to Parry in the Liverpool directors' box.
BBC Sport understands that Hicks feels that the club needs a fresh injection of commercial clout in an attempt to boost their off the field revenue.
Hicks believes the club is falling behind the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea in those areas but the American also feels that Parry has failed to deliver strength and direction in the transfer market.
It is also understood Hicks is aiming to take sole control of the club with his relationship with Gillett described as "unworkable".
But although Gillett is willing to sell, it is thought that he is unwilling to sell to Hicks.
The pair have had a tough time since taking control of the club in February 2007.
Despite seeing the club enjoy some success on the pitch, with Liverpool reaching last season's Champions League final, Hicks and Gillett's relationship with manager Rafa Benitez has often been strained.
Benitez has become increasingly frustrated with the lack of transfer funds made available to him over the past year, although he was able to bring in the likes of Fernando Torres and Ryan Babel.
The American pair have not endeared themselves to Liverpool supporters who idolise Benitez and have shown their backing for the Spaniard with a series of rallies.
Plans for a new stadium in Stanley Park have also had to be downsized due to rising costs. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3236389.stm | A draft Afghan constitution has been unveiled, setting out a new political system and defining Islam's role in the country.
It calls for the creation of an Islamic republic, with a presidential system, and where citizens have equal rights.
The draft will be debated by a loya jirga grand assembly next month, paving the way for possible elections in 2004.
A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan needed stability and the new constitution was made with "the next 100, 200 years" in mind.
The ceremony came as a delegation from the UN Security Council toured the country to examine post-war reconstruction efforts.
The delegation is the first of its kind to visit the country since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.
The UN envoys headed to the western town of Herat on Monday to meet Governor Ismail Khan who is often accused of ignoring central authority.
The Constitutional Committee had been due to present the draft in September, but it was delayed for technical reasons.
The draft was handed over at a formal ceremony with Mr Karzai, former King Mohammed Zaher Shah and foreign diplomats at Kabul's Presidential Palace on Monday.
The 88-year-old ex-monarch said he hoped the new constitution "will direct people towards peace, security and democracy".
The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Kabul says, under the constitution, the country would be called the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
There would be a presidential form of government, with a vice-president and a parliament with upper and lower houses.
Afghans would have equal rights, and there would be a drive to promote the education of women following their experiences under the Taleban.
"The draft is based on Islamic principles and recognises that no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam," the commission said in a statement.
Our correspondent says the draft makes no mention of sharia law.
The unveiling has been long-awaited by ordinary Afghans, lawyers and experts who have been debating the constitution's likely provisions over the last few months.
Hardliners have sought assurance that the constitution will not turn the country into a secular state. Others were pressing for the adoption of civil laws but in conformity with Islamic principles.
The international community wanted to see that basic human rights were guaranteed and the rights of women protected.
The constitution was drafted by the 35-member commission, which started work more than a year ago.
Hundreds of thousands of questionnaires were sent to communities around the country asking for their views on a new constitution for the country. Those who could not read or write recorded their thoughts on tape.
"It was the day Afghans had been waiting for" |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/fa_cup/6282171.stm | Substitute Paul Peschisolido's late strike earned Derby a place in the fifth round of the FA Cup at the expense of Bristol Rovers.
The Canadian was played in by team-mate Steve Howard and coolly slotted the ball in from just inside the area.
It was harsh on valiant Rovers who saw Richard Walker and Sammy Igoe go agonisingly close with headers.
The game turned in Derby's favour when Aaron Lescott saw red for a foul on Arturo Lupoli with 20 minutes left.
Paul Trollope's outfit did not come to Pride Park to defend and made their intentions clear as early as the third minute when star striker Richard Lambert directed his six-yard header towards goal but into the arms of Stephen Bywater.
Bywater was then forced into acrobatic action, tipping over Walker and Igoe's headed efforts.
When he was beaten by Andy Sandell's header, referee Andy D'Urso came to Derby's rescue by ruling out the goal for a foul on Bywater.
The Rams' shot-stopper was also forced into clearing a loose goalbound backpass from team-mate Richard Jackson, with the alert Walker breathing down his neck.
The Championship leaders had to increase their forays into Rovers' half, and they did after the break.
Lupoli, their on-loan striker from Arsenal, was unlucky not to score with a header that had to be cleared off the line by Martin Carruthers, while Howard struck his 12-yard effort two feet wide of the Rovers goal.
However, Derby's fortunes changed on 70 minutes when Lescott was shown a straight red for a late tackle on Lupoli.
With the away side down by a man, Billy Davies' men sensed they could steal the win.
And with 10 minutes left they did just that when substitute Peschisolido broke the offside trap to give the home side a valuable yet undeserved win.
"We knew this cup game would be difficult because we were at home.
"They are 56 places below us but the cup is a leveller. It's a great chance for these teams to come and dig in."
He added: "It was a great goal from 'Pesch'. He's put us in the fifth round for the first time since 1999."
"We can take a lot of pride from our performance, I said to the boys it was a chance to make their mark.
"In the first half we got hold of the ball and created a lot of chances. I was disappointed we didn't have the lead at half-time."
On Aaron Lescott's red card Trollope added: "A yellow card would have done."
Derby: Bywater, Jackson, Moore, Michael Johnson, Camara, Fagan (Bisgaard 85), Malcolm (Smith 81), Seth Johnson, Barnes, Lupoli (Peschisolido 73), Howard.
Subs Not Used: Edworthy, Oakley.
Bristol Rovers: Phillips, Lescott, Hinton, Elliott, Carruthers, Igoe (Rigg 83), Campbell, Disley, Sandell (Haldane 76), Walker (Ryan Green 72), Lambert.
Subs Not Used: Lines, Parrinello. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-44230083/police-federation-a-tough-audience-for-any-politician | Police Federation - a tough audience for politicians Jump to media player How did the new Home Secretary Sajid Javid get on an the annual conference, compared with his predecessors?
Sajid Javid appointed home secretary Jump to media player He replaces Amber Rudd who "inadvertently misled" MPs over what she knew about immigration targets.
The annual Police Federation conference has a history of given politicians a rough ride. So how did the new Home Secretary Sajid Javid compare to predecessors like Jack Straw and Theresa May? |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1617475.stm | The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has said that the United States bombing campaign against Afghanistan represents a more mature approach than taken during previous wars.
In an interview with the BBC, the Dalai Lama said the selective nature of the bombing, the precautions taken to prevent civilian casualties and the dropping of food packages were signs of change.
He said there was an emphasis on humanitarian concerns, in comparison with the First and Second World Wars, and he believed humanity was becoming more mature.
He was speaking after an address to the European parliament in Strasbourg during which he said the international community should develop a culture where dialogue and non-violence is used to resolve differences. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46671811 | As many as 3,000 people have been evacuated after residents of a newly completed tower block in Australia reported hearing "cracking noises".
Police confirmed they had found a crack in the 33-storey Opal Tower, in Sydney Olympic Park, following reports of the noise on the 10th floor.
Engineers said the high-rise tower has moved up to 2mm, local media reported.
A 1km (0.6 mile) evacuation zone, which also affected other buildings, was put in place amid safety fears.
An email to residents of a nearby apartment block said the evacuation had been ordered because "there is a potential for the tower to collapse", according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Specialists were due to enter the 10th floor to inspect the crack and assess whether the building was safe, Greg White, a spokesman for New South Wales Fire And Rescue, told reporters.
He said police had been called at about 14:35 local time (03:45 GMT) about a "loud crack".
"They attended, identified there was a crack in the building and they called for Fire And Rescue assistance," he said.
"We've attended and police and Fire And Rescue evacuated up to 3,000 people from the building and the surrounding areas."
The Opal Tower, which was completed earlier this year, was described by developer Ecove when the design was first unveiled as "a curvaceous, triangular-shaped building with green walls of living plants embedded into the façade, and elevated communal courtyards every five levels".
An Ecove spokesman said it was aware of the "concerns" and had "notified" the builder, the Morning Herald said. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8031587.stm | A UK human rights lawyer has flown to Laos to assist a pregnant Briton who faces possible death by firing squad, if convicted of drug smuggling.
Prosecutors say Samantha Orobator, 20, of London, was in possession of 1.5lb (680g) of heroin when she was arrested at Wattay airport, Laos, last August.
Her trial has been brought forward and is due to start this week.
Legal charity Reprieve said its lawyer, Anna Morris, has been given permission to see Miss Orabator on Tuesday.
Miss Orobator has been held at Phonthong prison in the east Asian country since last August.
She became pregnant in the prison in December and is due to give birth in September, it is claimed.
Reprieve says authorities in Laos have brought the trial forward a year to avoid her having proper legal representation.
The charity says the decision to reschedule the trial was only taken after arrangements were made for her to see a lawyer for the first time.
Laotian government spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing insisted that "the trial will be carried out fairly".
He said it is expected to be held this week but was unable to confirm a date.
Ms Morris flew into the country on Sunday after permission was granted to meet Miss Orobator on Tuesday.
Ms Morris told the BBC: "Things are moving quickly. We found out only this morning that the trial wasn't going to take place today [Monday], but we still have no more information as to when it will take place.
"We are of course concerned, given that the prison conditions are well documented, we are concerned for her welfare, and we are concerned for the sort of nutrition she's receiving, but we'll know more once we've seen her.
"But at this point we can certainly say that we're very concerned."
In Laos, anyone caught with more than 1lb (500g) of heroin faces a mandatory death sentence.
At least 39 people have been sentenced to death in Laos since 2003.
Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith said of the pregnant Briton: "There can hardly be a circumstance where scheduling a capital trial is less appropriate.
"She is five months pregnant, without ever having met a lawyer, facing a show trial for her life."
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said British Embassy officials, including the Ambassador, have visited Miss Orobator a total of six times since her arrest.
British officials said these visits had been limited to a period of about 20 minutes once a month.
There is no British Embassy in Laos and the nearest is in the Thai capital, Bangkok. The Foreign Office only learned of her arrest when Australian authorities passed on information from another prison inmate.
The FCO reiterated the government's opposition to the death penalty "in all circumstances".
An FCO spokesman said: "In cases where a British national faces charges that carry the death penalty or has been sentenced to death, we make representations at whatever stage and level is deemed appropriate.
"We take every opportunity to make representations to the Lao authorities about our opposition to the death penalty."
Her mother Jane Orobator said she was "so scared" about her daughter's situation.
"I'm just appealing to the British government, to the Laos authorities, to just please release her. They should just bring her back to me."
Mrs Orobator added that she has no idea why her daughter was in Laos.
Mrs Orobator last heard from her daughter in July, when she was on holiday in Holland. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-parliaments-43245116 | Still no sign of the return to the Commons of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill and the Trade Bill - two vital Brexit measures that have completed committee stage consideration but are under threat of hostile amendment, when they come back before the whole House.
Jeremy Corbyn's speech on Monday has cleared the way for Labour to back Conservative MP Anna Soubry's EU customs union amendment to the Trade Bill - new clause five - which means it could very well be passed. In the Commons as in the Lords, the government is only in danger of defeat if Labour pitches in with Tory rebels.
I'm told no decision has been taken for Labour to support the Soubry amendment, but it is doubtless a serious temptation, because passing it would cause huge problems for Theresa May. Here's the amendment in two deadly lines: "It shall be the objective of an appropriate authority to take all necessary steps to implement an international trade agreement which enables the UK to participate after exit day in a customs union with the EU." It would commit the government to a policy Theresa May has rejected and one which would split her government.
So the bills are being held in limbo, while government whips try to find a compromise that would satisfy Conservative rebels, without infuriating Brexiteers. Which may not be possible. The Brexiteer line is already clear - staying in a customs union would be a betrayal of the referendum vote because it would leave Britain as an EU "rule-taker" and foreclose the possibility of lucrative international trade deals across the globe. The Remainer line is that a failure to agree "a" customs union would have a devastating impact on British industry. In short this is a crunch point, and one which the government is keen to postpone.
Through a rather unexpected route, a second front may be about to open. Some rather arcane reshuffling of who controls what backbench debating time in the Commons has given the Liaison Committee (the super-committee of select committee chairs) the opportunity to put down vote-able motions of their own. The first motion they will propose, when they get a debating slot, will be on.... drum-roll.... the customs union.
It is a moot point whether such a vote would be binding on the government. But potentially it would provide a serious test of Commons opinion. What the Remain side hopes is that it would force the Prime Minister to face down what they call her "hard Brexit" wing, and take on board a commitment to "a" customs union. She would be able to tell them that they could not get a Brexit without a customs union through the Commons so they would just have to lump it. They believe this cause would bring out all the "submarine Remainers" who they believe have been biding their time and waiting for the moment to strike. It might even induce a number of ministers to surface and hoist the Jolly Roger - or possibly the EU flag - even if it meant resignation.
It is hard to see the Brexiteers accepting this without a fight. There would undoubtedly be a huge row and even cabinet resignations and that could quite possibly spell the end of Theresa May's premiership. John Major's helpful (sic) suggestion of a free vote on these issues in the Commons would not defuse the threat - just free up Remainer ministers. Whipped or not, the divisions among Conservative MPs will not disappear.
Meanwhile their Lordships will be trying to create more divisive votes to test the Tory whips and the consciences of pro-EU Conservatives. When, at some point after Easter, the EU Withdrawal Bill enters its report stage, the aim of Labour and the other Opposition parties, and of many on the crossbenches, will be to attach as many amendments as possible, ultimately forcing the government to whip Conservative MPs to overturn them, when the bill is sent back to the Commons.
Some amendments may be swallowed by ministers, even if they have to gulp pretty hard. Would they die in a ditch to keep the UK out of the atomic energy agency, Euratom, or the student exchange programme, Erasmus? But on the bigger issues, they cannot easily swallow amendments which require the UK to stay in "the" or "a" customs union, still less amendments which mandate a further referendum. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4391640.stm | Japan has moved closer to lifting a two-year ban on US and Canadian beef after government health advisors said the meat posed a 'slim' risk to consumers.
A sub-committee of Japan's Food Safety Commission said imports, which had been halted amid fears of mad-cow disease, could resume as early as December.
The ban has proved controversial and the US threatened retaliatory tariffs.
to Japan on 15 and 16 November.
The ban on US beef was imposed in December 2003, seven months after halting imports from Canada.
At the end of 2004, it seemed as if a breakthrough had been negotiated when Japan agreed to exempt cattle that was younger than 20 months.
Japan attached conditions to the deal and it pretty much stalled, prompting increased frustration among US producers.
Before the ban, Japan was the biggest importer of US beef.
Speaking on Monday, the chairman of the committee that looked into the risks related to US beef said that a ban could be lifted as long as dangerous body parts - such as heads and spinal cords - were removed.
"Based on the assumption that all precautions are taken as requested, we consider the difference in risk between US and Japanese beef to be extremely small," said committee chairman Yasuhiro Yoshikawa.
"If the conditions are maintained, the risk is very slim."
However, the lifting of the ban if far from certain.
The sub-committee will now forward their report to the full Food Safety Commission, which is expected to consider it on Wednesday.
Following that, there will be public hearings and finally the government will be asked to approve or reject any changes to the ban.
While policymakers may be close to reaching an agreement, surveys have shown that the majority of Japanese consumers remain very wary of US beef.
Mr Yoshikawa also urged caution, adding that "imports must be stopped if there is a concern of a risk to humans". |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4204877.stm | Up to 300 Hindu pilgrims are feared dead and hundreds injured during a stampede at a Hindu festival in India.
The stampede happened during a pilgrimage to the remote Mandhar Devi temple in western Maharashtra state.
Officials say thousands panicked during a religious procession after a fire broke out in roadside stalls.
Many pilgrims were crushed and burned to death as the fire forced crowds into a narrow stairway leading to the hilltop temple.
The stampede occurred near the village of Wai, more than 200km (125 miles) south of Mumbai (Bombay), where pilgrims congregate every year at the temple to venerate a Hindu goddess.
This year more than 300,000 people had gathered, and the narrow path leading to the temple was jammed with worshippers, many of them women and children.
Accounts vary as to what caused the stampede. One local police inspector blamed a fire caused by an electrical short circuit in a makeshift shop.
Other witnesses said pilgrims began burning and looting roadside stalls after they became frustrated at long delays in gaining entry to the temple site.
The procession quickly became panicked and the narrow passage was jammed as crowds surged forward to avoid the flames.
A local police chief, V N Deshmukh, put the death toll at more than 300 and said that more than 200 were taken by bus to local hospitals, the AFP news agency reported.
District official Subarrao Patil told Reuters that 250 to 300 people died in the crush.
"This does not include the people who may have been charred to death in the shops that have gutted nearby in the fire," he said.
"People got suffocated in the crush. Bodies are still lying there," shopkeeper Sanjay Mistry, who was among the pilgrims, told AFP.
"There was a lot of chaos and cries of 'many people are dead'," he added.
Stampedes are not uncommon at Hindu religious festivals, which often attract millions of worshippers and are notoriously difficult to police.
The event at Wai takes place every year during the night of a full moon.
Pilgrims started arriving on Monday, ahead of the full moon on Tuesday night.
At least 39 people died in August 2003 when devotees panicked on the banks of a holy river 175km north-east of Bombay.
In 1999, 51 pilgrims died when a safety rope snapped at a Hindu shrine in southern India, and 50 were killed in 1986 in a stampede in the northern town of Haridwar.
In 1954, some 800 are thought to have died in the northern city of Allahabad - the worst such incident recorded. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4403279.stm | President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party has won two-thirds of the vote in Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections.
The result enables the president to change the constitution to install a successor without immediately calling elections as presently required.
So far the party has taken 71 of 120 contested seats, and Mr Mugabe can appoint another 30 deputies to the 150-seat parliament.
The opposition, which has 39 seats, has spoken of "massive fraud" in the poll.
In the last parliamentary election in 2000, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won 58 seats.
Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF won 61 of the eligible seats but its parliamentary strength was boosted with the extra 30 presidential appointments, but this was short of a two-thirds majority.
In these latest polls, the recently sacked information minister Jonathan Moyo won a surprise seat as an independent.
Mr Moyo, the architect of Zimbabwe's tough media laws who fell out with the president over the appointment of the country's first woman vice-president, took the Tsholotsho constituency from the opposition MDC.
The BBC's Themba Nkosi says Zanu-PF supporters have taken to the streets in celebration in northern parts of the country, but the atmosphere is more muted in the second city of Bulawayo where the MDC draws its support.
Security is tight, with police patrolling the streets warning the winners not to provoke those who lost, he says.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme that he was "over the moon" about his party's victory.
All Zanu-PF's hard work had paid off and the result was a vindication of the party's good policies, he said.
He rejected claims by the UK, the US and Germany that Thursday's election was "flawed".
"These were the most free and fair elections in the world," he said.
Mr Tsvangirai accused the ruling party of stealing the election.
"We are deeply disturbed by the fraudulent activities we have unearthed," he said.
"We believe the people of Zimbabwe must defend their votes, their right to a free and a fair election - this is what has been denied," he said.
President Mugabe, who has been in power for 25 years, dismissed opposition complaints as nonsense.
Average turnout was below 50%, chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramai said while local election observers describing the process as smooth.
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, which had some 6,000 observers in the 8,000 polling stations, says that some 10% of would-be voters were turned away, either because their names were not on the electoral roll, they did not have the right identity papers, or they were in the wrong constituency.
One man told the BBC News website that his name had been taken off the register since the last election and yet the name of his aunt was still there, although she had died six years ago.
Human rights groups say that hundreds of thousands of "ghost voters" appear on the electoral roll of 5.8 million people. They fear these entries could be used to record fraudulent votes.
Our correspondent says MDC officials were visibly shocked when the Harare South seat went to Zanu-PF, leaving them to question the voters' register and the re-drawing of constituency boundaries.
Parliament speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa, once tipped to succeed Mr Mugabe, lost in the central Kwekwe constituency.
MDC candidate Heather Bennett, wife of jailed MP Roy Bennett, lost his Chimanimani seat. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34997417 | The British photographer John Stewart is still active at the age of nearly 95. His extraordinary life has seen Japanese PoW camps, encounters with Picasso and Matisse, and a long stint shooting the fashion and business elite of New York. He's also won acclaim as one of the finest practitioners of the still life. Hugh Schofield met John Stewart at his home in southern France.
There are not many people who can recall walking along Avenue Foch in 1930s Paris, wearing badge lapels of the right-wing leagues that proliferated in those tense political times.
Even more surprising is to hear the reminiscence from the mouth of an Englishman.
"Everything was very political back then, and everyone in my very posh lycee belonged to one right-wing club or another.
"I was with the Croix-du-Feu, which counted as left-wing compared to the other lot, who were royalists.
"But when we went out we would wear both insignia - one of them inverted. Then if we bumped into the royalists, we could change them over and pretend we were with them!"
Speaking with John Stewart brings back the past in such vivid detail, you need to collect yourself to remember that these events took place 80 years ago.
His English is very lightly accented with French - testament to the mixed influences of his youth and a life now lived mainly in Paris and Provence. It is also peppered with the occasional Wodehouse-ism. He never goes, he tootles.
He was born in 1919. His maternal grandfather was founder of the Gestetner copying fortune, and his father was the company's representative in France. It was originally hoped that John too would enter the business - but he had other ideas.
The memories flood out over lunch. In 1937 he got his baccalaureate and went to the UK, where he wangled a job as stockbroker at Rothschild's Bank.
With other members of the London "jeunesse doree" he joined the 332nd Anti-aircraft Company of the Royal Engineers, which seems to have combined searchlight duties with alcohol-fuelled high jinks around the Home Counties.
"Remind me to tell you about John Gielgud's bathtub," gives the flavour.
With the outbreak of war, things got more serious. With fluent French, Stewart was trained as an undercover agent and sent to Syria to help in the fight against Vichy. But his ship was diverted to Singapore - at the worst possible time. In February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese and Stewart was a prisoner of war.
"Early on I had a dream - that I would be in captivity for three-and-a-half years. Afterwards I counted the days, and it was exactly that.
"That dream I took as a message of the potential for survival. I asked myself - what is most needed here? And I realised that for 100,000 men there were only seven Japanese speakers. So I decided to learn Japanese and become an interpreter. It saved my life."
Stewart believes he is now the last living survivor from one of the worst camps on the notorious Burma railway, Sonkrai.
"When the cholera came it was pitiful. When you went to sleep you never knew if the man in the next bed would be alive in the morning. You didn't know if you yourself would be on the funeral pyre by the end of the next day.
"No-one knows how anyone will react in such circumstances, but one thing became very clear to me: if you had a good education and a good background, you could detach yourself better - rather than identifying solely with the appalling conditions and the disease."
We need to fast-forward now. Dessert is approaching.
1951. Married, living in New York, needing direction. He and his wife decide to spend a few summer weeks in Saint-Paul de Vence, the bohemian colony on the Cote d'Azur.
Stewart brought with him a Leica camera - not that he had any intention of taking more than a few holiday pictures. Hanging out at the bar of the Colombe d'Or inn, he made the acquaintance of a Communist poet - who suggested they go and see Pablo Picasso.
"So the next day we went to Vallauris. Picasso was normally very gruff with people coming to snoop but he was charming to me, and let me snap away.
"At the end of the day I plucked up courage and asked him, would he come to a field of wheat with his painting kit and pretend to paint, so I could photograph him there - and he said. 'Yes!'"
That evening, recounting the story in the Colombe d'Or, he got a second invitation - to see Matisse.
"He was in bed working on sketches for his chapel at Vence. There was a cat there too which made him wheeze, and my wife was wheezing too. So we didn't stay long."
Picasso, Matisse, Georges Braque: these were the start of Stewart's first portfolio. But it was another chance encounter that launched him.
"I was outside the Matisse chapel in Vence at its inauguration, and another photographer was there. We started talking and he asked where I got my stuff developed.
"'And what is your name?' I asked.
"'Henri Cartier-Bresson!' The most famous photographer in France! After that I had no choice. It was photography or nothing!"
Stewart returned to New York where he trained under the influential arts director of Harper's Bazaar magazine, the Russian Alexey Brodovitch. He embarked on a highly successful career through the height of Mad Men era Manhattan.
In addition to the models and captains of industry he photographed by the hundred, his most famous coup was becoming official portraitist for Muhammad Ali.
The sweat-flecked face; the extended arm and fist; Ali holding a butterfly: these world-famous images were the result of a three-day session in 1977.
Stewart had been approached by two men who offered him the franchise for a poster and merchandising campaign featuring Ali's image. If he stumped up $50,000, he could take the pictures and have the rights.
"So I tootled up to Chicago, and at this vast mansion I was ushered in by a man in a turban. There were about 50 people waiting around for an audience with the great Ali.
"Down the end of a long corridor there was a red-and-gold Chinese portico. On one side was a stuffed tiger growling at me, on the other a stuffed lion. In the middle was Ali in sports clothes, slumped over with his head nearly on his knees.
"All I heard was a grunt: 'It's Ramadan - I'm hungry!'"
Stewart got his pictures, but the franchisers turned out to be incompetent. In the end he sold the rights on to his friend Andy Warhol.
The stories keep coming. How Stewart got a job advising David Lean on the making of Bridge on the River Kwai ("My input was zero! He didn't want my advice!"); how Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave him permission to spend a year in the remote Ladakh region of northern India.
His time in a PoW camp left Stewart with an abiding interest in eastern philosophy and culture, and he has travelled frequently to the region. He also set up the IRIS eye charity, which has saved tens of thousands of people from blindness in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Laos.
In the last 30 years his work has focused on still lifes - and especially on the folds of cloth. Critics have made comparisons with great artists of the past like Zurbaran and Chardin. He continues to use a rare pigment-based developing technique, which creates, at first sight, an illusion of charcoal drawing.
At the end of lunch I have been fed stories about pre-war France, spy schools, Japanese bayonets, butterflies on the corpses of PoWs, the Mediterranean and Manhattan, Rothschilds and Muhammad Ali.
The sun is lowering over the Luberon hills. Stewart needs a zizz. I need to tootle. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/scot_cups/8464438.stm | Montrose set up a lucrative Scottish Cup visit to Hibernian after overcoming a spirited Edinburgh City.
Steven Nicholas turned his man to fire the visitors ahead on 20 minutes but Dougie Gair levelled before half time after some slack defending.
John Maitland headed the Third Division strugglers ahead again after John Gemmell's shot had hit the post.
Montrose substitute Daryl Nicol wrapped the tie up on 84 minutes following a mazy run from inside his own half.
90:00+1:59 The referee ends the match.
90:00+1:36 Daryl Nicol produces a left-footed shot from just outside the box that goes wide left of the goal.
89:13 Substitution John Gemmell leaves the field to be replaced by Jordan Leyden.
88:17 Outswinging corner taken left-footed by Dougie Gair from the left by-line, Andrew McNeil makes a save.
87:31 The ball is sent over by Ross MacNamara, save by Andrew McNeil.
84:48 Outswinging corner taken from the left by-line by Dougie Gair, clearance made by Sean Crighton.
84:23 Outswinging corner taken left-footed by Dougie Gair from the left by-line, clearance by Steven Tweed.
83:17 GOAL - Daryl Nicol:Edinburgh City 1 - 3 Montrose Daryl Nicol grabs a goal from inside the box to the bottom left corner of the goal. Edinburgh City 1-3 Montrose.
81:17 Substitution Marek Tomana replaces Sean Fleming.
81:04 Direct free kick taken by Alan Cambell.
81:04 Substitution Danny Denholn goes off and Ross Guthrie comes on.
81:04 Foul by Michael Bruce on Steven Nicholas, free kick awarded.
80:10 Corner taken by Dougie Gair from the left by-line, clearance made by Steven Nicholas.
79:15 Ross MacNamara takes the free kick.
79:15 Booking Christopher Hegarty goes into the book.
79:07 Christopher Hegarty challenges Danny Denholn unfairly and gives away a free kick.
77:34 Ian McFarland has a volleyed shot. Save by Andrew McNeil.
77:00 Fraser Milligan concedes a free kick for a foul on Steven Clee. Dougie Gair crosses the ball from the free kick right-footed from left channel, clearance made by Steven Tweed.
76:31 A cross is delivered by Steven Clee, save by Andrew McNeil.
75:35 Foul by John Gemmell on Shaun Harrison, free kick awarded. Duncan Montieth takes the free kick.
74:31 Substitution Daryl Nicol on for John Maitland.
73:34 Ian McFarland has an effort at goal from outside the box which goes wide right of the target.
73:13 Steven Nicholas concedes a free kick for a foul on Shaun Harrison. Shaun Harrison takes the free kick.
72:18 John Gemmell concedes a free kick for a foul on Kenny Ross. Duncan Montieth restarts play with the free kick.
70:11 Hugh Davidson provided the assist for the goal.
70:11 GOAL - John Maitland:Edinburgh City 1 - 2 Montrose John Maitland finds the net with a headed goal from close range. Edinburgh City 1-2 Montrose.
69:31 The ball is delivered by John Maitland, John Gemmell has an effort at goal from deep inside the box hitting the post.
67:41 The ball is sent over by Alan Cambell, clearance by Michael Bruce.
67:06 John Gemmell concedes a free kick for a foul on Ross MacNamara. Duncan Montieth takes the direct free kick.
66:37 Free kick awarded for an unfair challenge on Steven Tweed by Steven Clee. Andrew McNeil takes the direct free kick.
64:56 Unfair challenge on Dougie Gair by Fraser Milligan results in a free kick. Free kick crossed left-footed by Dougie Gair, clearance made by Alan Cambell.
64:22 A cross is delivered by Ian McFarland, Andrew McNeil makes a save.
63:54 Outswinging corner taken left-footed by Ian McFarland from the left by-line, clearance by Steven Tweed.
62:33 John Gemmell fouled by Ian McFarland, the ref awards a free kick. Christopher Hegarty has an effort direct from the free kick.
60:45 Steven Nicholas has shot on goal from just outside the penalty box which goes wide of the right-hand upright.
60:04 Substitution Steven Clee on for Peter Stenhouse.
56:37 John Maitland sends in a cross, Michael Bruce manages to make a clearance.
54:32 A cross is delivered by John Gemmell, Ross MacNamara gets a block in.
53:54 Free kick awarded for a foul by John Gemmell on Ross MacNamara. Ross MacNamara takes the free kick.
52:05 Steven Tweed takes the direct free kick.
52:05 Booking Michael Bruce is cautioned.
51:52 Free kick awarded for an unfair challenge on Sean Crighton by Michael Bruce.
50:02 Shot by Christopher Hegarty. Duncan Montieth makes a save.
47:10 The official flags Peter Stenhouse offside. Free kick taken by Andrew McNeil.
46:23 Direct free kick taken by Shaun Harrison.
46:23 Booking Steven Tweed is shown a yellow card for unsporting behaviour.
46:10 Steven Tweed concedes a free kick for a foul on Ian McFarland.
45:48 A cross is delivered by Kenny Ross, Jordan Caddow takes a shot. Save by Andrew McNeil.
45:25 The ball is sent over by Shaun Harrison, Fraser Milligan makes a clearance.
45:00+1:00 The ref blows to signal half-time.
45:00+0:35 Peter Stenhouse produces a right-footed shot from deep inside the penalty box which goes wide of the right-hand upright.
44:16 Corner taken left-footed by Dougie Gair from the left by-line, Alan Cambell manages to make a clearance.
44:06 The ball is delivered by Ian McFarland, clearance by Steven Tweed.
43:56 Shaun Harrison crosses the ball, clearance made by Alan Cambell.
41:16 The ball is delivered by Shaun Harrison, save by Andrew McNeil.
39:28 Andrew McNeil takes the direct free kick.
39:28 Booking The referee cautions Shaun Harrison for unsporting behaviour.
39:13 Free kick awarded for an unfair challenge on John Gemmell by Shaun Harrison.
37:42 Effort from outside the penalty area by Dougie Gair goes wide left of the goal.
36:34 GOAL - Dougie Gair:Edinburgh City 1 - 1 Montrose A goal is scored by Dougie Gair from inside the penalty area to the bottom right corner of the goal. Edinburgh City 1-1 Montrose.
36:08 Inswinging corner taken by Christopher Hegarty, Michael Bruce makes a clearance.
Correction - 34:05 Shot comes in from Christopher Hegarty from the free kick. Steven Nicholas delivers the ball, clearance made by Michael Bruce. Fraser Milligan crosses the ball, Shaun Harrison manages to make a clearance.
Correction - 34:05 Booking Ross MacNamara shown a yellow card.
34:05 Christopher Hegarty has a direct shot on goal from the free kick. The ball is swung over by Steven Nicholas, Michael Bruce makes a clearance. Fraser Milligan sends in a cross, Shaun Harrison makes a clearance.
34:05 Booking Michael Bruce is given a yellow card.
Correction - 33:52 The referee penalises Ross MacNamara for handball.
33:52 Michael Bruce is adjudged to have handled the ball.
32:37 Free kick awarded for a foul by Michael Bruce on Steven Nicholas. Sean Fleming shoots direct from the free kick, Michael Bruce gets a block in.
32:11 Shaun Harrison delivers the ball, Andrew McNeil makes a save.
31:05 Scott MacFarland produces a cross.
30:34 Outswinging corner taken from the right by-line by Scott MacFarland, clearance made by Steven Tweed.
30:28 The ball is sent over by John Maitland, clearance made by Kenny Ross.
29:45 Dougie Gair fouled by Sean Crighton, the ref awards a free kick. Michael Bruce takes the direct free kick.
28:40 Outswinging corner taken by Christopher Hegarty from the right by-line, Close range headed effort by John Maitland goes wide of the left-hand upright.
27:07 Sean Crighton concedes a free kick for a foul on Ian McFarland. The free kick is delivered right-footed by Ross MacNamara from left channel, Christopher Hegarty makes a clearance.
26:38 Booking Sean Fleming is given a yellow card.
25:15 Ian McFarland gives away a free kick for an unfair challenge on Steven Nicholas. Free kick crossed right-footed by Christopher Hegarty from left channel, save made by Duncan Montieth.
24:47 John Gemmell has an effort at goal from just outside the box which goes wide of the left-hand upright.
23:24 The referee blows for offside. Duncan Montieth takes the indirect free kick.
21:29 Christopher Hegarty decides to take a short corner.
19:31 GOAL - Steven Nicholas:Edinburgh City 0 - 1 Montrose Steven Nicholas grabs a goal from the edge of the area to the bottom left corner of the goal. Edinburgh City 0-1 Montrose.
17:25 The referee blows for offside against Alan Cambell. Indirect free kick taken by Duncan Montieth.
16:54 Shot from just outside the box by Sean Fleming goes over the crossbar.
16:30 Outswinging corner taken by Sean Crighton from the right by-line, Ross MacNamara makes a clearance.
15:26 Kenny Ross gives away a free kick for an unfair challenge on John Maitland. Strike on goal comes in from Sean Crighton from the free kick, save by Duncan Montieth.
15:12 Alan Cambell crosses the ball, Kenny Ross makes a clearance.
14:29 Steven Nicholas gives away a free kick for an unfair challenge on Duncan Montieth. Direct free kick taken by Duncan Montieth.
13:10 Corner taken left-footed by Steven Nicholas, Ross MacNamara manages to make a clearance.
12:09 Sean Fleming takes a shot. Save made by Duncan Montieth.
11:47 Outswinging corner taken left-footed by Sean Crighton, Dougie Gair manages to make a clearance.
10:58 Inswinging corner taken left-footed by Dougie Gair, Peter Stenhouse has a headed effort at goal from close range which goes wide of the left-hand upright.
10:21 Ian McFarland takes a shot. Alan Cambell gets a block in.
10:14 The ball is delivered by Jordan Caddow, clearance made by Alan Cambell.
10:00 A cross is delivered by Jordan Caddow, Alan Cambell gets a block in.
8:56 John Gemmell has an effort at goal from 20 yards. Andrew McNeil makes a save.
6:44 Free kick awarded for a foul by Steven Tweed on Dougie Gair. Ian McFarland produces a cross, Headed effort from inside the box by Jordan Caddow misses to the right of the target.
5:55 Dougie Gair produces a cross, clearance by Steven Tweed.
3:48 John Gemmell takes a shot. Duncan Montieth makes a save.
2:34 The ball is crossed by Kenny Ross, clearance by Hugh Davidson.
1:24 Hugh Davidson takes a shot. Save made by Duncan Montieth.
0:38 Free kick awarded for a foul by Dougie Gair on Christopher Hegarty. Sean Crighton takes the direct free kick. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-46264858 | The future of one of the world's oldest horse drawn tramways has been secured after the Isle of Man's parliament pledged to continue funding the service indefinitely.
Politicians voted to approve a £1.5m financial package for a new horse tram depot in Douglas.
The government took over the running of the service in 2016 and had committed to paying for it until 2018.
The service had previously been operated by Douglas Borough Council.
Image caption The Manx government bought the horse tram depot from the council for a "nominal amount"
The Department of Infrastructure's (DOI) plans for a new depot at Strathallan will see the existing structure demolished.
It will be replaced with a modern building which will recreate the original 1896 facade of the first floor.
Two thirds of the ground floor will house 13 historic horse tram cars.
Office accommodation and staff facilities to replace the existing temporary Manx Electric Railway depot at Derby Castle will also be added, at an additional cost of £483,108.
The DOI said the extra funds would be found from its own budget.
Built and originally operated by Thomas Lightfoot from Sheffield, the tramway runs along Douglas promenade for 1.6 miles (2.6 km) from the Strathallan terminal to the Sea Terminal.
The heritage horse trams have been in operation for more than 140 years.
The 2019 horse tram season will run on a restricted timetable as work to refurbish Douglas promenade takes place. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-41086045 | A sale has been agreed for an island off the south of Scotland coast where a lighthouse keeper was murdered by a colleague in 1960.
Little Ross island near Kirkcudbright was put up for sale earlier this summer and attracted strong interest.
It hit the headlines 57 years ago when Hugh Clark was shot by fellow keeper Robert Dickson.
It is understood the island fetched significantly over its asking price of £325,000.
A spokesman for estate agents Galbraith confirmed there had been a dozen offers for the island, which covers 29 acres.
The listing also included a six-bedroom, B-listed cottage and courtyard next to the operational lighthouse tower which was not part of the deal. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-31517449/prince-charles-inside-london-s-super-sewer | Prince Charles inside 'super sewer' Jump to media player Prince Charles visits a sewer in East London to mark the 150th birthday of the city's underground water system.
Cameron and Charles in Saudi Arabia Jump to media player World leaders and dignitaries are beginning to arrive in Saudi Arabia to pay their respects following the death of King Abdullah on Friday.
Prince Charles visits ancient Saudi site Jump to media player Prince Charles is given rare access to ancient archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia, as he continues his tour of the Middle East.
The peculiarity of 'planet Windsor' Jump to media player Author Catherine Mayer talks about her biography of Prince Charles, which Clarence House says is unauthorised.
Prince returns to flood-hit Somerset Jump to media player Prince Charles visits Somerset which suffered severe flooding earlier this year.
How would the 'super sewer' be built? Jump to media player Planning officials have started looking into proposals to build a so-called "super sewer" under London. Tom Bateman goes into the existing sewers to investigate.
'Bus-sized fatberg' in London sewer Jump to media player Britain's biggest ever "fatberg" has been removed from a London sewer, Thames Water has revealed.
The Prince of Wales has visited a new 'super sewer' in East London.
The newly-completed Lee Tunnel is part of a Thames Water project to improve the capital's sewer system.
The visit was to mark 150 year anniversary of the capital's sewers which were designed and built by engineer Joseph Bazalgette.
The BBC's Nick Higham explains the history of London's sewers. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-18685789 | A Formula 1 test driver who suffered life-threatening injuries in a crash during testing in Cambridgeshire has regained consciousness.
Maria de Villota was hurt while driving an MR-01 race car for the first time for the Oxfordshire-based Marussia team at Duxford airfield.
The car hit a Marussia support truck which had been used to transport it to the track.
The Spaniard, 32, is being treated at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.
Emergency medical charity Magpas, which helped to treat De Villota at the scene, said she had suffered "facial and head injuries" and was in a stable condition on her arrival at hospital.
Marussia said she later regained consciousness and was being assessed by doctors.
A spokesman for the team said: "Maria is conscious and medical assessments are ongoing."
He added that "she has been receiving the best medical attention possible at the hospital".
BBC Cambridgeshire presenter Chris Mann, who witnessed the crash, said the car was slowing down when it "suddenly accelerated" into the back of the lorry.
"The top of her car and her helmet seemed to take the brunt of it," he added.
"She didn't move for about 15 minutes.
"It was an absolutely awful moment. I was surrounded by people that knew her very well, including family, friends, engineers, and her manager."
He said De Villota had been driving at up to 200mph during the testing but the car was travelling considerably slower at the time of the crash.
A Cambridgeshire police spokesman said they were notified by the ambulance service "of a slow-speed crash involving a racing car and a lorry".
Formula 1 cars are extremely challenging machines and can require significant skills and experience even to control in a straight line, but Maria de Villota is exactly the kind of competent racing driver typically asked to conduct this sort of test.
Extremely unlikely ever to qualify as a fully-fledged Grand Prix driver, she has raced solidly since 2001 in various lower categories and last summer completed a test for the Renault F1 team at a race track in France.
Crashes are not unknown at straight-line tests, but the circumstances surrounding this one sound especially unusual and it would be unwise to speculate what caused it before a full investigation is undertaken.
He added: "It looks like the driver has suffered a serious injury and we will be notifying the Health and Safety Executive as it happened on private land."
East of England Ambulance Service spokesman Gary Sanderson said: "A woman has sustained life-threatening injuries and following treatment at the scene by paramedics, she has been taken to Addenbrooke's Hospital for further care."
The crash happened at the start of two days of Formula 1 testing at the site.
Minutes before, Marussia driver Timo Glock said on Twitter: "Great to see @mariavillota in the car with the new update. Make it quick."
In a statement, Marussia said: "At approximately 09.15hrs BST, the Marussia F1 Team's test driver Maria de Villota had an accident in the team's MR-01 race car at Duxford Airfield, where she was testing the car for the first time.
"The accident happened at the end of her first installation run and involved an impact with the team's support truck."
Former F1 champions are among the hundreds of people to have wished De Villota well on Twitter.
Ferrari driver and fellow Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who won the F1 drivers championship in 2005 and 2006, said: "I just got home and found out Maria's accident, we called the family and hopefully we will know more soon! All my energy with you!"
Jenson Button, who won the championship in 2009, said: "Terrible accident for Maria de Villota, Marussia F1 team test driver.
"My thoughts are with Maria and her family at this very difficult time."
Marussia entered the sport under the name Virgin in 2010, backed by businessman Richard Branson.
Russian car company Marussia acquired a controlling stake in the team toward the end of 2011.
In 2012, the team rebranded as Marussia, and drafted in Charles Pic to race alongside Glock.
The team has not scored any points so far this season.
Earlier, Marussia said on Twitter: "@mariavillota had her final seat-fitting & pedal test at our Banbury HQ & then headed north to the Imperial War Museum, ready to do battle."
On Friday, it tweeted that De Villota "had been waiting patiently all year" for the Duxford test day.
When she was unveiled as a test driver for Marussia in March, she said: "This is a fantastic opportunity to work closely with a Formula 1 team and gain important experience to help me progress my career, including the chance to drive the new car later in the year at the Abu Dhabi test."
She added that the move "can only help my future ambition to step up to F1 racing".
On Monday she wrote on Twitter: "In Banbury, getting ready for tomorrow test. Can't wait." |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46252933 | Energy firms likely to miss smart meter deadline, warns Which?
Large energy suppliers will need to triple the number of smart meters they are installing to meet a 2020 deadline, consumer group Which? has warned.
It said firms would need to install 30 smart meters a minute, every day, for the next two years to replace the 46 million existing meters.
At present, large energy suppliers are only putting in 9.7 meters a minute.
Smart Energy GB said suppliers "are working hard to offer all households smart meters as soon as possible".
A spokesman for the independent body which is responsible for promoting the scheme, added: "In line with the government's figures, smart meters will help people save on average almost £50 a year on their energy bills by 2030."
But Alex Neill, managing director of home products and services at Which?, said: "The smart meter rollout has been plagued by problems and been massively delayed, the benefits have been overstated and the savings they could bring consumers are at risk."
She added: "Therefore it's time for the Government to replan with industry and consumer groups to ensure people get the maximum benefit at the minimum cost."
So far, large suppliers - that are defined by Which? as those with 250,000 customers or more - have installed 11 million smart meters, which show people how much energy they are using and the cost in pounds and pence.
A spokesman for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: "The government is committed to all households and small businesses in Great Britain being offered smart meters by the end of 2020.
"Suppliers are ramping up their operations over the next 12 months as they recruit and train even more installers."
In July, the cross-party British Infrastructure Group said it believed that the 2020 target for the £11bn roll-out would be missed and questioned "whether the programme will even deliver meaningful returns for consumers at all".
The following month, Citizens Advice advised that the deadline should be extended to 2023.
British Gas, which is owned by Centrica, said it had installed almost six million smart meters in homes across the UK.
E.On has installed 1.4 million smart meters and said it "firmly believe in the benefits they offer customers".
A spokesperson for EDF Energy said: "We are on course to achieve our targets for 2018."
Npower said it had installed a total of 428,088 smart meters, "meeting targets agreed with Ofgem", the energy regulator.
OVO Energy said over half its 860,000 retail customers have had a smart meter installed.
Scottish Power and SSE were unavailable for comment. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14200971 | RadioAstron, a Russian radio telescope intended to be the biggest radio telescope in space, has started touring the Earth for the first time.
Once operational, the 3.8 tonne "space eye" could help focus in on many remote places of the Universe.
The device will travel in an elliptical orbit that at its furthest reaches almost as far as the Moon.
Carried by a Zenith-3M rocket, it blasted off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Monday.
The telescope is part of a Russian space observatory called Spectrum-R.
Despite RadioAstron's antenna being only 10m across - far smaller than the antennas of many other radio telescopes on Earth - its signals are meant to be combined with those on the ground, effectively making it the biggest radio telescope in space.
Shortly after the observatory reached its designated orbit, it successfully opened its solar panels, said Viktor Khartov, head of Lavochkin R&D that built the device.
He said that it would take the craft eight days and seven hours to circle the Earth.
"On the fifth day [after the launch] the telescope's mirror will open, and in the three following months we will prepare the observatory for practical work," he added.
Although RadioAstron is expected to deliver more precise data than the US space veteran Hubble, the Russian Federal space agency Roscosmos said the apparatus was not meant to replace it.
"Hubble is an optical telescope and RadioAstron is radio," Aleksei Kuznetsov, Roscosmos' spokesperson, told BBC News. "I would say that the two will complement each other."
Once RadioAstron's 27 carbon fibre petals open up to form a dish, the telescope will start to collect data, then combine it with observations captured by radio telescopes on Earth.
This technique of combining images from a network of telescopes to form a single image is called interferometry.
The result is expected to have an incredibly high resolution - as if taken by a telescope with a dish as wide as the maximum distance between the antennas - from the Earth to the Moon.
One of the telescope's primary goals is to zoom in to the neighbouring galaxy M-87, some 59 million light years from Earth.
Scientists believe that there is a black hole there, and RadioAstron's mission is to confirm this hypothesis.
Researchers are also after some detailed data about pulsars, interstellar plasma and neutron stars in the Milky Way.
The Soviets first started building the telescope back in the 1980s, but the project was shelved when the USSR collapsed in 1991.
"In the 1990s, financial hurdles prevented us from completing the observatory, but in recent years Russia has come back to it," said Mr Kuznetsov.
"The launch of Spectrum-R is one of the main aspects of Roscosmos' space programme."
According to Roscosmos, the observatory is expected to remain in operation for at least five years.
Later in 2011, Russia also plans to go forward with its Phobos-Grunt mission, which involves sending a craft to Phobos, one of Mars' moons, to explore its surface. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47259889 | Image caption This is not about terminator robots but "conventional weapons systems with autonomy"
A group of scientists has called for a ban on the development of weapons controlled by artificial intelligence (AI).
It says that autonomous weapons may malfunction in unpredictable ways and kill innocent people.
Ethics experts also argue that it is a moral step too far for AI systems to kill without any human intervention.
The comments were made at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington DC.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is one of the 89 non-governmental organisations from 50 countries that have formed the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, to press for an international treaty.
Among those leading efforts for the worldwide ban is HRW's Mary Wareham.
"We are not talking about walking, talking terminator robots that are about to take over the world; what we are concerned about is much more imminent: conventional weapons systems with autonomy," she told BBC News.
"They are beginning to creep in. Drones are the obvious example, but there are also military aircraft that take off, fly and land on their own; robotic sentries that can identify movement. These are precursors to autonomous weapons."
Ryan Gariepy, chief technological officer at Clearpath Robotics, backs the ban proposal.
His company takes military contracts, but it has denounced AI systems for warfare and stated that it would not develop them.
"When they fail, they fail in unpredictable ways," he told BBC News.
"As advanced as we are, the state of AI is really limited by image recognition. It is good but does not have the detail or context to be judge, jury and executioner on a battlefield.
"An autonomous system cannot make a decision to kill or not to kill in a vacuum. The de-facto decision has been made thousands of miles away by developers, programmers and scientists who have no conception of the situation the weapon is deployed in."
According to Peter Asaro, of the New School in New York, such a scenario raises issues of legal liability if the system makes an unlawful killing.
"So it may well be that the people who made the autonomous weapon are responsible." |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/d/dundee_utd/2351823.stm | Dundee United are to begin talks in the next few days in an attempt to prevent Scotland striker Steven Thompson leaving the club for nothing in the summer.
New Tannadice owner Eddie Thompson is angry that recently sacked manager Alex Smith and the previous board had not already moved to secure the 23-year-old on a new deal.
Striker Thompson is out of contract next summer.
By then, he will have turned 24 and be able to leave for another club without United being due any compensation.
He can begin talking to potential new clubs in January.
The club chairman said: "This situation should not have been left to me to deal with.
"When you know you have got the January gap coming up and his contract expiring next summer, you really should be doing this several months before now.
"I will be sitting down with Steven within the next few days.
"First of all, these will be initial discussions just to voice our own immediate thoughts because we have had no discussions.
"We are both fairly new to each other and then we can get down to more detailed discussions where Steven might want to bring other representatives with him.
"I will see what he says when I sit down with him for a brief chat.
"But the aim of this is simply to keep Steven Thompson at Tannadice."
Thompson recently broke into the Scotland set-up and scored in the recent 3-1 win over Canada. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45568179 | Australian airline Qantas will place an order next year for planes capable of making the 20-hour flight between London and Sydney.
Chief executive Alan Joyce told the BBC he was in advanced discussions with planemakers Airbus and Boeing.
Flights could start around 2022 if they produced the right aircraft, he said.
Qantas also plans to fly non-stop from Australia to North America - slightly shorter than the London-Sydney non-stop flight.
Mr Joyce told the BBC's Today Programme he was confident there would be demand for the flight.
"Business traffic and general leisure customers would rather have the certainty of getting there direct, not having to stop, not having connections gone wrong, the extra speed that that entails is really important," he said.
In March, the airline launched non-stop flights between London and Perth, a flight lasting just over 17 hours.
Mr Joyce said since their launch the flights had on average been 92% full, with business class even higher at 94%.
He said, however, that there was no plane yet that could handle the longer London and Sydney flight.
Qantas is considering the Airbus A350-1000 for the flight but said the plane would need "modification" because it "needs a little bit more range to get there".
Boeing's 777-8, the new version of its 777 plane, which is expected to be ready in 2022. is also under consideration.
If the non-stop flights - dubbed Project Sunrise - go ahead, Mr Joyce said the airline would also start offering non-stop flights to New York as well.
"Qantas is unique because we can probably justify a large number of these long haul aircraft, given how far Australia is from the rest of the world," he said.
And Qantas is not the only airline targeting long non-stop flights.
Singapore Airlines will launch a non-stop flight in October from Singapore to Newark, New Jersey - a journey that will take nearly 19 hours.
Meanwhile, Qatar currently offers the longest non-stop flight available: its Auckland to Doha route which takes 17.5 hours. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/r/rangers/7136425.stm | Rangers striker Jean-Claude Darcheville says his miss against Lyon in the Champions League clash at Ibrox cost his side a place in the last 16.
"I don't want to make excuses but the ball gave a little bobble. But I should have scored," said the 32-year-old.
The Frenchman, who was later sent off in the 3-0 defeat, said it was the biggest disappointment of his career.
Rangers needed a point against Lyon on Wednesday to progress to the knockout stages of the competition.
But the French champions joined Group E winners Barcelona in the last 16 after winning 3-0 at Ibrox.
Darcheville, who was brought on with 20 minutes remaining, blazed over the crossbar from five yards after a superb pass from Barry Ferguson.
Lyon were leading 1-0 at that stage, and Darcheville said he was disappointed not to score.
"I knew the importance of the game, I'm a very experienced striker and I knew that was an important moment in the game," he said.
"I was sure I was going to score and it would've given us a great chance to qualify."
Rangers team-mate Steven Naismith said the players were not blaming Darcheville for the Ibrox club's exit.
"Darch's miss would have changed everything but that's football," said Naismith.
"Some will say it was a bad miss but we are right behind him. We win as a team and lose as a team. Nobody is pointing fingers at him."
Rangers manager Walter Smith was frustrated to see Rangers slip into the Uefa Cup after losing to Lyon.
"The Uefa Cup isn't a great consolation but maybe in the next few days we'll appreciate it a bit more," he said.
"It was a disappointing result and disappointing performance overall.
"We'll sit down and reflect in the next few days. We've enjoyed some good experiences and some bad ones as well. I'm sure it will help their careers." |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7366662.stm | English Democrats candidate Matt O'Connor says he has halted his campaign to be London mayor.
Mr O'Connor told BBC London he fell out with the party leadership over campaign funding and tactics.
But his name will still appear on ballot papers as they have been printed - and many postal votes have already been cast in the 1 May contest.
Mr O'Connor is best known as the founder and spokesman for the campaigning group Fathers 4 Justice.
Explaining his decision to stop campaigning with less than a week to go before polling day, Mr O'Connor said he had been unhappy with the lack of coverage he was getting from the media.
He told presenter Vanessa Feltz: "We've just had St George's Day and you would just think the one thing a party about England would own would be St George's Day.
"But I don't think they got any publicity at all and I was effectively sidelined. I think they thought I was going to take over the party or something."
The marketing consultant was approached by the English Democrats to run for them in the mayoral race after journalist Garry Bushell pulled out.
He said he had been flattered to be asked but added: "It's an awful situation to be in, but probably with the benefit of hindsight I probably should not have stood for them. I should have checked them out a bit more."
Mr O'Connor's election agent and English Democrats' London regional chairman, Steve Uncles, said the candidate had been "frustrated" by the lack of coverage.
But, he added, Mr O'Connor's name would still be on the ballot paper as the deadline for nominations had passed.
"The only way he can actually resign is if he dies," said Mr Uncles.
Mr Uncles said the party had "never expected to get him elected" and would now concentrate its efforts on the London Assembly elections, where it hoped to achieve the 5% of the vote needed to gain a seat.
The party says it paid the £10,000 deposit Mr O'Connor needed to enter the race. |
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-40501327 | Councillors in Orkney have voted to confer the Freedom of Orkney on Dr John Rae.
The Arctic explorer was born in Orphir, but died more than 120 years ago.
One councillor argued the list of posthumous candidates should also include Orkney's patron saint, St Magnus, who was martyred 900 years ago.
In the end the Rae proposal was passed, though it is not clear who will accept the honour on his behalf.
Born in Orphir in September 1813, Rae studied medicine in Edinburgh before signing on as ship's surgeon on the Prince of Wales bound for Canada.
When the ship's return was blocked by ice, he accepted the post of surgeon and clerk at Moose Factory and served there for 10 years, using his spare time to learn hunting, travel and survival skills from the First Nation and Metis people.
He was asked by the Hudson Bay Company to finish the mapping of the Arctic coast, making several important discoveries during his subsequent expeditions.
He also found evidence of the fate of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition, which had intended to traverse the last unnavigated section of the Northwest Passage.
After Rae's death in 1893 his body was taken to Orkney, where it was buried in the grounds of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall.
The proposal confer the freedom of the islands to him was passed at a meeting of the council in Kirkwall on Tuesday.
North Isles councillor Stephen Clackson told the meeting: "Once we are able to nominate candidates from any time in history, deciding who are the most deserving becomes a very difficult task on account of the plethora of meritorious candidates.
"A candidate that springs to mind for me would be the late Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney who, 900 years ago, gave himself up to be martyred to secure peace for the people of Orkney, and who has been an enduring inspiration over the past nine centuries."
Councillor Clackson went on to argue that the Freedom of Orkney ought to be restricted to candidates who are living.
The council's convenor, Councillor Harvey Johnston, told members he doubted if St Magnus needed the extra recognition.
"The forerunner of this council, the government and the people of Orkney, erected a cathedral to him sometime ago. And he's also our patron saint", he said.
"So, he's got a fair bit of honour."
Then political leader councillor James Stockan, who had originally nominated Dr Rae, summarised the arguments in his favour: "He, for many years, was almost banished to obscurity. And he was one of our citizens who did something quite remarkable.
"I know recently a statue was erected to his honour in Stromness, the place he lived for so many years.
"But in this year of Stromness 200 (commemorating the grant of Burgh of Barony status to the town) I would say it would be a very fitting thing for us to do."
Discussions will now have to take place to decide what form of ceremony is appropriate to recognise the first ever posthumous granting of the Freedom of Orkney. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-14630851 | As a Buddhist, Tan Cheow Hong didn't expect to run up against Malaysia's Islamic laws.
Then last November, his estranged wife showed up at their child's school with a court order from a Sharia judge, who had granted her temporary custody of their 7-year-old.
The wife took their daughter away with the help of Islamic officials and police.
"If I had tried to stop them they would have arrested me," says Mr Tan.
He says he had no idea his wife had become a Muslim. The next day his wife converted their daughter to Islam without Mr Tan's consent. That means both mother and child are now subject to Islamic law, which does not apply to non-Muslims like Mr Tan.
He is now filing for child custody through the civil court while his wife is fighting for the case to be heard in the country's Sharia court.
The case highlights a growing problem with Malaysia's separate judicial systems and those caught in between. Muslims are bound by Sharia law on personal matters like marriage and custody rights, while members of other faiths follow civil law.
Yet the lines become blurred when cases involve both Muslims and non-Muslims. Analysts say some disgruntled spouses are exploiting the parallel judicial system.
The most high profile case involved an ethnic Indian couple who were married in a Hindu ceremony. The couple separated and the father became a Muslim. Then he secretly converted his two children to Islam and obtained custody through the Sharia court.
The Hindu mother was also granted guardianship, but through the civil courts. After several years the case is still in the courts to determine which court has jurisdiction to hear the matter.
In a desperate bid to escape the Sharia court order, the mother took the two children and fled the country.
Cases such as these have sowed a feeling of distrust among some non-Muslims who feel that the 'quick conversions' of children with the consent of only one parent are being allowed by religious authorities because of a rising tide of Islamisation in the country.
Mr Tan's estranged wife, Fatimah Fong Abdullah, refused to comment on her case to the BBC, but her lawyers confirmed that the child was converted after she returned to her mother. They are fighting to have the case heard in Sharia court.
The Muslim Lawyers Association argues that non-Muslims can submit themselves to the Sharia court jurisdiction.
"It is a fallacy that the Sharia court is religious," vice president Abdul Rahim Sinwan said in a statement to the BBC.
"The court is another system which can be alternative or in fact complement the present civil system."
There is a misguided perception that non-Muslims cannot get justice in the Sharia court but there are plenty of Sharia lawyers willing to give them fair representation, said Mr Rahim.
Law experts say the issue stems back to 1988, when the Constitution was amended to state that civil courts cannot hear matters that fall within the jurisdiction of Sharia courts.
This was meant to prevent Muslims unhappy with a Sharia judge's order from running to civil courts to challenge it, but in practice many claim it has also allowed Sharia courts to expand their remit.
Although government officials have said they will address the problems between Sharia and civil courts, nothing has been translated into law yet.
In the absence of a remedy, a Christian lawyer is now fighting to practice in Sharia courts to give non-Muslims fairer representation.
Victoria Jayaseele Martin says she is qualified because she holds a diploma in Sharia law from the prestigious International Islamic University Malaysia.
But the religious council in charge of Kuala Lumpur says she cannot practice in Sharia court because she is not a Muslim. Ms Martin is currently appealing against the decision.
Since non-Muslims are being asked to take cases involving Islam to the Sharia court, Ms Martin says they need effective counsel, especially in conversion cases.
But even with effective counsel in the Sharia court, non-Muslim Mr Tan says he will not subject himself to Islamic law.
Mr Tan is asking the civil court to decide whether one parent can convert the religion of a child without the consent of the other. He also wants the judge to declare that the Sharia court had overstepped its boundary when it granted his wife custody of the child, who was a non-Muslim when the order was issued.
The case is still stuck in the court process. For now he lives in limbo. Every two weeks he takes a five hour bus journey to Kuala Lumpur to see his daughter. It is part of the temporary custody settlement by the civil court.
"If my wife is in a good mood, then she'll allow me to see our daughter. If not, then she won't," he says.
Mr Tan is prepared to push his case up to the country's highest court.
But he feels the law is helpless.
"This type of case is very difficult to resolve in Malaysia because Islam is supreme."
Can the Malaysian economic tiger really get the cream? Decades of economic policy based on ethnic and religious discrimination have left many in the country wondering. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/330888.stm | Plans for direct Eurostar trains linking cities such as Edinburgh and Manchester to Paris are in serious doubt after the company said it was making half the drivers earmarked for such services redundant. The remainder are being hired out to do other jobs as the BBC's Alan Whitehouse reports.
Cities in Scotland and the North of England were promised international Eurostars five years ago, but apart from a few test trains, nothing happened.
The BBC's Alan Whitehouse: "Over �2 million of tax payers money has already been spent"
Eurostar has already said it does not want to run trains to the North and Scotland and rail campaigners say getting rid of the drivers amounts to sabotage.
Jonathan Bray, from Save Our Railways, said: "The English regions were promised direct links, through the Channel tunnel with Eurostar.
"We've got a review going on at the moment, from the Government, to see how that could work out.
"It's prejudging that review. It seems to us, it's sabotaging the future of regional Eurostar."
So far 16 drivers have been dismissed and 15 more put on to other work, even though they are the only crews with the specialist knowledge needed to operate northern Eurostars.
But an industry umbrella group, The Railway Forum, which includes Eurostar, says the company had no choice.
Railway Forum managing director David Morphet said: "Eurostar do not believe that the present regional Eurostar services are commercially viable.
"They've looked at it closely and in particular, the competitive position that they would be in in relation to air services and other alternative travel possibilities."
Over �200m of taxpayers' money has already been spent on a fleet of seven trains and specialised maintenance bases, which now may never be used.
Eurostar is saying little, but their critics insist there are some awkward questions to be answered, such as why drivers who have been on the payroll for years are being dismissed only months before a final verdict on whether regional trains will run or not is expected. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44665862 | The US ambassador to Estonia is resigning, reportedly in frustration at remarks made by President Donald Trump about America's European allies.
James D Melville said Mr Trump's comments on Nato and the EU had brought forward his decision to retire, Foreign Policy magazine reports.
The magazine was quoting from a private Facebook post by the envoy.
Mr Trump accuses Europeans of unfairly expecting America to shoulder the costs of the Nato alliance.
He has also imposed trade tariffs on some EU industries.
In January, US ambassador to Panama John Feeley resigned saying he was no longer able to serve under President Trump.
In the private Facebook post seen by Foreign Policy, Mr Melville reportedly told friends: "For the president to say the EU was 'set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank', or that 'Nato is as bad as Nafta [the North American Free Trade Agreement]' is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it's time to go."
Mr Melville is a career diplomat and took up his position as ambassador in Estonia in 2015 after being nominated by then President Barack Obama.
He had previously held senior diplomatic posts in several European countries and speaks Russian, German and French, according to his biography on the US state department website.
A state department spokesperson confirmed Mr Melville's intention to resign on 29 July.
President Trump reiterated his criticism of fellow Nato members on Friday while on a flight from Washington to his private golf club in New Jersey.
He told reporters on board Air Force One that countries including Germany, Spain and France had to increase their financial contributions to the bloc.
"It's not fair what they've done to the United States," he said. "The United States is paying much more disproportionately to anyone else."
His remarks come less than two weeks before a Nato summit in Brussels. |