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The 22-year-old joined Surrey from Essex over the winter and helped the club win promotion to Division One of the County Championship.
He has been named in the England Lions squad for their winter tour of the UAE.
"Ben has had an excellent first season at Surrey," director of cricket Alec Stewart said.
"He thoroughly deserved his selection for the England Lions squad this winter.
"He has a huge role to play over the coming years and I'm confident that his talent and performances with us will see him play for England in the future." | Surrey wicketkeeper-batsman Ben Foakes has signed a new contract, which will keep him at The Oval until the end of the 2018 season. | 34428424 |
The 25-year-old, who had been with Reading since leaving Huddersfield in 2014, started all four of Northern Ireland's matches at Euro 2016 in June.
The former Manchester United trainee joins on a three-year deal at Brighton.
"He's a box-to-box midfielder and an excellent passer of the ball," manager Chris Hughton told the club website.
"He has a good grounding, coming from Manchester United, and gives us extra options in midfield and adds further depth to our squad."
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | Brighton & Hove Albion have signed Northern Ireland midfielder Oliver Norwood from fellow Championship side Reading for an undisclosed fee. | 36971005 |
A series of amendments to a regulation on how internet traffic is managed in Europe were all rejected by MEPs.
Proponents of net neutrality, who demand that web traffic be treated equally by networks, have already criticised the move.
The existing legislation, which was accepted, will be developed into regulations.
Campaigners have said that provisions for protecting net neutrality in the existing text of the rules are too vague and many worry that it will be easy for internet firms to strike deals with content providers which may not be advantageous for everyone.
For example, it is thought that so-called "zero rating" agreements, in which customers can access certain sites and services for free outside their data plans, might become more widespread.
While this could be beneficial for those who want to access content from those providers, others worry that it will stifle innovation.
The rules, however, do stipulate that network companies will not be able to offer or market paid-for access to "fast lanes". Traffic management, they add, should be based on objective technical requirements.
Although some campaigners had suggested there might be growing support for the amendments within the parliament, all were voted down in large majorities.
It is thought that many MEPs would have been reluctant to begin a process of amending the regulation given that it might have delayed another aspect of the rules - the abolition of mobile data roaming charges.
The result is "hardly surprising" according to legal expert Chris Marsden at the University of Sussex, given that many of the major parties represented in the parliament all supported the regulation text without amendments.
The Body of European Regulators (BEREC) would now have nine months to issue guidelines to bodies like Ofcom in the UK, he added.
"So, [by] September next year we will have the guidelines and the real enforcement work begins," he told the BBC.
Dr Marsden also said there were still plenty of unknowns, such as what form regulations on "zero ratings" and fast and slow lane services might actually take.
There was also the issue of how laws in the Netherlands, Slovenia and Finland - which all have special net neutrality protections in place - would be affected.
Some initial guidelines, Dr Marsden added, would not be ready until 2016.
Michael Theurer, a liberal German MEP described the outcome as "regrettable" and added that he felt the regulations as passed do not include a clear definition of net neutrality to inform regulators.
Prior to the vote, the inventor of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and a host of tech companies had expressed their support for the amendments and urged MEPs to vote them through.
Firms which has openly supported the amendments included:
"The fact is that what we use the internet for in 2015 is vastly different from those early days when Tim Berners-Lee was inventing the web," commented Chris Green of business consultancy Lewis as he pointed out that the rise of video streaming had placed extra burdens on network companies.
"Maintaining that information flow is an expensive process and the cost of running that infrastructure is falling on the shoulders of ISPs.
"For them, a two-tier internet makes much more sense," he told the BBC.
The idea that data should be ferried from place to place as quickly as possible, regardless of what it is, is how most people assume the internet works.
That's the essence of net neutrality.
However, it's possible to decide to prioritise certain types of data over others - perhaps, for example, by charging the producers of such data a fee to make sure their content gets delivered promptly.
For big video streaming sites, the prospect is worrying. They could find themselves coughing up lots of money in fees simply to give their users the same experience as before.
Some argue, however, that such fees are fair since it costs internet service providers a lot of money to keep providing such content, no matter how popular the streaming sites become.
Part of the problem with the rules in their current form, argued Joe McNamee at the European Digital Rights campaign group, is that they are ambiguous.
"As the text currently stands there is no indication as to how much abuse of dominance would be permissible under this arrangement," he told the BBC.
The sort of scenarios that could impact internet use include the creation of "fast lanes" and "slow lanes" or the creation of "zero ratings" in which some services may be accessed without using up any of the internet user's data quota.
In Belgium, for example, some mobile phone companies currently allow unlimited access to Twitter and Facebook while all other data usage is part of a monthly plan. In a few countries such as the Netherlands, such practices are not allowed.
Besides a host of net neutrality campaigners, inventor of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee had added his voice to those supporting the amendments.
"If adopted as currently written, these rules will threaten innovation, free speech and privacy, and compromise Europe's ability to lead in the digital economy," he wrote in a blog.
And a string of tech companies signed a letter to the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, asking MEPs to adopt the amendments.
The firms included Netflix, Tumblr, Vimeo, Kickstarter and Reddit.
"I was contacted by a number of start-ups and investors because they were deeply concerned about the impact of the European Parliament's network neutrality proposals on start-up innovation in Europe," Stanford professor Barbara van Schewick, who helped pen the letter, told the BBC.
Interestingly, three countries within the EU - Netherlands, Slovenia and Finland - already have a range of net neutrality rules enshrined in law.
These laws might have to be altered depending on how the new, EU-wide rules are interpreted by regulators later.
Elsewhere, net neutrality has received some regulatory protection in the United States after a vote in February this year placed new restrictions on what deals could be sought by internet firms with content providers.
But in other countries, such as India, "zero rating" is allowed.
"It's a fragmented picture across the board," said Dr Marsden.
"It's an extremely difficult area and there are probably no absolutely right answers." | The European Parliament has voted against a set of rules intended to safeguard "net neutrality" in the EU. | 34649067 |
Astronomers working on the Gaia space telescope have released a first tranche of data recording the position and brightness of over a billion stars.
And for some two million of these objects, their distance and sideways motion across the heavens has also been accurately plotted.
Gaia's mapping effort is already unprecedented in scale, but it still has several years to run.
Remarkably, scientists say the store of information even now is too big for them to sift, and they are appealing for the public's help in making discoveries.
To give one simple example of the scope of Gaia: Of the 1.1 billion light sources in Wednesday's data release, something like 400 million of these objects have never been recorded in any previous catalogue.
"You're imaging the whole sky in basically [Hubble] space telescope quality and because you can now resolve all the stars that previously maybe looked as though they were merged as one star at low resolution - now we can see them," explained Anthony Brown from Leiden University, Netherlands.
Gerry Gilmore from Cambridge University, UK, was one of the mission's proposers. "Gaia is going to be a revolution," he said. "It's as if we as astronomers have been bluffing up until now. We're now going to see the truth."
A web portal has been opened where anyone can play with Gaia data and look for novel phenomena.
When a group of schoolchildren showed the BBC how to do it last week, they stumbled across a supernova - an exploded star.
The European Space Agency (Esa) launched its Gaia mission in 2013.
Its goal was to update and extend the work of a previous satellite from the 1980s/90s called Hipparcos.
This observatory made the go-to Milky Way catalogue for its time - an astonishing chart of our cosmic neighbourhood.
It mapped the precise position, brightness, distance and proper motion (that sideways movement on the sky) of 100,000 stars.
Gaia, with its first release of data, has just increased that haul 20-fold.
Gaia's imperative - To work out how far it is to the nearest stars
It is a function of the leap in technology, of course.
The new mission actually carries two telescopes, which it scans across the Milky Way from a location about 1.5 million km from Earth.
The telescopes' mirrors throw their captured light on to a huge, one-billion-pixel camera detector connected to a trio of instruments.
It is this ultra-stable and supersensitive optical equipment that Gaia uses to pick out its sample of stars with extraordinary confidence.
The called-for specification was to get to know the brightest objects' coordinates down to an error of just seven micro-arcseconds.
This angle is equivalent to the size of a euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth.
In addition to their position and proper motion, the stars are having their physical properties analysed by Gaia.
Its instruments are acquiring details such temperature and composition. These are markers needed to help determine the stars' ages.
Not all of this information can be gleaned at once. It will take repeat viewing, but by the end of five years of operations the 100,000 stars fully profiled by Hipparcos should become at least a billion in the Gaia catalogue. That is a conservative estimate, however.
If one thing is clear from the new data it is that Gaia is seeing many more fainter stars than anyone anticipated. Once the project is complete it could have plotted 2-3 billion light sources.
Gaia - The discovery machine
Astronomers around the world will have dived into the data the moment it went live on servers on Wednesday - and for all manner of reasons.
Some of the 1.1 billion light sources will not actually be stars; they will be the very bright centres of very distant galaxies - what are known as quasars.
The nature of their light can be used to calculate the mass of all the stuff between them and us - a means, in effect, to weigh the Universe.
A good number of other data-users will be planet-hunters. By studying the way Gaia's stars appear to wobble on the sky, it should be possible to infer the gravitational presence of orbiting worlds.
"Gaia is going to be extremely useful for exoplanets, and especially systems that have the Jupiter kind of planets," said Esa's Gaia project scientist, Timo Prusti.
"The numbers are going to be impressive; we expect 20,000. The thing is, you need patience because the exoplanets are something where you have to collect five years of data to see the deviation in the movements."
By way of comparison, in the past 20 years of planet-hunting, astronomers have confirmed 3,000 worlds beyond our Solar System.
One eagerly anticipated measurement is the radial velocity of stars. This describes the movement they make towards or away from Gaia as they turn around the galaxy.
If this measurement is combined with the stars' proper motion, it will lay bare the dynamics of the Milky Way.
It should be possible, for example, to make a kind of time-lapse movie - to run forwards to see how the galaxy might evolve into the future, or to run backwards to see how our cosmic neighbourhood came to be the shape it is today.
At the outset of the mission, scientists had hoped to get radial velocity data on about 150 million stars.
But this was thrown into doubt when it was realised soon after Gaia's launch that unexpected stray light was getting into the telescope. This made the observation of the faintest stars and their colours far more challenging.
Engineers think they understand the problem: in part it is caused by the way sunlight bends past the 10m-diameter shade that Gaia uses to keep its telescopes in shadow.
And the good news according to the scientists is that they think they can work around the difficulties.
The longer the mission runs, they believe, the closer Gaia will get to its target of 150 million radial velocity measurements - and that movie.
"Clearly, with the stray light we lost sensitivity. On the other hand, it happens to be that there are more stars than were thought before. So we're still talking about 100 million radial velocities," Timo Prusti told BBC News.
[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos | The most precise map of the night sky ever assembled is taking shape. | 37355154 |
It is feared Toshiba may have to write down the value of the unit by a larger-than-expected 700bn yen ($6.1bn; £5bn).
There are unconfirmed reports Toshiba is seeking aid from the government-backed Development Bank of Japan (DBJ).
Toshiba said the exact writedown figure was not finalised, and declined to comment on any DBJ approach.
The laptops-to-hydro power giant was plunged into crisis late last year when it emerged it faced huge cost overruns on projects handled by a newly-bought company that builds US nuclear power plants.
Toshiba's US operation Westinghouse paid about $229m in 2015 for Stone & Webster, the nuclear construction subsidiary of Chicago Bridge & Iron.
But on 27 December Toshiba admitted that it faced writedowns of "several billion dollars". The company later indicated that the size of the writedowns would be between $1bn and $4.5bn.
Toshiba's nuclear services business brings in about one-third of the industrial giant's revenue.
The share price, down 26% at one stage on Thursday, is now 50% lower than when the writedown revelations emerged amid fears that the company still has no firm grip on the final costs.
The company, at the heart of Japan's industrial development for decades, is still recovering from revelations in 2015 that profits were overstated for seven years.
That accounting scandal led to the resignation of the company's chief executive.
Japan's Nikkei newspaper and the Reuters agency were among news groups reporting that Toshiba had approached the country's development bank, and is looking to spin-off its profitable Nand computer memory division to raise cash.
Toshiba is thought to have been in close contact with its bank lenders about providing more financial support. Reuters said there would be more meetings with the main banks this week.
"The key thing to watch here is whether Toshiba's liabilities will exceed its assets. If that happens it will be difficult for some banks to step up with new financing," said Mana Nakazora, chief credit analyst at BNP Paribas.
Mr Nakazora said, however, she did not expect Toshiba to default on its debt as its main banks would stick by it, adding that some sort of package involving asset sales, financing and capital from the government was the most likely solution.
In a statement on Thursday, Toshiba said it was still assessing the scale of the writedown.
"We are still discussing how to deal with this issue, and no concrete decisions have been made," the company said. | Shares in Toshiba have dived 16% on reports that the embattled Japanese conglomerate faces bigger losses at its US nuclear power business. | 38674697 |
It reflects the tradition that, while a president is overseas, domestic bickering should be put on hold, as partisan grievances are best kept within the family.
Those norms, which used to be considered iron-clad, have frayed considerably in recent decades. Leave it to Donald Trump, however, to throw kerosene on whatever remains and dance around the ashes.
In a three-minute exchange with reporters in Warsaw, Mr Trump aired a wide range of his usual grievances - against the US media, his presidential predecessor and the US intelligence community.
Here's a closer look:
Trump:"I've said it very simply, I think it could very well have been Russia but I think it could well have been other countries and I won't be specific, but a lot of people interfere."
Anthony: The question that set Mr Trump off, from MSNBC reporter Hallie Jackson, was direct. "Will you once and for all yes or no definitively say that Russia interfered in the 2016 election?"
His answer was far from a definitive "yes". Instead he engaged in several paragraphs worth of water-muddying along the lines of past remarks, where he has suggested the Chinese or some "400-pound person sitting in bed" could be the true culprit behind the email hacks of top Democratic officials in 2016.
Trump: "Barack Obama, when he found out about this in terms of if it was Russia, found out about it in August. Now the election was in November. That's a lot of time he did nothing about it."
Anthony: According to the Washington Post article that detailed the extent of the information available to Mr Obama at the time - including that Russian President Vladimir Putin had directly ordered election meddling - the then-president took several steps.
In September, he directly warned Mr Putin face-to-face to stop Russian cyber-activities in the US. He directed his intelligence officials to reach out to congressional leadership, although the Republicans were reluctant to participate in any bipartisan call for action.
He also informed state governments to ensure that their electoral systems were secure.
Trump: "They say he choked. Well, I don't think he choked."
Anthony: Mr Obama's response didn't go over well with everyone in his administration. Mr Trump is referencing a line in that same Washington Post article, from a senior Obama official who felt the US government didn't do enough to punish Russia for what appeared to be a brazen attempt to destabilise the US election.
There's a certain amount of irony that Mr Trump would highlight this anonymous remark, given how frequently he and his aides have condemned reliance on anonymous sources in news stories critical of his own administration.
Trump: "He thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the election and he said let's not do anything about it. Had he thought the other way he would have done something about it."
Anthony: The Washington Post article reported that Mr Obama decided not to go public with the evidence of Russian involvement because of concerns that it might provoke further Russian action, reveal US intelligence-gathering resources or be cited by Mr Trump as evidence that Democrats were "rigging" the US election against him, an accusation he was regularly making in the closing days of the presidential campaign
Mr Trump has apparently concluded that if the situation for Mrs Clinton had appeared more dire, he would have been more aggressive in his response. It's a charge that is impossible to prove, of course - but it allows Mr Trump once again to bask in the unexpected nature of his presidential triumph.
Trump: "I heard it was 17 agencies. Boy, that's a lot. Do we even have that many intelligence agencies?"
Anthony: Yes, the US does. The CIA and the FBI are the big ones, but there are also intelligence divisions within the State, Defence, Homeland Security, Treasury and Energy departments, as well as multiple military intelligence offices.
It's not something most Americans would be expected to know. Whether those at the top of the US government should have a basic familiarity with the nation's national security establishment is another question.
Mr Trump brings this up because of New York Times and Associated press reports that all 17 agencies had signed off on the conclusion that Russia had meddled in the 2016 US election.
Trump: "We did some very heavy research, and it turned out to be three or four. It wasn't 17 and many of your compatriots had to change their reporting, and they had to apologise and they had to correct."
Anthony: It seems like it wouldn't take too much "heavy research" for the administration to discover the findings of its own intelligence apparatus, but the president is correct that the New York Times and Associated Press have corrected their initial reports.
The assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election was the result of efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and published in a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which represents all US intelligence agencies. Other intelligence divisions, like Coast Guard Intelligence, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration's Office of National Security Intelligence would have had nothing relevant to add to the report.
Obama Administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper pointed this out multiple times during testimony before Congress on 8 May, but the media outlets only recently modified their original articles.
Neither the Associated Press or the New York Times "apologised", however.
Trump: "I remember that I was sitting back listening about Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction. How everybody was 100% sure that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Guess what, that led to one big mess. They were wrong."
Anthony: During the Republican primary campaign Mr Trump frequently criticised George W Bush and members of his administration for launching the Iraq War based on the faulty conclusion that Saddam Hussein was pursuing a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programme.
At the time it was considered remarkable that a Republican candidate would break with party orthodoxy on the merits of the military operation.
Making those charges on a debate stage is one thing, however. Highlighting the shortcomings of US intelligence on foreign soil, in front of the world media, while standing next to a fellow head of state, however, is astounding.
Trump: "I think what CNN did was unfortunate for them, as you know now, they have some pretty serious problems. They have been fake news for a long time, they've been covering me in a very dishonest way. Do you have that also, Mr President?"
Anthony: It was probably inevitable that Mr Trump would be asked to comment about Sunday's CNN-wrestling tweet, and he took the opportunity to take another swipe at the US cable news network.
What makes this time a different, of course, was the president's aside to the Polish leader, who has been accused of cracking down on his own nation's free press. He recently blocked adversarial reporters from covering parliament and in January 2016 fired the executives of the nation's public radio and television networks, replacing them with individuals more friendly to the government.
Such an action is well outside of the power of a US president, but the New York Times did note that Mr Trump isn't without his own "leverage" over CNN, as his administration is currently reviewing whether to let the network's parent company, Time Warner, merge with telecommunications giant AT&T.
"Mr Trump's Justice Department will decide whether to approve the merger, and while analysts say there is little to stop the deal from moving forward, the president's animus toward CNN remains a wild card," the paper reports.
Trump: "NBC equally is bad, despite the fact that I made them a fortune with The Apprentice, but they forgot that."
Anthony: NBC News officials will likely howl at the insinuation that their coverage could ever be influenced by commercial considerations of their network - even if the Apprentice, at least early in its 14-season run, was a ratings success.
Donald Trump didn't make out too badly from his involvement with his reality television show, either. According to campaign disclosures, he earned more than $213m from the programme.
And the visibility he received from being portrayed as a take-charge executive once a week on prime-time commercial television?
That, as they say, was priceless. | There's an old saying in Washington that politics should "stop at the water's edge". | 40525767 |
While there was Scottish 10,000m gold for Liz Lynch, now Liz McColgan, the Games came at a heavy financial cost due to the boycott by 32 out of the 59 competing nations.
Teams withdrew after being angered by the British government's attitude to apartheid-era South Africa.
One of the nations that pulled out was Bermuda.
As Scotland prepares to host the Games once more, memories of the Edinburgh Games were brought back this week when the Queen's Baton Relay - the main curtain raiser for the Games - passed through the North Atlantic island.
For Bermudian swimmer Victor Ruberry and 100m runner Bill Trott, 1986 was a farce.
It is an episode of their lives which still causes frustration.
Before the Games, Ruberry and Trott were gravely concerned like thousands of others about apartheid in South Africa. They remember discussions on the island about boycotting, but no decision was made and the athletes made their way to Scotland.
They just wanted to compete. However, the Bermuda Olympic Association (BOA) - the governing body of the team - was still considering what to do.
When the athletes arrived in Edinburgh, there were reports of safety concerns for the Bermudians. According to team manager John Morbey, this was one of the reasons given behind the team's eventual withdrawal.
"The night before the opening ceremony, a teammate and I caught a taxi and we went to a disco," recalls Trott, who was looking forward to his first Commonwealth Games having competed in the 1984 Olympics.
"There was no-one supervising us, and that is how safe we felt. As we came back late at night, we bumped into John Morbey and he had just found out that the Bermuda Olympic Association had pulled us out.
"That is when all the drama started. I was deflated."
Trott and Ruberry woke up on 24 July, the day of the opening ceremony, with no idea what was going on.
After a day of discussions, Trott remembers a call was eventually made to Bermuda's leader John Swan while the opening ceremony was taking place on television screens behind them.
Swan offered his support, and Trott and his teammates frantically got dressed into their Panama hats, blue blazers and beige shorts and rushed to Meadowbank Stadium to take part.
Having missed their slot, they marched on just before the host nation and received one of the biggest cheers of the night, with Scottish fans - facing a Commonwealth Games without half the Commonwealth - showing their delight.
Ruberry, meanwhile, missed the ceremony as he prepared to take part in his 100m breaststroke the following day.
He remembers Morbey coming into his room around midnight to confirm he would be swimming in the morning. By the time he had reached the pool, Ruberry knew it was all in vain.
The BOA had finally decided to remove the team from the Games.
Ruberry was disqualified for keeping his head under water at the end of his race.
He said: "Your mental state was not one where you were focused on competition.
"It was an abysmal swim. It was nowhere near what I was prepped to do prior to that. I am not making excuses, I just did not feel ready. At one point we were packing our bags, the next moment we were unpacking our bags."
After the team's withdrawal, Morbey went on television in disgust over the BOA's decision while the athletes hung their bed sheets out the window with 'Bermuda wants to stay, don't penalise our athletes' written on one.
When the Bermudians returned home, Trott remembered an island sympathetic towards the athletes but behind the decision to boycott.
Twenty-eight years later, the athletes still reflect on what the 1986 boycott meant for them.
Trott said: "It was unfortunate that we were put in a situation like that. What I learnt from all of that was politics can play a role in some cases that it shouldn't."
Adventurer Mark Beaumont reports on the Queen's Baton Relay as it makes its way to 70 nations and territories of the Commonwealth. He makes regular reports online, on radio and on television
BBC Queen's Baton Relay: Glasgow 2014
Follow Mark Beaumont on Twitter
For Ruberry, the Edinburgh Games were the second time his dreams had been shattered by a political boycott after missing out on the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
He gave up swimming, believing the countless hours of training were not worth it when it could all be scuppered by a boycott.
He returned to the pool for the 1988 Olympics, and now works as a swimming coach on the island.
He said: "Any sporting event brings people together. Boycotts serve to divide.
"They are a huge disappointment for the athletes who have been training so hard for something like that, and all of a sudden you take away the goalposts.
"I still to this day don't believe there is a place for boycotts in sport. There is so much more that can be accomplished by the positives - the healthy competition, people coming together.
"If you are going to do something political, then don't use the athletes as pawns." | The 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh are sadly remembered for the wrong reasons. | 27165110 |
The Mexican actress set up a meeting in October between Hollywood star Sean Penn and Guzman, who was on the run at the time.
Prosecutors say she may have received money from Guzman to launch her tequila business last year.
She denies any wrongdoing.
Ms Del Castillo, who also has American citizenship, was called in for questioning shortly after Guzman's arrest.
But she failed to turn up at the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles, where she lives.
The new order is valid in Mexican territory only. If she returns to her native country, she will be detained and questioned as a witness.
Her lawyer in the US, Harland Braun, has said that Ms Del Castillo is prepared to talk to the authorities "if we receive proper information and credentials".
"She's not hiding anything. There's no problem locating her. Everyone knows she has lawyers, publicists, agents," Mr Braun told AP news agency.
On Wednesday, Ms Del Castillo sought an injunction in Mexico to prevent her arrest.
Mexican prosecutors said they respected her decision and "the principle of presumed innocence," said Attorney General Arely Gomez.
Guzman was captured by Mexican troops in the northern city of Los Mochis on 8 January.
He was taken back to the Altiplano high security jail near Mexico City, six months after escaping through a tunnel.
Guzman was the founder of the brutal Sinaloa Cartel, which smuggled vast amounts of drugs into the United States. Mexico is seeking his extradition to the US.
Ms Del Castillo and Guzman exchanged dozens of messages before she and Sean Penn met him in northern Mexico.
Some of the messages seem to mention business deals, Ms Gomez told El Universal newspaper last month.
"They mention 'the order,' 'we're in business,' 'let's go together'. There's a great deal we still need to find out," said Ms Gomez.
Last year, Kate del Castillo launched her own tequila brand, Honor del Castillo.
She would have been involved in money laundering if she had received money from Guzman for her business, explained Ms Gomez.
Kate del Castillo is best known for her portrayal of drug boss Teresa Mendoza in the soap opera La Reina del Sur (Queen of the South). | Mexican prosecutors have issued an order to locate and question actress Kate del Castillo over her links with the imprisoned drug baron, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. | 35497491 |
Emergency services were called to the scene near the Cantref Reservoir at Nant Ddu at 10:00 BST on Saturday.
Firefighters said five vehicles were involved in the incident, with the casualties taken to hospital.
The road was closed in both directions for two hours while crash investigations took place. | Five people have been injured after a multi-vehicle accident on the A470 trunk road in Powys. | 40690716 |
You might argue about the order in which they should be placed, but few fans - aside from some Barcelona or Real Madrid followers who are unwilling to praise their greatest enemy's biggest star - would question the suggestion that those two are head and shoulders above everybody else.
That impression is supported by the result of the annual Ballon d'Or award, which has been presented to Messi in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 and to Ronaldo in 2008, 2013 and 2014, with nobody else claiming the prize since Kaka in 2007.
Now, however, perhaps it is time to reconsider the old notion that nobody else comes close to touching Messi and Ronaldo, because another flamboyant talent is also performing at similarly outrageous levels: Neymar.
And this weekend he could have no bigger stage to prove it, as Barcelona travel to Real Madrid for the first Clasico of the season.
Late on in Barcelona's home game with Villarreal this month, with the hosts leading 2-0 through goals from Neymar and Luis Suarez, a familiar chant echoed around the Nou Camp as fans reminded an injured hero that he had not been forgotten: "Meeessi, Meeessi, Meeessi…"
While they sang, Barca surged forward and Luis Suarez advanced down the left before curling a bouncing cross towards Neymar on the edge of the penalty area.
What Neymar did next will never be forgotten by those fortunate enough to witness it, with the Brazilian forward conjuring a piece of magic which his national team coach Dunga later described as "the sort of thing that makes football the beautiful game".
With his back to goal, Neymar controlled the cross with his stomach, then immediately flicked it over his head to lose his marker and swivelled 180 degrees to meet the dropping ball with a fierce low volley which flew into the back of the net.
The goal was met with astonishment as much as jubilation, and more than 70,000 fans rose to their feet to acclaim the scorer by quickly adapting their previous chant: "Neeeymar, Neeeymar, Neeeymar."
Same song, different name and, although he obviously did not mean it in this way, the goal felt like a symbolic moment with Neymar delivering an emphatic message to the watching world: 'Forget Messi. I'm king now.'
That goal against Villarreal was Neymar's 11th of the season in La Liga, making him the league's top scorer - three ahead of Ronaldo despite playing 93 fewer minutes.
Not insignificantly, he has been in a particularly rich vein of form during Messi's spell on the sidelines, rising to the challenge of compensating for his fellow South American's absence by scoring 10 goals in his past seven club games.
Although this season's achievements have been particularly impressive, nobody should be too surprised to see Neymar making such a big impact because he has been scoring goals for fun ever since breaking into the Santos first team at the age of 17.
He is still only 23, yet Neymar has 249 career goals: 136 for Santos, 67 for Barcelona and 46 for Brazil.
To put those figures into context, by the time Messi and Ronaldo reached the age Neymar is now (23 years and nine months), they had 'only' registered respective career goal tallies of 186 and 127.
Each case is different, with Ronaldo needing some time to develop into the awesome physical specimen he is today, while Messi's younger years were spent in a Barcelona team containing other established stars who commanded more than their fair share of attention.
Furthermore, you could argue that a chunk of Neymar's early goals came 'cheaply' as they were scored in the relatively low standard Brazilian state championship.
While it does not necessarily follow that Neymar will end up scoring more goals than Messi and Ronaldo simply because he has scored more than them by his current age, surely it suggests that this young man from Sao Paulo should be taken seriously as a potential all-time great?
Neymar's electrifying performances over the past few weeks have attracted considerable attention in Spain and Albert Masnou, the deputy editor of Barcelona-based newspaper Sport, believes he is playing better than Ronaldo.
"At the moment he is surpassing Ronaldo," Masnou told BBC Sport. "Cristiano is enduring a 'grey' period, uncomfortable with his club and his coach. He isn't leading his team or serving as their reference point, although that could easily change in just one game.
"But Neymar has become more integral to Barca. He is more consistent and growing a lot as the years go by. Now he is capable of leading the team when Messi's not there, and we are seeing his full potential."
Those views were echoed by a man who knows Neymar extremely well: Tata Martino, who was his coach at Barcelona when he arrived from Santos in the summer of 2013 and who is now in charge of Argentina.
Before last week's World Cup qualifier between the two nations, Martino commented: "Neymar has reached a point of maturity. What he's doing now puts him on a level with the two footballers we consider above the rest."
Ronaldinho, who remains a revered figure among Barcelona fans, was also glowing in his tribute of his countryman as he enthused: "Neymar is a phenomenon. It's nice to see a Brazilian continuing to make history and I think he can be the greatest in the world."
It will soon get much harder for Neymar to maintain his recent standards, however, because Messi's absence through injury is nearly over. And when that happens, the focus of the Barca team and everyone else - fans, media and opponents - will immediately return to the Argentine.
Messi is, quite simply, the man around whom the Catalans have built their team, and when he is on the pitch the primary function of the other 10 players is to service him.
Messi's status is illustrated off the pitch by the parrot-like phrase trotted out weekly by every Barca player that he is "the best player in the world", and manager Luis Enrique notably brushed aside a question after the Villarreal game asking whether Neymar is the second best, instead blandly asserting that he is proud to coach lots of great players.
Considering Messi's consistent greatness, the reliance upon him is understandable. But it does mean the other players are forced to somewhat subdue their natural games in order to meet the demands of contributing to a team built around Messi.
Some, such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Alexis Sanchez, have been forced to leave in order to allow their personal talents to flourish. Others - and there is perhaps no better example than Neymar - have accepted that role and made the most out of playing for Messi first, the team second and themselves third.
Masnou says Neymar will, in the short term, have no problem stepping out of the spotlight once Messi returns.
"He didn't join Barca to overshadow Messi, but to be his heir," Masnou said. "Neymar has been the king for two months but he knows that when Messi is there, the leader is Messi."
Neymar is widely regarded in Barcelona as the heir apparent: the player lined up to become the team's focal point when Messi has retired or entered into decline.
The question, however, is how much longer Neymar will be prepared to accept that role. Messi is only 28 and could still be performing at or near his peak for another four or five years.
By then, Neymar will be in his late 20s and may well have grown tired of being the chief member of the supporting cast rather than taking the lead role.
Perhaps the key for Barca will be to create a slightly more level playing field, one which places just as much importance in Neymar as it does in Messi: to use Masnou's poetic phrase, a system which makes them "equal protagonists".
The past few weeks have suggested that Neymar is good enough to merit a more elevated standing, placing him shoulder to shoulder with Messi rather than deferentially looking up to him.
Whether Messi will be prepared to share his crown is another matter. | For the past few years, there has been a general consensus of opinion among football supporters that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are the best players in the world. | 34835193 |
Connie Yates's and Chris Gard's son Charlie is receiving 24-hour treatment for a condition that causes progressive muscle weakness.
UK doctors have said there is no accepted cure and Charlie should be allowed to die with dignity.
A High Court judge will decide on Monday what is in his best interests.
The judge will analyse medical evidence at a hearing in the Family Division as Charlie's parents seek to keep him on life support at London's Great Ormond Street hospital.
Though born healthy in August 2016, Charlie began to lose weight and strength by the time he was eight weeks old.
He was admitted to Great Ormond Street in October after developing aspiration pneumonia and was diagnosed with mitochondrial depletion syndrome - a condition that causes progressive muscle weakness.
Last month, his parents told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme that they would continue to fight for their child's survival.
They said: "He can move his mouth, he can move his hands. He can't open them fully, but he can still open his eyes and see us, in response to us.
"We don't feel he's in pain at all."
The couple, who live in London, believe Charlie may have a chance of surviving if he receives pioneering treatment in the US.
"We just want to have our chance. It would never be a cure but it could help him live. If it saves him, amazing," Miss Yates said.
"I want to save others. Even if Charlie doesn't make it through this, I don't ever want another mum and their child to go through this."
Charlie is thought to be just one of 16 children in the world to suffer from mitochondrial depletion syndrome.
Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust said: "Charlie has a very rare and complex disease, for which there is no accepted cure.
"Charlie was very unwell when he was admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital and has remained under 24-hour care on our intensive care unit.
"But his condition has continued to deteriorate and we now feel we have exhausted all available proven treatment options.
"We cannot imagine how hugely distressing this is for his family.
"We continue to support them in every way we can, while advocating, what we believe, is best for Charlie." | The parents of baby with rare genetic condition have reached a £1.2m crowdfunding target for him to have pioneering treatment in the US. | 39471712 |
Olivia Colman and David Tennant are back as DS Ellie Miller and DI Alec Hardy, this time investigating the rape of a woman in the fictional Dorset town.
She's played by former Coronation Street actress Julie Hesmondhalgh.
Jodie Whittaker and Andrew Buchan return to play Beth and Mark Latimer, along with Arthur Darvill as local vicar Paul Coates.
Other cast members include Lenny Henry, Georgina Campbell, Sarah Parish, Charlie Higson and Mark Bazeley.
The first episode, shown on Monday night, drew 7.5 million viewers.
That fell slightly short of the first episode of series two, which launched in 2015 to 7.6 million.
The debut episode of the first series, shown in 2013, pulled in 6.8 million.
Here's what the TV critics had to say about the start of the new series.
Read the full reviews from the Daily Mail, The Independent, the Daily Express, the Telegraph, The Times (subscription required) and the Radio Times.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]. | Broadchurch is back for its third and final series - and has gone down well with TV critics. | 39115192 |
In November and December, the main line at Cowley Bridge near Exeter was submerged, closing it for 11 days.
Business leaders and Devon and Cornwall's councils have written to the Environment Agency and Network Rail.
Network Rail has insisted work is being done to improve the situation.
The joint letter said that while the "severe impact" the closure of Cowley Bridge had on Devon and Cornwall's economies had been recognised, there was still "no firm, positive and long-term solution".
Network Rail said a bid for £30m had been submitted to the government which would pay for work at 10 locations to make the South West's rail tracks more resilient against flooding and landslips.
But the letter said although work was due to be carried out in January, it did not include work at Cowley Bridge.
The letter concluded by asking for confirmation from Network Rail and the Environment Agency that a solution "acceptable to the region as a whole" to stop flooding at Cowley Bridge was found as soon as possible.
Mike Gallop, Network Rail's route asset management director, said a detailed study had been carried out after the flooding.
"I think it's very important to state that we're not proposing to stop the flooding at Cowley Bridge," he told BBC News.
"What we are proposing is to improve the resilience of the railway - to recover the service and recover the track and signalling much more effectively than we did last year."
Mr Gallop said Network Rail fully recognised the importance of rail services to the South West economy and a looking for a solution was a priority.
"The railway to the South West is a priority - not only Cowley Bridge," he added. | Concerns have been raised that not enough is being done to prevent a repeat of serious flooding which disrupted rail services in the South West last winter. | 23520673 |
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) predicted that the UK housing market will slow down over the next three months.
In April, landlords and second home owners face a 3% stamp duty surcharge on new purchases.
This would slow price rises, Rics said, but only in the short-term.
Surveyors still expect house prices to rise by 25% over the next five years.
"Over the past three months, we have witnessed a surge in buy-to-let activity," said Simon Rubinsohn, Rics chief economist.
"Investors have rushed to purchase homes before the stamp duty surcharge comes into effect. It is inevitable that over the coming months, April's stamp duty changes will take a little of the heat out of the investor market.
"While there remain significant doubts as to whether the government's plans to encourage a more robust development and construction pipeline will be sufficient to address the housing crisis, long-term price indications for the housing market remain strong."
East Anglia saw the most widespread house price rises in February, Rics suggested.
Other surveys have suggested a pick-up in activity by landlords ahead of the stamp duty rises, but there is some disagreement among commentators over what effect this is having on the UK housing market as a whole.
Various surveys record UK house prices on a monthly basis, but they all have slightly different methodology.
The house price index by the Nationwide Building Society is the quickest to be released. It uses an average value for properties after considering components such as location and size. The survey is based on its own mortgage lending which represents about 13% of the market.
A survey by the Halifax, now part of Lloyds Banking Group, is published a few days later. Lloyds is the biggest mortgage lender in the UK with 20% of the market and, like the Nationwide, uses its own home loan data.
Figures from the Land Registry are widely considered to be the most robust but are published much later than the lenders' data. It calculates the price change for properties that have sold multiple times since 1995. This survey only covers England and Wales.
A survey is of house prices in Scotland is published by the Registers of Scotland, using a simple average of house prices. The Land and Property Services assisted by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency produces a quarterly house price index in Northern Ireland.
The official UK statistical authority - the Office for National Statistics - is another well-regarded survey, used for reference by government. It offers a UK-wide regional breakdown. It draws on data from the regulated mortgage survey by the Council of Mortgage Lenders, so excludes cash buyers of property.
Housing market sentiment is reflected in the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) survey of some of its members.
Various other surveys include a Hometrack review of house prices in UK cities, and a Rightmove survey of asking prices. | The pace of house price rises will slow when tax changes "take the heat out" of interest from investors, surveyors suggest. | 35764233 |
Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa drugs cartel, was captured on Friday after escaping from a prison in Mexico last year, the second such breakout he's managed to pull off.
Guzman had been charged with drug trafficking and murder. US prosecutors have said he's helped to bring more than 500 tons of cocaine into the US over the last several decades.
He has operated a vast drug empire that has a fleet of trucks, aeroplanes and submarines, as he told Penn in the interview, conducted while Guzman was still in hiding.
Actor Penn has been secretive about the circumstances around the interview, which was conducted while Guzman was being pursued by Mexican and American authorities, and how he managed to secure it in the first place. He says he was put in touch with the drug lord through the Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who was in talks with Guzman about a biopic.
In his Rolling Stone piece, Mr Penn talked about the use of burner phones and other methods used to escape detection by authorities.
Many people have wondered whether Mr Penn broke the law with his reporting - and whether or not he could be prosecuted.
But legally, it is OK to talk to someone when they are a fugitive from justice?
"Simply having contact with a known narco-trafficker is not the basis of prosecution," said Daniel Richman, a professor of law at Columbia University and a former federal prosecutor.
But if Mr Penn had helped Guzman in some way to avoid capture - or interfered with the authorities' efforts to find him - he could be prosecuted.
There don't seem to be signs that Mr Penn is guilty of that, or that authorities in the US or Mexico will file criminal charges against him.
In the past, authorities have decided not to go after journalists or former officials who have interviewed notorious figures.
Osama Bin Laden spoke to journalist Robert Fisk for a series of interviews, and to former US justice department official John Miller in 1998 for an ABC News report.
Neither Mr Fisk nor Mr Miller was prosecuted. A senior intelligence official told the BBC that in a similar way it's unlikely that Mr Penn will be.
Yet his interview has made people uncomfortable, especially given Guzman's history of violence.
"It may be immoral," said Stanford Law School's Robert Weisberg, describing Penn's journalistic work. "But it's not illegal."
Caleb Mason, a former federal prosecutor who used to work on drug-smuggling cases, said Mr Penn was unlikely to be prosecuted in Mexico, either. "He was just doing an interview," said Mason. "Mexican law is pretty protective of journalistic rights."
Still, Mexican authorities have made it clear they would like to talk to Mr Penn - though they haven't said anything publicly about prosecuting him.
As Cesar Diaz, a former senior special agent who worked on investigations of Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug trafficker, said: "If I was a Mexican authority, I would want to know: How in the heck did Sean Penn know where El Chapo was and we didn't?" | Did Sean Penn break the law when he did an interview with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzman for Rolling Stone? | 35228910 |
15 July 2016 Last updated at 07:23 BST
The British astronaut made history when he floated into the International Space Station.
He spent six months living and working onboard the ISS, doing important experiments and learning how to wash and eat in space.
But what were his favourite bits, and what is life like now he's back on Earth? | Major Tim Peake has been back on Earth for three weeks now, but what's it really like to live in space? | 36795599 |
When asked to design a community project to promote the restoration of the Ashton Gatehouse, Vicky Harrison was puzzled not to find it on a map.
Together with a team of volunteers aged 15 to 70 she set about changing that.
The embroidered map, that took 600 hours to complete, will be on display at the gatehouse from Wednesday.
The original entrance to the Ashton Court Estate is being renovated with the help of a £550,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Artist Ms Harrison said: "After searching for it online, I quickly realised that it was not on Google maps and so the idea to put it back on the map was born.
"The map takes in the local sights of Long Ashton, Bower Ashton, Ashton Vale, Southville and Bedminster.
"There will be a nod to the key roads but scattered all over it are landmarks and points of interest such as peregrine falcons in the gorge, deer in the park and hot air balloons floating above Ashton Court."
Hundreds of stitches were used, including cretan stitch, woven wheel stitch, zigzag chain stitch and Roumanian couching. | The woman behind the creation of a giant woollen model of Bristol has recreated an historic city gatehouse on an embroidered map. | 38641949 |
Award organisers posted on Facebook: "We have some really sad news. Calvin Harris has taken ill and will not be able to perform at tomorrow's show.
"He sends his sincere apologies. Get well soon, Calvin!"
On Twitter, the 30-year-old DJ is reported to have said: "No EMAs for me this weekend. Got some heart problems. Heading home to see if it can be fixed x." | Dumfries-born DJ Calvin Harris has withdrawn from the MTV European Music Awards because of illness. | 29968443 |
One person died when an apparent twister hit the state of Georgia, overturning cars on a motorway.
Bartow County Fire Chief Craig Millsap said at least 10 cars had been flipped over on Interstate 75.
A man died in Nashville, Tennessee, when high winds toppled a tree on to a shed he had been taking shelter in.
The storm system also brought mayhem to parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky and Indiana.
More than 60,000 customers have lost electricity from the Gulf Coast to Ohio as a result, it is estimated.
Footage showed a funnel cloud tearing through the Georgian town of Adairsville, 60 miles (97km) north-west of Atlanta.
Interstate 75 was closed in both directions after vehicles were flipped and tossed on to the grassy shoulder.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports there have been numerous emergency calls of trauma and injuries.
The National Weather Service (NWS) warned of "major structure damage" in Adairsville.
Reports said people were trapped in homes and businesses and aerial news footage showed widespread damage at a factory.
Elsewhere:
The NWS is reporting golf-ball sized hail stones in some areas.
Meteorologists say warm weather from the Gulf of Mexico collided with a cold front from the west, creating volatile conditions. | A sprawling storm system has brought havoc to a swathe of the US, leaving two people dead and thousands of households without electricity. | 21268042 |
He qualified that by saying that he was "not actively trying to sell it".
Mr Lebedev also owns the London Evening Standard and the Independent's sister newspaper, i.
On Monday he launches London Live, a 24-hour television network dedicated to news, entertainment and culture in the capital.
On The Andrew Marr Show Mr Lebedev said he hoped the TV channel would create jobs and be a platform to launch new talent.
He has hired what he described as "YouTube sensations" and relative unknowns to present its programming.
Another innovation Mr Lebedev highlighted was the broadcast of live plays.
Asked about his newspaper business, Mr Lebedev underlined the re-invigoration of the London Evening Standard under his ownership, which - since becoming a free title - has gone from a circulation of 700,000 to 900,000.
From losing £30m a year, the Evening Standard now makes a profit.
He also said the Independent and the i newspaper were together losing £5m-a-year, compared with a £20m loss in the previous year.
Those two newspapers have long been rumoured to be for sale. The latest comments from Mr Lebedev are a sign from the owner that he is entertaining offers.
Mr Lebedev, 33, is a British citizen and told Andrew Marr he had been a Londoner since the age of eight. He also owns a pub, the Bunch of Grapes, in East London.
He still owns several properties in Crimea.
Asked if he was worried about them in the light of the Russian incursion, he said he was "very concerned", but the situation there was "complicated and textured" and a lot of the time was misunderstood in the West.
London Live goes on air at 18:30 BST on Monday on channel 8 on the Freeview service. | The owner of the Independent, Evgeny Lebedev, says the newspaper could be for sale if somebody "offers the right price". | 26808572 |
The five men from London died in the sea at the East Sussex resort of Camber Sands in August.
The East Sussex coroner said Mohit Dupar died in July, getting into difficulty on the same day that 19-year-old Gustavo Silva Da Cruz died.
Mr Dupar died in hospital four days later but details of his death have only now been publicly revealed.
More news from Sussex
Among the five friends who died were Kenugen Saththiyanathan, 18, known as Ken, and his brother Kobikanthan Saththiyanathan, 22, known as Kobi, both of Normandy Way, Erith, south-east London.
Nitharsan Ravi, 22, of Admaston Road, Plumstead, south-east London, Inthushan Sriskantharasa, 23, of Chadwell Road, Grays, Essex, and Gurushanth Srithavarajah, 27, of Elsa Road, Welling, south-east London, were also among the group.
Pre-inquest reviews into their deaths will be held in Hastings on Tuesday following full inquests into how Brazilian national Mr Silva Da Cruz and Mr Dupar, of Cranmer Road, Hayes, west London, who was believed to be in his 30s, died. | A beach where five friends died during a day trip claimed a seventh life in the summer, a coroner has disclosed. | 37829390 |
After a club-record 10 straight league wins, they have drawn their last two.
"We're in a fantastic position - but anything can happen in a week of football, there's nine points to play for," said Wilder.
"Other teams have got to go on great runs to catch us and we've got to have a dip, but I don't see it."
Wilder told BBC Radio Northampton: "I'm not seeing any nervousness or apprehension in our play - we're going for it and enjoying this situation.
"Will we win the next 12 games? I think it's going to be a real difficult task because to win three games on the bounce is tough. When you're talking about the exposure we get, we should do, because it's a special run, breaking club records."
The Cobblers travel to play-off-chasing Carlisle on Saturday, after draws against Hartlepool and AFC Wimbledon.
And Wilder says that, because teams below them all play each other, they will struggle to put together a run of wins.
"Look at some of the games that are coming up - Accrington are going to Wimbledon on Saturday, Portsmouth are playing Accrington next week, Oxford v Plymouth - they're all going to cut their own throats," he said.
"I don't see a team sticking 10 wins on the bounce again between now and the end of the season.
"We've got Cambridge coming up who fancy getting into the play-offs, Carlisle on Saturday, and even down to the likes of Luton - there's going to be some tough games coming up for everybody." | Northampton Town manager Chris Wilder says he cannot see his side faltering as they sit 11 points clear at the top of the League Two table. | 35716045 |
Jake Gosling's drilled cross was turned in by Lee Mansell before Shaun Miller's lob levelled for the Shrimps.
Billy Bodin and Matty Taylor both converted to give Rovers a two-goal cushion but Tom Barkhuizen stroked home from close range to reduce the deficit.
In the final 10 minutes both sides were awarded penalties with Ellis Harrison netting for Rovers and Paul Mullin for Morecambe, the visitors moving to 12th. | Bristol Rovers triumphed in a seven-goal thriller away at Morecambe. | 34367070 |
Manuel Pellegrini's side dominated the second half but were repeatedly denied by away keeper Tim Howard.
It was a supreme defensive display from the Toffees, who had been the better attacking side in the first half.
They also rode their luck, as City were denied a late penalty for a foul on Raheem Sterling by John Stones.
For Everton, it is a point won - and a confidence-boosting one, following a run of seven games in which they have won just once.
But it is two key points dropped for City and they remain three points behind joint league leaders Arsenal, held 3-3 by Liverpool, and Leicester, 1-0 winners at Tottenham.
Look back at all the action from the Etihad
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The game began in a half-full Etihad Stadium as traffic problems prevented many fans arriving by kick-off.
However, you would forgive many of the City supporters who did eventually make it to the ground for wishing they had not. Before the break, the home side looked sluggish and were outworked by a dynamic away side.
They did produce a couple of chances - the best of them a Yaya Toure header from eight yards that was palmed away by Howard - but could easily have trailed.
They improved in the second half as Sergio Aguero became more involved, but still struggled to break their opponents down, even after the introduction of David Silva with 15 minutes to go.
The game would end in desperate, vain calls for a penalty for Stones' admittedly risky sliding challenge on Sterling.
City boss Manuel Pellegrini was adamant that Stones' challenge should have been penalised and his side awarded a "clear penalty".
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"Everyone in the stadium could see it was a penalty - it was so near to the referee and so clear," said the Chilean. "Both Raheem's legs were taken by Stones but if he doesn't whistle we can't say anything."
Unsurprisingly, Everton boss Roberto Martinez had an opposing view of the incident and praised the "maturity" of referee Roger East.
"We have been on the back end of receiving a penalty, in the last seconds against Stoke," said the Spaniard.
"Stones goes to slide to block the ball, Sterling does not play the ball and waited. In my eyes it is an area that is not certain if it's a penalty or not.
"I believe the referees should control their emotions and the referee did exactly that. It is impossible to be 100% certain and I am pleased he did this and showed his maturity."
This game was the second part of a fixture trilogy between these sides in January, falling between the two legs of a Capital One Cup semi-final.
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A week ago, Romelu Lukaku's winner gave Everton a 2-1 victory at Goodison Park, and they impressed again in a performance that showcased both sides of their game.
In the first half, the Toffees were patient and precise when they had the ball and hard-working when they did not. But for some wayward shooting, they would have led at the break.
Gerard Deulofeu and Lukaku were both denied with shots from an angle in the box, while the latter set up Leon Osman for the best chance - a volley from 15 yards that flew just past Joe Hart's far post.
After the break, Roberto Martinez's side were firmly on the back foot and spent long spells without the ball but demonstrated discipline and commitment to limit City to only a few goalscoring chances.
Manchester City are at home again on Saturday, with Crystal Palace the visitors.
Everton face another tough away trip on the same day, as they travel to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea. | Manchester City missed the chance to make up ground in the Premier League title race as they were held to a goalless draw by a stubborn Everton. | 35239748 |
Mendes told a court hearing held behind closed doors in Madrid that he never advised his clients on tax matters, his company Gestifute said in a statement.
The agent, who could be put under official investigation in the case, gave evidence at the hearing into alleged tax evasion by Monaco striker Radamel Falcao, one of his clients.
Falcao, like Mendes, denies wrongdoing.
The former Chelsea and Manchester United striker is accused of failing to declare 5.3m euros (£4.69m) of income earned from image rights between 2012 and 2013 while he played for Atletico Madrid.
Falcao, 31, is alleged to have used a network of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands, Republic of Ireland, Colombia and Panama to avoid taxes on image rights income.
The Colombia international's case is being heard as the Spanish authorities place the tax affairs of footballers under increasing scrutiny, with a number of Mendes' clients being investigated, including Real Madrid team-mates Cristiano Ronaldo and Fabio Coentrao, who have also denied committing any offences.
Judge Monica Gomez Ferrer, who is hearing the evidence relating to Falcao, is also overseeing the case of 32-year-old Portugal captain Ronaldo, and is scheduled to question him on 31 July over allegations he illegally evaded 14.7m euros (£13m) in taxes.
Coentrao, the 29-year-old Portugal international, is accused of having hidden close to 1.3m euros (£1.15m) from the tax authorities.
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho, another client of 51-year-old Mendes, has been accused of failing to pay millions of euros in taxes during his time in charge of Real Madrid.
However, Gestifute has said Mourinho, 54, had resolved the situation with the tax authorities.
Angel di Maria, the 29-year-old Paris St-Germain winger who is represented by Mendes, agreed to pay 2m euros (£1.76m) to settle a tax case last week.
Earlier this month, Gestifute made a statement denying that Mendes has done anything wrong.
It read: "Neither Jorge Mendes nor the company he manages, Gestifute, participate in or offer any service linked, directly or indirectly, to financial, fiscal or legal advice to their clients." | Football agent Jorge Mendes has denied helping footballers evade tax illegally by creating shell companies. | 40421370 |
Nick Hedges travelled the country in the 1960s and 70s for the housing charity Shelter, taking pictures of families living in run-down homes.
Mr Hedges said he was "shocked to the core" to witness the conditions in large parts of the UK.
"I often wonder what happened to them, if they went on to lead happy and healthy lives."
"It's heart-breaking to know that the conditions some people have to live in today aren't a million miles away from the photos I took all those years ago," Mr Hedges said.
"A home should be a place of safety and security, but too many families are having to live without."
Campbell Robb, Shelter's chief executive, said that while the slums had disappeared, the UK was "in the midst of another housing crisis" and called on the government to provide more support to vulnerable families.
"The double blow of sky-high house prices along with cuts to welfare support means just one thing like an illness or cut in hours can leave a family hurtling towards homelessness," he said.
The images are available online and can be seen at a free exhibition at the Custard Factory in Digbeth, Birmingham until Friday.
Vicky Hines, manager of Shelter's Birmingham services, said the pictures captured "an incredibly important part of this city's history".
She said: "They show how far we've come in the past 50 years, but remind us how much more we must do for the tens of thousands of families still desperate for a safe and secure place to call home."
A spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government, which has responsibility for housing, said it was "an absolute priority" to build more homes in the UK, and said its current plans were "the most ambitious housing programme in a generation".
An exhibition of the photographs has already been held in Sheffield, and another will take place in Manchester later this month. | A charity is trying to trace children who were photographed in the post-war slums of Britain. | 37288396 |
It came into effect on Tuesday night and was in place until 10:00 GMT on Wednesday.
The Met Office said icy patches were expected on untreated surfaces, with slippery conditions on pavements and cycle paths possible.
Drivers were also warned to be aware of difficult conditions on the roads.
The warning covered Pembrokeshire, Swansea, Vale of Glamorgan, Bridgend, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Neath Port Talbot, Powys, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Conwy, Gwynedd, Anglesey, Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Cardiff, Denbighshire, Merthyr Tydfil, Monmouthshire, Newport and Torfaen. | The Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" warning for ice across Wales. | 38903688 |
The accident happened on the A74(M) northbound, between junctions 14 and 15 in Moffat, at about 10.15.
Three men were injured. There were not thought to have been any passengers on board the coaches.
Two men were taken to Wishaw General Hospital and the third to Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.
Their conditions are not known.
Diversions were set up following the closure.
One lane remained closed on Saturday evening while recovery work was carried out after debris was left scattered on the carriageway. | The northbound section of the main road into Scotland has been reopened following a crash involving two coaches and a lorry. | 28071228 |
Its survey of leading employers found that, while 54% of students are women, they make up just 47% of graduate scheme applicants.
But they took 49% of the posts, the responses by 170 employers showed.
"Many women don't apply for the top schemes when they should," said AGR chief executive Stephen Isherwood.
Improving the gender diversity of graduate programmes is largely a challenge of attracting women in the first place, says the report.
Once they apply women are more likely to be hired, according to the survey sent to AGR members in April this year.
Even in male-dominated areas such as IT and engineering, women are proportionally more likely to succeed once they decide to apply, the survey found.
For example, women make up only 17% of IT students and 15% of engineering students, but succeed in getting 27% and 25% respectively of the places on graduate schemes in these fields, the report suggests.
This means that while men make up 83% and 85% of the student population in these fields, they find it relatively tougher to get work - taking 73% and 75% of the jobs.
But in the field of law the reverse is true - 63% of students are female but only 58% of the graduate scheme posts go to women.
Graduate employers are making efforts to boost the numbers of women they hire, the research found.
Three quarters of the firms which responded to the survey had a diversity strategy in place, and the majority said redressing workplace gender imbalance was the highest priority.
Construction and engineering firms were particularly successful, increasing the share of women hires by 3% and 4% respectively in a year, says the report.
Mr Isherwood says considerable barriers to gender equality remain.
"Graduate employers want to hire women, there are lots of opportunities out there and these candidates are more likely to succeed, so we need to address why they're not applying. Industry-wide collaboration to tackle student perceptions will be a key step forward.
"We know women are hugely successful in the selection process. We just need them to realise it. We need to boost confidence and encourage more female graduates to reach their potential." | Female students are less likely to aim for top graduate jobs but more likely to land them if they apply, says the Association of Graduate Recruiters. | 36855834 |
Conteh played for Guinean side Ashanti Golden Boys de Siguiri and had received several call-ups to Sierra Leone's squad but was yet to secure a place in the international side's first team.
He was part of the Leone Stars 18-man squad for their 2019 Africa Cup of Nations match against Kenya last month but dropped out the night before the match due to poor health.
It's very sad to wake up and hear news like this. Alhaji was such a great person
"Conteh was not impressive in the last day of training because something was wrong with him," Sierra Leone's coach John Keister told BBC Sport.
"I even told one of my assistants about it. This forced me to drop him from the squad. We'll surely miss him. I always liked him because he was humble and always good to be around the Leone Stars team.
"He was a clever boy and had a goalkeeper's height and good goalkeeping abilities," Keister added.
Some of Sierra Leone's biggest international stars have also been playing tribute to their team-mate.
"It's very sad to wake up and hear news like this," said former Norwich city and Middlesborough striker Kei Kamara.
"Alhaji was such a great person; being a college graduate and a footballer is a hard thing to do and he was able to accomplish that. My prayers to his family," Kamara added.
Leone Stars skipper Umaru Bangura spoke of his shock at hearing the news of Conteh's death.
"We've lost a good goalkeeper. We were with him in camp last month when preparing for our match against Kenya. We'll miss him. Rest in peace Conteh," said Bangura.
Turkey based midfielder Alfred Sankoh also paid tribute to the 25-year-old.
"Rest in peace brother. God knows best but this is so scary after a month when I was with you in the Leone Stars camp."
Former Leone Stars captain Mohamed Kallon, who brought Conteh to his club FC Kallon some years ago, described the goalkeeper as a "great guy with lots of ambition."
"He graduated from college and he was working whilst playing for FC kallon," said Mohamed Kallon.
"He was a talented goalkeeper and it is a great loss for Sierra Leone. May his soul rest in Peace. We love him but Allah loves him most."
Conteh, who is yet to be buried, was one of few educated Sierra Leonean players with a degree having graduated from Fourah Bay college at the University of Sierra Leone.
He played for three Premier league clubs in Sierra Leone - East End Lions, Kallon FC and Diamond Stars of Kono - as well as two clubs in Guinea, Fello Star de Labè and Ashanti Golden Boys de Siguiri. | Sierra Leone is mourning the death of top goalkeeper Alhaji Dauda Conteh who has died from a short illness in hospital in Freetown aged 25. | 40548717 |
Raymond McCord is seeking a judicial review and lodged the papers at the High Court in Belfast on Thursday.
Mr McCord became involved with the rights of victims of the Troubles after his son was murdered.
His legal team claim it would be unlawful to begin the formal process of the UK leaving the EU without a parliamentary vote.
They also claim it could undermine the UK's treaty obligations under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the peace process.
It is the first challenge of its kind in Northern Ireland.
With similar legal action already under way in England, efforts are being made to secure an initial court hearing in Belfast next week.
Mr McCord's son Raymond Jr was beaten to death by the Ulster Volunteer Force in north Belfast in 1997. His body was dumped in a quarry.
Mr McCord is concerned that money from the European Union, which goes towards victims of the Troubles, may be discontinued.
His lawyer said there are fears that Brexit could impact on Mr McCord's fundamental rights.
"As a victim of the most recent conflict in Northern Ireland, Mr McCord is very concerned about the profoundly damaging effect that a unilateral withdrawal of the UK from the EU will have upon the ongoing relative stability in Northern Ireland," he said. | The father of a man murdered by loyalist paramilitaries has launched a legal challenge to Brexit. | 37051175 |
Last year Dumfries and Galloway Council refused to release the details following a BBC Scotland news website Freedom of Information request.
It has now confirmed it will pay just over £1.3m towards remedial works at the DG One centre in Dumfries.
The case was taken to the Scottish Information Commission but the council has now voluntarily revealed the sum.
The DG One centre shut in October 2014 but a legal wrangle between the council and the original builders meant works could not start for nearly two years.
They finally got under way in September last year with a timeframe of about 18 months for completion.
The £17m centre opened in 2008 but suffered a string of problems which led to its complete closure in 2014.
The total cost of repairing the issues uncovered is just short of £10m and contractors McLaughlin and Harvey started site works on 5 September last year.
Dumfries and Galloway Council had refused to reveal the scale of its contribution when first sought via an FOI request.
However, it has now confirmed the figure to be £1.301m. | A council has revealed the scale of its financial contribution to major repair work at its flagship leisure centre. | 38882119 |
His pledge came as Facebook shares hit an all-time low of $17.55 on Tuesday.
There have been fears that as various lock-up periods, which stop sales by early investors, end, the stock may dip further.
Mr Zuckerberg owns about 444 million shares of Facebook plus an option to issue another 60 million.
Last month, Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and one of Facebook's earliest backers sold 20.1 million shares, cashing in most of his stake in the firm, after the first lock-up period ended.
Facebook shares rose nearly 2% in after-hours trading post the announcement.
Facebook shares have fallen almost 50% since the company went public in May this year.
Analysts and investors have been concerned about the firm's ability to generate revenue from users that access the website on their mobile devices.
The decreased screen space on these devices, compared with traditional desktop computers, means it is difficult to place advertisements.
As more and more users access the site from mobile devices, there are fears that revenue growth from advertisers, may slow.
That does not bode well for Facebook, as advertising revenue is one of the biggest contributors to its income.
Those fears were fanned further on Tuesday after analysts at Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase cut their price targets for the firm's shares.
Scott Devitt of Morgan Stanley lowered his target price to $32 from $38 on concerns over mobile advertising.
Meanwhile, Doug Anmuth of JPMorgan Chase slashed his target to $30 from $45, saying that revenue from games hosted on the website was likely to fall. | Mark Zuckerberg has said that he will not sell any of his shares in Facebook for at least one year in a bid to shore up investor confidence. | 19485402 |
The U's were reduced to 10 men early on after Joe Edwards was sent off for a late challenge on Matty Palmer.
Lucas Akins' close-range finish put the Brewers ahead on the stroke of half-time despite protests of offside.
Akins then completed his hat-trick after the break with a thumping finish from the edge of the box followed by a clean strike into the bottom corner.
Colchester's relegation comes towards the end of a hugely disappointing season which saw them fail to register a league win in more than four months between late October and early March.
The winless run of 19 matches was finally broken when they beat Bradford on 1 March, but by then they were already rock bottom.
A slight upturn in form over the last few weeks, in which they won three and drew two out of six games, saw Colchester move off the foot of the table.
However, with 95 goals conceded, they could become the first team to let in 100 league goals since Stockport County shipped 102 in the old First Division in 2001-02.
Burton, who came up from League Two last campaign, are now on the verge of winning back-to-back promotions as they sit six points clear of the play-offs in second, with two matches left.
Match ends, Colchester United 0, Burton Albion 3.
Second Half ends, Colchester United 0, Burton Albion 3.
Attempt saved. George Moncur (Colchester United) right footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Attempt missed. Owen Garvan (Colchester United) right footed shot from outside the box is close, but misses to the left.
Mason Bennett went off injured after Burton Albion had used all subs.
Foul by Mason Bennett (Burton Albion).
Alex Wynter (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Substitution, Colchester United. Drey Wright replaces Chris Porter.
Foul by Callum Butcher (Burton Albion).
George Moncur (Colchester United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Substitution, Burton Albion. Mason Bennett replaces Matthew Palmer.
Attempt missed. Tyler Walker (Burton Albion) header from the centre of the box misses to the right.
Attempt saved. George Moncur (Colchester United) left footed shot from the centre of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Attempt saved. Chris Porter (Colchester United) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the bottom left corner.
Substitution, Burton Albion. Tyler Walker replaces Stuart Beavon.
Mark Duffy (Burton Albion) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Alex Wynter (Colchester United).
Corner, Burton Albion. Conceded by Elliot Parish.
Attempt saved. Mark Duffy (Burton Albion) right footed shot from the left side of the box is saved in the bottom left corner.
Substitution, Burton Albion. Callum Butcher replaces Damien McCrory.
Attempt missed. Hamza Choudhury (Burton Albion) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right.
Corner, Burton Albion. Conceded by Tom Eastman.
Corner, Burton Albion. Conceded by Nicky Shorey.
Attempt blocked. Lucas Akins (Burton Albion) right footed shot from the right side of the box is blocked.
Tom Lapslie (Colchester United) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Mark Duffy (Burton Albion) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Tom Lapslie (Colchester United).
Goal! Colchester United 0, Burton Albion 3. Lucas Akins (Burton Albion) left footed shot from the right side of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Jon McLaughlin.
Hand ball by Stuart Beavon (Burton Albion).
Attempt missed. Tom Lapslie (Colchester United) right footed shot from outside the box is just a bit too high.
Goal! Colchester United 0, Burton Albion 2. Lucas Akins (Burton Albion) left footed shot from the centre of the box to the high centre of the goal. Assisted by Stuart Beavon.
Attempt missed. Alex Wynter (Colchester United) right footed shot from outside the box is close, but misses to the left.
Second Half begins Colchester United 0, Burton Albion 1.
Substitution, Colchester United. George Moncur replaces Louis Dunne.
First Half ends, Colchester United 0, Burton Albion 1.
Corner, Burton Albion. Conceded by Alex Wynter.
Attempt blocked. Mark Duffy (Burton Albion) right footed shot from the left side of the box is blocked.
Goal! Colchester United 0, Burton Albion 1. Lucas Akins (Burton Albion) right footed shot from very close range to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Mark Duffy.
Corner, Burton Albion. Conceded by Nicky Shorey.
Hamza Choudhury (Burton Albion) wins a free kick in the defensive half. | Colchester were relegated from League One with a home defeat by Burton, who boosted their own promotion chances. | 36060907 |
The Old Trafford outfit, who are unbeaten in the Championship all season, have secured an immediate return to the top tier with two games left to play. They need just 12 more points to be crowned champions.
Mark Chilton was the last Red Rose captain to achieve promotion back in 2005 and was also part of their Championship-winning side of 2011.
The 36-year-old assesses the key factors to Lancashire securing a return to the top flight.
Relegation came as a surprise for Lancashire in 2012, less than 12 months after they had been crowned outright champions for the first time in 77 years. The only goal for 2013 was promotion.
"The challenge for that season when you're in Division Two is that it almost feels like you're not playing for anything major. It's just a case of 'we've got to get ourselves back in that top division'.
"I remember 2005 being a bit of a stop-gap season and I'm pretty sure the lads will have felt like that this year.
"It hasn't surprised me that they've been so dominant. If you had spoken to me in April, I'd have confidently said they would have been going up, more than likely as champions.
"Clearly, in four-day cricket, they've really played very well this year. There's lots of good things happening at the club, with lots of good people involved, and over time, more often than not it will produce good results."
Six of Lancashire's eight home Championship fixtures in 2013 have been played at Old Trafford, compared with just two in 2012, following the completion of a multi-million pound redevelopment at the county's traditional home.
"I do think it's made a significant difference.
"Liverpool became a bit of a fortress for us in 2011 but having the home comforts of the new stadium, which is a fantastic facility and a lovely place to be, has probably really helped to settle the side.
"They've started to create the same feeling that we had at Liverpool in 2011, in that it becomes a difficult place to play.
"There would have been a lot of people holding their breath this summer. It was a big moment for the club because an awful lot of work had been done to get to that stage.
"To see the ground full for a Test match and a one-day international match [both against Australia] is what a lot of people have worked hard towards. They can sit back and take a great deal of satisfaction from a job well done."
With 122 Test appearances between them for South Africa and Australia respectively, Ashwell Prince and Simon Katich have brought some much-needed experience to Lancashire's batting line-up and are their top two run scorers in four-day cricket.
"Simon is probably The times I've seen him, he's looked very fluent and has scored a great volume of runs.
"I got the chance to play with Ashwell and I know what a determined performer he is.
"You're always guaranteed runs with those two guys. You'll very rarely put them into a situation that they've not played out before, so they can play lots of different roles and also complement the other guys in the team."
The evergreen Glen Chapple and the rejuvenated Kyle Hogg have both taken more than 50 first-class wickets for Lancashire in 2013, their stand-out performance coming in June when they dismissed Essex for just 20.
"After starting with successive home draws, Lancashire's campaign burst into life with a dramatic win against Glamorgan at Colwyn Bay, bowling the home side out for 139.
"Two victories against Essex, the first coming after chasing down 253 to win on the final day at Old Trafford, and then bowling Essex out for just 20 at Chelmsford, were remarkable achievements and big highlights.
"Once they picked up their first win, they never really looked back. With a trio of bowlers claiming more than 50 wickets apiece and runs coming from throughout the team, Lancashire are worthy of promotion in 2013."
"I've known Glen a long time and he looks as fit as I've seen him for a long time. The important thing for him is to keep his body in a good shape so that he can go out and demonstrate those skills.
"If you ask the majority of opening batsmen their top three hardest opponents, he will be in most people's top three. He's very well respected and
"The partnership between Glen and Kyle was a real strength in 2011, and
"Similarly to finding a good opening partnership with the bat, exactly the same thing applies with the ball.
"Where they're very strong is that they don't give much to hit. They're always testing techniques early on, always asking questions and not leaking too many runs so they're putting sides under pressure straight away.
"They obviously enjoy bowling with each other and it's proved to be an effective partnership this year."
Gary Keedy had been Lancashire's front-line spinner for much of his 18 years with the county, but his pre-season departure to Surrey has allowed Simon Kerrigan to flourish in a season that ended with him being handed a Test debut by England.
"Simon has always been an exciting cricketer - an aggressive spin bowler who is always looking to take wickets.
"His will have been up and down, but they will stand him in good stead.
"I really think he will go on to be a high-class international spinner. He's got all the attributes. When he's bowling well, he bowls people out and he wins games."
Lancashire have offered first-team chances to talented youngsters in recent seasons and 2013 has been no different, with opener Luis Reece, 23, making the most significant breakthrough.
"Luis was involved during my time and he forced his way in through the sheer volume of runs he was scoring in every form of cricket he was playing. It's very hard to ignore that.
"He's got his game organised and he's shown himself to be a consistent performer.
"I've done it myself - if you can bat a long time, see off the new ball and bat out that first session, you're setting a platform for the team to get big runs. He's done that brilliantly." | Lancashire clinched promotion back to Division One of the County Championship after they drew with Leicestershire on Saturday and Essex failed to beat Kent. | 24037309 |
The Celtic midfielder, 23, hopes the Tangerines, who are 13 points adrift at the foot of the Premiership, can avoid relegation.
United chairman Stephen Thompson has challenged his squad to preserve their top-flight status and "redeem" their professional reputations.
"It's very sad to see," Armstrong said. "Their future is not looking good in this league."
Armstrong was one of three players United sold in to Celtic in 2015. Since his departure - along with Nadir Ciftci and Gary Mackay-Steven - United's form has slumped.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Mixu Paatelainen's side lost 3-0 to Motherwell at Tannadice on Tuesday and Thompson then apologised to the club's supporters for their "abysmal" display and position in the table.
"I was hoping they would get a result on Tuesday night," said Armstrong. "It was not to be.
"But you have to remain optimistic and hope they can finish the league strongly and then if they do come down they come back up as soon as possible."
Meanwhile, St Johnstone boss Tommy Wright believes no-one should be writing off the Tangerines until it is arithmetically impossible for them to stay up.
"I would never say anything is done until it is done." Wright told BBC Scotland.
"They are not in a great position, that is an obvious thing for me to say.
"What they have got is a difficult position to get themselves out of. It shows the change in Scottish football."
Scotland's top flight has lost Rangers, Hearts and Hibernian in recent years, though Hearts have since returned to the Premiership and Rangers and Hibs are trying to get promoted to the top tier for next season.
Wright admits it would be "disappointing" for Saints to lose one of their Tayside rivals out of the league.
"We always enjoy the derby games with them," added Wright.
"Rangers or Hibs would probably be an automatic replacement but everybody wants to see the top clubs in the league on merit."
Dundee striker Greg Stewart would also miss local derby matches with United but concedes his own club's supporters may not feel the same way.
"Personally I enjoy playing in the derbies but I suppose Dundee fans won't agree with me," said the 25-year-old. "I'm sure they are wanting them down just to get the bragging rights in the city.
"The atmosphere in the games is brilliant for players and it makes you more determined and you want to win them.
"We have one more at least this season and hopefully we can make the most of it and get the win." | Stuart Armstrong is saddened by the plight of former club Dundee United. | 35605805 |
Six world powers - the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany - and Iran are meeting in Istanbul in Turkey.
Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful, but critics suspect it of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Israel has hinted in recent months that it may carry out a pre-emptive strike.
Michael Mann, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said of the talks: "There is a positive atmosphere... contrasting with the last time."
The BBC's James Reynolds, in Istanbul, says the envoys had earlier set the bar pretty low - saying they did not expect detailed, substantive proposals from either side.
What they wanted to see, he says, was whether Iran was ready to seriously engage and, if that happened, there might be another round of talks in four to six weeks time.
After a two-and-a-half-hour morning session, there was general agreement among the six world powers, known collectively as the P5+1, that there had been progress.
Mr Mann said: "The principles for future talks seem to be there."
One diplomat told Associated Press that Iran appeared ready to discuss its uranium enrichment programme and that the Iranian team had referred to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's "fatwa" on nuclear arms.
Another session later in the day involves bilateral meetings, possibly including a rare US-Iran encounter.
Ahead of the talks, Baroness Ashton said she hoped they would be "the beginnings of a sustained process".
"What we are here to do is to find ways in which we can build confidence between us and ways in which we can demonstrate that Iran is moving away from a nuclear weapons programme."
Chief Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili said the talks would "serve the dignity of the Iranian nation".
US President Barack Obama earlier described this as a "last chance" for diplomacy to work.
The P5+1 hope eventually to persuade Iran to reduce its enrichment of uranium and fully open up its nuclear facilities to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
There are suggestions that the stringent sanctions on Iran could be reduced if it complies with the requests.
The last series of international talks broke down in January 2011 after the parties failed to agree on any issues.
Since then, the IAEA expressed concern that Iran had failed to co-operate with its inspectors and had carried out activities "relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device".
Israel, which believes a nuclear-capable Iran would be a direct threat to its security, has warned that time is running out to prevent that outcome.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would never allow Israelis to "live in the shadow of annihilation", and hinted his country is ready to strike Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomacy does not work soon.
President Obama has warned against "loose talk of war", while stressing that all options remain open. | Key talks on Iran's controversial nuclear programme, which have resumed after a 15-month impasse, have been described as "positive" and "totally different" from the last meeting. | 17706248 |
Stephen Port was charged with four counts of murder last year but the new allegations relate to eight living complainants.
The 41-year-old from Barking denied the charges during a pre trial hearing at the Old Bailey.
He allegedly met the four murder victims on the internet between June 2014 and September 2015.
It is alleged he then invited them to his flat on Cooke Street where he is said to have poisoned them with the psychoactive drug GHB.
Mr Port faces 29 charges in total and is set to stand trial on 4 October.
He was originally charged with four counts of murder and four of administering a poison, but at the Old Bailey on Monday prosecutors added six more counts of administering a poison, seven charges of rape and four of sexual assault.
Mr Port now also faces four alternative charges of manslaughter.
These are alleged to have occurred between 2011 and 2015.
Some of the charges relate to the deaths of:
The deaths were not initially linked but after further investigation they were referred to the Metropolitan Police homicide and major crime command in October last year.
The force has referred its handling of the case to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). | A man accused of murdering four men in east London has also been charged with poisoning, rape and sexual assault. | 36883559 |
The plane crashed in the French Alps on March 24 with 150 people on board.
Investigators say co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane after locking the pilot out of the cockpit.
Experts have spent six weeks conducting DNA tests on the remains.
"The 150 death certificates can now be signed, as well as the 150 burial permits," said Brice Robin, Marseille's city prosecutor.
Mr Robin had previously said it was Mr Lubitz's "intention to destroy [the] plane", which was flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.
Among the victims was a group of 16 students, 14 girls and two boys, and two of their teachers, from Joseph-Koenig school in Haltern, western Germany.
They were travelling back from a Spanish exchange programme on the Germanwings flight.
The victims were from 18 countries, including Australia, Argentina and Japan, but most of those on board were either Spanish or German.
The plane took off from Barcelona just after 09:00 GMT on 24 March. It made its last contact with air traffic control half an hour later, before descending over the following ten minutes.
The Airbus plane crashed in a remote region at 09:41GMT.
On 26 March, French investigators said information from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) found at the crash zone revealed that Mr Lubitz had taken over the controls of the plane and sent it into a dive intentionally.
A full investigation report is expected to be completed in a year. | All the human remains found at the scene of the Germanwings air crash have been identified and will be returned to their families, a French prosecutor says. | 32799471 |
The record revenues were boosted by sales of its new 2015-16 Adidas replica kit, and Champions League football.
The club expects overall revenue for the year to be between £500m and £510m. No club has exceeded £500m before.
The team are fourth in the Premier League, two points behind rivals Man City, and also top their Champions League group table after four games.
The Old Trafford club failed to qualify for Europe's premier club competition last season but its return to Champions League competition has seen a big leap in matchday and broadcast revenues.
In July 2014 it signed a record-breaking deal with Adidas, worth £750m over 10 seasons.
Club executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward said the revenues demonstrated "the continued strength of our businesses".
During the quarter, the club also brought the management of its Old Trafford Megastore in-house and signed a licensing deal with South Korean footwear brand Sbenu.
In total, four sponsorship deals were signed in the quarter, including a global deal with Marathon Bet.
Mr Woodward added: "During the quarter, we entered into an agreement with HCL to be our Digital Transformation partner, which will enable us to connect with our fans around the world in innovative ways and further strengthen and grow our commercial revenues."
Profit for the period was £5m, down 43.8% from the £8.9m figure a year previously.
The drop in profit was partly caused by a loss on player trading of £7.4m. There was a negative impact from the sales of players Angel Di Maria, Robin van Persie and Nani, which was partly offset by the profit made on the sale of Javier Hernandez.
That compared with a profit of £18.3m a year before - that sum being largely due to the sale of Danny Welbeck to Arsenal for £18m.
The EBITDA figure, which indicates the underlying profitability of a company, was up more than 100% to £41.6m.
The club also confirmed it had approved a quarterly cash dividend shareholders of $0.045 per share, a move which will see the six Glazer children, who own the club and about four-fifths of the club's shares, paid millions of dollars in dividends annually.
Despite their strong start to the season, there have been complaints from some fans and former players that the club's current possession football is less exciting in comparison with the more attacking sides of the past. | Manchester United has reported that overall quarterly revenues to 30 September went up 39.3% to £123.6m. | 34797243 |
Jose Manuel Barroso, who left the key post last October, said that Alexis Tsipras's Syriza-led administration lacked experience.
Greece's demands were "completely unacceptable to other countries", he told the BBC's Business Live programme.
In its election campaign, Syriza promised to ease economic austerity.
Mr Tsipras pledged new jobs and a rise in the minimum wage. But Greece's creditors have made it clear they will not support a bailout for the country unless there is a comprehensive plan to reduce spending and increase revenues.
On Wednesday, the Greek government submitted fresh reform proposals.
The new plan foresees increasing government revenues through a crackdown on tax evasion and fraud, and a new lottery designed to encourage payment of sales tax.
But it also includes extra spending, including increased pension payments and and rise in the minimum wage.
Greece's creditors will now decide whether these latest reform proposals go far enough to unlock the bailout money.
In the interview, Mr Barroso pointed out that there were poorer countries lending money to Greece who would not support the idea of Greece's debts being written off.
He called on Greece to take responsibility for its financial plight and implement structural reforms, which was now the most important issue for the country.
"It was not Germany or any other member of the EU that created the problems in Greece - the problems in Greece are structural: low productivity and previous governments."
Nations such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain had come back from the financial brink and Mr Barroso said Greece could do the same: "There is nothing regarding Greece that prevents it being successful, but... bad politics have created a lot of problems for Greece."
Greece's previous proposals failed to satisfy its main creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
But France's finance minister, Michel Sapin, said Greece's new proposals did represent some improvement in Athen's position.
"There is progress with the last list... Is there a need for more progress? Yes - in the quantification of the measures," he said.
A decision may not come before Greece is due to make a €450m (£330m) payment to the IMF on 9 April.
Eurozone finance ministers are likely to reserve any formal judgement for the next scheduled meeting in Riga on 24 April.
Despite the ongoing bail-out negotiations, Mr Barroso said a Greek departure from the eurozone was still a possibility. He said that would still be "negative", but that he believed it would be less damaging now because financial markets were much more confident than they had been in recent years.
However, he added that a "Grexit" would still leave the idea of monetary union in doubt. "It breaks a taboo and sets a precedent," he said.
The former EC chief and Portuguese prime minister also reiterated his view that Britons would be worse off if the UK left the European Union.
"I believe they would lose a lot if [the country] leaves the EU, because today, in the 21st century, versus the US, China, countries of 60 million people cannot speak at the same level - they do not have the same leverage - and we have to use the EU and our common leverage to count in the world."
Mr Barroso, 59, is now a visiting professor at Princeton University and the University of Geneva.
Business Live airs at 07.30GMT each weekday on BBC World TV. | The Greek government made "completely unrealistic promises" to voters that it cannot now fulfil, the former European Commission president has said. | 32154876 |
Organisers passed a motion on Saturday not to invite Malcolm Turnbull, who was the first sitting prime minister to attend the last gay pride event.
Mr Turnbull, a supporter of marriage equality, backed his party's calls to allow a national vote on the issue.
But the stance has angered some who fear a vote would be divisive.
Currently, same-sex couples can have civil unions or registered relationships in most Australian states but they are not considered married under national law.
Cat Rose, who put forward the motion at the Mardi Gras parade's annual general meeting, accused Mr Turnbull of using last year's event as a "media opportunity".
Since then, she added, he had been "nothing but a conduit for homophobes wanting to derail marriage equality through a vindictive plebiscite".
"We wanted to express our disgust at his prime ministership as a community and to say that we don't need his phony friendship," Ms Rose said in a statement released on Facebook.
"For this reason we are not extending an invitation for him to attend the parade while we wait for equality."
Despite opinion polls indicating that most Australians support same-sex marriage, some believe a plebiscite - which would be expensive - could unleash a homophobic campaign.
A survey of 5,500 LGBTI Australians conducted in July by advocacy group Just Equal found that 85% opposed holding the referendum.
Instead, they want Mr Turnbull to allow parliament to vote on the issue.
This week, opponents of the referendum were backed by Australia's upper house, which blocked the government's proposal for the national vote.
Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade is one of the world's largest gay pride events.
It brings hundred of thousands of people to Australia from around the world, adding an estimated A$30m ( $22.6m/£17.9m) to the local economy.
The first march was held in June 1978, on a global day of activism to commemorate the Stonewall riots of 1969, which followed police raids on New York's Stonewall Inn gay bar.
But participants were met with police violence. This year, the New South Wales parliament apologised to the group, now known as the 78ers. | Australia's prime minister has been told he will not be welcome at next year's Mardi Gras parade because of his handling of the gay marriage issue. | 37962274 |
About 300 kgs of cannabis resin, eight kgs of cannabis herb and 1 kg of cocaine were found at Donaghmede Park, north Dublin, on Saturday at 19:30 local time.
The men, aged 25 and 52, were arrested at the scene.
They are being held at Coolock and Clontarf garda stations. | Two men have been arrested after Irish police seized drugs worth about 2.1m euros (£1.63m) in Dublin at the weekend. | 35574030 |
Monaco - who are top on goal difference - can restore their three-point lead if they beat Nantes on Sunday (20:00 GMT).
PSG beat Nancy 1-0 thanks to Edinson Cavani's late penalty, his 37th goal of the season, and they were lucky not to concede when Alexis Busin's shot hit both posts.
Nice won by the same scoreline against Dijon, with Wylan Cyprien scoring in the 69th minute.
Match ends, Paris Saint Germain 1, Nancy 0.
Second Half ends, Paris Saint Germain 1, Nancy 0.
Foul by Edinson Cavani (Paris Saint Germain).
Modou Diagne (Nancy) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Offside, Paris Saint Germain. Javier Pastore tries a through ball, but Julian Draxler is caught offside.
Layvin Kurzawa (Paris Saint Germain) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Benoit Pedretti (Nancy).
Thiago Silva (Paris Saint Germain) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Youssouf Hadji (Nancy).
Attempt missed. Youssouf Hadji (Nancy) left footed shot from the right side of the box is close, but misses the top left corner. Assisted by Faitout Maouassa.
Substitution, Nancy. Youssouf Hadji replaces Issiar Dia.
Attempt missed. Hatem Ben Arfa (Paris Saint Germain) left footed shot from the centre of the box misses to the left. Assisted by Edinson Cavani.
Attempt saved. Javier Pastore (Paris Saint Germain) right footed shot from the left side of the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Assisted by Hatem Ben Arfa with a through ball.
Attempt saved. Faitout Maouassa (Nancy) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the bottom right corner.
Attempt blocked. Faitout Maouassa (Nancy) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
Hatem Ben Arfa (Paris Saint Germain) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Diallo Guidileye (Nancy).
Attempt saved. Edinson Cavani (Paris Saint Germain) header from the right side of the box is saved in the centre of the goal. Assisted by Hatem Ben Arfa with a cross.
Substitution, Nancy. Benoit Pedretti replaces Youssef Ait Bennasser.
Corner, Paris Saint Germain. Conceded by Vincent Muratori.
Goal! Paris Saint Germain 1, Nancy 0. Edinson Cavani (Paris Saint Germain) converts the penalty with a right footed shot to the bottom left corner.
Penalty Paris Saint Germain. Serge Aurier draws a foul in the penalty area.
Penalty conceded by Sergei Chernik (Nancy) after a foul in the penalty area.
Corner, Paris Saint Germain. Conceded by Erick Cabaco.
Delay over. They are ready to continue.
Substitution, Paris Saint Germain. Hatem Ben Arfa replaces Gonçalo Guedes.
Delay in match Youssef Ait Bennasser (Nancy) because of an injury.
Attempt blocked. Alexis Busin (Nancy) right footed shot from the left side of the box is blocked. Assisted by Faitout Maouassa.
Attempt blocked. Thiago Silva (Paris Saint Germain) right footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Assisted by Javier Pastore.
Alexis Busin (Nancy) hits the left post with a right footed shot from the left side of the box. Assisted by Youssef Ait Bennasser following a fast break.
Corner, Paris Saint Germain. Conceded by Vincent Muratori.
Blaise Matuidi (Paris Saint Germain) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Foul by Joffrey Cuffaut (Nancy).
Corner, Paris Saint Germain. Conceded by Loic Puyo.
Substitution, Nancy. Alexis Busin replaces Anthony Koura.
Attempt missed. Thiago Silva (Paris Saint Germain) header from the centre of the box is too high. Assisted by Julian Draxler with a cross following a set piece situation.
Javier Pastore (Paris Saint Germain) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Diallo Guidileye (Nancy).
Attempt missed. Julian Draxler (Paris Saint Germain) right footed shot from outside the box is high and wide to the right. Assisted by Marco Verratti.
Thiago Silva (Paris Saint Germain) wins a free kick in the defensive half. | Paris St-Germain and Nice both won on Saturday to make it a three-way tie on points at the top of Ligue 1. | 39105949 |
The American began the day in a four-way tie for the lead and recovered from a bogey on the first with his fifth birdie of the day on the 10th.
Spieth carded three more in succession from the 14th to finish 12 under par, three shots ahead of Dustin Johnson.
"I've been striking the ball well this year," the 24-year-old said.
The three-time major winner, who also pulled off an impressive shot from eight feet to three-putt the ninth, had been four clear until world number one Johnson birdied the 18th to complete a 67 and move two ahead of Paul Casey, Jon Rahm, Patrick Reed and Matt Kuchar.
Spieth, who has won each of the five times he has enjoyed a lead of two shots or more after 54 holes on the PGA Tour, felt a "heated putter" had been crucial to his success.
"Today was about the most committed I've been finishing a round - Michael [Greller, his caddie]said ever - and I agreed with him," he added.
"[We] committed to targets that were away from holes, knowing I'm in the lead and knowing the putter is getting hotter each putt I hit. That last six-hole stretch, I played beautiful golf." | Open champion Jordan Spieth edged closer towards his fourth win of the season after a six-under-par third round of 64 in the Northern Trust. | 41064322 |
They were chosen from 16 applications and it is expected that 10 campuses will be created over the next five years.
The three projects are Moy Primary School and St John's Catholic Primary in Moy; St Mary's High, Limavday, and Limavady High School and Ballycastle High and Cross and Passion college.
In January 2014, Education Minister John O'Dowd launched the Shared Education Campuses Programme, with a deadline of 31 March for a receipt for expressions of interest.
On Tuesday, the minister said: "I believe shared education has the potential to deliver real educational benefits, to ensure best use of resources and to further community cohesion.
"The Shared Education Campuses Programme provides schools with the opportunity to build on existing sharing arrangements and access funding to help improve or provide shared facilities.
"We received a significant level of interest in this programme with 16 applications. I am pleased to be in a position to announce the first three projects to be supported."
Mr O'Dowd said: "The three projects selected will build on well established sharing arrangements between the schools involved and will help embed and enhance those sharing arrangements.
"This was the first call for projects and I am conscious that the limited time meant not everyone was able to have proposals worked up in time for the deadline.
"Therefore, as well as approving the three projects to be advanced through to a detailed business case, I am announcing that a second call for projects will open in September this year.
"Those that were unsuccessful in this announcement will receive feedback on their proposal and can resubmit it, if appropriate, to this second call."
The successful projects will now proceed to the planning stage. | Three sets of schools have been selected by the Department of Education in Northern Ireland for new shared campuses. | 28105101 |
The broadcaster is planning to move from its current premises on Ormeau Avenue but has yet to decide on a location.
The property news service, Co-Star, said land agent Lambert Smith Hampton is now advising on the relocation.
It said the Sirocco site and a site near the new Ulster University campus have "emerged as early favourites".
Co-Star said that "market sources" have suggested that the BBC's need for studio space and parking for broadcast vehicles mean it will need a development site rather than refurbished space.
Sirocco is a 16-acre site beside the river Lagan.
The Carvill Group had planned to develop a hotel, supermarket and 2,400 apartments there before the property crash.
It ultimately ended up in the control of the Cerberus investment fund which recently sold it to an unnamed buyer.
The BBC has previously been linked with a move to Titanic Quarter or as part of the redevelopment of Great Victoria Street station.
Belfast City Council has said it would like the broadcaster to move close to Ulster University.
It has said land to the rear of Belfast Central Library, a site north of Great Patrick Street or the stalled Royal Exchange development could all be suitable. | BBC Northern Ireland has been linked with a move to the Sirocco site in east Belfast. | 36036068 |
Late-stage disease is found in about 25% of black African and 22% of black Caribbean breast cancer patients.
In white breast cancer patients, the figure is 13%.
Experts say there are many reasons for this. Vital ones to change are low awareness of symptoms and screening.
According to Cancer Research UK, black women are less likely than white women to go for a mammogram when invited by the NHS.
Spotting cancer early is important because the sooner it can be treated, the better the outcome.
A support group in Leeds helps women of black African and Caribbean descent who have either had breast cancer themselves or have loved ones who have.
One woman there told the BBC: "A lot of us black people bury our head in the sand. 'Oh, me, well, I don't need to go, there's nothing wrong with me.'"
Another said: "I find a lot of people, they'll find out something is wrong but they keep it to themselves and they're praying. They're praying that God will heal them."
Heather Nelson, who works for BME Cancer Voice, said: "Women, especially women of colour, are less likely to go for screening.
"You'll get leaflets through your door and they will be predominantly of white, middle-class women. There's no representation of South Asian, African descent et cetera.
"If you get information like that, you're going to look and think, 'That's not about me.'"
Most breast cancers are still diagnosed at an early stage, across all ethnic groups, the data for 2012-13 shows.
Dr Julie Sharp, of Cancer Research UK, said: "If you notice something that isn't normal for you, or you've a symptom that's not gone away or has got worse, getting it checked out promptly could save your life."
Lumps are not the only sign of possible breast cancer.
Women should also get checked if they notice any changes to their breasts such as nipple discharge or changes to the skin.
Breast screening (mammogram) is offered to all women in England aged 50-70.
The NHS is in the process of extending the programme as a trial, offering screening to some women aged 47-73.
Women over the age of 70 will stop receiving screening invitations but can arrange an appointment by contacting their local screening unit.
Follow our Pinterest board Shining a Light on Cancer | Black women in England are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with advanced breast cancer as white women, according to a new analysis by Cancer Research UK and Public Health England. | 37991460 |
Vardy, 29, is serving a three-match ban after being sent off at Stoke on 17 December for a two-footed challenge on Mame Biram Diouf.
The Foxes had 30,000 masks printed after Vardy had an appeal rejected by the Football Association.
Vardy sat in the stands and wore one of the masks himself.
The England international will also miss games against West Ham and Middlesbrough but will be available for the FA Cup third-round tie against Everton at Goodison Park on 7 January.
Leicester boss Claudio Ranieri said he did not emerge from the tunnel at the King Power Stadium in time to see the masks.
"I'm sorry, I didn't see when I came out. I don't know, it's not my matter. I didn't see. I'm sorry," he said.
"It's difficult to say how much we missed Vardy. I didn't see the masks."
In an Instagram post, Foxes owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha said the decision to suspend Vardy was "unfair".
Leicester forward Riyad Mahrez was left on the bench against Everton by Ranieri and the Foxes boss has demanded an improvement from the Algerian.
"He's not in good form now and I wanted to stimulate him," said the Italian.
"I didn't see him do well during the training sessions and he must give more for the team. I want more."
The Premier League champions have won only four of their opening 18 league games and are three points above the relegation zone.
"This season is this way - nothing is right, nothing is easy," added Ranieri.
"We wanted to give a good present on Boxing Day, but it was not possible. Here everything was right in first six months and now everything is wrong." | Leicester City fans wore Jamie Vardy face masks for their 2-0 defeat by Everton on Boxing Day to show their support for the suspended striker. | 38437830 |
Omar Badreddin, 18, Mohammed Alfrouh, 20, and Mohammad Allakkoud, 18, have pleaded not guilty.
A 16-year-old-boy, understood to be Syrian, has also been charged with sexual assault. It is not known if he has entered a plea yet.
Mr Badreddin came to the UK from Jordan last November under the government's refugee resettlement programme.
He and his family were judged to be vulnerable by the UN refugee agency.
The three adults charged in connection with the alleged incident on 10 May have been released on bail.
Their trial has been set for 26 September.
Mr Alfrouh has also been charged with sexually assaulting a second 14-year-old girl, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
The case of the 16 year old will be heard separately by a youth court.
Mr Badreddin is one of 1,602 Syrians who have arrived in the UK under the resettlement programme.
The scheme was designed to bring vulnerable Syrian refugees directly from refugee camps in the Middle East to the UK.
Those arriving have been screened and vetted by the UN.
The scheme will see 20,000 refugees come to Britain over the next four years.
The BBC's Newsnight has been following the progress of Syrian refugees and reporter John Sweeney says that although the case is at an early stage, police are concerned that the charges could raise tensions between locals and Syrian refugees in Newcastle. | Three Syrian men have appeared in court accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a park in Newcastle. | 36507138 |
The 32-year-old midfielder had trained alone or with the club's under-23s since Jose Mourinho was appointed United boss in the summer.
Former Germany captain Schweinsteiger last played for the Red Devils in March, when Louis van Gaal was manager.
He said in August he had "no personal problems" with Mourinho, and United will be his last club in Europe.
"It's great to see him back," said United left-back Luke Shaw. "We found out the news a couple of days ago.
"He's a big influence in the dressing room and obviously on the pitch, especially for the young players like myself."
It is unclear whether Mourinho will now consider Schweinsteiger for first-team action.
He was named in United's Premier League squad for this season, but left out of their Europa League squad.
Schweinsteiger has made 31 appearances for the club since his £14.4m move from Bayern Munich in July 2015.
Simon Stone, BBC Sport
Before Schweinsteiger can think about a return he still hoped for during the dark days of being forced to train on his own, he needs to know why Mourinho brought him back into the fold.
After all, he cannot play against Fenerbahce on Thursday because he is not in Mourinho's Europa League squad.
With Ander Herrera banned, Schweinsteiger is an option for United's Premier League trip to Swansea.
However, given he is so short of match practice, is that really an option? Or is Mourinho merely reminding potential January suitors that the 32-year-old still exists? | World Cup winner Bastian Schweinsteiger has returned to training with Manchester United's first team. | 37824866 |
Radovan Krejcir was arrested on Friday at his home in Johannesburg on a charge of kidnap and assault.
His lawyers filed a court application, saying he needed medical attention and risked kidney failure.
Krejcir has repeatedly denied having links to the criminal underworld.
The police have been accused of reacting slowly to reports of his alleged involvement in the killing of underworld bosses, reports the BBC's Pumza Fihlani from Johannesburg.
A number of his associates have been killed in separate incidents in recent months, local media report.
In July, Krejcir survived an attempt to kill him carried out by guns hidden behind a car number plate operated by remote control opened fire on him in Bedfordview, a suburb east of Johannesburg.
Krejcir reportedly described the shooting as "something out of a James Bond film".
He is challenging the government's attempts to extradite him to the Czech Republic, where he was convicted in absentia last year on tax fraud charges.
He moved to South Africa in 2007.
Our correspondent says South Africans have been keenly watching Krejcir's extraordinary career over recent months and the series of gangland shootings and killings with which he is allegedly linked.
They are worried that it might show that a well-connected, sophisticated and violent underworld still exists on the streets of Johannesburg, she says.
On Saturday, police chief Riah Phiyega said Krejcir's arrest was a major breakthrough.
"There are many investigations that are taking place, even on the charges that the suspects have been arrested for. We hope to arrest more suspects as the investigations unfold," she told reporters in the capital, Pretoria.
She did not reveal details of the charges against him.
The police watchdog, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), said it had launched an investigation into Krejcir's claim that he had he had been tortured.
Police are accused of taking him to an open field where he was "allegedly shocked with a taser and a plastic bag was placed over his head to suffocate him", Ipid said in a statement.
The High Court in Johannesburg ordered that Krejcir be transferred to hospital after his doctor testified that his injuries were consistent with those of someone who had been assaulted.
He could face renal failure if he was not taken to hospital, the doctor said.
In his ruling, Judge Ramarumo Monama said the doctor was a credible witness.
"He has provided more than enough evidence," local media quotes the judge as saying. | A South African court has ordered that a Czech businessman accused of links to organised crime be moved from prison to hospital after claims he had been tortured by police with a taser gun. | 25088134 |
The 34-year-old, who was born in Brazil but plays for Portugal, has been linked with Paris St-Germain and AC Milan and has "had proposals from England".
Pepe has made 334 appearances for Real, winning three La Liga titles and three Champions League trophies.
He missed Saturday's win over Juventus and added: "I didn't say goodbye because they knew before I did."
Pepe announced his departure in an interview with radio station COPE, and said he had not spoken to manager Zinedine Zidane since Madrid's Champions League final win in Cardiff.
"What he has done for Real Madrid is spectacular, but there are things I still do not understand," Pepe said.
The centre-back, who was injured for part of the season with a hamstring problem and then broke two ribs in April, fell behind both Raphael Varane and Nacho in the challenge to play alongside captain Sergio Ramos in the Madrid defence.
"I've had years of great pride in which I have given my body and soul," he said. "But I took the decision in January when it was clear which way it was going.
"I'm happy for the love of the people, and that's worth more than everything." | Defender Pepe is leaving Real Madrid after 10 years at the Spanish club, having decided in January to move on. | 40172531 |
The unnamed woman had agreed Greater Manchester Police (GMP) could refer to her experience in a training session providing she remained anonymous.
However, she later learned her identity and medical history were disclosed to a wider audience.
GMP has apologised and said "steps" had been taken to stop similar occurrences.
The victim's solicitor said the payout was believed to be one of the biggest by a British force in a privacy case.
In a witness statement, the woman, who agreed to an out-of-court settlement, said she "felt betrayed by GMP".
The errors in this case by Greater Manchester Police almost beggar belief. Safeguarding victims is the most important priority in domestic violence police work.
Revealing a victim's identity, medical history and distressed 999 call, against their wishes, represents very grave mistakes. This episode is hardly likely to increase victims' confidence in the police.
The case also illustrates the use of part of the civil law that has principally been seen in cases involving celebrities whose privacy has been breached by newspapers.
'Misuse of private information' has been argued in a number of cases. It relies on a breach of Article 8 of the 1988 Human Rights Act; the right to respect for a private and family life.
The claimant has to establish they have a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to the information concerned, and that privacy has been breached.
The media can argue the claimant's right to privacy is outweighed by the right to freedom of expression and that there is a public interest in publishing. The police have no such defence.
This case shows that Article 8 is not simply for celebrities and that public bodies, such as the police, can be sued if they breach it.
Nick McAleenan, from JMW Solicitors, described his client as a "successful, professional woman".
He said she "suffered psychiatric harm" after learning that her personal information was disclosed and that a tape of her 999 call following an assault was played at a training session.
He added that GMP had initially refused to accept it had done anything wrong and its internal investigation concluded that no officer had infringed the police code of conduct.
In May 2014, the force admitted breaching the woman's privacy but refused to acknowledge she had suffered distress or loss as a result which would entitle her to any damages.
Mr McAleenan said: "This is information out there in the public domain. She can't put the genie back in the bottle and it's something that she is going to have to live with for the rest of her life".
A GMP spokeswoman said it was "an exceptional case", adding: "The force has taken action to protect the individual's information to prevent any issue in the future."
She added: "We have apologised to the woman involved... This was an unacceptable mistake; however, it was done with the best of intentions as part of training for partner agencies around recognising the signs of domestic abuse."
A spokesperson from the domestic abuse charity, Women's Aid, said: "Survivors of domestic abuse should be able to expect the highest standards from the police - and the police should be extremely careful when dealing with survivors.
"The survivor in question could have been put in a very dangerous situation; highly manipulative perpetrators of domestic abuse will stop at nothing to find out where their former partner is, or to gather information on them." | A domestic abuse victim has received £75,000 from a police force after it revealed details of her treatment by a former boyfriend without her consent. | 37035874 |
The Liverpudlian is second on 3,932 points, 40 behind leader and reigning champion Brianne Theisen-Eaton.
Johnson-Thompson has said her main aim this weekend is to get the 6,200 points needed for Rio.
She needs 2,268 points on Sunday in the three remaining events.
The 23-year-old began the day equalling her personal best of 13.37 seconds in the 100m hurdles and followed it up by clearing 1.92m in the high jump, a personal best outdoors.
After two events, Johnson-Thompson was in the overall lead but slipped to sixth following a disappointing 11.55m in the shot put - the worst mark in the field and 1.59m below the personal best she set earlier in the season.
She made amends for that poor display with a personal best 22.79 secs in the 200m, which pulled her closer to Canada's world silver medallist Theisen-Eaton.
Johnson-Thompson will start with the long jump on Sunday, the event which ruined her chances of gold at last year's World Championships following her failure to record a legal jump.
She said: "I'm sure I'll be nervous again in the long jump. I really want to get a good jump in the first round.
"This is my first big competition especially after a knee operation last autumn so I just want 6,200 points and to be injury free and to be going home with my ticket for the Olympics."
The Briton has also said her experience in Beijing changed her, created a "new Kat" who is determined to bounce back and quash her demons.
Her performances on the opening day in Austria promised much not only for this competition but the summer ahead.
Although she has repeatedly said Olympic qualification rather than regaining the title she won in 2014 is her priority this weekend, she looks set to vie with favourite Theisen-Eaton for first place.
And despite a poor display in the shot, her weakest event, Johnson-Thompson will take heart that she achieved her best heptathlon score of 6682 points in Gotzis two years ago, when her total after the opening day was also 3923.
The long jump, javelin and 800m remain on Sunday but fellow Brit Morgan Lake - adrift of her personal bests in all four events on the first day - is likely to fall short of the total needed for Rio.
Lake - recording 14.43 secs in the 100m hurdles, 1.86m in the high jump, 13.18m in the shot put and 26.12 secs in the 200m - is 29th overall.
British decathletes John Lane (4159 points) and Ashley Bryant (4121 points) are ninth and 13th respectively at the halfway stage in Austria, with the pair needing 8100 points to be selected for the Olympics. | Britain's Katarina Johnson-Thompson is on course to qualify for this summer's Rio Olympics after setting three personal bests on the opening day of the Hypo meeting in Gotzis. | 36404465 |
Moelfre inshore lifeboat launched at about 11:00 BST, along with the local coastguard team and rescue helicopter from Caernarfon.
The lifeboat crew found the man in his forties clinging to his fishing kayak, having struggled to climb back on.
He showed signs of immersion and was transferred to Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor.
The man, who was wearing all the correct safety equipment, estimated he had been in the water for more than 15 minutes.
Lifeboat helm Alan Owen said the man was "coughing heavily" by the time they got him to the beach "which is a clear sign of salt water ingestion".
Mr Owen praised the multi-agency response, which he said resulted in a "quick and efficient rescue". | An RNLI crew came to the rescue of a capsized kayaker off Anglesey on Friday. | 39602052 |
A ceremony, attended by PM Shinzo Abe, was held at Hiroshima's memorial park before thousands of lanterns are released on the city's Motoyasu river.
The bombing - and a second one on Nagasaki three days later - is credited with bringing to an end World War Two.
But it claimed the lives of at least 140,000 people in the city.
A US B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb, exploding some 600m (1,800ft) above the city, at around 08:10 on 6 August 1945.
On that day alone, at least 70,000 people are believed to have been killed. Many more died of horrific injuries caused by radiation poisoning in the days, weeks and months that followed.
People across Japan have observed a minute's silence to mark the anniversary. In Hiroshima a bell tolled at 08:15 local time - when the US aircraft dropped the bomb that flattened the city centre.
Addressing 40,000 people who attended the commemoration ceremony at Hiroshima's peace park near the epicentre of the 1945 attack, Mr Abe called for worldwide nuclear disarmament.
He said that that atomic bomb not only killed thousands of people in Hiroshima but also caused unspeakable suffering to survivors.
"Today Hiroshima has been revived," the prime minister said, "and has become a city of culture and prosperity.
"Seventy years on I want to reemphasise the necessity of world peace."
Mr Abe and Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matusi were joined by US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy for the official ceremony of remembrance on Thursday, which included silent prayers, the release of doves and a declaration of peace.
Mr Matsui described nuclear weapons as an "absolute evil" while urging the world to put an end to them forever.
"To coexist we must abolish the... ultimate inhumanity that is nuclear weapons. Now is the time to start taking action," he said in his annual speech.
Later in the day, thousands of paper lanterns will be released on the city's Motoyasu River - symbolising the journey to the afterlife of those who died.
The anniversary comes as divisions in Japan rise over Mr Abe's bid to pass unpopular legislation to expand the country's military role worldwide.
The 'sanitised narrative' of Hiroshima's atomic bombing
In pictures: The first atomic bomb | Residents in the Japanese city of Hiroshima are commemorating the 70th anniversary of the first atomic bomb being dropped by a US aircraft. | 33792789 |
Biffa says that its crews found 93 people sleeping in rubbish last year.
It says the cameras, fitted to 140 of its 800 trucks, would remind staff to check bins before emptying them.
Last year four people sheltering in bins died when they were tipped into the back of trucks.
Biffa's Tim Standring told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours the cameras would give drivers extra "peace of mind" and that some vehicles would also record footage from inside hoppers.
The company was not spying on its staff, he said, saying the move was designed to protect them from the "anguish" of not realising a person had been inside the bin.
Mr Standring, the firm's divisional health, safety, environment and quality coach, said: "If it's the only place you've got to stay and it's the most secure place I can kind of see the appeal, but the down side of it is if we don't find you, you're not going to survive."
He added: "Once you're in the hopper, the blade comes down and it crushes and breaks the waste and it will take it back into the body [of the vehicle] where it's compacted again.
"These machines won't differentiate between cardboard, wood and unfortunately people as well."
Biffa hopes that all of its refuse lorries will have the new technology by the end of the year.
The company formed a partnership with the Chartered Institute of Waste Management and homelessness service StreetLink to raise awareness of the issue of people sleeping in bins.
The organisations carried out research last year that showed that 28 of the 176 waste management organisations surveyed reported finding people sheltering in bins over the previous 12 months. | One of the UK's biggest waste companies is fitting cameras to its vehicles in a bid to reduce the number of homeless people killed after sleeping rough in industrial-sized wheelie bins. | 32776626 |
Prosecutors described the Paralympic athlete's punishment for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013 as "shockingly lenient".
At the hearing in Pretoria, Judge Thokozile Masipa said the petition had no reasonable prospect of success.
The state now has 21 days to take its case to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
Pistorius, 29, was given a five-year term for manslaughter in 2014, but was found guilty of murder last December after a prosecution appeal.
He shot Ms Steenkamp through a locked toilet door and said in his his defence that he mistook her for an intruder.
The judge said at the sentencing that she had deviated from the minimum 15-year sentence because of "compelling personal circumstances".
She said mitigating circumstances, such as rehabilitation and remorse, had outweighed aggravating factors, such as his failure to fire a warning shot. | South African state prosecutors have failed in their bid to challenge the six-year sentence for murder handed down to Oscar Pistorius. | 37195090 |
The Gobbins coastal path in Islandmagee was the brainchild of Irish railway engineer Berkley Deane Wise.
It first opened in 1902 and quickly became famous as a white knuckle walk.
Edwardian era visitors were able to have a close encounter with waves and wildlife.
The path, which is carved into black basalt cliffs, was an engineering triumph - it's connected by a network of walkways and bridges - the most iconic of which was the tubular bridge.
Post-war austerity spelt decline for the 1.5 mile walkway and it was closed to the public in the 1950s.
Since then only seabirds have enjoyed the stunning views from this part of our coastline.
Rumblings down the years about restoring the path finally turned into action in 2013, when the restoration project got under way.
Since then, £7.5m has been spent replacing bridges, hand rails and constructing a new visitors centre.
The tubular bridge has been replaced with an almost identical replica.
While modern engineering methods have made the work safer, construction worker Paul Montgomery says he has an enhanced respect for those who built the original path.
"They did an immense job, because the beams I have seen from the old bridges were concrete cased and to get them down here would have been a feat in itself as there were no cranes in those days," he said.
"So I have a lot of respect for them."
While health and safety is more of a concern nowadays some things have not changed, including the steep walk down to the starting point - a hole through rock known as Wise's eye.
Before starting the Gobbins experience, visitors are given a safety briefing and a hard hat in the visitors centre, it's then on to a minibus for the two-mile journey to the path.
The walk is described as strenuous and is not suitable for everyone.
No-one under the height of 1.2m will be permitted, a good level of fitness is required and people with cardiac, respiratory, asthmatic or joint conditions are urged not to attempt it.
The route allows visitors to see coastal birds such as puffins, guillemots and kittiwakes up close. It's also possible to spot porpoises off the coast.
This attraction has created some much needed employment in the area and one of the tour guides is Robert Stewart, a local farmer who has decided to try something new.
"I'm very enthusiastic about my new job," he said.
"Everybody knows about the Giant's Causeway but I think we have something here that can compete with the Giant's Causeway and is just as beautiful."
Groups of 10 to 15 will be guided along the bridges which cling to the cliff face just metres above the sea.
Tours should be booked in advance and the costs are £8.50 for adults, concessions £6 and a family rate of £23.
There will also be a cliff top walk which will be free for the public and has a viewing platform that hangs over the cliff. This element of the work is not expected to be complete until September.
The project is over a year late and £1.5m over budget, but Mid and East Antrim Council has big hopes for the attraction and is expecting 50,000 visitors a year.
Tourism Minister Jonathan Bell, who walked the path on Tuesday, said it was "staggeringly beautiful".
"It is something that you could bring visitors from anywhere in the world to and be very proud of the quality of the tourism offering," he said.
"Having done it, I think it represents real value for money and puts Northern Ireland with another - and I genuinely mean this - top quality, international tourist destination."
The council's mayor Billy Ashe said it was fantastic for the area.
"I think that first and foremost it will put us back on the map," he said.
"Berkley Deane Wise thought that this path could be one of the world's attractions - I agree with him.
"I think people will be coming here for many, many, many years to feast their eyes on this marvellous achievement." | A dramatic cliff face walk in County Antrim that was built more than a century ago has reopened to the public after multi-million pound revamp. | 33981824 |
Jason Woodward's try put them ahead but Josh Bassett, Tommy Taylor and Joe Simpson scored as Wasps went in ahead.
Christian Wade, Guy Thompson and Bassett went over for the visitors for a bonus point, which deflated Bristol.
The hosts rallied, Jack O'Connell and Nick Fenton-Wells touching down, but it could not stop them from going down.
Having finished top of the Championship in five seasons before finally winning promotion in the play-offs last year, Bristol will return to the second-tier at the first time of asking.
After Worcester's win over Bath on Saturday, Mark Tainton's Bristol needed two points from the game to prolong their relegation battle, but they lacked a clinical streak.
It leaves them 12 points adrift at the bottom of the table, with a maximum of 10 points on offer from their final two matches.
Wasps were far from at their best, on the back foot for much of the game, but have restored their five-point lead at the top and need one win from their last two to secure a home semi-final in the play-offs.
The Premiership's top try-scorer Wade, on his 100th appearance for Dai Young's side, did his England hopes no harm with his 16th score of the campaign.
Bristol were promoted to the top tier on 25 May after winning their two-legged play-off final, with the Premiership season starting just 100 days later.
Director of rugby Andy Robinson, a former England head coach, was sacked in November after his side lost their first 10 games of the campaign.
Tainton took interim charge and Bristol finally got their first league win against Worcester on Boxing Day, following it up with victory at Sale and a losing bonus point at Northampton, but it was a false dawn.
The scrapping of the Championship play-offs, meaning the team that finishes top will gain automatic promotion, may give Bristol more time to plan ahead next season if they are successful.
Connacht boss Pat Lam will have the task of bringing Bristol back into the Premiership, having signed a three-year deal in December to become head coach from June.
Tainton will remain at the helm for their final two matches at Saracens and at home to Newcastle, and remains optimistic about the future of the club.
"Obviously it's disappointing to get relegated, but we've put a plan in place whether we were going to stay in the Premiership or get relegated," he said.
"We have the infrastructure at Ashton Gate to be a Premiership team - we're not going to be next year, but hopefully the supporters will still watch us in that league.
"Bristol more than most know what a difficult league it (the Championship) is, but hopefully we can bounce back very quickly."
Bristol interim head coach Mark Tainton:
"It was a similar story to a lot of games - we've created an awful lot, we've been in the opposition 22 many times but we've just not executed and got across the line.
"We give Wasps an opportunity and they score tries, it's as simple as that - that's the difference in the level we need to get to.
"We were down and beaten in the second half but we played right until the very end of the game - I expect that from them in the next two games."
Wasps director of rugby Dai Young:
"Obviously there are still things to work on, especially our starts - I thought our first 10 minutes, again, we made far too many mistakes and gave ourselves a bit of a hill to climb.
"We just had enough to do it but we make it hard for us really - there's room to improve in every area, but I'm pretty pleased and felt we looked in control for most of the game.
"It's up to us to nail it (a top-two finish) ourselves - we're not relying on other people."
Bristol: Woodward; Edwards, Hurrell, Henson, Tovey; Searle, Mathewson; Bevington, Jones (capt), Cortes, Phillips, Sorenson, Jeffries, Fenton-Wells, Eadie.
Replacements: Crumpton, O'Connell, Ford-Robinson, Glynn, Robinson, Williams, Pisi, Amesbury.
Wasps: Le Roux; Wade, Daly, Beale, Bassett; Gopperth, Simpson; Mullan, Taylor, Swainston, Launchbury (capt), Symons, Haskell, Thompson, Hughes.
Replacements: Cruse, Bristow, Cooper-Woolley, Myall, Young, Robson, Cipriani, Leiua.
For the latest rugby union news follow @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter. | Bristol have been relegated to the Championship with two games left to play after a brave defeat by ruthless Premiership leaders Wasps. | 39569142 |
Virginia Raggi said more arrivals could exacerbate social tension.
Her call follows local elections on Sunday in which the Five Star Movement performed poorly.
More than 500,000 people have arrived by boat since 2014. Nearly 200,000 are being housed in centres across the country.
"We cannot permit the creation of more social tensions," Ms Raggi said on Facebook.
"That is why I am saying it is impossible, risky even, to think about creating any new reception structures."
The interior ministry has asked all Italian municipalities to find space for an expected 250,000 new migrants this year, up from about 180,000 last year.
Some observers say Ms Raggi is attempting to win back support by targeting migrants after her party failed to make the run-off in 24 of the main 25 cities choosing a new mayor.
About half of Italians do not want the country to take in more people, pollster Renato Mannheimer told Reuters news agency.
Italy is accommodating rising numbers of migrants because countries to the north have tightened their borders and some EU states have refused to take part in a plan to relocate 160,000 people from Italy and Greece.
Just over 20,000 migrants have so far been relocated under the plan and the EU has begun legal action against against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for refusing to accept refugees.
An estimated 40% of the migrants in Italy have a valid claim to asylum or leave to remain on humanitarian grounds, AFP news agency reported.
The others are deemed to be illegal economic migrants and face deportation, but this can be difficult to arrange in practice because their countries of origin sometimes refuse to take them back.
A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants. | The mayor of Rome, who is from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, has asked Italy's government not to send more migrants to the city. | 40268210 |
South Sudan's defensive tactics paid dividends as they held on for a point.
After beating Djibouti 2-0 in their opening Group C game on Monday it puts South Sudan in line to qualify for the quarter-finals of the tournament.
"We are happy that we have picked a point against a strong Sudan side," said South Sudan's goalkeeper Juma Ginaro after the game.
"We now wait to face Malawi in our last group game."
The draw leaves Sudan in third place behind their neighbours with just a single point so far after they lost 2-1 to Malawi in their first match.
Guest team Malawi top the group and have qualified for the last eight after brushing aside Djibouti 3-0.
Yaboh Idriss Moussa missed several chances for Djibouti before Gerald Phiri converted a penalty for Malawi and John Banda and Chiukepo Msowoya secured the victory.
In the other games played on Wednesday defending champions Kenya and Burundi settled for a 1-1 all draw.
While hosts Ethiopia recovered from their loss in the opening match to Rwanda to beat Somalia 2-0 in front of a capacity crowd. | The first ever game between South Sudan and Sudan ended goalless at the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup in Ethiopia. | 34925159 |
The Direct Energie rider took advantage of a lapse in concentration from Team Sky's Nicolas Roche to beat the Irishman in a sprint finish.
Roche was also second in the overall standings, six seconds behind Voeckler.
Bury's Adam Yates (Orica) was Britain's highest finisher, as he was third in the stage and fourth overall.
Sunday's final stage, a 198km route from Middlesbrough to Scarborough, contained six categorised climbs.
Team Sky set a punishing pace in wet and gruelling conditions after taking it on at half distance and with 44km to go they had five riders at the head of the leading group.
Roche attacked on the ascent at Harwood Dale and took with them Voeckler, Yates, Anthony Turgis (Cofidis) and Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL).
It was Voeckler who clung on the to back of Roche as the Team Sky sprinter attacked again in the descent into Scarborough.
Voeckler, who finished third last year after missing out in a sprint finish, used that experience to employ some cat and mouse tactics, as he tracked Roche along the resort's seafront in front of huge crowds on the town's famous grass banks.
Roche suffered a momentary lapse in concentration, causing him to look the wrong way as Voeckler flew past him with the finishing line in sight to leave his rival in his wake.
Voeckler told ITV4: "It wasn't just with the strength in my legs that I used, but also my head.
"It was difficult to follow the attack of Team Sky at the climbs, so I decided on a little more patience.
"Then I knew to launch the sprint at 300 metres. Although it was early, with the wind at my back, it was not so bad."
And in a tribute to the Yorkshire public that came out in huge numbers despite persistent drizzle, he added: "I feel like this is home because the crowd were shouting my name."
The Tour de Yorkshire is a legacy of the county's hosting of 2014 Tour de France's Grand Depart. More than two million people are estimated to have lined the three-day route. | Frenchman Thomas Voeckler clinched overall victory in the Tour de Yorkshire by winning the third and final stage at Scarborough. | 36181903 |
The hosts almost caught Torquay napping with a simple ball over the top in the first minute, but Woking loanee Delano Sam-Yorke was unable to get his shot on target.
Maidstone continued to force the issue, with Nana Ofori-Twumasi and Jamar Loza also going close before the break, and they got their rewards when Loza found Sam-Yorke in space to fire home from 10 yards in the 53rd minute.
Substitute Brett Williams briefly levelled things up for Torquay after 63 minutes, but Jack Paxman sealed the win which took Maidstone out of the drop zone six minutes later.
Report supplied by the Press Association
Match ends, Maidstone United 2, Torquay United 1.
Second Half ends, Maidstone United 2, Torquay United 1.
Substitution, Maidstone United. James Rogers replaces Jack Paxman.
Seth Nana Ofori-Twumasi (Maidstone United) is shown the yellow card.
Substitution, Torquay United. Sam Chaney replaces Ben Gerring.
Substitution, Maidstone United. Alex Flisher replaces Jamar Loza.
Goal! Maidstone United 2, Torquay United 1. Jack Paxman (Maidstone United).
Goal! Maidstone United 1, Torquay United 1. Brett Williams (Torquay United).
Substitution, Torquay United. Jamie Reid replaces Luke Young.
Substitution, Torquay United. Brett Williams replaces Shaun Harrad.
Goal! Maidstone United 1, Torquay United 0. Delano Sam-Yorke (Maidstone United).
Second Half begins Maidstone United 0, Torquay United 0.
First Half ends, Maidstone United 0, Torquay United 0.
First Half begins.
Lineups are announced and players are warming up. | Maidstone ended a run of five National League games without a win by beating Torquay 2-1 at the Gallagher Stadium. | 38620559 |
Research from the Institute for Policy Studies found that in 2014, bonuses paid to Wall Street employees had been double the annual pay earned by all Americans who worked full-time at the federal minimum wage.
So, 167,800 Wall Street employees were paid $28.5bn (£18.2bn) in bonuses, while 1,007,000 full-time minimum wage earners made about $14bn.
One particularly eye-catching blog on the subject carried the headline: "If You Own a Pitchfork, You Will Grab It When You See This Chart".
I wondered if this statistic was also true in the UK.
The best proxy we have for the Wall Street bonus pool is the ONS figure for bonuses paid in the finance and insurance sector, the most recent figure for which was £14.4bn in the financial year 2013-14.
The Low Pay Commission says that excluding apprenticeships there were 1.3 million jobs in 2014 that paid the National Minimum Wage (NMW) of which 40% were full-time, so that's about 520,000 jobs.
Assuming everyone earned the highest level of minimum wage, the average level of the NMW for 2013-14 was £6.25.
If we assume that they worked 37.5 hours a week (that's the average number of full-time hours given in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2014) and that they work 48 weeks a year, their total earnings come to £5.9bn, which is less than half the amount paid in bonuses by the finance and insurance sector - it's about 40%.
Before you go and buy a pitchfork, remember that there are differences between this figure and the US one. For example, the bonuses in the UK finance and insurance sector were shared between more than a million employees - considerably more than on Wall Street. There were people paid very high bonuses but also people paid much more modest ones. The average overall was £13,300, but I would expect that to mask quite a range.
But the other question is, what is this an indicator for and what would make it rise or fall?
So, for example, imagine that 100,000 people earning minimum wage suddenly received a pay rise of £1 an hour. They would no longer be earning minimum wage, so the total amount paid to workers on the minimum wage would fall considerably and as a result the amount paid out in bonuses would be a higher multiple of it. But it would be hard to argue that their pay rise had increased inequality.
Nonetheless, if you were outraged by the figure from the US then you will be just as outraged that the same appears to be true in the UK. | A statistic in March provoked outrage in the US media about inequality. | 32719657 |
The force said mental health issues resulted in 141,230 lost days among front-line officers.
The Liberal Democrats said the figures showed evidence of a force "being stretched to breaking point".
The Scottish government said the welfare of officers and support staff was taken "very seriously".
Police Scotland released the figures to the Lib Dems under Freedom of Information laws.
The party's justice spokesman Liam McArthur said police officers and civilian staff were not getting the support they needed from the Scottish government.
He said: "The savings that were promised by the SNP before the creation of Police Scotland have not materialised.
"As a result, officers and civilian staff are being asked to do more and more with less. With the chief constable warning that further cuts are coming, the pressure on staff is only likely to get worse."
He added: "We have already seen staff surveys which show morale is at rock bottom. The shortages are affecting the health of officers and civilian staff and these new figures are a huge concern.
"Policing is a high-stress profession at the best of times. The changes that the SNP forced through are stretching the mental health of officers and civilian staff to breaking point.
"This means giving police management the freedom to put resources where they are needed.
"Extra money is also required to plug the hole in the national force's budget and avert the loss of staff which would only put those remaining further under the cosh."
A Scottish government spokesman said Police Scotland would be expected to have "robust policies" in place to support staff and manage their health at work.
The spokesman added: "They have a number of targeted activities to support wellbeing and occupational health across the organisation.
"We have committed to protecting the police revenue budget in real terms, safeguarding policing from Westminster budget cuts and delivering an additional £100m of investment by the end of this parliament, in addition to £55m of reform funding in 2016-17."
A Scottish Police Authority (SPA) spokeswoman said: "The SPA recognise and value the contribution of our workforce. We regularly scrutinise absence levels to ensure they are effectively monitored and managed.
"We also ensure all officers and staff have access to a range of support options, including an appropriate independent occupational health service which can be tailored to individual needs.
"As a responsible employer, we have placed major importance and priority on listening to the police workforce and acting on the issues raised." | Police Scotland officers and staff suffering psychological problems took nearly 200,000 sick days over the last three years, new figures show. | 37530914 |
Current Yes keyboardist Geoff Downes tweeted: "Utterly devastated beyond words to have to report the sad news of the passing of my dear friend, bandmate and inspiration Chris Squire."
Squire had revealed he was suffering from a rare form of leukaemia.
The band said he died "peacefully" in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday night.
"It's with the heaviest of hearts and unbearable sadness that we must inform you of the passing of our dear friend and Yes co-founder, Chris Squire," a statement on the band's official Facebook page said.
Squire had revealed in May that he had been recently diagnosed with acute erythroid leukemia, which would force him to miss the band's summer co-headlining tour with Toto.
Yes were formed in 1968 when singer Jon Anderson met self-taught bassist Squire in London.
Their big break came a year later when they signed to Atlantic Records after opening for Janis Joplin at London's Royal Albert Hall. Their debut single, Sweetness, and first album, Yes, were released later that year.
Other albums included 1971's Fragile, 1972's Close To The Edge and 1977's Going For The One.
In 1983 they released the album 90125, which featured their classic hit Owner Of A Lonely Heart. That went on to become a US number one hit in January 1984 despite only reaching number 28 in their home country.
Squire also released a solo album, Fish Out Of Water, in 1975.
The group's most recent studio album, Heaven & Earth, came out last year.
Squire, who was born in Kingsbury, north-west London, was the only member of the group to feature on every studio album.
Musicians and fans took to Twitter and Facebook to pay tribute to Squire.
John Petrucci, founding member and guitarist for American progressive metal band Dream Theater, tweeted: "Thank you for all of the amazing music Chris Squire. You will surely be missed."
Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello tweeted: "RIP Chris Squire, super bassist of Yes. An extremely talented musician's musician who mastered his instrument and took it to new realms."
American rock guitarist Joe Satriani posted: "R.I.P. and thank you Chris Squire. #ChrisSquire,#yes"
The band posted on their official website to say they would have more information for fans soon, adding: "Thank you for all your heartfelt tributes on Facebook and Twitter." | Chris Squire, the bass guitarist and co-founder of 1970s British progressive rock band Yes, has died at the age of 67, his bandmates have said. | 33306933 |
The Blues, who had keeper Thibaut Courtois sent off, were down to nine men for a period after staff ran on to treat Hazard following a trip, despite him not appearing to be badly injured.
If a player receives treatment, they must leave the field.
"I was unhappy with my medical staff. They were impulsive and naive," Mourinho told Sky Sports.
"Whether you are a kit man, doctor or secretary on the bench you have to understand the game.
"You have to know you have one player less and to assist a player you must be sure he has a serious problem. I was sure Eden did not have a serious problem. He had a knock. He was tired."
Chelsea were already struggling to cope against Swansea's extra man before Hazard was tripped by Gylfi Sigurdsson with six minutes remaining, leading to Mourinho's frustration.
It was an eventful match for Premier League champions Chelsea. Courtois suffered an injury scare in the warm-up before he was was dismissed in the 52nd minute after bringing down Swansea striker Bafetimbi Gomis.
Replacement goalkeeper Asmir Begovic came on for his debut after an £8m move from Stoke, with opening goalscorer Oscar making way. Gomis scored the resulting penalty.
"I don't want to talk about it," Mourinho said of the referee's decision.
After Oscar's opener, Andre Ayew equalised on his Swansea debut but the visitors only held on for 95 seconds before Federico Fernandez scored an unfortunate own goal to gift Chelsea a 2-1 lead.
Following defeat by Arsenal in last Sunday's Community Shield, Chelsea again looked rusty, having returned from a pre-season tour of North America where they travelled 9,800 miles.
Mourinho said: "Swansea didn't have chances against 11 men. The team was playing very, very well in the first half.
"In one minute, it was a penalty, red card and the goal.
"If you have 10 men and are winning you can defend well and try to find a strategy but to play with 10 men and try to win the game is more difficult. I would say we were the best team with 11 players and with 10 we fought hard, some fighting at the limit of their condition."
Chelsea travel to face Manchester City in their next game on Sunday, 16 August. | Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho criticised his "naive" medical staff for treating Eden Hazard in their draw with Swansea. | 33837212 |
Last year, Beijing banned any more "bizarre" buildings. In recent years the country has seen buildings shaped like a teapot and another resembling a pair of trousers.
Now, China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce has continued the government's crusade for normalcy with restrictions on such names as 'scared of wife' or 'prehistoric powers'.
So, just how weird and wonderful are Chinese company names? Well, a few otherwise-unoccupied social media users in China have dug up some gems.
Some curiosities have crept into business names from internet memes.
"Shenyang Prehistoric Powers Hotel Management Limited Company" might sound weird but less so to Chinese sports fans who remember swimmer Fu Yuanhui.
She famously won a bronze medal at the Rio Olympics, afterwards declaring: "I have used all my prehistoric powers to swim!"
There are also lots of restaurants and cafes with the phrase "skinny blue mushroom".
The phrase originated from a meme which mocked a man from Guangxi province who uploaded a video of himself talking about his loneliness while his girlfriend was away.
"Unbearable, I want to cry," he moaned - but thanks to his accent, it ended up sounding more like "skinny blue mushroom".
One of the best known offbeat names on Chinese social media is a condom company called "Uncle Niu".
Or, more accurately, "There Is a Group of Young People With Dreams, Who Believe They Can Make the Wonders of Life Under the Leadership of Uncle Niu Internet Technology Co Ltd."
It's not concise, but at least it's positive.
Others aren't so upbeat, especially when it comes to home life.
And given "Beijing Scared of Wife Technology Company" and "Anping County Scared of Wife Netting Products Factory" are both registered companies, the trend doesn't seem to be limited by industry or region.
The rules of written Chinese are vastly different to those of written English, so many names seem far stranger in translation than in the original tongue.
English names can seem pretty strange in Chinese too, and there's a cottage industry among branding agencies to help western companies come up with names for the Chinese market.
Western company names often follow the name of their founder (think Boeing, Ford or Gucci), which might have no direct translation.
Or they might be a concocted portmanteau (think Verizon, which is the Latin word "veritas" meaning truth, with horizon bolted on to the end) or maybe even just tech nonsense (Etsy, Hulu).
"What we think is most important to come up with a name that captures the spirit of the brand," says Tait Lawton, from Nanjing Marketing Group, which provides naming services.
Western companies sometimes try to phonetically replicate the original, or come up with a Chinese name that's fairly neutral in meaning.
Others will come up with a new name that tries other ways of encapsulating the brand.
"BMW's current Chinese name is 宝马. It's great. The first character means 'treasure' and the second character means 'horse'. The sound is 'bao ma', starting with a B and M. Plus, it's short. It just has a great feel to it," says Mr Lawton.
He has a few other examples he likes too.
Pampers, for example, is 帮宝适 or "bang bao shi", which means "helps make baby comfortable".
Walch soap 威露士 or "wei lu shi" loosely translates as "mighty liquid guard", and who wouldn't want to wash with that? | China has banned companies from registering weird and long names. | 40945179 |
BT, Edinburgh International Conference Centre and Apex Hotels are among firms supporting the City Region deal.
The six councils behind the bid claim it will lead to more jobs and improve infrastructure across the Lothians, Fife and the Borders.
It will now be submitted to the UK and Scottish governments.
Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, Marketing Edinburgh and universities and colleges in the region have also leant their support to the deal.
It is being led by East Lothian, the City of Edinburgh, Fife, Midlothian, Scottish Borders and West Lothian councils.
If the bid is successful, they hope to build new housing, generate jobs and improve connectivity through transport links and the internet.
They believe it could also generate an additional £3.2bn worth of private sector investment.
Andrew Burns, the leader of the City of Edinburgh Council, said: "I am delighted that we have now reached this key milestone and look forward to discussing our proposals in more detail with both governments in the coming months.
"In negotiating this deal, we want to build on our key sector strengths of knowledge, culture and technology."
He added: "Our ambition is to achieve a step change in economic performance for the economies of the region, Scotland and the UK and we are delighted that to date almost 100 businesses have registered their support.
"In addition to this the academic community in the region are also on board. The joint working of public, private and the third sector is crucial to the success of this deal." | A bid to secure £1bn of funding for Edinburgh and the south east of Scotland has won the backing of almost 100 businesses. | 34152358 |
The investment will secure thousands of jobs at the Sunderland factory, which produces the current Juke, Qashqai, Note and electric Leaf models.
The firm said the money gave "security to our Sunderland plant beyond 2020".
Chancellor George Osborne welcomed the "fantastic news" that was "an important sign of Britain being chosen as a global leader in car production".
The plant made 500,000 cars last year, making it the biggest car plant in the UK, according to Nissan.
According to Prof David Bailey from Aston Business School, Nissan's Sunderland plant makes more cars than the whole of the Italian car industry.
The new investment will secure 6,700 jobs at the plant and more than 27,000 in the supply chain.
Unite union assistant general secretary Tony Burke said: "We warmly welcome the decision of Nissan to build the new Juke model in the UK, when it could have gone to one of Nissan's plants abroad.
"The decision demonstrates the confidence the industry has in a highly skilled and dedicated workforce across the UK automotive industry."
Nissan Europe chairman Paul Wilcox told the BBC the plant was "probably the most productive in Europe and, I'd argue, globally".
He added that although demand in Russia and China was slowing, the car market in western Europe was "very good and improving, and the market in the UK is very, very good".
"We are not getting carried away as the global market is turbulent, but we are seeing slight growth in demand."
According to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, UK car production in the first half of the year hit a seven-year high of 793,642 cars - the equivalent of three cars every minute.
This was the highest production since 2008, the year of the financial crisis that sparked a deep recession in the UK. | Japanese carmaker Nissan has announced it will invest £100m in its UK plant to build the new Juke model. | 34136541 |
CO2 emissions are believed to be the driving force behind climate change.
The Paris deal is the world's first comprehensive climate agreement.
It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions.
"Ratification is yet to be done and India too is yet to do it. I announce that India will ratify the decision on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi," Mr Modi said in a speech at a national meeting of his ruling party in the southern state of Kerala.
Last December, countries agreed to cut emissions in a bid to keep the global average rise in temperatures below 2C.
The US and China - together responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions - both formally joined the Paris global climate agreement earlier this month. | India, one of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters, will ratify the Paris global climate agreement pact next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said. | 37469603 |
Lennon Toland, from the city's Tollcross area, was struck by a white Ford Transit van in Dalness Street, Shettleston, at about 15:15 on Monday.
The St Paul's Primary School pupil was taken to hospital with serious injuries and died a short time later. The 62-year-old van driver was not injured.
Police have appealed for witnesses to the accident to contact them. | Police have released the name of a five-year-old boy who died after being hit by a van in Glasgow. | 37353611 |
Kerry Jane Wilson, 60, was working with an NGO when she was taken from the company's office in Jalalabad by armed men in military-style uniforms.
She is now "safe and well", according to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who gave no further details.
Jalalabad is close to the border with Pakistan, in a region where militant groups are known to operate.
Ms Wilson, known also as Katherine, is the director of Zardozi, a charity which helps poor women start their own businesses.
She had been working in the region for 20 years before she was kidnapped by the unidentified gunmen.
Ms Bishop said the government would not comment on the circumstances of her release to "protect those who remain captive or face the risk of kidnapping".
However she added that she "deeply appreciated the work of the authorities in Afghanistan whose support and assistance facilitated (Ms Wilson's) release".
Australia says it does not pay ransoms for hostages.
Ms Wilson's 91-year-old father, Brian Wilson, had earlier told the Australian Broadcasting Corp he was extremely worried about his daughter, but that the kidnappers would probably keep her alive. | An Australian aid worker who was abducted in Afghanistan earlier this year has been released. | 37211649 |
It is also cancelling annual bonus payments as part of a series of measures aimed at saving $118m (£89m) in employment costs.
In July, civil servants went on strike over delays in the payment of their salaries.
The country is going through its toughest economic situation since the hyper-inflation of 2008.
Speaking to parliament on Thursday, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said that currently the government wage bill takes up nearly 97% of the revenue it receives.
He hopes to bring that figure down to 75% by the end of next year.
The 25,000 job losses, which amount to 8% of the civil service workforce, were described in the state-owned Herald newspaper as a "bold measure" to reduce "unsustainable" spending.
Last year, Mr Chinamasa made similar proposals which were then blocked by the cabinet.
In the past few months, the government has struggled to pay civil servants' wages including those of soldiers, teachers and health workers.
The delay led to one of the biggest strikes the country has witnessed in years, in July.
The government is finding it hard to raise revenue amid an economic collapse.
The BBC's Brian Hungwe in Harare says more than 10,000 companies have shut in the last decade.
He adds that President Robert Mugabe blames his economic woes on sanctions, but his critics blame what they call ruinous economic policies and corruption within his government.
To add to the country's woes, a severe drought has left many people dependent on food aid. | Zimbabwe's government is axing 25,000 civil service jobs in an effort to rein in government spending. | 37320976 |
Tries from Kotaro Matsushima and Yoshikazu Fujita helped them into an 18-8 half-time lead, with Takudzwa Ngwenya crossing for the US.
Amanaki Mafi burst through for Japan's third try before Chris Wyles crossed to give the United States hope.
But Goromaru's third penalty late in the game gave Japan a clear lead.
After their thrilling opening win against South Africa, Japan went on to add the scalps of Samoa and the US, but their heavy defeat by Scotland left them third in the group, and they miss out on a place in the last eight.
The Eagles finish having lost all four of their matches.
Japan, who left Kingsholm to a standing ovation after a lap of honour, host the competition in four years' time and will go into that tournament buoyed by an excellent World Cup on English soil.
They had only ever won one match at a World Cup before, and their three victories in England represent a significant improvement.
Japan are the first non-tier-one team to win three matches at a single Rugby World Cup.
Full-back Ayumu Goromaru is the first player to score more than 50 points in a single RWC campaign for Japan. At the end of the pool stage, only Greig Laidlaw (60) has scored more than him in 2015 (58).
Eric Fry became the seventh player to get a yellow card for the USA in a RWC match.
Japan's win brought to an end a highly-competitive and entertaining pool stage. The quarter-finalists are now known as the 2015 tournament reaches the business end.
USA: Chris Wyles; Takudzwa Ngwenya, Seamus Kelly, Thretton Palamo, Zach Test, AJ MacGinty, Mike Petri; Eric Fry, Zach Fenoglio, Titi Lamositele, Hayden Smith, Greg Peterson, Al McFarland, Andrew Durutalo, Samu Manoa.
Replacements: Phil Thiel Thiel for Fenoglio (63), Cam Dolan for Smith (31), John Quill for Peterson (77).
Japan: Ayumu Goromaru; Yoshikazu Fujita, Harumichi Tatekawa, Craig Wing, Kotaro Matsushima, Kosei Ono, Fumiaki Tanaka; Keita Inagaki, Shota Horie, Hiroshi Yamashita, Luke Thompson, Justin Ives, Michael Leitch, Michael Broadhurst, Ryu Koliniasi Holani.
Replacements: Karne Hesketh for H. Ono (73), Masataka Mikami for Inagaki (59), Takeshi Kizu for Horie (77), Kensuke Hatakeyama for Yamashita (41), Shinya Makabe for Ives (68), Hendrik Tui for Broadhurst (73), Lelei Mafi for Holani (41).
Attendance: 14,578
Referee: Glen Jackson (New Zealand)
For the latest rugby union news, follow @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter. | Japan made unwelcome history as the first team to exit the World Cup having won three matches after they beat the United States. | 34492412 |
The 29-year-old former Billericay, Peterborough United and Gillingham man scored nine goals in 24 appearances for Boro last season.
"There were a couple of players at Stevenage that stood out last season and Chris was one of them," Dons boss Neal Ardley told the club website.
"His goalscoring record from midfield has been exceptional over the years."
Whelpdale becomes AFC Wimbledon's third signing of the summer following their promotion to the third tier via the League Two play-offs.
The Dons have not disclosed the length of his contract at Kingsmeadow.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page. | League One side AFC Wimbledon have signed Chris Whelpdale following the winger's departure from Stevenage. | 36655016 |
Henry Ramos Allup, 72, will be the first opposition politician to lead the National Assembly in 16 years following a landslide victory in legislative elections on 6 December.
Mr Ramos said he would ensure the assembly would act "as an autonomous power."
The newly elected lawmakers will take up their seats on Tuesday.
Mr Ramos Allup was chosen by opposition lawmakers in a secret ballot with 69 votes out of 111 cast, defeating 46-year-old Julio Borges of the Justice First party.
He is expected to be formally confirmed in the post when the lawmakers take up their seats.
Mr Ramos Allup is the secretary general of the social-democratic Democratic Action party, which has long been opposing the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor in office, Hugo Chavez.
The government says Mr Ramos Allup is a member of Venezuela's "old guard". His Democratic Action was one of two parties that alternated in power for four decades before President Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998.
But his supporters say the 72-year-old has the experience and political savvy to turn the National Assembly into a counterbalance to President Maduro's executive branch.
Mr Ramos Allup said the MUD opposition coalition, which won a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, would show Venezuelans "a more democratic way forward".
Known for his sometimes confrontational style, he struck a surprisingly conciliatory note after his election.
"We represent an alternative. We are not going to be anti-establishment, rather an autonomous legislative power," he said.
"We ask people to watch us, to demand more of us, and keep an eye on what we do to make sure we honour our commitment," he added.
Nevertheless, the first session of the assembly is expected to be tense after the opposition coalition said all of its 112 members would take up their seats even though three have been suspended by the Supreme Court pending investigations into alleged voting irregularities.
Tension is also expected to be high around the National Assembly building, as both the opposition and the governing Socialists have called on their supporters to converge on the building. | Venezuelan opposition lawmakers have chosen a veteran politician as the new head of the country's legislative body. | 35220773 |
Aqsa Mahmood, 20, travelled to Syria from her Glasgow home to become a "Jihadi bride" in November 2013.
The Daily Mail reported she had been in touch with at least one of the three London girls, who are aged 15 and 16.
The trio are thought to have flown to Turkey in an attempt to enter Syria.
Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and an unnamed 15-year-old girl, who all attended Bethnal Green Academy in Tower Hamlets, travelled to Turkey on Tuesday.
They were interviewed by police after another girl from their school went to Syria in December but were not considered as a risk.
In a statement released through their lawyer Aamer Anwar, the Mahmood family said they were "full of horror and anger that their daughter may have had a role to play in the recruitment of these young girls to Isis".
They also sent a message to Aqsa: "You are a disgrace to your family and the people of Scotland, your actions are a perverted and evil distortion of Islam.
"You are killing your family every day with your actions, they are begging you stop if you ever loved them."
The statement also said the UK security services had questions to answer.
It added: "Aqsa's social media has been monitored since she disappeared over a year ago, yet despite alleged contact between the girls and Aqsa, they failed to stop them from leaving the UK for Turkey, a staging post for Syria.
"Sadly, despite all the government's rhetoric on Isis, if they can't even take basic steps to stop children leaving to join Isis, what is the point of any new laws?"
Privately educated Mahmood travelled through Turkey to Aleppo in Syria, where she married an Islamic State fighter.
She was reported to have later encouraged terrorist acts via a Twitter account under the name Umm Layth. The account has since been deleted.
Speaking in September, her parents Khalida and Muzaffar Mahmood said their daughter had attended Craigholme School, then university and was "well integrated into society".
They also said she was brought up "with love and affection in a happy home" and appealed for her to come home. | Relatives of a Scottish woman who is suspected of helping to recruit three missing London teenagers to Islamic State (IS) have said she is a "disgrace to her family". | 31569808 |
Eight Type 26 frigates are due to be built on the Clyde, but the UK government has not announced a timescale for the project.
Harriet Baldwin faced calls from SNP and Labour MPs to confirm a time-frame for cutting steel on the frigates.
But she said it would be "inappropriate" to do so as negotiations continue.
Work had originally been due to start this year, but SNP defence spokesman Brendan O'Hara predicted during a Commons debate on Tuesday that construction of the ships would not start until at least the summer of next year.
He also said the delays could be in part blamed on the economic impact of Brexit, as well as the government committing too much of its procurement budget to renewing the Trident nuclear deterrent.
Mr O'Hara told MPs: "It would be an unforgivable betrayal of the Clyde workers if they were the ones that had to pay the price of Brexit, but also the price of Trident."
In reply, Ms Baldwin told the Westminster Hall debate: "The timing of the award of the build contract and the build schedule itself are key components of the ongoing commercial negotiations between the Government and BAE Systems.
"We are negotiating a deal that aims to optimise the requirements of the Royal Navy in terms of the capability the ships will deliver, to achieve value for money for defence and the taxpayer, and to deliver a build schedule that drives performance.
"These negotiations are continuing, so I am not this afternoon in a position to give a specific date as to when an agreement will be reached.
"To protect the commercial interests of the Ministry of Defence, disclosing any such detail would be inappropriate at this time."
Under questioning from the SNP's Chris Stephens, Ms Baldwin confirmed the national ship building strategy will report by the time of the Autumn Statement on 23 November, which could reveal fresh information about plans for the Type 26 frigates.
Ms Baldwin also resisted calls to disclose further reasons behind delays and cuts to the project.
The project has already been cut from 13 to eight new ships, while a target to start cutting steel in May has been delayed indefinitely.
Tory MP Bob Stewart, a former British Army officer, said: "I don't think we need the minister to answer that - the answer is we had no money.
"That's why we had to cut down the number of Type 26 ships. We did not have the money, and we actually had to cut our means to suit our coat."
SNP MP Martin Docherty-Hughes said the delays left Scotland and the United Kingdom "dangerously under-defended", adding it was a "tale of under-investment and neglect". | A defence minister has refused to say when the next generation of Royal Navy warships will be built. | 37696256 |
The collision happened on the westbound carriageway between junction 23, Magor, and junction 24, Coldra, at about 15:25 BST.
Gwent Police said four people were believed to have been injured but the extent of their injuries is not known.
Earlier on Saturday, two people were taken to hospital following a crash at the same junction between a vehicle towing a horsebox and a motorbike.
That crash saw motorists face delays of up to 60 minutes as the exit slip road was closed - it was later reopened at 13:45.
The delays were not helped by the closure of the M48 Severn Bridge in both directions, which has been shut all weekend for maintenance work. | One lane of the M4 in Monmouthshire has reopened after a five-vehicle crash. | 36874328 |
The role is widely regarded as the biggest job in British theatre, and Norris called it "a great honour".
"I am thrilled at the challenge of leading this exceptional organisation, where it has been a privilege to work under the inspirational leadership of Nick Hytner," he said.
Sir Nicholas announced last April he would step down in March 2015.
Norris first came to prominence in 2001 with his production of Afore Night Come at the Young Vic, for which he won the Evening Standard award for most promising newcomer.
Having initially trained at Rada as an actor, the 48-year-old has since directed theatre in the West End and on Broadway, as well as having experience with opera and film.
In 2012 his film Broken premiered at the Cannes Film Festival before winning best British independent film at the British Independent Film Awards.
He recently directed The Amen Corner at the National and also created Dr Dee: An English Opera with Blur frontman Damon Albarn for the Manchester International Festival in 2011.
Earlier this year he also launched the National's temporary Shed venue on London's Southbank with Table, by his playwright wife Tanya Ronder.
"The National is an extraordinary place full of extraordinary people and I look forward with relish to the task ahead," Norris said.
"That being to fill our theatres with the most exciting, accessible and ground-breaking work our unique and broad community of artists has to offer."
Sir Nicholas will have spent 12 years as the National Theatre's director when he hands over to Norris in 2015.
He has overseen worldwide hits such as The History Boys, War Horse and One Man, Two Guvnors, as well as NT Live which screens theatre productions in cinemas.
He said his successor would be "welcomed with great excitement both within the National and in the theatre at large".
He added: "His work as a director is always searching, deeply considered and adventurous and I have no doubt he will bring these qualities to the running of the National."
Sir Nicholas said Norris received a standing ovation from the National Theatre company when he had introduced him earlier, accompanied by a huge roar "even louder than when old Alfie falls down the stairs in One Man, Two Guvnors".
Norris said his new role was "a great privilege and I will attack that with gusto", adding he would like to "cast the net wider" in terms of who would perform at the theatre.
Theo Bosanquet - editor, WhatsOnStage
"He fits the bill. There are certain echoes between him and Hytner which no doubt appealed to the board.
"The main thing is that neither of them, upon being appointed, had run buildings before. They both enjoyed stellar careers as freelance directors which, firstly, indicates the board wants to have an artist at the head rather than a career artistic director and, secondly, they want someone with new ideas.
"He's had a fascinating career. Festen at the Almeida (2004) was a stellar production and proved that work fostered in a subsidised theatre could transfer to the commercial West End.
"The key with him is that he can direct at the Olivier (The Amen Corner, London Road, Death and the King's Horseman) and on a smaller scale at The Shed (Table).
"He's proved he has the ability to direct across the board."
WhatsOnStage
"The theatre's in a different place from when Nick [Hytner] took over - a position of strength."
Norris revealed he was directing a movie version of London Road in 2014, but said he would be "100% committed to this building" from the moment Sir Nicholas leaves.
"I'm not going to kid myself. I will be chained to this place," he added.
Norris, who has been an associate director at the National Theatre since 2011, will take up his new position from April 2015.
He is the first former actor as well as non-Oxbridge graduate to be appointed since Sir Laurence Olivier, who was the National's first artistic director in 1963.
"There have been many times in my life when I've regretted that I played in bands and was a painter decorator for four years when I could have been at university, but I seem to be here - it worked out," Norris said.
"The simple fact is, lots of people who go to Oxford and Cambridge are very, very clever. That doesn't mean they're the only clever people."
The National Theatre's chairman John Makinson said: "The Board looked for an individual with a creative reputation that would command the respect and support of British theatre, and with the generosity of spirit that has characterised Nick Hytner's period as director.
"Rufus Norris has both those qualities in abundance. He is an exciting choice, someone who will build on the National Theatre's present reputation as one of the most admired and innovative performing arts organisations in the world.
"We are fortunate that he has chosen to join us."
The National Theatre's first director from 1963-73 was Sir Laurence Olivier, who is widely considered to be one of the greatest actors of all time.
When asked by the BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz whether he thought his acting past would also bring a different flavour to the institution, Norris laughed: "It's an interesting question and one I had not anticipated at all, because to compare me as an actor with Laurence Olivier is one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time."
He continued: "I'm sure that what I bring to it will be nothing like the amount of skill and expertise that his acting career allowed him to bring to the table.
"But I think, yeah, training as an actor and having that experience for a while gives you an insight into a certain aspect of the process which is very, very useful."
Sir Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Daldry, Danny Boyle and ex-Donmar Warehouse bosses Michael Grandage and Sam Mendes had all been in the frame for the job, although Mendes had ruled himself out of the race.
Nick Starr, the theatre's executive director since 2002, also announced he would be leaving the NT during 2014, leading to a phased handover of the top jobs. | Rufus Norris is to take over from Sir Nicholas Hytner as director of the National Theatre. | 24532377 |
The Endeavour project has bought a former German harbour ferry for £1 with the hope of raising £3m to restore the 59-year-old rusting vessel.
A service used to link Liverpool with the Welsh resort, while en route to the Isle of Man, 30 years ago.
"The money is coming from some private investors," said restorer Steve Payne.
"We have some fund-raising ourselves and then we've had some bequests come in as well."
The 55-metre long vessel, first launched in Hamburg in 1958, has been rusting in Liverpool docks since 1994 when an attempt to turn her into a floating bar on Liverpool's famous Albert Dock failed.
Enthusiasts, headed by Mr Payne, saved her from scrap in 2016 with the dream of offering three-hour summer day trips for up to 450 people from Liverpool to Llandudno.
The Endeavour's two diesel engines will have to be refurbished while the lifeboats have been sent to Norway for an overhaul.
Many of the ship's fittings need replacing and even the ship's wheel has been stolen.
"If we were to build a ship this size, new at the moment, we'd be looking around £25m-£30m," said Mr Payne, secretary of the Liverpool and North Wales Steam Ship Company.
"We have the basis of a very, very good ship here."
Mr Payne is confident the new limited company can meet the health and safety requirements necessary to allow The Endeavour leave her berth in Liverpool's Canada Dock again.
The Endeavour has no history of sailing in British waters but Mr Payne believes she is the ideal ship for traditional summer day trippers.
"You can't find ships like this any more," he said.
"There's not a major UK connection but we want to establish a new connection for this ship so children can have a chance to experience this in 25 years time the way their grandparents did." | A ferry between Llandudno to Liverpool could be restarted by the summer of 2021 as a group of enthusiasts hope to reopen the once-popular day trip. | 39560618 |
The firm told a judicial review it did not accept the discharge of final treated effluent had degraded the quality of Llyn Padarn at Llanberis.
Anglers claim water quality threatens the future of the Arctic char fish.
A High Court judge reserved judgement in the case at Caernarfon on Wednesday.
The judicial review proceedings have been brought by the Seiont, Gwyrfai, and Llyfni Anglers Society, represented by a body called Fish Legal - an umbrella organisation for fishing groups.
Lawyers claimed Natural Resources Wales (NRW) had not done enough to protect the Arctic char, primarily from raw sewage and treated effluent discharged by Welsh Water.
The company said since 2010 it had invested £3.6m at the works, with another £4.6m agreed to be spent by summer 2016.
It said the work completed meant the lake met water quality standards necessary to be awarded bathing water status by the Welsh government.
"It is not accepted that the discharge of final treated effluent has degraded the lake as alleged by the society, or caused damage to fish stocks," its statement added. | More than £4.5m is to be spent at a water treatment works near a Snowdonia lake to improve the quality of water returned to the environment, Welsh Water has said. | 34922693 |
The Kenyan trade unionist turned politician Tom Mboya, who studied at Ruskin College, Oxford, wanted members of his country's government to be adequately prepared for a post-colonial Kenya.
He recognised quite early on that there were not enough professional Africans to run an efficient civil service.
To make up the shortfall, he set up a scholarship fund that would take young bright Africans to the US and Canada.
The idea was for them to acquire the necessary skills and come back to help build a new country when the white civil servants packed up and returned to Europe.
One of those students was one Barack Obama from Kogelo, near the port city of Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria.
Barack Obama Senior was the first African student to study at the University of Hawaii.
There he fell in love and married a young American woman, Ann Dunham. They had a son named after his father, Barack Hussein Obama II.
I travelled to Mr Obama's home in Kogelo where I met his step-grandmother Sarah Obama and aunt Marsat Onyango Obama to find out what the scholarship meant for the family at the time.
We stood in the family's small graveyard, next to the grave of Barack Obama Senior.
Ms Onyango told me that even though she had not yet been born when Mr Obama left, she knew that the family had been very proud of him.
"They said he carried their hopes and dreams."
Tom Mboya was assassinated in central Nairobi 1969 at the age of 38.
He was minister of economic development and planning but the motive for his killing remains a mystery.
He had achieved a lot for his young age - his intellectual prowess and eloquence meant that he could articulate his vision clearly to others.
As a sign of his global significance he had appeared on the cover of Time magazine, the first Kenyan to have done so.
One of his daughters, Susan Mboya, who holds a PhD in chemistry, is an executive at Coca-Cola Africa based in Nairobi.
She also runs a scholarship programme, known as Zawadi, the Kiswahili word for gift, helping mainly young African women to study abroad.
In light of the excitement engulfing Kenya ahead of President Obama's visit this weekend, I asked what she thought of her father's initiative.
She replied in a quiet, confident voice: "My father could not have known that by helping one person to go to school, he was going to change the lives of so many people.
"Barack Obama has achieved a lot personally and it's great that he is the president of the United States.
"But I think the biggest benefit that Barack Obama has brought is how he has inspired young people all over the world… and to me that is the huge thing that has come out of the scholarships."
I asked her why she had followed in her father's footsteps by setting up her own programme.
"I want to finish what my father started but I want to finish it in a way that brings balance to the leadership in this country."
The airlift scholarship also took the Kenyan newspaper columnist Philip Ochieng to America.
He studied a Bachelor of Arts in Literature at Chicago's Roosevelt University.
The 76-year-old knew Mr Obama Senior very well and recalls that he was clever.
He told me in Nairobi that they used to drink whisky together.
As he put it: "America watered my thirst for knowledge."
What if
The scholarship programme educated nearly 800 students from Kenya and elsewhere in East Africa.
Other scholars included the late Wangari Mathaai, who became the first African woman to become a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the late geneticist Reuben Olembo, who became a director at the United Nations environment agency, Unep.
The partner, on the other side of the Atlantic, was an American entrepreneur William X Scheinman, who was a good friend of Tom Mboya's, and they received President John F Kennedy's support.
Musician and activist Harry Belafonte and actor Sidney Poitier raised funds for the scholarship fund, amongst many others.
Mr Belafonte later wrote about Mr Obama Senior's scholarship: "Imagine: perhaps, if not for support from the African American Students' Foundation, he might not have come to America," he said.
"Then who would be in the White House today?"
Mr Obama Senior, who also graduated from Harvard, returned to Kenya in 1968 and eventually worked for the government as an economist.
He died in a car crash in 1982.
But not before he had visited his son in Hawaii.
He gave his son his first basketball as a gift and took him to his first jazz concert, where the maestro pianist and composer Dave Brubeck was performing.
And as I left her office in Nairobi, which boasts pictures of when she met President Obama, Ms Mboya reminded me "it doesn't take much to change a life." | This is where the story of America's first black president, Barack Obama, begins. | 33629577 |
Culture Minister Ali Jannati said flights would only resume once those responsible had been punished.
The teenagers allege that before returning to Tehran from the Umra, or lesser Islamic pilgrimage, in March they were abused by security officials at Jeddah airport.
The move is likely to deepen tensions between the two regional powers.
They are currently at odds over the conflict in Yemen, where a coalition led by Sunni Muslim-ruled Saudi Arabia is carrying out air strikes on Shia Houthi rebels, which the US says are receiving military assistance from Iran. Iran and the Houthis deny this.
On Saturday, hundreds of people protested outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran and demanded that the Iranian government "end the unnecessary Umra".
On Monday, Mr Jannati told state television: "I have ordered the Hajj and Pilgrimage Organisation to suspend the Umra until the criminals are tried and punished."
"Considering what has happened, Iranians' dignity has been damaged and a public demand has formed," he added.
The minister said Saudi officials had "promised to punish the persons in custody".
"They even asserted that they would execute them, but nothing has been done in reality so far."
Each year about 500,000 Iranians undertake the Umra, an optional pilgrimage that can be undertaken at any time of the year other than during the main pilgrimage, or Hajj.
Although the Umra includes some of the rituals of the Hajj, which every sane adult Muslim must undertake at least once in their lives if they can afford it and are physically able, they are shortened and there are fewer of them. | Iran has suspended flights for pilgrims to Saudi Arabia after the alleged sexual assaults of two Iranian boys. | 32284359 |
It also proclaimed the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as caliph and "leader for Muslims everywhere".
Setting up a state governed under strict Islamic law has long been a goal of many jihadists.
Meanwhile, Iraq's army continued an offensive to retake the northern city of Tikrit from the Isis-led rebels.
The city was seized by the insurgents on 11 June as they swept across large parts of north-western Iraq.
In a separate development, Israel called for the creation of an independent Kurdish state in response to the gain made by the Sunni rebels in Iraq.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) announced the establishment of the caliphate in an audio recording posted on the internet on Sunday.
Isis also said that from now on it would be known simply as "the Islamic State".
The BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, says the declaration harks back to the rise of Islam, when the Prophet Muhammad's followers conquered vast territories in the Middle Ages.
The Sunni-Shia split has its origins in a dispute over the succession to Muhammad.
It's easy to dismiss the latest crop of Isis videos and statements as mere propaganda (however well produced), but the announcement of the establishment of a caliphate is rich with religious, cultural and historic significance.
Generations of Sunni radicals have dreamt of a moment when, in the words of Isis spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, Muslims "shake off the dust of humiliation and disgrace" and a new caliphate rises out of the chaos, confusion and despair of the modern Middle East.
Many Sunnis, and all Shia, will recoil in horror from the barbarism that has accompanied this moment, but the sight of old colonial-era boundaries being erased is a powerful statement, designed to attract new recruits to this whirlwind jihad.
In one of the Isis videos uploaded on Sunday, a bearded fighter called Abu Safiyya guides the viewer around a newly demolished border post. The video, with its arresting imagery and impressive production values, is designed to electrify the group's followers.
The fact that Abu Safiyya is described as being from Chile merely adds to what the authors hope is now the organisation's global appeal.
Isis said the Islamic state would extend from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala province in eastern Iraq.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group said, would become the leader of the state and would be known as "Caliph Ibrahim".
In the recording, the rebels also demanded that all Muslims "pledge allegiance" to the new ruler and "reject democracy and other garbage from the West".
On Sunday, Iraqi government jets struck at rebel positions and clashes broke out in various parts of Tikrit, witnesses and officials said.
"The security forces are advancing from different areas", Lt-Gen Qassem Atta told journalists. "There are ongoing clashes."
Troops had reportedly pulled back to the nearby town of Dijla as Saturday's initial offensive met stiff resistance.
The heavy fighting over the two days caused many casualties on both sides, eyewitnesses and journalists told the BBC.
Insurgents were reported to have shot down a helicopter and captured the pilot.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the creation of an independent Kurdish state in response to gains made by Sunni insurgents in Iraq.
In a speech in Tel Aviv, he said the Kurds were "a nation of fighters and have proved political commitment and are worthy of independence".
The Kurds have long striven for an independent state but they remain divided between Syria and Turkey, Iran and Iraq.
The international community, including neighbouring Turkey and the US, remains opposed to the breakup of Iraq. | Jihadist militant group Isis has said it is establishing a caliphate, or Islamic state, on the territories it controls in Iraq and Syria. | 28082962 |
Look into their jaundiced eyes, listen to their weary words and you enter a world of crossed-out, ripped-up, stomped-upon storylines.
So sup up the youthful vigour of Great Britain's glorious Olympians Anthony Joshua and Luke Campbell while you can. Because the flavour might run out before long.
"You get back from an Olympics and you're hot property," says James DeGale, who won gold for Britain at the 2008 Games in Beijing.
"I'd done my country proud, I signed for the biggest promoter in Europe in Frank Warren. But after my first professional fight, when I got booed, I thought to myself: 'Right, this ain't all glitz and glamour. That stuff fades, this is some serious stuff.'"
On 16 November, DeGale fights Dyah Davis at the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. Vegas it isn't. Almost five years, 17 fights and plenty of lumps and bumps into his professional career, the promised land still seems a long way off.
"I definitely thought I'd have fought for a world title by now," adds the 27-year-old, who at least has terrestrial television exposure on Channel 5.
"But with politics and problems with promoters [DeGale left Warren for Mick Hennessy last September], things slowed down a touch. Pro boxing's not just a sport, it's a business - the hardest business in the world."
No British Olympic boxing champion has won a professional world title. Chris Finnegan, who struck gold in 1968, came closest, losing in valiant fashion to American light-heavyweight great Bob Foster in 1972.
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Sydney 2000 champion Audley Harrison entered the pro ranks believing the medal dangling from his neck doubled as an amulet but soon discovered that gold grows old, like any other colour.
Errol Christie never competed at an Olympics but he was one of Britain's finest amateur talents, our very own Sugar Ray Leonard. But three years into his paid career he was all but washed up and never fought for a pro title. "Christie's heart," it was written, "sets questions his chin can't answer."
Frankie Gavin was billed as a modern-day Christie - only better. Balletic foot movement, exquisite balance, the kid from Birmingham had pretty much everything. And still does, it's just that he momentarily lost it along the way.
"In the end it was so easy for me as an amateur," says Gavin, who missed out on the 2008 Olympics after failing to make the weight but remains the only British boxer to win a world amateur title.
"I won my last 50 fights, everything was done for me at GB Boxing in Sheffield and when you're part of a team you can help each other. But when you turn pro you're on your own. I didn't realise how lonely it would be."
An unhappy boxer tends to be an underperforming boxer and loneliness exacerbated by personal turmoil made Gavin a very unhappy boxer indeed.
"I took my family up to Manchester and it was all right for a bit," says the 28-year-old. "But when I split up from my girlfriend I was doing it all on my own. And I was even lonelier."
Besides his relationship ending in acrimonious circumstances, Gavin's grandmother died and his mother was diagnosed with cancer. In addition, Gavin felt unloved by some of those charged with guiding his career.
"I remember almost falling over in front of one trainer," says Gavin, "and he said: 'I'm glad you didn't go over, that might have been my investment gone, my 10%.' It made me think.
"I was on the brink of giving it all up. I said to Frank Warren: 'I'll get back in touch if I want to box again.'"
Sitting next to Gavin, with his eyes wide open and his ears cocked, is his old team-mate Anthony Ogogo, a bronze medallist at the London Olympics.
Ogogo, on the books of American giants Golden Boy Promotions, is three fights into his pro career and as bushy-tailed as boxers come. But even he is becoming pitted by the game's hard truths.
"I've never seen anyone as talented as Frankie," says the 24-year-old. "So it's weird to think it could have been all over almost before it started.
"Then again, you hear so many horror stories in boxing - strife with promoters, trainers or managers. It's a hard enough game without all that so you need to know you've got the right people around you. People you can trust."
You hear so many horror stories in boxing - strife with promoters, trainers or managers. It's a hard enough game without all that.
Boxers are wont to blame everyone but themselves for their lack of progress. So it is refreshing to hear Gavin admitting his own mistakes and that he has taken steps to rectify them. Starting with getting the right people around him. People he can trust.
"I got complacent because it all seemed too easy again, starting out in the pro ranks," says Gavin. "I thought all I had to do was box - pads, spar, pads, spar. But you've got to work on your weaknesses as well as your strengths.
"Fighters I should have been smashing up I was having hard fights against, like Curtis Woodhouse. But when I went back to Birmingham my old amateur trainer, Tom Chaney, took over again.
"He's like a father figure to me. He doesn't nag me for money if I don't pay him on time - he's not in it for money, he's in it for me."
Head settled and body a temple once more, Gavin is now the British and Commonwealth welterweight champion and confident enough to be calling out Kell Brook and Amir Khan.
DeGale, too, is "older and wiser". Free of hangers-on, less bombastic but painfully aware he remains lumbered with something of an image problem.
"I learned a whole heap from my loss against George Groves," says DeGale of his only pro defeat, by his bitter domestic rival in 2011.
"During the build-up I was a bit too vocal, telling him he was ugly and his breath smelt. Maybe I shouldn't have said that.
"I read and hear people saying I'm flash and cocky and it does hurt a bit. Maybe it's just me being me. But the people who know me realise I'm a genuine, humble, down-to-earth boy."
Ogogo may have his eyes wide open and both ears cocked - "James and Frankie have made mistakes I don't want to make" - but the chain of advice is unbroken from the time men first laced up gloves and the same mistakes get made. Over and over again.
Proof that professional boxing isn't a sport, it isn't a business, it's a series of accidents - rather than mistakes - just waiting to happen.
"I get a lot of stick," says DeGale, a former British and European super-middleweight champion and one or two fights away from a world title shot.
"People telling me I'm greedy, that I'm always thinking about money, that I've messed up my career. But they don't understand. I love boxing, but it's hard, it's a short career and I want to get paid as much as I can and get out with my faculties intact.
"I tell young fighters who train with me: 'Get in there, make some money and run.'" Which almost never happens. Not even if you turn up for your first day of work with a medal round your neck.
"It's always there," says DeGale, "I'm always 'James Degale, Olympic champion'. But another Olympics comes around, new medallists arrive and they start taking the limelight." Leaving the old guard cynical and contorted, seemingly overnight. | Boxing can turn the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed into the cynical and contorted, seemingly overnight. | 24796803 |
2 February 2016 Last updated at 08:05 GMT
It's a bit different to your average lunchbox in the UK.
Watch the video to find out what Japanese kids have for their lunch. | Leah met children at the Emporium Kindergarten in Koriyama, Japan, tucking into a tasty lunch. | 35466150 |
The 33-year-old made his Ulster debut in 2008 and has scored 745 points in 113 appearances for the Kingspan Stadium team.
Humphreys has also played for Leicester Tigers and London Irish.
"My body is telling me it's time to stop - I feel blessed to have enjoyed such a long career, the highlight of which is winning 100 Ulster caps."
Humphreys has played eight times for Les Kiss' men this season, including four starts, and has scored two tries.
"Throughout his rugby career, 'Mini Humph' has been one of the stand-out attacking 10s in European Rugby," said Ulster operations director Bryn Cunningham.
"However, it is possibly his organisational and communication skills with players around him, often unseen by those watching, that made Ian such an influential person to have around the team."
The former Ballymena Academy student enjoyed successful stints in England with Leicester (2005-2008) and London Irish (2012-2014). | Ulster fly-half Ian Humphreys has announced he will retire from the game at the end of the season. | 35754289 |
Pacheco, 17, has made three appearances this season for Liverpool, who are fifth in the WSL One table.
Doncaster are currently bottom of the league, having failed to pick up a point from their opening four games.
"She's an extremely exciting and talented young player," Belles manager Emma Coates told the club website. | Doncaster Rovers Belles have signed Liverpool and England Under-19 defender Maz Pacheco on loan until the end of the Women's Super League season. | 36678662 |
Ed Joyce top-scored with 35 from 60 balls, sharing a third-wicket partnership of 55 with Niall O'Brien.
Queensland are 137-5 in reply, with one further day's play to come on Tuesday.
The fixture was arranged as preparation for Ireland's Intercontinental Cup game against Papua New Guinea, which begins in Townsville on Sunday.
Ireland currently top the Intercontinental Cup table with maximum points from convincing wins in their matches against the UAE and Namibia.
Openers William Porterfield and Paul Stirling were both dismissed cheaply, making only five, but the experienced pairing of Joyce and O'Brien led a fightback.
Joyce plundered four fours and a six in his innings, while O'Brien struck four boundaries in a fluent 26.
O'Brien's dismissal by Australian international Ben Cutting sparked a collapse in the Irish ranks, as Joyce followed shortly after.
Gary Wilson and Stuart Poynter both made 18, with Andrew Balbirnie (0) and Stuart Thompson (4) falling in quick succession to leave Ireland reeling on 122 for 8, with Clontarf professional Mick Granger (2-53) accounting for Wilson and Thompson.
Tim Murtagh made a solid 20 before he was dismissed by Andy McBrine (1-14) - both the Donemana all-rounder and George Dockrell were playing for the hosts.
Indeed it was Dockrell (1-5) who brought the Irish innings to a close on 155 as he bowled Boyd Rankin for nine.
Craig Young took an early wicket but a second wicket stand of 68 between Scott Henry (50) and Nick Stevens (33) put Queensland firmly in the ascendancy.
Young came back to break the partnership, having Stevens well caught by Stirling.
Former Australian Under-19 international Sam Truloff (9) became Boyd Rankin's (1-15) first wicket back in Irish colours as Ireland rallied late in the day.
Stuart Thompson had Henry caught behind by O'Brien, before Stirling bowled Scott Bazley with the last ball of the day as Queensland finished 18 runs adrift. | Ireland's batsmen showed signs of rustiness as they were dismissed for 155 on the first day of their game against a Queensland XI in Brisbane. | 35399671 |
They were signed by former manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the summer of 2014.
Both spent loan spells at rival Championship clubs during the 2015-16 season and have not travelled on the Bluebirds' pre-season tour to Germany.
"They can look for pastures new," first team coach Paul Trollope told BBC Radio Wales Sport.
"It's not an easy situation for them. They've shown a really good attitude and worked hard through pre-season.
"They've been treated with respect and for all parties, if a solution is found, then it would suit."
Macheda, 24, joined Cardiff from Manchester United in May 2014, and has scored six goals in 27 league games for the Bluebirds.
Le Fondre, 29, signed from Reading on a three-year deal in May 2014 but has scored only three goals in 23 league appearances for the club.
He spent the whole of the 2015-16 campaign on loan at Wolves having been on loan at Bolton Wanderers during the previous season.
Italian Macheda was on loan at Nottingham Forest last season, where he failed to score in three league appearances.
Trollope, who succeeded Russell Slade as Cardiff boss in May, would not be drawn on his future with Wales' coaching team.
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The 44-year-old is expected to leave Chris Coleman's staff to concentrate on his role with the Bluebirds.
The former Fulham midfielder wants to add to his squad before the transfer window closes but did not reveal who is targets were.
"I'm not getting involved in any names, whether we are or aren't looking," Trollope added.
"All I can say is we are looking to add a couple of new faces and to add to the group.
"We need the strength in depth, we need the quality and we need the attitude within the squad.
"The emergency loan window no longer being at our disposal probably changes our thoughts a little bit in terms of having to finalise everything by the end of August." | Cardiff City are open to offers from other clubs for strikers Federico Macheda and Adam le Fondre, says boss Paul Trollope. | 36888180 |
Mr Haigh has been accused of fraud by the Dubai-based group and is currently in custody while authorities decide whether to pursue a criminal case.
Speaking from his cell, he told the BBC he would reveal "damaging allegations" about the group's financial conduct.
GFH Capital said it could not comment on "general accusations".
Mr Haigh, 36, was employed by GFH when it purchased Leeds United in December 2012 but resigned as an employee following the club's takeover in April.
Speaking exclusively from the Dubai police cell, he claimed one allegation about GFH concerned the run-up to the purchase of Leeds United from Ken Bates for more than £17m in December 2012.
A GFH Capital spokesman said: "GFH cannot and will not comment on such general allegations, and is concerned about Mr Haigh's protestations of being unable to engage with the claim against him while apparently being able to brief the media at will."
The allegations were contained in a dossier compiled by Mr Haigh "about GFH's professional conduct and practices", according to a statement released on his behalf by UK-based spokesman Ian Monk.
"David shared its full contents with two senior figures at GFH in Bahrain who are thus aware of what it contains," Mr Monk added.
Mr Haigh is accused of profiting from falsified invoices worth about £3m while at GFH Capital and prosecutors are investigating whether to press criminal charges.
Mr Haigh returned to Dubai last month believing he was about to discuss a job offer with his former employer - only to be handed over to the police. He has now been detained, without charge, for more than a month.
Dubai law states that if someone is suspected of cheating, a breach of trust or fraud they can be detained for as long as necessary, based on the complexities of the investigation.
In his interview with the BBC, Mr Haigh was softly spoken but appeared extremely anxious.
He said he felt "trapped", not by the UAE's legal system - with which he has no complaints - but by the lack of resources in the cell.
The former managing director is one of about 40 detainees, all of whom are denied access to pens and have to share a single payphone.
Mr Haigh said he was allowed very little time with his legal team in order to mount a defence and was particularly exasperated about his bail of about £3.5m - an amount he said he did not have.
GFH Capital said it had no control over the criminal investigation being carried out by the Dubai authorities.
Mr Haigh told the BBC he underwent stomach surgery in the UK before flying to Dubai and remains in lots of pain and unable to eat solid foods.
One of his teeth is also causing him pain and he says he has to take medication to sleep.
He continues to deny all of the charges but told the BBC he regretted "signing blank cheques" and allowing others to act on his behalf, prompted by his hectic travel schedule while working at GFH Capital.
GFH Capital has previously categorically denied that it, or its lawyers, have behaved in any way inappropriately.
The private equity company said it had absolute confidence in the legal systems of both Dubai and the UK, which are investigating the civil and criminal claims against Mr Haigh. | A war of words has erupted between ex-Leeds United managing director David Haigh and his former employer, private equity group GFH Capital. | 28061069 |
Child Soldiers International and ForcesWatch claim it costs the Ministry of Defence (MoD) twice as much to train a 16-year-old as it does an adult.
That is due to longer training and a higher drop-out rate, they say.
The MoD said it did not recognise figures in the report and it "ignores the benefits" for young people.
Using figures presented to Parliament in 2011, the report said it cost an "estimated" £88,985 to recruit, train and pay new soldiers aged 16 and 17, compared with £42,818 for each adult recruit.
It said initial training for under-18s lasted either 23 or 50 weeks, depending on their chosen trade and where they were trained, whereas adult training takes 14 weeks.
The calculations included £10,000 to recruit each person, irrespective of age. The other costs covered training, accommodation, meals, welfare, health, salary and other support per Army recruit in 2010-11.
Army personnel can be deployed once they turn 18 - which the two groups said meant that "at any one time, approximately 150 soldiers are fully trained but too young to be deployed."
They added that it costs approximately £2.65m to pay the salaries of these un-soldiers, which it said were each paid a salary of £17,690.
The report said the drop-out rate for minors was 36.6% compared with 28.3% for adults, the report said.
But it added that under-18s who completed their training were likely to serve for an average of 10 years, compared with seven-and-a-half years for adult recruits.
The report suggested taxpayers would save between £81.5m and £94m if all recruits were aged 18 and over.
Its authors also say the UK is becoming "increasingly isolated" internationally in continuing with the practice - no other country in Europe recruits from such a young age - and are calling on the MoD to raise the Army recruitment age to 18.
David Gee, of ForcesWatch, said recruiting under-18s into the Army was "a practice from a bygone era".
"It's not just young recruits who pay the price for outdated MoD policies - taxpayers do too," he said.
"And so does the Army when it finds itself undermanned on the front line because so many minors have dropped out of training."
An MoD spokesman said it continued "to actively recruit across all age groups".
"As part of our duty of care to our recruits, no young person under the age of 18 years may join our armed forces without the formal written consent of their parent or guardian," he added.
"There are currently no plans to revisit the government's recruitment policy for under-18s, which is fully compliant with United Nations conventions."
One former serviceman said that joining the armed forces as a teenager was "a good thing for young people".
Jason Hardick, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, told the BBC: "It gives you self-confidence, self-discipline and a certain self-determination. You never want to fail, you always want to move forward."
He joined two weeks after his 16th birthday, and stayed for 10 years, only leaving to get married.
"I had a brilliant time, it's a good thing for young people to do and I was the youngest of my intake." | The "outdated" practice of recruiting 16-year-olds into the Army is wasting up to £94m a year and should stop, two human rights groups have said. | 22259982 |
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Kyle Good put the Irish ahead in the first minute but the French hit back with goals from Jean-Laurent Keiffer and Gaspard Baumgarten.
Peter Caruth equalised with a rebound finish and Jonathan Bruton's shot sneaked across the line to make it 3-2 before Shane O'Donoghue added a fourth.
Simon Brisac Martin pulled one back but Ireland held on for the points.
Good gave Ireland the perfect start in the Pool B encounter at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, netting just seconds into the game.
Irish keeper Davy Harte made a good save to deny Martin before Keiffer redirected a powerful shot into the net four minutes before half-time.
France moved in front within seconds of the restart with Baumgarten firing high past Harte.
Caruth followed up his shot to convert the rebound while goalline technology was required to confirm Bruton had indeed scored Ireland's third goal.
Martin set up a tense finale and France pressed for the leveller but Ireland held firm to secure a winning start.
Ireland, who need to win the tournament to ensure a place at the Rio Olympics, are back in Pool B action on Sunday against Germany.
"It was a good win and we played well in phases," said Ireland coach Craig Fulton.
"France are a very attacking team and scored some good goals. The result was important for us but we need to improve in every game and we're keen to do that." | Ireland clinched a 4-3 victory over France in their opening game at the EuroHockey Championships in London. | 34026805 |
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Three-time Olympic eventing medallist Fox-Pitt, 47, has been named in a 12-strong Team GB equestrian squad for this summer's Games.
He suffered a head trauma when he fell from his horse at the World Young Horse Championships in France in October.
"I felt maybe Rio was selfish but it gave me a kick into action," he said.
"I did think I'd been doing it for 32 years, did I need to carry on doing it?" he told BBC Sport.
But Fox-Pitt, who won Olympic team silver in Athens 2004 and London 2012 and team bronze in Beijing in 2008, said "an individual title would be marvellous".
"I think if I did win a medal my wife would make me give up.
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"I've been around a long time, I'm 47 and I'm hoping my wife thinks this will be my last Olympics. I'm not ruling myself out for Tokyo, if it happens brilliant.
"The Rio goal was a great drive personally, it gave me a good reason to get back", before adding of his ride: "I didn't want to let Chilli Morning down, I put everything into getting selected."
Fox-Pitt was competing at Le Lion-d'Angers when he fell from Reinstated, which was unharmed. "I've come off a lot of times in my life, and in being knocked out my memory has been very selective and I've been able to put it behind me."
He said the fall "affected my sight, my judgement and made me more dozy, in the beginning it was all a little bit of a dream".
"It's been an incredible journey, I've had incredible support."
Meanwhile world, European and Olympic champion Charlotte Dujardin will ride with fellow 2012 gold medallist Carl Hester in the dressage.
London gold medallist Nick Skelton goes to his seventh Games in the jumping.
Another gold medallist in London, Ben Maher, joins Skelton in the jumping team along with Los Angeles 1984 silver medallist John Whitaker, who will be competing in his sixth Games.
Younger brother Michael Whitaker, who also won silver in 1984, is heading to his fifth Olympic Games.
Fox-Pitt is joined in the eventing team by three Olympic debutants in Kitty King, Izzy Taylor and Gemma Tattersall.
There are two Olympic debuts in the dressage as Spencer Wilton and 2015 European team silver medallist Fiona Bigwood earn selection.
Squad:
Eventing: William Fox-Pitt, Kitty King, Gemma Tattersall, Izzy Taylor, reserve: Pippa Funnell MBE
Dressage: Fiona Bigwood, Charlotte Dujardin OBE, Carl Hester MBE, Spencer Wilton, reserve: Lara Griffith
Jumping: Ben Maher MBE, Nick Skelton OBE, John Whitaker MBE, Michael Whitaker, reserve: Jessica Mendoza | William Fox-Pitt says his dream to compete at a fifth Olympics in Rio gave him the "great drive" to recover from a fall and induced coma last year. | 36713809 |
The chairman of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) inquiry made the announcement during a preliminary hearing at Stormont, outlining its work.
Sir Patrick Coghlin said his inquiry will investigate failings in the scheme "wherever accountability may lie".
No time limit has been placed on the scheme to produce a conclusion, the retired Court of Appeal judge added.
He said he "will insist" that the inquiry has "complete independence" and it will carry out its work "without fear or favour and free from any external pressures".
The public and the media must understand that the inquiry is a "fact-finding exercise" and not an "adversarial trial", Sir Patrick said.
Statutory notices requiring production of documents have already been served on 125 bodies such as government departments.
Notices requiring witnesses statements have also been served.
The inquiry team expects to view hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation relating to the scheme.
Sir Patrick said another public session could be held in June, when further information about the inquiry timetable may be announced.
The green scheme was set up in 2012 to encourage businesses and other non-domestic users to move from using fossil fuels to renewable heating systems.
In what has been dubbed the "cash-for-ash" scandal, the flawed scheme meant users could legitimately earn more cash the more fuel they burned.
The inquiry was announced in January by the then finance minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir.
It was set up to investigate the design and operation of the scheme, which at one point had a projected overspend of £490m.
Cost controls have now been introduced for the current financial year.
The inquiry will consider the delay in implementing cost controls in 2015 and allegations of political pressure to keep the scheme open at a time when applications were flooding in and the projected costs were spiralling.
The fallout was cited as one of the reasons for Sinn Féin withdrawing from devolved government and forcing the recent Northern Ireland Assembly election.
The party has said it will not share power with Arlene Foster as Democratic Unionist Party leader until the inquiry has fully investigated her role.
Mrs Foster was the minister in charge of the former Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment, which ran the scheme.
She has said she expects to be vindicated.
Meanwhile, some recipients of the RHI subsidy have said cuts to tariff rates have had a significant impact on their business.
The changes were applied from April, but a usage cap means some people who borrowed tens of thousands of pounds to put in a boiler are receiving no subsidy payments and are struggling to repay the banks.
A group of about 500 boiler owners is going to court in an attempt to have the new reduced tariffs set aside.
They say they signed up to a government scheme in good faith and they had factored in the promised subsidy payments to bank loans. | Public evidence hearings in an inquiry into a botched green energy scheme are expected to begin in autumn this year. | 39726411 |
Police had attended the alert after a suspicious object was discovered at Butcher Gate shortly after 23:30 BST on Friday.
It was later declared a hoax.
During the clearance operation, fireworks and petrol bombs were thrown at police in the Fahan Street area. There were no injuries reported.
Police said it was also reported that the windscreen of a van was smashed in Fahan Street shortly after midnight. | Twenty-five petrol bombs and a number of fireworks have been thrown at police by youths following a security alert in Londonderry. | 37069841 |