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You never said that, but all your friends on Facebook think you did because a profile claiming to be you has said it. At a glance the account could be yours too. From photos, to status updates, to your date of birth, the account is rich with information which has been lifted from your profile, which is public. It is so convincing many of your friends have accepted a friend request. The problem is that you have no control over what the account pretending to be you says, or who it says it to. After being granted rare access to Devon and Cornwall Police's Hi-Tech Crime Unit, Newsbeat has learnt this scenario is becoming more frequent, particularly for young people. It's thought weak privacy settings combined with a rise in professional trolls who have the time and resources to steal your identity is to blame. An anti-bullying group has told us replica accounts have sent death threats or told people "to get cancer". There have been incidents where people have been beaten up or were scared to leave their house after offensive messages were sent from an account pretending to be them. Replicating a profile is all about piecing bits of information together, like a jigsaw. The more pieces there are, the more believable the account will be. While you can never completely stop a troll from stealing your identity, here are some things you can do which will make a troll's life a bit more difficult. The best way to protect your profile is to make it completely private so only people you know can see it. However, even if your account has the highest privacy settings, if a couple of your friends have Public accounts and accept Friend Requests from strangers then a potential troll could still access your photos or comments. By editing your account so only your Friends can see your Friend List it will be harder for a troll to work out who you know. If you want to see how strangers view your Facebook profile click on View As (see above) and it will show you. We think Rachel may want to reconsider how much she is sharing with the world and keep it amongst her "Friends"... Sorry. There's nothing wrong with letting people know where you are when you have taken a photo; if you are capturing the Eiffel Tower it can feel almost essential. However, photos can soon add up, and if you do not keep an eye on your Instagram Photo Map and it is open to the public it soon becomes clear where you live, work and socialise. That's handy for a troll. You can edit what pictures appear on your map by clicking on them. If you don't want any locations on any of your images you can make the switch on your privacy settings. It's one thing tweeting that you are rocking out to Taylor Swift at Radio 1's Big Weekend 2015 and the message confirms to the world you are in Norwich. It's a bit different if you are at home and decide to tweet about Rita Ora on The Voice and the message confirms to the world exactly where you live. To remove your location from a tweet choose Security and Privacy on the Account tab and untick Tweet Location. You may need to re-enter your password, but once you have done that you can tweet away from the comfort of your home, happy in the knowledge that only the people you want to know where you live, do. The beauty of Snapchat is you take photos which you feel are important, for ten seconds or so, and then they disappear. But are you sending these pictures to your Friends or to Everyone... If your Privacy Settings looks like this, you can change it so only your Friends can see your photos. It's also important to be careful who is on your friends list to make sure you are only sharing your photos with those that you want to. Detective Constable David Wright from Devon and Cornwall's Hi-Tech Crime Unit told Newsbeat: "There are people with time and resources who have embarked on almost a career in creating an online presence pretending to be someone else. "I don't want to be too sinister because social media is supposed to be fun, but sometimes we do need to think about what we are sharing online." Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube
Your friend Monica calls you, agitated and angry, asking: "Why did you write that horrible thing about Ross?!"
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On Tuesday, a BBC Spotlight programme revealed that eight children had gone missing in Northern Ireland. Two of the girls were Somali teenagers who disappeared in 2005 and 2012. The Health and Social Care Board has said new guidelines are in place and add that no children have gone missing since 2014. Separated children are children outside their country of origin and separated from their parents or legal guardian. The term can also include unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and trafficked children. When they arrive in Northern Ireland they are taken into the care of the local health trust. Eight children have gone missing since 2005 and they remain missing. The SDLP's health spokesman Mark H Durkan said he would be raising the issue at the Northern Ireland Assembly's health committee and his party colleague Alex Attwood would be raising it at the justice committee. "The number of children who cannot be accounted for is something that needs urgent inquiry and investigation," he said. "There is a lot of very good work being done to look after the welfare of unaccompanied young people, but clearly we now have some very big questions that need to be answered." Ulster Unionist MLA Jo-Anne Dobson said it was "frankly appalling" to hear that eight children had gone missing. "I have written to Health Minister Michelle O'Neill on this issue to seek further clarification and to demand details of how the department, health trusts and the Health and Social Care Board have sought to address each of the cases involved in the investigation," she added. The Green Party leader Steven Agnew also said it was extremely worrying that children can disappear without a trace. Paula Bradshaw from the Alliance Party added that the health trusts and police "need to work closer over the handling of these cases". In a statement, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland said: "Our director of investigations will be reviewing the contents of the programme to ascertain if there are any issues of police conduct which may need further investigation." The Police Service of Northern Ireland has said that in the two cases identified in the programme, investigations were robust and all information available at the time was followed. The Health and Social Care Board has said that new guidelines are in place and stress that no children have gone missing since 2014. BBC Spotlight's investigation is now available on BBC iPlayer.
An "urgent inquiry" is needed into separated children who have gone missing from care, the Social Democratic and Labour Party has said.
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The operation foiled a plan to smuggle drugs and weapons from South America to the port of Gioia Tauro in Calabria, officials said. The raids targeted two mafia crime families, the Gambino of New York and the Ndrangheta from Calabria. FBI agents travelled to Italy to take part in the raids. Police said the two-year investigation prevented the delivery to Italy of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine hidden in coconuts and pineapples, as well as heroin and marijuana. Gioia Tauro, the intended destination of the drugs, is one of Europe's largest shipping ports. Eight of the arrests were made in New York, and are linked with the Gambino crime family which is believed to have negotiated the deal. The other 18 people were arrested in Italy are believed to have been involved with the Ndrangheta clan.
Police in the US and Italy say they have arrested 26 people in a joint raid against a new mafia-operated drug trafficking route.
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Analysts say North Korea has several nuclear warheads but this development would be an advance as submarine-fired devices are difficult to detect. This latest test has not been independently verified. The US said using ballistic missiles was a "clear violation" of UN sanctions against North Korea. A statement from the State Department made no comment on the reported test but called on North Korea "to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region". State media described the missile emerging with "a fiery, blazing trail", but did not mention the date or the location of the test. The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, was pictured apparently overseeing the launch. Mr Kim said his country now possessed a "world-level strategic weapon capable of striking and wiping out in any waters the hostile forces infringing upon [North Korea's] sovereignty and dignity", the reports said. After the announcement, South Korea said the North fired three anti-ship cruise missiles into the sea off its east coast. Pyongyang had warned it would fire without warning against vessels it claims have violated its waters. South Korea is yet to comment on the missile test, but the country's National Security Council has met in emergency session. Claims about North Korea's military capabilities always have to be treated sceptically. The latest pictures in the state-run media may or may not be photo-shopped, perhaps to insert Kim Jong-un very prominently into the picture of a missile launch. However, analysts at the respected US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the US reported recently that satellite pictures indicated that "the conning tower of a new North Korean submarine first seen in July 2014 houses one to two possible vertical launch tubes for either ballistic or cruise missiles". The academics also said that satellite imagery indicated "that North Korea has been upgrading facilities at the Sinpo South Shipyard in preparation for a significant naval construction program, possibly related to submarine development". Missiles launched from submarines dramatically change the calculation that any potential target must make because the warning time is so much shorter than with land-based missiles with which preparations on the ground might also be detected. The best estimate of North Korea's nuclear arsenal is that it could make up to 20 weapons but that its ability to make them small enough for a missile is unclear. It is clear, however, that the ambition is there - not least because the North Korean foreign ministry said so: Its nuclear forces were a "powerful, treasured sword" to "protect the sovereignty of the country". It may be moving faster than previously thought.
North Korea says it has successfully tested a submarine-launched missile, which if confirmed would be a significant boost in its arsenal.
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England Under-18 captain Ryan Ledson was one of four debutants as Roberto Martinez - whose side had already won Group H - gave his youngsters a chance. Laborde ran on to a through ball and checked to score at the near post, with keeper Joel badly positioned. Striker Arouna Kone played 90 minutes as he ended a 14-month injury absence. Kone's inclusion in the Everton line-up was one of 10 changes Martinez made to the side beaten 1-0 at Manchester City in the Premier League last Saturday, with only Gareth Barry retaining his place, as 17-year-old midfielder Ledson made a solid impression. Forward Kieran Dowell - capped by England at Under-18 level along with Ledson - also made his first senior appearance as an early substitute for hamstring injury victim Christian Atsu, while striker Chris Long and midfielder Gethin Jones came on late in the game. But the most impressive of the young players given a chance by Martinez was left-back Luke Garbutt, making only his third Everton start as Leighton Baines was rested. Garbutt, 21, made a number of surging forward runs, the best of which came after a quarter-of-an-hour, when Conor McAleny just failed to connect with his low cross before the ball ran loose for Steven Pienaar's 25-yard shot to be pushed aside by keeper Andrei Sinitsin. The former Leeds United youngster also tested Sinitsin with a second-half drive from out on the left. Joel, making his first Everton appearance since March, suffered a bloody nose in keeping out Wanderson's drive towards the near post shortly after Pienaar's effort at the other end. But the Spanish keeper was at fault as Krasnodar - who were already eliminated - took the lead in the 30th minute. Laborde escaped Pienaar's attentions to run clear, and although he was forced to check as Joel narrowed the angle, the keeper left his near post open for the Colombian forward to fire in from a tight angle. Kone, harshly booked for an accidental first-half elbow on Vitali Kaleshin, completed his first senior match since suffering a cruciate knee ligament injury in October 2013. He had a smart shot on the turn beaten out by Sinitsin after Tyias Browning's cross was deflected into his path, but Everton could not find an equaliser despite a brighter second half. Everton manager Roberto Martinez: "I thought we saw young players with a lot of talent, but they were very nervous in the first half. I don't think we saw their real quality in the first half, but in the second half they got rid of that fear and expressed themselves a lot better. "The experience will be really helpful. They are different players after the game than they were before, and that is part of the development of a youngster. "I know the talent the young players have and I think they have learned a massive lesson about how to enjoy yourself on a football pitch. I think these young players will be much more ready to compete on a football pitch after this."
Everton's much-changed side fell to a Europa League defeat as Krasnodar's Ricardo Laborde took advantage of a Joel Robles error to score the winner.
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Everton supporter Michael Cullen, 50, completed the 11-day challenge ahead of his team's FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United on Saturday. He has now raised more than £53,000 for the Woodlands Hospice in Liverpool, having previously raised £30,000 after swimming the English Channel. Everton lost the game 2-1, with United scoring a late injury time winner. Mr Cullen said: "I'm very tired, but elated. On the last day I was very happy all the way and it was great to arrive there. "I'm back at work tomorrow and I'm actually looking forward to getting back to normality." Carole Riley, of Woodlands Hospice, said: "We are very proud and appreciative of Michael's efforts. "Not only has he generated a massive amount of money but he has raised the awareness and profile of Woodlands Hospice and the need for hospice services to such a wide audience. "We would like to give a massive big and sincere thank you to Speedo Mick and all those who have supported him."
A football fan who walked to Wembley wearing his swimming trunks has broken his £50,000 fundraising target.
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The ruling has come about because a dad was fined for taking his daughter out of school for a family holiday to Disney World in the United States, without her head teacher giving permission. The man from the Isle of Wight appealed against the fine, and at first won the case, but now the UK Supreme Court has ordered him to pay the fine of £120. It means that parents will now have to seek permission from the school and head-teacher to take children on holiday during a school term. The case has caused lots of arguments because some people feel the price of holidays outside of school terms is too expensive, and many parents feel they should have the choice to go on cheaper breaks during a school term. The Department for Education said: "We are pleased the Supreme Court agreed with our position - that no child should be taken out of school without good reason." We've been speaking to some of you, to see what you think about the decision...
The most important court in the UK, has made a decision that means parents are not allowed to take children on holiday during term-time, unless the school agrees.
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This is demonstrably false. Far-right parties failed to pass a 5% barrier to enter parliament, although if they had banded together, and not split their vote, they would have probably slipped past the threshold. Only one government minister has links to nationalist parties - though he is in no way a neo-Nazi or fascist. And the speaker of parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, is Jewish. He has the third most powerful position in the country after the president and prime minister. But Ukrainian officials and many in the media err to the other extreme. They claim that Ukrainian politics are completely fascist-free. This, too, is plain wrong. As a result, the question of the presence of the far-right in Ukraine remains a highly sensitive issue, one which top officials and the media shy away from. No-one wants to provide fuel to the Russian propaganda machine. But this blanket denial also has its dangers, since it allows the ultra-nationalists to fly under the radar. Many Ukrainians are unaware that they exist, or even what a neo-Nazi or fascist actually is, or what they stand for. This hyper-sensitivity and stonewalling were on full display after President Petro Poroshenko presented a Ukrainian passport to someone who, according to human rights activists, is a "Belarusian neo-Nazi". The Ukrainian leader handed out medals on 5 December to fighters who had tenaciously defended the main airport in the eastern region of Donetsk from being taken over by Russian-backed separatists. Among the recipients was Serhiy Korotkykh, a Belarusian national, to whom Mr Poroshenko awarded Ukrainian citizenship, praising his "courageous and selfless service". The president's website showed a photo of Mr Poroshenko patting the shoulder of the Belarusian, who was clad in military fatigues. Experts who follow the far right have strongly objected to President Poroshenko's decision. They say Mr Korotkykh was a member of the far-right Russian National Unity party and also a founding member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Society (NSS) in Russia. According to Ukrainian academic Anton Shekhovtsov, the NSS's main goal "is to prepare for a race war". Mr Shekhovtsov said the Belarusian had been charged for involvement in a bombing in central Moscow in 2007, and was detained in 2013 in the Belarusian capital Minsk for allegedly stabbing an anti-fascist activist. He was later released for lack of evidence. Even though the details involved accusations rather than facts, if true they were damning, said human rights activist Halya Coynash. Top Ukrainian officials then rejected as defamatory any claims that Mr Korotkykh had neo-Nazi ties. "Counter-intelligence has no information that could prevent him from receiving Ukrainian citizenship," said Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, the head of Ukraine's security services. Nevertheless, the fact is, neo-Nazis are indeed a fixture in Ukraine's new political landscape, albeit in small numbers. As Mr Korotkykh's case demonstrates, the ultra-nationalists have proven to be effective and dedicated fighters in the brutal war in the east against Russian-backed separatists and Russian forces, whose numbers also include a large contingent from Russia's far right. As a result, they have achieved a level of acceptance, even though most Ukrainians are unfamiliar with their actual beliefs. The volunteer Azov Battalion is a case in point. Run by the extremist Patriot of Ukraine organisation, which considers Jews and other minorities "sub-human" and calls for a white, Christian crusade against them, it sports three Nazi symbols on its insignia: a modified Wolf's Hook, a black sun (or "Hakensonne") and the title Black Corps, which was used by the Waffen SS. Azov is just one of more than 50 volunteer groups fighting in the east, the vast majority of which are not extremist, yet it seems to enjoy special backing from some top officials: Ukraine's media have been noticeably silent on this subject. Recently, prominent newspaper and online publication Left Bank published an extensive interview with Mr Troyan, in which the journalists asked no questions at all about his neo-Nazi past or political views. And after the Unian news agency reported the presidential ceremony under the headline, "Poroshenko awarded Belarusian neo-Nazi with Ukrainian passport", it was soon replaced with an article that air-brushed out the accusations of extremism. Unian's editors have declined to comment on the two pieces. There are significant risks to this silence. Experts say the Azov Battalion, which has been widely reported on in the West, has damaged Ukraine's image and bolsters Russia's information campaign. And although Ukraine is emphatically not run by fascists, far-right extremists seem to be making inroads by other means, as in the country's police department. Ukraine's public is grossly under-informed about this. The question is, why doesn't anyone want to tell them?
Ever since Ukraine's February revolution, the Kremlin has characterised the new leaders in Kiev as a "fascist junta" made up of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, set on persecuting, if not eradicating, the Russian-speaking population.
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Run by the National Trust, Dinefwr Park in Llandeilo is the only example of Brown's work in Wales currently open to the public. He was commissioned to design the gardens in 1775, by then owners George Rice and his wife Cecil, who was the only child of the fabulously wealthy William Talbot of Hensol in Glamorganshire. The socialite couple wished to emulate Brown's creations they had encountered at the homes of their friends in and around London, where they spent most of their time. National Trust Carmarthenshire general manager Jacqui Kedward said: "What visitors to Dinefwr now see today is the vision of George and Cecil Rice with Brown's influence. "Three hundred years on, Brown's influence is ever present and its splendour is something visitors still marvel at. Last year, we had record visitor numbers, many drawn mainly by the beauty of the landscape." Capability Brown was born in Northumberland in 1716 - although the exact date is unknown - the fifth son of a land agent and a chambermaid. Aged 16 he began work as a gardener on the Kirkharle Estate which his father managed. By 1739 he had moved south, and by 1742 his work - as apprentice to another prominent landscape gardener, William Kent - began to gain notoriety. Between 1750 and his death in 1783, Brown designed the grounds of more than 170 stately homes, including Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle and parts of Kew Gardens. He served George III as royal gardener at Hampton Court, and each of his commissions were said to have earned him about £500 (equivalent to £61,000 in 2016). Created when Brown was almost 60, Dinefwr Park is typical of his naturalistic style, which drew praise and criticism in almost equal measure. Dinefwr's neat flowerbeds and tree-lined paths were ripped up in favour of his trademark undulating grasslands extending right to the house, irregular clumps of trees, and lakes created by damming small streams. Though seemingly George and Cecil Rice were not taken with all of Brown's suggestions, as a deer park garden and Gothic lodge at the entrance, shown in Brown's sketches, never made it into the finished project. The commemorative tree will be planted by National Trust director general Dame Helen Ghosh, on Friday, and events to mark the anniversary, including tours of Dinefwr Park's Capability Brown walk, will take place this year.
The 300th anniversary of the birth of renowned landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown is being celebrated with a tree-planting ceremony.
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In the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, where the threat of attack is considered greatest, the UK, France and Germany have also shut their embassies. The British embassy has emptied completely, with all remaining British staff leaving the country on Tuesday, while the US air force flew out American personnel. So just what is it about al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen that triggers such warning bells in Washington? Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen, is not the biggest offshoot of the late Osama Bin Laden's organisation, nor is it necessarily the most active - there are other, noisier jihadist cells sprawled across Syria and Iraq, engaged in almost daily conflict with fellow Muslims. But Washington considers AQAP to be by far the most dangerous to the West because it has both technical skills and global reach. Plus it is loyal to the nominal al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and what remains of the group's core leadership hiding in Pakistan. For the West, AQAP presents three dangers: AQAP has form. In August 2009, its master bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, a Saudi national, built an explosive device so hard to detect it was either packed flat next to the wearer's groin or perhaps even concealed inside his body. He then sent his brother Abdullah, a willing volunteer, as a human bomb to blow up the Saudi prince in charge of counter-terrorism. He very nearly succeeded. Pretending he wanted to give himself up, Abdullah al-Asiri fooled Saudi security into letting him get right next to Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef before the device was detonated, possibly remotely by mobile phone. The blast blew the bomber in half, but with most of the explosive force directed downwards, the prince had a miraculous escape with only a damaged hand. AQAP boasted that it would try again and it did. In December 2009, Ibrahim al-Asiri devised another device to put on a volunteer, this time a young Nigerian called Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He was able to fly all the way from Europe to Detroit with a viable explosive device hidden in his underpants, a massive failure of intelligence and security. But when he tried to light it as the plane approached Detroit airport, he was spotted, overpowered, arrested and convicted of the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. As Western intelligence heads scrambled to assess this new development, the British government decided to raise the UK national terror threat level to "critical", its highest ever. (It has since dropped back down to "substantial", the third highest of five.) The next year, 2010, AQAP tried again, smuggling bombs onto the cargo holds of planes hidden inside printer ink toner cartridges. The intended destination was America and one device got as far as the UK's East Midlands airport. The plot was thwarted at the last minute by a tip-off from a Saudi informer inside AQAP, but the group has promised to keep trying. Since then AQAP's leaders have come under continual attack from unmanned US Reaper drones or UAVs, losing several top operatives, including their deputy leader, Saeed al-Shihri, and the influential English-speaking propagandists Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. According to the US think-tank the New America Foundation, US drone strikes in Yemen have soared, from 18 in 2011 to 53 in 2012. A drone strike on Tuesday reportedly hit a car carrying four al-Qaeda operatives. In Yemen, the US drones are deeply unpopular, sometimes hitting the wrong targets and wiping out whole extended families. Human rights groups have branded them as a form of extra-judicial killing. Local tribes also view them as an insulting infringement of national sovereignty. But US and Yemeni officials argue that in the wilder, more remote parts of the country, including Shabwa, Marib and Abyan provinces, targeting from the air based on tip-offs on the ground is their only means of stopping those plotting fresh attacks.
Whatever plot the US eavesdroppers overheard the top two al-Qaeda leaders discussing clearly rattled the US intelligence community so badly that Washington shut 19 of its diplomatic missions around the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
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Donald "Chip" Pugh texted police a photo of himself and wrote: "Here is a better photo that one is terrible". Police in Lima, Ohio, posted the photos to their Facebook page and asked for help in locating Mr Pugh. "This photo was sent to us by Mr Pugh himself," Lima Police Department wrote in a post. "We thank him for being helpful, but now we would appreciate it if he would come to speak to us at the [Lima Police Department] about his charges." Police said he is a person of interest in several cases and his warrant is for his failure to appear as directed in a summons. "Man, they just did me wrong," Mr Pugh told an Ohio radio station about why he sent the selfie. "They put a picture out that made me look like I was a Thundercat... or James Brown on the run. I can't do that." A Facebook page called "Free Chip Pugh" pokes fun at the situation.
A man suspected of arson and vandalism has sent a selfie to police because he found the photo in his arrest warrant to be unflattering.
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Sentinel-1b was carried into orbit by a Soyuz rocket that flew out of Sinamary in French Guiana. The new platform will monitor shipping lanes for pollution and icebergs, and survey land surfaces for evidence of subsidence - to name just three of the myriad applications for radar imagery. Sentinel-1b will work alongside the 1a spacecraft, which was launched in 2014. Operating in the same orbit but separated by 180 degrees, the pair will be able to map the entire Earth every six days. This promises an avalanche of data - some five terabits per day - and both satellites are carrying laser communications systems to help get all the information to the ground. The Sentinels are a flagship space project for the European Union, which has committed billions of euros to the endeavour. The satellites fit into a programme the European Commission calls Copernicus, which draws together all sorts of data about the health of the Earth, not just from orbit. Copernicus will support a multitude of services, ranging from air quality updates to crop-performance monitoring, from water-resource management to transport infrastructure planning. Esa is acting as the technical agent, procuring the satellites for the EU. Sentinel-1b is the fourth to launch, with more platforms to follow. "At the moment, we have around 36,000 self-registered users (for Sentinel data), who have downloaded already about four million images, mainly from Sentinel-1a; although this is now picking up because Sentinel-2a (a visible colour camera) has just become operational as well," explained Esa's Earth-observation director Prof Volker Liebig. The Soyuz' lift-off from French Guiana occurred at 18:02 local time (21:02 GMT), following three postponements in previous days due to meteorological and technical issues. The 2.1-tonne Sentinel was ejected 23 minutes into the ascent. The planned injection altitude was 686km (426 miles). "We will not start commissioning until we have raised ourselves to the proper orbit (693km), which could take two weeks, a maximum of three," Esa's Sentinel-1 project manager, Ramon Torres told BBC News. "We will then go into detail with the calibration of the radar instrument. We plan the commissioning review (to declare Sentinel-1b operational) for 14 September." Four other satellites were put in orbit on the same Soyuz flight. Three were university cubesats. One, however, was a French space agency mission called Microscope - a fundamental physics experiment. This satellite will spend the next couple of years investigating the so-called "equivalence principle". It is the concept in general relativity that holds that gravity accelerates all objects equally, regardless of their mass or composition. The Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott famously demonstrated the principle on the Moon in 1971 when he dropped a geology hammer and a falcon feather. Both hit the surface of the airless body at the same time. Microscope's examination will be much more exacting, of course. It will "drop" metal cylinders made from titanium-aluminium-vanadium and platinum-rhodium - to see if they also fall at the same rate in the vacuum of space. The experiment can sense accelerations that are a millionth of a billionth of Earth's gravity. Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
The European Space Agency has launched a second radar satellite into the EU's new Sentinel constellation.
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Jamie Vardy's crisp finish from a lightning break gave Leicester the lead on 18 minutes - but he was then sent off after getting a second yellow card for diving when he tangled with Angelo Ogbonna early in the second half. Referee Jonathan Moss made himself even more unpopular when he awarded West Ham a penalty with six minutes left. There had been pushing and pulling in both penalty areas but he decided to punish Wes Morgan for pulling back Winston Reid at a corner. Analysis: MOTD2 pundits on referee's 'mind-boggling inconsistencies' Substitute Andy Carroll slotted home to end Leicester's run of 574 minutes without conceding a league goal and Aaron Cresswell looked to have opened the door to the Foxes' title rivals Spurs with a stunning left-footed finish two minutes later. As the game went into injury time, Moss produced another controversial decision when he pointed to the spot once more after Carroll made the merest contact with Jeff Schlupp. West Ham clearly felt Moss had evened things up after earlier decisions in their favour, but Ulloa was not concerned as he took the chance to secure what might yet be a vital point - although Leicester will be without Vardy for next weekend's home game with Swansea. Relive the action from the King Power Stadium Leicester's fans celebrated at the end before turning their anger on referee Moss - although it was his very questionable decision that allowed them to earn that point at the end. Psychologically, this point could be vital because a loss might just have produced a few doubts and given Spurs just a little more wiggle room going into their game at Stoke on Monday. It means Leicester's last Premier League defeat is still that last-minute loss at Arsenal on Valentine's Day and their spirits will be lifted by the manner in which they earned a point when it seemed certain they would end up empty-handed. Referee Moss was surrounded by players of both sides and escorted from the field by stewards to jeering from the home fans at the final whistle. Moss's eventful second half began after 56 minutes when he penalised Vardy for simulation as he tumbled theatrically under a challenge from Ogbonna. Having already given Vardy a yellow card, he felt obliged to give a second. Vardy made the most of the contact and ran the risk of punishment. And he has been accused of doing this before this season. Opinion was split but plenty felt Moss was right. For West Ham's penalty, there was undoubtedly pulling and pushing between Morgan and Winston Reid - so again Moss had justification. The difficulty, the inconsistency, is that similar behaviour had been going on in both penalty areas all afternoon without punishment - so why did Moss decide this was the time to penalise it? Too often, these decisions seem arbitrary, as was demonstrated when Ogbonna dragged Huth to the floor even more unceremoniously a few minutes later and no foul was given. Finally, in injury time and with an atmosphere of chaos engulfing the game, Moss pointed to the spot for the slightest touch from Carroll on Schlupp. It was incredibly harsh and the Hammers clearly felt Moss had punished them to make up for earlier decisions given against Leicester. It is a tough job - as the abuse directed the referee's way at the end proved. Not as much as there might have been had Ulloa not scored at the end, but they can apply pressure and move to within five points of Leicester if they win at Stoke. Leicester at least have the point in the bag but Mauricio Pochettino and his players will just feel the door is ajar, even if they know time and games are running out. Leicester boss Claudio Ranieri: "It was a very tough match. We were lucky at the beginning when they touched both posts. After that we scored a great goal and we had an opportunity to finish the match at the beginning of the second half. Media playback is not supported on this device "After then sending off it changed our match. "I never spoke about the decision of the referee. Two yellow cards, that's it. "Our performance 11 v 11 and 10 v 11 was fantastic." West Ham manager Slaven Bilic: "It was a good game of football. We showed determination, character and quality. We turned the game around. We were dangerous, and after sending off we totally dominated the game. Media playback is not supported on this device "After our second goal I thought we had done enough to win the game, maybe we could have coped with added time better in terms of keeping the ball but they took the risk. "It was extremely hard for referee, but I mean that was no penalty at all." Leicester - minus the suspended Vardy - are at home to Swansea next Sunday. The Hammers host Watford on Wednesday. Match ends, Leicester City 2, West Ham United 2. Second Half ends, Leicester City 2, West Ham United 2. Goal! Leicester City 2, West Ham United 2. Leonardo Ulloa (Leicester City) converts the penalty with a right footed shot to the bottom right corner. Penalty conceded by Andy Carroll (West Ham United) after a foul in the penalty area. Penalty Leicester City. Jeffrey Schlupp draws a foul in the penalty area. Offside, Leicester City. Danny Simpson tries a through ball, but Leonardo Ulloa is caught offside. Manuel Lanzini (West Ham United) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by N'Golo Kanté (Leicester City). Attempt missed. Emmanuel Emenike (West Ham United) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the left. Attempt missed. Robert Huth (Leicester City) header from the centre of the box misses to the right. Assisted by Christian Fuchs. Foul by Andy Carroll (West Ham United). Leonardo Ulloa (Leicester City) wins a free kick in the attacking half. Foul by Angelo Ogbonna (West Ham United). Leonardo Ulloa (Leicester City) wins a free kick on the right wing. Goal! Leicester City 1, West Ham United 2. Aaron Cresswell (West Ham United) left footed shot from the left side of the box to the top right corner. Goal! Leicester City 1, West Ham United 1. Andy Carroll (West Ham United) converts the penalty with a left footed shot to the bottom right corner. Penalty West Ham United. Winston Reid draws a foul in the penalty area. Penalty conceded by Wes Morgan (Leicester City) after a foul in the penalty area. Corner, West Ham United. Conceded by Wes Morgan. Attempt missed. Enner Valencia (West Ham United) right footed shot from the centre of the box misses to the left. Assisted by Cheikhou Kouyaté. Attempt missed. Cheikhou Kouyaté (West Ham United) header from the centre of the box misses to the right. Assisted by Aaron Cresswell with a cross. Enner Valencia (West Ham United) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Jeffrey Schlupp (Leicester City). Attempt missed. Dimitri Payet (West Ham United) right footed shot from outside the box is too high from a direct free kick. Substitution, Leicester City. Daniel Amartey replaces Riyad Mahrez. Wes Morgan (Leicester City) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul. Andy Carroll (West Ham United) wins a free kick in the attacking half. Foul by Wes Morgan (Leicester City). Corner, West Ham United. Conceded by N'Golo Kanté. Attempt missed. Emmanuel Emenike (West Ham United) right footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high. Substitution, West Ham United. Enner Valencia replaces Victor Moses. Hand ball by Aaron Cresswell (West Ham United). Foul by Winston Reid (West Ham United). Leonardo Ulloa (Leicester City) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Attempt missed. Manuel Lanzini (West Ham United) right footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high. Assisted by Dimitri Payet. Substitution, West Ham United. Manuel Lanzini replaces Mark Noble. Winston Reid (West Ham United) hits the right post with a right footed shot from very close range. Assisted by Dimitri Payet with a cross following a corner. Corner, West Ham United. Conceded by Robert Huth. Substitution, Leicester City. Leonardo Ulloa replaces Shinji Okazaki. Foul by Michail Antonio (West Ham United).
Leonardo Ulloa's injury-time penalty rescued a point for Leicester in a controversial encounter with West Ham as the Foxes went eight points clear at the top of the Premier League.
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Mr Weah got 78% of the vote for the Montserrado county seat, which includes the capital Monrovia. He beat Robert Sirleaf, the son of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who took nearly 11%. Low turnout in the poll, which was first planned for October, was blamed on concerns about Ebola. Strict health controls were in place to try to prevent the spread of the disease. Those who came to polling stations had their temperature taken, were told to stand a metre (3ft) apart and wash their hands before and after voting. Liberia has been one of the countries worst affected by Ebola, with almost 3,400 deaths, the UN says. Other winners in the senate elections include Jewel Howard-Taylor, the ex-wife of the jailed former president Charles Taylor, and the former rebel leader Prince Johnson. Both retained their seats. The National Elections Commission chairman, Jerome Korkoya, called the conclusion of the vote "the end of a crucial journey". Mr Weah won the first round of the 2005 presidential election, losing the runoff to Ms Johnson-Sirleaf. He is the only African to be named Fifa's world player of the year, winning in 1995.
The former football star George Weah has won a landslide victory in Liberia's senate elections, in polls disrupted by the Ebola outbreak.
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The 29-year-old former Manchester United player will now fly to London to finalise personal terms and have a medical with the Hammers. Meanwhile, Austria forward Marko Arnautovic is due to have a medical in the next 48 hours after West Ham agreed a deal with Stoke City. It is understood Stoke have accepted a fee in the region of £24m. In May, Hernandez - widely known by the nickname Chicharito, which means 'little pea' - became Mexico's leading all-time scorer with his 47th international goal. Hernandez scored 59 goals in 156 appearances for United after arriving at Old Trafford in 2010, before joining Leverkusen for £7.3m in August 2015. He has netted 39 times in 76 matches for the German club. Arnautovic, 28, joined Stoke from Werder Bremen four years ago and is just 12 months into a four-year contract with the Potters. He scored seven times in 35 games in all competitions last season. West Ham signed Manchester City and England goalkeeper Joe Hart on a season-long loan deal on Tuesday. Media playback is not supported on this device Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page.
West Ham have agreed a deal with German club Bayer Leverkusen to sign Mexico striker Javier Hernandez for £16m.
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Mario Mandzukic, on his 31st birthday, turned home Juan Cuadrado's cross from close range to give the perennial champions an early lead. Paulo Dybala curled home a brilliant free-kick and Alex Sandro headed in a third via the crossbar as Juventus won with relative ease. They could have won the title last week but lost 3-1 to second-placed Roma. Massimiliano Allegri's side, who beat Lazio 2-0 in the Italian Cup final on Wednesday, are bidding to become the second Italian team, after Jose Mourinho's 2010 Inter Milan, to win the treble. They face Real Madrid in the Champions League final in Cardiff on Saturday, 3 June. They have one game before then - a trip to Bologna on the final day of Serie A next Sunday. Match ends, Juventus 3, Crotone 0. Second Half ends, Juventus 3, Crotone 0. Corner, Juventus. Conceded by Alex Cordaz. Attempt saved. Mario Mandzukic (Juventus) right footed shot from more than 35 yards is saved in the top centre of the goal. Assisted by Alex Sandro with a headed pass. Corner, Crotone. Conceded by Alex Sandro. Attempt saved. Andrea Nalini (Crotone) right footed shot from a difficult angle on the right is saved in the bottom left corner. Assisted by Bruno Martella with a cross. Dani Alves (Juventus) is shown the yellow card. Andrea Barzagli (Juventus) wins a free kick on the right wing. Foul by Gianmarco Ferrari (Crotone). Foul by Alex Sandro (Juventus). Mario Sampirisi (Crotone) wins a free kick on the right wing. Paulo Dybala (Juventus) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Boadu Maxwell Acosty (Crotone). Attempt saved. Mario Sampirisi (Crotone) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Assisted by Lorenzo Crisetig. Andrea Barzagli (Juventus) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Gianmarco Ferrari (Crotone). Foul by Dani Alves (Juventus). Boadu Maxwell Acosty (Crotone) wins a free kick on the left wing. Substitution, Juventus. Tomás Rincón replaces Miralem Pjanic. Goal! Juventus 3, Crotone 0. Alex Sandro (Juventus) header from the centre of the box to the top left corner. Assisted by Paulo Dybala with a cross following a corner. Corner, Juventus. Conceded by Mario Sampirisi. Foul by Gonzalo Higuaín (Juventus). Federico Ceccherini (Crotone) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Offside, Juventus. Leonardo Bonucci tries a through ball, but Mario Mandzukic is caught offside. Attempt missed. Mario Mandzukic (Juventus) right footed shot from the centre of the box misses to the right. Assisted by Leonardo Bonucci. Attempt missed. Andrea Barberis (Crotone) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right. Substitution, Crotone. Boadu Maxwell Acosty replaces Marcus Rohden. Bruno Martella (Crotone) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul. Dani Alves (Juventus) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Bruno Martella (Crotone). Attempt missed. Miralem Pjanic (Juventus) right footed shot from the centre of the box is high and wide to the right. Assisted by Gonzalo Higuaín. Substitution, Juventus. Mario Lemina replaces Claudio Marchisio. Medhi Benatia (Juventus) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Simy (Crotone). Foul by Leonardo Bonucci (Juventus). Simy (Crotone) wins a free kick in the attacking half. Foul by Medhi Benatia (Juventus). Diego Falcinelli (Crotone) wins a free kick in the attacking half. Substitution, Juventus. Andrea Barzagli replaces Juan Cuadrado. Dani Alves (Juventus) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Treble-chasing Juventus clinched a record sixth consecutive Serie A title thanks to victory over lowly Crotone.
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Crews were called to the incident at about 17:00 on Friday. Five appliances were initially sent to the scene with one remaining on site on Saturday afternoon. No-one was injured in the incident.
Firefighters have been tackling a blaze at a factory on the Isle of Scalpay in the Western Isles.
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A study by an international team of scientists has revealed that the primates either develop big voices, or big testes - but not both. Scientists made the discovery while trying to understand the "evolution of the animals' incredible roars". The findings suggest such evolutionary trade-offs may be more common that previously thought. They are published in the journal Current Biology. Howler monkeys are named for their impressive howling roars - sounds they make to intimidate rivals and impress potential mates. And their anatomical musical instrument is a bone in their throat called the hyoid bone, which acts as a resonator So, while their vocal folds act like the strings of an instrument, the hyoid bone is the body - and its size relates directly to the depth of their howl. "Females find a deeper howl more attractive," explained lead researcher Dr Jake Dunn from the University of Cambridge. Looking at research into the different howler monkey species, the researchers found that there was "huge variation" in the size of the hyoid bone. "The largest hyoid is 14 times the size of the smallest," explained Dr Dunn. "We became really interested in understanding how and why such amazing variation exists in this trait." With colleagues from the University of Utah, the team carried out laser scans to calculate the volumes of more than 200 howler monkey hyoid bones from museums in the US and Europe. And to confirm the scans were accurate, the team made MRI images of two adult male monkeys. As well as measuring the variation, they found that it was connected to another striking physical difference between the species. "There's also a dramatic difference in the size of the monkeys' testes", said Dr Dunn. "The largest are 6.5 times bigger than the smallest." Comparing the animals, Dr Dunn and his team found that different species of howler monkeys seemed to face a trade-off between "investing in either a huge vocal tract - for making lower frequency, more impressive calls - or large testes - for producing lots of sperm". Dr Dunn added: "Different species invest in either one or other of these traits, depending on their mating system." In species where one male has a harem of females and has to compete with other males for the chance to mate, males have deeper voices and smaller testes. Those with many males in a group - and therefore less vocal competition - had smaller voices, but correspondingly larger testes. There are some animals - walruses, seals and sea lions, for example - where those with larger bodies have smaller genitals, Dr Dunn explained. There was even a study published in 2012 suggesting that deeper-voiced men had lower sperm counts. But this is the first clear example, Dr Dunn says, of a trade-off "vocal investment and sperm production" in any species. "It was a surprise to find that such trade-offs might be more common than previously thought." Follow Victoria on Twitter
The deep, growling roar of the howler monkey may hide reproductive shortcomings, according to biologists.
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The Nevada State Athletic Commission (NAC) confirmed a one-off rule change to drop the glove size from 10oz. "I don't believe with the new gloves he makes it out of the second round," said UFC champion McGregor, 29. "Part of me kind of wants to show some skill and dismantle him but I do not see him absorbing the blows." "I am ready to go to war for 12 rounds and I am also ready to put him away in seconds," he added. "There is no way in hell I am not prepared to fight in the deepest of trenches." The move to allow lighter gloves came as a surprise as the 154lbs bout is considerably over the 147lbs limit at which 8oz gloves can be used. The lighter gloves have less padding over the knuckles and are believed to favour the heavier puncher. Earlier in August, the NAC, who sanctioned the contest, told BBC Sport they could not recall a fight at 154lbs ever being given dispensation to make such a move. McGregor typically uses 4oz fingerless gloves in MMA, while undefeated boxer Mayweather has used 8oz gloves in 46 of his 49 bouts. In a lengthy conference call, McGregor took questions from journalists around the world just 10 days before he makes his boxing debut in Las Vegas against former five-weight world champion Mayweather, 40. He revealed he has been conducting "scary" training sessions at 13,000ft in an altitude chamber and stated he feels in "absolutely amazing" condition for the T-Mobile Arena bout. But the UFC lightweight champion believes he has been "discarded" by boxing analysts and made to feel "not welcome" in the build-up to what could be the richest fight in history. "It's certainly motivating - the disrespect and disregard for my skillset," added McGregor. "I look at people sometimes and their mind is closed. "Fighting is a complex game. I use it as motivation and I look forward to going in and educating the world on what martial arts is." McGregor's future beyond his boxing debut has been queried by MMA fans who fear he may not be motivated to return to UFC after earning a reported $100m in facing Mayweather. He addressed several potential career avenues during the conference call and contests he is still a current multiple-weight UFC champion despite vacating his featherweight belt in November. "The current featherweight champion is Max Holloway, a man I dismantled," added McGregor. "Everyone knows, I am the multiple world champion. I look forward to going back and continuing where I left off." McGregor said Mayweather would get his "respect" if he followed through on comments made on a US talk show this week in which he said the pair could rematch under MMA rules. Paulie Malignaggi - who quit as McGregor's sparring partner after reacting angrily to images appearing to show him knocked down in a session - has also raised the prospect of coming out of retirement to box the Irishman. "Tell him to shut his mouth and join the queue," McGregor said when asked about facing the former two-weight world champion. "He got whooped and went sprinting. There's a big list of people who want to fight me."
Conor McGregor says he will beat Floyd Mayweather Jr in two rounds after the use of 8oz gloves was approved for the contest in Las Vegas on 26 August.
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Chastain, who is now retired from the sport, said she hoped it would help "change things for the positive". She joins a number of sporting figures helping to research long-term effects of concussion on competitors in sports. CTE, a degenerative disease, has been found in athletes with a history of repetitive brain trauma. Chastain, 47, announced on Thursday she would be donating her brain to Boston University, which is leading studies into the effects of multiple concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). "It's scary to think about all the heading and potential concussions that were never diagnosed in my life, but it's better to know," she said, speculating about her own experience of head injury during her football career. CTE is associated with symptoms such as memory loss, depression and progressive dementia. No female athletes have been found to have suffered from CTE, the New York Times reports, though this may be because the sample size is too small. The disease has been found in a number of male sports stars - including many former American football players. CTE cases can only be diagnosed after examination of the brain post-mortem. Chastain's decision follows that of her team mate, Cindy Parlow Cone, who has also decided to donate her brain. Both women have been calling on football regulators to introduce regulation preventing children under the age of 14 from heading the ball. Research into CTE has thrown the spotlight on several sports, including American football, horse-racing and rugby in recent months. A Hollywood film about the effects of concussion on National Football League stars was released last year, starring Will Smith. In February, it was revealed Ken Stabler, one of the most celebrated quarterbacks of all time, had been suffering from the disease. Chastain became well known for scoring America's winning goal in a penalty shoot-out against China in the final of the 1999 Women's World Cup. Images of the football star kneeling on the pitch in her black sports bra, fists clenched, swept around the world, becoming an iconic image for women's football.
US football star Brandi Chastain, who shot to fame in the 1999 Women's World Cup, has pledged to donate her brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
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The injured bird was found by a walker in Hall Lane, Blubberhouses, on Sunday. It had suffered a shattered wing, possibly a few days earlier, and was put down by a vet. PC Gareth Jones, North Yorkshire Police wildlife crime co-ordinator, said: "I am saddened by the scale of persecution of these birds. It has to stop." The birds were all found in North and West Yorkshire and police are concerned by the "unusually high" number of recent attacks on red kites, which are protected by law. In the past two months, four red kites have died after being shot. Another was found shot but released back into the wild after being treated by vets. Three red kites have also died after being found "in circumstances that suggest poisoning". They are being examined by the police's Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme. PC Jones said: "Red kites were persecuted into virtual extinction in the UK, but in recent years they have been re-introduced through breeding programmes at a number of locations nationally. "In Yorkshire, they have spread from their release site at Harewood House, and are now breeding over a large area. Red kites are scavengers, and normally eat carrion, their favourite food being rats and rabbits. "They are magnificent birds than can be regularly seen soaring over our area, bringing pleasure to many people." He urged anyone with information about the most recent incident to contact North Yorkshire Police.
A red kite found shot in North Yorkshire is the seventh to have been killed in the region in the past two months, police have said.
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If confirmed by the Senate, James Comey will replace outgoing director Robert Mueller III, serving for 10 years. At the White House, Mr Obama praised Mr Comey as a model of "fierce independence and deep integrity". Mr Comey is known for successfully opposing a warrantless wiretapping programme backed by other Bush aides. Mr Mueller took up his post shortly before the 9/11 attacks and is retiring as director on 4 September. In remarks on Friday, Mr Obama said the outgoing director had displayed "a steady hand and strong leadership" during his time at the head of the FBI. The US president said Mr Comey had "law enforcement in his blood". "As a young prosecutor in the US attorney's office in Manhattan he helped bring down the Gambino crime family; as a federal prosecutor in Virginia he led an aggressive effort to combat gun violence that reduced homicide rates and saved lives," Mr Obama said. He also joked that Mr Comey - who is 6ft, 8in tall (2.03m) - was "a man who stands up very tall for justice and the rule of law". The nominee said he could not describe his excitement to work again with the FBI. "They are men and women who have devoted their lives to serving and protecting others and I simply can't wait to be their colleague," he said. One of the most dramatic episodes of Mr Comey's tenure as deputy attorney general in the Bush administration came in 2004, when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was ill in hospital. Mr Bush's White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card pressed him in his hospital bed to re-authorise a controversial programme allowing federal agents to eavesdrop on phone conversations without a warrant. Mr Comey, who was acting as attorney general in Mr Ashcroft's stead, rushed to the hospital and intervened. Changes were subsequently made to the programme and Mr Comey drew wide praise. Mr Obama alluded to the incident on Friday, saying Mr Comey "was prepared to give up a job he loved rather than be part of something he felt was fundamentally wrong". After leaving the Bush administration, Mr Comey was general counsel for Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund in the US state of Connecticut. He now lectures at Columbia University law school in New York. Before he became deputy attorney general, Mr Comey had a long tenure at the justice department, serving in many posts including as US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
US President Barack Obama has nominated a former justice department official under President George W Bush as the next FBI director.
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He said he was disappointed that judges ruled ministers could not invoke Article 50 - starting formal Brexit negotiations - without MPs' approval. Mr Cairns was at a breakfast meeting with business leaders in Cardiff. Welsh Conservative MP David Davies warned attempts to block Brexit could lead to an early general election. Mr Cairns told BBC Wales that there was an "obligation" on politicians in all UK parliaments to give firms certainty about the UK's departure from the European Union. "What investors and employers want is the direction of travel and that's what we're focused on," he said. The UK government has said it intends to appeal against Thursday's High Court ruling. First Minister Carwyn Jones has said that would be a mistake, but on Friday the Welsh Government announced it would apply to have a voice in the appeal. Mr Cairns claimed the UK was in a "strong position" on the Brexit negotiations as it had one of the world's fastest growing economies. He said he wanted to work with the Welsh Government to get "a good deal" for Wales, and also wanted to work with Europe. "It's in our interests that Europe grows and it's in Europe's interest that the UK and Welsh economies grow," he said. Mr Davies, MP for Monmouth and chair of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, warned that politicians seeking to keep the UK in the EU would now use the judges' decision to try to block Brexit. "There'll be members of parliament looking to find excuses and flaws in the legislation that the government bring forward and the negotiation package, if you like, to try and vote against it," he told BBC Radio Wales. "This is all about trying to undo the result of the referendum - let's be in no doubt about that." He added: "This could easily lead to an early general election if that's what it takes to get this sorted out." But Labour's Shadow Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens said Parliament now needed to do its job and scrutinise the UK government's approach to Brexit. "How we leave the European Union was not on the ballot paper and there are a number of ways in which that could happen," she told BBC Radio Wales. "There's no consensus on that yet because the government haven't yet disclosed any details of how they intend to approach both the negotiations and the end point when we leave the EU. "So of course Parliament should scrutinise those plans - that's exactly what Parliament is there to do. "The court decision yesterday simply says, as we all knew, that Parliament has a clear role - a legal role, a constitutional role and an incredibly responsible role to try and influence how that exit happens." However, Pontypridd Labour MP Owen Smith told the BBC's Daily Politics programme he could "potentially" vote against the triggering of Article 50 in a Commons vote. "Most [Labour] colleagues feel that we couldn't possibly do anything other than trigger Article 50 - I disagree with them," he said. "If we have no further clarity as to whether Britain is going to be better or worse off as a result of the ending of the negotiations then I think the right thing for me to do on behalf of my constituents is not to vote to make them worse off."
Businesses need stability after the UK government's High Court defeat over the trigger for leaving the EU, Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns has said.
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Media playback is not supported on this device Ali Crawford missed a hat-trick of chances for Accies in the first half while Killie's Kris Boyd twice headed wide from close range. Souleymane Coulibaly's volley for the hosts just after the break was well saved by Gary Woods. Boyd fired into the net after connecting with an Adam Frizzell shot but the striker was flagged offside as both sides had to settle for a point. There was a familiarity about the manner in which Accies enjoyed periods of dominance and yet failed to capitalise. It is a characteristic that has haunted them throughout the early part of the season and has cost them points on several occasions. Media playback is not supported on this device So it proved again in east Ayrshire as a combination of poor finishing and good goalkeeping denied them a breakthrough. And though a point away from home might prove valuable in the final analysis, a win would certainly have been more welcome. Accies were culpable of a lack of composure and accuracy in front of goal, with the normally reliable Crawford skewing shots wide or hitting tamely into the keeper's arms. Rakish Bingham missed arguably the chance of the match when he headed wide of goal from inside the six-yard box. But Accies were not the only team guilty of profligacy in front of goal. Kilmarnock - and Boyd - in particular passed up good chances, with the striker heading off target from good positions on a couple of occasions. He was also caught offside far too often, notably when tapping Frizzell's shot into the net. When the strikers did find their shooting boots, both keepers earned their corn with some excellent saves. Woods kept out a controlled Coulibaly volley and also denied Frizzell late in the game, with the Kilmarnock substitute making a good impression from the bench. Jamie MacDonald, so often a hero for Kilmarnock, did superbly to tip Greg Docherty's goal-bound header round the post. And he did likewise with a Massimo Donati long-range volley in added time to ensure the game ended in a stalemate. Kilmarnock manager Lee Clark: "It was a good point when you consider Jamie's made a fantastic save right at the death. I don't think we deserved anything more - Hamilton have had their fair share of opportunities. "We've blown a big opportunity to get ourselves into the top six going into the international break and feel good about ourselves. "In comparison to where we were in our last two home games and where we were against Inverness and St Johnstone, we didn't play enough on the front foot and we let Hamilton's shape cause us too many problems." Hamilton manager Martin Canning: "I thought we deserved to win the game on opportunities created but if you're having one of those days when the ball's not going to go in for you, you need to keep the back door shut. "I thought Dougie Imrie should have had a penalty [in the first half] - he's wrong side of the defender and I don't see why he would go down as he's driving across the box. "If we continue to perform to a high level, I've no doubt we can win games." Match ends, Kilmarnock 0, Hamilton Academical 0. Second Half ends, Kilmarnock 0, Hamilton Academical 0. Corner, Hamilton Academical. Conceded by Jamie MacDonald. Attempt saved. Massimo Donati (Hamilton Academical) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the bottom right corner. Attempt blocked. Ali Crawford (Hamilton Academical) right footed shot from the left side of the box is blocked. Attempt blocked. Michael Devlin (Hamilton Academical) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked. Corner, Hamilton Academical. Conceded by Rory McKenzie. Attempt blocked. Louis Longridge (Hamilton Academical) right footed shot from a difficult angle and long range on the left is blocked. Attempt missed. Adam Frizzell (Kilmarnock) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right. Attempt saved. Souleymane Coulibaly (Kilmarnock) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the bottom left corner. Jordan Jones (Kilmarnock) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Scott McMann (Hamilton Academical). Attempt saved. Jordan Jones (Kilmarnock) right footed shot from a difficult angle on the left is saved in the bottom left corner. Corner, Kilmarnock. Conceded by Georgios Sarris. Substitution, Hamilton Academical. Scott McMann replaces Dougie Imrie. Attempt missed. Souleymane Coulibaly (Kilmarnock) header from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the right. Corner, Kilmarnock. Conceded by Michael Devlin. Attempt saved. Adam Frizzell (Kilmarnock) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Jonathan Burn (Kilmarnock) wins a free kick on the left wing. Foul by Eamonn Brophy (Hamilton Academical). Corner, Kilmarnock. Conceded by Massimo Donati. Foul by Adam Frizzell (Kilmarnock). Darian MacKinnon (Hamilton Academical) wins a free kick on the left wing. Substitution, Hamilton Academical. Louis Longridge replaces Gramoz Kurtaj. Georgios Sarris (Hamilton Academical) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul. Jordan Jones (Kilmarnock) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Georgios Sarris (Hamilton Academical). Foul by Jonathan Burn (Kilmarnock). Eamonn Brophy (Hamilton Academical) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Attempt blocked. Eamonn Brophy (Hamilton Academical) right footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Foul by Scott Boyd (Kilmarnock). Gramoz Kurtaj (Hamilton Academical) wins a free kick in the attacking half. Substitution, Hamilton Academical. Eamonn Brophy replaces Rakish Bingham. Attempt blocked. Grant Gillespie (Hamilton Academical) right footed shot from the left side of the box is blocked. Foul by Gary Dicker (Kilmarnock). Gramoz Kurtaj (Hamilton Academical) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Attempt missed. Rory McKenzie (Kilmarnock) right footed shot from outside the box is too high. Corner, Kilmarnock. Conceded by Michael Devlin. Attempt saved. Souleymane Coulibaly (Kilmarnock) header from the centre of the box is saved in the top centre of the goal. Adam Frizzell (Kilmarnock) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Kilmarnock and Hamilton Academical drew a blank in the Scottish Premiership.
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Richard Callaghan, of Rathmore Crescent in Creggan, Londonderry, pleaded guilty to being involved in the supply of cocaine and herbal cannabis. The court heard that police valued the drugs at almost £130,000 but the defence said it was half that amount. The judge sentenced Callaghan to two years and eight months, half of which will be spent on licence. Almost 0.5kg of cocaine, with a purity level of between 12% and 13%, and 5kg of herbal cannabis were found in a wheelie bin at the back of a car driven by Callaghan at Beechwood Crescent in Derry on 13 June last year. Police officers saw Callaghan, along with another man who ran off, lifting out the spare wheel of the car and loading the drugs from the boot into the bin. The car used in the drugs run was bought by another man on the internet and given to Callaghan in return for him driving the drugs to Beechwood Crescent. Callaghan drove the car from a garage in County Armagh where the drugs had been loaded into the vehicle. On his way to Derry, he stopped to check on the consignment of drugs. The judge at Londonderry Crown Court described Callaghan as an active courier, and said whatever the value of the drugs it was still a significant amount. He said Callaghan got involved in what he called "this crazy scheme" because he was in debt due to his own cannabis habit. PSNI Det Insp Tom McClure said the sentence was "the result of a substantial proactive investigation". "The message from this sentence is clear: all those involved in the supply chain of large quantities of controlled drugs can expect to go to prison when they are caught. "Police will work to ensure Northern Ireland remains a hostile environment for those who seek to benefit in any way from peddling the misery of drugs."
A man who was caught in a police anti-drugs operation last year has been jailed.
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The FTSE 100 index rose 77 points, or 1.1%, to 6,911.4, with similar rises seen elsewhere in Europe. Most analysts had expected the Fed to hold rates on Wednesday, although the US central bank indicated rates could rise before the end of the year. The dollar fell after US rates were held, which pushed commodity prices up. That led to rises in shares of mining companies, as the price of copper hit a one-month high and other metal prices increased. Shares in Glencore and Fresnillo led the FTSE 100 higher, with both seeing rises of more than 5%. "Given the rise across the spectrum for commodities, it comes as no surprise that the FTSE leaderboard is headed by some of the biggest names in mining," said Joshua Mahony, market analyst at IG. In the FTSE 250, shares in Kier Group rose 1.3% after the construction group reported a 45% increase in underlying full-year pre-tax profits to £125m. On the currency markets, the pound rose 0.55% against the dollar to $1.3104, but was little changed against the euro at €1.166.
(Close): UK shares joined in the global rally triggered by the US Federal Reserve's decision to keep interest rates unchanged.
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This article contains language that some readers may find offensive. "So this week it's Robert E Lee," he said on Tuesday of the rebel general's monument that was a flashpoint for last Saturday's violent rally in Virginia. "I wonder, is it George Washington next week?" he asked journalists at Trump Tower. "And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?" Let's put aside for a moment the irony that Lee may well have supported Charlottesville's plans to remove his bronze likeness, given that he urged the country to "obliterate the marks of civil strife" and refrain from erecting such monuments. As President Trump pointed out, George Washington was a slaveholder. So might the stone obelisk dedicated to the father of the nation, looming over the heart of his eponymous capital city, be the next battleground in the US culture wars? Or even Mount Rushmore? Washington conceded the system of human bondage that underpinned the economy of 18th Century Virginia was a "wicked, cruel and unnatural trade". He was the only founding father and commander-in-chief to liberate his slaves - he owned more than 300 - when he died. But as Ron Chernow's magisterial biography Washington: A Life makes clear, while he lived, the nation's first president extracted his pound of flesh from those whom he preferred to call his "servants", or "family". Washington saw himself as a benevolent master, but he did not tolerate suspected shirkers on his farm, even when they were pregnant, elderly or crippled. He once scolded a slave who pleaded that he could not work because his arm was in a sling. As Chernow writes, Washington picked up a rake and demonstrated how to use it with one arm. "If you use your hand to eat," he said, "why can't you use it to work?" He was not averse to shipping refractory slaves to the West Indies, such as one man named Waggoner Jack, where the tropical climate and relentless toil in sugarcane brakes tended to abbreviate life expectancy. "There are few Negroes who will work unless there be a constant eye on them," Washington advised one overseer, warning of their "idleness and deceit" unless treated firmly. Washington, Chernow notes, wholly approved in 1793 when one of his estate managers, Anthony Whitting, whipped a slave named Charlotte. Martha, the president's wife, had deemed her to be "indolent". "Your treatment of Charlotte was very proper," Washington wrote, "and if she or any other of the servants will not do their duty by fair means, or are impertinent, correction (as the only alternative) must be administered." Washington badgered Whitting to keep another slave named Gunner hard at work to "continue throwing up brick earth". Gunner was 83 years old. With his Mount Vernon plantation creaking under financial pressure owing to his long absences serving the country, Washington would fire off angry letters to his overseers insisting on greater crop productivity. Given these reprimands it is perhaps hardly surprising that another of his estate managers, Hiland Crow, was notorious for brutally flogging slaves. In early 1788 the Potomac river froze over for five weeks, but even with nine inches of snow on the ground, Washington did not spare them from gruelling outdoor labour. He sent the female slaves to dig up tree stumps from a frozen swamp. During this Arctic snap, Washington ventured to ride out and inspect his farms, but noted in his diary that, "finding the cold disagreeable I returned". When some of his slaves absconded during the Revolutionary War to find protection - humiliatingly, for him - with the enemy, Washington did not let up in his efforts to reclaim what he saw as his property. One internal British memo portrayed him after victory as demanding the runaways be returned "with all the grossness and ferocity of a captain of banditti". The British refused. Whenever George and Martha's bondmen and women did flee, the first couple seemed to regard them as disloyal ingrates. In one runaway notice Washington posted in a newspaper, he wrote that a slave named Caesar had escaped "without any cause whatever". That these enslaved human beings might thirst for freedom, or even the opportunity to learn to read and write, did not seem to occur to him. Professor Joseph Ellis, author of American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, says of the founding fathers: "They could imagine a nation-sized republic, which nobody else had ever done before. "They could imagine the separation of church and state, which nobody else had ever done before. "They could imagine a government based on checks and balances that prohibit any form of dictatorship at the presidential level. Nobody had ever done that before. "They could imagine power flowing from the people upwards, rather than from God downward. "All those unbelievable acts of imagination. The most creative political group in American history. We'll never replicate that. "But they could not imagine a biracial society." Jefferson, as every American schoolchild knows, is the nation's third president, and a genius political theoretician who penned arguably the five most important words in modern history - "all men are created equal" - in the 1776 Declaration of Independence. He also owned up to 140 slaves. A bon vivant who lived in luxury at a palatial Virginia estate, Jefferson knew America's original sin was a "depravity", as he described it. But his statements about black people are rarely taught in classrooms today. Here are some Jefferson quotes that visitors will not find on his memorial, a Roman pantheon-style temple to liberty where the Sage of Monticello's graven image keeps vigil over the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. To his friend, French social reformer the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Jefferson confided that he envisaged eventual manumission to entail "exporting to a distance the whole black race". The duke wrote: "He [Jefferson] bases his opinion on the certain danger… of seeing blood mixed without means of preventing it". And yet Jefferson, historians say, fathered up to six children by one of his mixed-race slaves, Sally Hemings. In his book Notes on the State of Virginia, he prophesied a race war in America and "convulsions which will probably never end but on the extermination of the one or the other race". Jefferson also opined in this work that black people's "unfortunate difference of color" made them less beautiful than whites. "They are more ardent after their female," he continued, "but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. "Their griefs are transient… in reason much inferior." And so on. Professor Ellis believes a plaque should be put up at the Jefferson Memorial to correct the record and admit some of the Declaration author's less savoury statements. "Jefferson embodies the inherent contradictions, a kind of self-deception, that co-exists in us, too," the biographer said. "Given the relationship with Hemings, the fact that he refused to take a leadership position on ending slavery because of his fear of miscegenation, it makes his hypocrisy even more dramatic. "He's got slaves who are his children serving him at dinner. But he doesn't seem to find that troubling. It's mind-boggling." "Racism is a chromosome in the DNA of the United States," Professor Ellis added. "It's like cancer. It ain't never gonna be cured." Should Americans therefore disavow these founding fathers as scoundrels and national embarrassments, or accept them as men of their time, demigods with feet of clay, who bore their imperfections even as they sought to steer their country beyond them? What actually is the difference between monuments to the founding fathers and Confederate leaders? Dr Clarence Jones - the African-American speechwriter who helped civil rights legend Dr Martin Luther King Jr craft his 1963 "I Have a Dream" address, four words that shaped modern America - explains. He says: "Sure, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. "There was no question they were morally compromised in their effort to fashion together this new country, a republic, based on the principles and precepts enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. "But neither of those two persons led the nation in treasonous insurrection to overthrow the government they had formed in order to preserve the institution of slavery. Period. "On the contrary, they devoted their life to saving and founding this country." He says that commemorating the valour of the Confederacy is just as wrong as celebrating the soldiers of the Third Reich. "What Charlottesville tells us is, it's no longer possible for the United States to ignore this unresolved issue of reconciliation over slavery," said Dr Jones. "Trump missed an extraordinary opportunity - and he still has it - of exercising the leadership of reconciler and healer-in-chief for the nation today." Washington and Jefferson are not the only American historical titans who can seem diminished when viewed through the lens of present-day values. Take Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator and Civil War leader who destroyed the South's slavocracy. He is immortalised in another neo-classical shrine on the National Mall. But as Hofstra University history professor Alan Singer points out, the nation's 16th president espoused racist opinions as his political soul evolved. He is quoted as saying to applause at a debate at Charleston, Illinois, during an 1858 Senate election campaign: "There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." The Republican leader is also recorded as having tried to persuade a black delegation in 1862 that African-Americans should self-deport and colonise somewhere like Central America, arguing that it would be "extremely selfish" if they refused. "The United States needs to have a general evaluation of who we are as a nation, so we can come to terms with our present by understanding our past," says Professor Singer. "Nations need heroes to define who we are, to help us see ourselves in a better light. "And the United States has heroes. But we tend not to see the warts. "We tend to try to erase the parts we don't want to see. And this is a time when we have to look." Sometimes, though, it can be hard to look. President Lyndon Baines Johnson is lionised as the signer of the 1964 Civil Rights Act - one of the greatest legislative accomplishments of any US administration - which outlawed discrimination. However, LBJ is also known to have frequently tossed racial slurs around the cloakrooms of the US Senate, according to his biographer Robert Caro. Johnson nicknamed an earlier iteration of the landmark act for which he is known as "the n***** bill". In his memoir, Capitol Hill in Black and White, African-American chauffeur Robert Parker relates a disturbing interaction while he was driving for the Texan. Johnson, he recalls, asked him whether he objected to being called "n*****". When Parker replied that he would rather be addressed by his own name, Johnson allegedly retorted: "As long as you are black, and you're gonna be black till the day you die, no one's gonna call you by your goddamn name. "So no matter what you are called, n*****, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you'll make it. Just pretend you're a goddamn piece of furniture." But Dr Jones believes that LBJ, for all his flaws, understood that his duty as chief magistrate of the United States was to lead his country towards sunlit uplands of a more perfect union, to achieve the unfulfilled promise of its founding. The University of San Francisco professor is in little doubt what his old friend, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, would say to the current White House incumbent. "I have no question," says Dr Jones, "that the pre-eminent apostle of love and non-violence in the 20th Century would remind President Trump he has a responsibility to indicate to the nation what is right and what is wrong. "This is not a time to engage in moral relativity. "I really believe that President Trump is not beyond redemption, that he still has an opportunity to rise to the majesty of the office."
President Donald Trump's argument that the removal of Confederate statues is a slippery slope to changing history has recharged the perennial debate about America's tormented racial legacy.
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Olive Cooke, 92, of Bristol, joined the Royal British Legion (RBL) aged 16 following her father who was an active member after serving in World War One. Mrs Cooke said selling poppies took on a whole new meaning after her first husband was killed in action in 1943. The RBL said it could not be exact but that Mrs Cooke was "one of our longest-standing poppy collectors". For the past 12 years Mrs Cooke has sold poppies from the entrance to Bristol Cathedral. She said she wished everyone would wear one with "great pride" to remember those who died in both world wars. She said although she had only been married two-and-a-half years when her first husband Leslie Hussey-Yeo was killed, "he is in my memory every day". "You never forget the lost people and he was such a good man you wouldn't want to," said Mrs Cooke. "His words to me were that if anything were to happen to him, to always wear a smile and I've never got bitter. I never thought bitterness helped. "I think of my husband, cousins and many of my school friends who were killed aged 18, all young men that we were at school with, so all of those faces come back to me." Col Brian John, president of the City of Bristol group of RBL branches, said Mrs Cooke was their "most-valued poppy collector". Sue Potepa, from the RBL in Bristol, said she was "well-loved" by the team. "This year 350,000 volunteers like Olive will help us to ensure that the poppy is available to all those who wish to wear one and we are extremely grateful to her for the support she has given the Royal British Legion and our annual Poppy Appeal for more than 75 years," she said.
A charity volunteer who has clocked up 76 years of service is one of the UK's longest-serving poppy sellers.
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It is still one of the poorest countries in the world, with an estimated third of the population earning less than $1 (63p) a day, but the country also has one of the world's fastest growing economies. Opinion is sharply divided, however, as to whether or not it is wise to invest in the country. Since 2004, its economy has been expanding by about 10% a year. The government expects growth to continue in double digits - but a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suggests it will slow to 6.5% in 2013. Even the IMF predictions are impressive, however, considering the current global financial climate and the fact that unlike many other countries on the continent, Ethiopia does not have much in the way of natural resources. Coffee is one of the biggest export earners in Ethiopia. In Addis Ababa, the country's capital, coffee exporter Michael Girma says it was a challenge to launch his business. "To start up in the export sector, you need to perform with your own cash. Then after that, you can approach the banks," he says. Apart from exporting coffee, he now also owns a cafe, a bar, and a pizzeria, employing 140 people altogether. Although the business environment is getting very competitive, he is achieving a profit margin of 20-30% each year and feels confident about the future. "A lot has changed in the last seven years," he says. "You need to be aggressive, but not arrogant." Although foreign investors are encouraged, many sectors are reserved for domestic investors. "The restricted sectors are those which supply to the local people. If foreign investors want to come in and invest in projects which are export oriented, anything is open," he says. "It would be very hard to compete otherwise." Despite annual high inflation, some investors think the potential in Africa's second most populous nation has not been recognised. Earlier this year, Shultze Global Investments launched a $100m equity fund aiming to invest in Ethiopian businesses. In a nondescript building on a hillside overlooking Addis Ababa, Berhane Demissie decides where to put that money. "Ethiopia offers significant opportunities for investors," she says, pointing out that agriculture is a strong growth sector. "Anything grows in Ethiopia with the various climate and soil diversities that we have. That also follows through to the agricultural value-added chain with processing and exports," Ms Demissie says. With 85% of the population dependent on the agricultural sector, she says the government is trying to ensure those farmers have access to finance and fertilisers that will allow them to grow more. Ms Demissie says this will lift people out of poverty. "If the programme was just about big farms I would have said no, but the smallholder farmers are being included in the overall growth of the economy," she says. She also says there is a lot more demand for consumer goods and services within the country, but too few manufacturing companies. In 2010, Transparency International, which rates countries according to perceived corruption, listed Ethiopia at 120th out of 183 countries and the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity research organisation concluded that illicit financial outflows between 2000 and 2009 totalled $11.7bn (£7.4bn) in 2009 - which was more than Ethiopia had earned through exports. It is reports like those which deter some of the diaspora from returning to the country to look for business opportunities. Berhanu Nega went back to Addis Ababa in 1994 after the change in government and was elected mayor in 2005 - only to find himself imprisoned for life on the day he was elected on charges of treason, because he had called for the overthrow of the president. He was released after 21 months and returned to the US where he is now an economics professor at Bucknell University. He is also the co-founder of Ginbot 7, an Ethiopian opposition party, and he does not believe the country is a good place to invest in for the medium or long term. "If you want to make big bucks and get out then it is good for the short term," he says. Apart from concerns about corruption, he is also worried about the uncertainty of inflation: "The government has been printing money since 2005 and inflation, depending on which figures you look at, ranges between 40-60%." He says many businesses have closed down because of the taxation the government has imposed to pay for its expanded security forces. He adds: "The government has been pushing tens of thousands of people off their lands because of the land grabs by China, Saudi Arabia and India among others, which has caused serious conflict in many areas." He does not feel there will be any changes soon and is pessimistic about the country's future business environment.
Ethiopia was once a byword for poverty and famine.
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Reports of a "mass murder" investigation in France and pictures of German policemen carting bags of evidence from his parents' home suggest that officials are determined to find out. But this appears to be a case of murder-suicide, which is very different and extremely rare. In these incidents, one person wishing to end their life takes the lives of others - in this case, complete strangers - at the same time. The statistics show that most murder-suicides happen in domestic settings, and involve a man and his spouse. Murder-suicides involving pilots or in gun massacres are, in fact, much, much rarer. What drives people to these acts is therefore virtually impossible to determine because there is no common theme and the perpetrators don't leave notes explaining their actions. In contrast to the motivations of a suicide bomber, which are intentionally well-publicised, those behind a murder-suicide are usually more difficult to fathom. No-one, of course, can pretend to know what was in Lubitz's mind as he locked the cockpit door and instigated the plane's devastating descent. Simon Wessely, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, says it's unlikely we will ever know. "It's possible something will emerge, but in most suicides people leave clues or a message. "Incredibly extreme events like this are sometimes just inexplicable." Despite this, the media has been quick to point the finger at Lubitz's history of depression. German newspapers have also reported that he had received psychiatric treatment and may have been experiencing a "personal life crisis". In reality, there is a multitude of factors, feelings and personality traits which could push someone to such an extreme course of action. Alcohol problems, drug misuse, broken relationships or marriages, personality disorders, work stresses - in the past or at the time of the act - can all play a part. Mental health charities agree, and have been queuing up to plead for more understanding about depression, and less sensationalist language. They say the vast majority of people with depression do not hurt anyone, and research shows that their risk is primarily to themselves. Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity Sane, says: "There are thousands of people with a diagnosis of depression, including pilots, who work, hold positions of high responsibility and who present no danger whatsoever. "We do not know what part depression played in this tragedy but it is a condition that should never be trivialised." Charities said there was a danger that mental health problems could be stigmatised by coverage of the crash, making people more afraid to talk about their experiences. Dr Paul Keedwell, consultant psychiatrist and specialist in mood disorders, also says mental health problems are not a sufficient explanation for what happened. "Among cases of murder-suicide in general, the rate of previously diagnosed depression varies from 40% to 60%, depending on the context." But he does say that of those who are depressed, very few are being treated for it. It is clear that men find it particularly difficult to seek help if they have a history of mental illness. In the UK, for example, 75% of suicides are in men. Lubitz passed the tests set by his employer which indicated he was fit to fly, but it has since come to light that he may have been hiding an illness from them. This illness and his seeming inability to talk about it or come to terms with it may hold some small clue to his actions. But, in reality, there is never going to be an adequate explanation for murder-suicides - particularly for the families of those killed.
The question has been raised - is 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz a mass murderer for bringing down a plane full of passengers, killing everyone on board?
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He accused Lord Patten, chairman of the trust which oversees the BBC, of making "unfair and untrue" claims not to have known about Mark Byford's payment. Lord Patten said he "couldn't have been expected to know" about the sum. Mr Thompson told MPs the trust had put him under "ferocious pressure" to make senior redundancies like Mr Byford's. The BBC has been criticised for paying £25m ($39m) to 150 outgoing executives - £2m ($3.1m) more than their contracts stipulated. Mr Thompson - who is now chief executive of the New York Times newspaper - was one of seven senior BBC figures giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). He was asked about a £949,000 pay-off package given to former deputy director general Mr Byford. By David SillitoArts Correspondent A "grossly unedifying occasion" which has damaged the reputation of the BBC - that was Margaret Hodge's verdict. But have we learnt anything? MPs seemed to accept Lord Patten's argument that he really could not be expected to have questioned deals such as Mark Byford's £1m pay-off given it was done before he arrived and was said to be within contract. Mark Thompson appeared to convince the committee when he said he had tried to keep the trust informed. The question about why the trust had not done more hung in the air. The answer that it was not their job did not go down well with some of the MPs. The former chairman Sir Michael Lyons accepted that perhaps they should have taken more of an interest. The government has been watching with interest; the question of how the BBC is governed is being discussed. The debate over the renewal of the charter for the BBC is about to begin and today will only add weight to a growing debate about the future of the trust. He said Mr Byford's redundancy had represented "value for money" as part of a wider effort to cut the number of highly-paid executives and save about £19m a year. He said he had believed he had the "full support" of the BBC Trust in trying to do that within a very short time frame. Committee chairman Margaret Hodge said under Mr Byford's contract he could have been paid off with £500,000. But Mr Thompson said he was paid almost twice that because the corporation wanted him to be "fully focused" on his job in the final months of his tenure and not "worried about his future and taking calls from head hunters". He said the fact that he had known Mr Byford for more than three decades and socialised with him did not affect judgement about his severance package. Asked by Mrs Hodge if the BBC had "lost the plot", Mr Thompson replied: "I do not think we lost the plot." BBC HR director Lucy Adams told the committee the corporation was trying to "get people out of the door" with minimal disruption and no risk of legal action - and to do that, it was "occasionally" necessary to pay more than was contractually required. Former trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons agreed with the MPs that payments like Mr Byford's "look eye-watering", adding that "clearly the trust is damaged" by the whole affair. But he said the process of making "rapid reductions in senior management" was "very difficult", adding: "You think we should have done it for less.... "The price of that would have been that it would have taken longer and the savings would have been smaller." BBC trustee Anthony Fry told the PAC there had been "months and months of arguments" between the trust and the BBC executive committee over financial issues such as pay, perks and bonuses - although he admitted that severance packages were not given much attention. "It became a battleground. I got the distinct view... that our views were not being taken with what I believed was the seriousness they deserved," he said. In July, Lord Patten told the PAC he was "shocked and dismayed" by the scale of pay-offs and said that should Mr Thompson be called before MPs he would be as interested as they were to hear why the trust had not known about them. Ahead of his appearance before the committee, Mr Thompson sent a letter to the PAC saying he had emails which showed trust members had approved the payments. Then, in person, he told the MPs that Lord Patten's claims not to have known about them were "damaging, unfair and misleading statements". In reply, Lord Patten said he took the charge of misleading the committee "very strongly" and insisted he had been told settlements for Mr Byford and former marketing boss Sharon Baylay were "contractual payments" agreed before his appointment. "I'm in the position in which I'm accused of having misled the committee on something I didn't know and couldn't have been expected to know," he added. Trust director Nicholas Kroll said the deputy director general's severance package was not part of the trust's remit. But Mrs Hodge said the the job of the trust was "to protect the licence fee payers' interests", adding: "There is not one person around the table who can understand why there was no challenge from you." Former chairman of the BBC executive board remuneration committee Marcus Agius said there had been "a great deal of concern" within his committee "about these redundancies and the amounts". "We challenged and tested Mark Thompson and after sustained debate we were finally persuaded on value for money grounds," he said. Ms Adams apologised to the committee for stating in the July hearing that she did not know of an email explaining the pay-offs when in fact, she had helped to compose it. The BBC has recently introduced a £150,000 cap on severance pay. Ms Adams said she suggested a cap to the executive board before Mr Byford's package was agreed, but it had decided it would be "inappropriate to introduce the cap at that time". Summing up the hearing, Mrs Hodge said it had been a "grossly unedifying occasion which can only damage the standing and the reputation of the BBC". She said the committee believed the governance of the corporation was "broke". Lord Patten told her he accepted there was "a cultural issue" around pay at the BBC "that we really do have to recognise and apologise for and deal with very robustly" - but that "trying to get people to face up to lowering salaries and reducing the number of managers is an uphill struggle". He rejected suggestions that responsibility for governance should be taken from the trust and handed to Ofcom, and said he hoped over the next couple of years the corporation could demonstrate that the existing system could work. The biggest severance payments included: The PAC meeting in July followed the publication of a report in which the National Audit Office criticised the corporation, saying the scale of the payments put public trust at risk. A spokesman for the prime minister said earlier that "legitimate questions" had been raised about the use of licence payers' money and should be answered.
Ex-BBC director general Mark Thompson has told MPs the corporation had not "lost the plot" when it agreed a pay-off of almost £1m to his former deputy.
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The Electoral Commission will decide whether to select Vote Leave, which Mr Johnson is backing or Grassroots Out, which has been endorsed by UKIP's Nigel Farage, as the official lead campaign. The winner will be able to spend up to £7m on TV broadcasts and advertising. The Mayor of London suggested the two groups would unite after the decision. Relations between the two groups have been strained amid arguments over campaign strategies and personalities. Asked whether a merger was now on the cards, he told LBC Radio that the "basic objective" should be to have a single campaign and the rival groups were "unified by the rightness of their arguments". Vote Leave has been endorsed by Mr Johnson and the five Conservative Cabinet ministers who want to leave the EU. It also has the backing of a number of Labour Eurosceptics, including Gisela Stuart, and business figures. Grassroots Out, which was formed in January, is backed by senior UKIP figures as well as Conservative and Labour backbenchers such as Peter Bone and Kate Hoey. Speaking on his monthly LBC phone-in, Mr Johnson rejected suggestions that having two separate groups was holding back the Leave campaign and was being exploited by their opponents. "I haven't noticed the other side making very much of this. Let's hold our fire and not get wrapped up in tiny issues about who is doing what on the Leave campaign. The thing that matters to me is getting the arguments out." Mr Johnson said he had spoken to the UKIP leader in recent weeks but his focus was on making the case to the British people. He added: "The Electoral Commission have to work out which of the various groupings should carry the flag for Britain to take back control of its borders, take back control of a huge amount of money and forge new trading relationships around the world. "I think it doesn't really matters too much who comes out on top in this one provided that we all get together and work to that end." Asked whether the decision would be a unifying moment for those backing EU exit, he replied "of course it will". The elections watchdog is expected to make its decision on which group will head the Leave campaign by the middle of April. It will judge each applicant's merits on the basis of a range of criteria, such as level of cross-party support, campaign tactics and organisational capacity. Whoever wins will get access to a grant of up to £600,000 and an overall spending limit of £7m for media, mailshots and campaign organisation. Conservative MP Tom Pursglove, one of the co-founders of Grassroots Out, said the designation would be a "watershed moment", after which all Leave campaigners should "put aside their differences, row in together and campaign as one". He said he expected there to be dialogue between the two groups in the run-up to the official decision and Boris Johnson was "spot on" to argue the issue could not be allowed to become a distraction. "There is just not the time to waste on bickering over the designation. We should be focused purely on leaving and winning this referendum." During the phone-in, Mr Johnson likened the Remain campaign's warnings about the risks of EU exit to fatalistic predictions about the Millennium Bug in 2000, saying talk of "bank accounts being wiped" and "planes falling out of sky" back then had been proved to be groundless. But he was challenged by the Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who accused him of using the campaign for his own political ends and "inviting a media circus" to his house last month to announce he was backing EU exit. "What you need to understand is that this is not about you," Mr Umunna, who backs EU membership, said. "It is about our city and our country...If anybody has been talking down our country, it is you. You denigrate our influence within the EU." Mr Johnson said that what made people sceptical about the EU was listening to politicians such as Mr Umunna "droning on" about the economic benefits of EU membership. "This is about the prospects of the British people and their democracy," he insisted.
Boris Johnson has said it does not really matter which lobby group is chosen to "carry the flag" for EU exit in the up referendum campaign.
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The cloning of the first animal from an adult cell was a remarkable scientific achievement. It promised new treatments for debilitating diseases. But it also raised fears of cloned human beings, designer babies and a dystopian future. Twenty years on, neither the hopes nor the fears have been realised. So what is Dolly's legacy? I first saw Dolly in 1997 at the Roslin Institute just outside Edinburgh. She stood apart from the other sheep in the pens at this agricultural research centre. She stood prouder, her fleece seemed like a lion's mane and there was an aura about her. Dolly's creation had echoes of Mary Shelley's classic novel Frankenstein, in which inanimate tissue was brought to life by electricity. Dolly was created from DNA taken from a cell taken from an sheep. The technique involved putting the DNA into an empty eggshell and then zapping it with electricity. This created an embryo. Researchers at Roslin then implanted the embryo into the womb of a sheep which grew into Dolly - an exact genetic copy of the sheep from which the skin cell was taken. It took 277 attempts to clone Dolly and there were many miscarriages on the way. There were also genuine concerns that it would not be long before cloned humans would be walking the Earth - people would try to clone themselves to achieve a kind of immortality or they might try to resurrect a beloved dead relative. The airwaves were filled with conversations about what it meant to be human, whether the clones would be exactly the same as the person from which they were cloned and what kind of world the scientists were tumbling us into. When I met the researchers at Roslin they were acutely aware of public suspicion. And they knew it was important to be clear, open and honest about their work. Dolly's creator, Prof Sir Ian Wilmut, could not be any more different from fictional scientists such as Dr Frankenstein or indeed Dr Moreau, who developed human-like hybrids in a story by HG Wells. By contrast, Prof Wilmut is a quietly-spoken man whose motivation was to improve animal welfare and human health. This bespectacled scientist with his gentle candour was ideally complemented by the enthusiastic and eloquent Dr Simon Best, who was brought in to commercialise the technology to improve human health. A former manager of the early 1980s pop group The Human League turned biotechnology pioneer, Prof Best knew how to sell a good story and do so with panache. Between them they quickly changed the narrative from that of a nightmare future to one in which cloning was used to treat many incurable diseases. Prof Wilmut and Dr Best promoted the term "therapeutic cloning". Their vision was to develop treatments for heart disease, Parkinson's Disease and rheumatism by taking cells from patients and using cloning technology to create healthy tissues which could then be transplanted to heal their damaged cells. This raised further concerns from some church and anti-abortion groups, who were concerned that the process involved the creation, and then destruction, of human embryos. They wanted the technology banned but, following strong lobbying by the medical research community, parliament permitted therapeutic cloning but banned the cloning of human beings. Since then, the much hoped-for benefits from therapeutic cloning have not emerged. Some groups in the UK are cloning tissues from patients to study diseases and test drugs. But no so-called cell-replacement treatments have yet been developed. However, important scientific breakthroughs can - and usually do - take time to have an impact. Dolly's legacy is to show scientists that animal cells can be reprogrammed. They can be rejuvenated and redirected to form any cell in the human body. Scientists may not have reaped the clinical benefits just yet but, at a stroke, Dolly's birth changed scientific thinking forever. It is hard to imagine how this incredible biological insight won't alter the world fundamentally and in ways we have yet to imagine.
The birth of Dolly the sheep seemed one of those moments in scientific research that would change the world forever.
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The 22-year-old agreed a four-and-a-half-year deal with the Italian club and completed a medical on Wednesday. Media playback is not supported on this device "I will always have a very special place in my heart for City, it's a great club with a great future," he told the Manchester club's website. "I thank them for all of their support of me. Maybe one day we will see each other again." City signed Balotelli from Inter Milan for £24m in 2010 and he scored 30 goals in 80 appearances for the club. He helped City to the Premier League title last season, but has managed only three goals in 20 matches this time round. "I think to win the Premier League was a very special moment, and I am proud to have been a part of that," he added. The forward also revealed he bid farewell to his team-mates at the pre-match dinner before the 0-0 draw at QPR. I love Roberto, he has been very important for my career, and I will always thank him for having trust and faith in me "Yes, I said goodbye to everyone at the meal in London before the game at Queens Park Rangers. It was very emotional for me," Balotelli continued. "I spoke with [manager] Roberto [Mancini] before I went to speak to the players. We spoke for some time about lots of things. He was sad, and I was too. But it was a good conversation. I love Roberto, he has been very important for my career, and I will always thank him for having trust and faith in me. "Being at City was an important part of my life and career. I needed to grow up like a player and as a person and it has been a very good experience for me." Balotelli flew to Milan by private jet on Wednesday afternoon with the Italian club's vice-president Adriano Galliani. Galliani said: "With his arrival, we have reinforced our team a lot. He's a dream come true, wanted by [AC Milan president Silvio] Berlusconi and the club. "Mario has been in our hearts for many years and finally we've managed to get him." Milan reached an agreement with City on Tuesday and Balotelli will sign a four-and-a-half-year contract, subject to passing his medical.
AC Milan have signed striker Mario Balotelli from Premier League champions Manchester City for £19m.
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The mythical ruler's legendary court has been associated with locations throughout Wales, including Carmarthen, St David's, and Cardigan. Now a retired Bangor University professor has revealed what he believes to be the true location of Camelot. And it turns out to be a small Roman fort at Slack, on the outskirts of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. Prof Peter Field, a renowned expert in Arthurian literature, said: "It was quite by chance. I was looking at some maps, and suddenly all the ducks lined up. "I believe I may have solved a 1,400-year-old mystery." Previous best guesses for the location of the round table include Caerleon in Newport, Somerset's Cadbury Castle, and Tintagel in Cornwall. In Roman times, Slack was home to a fort called Camulodunum, which means "the fort of the god Camul". Over the years, well-recognised linguistic processes would have reduced Camulodunum to Camelot. Though almost forgotten and insignificant today, and even though it was abandoned and dilapidated by the relevant time of King Arthur around A.D. 500, Prof Field argues that this site at Slack would still have been considered a strategic stronghold. At that time, Celtic-speaking Britons, who could have been led by King Arthur, held the north and the west coast against the invading Anglo-Saxons. Slack, on the Roman road from Chester to York, would have been the ideal location from which to defend the east coast. Prof Field added: "If there was a real King Arthur, he will have lived around AD500, although the first mention of him in Camelot is in a French poem from the Champagne region of France from 1180. "There is no mention of Camelot in the period between those dates, known as the Dark Ages, when the country was at war, and very little was recorded. "In this gap, people passed on information, much got lost in transmission, and people may have made up facts or just messed up known information." Prof Field, who taught at Bangor from 1964 to 2004, has been researching the location of Camelot for the past 18 months. He spoke about his findings during the official launch of Bangor University's Stephen Colclough centre for the history and culture of the book.
The quest to find King Arthur's Camelot has puzzled and intrigued scholars and fans for over a thousand years.
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The males, two aged 17 and one 19, from north-west London, were reported missing in March amid fears they were planning to travel to Syria. They were stopped by Turkish officials and arrested on their return to the UK. The teenagers, who have not been named, were bailed while police carried out further inquiries. Scotland Yard said they were all released without charge on Monday 8 June. It is understood they had flown to the Turkish city of Istanbul from Barcelona in Spain. The teenagers were all detained at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen airport. Their arrests came weeks after an international police hunt was launched to find three London schoolgirls who travelled to Istanbul on their journey to Syria. Shamima Begum, Amira Abase, both 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16 - all from east London - took flights to Istanbul in February, from where it is feared they travelled to join Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria. IS has taken over large swathes of Syria and Iraq, with the aim of establishing a "caliphate", a state ruled by a single political and religious leader according to Islamic law.
Three teenagers arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences after being detained in Turkey will not face charges, police have announced.
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The East Riding of Yorkshire Council refused planning permission for the scheme at North Ferriby, near Hull, in May 2013. The developer St Modwen appealed to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Greg Clark, who has rejected the plan. The company said it was disappointed and is considering its options. The Melton Fields project would have consisted of 510 houses and a care home. The company also applied for permission for an alternative smaller scheme of 390 homes. Villagers mounted a campaign against the development, with more than 1,200 people writing letters objecting to the plans. East Riding council rejected both proposals claiming the land had been earmarked for employment rather than residential use. The developer appealed against the council's decision to the government's Planning Inspectorate, which held a public inquiry last year. Councillor John Mabbett, vice chairman of North Ferriby Parish Council, described the secretary of state's refusal as "a victory for common sense". "Had this ill-conceived development been approved our community would have been overwhelmed by its size and the fabric and character of the village would have been harmed for ever," he said. A spokesperson for St Modwen said: "We firmly believe that our proposals for a residential development represent the most viable option for the site, and for the region. "Our proposals would not only deliver much needed family homes, but also bring important investment and jobs to the local area."
The government has turned down plans to build more than 500 homes near an East Yorkshire village.
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Cassie Sainsbury, 22, was stopped at an airport in Bogota on 12 April. She could face up to 25 years in jail, according to her sister, Khala. The drugs were hidden inside 15 pairs of headphones that Ms Sainsbury bought during a holiday, the family said. Ms Sainsbury's family claims she is innocent of drug trafficking charges. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed it was providing consular assistance, but did not give further details. The personal trainer, from Adelaide, had just finished a working holiday when she was arrested at El Dorado International Airport, her family said. Ms Sainsbury's mother, Lisa Evans, claimed her daughter was the "naive" victim of a Colombian man she had befriended during her trip. "The day of her departure, he came up to her hotel, gave her a package that was wrapped in black plastic and she took it and put it in her luggage," she told Australian radio station KIIS FM. "And this is where the naive bit comes in, she didn't even rip it open to make sure there were headphones in there." They said she was being held at El Buen Pastor, Colombia's largest women's prison. The family has started an online campaign to help cover legal fees, raising A$2,600 (£1,500; $2,000) in four days. Penalties for possession, use, or trafficking of illegal drugs in Colombia are severe and offenders can expect long prison sentences under harsh conditions. According to Ms Evans, Ms Sainsbury's lawyer has recommended a guilty plea to avoid a maximum sentence up to 25 years in jail. If Ms Sainsbury pleads guilty, she would face a six-year sentence, which could be reduced further if she gives information about the man who supplied the headphones, Ms Evans said. Colombia is one of the world's largest producers of coca leaves and cocaine. Highly pure cocaine costs more than A$350 per gram in Australia, making it proportionally the most lucrative market in the world, according to the Global Drug Survey 2015, According to a government website, Colombia's official working holiday visa may only be obtained by citizens of Chile, France, Mexico and Peru.
An Australian woman has been arrested in Colombia after being found with 5.8kg (12lb 13oz) of cocaine in her luggage, her family says.
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On Wednesday, shares of Chinese solar power manufacturer Hanergy Thin Film were suspended after falling 47%, wiping out $18.6bn (£11.9bn) from its market capitalisation. That was followed by shares of Goldin Financial, which fell 55% on Thursday. Both firms had seen the price of their shares surge over the past year. Shares of Goldin Financial, which is 70%-owned by Hong Kong billionaire Pan Sutong, have jumped by more than 400% between September 2014 and March this year, according to Reuters. The firm had said that it was not aware of the reason behind the big jump in its share price. About half of Goldin's value - $16.12bn - was erased on Thursday as shares fell. Meanwhile, Hanergy shares had risen five-fold since September before the sell-off began. The firm, controlled by Chinese billionaire Li Hejun, had issued a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday saying its shares had been halted from trade "pending the release of an announcement containing inside information". Li has been considered one of China's richest men on the back of his stake in Hanergy. Nicholas Teo, market analyst at trading firm CMC markets said he had noticed the dramatic drop in Hanergy's shares right away because it had everyone "scratching their heads". "The company was very quick to call a halt to the trading, but without any news, there is plenty of speculation and potentially room for further reaction to the downside if the trading suspension is lifted," he said. "Even after the drop though, Hanergy's shares are basically twice as expensive as some of the firms in that sector." David Kuo, chief executive of The Motley Fool Singapore backed the view that Hanergy shares were overvalued. "Hanergy is involved in the much-hyped solar-panel industry. Investors are paying $50 for every dollar of profit the company makes," he said. "When expectation overtakes reality, reality eventually wins. The market is experiencing a dose of reality." There has been speculation as to the reason why the Chinese company halted trading, with Reuters citing an unnamed source as saying the firm is under investigation by Hong Kong regulators. Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has declined to make a comment. Local reports also said that Li, chairman of the firm, did not attend the firm's annual general meeting in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
Shares of two Hong Kong-listed companies have plunged by about 50% in the past two days, surprising market watchers across the region.
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He had been facing charges of genocide during one of the most brutal periods in Guatemala's civil war. Doctors said he was not able to understand any charges against him. The medical report will affect two separate trials where he is charged with ordering the murder of hundreds of farmers and over 1,000 Mayan Indians. General Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide and war crimes two years ago, and sentenced to 80 years in prison. The main charges were that he and his former intelligence chief ordered the army to carry out 15 massacres of Ixil Maya indigenous people in Quiche in northern Guatemala, in which around 1,700 Indians were killed. However, a high court then threw out the charges on procedural grounds and ordered a retrial. Another trial began in January but ended after the judge was rejected for having made public opinions about genocide in a student thesis. A new trial was set for July. This may now not take place because of the medical examiner's report declaring the ex-leader mentally incompetent.
A former Guatemalan general, Efrain Rios Montt, who ruled the country briefly in the 1980s, has been found mentally incapable of standing trial.
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Mr Anderson, who also created science-fiction series Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 and Stingray, died in 2013 following a battle with Alzheimer's disease. His son Jamie, from Highworth in Wiltshire, said the proceeds will be donated to the Alzheimer's Society. The 19in (48cm) replica with optic eyes and the "same make of teeth as the original", is being auctioned on eBay. The science-fiction fantasy about a daring rescue squad, was filmed in a studio on the Slough Trading Estate in Berkshire and was first aired on TV screens in October 1965. At its peak, Thunderbirds was attracting an audience of 100 million fans in 66 countries around the world. But, according to Jamie Anderson, after his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2011 - he "had no idea" he was its creator. "For a man who made Thunderbirds, created it and was best known for that - he would say to me: What was that show that I made?," he said. "I could say the name 'Thunderbirds' and it meant nothing to him. For the disease to affect him in that way, was a really distressing thing to see." Donated by a fan to the son of her original creator, the Lady Penelope puppet boasts a head made of fibre glass - like the original - and real human hair. "Before Dad died he fulfilled his ambition of raising awareness of dementia and funds for Alzheimer's Society," said Mr Anderson. "He'd be so pleased to know of the sale of one of his most iconic characters in aid of a charity that was so close to his heart."
A Lady Penelope puppet, donated by the son of Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson, is to be sold for charity.
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More than 110 members of the Unite union, based in Weymouth and Bridport, are set to walk out from 04:00 on Monday until 03:59 BST on Saturday. Unite said it is angry at a 2.3% pay offer from First Group while it says drivers for the firm in Bristol have been given a 13% increase. The operator said the action was "totally unnecessary". The union says Weymouth and Bridport drivers earn £8.80 an hour while drivers in Yeovil are on £9.50 an hour and those at rival firms in Bournemouth and Poole earn nearly £2 an hour more. Unite regional officer Bob Lanning said: "What we have here is a situation where the drivers in Weymouth and Poole are the poor relations, when compared with the pay of other drivers working for First Group. "Our members regret the disruption to the public that will be caused by this strike, but they have been pushed against the wall with years of insulting pay increases for the responsible job that they do." First Dorset, which is part of the First Group, said it had been in discussions with Unite for several months and an offer to use resolution service Acas is still on the table. Marc Reddy, managing director of First Dorset, said: "This action is totally unnecessary and will cause great hardship to our customers who rely on our services daily to get them to work, to school or college, to attend hospital and doctors' appointments or job interviews." The operator said contingency plans were being put in place but urged the union to "get back round the table".
Passengers are facing disruption as bus drivers in Dorset prepare to stage a five-day strike over "poverty" wages.
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Ken Plowman and Leslie Kershaw were in their 20s in 1945, when they took part in the largest air assault in history. Flying Horsa gliders, they joined an armada of 3,000 aircraft landing 14,000 troops on the River Rhine's east bank. Darren Lewington, from Jet Age Museum, said: "They play down their heroics in such a way that it is truly humbling." Nearly 400 Horsa gliders were involved in the operation, in March 1945. Made by cabinet makers, with an 88ft (27m) wingspan, most of the wooden giants broke up on landing. "Flying a heavily laden, unarmed glider into enemy territory under intense fire was immensely brave," said Mr Lewington. "Casualties amongst glider pilots were as high as 30% but these two play down their heroics in such a matter-of-fact and unassuming way that it is truly humbling." In 2013, the Gloucester museum was awarded £9,000 to build a replica Horsa glider cockpit which is now nearing completion.
Two veteran RAF glider pilots have returned to the "cockpit" at a museum in Gloucestershire to mark the 70th anniversary of Operation Varsity.
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This is exactly the same outcome as in 2014, although slightly fewer students got the very top grades. A total of 19.2% passes were A* and A grades - a drop of 0.2%. Wales failed to close the gap with England but the education minister said the best results had been matched and it was a "strong performance". But opposition parties said it was a reality check and Wales had come up short. An improvement in performance in the north east of England (67.2%) saw the region overtake Wales (66.6%) in terms of A* to C grades. Education Minister Huw Lewis said Wales had "at least matched" its best results. "This is the result of hard work and sustained effort by both our learners and their teachers and I wholeheartedly congratulate everyone involved on this success," he said. "I am particularly pleased we have seen such a strong performance at key subjects including English, maths, Welsh and science." Take our GCSE quiz here. There is a difficulty in comparing results for maths, where there has been a further fall in the results of pupils who sat the exam in June. This year, just 47.5% managed to reach a grade of A*-C, compared with 50.6% last year and 52.8% in 2013. However, many pupils in Wales sat the exam earlier in the year. When those results, which tend to be higher, are taken into account, it is expected that figure will rise. Those results will not be released until the autumn. Wales still lags behind other parts of the UK, as well as comparable regions of England. The results show: GCSE results Must do better - how did 40 schools challenged to improve perform? How does it feel for a head teacher as results approach? Where are we at with GCSE changes? Northern Irish pupils achieve best results What is it like to re-take a maths GCSE 22 years later? The 66.6% score on A*-C puts Wales ahead of just two of the nine regions of England - Yorkshire (65.3%) and the East Midlands (65.9%). But it lags behind the north east of England (67.2%) and the north west (68.6%). However, at A*-A grades, Wales scored higher than four of the English regions. POLITICAL REACTION Conservative Shadow Education Minister Angela Burns AM said: "Overall results across Wales are - regrettably - still lagging behind England. "In fact, the attainment gap has widened. That's despite clear promises from Labour's first minister to turn performance around and challenge - and surpass - English results." Aled Roberts AM, Liberal Democrat education spokesman, called it a "massive reality check" for ministers who had spent months heralding this year as being the one where Wales would see a further narrowing of the gap. "However much spin the Welsh government issues before results as to why we cannot rely on bare data, the reality of the situation is that they would have been very willing to rely on that same data if it had painted a more positive picture." Plaid Cymru accused the Welsh government of a "culture of complacency".
Two thirds of Welsh pupils who took GCSEs got A* to C grades, according to this year's results.
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Media playback is not supported on this device Team GB won four medals in Sochi, which matched their total from the inaugural Winter Olympics in 1924 in France. Six sports shared a fund of £13.4m over the past four years, but that pot could now be boosted for the 2018 Olympics. We should shed this idea of not being a winter nation. Actually it's not true - we can be "It's been an outstanding Games and the athletes need and deserve the support," said UK Sport chief Liz Nicholl. "I can't say what the investment will be from sport-to-sport as we'll discuss that with them over the coming weeks and months, but I am anticipating more investment in winter sport." Lizzy Yarnold continued Britain's proud tradition of winning a medal at each Olympics in which the sport of skeleton has featured by claiming gold in Russia. The men's curling team took silver and the women bronze, while snowboarder Jenny Jones finished third in slopestyle's Olympic debut. Great Britain finished 19th in the medal table, but the plan - based on the sort of "no compromise" funding policy applied to summer sports post-2006 - is to be higher in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in four years. "We're anticipating building on it and will be going for more medals in 2018," said Nicholl. "The success has shown that the approach we have taken to athletes, and supporting sports with medal prospects, is working. Media playback is not supported on this device "It gives us a huge amount of confidence in the system." Four-time Olympic rowing champion Sir Matthew Pinsent, who has covered both the Vancouver and Sochi Games for the BBC, believes now is the time for winter events to receive the same support as the summer sports. "I think some of the winter sports, like curling, freestyle and short track are performing like summer sports, so why offer different support?" he said. "Germany and Norway don't make this distinction and I think we should shed this idea of not being a winter nation. Actually it's not true - we can be." 1924: Men (curling) 1936: Men (ice hockey) 1952: Jeannette Altwegg (figure skating) 1964: Tony Nash & Robin Dixon (two-man bobsleigh) 1976: John Curry (figure skating) 1980: Robin Cousins (figure skating) 1984: Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean (figure skating) 2002: Women (curling) 2010: Amy Williams (skeleton) 2014: Lizzy Yarnold (skeleton) * Madge Syers won figure skating gold at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London Nicholl said that the funding award would not be anywhere near the £272m divided between 19 summer Olympic sports but insisted that did not mean Team GB could not continue to make improvements. "We'll never be topping the table with the Russians and Canadians, but we can make gains and that is what our investment principles are based on," she said. Having achieved a bronze medal and a record six top-10 finishes, the British freestyle skiing and snowboarding team are well placed for a significant increase on the £1.5m they have received since 2012. "We have big plans on how we can develop and grow the freestyle programme and are hopeful UK Sport will help invest in that alongside commercial partners," Lesley McKenna, British Park and Pipe programme manager, told BBC Sport. The British bobsleigh duo of Paula Walker and Rebekah Wilson were the only team to miss their UK Sport performance target, finishing 12th when seeking a top-eight result. Success does cost money but we are committed to investment However, the men's four-man bobsleigh came an impressive fifth, just 0.11 seconds off the podium. GB Bobsleigh performance director Gary Anderson is hopeful that the set-up - which received £3.3m leading into Sochi and has invested heavily in new technology - will continue to be backed. "We are only halfway through an eight-year programme and with support through to 2018 I'm convinced we can challenge for not just one medal, but in all three events [men's two- and four-man and women's two-man bob]," he told BBC Sport. UK Sport recently axed funding for basketball, synchronised swimming, water polo and weightlifting but Nicholl insisted this announcement was not related to the performances of winter sport athletes in Sochi. It will now enter a series of meetings with officials from all British Winter Olympic disciplines about performance targets over the next four years and reveal its decision in June.
UK Sport says it expects to increase funding for winter sports following Great Britain's record-equalling Winter Olympic performance in Sochi.
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The claim: England and Wales have the highest incarceration rate per head of the population in Western Europe. Reality Check verdict: In 2014 England and Wales did indeed have the highest incarceration rate in Western Europe, marginally ahead of Scotland. Together with former home secretaries Jacqui Smith and Ken Clarke, he had written a letter to the Times calling for the prison population in England and Wales to be cut from the current level of more than 85,000 to the level in 1993 of about 45,000. They referred to 1993 as being the year in which Michael Howard said that "prison works". The prison population grew rapidly after that point, especially in the following five years. In the last five years it has been pretty much static at about 85,000. Since 1993 the prison population has almost doubled over a period when the overall population of England and Wales has grown by about 17%. Mr Clegg was only talking about England and Wales because in the rest of the UK the justice system is a devolved power, controlled by the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. He also said: "We already have higher rates of incarceration per head of the population than anywhere else in Western Europe." This chart based on Eurostat figures for 2014 shows that England and Wales is indeed ahead of the rest of Western Europe with 146 prisoners per 100,000 population, narrowly ahead of Scotland's 145. Northern Ireland had 93 prisoners per 100,000 population. Read more from Reality Check
Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg was on Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday talking about prison reform.
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TV signals use different parts of the radio spectrum to radar, but both bounce off solid objects. Using special receivers, researchers said they were able to track up to 30 planes simultaneously flying at altitudes of up to 10,000ft (3km). But they say more work has to be done. "Questions around resilience and service standards need to be answered and we'd need to explore formal agreements with the broadcasters, but this is very exciting and we'll be looking to further develop the concept over the next five years," said Nats engineer Nick Young. The study involved a TV signal broadcast by a transmitter at Crystal Palace in London. Three specialist receivers were used to measure the directions of the signals that reflected off the aircraft and the differences in time they took to be received compared to the rest of the unimpeded TV signal. This "triangulated" information was then used to deduce the various planes' locations. A follow-up trial in Liverpool suggested that the TV signal-based system experienced less interference from wind turbines than traditional radar receivers. "As the blades rotate they can enter a velocity range that the radar is looking for," explained Mr Young. A typical wind farm can contain 30 turbines moving at 300m (984ft) per second which is aircraft speed, he added. "The radar detects it and may think it's an aircraft," he said. "It can exhibit strange behaviour. But there's a suggestion that using this type of [TV signal] 'radar' might overcome these issues." Using TV signals instead could save money and free up valuable radio spectrum for other uses, Mr Young added "Radar is big and expensive, it's an effort to procure and maintain. "You could almost put this on a phone mast and distribute the signal over a wide area - plus you've got third parties [broadcasters] already transmitting it." The research was been carried out in conjunction with the defence firm Thales UK and the R&D lab Roke Manor over the past two years. But the idea behind the project is far from new. In 1935, radar pioneer Sir Robert Watson-Watt successfully bounced a radio wave from a BBC short-wave transmitter off a Heyford bomber, indicating the technology worked. "Increased computer processing power has made this easier," said Mr Young. "It's only in the last five or 10 years that we have entered a stage where we can process enough information to make it viable. "There are a number of technical and regulatory hurdles to overcome before this could be considered for operational use," he added.
Research carried out by the air traffic control provider Nats and its partners suggests that existing TV signals could be used to track aircraft, providing a cheaper alternative to radar.
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Media playback is not supported on this device It was physical, it was abrasive, it was what they talked about all week and what new head coach Eddie Jones said he wanted to get England back to. Jones said he was going up to Murrayfield to set the tone and leave with the win. He will go away happy and we will see a progression on what they did against Scotland over the next few games. The tactics were more route one, using the forwards. Centre Jonathan Joseph didn't really get the ball and the wingers mainly got it from kick returns so there is still a bit of finesse for England to put around the back line. The stats showed that England's set-piece was very good. Captain Dylan Hartley's line-outs were brilliant (England only lost one of their 15) and they were clinical. Jones has said he wants a strong set-piece game and he wants a strong, abrasive pack. They delivered that against Scotland. England also probably had two clear-cut chances to score tries and they took both of them. From that side it is all positives but I think Joseph will want to be in the game more. Media playback is not supported on this device His centre partner Owen Farrell wasn't in the game that much either and full-back Mike Brown wasn't his usual self. That will come but it is just going to take a bit of time. I am not massively sold on the combination of Owen Farrell and George Ford at fly-half and inside centre. If you have two number 10s who are out-and-out number 10s then both of them are spending too much time organising the game rather than carrying the ball. Farrell only carried the ball three times against Scotland and Joseph four. The midfield is not really functioning properly if that is happening. But at the same time, they linked up beautifully to put Jack Nowell in for a try. I would prefer an out-and-out inside centre who can also be a ball player rather than a fly-half playing there. At the moment it is a stop gap for England. I would prefer someone with a little bit more individual threat who can also do the distributing. Someone who is saying, "I need to be in the game more". Sometimes Farrell is trying to plan what England do and plot them around the pitch. George Ford needs to be doing that. Henry Slade is your dream but he is injured. He would have been the answer without a question of a doubt. At the moment they are having to do what they can with limited resources. England edged the breakdown in terms of numbers and in terms of actual turnovers. There are a lot of people in the England pack that can make turnovers with Dan Cole, Chris Robshaw, Joe Launchbury, James Haskell, Billy Vunipola and Mako Vunipola off the bench. I do hope England don't come up against an out-and-out specialist open-side flanker and get done again. We are not going to see that probably until we go to play Australia in the summer but it will be interesting to see what England do in the meantime. We still need to develop an out-and-out number seven. It will strengthen our game but someone has got to play well enough to keep knocking on the door. I judge intensity on the speed of your ball coming out from rucks and how fast people are getting into position to carry again. Media playback is not supported on this device England completely outworked Scotland in that respect. I also judge intensity on what a side does in defence - in terms of line speed in getting up to make a tackle. In the first half England were a bit off it but in the second half they were outstanding. They really led the line and outworked Scotland. From that point of view I think Eddie will be very happy. The scorelines might be similar between England's first game under Stuart Lancaster at Murrayfield in 2012 (a 13-6 victory) and this weekend but England had a lot more control this weekend. At the same time it can't really be compared. Stuart was creating a brand new team. He got rid of all the old guys and brought in loads of youngsters. Jones' team knew each other very well. I would give it a solid six and a half out of 10. Maybe a seven. There is still a lot of work to be done but knowing Jones and the workaholic nature he has got, he'll think the same.
In terms of what England wanted out of the game with Scotland I think they got everything.
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This will affect businesses that use the VAT Flat Rate Scheme but which spend very little on goods, including raw materials - such as firms providing services. The VAT Flat Rate Scheme simplifies businesses' record keeping, and makes it easy to work out the VAT they have to pay. The proposed changes are the most important element of the Autumn Statement for this type of business. Normally a business deducts the VAT on its inputs (what they buy) from the VAT charged on what they sell (outputs). Under the Flat Rate Scheme, that two stage process is simplified to one step. For example, the flat rate percentage for a clothes shop is 7.5% - so if the owner of that shop sells a dress for £120 including VAT of £20 he will pay a flat rate of £9 (£120 x 7.5%) to HMRC. The flat rate percentage for a detective agency is 12%. Exactly which sales count can be complicated - the details can be found on the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) website. The percentages for each type of business vary - there is a list here. The flat rate scheme is designed to give the government roughly the same amount of VAT, but should be much easier to work out. However, because it is an approximation, some businesses will pay more, and some less. The government is concerned that some businesses are using the Flat Rate Scheme to pay less VAT than is appropriate In the Autumn Statement, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced changes which affect businesses which have a very low cost base. These businesses are now called "limited cost traders". Limited cost traders can still use the Flat Rate Scheme, but their percentage will be 16.5%. So if they sell £120 of work, including £20 of VAT, the flat rate amount is £19.80 (£120 x 16.5%). A limited cost trader is defined as one that spends less than 2% of its sales on goods (not services) in an accounting period. When working out the amount spent on goods, it cannot include purchases of: A firm will also be a limited cost trader if it spends less than £1,000 a year, even if this is more than than 2% of the firm's turnover on goods. It will increase the VAT paid by labour-intensive businesses where very little is spent on goods. For example, this may affect IT contractors, consultants, hairdressers and accountancy firms. It will also affect construction workers who supply their labour, but where the raw materials are provided by the main contractor. Mike Cherry, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: "Many small businesses rely on the optional VAT flat rate scheme to simplify the management of their tax affairs. "We welcome the government's attempts to clamp down on any misuse of this scheme by a small minority of businesses that use it. However we would be concerned if any small businesses who play by the rules now end up having to pay more to remain within the scheme. "Following these reforms, it is important HMRC now produces clear guidance so that small firms understand whether or not to join the scheme." The new rules start on 1 April 2017, but may also affect invoices issued, and goods bought, from now on. There is more about these "anti-forestalling" rules at sections 8.2 and 9.7 of the newly updated HMRC leaflet on the Flat Rate Scheme. The scheme can be more complicated than expected, and this note is only an overview, so be sure to read the guidance carefully.
Significant changes have been announced for the amount of VAT that many small businesses will have to pay.
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The ban, effective Thursday, applies to officials with access to classified information, as well as ministers, mayors and country magistrates. BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei says there are concerns that they may inadvertently reveal information. It comes as relations between the two sides are already strained. Some officials choose China for further education partly because they want to build connections to generate trade and investment opportunities. But there have also been a string of cases involving Taiwanese defence ministry officials spying for China, our correspondent says. "The ministry has discussed the matter for some time and published the revised regulations in view of national security," said Interior Minister Chen Wei-zen on Wednesday. State media Focus Taiwan cited National Security Bureau data that showed 97 civil servants went to China between 2004 and 2013, mainly to pursue doctorates. They mainly studied at Xiamen University in Fujian Province, China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing and Jinan University in Guangzhou, Focus Taiwan said. Relations between the two sides were frayed earlier this year when protests broke out in Taiwan over a trade deal with China. In March, student protesters occupied the parliament building. In October, Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou voiced support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, angering Chinese officials. There are also increasing worries about China's growing influence in Taiwan, our correspondent reports. Beijing claims Taiwan as a province of China with hopes of reunification at some point.
Taiwan has banned its senior government officials from higher studies in mainland China, citing "national security" reasons.
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The Anglo-Dutch giant's chief executive Ben van Beurden accepted that Arctic drilling "divides society", but said the world needs new sources of oil. Greenpeace said Shell was taking a "massive risk" in a "pristine" region. Shell also announced a $15bn (£9.9bn) cut in global spending, and profit figures that disappointed investors. The cut in investment - spread over three years - comes after a fall in the oil price. Although the price is expected to remain lower in the medium term, Mr van Beurden said: "We are taking a prudent approach here and we must be careful not to over-react to the recent fall in oil prices. "Shell is taking structured decisions to balance growth and returns." Shell also said profits for the last three months of 2014 had risen to $4.2bn compared with $2.2bn in the same period a year earlier. The numbers were below analysts' forecasts, prompting a big sell-off of Shell's shares, which were down by 4.3% at the end of Thursday. Shell put its Arctic plans on hold two years ago after a drilling vessel ran aground and legal wrangles in the US. The company has already spent $1bn on preparing its drilling work in Alaska's Chukchi Sea. It was costing Shell several hundred millions of dollars a year to keep the existing operations ticking over, the company said. Mr van Beurden said there were still issues to resolve before drilling began, such as over operating permits and getting further facilities in place. But he hoped to see work begin in the summer. "We will only do this if we feel that we can do it responsibly," Mr van Beurden told the BBC. "I think that we are as well prepared as any company can be to mitigate the risks." He also pointed out that there are already other energy companies operating in the Arctic. Mr van Beurden said that the world needs new sources of oil and gas to meet demand and that the Arctic offered potentially the biggest resource base ever found. Estimates have put the estimates at some 24bn barrels in Alaska. Environmentalists have campaigned against Shell for years. Greenpeace's Charlie Kronick, said: "Despite announcing cuts [in global investment], Shell hasn't taken the opportunity to cut its most high-cost high-risk project. "Shell is taking a massive risk doggedly chasing oil in the Arctic, not just with shareholder value, but with the pristine Arctic environment. "A spill there will be environmentally and financially catastrophic. It's time for investors to recognise that it's impossible for Shell to justify its continued pursuit of offshore Arctic oil." As the first of the major oil companies to report its figures for last year, Shell plays the role of the canary in the coal mine - or on the oil rig. After a rather sickly 2013, profits are actually up. But the impact of the low oil price is clearly biting. The company announced that it would be cutting investment over the next three years in new exploration and the development of oil and gas fields, a move that will raise fresh concerns about its business in the North Sea. Last summer Shell announced the loss of 250 jobs in Aberdeen. The chief executive, Ben Van Beurden, said that the company would not "over-react" to the oil price which has fallen by 60% since last June. And of course a low oil price means lower prices at the petrol pumps for consumers. He said though that Shell would look at further cuts if necessary. As well as the North Sea, the company's operations in Nigeria, where it recently paid a £55m bill to clean up pollution after a major oil spill, and the Arctic will also come under increased scrutiny. Meanwhile, Shell's profits for the quarter after stripping out one-off items, such as asset sales and accounting changes, were $3.26bn. That is a 12% rise on the same period a year earlier but down from the $5.85bn in the June to September quarter. Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said: "As expected, fourth quarter performance has been impacted by the lower oil price, although downstream refining operations have provided some counterbalance. "More broadly, the numbers are below forecast, with the news providing a difficult start to the oil majors' results season. "In all, and despite the disappointing numbers, the dividend payment remains core, with the payment being left unchanged." Shell said it was spending $12bn on dividends to shareholders in 2014, and also repurchased $3.3bn of its own shares. The group said it had slowed the pace of share buybacks to conserve cash and that near-term oil prices would dictate how it progressed. Oil prices have fallen by almost 60% since June because of weak global demand and a boom in US shale production. Shell's main rivals, BP and Total, have also announced large cutbacks in capital expenditure in recent weeks.
Royal Dutch Shell is reviving plans to drill for oil in the Arctic in a move likely to intensify its battle with environmentalists.
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The organisation said that councils stood "ready, willing and able to take at least 2,000 refugees". All 32 local authorities have agreed to support a "coordinated response" to the humanitarian crisis. But not all council areas may end up receiving refugees due to the complex needs of those arriving. At least 18 local authorities could see the first groups of people arriving before Christmas, Cosla said. The UNHCR estimates that 520,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year, most braving dangerous journeys from North Africa and Turkey as they flee the conflict in Syria. The Scottish government has pledged to accept at least 2,000 of the 20,000 refugees which the UK government has agreed to take. Cosla president David O'Neill said there had been an "unprecedented response" from Scottish local government to the crisis. He added: "A number of councils had already been in discussions with the Home Office about their involvement in the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme. "The last three weeks has seen all Scotland's councils willing to support a coordinated response to what can only be described as a humanitarian crisis. "For many councils that has seen them committing to taking refugees immediately." Glasgow City Council was one of a small number of councils across the UK that had already taken in Syrian refugees, with more than a quarter of refugees that have arrived in the UK through the scheme being housed there. Cosla said Scotland's local authorities had an excellent track record in supporting the most vulnerable in society and already had effective systems and partnerships in place which makes them well placed to host Syrian refugees in their communities. But it said it recognised the scale of the task and the need for detailed planning. Cosla spokesman Harry McGuigan said: "We fully recognise that this is not simply about matching people to houses, and that we must meet the wider needs of people so that they can integrate into our communities and build a safe life in Scotland. "The response to this crisis will therefore be focused on balancing the urgency of the situation with planning the most appropriate ways in which councils and their community planning partners receive and integrate these extremely vulnerable people." Cosla called on the Home Office and the Scottish government to ensure the programme is fully resourced so that local authorities and partners in areas such as health, the police and the voluntary sector could put appropriate services in place to meet the needs of refugees.
Syrian refugees are likely to have arrived in many areas of Scotland by Christmas, local authority body Cosla has said.
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The 39-year-old, who goes by the name Mick Fett, was born the year the first film in the series came out. Since the 1990s, Fett has amassed a vast collection of action figures, costumes and other merchandise. His collection fills the five-bedroom home he shares with his girlfriend and is estimated to be worth A$500,000 (£300,000; $370,000). "I mentioned that I had some Star Wars stuff when we first got together," he told the BBC. "She was a bit overwhelmed at first and then she sort of adapted." The suburban house is filled with a life-size Han Solo carbonite statue, priceless vintage toys and a vast collection of creatures from across the galaxy. There's an entire room dedicated to arcade games and even a pod-racer in the backyard. Only one room does not have Star Wars memorabilia in it - the main bathroom. You might also like: Rogue One receives warm reviews Star Wars' Rey falls for Mongolia story Things to know before you see Rogue One "When I'm not dressing up in Star Wars costumes, I wear a uniform," he said. "It's two different worlds. The guys at work can't believe what I do in my Star Wars time and all my Star Wars friends can't believe I'm a police officer." The idea to redecorate the Darth Vader costume began when he attended an overseas Star Wars convention. He originally intended to attend the event as a Stormtrooper with an Australian flag cape. But at the suggestion the idea evolved. "One of my mates said: 'Why don't you go out and spray paint the entire costume?' I thought - instead of doing a Stormtrooper why not Vader?" The Down Under alter ego of the Sith Lord has since become a huge hit - at home and abroad. "I don't know whether Aussie Vader is a villain or a Rebel," he laughed. "I'm a bit of a Rogue One myself." "One of my favourite sayings is 'May the Force be with you, mate,'" he said. "The cape is an Australian flag. I've got beer cans on my belt and blue flames airbrushed onto my helmet and chest piece. I've even made a custom light-sabre with a didgeridoo handle." He has already seen the new Star Wars film Rogue One, once at the red carpet premiere and again at a midnight screening with fans. "It definitely beat all my expectations," he said, adding that the latest blockbuster is a great tribute to the original trilogy. "Empire Strikes Back was dark and gritty. Rogue One has a lot of those elements too." Reporting by the BBC's Greg Dunlop
A Sydney police officer and huge Star Wars fan has become a local hit after creating a Darth Vader costume painted with the Australian flag.
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Many in the list have been found down old mine tunnels or on slag heaps where water and even fire have had the opportunity to work up novel compounds. It is another example, the researchers argue, of our pervasive influence on the planet. New minerals and mineral-like compounds are now being formed faster than at anytime in Earth's history, they say. "These 200 minerals are roughly 4% of the total known minerals, but they all occurred in the last couple of thousand years, most in the last couple of hundred years," explained Robert Hazen from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC. "That's an incredible rapid spike in the rise of mineral species unmatched in the history of our planet," he told BBC News. The only period that bears comparison is the time when oxygen became abundant over the surface of the Earth just over two billion years ago. But that event would have played out over millions of years. Minerals are specific combinations of chemical elements arranged into crystalline structures. Earth's rocks are built from different aggregations. The likes of feldspar, quartz and mica will be known by most people. But bobcookite, calclacite, or elyite are obscure, to say the least. Their existence is down to humans creating a setting where chemical reactions can take place between materials that might otherwise not have come into contact. In addition to mines, which seem to be a particularly productive environment, the new minerals have been found to occur inside smelters, old geothermal piping, on the surfaces of archaeological artefacts, even inside museum specimen drawers. The 208 man-mediated minerals are listed by Prof Hazen and colleagues in a paper just published by the American Mineralogist. They have all been approved by the International Mineralogical Association. This organisation operates some quite tight definitions on the sorts of compounds that can appear among the 5,200 entries in the official catalogue. And the group that does not make the grade is the huge number of mineral-like materials that have been manufactured by humans for a specific purpose. "Human synthesise thousands and thousands of materials - semi-conductors, and laser crystals, and magnets, and batteries, and building stone," said Prof Hazen. "These have mineral-like materials that will persist in the geological record for the next billion years." It is further evidence, if more were needed, that Earth has now entered a new epoch. Currently, geologists label the time since the last ice age, 11,700 years ago, as the Holocene. But there is a push to introduce a new classification to reflect the immense, planet-wide changes driven by humans in recent decades - and for it to be called the Anthropocene Epoch. The list of new man-mediated minerals bolsters the case. Co-worker Marcus Origlieri from the University of Arizona commented: "In the sediment layers left behind from our age, future mineralogists will find plentiful building materials such as bricks, cinder blocks, and cement, metal alloys such as steel, titanium, and aluminium, along with many lethal radioactive byproducts of the nuclear age. They might also marvel at some beautiful manufactured gemstones, like cubic zirconia, moissanite, synthetic rubies, and many others." And Edward Grew from the University of Maine added: "These minerals and mineral-like compounds will be preserved in the geological record as a distinctive, globally distributed horizon of crystalline novelty - a persistent marker that marks our age as different from all that came before." Colin Waters, from the British Geological Survey, is secretary to the Anthropocene Working Group, which is the body trying to draw up detailed criteria to define the proposed new epoch. He echoed the statements of Prof Hazen's team. The great changes occurring on Planet Earth were being reflected in the mineralogical record, just as they were in the chemistry of the atmosphere and the oceans, he said. And Dr Waters highlighted the ball-point pen as an example. "The ball at the end is made from tungsten carbide. Billions of them have been produced since the 1950s. Imagine how much of that material is knocking around the planet. "We're ingenious at creating new mineral-like materials for our own purpose, and it is actually these that will be the voluminous signature of our presence on the planet, rather than some fairly obscure mineral that develops in a mine as a result of our excavation and then later alteration." Prof Hazen's team is part of the Deep Carbon Observatory, an international network of nearly 1000 multi-disciplinary scientists committed to investigating the quantities, movements, forms, and origins of carbon in deep Earth. Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
Scientists have identified 208 new minerals that owe their existence wholly or in part to humans.
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He crossed his hands above his head as he finished the race - a gesture made by Ethiopia's Oromo people who have suffered brutal police crackdowns. He says he may be killed if he goes home but Ethiopia's government says he will be welcomed as a hero. However, state media is not showing photos of him crossing the line. There has been a wave of protests in Ethiopia in recent months over a series of frustrations, including attempts by the governments to reallocate land in the Oromo and Amhara regions. US-based Human Rights Watch says security forces have killed more than 400 Oromo protesters, a figure the government disputes. Rule 50 of the Olympic charter bans political displays or protests and the IOC say they are gathering information about the case. The BBC's Emmanuel Igunza in neighbouring Kenya says Mr Feyisa is being described by some as the bravest Olympian at the Rio Games for his anti-government protest, but he now faces the prospect of a life in exile. Within hours of his protest, a crowd-funding page was set up, saying the runner had displayed "extraordinary heroism" and that he had become an "international symbol" for the Oromo protests. The California-based organiser had initially set a target of $10,000 but it was exceeded within an hour. "We raised the bar to $25,000 and that too was exceeded in a few hours," Solomon Ungashe wrote on Facebook. After the race, Mr Feyisa explained why, as an Oromo, he supported the protests about land and resources. "The Ethiopian government is killing my people so I stand with all protests anywhere as Oromo is my tribe. My relatives are in prison and if they talk about democratic rights they are killed," he said. A legal team hired by Ethiopians in US is headed to Rio to try and help Mr Feyisa, who has a wife and two children in Ethiopia, with a request to seek asylum in the US. But Information Minister Getachew Reda told the BBC the government had no reason to arrest him and it respected his political opinion. He also said none of Mr Feyisa's relatives had been jailed over the Oromo protests. Ethiopian state-owned television station EBC Channel 3 covered the race live, including the finish, but did not repeat the clip in subsequent bulletins - focussing instead on the winner Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge.
A crowd-funding campaign has raised more than $40,000 (£30,000) to help Ethiopia's Olympic marathon silver medallist Feyisa Lilesa seek asylum.
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The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said she was "swept off my feet" when she was contacted by a man she believed to be in Turkey. She lost her home, business and took out several loans over 14 months. She said: "The pressure was horrendous, and it got to the point where all the money had gone." More on this and other York stories Speaking to BBC Radio York, the woman, known as Nancy, said she had come out of a "bad marriage" and joined dating website Match.com "to dip my toe into the dating world". In July 2015, she received her first message. Nancy, from North Yorkshire, said: "I just connected with what seemed to be a very attractive-looking person who was really keen to talk to me. "There's a term for it - lovebombed - where you're just bombarded with affection and compliments. "When you're with someone who tells you how awful you are every day for ten years, then someone pays you some compliments... of course you're going to be swept away." After chatting for six weeks online, they then began talking via another messaging service, and she was asked for money. She was told the man and his young son had been attacked and mugged, with the boy requiring "urgent medical care". "It was a really bizarre amount of money, it was €3,750, it wasn't a straightforward amount of money I would have normally associated with a fraud," she said. "Reluctantly I sent the money, because I couldn't think of a child in distress and we seemed to be getting on really well." Nancy said she was "bombarded" with messages from the moment she woke up to when she went to sleep, with further requests for money coming in. She did not tell anyone about what she was experiencing. Nancy said: "As soon as the money requests came through it was posed to me that I shouldn't tell anybody because it would look really bad, nobody would understand." Action Fraud advice Nancy continued: "I came from one abusive relationship and went straight back into another one. "The manipulation was so extreme that I was told that if I didn't send money, they would starve and die. I didn't want that on my conscience. "You get to the point where you have lost so much money, you have to keep going in the hope that you're wrong." After reading fraud advice online, Nancy went to police at the start of September, but by this time, more than £300,000 had gone. No arrests have been made over the crime, also known as 'catfishing'. Nancy added: "I've got no house and huge debts, but the pressure has now gone. "I've restarted my business and have got a really good support network now."
A woman "lovebombed" out of more than £300,000 in an online dating scam has shared her story as a warning to others.
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Open-side flanker Sam Underhill has been ruled out for four months with a shoulder injury. McCusker made 133 appearances for Scarlets before moving to London Irish last season, where he played 17 games. The 30-year-old has won 10 caps and joins Ospreys having initially signed for Welsh Premiership club Carmarthen Quins following his release from Irish. "With Sam's injury and one or two others working their way back to full fitness who are not quite there yet, we felt that we needed someone else in to help us through this period," said Ospreys head coach Steve Tandy. "We are fortunate to have someone with Rob's versatility and experience available and have brought him into the environment with a view to him helping us prepare for Zebre at home in the opening round of the Pro12 next month."
Ospreys have signed former Scarlets and Wales back-rower Rob McCusker on a short-term contract as injury cover.
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Pham Minh Hoang had written articles that "blackened the image of the country", according to the judge at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. Hoang, 56, admitted having joined an opposition group but said his writings were not aimed at overthrowing anyone. Human rights activists say dozens of government critics in Vietnam have been given long jail terms in recent years. France's foreign ministry had earlier voiced "serious concern" about Hoang's case. His family has said he will appeal against the sentence. His wife, Le Thi Kieu Oanh, said she was "utterly shocked" by the court's decision. "I am losing hope... but as a wife, I will fight until the very end," she told the BBC's Newshour programme. Hoang, who was said to have written 33 articles under the pen name Phan Kien Quoc, asked for leniency, saying he did not know he was breaking the law. "My writings were not aimed at overthrowing anyone," he told the court. "I only pointed out the negative things in society, and I think the country needs to be more democratic." His lawyer said Hoang was only exercising his right to free speech, and drew from his experience in France "where there is a civilised education environment". Subversion has become an increasingly common charge brought against democracy activists in Vietnam - resulting in sentences of up to 15 years in prison, says Nga Pham of the BBC's Vietnamese service. But Hoang received the more lenient jail term of three years for a number of reasons; he is a French citizen, and although he confessed to belonging to the banned opposition group Viet Tan, he said he was not acting under its instruction. Viet Tan is a California-based pro-democracy group that Vietnam considers a terrorist organisation. The US has said there is no evidence to suggest that Viet Tan is a terrorist group.
A French-Vietnamese dissident blogger has been jailed in Vietnam for three years for attempted subversion.
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Instead of fees rising to £9,250 per year in the autumn, Jeremy Corbyn is proposing a complete handbrake turn in saying that university tuition should not cost students anything. It's a bolder step than Labour's previous leader, who two years ago opted for a halfway house of cutting fees to £6,000 - and then was accused of pleasing no-one. This is Labour going for an all-or-nothing approach - asserting free education as a fundamental principle - and creating the starkest choice in university policy for two decades. It's a direct appeal to younger voters - with surveys suggesting that students are more likely to vote Labour. It makes the pitch that no-one should be deterred from university because of the cost or fear of debt. Labour has costed the removal of fees - and the reintroduction of maintenance grants - as being worth £11.2bn per year. And this is only England - because education funding is a devolved matter. There are no fees for Scottish students in Scotland and the Institute for Fiscal Studies says scrapping the lower fees charged in Northern Ireland and Wales would cost a further £500m per year. This would be covered by the £48.6bn that Labour's manifesto says will be raised by tax changes - along with the party's other spending commitments. But there are lower estimates. Labour's figure is based on replacing the fees currently paid by students. But the IFS and London Economics say the cost to the Treasury could be lower, when written off loans are taken into account, with forecasts around £7.5bn to £8bn. Labour's big move on fees represents a complete of direction. Previously in government, Labour raised fees and in opposition proposed a modest reduction. But they are now proposing to bulldoze the apparatus of fees, loans and repayments. The most recent figures show £76bn is owed in student loans in England - with this level of student debt having almost doubled in four years. From this autumn, fees will begin increasing every year with inflation and will soon glide past the £10,000 mark, with interest charges also rising to 6.1%. And the Conservative government, before the election, had announced plans to sell off student debt to private investors. Under Labour's plans, this whole push towards marketisation would be ditched - and universities would return to being directly funded by government. But is there any evidence that getting rid of fees would help more young people into university, including the disadvantaged? Universities are worried that such a switch to direct funding, dependent on government finances, would put a limit on places and a brake on expansion. One of the quiet revolutions of recent years has been the complete removal of limits on student numbers - with universities able to recruit as many students as they can accommodate - and opening the door to rising numbers of graduates. The argument for fees has always been that they provide the funding to allow more young people to go to university - and that a much smaller proportion went to university when there were no fees. This year has seen a fall of 5% in university applications from UK students - and it follows a pattern of dips when fees are increased. But the long-term trend has been relentlessly upwards, with a huge growth in demand for university places. It remains a powerful symbol of family aspiration. Although wealthy families remain much more likely to send their children to university - entry rates have risen across all social classes, including the poorest. Do students get value for money from tuition fees? Is this an investment that is repaid in better job prospects? Department for Education figures published last month showed that graduates remained more likely to be in a job than non-graduates and on average earned £10,000 per year more. Among younger people, this graduate advantage is less, at £6,000 per year. But the figures also showed that, despite rises in fees, graduate salaries have stagnated over the past decade. Labour's plan sends a strong political signal to young voters. A survey from the Higher Education Policy Institute, taken before the manifesto publication, suggested that Labour is now more popular among students than it was in any of the three previous general elections. The survey found Labour significantly ahead in the student vote. The Liberal Democrats, once the most popular party for students, are trailing in third behind the Conservatives. Is this still the cloud of tuition fees hanging over the Lib Dems from their U-turn during the coalition government? Could they really entirely scrap fees? There will be plenty of scrutiny over funding Labour's plans. But there is nothing unprecedented or outlandish about getting rid of fees. Germany has phased out tuition fees - and universities in the Netherlands and Scandinavia try to recruit students from England with the offer of low or no fees. French undergraduates can study for low fees. In the United States, New York state is introducing free fees for students from families earning up to about £100,000 per year, offering a handout to the squeezed middle classes. There are now leading universities in the US which have lower tuition fees than in England. The University of Washington charges less than the University of Wolverhampton. And the most immediate example of getting rid of fees has been in Scotland. For England's voters, Labour's undiluted policy on tuition fees - proposing their complete abolition - offers the sharpest divide in the road for decades.
Scrapping tuition fees in England is the biggest and most expensive proposal in Labour's £25bn worth of pledges for education.
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The Markit/CIPS manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index grew to 50.1 from 49.4 in April, which had been the lowest reading since early 2013. The 50 mark separates manufacturing growth from contraction, with the sector now just on the positive side. Manufacturing failed to boost overall UK growth during 2015 and early 2016. UK economic growth slowed to 0.4% in the first quarter of the year from 0.6% in late 2015, propped up by the services sector. Rob Dobson, senior economist at survey compilers Markit, said: "The manufacturing sector looks likely to act as an increased drag on the economy in the second quarter. "There are also signs that increased client uncertainty resulting from slower growth and the forthcoming EU referendum are weighing on investment spending and business decision-making in general." The report found that more than a third of manufacturers surveyed believed uncertainty over the EU vote has had an impact on their business, with 8% saying the effect was "strongly detrimental". The survey showed the investment goods industry experienced a difficult month, with production falling at the quickest pace since early 2013. Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, said the manufacturing sector was "essentially at a standstill in May". Ruth Miller, UK economist at Capital Economics, said the small improvement for manufacturing in May did little to change the fundamental picture of a struggling industrial sector. "Granted, the headline PMI index recovered from its three-year low in April, ticking up from an upwardly revised 49.4 to 50.1 in May, above the consensus expectation of 49.6," she said. Ms Miller said this was still far below the average since the economic recovery picked up at the start of 2013. However, she thought the situation would "improve for UK manufacturers later this year". Overall new orders rose in May. Meanwhile, some firms said they were already pricing in the expectation that inflation will rise. Annual consumer price inflation currently stands at 0.3%.
UK manufacturing activity rose slightly in May, raising concerns over the economy's strength in the run-up to the 23 June European Union referendum.
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The England skipper hit a run-a-ball 92 at Headingley, with James Taylor and Ben Stokes both scoring 41. David Willey had earlier reduced Australia to 30-3 with the new ball before they recovered to post 299-7. Glenn Maxwell, who was dropped on 6 and 35, top-scored with 85 off 64 balls. The Australia all-rounder also took two stunning catches but his efforts were not enough to prevent England overhauling a score of 300 or more for only the fourth time in their one-day international history. Their previous best ODI run-chase against Australia was 270-4 at Lord's in 1997. It was England's second successive victory, after they also won at Old Trafford on Tuesday, and means the hosts can still send Australia home defeated across all formats after they won the Ashes 3-2 and the solitary Twenty20 international by five runs. Morgan anchored England's run-chase perfectly with his eighth score of 50 or more in his last nine innings. Jason Roy and Taylor had shared a first-wicket partnership of 72 off 53 balls but England's progress stalled when both were dismissed in quick succession. Morgan, however, slowly rebuilt the innings as he took 40 balls to score his first 20 runs before slowly accelerating. He hit John Hastings for a straight six which landed on the roof of the adjacent rugby stadium as he thumped eight fours and two maximums before being caught at backward point by Maxwell's stunning one-handed catch. Although Morgan appeared disappointed not to have finished the job, his brilliant innings took England to 238-5 with more than 10 overs remaining. Some big hitting from Liam Plunkett and Willey, plus a steady hand from Moeen Ali, saw England home with 10 balls to spare. Morgan is the highest scorer in the series but only just ahead of Taylor, who followed up his century at Old Trafford with a counter-attacking 41 off 42 balls. He hit eight boundaries in his innings - compared to just five in his career-best 101 in Manchester earlier this week - and displayed a different side to his game before chasing a ball down the leg side and being acrobatically caught by Matthew Wade. Taking on the fast bowlers, he was particularly strong through the off side as he cut and drove impressively to seize the early initiative back from Australia following the early loss of Alex Hales for a two-ball duck. Former England captain Michael Vaughan believes Taylor has now done enough to justify selection on the tour of the UAE to play Pakistan next month. "I think they've got to take him," said Vaughan. "Taylor plays spin differently to many England players, using his feet well. "He hasn't faced brilliant spin in this series, but he's played it in a good fashion, and he's looked good against the quick bowlers. He's read situations well, and that's what he'd have to do at five in Test cricket." Willey, who will play for Yorkshire next season after deciding to leave Northants this summer, was superb with the new ball in the absence of the injured Chris Woakes and the rested Steven Finn. The left-armer started by swinging the white ball into the right-handers' pads - dismissing Joe Burns (played on) and Steve Smith (lbw) cheaply - before occasionally running it across the batsmen. That created doubt in the minds of Australia's batsmen and Aaron Finch was the next to go when he edged behind to Jonny Bairstow. Willey and Moeen were the pick of the England bowlers, with Australia failing to score a run off 50% of the latter's deliveries. However, the hosts' familiar problems at the back end of an innings resurfaced, with Australia smashing 77 off the last six overs. Both Willey and his fellow opening bowler Mark Wood bowled too full, allowing Wade and Hastings to get under the ball and plunder enough boundaries to take Australia from 215-7 in the 42nd over to 299-7 when their innings closed. It was not just Willey who impressed at Headingley, with another honorary Yorkshireman dazzling the crowd with some fantastic cricket. Maxwell, who is nicknamed The Big Show and has played for Yorkshire as an overseas player this summer, displayed some fantastic reverse-sweeps with the bat as well as also launching Adil Rashid for two huge sixes. However, he saved his show-stopping best for the end of England's run chase when he produced an incredible boundary catch to end Plunkett's entertaining late cameo. He caught the ball with both feet off the ground but, aware he was going to step over the rope, flicked the ball up with his right hand and then caught it in his left as he re-entered the playing area in front of the Western Terrace. His athletic best could not deny England though, and it is Morgan's side who have the momentum heading back to Old Trafford on Sunday.
Eoin Morgan inspired England to their best one-day international run chase against Australia as they levelled the five-match series to set up a decider at Old Trafford on Sunday.
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The 31-year-old has joined the Spitfires on a deal until the end of the season. Tubbs could be handed his Eastleigh debut in the National League game at Kidderminster on Tuesday. Ex-Bournemouth striker Tubbs has scored five goals for League Two side Portsmouth this season but he has not featured for Pompey since October.
Eastleigh have confirmed the loan signing of Portsmouth striker Matt Tubbs.
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Pools, who were relegated from the English Football League last season, lost their opening game at home to Dover on Saturday but started well at Moss Rose, with Cassidy and Jack Munns both firing inches wide. Macclesfield hit back, with Danny Whitaker's volleyed effort superbly tipped away by goalkeeper Scott Loach. The home side took the lead in the 38th minute when Elliott Durrell's ball into the box was headed home by Whitaker. There was a let-off for Hartlepool at the start of the second half when a mistake from defender Scott Harrison set Tyrone Marsh clear but he shot straight at Loach. Pools levelled after 58 minutes when Cassidy nodded in a cross from Ryan Donaldson and came closest to winning it when the striker's flicked header was saved. Match report supplied by the Press Association. Match ends, Macclesfield Town 1, Hartlepool United 1. Second Half ends, Macclesfield Town 1, Hartlepool United 1. Substitution, Macclesfield Town. Koby Arthur replaces Elliott Durrell. Substitution, Macclesfield Town. Scott Wilson replaces Scott Burgess. Substitution, Hartlepool United. Blair Adams replaces Jack Munns. Substitution, Macclesfield Town. Kieran Kennedy replaces George Pilkington. Goal! Macclesfield Town 1, Hartlepool United 1. Jake Cassidy (Hartlepool United). Second Half begins Macclesfield Town 1, Hartlepool United 0. First Half ends, Macclesfield Town 1, Hartlepool United 0. Jack Munns (Hartlepool United) is shown the yellow card. Goal! Macclesfield Town 1, Hartlepool United 0. Danny Whitaker (Macclesfield Town). Tyrone Marsh (Macclesfield Town) is shown the yellow card. Liam Donnelly (Hartlepool United) is shown the yellow card. First Half begins. Lineups are announced and players are warming up.
Jake Cassidy's second-half equaliser earned Hartlepool their first point in the Vanarama National League as they drew against Macclesfield.
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Russell Goodway told BBC Radio Wales that councillors and officials were the "experts" and should "seriously develop" a set of proposals. Former Public Services Minister Leighton Andrews had been planning to cut the 22 councils to eight or nine. But First Minister Carwyn Jones has said the Welsh Government will have to rethink its plans to win wider support. Mr Andrews is no longer in government after losing his Rhondda seat at the election in May, and the Labour manifesto did not include a commitment on the number of councils it would like to see. As a minority government, Labour will need the support of other parties if any cut is to happen. Speaking on the Good Morning Wales programme on Monday, Mr Goodway said: "The status quo isn't an option. "You really cannot maintain 22 local authorities unless you're prepared to dismantle local government as we know it and create other organisations or bodies that would be responsible for some of the major services such as education, social services and possibly economic development. "I would like to see the experts in the field, who happen to be those that run local authorities - whether they're councillors or council officials - coming forward with well-developed proposals to meet the government's aims. "I do not want to see a top-down reorganisation imposed on Welsh local government, particularly at a time when you're seeing a lot of new faces in the assembly, people who don't have the expertise in local government to shape those services. "I really do hope now the Welsh Local Government Association and the leaders in local government will come forward and seriously develop a set of proposals, hopefully capturing the city region dimension." On Sunday, the first minister told BBC Radio Wales he wanted to talk to opposition parties about the future of local government. "Clearly, the map we published before the election, that is not going to gain support across the assembly, that's obvious," Mr Jones told the Sunday Supplement programme. Meanwhile trade unions representing council workers have asked for urgent talks on the issue with the new finance and local government secretary Mark Drakeford. Dominic MacAskill, head of local government in Wales for Unison, said: "We are in a state of limbo and, in that state of limbo, the workforce is anxious and fearful of the future."
Councils should draw up fresh plans to reorganise local government, a former leader of Cardiff council has said.
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A firmer dollar in the aftermath of the first Clinton-Trump presidential debate helped send gold prices lower. The Dow Jones Average was up 0.74% to 18,174, while the more tech-related Nasdaq rose 0.92% to 5,284. The broader S&P 500 index gained 0.64%. Stronger consumer confidence data helped to boost retail stocks. High street firms Macy's and Best Buy gained 1% and 2% respectively. Technology shares were strong, with Facebook and Google parent Alphabet both rising 1.1%, and Amazon adding 2.1%. Oil-related shares retreated on lower crude prices, with Anadarko Petroleum losing 0.5% and Halliburton down 1%.
(Close): US markets closed higher, led by technology and consumer sectors, while oil prices fell on fading hopes of an Opec deal to limit output.
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Officers are searching in Weston Park East in Bath, where the first foot was found by dog walkers in February. A second foot was found in a garden of a property in Weston Park in July, and another was found in a garden in nearby Cranwells Park two weeks ago. Police said they do not believe a crime has been committed and it is likely they were all medical exhibits. Det Insp Paul Catton, of Avon and Somerset Police, said he "strongly believed" the finds had originated from "an old private collection". A spokesman said the new search was being carried out "to try to find anything which may be connected to the discoveries". "All three feet show signs they have come into contact with animals and it is likely that they have been moved to the locations they were found from a specific source," Det Insp Catton added. "Regulations are significantly stricter these days compared to several decades ago and we believe the source is most probably someone who used the feet as a teaching aid. "It is also possible these feet may have been found by someone who has then innocently buried them in an attempt to dispose of them and they have then been unearthed by animals, or that animals have disturbed the location they were stored." Tests on the first foot showed it was human but found very little DNA, and preliminary results from on the second foot were similar. The third foot, found on 5 August, is still undergoing tests. Mr Catton said officers were searching the whole of the park and the grounds of a nearby school. "The school is in a central location to the sites where all three feet have been found and the last thing we want is for a member of the public to come across one of these unpleasant finds. "We believe someone knows something about where these feet have come from and would appeal for them to get in touch," he added.
Police are searching a park in an area where three severed human feet have been found this year.
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Media playback is not supported on this device Scotland scored twice in three minutes in the final quarter to win 2-1 in Glasgow. James Carson gave Wales the lead from a penalty corner, but Ben Cosgrove and Alan Forsyth won it for the hosts. Earlier the Wales women's team lost 3-0 to Italy to finish fourth at their EuroHockey Championships in Cardiff. Chiara Tiddi, Celina Traverso and Federica Carta scored the Italian goals. "We came out fighting for the bronze today but just couldn't hit the line," midfielder Sian French told BBC Wales Sport. "We'll keep on pushing as a team for the next two years and we'll come back even stronger next time." Because two teams get promoted from the B Division, Wales's men will compete in Europe's top tier at the next EuroHockey Championships in 2019. On Friday, Wales women's hopes of rising into Europe's top tier were shattered in a 2-1 defeat by Russia. Wales' men secured promotion to their top tier by beating France 4-3 in their semi-final in Glasgow. Wales women had beaten Austria and Poland, but lost to Belarus on the way to the semi-finals. Neither Wales side has been in the EuroHockey A Division since it was reduced to eight teams more than a decade ago. The nation's women were playing in the third tier just four years ago.
Wales men's hockey team suffered an agonising late defeat by Scotland in their EuroHockey Championships II final.
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The perception that in some areas police had lost control of the streets was the most important reason disorder spread, they said. The Home Affairs Committee said insufficient numbers of officers were initially deployed and police training for public disorder was inadequate. The Metropolitan Police said it had outlined what it was doing to improve. The Policing Large Scale Disorder: Lessons from the disturbances of August 2011 report said flooding the streets with police was what ultimately quelled the disorder. "If numbers could have been increased more rapidly, it is possible that some of the disturbances could have been avoided," it said. "We regret this did not happen and, with the benefit of hindsight, we regard the operation to police the disorder in many towns and cities, and particularly in London as flawed." It said the mutual aid system, under which police officers are transferred to forces in need, could have operated more quickly; it may have left areas which had loaned officers to other forces "vulnerable". The report said anecdotal evidence from some of those convicted suggested the widespread disorder started when people saw police had "lost control" in Tottenham via television and social media. This echoes the findings of the independent Riots Communities and Victims Panel. "Clearly a feeling existed that desirable consumer goods could be made available by looting. There was a substantial element of opportunistic criminality and copycat behaviour," the report said. "The absence of a police presence or sight of police officers apparently standing by and allowing criminal behaviour to take place was distressing for those whose homes and businesses were being attacked," it added. Committee chairman Keith Vaz MP said: "Individual police officers acted with great bravery, and we commend them for their actions. However, in London and other areas, in contrast with the effectiveness of police responses in some towns and cities, there was a failure of police tactics. "This situation might have been avoided had police appreciated the magnitude of the task. "We urgently require a rapid improvement in police training to deal with public disorder. We urge the police to act more quickly in future and to review the arrangements for loaning officers from one force to another in this type of scenario." He said that, for those who lost their homes and businesses, "the state effectively ceased to exist - sometimes for hours at a time". Mr Vaz told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the committee felt that there should have been better communication between the police and the local business community to ensure that people knew what was happening and how best to protect their livelihoods. "Those areas where the chief constables had decided to take pre-emptive action and get police officers on the streets quickly were able to contain this violence much more effectively," he added. The MPs say had more officers been deployed different tactics could have been used. The Met Police is training more police to use baton rounds and is considering buying three water cannon. Mr Vaz said the committee did not feel water cannon would have helped police in the riots and may have caused "even greater disorders". Riots broke out in Tottenham, north London, on 6 August, two days after the fatal shooting by police of 29-year-old Mark Duggan. Unrest spread across London and to other cities, including Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol over the following days. But the committee's report said the specific causes behind the riots were still unknown. The report criticised the Met Police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission over failures in communication with Mr Duggan's family, which it said made a potentially tense situation worse. The committee also concluded it would be unhelpful to switch off social media during times of disorder, following claims rioters used it to organise themselves. "People who made an active decision to join in the disorder could equally well have heard about it on the television as on social media," the report said. The MPs say the government needs to urgently clarify whether the police authorities will be able to recover the £89.827m it cost to police the riots. It says the riots were an exceptional series of events at a time the authorities were being asked to make savings. They also call on the government to speed up the process of reimbursing people under the Riot Damages Act. The Met Police said it had already recognised and publicised some of its findings on the issues identified and what it was doing to improve. A spokesman said: "This includes acknowledging that we didn't have enough officers available quickly enough to respond to the initial disorder or its subsequent unprecedented escalation. As a result we have changed our mobilisation plans." He added that the force was reviewing how it engaged with local communities and was working with Acpo and the IPCC to ensure communication was more effective in future investigations. The Association of Chief Police Officers said the report had identified issues it believed was critical to get right within current policing reforms. "This includes the capacity and ability to move sufficient numbers of police officers around the country when required to protect the public from national threats," a spokesman said. "We will continue to look at all the various reports into the disorder to examine how the police service can best respond in future to the kind of exceptional criminality seen in August."
The policing operation to tackle the summer riots across England was flawed, a report from MPs has concluded.
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The 50p per unit minimum was approved by MSPs in 2012, but has faced legal challenges from the drinks industry. The committee on the Licensing Act 2003 also called for an overhaul of local licensing panels after hearing of "scandalous misuse" of powers. Chair Baroness McIntosh of Pickering called the act "fundamentally flawed". The Lords Select Committee said that if minimum pricing was shown to cut down on excessive drinking, it needed to be adopted nationwide. But while the government waited for legal challenges to conclude, there were other areas of the act that could be addressed, such as abolishing local authority licensing committees and giving the powers to planning committees. "The [Lords select] committee was shocked by some of the evidence it received on hearings before licensing committees," said Baroness McIntosh. "Their decisions have been described as 'something of a lottery', 'lacking formality', and 'indifferent', with some 'scandalous misuses of the powers of elected local councillors'." Derbyshire Police told peers that the system had become "too political", with councils "frightened of making a tough decision" in case of appeals by big drinks companies. But a spokesman for licensing at the Local Government Association said scrapping the panels would be "unnecessary and ill-advised". Chris Pillai added: "Figures from 2016 show that of the more than 21,000 licence applications made to council licensing committees, less than 1% were challenged. "This reflects the fairness and sound basis licensing committees are using to make their decisions." He agreed with the peers that planning and licensing could work more closely within local authorities, but said the proposed changes would "not tackle current flaws in the Licensing Act" and failed to take into account pressures on the planning system. The select committee's report also warned that the act was not working in regulating late night openings. "Pubs, clubs and live music venues are a vital part of our cultural identity," added Baroness McIntosh. "Any decline in our cities' world-famous nightlife ought to be prevented and the businesses supported. "But the night time economy needs regulating; even in these areas of cities, residents have their rights. The current systems are not being used because they do not work." The report also called for the act to be implemented at airports and for establishments to provide a disabled access statement when applying for a licence.
Minimum unit pricing for alcohol should be rolled out across the UK if Scotland's scheme is successful, a Lords committee says.
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Hurtling round the extremely dangerous 38-mile (61km) street course at an average speed of nearly 132mph (212km/h), takes immense skill and nerves of steel. But what makes him so much faster than many of his rivals on near identical bikes? Some of the sponsors of his Honda 1,000cc bike wanted to find out using the appliance of science. Data analytics firm EMC, sportswear maker Alpinestars, and sensor specialist Freescale Semiconductor, fitted his bike and suit with a battery of biometric and mechanical sensors to record every aspect of man and machine in action. "It was a bit nerve-wracking - there were wires everywhere," the 43-year-old road-racing champion tells the BBC. "There were even temperature sensors down my underpants. "But once the visor's down you forget all about that." The team tested the technology at the Monteblanco circuit in Huelva, Spain, comparing McGuinness' performance against that of motorcycle journalist, Adam Child. Then they tested the kit in race conditions during June's Isle of Man TT race. The results were surprising, not least to McGuinness himself. Fifty sensors measured everything from front and rear wheel velocities to throttle usage; banking angles to gear changes; acceleration and braking rates to suspension travel. The sensors in his suit even allowed them to analyse his position on the bike at different points of the course. But it was the biometric sensors on McGuinness himself that revealed a lot about the racer's secret to success. It turns out that he really does have ice in his veins, figuratively speaking. Even bombing down roads at top speeds of over 200mph, his heart rate is much lower than might be expected. "He was only at 120bpm [beats per minute] - well within the aerobic range - even at very high speeds," says Mike Foley, EMC's senior director of data science. "As his heart rate was much lower, his oxygen intake was lower," he says. "He was under less stress, calmer, and so more consistent in his performance, experiencing less fatigue than other riders." And tiredness leads to mistakes - sometimes fatal - in an intense time-trial race that lasts 1 hour 50 minutes around a course with 250 corners. "I didn't really know why I was faster," says McGuinness, "so it's been interesting finding out. "I get nervous before a race starts, but I consciously try to relax myself so I don't get burnt out and lose concentration." The testing generated mounds of data, all of which needed analysing, says Mr Foley. It also revealed limitations in the sensors themselves - many failed in the harsh conditions of the Isle of Man. Unusually, EMC opened a global competition to see who could analyse and present all the collected data in the most imaginative and practical way. "We crowd-sourced 750 data scientists," he says. "We applied machine learning techniques to the data analysis and discovered that only 14 variables really made a difference during the race. "It is the interplay of those 14 variables at any point on the lap that explains why he is faster." In short, this means he braked a little later, accelerated a little longer, and banked over in the corners a little more than other riders. He also used some gears more than others. "A 1% change in banking angle can make a big difference," says Mr Foley. Of course, natural ability plays a big part, too, as does long experience. "I first went on a motorbike at the age of three," he tells the BBC. "My dad had a bike garage in Morecambe so it was two wheels for me as far back as I can remember." Racing was just a natural extension of his "burning passion" for motorbikes, he says. "I loved the thrills, the speed, the freedom...and winning was the icing on the cake." So what did he learn from the data analysis? "I learned that I can go even faster in a couple of areas on the track - the ones I don't enjoy as much. I get a little tense here and my heart rate goes up. "So now I can clean myself up and make myself relaxed," he says. Formula 1 motor racing has had this kind of analysis for years, as has superbike Moto GP racing, with sensors beaming data wirelessly from the cars and bikes in real time during races. But the Auto-Cycle Union (ACU) Ltd., which runs the Isle of Man TT races, does not allow real-time data transmission - all the analysis of how the bikes have performed must be done after the races. "We like to think of TT as a purer form of racing - the rider has the responsibility for what he is doing, not the technical guys," explains Dr Paul King, chair of the ACU's road race committee. But Mr King, who is also a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at Loughborough University, does believe in-suit biometrics could play an increasing role in motorsport and for civilian motorcyclists. "There are all sorts of possibilities for smart sensor technology in motorcycle clothing," he says. "Core body temperature is key on motorcycles - levels of concentration can drop if your body gets too cold. "You could receive an alert - a vibration in the seat perhaps - if this happens and you get too sleepy, for example." John McGuinness agrees, saying: "All this data we're gathering could be useful in the real world - sensors measuring your fatigue levels, the state of your tyres, whether you have an oil leak - it could save lives." Meanwhile, McGuinness aims to beat the late Joey Dunlop's record of 26 Isle of Man TT wins. With the help of data analytics, he might just succeed. Follow Matthew on Twitter: @matthew_wall
John McGuinness, known as the "Morecambe Missile", has won 23 times at the famous Isle of Man TT motorbike races.
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Hooker Hughes, 20, featured for Llandovery during the 2015-16 season while 19-year-old flanker Evans has played for Scarlets' Under-18 side. Both players have been included in Wales' squad for June's Junior World Championship. Wales play Ireland, Georgia and New Zealand in Pool A in Manchester. "They both enjoyed a very successful Six Nations campaign and will take confidence into the forthcoming World Championships," Scarlets general manager of rugby Jon Daniels said.
Wales Under-20 Grand Slam winners Shaun Evans and Dafydd Hughes have signed their first professional contracts with Scarlets.
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Judge Carlos Castro Martins reversed the order he had issued in September, which had barred any work on the Belo Monte dam that interfered with the natural flow of the Xingu river. He said the company behind the project had subsequently shown its work would not harm local fishing. The project has been heavily criticised by environmentalists. Judge Martins had originally ruled in favour of a fisheries group which argued that the dam would affect local fish stocks and could harm indigenous families who make a living from fishing. He had barred the Norte Energia company behind the project from all work which could interfere with the natural flow of the Xingu river, including building a port, using explosives, installing dikes and building canals. Legal wrangling Norte Energia appealed against the decision and Judge Martins ruled on Friday that construction work on the dam could go ahead as the company had shown that local fishing boats would not be blocked or hindered in their work. "Since the course of the water won't be altered, and there won't be much variation in the speed of its flow, (the project) won't have a major influence on the habitat of ornamental fish species used for fishing," he said. Judge Martins did, however, say that the wider environmental impact of the project "could only be felt and analysed once the work was completed, as the studies into its effects were only forecasts of what could happen". He also said that any work would have to comply with the regulations laid down by Brazil's Indian Affairs Department (Funai) and the National Environment Agency, Ibama. Norte Energia said the temporary halt on the building work had not affected the project, as it had not yet reached the stage where the company needed to do any of the specific type of work which had fallen under the ban. If it goes ahead, the 11,000-megawatt dam will be the third biggest in the world - after the Three Gorges in China and Itaipu, which is jointly run by Brazil and Paraguay. The government says it is crucial to meeting growing energy needs, but environmentalists and those fighting for indigenous rights have been vociferous in their opposition.
A judge in Brazil has revoked a decision which had halted work on the Belo Monte dam in the Amazon region.
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The Lowland League champions, 3-0 up after the first leg. went further ahead through Dougie Gair's chipped finish. Cove levelled on the day through Jamie Watt, but the Highland League champions could make up the remainder deficit. And Edinburgh will place League Two bottom side Shire over two legs for a place in that division..
Edinburgh City will play East Stirlingshire in the Scottish League Two play-off after completing an aggregate victory over Cove Rangers.
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Having arrived at Adams Park with Super League honours and international recognition behind him, injury and personal issues brought a premature end to Smith's big move to the Premiership. However, after returning to Leeds and then Wakefield in Super League, he accepted a second crack at union with Newcastle Falcons earlier this season. Why would a player with a vast collection of honours in league go through the rigours of switching codes for a second time when so many others have struggled to adapt? Smith is clear. Sam Burgess's move to Bath from Australian NRL side South Sydney in 2015 is much anticipated, with his ball-carrying, defensive work and offloading skills all appealing to the 15-man game. There remains some doubt about where Burgess will be employed, as he can play anywhere across the back-row in league, but like Andy Farrell - another code-switcher - he could find himself in the centres. However, Smith is concerned that trying to mould Burgess could take away some of his natural talent. "I went on a show with Brian Moore when I made my debut against Leicester and I said anyone can be a success (in union) if they get the right coaching, and play to their strengths," Smith said. "Don't try to change a player into something they're not. They need to use a player's strengths and work with it." "If I got into my 40s and 50s looking back on my career without having a proper go at it I'd have been disappointed with myself," he told BBC Sport. "Obviously I had a go with Wasps and it didn't work out, but I'm very fortunate that Newcastle came in and wanted to sign me." Rugby league has been a useful talent pool for union clubs since the advent of professionalism in the late 1990s reversed a trend of players moving the other way for financial and sporting rewards. Whereas once it was union stars such as Jonathan Davies, Scott Quinnell, Kel Coslett, Billy Boston and Tom van Vollenhoven who moved into the 13-man game, now it is Sam Burgess, Kyle Eastmond and Joel Tomkins who have brought their skills into union. Not everyone can make the same impact in both codes, as countless stars including Henry Paul, Lesley Vainikolo and Shontayne Hape can testify. "I had a great time in rugby league, but there's only a certain type of player that can move codes," said Smith. "They're two totally different games. All the rucking and mauling compared to the play-the-ball is completely different. "Moves are similar, but it's different game plans. The fitness has to be different. You need to be intense for one or two minutes in union and then you get a break, while league is a bit more continuous. That's something else I'm going to have to work on during the off season." While Smith's rugby league career brought him Super League Grand Final winners' medals, and a Harry Sunderland Trophy for man of the match in the 2008 final, the move to Newcastle has seen him experience the opposite end of the scale. Falcons feared potential relegation from the top flight until the penultimate game of the current campaign and have a big summer ahead to ensure improvement is made next season. "I think the culture has to be player-driven, the coaches can only give you so much," Smith said. "I've been about a long time and seen a lot of things," Smith said. "But I still class myself as young, and the more you hang about with the younger lads it keeps you young. "Keith Senior used to be like that, he'd hang around with all the young lads and still thought he was 19 like us lot. "It keeps you young but I've got experience. I've got little things I learned in rugby league that I can bring through to Newcastle and I'm trying to do that in little ways. "During the off-season I will probably have more to time to spend with the coaches and bring my knowledge of that game to mix in with the rugby union stuff." "Going back, Leeds had lots of very good professionals. I got brought up by people like Kevin Sinfield, Jamie Peacock, Danny McGuire and Rob Burrow - they were very good pros and it filtered down into the academy. "That's how you were brought up, if you stepped out of line then you got knocked back into line. That's somewhere where maybe at the Falcons we can tighten up a bit in the off-season. "We need to set our standards ourselves, so when we get beat we can ask ourselves questions why and take a bit of responsibility off the coaches." With nearly 200 games for club and country across the two codes on his curriculum vitae, Smith has grown from young gun to seasoned pro. The aim now for the Morley-born three-quarter is to establish a regular place at Kingston Park, once the Falcons have completed their 2013-14 campaign with the visit of Exeter. "It's a bit frustrating going in and out, but you've got to look at the bigger picture," Smith continued. "I'm getting my first summer holiday for something like 13, 14 years which will be brilliant. I'll go away and spend some time with the family and then we're back in mid-June. "I've got two and a half months then before the Premiership season starts, where that is my real learning curve. "That's when, in September, I want to be hitting the ground running, starting in the team and nailing down a position where I'm going to play and playing week in, week out."
It would have been easy for Lee Smith to turn his back on rugby union after a stint with Wasps in 2009 ended after only five months.
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Media playback is not supported on this device The 48-year-old German was appointed as Brendan Rodgers' successor on Thursday, signing a three-year deal worth £15m. He takes over a side who are 10th in the Premier League with 12 points from eight games. "I was never a guy for an easy way," Klopp told LFCTV. "This is the biggest challenge in football. It is the most interesting job in world football." Klopp, who will be joined at Anfield by his former Borussia Dortmund assistants Zeljko Buvac and Peter Krawietz, continued: "I read in the papers it is a disaster, but we are only six points to the top position in the table. "It is interesting that nobody is satisfied or patient. We have to think about what to change. That is my job. "I know what I want. First I need to talk to the players to find a common way. We will find that and who wants to do what I propose. "Whoever wants to do what I want can be a good friend of mine. And it is not so bad a thing to be a friend of mine." Media playback is not supported on this device Rodgers led Liverpool to a second-place finish in 2014, but they managed only sixth last season. Klopp, who won the Bundesliga twice and reached the 2013 Champions League final during his seven years at Dortmund, said: "I am here because I believe in the potential of the team. "In this moment we are not the best team in the world, but who cares? We want to be the best team in the world in the future. "There are problems, you need to solve them. We have good defenders, strikers and midfielders. The first game is at Tottenham [in the Premier League on 17 October]. We need to make a team for this game. "You have to change from doubter to believer. We have to change our performance because nobody is satisfied at the moment." During Rodgers' tenure, Liverpool operated what has become known as the 'transfer committee' - a six-member group responsible for identifying transfer targets, considering their merits and conducting negotiations. Twenty-three players were signed on permanent deals during Rodgers' reign for a combined fee of nearly £292m, with Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling sold, to Barcelona for £75m and Manchester City for £49m respectively. It is understood that Klopp will operate in this existing system but the German pointed out that he would have a decisive role. "It's enough for me to have the first and last word," Klopp later told a press conference. "We only want to discuss really good players. I'm not a genius, I don't know more than the rest of the world. I need the other people to get perfect information. It's really easy to handle it." It is 25 years since Liverpool last won the league - their 18th top-flight title - under Kenny Dalglish. "Twenty-five years ago is a long time," said Klopp. "History is only the base for us; [we shouldn't] keep the history in our backpack all day. "I want to see the first step next week and not always compare with other times. This is a great club with big potential. Everything is there. Let's try to start a new way. "I ask, please give us time. If you are patient and are prepared to work, in a special Liverpool way we can be successful. "If I am sitting here in four years, we will win one title [piece of silverware] in this time." Klopp introduced a style of powerful, high-speed football during his time at Dortmund - a style he says he will continue at Anfield. Media playback is not supported on this device "Winning is important, but so is how you win and how you play the game," he said. "I believe in a playing philosophy that is very emotional, very fast and very strong. "Everybody knows me. I haven't changed in four months. [My style is] emotion inside, it's speed, it's a transition game. All the things that make football interesting for me I want to see on the pitch. "I have said this phrase 'full-throttle' football. It will be this. "But it's not the day for promising a certain style of football. Let's start to work, let's speak next week, let's start normal work." There are a number of revered managers in Liverpool's history, such as Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley and Dalglish, who won 12 league titles between them. However, Klopp, who described joining Liverpool as "one of the best moments of my life", said he was more focused on the work he has to do in the present than on whether he could join them as a Reds "legend". "I don't compare myself with genius managers of Liverpool," he said. "It's cool that some of you, and the fans, are looking forward to the next few years and months, but none of these managers said 'my target is to be a legend'. "This is a great club because of many, many great decisions in the past. Now we have to work in the present." In Jose Mourinho's first press conference after joining Chelsea in 2004, he described himself as a "special one". Reminded of this and asked to assess himself, Klopp responded: "I don't want to describe myself. I'm a totally normal guy, I'm the 'normal one'."
New Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has described the Anfield job as "the biggest challenge" in world football.
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Now the complete ban is being lifted. Until now, any man who had ever had sex with another man was barred for life from donation. From 7 November the ban is being lifted in England, Scotland and Wales. But men who want to donate must not have had sex with another man in the past 12 months. This deferral period has been left in place because there is a "window period" after infection with blood-borne viruses where they are not detectable. This window period is far less than 12 months. The report from the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO) says that for HIV it varies from nine to 15 days, depending on the type of test. For hepatitis B, which causes liver disease, it is 66 days. In Spain, the deferral period is six months following the change of a sexual partner, whether the would-be donor is heterosexual or gay. In Italy the restriction lasts for four months following the change of partner. By contrast, in the US, Canada, France and many other countries there is a complete ban on donations from men who have ever had sex with men. Whilst welcoming the lifting of the ban in the UK, some still regard the one year deferral as too long. Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill. "To retain a blanket ban on any man who has had sex with another man in the last year, even if he has only had oral sex, remains disproportionate on the basis of available evidence." But Sir Nick Partridge, Chief Executive of Terrence Higgins Trust said: "The remaining deferral regulation for sexually active gay men is based on their heightened risk, as a group, of sexually acquired blood-borne viruses." A one year deferral period for donation applies to other groups as well: for example anyone who has been sexually active in countries where HIV/Aids is very common, and anyone who has had sex with a prostitute. NHS Blood and Transplant has a complete list of who can and cannot donate. The hope will be that the shift in policy will lead to an increase in the number of donors. If you want more detail about the reasoning behind the decision to lift the ban, then the full report from the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO) can be read here.
When I reported last year about the urgent need for blood donors I received many comments from gay men that they would like to donate but were unable to.
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Sam Vokes turned Owls captain Glenn Loovens, squaring for strike partner Andre Gray to tap in for the visitors. Wednesday equalised when Atdhe Nuhiu headed down Barry Bannan's centre for the onrushing Lee to tuck home. The Clarets could have won it but Vokes could not get a clean contact on substitute Matt Taylor's ball in. The result leaves the hosts a point outside the Championship play-offs, while Burnley are three points behind second-placed Middlesbrough, having played two games more. Burnley had the better of the first half, Kieren Westwood saving superbly on his line from Vokes' header, although their Yorkshire opponents had a penalty appeal waved away by referee Andy Woolmer after Daniel Pudil went down in the box. The Owls threatened more after the interval and new loan signing Aiden McGeady came on for his debut in the final few minutes after joining the club on transfer deadline day. Wednesday have not lost in the Championship at home since the end of August, going 12 games unbeaten, and are level on points with Birmingham, who they visit on Saturday. Sheffield Wednesday head coach Carlos Carvalhal: "We tried to find the second goal but we just couldn't. I think if anyone was going to win it, it was us. We'll take the point against one of the strongest teams in the competition. "The second half was nearer to what we can do. A draw is the correct score in my opinion, but if anyone was going to win it was us. "The negative was that we conceded so early. The positive is that we got back into it using our heads and our hearts." Burnley manager Sean Dyche: "I think we arguably had the best chance of the game which we didn't take, but really both teams attempted to play on a really tough pitch. Overall, it was just about right. "I have been pleased with the players and I'm pleased again. It's hard to dominate every game and we have dominated a lot lately. "We were really secure in our third and the middle third, I just felt we didn't keep the ball well enough in the final third." Match ends, Sheffield Wednesday 1, Burnley 1. Second Half ends, Sheffield Wednesday 1, Burnley 1. Attempt saved. Scott Arfield (Burnley) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Assisted by Sam Vokes with a headed pass. Jack Hunt (Sheffield Wednesday) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Sam Vokes (Burnley). Sam Hutchinson (Sheffield Wednesday) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Ben Mee (Burnley). Corner, Burnley. Conceded by Daniel Pudil. Foul by Lucas João (Sheffield Wednesday). Ben Mee (Burnley) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Attempt missed. David Jones (Burnley) right footed shot from outside the box is too high following a set piece situation. Attempt saved. Scott Arfield (Burnley) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Foul by Jack Hunt (Sheffield Wednesday). Sam Vokes (Burnley) wins a free kick on the left wing. Substitution, Burnley. Rouwen Hennings replaces Andre Gray. Substitution, Sheffield Wednesday. Aiden McGeady replaces Ross Wallace. Foul by Lucas João (Sheffield Wednesday). Ben Mee (Burnley) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Attempt saved. Ross Wallace (Sheffield Wednesday) left footed shot from long range on the right is saved in the bottom right corner. Michael Keane (Burnley) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul. Fernando Forestieri (Sheffield Wednesday) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Michael Keane (Burnley). Kieran Lee (Sheffield Wednesday) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul. Foul by Kieran Lee (Sheffield Wednesday). Joey Barton (Burnley) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Substitution, Sheffield Wednesday. Lucas João replaces Atdhe Nuhiu. Offside, Burnley. Stephen Ward tries a through ball, but Scott Arfield is caught offside. Attempt missed. Barry Bannan (Sheffield Wednesday) left footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the left. Glenn Loovens (Sheffield Wednesday) wins a free kick in the defensive half. Foul by Sam Vokes (Burnley). Fernando Forestieri (Sheffield Wednesday) wins a free kick on the left wing. Foul by David Jones (Burnley). Kieran Lee (Sheffield Wednesday) wins a free kick in the attacking half. Foul by Joey Barton (Burnley). Attempt missed. Sam Vokes (Burnley) left footed shot from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the left. Assisted by Matthew Taylor with a cross. Attempt missed. David Jones (Burnley) left footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the left. Foul by Atdhe Nuhiu (Sheffield Wednesday). Matthew Taylor (Burnley) wins a free kick in the attacking half. Offside, Sheffield Wednesday. Sam Hutchinson tries a through ball, but Atdhe Nuhiu is caught offside. Foul by Atdhe Nuhiu (Sheffield Wednesday).
Kieran Lee's second-half leveller earned Sheffield Wednesday a draw and halted Burnley's charge towards the automatic Championship promotion spots.
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The 23-year-old admitted she could be tempted to take up mixed martial arts (MMA) after competing at Tokyo 2020. After winning bronze for the United States in Judo at Beijing 2008, Rousey became a fighter in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). "[Rousey] is one of the highest profile mixed martial artists that has stepped foot on the planet," Johns said. "Why can't we have that for Jade? What's saying that she can't be the next Ronda Rousey, I'd love to see her achieve that sort of status." Jones could be the first fighter to win three Olympic gold medals in taekwondo when she competes at the next summer Olympic Games in four years' time. "There's a lot of successful mixed martial artists out there that have a background in taekwondo," Johns said. "I was a judo player and in my first MMA session I had my head boxed off." Johns became the first Welshman to win a bout in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) when he beat South Korean Kwan Ho Kwak at Fight Night 99 in Belfast in November and believes Jones could benefit the sport in Wales. "I think she'd be an amazing asset to have in the Wales MMA circuit. I've trained with a lot of females who do taekwondo and they are really good," he told BBC Radio Wales. "She's young enough and it will be an amazing to have a female Welsh mixed martial artist. We've got the males and now we can see if we can get the females in."
Welsh UFC fighter Brett Johns says double Olympic taekwondo champion Jade Jones could be the next Ronda Rousey.
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Mrs Merkel said she wanted friendly relations with both countries as well as Russia but Europe now had to "fight for its own destiny". Her comments come after Mr Trump refused to re-commit to the 2015 Paris climate deal at the G7 summit. Mrs Merkel is on the campaign trail ahead of elections in September. "The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days," Mrs Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany. The relationship between Berlin and new French President Emmanuel Macron had to be a priority, Mrs Merkel said, adding: "We Europeans have to take our destiny into our own hands." On Saturday, the German leader had described climate change talks at the G7 group of rich nations as "very unsatisfactory". Leaders from the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan had re-affirmed their support for the Paris accord - but Mr Trump said he would make a decision in the coming week. Mr Trump has previously pledged to abandon the Paris deal, and expressed doubts about climate change. Speaking in Brussels last week, Mr Trump also told Nato members to spend more money on defence and did not re-state his administration's commitment to Nato's mutual security guarantees. Mrs Merkel's latest comments are partly a move to appeal to German voters first and foremost, the BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler says. Polls suggest Mrs Merkel is on course to be re-elected for a fourth term as German chancellor at elections in September. It might have been thanks to the beer, pretzels and Bavarian brass-band enlivening the crowd. But Mrs Merkel's words were uncharacteristically passionate and unusually forthright. By all means keep friendly relations with Trump's America and Brexit Britain, was the message - but we can't rely on them. Rapturous applause greeted her fiery calls for Europeans to fight for their own destiny. No wonder she's sounding confident. France has a new president who shares her pro free-trade, Europhile values, so there is a positive feeling in Europe that the EU's Franco-German motor is back in business. With four months to go before elections, Angela Merkel's position also looks stronger than ever domestically. Initial enthusiasm for her centre-left rival Martin Schulz has fizzled out. And Sunday's beer-tent event underscored her strength by marking an end to a potential split with her Bavarian sister conservative party. She might not have welcomed Brexit or Trump. But it seems that Mrs Merkel has decided that standing up for the EU will only strengthen her chances of winning another term in September.
Europe can no longer "completely depend" on the US and UK following the election of President Trump and Brexit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says.
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East Kent Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust serves a population of more than 750,000 people across five different hospitals. Experts from health regulator Monitor also identified issues with safety, leadership and "a culture of bullying". The trust said it would "work to make improvements to the services". It was deemed inadequate by the independent watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, in August. The trust runs the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford; the Kent and Canterbury in Canterbury; the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (QEQM) in Margate; the Buckland in Dover; and the Royal Victoria in Folkestone. Concerns were raised about a culture of bullying at the organisation and inspectors identified staff shortages in A&E, children's care and at night. They found risks to patients and incidents involving patient safety were not always identified. The inspection team also noticed that in a number of areas around the trust, buildings and equipment were "poorly maintained". Monitor said it would be appointing an improvement director at the trust to provide support and to ensure it is making progress. "The trust needs to urgently improve the safety of care for patients, and strengthen its management to better support frontline staff," said Paul Streat, regional director at Monitor. "By putting the trust into special measures we can ensure they turn things around quickly. "Senior leaders need to listen to and work with all staff to understand and tackle problems on their wards," he said. Patients visiting the Kent and Canterbury Hospital on Tuesday said they had no confidence in the management. Former cancer patient Ken Rogers, who quit in July as a governor, said: "I've argued with the trust over some of the performance results of what they've been doing to patients and they haven't listened." Robert Watts, who was at the hospital with his wife and baby son, said: "You want the best. You want to be told the right things and hope that they do the best job they can. "Sometimes they don't, they miss it. I just don't think that this hospital can do that." The trust's chief executive, Stuart Bain, said: "We want to work with our regulator Monitor, our staff and our health partners to make improvements to the services we provide to the people of east Kent." He said areas for improvement had already been recognised including the investment of an additional £2.9m to recruit 69 nurses where shortages existed. An additional four general surgeons had also been recently appointed and a further three would be recruited shortly, Mr Bain added. "In addition we identified the need to improve our appointment system some time ago and have just completed a public consultation on our outpatient services that will allow us to make improvements to the services we offer patients. "New appointment booking systems, more flexible appointments, and an investment of £28m in improved facilities including a new hospital in Dover will start to address these issues," he said. "The trust is committed to working with staff and health partners to produce an action plan to address the issues raised by the CQC and Monitor and to see us removed from special measures as soon as possible."
One of the largest hospital trusts in England is to be put into special measures because of "serious failures" in patient safety.
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The money for Kingston Maurward College, near Dorchester, will go towards a £3.24m project that includes a new animal sciences building. Weymouth College has also been awarded £0.5m towards its £1.5m project to refurbish two buildings. The grants form part of a £214m investment in 47 colleges in England. Skills Minister Matthew Hancock said of the Enhanced Renewal Grant that it was to "ensure" investment in "first rate facilities". Kingston Maurward principal Clare Davison said she was "thrilled" with the grant. She said the animal science building would include aquatic, reptile and mammal rooms, a laboratory and six teaching classrooms. She added: "This building will help ensure that we continue to deliver high quality teaching and learning to give young people the appropriate skills required to gain employment in animal science-related fields." Construction is planned to start this summer and is expected to be completed by mid-summer 2014. The grants go alongside plans for the government's new skills strategy to "support the majority of good and outstanding colleges" while intervening if colleges are failing.
A further education college in Dorset has received more than £2.88m in government funding to renovate buildings on campus.
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The carmaker has also released the first images of the concept car upon which the new Defender will be based, the DC100. This is set to make its public debut at next month's Frankfurt motor show. The first Land Rover was introduced in 1948 and its basic design has changed little over the past six decades. More than two million have now been sold. The Defender name was first used in the early 1990s, shortly after the launch of the Discovery. By Jorn MadslienBusiness reporter, BBC News Land Rover insists its next Defender will be a rugged workhorse, having ruled out moving it upmarket as a luxurious car that simply looks butch on the outside. But competing in the market for working vehicles will be a major challenge. Land Rover can no longer rely on military contracts, so more promising markets might be in developing countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, where working vehicle sales are booming in parallel with rapid economic growth that is predicted to continue for decades yet. To succeed in these markets, a new Defender will need to be able to compete on both price and quality. It will need to be both cheaper - so the cost of production will need to come down - and better, in terms of both capabilities and fuel economy. And arguably, the overhaul cannot come too soon for a vehicle that now feels hopelessly outdated next to the company's latest offering, the Range Rover Evoque. Evoque to leave Defender in the dust? Land Rover's director of design, Gerry McGovern, said: "Replacing the iconic Defender is one of the biggest challenges in the automotive design world; it is a car that inspires people worldwide. "[The DC100] isn't a production-ready concept but the beginning of a four-year journey to design a relevant Defender for the 21st century." John Edwards, Land Rover's global brand director, added that the company was "determined that the new Defender will be true to its heritage, while meeting the requirements of a changing global market". UK-based Land Rover and its sister brand Jaguar are owned by India's Tata Motors. "Land Rover insists its next Defender will be a rugged workhorse, having ruled out moving it upmarket as a luxurious car that simply looks butch on the outside," says BBC business reporter Jorn Madslien. "But competing in the market for working vehicles will be a major challenge." Land Rover can no longer rely on military contracts, so more promising markets might be in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, where working vehicle sales are booming in parallel with rapid economic growth that is predicted to continue for decades yet. "To succeed in these markets, a new Defender will need to be able to compete on both price and quality," says our reporter. "It will need to be both cheaper - so the cost of production will need to come down - and better, in terms of both capabilities and fuel economy."
Land Rover will release an all-new version of its Defender model in 2015, it has confirmed.
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Brown accused referee Dean Whitestone of a number of "really poor" decisions. Whitestone awarded Gillingham a penalty in first-half stoppage time before sending off Southend's Ryan Inniss for two bookable offences. "There were four or five decisions that says that referee shouldn't be refereeing at this level," said Brown. The 57-year-old claimed Whitestone did not cope with the pressure of the game between two sides separated by the mouth of the Thames. "The referee mentioned to me that it was a derby game and he'd heard about the potential friction - but you can't take that into consideration," said Brown. "He initially crossed his arms about to wave away the penalty but the next movement he blows for a foul. That, for me, is a referee under pressure. "The sending off is even worse - unbelievable refereeing. This was officiating at its worst and someone has to be brought to task. I'm appealing the red card and if I can take it further than that I will." Meanwhile, Southend defender and former captain Adam Barrett has announced his retirement at the age of 37. Barrett played 354 games in two spells with the club, the last against Stevenage in the EFL Trophy in November. He was a member of the Shrimpers side that won back-to-back promotions from League Two to the Championship in 2005 and 2006, and also the League Two play-off final in 2015. "He will be remembered as one of Blues' greatest and a true legend," Brown told the club website.
Southend manager Phil Brown says the referee for his side's 2-1 defeat at Gillingham should be "brought to task" over his performance.
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Media playback is not supported on this device GB had opened their campaign with a comfortable 31-7 win over Kenya, Dan Bibby (2), Dan Norton, Phil Burgess and Mark Bennett all scoring. Against Japan - who upset joint favourites New Zealand 14-12 - GB led deep into the final stages. But Japan scored a third try, only to miss a conversion to draw with time up. Media playback is not supported on this device New Zealand - who will be without Sonny Bill Williams for the rest of the tournament after he partially ruptured an Achilles tendon - bounced back from their shock opening loss to Japan to beat Kenya. Augustine Pulu scored 11 points, including three conversions, as the All Blacks recovered from conceding a try inside the first minute to win 28-5. Team GB only just maintained their 100% start to the tournament when they met Japan, James Rodwell scoring twice and Marcus Watson adding another with captain Tom Mitchell converting all three tries. The Japanese could have drawn after the final hooter when Lomano Lemeki crossed for Japan's third try, but Katsuyuki Sakai missed the tricky drop-goal conversion. Britain face New Zealand at 16:30 on Wednesday in the final match in Pool C. The top two sides in each of the three pools go into the quarter-finals, plus the two best third-placed teams. Media playback is not supported on this device Feel inspired to have a try? Here's our handy guide.
Britain's men made it two wins from two in the Olympic sevens as they edged past New Zealand's conquerors Japan 21-19 in a thriller in their second match.
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The incident happened on the A630 Sheffield Road just outside Conisborough, near Doncaster, at 17:00 BST on Saturday. South Yorkshire Police said officers were called to the scene after reports that a motorbike had left the road north of Archers Way. The force is appealing for any witnesses to contact them.
A 25-year-old man from Doncaster has died following a motorcycle crash in South Yorkshire.
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Diamond, 47, says some internationals could join Sale at the AJ Bell Stadium in time for next season. "We're in talks with four or five international players to join us," he told BBC Radio Manchester. "We're well on the way to bringing some real experienced quality players to the club next year." Diamond said there is no urgency to bring in players and that he was happy with the way the club plans to bring in recruitments. "I don't need to rush into signing players. We've got a good protocol with how we find our players and it's not let us down yet in five years," he said. "There's offers gone and there's offers been accepted, we've just got to tie the details up. "There's one or two people who have decided to come to Sale for less money than they're being offered. "They've got mates who are here and they've asked the question. How do they run it? What's it like? "One or two of these are leaving big clubs to come here which will be a statement when we announce them."
Sale Sharks director of rugby Steve Diamond says the club will not rush into making signings and insists they will bring in "quality" talent.
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Workers spend on average 75 minutes a day travelling to and from work in London, compared nationally with 52.8 minutes, the TUC said. Wales sees the fastest commutes, an average of 41.4 minutes travelling, down 4.6 minutes since 2006. The study compares pre-recession travel times of 2006 with those of 2012 and found the average commute was the equivalent of five weeks a year. The TUC analysed the figures from the Labour Force Survey to mark Commute Smart week. The study found that men working in the east of England saw the sharpest rise in travel times - up 3.8 minutes to 65.2 minutes. But in London even though men spend just above 77 minutes commuting, the figure has fallen by 1.8 minutes since 2006. The study attributed the drop to an increase in part-time work, especially among men. The trend was bucked by the capital's women workers who saw their travel times rise by three minutes to 72.8 minutes. The TUC's General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "With rising transport costs far outstripping pay rises, reducing the number of peak-time commutes would save both time and money for hard-pressed workers. "Recent trends suggest there is a link between long commute times and longer hours in the office, with the growing number of men in part-time work having shorter journeys to work. "This trend is concerning if it means part-time workers and those needing to balance work with caring responsibilities are being excluded from certain types of jobs." Phil Flaxton, chief executive of Work Wise UK, urged employers to "revise tired working practices" and adopt "flexible approaches to people management".
Londoners face the longest average daily commute in the UK, a study found.
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Cardiff and Vale University Health Board confirmed it had shut the mental health wards to prevent further spread of the virus. The health board said a number of cases had been confirmed in the community, including in care homes. Dr Tom Porter urged anyone eligible to get a free flu vaccine to reduce risk. He said: "Every year flu causes thousands of deaths across the UK and vaccination is a quick and effective way of reducing your risk." The dominant strain circulating in the community is influenza A (H3), which particularly affects the elderly.
Three wards treating elderly patients have been closed at Llandough hospital in the Vale of Glamorgan after an outbreak of flu.
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Alasdair Dudgeon was killed near the Kincardine Bridge on 6 January 2013 when James Sneddon knocked him off his bike in the early hours of the morning. Mr Dudgeon suffered a broken neck and internal injuries as he commuted to his work at a bakery near Falkirk at 02:00. Sneddon, 42, was found guilty of causing the 51-year-old's death, after a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh. Mr Dudgeon, of High Valleyfield in Fife, regularly cycled to and from his work as a baker at Tesco in Camelon, just outside Falkirk. He was cycling on the A985 road between the Longannet roundabout and the Kincardine Bridge when he was hit by a Vauxhall Astra driven by Sneddon, of Falkirk. Sneddon called an ambulance, but paramedics found no sign of a pulse on the victim before taking him to Forth Valley Hospital in Larbert, where he was pronounced dead. Witnesses said weather conditions were clear and visibility was reasonable on the night of the crash, with a police officer noting that the red flashing light on Mr Dudgeon's bike was bright enough to be seen from 300m away. Prosecutors said that although Mr Dudgeon had not been wearing a high visibility jacket, Sneddon should have seen him well before the collision and should have taken steps to avoid the cyclist. The Crown originally charged Sneddon with causing Mr Dudgeon's death by dangerously failing to observe the cyclist and colliding with the rear of his bike, which he denied. After a trial, the jury found him guilty on the lesser charge of death by careless driving. He will be sentenced later after background reports are compiled.
A motorist who fatally injured a cyclist has been convicted of causing death by careless driving.
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The aeroplane is a larger version of its new CSeries aircraft. The Montreal-based plane and train maker is under pressure to bring the CSeries into service after years of cost overruns. The smaller CS100 started testing in 2013. The wings and engine covers of the CS300 jet are made in Belfast. The aerospace company is one of Northern Ireland's biggest employers. About 5,000 permanent employees and about 1,000 temporary and contract staff work at its Belfast base. Michael Ryan of Bombardier Belfast said: "It is another testament to the skills of our workforce, and our design and manufacturing capabilities, which are helping bring a step change in aircraft wing technology."
Bombardier Inc has launched a test flight of its CS300 jet.
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If confirmed by the Senate, the 49-year-old would restore the court's conservative majority, lost with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The Senate Democratic leader has said he has "very serious doubts" about Judge Gorsuch's nomination. The court has the final legal word on many of the most sensitive US issues, from abortion to gender to gun control. Mr Trump said Judge Gorsuch had a "superb intellect, an unparalleled legal education, and a commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to text". "Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline, and has earned bipartisan support," Mr Trump said. He was picked from a shortlist of 21 choices, which Mr Trump made public during the election campaign. Accepting the nomination, he said: ""It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people's representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands." Judge Gorsuch is a so-called originalist, meaning he believes the US Constitution should be followed as the Founding Fathers intended. If successful, his nomination will restore the 5-4 conservative majority on the nine-seat high court. Protests against Mr Trump's choice were held outside the Supreme Court following the announcement. Abortion: He has not spoken out about Roe v Wade, the case which legalised abortion nationwide in 1973, making in difficult to pin down where he stands on the issue. Birth control: Judge Gorsuch has supported religious institutions which objected to requirements for employers to provide access to contraception. In one of his most high-profile cases, he defended the religious owners of retailer Hobby Lobby who refused to fund birth control via staff health insurance. Gun rights: He hasn't ruled directly on firearms restrictions, but is thought to be generally pro-second amendment. He once wrote in a legal opinion that a citizen's right to bear arms "must not be infringed lightly". Euthanasia: He has been vocal about assisted dying, writing a book in 2009 which opposed legalisation. A conservative's dream: Anthony Zurcher, North America Reporter Donald Trump's choice of Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee is a fairly traditional pick in a decidedly untraditional time. Judge Gorsuch has a CV and background that would make him a natural selection for just about any Republican president. He's the kind of Supreme Court nominee evangelical and traditional conservative voters dreamed of as a reward for sticking with Mr Trump through the general election despite campaign missteps, controversies and occasional political apostasies. They knew they would get a court pick they wouldn't like if Hillary Clinton won. They hoped they would get someone like Judge Gorsuch if Mr Trump prevailed. Meanwhile, Democrats are left fuming over Senate Republicans' precedent-breaking decision to stymie Barack Obama's attempts to fill this court vacancy for nearly 10 months. They have to decide if they will try to derail Mr Gorsuch's nomination as retribution - perhaps forcing Republicans to break with another Senate tradition, the ability of a minority to a block a Supreme Court nominee with only 41 votes through a filibuster. The party's base, feeling a liberal majority on the court was stolen from them, will demand lockstep resistance, likely setting up a divisive confirmation fight ahead. Judge Gorsuch's nomination is expected to spark a political showdown in the Senate. Former President Barack Obama had put forward Judge Merrick Garland after Justice Scalia's death last February. But Republicans refused to debate the choice, saying it was too close to an election, which left Democrats embittered. Even if Judge Gorsuch makes it through the Senate Judiciary Committee, he will still face challenges when the entire chamber convenes for a final vote. Democrats may seek to prevent that second vote by prolonging or filibustering the debate. In that case, the nomination would need 60 votes rather than a simple majority. With Republicans only holding 52 Senate seats, they may have to change Senate rules in order to approve Mr Trump's nominee. The highest court in the US is often the ultimate arbiter on highly contentious laws, disputes between states and the federal government, and final appeals to stay executions. It hears fewer than 100 cases a year and the key announcements are made in June. Each of the nine justices serves a lifetime appointment after being nominated by the president and approved by the Senate. The court already has cases this term on the rights of transgender students, gerrymandered voting districts and on the Texas death penalty determination. It is also likely the court will hear cases on voter rights, abortion, racial bias in policing and US immigration policy, and possibly on Mr Trump's controversial executive order banning refugees.
President Donald Trump has nominated Colorado federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch for the US Supreme Court.
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Twelve people died in the 19 December attack. Amri fled to Italy and was shot dead by police in Milan. Investigators believe Bilel A, aged 26, was either involved in planning the attack or at least knew about it. Police say they have arrested him on suspicion of benefit fraud as they do not have enough evidence against him. Federal prosecutors' spokeswoman Frauke Koehler told reporters on Wednesday that the suspect had known Amri since the end of 2015 and that the pair had met at a restaurant on the evening before the attack and had "very intense conversations". The suspect's home in an asylum shelter had been searched and communication devices taken away for analysis, she added. The man is believed to have used at least two false names in several German cities between April and November 2015. A former flatmate of Amri's is also being investigated as a potential witness. Amri twice tried to contact him on 19 December, although it is unclear whether or not they spoke. Over a fortnight after the attack, German prosecutors have said there is now no doubt that 24-year-old Anis Amri was behind the attack. And investigators across Europe have a clearer picture of what happened on the night of the attack and how Amri fled south to Italy. Police in Italy confirmed on Wednesday that the gun used by Amri to murder Polish driver Lukasz Urban was the same he fired four days later in Milan. Shortly before the attack, Amri is thought to have gone to Friedrich-Krause-Ufer, a street where he shot dead Mr Urban. He then went to a mosque and returned to the lorry to carry out the attack on Breitscheidplatz a few miles away. Amri was then seen on camera a short distance from the square at Zoo station, raising an index finger, a gesture linked to jihadist group Islamic State. What happens next is unclear, but it is thought that he escaped to the North Rhine-Westphalia area of western Germany. His final journey took him through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy, exploiting the open borders of Europe's Schengen zone. Some of Amri's story is yet to emerge. Swiss police said they too had opened an inquiry into the Berlin attack after receiving information from another police force.
Berlin police have detained a Tunisian man suspected of eating dinner with Anis Amri the night before he drove a lorry into a crowded Christmas market.
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Pakistan's military spokesman says the line has just been used for the first time as the two countries work to improve co-ordination along the border. The move was agreed when Pakistani army chief Raheel Sharif visited Kabul. Security co-operation between the two countries is seen as crucial in countering the growing Taliban threat. Earlier this month Afghan President Ashraf Ghani blamed Pakistan-based militant groups for the escalating violence. Afghan officials often accuse Pakistan of controlling the Afghan Taliban. The say that Islamabad allows the most senior Afghan Taliban leaders to operate freely there. Pakistan denies this although it admits having contacts with the militants. News of the hotline comes as Afghanistan will host discussions next week with Pakistan, the US and China to prepare the ground for possible Afghan peace talks involving the Taliban. Afghanistan sees Pakistani support as crucial if negotiations with the Taliban are to be successful. President Ghani has recently moved towards strengthening ties with Pakistan - the Taliban's historic supporters - in what correspondents say is a desperate bid to restart peace negotiations as the insurgency spreads. The president warned that the presence of international militant groups - including al-Qaeda, Islamic State and militant groups from China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the Middle East - was growing in Afghanistan. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said at the beginning of this month that "working for the achievement of a peaceful neighbourhood is a cardinal principal of Pakistan's foreign policy". "We should envisage collective and co-ordinated measures on the regional security front to ensure that the gains and struggle against terrorism are durable and irreversible," he said.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have established a hotline between their respective military commanders to reduce frequent cross-border tensions.
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Ansar al-Sharia demanded the authorities release Islamist fighters from jail in exchange for the soldiers' safe return. The announcement came only days after a series of suicide attacks and armed assaults by the group in southern Yemen left more than 100 people dead, most of them soldiers. It had previously warned that it was going to launch a series of attacks on the authorities, dubbed the "Flooding River". Ansar al-Sharia, whose name means "Partisans of Islamic law" in Arabic, was formed by AQAP in response to the growing youth movement in Yemen, which has marginalised Salafi-jihadists who advocate the violent overthrow of the government and the establishment of an Islamic state. Mass, peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations have swept the Arab world in the past year, not least in Yemen, where they eventually forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to hand over power to his deputy in November. Last April, jihadist websites published an interview with AQAP's religious leader, Adel al-Abbab - also known as Abu al-Zubair - who said that Ansar al-Sharia had been set up to attract people to Sharia rule in the areas under the control of AQAP and allied groups, including "Islamic" punishments. In the past year, militants linked to AQAP have seized parts of the southern province of Abyan, including the provincial capital, Zinjibar. Ansar al-Sharia says it provides public services to locals in such areas and claims to solve their day-to-day problems. It says it is reproducing the model of Sharia rule espoused by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq. Adel al-Abbab said Ansar al-Sharia had successfully attracted locals and tribesmen in some areas by turning their strategy "into popular action, instead of keeping it as an elite one". Many of those involved in Ansar al-Sharia are jihadists who have experienced living in an "Islamic state", either in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, or among jihadists in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003. Ansar al-Sharia's ability to launch attacks, as well as build local support, indicates that the Yemeni authorities' struggle with Islamist militants may soon become bloodier and more protracted.
An offshoot of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has issued a statement threatening the lives of 73 Yemeni soldiers it says it captured last week.
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Violet-Grace Youens died after Aidan McAteer's car struck her on Prescot Road, St Helens, on 24 March. McAteer pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving at an earlier hearing at Liverpool Crown Court. He was handed a jail sentence of nine years and four months.
A man has been jailed for the hit-and-run death of a four-year-old girl who was struck by his speeding car when it mounted a pavement in Merseyside.
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Welshman Compton, 27, joins on a one-year deal after leaving Yeovil Town. Rigg has signed a two-year deal after helping AFC Wimbledon to League Two promotion, playing 44 times last term. "The squad is starting to shape up nicely. There are a couple more to come in," manager Warren Feeney said. "I'm very happy with the signings we have been able to secure so far." Former West Bromwich Albion player Compton started his career with Portsmouth and joined the south coast club again for a short spell in 2012. Compton also featured for Bradford, Colchester and Hartlepool United in addition to a spell in Scotland with Falkirk. Last season he scored four goals in 20 appearances for Yeovil, including the winning goal in the Glovers' 1-0 win over the Exiles in April. Rigg, also 27, started at Newport's rivals Bristol Rovers before spells with Port Vale and Oxford United and scored twice for the Dons last season. "I'm delighted to have signed for Newport County," Rigg said. "I took to Warren Feeney straight away and that was a big draw in me signing." In a summer where several players have departed Rodney Parade, Jamie Turley, Scot Bennett, Mark Randall, Joss Labadie Jennison Myrie-Williams and James Bittner have all been recruited.
Newport County have signed winger Jack Compton and striker Sean Rigg.
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Visitors to the Hebridean Celtic Festival will be able to use an app to trigger online information from items such as signs and posters on the site. Videos and band interviews will be among the online material available to view on phones and tablets. HebCelt is is taking place in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis from 19 to 22 July. The Waterboys, Imelda May, Lucy Spraggan, Skerryvore, Peatbog Faeries and Dougie MacLean are among this year's acts. HebCelt director Caroline Maclennan said: "We are offering the new augmented reality experience as an extra feature to add to the enjoyment of visiting the festival this year. "But it will also mean people around the world can interact with the festival and capture a flavour of its atmosphere at any time. "The message will be updated in the run up to HebCelt and during the event, allowing people to instantly access information and interviews, buy tickets and also get a taste of our unique festival wherever they are."
A Scottish music event is to offer festival-goers an augmented reality experience.
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The new note features images of Scottish mathematician and astronomer Mary Somerville, her hometown of Burntisland in Fife, and two otters. The material includes a variety of new security features which the bank said makes them "difficult to counterfeit but easy to authenticate". For the first time, the note includes braille to help the visually impaired. The bank also announced that the face of its polymer £20 note, which is not expected to enter circulation until 2020, will feature Glasgow philanthropist and entrepreneur Catherine Cranston. Mary Fairfax Somerville was a mathematician, geographer and astronomer, who was born in 1780 in Jedburgh but her childhood home was at Burntisland in Fife. Her parents tried to stop her studying because they thought it would kill her. Her sister had died and they thought studying was to blame. But Mary ploughed on and carried out detailed and highly-accurate studies of the solar system. She was so accurate that she noticed a wobble in the orbit of Uranus and suggested there could be another planet out there. She was right. It was the planet Neptune. Jointly with Caroline Herschel, she became the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Mary was also a huge advocate of women's rights, votes for women and women in education, which is why the formerly women-only Somerville College, Oxford, was named after her soon after her death in 1872. Its alumni include former Indian prime minister Indira Ghandi and Margaret Thatcher, among others. The new £10 note is 15% smaller than the paper ones currently in circulation. It follows the bank's polymer £5 note, which features Scottish novelist and poet Nan Shepherd, and came into circulation in 2016. RBS chief executive Ross McEwan said the bank felt that their notes had value beyond the figure printed on them, and were a "symbol which lives in people's pockets and touches everyday lives". He said: "It has been 30 years since we produced a new £10 note, and we wanted the public to help influence the design. They helped influence our theme of 'fabric of nature' and helped us consider the impact Mary Somerville has had on our understanding of the world in which we live. "It is fitting that our most advanced note yet will carry her portrait." A moon diagram taken from Somerville's book Mechanism of the Heavens appears when the note is viewed under UV light. Words from the Scottish poet Norman MacCaig also feature. Bank of Scotland also has a polymer £10 note entering circulation, featuring the image of Sir Walter Scott, while Clydesdale Bank's version, featuring Robert Burns, comes out on 21 September.
The Royal Bank of Scotland is to issue its first polymer £10 note to the public on 4 October.
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Built in the 13th Century, it overlooks Aleppo's Old City and is part of a UN-listed World Heritage site. Syrian government forces have been using the citadel as a military position. Government and rebel forces have been fighting for control of the city for over three years. It is not known which side caused the explosion. Fighting on the ground and government air strikes have left thousands dead, and destroyed more than 60% of the Old City. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said the explosion occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning. "The blast caused the collapse of part of the wall of the citadel," the organisation's chief, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP news agency. The government says that rebel fighters set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath the citadel. The use of tunnel bombs has become a common rebel tactic. Since the start of July, rebel groups have been waging a major offensive against President Bashar al-Assad's troops in the city. More than 230,000 people are believed to have been killed in Syria since the uprising against President Assad began in March 2011. Some 11.5 million others - more than half of the country's population - have fled their homes.
A bomb explosion has caused part of the walls of Aleppo's ancient citadel to collapse.
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The unmanned cargo ship was launched from Kazakhstan on Tuesday, but contact was lost with it soon afterwards. Russia's space agency says Progress M-27M is now orbiting in an uncontrolled spin. It cannot reach the ISS and is likely to break up on re-entering Earth's atmosphere. The craft carried on to a higher orbit after contact was lost. Igor Komarov, the head of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said: "The craft's continued flight and its docking with the ISS is not possible." Two astronauts spending a year on the ISS, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, told the Associated Press news agency that flight controllers had given up hope of controlling Progress again. Progress is likely to re-enter Earth's atmosphere some time between 5 and 7 May. Other capsules - including one Progress craft last year - have burned up and disintegrated on re-entering Earth's atmosphere without posing a threat to the planet's population. Cathleen Lewis, a specialist in Russian space programmes at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, said it was not yet known where debris will fall - but that it was highly unlikely to hit urban areas. "I always remind people that two-thirds of Earth's surface is water," she said. "The likelihood of it coming down and hitting someone is so remote as to be minuscule." The problem with the loss of the Progress is that it puts further pressure on the volume of stores held on the space station. ISS managers like to keep a good six months' supply of food, water, fuel and other resources in reserve at all times. Currently, however, this volume is somewhat depleted - in part because of the explosion on launch last year of the American Cygnus freighter. The responsibility for keeping the stores topped up leans heavily on Progress and the second American freighter, Dragon. The latter is due to make its next supply run in June. As long as it keeps working well, ISS officials in Houston and Moscow will not be unduly concerned. If, for some reason, supplies did become marginal, the space agencies would simply reduce the size of the normal six-person crew until matters could be improved. Progress was to deliver food, water, fuel, oxygen and clothing to the crew of six people on the space station that orbits about 420km (250 miles) above Earth. Even after Progress' loss, the astronauts have enough supplies to keep them going until the next expected delivery on 19 June. A Roscosmos spokesman told Reuters that the loss was valued at 2.59 billion roubles ($50.7m, £32.9m).
A Russian spacecraft delivering supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) is out of control and will fall back to Earth, officials say.
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