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Weekend Edition: The week's best reads - BBC News | 2017-01-09 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Stories you may have missed in the past seven days, including the women who invented the "Brazilian" wax and the spy who was an imposter son. | Magazine | "Are you crazy? I'm not touching you there." That was the response when Brazilian Janea Padilha asked a beautician to remove most of her pubic hair in the late 1970s. But that was then and Janea, who went home and did it herself, so inventing the Brazilian wax, is one of the J Sisters. Their salon in New York now turns over millions of dollars a year catering to the grooming demands of the rich and famous. "It's an inspirational story of self-made women who came from nothing, illegal immigrants who made it in America," says Laura Malin, author of a forthcoming book about the sisters.
In 1977, Dutch woman Johanna van Haarlem finally tracked down the son, Erwin, she had abandoned as a baby 33 years earlier. She immediately travelled to London to meet him. What followed was a scarcely believable story of deception and heartbreak, ending in Erwin van Haarlem's unmasking in court as an imposter and Soviet spy. More than two decades after his release from prison, the man newspapers called the "spy with no name" was living in Prague, where Jeff Maysh went to hear his story.
"It was on the second day of our trek that I realised it was missing," says Eloise Dicker. "We had packed up the tents and loaded the horses. I reached up to the horse's mane to pull myself up and saw that my wrist was bare. 'My mum's bracelet! It's gone,' I thought, and immediately burst into tears. That bracelet was a physical part of my mother who is no longer physically in the world. It became part of me, and now was gone." Some weeks later, having returned to Europe from Kyrgyzstan and made peace with the loss, Eloise received a Facebook message that changed everything.
"Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws," says Iain Overton, author of Gun Baby Gun. "They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don't play a part in civilian society." Tough regulations extend to the police, who rarely use firearms - so how do they deal with incidents of violence and what is the effect of strict gun laws on crime in Japan?
After an hour's bus journey through forest from the town of Mae Sot, Mae La appears suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. In the morning mist, thousands of bamboo huts cling to steep limestone crags. It is the largest of nine refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border, and home to almost 40,000 people. Many families have been there for decades, but instances of suicide in women before and after childbirth appeared worryingly high. Researcher Gracia Fellmeth went there to find out why young women have been killing themselves.
"Magazine stories come and go," says National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore. "But I had not seen the plight of endangered species getting better so I thought about what I could do to actually make a difference." The answer he decided on was to make professional studio-style portraits of species close to extinction. He has now photographed more than 6,000 species in 40 countries and the results, preserved in the National Geographic Photo Ark, are amazing.
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38522061 | |
Why RBS's recovery is lagging Lloyds' - BBC News | 2017-01-09 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Lloyds Banking Group is returning to 'near normality' as the government's stake dips below 6%, but RBS's road to recovery looks set to take many, many years. | Business | Eight years ago the government rescued Lloyds by taking a 43% stake for just over £20bn.
The fact that the government is no longer even the biggest shareholder marks an important return to near normality.
Since 2013, the government stake has been sold off at first in a couple of big chunks and then in a gradual trickle and so this moment was bound to happen at some stage.
The government still owns nearly 6%, but global investor Blackrock now eclipses that and Lloyds is on trajectory to return to full private ownership later this year when taxpayers should recoup all the money they put in.
It hasn't been an easy ride. The huge compensation costs of PPI mis-selling and intermittent market turbulence have hampered and delayed the process, but Lloyds, while not risk-free, can be considered pretty much out of the woods.
As a plain vanilla UK savings and lending bank, Lloyds was always going to be an easier bank to fix than RBS which is still about 71% owned by the taxpayer.
As a global bank with fingers in most of the pies that got burnt during the crisis, RBS has paid out over £50bn in fines and compensation and has its biggest reckoning yet to come.
It is still facing a bill from US authorities which could end up in the double digit billions for its role in the subprime mis-selling scandal that started the whole financial crisis in the first place.
While those negotiations could come to a head as early as this week (watch out for separate blog on this), RBS won't reach the point Lloyds did today for many, many years to come. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38552831 | |
The 'muesli queen' who built a $60m food business - BBC News | 2017-01-09 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | How not wanting to lose her job started an Australian teenager on the path to creating a breakfast cereal empire. | Business | Carolyn struggled in her first years of business
When an 18-year-old Carolyn Creswell was told she might lose her job, she decided to take a leap of faith.
While at university in Melbourne, Australia, she supported herself by working part-time for a little company that made muesli for a handful of cafes and shops.
This was in 1992, and the husband and wife who owned the business said they were putting it up for sale. They warned Carolyn that this would probably mean she would be out of work.
Wanting to save a job she enjoyed, Carolyn decided to try to buy the business.
Pooling her savings with those of her friend and co-worker Manya van Aker, their offer of the princely sum of 1,000 Australian dollars ($735; £590) was accepted.
They dubbed the new incarnation Carman's, combining the first three letters of their names.
Despite their youthful enthusiasm, increased sales were hard to come by, and Manya left the business two years later. Carolyn, however, persevered on her own, and in 1997 the company got its big break when Australia's second largest supermarket chain, Coles, started to stock its muesli.
Today Carman's Fine Foods is worth 83m Australian dollars ($60m; £50m), while Carolyn is dubbed the "muesli queen" by the Australian media.
The company's breakfast cereals and other products are stocked by more than 3,000 outlets across the country, and exported to 32 other nations.
"I wasn't afraid of hard work," says Carolyn, now 42. "[But] the first few years were really hard. If I could have given it away I would have."
For the first three years of the business Carolyn continued with her arts degree at Melbourne's Monash University. She would make deliveries early in the morning before lectures, and then do the business's bookkeeping in the college library over lunch.
After she graduated Carman's still wasn't making enough money for it to be Carolyn's only source of income, so she also held a number of part-time jobs, including working behind the till at a supermarket.
Carolyn bought out her co-founder two years into the business
She was so hard up at times that she had to ask her brother to siphon petrol from their mother's car.
"I was really broke," says Carolyn. "I remember I couldn't see my way out of it."
However, sales to independent stores and cafes starting to rise thanks to word of mouth. With no money for advertising, Carolyn's mum helped with an unusual marketing initiative - she'd stand in shops and loudly tell people how good her daughter's muesli was.
Then after five years the company's fortunes were transformed when it started being stocked by Coles. At the time Carolyn still didn't have any formal staff, instead relying on help from her husband Pete.
Today the company has 25 employees at its Melbourne head office, and another 160 people at its manufacturing facilities. In addition to six types of muesli it now makes other granolas, plus breakfast and snack bars.
Although Carolyn says she will never regret her decision to set up Carman's, she says she had to miss out on many of the fun experiences that come with being young. For example, she never partied or travelled the way her friends were able to.
And she wonders whether her age might have hindered early success. "It might have happened a bit quicker if I was a little bit more mature," she says.
Carolyn balances running the company with helping to look after her four children
Carolyn also says she faced challenges as a young woman running a business that are - thankfully - less common than they are today.
She says being a 20-something female meant she struggled to convince banks to lend her money. Much more distressingly, she says she occasionally faced sexual harassment from suppliers and other men who wouldn't take her seriously.
"Now I'd be like, 'you've got to be joking, that is so inappropriate.' [But] I think 20 years ago I was a bit nervous to stand up and go, 'hey that is not cool,'" she says.
While Carman's has continued to grow strongly following the first Coles contract, it has not all been plain sailing. For a brief period eight years ago Carman's lost another supermarket deal because of a temporary dip in sales.
Carolyn says she was able to win back the contract, and that the episode was one of the biggest learning experiences of her career.
"I wouldn't be living with the healthy paranoia I have now," she says. "That is never going to happen to me again."
The business has expanded beyond muesli
Nathan Cloutman, a senior food industry analyst at research group Ibis World, says Carman's is able to charge premium prices for its products.
"Consumers see Carman's as promoting that healthy, rustic lifestyle that people are moving towards," he says.
Mr Cloutman says the two main challenges for the company in the future are to cope with the big cereal producers increasingly trying to copy what it is doing, and for it to expand without sacrificing its local, homemade feel.
With Carman's now entering the giant Chinese market, Carolyn says she continues to set three-year goals for the business, while regularly testing and measuring her chances of success.
"It's kind of like climbing Everest. What do we need to do to get to base camp?"
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38510041 | |
Liverpool 0-0 Plymouth Argyle - BBC Sport | 2017-01-09 | null | Liverpool's youngest ever starting line-up are held to a frustrating draw by resolute League Two side Plymouth Argyle in their FA Cup third-round tie at Anfield. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
The youngest Liverpool starting line-up in the club's history were held to a frustrating draw by resolute League Two side Plymouth Argyle in their FA Cup third-round tie at Anfield.
The hosts, whose side had an average age of 21 years and 296 days, had 80.3% possession in the first half but struggled to break down their gritty opponents, with Sheyi Ojo failing to take their best chance when he missed a header from close range.
Divock Origi also had a goal disallowed for a foul on Gary Miller before Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp brought on first-team regulars Daniel Sturridge, Adam Lallana and Roberto Firmino in search of a breakthrough.
Sturridge sent a 25-yard shot just wide, looped a header over and fired into the side-netting - but the Reds could not find the cutting edge to break down an organised and disciplined Plymouth.
Craig Tanner would have been clean through on the Liverpool goal but for a Kevin Stewart challenge as the Pilgrims earned a replay at Home Park.
Both sides now go into the fourth round draw, which will be made live on BBC Two and online from 19:00 GMT on Monday.
• None Watch all of the latest FA Cup highlights and reaction here
• None All the FA Cup third-round reports in one place
Liverpool boss Klopp made 10 changes for the game - including defender Joe Gomez returning to first-team action for the first time since 1 October, 2015 following a knee ligament injury, and 17-year-old forward Ben Woodburn making his first start for the club.
And, despite his side enjoying plenty of possession - 87.2% after the first 15 minutes - they could not find the creativity to pierce the banked masses of Plymouth players.
Ojo failed to make proper contact with a header from five yards and Woodburn - showing some neat footwork at times - had a shot saved, but chances were few and far between for the youthful Reds, who managed just four efforts on target from 28 overall.
German Klopp said before the game he could be criticised if his team selection backfired and, even with the introduction of Sturridge, Lallana and Firmino, his much-changed side could not find a winner.
Such was the effort and application put in by Plymouth, who are second in League Two, Klopp congratulated their players on the pitch after the final whistle.
The visitors set up in a 4-5-1 formation and their focus on containment rather than posing any attacking threat resulted in keeper Luke McCormick having the most touches - 52 - of any Pilgrims player.
It was a team effort, but centre-backs Sonny Bradley and Yann Songo'o epitomised the dogged spirit and endeavour of their side and were key to the result.
Plymouth took nearly 9,000 fans to Anfield and, although they had little to cheer from an attacking point of view with their team managing just three touches in the Liverpool box, they were celebrating at the end and have a replay to look forward to at Home Park.
"The character and work rate we showed was unbelievable," said Plymouth midfielder Graham Carey.
"The atmosphere has been brilliant and it will be the same when they come to our place. I've come here as a fan before - the hairs are standing up on the back of my neck."
What they said:
Liverpool manager Klopp: "They created small spaces and we made our own problems. A game like this is not easy to make exciting.
"We had a young side so that's difficult. We can do better and if we do better then we have a good chance of making the next round.
"With our other line-up it could be possible that the result was still the same - not likely, but possible. It was a good experience for the boys."
Plymouth boss Derek Adams: "We had a very good defensive display. We allowed Liverpool the ball. When we had the ball we still created a couple of opportunities.
"We had gone in at half-time at 0-0 and that was important. We knew Liverpool might start the second half at a better tempo and we coped with that well. We knew we would get a bit of belief as well.
"We've had a couple of opportunities in the game that we might have done better with, but that would be asking too much."
On an injury to Gary Miller: "He's either got a broken ankle or ankle ligament damage. We'll see what happens. It's disappointing for him and the team."
Former Wales and Arsenal striker John Hartson on BBC Radio 5 live
"Plymouth gave everything. They have left everything out there on the Anfield pitch.
"Liverpool paid the price for too many changes. They never really created enough opportunities for their strikers. It's a day to give Plymouth the credit."
• None The Reds have drawn four of their past five FA Cup matches at Anfield 0-0.
• None Liverpool had 76.7% on Sunday. Only against Burnley and Sunderland in the Premier League this season have they had more in a game.
• None The last fourth-tier side to claim a draw in an FA Cup game at Anfield were Doncaster Rovers in January 1974.
• None The Pilgrims avoided defeat in an FA Cup game against a top-flight team for the first time since drawing against Everton in the fourth round in 1989 (before losing the replay).
• None Liverpool midfielder Kevin Stewart made the same amount of successful passes (53) as the whole Plymouth team during the first half.
Liverpool go to Southampton on Wednesday for the first leg of their EFL Cup semi-final (19:45 GMT kick-off), while Plymouth continue their League Two promotion challenge when they host Stevenage on Saturday at 15:00.
• None Attempt blocked. Divock Origi (Liverpool) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Assisted by Adam Lallana.
• None Attempt missed. Lucas Leiva (Liverpool) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right.
• None Sheyi Ojo (Liverpool) wins a free kick on the right wing.
• None Attempt blocked. Kevin Stewart (Liverpool) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Assisted by Adam Lallana.
• None Attempt missed. Jake Jervis (Plymouth Argyle) right footed shot from the right side of the box misses to the left.
• None Attempt missed. Daniel Sturridge (Liverpool) left footed shot from the right side of the box is close, but misses to the right. Assisted by Sheyi Ojo following a corner.
• None Attempt blocked. Roberto Firmino (Liverpool) right footed shot from a difficult angle and long range on the left is blocked. Assisted by Trent Alexander-Arnold.
• None Attempt missed. Divock Origi (Liverpool) header from the centre of the box misses to the left. Assisted by Adam Lallana with a cross.
• None Attempt missed. Daniel Sturridge (Liverpool) header from the right side of the six yard box is too high. Assisted by Roberto Firmino with a cross. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38481646 | |
The Donald Trump tweets that say so much and reveal so little - BBC News | 2017-01-09 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | James Naughtie reflects on the tweets of Donald Trump ahead of his inauguration as US president. | US & Canada | It is as if the campaign is still going on.
Two weeks away from his inauguration, Donald Trump seems to prefer the role of "candidate" - flaying his opponents and aiming arrows at the federal government from the enemy camp.
It is almost as if he does not want to accept fully that he is the new chief executive who will be dealing with official Washington from the moment he drives back from the Capitol as the president on 20 January.
And his weapon of choice, forged for him like a legendary warrior's sword in the furnace of the new technology, is Twitter.
No president-elect has battled like this.
Most of them go to ground, secluded with the staff who will take over the West Wing, and make their plans. Dream their dreams, you might say.
They have followed the golden rule: do not give too much away, because it will make life more difficult when the inauguration is over and the business of power begins.
The Trump Twitter account is not just a break with that pattern, but a challenge to the very idea.
His New Year tweet (one of them, I should say) wished love to everyone "including my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don't know what to do".
Mr Trump wished love to everyone via Twitter at the turn of the year
The implication, of course, is that he does know what he is going to do. The trouble with his Twitter account is that it makes you wonder.
More than 34,000 tweets to nearly 19 million followers (many "enemies" among them, no doubt) and a narrative that has become a kind of stream of consciousness. They read like the unfiltered, disconnected thoughts of someone for whom patience is an ugly word.
You always have to say something, even if you say the opposite the next day. On Twitter, who cares?
Yet, the messages are powerful. One contemptuous tweet about the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives winding down the Office of Congressional Ethics led them to beat a humiliating retreat and cancel the plan.
Mr Trump's choice as White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said the other day: "Whatever he tweets, he is going to drive the news."
And, bizarre though it may seem, the South Korean government is poring over them. The JoongAng Daily reported that a Twitter-watching position had been set up in the foreign ministry in Seoul "because we don't yet have an insight into his foreign policies".
What insight will they get from tweets which have criticised the Central Intelligence Agency, praised Julian Assange - the Whistleblower of WikiLeaks and a bete noire to most Republicans - and praised President Putin, who gets more friendly treatment than all Democrats and some Republicans at home?
And remarkably the tweets take aim at the entire intelligence community in Washington. What precisely are the South Koreans meant to make of that?
Not too much, you may think, because who can tell how this mercurial candidate is going to be moulded into a president? We still do not know and what his Twitter account tells us - colourfully, astonishingly, sometimes hilariously - is that he is refusing to let us know.
Far from revealing what a Trump presidency is going to be like - as he says his tweets do - they have the effect of enveloping him in a thick fog.
Yes we know he will "make America great again", cut immigration, build his wall, cut taxes, be Israel's greatest ally and so on. But how he is going to build a White House team on foreign affairs and security, conduct relations with Capitol Hill, deal with allies in Nato and the rolling chaos in the Middle East, we have very little idea.
And when the first crisis arrives - as it will before long - will he be able to find the calm that he needs?
Where it all began: Trump's Twitter page in April 2009
No president-elect in modern times has said so much and revealed so little.
We know how Mr Trump feels about almost everything, but about priorities, his approach to the compromises of power, the way he will deal with the bureaucracy - in practice we know very little.
A week or two before election day in November, one of his close associates told me that, if he won, Mr Trump had agreed that in office he would relinquish control of that Twitter account, because it would be inappropriate in the White House.
The satirists' loss, certainly. But, if it happens, a step into reality, at last.
Some day he has to stop being the candidate and playing that game, even though he enjoys it so much.
So the first great test for the Trump White House team is surely getting his finger off that keyboard. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38534308 | |
Beyond 'Brogrammers': Can AI create a meritocracy? - BBC News | 2017-01-09 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Can a new system of artificial intelligence mean more women are recruited into IT? | Business | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. "There's a dominant face of a programmer - young, male, they've gone to a top school"
Silicon Valley is so male-dominated that there's a name for the young, brash men who populate the region's many start-ups and high-tech firms: "brogrammers".
Brogrammers are not your standard, introverted computer programmers. They are a more recent stereotype: the macho, beer swilling players who went to top schools and are often hired by their friends or former fraternity brothers in the technology industry.
"If there's a group of a hundred candidates and they're from multiple different backgrounds, different races, different genders, we noticed across the board there was a certain type of programmer that would still move forward in interviews," says Iba Masood, the 27-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Tara.ai, an artificial intelligence project manager that aims to change the world by combating bias.
"The brogrammer," says Ms Masood when asked what type of candidate she is referring to. "It's a type that's known in the Valley."
Syed Ahmed and Iba Masood created Tara so job candidates can be assessed without bias
Ms Masood's company created Tara, which stands for Talent Acquisition and Recruiting Automation.
Tara analyses and ranks programmers' code, removing biographical information such as age, race, gender or where you have worked in the past or where you went to university. The algorithm means that people are judged on the work they have produced rather than who they are or who they know.
"We're very passionate about creating a meritocracy," says Ms Masood, who along with her co-founder Syed Ahmed, were born and raised in the United Arab Emirates. They wanted to create opportunities for people like themselves: smart and entrepreneurial, but not graduates of brand-name schools.
Tara is a project manager that recruits and manages the best programmers for a variety of projects for businesses, from building simple websites to creating advanced applications.
To create Tara the two used publicly available code and graded programmers on a 1-10 scale. None of the programmers are a perfect 10 and Tara doesn't tell a candidate their rank, though it does set a minimum standard for recommending work.
Their highest-ranking member is a nine - he's a young, US-based programmer who never went to university.
The people creating Tara hope it will help those who find it tough to break into the tech industry
Mr Ahmed, 28, is the chief technology officer behind Tara. He says the system is much more than a recruiter - it is capable of finding the best people for the job and carrying out the entire recruitment process.
He says Tara will increasingly offer opportunities for people working in the freelance economy, and will create more opportunities for women and minorities who have historically had a tough time breaking in to cutting edge start-ups and staying in the tech industry.
In the US, women held just 25% of professional computing occupations in 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And more than 90% of those women were white. Just 5% were Asian, 3% African American and 1% Hispanic.
Women in computing fields in the US have declined since a peak of 36% in 1991. A 2016 report from the National Center for Women in Information Technology says that women quit the tech industry in numbers more than double their male counterparts.
"Evidence suggests that workplace conditions, a lack of access to key creative roles, and a sense of feeling stalled in one's career are some of the most significant factors contributing to female attrition from the tech field," the report says.
Shaherose Charania believes a more diverse workforce will help companies avoid making cultural mistakes that cause offence to customers
Shaherose Charania, a board member and also the co-founder of Women 2.0, which advocates for women in technology, says that companies lacking diversity are more prone to make mistakes that offend their users.
"There are so many mistakes that companies like Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter have made to exclude some of their most engaged user groups," Ms Charania says, referring to Facebook's "poke" which annoyed many women and more recently Snapchat's Bob Marley filter, which was criticised as promoting a racist digital version of blackface.
While "bro culture" might be blamed for failing to retain the few women who do work in tech fields, the reality is there aren't many trained female computer scientists to recruit in the first place. Although women earn 57% of all undergraduate university degrees in the US, they account for just 18% of computer science degrees.
Using artificial intelligence may level the playing field when it comes to hiring on merit but it won't solve the recruiting "pipeline problem" of having too few women applicants.
Ms Charania says bias in hiring is typically not conscious, but a result of people hiring people they feel comfortable with, often from similar backgrounds and universities. If there are no women candidates or just one token female, their likelihood of getting the job is very slim.
Whether or not AI changes "bro culture" remains to be seen. Some of those "bros" are likely to be very talented programmers. But until more women study computer science, gender parity in technology will remain science fiction.
But Ms Masood predicts more and more women will enter the field in the future.
"I believe the next 20 to 30 years is going to be transformative for women," says Ms Masood. "There's going to be people from multiple different backgrounds, races, perspectives coming into the field of programming. And I think that's why Tara is so important in this field in particular." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38393802 | |
Viewpoint: The 'delicious spectacle' of President Trump - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | The first of two animated opinion pieces for BBC Newsnight looking ahead to Donald Trump's presidency. Roger Kimball, art critic, social commentator and editor of The New Criterion, says the moral panic needs to stop. | null | The inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the US is on Friday.
What does he represent? What might his presidency bring? In the first of two very personal viewpoints for BBC Newsnight, Roger Kimball, art critic, social commentator and editor of the magazine The New Criterion, says the moral panic needs to stop.
Watch the second opinion piece - from Trump critic Andrew Sullivan - here. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38664788 | |
Moneysupermarket and Paddy Power lead advert complaints - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Adverts for Moneysupermarket and Paddy Power were among the most-complained-about last year. | UK | Moneysupermarket's twerking businessman in high heels and Paddy Power's cat-kicking blind footballers were some of the most-complained-about ads of 2016.
Moneysupermarket's dancing bodyguard Gary, twerking businessman Dave and dancing builder Colin were all in the top 10, the advertising watchdog said.
The Paddy Power advert was first shown in 2010 but still drew 450 complaints.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said none on the list "crossed the line" from bad taste to offence.
Three Moneysupermarket price comparison website adverts attracted 2,491 complaints between them.
Some viewers found the bodyguard's dance moves "distasteful", and the ads with the businessman and the builder as homophobic.
An advert for dating website Match.com showing a woman removing her female partner's top and kissing her received 896 complaints.
It was seen as sexually explicit and inappropriately scheduled.
The Paddy Power advert featured men playing blind football and inadvertently kicking a cat due to the sound of a bell round its neck.
The ASA had already ruled the majority of viewers would see the advert as humorous and not humiliating or undermining to blind people, and so did not investigate it again.
The bookmaker's advert about Scottish football fans not minding not qualifying for Euro 2016 - because they could bet on England to lose - was complained about for being racist and anti-English.
Also in the top 10 were Smart Energy's Gaz and Leccy cartoon characters, the Home Office's Disrespect Nobody domestic violence campaign, Maltesers featuring a woman in a wheelchair and Gourmet Burger Kitchen's references to giving up vegetarianism.
The complaint about the Home Office's ad was that it implied only men were responsible for domestic abuse and it could discourage male victims from coming forward.
ASA chief executive Guy Parker said: "The ads that attract the highest number of complaints are often not the ones that need banning.
"Our action leads to thousands of ads being amended or withdrawn each year, mostly for being misleading, but there wasn't one misleading ad in the top 10.
"In the list there are a number of ads, which while advertising their product or service, have also sought to present a positive statement about diversity but were in fact seen by some as doing the opposite.
"In all those cases, we thought people generally would see the ads in a positive light and that the boundary between bad taste and serious or widespread offence had been navigated well enough, often through using sensible scheduling restrictions."
A Moneysupermarket campaign also topped the most-complained-about list in 2015.
• None Men more likely to complain about ads
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38672439 | |
India v England: Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni seal series in Cuttack - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Brilliant centuries from Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni give India a series-clinching 15-run win over England in a thrilling second ODI. | null | Brilliant centuries from Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni gave India a series-clinching 15-run win over England in a thrilling second one-day international.
India were reduced to 25-3 in Cuttack before Yuvraj, who struck 150, and Dhoni (134) shared a stand of 256.
They helped India to 381-6, the third-highest total made against England.
Eoin Morgan blasted an 80-ball hundred, Jason Roy, Joe Root and Moeen Ali all made half-centuries, but England ended 366-8 to go 2-0 down with one to play.
That in itself was England's fifth-highest total and their second of 350 or more in as many games, but they still have not won a series in this country since 1984-85 and have lost 21 of their past 25 ODIs against India in India.
The tourists looked well set to alter that record when Chris Woakes took three wickets in his first three overs, including the prolific Virat Kohli, but Yuvraj and Dhoni destroyed an England attack that had no control of length.
An unlikely chase was not out of the question on an ideal batting surface, only for India's spinners to run through the England top order, with the late hitting of Morgan not enough in the face of the home attack's greater nous.
Before returning for the first match, Yuvraj was out of the India ODI side for more than three years, dropped at the end of a 2013 when he averaged only 19.71 with the bat.
Recalled after some excellent domestic form, he made his first ODI century for six years and his highest score, dismantling the England bowling with stylish drives and brutal pulls.
England were right to initially probe the left-hander's historical weakness against the short ball, but too slow to change a plan that did not work.
Time and again short deliveries were dismissed to the leg-side fence, even after Yuvraj had registered his 14th ODI ton with Jake Ball the most persistent offender.
Yuvraj successfully overturned a caught-behind decision on 145 and a double century seemed possible until he edged the excellent Woakes, comfortably the pick of England's bowlers, to wicketkeeper Jos Buttler.
Dhoni relinquished the white-ball captaincy to Kohli before this series but once again proved his worth alongside the equally experienced Yuvraj - both 35 and with 580 caps between them.
Usually at his best at the end of the innings, Dhoni dealt with the inconvenience of having to arrive in the fifth over by batting until the 48th, initially as a foil for Yuvraj.
He was dropped on 43, a tough chance to a retreating Ball off a leading edge, and only really accelerated as he neared a century, announcing his intention with a huge six over long-on off Woakes.
From there it was carnage, as Dhoni took 41 runs off the last 20 balls he faced. Overall, India hit 214 from their final 20 overs and 120 off the last 10.
Liam Plunkett, ineffective on his return for figures of 2-91, was hammered for three sixes in an over, eventually getting a crumb of comfort when Dhoni hit a full toss to David Willey at deep mid-wicket.
England were not fazed by what would have been their highest successful run chase in ODIs, with Root and Roy sharing a stand of 100 that kept the tourists ahead of the curve.
However, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, England's tormentor during their 4-0 Test series defeat, had Root sky a sweep, bowled Ben Stokes and had Buttler stumped down the leg side, while spin partner Ravindra Jadeja found turn to bowl Roy.
Still England pressed on, captain Morgan returning to form with sixes over long-on and long-off, and Moeen's leg-side scoring bringing him a 40-ball half-century.
When Moeen dragged on to his stumps off Bhuvneshwar Kumar, it looked to be a fatal blow to England's chances, but Morgan kept them alive in a fifty partnership with Plunkett that came in only 24 balls.
The Irishman reached his ninth ODI ton only to be run out by bowler Jasprit Bumrah when backing up too far, taking England's hopes with him as he departed.
Falling short by 15 in a game of 747 runs, England will reflect on a bowling effort that was too expensive and top-order batting that failed to capitalise on a strong position.
'India just got too many runs' - analysis
India got just too many runs. England's bowling wasn't focused enough on Yuvraj Singh and then they lost wickets at the wrong time.
It's unfair to blame England's death bowlers, but they still haven't got that right. Woakes is good but they haven't got another person that they can really rely on.
• None India's 381-6 is the third-highest score ever made against England in a one-day international.
• None The partnership of 256 by Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni is the second-highest for any wicket by any opponent against England in ODIs, bettered only by the 286 shared by Sanath Jayasuriya and Upul Tharanga for Sri Lanka in 2006.
• None Yuvraj is only the sixth man to make a score of 150 or more against England in an ODI.
• None England made their fifth-highest ODI total and their largest batting second. It was also the largest score they have ever made to lose an ODI.
• None 747 runs is the second-most made in an ODI in India, behind the 825 made by the hosts and Sri Lanka in 2009-10.
• None Joe Root has made a half-century in each of the five Tests and two ODIs against India this winter.
'We weren't at our best' - what they said
England captain Eoin Morgan: "We probably weren't at our best with ball or the bat but we still competed and it's tremendously disappointing not to get over the line.
"Bowling to MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh is very difficult at times. The margin for error is quite small and the challenge is to break the partnership a little earlier.
"We showed a lot of fight, we have a huge amount of talent. It's been a magnificent day's cricket."
India captain Virat Kohli: "I said to the team that if we had had a good start then where could we have ended up today? MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh brought stability and wonders to the team, their batting rate was outstanding.
"A 380 target, we thought, was a bit too far-fetched, but we bowled at the most difficult phase because of the dew and the ball was very hard to execute - and the guys showed great character.
"If we had not picked out the wickets in the middle then I'm not sure where the game would have gone."
Man-of-the-match Yuvraj Singh: "In the domestic season I've been hitting the ball really well and I've been working hard on my fitness. The results showed today.
"Me and MS Dhoni understand the situations really well, we started by hitting the ball down the ground really well and not taking any risks. Then we attacked when the time was right."
"Diet has been the key, as you pass 30 you've got to work hard on your fitness - I learned that from Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble, all the greats." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/38679657 | |
Studying at the Bahai secret university - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Iran's Bahai minority is forbidden from studying at university - but they have a way round it, at least until it comes to postgraduate degrees. | Magazine | Mona studied at the underground Bahai university 10 years after Shirin
The largest non-Muslim minority in Iran, the Bahais, are persecuted in many ways - one being that they are forbidden from attending university. Some study in secret, but for those who want to do a postgraduate degree the only solution is to leave their country and study abroad.
"I remember my father showing me the scars he had on his head from when he used to be beaten up by the children of his town on his way to school," says Shirin. "So, of course, I didn't tell my father that I was experiencing the same when I was growing up in Iran in the 1980s. I knew he prayed and hoped that the world would get better."
In fact, persecution of the Bahais only increased following the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
And when Shirin's son, Khosru, started going to school, she had to hide more bad news from her father.
"I did not tell him that the children of the children of the children who left him scarred, are now calling my son untouchable," she says.
When, in the eighth grade, Khosru told the other children he was Bahai they dropped him like a stone.
"The kids wouldn't touch me," he says, "and if I were to touch them, they'd go and take a shower."
Since the creation of the Bahai faith in the mid-19th Century, the Iranian Shia establishment has called them "a deviant sect", principally because they reject the Muslim belief that Mohammed was the last prophet.
On official websites they are described as apostates, and as "unclean".
But it is when a student has finished school that the problems really begin.
As a Bahai, Shirin was told she could not enter university. Her only option was to secretly attend the Bahais' own clandestine university - the Bahai Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), set up in the mid-1980s by Bahai teachers and students who had been thrown out of Iranian universities after the revolution.
Universities are open to young women in Iran, but not if they are Bahai
Shirin enrolled in 1994. At that time, only two BA courses were available -in Science or Religious Studies - so she decided to study comparative religion.
Lectures took place in improvised classrooms in private homes all around Tehran. It took six years to complete her course, and it was then that she hit an impenetrable wall. There was no scope to do an MA or a PhD, and there was no scope for employment where her skills could be used.
Soon afterwards, a wave of crackdowns on the Bahai intelligentsia began, with raids on clandestine classrooms and the arrest of many BIHE teachers. Shirin saw her world was closing in on her. So when she heard about a domestic worker's visa scheme in the UK, she jumped at it.
"I applied straight away without wasting time, it didn't matter what the visa was called. I had to leave," she says.
Shirin arrived in the UK in 2003 and combined her domestic work with an evening job at an Italian restaurant in Scarborough. But she never forgot what she came to do, what she must achieve.
On a dark and smoggy English morning, she boldly walked through the doors of Birmingham University, and announced that she had a degree in religion from an underground university in Tehran.
To her great surprise, a week later, she was summoned back and was offered a place.
Listen to Lipika Pelham's report on the Bahai, The World's Faith, for Heart and Soul on the BBC World Service
"It was more than a miracle - it was beyond expectation, beyond my wildest dream," she says. "Till today, I feel it was the best reward I received for never compromising my faith."
Shirin finished her degree in 2006 and left the UK to join her brother in the US, where many of her family, friends and co-religionists have, over the years, found sanctuary from persecution.
Shirin (right) and a friend in New York
But soon another crackdown against the Bahais began, at home in Iran.
In 2008, seven members of the Bahai administrative body, Yaran, were arrested and charged with among other things, spying for Israel. After a trial in a Revolutionary Court in 2010, they were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
At this time another young Bahai woman, Mona, was applying to university in Tehran.
"I took an entrance exam at the University of Tehran - they were supposed to send a card saying how and where you should register if you were accepted, and you must write your religion on the card," she says.
"I wrote that I was not Muslim. There was an option that said 'other', and I ticked that box. There was no option for Bahai.
"When they sent back the card, they said, 'OK, you may register,' and in the place of religion, they wrote, Islam."
"In my belief, you're not supposed to lie about your faith even when facing death. So I wrote back, I was not Muslim. They said, 'Good luck, you can't enter university.'"
Like Shirin, Mona had only one option - the clandestine university, and it was an unforgettable experience.
"I remember the faces of all my friends who were coming from other cities in Iran, from far away," she says. "It took them maybe 16 - 20 hours to get to Tehran. Their faces looked so tired.
"It was really hard. We had one class from 08:00 to 12:00 in the east of Tehran, and the second class from 14:00 to 18:00 on the west side - it was exhausting! Sometimes we didn't have physical teachers, we had them over Skype, who were teaching us from the US, Canada."
After she graduated, she faced the same difficulties Shirin had experienced a decade earlier - and opted for a similar solution.
In 2009, she escaped to New York, via Austria, under an international religious refugee repatriation programme.
When I met her recently in Joe's Coffee, a lively meeting place for students and teachers at Columbia University, she had just completed her MA in Psychology. She was over the moon.
"It feels amazing, I can't believe it's all done and I'll even have a graduation! When I graduated from the BIHE, they arrested all my teachers, Bahai teachers. And we never had a graduation day."
The US is home to one of the largest Bahai populations in the world, their presence dating back at least to 1912, when Abdul Baha, the son of the faith's founder, Baha'u'llah, spent 11 months in the country, promoting the religion.
The BIHE degrees are accepted by most US universities - as Mona's was at Columbia University - and many BIHE volunteers are based in the US.
"Students and instructors in Iran can end up in jail just for being students and instructors. So they are not only doing something that is hard for them to do, but dangerous to do," says Prof Thane Terril, a convert to the Bahai faith who now runs online teacher training courses for post-graduate students.
"The motivation for the students is like a person in the desert without water."
Sipping coffee in the café of the former hotel, Ansonia, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Abdul Baha once stayed, Shirin says that she could never understand what the regime has against the Bahais.
"Abdul Baha emphasised that the East and West must meet," she says. "I think the collective approach to life is what we think of as being the oriental or Eastern culture, and the individualist approach to life is considered to be Western. And when the two merge, you have a very beautiful culture."
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38656871 | |
Putin spokesman denies US election hack - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman denies any Russian government involvement in hacking to influence the 2016 US election result. | null | President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has told the BBC that neither the Russian government nor the president himself were involved in hacking to influence the 2016 US election result.
Speaking exclusively to Hardtalk, Dmitry Peskov added that Russia suffered “hundreds and thousands of cyberattacks every day” emanating from the West.
The full Hardtalk interview is running on the BBC News Channel on Saturday 21 January at 0030 and 1530 GMT and Sunday 22 January 1630 GMT. It will also be on BBC World News on Saturday 21 January at 0730 and 1630 GMT and Sunday 22 January 2030 GMT. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38684643 | |
US frisbee team captures frozen lake crossing - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Unusual mobile phone footage shows the frisbee skittering across the ice in the US. | null | A youth frisbee team has filmed a frisbee crossing a frozen Maine lake in the wind.
Falmouth Rogue coach Shea Gunther captured the action on his phone while skating behind the frisbee.
He told the BBC: "I noticed how the wind would catch an errant throw, so I turned my camera on and threw it into the wind so it would skitter. And skitter it did". | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38684425 | |
Primates 'sliding towards extinction', say scientists - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | A report says that 60% of the world's primate species are under threat of extinction. | null | The world's primates face "crisis" with 60% of species now threatened with extinction, according to research.
A global study, involving more than 30 scientists, assessed the conservation status of more than 500 individual species, including apes, monkeys, lemurs and lorises.
The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.
Victoria Gill visited the lemurs at Blackpool Zoo to explain the threat. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38670097 | |
Netflix's gamble pays off as subscriptions soar - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Netflix's choice to bin old films and shows in favour of ploughing money into original content is, for now at least, reaping rewards. | Technology | Netflix took a decision to invest in original content
Hundreds of movies disappeared from Netflix over 2016, the result of the streaming service’s decision to end several key content deals with top studios and distributors.
It was a brave move - particularly given that its main rivals, such as Hulu, jumped at the chance to take on some of those titles Netflix decided it no longer wanted.
The reason for the cull? Original content.
Netflix was being bold - its aspirations were no longer to be your on-demand DVD collection, but instead the place where you discovered and consumed new and exclusive shows.
So rather than pay money out to studios for the right to show existing content, it instead ploughed its cash into shows such as Stranger Things, The Crown, Luke Cage and the remake of Gilmore Girls.
In 2016, those “Netflix Originals” - already a term you could argue has become synonymous with quality - came thick and fast.
The firm said it produced 600 hours of original programming last year - and intends to raise that to about 1,000 hours in 2017. Its budget to achieve that is $6bn (£4.9bn) - a billion more than last year.
On Wednesday we learned the company has been rewarded handsomely for putting its eggs in the original content basket. After hours trading on Wednesday saw the company’s stock rise by as much as 9% on the news it had added 7.05 million new subscribers in the last three months of 2016.
That’s far greater than the 5.2 million they had anticipated, and left them ending the year with 93.8 million subscribers in total - and an expectation of breaking the symbolic 100 million mark by the end of March.
The kids of Stranger Things become overnight superstars - and helped earn Netflix millions
In all, 2016 saw Netflix take in $8.83bn (£7.1bn) in revenue - with a profit of $186.7m (£151.6m).
All looking good, then - but there’s still work to do.
In a letter to shareholders, Netflix underlined, as it is obliged to do, the potential risks to its success going forward - chiefly globalisation and competition.
While international expansion has been rapid, with the majority of the new sign-ups are coming from outside of the US, it will require a lot of expenditure for Netflix to dominate with original content in the 189 other countries it serves.
It has put some of its budget into non-English language shows, such as “3%”, a Portuguese sci-fi series. Intriguingly, Netflix noted that many English viewers opted to watch the dubbed version, providing an unexpected added audience.
Still, when local TV players kick into action and give up so-called linear TV - episodes once a week, and so on - in favour of Netflix’s model there’s a chance the company’s head start could be clawed back.
The company notes that the BBC became the first “major linear network” to push into a “binge-first” strategy, and it expects American network HBO to follow suit pretty soon.
The company also took a somewhat unusual political step in its earnings, drawing attention to the ongoing debate over so-called net neutrality.
Net neutrality is the concept that all data traffic on the internet is treated equally - and that internet service providers (ISPs) cannot, for example, charge extra for data-heavy services like video streaming.
The cost could be passed on to either companies like Netflix or the consumer - but is currently not allowed. However, there are concerns the incoming Trump administration may abolish the current laws that ensure net neutrality.
Netflix said any weakening of net neutrality laws would not affect its business in any significant way, but stressed, as many advocates have done, that it would hinder competition across the board.
“Strong net neutrality is important to support innovation and smaller firms,” the company wrote.
"No one wants ISPs to decide what new and potentially disruptive services can operate over their networks, or to favour one service over another. We hope the new US administration and Congress will recognise that keeping the network neutral drives job growth and innovation.”
Finally, Netflix reiterated its reluctance to get into the business of broadcasting live sport - something the company argued was the last real incentive for someone to have a traditional cable or satellite subscription.
My hunch there is that it’s biding its time.
Netflix boss Reid Hastings said his company was not interested in going after sports rights
Right now, sports rights - even for just one market - cost astronomical amounts of cash.
But if big cable firms continue to be weakened by the likes of Netflix, their spending power will decrease. At which point the new players could see the prospect of getting a far better deal than if they were to go after it today.
What Netflix has made clear is that it’s no longer content with signing up content to show only in select markets, it’s instead focusing on deals that can be shown in every country.
How much would global rights to the Premier League be worth, I wonder?
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC and on Facebook
• None Netflix to allow TV and movie downloads | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38672837 | |
Vegemite back in Australian ownership after A$460m Bega deal - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The iconic brand of salty yeast spread is bought by Bega Cheese from US giant Mondelez in $A460m deal | Australia | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Vegemite is back under Australian ownership after it is sold by US food giant Mondelez.
Vegemite will return to Australian ownership after Bega Cheese agreed to buy a range of well-known food brands in a deal worth A$460m (£280m; $345m).
Bega said it would acquire Vegemite, ZoOSH mayonnaise and Bonox beef extract from Mondelez International.
The deal will also give the dairy producer the right to use the Kraft brand under licence.
Mondelez announced it would now focus on "core brands" in Australia and New Zealand including Cadbury and Oreos.
Fans of Vegemite spread it on sandwiches or toast, and sometimes mix it with cheese, salad and peanut butter.
"The wonderful heritage and values that Vegemite represents and its importance to Australian culture makes its combination with Bega Cheese truly exciting," Bega executive chairman Barry Irvin said.
For decades, Australians bemoaned the loss the brand to the US-owned Kraft in 1935, though it is still manufactured in Port Melbourne, Victoria.
Mondelez took control of the brand in 2012 after a restructuring at Kraft.
Mondelez International vice president Amanda Banfield said: "It's been a privilege stewarding this brand, which is found in almost every Australian household and is part of the fabric of the nation."
• None The story behind the Vegemite scare | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-38672758 | |
Who will host the Brit Awards, as Michael Buble takes time off for his ill son? - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | As Michael Buble takes time off to care for his son, who could replace him as host of the Brit Awards? | Entertainment & Arts | With only five weeks to go, it looks like the Brit Awards have no host.
Canadian crooner Michael Buble was due to present - but that's been in doubt since his three-year-old son Noah was diagnosed with cancer last year.
At the time, the distraught singer cancelled all future engagements, saying he was determined to focus on caring for his eldest child.
It was hoped he'd be able to return for the Brit Awards, but media reports are suggesting he's pulled out for good - and understandably so.
So, who could take the helm at the O2 Arena on 22 February? Here are a few suggestions...
Ant (stands on the left, a bit wacky), and Dec (stands on the right, giggles) were hardly at their best when they hosted the Brits last year.
The nadir was the moment when Ant "mistakenly" appeared on stage in a dress. Because a man in a dress is hilarious, right?
Coming so soon after a video tribute to androgyny-embracing pop lizard David Bowie, it felt particularly dated.
But with a better scriptwriter they're a safe pair of hands - and, crucially, able to draw a big audience.
Back in 2008 when Katy Perry was a relatively new and untested pop star, she took the helm of the MTV Europe Music Awards in Liverpool and totally stole the show.
Cheeky and energetic, she kept the event moving at a frenetic pace, racing through 10 costume changes and more than a few memorable moments. "Girls. Just a reminder," she said, while riding on top of a giant banana. "It's not how big the banana is - it's how you sit on it."
With new music to promote in 2017, could the star be coaxed into a repeat performance?
If only so they can go: "On your marks, get set, DRAKE!"
By hiring Michael Buble, the Brits were making a statement of intent: we want some showbiz, and we want a host a global audience will recognise. Adele is one of the only other stars that fits the bill.
In many ways, Adele is the Brits. From the stop-you-in-your-tracks performance of Someone Like You to the moment last year when she tearfully accepted an award from Tim Peake in outer space.
She's funny, she's charismatic, and there's 0% chance she'll do it. Which will be a relief for the person who works the bleep button.
He's already winning the Brits Icon Award, so they won't need to book an extra cab.
His propensity to go off-script might cause organisers a few headaches - but a double-header with his bff Olly Murs would be worth tuning in for.
Before he swanned off to become a US chat show host, Corden presented the Brits five times (including a stint with Kylie in 2009). He stood down three years ago, telling the Radio Times he didn't want to outstay his welcome.
"There are award shows where it actually becomes a plus that it's hosted by the same person," he said. "But the Brits should always have an energy about them that is fresh and new and exciting."
But imagine if the whole Brits ceremony was an extended episode of Carpool Karaoke? No pizzazz, no fireworks, no music industry "suits" - just a rotating cast of megastars in the passenger seat, with Corden fishing the occasional trophy out of his glove compartment.
TV Gold. But, seeing as he's already presenting the Grammys a week before, extremely unlikely.
The Brits have often looked to comedians to provide a bit of frisson - notably Russell Brand, who outraged (some) viewers in 2007 with his references to the Queen's "naughty bits" and Amy Winehouse's drinking problem ("her surname's beginning to sound like a description of her liver".)
Of the current crop of stand-ups, Jack Whitehall has both the profile and the requisite irreverence. His UK tour might get in the way of rehearsals but, by coincidence, he has a day off on 22 February.
In the year that grime took over the Brits, Julie Adenuga would be a brave but bold choice.
The Beats 1 DJ is one of the genre's biggest champions (as well as being sister to three-time nominee Skepta) but eminently knowledgeable about music from all walks of life. Apple Music is also sponsoring two of the awards - best British male and best British female - so there's also a commercial reason to use one of their presenters on the night.
However, she's untested as a live TV presenter, so unlikely to make the cut.
X Factor host and hot buttered crumpet Dermot O'Leary makes live television look like a walk in the park - when in reality it's a race through a field full of knives, on one leg, in the dark, tethered to an excited donkey.
Amazingly, he's never presented the Brits, but given his role as a new music champion on Radio 2, he's a perfect fit.
Big Brother host Emma Willis did a great job fronting the Brits nominations show on Saturday night, attracting a respectable 1.6 million viewers to ITV.
She told the BBC she was planning to watch the main ceremony from the audience - but if the call comes, she can recreate her favourite ever Brit moment, when "Cat Deeley flew in on a champagne bottle" in 2004.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38662210 | |
Supermarket introduces 'relaxed' lane - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | A supermarket in Moray introduces a "relaxed" lane aimed at making life at the checkout less stressful for some of its more vulnerable customers. | null | A supermarket in Moray has introduced a "relaxed" lane aimed at making life at the checkout less stressful for some of its more vulnerable customers.
Checkout staff at Tesco in Forres have been trained to identify any special needs of customers and operate at a speed that suits them.
Tesco has developed the scheme with Alzheimer Scotland. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38671867 | |
Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth artwork shortlist announced - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A scoop of ice cream covered in parasites and an empty robe are some of the new proposals for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. | London | The End by Heather Phillipson: Described as exploring the extremes of shared experience, from commemorations and celebrations to mass protests, all while being observed by a drone's camera
A scoop of ice cream covered in parasites and an empty robe are some of the new proposals for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
Also put forward is a recreation of a sculpture destroyed by so-called Islamic State.
Maquettes of the proposed works will be on display at the National Gallery until 26 March. The two winners will then be chosen.
The two chosen works will be unveiled on the plinth in 2018 and 2020.
The Fourth Plinth Programme invites world-class artists to make new works for the capital.
A maquette is a small preliminary sketch, or wax or clay model, from which a work of art is elaborated.
High Way by Damián Ortega: Described as a playful and precarious construction of a truck, oil cans, scaffold and a ladder
Untitled by Huma Bhabha: Described as an imposing figure, the scale reflecting a modern comic sci-fi movie
The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist by Michael Rakowitz: Described as a recreation of the Lamassu, a winged bull and protective deity, which was destroyed by so-called Islamic State in 2015
The Emperor's Old Clothes by Raqs Media Collective: Described as exploring how power can be both present and absent in sculpture
The current artwork, David Shrigley's Really Good, will be on the plinth until March 2018.
The 7m-high (23ft) sculpture of a hand giving a thumbs up sign was unveiled last September.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: "I'm delighted to see that the shortlisted commissions are not just from the UK but from around the globe, a clear sign that London is open to creativity.
"The Fourth Plinth reflects the best of London in so many ways - it is inventive, pioneering, surprising and a source of delight, discussion and debate for millions of Londoners and visitors from across the world."
Mark Wallinger's figure Ecce Homo was the first piece to stand on the empty plinth - in the north-west corner of the square - in 1999.
Other works have included Alison Lapper Pregnant by Marc Quinn (2005), Nelson's Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare (2010) and Elmgreen and Dragset's Powerless Structures, Fig 101 - a sculpture of a boy astride his rocking horse.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-38670797 | |
NHS staff shortages: Why so persistent? - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Why is it that the NHS always seems to be short of staff, and is there anything that can be done to resolve the problem? | Health | The NHS has relied on nurses from home and abroad since its birth
NHS staff shortages seem an everyday fact of life - or at least a factor mentioned in several news stories each week. But why do these shortages persist and is there anything that can be done to get rid of them?
In this week's In Business on BBC Radio 4, I spoke to historians, economists, nurses, doctors and other healthcare staff to try to get to the bottom of these questions.
And to pose another one - does the NHS have the right mix of staff with the right mix of skills or could changing traditional roles rather than just boosting numbers help?
The Royal College of Nursing says England is currently short of at least 20,000 nursing staff.
And the Royal College of Midwives says the country needs 3,500 more midwives.
Meanwhile, GP leaders and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine say the UK urgently needs greater numbers of general practitioners and emergency doctors - just a few of the medical specialities struggling with recruitment and retention right now.
Increasingly, an older population, with often complex health needs, adds extra demand.
But these problems are far from new.
Stephanie Snow, medical historian at the University of Manchester, says staff shortages have existed since the very birth of the NHS, in 1948 - though people are often quick to label recruitment crises as one-off problems.
She told the BBC: "Over the first decade in particular, the NHS expanded its specialist services rapidly and there were many new technologies on board.
"All of these things led to unprecedented increases in the number of staff required.
"By the time we get to the late 1960s, hospitals had to turn to mass recruitment, looking towards countries such as India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka - where courses were taught in English and aligned to the UK's General Medical Council, as a consequence of colonial rule."
Physician associates are a relatively new role within the NHS
Meanwhile, Anita Charlesworth, director of Research and Economics at the think tank, the Health Foundation, argues the UK has perpetually trained lower numbers of medical and nursing students than it needs.
She said: "There is not a problem that we don't have enough bright, young people who would meet the standards and would love to have a career in medicine and nursing.
"They just can't get a place. We have systematically trained fewer than we need."
And she suggests being able to recruit doctors and nurses from overseas has offered a "get out of jail card" for successive staff shortages.
Dr Mark Porter, of the doctors' union, the British Medical Association, argues we have generally staffed a health service we can afford - rather than look at what the population needs.
But he says planning for the NHS workforce of the future is not easy.
He said: "It is difficult to get planning perfect for every one of 50 or 60 specialities all of the time.
"The population's needs are genuinely not quite as predictable as one might imagine.
"We know the trajectory illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes are taking over the next five years.
"But what about the next 25 years?
"Will public health messages and new technology be successful, or won't they?
"The answer could give us completely different trajectories in the future."
Nurses starting work on the first day of the NHS
For its part, the government says it plans to increase the numbers of doctors and nurses it trains and boost other healthcare staff too.
At the Conservative Party conference in October 2016, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said: "My job is to prepare the NHS for the future, and that means doing something today that we have never done properly before, and that's training enough doctors."
The government announced there would be up to an extra 1,500 medical school places each year from 2018 in England.
And, looking back, the NHS Confederation said there had been an extra 32,467 doctors employed in England in 2014 compared with 2004.
Health chiefs also say current plans to scrap nurse bursaries will help increase the number of nurse training places available this year - though whether this will work in practice is unclear and has been disputed by nursing leaders.
Other positions such as nurse apprentices and physician associates are being explored.
Physician associates (PAs) - trained to do some of the jobs junior doctors do, might be able to cut some pressures on wards.
But current numbers are tiny, most cannot prescribe and they are not professionally regulated in the same way doctors are.
Ms Charlesworth is worried options for filling shortages quickly might be running out.
She said: "There's a massive gap globally now in the number of doctors and nurses compared to projected demand.
"So India keeps many more of its doctors.
"It has fantastic leading hospitals that are an exciting place to work if you are a young Indian doctor.
"There is a global shortage of clinical healthcare staff."
And of course there is another issue to consider.
It is estimated about 10% doctors and 7% of nurses working in the NHS in England are nationals of other EU countries.
The question is - could Brexit make NHS recruitment and retention problems even worse?
To find out more and to hear some possible solutions, listen to: BBC Radio 4 - In Business, The NHS- The Recruitment Dilemma.
Presented by Smitha Mundasad and produced by Rosamund Jones
• None BBC Radio 4 - In Business, The NHS- The Recruitment Dilemma | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38640068 | |
Italy avalanche aerials show stranded rescuers - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Aerial footage reveals the wall of snow blocking rescuers from reaching a hotel engulfed by an avalanche in central Italy. | null | Rescuers have struggled to reach the hotel engulfed by an avalanche in central Italy because of heavy snow.
Aerial pictures show scores of rescue vehicles lined up as a snow-plough tries to break through. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38682034 | |
Cunning or clueless? Europe reacts in Brexit bout with May - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The BBC's Kevin Connolly gauges reaction in the European Parliament to the UK PM's Brexit pledges. | Europe | If Brexit is going to end up feeling like a long toe-to-toe boxing match then at last we can say that the first round is over.
Theresa May has come out jabbing - offering crisp points about the UK's plans to leave the single market and its readiness to walk away from a bad deal if that's all that's on offer.
The European side for the moment is still acting as if what we've seen so far this week is just the posturing and chest-beating you see at the pre-fight weigh-in rather than the fight itself.
Their big-hitters - politicians like the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and his equivalent at the European Council Donald Tusk - have confined themselves to a little nifty defensive work pointing to the likely difficulty of the talks, hoping for a fair outcome and reiterating that until Britain formally triggers the departure process everything is mere shadow boxing.
None of that of course will stop individual MEPs and commentators from offering their assessment of where the balance lies between the EU and the UK after Theresa May's Brexit declaration.
One German colleague said to me jokingly: "I didn't realise that the EU had decided to leave the UK until I heard your prime minister's speech."
And elsewhere in the corridors of the European Parliament you heard plenty of surprise at the confidence of the tone coming from London, the crispness of the decision to leave the single market and the sudden shafts of clarity after weeks in which the UK had appeared to not know what it wanted.
Shafts of clarity about the UK's position in the corridors of the European Parliament?
That's not to say of course that everyone has been impressed, even though Mrs May was praised in some quarters both for realism and for clarity.
It's worth remembering that most mainstream politicians in Europe view Brexit as an act of madness to be spoken of with hostility and incomprehension. Britain in this analysis has taken the decision to walk away from an institution that's been an engine of peace and prosperity.
Hence these remarks from the German MP Norbert Roettgen, who represents Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.
He said: "The UK's two main economic weaknesses are its considerable trade deficit and a big budget deficit. As such [UK Chancellor Philip] Hammond's threats with duties and tax cuts would primarily damage the UK and should be regarded as an expression of British cluelessness."
That dismissal of an option Britain is keeping in reserve - the option of operating as a low-tax base for business if Europe refuses to cut an attractive deal - would be seen in Strasbourg as one weakness in the Theresa May strategy.
From elsewhere on the German political spectrum came an alternative strand of criticism - not that the UK was trying to set up a kind of low-tax magnet for foreign investment into Europe but simply that it was cutting ties in too brutal a fashion.
Too much, too fast? Yes, says German Greens MP Ska Keller
For Bruno Gollnisch, MEP for the French far-right National Front (pictured left, next to party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen last year) the UK can return to days of yore
Ska Keller represents the German Greens in the European parliament.
She told us: "My overall impression is that May wants to go for a super-hard Brexit. She wants to cut all ties and I don't think that's going to fly well on the rest of the continent. Theresa May didn't really make friends in the last couple of days here in the overall European Union."
To the right of that broad European mainstream of course, things are seen rather differently.
France's far-right National Front looks at the success of the Leave campaign in the UK with a degree of envy. It doesn't like the EU either and would like to see its core treaties renegotiated.
Its senior MEP Bruno Gollnisch said: " I do think that in the end Britain could settle down to a situation rather like what it had before Brexit - after all in those days we managed things like exchanges of school pupils. And the UK will have commercial ties that reflect its specific Anglo-Saxon nature. There is no real reason why not."
So there has been a sense in Strasbourg this week that a phase in a kind of phoney war has finally ended and after months of speculating about what Britain might or might not want, a degree of clarity has emerged about British ambitions towards the single market and to a lesser extent the custom unions.
So far in this cautious round it was the UK which came out swinging rather than the European side.
But there is a very long way to go in this negotiation and by the end of it both sides will have endured defeats and disappointments alongside their occasional moments of triumph.
The UK might feel for now that its ahead on points, but everyone knows there's a long way - a very long way - to go. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38669476 | |
Windsor Castle undergoes two-week 'high clean' - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Chandeliers and suits of armour are just some of the features being dusted down. | Berkshire | The chandelier, one of five in the Waterloo Chamber, dates from 1862 and was made by the Birmingham glass makers F and C Osler
Windsor Castle is undergoing a two week spring clean before it is re-opened to the public over the weekend.
Experts ensure the castle's State Apartments are cleaned from floor to ceiling during what the Royal Trust calls the annual "high clean".
Chandeliers dating from 1862 and commissioned by Queen Victoria are dusted, along with suits of armour on the Grand Staircase.
The castle will open its doors again to the public on Saturday.
A marble bust of German Emperor Frederick III of Prussia in St George's Hall is cleaned as part of the annual clean
Expert staff cleaning a cut glass chandelier, dated from 1862, in the Waterloo Chamber, Windsor Castle
The clean takes two weeks to complete and sees each room cleaned from top to bottom
Castle staff dust the suits of armour on the Grand Staircase
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-38674610 | |
Trump and the nuclear codes - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | What are the checks on a US president launching a strategic nuclear strike? | US & Canada | On 20 January, inauguration day in the United States, a nameless, unknown military aide was seen accompanying President Barack Obama to the handover ceremony at the US Capitol in Washington.
That military aide was carrying a satchel over his or her shoulder containing a briefcase known as "the nuclear football". Inside was a piece of digital hardware measuring 3in (7.3cm) by 5in, known as "the biscuit".
This contained the launch codes for a strategic nuclear strike. The briefing for the incoming president on how to activate them had already taken place out of public sight, but the moment President-elect Donald Trump took the oath of office that aide, and the satchel, moved quietly over to his side.
From then on, Donald Trump has had sole authority to order an action that could result in the deaths of millions of people in under an hour. The question on a lot of people's minds is, given his thin skin and impulsive temperament, what are the safeguards, if any, to prevent an impetuous decision by one man with catastrophic consequences?
First off, it should be said that Donald Trump has previously rowed back on some of his earlier, provocative comments on the use of nuclear weapons. He stated he would be "the last person to use them", although he did not rule it out.
Other senior figures are also involved in the chain of command, such as the US Secretary of Defence, retired US Marine Gen James Mattis, But Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington, says that ultimately, the sole authority to launch a strike rests with the president.
"There are no checks and balances on the president's authority to launch a nuclear strike," he says. "But between the time he authorises one and the time it's carried out there are other people involved."
The idea of a rogue president taking such a monumental decision on his own is unrealistic. He gives the order and the secretary of defence is constitutionally obliged to carry it out.
The secretary of defence could, in theory, refuse to obey the order if he had reason to doubt the president's sanity, but this would constitute mutiny and the president can then fire him and assign the task to the deputy secretary of defence.
Donald Trump says the US should "greatly strengthen and expand" its nuclear capabilities
Under the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution a vice-president could, in theory, declare the president mentally incapable of taking a proper decision, but he would need to be backed by a majority of the cabinet.
So how would it work in practice?
Inside that briefcase, the "nuclear football" that never leaves the president's side, is a "black book" of strike options for him to choose from once he has authenticated his identity as commander-in-chief, using a plastic card.
Washington folklore has it that a previous president temporarily mislaid his identification card when he left it inside a jacket that was sent to the dry cleaners.
Once the president has selected his strike options from a long-prepared "menu", the order is passed via the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Pentagon's war room and then, using sealed authentication codes, on to US Strategic Command HQ in Offutt Airbase in Nebraska.
The order to fire is transmitted to the actual launch crews using encrypted codes that have to match the codes locked inside their safes.
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The US and Russia both possess enough nuclear missiles to destroy each other's cities several times over - there are reported to be 100 US nuclear warheads aimed at Moscow alone. The two countries' arsenals account for more than 90% of the world's total number of nuclear warheads.
As of September 2016 Russia had the most, with an estimated 1796 strategic nuclear warheads, deployed on a mixed platform of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and strategic bombers.
Under a programme ordered by President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has recently invested billions of roubles in upgrading its strategic nuclear missile force, keeping an arsenal of constantly mobile ballistic missiles travelling through tunnels deep beneath the forests of Siberia.
America had, in September 2016, 1,367 strategic nuclear warheads, similarly deployed in land-based underground missile silos, which by their static nature are vulnerable to a first strike, at sea onboard submarines, where they are harder to detect, and at airbases, where they can be loaded on to bombers.
The UK has about 120 strategic warheads, of which only a third are deployed at sea. The Royal Navy always keeps a portion of the nation's Trident nuclear force somewhere in the world's oceans, maintaining what is known as the continuous at sea deterrent.
The Topol is one of Russia's mobile ICBMs
ICBMs travel at a speed of over 17,000mph (Mach 23), flying high above the Earth's atmosphere before descending towards their pre-programmed targets at four miles a second.
The flight-time for land-based missiles flying between Russia and the US is between 25 and 30 minutes. For submarine-based missiles, where the boats may be able to approach a coast covertly, the flight time could be considerably shorter, even as little as 12 minutes.
This does not leave a president much time to decide whether it is a false alarm or imminent Armageddon. Once ICBMs have been launched they cannot be recalled, but if they remain in their silos they will probably be destroyed by the inbound attack.
A former senior White House official told me recently that much would depend on the circumstances in which a nuclear strike was being considered.
If this was a long-term, measured policy decision to say, carry out a pre-emptive strike on country X, then a lot of people would be involved. The vice-president, National Security Adviser, and much of the cabinet would all be likely to be included in the decision-making process.
But if there was an imminent strategic threat to the United States, i.e. if an inbound launch of ICBMs from a hostile state had been detected and were minutes from reaching the US then, he said, "the president has extraordinary latitude to take the sole decision to launch." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38651616 | |
Masters 2017: Ronnie O'Sullivan beats Neil Robertson, Fu beats Allen - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan beats Neil Robertson 6-3 to reach the semi-finals of the Masters at Alexandra Palace. | null | Last updated on .From the section Snooker
Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan beat Neil Robertson 6-3 to reach the semi-finals of the Masters at Alexandra Palace in London.
Australia's Robertson started with 74, but O'Sullivan made 63 and 51 as the pair shared the first six frames.
Neither player were at their best but Englishman O'Sullivan won the seventh, and a fluked red helped him take the next, before winning with a 68 break.
O'Sullivan will now play Marco Fu, who beat Mark Allen 6-2.
Fu made the highest break of the tournament - a 140 in the eighth frame - and followed it up with a 65 to advance to Saturday's semi.
The 2010 runner-up had started with breaks of 83 and 74 as he took a 3-0 lead, before Allen's 70 and 54 closed the deficit, but Fu kept his cool by winning three-in-a-row.
Meanwhile, 'The Rocket' is bidding for a record seventh Masters title and aiming to retain the trophy after last year's 10-1 thrashing of Barry Hawkins.
Now 41, O'Sullivan last won an event at the 2016 Welsh Open in February and has lost in three finals of events since.
In a disjointed match against Robertson - which featured a highest break of 74 in the opening frame - he made uncharacteristic errors by missing straightforward pots, but still managed to battle through.
"I can feel and sense that I am missing too many easy balls now. I need to cut them out," he told BBC Sport.
"I am going to keep dragging my career out as long as I can, that is all you can do.
"It is nice to know if your game is coming back or not. I don't want to be at the point where I am being delusional and carry on playing for 10 years thinking I am good but I am not.
"Hopefully I have three years left in my career but I am appreciative that I am still playing."
"A fascinating and intriguing encounter. It was not the best standard but it was engrossing.
"Both players were missing and you saw how much it meant to them. It was enjoyable in a strange way."
Sign up to My Sport to follow snooker news and reports on the BBC app, or if you want to get involved yourself, read our Get Inspired guide. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/snooker/38680221 | |
Planes, trains and McDonald's: Your stories of porn in public - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The BBC's Siobhann Tighe was unsure what to do when she boarded a bus and sat next to a man watching porn on his mobile phone. Here readers tell their own stories of porn in public. | Magazine | The BBC's Siobhann Tighe was unsure what to do when she sat down on a bus beside a man who was watching porn on his mobile phone, as she wrote last Saturday.
Her story provoked a fiery debate - while some deplored the man's behaviour, others said what he chose to watch was his own business. Many readers also described similar encounters on public transport and elsewhere. Here is a selection of their comments.
I was travelling home from London to Newcastle with two children on a busy train. There was one man at a table with three empty seats. I realised he was sitting next to a conspicuous stack of porno mags and leafing through them. Everyone in the corridor had chosen to stand apart from him. "Mummy!" - my four-year-old daughter exclaimed loudly as she swung into the empty seat - "that man has got pictures of ladies with big boobies!". The porno man looked at her, looked at them, and crumpled. He put his mags in a bag and freed up the space next to him so that we could sit down. Hellen, Newcastle
Whilst on a flight from Germany to Hong Kong a man in the next seat started up his laptop and was oblivious to the fact that his hardcore porn could be seen and heard by me and people in the next aisle. As a woman travelling on my own on an overnight flight, this made me extremely uncomfortable. I raised it with the purser - the man was moved and spoken to, apparently. As for the countless times I've witnessed this on the train, there's been no hope of anyone in authority sorting it out. You either have to move seats, say something and risk being verbally attacked, or seethe quietly until your stop. I'm not anti-men, anti-sex or anti-porn. Yet whenever I've raised this issue in the past, there's always someone ready to call me out for being a prude. I'm not. I just don't think porn has a place on public transport, or in any areas frequented by the general public. Annie G, UK
I admit I've viewed online porn occasionally in the privacy of my own home, but even I was surprised and felt a little uncomfortable when the person on the next train seat began viewing very hardcore porn on his tablet. I ended up moving and informed the guard. He said he would "have a word" with the guy, and duly did, at which point the perpetrator (no doubt embarrassed) got up and moved. The guard apologised to me, then explained that this was an increasing problem. Lawrie, Sleaford
This happened to me on a train to London. I was shocked and offended. The man was watching porn video involving a yoga instructor, on his phone in the seat beside me. I decided to ask the man to stop watching the video because, like the man, I have free will and I could ask him to stop doing something I was uncomfortable with. Of course, he could refuse and I was prepared for that. As it happens, he obliged and actually apologised. It is not the law's role to protect people from offence. If we disagree with views, we must challenge these views and have an open debate, for that is the only way society can progress. Mel Lane, Guildford
l was on a bus in Huddersfield working with a looked after child who was 14 years old at the time. My young person tapped me and pointed out the man sitting in front of us was watching "disturbing stuff". He was watching hardcore porn on a large screen. I quietly approached the man and asked him to either sit at the back or please turn it off, otherwise I would have to have very loud words with the driver. He looked horrified when l told him that a 14-year-old had pointed out what he was watching to me. He didn't say anything, he just turned his phone off and shoved it in his pocket. I still told the driver quietly when l was getting off. I left him having a word with him. I felt l had to say something as a professional, responsible adult and a mother. Annabel, Bradford
When I was 14, I was on a plane with my dad. I had the middle seat and an unknown man was in the window seat with his computer. He was reading a lot of documents and then started watching porn. I was so shocked and then I got scared, like who does that in a plane? I've never told anyone about this, but I haven't forgotten it somehow. Lais, Brazil
I went to McDonald's one evening with my wife and children. I sat at a large table while my wife and children went to the counter. A group of children aged between 12 and 14 were watching porn on a large iPhone with the sound on. I asked them to switch it off and received a cold shoulder. I insisted since I had young children or I would report them to the manager. Happily they switched it off before my children came. Paul Brown, Glasgow
I was at an upmarket bar/restaurant having a meal with friends. At a table close by a man sitting on his own had his laptop out. I glanced at the screen and the man was searching porn websites full of pornographic explicit images of women. I was rather shocked, particularly as he was making no attempt to be discreet. It felt to me like a blatant case of sexual harassment to myself and my female friend. The waitress agreed to talk to him and he dimmed the screen. I said I would only be happy if it was turned off or we would leave. She went back to him and he closed his laptop and left. In my view a man wouldn't be able to expose himself in a restaurant so why should he be able to expose degrading images on his laptop? Paula Stott, Harrogate
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. VIDEO: From disgust to it's ok, Woman's Hour took to the streets to find out what you think of watching porn on buses
I was standing on a packed tube train and a man was standing watching a porn movie on his phone. A boy, around 12 years old, realised what the man was watching and moved away. I tapped the man on the shoulder and very loudly asked why he was watching porn in a public place with children around? All he could reply with was "you shut up" and [swore at me]. I told him loudly to stop watching porn and switch it off but he refused. He said it was his personal right. Only my 16-year-old daughter supported me and told him to stop. Nobody else joined in or tried to help me. His behaviour was very threatening. I wanted to take his photo but was worried about his reaction. It wasn't until after he left the train at Leicester Square that other passengers congratulated me on standing up to him. I was so angry I reported the incident to Transport Police. They said if they managed to identify him he would be prosecuted for causing public outrage. Sharon Forbes, Chippenham
I am a Traffic PCSO working for the Met Police on Safer Transport. There was a young male looking at a gay porn magazine. As there were young children on the bus I asked him to put the magazine away. He refused and called me "homophobic." I then requested the driver of the bus to pull over and I evicted the passenger from the bus and told him my thoughts. I could have gone down the route of a Section 5 of the Public Order Act - causing harm, alarm or distress. I would recommend anyone to challenge someone looking at porn on a bus, if its causing them distress. Anonymous
I was on an overland train and a man, about 25 years old and wearing a hoodie, was watching porn on his mobile as we waited for the train to depart. The speaker was turned up and it was obvious from the sounds that it was a man and woman having sex. The young man appeared to be oblivious to the rest of us. Two women got up and moved to the next carriage. None of us said anything, it was obvious looking around that most of us felt considerable discomfort. The train departed and as the sound of the tracks and its engine increased, he turned up the volume on his mobile. Mick Gavin, London
Listen to Siobhann Tighe talking to Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour, on BBC Radio 4
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38638339 | |
Chinese billionaire offers biggest education prize - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Internet entrepreneur Charles Chen Yidan is going to award $8m per year to education projects. | Business | Charles Chen Yidan is putting his technology fortune back into education
A Chinese technology billionaire is offering the world's most valuable education prize.
The Yidan Prize will award nearly $8m (£6.64m) every year to two research projects that have the potential to "transform" global education.
Charles Chen Yidan, who co-founded China's internet company, Tencent, wants to use the prize to scale up innovative education research projects and replicate them across the world.
Universities, governments and think tanks have reacted enthusiastically to the prize, and leading US institutions like Harvard and MIT have already submitted several nominations.
But the winner might not necessarily be a household name in education. Even a local project could win the prize, if it can prove it has been effective.
"As long as an idea is replicable in other regions, we can give them an award," says Mr Chen.
Mr Chen, now aged 45, became one of China's richest men after co-founding Tencent in 1998. In 2013, he stepped down to focus on educational philanthropy.
His interest in education came from his family. His grandmother was illiterate but insisted that Mr Chen's father got a good education.
The internet billionaire founded Wuhan College, with an emphasis on more than exam grades
Mr Chen himself studied applied chemistry as an undergraduate at Shenzhen University and took a master's degree in economic law at Nanjing University.
His educational philosophy has also been shaped by the "tremendous pressure" he felt while studying for China's "gaokao" higher education entrance examinations.
So he set up Wuhan College, a private university in China, which focuses on "whole-person development" rather than rote-learning and examinations.
More stories from the BBC's Global education series looking at education from an international perspective, and how to get in touch.
You can join the debate at the BBC's Family & Education News Facebook page.
The college aims to train talented students to join China's technology industry.
Executives from Tencent helped to design the college's curriculum, recruit students and teach classes, so that its graduates are trained in the skills required by employers.
But Mr Chen was frustrated that this college only reached a limited number of students. So he decided a global education prize would be the best way to improve education for millions of young people.
Mr Chen, speaking on a tour of Europe to promote the prize to universities, governments, NGOs and think tanks, says he has already been inundated with nominations.
He wants the prize to focus the attention of universities and governments on future trends in education.
Looking for creativity: Fine art exam in Wuhan this autumn
"We find that no matter whether people come from a rich or developing country, in the east or the west, they are talking about similar concerns," says Mr Yidan.
These are questions about children from rich families having the best access to education, and whether students in some countries face too many exams.
The prize-winners will be chosen by an independent committee of educational experts led by Dr Koichiro Matsuura, former director-general of Unesco.
They are looking for nominations that are innovative and sustainable, that reform existing educational structures, and that respond to what might be the future challenges for education.
But Mr Chen also has his own ideas about how to improve global education.
Speaking through a translator but occasionally breaking into English to reinforce a point, he said he wants to find ways to make the most of the expertise of retired teachers.
Mr Yidan, launching the prize, called for better use of the talents of retired teachers
"They are a valuable resource that we need to make better use of," he says.
He thinks that collecting "big data" on students can improve the education that individual students receive.
"By analysing big data, we can find bespoke ways to help pupils in need," he says.
Unsurprisingly for the co-founder of an internet company, he believes that technology will transform education.
This latest education prize is now the most valuable.
The Global Teacher Prize, run by the Varkey Foundation, gives $1m (£830,000) annually to a teacher who has made an "outstanding contribution" to education.
The Broad Prize for Urban Education, which ran from 2002 to 2014, gave $1m every year to a school district in the US that significantly improved the academic performance of low-income and minority students.
The WISE Prize for education, supported by the Qatar Foundation, awards $500,000 (£415,000) to the winning laureate.
But is a prize really the best way to improve education?
Dan Sarofian-Butin, founding dean of the school of education and social policy at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, says that prize money can be a poor way of achieving change.
"Rather than give a one-off cash prize, I hope the Yidan Prize will nurture and sustain its winners over a period of years," he says.
Hanan Al Hroub who teaches refugee children has been named as the world's best teacher
"If you look at the TV show Dragons' Den, or Shark Tank in the US, what the winners really get is not just the investment money from the sharks, but their expertise, their network of contacts and firms, their foot in the door with many companies, and their national exposure.
"Likewise, a really powerful education prize would create a mechanism that fostered exactly such mentoring, networking, and sustainability."
Andreas Schleicher, education director at the OECD, welcomes the Yidan Prize as an incentive for innovation in education.
"When we surveyed teachers, less than a quarter of them said they would be recognised for greater levels of innovation," he said.
"The highly industrial and compliance-based organisation of education generally means that even where good ideas are generated, they don't scale and spread."
Nominations close at the end of March and the winners will be announced in September. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38639891 | |
Hong Kong: Twenty years later - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Hong Kong has spent 20 years under Chinese sovereignty. What's changed? | China | This year marks the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from the UK to China. The BBC's Helier Cheung, who sang in the handover ceremony, shares her personal reflections on the last two decades.
As a child, you don't always appreciate when you're witnessing history.
On 1 July 1997, I was part of the choir singing in the handover, in front of China's leaders and millions of viewers around the world.
It was a historic day. But I was nine at the time, so my most vivid memories were:
All of us in the choir had grown up speaking Cantonese. So singing in Mandarin felt both familiar and unfamiliar - it signified a culture we recognised, but did not grow up with.
In 1997, I (second from left) got to sing in the handover ceremony
Nearly 20 years later, I was back in Hong Kong reporting for the BBC
There were lots of dancers with pink fans, and I remember China's then-President Jiang Zemin holding up a piece of calligraphy that read "Hong Kong's tomorrow will be better".
But that night, I saw on TV that some had been protesting against the handover. It was one of my first lessons about Hong Kong's divisions - some were happy to be part of China again, but others were afraid.
I didn't always follow politics then, but politics still affected me. Some of my friends emigrated ahead of the handover, because their parents weren't sure about life under China.
And 1997 was also the start of the Asian financial crisis, so I overheard adults talking about stock market crashes, and suicides.
As a child, it was more comforting to be oblivious about the news.
Even as my friends and I went to secondary school, we rarely thought about developments in mainland China - we were teenagers after all.
This all changed in 2003. Hong Kong was hit by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) which travelled over from southern China.
People started wearing face masks to protect themselves from Sars
Suddenly whole buildings were being quarantined. School was cancelled - shortly before our exams - as well as our junior high ball.
To some, it almost seemed unfair - the virus had spread here after officials in mainland China covered up the outbreak.
Yet Hong Kong, which handled the outbreak more transparently, was the focus of a lot of international coverage, and was the city with the most deaths - nearly 300.
My friends and I became more pragmatic. We did everything we were told to - wearing face masks, disinfecting our hands and taking our temperatures before school each day.
But we kept meeting up in McDonald's after class, as we always did. One friend told me: "If you die, you die, there's nothing you can do. You just need to do the best you can."
By summertime, Hong Kong was Sars-free. But another crisis, this time political, was rumbling.
The government wanted to introduce national security legislation, known as Article 23.
It would have outlawed treason, secession and sedition - words I had to look up - and allowed our government to outlaw groups banned in mainland China.
The bill struck a nerve. Although many countries outlaw treason and secession, to many Hong Kongers it reminded them too much of mainland China.
On 1 July 2003, half a million people, including some of my classmates, marched against the bill.
A few days later, the government was forced to shelve Article 23, after one of its political allies, a pro-business party, withdrew its support.
My friends were jubilant, telling me they had "made history". Many felt that, although there was no democracy, it was possible to vote with their feet.
Many people wore black to show their opposition to Article 23
The Sars outbreak and Article 23 row made local and Chinese politics seem more relevant to our daily lives.
And by the late 2000s, mainland China felt more entwined with Hong Kong than ever.
When I was a child, some of my classmates, somewhat cruelly, mocked "mainlanders" as people who squatted and were poor. But now, more people were learning Mandarin, and Hong Kong's economic future seemed to depend on China's.
China loosened travel restrictions, making it easier for mainland tourists to visit Hong Kong.
It gave the economy a much-needed boost, but resentment was also growing.
I was studying abroad by then, but whenever I flew home I would hear people gripe about the sheer number of tourists, and how rude some appeared.
Mainlanders' shopping trips to Hong Kong have been a source of irritation to people in the city
Some tourists bought up huge quantities of baby milk powder, leaving local parents without enough.
I could no longer recognise many of the shopping malls my school friends and I used to frequent. We grew up with cheap jewellery stalls and snack shops - but now shopping centres were dominated by designer brands that wealthy Chinese tourists preferred.
The other big change was in politics. When I was at school, expressing an interest in politics was more likely to get you teased than admired.
But by 2012, students were holding hunger strikes to oppose a government attempt to introduce "patriotic education" classes.
And in 2014, something surprising, almost unthinkable, happened. Tens of thousands of people, led by students, took over the streets, demanding full democracy.
Growing up, it was easy to avoid talking about politics.
But with protesters sleeping in the streets for weeks, the subject was suddenly unavoidable.
Families and friends started arguing - in person and on Facebook - and "unfriending" people they disagreed with.
Supporters felt it was worth sacrificing order and economic growth for true democracy, but critics accused the protesters of "destroying" Hong Kong.
One woman told me her relatives were angry she took part in the protests and now, two years later, they still didn't want to meet her for dinner. "Hong Kong's become so split," she said.
Hong Kong was split between "yellow ribbons" who supported the protesters, and "blue ribbons" who supported the police
Recently, after years in the UK, I got to return to Hong Kong as a reporter.
A lot feels the same. The territory is still clean, efficient, and obsessed with good food.
But young people seem more pessimistic - with politics and soaring house prices their main bugbears.
Surveys suggest young people are the unhappiest they have been in a decade - and that up to 60% want to leave.
Recently, some have even started to call for independence from China, frustrated with Beijing's influence and the lack of political reform.
Their resentment stems from Hong Kong's handover or even the Sino-British negotiations in the 1980s.
"We were never given a choice," one activist said. "No-one ever asked Hong Kongers what they wanted."
Protests have become angrier. Most demonstrations I witnessed growing up were peaceful - even festive.
Now, some rallies are more confrontational and prone to clashes, while the government seems less willing to make concessions.
Pro-Beijing and pro-democracy protesters sometimes end up clashing
It's not surprising that, in an online poll run by a pro-government party, people chose "chaos" as the word to describe Hong Kong's 2016.
From violent protests, to legislators swearing and scuffling in parliament, politics has definitely been chaotic at times.
But, chaotic or not, what really strikes me about Hong Kong is how alive and adaptable it is.
Hong Kong's streets are busy late into the night
Whether in business or politics, Hong Kong is full of people fighting to be heard.
Local entrepreneurs are constantly devising controversial or creative ways to make money - such as renting out "capsule units" in their homes, or starting a rabbit cafe.
And, even as artists complain of pressure to self-censor, pop music has become more political and fresh news websites and satirical news channels have popped up.
Hong Kong may be a relatively small territory with a population of 7.3 million, but I love the fact it has never lost its ability to surprise me.
Helier Cheung's report can also be heard on From Our Own Correspondent | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-38489435 | |
Mexico's Colima volcano in fiery explosion - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Webcams have caught the dramatic eruption of Mexico's Colima volcano, which has seen an increase in activity since October. | null | Webcams have caught the dramatic eruption of Mexico's Colima volcano, which has seen an increase in activity since October.
The explosion sent a large plume of ash and smoke 2,000m (6,561 feet) above the crater.
Mexico has more than 3,000 volcanoes, but only 14 are considered active. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-38674298 | |
Theresa May's Brexit speech: What does it mean for free trade? - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | BBC Economics Correspondent Andrew Walker answers your questions on Theresa May's Brexit speech. | UK | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Theresa May confirmed that the final deal would be put to the vote in Parliament
Following Theresa May's widely anticipated speech on Brexit on Tuesday, you sent us your questions.
The impact on free trade was the most asked about subject. Below, BBC Economics Correspondent Andrew Walker looks at two of the most popular questions you asked:
The only thing on the list above that the Prime Minister has said she wants to opt out of is the free movement of people - or rather the free movement of people to work and settle in the UK.
She is very keen on the free movement of goods and services. She said in the speech that she wants: "the freest possible trade in goods and services between Britain and the EU's member states."
She does not want to opt out of that.
The freest possible means what we have today. For example: no tariffs on goods travelling in either direction, mutual recognition of each other's technical standards, the freedom to offer services across borders and more.
In short, it means the provisions of the single market that apply to goods and services. It would be theoretically possible to go further still, especially in services. The European Commission says there are still barriers and it wants to tackle them.
But for now, the single market as it is represents the freest we can get.
But Mrs May seems to accept that we can't have that without also accepting freedom of movement for workers. And that is one of her red lines.
So once that has gone, the freest possible movement for goods and services will presumably mean something less than the single market, something less than we have today.
How much less will be a matter for negotiation. In fact, the answer to many questions about what will "X" be like when we leave will depend on the outcome of the negotiations. We can speculate but we can't know for sure.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Some of the headlines from Theresa May's vision for future UK-EU relations
The UK does have some cards which will encourage the EU to lean towards what the Prime Minister wants. Some European businesses have the UK as an important export market - German car makers for example.
During the referendum campaign many Leave supporters were keen to point out that the rest of the EU exports more to the UK than the UK exports to them. That, they argued, means they need the UK more than we need them.
The counter-argument is that EU exports to the UK as a share of national income are a lot smaller than trade in the opposite direction. That suggests UK/EU trade matters more to us than to them.
Another reason that the remaining EU might want to be cooperative in trade negotiations is that many continental businesses would want to continue to be able to use the City of London as a financial centre. On the other hand some other cities, including Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin, might fancy a bigger slice of that pie.
So there are some economic reasons for the EU to share Mrs May's desire for free movement of goods and services.
But there is an important political issue that pulls them in the opposite direction. They don't want life in the UK to look too rosy at a time when there are rising Eurosceptic movements in many countries beyond the UK. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38658697 | |
Novak Djokovic: Australian Open champion knocked out by world 117 Denis Istomin - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Defending champion Novak Djokovic is beaten in five sets by world number 117 Denis Istomin in the Australian Open second round. | null | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Defending champion Novak Djokovic suffered a shock defeat by world number 117 Denis Istomin in the second round of the Australian Open.
The six-time winner struggled for rhythm and lost 7-6 (10-8) 5-7 2-6 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 in four hours and 48 minutes.
It is the first time Djokovic, 29, has lost in the second round of a Grand Slam since 2008 at Wimbledon.
The result leaves world number one Andy Murray as favourite to win his first Australian Open title in Melbourne.
Briton Murray, who has already reached round three, has lost five finals in the past seven years in Melbourne, four of them to Djokovic.
It is only the second time in seven years that Djokovic has lost to a player ranked outside the top 100 - his defeat by Juan Martin del Potro, ranked 145th, at the Rio Olympics in 2016 being the other occasion.
"He deserved to win. No doubt, he was a better player in the clutch moments," said Djokovic.
"Many things came together for him today and he's a well-deserved winner. There's not much I could do."
• None Analysis - Has Djokovic's obsession burned itself out?
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Djokovic could not find his rhythm, eventually winning his first service game after 15 minutes but going on to lose the first set in one hour and 25 minutes.
He won four consecutive games in the third set as his opponent faltered but Istomin came back in the fourth set to take it to a tie-break.
Both players served aggressively as they received vocal support from the crowd, with Istomin taking the match to a deciding set with a brutal ace.
Istomin, who broke in game five, remained strong on his own serve and wrapped things up when Djokovic, lunging on the backhand, could only block another crunching delivery long on match point.
Uzbek Istomin will next face Spain's Pablo Carreno Busta, who beat Britain's Kyle Edmund on Thursday.
"It is the biggest win of my career and means so much, now I feel I can play with these guys and be with them on the same level," said Istomin.
"From the third set I had cramp in my leg, I don't know how I held it. I was playing so good. I surprised myself."
Istomin had two years out of the game after breaking his leg in a car accident and spending three months in hospital in 2001.
Coached by his mother Klaudiya, he dropped out of the top 100 in 2016 and was given a wildcard to play in the Australian Open.
Prior to his win over Djokovic, Istomin had won just one of 33 matches against a player ranked in the world's top 10.
His best Grand Slam result is reaching the last 16 at Wimbledon in 2012 and the US Open in 2013, where he lost to Murray.
Gavhar Azimova, from the Tennis Federation of Republic of Uzbekistan, said Istomin is a "star" in his home country.
"We are ecstatic," he told BBC Uzbek. They [Denis and his mother] trained very hard. He is a very kind and modest guy, but works very hard.
"The whole Federation watched it live together. You say 'Istomin' and everyone knows him. The phones have not stopped ringing - we have had a barrage of phone calls saying congratulations."
Djokovic has struggled for consistency since winning his first French Open title in June 2016 and completing a career Grand Slam.
He was knocked out in the third round at Wimbledon by American Sam Querrey but looked to have returned to form when he won the Rogers Cup in July.
However, he went on to lose to Del Potro in the first round of the Olympics and was knocked out of the doubles competition the following day.
He struggled physically in the US Open final, losing in four sets to third seed Stan Wawrinka, before he lost the world number one ranking to Murray in November.
Murray also ended his run of four consecutive ATP World Tours Finals titles in the same month.
"Djokovic is not the same Djokovic we saw this time last year, who was at the peak of his career," two-time Australian Open finalist Pat Cash told BBC Radio 5 live.
"It's clearly the mental edge. He's done so much and worked so hard to grab those four Grand Slams, I think he's just lost the edge."
Find out how to get into tennis in our special guide. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38673905 | |
Daily Politics coverage of PMQs - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Prime Minister's Questions on the BBC's Daily Politics. | null | This video can not be played. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27901933 | |
GCHQ seeks teenage girls to join cyber security fight - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Web-savvy teenage girls could become the UK's spies of the future, Britain's intelligence agency hopes. | UK | The CyberFirst competition aims to get more girls to consider a career fighting online crime
Teenage girls who spend a lot of time online and on social media could become the UK's spies of the future, Britain's intelligence agency hopes.
GCHQ is launching a competition with the aim of encouraging more girls to think about a career in cyber security.
Girls aged 13 to 15 will compete in tests that will also cover logic and coding, networking and cryptography.
Women currently only make up 10% of the global cyber workforce, the agency says.
The competition is part of a five-year National Cyber Security Strategy announced in November 2016, and will be overseen by the new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
Working in teams of four, the girls will complete online tasks remotely on their school computers, with each stage being harder than the previous one.
The 10 groups with the highest scores will then be invited to the CyberFirst competition final in London to investigate a complex cyber threat.
CyberFirst's winning team will be awarded £1,000 worth of computer equipment for their school, as well as individual prizes.
The NCSC was set up to be the main body for cyber security at a national level.
It manages national cyber security incidents, carries out real-time threat analysis and provides advice.
An NCSC spokeswoman said: "Women can, and do, make a huge difference in cyber security - this competition could inspire many more to take their first steps into this dynamic and rewarding career."
Government Communications Headquarters director Robert Hannigan said: "I work alongside some truly brilliant women who help protect the UK from all manner of online threats.
"The CyberFirst Girls competition allows teams of young women a glimpse of this exciting world and provides a great opportunity to use new skills."
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38664703 | |
Northern Ireland Assembly Election 2017 | BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | All the BBC's coverage of the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly Election including news, analysis and results. | null | MPs agree to a government proposal to extend the deadline to restore devolution until 29 June. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/ni2017 | |
Lewis Hamilton: Mercedes driver backs new team-mate Valtteri Bottas - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Lewis Hamilton backs Mercedes' choice of Valtteri Bottas as a replacement for Nico Rosberg, team boss Toto Wolff has said. | null | Lewis Hamilton has backed Mercedes replacing Nico Rosberg with Valtteri Bottas, says team boss Toto Wolff.
Mercedes signed the Finn this week after agreeing a deal to buy him out of his Williams contract to replace Rosberg, who retired after winning last year's world title.
Wolff said: "Lewis said he thought Valtteri was a nice guy.
"One of the guys he actually got along with well in Formula 1 and he felt he was a good option."
Wolff, who was talking to Finnish commentator Oskari Saari for a podcast, said he believed there might be less tension between Hamilton and the 27-year-old Finn than there was between the triple world champion and Rosberg.
"I think that works well," he added. "It was OK already between Nico and Lewis, but there was the luggage of the past... Now it is a completely new relationship and there is no animosity.
"There will be moments where it is going to be difficult, but I think that how the personalities are for the team it's going to be a good situation and one that is maybe a bit easier to handle than the past. But I could be wrong."
BBC Sport revealed on Monday that Bottas had signed a one-year contract, with options to extend it into subsequent seasons.
Wolff said that was because a number of leading drivers' contracts were up for renewal at the end of the 2017 season - including multiple world champions Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso of Ferrari and McLaren - and Mercedes wanted to keep their options open.
"We wouldn't have chosen Valtteri if we thought that he was not good enough to continue with the team," said Wolff.
"But, as a matter of fact, the market is very dynamic at the moment. Next year options open - young drivers, Sebastian, Fernando, Valtteri, many of them. So it is about understanding that - and Valtteri does.
"Equally we have great faith and confidence in him that he can stay with us for a long time, but now we need to see how the season goes." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38671931 | |
Trump's inauguration: An insider's tour - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | The day begins early for President-elect Trump at the exclusive White House guest residence. | null | The day begins early for President-elect Trump at the exclusive White House guest residence.
And from there it's a day of tradition and ceremony throughout Washington DC. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38658917 | |
Jan Vertonghen: Tottenham defender expected to be out for six weeks - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Tottenham defender Jan Vertonghen is expected to be out for six weeks with an ankle ligament injury. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Tottenham defender Jan Vertonghen is expected to be out for six weeks with an ankle ligament injury, according to his manager Mauricio Pochettino.
The 29-year-old centre-back turned his left ankle during the second half of last Saturday's 4-0 win over West Brom.
"When your mind is positive it's easier to recover," said the Argentine boss. "He doesn't require surgery.
"We have players that can perform in his place and we are very happy with the squad and the players we have."
Analysis: The best defence? the most powerful midfield? - How good are Tottenham?
Vertonghen has played in 20 out of 21 league matches this season, forming part of a defence that has conceded just 14 goals - the best record in the league.
Pochettino, however, was unsure as to when attacking midfielder Erik Lamela would return to action. The 24-year-old has been sidelined since the end of October with a hip problem.
"He will have a scan on Friday," he added.
"Still it is difficult to give the time that he can come back. We need to wait tomorrow because there is still some problems, and we are still not sure of the diagnosis." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38685142 | |
Teetotal Trump and the drinking presidents - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | What the chief executive's relationship with alcohol reveals about the occupants of the White House. | US & Canada | As Donald Trump becomes US president on Friday many will reach for a drink. Washington DC will be whirl of parties, galas and balls.
The celebrities may be skipping it this year but the US capital will still swing to the sound of clinking glasses and popping corks. Across the country, celebrating Trump supporters will toast his swearing-in with a drink while others will numb their nerves with booze.
Around the world, alcohol will help with this historic transition. In north London, for instance, the Old Queens Head pub is throwing an Armageddon-themed party to mark the start of Donald Trump's presidency.
But the man himself will not be boozing through his first hours as the most powerful politician in the world. In fact, he won't touch a drop of alcohol on Friday night or on any day of his presidency.
"I've never had a drink," Donald Trump told Fox News after his election last November. Unlike George W Bush, who was teetotal in office after giving up booze on his 40th birthday, Mr Trump has eschewed alcohol his whole life, making him a first among modern US presidents.
Donald Trump's teetotalism stems from the early death of his older brother Freddie
The reason for Mr Trump's sobriety is because his adored older brother Freddie died of illness stemming from alcoholism at the age of 42. "It was a very tough period of time," he said, that convinced him never to drink.
"If you don't start you're never going have a problem. If you do start you might have a problem. And it's a tough problem to stop," Mr Trump told Fox.
What is fascinating is his view that one drink could spiral into addiction. He discussed his fear that he might have a gene that would make moderate drinking impossible.
His approach to alcohol is also a window into a personality that appears to crave control over others. Mr Trump ordered his children to follow his example. Every day he would drum the message into them: No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. "I've been very tough on my children with respect to drink," he said.
So how do the teetotal presidents compare with those who enjoyed the pleasures of a drink? George W Bush went dry after years of heavy boozing and swapped a compulsion for drink for an obsession with fitness.
Remembered largely for the invasion of Iraq, George W's foreign policy record might not be seen as the best advertisement for a teetotal presidency.
Franklin Roosevelt (right) had a particular reverence for "cocktail hour"
Nor might the idealistic but muddled foreign policy of Jimmy Carter, another teetotal president. Life in the Carter White House was drearily dry and a chore for its more sociable visitors.
Senator Ted Kennedy remembered arid evenings of earnest discussion. "You'd arrive about 6.00 or 6.30pm, and the first thing you would be reminded of, in case you needed reminding, was that he and Rosalynn had removed all the liquor in the White House. No liquor was ever served during Jimmy Carter's term. He wanted no luxuries nor any sign of worldly living," Kennedy wrote.
The moderate drinkers fare better. Franklin D Roosevelt frequently tops the list of America's greatest presidents, the commander-in-chief who defeated the Great Depression and led the US through World War Two.
Throughout these turbulent years, FDR kept a martini close at hand and prized the rituals of cocktail hour, when he mixed stiff drinks for friends on his White House study desk. The conviviality of cocktail hour undoubtedly helped FDR unwind and briefly relieved the immense pressure he was under.
John F Kennedy would occasionally sip a daiquiri but preferred women to wine and kept a clear head through the brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But other presidents were more reckless with their drinking.
Lyndon Johnson was well known in Washington for his capacity to guzzle Cutty Sark whisky and soda when he was Democratic majority leader in the Senate, a habit he took to the White House. Johnson, who told his doctor after a heart attack that the only things he enjoyed in life were "whisky, sunshine and sex", enjoyed entertaining at his Texas ranch where the booze flowed.
LBJ's special assistant for domestic affairs, Joseph A Califano, remembered a ride around the ranch with the president: "As we drove around we were followed by a car and a station wagon with Secret Service agents. The president drank Cutty Sark scotch and soda out of a large, white, plastic foam cup.
"Periodically, Johnson would slow down and hold his left arm outside the car, shaking the cup and ice. A Secret Service agent would run up to the car, take the cup and go back to the station wagon. There another agent would refill it with ice, scotch and soda as the first agent trotted behind the wagon."
But the most disturbing picture of presidential drinking is provided by Richard Nixon, a man prone to morose self-pity who medicated his moods with booze.
According to his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's trouble was that a small amount of drink would set him off and late-night threats of military action were made when the president was the worse for wear.
When North Korea shot down a US spy plane in April 1969, an enraged Nixon allegedly ordered a tactical nuclear strike and told the joint chiefs to recommend targets. According to the historian Anthony Summers, citing the CIA's top Vietnam specialist at the time, George Carver, Henry Kissinger spoke to military commanders on the phone and agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning.
By the early 1970s, Watergate was beginning to choke Nixon's presidency and the president was relying more on drink and sleeping pills to cope with the pressure. On the evening of 11 October 1973, he was incapable of speaking to the British Prime Minister Edward Heath on the phone.
Heath was keen to discuss the latest developments of the Arab-Israeli War but a transcript of the conversation between Henry Kissinger and his assistant Brent Scowcroft revealed the president was too drunk to talk to the prime minister.
Richard Nixon was a warning to future presidents on the danger of mixing hubris with drink. He is a reminder too of the awesome executive power a US president has when it comes to conducting foreign affairs.
With no previous political or military experience, Donald Trump is unlike any incoming president. His hubris is clear to all and his (sober) stream of excitable tweets prove an impetuous temperament.
Nixon's example might make us grateful booze is not in the mix too. But some of the most successful presidents found valuable perspective and balance at the bottom of a glass. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38651623 | |
The vegan trying to make the perfect burger - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The vegan aiming to make the perfect meatless burger to please even "the hardcore meat lover". | Business | The "impossible burger" - as good as the real thing?
"My company's goal is to wipe out the animal farming industry and take them down," Patrick Brown tells me.
The grey-haired, former paediatrician turned professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, now turned start-up founder, may be softly spoken but he doesn't mince his words.
A vegan, he's come to the World Economic Forum in Davos to evangelise about how ditching meat can save the planet.
At Davos, where helping the United Nations reach its goal of eradicating hunger by 2030 is one of its goals, he's got a receptive audience.
A pop-up barbecue - set up by Brazilian charity Gastromotiva amid the snowy slopes - draws daily crowds. The company helps young people out of poverty by training them as chefs and creates its dishes out of food surplus that otherwise would have been thrown away.
It neatly illustrates the point that a staggering one third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, around 1.3bn tonnes, which if used could help address the issue.
But Mr Brown's target is not the Davos elites but the masses.
The firm he set up almost seven years ago - Impossible Foods - is aiming to make the perfect meatless burger for "the hardcore meat lover".
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The 62-year-old came up with the idea during a sabbatical. Freed from admin and teaching responsibilities, instead of hitting the beach he pondered what was the most important problem in the world he could do something about.
The issue he hit upon was animal farming due to its environmental impact.
While he personally has been a vegan for years, he said this was a personal choice and had nothing to do with his decision.
Rattling off statistics staccato style he says the sector uses a third of the world's water supply and land, with the greenhouse gas impact second only to the power industry.
But while startling, he admits such facts won't change people's minds or behaviour, or persuade them to eat "cardboard food".
Instead, he decided to try to solve the problem scientifically.
"A different way of looking at it is that it's not a problem that people love meat and dairy products. The problem is that we produce them using animals, which is completely inefficient," he says.
So he set his mind to creating a burger - with the same nutritional value, taste and texture of ground beef - just without using an animal.
The vegan pattie is made from wheat, coconut oil, potatoes and, crucially, heme
The Californian firm's 70 scientists doing research and development treated the issue in the same manner as a biomedical one, says Mr Brown, figuring out the problem and working out what exactly it was in meat that made it so appealing.
"We needed to understand it in actionable terms so we could make deliberate choices to deliver those characteristics to consumers," he says.
The magic ingredient turned out to be a compound called heme. Their research identified this as the thing which made meat distinct, giving it a richer taste and its bloody, red colour.
The firm has now figured out a way to produce heme on a large scale cost effectively by using fermentation.
So far the resulting burger is available in just four high-end restaurants, although Mr Brown says this will soon expand to seven.
The decision to choose expensive restaurants seems at odds with his desire to persuade the masses to ditch meat. But Mr Brown argues that strategically it makes sense.
"We can only produce small volume so we have to get maximum brand building from every pound of product we make," he says.
The vegan burger is currently only sold in four high-end restaurants
He argues that by choosing well-known establishments - largely known for their meat offerings - it will help further the firm's name.
But you won't see "vegan burger" on the menu. "It's divisive," says Mr Brown. Instead it's called the "impossible burger", with the small print explaining that the product is made from plants.
"People don't have to change their beliefs or buy into anything philosophically. The burden is on us to make a delicious and affordable burger," he says.
By the end of this year, production will ramp up, and he and his research and development team will double to 140 people.
But can it really compete with the mass market burger chains such as McDonald's and Burger King?
Mr Brown says he's already talking to places "of that ilk" but currently he remains focused on development rather than sales.
Patrick Brown came up with the idea of the vegan burger during a sabbatical
Pushed on whether the burger can also compete on price, he is unequivocal.
"By the end of the year we will be selling the product at a price where thousands of restaurants can sell it to their customers at the same price range as other stuff, and we will make money on every pound of [fake] meat that we sell," he says.
Ultimately, he claims the cost of their burger will be "substantially cheaper" than a burger from a cow.
"The economics are so much in our favour. It takes a lot of resources to produce a pound of beef," he says.
Mr Brown isn't the only confident one. The firm has attracted funding from some big-name venture capital firms including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Horizons Ventures, which invests on behalf of Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing.
He says this investment is supporting research and development, which will continue as it moves on to replicating other meat products and fish in the same manner.
And ultimately in the battle of cow versus meatless burger Mr Brown says he's got no doubts that he will win.
"I'm so completely confident I'm going to win this competition.
"A cow did not evolve to be eaten. It was just there and it's not getting any better at this. The product we have is now better than a month ago. We're optimising it for deliciousness." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38664353 | |
Travelling from China to London - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | China has launched a direct rail freight service to London, as part of its drive to develop trade. | null | China has launched a direct rail freight service to London, as part of its drive to develop trade and investment ties with Europe.
London will become the 15th European city to join what the Chinese government calls the New Silk Route. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-38659170 | |
President-elect Trump arrives in Washington - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania have arrived in Washington ahead of his inauguration on Friday. | null | President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania have arrived in Washington ahead of his inauguration on Friday. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38684420 | |
What Mrs Trump's hometown tells us about the next first lady - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Guy Delauney visits Melania Trump's hometown of Sevnica in Slovenia to meet those who knew her. | US & Canada | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. What was Melania Trump like in Slovenia?
The President Burger is presented with a flourish - on a wooden board, surrounded by circular "dollar fries" and topped with a yellow crust of cheese "hair" which looks as if it might fly away at any moment.
As tributes to the US President-elect go, it may not be the most respectful. But it is offered with the affection and gentle humour which it soon becomes apparent is a hallmark of Sevnica, a Slovenian town which just happens to be the place where Donald Trump's first-lady-to-be, Melania, spent most of her childhood.
"We formed the burger so it would resemble Trump a little bit," chuckles Bruno Vidmar, the chef-proprietor of Rondo, a restaurant in the newer part of Sevnica.
"It has hot peppers, because Trump's statements are hot - and it comes with dollar fries because he's a successful entrepreneur."
The owner of the Rondo restaurant designed this burger to resemble Donald Trump
The presidential tie-in seems to be serving Rondo well: on a weekday morning, the place is buzzing with an early lunch crowd from the nearby furniture and textile factories. Meanwhile a table full of smartly-dressed young women order another of Bruno's culinary creations dreamt up with Sevnica's most famous daughter in mind.
"The 'Melanija' dessert is made out of sponge, then there's a layer of mascarpone and strawberries. It's light enough for a model - and we have it on good authority that Melania loves strawberries."
Sevnica is a small place - so Bruno probably did not have to search long to find an authority on what Melania likes for pudding. Or, at least, what she did like when she was growing up as Melanija Knavs in this town of fewer than 5,000 people.
Bar the addition of a branch of Lidl on the outskirts, little seems to have changed since she left for Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana, as a teenager. The old castle - parts of which date back to the 12th Century - still overlooks Sevnica from its hilltop perch.
The town itself is a tidy place with new and old sections, sitting alongside the River Sava and surrounded by forested hills. The Slovenian Tourist Board suggests that Sevnica is "an excellent destination for those who enjoy picnics and outings, hiking, cycling or fishing".
If the roads had been less icy, it would certainly have been an enjoyable ride through the trees to Gostišče Ob Ribniku, a restaurant and guesthouse next to a small lake. Inside the traditional wooden chalet, you can chat to one of the people who can shed some light on the future first lady's early years.
Sevnica is "an excellent destination for those who enjoy picnics and outings, hiking, cycling or fishing" according to the Slovenian Tourist Board
"We were next door neighbours - and we used to go the same way to school," says Mateja Zalezina, who runs Gostišče Ob Ribniku with her husband, Dejan.
"In the afternoon when we came back we used to hang out in front of the apartment block. Even then she was quite busy, because her mother was a fashion designer and Melania was one of the models for the Jutranjka company that did fashion for kids."
Mateja laughs at the idea that she could have spotted that her neighbour would go a long way from Sevnica - never mind all the way to the White House. But she says that Melania could not help but stand out.
"She was really good at school. She and her sister Ines were studying really hard. After school, we played a game called 'gumi-twist', an elastic band game, and she was really good at that. She had the figure of a model - really long legs - and she always won!"
The restaurant is offering a three-course "Melanija Menu" in honour of Mateja's former playmate. But, like Rondo's eponymous offering, this does not feel like a culinary cash-in, just a low-key tribute, delivered with affection.
"I'm really happy for her - she's achieved the maximum," says Dejan. "I hope everyone in Sevnica will watch the inauguration. We will be here at the restaurant with friends and will raise a glass to them both."
Melania's former neighbour says America's next first lady studied "really hard" at school
Back in the old town, beneath the castle, Sevnica's mayor Srecko Ocvirk is not planning any special events to mark the start of the Trump era. But he hopes the publicity will bring the town's charms to the attention of tourists.
"The first visitors who came were journalists like you," he admits. "But we're now seeing there are rising numbers of tourists. We're also expecting more organised tour groups after the inauguration. Sevnica and the region will become better known because of this."
At the town's primary school, one of the staff has certainly achieved a degree of local celebrity. Art teacher Nena Bedek was best friends with Melania until the future Mrs Trump left to finish her schooling in Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana.
Now Nena fields questions from her students about her friendship with Sevnica's most famous former resident - and marvels at the different paths their lives have taken.
"It's a 'wow' effect for us and for me," she says.
"She was a reliable girl and a very good friend. But she never wished to stand out - even though she was beautiful and hard-working. She loved to read and draw. She was brought up in a very artistic manner - she knew what was beautiful - due to her mother's job as a fashion designer. I have very fond memories and keep her very close in my heart."
As for the town's various tributes - which include wine, slippers and honey as well as the culinary offerings - Nena believes they are in keeping with the Sevnica spirit.
"They are very sympathetic and sweet - none of them are bad things - and it's also funny. I think it's still within limits - all in all it's sweet and nice."
Rather like Sevnica itself, perhaps.
You can hear Guy De Launey's report from BBC Radio 4's World Tonight via BBC iPlayer. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38642889 | |
The man correcting stories about Muslims - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Every day, Miqdaad Versi searches newspapers looking for errors concerning Muslims and Islam, looking to challenge them. | UK | Every day, Miqdaad Versi searches newspapers looking for errors concerning Muslims and Islam
When one newspaper reported last year that "enclaves of Islam see UK as 75% Muslim" last year, Miqdaad Versi's instinct was to challenge it. He believes errors in the reporting of Muslims have become all too common, and has made it his mission to fight for corrections.
Miqdaad Versi sits in front of a rather geeky-looking spreadsheet at the offices of the Muslim Council of Britain in east London.
He is the organisation's assistant secretary general, but the task in front of him is a personal project.
The spreadsheet has on it every story published concerning Muslims and Islam that day in the British media - and he is going through them looking for inaccuracies.
If he finds one, he will put in a complaint or a request for a correction with the news organisation, the press regulator Ipso, or both.
Mr Versi has been doing this thoroughly since November, and before that on a more casual basis. He has so far complained more than 50 times, and the results are visible.
He was personally behind eight corrections in December and another four so far this month.
Miqdaad Versi tweets diagrams showing corrections and apologies made following his complaints
In the past, corrections to stories were mostly printed when individuals were the victims of inaccurate reporting, but Mr Versi is looking at a whole topic.
"Nobody else was doing this," he tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme. "There have been so many articles about Muslims overall that have been entirely inaccurate, and they create this idea within many Muslim communities that the media is out to get them.
"The reason that's the case is because nobody is challenging these newspapers and saying, 'That's not true.'"
Watch the Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel.
Mr Versi goes through some of the corrections from December. Five of them concerned a review into integration by Dame Louise Casey. The Sunday Times reported that "Enclaves of Islam see UK as 75% Muslim" in a preview of the review.
This was incorrect, with the review actually citing a survey of pupils in one largely Asian school who thought 50-90% of the population in Britain were Asian.
The paper corrected the article, and later apologised. As the same story was reported in other publications, it led to five corrections.
Mr Versi highlights another article, concerning the Muslim president of the National Union of Students (NUS). She was accused on Mail Online of refusing to condemn so-called Islamic State, when she had openly done so.
Also in December, he points out a report in the Sun on Sunday confused the identities of two Muslim individuals - one fighting against extremism and one accused of extremism.
He has met several newspaper editors and has been pleased with the quick corrections he has received in some cases.
But he is concerned that these revisions are not obvious enough to the reader.
"Sometimes the corrections lack a clear acknowledgement of the error they made and often do not include an apology. In addition, they are rarely given the prominence of the original article," he says.
He adds that while he is concerned with "significant failings" in the reporting of Muslims, the same issues "might also be replicated for refugee, migrant or other groups".
One particularly high-profile correction in December last year - that Mr Versi was not behind - involved a 2015 article in which Mail Online columnist Katie Hopkins wrongly suggested Zahid Mahmood and his brother were extremists with links to al-Qaeda, after they had not been allowed to board a plane to the US.
The Mail Online and Ms Hopkins apologised and paid £150,000 in damages.
At his home in Walthamstow, north-east London, Mr Mahmood says he has forgiven her. He now says it is not her original false accusations that he finds the most upsetting, but the public reaction.
"First they were all against us when Katie Hopkins published the article, and then when she made the apology a year later - then they all turn against her.
"There's no middle ground. It's not just about Katie Hopkins, it's the mindset of people - how they can very easily be led against somebody, or in favour of somebody."
Zahid Mahmood says he holds "no grudge" against Mail Online columnist Katie Hopkins
Mr Mahmood says he feels this kind of reaction is causing divisions in society, and - keen to do his bit for unity - tells the BBC he is formally inviting Katie Hopkins to his home for tea and coffee.
"We have no grudge against her, and we would like her to learn and know that we are as British as she is.
"In fact, my wife's grandfather and great-grandfather both fought in World War One and World War Two. They fought for the very freedom of this country."
Mr Versi says he wants to improve community relations too. He thinks inaccurate reporting has far-reaching consequences, especially because negative stories are often widely circulated by far-right groups and then the corrections are not.
Some free speech campaigners, however, are concerned about this kind of work. Tom Slater, deputy editor of Spiked Online, says these complaints could create a fear of reporting certain issues.
"I, like anyone else, want a press that's going to be accurate... but what we're seeing here is quite concerted attempts to try and often ring-fence Islam from criticism."
Mr Slater says he found a recent correction to a story about a suspected "honour killing" particularly problematic.
Tom Slater worries such complaints are attempts to "ring-fence Islam from criticism."
In May 2016, the Mail Online and the Sun used the phrase "Islamic honour killing" in their headline.
Mr Versi successfully complained to Ipso that Islam does not condone honour killings and that the phrase incorrectly suggested it was motivated by religion.
The word "Islamic" was removed from the papers' headlines, and at the bottom of the articles they wrote: "We are happy to make clear that Islam as a religion does not support so-called 'honour killings.'"
Mr Slater says he found that statement added by the papers "absolutely staggering".
"We all know a religion is just an assortment of ideas and principles. What these papers were effectively asked to do, and what they did do, was to print one accepted interpretation of a religion - and to me this was just like backdoor blasphemy law."
Mr Versi, however, insists his work is about ensuring the facts are right - not silencing critics.
He says there are many examples where Muslims can be rightly criticised and he is not complaining about those.
"All I'm asking for is responsible reporting." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38655760 | |
Rachael Heyhoe Flint dies aged 77 - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The women's cricket pioneer and Wolves vice-president dies aged 77 after a short illness. | Birmingham & Black Country | Rachael Heyhoe Flint, the former England women's cricket captain, has died aged 77.
Baroness Heyhoe Flint, vice-president of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, passed away in the early hours of Wednesday after a short illness.
She leaves behind husband Derrick, their son Ben, and her stepchildren Rowan, Hazel and Simon. Ben said the family was "deeply saddened".
Heyhoe Flint, pictured with Wolves legend Steve Bull, was vice-president of the football club
She also played in the first ever women's match at Lord's, against Australia, in 1976.
During her career she played 22 Test matches and 23 one-day internationals. She was inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame in 2010.
She also became a successful journalist, after dinner speaker and expert in public relations, which brought her back into contact with her beloved Wolves as she headed up the club's work in the local community.
MCC president Matthew Fleming said: "Rachael Heyhoe Flint was a pioneer of women's cricket - she was the first global superstar in the women's game and her overall contribution to the MCC, cricket and sport in general was immense."
Baroness Heyhoe Flint has been described as a pioneer of women's cricket
Clare Connor, the ECB's director of women's cricket, said: "She was so special, so ever-present and now she has gone - but her impact can never be forgotten.
"Rachael was one of our sport's true pioneers and it is no exaggeration to say that she paved the way for the progress enjoyed by recent generations of female cricketers."
Among many others paying tribute to Heyhoe Flint was BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew, who said on Twitter: "Very sad news re Rachael Heyhoe Flint. Great champion of women's cricket, won first World Cup and one of life's real enthusiasts. #RIP."
Clare Connor, pictured with Heyhoe Flint, said her impact could never be forgotten
Heyhoe Flint's development of cricket was "immense", the ECB said in tribute
Flags were flying at half mast at Lord's and Wolves' Molineux stadium.
The club's players will also be wearing black armbands at Saturday's Championship game at Norwich.
Wolves managing director Laurie Dalrymple said: "Everyone at Wolves is deeply saddened to hear the news that Rachael has passed away.
"She was a wonderful lady who meant so much to so many people at the football club, in the city of Wolverhampton, and also much further afield.
"Rachael's contribution to the world of sport, the local community, and in later years politics, cannot be measured, and neither can her seemingly never-ending kindness and generosity of spirit."
The England Cricket Board said her development of cricket had been "immense".
Baroness Heyhoe Flint was one of the first women admitted to the MCC
When her playing career ended, Heyhoe Flint became one of the first women admitted to the MCC. In 2004 she became the first woman elected to the full committee.
She was awarded the MBE in 1972, the OBE in 2008 and was made a life peer in 2011. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-38664893 | |
Australian Open 2017: Johanna Konta wins but Heather Watson and Kyle Edmund lose - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Johanna Konta reaches the third round of the Australian Open but fellow Britons Heather Watson and Kyle Edmund go out. | null | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Konta reached the semi-finals in Melbourne last year Coverage: Daily live commentary on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra; live text on selected matches on the BBC Sport website. Britain's Johanna Konta eased through to the Australian Open third round but Heather Watson and Kyle Edmund both lost in the second round in Melbourne. Watson had five match points but was knocked out 2-6 7-6 (7-3) 10-8 by American qualifier Jennifer Brady. Edmund, hoping to join Andy Murray and Dan Evans in the last 32, lost 6-2 6-4 6-2 to Spain's Pablo Carreno Busta.
• None Dan Evans' exciting form, injury worries and inspiring the next generation Konta, who will now face Denmark's 17th seed Caroline Wozniacki on Saturday, faced one of the most promising players in the women's game. The big-serving Osaka, ranked 48th, had a chance to break Konta in the eighth game but missed a forehand and then looked on helplessly as the Briton fired down two aces to hold serve. Konta took advantage of her opponent's loss of focus to break to love and then served out the opening set in clinical fashion. The Briton dominated the second set to secure her 10th win of 2017. "I love playing on these amazing courts and I'm looking forward to staying here as long as possible," she said. Johanna Konta is looking every bit the contender. She has one of the best serves in the women's game, moves well, defends much better and plays well off both sides. She looks confident, determined and focused. She has a strong team in her corner and is in a very good position to go far in this competition. Watson fails to take her chances Watson was bidding to equal her best run at a major tournament Watson, 24, should have joined Konta in the third round but was unable to clinch victory against the world number 116. The British number two, ranked 35 places higher than Brady, took the first set without any fuss and was on course to win in straight sets, only to be broken when serving at 5-4. She lost the tie-break and from there her 21-year-old opponent grew in confidence during a final set which lasted 86 minutes. Watson had two break points in the fourth game, five more in the fifth, which she led 40-0 but failed to see out, and two more in the eighth but Brady survived them all. At 6-5, the Briton had three match points on Brady's serve but squandered all of them as the American levelled. Watson had her fourth and fifth match points at 8-7 but two strong serves ensured Brady again held on. Watson served a double fault to hand Brady a 9-8 lead and although the Briton saved two match points on the American's serve she could not stop a third as her opponent sealed victory. "It was a tough day especially because of the scoreline and having match points," said Watson. "It's one of the worst ways to lose." Edmund recorded six double faults and failed to take any of his six break-point opportunities The British number two produced an impressive victory to reach the second round but was unable to maintain that form against the 30th seed. Edmund, 22, made too many errors and could not match the power of his opponent's serve, as he lost in an hour and 46 minutes. He won the first game of the match on serve but then lost the next five. At 5-2, Edmund called the trainer for treatment on his left foot, but it did not affect the momentum of the match as he netted a forehand on set point in the next game. Edmund failed to take his first break point in the second game of the second set, and then double-faulted to hand Carreno Busta a break in the seventh game. Edmund had chances to level the set in the 10th game, but Carreno Busta produced two big serves and took the set after surviving two further break points. Two unforced errors and a double fault handed the Spaniard a break in the fifth game of the third set and the contest was effectively over when Carreno Busta got a second break two games later. "I thought I was a little bit short of patience, a little bit mentally, and also trying to rush to finish the point," Edmund said. "My game is aggressive and most days I think I get the balance right, but today I didn't." Find out how to get into tennis in our special guide. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38673037 | |
Viewpoint: Does democracy lead to tyranny? - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | The second of two animated opinion pieces for BBC Newsnight looking ahead to Donald Trump's presidency. British-American author and blogger Andrew Sullivan argues there are lessons to be learnt from Plato. | null | The inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the US is on Friday.
What does he represent? What might his presidency bring? In the second of two very personal viewpoints for BBC Newsnight, British-American author and blogger Andrew Sullivan argues there are lessons to be learnt from Plato.
Watch the first opinion piece - from art critic and social commentator Roger Kimball - here | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38664789 | |
FA Cup: Cracking goals from the third-round replays - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Watch a selection of the best goals from the FA Cup third-round replays, including a great finish from Newcastle's Yoan Gouffran and Nathan Arnold's last-gasp winner for Lincoln City. | null | Watch a selection of the best goals from the FA Cup third-round replays, including a great finish from Newcastle's Yoan Gouffran and Nathan Arnold's last-gasp winner for Lincoln City.
Watch all the best action from the FA Cup third-round replays here.
Available to UK users only. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38672657 | |
BBC iPlayer - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | null | null | JavaScript seems to be disabled. Please enable JavaScript to take full advantage of iPlayer. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10318089 | |
Dunelm venetian blind thief gets community order - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Jessie Bellham, who stuffed the stolen Dunelm shade in his trousers, is sentenced for his troubles. | Northampton | Jessie Bellham stuffed the shade down his trousers
A thief who stole a Venetian blind by stuffing it in his trousers and jacket has been given a community order.
Jessie Bellham admitted stealing the £48.99 blind from the Dunelm Mill store in St James Retail Park, Northampton, last October.
He was given a 12-month order for burglary by Northampton Crown Court.
Bellham, of Chaucer Street, must carry out 180 hours of unpaid work and also spend 20 days in rehabilitation for drug dependency.
Pictures of the 39-year-old leaving the shop with the stolen shade tucked into his clothing attracted global attention.
The item was found abandoned by shop staff on a nearby canal path, shortly after the theft.
Pictures of his efforts went viral on social media
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-38682424 | |
Squash Tournament of Champions: Laura Massaro beats Sarah-Jane Perry to reach final - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/BBCSport/ | Laura Massaro beats fellow Briton Sarah-Jane Perry to reach the women's final of the Tournament of Champions but James Willstrop loses. | Squash | Massaro, a former world number one, is through to the final in New York
England's Laura Massaro beat compatriot Sarah-Jane Perry to reach the women's final of the Tournament of Champions. Massaro, 33, took 40 minutes to beat Perry 3-0 in New York and will now face France's Camille Serme. "Sarah-Jane has been in great form this week beating some of the very top players so I'm very proud with the way I played today," said Massaro. England's James Willstrop missed out on a place in the men's final, losing 3-0 to Karim Abdel Gawad in the last four. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/squash/38674176 | |
Johnny Wright: The Instagram star who cuts Michelle Obama's hair - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Throughout his time in the White House, Michelle Obama's personal hairdresser has become a flamboyant social media star. | null | Johnny Wright has several celebrity clients but perhaps none is as famous as the First Lady.
Throughout his time in the White House, Wright - Michelle Obama's personal hairdresser - has become a flamboyant social media star, with nearly 24,000 Instagram followers.
He admits he's sometimes had to tone down his pics because of his high-profile customer.
As Mrs Obama makes way for Melania Trump, how does Wright think the FLOTUS has changed American style?
You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38666098 | |
Aleppo ‘haunted by violence and death’ - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Jeremy Bowen reports from the ruins of eastern Aleppo where 40,000 people have returned home. | null | Jeremy Bowen reports from the ruins of eastern Aleppo where 40,000 people have returned home. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38668377 | |
Lawro's Premier League predictions v James McAvoy - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Actor and lifelong Celtic fan James McAvoy predicts this weekend's Premier League results and reveals his favourite players from the Scottish side. | null | Actor and lifelong Celtic fan James McAvoy predicts this weekend's Premier League results and reveals his favourite players from the Scottish side.
Watch Football Focus at 12:00 GMT on Saturday, 21 January on BBC One, the BBC Sport website & mobile app.
Available to UK users only. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38679851 | |
Footage shows rescuers inside Italy avalanche hotel - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Rescuers battled overnight to reach the Rigopiano hotel, with the first of them arriving on skis. | null | An Italian rescue official has said that a number of people have been killed after a hotel was hit by an avalanche, apparently triggered by an earthquake on Wednesday.
Rescuers battled overnight to reach the hotel close to the Gran Sasso mountain in the Abruzzo region. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38674302 | |
Is free trade good or bad? - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Free trade has been a dominant part of the post-WW2 global economy, but it is now being challenged. | Business | Trade makes the world go round, but how free can it remain?
Free trade is something of a sacred cow in the economics profession.
Moving towards it, rather slowly, has also been one of the dominant features of the post-World War Two global economy.
Now there are new challenges to that development.
The UK is leaving the European Union and the single market - though in her speech this week, British Prime Minister Theresa May promised to push for the "freest possible trade" with European countries and to sign new deals with others around the world.
Most obviously Donald Trump has raised the possibility of quitting various trade agreements, notably Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. Even the World Trade Organization (WTO) has proposed new barriers to imports.
In Europe, trade negotiations with the United States and Canada have run into difficulty, reflecting public concerns about the impact on jobs, the environment and consumer protection.
The WTO's Doha Round of global trade liberalisation talks has run aground.
The World Trade Organization is based in Geneva and came into being in 1995
The case for trade without government imposed barriers has a long history in economics.
Adam Smith, the 18th Century Scottish economist who many see as the founding father of the subject, was in favour of it. But it was a later British writer, David Ricardo in the 19th Century, who set out the idea known as comparative advantage that underpins much of the argument for freer trade.
It is not about countries being able to produce more cheaply or efficiently than others. You can have a comparative advantage in making something even if you are less efficient than your trade partner.
When a country shifts resources to produce more of one good there is what economists call an "opportunity cost" in terms of how much less of something else you can make. You have a comparative advantage in making a product if the cost in that sense is less than it is in another country.
Economic arguments over free trade date back to the 19th Century
If two countries trade on this basis, concentrating on goods where they have a comparative advantage they can both end up better off.
Another reason that economists tend to look askance at trade restrictions comes from an analysis of the impact if governments do put up barriers - in particular tariffs or taxes - on imports.
There are gains of course. The firms and workers who are protected can sell more of their goods in the home market. But consumers lose out by paying a higher price - and consumers in this case can mean businesses, if they buy the protected goods as components or raw materials.
The textbook analysis says that those losses add up to more than the total gains. So you get the textbook conclusion that it's best to avoid protection.
Many lower-skilled workers in developed economies feel they have lost out in the drive to globalisation
And this conclusion is regardless of what other countries do. The 19th Century French economist Frederic Bastiat set it out it like this:
"It makes no more sense to be protectionist because other countries have tariffs than it would to block up our harbours because other countries have rocky coasts."
The implication is that unilateral trade liberalisation makes perfect sense.
A more recent theory of what drives international trade looks at what are called economies of scale - where the more a firm produces of some good, the lower cost of each unit.
The associated specialisation can make it beneficial for economies that are otherwise very similar to trade with one another. This area is known as new trade theory and the Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman was an important figure in developing it.
The basic idea that it's good to have freer trade has underpinned decades of international co-operation on trade policy since World War Two.
Free trade has been a cornerstone of the post-war world
The period since 1945 has been characterised by a gradual lowering of trade barriers. It happened in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which began life in 1948 as a forum for governments to negotiate lower tariffs.
Its membership was initially small, but by the time it was replaced by the World Trade Organization in 1995, most countries had signed up.
The motivation was to end or reduce the protectionism or barriers to trade that went up in the 1930s. It is not generally thought that those barriers caused the Great Depression, but many do think they aggravated and prolonged it.
The process of post-war trade liberalisation was driven largely by a desire for reciprocal concessions - better access to others' markets in return for opening your own.
But what is the case against free (or at least freer) trade?
First and foremost is the argument that it creates losers as well as winners.
What Ricardo's theory suggested was that all countries engaging in trade could be better off. But his idea could not address the question of whether trade could create losers as well as winners within countries.
Economic theory says if governments adopt protectionism, total losses will outweigh total gains
Work by two Swedish Nobel Prize winners, Eli Hecksher and Bertil Ohlin, subsequently built on by the American Paul Samuelson developed the basic idea of comparative advantage in a way that showed that trade could lead to some groups losing out.
Putting it very briefly, if a country has a relatively abundant supply of, for example, low-skilled labour, those workers will gain while their low-skilled counterparts in countries where it is less abundant will lose.
There has been a debate about whether this approach fits the facts, but some do see it as a useful explanation of how American industrial workers (for example) have been adversely affected by the rise of competition from countries such as China.
A group of economists including David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at the impact on areas where local industry was exposed to what they call the China shock.
"Adjustment in local labour markets is remarkably slow, with wages and labour-force participation rates remaining depressed and unemployment rates remaining elevated for at least a full decade after the China trade shock commences.
At this week's World Economic Forum, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned against isolationist moves that could spark a trade war
Still if you accept that overall countries gain, then the winners could in principle fully compensate the losers and still be better off.
Such programmes do exist. Countries that have unemployment benefits provide assistance to people who have lost their jobs. Some of those people will have been affected by competition from abroad.
The United States has a programme that is specially targeted for people who lose their jobs as a result of imports, called Trade Adjustment Assistance.
But is it enough? Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank in Washington writes: "The winners have never tried to fully compensate the losers, so let's stop claiming that trade benefits us all."
Which arguments will Donald Trump be listening to in the White House?
In any case, it is not clear that compensation would do the trick. As Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor noted, they may lose their jobs and also "the dignity of work".
He is keen on maintaining open markets for trade, but recognises the need to do something about what you might call the side effects.
To return to recent political developments - Donald Trump clearly did get support from many of those people in areas of the US where industry has declined.
We don't yet know how he will address those issues when he takes his place in the White House.
Perhaps his threats to introduce new tariffs are just that - threats. But the post-war trend towards more liberalised international trade looks more uncertain than it has for many years. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38209407 | |
Donald Trump's mother: From a Scottish island to New York's elite - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Donald Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod grew up on the Hebridean island of Lewis. | Scotland | By 1934 Mary Anne MacLeod had become a glamorous New Yorker. This photo, was taken on the steps of a Long Island swimming pool
Donald Trump's mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was born and brought up on the Hebridean island of Lewis but emigrated to New York to live a very different life.
Mary Anne was one of tens of thousands of Scots who travelled to the US and Canada in the early years of the last century looking to escape economic hardship at home.
She first left Lewis for New York in 1930, at the age of 18, to seek work as a domestic servant.
Six years later she was married to successful property developer Frederick Trump, the son of German migrants and one of the most eligible men in New York.
The fourth of their five children, Donald John, as he is referred to on the islands, is about to become US president.
His mother was born in 1912 in Tong, about three miles from Stornoway, the main town on the isle of Lewis.
Genealogist Bill Lawson, who has traced the family tree of Mary Anne MacLeod back to the early 19th Century, says her father Malcolm ran a post office and small shop in his later years.
Donald Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod, aged 14, sits on the windowsill of a house in the village of Tong
Economically, the family would have been slightly better off than the average in the township, he says.
However, life during and after World War One, in which 1,000 islanders died, was very hard and many young people were leaving the Western Isles.
Lewis had also suffered the Iolaire disaster in 1919 when 200 servicemen from the island had drowned at the mouth of Stornoway harbour, coming home for the first new year of peace.
Mr Lawson says: "Mary Anne MacLeod was from a very large family, nine siblings, and the move at that time was away from the island.
"The move by Viscount Leverhulme to revive the island had gone bust and there was not much prospect for young people.
"What else could she do?"
Mr Lawson adds: "Nowadays, you might think of going to the mainland but in those days most people went to Canada. It was far easier to make a life in America and many people had relatives there."
The genealogist says Mr Trump's mother was slightly different in that her sister Catherine, one of eight members of the MacLeod family to have emigrated to America, had moved from Canada to New York.
When Catherine returned to Lewis for a visit in 1930, her 18-year-old sister Mary Anne went with her to look for work.
It appears that she found work as a nanny with a wealthy family in a big house in the suburbs of New York but lost the job as the US sank into depression after the Wall Street Crash.
Mary Anne returned briefly to Scotland in 1934 but by then she had met Fred Trump and soon returned to New York for good.
The couple lived in a wealthy area of Queens and Mary Anne was active with charity work.
Mary Anne en-route to America in the early 1930s
Donald Trump still has three cousins on Lewis, including two who live in the ancestral home, which has been rebuilt since Mary Anne MacLeod's time.
All three cousins have consistently refused to speak to the media.
John A MacIver, a local councillor and friend of the cousins, says: "I know the family very well.
"They are very nice, gentle people and I'm sure they don't want all the publicity that's around.
"I quite understand that they don't want to talk about it."
Mr MacIver says Mary Anne MacLeod was well-known and much respected in the community and used to attend the church on her visits home.
Mr Trump's mother became a US citizen in 1942 and died in 2000, aged 88.
But she returned to Lewis throughout her life and always spoke Gaelic, Mr MacIver says.
According to genealogist Bill Lawson, surnames are a relatively recent phenomenon on the islands and official records only go back to the early decades of the 19th Century.
His research took him back as far as John Roy MacLeod, which in Gaelic is Iain Ruaidh, named for a tendency to red hair.
Mary Anne Trump regularly returned to Lewis and spoke her native Gaelic language on her visits
Mary Anne Trump's paternal MacLeods came from Vatisker, a few miles further north of Tong.
Her great-grandfather Alexander Roy MacLeod and his son Malcolm were thought to have drowned together while fishing in the 1850s.
On Mary Anne's mother's side, the Smiths were among the families cleared from South Lochs area of Lewis in 1826.
The period of the Highland Clearances on the mainland had largely missed Lewis but after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 some of the better lands for sheep-grazing on the island were cleared of tenants.
In most cases the displaced tenants were relocated elsewhere on Lewis rather than sent overseas.
According to Mr Lawson, all four lines of Mary Anne MacLeod's maternal ancestry had been moved to Stornoway parish from elsewhere on the island as a result of the Clearances.
His research also found another fishing tragedy when Donald Smith was drowned in October 1868 after his boat was upset in a squall off Vatisker Point.
His widow was left with three children, of whom the youngest, Mary, Donald Trump's grandmother, was less than a year old.
Mary succeeded her mother at 13 Tong but it was the smallest of the crofts in Tong.
After her marriage to Malcolm MacLeod, they were able to acquire the Smiths' original croft of 5 Tong and move there.
Donald Trump's mother Mary Anne was the youngest of their 10 children.
Mary Anne Trump's billionaire son Donald visited the house in which his mother grew up, and his cousins in 2008.
On that trip, the now president-elect said he had been to Lewis once before as "a three or four-year-old" but could remember little about it.
Donald Trump on a visit to Tong in 2008
Donald Trump and his sister Maryanne (left) on their visit to Tong
It is estimated he spent 97 seconds in the ancestral home during his whistle-stop tour.
At the time, he said: "I have been very busy - I am building jobs all over the world - and it's very, very tough to find the time to come back.
"But this just seemed an appropriate time, because I have the plane... I'm very glad I did, and I will be back again."
Donald Trump next to a piper at the opening of The Trump International Golf Links Course in July 2012
The president-elect was accompanied by his eldest sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a US federal judge, who has regularly visited her cousins on Lewis.
Mr Lawson says: "If you want to celebrate anyone, you should perhaps celebrate Maryanne, who has done a lot of work for the island.
"Donald arrived off a plane and then disappeared again. One photoshoot, that was it.
"I can't say he left much of an impression behind him." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38648877 | |
Westmonster: Arron Banks launches anti-establishment website - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The businessman who bankrolled the Brexit campaign reveals his latest venture to shake up the political landscape. | Entertainment & Arts | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Amol Rajan reports on the launch of the Westmonster website
Arron Banks, the former UKIP donor who bankrolled the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, is making a move into the media sector by backing an anti-establishment news website.
I can reveal that Westmonster is co-owned by Michael Heaver, former press adviser to Nigel Farage. The 27-year-old, who together with Mr Banks will own 50% of the website, will edit it day to day.
Modelled on the Drudge Report, the American aggregator site that generates huge traffic, Westmonster will be powered by the social media reach of Leave.EU, the campaign to which Mr Banks gave close to £7m - the largest donation in British political history.
Leave.EU has nearly 800,000 followers on Facebook and Mr Heaver believes he can use that base to generate substantial traffic from day one.
Westmonster will publish some original news, and Mr Heaver hopes to enlist more celebrity writers than backbench MPs.
The site will launch with an article from Nigel Farage, and Mr Heaver is open about wanting to ape the opinionated, anti-establishment, highly provocative tone of Breitbart.
This launch is significant for several reasons. It shows that the anti-establishment media which helped to power the campaign of Donald Trump is coming to Britain.
It's no coincidence that Westmonster is launching the day before Mr Trump's inauguration - an event that will be attended, almost alone among Brits, by Nigel Farage, Arron Banks, and Mr Banks's business associate Andy Wigmore, who are together hosting a celebratory party on Saturday night in a hotel across the road from the White House.
Banks has booked out an entire floor of the Hay-Adams Hotel on Saturday night, and - logistics permitting - the plan is for the new President to attend, along with his close friend the Governor of Mississippi, Phil Bryant.
It also marks a significant acceleration of Mr Banks's involvement in British public life.
I spent time with him in the nondescript offices of his insurance company on the edge of Bristol on Tuesday, with a Premier Inn on one side and the M4-M5 junction on the other.
Arron Banks donated millions to the Brexit campaign
He is an extremely intriguing character, as this superb profile for Radio 4 pointed out.
He tweets vigorously and his politics do not fit into the anachronistic right-left spectrum through which so much of Westminster is still naively interpreted.
For instance, he favours nationalisation of Britain's railways and some utilities over their present near-monopoly status, harbours a visceral hatred of many Tories, and has had several conversations with Labour MPs about wooing them over to the populist Momentum-style movement that he intends to launch in the coming months.
I also revealed in December that he has expressed interest in more traditional media - that is, The Daily Telegraph.
Now, as I put to him yesterday, he has become Britain's latest media baron. He helps to show how the rise of digital media has not so much blurred the distinction between media and politics as abolished it; how the culture wars raging in the US are being imported here; and how traditional media - including the BBC - face ferocious competition like never before.
Watch my report for Wednesday's BBC News at Ten. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38650596 | |
Kidnapped girl Lexis Manigo defends abductor 'mother' - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | A girl, who was kidnapped as a baby 18 years ago, has defended the woman who took her from a Florida hospital. | null | A girl, who was kidnapped as a baby 18 years ago, has defended the woman who took her from a Florida hospital.
Lexis Manigo, whose birth name is Kamiyah Mobley was abducted by Gloria Williams, a woman she considers her mother in 1998. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38674296 | |
James Ellington & Nigel Levine: British sprinters 'truly blessed' to be alive - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | British sprinter James Ellington says he does not know how he or team-mate Nigel Levine survived a motorbike accident in Spain. | null | Last updated on .From the section Athletics
British sprinter James Ellington says he does not know how he or team-mate Nigel Levine survived a motorbike accident in Spain.
The pair will miss the 2017 season - including the World Championships - and Ellington posted on Instagram that he is "truly blessed" to be alive.
The 31-year-old has a suspected broken leg in two places and both men have a suspected broken pelvis.
Ellington said he is "overwhelmed" by the public's support.
He added: "I truly am blessed as I do not know how me or my training partner Nigel are still alive.
"Me and him are both strong characters and will be looking to bounce back from this horrific accident."
British Athletics says its staff are with the athletes and are liaising with doctors over treatment.
However, they are still waiting to find out the severity of their injuries from specialists. There will be no definitive update from doctors until the weekend or next week.
Ellington and Levine say they were riding a motorbike when they were struck head on by a car travelling on the wrong side of the road.
The incident happened on Tuesday evening, with Ellington and Levine part of a British Athletics group taking part in a warm-weather training camp.
Any pelvic injuries to sprinters are potentially career-threatening and both athletes will need significant rehabilitation.
Ellington, 31, is a 100m and 200m specialist and a two-time Olympian who was part of the gold medal-winning 4x100m relay teams at the 2014 and 2016 European Championships.
Levine, 27, is a 400m runner who was born in Trinidad and raised in Northamptonshire.
He won a European outdoor relay gold in 2014 and an indoor relay gold in 2013. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/38663811 | |
Plymouth Argyle 0-1 Liverpool - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Lucas Leiva's first goal in seven years sends Liverpool into the FA Cup fourth round at the expense of League Two Plymouth. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Lucas Leiva scored his first goal in seven years to send Liverpool into the fourth round of the FA Cup at the expense of League Two Plymouth.
Jurgen Klopp's side had to make the 293-mile trip to Home Park after they were held to a frustrating goalless draw in the initial meeting between the two at Anfield.
However, Lucas ensured the long journey was not a wasted one when he headed home Philippe Coutinho's corner early in the first half.
The win should have been more comfortable for the Reds but Divock Origi's poor penalty was comfortably saved by home keeper Luke McCormick.
Plymouth, who are 66 places below Liverpool in the football pyramid, were not overawed by their Premier League opponents and came closest to equalising when Jake Jervis hit the post with a scissor kick midway through the second half.
Liverpool's reward for victory is a home tie against Championship side Wolverhampton Wanderers on 28 January.
'It is that long?' Lucas ends wait
Brazilian Lucas has been at the club since 2007 but goals are not a regular feature of his game. The midfielder's strike was his first since a 4-1 win against Steaua Bucharest in the Europa League back in September 2010 - 2,316 days ago.
That was when Roy Hodgson was Liverpool boss and Ben Woodburn, Lucas' team-mate against Plymouth, was just 10 years old.
"It's that long? I scored last week in training," Lucas said after the game.
Despite the lengthy gap between goals, it was a neat finish by Lucas as he rose above the defence to power a header beyond McCormick's reach.
"He is the top scorer in training," joked Klopp. "I love this in football, everyone can cause problems."
Close game, but Klopp rewarded for keeping the faith
Klopp named the youngest-ever Liverpool line-up in the club's history for the first meeting between these two sides - a decision that came under some criticism as they struggled to break down their determined opponents.
The draw added another fixture to an already congested list for the Reds and, after a tough encounter with Manchester United in the Premier League at the weekend, Klopp gave the majority of those who played in the first game a chance to finish the job.
It wasn't a memorable Liverpool performance as they struggled to put the game out of Plymouth's reach. Origi had the best chance to do just that when Yann Songo'o brought down Alberto Moreno inside the box, but the Belgian, who has not scored since 14 December, hit an unconvincing spot-kick too close to McCormick.
Plymouth are fighting for promotion from League Two. They are currently second in the division and produced a hugely impressive defensive display at Anfield to earn the replay.
As a consequence, there was an air of expectation in the build-up to the game that the Pilgrims could produce an upset, with excitement for the fixture high throughout the city.
Tickets quickly sold out as fans queued for hours to ensure they had the chance to be part of a potentially famous night for the club, while several iconic buildings around Plymouth were illuminated in green and white colours to show their support.
During the game, Plymouth fans produced a party atmosphere even after Lucas' goal and their players responded by creating one or two chances to equalise.
Alberto Moreno struggled to deal with the combination of the impressive Oscar Threlkeld and Jervis down Liverpool's left. And it was from there that the hosts produced their best chance in the first half.
Threlkeld got into space to cross low into the box, only for a well-timed Alexander-Arnold tackle to deny Paul Garita the chance to equalise from close range.
Jervis then shaved the outside of the post as Plymouth pressed in the second half, and although it was not to be in the end, the club are set to earn more than £1m from the two games with Liverpool. That could provide a significant boost to their bid for promotion.
'We didn't want to be embarrassed'
Klopp was relieved to avoid an upset and praised his young players for stepping up to the challenge.
"You do not want to feel the embarrassment of losing a game like this," he said.
"I'm happy about their potential and we will do everything we can to let it grow. But they have a big job to do too."
Plymouth manager Derek Adams said his players could be proud of their performance.
"We took the game to Liverpool at times," he said.
"We went a wee bit direct towards the end and overall I thought it was a very good performance from us. Over the two games we've lost by one goal to Liverpool."
• None Attempt blocked. Alberto Moreno (Liverpool) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
• None Ben Purrington (Plymouth Argyle) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Offside, Plymouth Argyle. Luke McCormick tries a through ball, but Nauris Bulvitis is caught offside.
• None Offside, Plymouth Argyle. Louis Rooney tries a through ball, but Craig Tanner is caught offside.
• None Attempt missed. Divock Origi (Liverpool) left footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high. Assisted by Alberto Moreno.
• None Penalty saved! Divock Origi (Liverpool) fails to capitalise on this great opportunity, right footed shot saved in the centre of the goal.
• None Yann Songo'o (Plymouth Argyle) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Penalty conceded by Yann Songo'o (Plymouth Argyle) after a foul in the penalty area.
• None Attempt blocked. Sheyi Ojo (Liverpool) left footed shot from the left side of the box is blocked. Assisted by Harry Wilson.
• None Attempt missed. Harry Wilson (Liverpool) left footed shot from the centre of the box misses to the left. Assisted by Ben Woodburn.
• None Sheyi Ojo (Liverpool) has gone down, but that's a dive. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38579212 | |
Rebecca Gallantree: World champion diver retires - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/BBCSport/ | World champion Rebecca Gallantree retires from diving after competing in three Olympic Games. | Diving | British world champion Rebecca Gallantree, who also attended three Olympic Games, has retired from diving.
Gallantree competed in her first international event in 2004 and won gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in the women's 3m synchronised springboard alongside Alicia Blagg.
The 32-year-old from Chelmsford won the team event at the 2015 World Championships alongside Tom Daley.
"I have achieved more in my career than I ever thought possible," she said.
"Representing Team GB at three Olympic Games, winning a Commonwealth gold medal with Alicia, and a World Championship gold medal with Tom were all things that I would never have imagined 10 years ago.
"Competing in front of a home crowd at London 2012, in particular, will always be one of my fondest memories.
"I hope that my diving career has helped show what can be achieved with passion, determination, and hard work." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/diving/38677339 | |
Novak Djokovic: The waning of his winning obsession has led to a lost sense of direction - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Novak Djokovic's ferocious focus took him to the top of the game but it is hard to see him rekindling the flames of that obsession, writes Russell Fuller. | null | When asked what he would take away from his stunning defeat by Denis Istomin in the second round of the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic said he would take his bags and go home.
The world number two exuded the utmost class in the aftermath of Istomin's five-set victory in the Rod Laver Arena. He signed autographs, offered sincere congratulations to the current world number 117, and declined the opportunity to comment further on the malaise which has affected him since winning his first French Open title last June.
Istomin has had a fine career - spending plenty of time in the world's top 50 - but after an injury-affected 2016, he had to win the Asia Pacific Wildcard play-off in China (saving four match points in his semi-final) to qualify for this Australian Open.
His only previous tournament this year was in Thailand, where he lost to the world number 211 in the second round of the Wind Energy Holding Bangkok Open.
• None Cash fears Djokovic's best days are behind him
• None How to follow the Australian Open on the BBC
Lukas Rosol was 100 in the world when he beat Rafael Nadal in the second round of Wimbledon 2012, but Istomin can claim an even bigger upset given Djokovic's recent record in Melbourne, where he has won five titles in the past six years.
Conquering the clay of Roland Garros last year has affected Djokovic's sense of direction.
That burning desire to become only the eighth man in history to win all four of the sport's Grand Slams drove him forward. An unwitting consequence of that magnificent achievement appears to be a diminished appetite for the incessant demands of the tennis tour.
He has lost surprisingly since then to Sam Querrey in the third round of Wimbledon; to Juan Martin del Potro in the first round of the Olympics; to Roberto Bautista Agut and Marin Cilic in the autumn of last season; and now to Istomin.
There have been personal problems and niggling injuries along the way, and he has still been good enough in that time to win titles in Toronto and Doha - and finish as runner-up at both the US Open and the ATP World Tour Finals.
I would be very surprised if Djokovic fails to add to his Grand Slam tally of 12, but I think it unlikely he will ever be able to dominate the sport as he has in the past.
After all, from the start of 2011 through until last year's French Open, Djokovic won 11 Grand Slam titles and appeared in all but five of the 22 finals staged.
That is a staggering effort which bears comparison to the standards set by Roger Federer, who won 16 of his 17 Grand Slams in a six and a half year period. But 35-year-old Federer has added only one since he turned 29.
It is perhaps just not possible in the modern age to sustain such relentless success for any longer.
In Djokovic's case, the years of obsession and dedication began at the age of six, when he was spotted watching some lessons through the fence of a newly built tennis academy in his home town.
He was invited to come and play the following day by a coach called Jelena Gencic, who would have a profound effect on his career.
As Djokovic himself said at the World Tour Finals in November: "Every year is an evolution for me. It's hard to expect to repeat all these things forever. Nothing is eternal. I'm trying to do the same things. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't."
What might the future hold for Djokovic?
He says regaining the world number one position from Andy Murray is not his main priority, and that may be wise given Murray would move more than 3,500 ranking points ahead of him by winning a first Australian Open title.
He says he has no plans to add to his current coaching team of Marian Vajda and Dusan Vemic, and if Djokovic sticks to his schedule we won't see him again until the second week in March when he is due to defend his Masters title at Indian Wells.
And what does this mean for the men's game in 2017 - and for the ongoing Australian Open?
It leaves Andy Murray in pole position, it gives the returning Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal even greater hope of further glories, and offers encouragement to the next generation of players who have had to bide their time so patiently. Twenty three-year-old Dominic Thiem and 19-year-old Alex Zverev currently look best placed to take advantage. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38681767 | |
Donald Trump's big day: Who is performing? - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Donald Trump has put together a star-studded line-up for his official inauguration celebrations. | Entertainment & Arts | Although a host of big names have turned him down, Donald Trump has gathered a number of stars for his official inauguration celebrations. Meanwhile, other stars are appearing at alternative and anti-Trump events.
The official inauguration celebrations kicked off on Thursday with the Make America Great Again! concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC as part of the Welcome Celebration.
The bill included hard rockers 3 Doors Down (above), who have had two US number one albums.
Country singer Toby Keith joined them at the event. He released a statement explaining his decision. "I don't apologise for performing for our country or military," he said. "I performed at events for previous presidents Bush and Obama and over 200 shows in Iraq and Afghanistan for the USO [United Service Organizations]."
Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight also put in an appearance. He endorsed Mr Trump during the presidential election campaign, saying Mr Trump is "an answer to our problems" and "will save our nation".
During his speech on Thursday, Voight said: "We have been witnessed to a barrage of propaganda that left us all breathless with anticipation, not knowing if God could reverse all the negative lies against Mr Trump, whose only desire was to make America great again."
American-Indian DJ RaviDrums provided further entertainment. He said he was "on the fence" when he was first asked to perform. "But I talked to my dad and he said this is a great honour. My dad came to America from India with $8 and a one-way ticket to pursue the American dream. This is the dream!"
But - although Dreamgirls star Jennifer Holliday was announced as a performer at the concert, she dropped out after a vicious backlash.
"I woke up, and there was like this whole thing of terrible tweets and things on my Instagram," she said. "I live a pretty reclusive life. I pretty much stay to myself. You're not on the radio and then one morning you wake up and everybody hates you."
The honour of singing the national anthem during the main inauguration event itself on Friday has gone to 16-year-old Jackie Evancho, who came second on America's Got Talent in 2010.
Sam Moore, of legendary soul duo Sam and Dave, will lead the line-up at Liberty and Freedom: The Official Presidential Inaugural Balls.
He said: "I was a participant in the civil rights movement and have seen many positive changes and advancement in my 81 years of living in this wonderful country, but I know we must all join hands and work together with our new president."
The Radio City Rockettes will also turn on the style at the official balls - even though the decision caused consternation among some members of the troupe.
Other performers at the balls will include Tim Rushlow and his Big Band, Silhouettes, Pelican212, The Piano Guys, Circus 1903, Cache Olson, Lexi Walker and Erin Boheme.
There are alternatives to the official balls - the Peace Ball, for liberal activists, will feature Solange Knowles.
Grammy-winning jazz musician Esperanza Spalding will also star at the Peace Ball in Washington.
Rock band Audioslave will play their first concert for 11 years at an Anti-Inaugural Ball in Los Angeles, organised by rock/hip-hop crossover band Prophets of Rage on Friday.
Veteran folk rocker Jackson Browne - who initially supported Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders - will play at the same anti-Trump event.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38678102 | |
The dying officer treated for cancer with baking soda - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Naima Houder-Mohammed believed Robert O Young, the father of the alkaline diet, could cure her. It didn't turn out as she hoped. | Magazine | The father of the alkaline diet, Robert O Young, is hailed as an inspiration by one of the UK's most popular food writers, Natasha Corrett, but he faces a jail sentence for practising medicine without a licence. One patient who believed he could cure her cancer, British army officer Naima Houder-Mohammed, paid thousands of dollars for his alkaline treatment, which consisted mainly of intravenous infusions of baking soda.
In May 2009 Naima Houder-Mohammed was commissioned as a captain in the British army. The following year, tragedy struck. Naima was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She received treatment and was declared cancer-free. But in 2012, while training with the army skiing team, it was discovered the cancer had returned. Her condition was so serious she was offered end-of-life care.
"She refused to accept that this was the end," recalls her friend and former fellow officer, Afzal Amin.
"Naima was a fighter. She fought to get through selection for Sandhurst. She fought through Sandhurst and she fought her way through her life in everything she dealt with - army skiing or whatever it may have been. And this for her was another fight in that long list of victories."
As her medical options were limited, Naima did what many of us would do - she turned to the internet for a solution.
She came across Dr Robert O Young, an American alternative health writer selling a message of hope for cancer patients online.
Naima began an email correspondence with him, which reveals how pseudo-science can be used to manipulate the vulnerable.
Young is the author of a series of books called the pH Miracle, which has sold more than four million copies around the world.
These books lay out his "alkaline approach" to food and health which has influenced many others, including the work of the British clean-eating guru Natasha Corrett, whose Honestly Healthy brand promotes her take on an alkaline diet.
In one email Young sent to Naima in July 2012, he told her "there is a great need for a daily regime focused on… hyper-perfusing the blood with alkalinity". He went on: "I would suggest your healing program is going to take at least 8 - 12 weeks. It will not be easy but you will be in a controlled environment that will give you the care you need."
Naima set about raising the money she would need - in one email Young mentioned a figure of $3,000 (£2,440) per day.
Naima's family used their savings, ran fund-raising events and managed to pull together tens of thousands of pounds with the help of a charity so that Naima could be treated by Young.
But the treatment did not have the outcome she was hoping for.
On one recent sun-kissed Californian morning, we drove up into the hills outside San Diego to visit Young. As we turned off Paradise Mountain Road, the parched golden grass eventually gave way to groves of avocado trees and we entered a millionaire's paradise known as the "pH Miracle Ranch".
The front door, preposterously set behind a moat, is reached by walking across some stone slabs.
As Young welcomed us into the ranch, our eyes were drawn to an empty spherical fish-tank built into the wall that separated the living area from the kitchen.
Noting our interest, he began to share his alkaline view of the world, starting with what he calls the fish-bowl metaphor. "If the fish is sick - what would you do? Treat the fish or change the water?"
He went on: "The human body in its perfect state of health is alkaline in its design."
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The pH of our blood is 7.4, which is slightly alkaline, so Young is broadly correct - although different compartments of our bodies, such as our stomach, function at very different pHs.
But then Young's "alkaline living" vision becomes complete fantasy. Young believes that in order to maintain the pH of our blood, we have to eat "alkaline" foods.
The main problem with this view is that it doesn't appear to take into account the stomach, which functions at a pH of about 1.5 and is the most acidic compartment in the body. Thus, everything we consume, regardless of its starting pH, becomes acidic before passing into the intestines.
Also, the categorisation of foods into alkaline or acidic does not appear to follow any consistent rules, with certain citrus fruits (full of citric acid) considered to be alkaline, for instance.
However, Young's view that alkalinity is good and acidity is bad goes beyond food. He told us: "All sickness and disease can be prevented by managing the delicate pH balance of the fluids of the body."
He believes that when your blood becomes acidic, something weird happens, and your blood cells transform into bacteria - a phenomenon he calls pleomorphism - thereby resulting in a diseased state.
This, frankly wild, view goes against all current scientific understanding.
When we put this to him, he simply disagreed, saying: "Germs are nothing more than the biological transformation of animal, human or plant matter. They're born out of that."
Dr Giles Yeo with Robert O Young at the "pH Miracle Ranch"
The biggest problem is that because Young believes that disease emerges from acidity, then by extension disease can be reversed with alkalinity - echoing his fish-bowl metaphor that you don't treat the disease, but you change the environment.
When Young said Naima would be cared for in a controlled environment, he meant the pH Miracle Ranch, which has a large area set aside as a "clinic" to treat cancer.
Young told us he uses the term "cancerous" as an adjective to describe a state of acidity.
Since 2005 he has brought more than 80 terminally ill patients to stay at his ranch for months at a time. Treatment has included intravenous infusions of an alkaline solution of sodium bicarbonate - the same Arm and Hammer stuff you stick in your fridge to absorb smells.
This was the "healing programme" that was being sold to Naima.
There is no doubting the impact of Young's message. In an email, Naima wrote to him: "I'll be pronounced text book perfect in a few months."
According to her friend Afzal Amin: "Naima was supremely confident that, with her willpower and this therapy, she would be healed. That was the overriding emotion in her that yes, I am going to better."
We put it to Young that someone like Naima, in a terminally ill state, who was desperate for a cure, would buy anything, try anything to help get better.
He responded: "But I wasn't selling her anything… I didn't force her to come here, it was her decision."
Yet, in one email Young insisted on Naima paying for her treatment, before she stepped on to the plane.
All in all, Naima and her family paid Young more than $77,000 (£62,700) for the treatment.
Young told us: "The doctors need to be paid and the people that are doing the massages need to be paid and the colonics, but I gave her the best price to make sure that those people were paid."
There is no evidence whatsoever that infusing an alkaline solution into your bloodstream will do anything against cancer. When we raised this with Young, he said: "These things need to be studied."
After about three months at Young's facility, her condition worsened and she was taken to hospital. Naima was brought back to the UK and died with her family. She was 27.
Afzal Amin told us: "They feel utterly betrayed. It's just horrific that somebody could exploit people for money. This is I think for them the most disturbing element, that for something as cheap as money he was just able to destroy people's lives."
Young's activities at the pH Miracle Ranch have not gone unnoticed by the authorities.
In 2011 the Medical Board of California began an undercover investigation after concerns were raised by a woman treated there.
Investigators were able to establish the prognosis of 15 cancer patients treated at the ranch - none of them outlived it.
One patient, Genia Vanderhaeghen, died from congestive heart failure - fluid around the heart - while being treated. Young told us he was "out of town" at the time.
According to an invoice we obtained, she had been given 33 intravenous sodium bicarbonate drips, each charged at $550 (£448), over 31 days. Some were administered by Young himself.
Last year Young was convicted of two charges of practising medicine without a license, and now faces up to three years in prison.
In court it was revealed that he is not a medical doctor and bought his PhD from a diploma mill.
We asked him if he felt remorse for what he had done. He said: "I don't have remorse because of the thousands if not millions of people that have been helped through the [alkaline diet] programme."
We asked Natasha Corrett to comment on the influence of Robert Young on Honestly Healthy. She told us: "We believe that our bodies should be fuelled with healthy and nutritious ingredients but we also believe that life is about having things in moderation."
Update, October 2018: Robert O Young was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison in 2017 for practicing medicine without a license.
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38650739 | |
Australian Open 2017: Konta, Edmund & Watson aim for last 32 - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | British trio Johanna Konta, Heather Watson and Kyle Edmund attempt to make the Australian Open third round on Thursday. | null | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Coverage: Daily live commentary on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra; live text on selected matches on the BBC Sport website.
British trio Johanna Konta, Kyle Edmund and Heather Watson will attempt to reach the Australian Open third round on Thursday.
Konta, who won the Sydney International last week, takes on Japan's Naomi Osaka at 00:00 GMT.
The 25-year-old ninth seed beat Osaka 6-4 6-4 in 2015 US Open qualifying - their only previous meeting.
Edmund plays Pablo Carreno Busta, while Watson will reach the last 32 if she beats Jennifer Brady.
Like Konta, world number 46 Edmund is first on court, with Watson to follow at approximately 01:30 GMT.
Konta began her campaign with a commanding 7-5 6-2 win over Belgian former top-20 player Kirsten Flipkens and, given her impressive early season form, will hope to improve on her run to the semi-final last year.
However, Osaka's power is a threat to those ambitions.
The world number 48 has hit the fastest female serve of the tournament so far at 123mph and delivered nine aces in her first-round victory over Luksika Kumkhum.
The 19-year-old reached the third round at the Australian, French and US Opens last year.
"I remember playing her and since then she's improved a lot," Konta said.
"I know she plays a big game. She has big shots. I'm definitely prepared to go in for a battle."
After losing in the opening round of the Australian Open in the past two years, Yorkshire's Edmund is into uncharted territory.
The 22-year-old's only previous encounter with 30th seed Carreno Busta was a defeat on clay at a lower-tier Futures event in 2013.
Should Edmund win, it will be the first time three British players have made it to the third round of the Australian Open.
Watson's third-round defeat by Agnieszka Radwanska in 2013 is her best run in Melbourne and she will be favourite to match that with victory against Brady, who is ranked 35 places lower at 116. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38660203 | |
Brexit memo to Boris Johnson: Don't mention the War - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The foreign secretary's evocation of the Great Escape didn't go down well in Europe. | UK Politics | Basil Fawlty discovered that some subjects were taboo
Like some latter-day Basil Fawlty, Boris Johnson mentioned the War and didn't get away with it.
The foreign secretary urged the French president not to "administer punishment beatings" on Britain for choosing to escape the EU "rather in the manner of some World War Two movie".
Not surprisingly, uproar has ensued. Former Labour leader Ed Miliband said Mr Johnson had shown once again that he could be "supremely clever and yet immensely stupid".
To some Britons, Mr Johnson's remarks will be seen as colourful but unexceptional language that echoes the popular World War Two film The Great Escape.
To many of Mr Johnson's generation, these films were part of their childhood and are subject to frequent cultural reference. Former Prime Minister David Cameron has seen The Guns of Navarone more than 17 times and once quoted a line from the film in a party conference speech.
I know one former Conservative cabinet minister who can quote reams from Where Eagles Dare. (Full disclosure, so can I).
Yet this hinterland of war films from the 1960s and 1970s, seen by some today as jingoistic, can create a tin ear among some Britons when it comes to recognising how sensitive many Europeans remain towards this period in their history.
The foreign secretary has form on this. During the referendum campaign last year he compared the EU to Nazi Germany, telling the Daily Telegraph both were attempting to unify Europe: "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically."
This caused a flurry of headlines and a social media storm that passed quickly. Yet the impact on EU politicians was lasting.
One EU diplomat explained it to me like this: "You Brits don't understand us when we talk about European values. To us they are important because they are not Nazi values, they are not Vichy values, they are not fascist values, not the values of the Greek junta. They are the values of a different Europe.
"So for that clown to compare us to the Nazis, well, that hurts and will not be forgotten."
In other words, the global conflict from which the EU's forerunner emerged - and was ultimately designed to prevent recurring - lingers long in the mind on the continent.
So perhaps the foreign secretary might take the advice of Gisela Stuart, the German-born Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, who said she was sure her fellow Brexit campaigner did not mean to be offensive but added: "For the next two years… just don't mention the war."
Or maybe Mr Johnson might remember the last line of the Fawlty Towers episode when a ranting Basil is being led away by the nurses and one of the stunned German guests asks: "However did they win?" | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38670349 | |
Novak Djokovic has 'lost his edge' says Pat Cash after Australian Open defeat - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Novak Djokovic has "lost his edge" and is "a shadow of what he was at his peak", says Pat Cash after the Serb's shock Australian Open exit | null | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Novak Djokovic has "lost his edge" and is "a shadow of what he was at his peak", says 1987 Wimbledon champion Pat Cash.
The defending champion lost in five sets in round two of the Australian Open to world number 117 Denis Istomin.
The Serb, 29, won four Grand Slams in a row between 2015 and 2016 but has made only one of the past three finals.
"If we were doubting it before, we confirmed he's not the same player he was six months ago," said Cash.
Speaking to BBC Sport, the Australian added: "[Thursday's defeat] just shows that Novak has absolutely lost his edge, there's no doubt about that."
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Djokovic - who has slipped to number two in the world with Andy Murray taking the top spot in the rankings - completed a career Grand Slam in June 2016 when he beat Murray in the French Open final, but has struggled for form since then.
The loss to Istomin was Djokovic's earliest exit from the Australian Open since 2006, when he was beaten in the first round by American Paul Goldstein.
"I'd love to see him competing, to be a true number two fighting for that number one spot, but at this rate I don't think we will see that," Cash said.
"It's clear that it's a mental thing. He's done everything he needed to do and wanted to do in his career."
Six-time Australian Open champion Djokovic double-faulted nine times in an error strewn performance against Istomin.
He denied he had lost intensity since completing the career slam, adding that he "forgot about it" when he began a new season.
"It's not a time now to go so deep into it. I didn't reflect on that at all at this stage," he said.
"It's just that, it's one of these days when you don't feel that great on the court, don't have much rhythm, and the player you're playing against is feeling the ball very well."
Since winning the French Open in June, Djokovic has been knocked out in the first round of the Rio Olympics and lost both his US Open title and his status as world number one.
"It's not like this technique has fallen off. There's obviously a big confidence thing, but now he makes mistakes and it is a mental thing," Cash added.
"Maybe it's his time to say I'm not quite the same player that I was but I can still perform well." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38675984 | |
Life and death on Thailand's lethal roads - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The BBC's Jonathan Head looks into why Thailand's roads are among the most lethal in the world. | Asia | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The BBC's Jonathan Head looks at the cost to human lives of Thailand's poor road safety record.
There is a ritual that is now very familiar to Thais, before the two big holiday seasons of the year, in late December for the new year, and in April for the Songkran Festival.
The government will set a target for reducing fatalities on Thailand's notoriously dangerous roads, exhorting Thais not to speed, or drink and drive.
Sometimes good citizens will run publicity stunts, like the coffin-maker, who last year invited journalists to film the huge stockpile his workers were building up for the holiday season.
And every year these efforts fail.
The grim statistics of death and injury on the roads are tallied each day in the media with, as often as not, worse figures than the year before.
And so it was this last new year - 478 people lost their lives on the roads in just seven days.
In one horrific collision in Chonburi on 2 January, 25 people died - some burned to death in a crushed and overcrowded passenger van they could not escape.
In the latest high-profile accident, a pick-up truck collided with a passenger van, killing 25 people
Thailand's roads are currently ranked the second most lethal in the world after Libya's by the World Health Organization.
This status is all the more extraordinary given the fact that Thailand has been peaceful and increasingly prosperous for decades, with governments that in other fields, like healthcare and infrastructure, have made impressive progress.
In 2011 the then-government announced the following ten years as Thailand's 'Decade of Action on Road Safety'.
It declared 2012 as the year of 100 percent helmet use on motorbikes.
In 2015 the Department of Disaster Prevention, which is tasked with road safety in addition to problems like floods and landslides, boldly announced a target of reducing road deaths by 80%.
The challenge they face is not hard to see. Thailand's rapid development has bequeathed it an unrivalled network of 462,133 roads in the region, nearly all paved, with plenty of multi-lane highways.
There are 37 million registered vehicles, 20 million of them motorbikes, and millions more that are unregistered.
Driving on a Thai expressway is akin to playing a hyper-caffeinated video game. A cursory web search for road accident videos will throw up examples of breathtaking, sometimes suicidal, recklessness. Drunk driving is a huge problem.
In 2014 and 2015 three foreigners, a British couple and a Chilean man, who were cycling around the world, and near the end of their journeys, were killed while travelling through Thailand.
A pick-up truck driver, who struck the British couple while trying to reach a hat on the floor of his cab, was fined the equivalent of $30 and given a suspended prison sentence.
"Thailand has beautiful roads", explains Ratana Winther, the country director for the US-based Asia Injury Prevention Foundation. "And people tend to go very fast. So the number one killer is speed."
Police Sergeant-Major Kanthachat Nua-on can attest to that.
At a speed trap he had set up on a stretch of elevated expressway outside Bangkok, he watched car after car pass him at speeds well in excess of the 80km/h (50 mph) limit. He did not bother to ticket them.
"If we strictly follow what the law says, and issue a ticket for people driving over the speed limit, then we will end up booking everyone."
He booked just one car, travelling at 129km/h. But the fines are small, and more than half of those ticketed do not bother to pay, with little follow-up.
There are now 37 million vehicles on Thailand's roads
In recent years there have been a number of cases where drivers from wealthy families have killed, and been treated with extraordinary leniency.
In 2012 the grandson of the man who made a fortune from the Red Bull energy drink killed a policeman while driving at speed in his Ferrari. He was charged, but has repeatedly failed to show up in court.
Another case was that of a 16-year-old girl from an influential family, driving without a license, who struck a passenger van, killing nine of its occupants.
She was given a suspended prison sentence, and ordered to do community service - which it turned out two years later she had avoided doing.
Some 24,000 people are estimated to die on Thailand's roads each year
"Enforcement is the key", says Ratana Winther. "But that is not just about telling the police to enforce the law. The police should be told to prioritise traffic policing over traffic management.
"But it is a multi-sectoral challenge. The punishment needs to be big enough for people to be afraid of it. And the safety campaigns must be continuous, not just at peak seasons. Then we need to move on to issues like improving the engineering of roads."
Former Deputy Transport Minister and safety campaigner Nikorn Chamnong goes further.
"We need to go back and change the DNA of the country," he says. "Education, right back in schools, is important".
He has been petitioning the current military-appointed National Assembly to do more. It is now on the point of approving ten changes to driving laws, including mandating the use of rear seatbelts - overall the largest overhaul of road safety legislation in 40 years.
But no-one knows how well these laws will be enforced.
Mourners have left flowers at the site of the accident in Chonburi
Members of the public are cynical. "There is a saying, that a true Thai follows his own rules," said Pongsak Putta, a motorbike taxi driver, who was hit by a car and injured over the new year.
"As long as it does not happen to them, people do not think safety is an issue," said Pornpen Wongbantoon, who complains about the poor driving of the buses she has to take to work.
"Enforcement is everything," says Dr Liviu Vedrasco, who works on road safety at the World Health Organization.
The government officials he works with are serious about road safety, he believes, but co-ordination is a real challenge.
The Road Safety Direction Centre is responsible for leading on the issue, but is subsumed within the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department, which is itself within the Ministry of Interior. Roads are the responsibility of the Ministry of Transport.
Dr Vedrasco believes the best way to cut the appalling death toll on the roads is to focus on the most vulnerable group, motorbikes, which account for 80% of deaths.
"If you cannot reduce the number of motorbikes, the next best thing is separating them. Make a dedicated lane; maybe not a hundred percent of roads in Thailand, but aim to increase the percentage of roads with separated traffic - this will definitely have a tremendous impact."
The parents of Hathaitip Modpai, one of the victims of the 2 January crash, have been grieving their daughter's death
After the shocking collision in Chonburi, the government has promised to phase out passenger vans, which it says are not designed to carry up to 15 people over long distances.
The police believe the 64 year-old driver fell asleep at the wheel. He was on his fifth 300km, 3.5 hour journey in 33 hours.
Twenty-six-year-old Hathaitip Modpai was one of the victims. She had been travelling in the van back from a new year visit to her parents to Bangkok, where she worked as a car saleswoman. She was an only child.
After her funeral, her mother, Wimol, reflected on what the impact of her daughter's death would be.
"I wish the government would do more," she said. "After the accident people got excited for a while, but once the fuss dies down, everything will go back to the way it was before." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38660283 | |
Alanis Morissette's manager admits stealing almost $5m from artist - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Jonathan Schwartz admits stealing over $7m from the singer and other celebrities, prosecutors say. | Entertainment & Arts | Morissette's former business manager has admitted stealing $4.8m from the singer
The former business manager of pop star Alanis Morissette has admitted stealing over $7m (£5.7m) from the singer and other celebrities, US prosecutors say.
Jonathan Schwartz was charged with fraud over claims he transferred the singer's money into his own accounts.
When initially confronted about the theft, Mr Schwartz lied and said he had invested the money in an illegal marijuana growing business.
He was responsible for collecting revenue, managing her accounts and organising the payment of bills on her behalf.
At the federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Mr Schwartz admitted to stealing $4.8m from Morissette and more than $2m from other celebrity clients, who have not been named.
His lawyer, Nathan Hochman, said Mr Schwartz had co-operated fully with the investigation and had accepted responsibility.
Mr Schwartz now faces a jail sentence of between four and six years if convicted on criminal charges.
Last year, Morissette sued Schwartz and his former company GSO for $15m in damages, claiming that he transferred money to his own accounts without permission.
It led to an internal investigation at the company, with GSO later issuing a statement saying that it was "shocked" to discover that Schwartz had been using the money to sustain a lavish lifestyle.
The lawsuit was later dropped by Morissette after a settlement was reached.
The Canadian-born singer, whose hits include Ironic and You Oughta Know, discovered the fraud after she appointed a new manager, who noticed sizeable discrepancies in her accounts.
Mr Schwartz is due to appear in court on criminal charges on 1 February. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38673219 | |
Brexit: The mind games - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Why Britain's negotiations to leave the EU are psychological as well as practical. | UK Politics | Psychology is always part of tense negotiations. In her Lancaster House speech this week Theresa May sought to seize back the advantage before the real battles start at the end of March. She wanted Europe to know that Britain would not be coming to meetings on the defensive, cap in hand.
During the 40 minutes of her speech she managed to shift the balance of power a little. A few days before she spoke I had been in Brussels and had spoken to a very senior European figure.
He was pessimistic. Mrs May, in his view, did not have a good relationship with other European leaders. He thought the negotiations could "go wrong from the start" and was in no doubt that in those circumstances the UK would be the loser.
He pointed out that Brexit was not high on the agenda for voters in the other 27 EU states. It was a way of saying that in the forthcoming negotiations the UK was the needy one. Britain would have to compromise.
What he reflected is the widely-held view in the EU that the divorce will be messy, that real damage will be done to the British economy.
Mrs May chose to exude confidence. The UK was determined to become a "champion of world trade" and was unafraid of negotiations turning difficult. The message was delivered with clarity and was intended to shape the mindset of those with whom Britain would be negotiating.
Donald Trump has intimated that he wants a fast-track trade deal with the UK
Two factors had strengthened Mrs May's hand. Firstly, the intervention of Donald Trump. The president-elect declared he was willing to fast-track a trade deal with the UK. There was no more talk about Britain being consigned to the back of the queue.
Secondly, and most importantly, the British economy has performed much better than was predicted. Consumer confidence has remained high and crucially the economy has bought Mrs May some political space and strengthened her hand.
Her speech was conciliatory in part. She made it clear she wanted the EU to succeed and did not seek the unravelling of the European Union and wanted Britain to "remain a good friend".
That was an important gesture because it is quite clear that some of those who backed Brexit would relish the break-up of the EU. And her stance was in marked contrast to that of Mr Trump who predicted last weekend that "others would leave" and that it would be difficult to keep the EU together. One EU ambassador to the UK said it sounded like Nigel Farage had briefed Mr Trump.
What Mr Trump has done is to encourage European leaders to circle the wagons by accusing Angela Merkel of making a "catastrophic mistake" with her welcoming of refugees, so chipping away at her authority. Mrs May, in contrast, was offering to be a good neighbour.
But, much as she offered friendship, there was no disguising the fist inside the gloved hand. If there was any attempt to punish the UK for breaking away it would do "calamitous self-harm" she said and "would not be the act of a friend".
Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico has warned against an agreement that would strengthen the UK at the expense of the EU
Britain, if necessary, would go it alone. "No deal would be better than a bad deal." It was an attempt to seize the psychological advantage in the talks, by reducing the threat of them failing.
She was clear that the UK was leaving the single market but sought a "bold and ambitious free trade agreement". If that was denied and high tariffs were introduced then Europe's leaders would have to answer to their voters.
"I do not believe," she said, "that the EU's leaders will seriously tell German exporters, French farmers, Spanish fishermen… that they want to make them poorer, just to punish Britain and make a political point."
That was a way of saying that if the talks turned ugly then all sides would suffer damage but that Britain would not flinch from telling European voters that their leaders were putting ideology above economic self-interest.
This is an important undercurrent to the negotiations. I have never seen Europe's leaders so unsure and anxious about the future of the European project. They genuinely fear that if another country was to leave it would mark the end of the EU. That is what underpins the unity they have shown so far.
It is also why they insist that Britain must not be able to walk away with a deal that was better than they would have got by staying on the inside. Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico said it would not be "right for the 27 remaining EU countries to emerge weakened and Britain strengthened".
So, in its negotiating strategy, the UK has to talk up the mutual economic benefits of compromise.
Regarding the City of London, the message is that there is a mutual interest in its continued health. Here again, the UK is arguing that the EU needs access to pools of capital and it needs the financial skills that only the City offers.
Protecting the pre-eminence of the City will be central to the UK's Brexit aims
The UK also wanted to leave a threat on the table: that if a deal could not be done the UK would take any measure to protect its economy, including turning it into a low tax area on the edge of mainland Europe.
May wanted to give her European audience some incentives. Firstly, that Europe needs the UK economy but also that it needed Britain's intelligence services and armed forces.
She was not offering security as a bargaining chip but she knew her pitch would resonate in parts of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States where they have grown uncertain of the Nato umbrella and are grateful for the sight of British forces on training exercises.
These are all strings that can be pulled as negotiations unfold over the next two years.
For all the strategy that lay behind Mrs May's speech, the headline that resonated around Europe was that Britain was leaving the single market. Some European papers accused Britain of turning inwards and of being "Little Britain".
The UK can live with those opinions but its position over the customs union is far more problematic. The UK wants to leave the customs union because it wants the freedom to negotiate trade deals with other countries. At the same time it wants to avoid tariffs and trade barriers.
The prime minister has spoken of negotiating associate membership of the customs union with special access for certain sectors like car manufacturing. This will be a tough part of the negotiations. To other EU states it looks like the cherry-picking they have vowed to resist.
Securing a trade agreement will take time and, almost certainly, some transitional arrangement. Mrs May, however, insists a trade deal can be negotiated within two years. That is hugely ambitious but she fears a transition would involve continuing to pay into the EU budget and accepting EU rules and that would be rejected by elements within her party.
Failure, however, conjures up the danger of the UK going over the cliff edge without a deal. That is a powerful card for the other EU countries and for MEPs in the European parliament who will have to vote on all this.
The dilemma for the 27 EU members is this: they believe it is necessary to demonstrate that leaving the EU is painful and risky. The UK must be seen to suffer, but the question is whether they can do that without hurting themselves.
What Mrs May did was to remind Europe that it does not hold all the cards. This was round one in the psychology of doing a deal.
Many European leaders did not like the message and warned that "Britain can't dictate the terms of separation", with the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, saying it would be like negotiating not with an EU member but with a '"third country". | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38676889 | |
Trump prods reluctant Melania to speak - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Donald Trump persuaded wife Melania to address a group of supporters at a lunch in Washington. | null | Donald Trump and his wife Melania visited a group of supporters at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
"This is a gorgeous room. A total genius must have built this place," the 45th US president remarked.
Mr Trump thanked his wife, who suffered through "fake news" throughout the campaign, he said.
He also invited her, with a bit of insistence, to make a few remarks. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38681430 | |
BBC Breakfast presenters meet 'Orangu-cam' - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | The Breakfast team have been monkeying around with one of the stars of new series 'Spy in the Wild'. | null | 'Spy in the Wild' uses life-like animatronics to infiltrate the animal world and capture wildlife from a unique perspective.
BBC Breakfast's Steph and Charlie met one of the stars of the series. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38673839 | |
Does living to 100 mean we'll work forever? - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | With more and more people expected to live until 100, how does that affect our working lives? | Business | Living longer may also mean working longer
Will you live to be 100 years old? Even if you don't - it's pretty likely your children or your grandchildren will.
While Brexit, China and Trump may be dominating the news out of this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, living longer is a hot topic in the cold and snowy mountain village, and one which many attendees are already grappling with.
Current trends suggest most babies born since 2000 in developed countries such as the UK, US, Canada, France and Germany, will live past their 100th birthday.
Put another way, for every 10 years since the 19th Century, life expectancy has increased by two and a half years, according to Jim Vaupel from Max Planck Institute of Demography, who has tracked global changes over the past 150 years.
That's the equivalent of another six to eight hours every day.
It may sound great - after all who doesn't want to live for as long as possible - but the reality is we may also be working for as long as possible to be able to pay for it.
"If we live 30 years longer, then in order to retire at 60 we would have to save five times as much during our working lives. It's the end of retirement as we know it," says Lynda Gratton, who hosted a session on the topic in Davos.
She is a psychologist, and professor of management practice at the London Business School, and has written a book on the topic.
The effects of people living longer is one of the hot topics in Davos
Rather than the three traditional stages of life: education, work and retirement, Ms Gratton expects people to have to constantly retrain as they shift careers and focus.
Counter-intuitively, she suggests that one positive of having a longer career could actually mean a better work-life balance.
If you're working for longer, then taking a couple of years out to look after children, or ageing parents for example, won't be such a big deal when your career lasts for 60-plus years, she suggests.
Jo Ann Jenkins, chief executive at non-profit group AARP - the influential lobby group for older Americans - says working longer is already a reality for many in the US.
In 2012, US employees aged over 50 made up almost a third of the workforce. By 2022 they're expected to make up 36%.
The shift has already forced the group to change its name. The body used to be called the American Association of Retired Persons, but had to change it to just AARP because its members complained they weren't retired, but still working.
"People used to think middle age started around 35. Now, most people think it's late 40s or early 50s. Same thing with one's working years. Someone who was 55 or 60 often used to be seen as over the hill. That's not the case today," says Ms Jenkins.
She believes one of the big adjustments will be how to manage the increasing breadth of age groups in the workplace.
"Years ago, one of the big questions was: can a man report to a woman manager? We've answered that question. Today, a big question is: can an older employee report to a younger manager? I think many organisations are still grappling with that."
Of course, increased life expectancy isn't always matched by better health.
Christophe Weber, the chief executive of Japanese pharmaceutical giant Takeda, says the key issue is how long people are remaining well.
In Japan, around a quarter of the population is now over 60, and Mr Weber notes that this increasing longevity also means certain diseases such as dementia, for example, are on the rise.
He says research and finding new medicines to address the issue will be crucial.
"[People living longer] is a very nice evolution but the challenge is how you finance it," he says, adding that the healthier people are, the less costly it is.
As far as work goes, he says people need "a soft landing carrier to retirement", suggesting while older people may remain at work, they're likely to work part-time, or in less hands-on mentoring roles.
But if even the idea of working part-time when you're in your 70s seems depressing, Ms Gratton has some encouragement.
She says the fact that you're likely to have to change jobs and retrain several times to remain employable over 60 years offers a natural break to take time out.
"Take a gap year. Why should it only be the young who take gap years? You could take a gap year at 50, and travel around the world," she says. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38652359 | |
Australian Open 2017: Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal reach round three - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Six-time Australian Open winner Serena Williams stays on course for a 23rd Grand Slam, while Rafael Nadal also reaches round three. | null | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Coverage: Daily live commentary on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra; live text on selected matches on the BBC Sport website; TV highlights on BBC Two and online from 21 January.
Six-time champion Serena Williams and former winner Rafael Nadal both reached the Australian Open third round with straight-sets victories on Thursday.
Williams, 35, who is attempting to win an Open era record 23rd Grand Slam singles title, beat world number 61 Lucie Safarova 6-3 6-4 in Melbourne.
"I'm really happy to have got through that," said the American second seed.
Nadal, who won the tournament in 2009, eased through 6-3 6-1 6-3 against 2006 finalist Marcos Baghdatis.
Williams beat 29-year-old Czech Safarova in the French Open final in 2015, and needed one hour and 25 minutes to see off the former top-10 player on Thursday.
"It's never easy having to play in a second round against someone you have seen in a final," she added. "I've played two former top-10 opponents, but it's a great way to start the tournament."
Williams lost the Australian Open final last year to Angelique Kerber, but went on to win at Wimbledon and equal Steffi Graf's Open era record of 22 Grand Slam singles titles.
She will continue her bid for the record against 23-year-old Nicole Gibbs, who beat fellow American Irina Falconi 6-4 6-1.
Fourteen-time Grand Slam winner Nadal will face promising teenager Alexander Zverev in the next round after the German beat 18-year-old American Frances Tiafoe 6-2 6-3 6-4.
Nadal, 30, says the 19-year-old world number 24 "can be a future world number one".
"It will be a big challenge for me," said Nadal. "He is a potential Grand Slam winner. He is a big, talented player. He is young and improving in every moment he is on the tour."
Nadal lost in the first round in Melbourne for the first time in his career last year and, having pulled out of Wimbledon with a wrist injury, his best major result in 2016 proved to be a last-16 exit at the US Open.
The Spaniard has only played one tournament since October, reaching the quarter-finals at the Brisbane International earlier this month, but says he has "no injuries" after coming through against Baghdatis in two hours and 12 minutes.
"I can't ask for more," he said. "I have suffered injuries in my career, but I have had a lot of success and amazing memories from all the places I have played.
"I cannot complain. I am a lucky person and I am trying to enjoy every moment on court."
The 27-year-old, who has reached two semi-finals in Melbourne in the past three tournaments, lost 6-3 6-2 to the 34-year-old world number 79.
Fifth-seed Karolina Pliskova beat 18-year-old Russian qualifier Anna Blinkova 6-0 6-2 in 59 minutes, meaning the Czech has dropped just four games en route to the third round.
"I don't want to say my opponent wasn't that good, but I was better," said the 24-year-old, who faces Latvia's Jelena Ostapenko next.
Third seed Milos Raonic reached the third round of the Australian Open for the seventh time with a 6-3 6-4 7-6 (7-4) win over Luxembourg's Gilles Muller.
The Canadian 26, hit 21 aces as he set up a meeting with France's Gilles Simon, who reached the quarter-finals in Melbourne in 2009.
"I started feeling a little bit of a cough but I didn't think much of it, then this morning I felt pretty bad waking up," he said.
"I came out with the sort of idea of put everything into the match, try to solve it, understand the importance of the mental side of things in that situation."
World number 15 Grigor Dimitrov also moved into the next round with a 1-6 6-4 6-4 6-4 victory over Korea's Chung Hye-on.
He will face France's Richard Gasquet after his 6-1 6-1 6-1 win over Argentine Carlos Berlocq. Former world number three David Ferrer beat American qualifier Ernesto Escobedo 2-6 6-4 6-4 6-2 to set up a tie with Spain's Roberto Bautista Agut. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38674306 | |
Kim Kardashian will appear in the all-female Ocean's Eight - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The all-female Ocean's Eight film adds two new cast members - Kim Kardashian and Kendall Jenner. | Entertainment & Arts | Kardashian has reportedly already shot her scenes for Ocean's Eight
The upcoming all-female Ocean's Eight film has just added a new cast member - Kim Kardashian.
The reality TV star and her half-sister Kendall Jenner will make cameo appearances in the film.
It will be the fourth movie in the Ocean's franchise in 17 years - confusingly coming after Ocean's Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen.
Kardashian and Jenner were photographed in New York on Monday after reportedly filming their cameos.
The pair will apparently appear in scenes set at a fictional gala being held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Kendall Jenner, Kardashian's half sister, has also shot scenes for Ocean's Eight
One scene in the film features a jewel robbery at New York's annual Met Gala - an event packed with celebrities.
The news comes three months after Kardashian was held at gunpoint during a robbery in Paris.
She took a break from social media and public appearances as a result but has recently returned to Twitter and visited Dubai last week.
Rihanna, Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway are due to take some of the main roles in Ocean's Eight.
Vogue editor Anna Wintour and fashion designer Zac Posen have also recently been spotted near the set - could they be making cameos in the same scenes?
We'll find out when the film hits cinemas in June 2018.
The original Ocean's 11 was released in 1960 and starred Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin - and was remade as Ocean's Eleven in 2001 with Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
Unlike Ocean's Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, the new film won't have major roles for Pitt and Clooney.
Matt Damon will reprise his role for a brief appearance, and James Corden and Damian Lewis will also have cameos.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38662090 | |
Katie Hopkins invited for tea by Muslim family - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Zahid Mahmood, wrongly accused by columnist Katie Hopkins of being a Muslim extremist, has invited her to his house for tea. Catrin Nye reports. | null | Zahid Mahmood, who was accused by Mail Online columnist Katie Hopkins of being a Muslim extremist, has invited her to his house to have tea and meet his family.
Hopkins wrongly said the family had links to al-Qaeda in two articles published in December 2015. The Mail Online paid £150,000 in libel damages.
The Victoria Derbyshire programme is broadcast on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38670716 | |
Newspaper headlines: Boris Johnson, NHS drugs, Gambia crisis and Dylan painting - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Boris Johnson's Brexit reference to World War Two comes under consideration in the newspapers. | The Papers | If you ever wanted to see what Boris Johnson would look like mocked up as Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, then look no further than the Sun.
It says the foreign secretary was "defiant" after being criticised for comparing French President Francois Hollande to a guard in a World War Two escape movie.
The paper mocks those who took offence as "delicate flowers" and hopes Theresa May does not "lock Boris in the cooler" - the punishment usually given to McQueen for his attempted break-outs.
The Times says Mr Johnson "ruffled feathers" with his words, while the Daily Mirror calls him "oafish" and says he put fragile relations at risk.
It says Mr Johnson was just being "characteristically colourful" with his words.
But one of his loudest critics, the European Parliament's leading Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, is making his voice heard again.
In an article for the Guardian, he says Britain's demands heading into talks with the EU are "unreasonable".
"It is an illusion to suggest that the UK will be permitted to leave the European Union but then be free to opt back into the best parts of the project," he says, before concluding that Brexit will be "a sad and exhausting process".
On its front page, the Times says cost-cutting measures by the NHS have raised fears about patient safety.
It says one in five newly-approved drugs could be rationed by NHS England to save money, even if they have been judged cost-effective by doctors, so patients will suffer longer waits for medication.
Cancer charities tell the paper the change will be devastating to patients.
The Times also says drug companies will no longer launch new medicines early in Britain.
British tourists who had been hoping to soak up some winter sun in The Gambia are packing their bags and "scrambling" to leave, according to the Guardian, after a political crisis caused the Foreign Office to advise against travel there.
"There is panic," says one tourist official. The Sun says British travellers have complained of shambolic organisation.
The Times says the scenes of crisis are depressingly predictable.
President Yahya Jammeh can avert bloodshed by doing the right thing, it says, or condemn his country to isolation and be remembered as a pariah.
The i newspaper suggests that an "evocative slice of authentic Americana", painted by none other than Bob Dylan, might actually be a picture of the pier at Blackpool.
Sharp-eyed observers who saw the watercolour at a London gallery found it was identical to a picture posted on the internet by a British photographer.
Even a bird on a lamp-post was identical. The photographer tells the Telegraph he is not angry but "astonished" that his work has been appropriated by a Nobel laureate - and labelled as being Norfolk, Virginia.
The paper suggests the singer was perhaps unconsciously influenced by playing three concerts at Blackpool's Winter Gardens in 2013. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-38672427 | |
Andy Murray column on Dan Evans, injury worries and inspiring the next generation - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | World number one Andy Murray on fellow Briton Dan Evans, injuring his ankle and inspiring kids to take up tennis. | null | Coverage: Live radio and text commentary of every Andy Murray match on BBC Radio, BBC Sport website and BBC Sport app. Watch highlights on BBC Two and online from 21 January.
I'm really happy and excited for Dan Evans, who is getting closer and closer to the top of the game.
I've known him a long time. I first met him when we played a Davis Cup tie probably nine, 10 years ago. You spend a week together in the build-up and since then I've seen him a lot at various events.
He used to have a reputation of maybe not working that hard but every time I have been on the court with him, he has been fantastic.
He's a natural competitor. Once you get him on the match court, he always tries his best and gives his best effort and I really respect that.
Away from the court, he's a pretty relaxed guy. He doesn't take himself too seriously and he likes to have a good time, but when he's playing, he's focused. He's a very talented player.
I haven't spoken to him loads about his tennis. He has a team around him that is doing such a fantastic job.
If he keeps doing what he's doing, who knows where he could end up? It's exciting to see how good he is going to be. We still don't know what his limit is.
'We want to inspire kids to pick up a racquet'
It's a really promising time to be part of British tennis. A number of players are close to the top of their game and that's really good.
I definitely think that having a number of different players, with different personalities and backgrounds and playing styles, is really positive. I hope it keeps going that way.
A lot of kids might watch tennis and hate watching me. But some might love watching Johanna Konta, or Dan, or Kyle Edmund or Heather Watson.
The more choice there is, the more role models people have to look up to and that is a really positive thing.
'I was worried about my ankle'
There was a moment of panic when I went over on my ankle during my match against Andrey Rublev. You don't know how bad it is until you get up and you're also a bit shocked about going over.
Once I got up and started moving around, it was still a bit concerning because it was sore. I'm walking around on it fine now - it's sore, but it's OK.
For now, it's all about icing it and keeping it elevated. I had an ice bath after the game and I'll be keeping it cool for the next few days. It's all good.
Facing Rublev did give me a few flashbacks to when I was first starting out.
I played Rafael Nadal when I was 19 at the 2007 Australian Open. Going out for the first time against one of the top players does influence the way you play.
I expected Rublev to come out going for his shots, because he had nothing to lose. He got off to a pretty quick start but once I settled down, I played some good stuff. He's a good player though and definitely one to watch in the future. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38661264 | |
How May's Brexit speech played out on the front pages - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A look at how UK newspapers wrote up the PM's speech, in line with their own views on Brexit. | Entertainment & Arts | Britain's newspapers are for the most part deeply hostile to the EU, and committed to making a success of Brexit.
At the same time, they have created a narrative about the referendum result which casts it as a victory for the common man and woman against a liberal, metropolitan establishment that counts the mainstream media - whatever that now means - as its weapon of choice.
This is one of the more pleasing ironies about the state of media in Britain today.
A brief glance at this week's headlines gives ample evidence of what psychologists call confirmation bias - the tendency to interpret events in a way that accords with pre-existing prejudices.
For papers who backed Leave, Theresa May's speech showed a stern commitment to freedom and love of country. The Mail, Sun, Telegraph and Express, who between them have done most to advance the Brexit cause, lauded the prime minister's speech.
The Mail has been a strong backer of May, seeing her as much the most plausible Tory leader in the aftermath of David Cameron's resignation, and contrasting her ostensible gravitas with the lightweights in her cabinet. Just for clarity, I'm paraphrasing the Mail's position there rather than mine, and doing so based on several conversations with the most senior figures there.
Picture choices matter so much in newspapers. I must say I am a very big fan of cartoons on front pages, as this Charlie Hebdo front page from my previous job shows you, and the Mail's use of a cartoon to show the prime minister looking defiant in a way redolent of the Dad's Army title sequence achieves its desired effect.
Similarly the Sun has her looking cheerful next to supportive furniture (the headline and sub-headline).
The Telegraph and the Guardian use similar pictures but by using a much tighter crop, a blue background and a positive headline, the Telegraph seem to endorse the prime minister; whereas the Guardian seem to issue scepticism about her chances of success. Interestingly, the Financial Times, which like the Guardian backed Remain, also uses exactly the same picture, albeit with a different crop. Their headline, being longer than most of the others, equivocates.
Wednesday's front pages alone provide ample evidence of the way the same events are interpreted in wildly different ways by different newspapers - always and without fail in accordance with their prejudices.
In some ways, Fleet Street, as romantics like me still sometimes call it, is basically the industrialisation of confirmation bias.
Does that matter, when newspapers are in swift decline?
Of course it does, and hugely so. Despite their perpetual shrinkage, newspapers are still read by millions of people across Britain.
Moreover, they exert huge - some would argue disproportionate - influence on the news agenda of broadcasters like the BBC, Sky and ITV.
And in my experience, Westminster is still obsessed, to a really bizarre degree, with trying to influence newspapers.
This was perhaps understandable 20 years ago; but today, when fake news goes viral, it seem strange to me how much politicians care about headlines on page 17 of daily publications.
And yet they do. Which is why the other important point about Fleet Street is that it is strongly weighted toward Brexit, and in that sense in touch with voters who, albeit by a small margin, voted to Leave.
Most papers are delighted with the referendum result and support the prime minister. Given the sheer complexity of Brexit negotiations, it's lucky for Theresa May that, despite having backed Remain herself, she can generally count on Britain's newspapers to back her every move in Brussels.
That is not a luxury many previous prime ministers have enjoyed. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38666066 | |
Man creates carousel on Helsinki open water - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | A 200-tonne ice carousel has been created on a frozen bay in Helsinki. The carousel is said to be 36 metres in diameter. | null | A 200-tonne ice carousel has been created on a frozen bay in Helsinki. It is said to be 36 metres in diameter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38668375 | |
Sir Patrick Stewart: Poo emoji role for Shakespearean actor - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | From Captain Picard to poo - the surprising new role for Sir Patrick Stewart. | Entertainment & Arts | Sir Patrick Stewart is joined by James Corden in the cast of the animated film
He has played many of Shakespeare's greats and been lauded for film roles in Star Trek and X-Men.
But now, Sir Patrick Stewart is to tackle perhaps his most surprising role to date - becoming the voice of the poo emoji.
He will take on the role of the bow-tie wearing Poop in The Emoji Movie, which will be released this summer.
James Corden will star as Hi-Five and Maya Rudolph will lend her voice to Smiler in the animated film.
Sony Pictures announced the casting news on Twitter, announcing Sir Patrick's role by saying - in emojis, naturally - that he was "no party pooper".
Sir Patrick's job as Poop comes after his voice roles in animated comedies Family Guy, American Dad! and The Simpsons.
Maya Rudolph practising her happy face for the role as a smiling emoji
The reaction on social media was unsurprisingly tongue-in-cheek, with one commentator saying Sir Patrick was "to boldly go" - referring to his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek.
And another wrote - adding the poo emoji: "Patrick Stewart is going to voice the poo emoji in the new emoji film. From Captain Picard to poo. What is this world?"
Sir Patrick is yet to comment on his new film.
His most recent post on Twitter, at the time of writing, was about Britain's decision to leave the European Union.
"First time back in continental Europe since Brexit," he wrote. "I was once so proud to be part of the Union. Now embarrassed to be British."
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38675616 | |
Line of cyclists in Bangladesh sets Guinness World Record - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Bangladesh cyclists set a world record for the longest single line of moving bikes. | null | A group of more than 1,000 cyclists in Bangladesh set a Guinness World Record for the longest single line of moving bikes. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/38668336 | |
Inside lab where Mers vaccine made - BBC News | 2017-01-19 | null | Tulip Mazumdar visits the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford where scientists are developing vaccines for all three of the shortlisted viruses. | null | Tulip Mazumdar visits the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford where scientists are developing vaccines for all three of the shortlisted viruses.
Their Mers vaccine is at the most advanced stage. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38672514 | |
Man Utd: Premier League club named world's leading revenue-generating club - BBC Sport | 2017-01-19 | null | Manchester United top the Deloitte Football Money League for the first time since 2003-04 after generating record revenue in the 2015-16 season. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Manchester United generated the most revenue of any football club in the world last season, according to a report published by Deloitte.
United dethrone Real Madrid - who held top spot for 11 years - after accumulating a record revenue of 689m euros (£515m) during the 2015-16 term.
The Premier League club saw commercial revenue grow by 100m euros (£71m).
Combined revenue for the top 20 clubs during the 2015-16 season grew 12% to 7.4bn euros (£6.41bn) - a new record.
It is the first time Manchester United have topped the annual Deloitte Football Money League since the 2003-04 season.
Real drop down to third, behind Spanish rivals Barcelona, who remain in second spot.
German giants Bayern Munich move up a position to fourth and Manchester City also climb a spot to fifth - having generated 524.9 euros (£392.6m) - up from 463.5 euros (£352.6m) during the previous season.
It is the first time they have reached the top five of the annual list.
Eight Premier League clubs make the top 20, with revenues totalling nearly 3.2bn euros (£2.4bn).
Champions Leicester City (20th) enter the top 20 for the first time. They produced a revenue of 172m euros (£128m) - which is almost five times the revenue generated two seasons before in 2013-14.
Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham remain in seventh, eighth, ninth and 12th place, with West Ham in 18th position.
Dan Jones, partner in the Sports Business Group at Deloitte, said Manchester United's record revenues were achieved by "phenomenal commercial revenue growth".
He added: "In recent years, their ability to secure commercial partnerships with value in excess of that achievable by their peers has been the crucial factor in enabling the club to regain their place at the top of the money league.
"That said, they'll face strong competition from Barcelona and Real Madrid to retain the top spot in next year's edition, due to the lack of Champions League football, the weakening of the pound against the euro and, over the longer term, as other clubs enter the commercial market demanding similar deals, using United as the precedent."
Take part in our Premier League Predictor game, which allows you to create leagues with friends. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38655480 | |
CES 2017: The hi-tech exercise bike for three-year-olds - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | null | Fisher-Price has unveiled a "smart" exercise bicycle for three-year-olds that tries to educate them as they work out. | null | Fisher-Price has created an exercise bicycle for three-year-olds, which it has put on show at the CES tech expo in Las Vegas.
The Smart Cycle plugs into a TV, so that the youngsters can be shown educational games as they build up a sweat.
But the BBC's Chris Foxx wondered if parents should be encouraging their children to be spend even more time in front of a screen.
Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38526192 | |
FA Cup: West Ham 0-5 Manchester City highlights - BBC Sport | 2017-01-06 | null | Pep Guardiola's first taste of the FA Cup ends triumphantly as Manchester City thrash Premier League rivals West Ham 5-0 in the FA Cup third round at London Stadium. | null | Pep Guardiola's first taste of the FA Cup ends triumphantly as Manchester City thrash Premier League rivals West Ham 5-0 in the FA Cup third round at London Stadium. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38536413 | |
After Brexit: What happens next for the UK's farmers? - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | From the environment to subsidies, trade tariffs to animal welfare, farming has the most to lose - and gain - from Brexit. | Business | Farming has the most to gain - and lose from Brexit
Of all UK industries, farming could lose or gain the most from Brexit.
At worst Brexit could devastate the farming sector; on average 60% of farm incomes come in the form of EU subsidies.
The report by Informa Agribusiness Intelligence estimates that without subsidies 90% of farms would collapse and land prices would crash.
So far no one has said the subsidies will be taken away, or even that they will shrink.
Indeed, the government has promised to match them up until 2020.
But beyond that it has promised nothing.
Some argue that without any subsidies at all, nine in 10 farms would collapse as businesses
This week has seen a flurry of activity as the farming industry tries to grapple with what comes next.
MPs from the Environmental Audit Committee warned on Tuesday of the dangers of Brexit to farming. Its report, the Future of the Natural Environment after the EU Referendum, says:
Meanwhile farmers gathered at the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) this week to listen to the Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom, but there were precious few details on what would happen once EU subsidies go.
"We will be consulting in the near future on exactly the shape of future farm and agriculture support," said Ms Leadsom. "I will be committed to supporting farming in both the short and longer term."
Andrea Leadsom gave few details on what would happen to farming after the UK leaves the EU
Also at the OFC was George Eustice, Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA, who was a little more detailed.
"I want to support agriculture to where it becomes more profitable, more vibrant, so we see expanding food production in this country, where we are supporting farmers to deliver eco-system services.
"So that rather than telling them 'here's a subsidy now here's a list of environmental demands', we should be saying to farmers you have a role to play to enhance our agricultural environment, and we are going to reward you for those services that you offer."
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) started in 1962 as the first members of what is now the EU emerged from over a decade of food shortages during and after World War Two.
Its emphasis was on production and food security but as farmers were paid for whatever they produced, they over-produced leading to food "mountains".
A reform process, including the "greening" of the CAP which emphasised environmental practices, has resulted in farmers mostly being paid depending on how much land they own - but some wealthy UK landowners now receive subsidies of up to £3m a year.
For instance, the Newmarket farm of Khalid Abdullah al Saud, billionaire owner of the legendary horse Frankel, receives £400,000 a year. Lord Iveagh who lives on the 22,486-acre Elveden Estate in Suffolk, receives over £900,000.
Yet working out what to replace EU subsidies with is raising passions.
Many farmers see opportunities once the UK is no longer in the Common Agricultural Policy
At the same conference the journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot had a run-in with the deputy head of the National Farmers Union (NFU) Minette Batters over the role of farmers after Brexit.
Mr Monbiot believes farming subsidies should be replaced by a fund to alleviate rural poverty, an environmental fund and help for new entrants into the sector.
When he asked Ms Batters if she was happy to see subsidies paid to wealthy farmers. Ms Batters hesitated and then said: "It depends on what they do with it," adding "I can't emphasise it enough, farmers embrace the environment".
An aghast-looking Mr Monbiot replied saying "Farmers, have, more than any other group been responsible for the environmental degradation of the countryside."
A few hundred yards down the road, another conference was going on. This was the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC), set up 10 years ago to give an alternative view on farming.
While the OFC is all suits, largely men, and a large NFU presence, the ORFC is more woolly jumpers, more women, more beards and more delegates, many of them young.
If there is no free trade agreement with the EU Britain would rely on trading rules laid down by the World Trade Organisation
The two are not absolutely opposed to each other - coming together this year for the first time to jointly discuss the weighty subject of cheese and how to produce it.
And the feeling at both conferences is that, despite uncertainties, everyone sees huge opportunities once the UK is no longer in the Common Agricultural Policy.
And, of course, everyone is pushing their own agenda.
Guy Watson, the founder of the country's largest organic retailer, Riverford Organic Farmers, bravely told a gathering of livestock farmers that "there is no getting away from it, we have to eat less meat"
David Baldock, a senior fellow at the Institute for European Environmental Policy said: "It's really not the end of the world to think that we are going to produce slightly less and better."
Surprisingly neither were shouted down and there were even suggestions from the audience that VAT ought to be levied on meat.
While most of the lobby groups have a view on reforming subsidies, they are less clear about the problem of trade.
90% of UK exports in beef and lamb go to the EU
If there is no free trade agreement with the EU, Britain would rely on trading rules laid down by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which could be very uncomfortable for farmers having to pay taxes, or tariffs, to sell into the single market.
Calum Kerr, MSP and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman for the SNP, said 90% of beef and lamb exports, and 70% of pork exports go to the EU.
"WTO rules would look at a minimum tariff into the EU of 20%. On red meat which ... is critically important [economic] modelling suggests anywhere between 50% and.... a 76% increase in costs into the EU market.
"That's why we believe we should remain a part of the EU market."
The NFU's Ms Batters said: "We have to do a deal with Europe and it is a deal that will shape our landscape for generations to come."
Nearly every farmer believes Brexit offers an opportunity to change the system, but exactly how is a matter for debate
As for competing with countries outside the EU, Ms Leadsom promised she wouldn't lower environmental and animal welfare standards to clinch free trade deals.
Ms Batters, herself a beef farmer, said: "The problem is that getting free trade deals in agriculture is notoriously difficult.
"Take Argentina. Michael Gove says he wants to do a deal with the South American countries. "But they have a completely different system of rearing beef, using a degree of genetically modified products.
"I simply can't compete with that."
Nearly everyone believes Brexit offers an opportunity to change the system, but no one can agree how. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38510423 | |
Terminally-ill man seeks law change over assisted suicide - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | null | Motor neurone disease patient Noel Conway wants a review of the law so he can end his life when his condition deteriorates. | null | Motor neurone disease patient Noel Conway is seeking a review of the law on assisted suicide. The terminally-ill man wants to have medical assistance to end his life when his condition deteriorates to a point that he feels is insufferable. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38532004 | |
Search on to find friend for Scotland's only elephant - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The home of Scotland's only elephant launches a search for a friend after the death of her companion. | Tayside and Central Scotland | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Scotland's only elephant is in search of a new companion
The home of Scotland's only elephant has launched a search to find her a friend after the death of her long-term companion.
Mondula, known as Mondy, has been on her own at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling since neighbour Toto died aged 46 last March.
The park is now in contact with zoos across Europe to find company for the "cheeky and clever" 46-year-old.
Mondy and Toto lived together for almost 20 years.
Blair Drummond Safari Park education officer Katie Macfarlane said that, despite not being the closest of friends, Mondy was affected by Toto's death.
She told the BBC Scotland news website: "For a few days she was quite sad and upset and you could tell she was wondering what had happened.
"In the family groups in the wild it has been seen that they mourn each other, but Toto and Mondy weren't related.
So, there were was a bond in the sense that they are very intelligent animals, but it wasn't a family bond."
Mondy has been at the park since 1998
Mondy and Toto were together for almost 20 years
The keepers have been working with Mondy every day through training to keep her stimulated following the loss of Toto.
Miss Macfarlane said: "In the first wee while she was a bit upset and she lost a bit of weight but she's doing really well now."
Any potential new companion will need to be an older African elephant which recognises Mondy's dominant nature.
Miss Macfarlane said: "It's her house, she's lived here for 20-odd years, so you've got to make sure that they're going to let her be the boss to a certain extent.
"The keepers would never want her to be on her own for the rest of her retirement, so it was always a thought from day one.
"But it takes time. You can't just throw elephants together and expect them to be friends."
Any potential new companion will need to recognise Mondy's dominant nature
Toto died after collapsing at the park last year
Mondy's new companion will be introduced to her gradually, with the pair initially being kept in separate enclosures.
Miss Macfarlane said the keepers were now trying "really hard" to find a new friend for Mondy.
She said: "The elephant building that we currently have was built in 2013 and was specifically designed as a retirement home almost.
"We work constantly with a lot of zoos through breeding programmes and the park managers are in touch with all the zoos that have African elephants in Europe.
"We said since we lost Toto that it wouldn't be immediate and it wouldn't be healthy for Mondy for it to be immediate.
"We have to give her a bit of time to get used to the new situation."
The Princess Royal opened a new elephant home at the park in 2013
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-38530025 | |
How Japan has almost eradicated gun crime - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world, and the rules around ownership are very strict. | Magazine | Shotguns and air rifles are the only firearms you can legally buy in Japan
Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US.
If you want to buy a gun in Japan you need patience and determination. You have to attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95%.
There are also mental health and drugs tests. Your criminal record is checked and police look for links to extremist groups. Then they check your relatives too - and even your work colleagues. And as well as having the power to deny gun licences, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons.
That's not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed.
The law restricts the number of gun shops. In most of Japan's 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three, and you can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges you bought on your last visit.
A photo posed by models - even Japanese gangsters rarely use guns these days
Police must be notified where the gun and the ammunition are stored - and they must be stored separately under lock and key. Police will also inspect guns once a year. And after three years your licence runs out, at which point you have to attend the course and pass the tests again.
This helps explain why mass shootings in Japan are extremely rare. When mass killings occur, the killer most often wields a knife.
In a world where a lot is going wrong there is also a lot going right. So what if you could build a country with policies that actually worked, by homing in ideas around the world that have been truly successful?
The current gun control law was introduced in 1958, but the idea behind the policy dates back centuries.
"Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws," says Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence and the author of Gun Baby Gun.
"They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don't play a part in civilian society."
People were being rewarded for giving up firearms as far back as 1685, a policy Overton describes as "perhaps the first ever gun buyback initiative".
"The moment you have guns in society, you will have gun violence but I think it's about the quantity," says Overton. "If you have very few guns in society, you will almost inevitably have low levels of violence."
Japanese police officers rarely use guns and put much greater emphasis on martial arts - all are expected to become a black belt in judo. They spend more time practising kendo (fighting with bamboo swords) than learning how to use firearms.
"The response to violence is never violence, it's always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]," says journalist Anthony Berteaux. "What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Japanese police practise martial arts every week and avoid using weapons whenever they can
Overton contrasts this with the American model, which he says has been "to militarise the police".
"If you have too many police pulling out guns at the first instance of crime, you lead to a miniature arms race between police and criminals," he says.
To underline the taboo attached to inappropriate use of weapons, an officer who used his gun to kill himself was charged posthumously with a criminal offence. He carried out the act while on duty - policemen never carry weapons off-duty, leaving them at the station when they finish their shift.
The care police take with firearms is mirrored in the self-defence forces.
Journalist Jake Adelstein once attended a shooting practice, which ended with the gathering up of the bullet casings - and there was great concern when one turned out to be missing.
"One bullet shell was unaccounted for - one shell had fallen behind one of the targets - and nobody was allowed to leave the facilities until they found the shell," he says.
There is no clamour in Japan for gun regulations to be relaxed, says Berteaux. "A lot of it stems from this post-war sentiment of pacifism that the war was horrible and we can never have that again," he explains.
There are a limited number of longstanding rifle owners in Japan - when they die their heirs must hand the rifles in
"People assume that peace is always going to exist and when you have a culture like that you don't really feel the need to arm yourself or have an object that disrupts that peace."
In fact, moves to expand the role of Japan's self-defence forces in foreign peacekeeping operations have caused concern in some quarters.
"It is unknown territory," says political science professor Koichi Nakano. "Maybe the government will try to normalise occasional death in the self-defence force and perhaps even try to glorify the exercise of weapons?"
According to Iain Overton, the "almost taboo level of rejection" of guns in Japan means that the country is "edging towards a perfect place" - though he points out that Iceland also achieves a very low rate of gun crime, despite a much higher level of gun ownership.
Henrietta Moore of the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London applauds the Japanese for not viewing gun ownership as "a civil liberty", and rejecting the idea of firearms as "something you use to defend your property against others".
But for Japanese gangsters the tight gun control laws are a problem. Yakuza gun crime has sharply declined in the last 15 years, but those who continue to carry firearms have to find ingenious ways of smuggling them into the country.
"The criminals pack the guns inside of a tuna so it looks like a frozen tuna," says retired police officer Tahei Ogawa. "But we have discovered cases where they have actually hidden a gun inside."
Join the conversation - find the BBC World Service on Facebook and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38365729 | |
One man's search for diamonds - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Photographing the men who sieve for diamonds in Sierra Leone | In Pictures | During its 11-year-long civil war, Sierra Leone became famous for blood diamonds.
Rebel and government groups fought brutally over diamond-rich territory in the north of the country and funded themselves by selling the stones to international buyers.
Fourteen years after the conflict ended, diamond mining operations are still under way in the northern district of Kono.
A South African company, Koidu Holdings, runs a large mine that uses sophisticated machinery to blast through kimberlite and identify diamond-dense areas in the deep earth.
One of these miners, Philo, has worked in Kono for the past 23 years, but was driven out during the conflict and lived in Guinea as a refugee.
When the war simmered down in December 2000, he returned home and started diamond mining again a year later.
Many artisanal miners will admit that they have not found a diamond in months and are desperately poor.
Yet in a country where there is 70% youth unemployment, mining at least provides some form of livelihood.
Most men mine in a team of three.
One of them dives to scoop a bucket of mud and grit from the riverbed, while another man holds him down so he does not drift with the tide.
The third collects the bucket and empties it into a mound.
Once there is enough, the sifting begins.
The three men swap roles regularly, to avoid getting too cold.
Philo complains of chills when he gets out of the water and sucks a packet of cheap rum to warm up, saying: "This work is tough and physically straining - if I had the qualifications or opportunity to do another job then I would at once."
The swampy area around the river has been dug out by artisanal miners, who are dotted all over, urgently scooping mud and sifting through it.
At last, after three hours of sifting, Philo is thrilled to have found a tiny diamond.
Some miners are able to invest in what is known as a "rocker".
They use a power hose to squirt water through a layer of mud piled on to fine mesh.
Once the mud is cleared they are more likely to spot a glinting diamond.
However, Philo does not have this luxury.
"We are not able to afford this kind of machinery, we have to manage with just a bucket, spade and shaker [sieve]," he says.
In the local market each shaker sells for 25,000 Leones (about £3.50).
Soon after Philo has discovered a diamond, he packs up early and heads into town with his team.
He is happy, saying: "This was a very good day, we hadn't seen a diamond for nearly a month."
On the way to his house, he bumps into his elder brother outside a shop.
They greet each other in front of the rocky kimberlite mountain that has been created by Koidu Holdings' blasts.
Philo says that he is jealous of their machinery and wealth, especially as diamonds in shallow ground are running out.
Back home, Philo relaxes in his room with his uncle.
During the conflict his mother was shot and killed by rebels, just outside the room in which he is now sitting.
His whole house was burned down and had to be rebuilt.
The following day Philo heads into Koidu town to sell his diamond in an office just off the high street.
The going rate is $3,200 (£2,520) for a carat that is 40% pure, and much less for gems of lower purity.
Philo obtains only $35 (about £28) for his find, but he is pleased as it is more than he had expected. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-38302289 | |
Ed Sheeran lyric 'driving at 90' prompts Suffolk Police plea - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A new song by Ed Sheeran which features the lyrics "driving at 90" prompts police to say, "please slow down". | Suffolk | Ed Sheeran describes "driving at 90" in his new song Castle on the Hill
A new song by Ed Sheeran which features the lyrics "driving at 90" has prompted a safety warning by police.
Castle on the Hill, released on Friday, has been described as a "love song for Suffolk".
In addition to describing the Framlingham area where he grew up, Sheeran sings "driving at 90 down those country lanes".
Sgt Chris Harris, from Norfolk and Suffolk Roads Policing, responded by tweeting "please slow down".
The new singles are the first to be released since he announced in December 2015 that he would be taking a break from music "to travel the world".
They are taken from his forthcoming album, which is called ÷ (Divide).
Police respond to Sheeran's new song by urging drivers to slow down
On the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, Sheeran said he wrote Shape of You with the singer Rihanna in mind.
While in his homage to growing up in Suffolk, Castle on the Hill, he says he "can't wait to go home".
Sgt Harris said: "Know you want to go home but please slow down on Suffolk roads."
And warned to "drive to arrive".
Sheeran is not the first singer to reference excessive speed in his lyrics.
In Crosstown Traffic, Jimi Hendrix sang "ninety miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive".
The BBC has approached Sheeran's representatives for a comment.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-38532571 | |
Premiership: Newcastle Falcons 24-22 Bath - BBC Sport | 2017-01-06 | null | Newcastle produce a superb late comeback to stun Bath and condemn the visitors to their third straight Premiership loss. | null | Last updated on .From the section Rugby Union
Newcastle produced a superb late comeback at Kingston Park to stun Bath and condemn the visitors to their third straight Premiership defeat.
The Falcons trailed 22-10 in the final 10 minutes, but forwards Mark Wilson and Ben Harris both bundled over after relentless pressure.
Second-half tries from George Ford and two from Semesa Rokoduguni built a lead for Bath before the late drama.
The much-improved Falcons have now won six Premiership matches this season, one more than the whole of last campaign, and move up to sixth, while Bath stay fourth.
Bath looked edgy once again following back-to-back league defeats against fellow play-off chasers Exeter and leaders Wasps.
A torrid first half started with Fiji wing Goneva being given too much space to race in under the posts, followed by England fly-half Ford missing two relatively simple penalties.
Ford, who failed to land another crucial penalty and conversion after the break, did start a clinical first 20 minutes of the second half when he strolled in to score as Bath were camped in front of the try-line.
Wing Rokoduguni produced two pieces of individual brilliance to help stretch Bath's lead to 12 points - first dotting down while being tackled by Goneva and then showing his pace after latching onto the returning Anthony Watson's pass.
But the visitors could not hold onto the advantage as big flanker Wilson was pushed over and replacement prop Harris touched down in almost identical circumstances, with Joel Hodgson coolly converting both.
Newcastle director of rugby Dean Richards: "The boys had belief and really stuck at it.
"We went 12 points down and just went for it. They showed a lot of courage to do that and come back against a side like Bath.
"The crowd were outstanding, especially that last five minutes, the players came in afterwards and said the crowd carried them through."
Bath director of rugby Todd Blackadder: "I'm very disappointed that we couldn't close out the game.
"We had a terrible first half. We were lucky we came away with anything at half-time.
"We didn't do the basics very well under pressure and that's not acceptable. The last two games we've had control and let it slip and it's just not good enough."
For the latest rugby union news follow @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/38500627 | |
CES 2017: AmpMe app offers free alternative to wireless speakers - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | null | A free app synchs smartphones so they play music in unison, creating a free alternative to expensive wireless sound systems. | null | A start-up is promoting a free app that syncs smartphones so they play music in unison, at the CES tech show.
AmpMe is being pitched as a free alternative to Sonos and other brands of wireless speakers.
Chris Foxx tied out the tech in Las Vegas.
Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38526187 | |
Qatar Open: Sir Andy Murray to face Novak Djokovic in final - BBC Sport | 2017-01-06 | null | Sir Andy Murray is to meet Novak Djokovic in the Qatar Open final after the world number one beat Tomas Berdych in the semis. | null | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Sir Andy Murray will face defending champion Novak Djokovic in the Qatar Open final on Saturday after beating third seed Tomas Berdych in the semis.
Murray won 6-3 6-4 against Czech Berdych, who needed treatment on an ankle injury after the first set.
It will be the 19th ATP final meeting between Murray and the man he replaced as world number one in November.
Second seed Djokovic survived five match points on his way to beating Fernando Verdasco in his semi-final.
Murray, who won the tournament in 2008 and 2009, has now recorded 28 consecutive victories in ATP Tour matches.
"I want to try and keep it going - I feel a little bit like this year's a fresh start," he told Eurosport.
"It's been the perfect week to get ready for the Australian Open."
Earlier, Serb Djokovic made only one unforced error in the decider to win 4-6 7-6 (9-7) 6-3 after Spaniard Verdasco, ranked 42nd in the world, controlled the first two sets.
"It's definitely one of the most exciting matches I have played," Djokovic said. "I haven't saved five match points many times. He should have finished it off."
You can follow live coverage of the Qatar Open final in Doha between Murray and Djokovic on the BBC Sport website from 15:00 GMT. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38535586 | |
Tesco shrugs off pyjama complaint - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Tesco says shoppers wearing nightclothes in its stores is "not a big issue" after one customer objected. | Business | Tesco has said shoppers wearing nightclothes in its stores is "not a big issue", after one customer asked it to refuse to serve such people.
A customer at the Salford store posted his request on Tesco's Facebook page alongside a picture of two women wearing pyjamas and dressing gowns.
Chris Cooke said he had seen shoppers dressed similarly on "a regular basis".
Tesco said it did not have a dress code and staff used "common sense" in talking to customers about the issue.
Mr Cook's post, which he has since taken down, said: "Dear Tesco, please can you put a rule in place that people like this will not be served in your stores."
He added that it was "disgusting" and went on: "Who doesn't have time to get changed into clothes to go shopping?"
Tesco's customer services team responded with a post saying that "many of our customers have told us that they feel uncomfortable when they see other shoppers wearing unsuitable clothing in our stores and we do try to find a balance that everyone is happy with".
However, a Tesco spokesperson told the BBC: "In general, it's not a big issue "
The Facebook complaint had "generated a lot of discussion "and a lot of people were commenting on that one post, he added.
He said there was no ban on nightwear in its stores and nothing had changed as a result of the Facebook complaint.
"We do not have a formal dress code in our stores and colleagues use their common sense and discretion when speaking to customers about this issue."
In 2010, a Tesco store in Cardiff asked customers not to shop in their pyjamas or barefoot.
Notices were put up in the chain's supermarket in St Mellons saying: "Footwear must be worn at all times and no nightwear is permitted." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38529285 | |
The Last Shadow Puppets beat David Bowie to win album art prize - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A record cover featuring a 1969 image of Tina Turner beats David Bowie's final release to a prize for the year's best album artwork. | Entertainment & Arts | Everything You've Come to Expect came top of the poll while Blackstar (right) came second
A record cover featuring a 1969 image of Tina Turner has beaten David Bowie's final release Blackstar to a prize for the year's best album artwork.
The Last Shadow Puppets' Everything You've Come to Expect was selected from 50 entrants in the annual awards.
Mark Pritchard's photo landscapes for his Under the Sun record came third, according to a public vote.
Now in its 11th year, the prize is organised by Art Vinyl, a company that promotes record covers as art.
The announcement follows news that vinyl sales topped three million last year - the highest UK total in 25 years.
The Last Shadow Puppets was formed by Miles Kane (left) of The Rascals and Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner
Illustrator Matthew Cooper used a photo of Turner taken by Vogue's Jack Robinson to decorate the cover for the Last Shadow Puppets' second album.
"The idea was to move the artwork on from the '60s feel of the first Last Shadow Puppets album artwork, so here is Tina on the very cusp of the 1970s," he explained.
The original black-and-white image was given a gold tint "to create an identifiable colour scheme and a warmer, more contemporary feel."
Blackstar was released shortly before Bowie's death in January last year at the age of 69.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38519733 | |
Taiwan politician's funeral features 50 pole dancers - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A Taiwanese politician is sent off in style with 50 pole dancers performing at his funeral. | Asia | The convoy of 50 jeeps with pole dancers brought traffic in Chiayi city to a standstill
A Taiwanese funeral featuring 50 pole dancers has become the talk of the Chinese internet this week.
Videos of the funeral procession, which took place on Tuesday, have been circulating online showing skimpily-clad women gyrating on top of jeeps in the southern city of Chiayi.
The funeral was for local politician Tung Hsiang, who died last month.
His family said they wanted to honour Mr Tung, who loved "having a lively fun time", local media reported.
The procession, featuring the convoy of colourful jeeps blasting loud music, brought traffic to a standstill in the city centre.
It also had a drumming troupe, a marching band, performers dressed as deities and giant puppets.
The dancers were part of huge funeral procession for local councillor Tung Hsiang
Mr Tung, a local councillor, was a well-known figure in the city and was active in politics for decades.
He died from an unspecified illness at the age of 76 in December.
"He told us he wanted this through a dream two days before the funeral," his brother Tung Mao-hsiung told Taiwanese broadcaster CTS.
Since Tuesday, videos of the procession have been circulating on Chinese media and social network Weibo, generating much interest.
"Now this is what I call a funeral!" said one user, while another wrote: "Looks like when it comes to funeral matters, Taiwan still comes first."
Others praised Mr Tung and his family for providing an entertaining afternoon for the city's residents. "This is what it means to be the 'people's councillor'!" said one netizen.
Another person joked: "The city's residents are asking: please die one more time!"
But hiring dancers and even strippers for funerals is not that unusual in parts of Taiwanese society, in which some practise a folk religion that believes in "entertaining" spirits.
One expert wrote that the practice combined old customs of using professional female wailers at funerals and holding processions for religious holidays with a desire to celebrate the deceased with a big, bustling public event. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38528122 | |
Denny Solomona: Castleford Tigers to seek £500,000 compensation - BBC Sport | 2017-01-06 | null | Castleford Tigers will claim they should receive £500,000 in compensation after winger Denny Solomona walked out on the club to join Sale Sharks. | null | Last updated on .From the section Rugby League
Castleford Tigers will claim they should receive £500,000 in compensation after winger Denny Solomona left to join Sale Sharks in December.
Solomona, 23, is alleged to have demanded his wages were doubled before his controversial rugby code switch.
Court papers seen by the BBC claim Sale had been agitating for Solomona to move since last summer, and that they acted with the player and agent Andy Clarke.
The papers also allege Sale knew he was under contract until November 2018.
• None The legal case that could impact rugby as Bosman did football
And they claim that Sale and the agent entered into a "cynical calculation" that they would be better off if the player breached his contract rather than negotiate a transfer fee.
The court papers include an email that Castleford say was sent by Sale's director of rugby Steve Diamond to the Tigers chief executive Steve Gill in which an offer of £50,000 compensation was made.
An earlier offer of £150,000 rising to £200,000 had been withdrawn.
In the email, it is claimed, Diamond writes: "…legal advice has been sourced and we are confident that when he walks away he will be free to play rugby union.
"I… do not want to get the lawyers involved, it isn't our style and it will be a distraction as well as expensive to go through the courts for the next two years.
"The club are prepared to pay £50,000 immediately and you will release Denny from his contract at the end of September after your last match.
"Hopefully you will see the sense in a quick, quiet deal."
Castleford are taking legal action against Solomona, his agent and the Sale club.
It is understood that the claim was only issued in the High Court of Justice in Leeds last month.
At the time of writing, attempts to contact Sale for comment had been unsuccessful but director of rugby Diamond has previously denied that the club, the player or the agent have done anything wrong. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/38525994 | |
2017 tech trends: 'A major bank will fail' - BBC News | 2017-01-06 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Cybersecurity promises to be major tech theme for 2017, but what are the others? | Business | Could a bank go under following a major hacking theft in 2017?
If 2016 seemed politically tumultuous, 2017 promises to be equally tumultuous on the technology front.
The pace of change is accelerating at a dizzying rate, with profound implications for the way we work, play and communicate.
So what are the big technology trends to watch out for in 2017?
Cybersecurity will undoubtedly be the dominant theme of 2017, as all tech innovations could be undermined by data thefts, fraud and cyber propaganda.
Forget Kim Kardashian, it's hacking that could break the internet - and much more besides.
As accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election continue to reverberate around the world, hackers - whether private or state-sponsored - would seem to be getting the upper hand.
Prof Richard Benham, chairman of the National Cyber Management Centre, gives a dire warning: "A major bank will fail as a result of a cyber-attack in 2017 leading to a loss of confidence and a run on that bank."
In November last year, hackers stole £2.5m from 9,000 Tesco Bank customers in a raid the UK's Financial Conduct Authority described as "unprecedented".
Last year Tesco Bank seemed to be offering free cash withdrawals to hackers, too
And the more connected the world becomes - think connected cars, smart homes, sensor-laden cities - the more opportunities for hackers to break into the system and wreak havoc.
"The internet of things (IoT) and industrial internet of things (IIoT) will play a larger role in targeted attacks in 2017," says Raimund Genes, chief technology officer at cybersecurity company Trend Micro.
"These attacks will capitalise upon the growing acceptance of connected devices by exploiting vulnerabilities and unsecured systems to disrupt business processes, as we saw with Mirai."
The firm also predicts that throughout 2017 criminals will continue renting out their ransomware infrastructures - the tools that enable hackers to break in to your system, encrypt all your data, then demand a ransom to decrypt it.
Hackers can achieve the same result by knocking out your website or factory control systems in a DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack - flooding your computer servers with so many requests that they cease functioning.
And hackers are not just interested in stealing data and making money from it, warns Jason Hart, chief technology officer in charge of data protection at Gemalto, a digital security company.
Are hackers beginning to get the upper hand?
"It's scary, but data integrity attacks have the power to bring down an entire company and beyond; entire stock markets could be poisoned and collapsed by faulty data.
"The power grid and other IoT systems, from traffic lights to the water supply, could be severely disrupted if the data they run on were to be altered," he says.
As well as poorly secured devices, gullible humans will continue to be targeted, with so-called "business email compromise" fraud continuing to reap rich rewards for criminals, experts predict.
Simply tricking employees in to transferring funds to criminals' bank accounts is lo-tech but surprisingly effective, with Trend Micro reporting that the average payout in the US was $140,000 (£114,000) last year.
"Cybercriminals are targeting human vulnerabilities," says Prof Benham. "Millions is being spent on technology, but nothing on awareness training."
AI was the buzzword of 2016 and looks set to dominate 2017 as well - for better or worse.
Enabling machines to learn, adapt to new circumstances and make decisions for themselves, rather than simply obeying pre-programmed instructions or algorithms, seems to present as many disadvantages as advantages.
The pessimists envisage self-programming machines running amok and breaking free of human control, with potentially apocalyptic consequences.
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But optimists believe that applying a more restrictive, less autonomous form of machine learning to the wealth of data we are now generating and storing in the cloud could help identify correlations and patterns that were impossible for humans to see before.
And as more devices and sensors become connected, we will learn even more about the world around us. This ability to make sense of all this data could help us cure disease, tackle climate change, grow food more efficiently and generally run our lives in a much smarter, more sustainable way, proponents believe.
Lots was made of customer service chatbots last year, sometimes described erroneously as AI in action, but most of these were actually pretty dumb, merely guessing the most likely answer to fit the question.
Real AI, underpinned by natural language processing, neural networks and machine learning, will understand how humans think, talk, and categorise concepts, making it smarter and easier to interact with.
And the more people who use it, the more data it will have to learn from and the better it will become.
So we are likely to see a proliferation of smarter virtual assistants, such as Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri, and newcomers like Viv.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Olly the robot develops a different personality to suit each of its users
Businesses will use their own versions of these AI assistants to make sense of all the data they now have to cope with.
"With AI we have the opportunity to build decision-support systems that see, hear, understand and collaborate with us to help make decisions faster, more relevant and better informed," says Gayle Sheppard, general manager of Saffron Technology, an Intel-owned cognitive computing firm.
Of course, these always-on listening devices connected to the cloud pose another potential security threat, not to mention privacy concerns over what happens to all the data they're hoovering up.
And another worry about AI is that hackers will have access to it as well - it's a cybersecurity arms race.
"AI will power malware, and will use data from the target to send phishing emails that replicate human mannerisms and content," warns Andy Powell, head of cybersecurity at Capgemini UK, an IT consultancy.
"Seeming more lifelike, these AI powered attacks will resonate with the target better than ever before, meaning they'll be more likely to fall victim."
There's simply no escaping the cybersecurity issue in 2017.
While Pokemon Go showed how augmented or mixed reality tech could take the mobile gaming world by storm, 2017 is likely to see more businesses adopting the technology, too.
The marketing opportunities are obvious, with companies like BMW linking up with Accenture and Google Tango to create an app that lets customers visualise what various car models would look like in real-world situations.
Augmented reality applications should grow in popularity this year
Lots of other retailers will be using it to enhance their marketing.
But there are plenty of industrial and educational applications, too, with smart glasses and head-up displays enabling workers to follow instructions, read manuals and navigate workplaces more efficiently.
Virtual reality is still primarily for gaming, but when lighter, faster headsets are combined with haptic technologies, training and teaching applications will become more viable, too.
As AI increasingly takes over from call centre and customer service staff, and automation continues its takeover of manufacturing, the big question is what new jobs there will be for all these redundant workers.
We've already seen how the effects of globalisation and automation have stirred up voters in the US and potentially across Europe this year.
If robots are going to take many of our jobs, what are we going to do instead?
Could there be a new Luddite revolution brewing? After all, who benefits most from cheaper production? It's certainly not the poor.
"We're going to start confronting some hard truths about technology and the labour force," says Tien Tzuo, founder of subscription technology platform Zuora.
"We're going to have to figure out how to create jobs for people in this new economy, and if there literally are going to be fewer jobs, then we'll need to establish some sort of living standard or basic income for people."
So 2017 could also be the year the world is forced to deal - finally - with the tangible impacts of technology upon human society. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38517517 | |
John Mikel Obi: Chelsea midfielder makes Chinese Super League move - BBC Sport | 2017-01-06 | null | Midfielder John Mikel Obi leaves Chelsea after a decade to join Chinese Super League side Tianjin TEDA. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
The 29-year-old Nigerian has played 372 times for Chelsea since joining in 2006 but has not featured this season.
He said it had been "an honour" to play for the Stamford Bridge club but it was time to "seek a new challenge".
Mikel has won two Premier League titles, four FA Cups and the 2012 Champions League during his time at Stamford Bridge.
"I haven't featured as much this season as I would have liked and I still have many years in the game ahead of me," Mikel wrote on Twitter in a message to Chelsea fans .
"With this in mind, I feel now is the time to seek a new challenge.
"I'm delighted to be joining Tianjin TEDA FC at a time that the Chinese Super League is really taking off, and I look forward to helping Tianjin TEDA FC continue to grow.
"To play in the Premier League is every professional player's ambition.
"But to play for Chelsea, to become part of the Chelsea family to work with some of the best managers and players in the world, has truly been an honour.
Mikel is the second Chelsea player to move to the Chinese Super League in recent weeks following Oscar's transfer to Shanghai SIPG. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38528144 |