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Jill Saward, sexual assault campaigner, dies aged 51 - BBC News

2017-01-06

June Kelly looks back at the life and legacy of sexual assault campaigner Jill Saward, who has died at the age of 51 after suffering a stroke.

Jill Saward, who became a sexual assault campaigner after she was raped during a burglary at her father's vicarage in 1986, has died after suffering a stroke. June Kelly looks back at her life and legacy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38525269

Manor Racing enter administration and are on brink of collapse - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Manor Racing enter administration after talks with potential buyers falter and will collapse without new investment.

Last updated on .From the section Formula 1 Manor Racing have gone into administration and will collapse without new investment. Staff were informed of the development on Friday by chief executive officer Thomas Mayer, a source told BBC Sport. Administrators FRP said there was "a very limited window of opportunity" to save the team before the start of the 2017 season in Australia on 26 March. FRP said it was "assessing options" and that the process affected Manor's operating company Just Racing Services. Manor Grand Prix Racing, which owns the rights to the team's participation in F1, is not in administration. Team owner Stephen Fitzpatrick said in a note to staff: "It was imperative that the team finish in 10th place or better in 2016." Manor, who finished 11th and last in the championship last season, have been in talks with new investors but so far no deal has been concluded. Administrator Geoff Rowley said: "The team has made significant progress since the start of 2015, but the position remains that operating a F1 team requires significant ongoing investment. "The senior management team has worked tirelessly to bring new investment, but regrettably has been unable to do so within the time available. "Therefore, they have been left with no alternative but to place [Manor Racing] into administration." A source said several buyers had been lined up over the past few weeks and two had gone as far as conducting a due diligence process. But none of them provided the funds necessary to buy the team, nor was there any proof they had the money to run it. Fitzpatrick, the boss of the energy company Ovo, decided to put the team into administration on Thursday night. FRP were also appointed the last time the team were in administration over the winter of 2014/15, after they collapsed with debts of £35m. At the time, they were known as Marussia, and were reconstituted under their original name of Manor when Fitzpatrick bought them at the 11th hour just before the 2015 season. Manor, who are based in Banbury in Oxfordshire, suffered a blow at the end of last season when Sauber moved ahead of them into 10th place in the constructors' championship thanks to the ninth place achieved by Felipe Nasr at the penultimate race of the year in Brazil. "For much of the season we were on track," said Fitzpatrick. "But the dramatic race in Brazil ended our hopes of [finishing 10th] and ultimately brought into doubt the team's ability to race in 2017. "We made a huge amount of progress on and off track but ultimately it was not enough." That cost Manor in the region of £10m in prize money - income they needed to survive into the new season - and the loss of it has made potential drivers and their backers reluctant to commit funds to the team, sources said. Fitzpatrick said at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi that the loss of income was "not a deal-breaker" in the talks he was having with new investors. But there had been no further news from the team until Friday's development.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38530855

Washington Post Express 'embarrassment' over gender symbol mix-up - BBC News

2017-01-06

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The Washington Post Express accidentally publishes a male symbol on its front cover promoting a story on women's rights.

US & Canada

The Washington Post Express "erroneously published" the front cover on the left, featuring the male symbol, instead of the front cover on the right with a female symbol. The Washington Post Express has apologised for an "embarrassing" mix-up on its front cover. Leading with an article about a 150,000 strong women's rights march, the Express accidentally used a male symbol instead of a female symbol. Social media users were quick to spot the mistake. The paper - a free daily newspaper published by the Washington Post - was quick to apologise on its Twitter account. One commentator referred to the blunder as a "record for largest typo". "We made a mistake on our cover this morning and we're very embarrassed," the statement from the Washington Post Express read. "We erroneously used a male symbol instead of a female symbol." It also released an image of how the cover should have appeared.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38518943

Three Kings parade in Madrid - BBC News

2017-01-06

Excited children lined the streets of Madrid to watch the annual parade on the eve of Epiphany.

Excited children lined the streets of Madrid to watch the annual parade on the eve of Epiphany. The Day of the Kings is a more important celebration than Christmas for many families, and some wait until then to open their presents said to have been brought by the wise men.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38526831

Mexico and Mr Trump: What will happen to trade ties? - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Caroline Bayley reports on the impact the Nafta trade deal has had in Mexico, and what its potential demise under US President-elect Trump would mean for the country.

Business

Donald Trump is not popular in Mexico Mexico is being blamed by President-elect Donald Trump for taking jobs from the US. He's been putting pressure on US companies not to move jobs south, and this week Ford announced it was investing in its factory in Michigan rather than building a new plant in Mexico. During his election campaign, Mr Trump threatened to rip up Nafta, the free trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, which has been in place for 23 years. But what impact has Nafta had in Mexico, and what would its potential demise mean for the country? In a leafy square in Mexico City on a warm December evening a group of excited children are hitting a brightly coloured pinata stuffed with sweets. A fellow passer-by explains to me that pinatas are a Mexican tradition, particularly at Christmas and birthdays. However, Mexicans also like pinatas "in the shape of everything we want to hit", he says. "The latest trend is Donald Trump pinatas," he adds. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. A look back at some of the things Donald Trump has said about Mexicans Mr Trump is not popular in Mexico. He was incredibly rude about Mexicans during his election campaign, and at a time when the world seems to be turning away from free trade he threatened to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) between the US, Mexico and Canada. The important thing about Nafta is that companies importing and exporting between the three countries pay no tariffs. Mr Trump believes it's been bad for the US as cheaper Mexican labour has meant some US manufacturers have moved production across the border, resulting in job losses at home. Nafta was implemented in 1994 and over the past 23 years Mexico has grown as a manufacturing hub. Today the United States and Mexico trade over $500bn (£400bn) in goods and services a year, equal to about $1.5bn a day. Mexico is the US's second-biggest export market, and the US is Mexico's largest. Thierry Legros says without Nafta his farming business would be under threat Red Sun Farms, a large vegetable-growing firm in central Mexico, depends on the free trade agreement. Its managing director, Thierry Legros, shows me into a vast greenhouse, 200m long, with row upon row of tomato plants. The company also grows peppers and exports 90% of its crop to the US and Canada. So what would it mean if Mr Trump repealed the Nafta agreement completely with its tariff-free trading? "We might need to close the whole company," Thierry tells me. "It would be around 3,000 direct jobs, so with all the indirect that's quite a lot, probably double that." Outside Thierry's office three flags flutter in the wind - one for each Nafta country. The three Nafta flags at Red Sun Farms reflect the company's integration within the free trade area Red Sun Farms even owns a farm in the US and sends Mexican workers over there. However, there's a stark wage differential, with pay significantly higher in the US. "Right now with the exchange rate that's huge," Thierry explains, "it's about one to eight, one to 10." These Red Sun Farms workers in Mexico earn far less than their counterparts in the US As well as enabling Mexico to export freely, Nafta also opened the door to US imports, giving Mexican consumers much greater choice. "It was an achievement, it was against history," says economic consultant Luis de la Calle, who was one of the negotiators of the free trade agreement. "Most Mexicans thought that it was impossible or not convenient to have a strategic association with the US, and many people in the US never thought that Mexico could be their partner." You can listen to In Business: Mexico and Mr Trump on BBC Radio 4 at 20:30 GMT on Thursday, 5 January and at 21:30 GMT on Sunday, 8 January. Increased demand, as a result of free trade, forced Mexican manufacturers to improve quality. Luis de la Calle says that before Nafta Mexico had three producers of TV sets, and the quality was "awful". But today, Mexico is "the largest manufacturer of TV sets in the world". They are exported and are "high quality, completely different from the protected market we had before". The instantly recognisable VW Beetles are manufactured in Puebla, Mexico Mexico is now a centre of manufacturing for overseas companies, such as the motor industry. General Motors and Ford both have factories in Mexico as well as the US. But Donald Trump has put public pressure on US companies not to move production, and has threatened to impose import duties on cars coming in from Mexico. It's a sensitive subject and the American carmakers refused to be interviewed. Donald Trump had this message for the car industry earlier this week However, in the city of Puebla, a two-hour drive from the capital, the German car manufacturer Volkswagen is the biggest employer with 14,000 staff. It's the only place in the world where VW produces its famous Beetle, and as you enter the site you're greeted by a display of Beetles suspended in the air like a piece of installation art. The Golf and Jetta models are also produced here. Thomas Karig from VW Mexico was tight-lipped about whether the firm had come under any pressure about jobs Like the US carmakers, Volkswagen's Mexican production is integrated with its US plant. "We use a lot of parts coming from the US for assembly here in Mexico in Puebla, and our colleagues in Chattanooga in Tennessee - they use a lot of parts coming from Mexico," explains Thomas Karig from Volkswagen Mexico. This integration is possible because there are no tariffs to pay each time components are sent from one Nafta country to another. But when I ask whether Volkswagen has come under pressure from Mr Trump about keeping jobs in the US, the atmosphere cools and there is a curt "no comment". The Nafta agreement has not benefited everyone in Mexico though. Some small farmers were unable to compete with US agricultural imports and big Mexican rivals. According to a study by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, from 1991 to 2007 some 4.9 million family farmers were displaced. Some found work with big exporting agricultural companies, but there was still a net loss of 1.9 million jobs. Three of Aurelio's children are illegal migrants in the US An hour's drive from Puebla I meet Aurelio, whose family has farmed a tiny patch of land since 1925. Deep in the dry countryside he raises a few cows. Job opportunities are scarce and three of his five children have migrated illegally to the US where they have found work painting cars. But Donald Trump has said he wants to deport illegal immigrants. Aurelio takes out his mobile phone and calls one of his sons in the US. Is his son worried about this, I ask. His son says that if there is a chance of being deported they will have to look elsewhere, but adds: "Mexico is a tough choice because of lack of opportunities, violence, high taxes and the economic situation, so it wouldn't be easy." President Obama has deported at least 2.4 million illegal immigrants so this isn't a new policy. And according to the Pew Research Center, by 2014 more Mexican immigrants returned to Mexico than migrated to the US. Luis de la Calle says both the US and Mexico benefit from Nafta Mr de la Calle acknowledges that the free trade agreement has split the country. He says there are two types of regions in Mexico. "[There are] parts of the south of Mexico that are disconnected from international trade, that are lagging behind, where Nafta had little impact. Rates of growth are low, there is little investment, and you don't see large manufacturing operations." In contrast to this, he says: "There are 16 or 17 other states that grow very fast, you see a lot of dynamism." These he describes as "Nafta states" with exporting businesses. However, he dismisses Mr Trump's criticism of Mexico. "He says [Nafta's] been great for Mexico, actually his whole argument is that Mexico is doing so well. It's flattering." He also claims that the US is benefiting from its close manufacturing links with Mexico. However, when I ask who would come off worst if Nafta were repealed, the US or Mexico, he answers, "Mexico because we are smaller, but the US would lose quite a bit as well." Donald Trump wasn't the first US presidential candidate to criticise Nafta. Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama did so on their campaign trails. But abandoning it completely? The US may find it has too much to lose and perhaps Mr Trump has realised that too. In Business: Mexico and Mr Trump is on BBC Radio 4 at 20:30 GMT on Thursday, 5 January and at 21:30 GMT on Sunday, 8 January.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38507482

US torture victim's family thanks police - BBC News

2017-01-06

The family of a man in Chicago whose torture was broadcast on Facebook thanks community and police.

The family of a man whose torture was broadcast on Facebook have thanked the community and local police for their response. They have asked for privacy from the public as they "cope and heal". Four people have been charged with hate crimes in relation to the Chicago assault, that police say lasted two days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38535446

CES 2017: Sony chief pledges to detangle confusing TV tech - BBC News

2017-01-06

Sony's chief executive says his firm must do more to help customers understand 4K, HDR, OLED and other TV terms.

Sony's chief executive says his firm must do more to help consumers get to grips with a mass of TV tech acronyms. Kazuo Hirai made the pledge the day after announcing the firm's first 4K OLED screen, which he said supported two kinds of HDR. Rory Cellan-Jones has more from the CES tech show in Las Vegas. Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38526893

The lost sounds of Stonehenge - BBC News

2017-01-06

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There are many questions surrounding the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge, might sound be part of the solution?

Entertainment & Arts

There are many questions surrounding the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge but might sound help in the search for answers? Thomas Hardy said it had a strange "musical hum". Tess of the d'Urvbervilles ends at Stonehenge and features the "sound". Modern-day druids also say they experience something special when they gather at Stonehenge and play instruments within the stone circle. However, Stonehenge is a ruin. Whatever sound it originally had 3,000 years ago has been lost but now, using technology created for video games and architects, Dr Rupert Till of the University of Huddersfield has - with the help of some ancient instruments - created a virtual sound tour of Stonehenge as it would have sounded with all the stones in place. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Arriving at 07:00 on a decidedly chilly January morning, I was sceptical. Dr Till had arrived with a horn, a drum and some sticks to try to show me that, even in its partially deconstructed state, there was still a distinctive echo. Perhaps it's the mystique of the stones but it's easy to hear something. However, sound is always going to bounce off huge standing stones: how can we say that was in any way meaningful for people 3,000 years ago? Dr Till says there's a great deal of evidence that ancient people were intrigued and drawn to places that had a distinctive sound and Stonehenge had a "strange acoustic". Even today, the wind or drumming can, he says, help generate a 47hz bass note. He first got a taste of what the circle might do to sound when he visited a concrete replica of the original intact Stonehenge in Maryhill in the US state of Washington. He has now developed an app which will help people blot out the sounds - including those made by tourists, and cars on the nearby A303 - and go back to the soundscape of 3,000 years ago. He's used instruments that were used at the time, such as bone flutes and animal horns, to give people a sense of what music would have sounded like within the reverberation of the intact stone circle and says the site has some of the characteristics you might expect of a rock concert venue. Dr Till explains that there's there's strong evidence that people several thousand years ago had an interest in acoustic environments. He's worked on caves in Spain in which instruments have been found deep underground. The echoes of the tunnels and cave systems may have had a special meaning for people. There are also, what appears to be, human markings on certain "musical" stalactites. Strike the stalactites in the right way and they give off a deep resonant note and can be played like a huge vertical xylophone. Virtual reality allows new ways to examine Stonehenge's history Stonehenge is a magnet for strange theories but this reflects a wider movement within archaeology to try to recreate the past with the rapidly growing technology of virtual reality (VR). Dr Aaron Watson is a research archaeologist and specialises in visualising the past. VR, he says, opens up a new way of researching history. "The material record can't give us all the answers," he explains. "The moment we start creating a virtual reality world it begins to ask questions, especially about people. What were they wearing, what were their postures, were they highly coloured, tattooed? As soon as we create the immersive experience it demands those answers. "It gives a new sensory experience to looking at the past that might take us beyond what we describe in books." • None How hard was it to build Stonehenge?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38530755

The mother, the medium and the murder that changed the law - BBC News

2017-01-06

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It was a murder which enthralled a nation, saw police turn to the supernatural and helped change the very law itself.

Nottingham

Mona Tinsley's face smiled out of countless newspaper articles and police leaflets It is 80 years since the murder of 10-year-old Mona Tinsley, a case which was by turns grisly, seedy and bizarre. It enthralled a nation and helped change the age-old principle that a murder could not be proved without a body. "Oh it couldn't possibly be him," said Lilian Tinsley to the assembled police. Officers had a lead in the disappearance of Mona, her slight but sprightly 10-year-old daughter, but needed help. Just hours after she vanished after leaving her Newark-on-Trent school on 5 January 1937, a witness identified a man seen nearby as a former lodger from the Tinsleys' home. Local historian Chris Hobbs said: "The reaction of Lilian and her husband Wilfred, when questioned, was odd. They seemed evasive. The house at the centre of the case has changed little on the outside "When pressed by officers, Mrs Tinsley admitted they briefly had a lodger, known to the children as 'Uncle Fred'. "Eventually she gave a name, Frederick Hudson, and, seemingly with great reluctance, the fact he was a friend of her sister Edith Grimes in Sheffield. "Why would the parents be like this with the safety of their daughter at stake?" Mr Hobbs queried. A possible, and murky, answer would emerge. Mrs Grimes gave them a slightly different name - Frederick Nodder - but insisted she had not seen him for months. This turned out to be a blatant lie. Officers quickly found a neighbour who had seen Nodder in Sheffield just after Christmas, driving a lorry marked 'Retford', a market town in Nottinghamshire. This led them to a haulage firm which provided an address in the nearby hamlet of Hayton. It was only a day since Mona had disappeared. British justice was haunted by the wrongful execution of three people in 1660 Legal historian Benjamin Darlow says: "This principle dates back to the case of William Harrison in 1660, known as the Campden Wonder. Mr Harrison disappeared from near Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, in 1660 and two men and a woman were found guilty and hanged for the crime. "In 1662, Mr Harrison turned up with a story about being kidnapped. This had a dramatic impact on English criminal law and the 'no body, no murder' principle survived for the next 294 years. "The Mona Tinsley case was part of an important narrative in the 20th Century which built up to the abolition of the principle in English Law in 1954. "It was perhaps the most high-profile and widely reported case in this timeline. "There is no longer a 'no body, no murder' principle in English criminal law. "A murder conviction can be based on circumstantial evidence if it is compelling and convincing enough. "While the principle is gone, it is still very difficult to prove murder without a body, unless there is alternative strong evidence pointing to the murderer." Confronted outside his rented house, Nodder, 50, denied any involvement but a girl was seen at the house at about noon that day, just a few hours before. A search found a child's drawings as well as fingerprints on crockery. Nodder was arrested. Witnesses placed him on a bus from Newark to Retford on Tuesday afternoon. He was accompanied by a girl. Faced by this evidence, Nodder asked to see Mrs Grimes, insisting this would lead to Mona being found "alive and well". Nodder's house (centre, between trees) was a short distance from the Chesterfield canal Mr Hobbs said: "It came out that Mrs Grimes had in fact seen Nodder on a weekly basis since he left Sheffield. She knew full well where Nodder lived but did not tell police. "Newspaper reports describe them as being "friendly" but it is striking how both she and Mrs Tinsley tried to deflect attention away from Nodder. "It seems likely Mrs Grimes was having an affair with him but it is surprising both she and Mona's own mother were prepared to obstruct the police investigation. "Had it delayed the search by vital hours?" Hundreds of people turned out to search fields and help police drag local rivers But when they met, Nodder offered only a statement insisting he had sent Mona to Sheffield to see Mrs Grimes. Nobody believed a word of Nodder's new statement - but the lack of a corpse hampered the investigation. After searches of the house, garden, nearby countryside and the ominously close Chesterfield canal, and just beyond it the River Idle, fat with winter rain, no new trace of the girl was uncovered. On 10 January 1937 Nodder was charged, but only with abduction. Divining, or dowsing, claims the twitching of sticks can locate lost objects or water sources The desperate search for Mona used many conventional methods - but also some more bizarre efforts. Diviners - who search for an item with the aid of sticks or rods and mysterious intuition - featured prominently in the hunt for the girl, often seeming to direct the efforts of police. Most prominent was James Clarke of Melton Mowbray, who, carrying one of Mona's shoes and guided by whalebone sticks, focused on a gravel pit. On 14 January he told the Nottingham Post, "Never was I more confident of success. I am so confident that if I was younger I would dig myself." The pit was cleared. Nothing was found. Several mediums featured in the case. The Daily Mirror tested three - gaining access to both the Tinsley family and Nodder's house - but was given vague or conflicting answers. Estelle Roberts, one of the most famous psychics of the 1930s, later claimed to have been chauffeured to the the crime scene by police and told them Mona was in the river. Whatever she revealed to officers at the time, it was not enough to find the little girl. The case made national headlines. The Daily Express offered a £250 reward to find Mona, a different editor was threatened with jail for contempt for publishing a photo of Nodder. Press and public queued to get into hearings. It was reported some were "laughing and joking as they pushed and struggled to their places" and were told off by court officials. Nodder stood trial in Birmingham just two months later. Efforts to solve the mystery even featured in upmarket picture magazine The Sphere His defence argued hard Mona might still be found alive and well and no-one should speculate on her fate. Nodder did not give evidence. The jury took 16 minutes to convict him. He was jailed for seven years. Clearly frustrated by what he felt was a killer getting away lightly, Judge Mr Justice Rigby Swift said: "You have been, most properly in my opinion, convicted by the jury of a dreadful crime. "What you did with that little girl, what became of her, only you know. It may be that time will reveal the dreadful secret which you carry in your breast." The searches had been exhaustive. Hundreds of volunteers had combed the countryside, leaflets had been handed out, an appeal broadcast on radio. The canal had been drained for five miles, the river dredged. As it stood, Nodder just had to bide his time. Nodder was described as unkempt but seemed to have been trusted by the Tinsley children But his luck ran out on 6 June. A family boating on the River Idle, a few miles downstream of Hayton, spotted a suspicious object under the water. When police arrived they found it was a body snagged in a drain. It was taken to a nearby pub where Wilfred Tinsley identified his daughter by her clothes. Injuries to her neck showed Mona had been strangled with a cord. Nodder was charged with murder. Nodder was hanged at Lincoln Prison still maintaining his innocence The law moved with vengeful speed. In November, the second time in a year, he stood trial. This time he gave evidence - still insisting he had put Mona on a bus for Sheffield. A two-day trial saw his defence, which claimed nothing directly proved he had killed Mona and no motive was established, briskly dismissed. Sentencing Nodder to death, Mr Justice Mcnaughton remarked: "Justice has slowly but surely overtaken you". On 30 December 1937, Frederick Nodder was hanged in Lincoln Prison. After the noose had done its work and the Tinsleys were left to grieve, the echo of the murder carried on. Its twists and revelations helped usher in a new way of seeking justice for the dead. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-37577247

Bangalore sex attacks: CCTV captures horror on 1 January - BBC News

2017-01-06

Police in Bangalore say there were no mass sex attacks on 1 January - but what does footage show?

Police in southern India say there is no evidence of mass sex attacks during new year celebrations in central Bangalore, despite a number of women telling the media they had been assaulted by groups of men. CCTV footage of one violent attack in the early hours of 1 January elsewhere in the city has come to light, with four men arrested over the incident. Filmed and edited by Jaltson AC. Produced by Yogita Limaye and Shalu Yadav

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-38521725

Om Puri: The actor who never got his due - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Film writer Aseem Chhabra on how Indian film actor Om Puri never got the recognition he deserved.

India

Om Puri was known for his gritty performances One of India's finest actors, Om Puri, died in Mumbai on Friday, aged 66. Film writer Aseem Chhabra believes he never got the recognition he deserved. In one scene he spoke in a delightful Punjabi accented English and cautiously suggested to Charlie Wilson, a Congressman from Texas played by Tom Hanks, that covert aid to the mujahideen, fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, should pass through the hands of the Pakistani government. I wanted to write something on this terrific actor, one of the few from India who straddled so many film spaces - from Bollywood to Indian art house indies, British Asian immigrant stories and big Hollywood productions. But the publicists for the film and even the studio Universal Pictures informed me that they had no images of Puri. Sadly this amazing actor had left no impression on the publicists who were mostly focused on promoting Hanks and his co-star Julia Roberts. Puri acted in over 300 film projects in India and abroad, and yet he did not get the kind of recognition that he surely deserved. He won two National Awards in India in the acting category (Arohan, 1982 and Ardh Satya, 1983), and was recognised at a number of film festivals, including a lifetime achievement medal at the prestigious Telluride Film Festival. Director Roland Joffé cast Puri in a supporting role in City of Joy This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Om Puri found international fame for his roles in films such as East is East He was even nominated for a Bafta film award in 2000 for playing the lead in Ayub Khan Din's autobiographical British film East is East. But unfortunately in the last decade or so Puri, the actor, was largely forgotten in the West and even in India. He did play one last big role in the West - that of an Indian chef in a remote French town in The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014), opposite a feisty Helen Mirren. It was a rare moment when Puri was suddenly, albeit briefly, the focus of a film produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey. While promoting that film, Puri told me that Hindi cinema mostly concentrated on younger, good-looking actors. And the industry had relegated him to roles of the father of a lead actor or a police officer. He was rarely offered meaty roles, he complained. He was always hungry for more challenging work and recognition. In another interview while promoting East is East (1999), Puri told me that his big regret was that he would never get the kind of roles given to Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. But Om Puri was as great an actor as Hoffman and De Niro. In fact, one can say he was even better, given the number of films he acted in and the range of his performances. Puri (left extreme)'s comic timing was perfect in Jaane Bhi Do Yaro Puri was one of the most versatile Indian actors His comic timing was perfect and we can see that in the cult classic indie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) and later on in Vishal Bhardwaj's Maqbool - a modern-day take on Macbeth, where Puri played one of the witches, along with his colleague and friend Naseeruddin Shah. Also in the same time period he played a sleazy photographer in Shyam Benegal's Mandi (1983). He was the voice of an angry, frustrated cop in Ardh Satya (1983), but was equally charming and seductive with his co-star, the late Smita Patil. And in Aakrosh (1980) he was the oppressed peasant who barely uttered a word. Puri became one of the first Indian actors of his generation to crossover to the West with his work in British films - East is East, its less successful sequel West is West (2010), the rarely seen Brothers in Trouble (1995), the Hanif Kureishi scripted My Son the Fanatic (1997), and the mini-series White Teeth (2002), based on Zadie Smith's bestseller novel. That was a time when nearly every Indian or Pakistani role in a British production was offered to Puri. Hollywood came calling as well. Mike Nichols also cast him in an important role in Wolf (1994) where Puri shared screen time with Jack Nicholson. And earlier Roland Joffé cast him in a supporting role in City of Joy (1992). Om Puri acted in the TV series Jewel in the Crown In 1994, Ismail Merchant cast Puri as a hapless college professor who sets out to interview an ageing and overweight Urdu poet (Shashi Kapoor) in In Custody, based on Anita Desai's Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel. Puri was perfect in the film, displaying his frustration as he observed the decline of Urdu language and poetry. But it is the sad reality of the film business, that talented men and women find it harder to get juicy roles as they get older. And Puri had to face that fact. Om Puri died too soon. But he has left a huge body of work reflecting his four decades as a film actor. He should get the most attention that a master actor of his stature deserves.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-38527144

Jill Saward: How Ealing vicarage case changed treatment of rape victims - BBC News

2017-01-06

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The impact of the Ealing vicarage rape case can be felt by victims of sexual assaults 30 years later.

UK

In 1986 Jill Saward, who has died aged 51, was raped after a gang of burglars broke into the Ealing vicarage where she lived. Her father, Michael - the vicar of St Mary's, Ealing - and her boyfriend were beaten with cricket bats by the men, who demanded money and jewellery. It was a sexual attack that shocked the nation, became headline news and was subsequently labelled the "Ealing vicarage rape". The media coverage of the case and the sentencing of the men who attacked Ms Saward - who later became Jill Drake - led to a public outcry about how rape victims were treated. Ringleader Robert Horscroft, then 34, who did not take part in the rape, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for his part in the burglary. Martin McCall, then 22, was given five years for rape and a further five for burglary, while Christopher Byrne, who was also 22, was given three years for his part in the sexual assault and five for the burglary. During sentencing, Old Bailey Judge Sir John Leonard said the trauma suffered by Ms Saward was "not so very great". Ms Saward's case affected the way rape victims were treated and is still being felt 30 years later. The public backlash against the media coverage and subsequent sentencing helped bring about changes to the way sexual assault cases were viewed. In particular, there was uproar at how one of the defendants had been given a longer sentence for the burglary than the attack. Several MPs, including Neil Kinnock, criticised the prison terms handed down - saying they were too lenient. The then-Labour leader said during a Commons debate in 1987: "While it is necessary for judges to remain detached in the name of the law, sometimes they show an insensitivity to the suffering of victims which is difficult to comprehend." And Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister at the time, expressed her "deep concern" over the crime of rape following concerns about the case. Ms Saward's case also sparked fierce criticisms about press coverage of rape cases after Ms Saward's ordeal became front page news. While newspapers did not name Ms Saward as the victim, several of them published details which led her to be easily identifiable. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Jill Saward, who was gang raped in 1986, says her attackers got the same sentence as for aggravated burglary The Sun newspaper printed the location of the attack and a photograph of Ms Saward with her eyes blacked out in the days following the rape. When investigated, the publication relied on the defence that media identification of a victim was only banned after a defendant was charged, which was the case at the time. Speaking in 1987 Ms Saward, who was an identical twin, demanded a change in the law to prevent this from happening. According to the Guardian, she said: "Unless this is done, others may find themselves identifiable by a process of deduction from third parties known to be involved as victims of a crime as I was. "This was very distressing both to myself and my family, and the manner in which some newspapers conveyed this information was highly insensitive and offensive." The law was changed a year later to allow for the right to appeal against lenient sentences and to close a loophole which allowed media identification of a rape victim before a defendant was charged. The Press Council also published guidelines on how rape cases were reported to prevent victims' anonymity being breached through jigsaw identification. The notorious case put the laws on rape under the spotlight and led to calls by women's groups and politicians to call for changes to the way the crimes were viewed. These included making rape within marriage a criminal offence, making oral and anal intercourse classified as rape and tougher sentencing for rapists - all of which have been achieved. In 1990, Ms Saward broke new ground when she became the first rape victim in the UK to waive her right to anonymity. She co-wrote a book, Rape: My Story, which explored her ordeal and she went on to become a fierce campaigner for the rights of sexual assault victims. Her decision to speak publicly was driven by a desire to change attitudes towards victims and strengthen the support they receive. Ms Saward launched a help group for those who had experienced sex crimes and regularly appeared in the media to highlight issues faced by victims. Her commitment to the cause also saw her become a sexual assault case worker and she subsequently provided training to police forces across the country. Over the years, further changes have been made to the way sexual assault cases are handled - taking into account the way victims were treated. These include a ban on allowing an alleged rapist to cross-examine victims while representing themselves in court and restrictions on what evidence can be heard about a victim's sexual behaviour. New guidelines were published on the sentencing of sex offenders in England and Wales in 2013 which gave a greater emphasis on the impact on the victim - something Ms Saward had long campaigned for. Speaking to the BBC, she said: "So long we've felt left out of the system or surplus to requirement, so to actually see victims' needs and what's happened to victims being put at the forefront of this is really, really good." Ms Saward never gave up on her fight for victims' rights, and in 2015 she spoke out against calls to give those accused of sex crimes anonymity. In 1998, she came face-to-face with a member of the gang who devastated her life, but did not rape her, and told him: "You don't need to say sorry." But she also spoke about forgiveness and said in a BBC interview: "I believe forgiveness gives you freedom. Freedom to move on without being held back by the past."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38516389

Quiz of the week's news - BBC News

2017-01-06

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The BBC's weekly quiz of the news, 7 days 7 questions.

Magazine

It's the weekly news quiz - have you been paying attention to what's been going on in the world over the past seven days? If you missed this week's quiz on famous resignations, try it here Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38522106

China's Great Wall filmed by drone - BBC News

2017-01-06

How drone photography shed new light on the Great Wall of China for one British obsessive.

British geographer, conservationist and author William Lindesay has had a lifelong obsession with the Great Wall of China. Three decades ago, he left his home on Merseyside to live near the wall so he might better be able to study it. In 2016 he and his family travelled 15,000km (9,320 miles) around the wall network, filming it from the air with a drone. Mr Lindesay and his sons, Jim and Thomas, spoke to the BBC about their epic journey and how they shot it. Read their full story here: One man's mission to walk Great Wall Footage by James and Thomas Lindesay at Depictograph.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-38325450

What does the future hold for Guantanamo? - BBC News

2017-01-06

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After President Obama failed to close the detention facility, what will President Trump do?

US & Canada

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. What is it like inside Guantanamo Bay? These are uncertain times at Guantanamo Bay. Not only for the detainees but also those who guard them. After eight years in which President Obama has tried - and failed - to close the detention facility, what will President Trump mean for its future? The first detainees arrived at Camp X-Ray 15 years ago in the early months of what was then called the "War on Terror". I first visited a few weeks later and watched the men in orange jumpsuits in steel cages in the hot Cuban sun. Guantanamo had been chosen partly because it was not US soil and so avoided coming under regular US law. The camp then had a thrown together feel - the Bush administration was improvising and no-one was sure how long it would last. The orange jumpsuits worn by detainees became notorious The next time I visited - two years later - Camp X-Ray had been replaced by the more permanent structure of Camp Delta. Guantanamo was here to stay. Its numbers grew - around 700 at its peak. But on his second day in office eight years ago President Obama promised to close the facility and the pace of transfers increased. On my visit a few weeks ago, I found much of the Camp eerily empty, a lone iguana roaming around the barbed wire. But closing Guantanamo was a promise President Obama could not keep, partly because Congress blocked the transfer of any detainees to the US. Fewer than 60 men are now left. There are 20 currently cleared for release and the Obama administration is trying to transfer some of these out before its term ends. But on 3 January, President-elect Trump made his views clear in a tweet. "There should be no further releases," he wrote. "These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back on to the battlefield." Most of the remaining detainees are held now in Camp Six. Inside a cell in Camp Six at Guantanamo Bay The uncertainty hanging over the base was clear as we toured the detention block. We were able to watch and film detainees in the communal areas of their cell block through one-way glass, an unsettling procedure. The detainees are not supposed to know we are there but clearly they realised as one put up a hand-painted sign showing a question mark with a padlock underneath. They followed the election result like everyone else and Col Steve Gabavics, Commander of the Joint Detention Force, told me: "They were all watching TV - their behaviour was pretty much the same as any other night. "We didn't notice any significant negative response. No-one came to us angry, no-one protested. They were simply interested to see what was going to happen." Colonel Steve Gabavics said they noticed no reaction to Donald Trump's election victory One difference from my early visits is just how much more controlled - even mundane - the interaction between detainees and guards is now compared to the early days. The attacks of 2001 were still raw and there was a tension and sense of underlying aggression on both sides. Now, the atmosphere is much more controlled. Detainees tap on a window to summon a guard when they have a message to pass and the guard proceeds through a door into a cage-like structure inside the cell-block where they can communicate with a detainee. During our visit in December, officials say that the detainees were "compliant". But what does the arrival of President Trump mean? "You know the detainees have questions - are the transfers going to stop when the new president takes office on 20 January? We don't know, they don't know. Their lawyers may speculate, but no-one knows," says Rear Adm Peter Clarke, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo. He did say - before Donald Trump's latest tweet - that "some of them may act up" if they realise they are not going to be transferred. Somewhere else on the base, which sprawls across an otherwise isolated tip of Cuba, is Camp Seven. Its precise location is secret - leading to much speculation from visiting reporters. This is where so-called high value detainees are being held - men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 11 September attacks who is going through the long slow process of a military commission - a form of trial. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and sent to the US detention centre in Cuba in 2006 Might it be not only that transfers out are stopped, but that current detainees find they have some company? "We are going to load it up with bad dudes," Mr Trump said in the campaign trail in February last year. Camp Five was built to hold detainees but now sits empty. What if President Trump decides he wants to not just stop people leaving but send in new detainees? The maximum capacity of Camp Six is around 175 detainees. Camp Five could hold 80 - it has been part-converted to a new medical facility. That means potentially Guantanamo could accommodate more than 100 extra detainees pretty much immediately. More than that would require construction work. Officials say it is a "reasonable assumption" that they would want to segregate new detainees who would be more likely to be members of so-called Islamic State rather than al-Qaeda. "We are prepared to receive some if that was required in the short term," Col Gabavics told us. The Obama administration's push to close Guantanamo also meant there was a reluctance to capture more detainees in counter-terrorism operations around the world, some former officials say. They believe that a policy of "take no prisoners" created an incentive to kill rather than capture, with the administration increasing the pace and the geographical spread of drone strikes which - on occasion - might mean useful intelligence gleaned from interrogation or captured material might be lost. Rear Adm Peter Clarke said he is confident he will not be asked to torture detainees Mr Trump has also said that he would consider returning to the practice of waterboarding detainees. Could that take place at Guantanamo? Rear Adm Clarke said he was "confident" that there will be no torture at Guantanamo. "Whatever orders we receive, by the time they come to me from US Southern Command, I am confident those orders will be legal orders that I will be ready to carry out," he said. In the 15 years since Guantanamo was opened, the contours of America's war on terror have changed. New enemies have emerged and the question of what to do with those America is fighting - where to put them, how to treat them and even whether to kill or capture them - will now be for a new president to decide.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38509031

CCTV shows Turkey bomb blast - BBC News

2017-01-06

CCTV obtained from a police officer shows the deadly car bomb attack a courthouse in the Turkish city of Izmir.

Two attackers, a policeman and a court worker have been killed in a car bomb and gun assault on a courthouse in the Turkish city of Izmir, state media say. Officials blamed Kurdish militants for the attack. A third attacker is reportedly still being sought. CCTV obtained from a police officer shows the moment of the blast, as seen on two separate cameras.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38524050

Tattingstone suitcase murder: Police appeal over Bernard Oliver death - BBC News

2017-01-06

A 17-year-old boy whose dismembered body parts were found in suitcases disappeared 50 years ago.

The murder of a 17-year-old boy whose dismembered body parts were found in suitcases in 1967 continues to be reviewed by cold case detectives, police said. The body of Bernard Oliver, from Muswell Hill, north London, was found dumped on farmland in Tattingstone, near Ipswich. He went missing on 6 January 1967 and was found 10 days later. No one has ever been charged over the murder. Det Ch Insp Caroline Millar, of Suffolk Police, said: ""Using advances in forensic science such as DNA familial profiling and the experience of current and retired senior detectives, the team are looking for any development that could help with the investigation into the murder of Bernard Oliver, including new information from the public. "Even with the passage of 50 years, it is never too late for people to come forward with any information they think may help this inquiry."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-38527821

Dan Roan looks ahead to sports news in 2017 - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Dan Roan looks at the key events and topics that will dominate sport in 2017, and asks if it will be as intriguing and controversial as ever.

After an unforgettable and relentless year for sports news, what does 2017 hold in store? Plenty, as sports editor Dan Roan explains: There's no football World Cup, and it may not be an Olympic year, but expect 2017 to revive fond memories of the London Games, with a host of major sports events on the horizon. Buoyed by Britain's remarkable success in Rio last year, track and field will take centre stage, first at the World ParaAthletics Championships, and then the IAAF World Championships, both held at London's former Olympic Stadium. It is the first time the two events have been held in the same city, and the same summer. It promises to be a fitting send-off for triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt, racing competitively for the final time before he retires, and also for double Olympic champion Mo Farah, who says he will focus on the marathon after the worlds. With Jessica Ennis-Hill already having retired however, it will be interesting to see whether a new generation of British talent - led by Scotland's Laura Muir - can make their mark, (and whether Russia will be allowed to compete at all after recent claims of state-sponsored doping). With the world's best team lying in wait, the British and Irish Lions trip to New Zealand is arguably the biggest and most anticipated rugby tour ever, and certain to add even more spice to this year's Six Nations. With England unbeaten under Eddie Jones and Ireland having recently won against the All Blacks for the first time, coach Warren Gatland can select a strong squad to seriously challenge the hosts. But it will be far from easy. The ultimate rugby challenge awaits against a team that continues to come as close as any in sport to perfection. If there is one place above all others to be covering sport this year, it is Auckland on 24 June for the first Test of what should be a titanic series. Having come third in the 2015 World Cup, England's women footballers will have high hopes in the biggest Euros staged to date, with 16 participants vying for glory in the Netherlands. A mouth-watering opening tie against Scotland in Utrecht on 19 July should ensure significant interest in a competition that is expected to give another major boost to the women's game. This summer will also see England host the women's cricket World Cup, and Ireland stage the rugby union World Cup, with England confident of retaining the title they won three years ago. The last time England turned up in Australia for the Ashes, they were humiliated, with batsman Jonathan Trott leaving a shambolic tour early, Graeme Swann retiring mid-series, and Kevin Pietersen playing his last Test before being banished. This time, with the likes of Joe Root and Ben Stokes now firmly established among the world's finest cricketers, they should fare significantly better that the 5-0 whitewash they endured in 2013-14. By the time the series starts in November, Australia will have also hosted rugby league's World Cup, with England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all involved. Elsewhere, in football it will be fascinating to see who prevails in the Premier League, with the 'big six' clubs having restored the natural order after the Leicester City 'miracle' last season. And there is the climax to qualification for the 2018 World Cup to look forward to as well. The incredible spending potential of China's clubs will no doubt continue the power shift in football's transfer market, along with more Chinese investment in English clubs. It is also a big year for sailing, with Sir Ben Ainslie aiming to bring the America's Cup to Britain for the first time. Lewis Hamilton is favourite to claim a fourth world title as F1 prepares for life without last year's winner Nico Rosberg, and with Liberty Media hoping to complete their multi-billion dollar takeover of the motorsport series, expect change away from the the track too, with much interest in the next move of F1's 86-year-old commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone. In tennis, world number one Andy Murray will attempt to win the Australian Open for the first time, and cycling's Chris Froome will target a fourth Tour de France victory, while Carl Frampton v Leo Santa Cruz and Anthony Joshua v Wladimir Klitschko are the highlights of a bumper year in boxing. And perhaps we will finally discover if the prospect of a mega-fight between UFC superstar Conor McGregor and retired unbeaten boxer Floyd Mayweather is anything more than just talk. Doping was the longest-running and biggest single issue in sports news last year, with claims of Russian state-sponsored cheating laid bare in two damning reports by Professor Richard McLaren, the build-up to the Rio Games overshadowed by the scandal, and the suspension of tennis star Maria Sharapova. In 2017, sports' leaders will be under mounting pressure to finally decide how to regain trust in the world's anti-doping regime. When the two International Olympic Committee (IOC) commissions have concluded their work, the organisation must punish Russia. With more positive results from the re-testing of Russian samples from London 2012 and Sochi 2014 expected over the coming weeks, and with the country already having been stripped of the bobsleigh and skeleton World Championships in March, should it also be banned from the winter Games next year? Russia has now admitted some doping took place, but continues to contest any government involvement, and there are serious doubts that it can persuade athletics' governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), to lift its suspension of the country's track and field athletes in time for the World Championships. The long-anticipated reform of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) must also be decided. Will it be granted the autonomy, additional resources, and sanctioning power that many in the anti-doping community are demanding? These are the difficult questions international sport must wrestle with over the coming months as it tries to recover from the worst doping scandal in history. There could be more bad news on the way however, with reports that the names of athletes who had bags of blood confiscated as part of Operation Puerto in Spain may be revealed. And could the Fancy Bears hackers cause more mayhem with further revelations? For the Football Association, Clive Sheldon QC has become a very important man. The barrister is heading up the governing body's review into allegations of child sexual abuse, and the FA is under mounting pressure to make the findings public, and then to act on them decisively and appropriately. With hundreds of victims coming forward, more than 155 suspects identified, and 148 clubs involved - so far - the scale of the scandal is breathtaking. British football seeks answers to the worst crisis in its history With the possibility of more suspensions of officials, along with the prospect of further criminal charges, and compensation claims, this story will extend well beyond 2017 as British football seeks answers to the worst crisis in its history. Current footballers may have been slow to publicly back the Offside Trust - set up to support the victims of abuse - but the issue of child protection in sport is here to stay. After the most turbulent year in its history, cycling is braced for the conclusion of two separate investigations. UK Sport will shortly announce the findings of an independent review into whether there was a culture of bullying and sexism at governing body British Cycling after a series of allegations from former riders and employees. Meanwhile, after being questioned by MPs over the circumstances surrounding a medical package delivered to his former rider Sir Bradley Wiggins, the future of one of the country's leading sports coaches - Team Sky supremo Sir Dave Brailsford - will hinge on the outcome of a UK Anti-Doping investigation into allegations of wrongdoing in the sport. Wiggins recently announced his retirement. But with the parliamentary committee considering calling more witnesses, do not expect the controversy over his use of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) before major races to go away. Wiggins' TUEs were approved by British authorities and cycling's world governing body the UCI. The pressure is still on the country's most decorated Olympian - and its most successful sport. The British President of the UCI, Brian Cookson, will seek re-election, while British Cycling must appoint a new chief executive. The countdown to what has the potential to be the most controversial World Cup to date has begun. Organisers of Russia 2018 have already had to defend themselves against accusations of corruption in the bidding process, racist behaviour, and, since those chaotic scenes at last year's Euros in France, a new generation of hooligans. The recent state-sponsored doping scandal has only intensified calls for Russia to be stripped of football's showpiece event. Lots will be at stake this summer when the nation hosts the Confederations Cup - the traditional dress-rehearsal for the World Cup. For three cities, the clock is ticking down to Wednesday, 13 September. That is when, in Lima, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will gather amid the usual fanfare, and vote to decide the hosts of the 33rd Olympiad in 2024. Before then, expect eight months of presentations, inspection visits and relentless lobbying. The race is seen as a straight fight between what appear to be two 'safe' candidate cities; Los Angeles and Paris, both bidding to stage the Games for a third time. But the IOC is under serious pressure over the budget-busting costs and questionable legacy benefits of their showpiece event. So how better to prove that President Thomas Bach's 'Agenda 2020' reforms - designed to bring about cheaper, more sustainable Games - are actually working, than to award them to a more modest bid, from a smaller city, like dark horses Budapest? Paris remains the favourite, but with US network NBC paying the IOC billions in broadcast rights, and with the next three Olympics all heading to Asian time zones (especially unfavourable to American TV audiences), LA's supporters are growing increasingly confident that it is their turn. Will a Donald Trump administration harm the US city's chances? Could the possible election of far-right leader Marine Le Pen in France's presidential election in April have a similar impact on Paris? All will be revealed in Peru. The integrity of sport will continue to be a priority for politicians in 2017, with the government committed to a review of the UK Anti-Doping Agency. Also expect significant interest in whether the government's latest sports strategy - intended to tackle inactivity - especially among the poor and children - is making any progress. By April, all sports that want to receive public funding must also show they are taking steps to comply with a new governance code, designed to improve decision-making, transparency and diversity on boards. Sports that controversially lost out in UK Sport's recent divvy-up of National Lottery elite performance funding will have their appeals heard. And with football's abuse scandal emphasising the importance of child protection, Baroness Grey-Thompson's review into sports' duty of care towards athletes will also take on extra significance. With the election of a new president, 2016 was a year of relative calm for Fifa as football's world governing body tried to move on from the scandal that shook it to the core. But later this year, the long-awaited trial of defendants in the wide-ranging corruption case, led by the FBI, begins in New York. There will be other issues of course; from the threat of terrorism, to safe-standing in football, concussion in rugby, mechanical doping in cycling, tax evasion and the rise of e-sports. The sports news agenda in 2017 could be as intriguing, controversial and scandalous as ever.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/38529033

CES 2017: Solos smartglasses help cyclists get fitter - BBC News

2017-01-06

Cyclists are being targeted with a new pair of smartglasses that display training data to help them get increase their performance.

A specialised type of smartglasses designed to help cyclists get fitter is on show at the CES tech show in Las Vegas. Smartglasses as a category have failed to make much impact to date, but Solos believes there is untapped demand for its product, as Chris Foxx reports. Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38526185

CES 2017: Razer gaming laptop has not one but three screens - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Gaming PC maker Razer unveils a concept laptop with three screens at the CES tech show in Las Vegas.

Technology

Razer claims its three-screened concept laptop is a world first Gaming PC maker Razer has unveiled a concept laptop with three 4K screens at the CES tech show in Las Vegas. The firm claims Project Valerie is the world's first portable laptop of its kind. Two additional screens slide out from the central display via an automatic mechanism. One analyst praised the design, noting that gamers were increasingly splashing out on high-end laptops. All three screens are 17in (43cm) in size. When folded up and closed, the laptop is 1.5in thick. Razer said this was comparable to many standard gaming laptops, which tend to be chunkier than home and office devices. "We thought, 'This is crazy, can we do this?'," a company spokesman told the BBC. "The answer was: 'Yeah, we are crazy enough, we can do it'." Project Valerie is still a prototype and Razer has not yet published a possible release date or price. Project Valerie has special hinges that automatically deploy its two additional screens Gamers commonly used more than one monitor these days, said gaming analyst Jonathan Wagstaff at Context. "Although it is unusual, it doesn't surprise me," he told the BBC. "It is something people will buy - I think it will sell." He added that increasing numbers of gamers - particularly those who travel to e-sports tournaments - are in the market for portable computers with high specs. But Mr Wagstaff added that industry data he had reviewed suggested widening interest in such machines from architectural and graphic design firms, as well. "That is interesting, that is traditionally the territory of Apple's products," he said. Project Valerie was just one of several gaming laptops shown off at CES. Consumer electronics giant Samsung also launched its first gaming laptop - called Samsung Notebook Odyssey - in 17in and 15in models. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38526705

Chicago attack condemned by Black Lives Matter campaigners - BBC News

2017-01-06

Four black people have been charged over the live-streamed torture of a white man. It comes as supporters of campaign group Black Lives Matter say it has been unfairly linked to the attack.

Four black people face hate crime and kidnapping charges for the Facebook Live-aired torture of a mentally disabled white man. In the video, the assailants can be heard making derogatory statements against white people and Donald Trump. Student Shelby, a supporter of Black Lives Matter, told World Have Your Say the social campaign group is being unfairly linked to the attack. Listen to World Have Your Say on the BBC iPlayer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38524551

Mother's quest to find missing daughter in Ghost Ship ashes - BBC News

2017-01-06

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A mother details her bid to trace her missing daughter after a California warehouse fire that killed 36.

US & Canada

When a fire at an underground music event in California killed 36, families whose adult children had been missing for months or years were among those who feared the worst. Daleen Berry explains why she went looking for her daughter at the Ghost Ship. I had moved across the country to find my daughter, Trista, but the deadly warehouse fire in Oakland in December forced me to take the first step, the one I had been dreading. After hearing that people actually lived in the warehouse of artists' studios and performance spaces known as the Ghost Ship, I needed to see for myself, to ensure Trista - the name I'll call her to protect her privacy - was not among the dead. At the scene many had gathered to grieve and pay their respects. There were also people like me, who had lost touch with their loved ones for weeks, months, or even years, and were fearful they were inside when the fire started. I took the advice of an officer and drove to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, where they had set up a makeshift family assistance centre to provide emotional support and privacy for the family members. We waited for updates from Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and found comfort in a safe place, together. On one wall inside the centre were three lists: the confirmed dead, those who had been located and were safe, and those still reported as missing. On that last list were about 150 names. I knew then I was far from alone. Somehow, it made it easier to speak the words I'd refused to let myself believe: "My daughter is missing." Unlike TV, where missing people are portrayed as victims of sexual trafficking or serial murderers, most adults disappear for far less sinister reasons. As of late December, the California justice department had 20,470 reports of missing persons in the state. Of those, 7,854 are like my daughter, classified as "voluntary missing adults". More than 8,000 are runaways. Another 1,060 people were taken by a family member, while 764 disappeared under suspicious circumstances and 114 went missing during a catastrophe. At just 51, stranger abduction cases number the lowest. The 48 hours in the family assistance centre were among the most painful in my life, as I struggled to answer one question after another. When did you last hear from your daughter? Do you have a preferred funeral home? This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Oakland residents held a vigil for victims of the fire A few months earlier I had packed up everything I owned, leaving behind family and friends to follow Trista's path west. I didn't tell them the real reason I was leaving - I wouldn't rest until I knew where Trista was. A kind and caring free spirit, Trista had gravitated to places like the Ghost Ship in the past. I knew that she might have lived there because this was her community: musicians, artists and other creative people. When I went to work for a small start-up in Oakland in 2009, she lived with me, then later followed me back to West Virginia. From there she travelled to Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, meeting up with fellow musicians. She was content to live in her own world, collecting items cast to the kerb and transforming them into beautiful works of art. But by 2014, while I was put the finishing touches on a true crime book about a missing daughter, Trista was becoming increasingly distant and withdrawn. By then, my daughter's temporary forays into seclusion had become legendary. I had been trying to understand them for 10 years because, at times weeks or even months would pass without so much as a word. But I always knew she would reach out to someone - my sister, her brother, my mother. Trista terminated all but two ties in February 2015, when she returned to the Bay Area. By June 2016, the last time I heard from her, she severed the rest. I called her brother in San Francisco: he hadn't heard from her in a year. She changed her cell phone number. All of my emails to her bounced back. "The email account that you tried to reach does not exist," Google repeatedly told me. This wasn't my first trip to Oakland to look for Trista. I drove there one month before the fire. I needed to check out our old neighbourhood in case my daughter had returned. She hadn't. Some of the victims of the fire were LGBT or made outcasts in other ways; people who believed their families had given up on them - or vice versa. But families like mine with missing children don't give up. We may stumble around, accidentally making matters worse. But it is never intentional. I met a few other parents whose children died in the fire. They didn't leave until the last handful of charred ashes was carried from the scene - when they knew for sure their child was truly, finally gone. A day after the fire, I finally forced myself to open the laptop Trista left behind in West Virginia a year earlier. I spent hours reaching out to her friends, fellow musicians, and a previous employer. They hadn't heard from her in years. No one knew anything. It was like Trista had closed the door on her old life, never to reopen it again. But I couldn't just wait for a phone call telling me if my daughter was dead or alive. I had to know myself, so I drove to Oakland from Sacramento. And waited, for as long as it took. After spending two days at the family services centre, I stumbled into my hotel room, still struggling with the enormity of it all. What will I do if they find her? What if they don't? The following morning, one of the mental health professionals on hand to help the families guided me down a corridor and into an office. There, two women greeted me from the state justice department's missing persons unit. "We've located 1,000 people since 2001," they said. "Even a few live Jane Does," they added hopefully. They asked more questions. I signed more paperwork. Then, after careful instructions, a gloved hand gave me what looked like a pink and white emery board. I opened my mouth, did as they directed, and handed over my saliva - my DNA - and the only link to my daughter. I just wanted to find Trista. Beg for her forgiveness. Tell her I was sorry - for me, for my mistakes, and for not understanding her well enough. For my family, who did likewise, and in whose heart she still holds a sacred place. Given that all 36 victims of the Ghost Ship fire have been identified, I have to believe Trista is still alive. Still out there, somewhere. Like the 150 or so other worried mothers of those on the missing list, I have but one thought: I love you. Or - at the very least - phone home. Daleen Berry is a New York Times bestselling writer and author of several books, including Shatter the Silence and Pretty Little Killers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37481071

M62 police shooting: Funeral held for Yassar Yaqub - BBC News

2017-01-06

The funeral of Yassar Yaqub, 28, from Huddersfield, who was shot dead by police on a motorway slip road has been held.

The funeral of Yassar Yaqub, 28, from Huddersfield, who was shot dead by police on a motorway slip road has been held. Mr Yaqub was shot in a car stopped near junction 24 of the M62 as part of an operation on Monday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38528578

CES 2017: Danny’s amazing earbud adventure - BBC News

2017-01-06

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A UK entrepreneur brings his earbuds that auto-translate languages to CES - but will he stand out from the crowd?

Technology

It sounds like a game-changing innovation: earbuds that auto-translate other languages. But what was supposed to be their big coming out week isn't going quite as planned. If you're a tech company wanting to grab the world's attention this week, then Las Vegas could be the worst place to be. Why? Well in the biggest CES yet with nearly 4,000 exhibitors you really have to shout very loud to be heard above the hubbub. If you're a giant company like Sony or Samsung, you pour your marketing millions into spectacular press conferences and ridiculously lavish show floor exhibits where visitors have to wade through deep pile carpet while being deafened by loud music and shouty demos. So, to arrive here as a one-man start-up with an innovative idea and try to get some attention requires both courage and optimism. Luckily Danny Manu has both in spades. When I met this young man from Manchester on the Las Vegas strip, he was desperately tired. His cheap flight from the UK had been delayed by eight hours on a Miami stopover - so he'd dashed from the airport to his AirBnB to drop his luggage, then came straight on to see me. "I've not slept for 24 hours but I'm still moving and looking forward to it," he says. Danny's product is called Clik and he bills it as the world's first truly wireless earbuds with live translation. The idea is that you speak in one language and another person hears what you say in their own tongue, either via their own earbuds or via the MyManu smartphone app that Danny has already developed. Smart wireless earbuds and instant translation are ideas which giants like Apple and Google are addressing with vast investments - so it seems ridiculously ambitious for a one-man band to take them on. He has already had a few setbacks. He'd hoped to have a working model ready for CES, but says delays in manufacturing in China mean the earbuds won't be ready for a few weeks. Instead, he demonstrates the system on a set of ear headphones, getting me to say Bonjour into an iPad which then comes out of his headphones as Hello. We struggle with bad connectivity - often an issue when thousands are using the mobile networks at once - but Danny is hoping for a smoother demo in any of 37 languages when his stand is set up at the show. It has been an extraordinary journey to get this far. He's been working on the idea for four years while holding down a full time job as an engineer at a major aerospace company. He tells me that when he went to China to sign a deal with Foxconn to manufacture his product he could only take three days leave, so spent just one day in Shenzhen - to the amazement of his hosts - then got back on the plane. He has funded Clik from his own savings and a crowdfunding campaign and exhibiting at CES is costing him a tidy sum. So, is it worth it? "I've had so many emails from companies that wanted to see the product," he says. "That's the main reason I've come to CES." He is also hoping to link up with distributors, manufacturers and other possible business partners. Let's be honest, the odds aren't great on Danny Manu beating the tech giants to launch a product that could transform the way we interact with people who speak a different language. In fact, he might be better to head to the roulette tables and pick a number to put his life savings on. But this brave young British entrepreneur, with the courage to stake everything on an innovation he believes could change the world, is just what CES should be all about. Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38514399

Man Utd: No acceptable bids for Morgan Schneiderlin or Memphis Depay - Mourinho - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Man Utd boss Jose Mourinho says Morgan Schneiderlin and Memphis Depay will not be selected while their futures remain unresolved.

Last updated on .From the section Football Manchester United duo Morgan Schneiderlin and Memphis Depay will not be selected while their futures remain unresolved, manager Jose Mourinho says. Everton hope to conclude a deal for Schneiderlin, 27, but United are yet to receive an acceptable bid for the midfielder, according to Mourinho. "I will allow both of them to leave - if the right offer comes. Until this moment, no," said Mourinho. "We don't have any offer that is close to the quality of the players we have." The Red Devils host Reading in the FA Cup third round on Saturday and Mourinho said that "in normal conditions" the two players would have been named in his squad. "But they aren't because we are waiting for something that a couple of weeks ago looked like 100% and at the moment looks like 0%," he added. West Brom have had an offer of £15m for Schneiderlin rejected, while Everton boss Ronald Koeman reportedly hopes to sign the France international in time for their Premier League match with Manchester City on 15 January. BBC Sport understands more than five clubs retain an interest in the former Southampton midfielder and suggestions Everton have arranged a medical for the player are inaccurate. Everton are also interested in former PSV Eindhoven winger Depay, 22, as are a number of clubs across Europe. 'No need for another defender' With Eric Bailly now on Africa Cup of Nations duty with Ivory Coast, United will have only three regular central defenders for up to eight matches. The club were heavily linked with a £40m move for Benfica's Swedish international Victor Lindelof but sources told BBC Sport in December that no bid would be made in in January. Southampton's Jose Fonte was reported to be a United target in the summer and asked for a transfer on Thursday. The form of Phil Jones and Marcos Rojo is the major reason why Mourinho is not interested in reinforcing his squad and, with Chris Smalling back after injury and Daley Blind and Michael Carrick both having experience in the role should the need arise, the United manager has indicated he wants to stick with his current group. "While I wait for Bailly, I hope the other three [Jones, Rojo, Smalling] can control the situation," said Mourinho. "I am going to try to rest one for every game. If I rest one against West Ham, I will rest another against Hull [in the EFL Cup semi-final on Tuesday] and try to make a rotation between these three. We have Daley Blind as a fourth and also Michael Carrick."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38532747

The Bank's 'Michael Fish' moment - BBC News

2017-01-06

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As the Bank of England's chief economist admits economists were wrong ahead of the financial crisis and post the Brexit vote - he says it's time for a better understanding of what economic data are telling us.

Business

BBC weather presenter Michael Fish reading the signs available to him "The only function of economic forecasting," JK Galbraith once said, "is to make astrology look respectable." With disarming honesty, the Bank of England's chief economist, Andrew Haldane, has admitted that criticisms that economic forecasts had been wrong before the financial crisis and wrong about the immediate impact of a Brexit vote were a "fair cop". The profession, he said, was facing a crisis of confidence. Mr Haldane went on to describe the failure to understand the impact of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 as the profession's "Michael Fish moment" - when the weather forecaster suggested in 1987 there wasn't a hurricane on the way before record high winds devastated large parts of the south east of England. To be clear, Mr Haldane was talking about economists as a whole - not just the Bank - and said he still fundamentally agreed with the Bank's central forecast - made last November - that 2017 and 2018 could see a "material" slowdown in economic activity and a significant rise in inflation. The Bank was right to suggest that sterling would fall in value following a Brexit vote. But, consumer confidence has held up far more robustly than expected and, yet again, it is clear that while economic models can make reasoned judgements about the future, those judgements can prove erroneous. Particularly when they attempt to account for "shock" events - the financial crisis (when forecasts undercooked the effects) or the vote to leave the European Union (when models over-cooked the short term effects and failed to account for "dynamic" policy responses such as the Bank itself cutting interest rates to new record lows). Mr Haldane said that economists could learn from meteorologists, who now use much more data to understand how weather patterns develop. Meteorology is, of course, a science. Economics is a study, ultimately, of human behaviour - what millions, billions, of people may or may not do, given a certain set of circumstances. Making judgements on that is always going to be a tricky, imprecise business.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38528544

West Ham v Man City: Sergio Aguero's cheeky flick gives Man City big lead - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Sergio Aguero turns home Yaya Toure's shot with a cheeky flick for Manchester City's fourth goal against West Ham in their FA Cup third-round tie at London Stadium.

Sergio Aguero turns home Yaya Toure's shot with a cheeky flick for Manchester City's fourth goal against West Ham in their FA Cup third-round tie at London Stadium. Available to UK users only.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38536416

What marks does Obama's presidency deserve? - BBC News

2017-01-06

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What is the Obama administration's legacy and will it survive Donald Trump?

US & Canada

It's almost time to close the book on Barack Obama's eight years as president. Before he relocates to Washington's posh Kalorama neighbourhood, however, here's a take on what he tried to do - and how well he did it. Although there are letter grades attached to each section, these assessments are not a reflection of the wisdom of his actions, only in how well he was able to advance his agenda over the course of his presidency. While a liberal might give his environmental policy high marks, a conservative would likely flunk him. What can't be argued, however, is that he accomplished a considerable amount during his eight years. Going unmeasured are a number of Mr Obama's intangible or indirect accomplishments. While the White House sported rainbow-colouring the night after gay marriage became legal nationwide, that was the result of a Supreme Court decision not presidential action. And while Mr Obama often spoke movingly about race relations in the US, particularly after the shooting at a black church in South Carolina, there was little in the way of policy elements accompanying his words. Mr Obama does have an ample record to judge, however. Here's a look at eight key areas - along with consideration of their "Trump-ability" - how easy it will be for incoming president Donald Trump to undo what Mr Obama has accomplished. Tell Anthony on Twitter @awzurcher how you would grade Barack Obama's presidency. Comprehensive healthcare reform had been the Democratic Party's holy grail for decades, always seemingly just out of reach. Under Mr Obama, they finally claimed the prize. Due to an electoral setback in the Senate before the bill's final passage, however, the massive piece of legislation was a half-baked cake, making implementation a challenge. The federal healthcare insurance marketplace website, essentially unusable for months after launch, was a very visible, politically devastating mistake. To the surprise of Democrats, many Republican-controlled states opted not to expand Medicaid healthcare coverage for the poor. More recently, insurance premiums for exchange-based policies will increase markedly in some US states - which will be a financial blow to less affluent Americans not covered by government subsidies. Much of the law operated as intended, however. The percentage of Americans without insurance dropped from 15.7% in 2011 to to 9.1% in 2015. More than 8.8 million Americans have signed up for coverage through the federal exchange in the current enrolment period - a record high. Insurers can't deny individuals coverage for their pre-existing medical conditions, and there are no lifetime dollar caps on coverage. Despite its shortcomings, passage of the Affordable Care Act, in the words of Vice-President Joe Biden, was a big expletive-ing deal. Trump-ability: Republicans have been trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act from the moment Mr Obama signed it into law. Mr Trump regularly condemned the programme as a failure. Now, Republicans are setting the wheels in motion to tear up the reforms "root and branch", in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's words. Republicans will be able to shred the programme even with their slim majority in the Senate thanks to presidential authority and legislative manoeuvres. Enacting a replacement plan, however, will be more difficult. At the moment, they seem determined to jump off the repeal bridge without figuring out exactly where they will land, but Mr Trump has cautioned his congressional colleagues to be careful with how they go about the task. Mr Obama's administration helped negotiate the Paris climate agreement, in which the US joined 185 countries in pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It enacted a host of new regulations governing pollution from coal-fired power plants and limiting coal mining and oil and gas drilling both on federal lands and in coastal waters. Mr Obama also used his executive authority to designate 548 million acres of territory as protected habitat - more than any prior president. The past eight years weren't without missed opportunities, however. Early in his administration, when Democrats had large majorities in Congress, the House of Representatives passed a stringent cap-and-trade programme for controlling carbon emissions. The Senate focused on financial and healthcare reform first, however, and the Democratic majority was gone before they could take action. That may be as close as Democrats come to any sort of comprehensive environmental legislation for a great many years. Trump-ability: US participation in the Paris accord is still uncertain given that the president-elect promised to abandon it. While the withdrawal procedure is supposed to take four years, Mr Trump's team is reportedly searching for ways to speed up the process. Other Obama-era executive accomplishments, however, will be more difficult to roll back. Proposed regulatory changes will require an extended approval process and are sure to face a flurry of lawsuits from environmental groups. Congress could speed things up, but Democrats in the Senate have enough votes to block their efforts if they stick together. Mr Obama made completion of two major trade agreements - the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - the cornerstone of his second term in office. The TPP is destined for the dustbin without even consideration by the US Congress, thanks to a coalition of opposition from Democratic left and the economic nationalists who are sweeping to power with Mr Trump. The TTIP, which is still in negotiation and attempts to reduce trade barriers between the US and the EU, is being abandoned by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. The Obama administration did successfully implement free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea, but they are dwarfed by the size and scope of the now-doomed regional deals. Trump-ability: Mr Trump can and will give a death blow to any hopes Mr Obama may have had of cementing a lasting trade legacy through the TPP and TTIP. More than that, the new president is poised to roll back the trade legacies of previous presidents, as he's pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement - which was concluded under President Bill Clinton - or perhaps even withdraw from the deal entirely. His promises to enact draconian import tariffs on some foreign goods would also run counter to US commitments to the World Trade Organization, which could undermine the entire foundation of the current global trade regime. When Mr Obama took office, the US economy was in freefall. Unemployment had spiked to double digits, housing prices had collapsed and the financial industry teetered on the brink of collapse. The picture eight years later is one of stability and modest growth, although critics will argue that things could be better (and blue-collar Trump voters in the industrial states seemed to agree). Policy-wise, Mr Obama pushed through a major stimulus package and financial reform legislation early in his first term. His administration oversaw a support structure that saved General Motors from a bankruptcy that would have devastated the US auto industry. The Home Affordable Refinance Program, run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, allowed several million US homeowners to avoid foreclosure and refinance high-interest mortgages. The president negotiated an agreement that rolled back many of the George W Bush era tax cuts in exchange for across-the-board spending freezes. He frequently called for a raise in the federal minimum wage, but he was unable to generate any support for such actions in the Republican-controlled Congress. Although the stock market is reaching new highs, 2015 household income is still below what it was in 2007. Considering where his presidency started, however, the current state of economic health is perhaps the president's most noteworthy legacy. Trump-ability: Republicans cutting taxes when they hold power is as certain as the sun rising in the east. Tax-reform, which will likely include a return to Bush-era rates along with even more substantive changes, appear all but certain for passage. Mr Obama's financial reform legislation also could be poised for weakening, as it was frequently the target of Mr Trump's anti-regulation ire. Although conservatives liked to criticise Mr Obama's efforts to bolster US companies as "picking winners and losers", early evidence (Carrier, Ford Motors, etc) indicates that's one tradition Mr Trump appears likely to continue, albeit with a sharper edge for businesses that don't comply to his wishes. Mr Obama will leave the White House with two prominent feathers in his foreign policy cap - the Iran nuclear deal and normalised relations with Cuba. Say what you will about the merits of the accomplishments (and many have), they represent a notable thawing in relations between the US and two long-time antagonists. He also oversaw the drawdown of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan - fulfilling a key campaign promise. Elsewhere, however, the president's international policy has been characterised by strained relations and festering problems. His planned "reset" of US-Russian relations upon taking office was followed by the nation's Ukrainian intervention and allegations of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. The Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2010 spread unrest throughout the Middle East, culminating in a Syrian Civil War that facilitated the rise of the so-called Islamic State and a devastating refugee crisis that has roiled European politics. North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons programme seemingly undeterred, and Mr Obama's plans for an "Asian pivot" in US foreign policy have done little to keep Chinese regional ambitions in check. Responsibility for this global unrest can't all be laid at Mr Obama's feet, of course, but it's a mark on his permanent record nonetheless. Trump-ability: Mr Trump has criticised the Iranian nuclear deal, although unlike some other Republicans he hasn't vowed to abandon it entirely. He may find renegotiating the multi-party agreement more difficult than he might think. As for Cuba, he has the executive authority to roll back all of Mr Obama's diplomatic overtures to the communist island, including relaxed sanctions and travel restrictions - although he's kept his options open so far. The president-elect also seems more likely to favour closer relations to Israel and a renewed attempt at improving relations with Russia (a re-reset). In Syria, he has criticised Mr Obama's actions but hasn't advocated a coherent counter-policy, so there's no telling how - or if - he'll change course. One thing is for certain, however. At least rhetorically the Trump administration will be a marked departure from Mr Obama's internationalist foreign policy, which leaned heavily on co-operation and co-ordination with allies. The long-term trend of declining crime rates continued over the past eight years, although a number of large cities have seen a recent uptick in their murder rates. While public safety was a 2016 campaign issue, much of Mr Obama's efforts while president were directed at criminal justice reform. In 2010 he signed a law that brought the mandatory minimum prison time for crack cocaine possession - which disproportionately involves black drug offenders - more in line with powder cocaine sentences. In January 2016, Mr Obama took a series of executive actions to limit the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons and provide greater treatment for inmates with mental health issues. He has also used his presidential power to commute the sentences of more than 1,000 non-violent drug offenders and supported a Justice Department policy that resulted in the early release of about 6,000 individuals. Although Mr Obama has backed bipartisan sentencing reform legislation in Congress, the 2016 presidential election - and Mr Trump's tough-on-crime rhetoric - has been attributed with frustrating those efforts. Gun control wasn't a top priority for Mr Obama when he took office, but in the early months of his second term - after the 2012 mass shooting of schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut - Mr Obama made a strong push for greater restrictions on some types of military-style semi-automatic rifles and more thorough background checks for firearm purchases. Those efforts ran head-on into the National Rifle Association's formidable lobbying power, however, and aside from a few executive actions, no new policies were enacted. In 2015, Mr Obama told the BBC that his failure in this area was his greatest frustration as president. Trump-ability: Given that Mr Trump regularly painted a bleak picture of crime levels in the US, lamented that law enforcement was too constrained by "political correctness" and opined that prison inmates were being treated too well, it's safe to say he will pursue a decidedly different course on public safety than Mr Obama. Sentencing reform - in limbo for the past year - will be an exceedingly low priority for Republicans in Congress now, and Mr Obama's gun-control executive actions are likely to face the chopping block. There was a point, shortly after Mr Obama's re-election in 2012, where comprehensive immigration reform seemed inevitable. The president and his fellow Democrats were in favour, and rattled Republicans saw granting permanent residency to some undocumented workers and streamlining the US immigration system as a means to curry favour with the growing bloc of Hispanic voters. A grass-roots revolt within the Republican Party derailed those plans, prompting Mr Obama to take a series of executive actions providing normalised status to undocumented immigrants who entered the US as children and the immigrant families of US citizens and permanent residents. (The latter policy has since been suspended during a protracted legal battle over its constitutionality.) While these efforts attracted widespread praise from pro-immigration activists and Hispanic groups, the Obama administration's policy of increasing removal of other undocumented immigrants has prompted some to call him the "deporter in chief". From 2009 to 2015, the Obama administration deported more than 2.5 million people - most of whom had been convicted of some form of criminal offence or were recent arrivals. Trump-ability: Mr Trump may very well drop the US defence of the portion of Mr Obama's immigration action that's currently under legal challenge. He could also unilaterally resume deportation of others given normalised status by Mr Obama's executive efforts, although that will be more controversial. The president-elect has pledged to deport more than three million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US - including visitors who have overstayed their visas - although given Mr Obama's track record it may be a difference of extent, not substance. At one point, Mr Trump was pledging to remove everyone not lawfully in the US - more than 11 million by most estimates - which would be a marked departure not just from Mr Obama's policies but those of every modern US president. Whatever his other successes during his time in office, Mr Obama's presidency was a beating for the Democratic Party. In 2009, when Mr Obama was swept to power, Democrats had large majorities in the US Congress and control of 29 of 50 governorships. Since then, he has seen his party's power steadily erode. The House of Representatives has been in Republican hands since 2010; the Senate since 2014. Democrats control the governor's mansion in only 16 states. The situation is even more dire in state legislatures - the proving grounds for young politicians with national ambitions. Republicans hold sway in 32 legislatures, while Democrats have majorities in only 12 (the rest are divided). If the party doesn't make inroads in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin by 2020, those legislatures will draw congressional district maps that make recapturing the House of Representatives a tall task for Democrats for another decade. Mr Obama's political constituency - young voters and minorities - proved enough to win him the presidency twice, but it was a fragile coalition that could not be counted on in mid-term congressional and legislative elections or, for that matter, by Hillary Clinton last year. While Mr Obama can boast considerable accomplishments over his eight years in office, if his party can't regain its footing after a string of devastating electoral setbacks, he won't have any legacy worth writing about before too long. Trump-ability: Barring a major political realignment in the liberal fortress of California, things can't get much worse for Democrats at the state level. In Congress, however, Mr Trump has a decent shot at expanding the Republican Senate majority in 2018, given that Democrats have to defend 10 seats in states that Mr Trump won last year. There's always the chance that Republicans could overreach in their efforts to enact their agenda. An economic decline or foreign policy fiasco could tank Mr Trump's approval rating and make winners of even unlikely Democrats. The durability of Mr Trump's own political coalition of disaffected working-class whites, evangelicals and other traditional Republican voters is still an open question as well. While Republicans may feel the future belongs to them, when Mr Trump's time in the Oval Office comes to an end, there's no telling what kind of grades will his legacy receive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38525529

Rail fares: Who are the season ticket winners and losers? - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Rail fare increases have been called a "kick in the teeth" by critics. Yet commuters using annual season tickets in some parts of England find themselves worse off than others.

England

The cost of annual season tickets has increased by 1.9%, analysis by the BBC England Data Unit found Commuters in some parts of England will be worse off than others from rail fare rises, which were called a "kick in the teeth" by critics. In some areas there was no increase in annual season ticket prices, despite wage growth. Others have seen their annual fares rise despite average pay having fallen. Across the UK rail fares of all types - from season tickets to single journeys - increased by an average of 2.3% on the first weekday of the new year. Analysis by the BBC England Data Unit found annual season tickets had increased in cost by 1.9%, while median take-home pay had increased by 2%. The government said wages were growing faster than regulated fares, which include season tickets. Passengers commuting to Manchester with the most popular annual season tickets saw no increase at all, while the median take-home wage increased 2.8%. Annual passes from East Didsbury, Macclesfield, Stockport, Altrincham, Wilmslow, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne, Bolton, Glossop and Knutsford are all the same price as they were before the increase. Yet commuters in Liverpool will pay 1.9% more for an annual pass. This is despite median wages having fallen, according to the Office for National Statistics. For more stories from the BBC England Data Unit follow our Pinterest board. Someone travelling from Runcorn to Liverpool would pay £1,532 for their annual pass, £28 more than in 2016. In Liverpool the average full-time wage, after tax and National Insurance deductions, fell from £21,901 in 2015 to £21,634 in 2016. The most expensive annual season ticket per mile travelled is Harlow Town to London Liverpool Street. A commuter pays £3,496, which is £64 more than in 2016. It works out at 39p per mile travelled. The figures are based on a Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) list of the most commonly used commuter services in six major cities. Our analysis of the figures was based on full-time workers using an annual season ticket five days a week, except on bank holidays or on 25 days of annual leave. Lianna Etkind, public transport campaigner at the CBT, said: "Wages remain stagnant and trains continue to be hopelessly overcrowded, so commuters are rightly angry at annual fare rises when they see little or no improvement in the service they receive. "Many commuters are now being charged at a similar level to a premium rate phone number for their season tickets and are left feeling equally as fleeced. "It's high time the government introduced a fairer ticketing system that actively encouraged rail travel, not penalised people for choosing to take the train." According to the Rail Delivery Group (RDG), which represents train operators, about 97p in every pound paid by passengers goes back into running and improving services. RDG chief executive Paul Plummer said: "Money from fares is helping to sustain investment in the longer, newer trains and more punctual journeys that passengers want." The Department for Transport said it had saved commuters money by capping season ticket increases so they are in line with inflation. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: "Thanks to action by the government on train ticket prices, wages are growing faster than regulated fares." Northern Rail, which runs commuter services into Manchester, confirmed it had not increased annual season ticket fares but said other prices had risen. It declined to comment further.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38497987

CES 2017: Minister hits back at tech show chief's attack - BBC News

2017-01-06

The UK digital and culture minister says the CES tech show's chief was wrong to claim the government is doing too little to support its start-ups at the event.

The UK's digital and culture minister says the CES tech show's chief was wrong to claim the government is doing too little to support its start-ups at the Las Vegas event. Matt Hancock was responding to criticism that his team's efforts were a "source of embarrassment" when compared to France and other countries'. He spoke to Rory Cellan-Jones at the trade show. Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38528392

Ant and Dec board game makers apologise over errors - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway board game is found to have multiple errors.

Entertainment & Arts

Ant & Dec have hosted Saturday Night Takeaway on ITV since 2002 The makers of Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway board game have apologised after it was found to have several errors. The game features cards with a series of quiz questions, but some of the answers given are incorrect. One answer claims the moon is 225 miles away from the earth - instead of about 238,900 miles. Manufacturers Paul Lamond Games said they "unreservedly apologise" and added replacement cards would be issued. It is understood at least six of the 50 answers in one round of the game - which costs £19.99 - are incorrect. One answer placed Stonehenge in Somerset instead of Wiltshire and a maths question suggested two cubed was bigger than three squared. It also said Albert Einstein died in 1949 instead of 1955 and gave the number of Coronation Street episodes to date as 8,000, when the actual figure is more than 9,000. One customer who bought the game told The Sun: "I couldn't believe it, the answers are so ridiculous... [but] the kids won't accept the game could possibly be wrong." A representative for Paul Lamond Games told the BBC: "We have been made aware of some mistakes with the answers to the questions within the first production run of this game." "These have now been corrected and we would like to unreservedly apologise for these errors. "Any affected customer can email us stating their name and full address and we will send out a replacement set of corrected cards free of charge." The company's email address is available on their official website. Ant & Dec - whose full names are Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly - have hosted Saturday Night Takeaway on ITV since 2002, although the show took a four-year break from 2009. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38529009

Jermain Defoe: Sunderland striker not for sale, says David Moyes - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Sunderland boss David Moyes says Jermain Defoe is not for sale amid speculation about the veteran striker's future.

Last updated on .From the section Football Sunderland boss David Moyes says Jermain Defoe is not for sale amid speculation about the veteran striker's future. The club rejected a £6m bid from West Ham for the 34-year-old on Wednesday and the Hammers were reportedly willing to double their bid . "We have said Jermain is not for sale and he is not for sale. West Ham made a bid and we rejected it," Moyes said. Defoe is Sunderland's top scorer with 11 goals in 21 appearances this season. He signed a one-year contract extension in June which runs until 2019. • None Listen: Defoe would much rather be at West Ham - Sutton "We have never asked for a second bid, we have never put a price on him, not at any time," continued Moyes. "He's really important to us. Everybody knows that and the club has already come out and said that. "There has been very little said from Sunderland. The talking has all come from other people, not from here." Moyes also confirmed Defoe would be involved "in some way" when Sunderland host Burnley in the FA Cup on Saturday. The England striker joined Sunderland in January 2015 and has scored 33 goals in 74 games including more than 50% of the team's 19 league goals this season. He started his senior career with West Ham before moving to Tottenham in 2004.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38529279

Kyle Edmund beaten by Stan Wawrinka in Brisbane International quarter-finals - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

British number two Kyle Edmund is out of the Brisbane International after losing to world number four Stan Wawrinka in the quarter-finals.

Last updated on .From the section Tennis British number two Kyle Edmund is out of the Brisbane International after losing to world number four Stan Wawrinka in the quarter-finals. The world number 45 took the first set but lost 6-7 (2-7) 6-4 6-4 against the reigning US Open champion. Edmund, 21, impressed but Wawrinka broke serve at 3-2 in the second set and twice in the decider to win in two hours 36 minutes. The Swiss 31-year-old will play third seed Kei Nishikori in the semi-finals. Canadian top seed and defending champion Milos Raonic beat 14-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal 4-6 6-3 6-4 to reach the last four. The world number three will play Bulgarian seventh seed Grigor Dimitrov, who beat Austrian Dominic Thiem. British number four Aljaz Bedene was also knocked at the quarter-final stage of the Chennai Open in India on Friday. The world number 101 lost 6-3 6-0 to French fifth seed Benoit Paire.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38527669

Pep Guardiola: First FA Cup tie with Manchester City will be 'special' - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Pep Guardiola is looking forward to a "special" first FA Cup game in charge of Manchester City in Friday's third-round tie at West Ham.

Last updated on .From the section FA Cup Coverage: Live on BBC One, BBC Radio 5 live and BBC local radio; text commentary on the BBC Sport website & app Pep Guardiola says he is looking forward to a "special" first FA Cup game in charge of Manchester City in their third-round tie at West Ham. City face the Hammers at London Stadium on Friday night, live on BBC One. "The cup is special because the lower team can beat the big teams, which is why it is fascinating," said Guardiola. "I'm looking forward to it, but of course it's a Premier League game so it will be tough. We were unlucky in the draw." West Ham manager Slaven Bilic said the tie is a "big game" for both sides and the fans. "They will put out a very strong team because it is a big chance for them to get a trophy," he added. The game at London Stadium is the first of 32 third-round ties across four days this weekend. BBC One also has live coverage of Tottenham v Aston Villa on Sunday (16:00 GMT) while 5 live Sport's Mark Chapman presents Saturday's show from Sutton United ahead of their tie with AFC Wimbledon. City goalkeeper Claudio Bravo was uncertain in the air in the 2-1 win over Burnley on Monday, failing to deal with a corner that led to Ben Mee's goal for the visitors. It was the latest in a series of mistakes by Bravo, but Guardiola said the Chilean - who could come up against West Ham's powerful striker Andy Carroll on Friday - is adapting to the physical nature of English football. "I see many goalkeepers who had the same problems as Claudio with these balls and when they fight for them, it's not only Claudio Bravo," said the Spaniard. "He's intelligent enough, he has experience enough, he was nominated one of the five best keepers in the world, he has experience in Europe, all around the world, in South America, where the intensity of the games is so tough. "He realised immediately with these sort of balls into the box he had to be careful because it's special. "It's not necessary to read the newspapers or the comments of the coach saying, 'Go there, be careful here, it's quite different'. He realised already." 'Pep knew what he was in for' Guardiola also insisted he is not ready to quit management, after he had said he was "arriving at the end" of his career following the Burnley match - when he also gave a testy post-match interview to BBC Sport. When asked about Guardiola's conduct, Bilic said: "I saw his interview but maybe he was just tired after a couple of games in three days. "Maybe after the great start they made some fans or pundits expected them to cruise in the league, especially with Guardiola. "But it is never easy in any league, especially here. They are not struggling but for their standards, to be however many points from the top is probably not what they expected. "He's never worked in a smaller club, he's never fought against relegation or mid-table or anything different than 'we have to win the league'. "Is it Barcelona, is it Bayern, is it Man City? It's the same. He knew the intensity of the English league, he was well prepared for a difficult season. He didn't expect anything less than he is getting or has faced so far." Guardiola has said he will play a full-strength side on Friday, while midfielder Soufiane Feghouli is available for West Ham after his red card against Manchester United on Saturday was rescinded. Bilic also confirmed on-loan striker Simone Zaza will not play for West Ham again to avoid having to pay a £17.1m permanent-deal fee to parent club Juventus, which would have been triggered after 15 first-team appearances. Zaza was signed on a season-long loan in August for a initial fee of £4.2m but has not scored in the 11 games he has featured in and has not played in the league since November. Sign up for the 2017 FA People's Cup and take your chance to win tickets to the FA Cup final in May and achieve national five-a-side glory. "He is still our player until he goes somewhere but mainly because of the situation with his contract he is finished here," said Bilic. "Unfortunately we had to judge him on six, seven, eight games which is not a big pattern to judge a player in general. "He is definitely a good player but like many times in football, it just didn't happen." Sign up for the FA People's Cup is under way - head to bbc.co.uk/getinspired to get involved.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38525445

West Ham v Man City: Yaya Toure penalty gives City the lead - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Yaya Toure's penalty gives Manchester City the lead after West Ham's Angelo Ogbonna fouls Pablo Zabaleta in their FA Cup third-round tie at London Stadium.

Yaya Toure's penalty gives Manchester City the lead after West Ham's Angelo Ogbonna fouls Pablo Zabaleta in their FA Cup third-round tie at London Stadium. Available to UK users only.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38536410

British doctors travel to Syria with 'People's Convoy' - BBC News

2017-01-06

A team of British doctors has travelled to the Syria/Turkey border with a convoy filled with medical supplies in order to set up a children's hospital near Aleppo.

A team of British doctors led by Dr Rola Hallam and journalist Paul Conroy has travelled to the Syria/Turkey border with a convoy filled with medical supplies. Aid workers plan to use the equipment to set up a children's hospital near Aleppo. Rola Hallam made a video blog of the journey. She arrived at the border on 23 December. The lorry arrived a few days later, on 2 January.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38528360

CES 2017: Intel reveals credit card-sized modular computer - BBC News

2017-01-06

Intel reveals a handheld computer that can operate as a PC or act as the brains of other equipment.

Intel has revealed a computer that is roughly the size of a credit card. The Compute Card can operate as a PC or act as the brains of other electronics. The US tech firm gave BBC Click's Spencer Kelly an exclusive first look before its official launch. Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38515472

Om Puri: A clip from British film East is East - BBC News

2017-01-06

This video has been removed for rights reasons.

This video has been removed for rights reasons. The Indian actor Om Puri has died at the age of 66. He was known for his roles in films in India, Pakistan, Britain and Hollywood. Reports suggest he suffered a heart attack at his residence in Mumbai. Om Puri found international fame for his roles in films such as East is East - about a Pakistani immigrant struggling to adjust to life in the north of England. This clip contains some strong language.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38528575

Productivity gap yawns across the UK - BBC News

2017-01-06

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There are mammoth variations in the rate of productivity across the UK - the Office for National Statistics is trying to understand why.

Business

Tower Hamlets - which includes Canary Wharf - is the most productive part of the UK Productivity, or more precisely the lack of productivity, is one of the great puzzles of the British economy at the moment. Productivity growth since the credit crunch has been dreadful and that matters, because unless we make more and work more efficiently we cannot pay ourselves more. In an attempt to understand what is going wrong, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is bringing all its productivity statistics together and conducting new research. It throws up some interesting details and possible explanations about what is going wrong. Output per hour worked increased by 0.4% in the three months to September last year, that is an improvement but according to (ONS) economist Richard Heys: "It is still weak compared to that experienced in the recent past." Part of the reason for low productivity lies in Britain's regions. While London and south-eastern England have productivity well above the national average and equal to the levels seen in rival economies like France and Germany, the rest of the country lags behind. Tower Hamlets, which includes the financial district of Canary Wharf, is the most productive part of the country, a huge 79% more productive than average. Powys in central Wales is the least productive and, overall, Wales and Northern Ireland have productivity levels 19% below the national average. The only towns in the country that have above average productivity are London, Aberdeen (centre of the off-shore oil industry) and Bristol (a high tech and aviation industry hub). The Bristol area is one of the most productive in the country The least productive city is Sheffield, once home to a huge steel industry but now lagging well behind; Sheffield is 19% less productive than the national average. This part of the productivity puzzle is perhaps the best understood. The most productive industry is finance and that is concentrated in London, while many regions suffer from poor infrastructure and communications and have never recovered from the loss of major parts of their economy in previous decades: mining, heavy engineering, ship building and many more. Perhaps more interesting, is new research by the ONS into the efficiency of family-owned and run manufacturing firms. That found well-structured management practices were better among larger businesses, multinationals and family-owned businesses that were not managed by members of the owning families. To put it bluntly the management of family-run firms (which make up more than half of all manufacturing companies) is awful. Even a small improvement in management would see a huge boost in productivity in such businesses. At first sight this might seem strange, but there is a fairly obvious explanation. What are the odds that the best-qualified and most competent person in the world to run a business just happens to be the son or daughter of the current boss? As one economist has put it, this is like selecting the children of previous gold medallists to be members of the country's next Olympic team, rather than picking the best athletes. There is also the issue of how such companies will attract top staff if they know nepotism means they will never make it to the top, which helps explain why the handling of promotions was one of the issues most associated with productivity. Solving the productivity gap in the UK will not be an easy job, certainly better regional policies would help, but just convincing family- run firms to appoint competent outsiders to run their business would also have a huge effect.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38528549

Psychiatric patient Oliver Lang speaks about his delayed discharge - BBC News

2017-01-06

Psychiatric patient Oliver Lang tells the BBC how he spent two months longer than necessary in a psychiatric unit.

Oliver Lang, from Norfolk, spent two months longer than necessary in a psychiatric unit. The 27-year-old, who has Asperger's syndrome, was initially detained under the Mental Health Act. But weeks after he was told he could leave, he remained in the unit while two separate mental trusts argued over who should pay for his care.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38528573

Bob, aged 95: Loneliness ruined my New Year's Eve - BBC News

2017-01-06

Bob Lowe, who is 95, says spending New Year's Eve alone was miserable.

We are all living longer. The number of people over 85 has increased by nearly a third over the past 10 years. A report from the Academy of Medical Science concluded that while our life expectancy is increasing, our healthy life is not increasing at the same rate. Bob Lowe is 95. He lives in Barton on Sea in Hampshire and told the Today programme the only thing he wants to see is Crossrail opening. He describes the loneliness of his New Year's Eve.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38516764

Handwritten Diana letters sell for £15,100 at auction - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Six handwritten letters from Princess Diana sell for £15,100 at auction.

UK

Six handwritten letters from Princess Diana have sold for £15,100 at auction. One candid letter from Diana to ex-Buckingham Palace steward Cyril Dickman, revealed Prince Harry was "constantly in trouble at school". Another note described how young Prince William "swamped" his baby brother with "an endless supply of hugs and kisses". The letters form part of about 40 lots from Mr Dickman's former estate, which sold for £55,000 in total - exceeding the estimate price of £13,000. Cheffins, a Cambridgeshire auction house, said the lots were "a unique collection of royal memorabilia". Bidders from as far away as Australia, Japan and the US were trying to purchase the items. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Auctioneer tells the BBC that the bidding was "extraordinary... [it] never seemed to stop" In a letter on headed Kensington Palace paper dated 20 September 1984, Diana thanked Mr Dickman for "such a lovely card" following the birth of her youngest son, Harry. She wrote: "William adores his little brother and spends the entire time swamping Harry with an endless supply of hugs and kisses, hardly letting the parents near!" "The reaction to one tiny person's birth has totally overwhelmed us and I can hardly breathe for the mass of flowers that are arriving here!" That letter sold for £3,200, having had an estimated auction price of £400-600. In another, dated 17 October 1992, Diana says how both young princes "are well and enjoying boarding school a lot, although Harry is constantly in trouble!". This sold for £2,400 - after an estimate of £600-900. The items were being sold by the family of the late Mr Dickman, who was head palace steward for more than 50 years. Described by Cheffins as "a favourite of every member of the Royal Family", he received handwritten notes from other senior royals dating back more than 30 years. The collection sold at auction also included letters, cards and photographs from Prince Charles and Princess Margaret, and Maundy money. In one letter from the Queen written on Windsor Castle headed paper, she thanks Mr Dickman for his "thoughts and sympathy" following the death of the Queen Mother. More than a dozen Christmas cards, including some from the Queen, Princess Diana and the Prince of Wales, were bought for £2,200. Unopened boxed wedding cake from the Queen's marriage to Prince Philip in 1947 also sold for a few hundred pounds.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38508089

The straight A student who dropped out of university - BBC News

2017-01-06

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A promising student has gone viral with a Facebook post that dismisses higher education as "a scam".

BBC Trending

Billy Willson received a 4.0 grade point average, the equivalent to straight As, for his first semester at Kansas State University. He decided that it would also be his last. In a strongly worded Facebook post, Willson uploaded a photograph of himself standing outside the university's sign, holding his middle finger up to it. In the accompanying text he wrote: "YOU ARE BEING SCAMMED. You may not see it today or tomorrow, but you will see it some day," he wrote. "You are being put thousands into debt to learn things you will never even use. Wasting 4 years of your life to be stuck at a paycheck that grows slower than the rate of inflation. Paying $200 for a $6 textbook." Billy and his girlfriend Brittany Quinn at a Kansas State University football game His post, which has been shared more than 10,000 times in little more than a fortnight and has provoked a vigorous debate in the comments, appears to have struck a chord with other young adults who are wondering if pursuing higher education is worth the time and money. Willson, who was on an Architectural Engineering undergraduate course told BBC Trending that the "cost of inflation is relatively small compared to the cost of college over the last 30 or so years. I mean, it really is ridiculous how the cost of college has gone up." He's backed up by data. According to the US Department of Education the average annual increase in college tuition in the United States, between 1980-2014, grew by nearly 260% compared to the nearly 120% increase in all consumer items. In 1980, the average cost of tuition, room and board, and fees for a four-year course was over $9,000. That cost now is more than $23,000 for state colleges. If you want to go private it's more than $30,000. A similar hike in tuition fees has also been seen in England. In 2012, the government backed initiatives from some universities to charge more than the £9,000 tuition fee limit. In the post Willson also cited higher education debt as a reason to leave university and enter the work place. Students in the United States are estimated to be in around over $1.2 trillion of loan debt with 7 million borrowers in default. Willson says that when he first told his parents that he was leaving university, they were "very upset" but are now supportive of his decision. So were dozens of others of people who commented on Facebook. Trey Foshee wrote: "Years and money wasted. Very much agree. I have two degrees that I would sell back right now if they'd let me." Others, like Blair Brown, agreed with Willson also pointed out that some professions do require a university degree. "Being an engineer, scientist, or computer technician could be learned rather quickly through apprenticeships, independent study, and hands-on experience. Human nature is to learn by doing, not learning to do. As for more professional careers such as medical doctors and lawyers, university study is admittedly necessary," Brown commented. Not everyone was supportive however, a comment on The Collegian, Kansas State's student newspaper accused Willson of adding to stereotypes about his generation: "First of all, thanks for continuing to destroy the millennial reputation with your entitled, everything-should-be-easy, get-me-rich-fast mentality... You have completely just destroyed your reputation. When you fall hard and fast...you are going to need a real, big kid job and guess what? Something called Google exists and even my grandma can dig up dirt on you." Willson, who told Trending that he is currently employed for a trade show sales team and his employers did Google him and they saw the funny side. He adds that he hopes enough work experience will allow him to be employed by an architectural engineering team in the future. He doesn't think university will play any part in that future. "They would have to make a massive change to the system before I would consider that and I don't think they'll do that while I'm still young enough to want to go" A shocking, graphic video showing torture and racial abuse led far-right activists to link the perpetrators to the Black Lives Matter movement. READ MORE You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-38512064

CES 2017: Car-makers choose virtual assistants - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Car brands from around the world reveal deals with three tech giants to bring virtual assistants to new cars.

Technology

Hyundai has teamed up with Google to allow users of Google Home to lock their cars remotely, among other features Four leading car brands have announced deals with three tech giants to add virtual assistants to new cars. Microsoft's Cortana netted two of the deals, the others went to Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. The announcements were made at the CES tech show in Las Vegas. One analyst said there would be a "battle of the giants" over the adoption of virtual assistants in 2017, since they can be built in to a variety of appliances. Nissan and BMW have opted to work with Microsoft to bring Cortana to selected vehicles in the near future. Ford, however, has struck a deal with Amazon meaning its assistant, Alexa, will feature in some of its cars. And Hyundai and Daimler have said they will make their cars partly voice-operable with Google Assistant. Ford has warned customers not to be distracted while driving and talking to Alexa Apple's Siri assistant is already available in certain cars as well - via the firm's CarPlay software. Many brands - including BMW, Nissan, Hyundai and Ford - have produced models that support it. Car-makers are interested in bringing such functionality to their vehicles as a means of making them easier to interact with - and to connect home appliances to drivers while they are on the road. With Alexa, Ford plans to give drivers the ability to close net-connected garage doors, or to play an audiobook, picking up from wherever they had previously left off. In Hyundai's case, Google Assistant will integrate with the firm's Blue Link software. Drivers will be able to start the car, adjust air conditioning, lock the doors or send destination details to the vehicle by voice alone. A sample command given by the firm was: "OK Google, tell Blue Link to start my Santa Fe and set the temperature to 72 degrees." The tech giants are vying for a place not just in your home - but also your car BMW discussed a handful of ways drivers might use its digital platform, BMW Connected, and Cortana in future cars - including booking restaurant tables. "BMW Connected can provide a reminder en-route of an upcoming appointment for which no location has yet been fixed," the company said. "And Cortana can be used to make a suitable restaurant recommendation and reserve a table." Toyota also announced a futuristic concept car at CES, the Concept-i. It features its own digital assistant, named Yui. "It's really going to be a battle of the giants, starting in 2017," said Adam Simon, a tech analyst at Context. "In exactly the same way that Amazon is doing a great job at the moment of building an ecosystem in the home, there'll be an ecosystem in the car," he told the BBC. Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has said he believes digital assistants will change the web Some car manufacturers, including Ford, are already warning drivers not to be distracted when using such products. Last year, researchers at the University of Sussex found that using a hands-free device while driving was as distracting as picking up a phone. "In the very long play we can see vehicles becoming a real entertainment space - an extension of people's lounges," said Jack Wetherill, a tech analyst at Futuresource. "The real endgame is we all put our feet up and watch movies, the digital assistant does the driving." In the short-term, he said that Amazon was likely hoping to encourage more purchases of entertainment content from its online store - such content could then be listened to in the car or watched by passengers. Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38526807

One man's mission to walk the Great Wall of China with a drone - BBC News

2017-01-06

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How one man celebrated his 30-year Great Wall obsession by filming the entire network by drone.

China

William Lindesay has been obsessed with the Great Wall of China since seeing it in a school atlas as a child in England, and last year embarked on an epic journey to fulfil a lifelong ambition - to film the wall in its entirety from the air. He told the BBC's Anna Jones about this quest. "The Great Wall is an amazing sight, and it deserves to be seen in its best light," says William from his home in Beijing. Unable to shake his childhood fascination, he moved to China from Wallasey on Merseyside in 1986 "for the wall", and has since researched it extensively, writing several books and gaining an OBE for his work. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The wall as filmed from the air by the Lindesays The wall most tourists see today is in places like Badaling or Jinshangling, an easy day trip from Beijing, where the stones and towers have been repeatedly restored, not always sympathetically. "But there's more to the wall than that," says William, who trained as a geographer. "Before the tourist wall that people flock to, there were many other 'Great Walls of China'." Few tourists see more of the wall than the manicured sections near Beijing Sprawled across northern China and into Mongolia, the creation of these various walls spanned centuries and ruling dynasties. The oldest parts date back more than 2,000 years. In some places towering stone and in others heaped-up earth, the walls have variously served as highways, defensive fortresses, a communication network and even a fence to contain migrating animals. "Over the past 30 years I've been looking at all of these walls, as far as possible," says William. "My travels have taken me all over northern China, even as far as Mongolia." In the 1990s, he and his wife, Wu Qi, bought a farmhouse at the foot of the wall, and would spend most weekends there exploring it. William Lindesay has been exploring the wall since the mid-1980s William and Wu Qi have brought their sons up in the shadow of the Great Wall Photography has always been important, says William, whether the images were "just beautiful or whether the architecture, the design features had a meaning that I wanted to explain in my writing". But in 2016 his sons, Jim and Tommy, had a suggestion for seeing the wall in a whole new way, and began, as they put it, pestering him to buy them a drone. "I was very concerned they'd come back from the first trip without the drone," says William. He eventually caved, and the results, coupled with some self-taught editing flair from his sons, have been "out of this world". "Over the years, publishers and filmmakers have come to me and said, let's do the Great Wall from the air," he says. "My typical reply was that unless you've got millions and millions of dollars, and high-level contacts with the government and the armed forces, who control the skies, then forget it. "In this way drone technology is a godsend." So armed with their drone and with a travel agency sponsor, the family spent a total of 60 days tracing the walls in 2016, celebrating William's 60th birthday and his 30th year of living in China "for the wall". They began in July at the Old Dragon's Head, the point where the Ming dynasty-era Great Wall meets the sea in the east, and followed it westwards, branching off to explore the older Zhao wall, dating back to 300BC, then hundreds of kilometres further west, the Han dynasty wall. The Zhao wall in Inner Mongolia bears little relation to most people's image of the Great Wall William and his sons spent weeks camping in Mongolia to trace the wall That was followed in August by a flight to Ulan Bator in Mongolia, from where they camped in the wild while tracing what is marked on old maps as the Wall of Genghis Khan. William calculates the entire journey to have been some 15,000km (9,320 miles) and says flying the drone over these remote areas gave a whole new perspective on the ruins. "When you go to Mongolia, you find a wall that doesn't actually excite you. You can barely see it in the broad light of day. "Very early in the morning, just before sundown, if you're lucky you get low angle sunlight, you can see the shadow of this structure not snaking, but streaking straight across the steppe." But from the air it becomes "a phenomenal sight... with the empty steppeland, golden sunlight and the mound underlined by very very dark shadow". Items discarded around the wall, like this 16th Century rock bomb, give a clue to the people who built it "In my mind of all the shots that the boys took of the Great Wall from the air, that is the most surprising, because it just looks so amazing, the wall in that completely empty landscape, you feel as though you're on the very edge of Central Asia." William is also clearly fascinated by the role the wall has played in the history of the Chinese people. Seeing it from the air, he says, helps an observer get in to the mind of its creators. "We see the twists and turns, and we ask, why did it twist and turn there? Why did they route it along there, and not along there?" "The land beside the wall where the builders established their camps, their villages, where they sourced all their building materials - I view this as the Great Wall's historical landscape." Beyond the romance of travel and photography, this contrast of old and new underlines the other reason for their trip. "There's a lot of hullabaloo always about how long the Great Wall is, and stories about the wall getting shorter because it's getting damaged," says William. "So I'll be looking at the footage and, trying to work out how close things are getting to the wall. "There are laws and regulations made in the last 10 years to protect the Great Wall landscape, and I'm going to be be interested to see how the reality matches up." The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-38127250

Golden Globes hopes for Manchester by the Sea - BBC News

2017-01-06

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How luck led Casey Affleck to his Golden Globe nominated role in Manchester by the Sea.

Entertainment & Arts

Manchester by the Sea has won 70 awards including being named best film of 2016 at the US National Board of Review's awards Golden Globe nominated actor Casey Affleck says that he "got lucky" to get his part in drama Manchester by the Sea - after replacing his friend Matt Damon at the last minute. Damon, the star of the Bourne franchise, was originally going to direct and star in the film, which is nominated for five Golden Globe awards. But scheduling meant he had to pull out of both roles, remaining as a producer. Affleck believes that "there aren't many parts like this". And that's even for male actors at the height of their career. "It's so exhilarating and fun to get a part like this," he explains. "You get to do what you thought you'd do when you first started being an actor. The reality is, you end up doing so much stuff you thought you'd never have to do, and would never want to do again." Affleck plays Boston janitor Lee, who, having suffered painful tragedy in his own life, has to return to his home town of Manchester by the Sea to take care of his teenage nephew, following the death of his brother. Director Kenneth Lonergan has been nominated for two Oscars for writing Gangs of New York and You Can Count on Me The film was written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, who was nominated for an Oscar for his writing on Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. "The truth is there's so much media out there, so much TV, and there's a lot of material written for comedies and dramas, but there are very few things that have been brewing for years in the way Kenny writes things," the actor claims. "It's the antithesis of what our culture has come to be, I mean our Western pop culture of churning it out and gobbling it up. There are also a lot of great actors out there, and sometimes those scripts go to other people. I got lucky." Affleck, who was nominated for an Oscar in 2008 for his role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, grew up in the Massachusetts area where the film is set, along with his brother Ben and neighbour, Matt Damon. Affleck says he was "aware of the project for some time" and knew Damon was working on it. "When they asked me to do the part I said, 'Sure, that might mean we never get it made, but I'm honoured that you asked.' It was very clear to me that it was the kind of movie I would love even if no-one else did." However, not only did the film receive glowing reviews after its debut at the Sundance Film Festival last year, but Affleck is the favourite to receive the Globe for best actor in a drama. The film is also nominated for best screenplay, best director, best motion picture drama, and his co-star Michelle Williams is up for best supporting actress. She plays Affleck's ex-wife, and confesses that she "burst into tears" when she got the role. Casey Affleck won best actor at the Critics' Choice Awards and director Kenneth Lonergan won best original screenplay (tied with Damien Chazelle for La La Land) while Lucas Hedges won best young actor "I'd wanted to work with Kenny for so long," she says. "Casey and I had actually read for a play with him years ago. I was pregnant with my daughter at the time. Just knowing that it was finally going to happen, that we were all going to work together - I got a little tearful, yes. "It felt like a momentous occasion when you want something and it comes true, even when you have to wait a long time. "Casey and Kenny are good men and more than anything I am really happy to see their toil and efforts come good at this end because they deserve it. Casey looked like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders when we were making it." The drama is a study in grief, and how the three main characters, played by Williams, Affleck and Lucas Hedges as Lee's nephew Patrick, deal with their losses. Affleck agrees that "there were bright spots in the experience" and "a lot of light in the film", but admits it was a "demanding role". "Talking about acting sounds so precious and pretentious, it's almost unbearable, but there was a lot required emotionally - showing up there, and being able to be very upset and sad and tortured, yet contain it all, and keep it tight." Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck have both been nominated for Golden Globes Kenneth Lonergan has received critical praise for not providing a so-called "Hollywood answer" to suffering, calling such stories "dishonest fantasies". "Nobody needs me to tell anyone that real life can be difficult enough without watching something that tells you that everything will be OK, and in time you will understand about the circle of life and all this palaver," he says. "But to see my own experience reflected back at me helps me and makes me feel less alone. The sentimental approach which is so common is a cheat." However, Michelle Williams believes that Manchester by the Sea does offer "a glimmer of hope" in its portrayal of bereavement. "I think ultimately one of the things the movie is about is endurance. After hard times, you have to find ways to cleave to life and to people, even when you feel there isn't any hope. There's always a glimmer, I think that's what the movie offers, a glimmer of hope." Manchester by the Sea is released in the UK on 13 January. The Golden Globes take place on 8 January. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38466808

Om Puri 'relished being on set' - Director Gurinder Chadha - BBC News

2017-01-06

Actor Om Puri, who has died aged 66, 'relished being on set' says British film director Gurinder Chadha.

Veteran Indian actor Om Puri, star of British hit East is East, has died aged 66, after suffering a heart attack. Film Director Gurinder Chadha, who is behind films such as Bhaji on the Beach and Bend it Like it Beckham, has been working with Om Puri on her upcoming film Viceroy's House. She told the BBC how Puri loved being on set.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38528162

Newspaper headlines: 'Michael Fish' moment, Brexit ambassador, Jill Saward and penguin walk - BBC News

2017-01-06

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The economy is brought sharply into focus on the front pages, with the newspapers picking up on a reference to Michael Fish's infamous hurricane weather forecast.

The Papers

Nearly 30 years after that famous broadcast in which he dismissed reports that a hurricane was about to batter the south of England, former BBC weatherman Michael Fish is being compared with the failures of economic forecasters. The admission by a top Bank of England official that economists failed to predict the 2008 financial crisis and were wrong about their dire warnings over the post-Brexit economy, make the lead for the Times, Telegraph and Guardian. They highlight the comment by the Bank's chief economist, Andy Haldane, that the shortcomings were a "Michael Fish moment" for the profession. The Guardian says Mr Haldane is known to be concerned about mounting criticism of experts and the potential for the Bank's forecasts to be dismissed by politicians if errors persist. According to the lead in the Financial Times, the appointment of Sir Tim Barrow as Britain's ambassador to the EU following the resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers was "vigorously opposed" by the top official at the Brexit ministry. Several unnamed officials have told the paper that Olly Robbins, permanent secretary at the department, wanted to take control of negotiations with Brussels, and suggested downgrading the job of UK ambassador to a director-general, with a reporting line to Mr Robbins. But, the paper goes on, the Foreign Office sees it as a vital diplomatic post and moved to block Mr Robbins. The Department for Brexit tells the paper the claims are "fundamentally untrue." For its main story, the Mail says senior civil servants have made an extraordinary demand for extra cash to deal with Brexit. According to the paper, the Whitehall mandarins and diplomats say the vote to leave the EU has left them facing "unsustainable" pressure. It says the First Division Association - a union representing elite civil servants earning up to £208,000 - has called for an end to the system that limits increases to 10% for officials who win promotion and a lifting of the 1% pay cap. The Mail also gives over much of its front page to a tribute to Jill Saward, the woman raped at an Ealing vicarage in 1986 who went on to campaign for the police and courts to treat victims better. She died on Thursday at the age of 51. The paper thinks it is a disgrace that she never received an honour. Ealing rape victim Jill Saward waived her right to anonymity "Doesn't it say it all about our rotten honours system that while vapid celebrities and self-serving mandarins are showered with gongs, a woman of grit and integrity who immeasurably improved the lives of countless others got nothing?" it asks. The Mirror says she was inspiring, courageous and remarkable. Finally, there is some timely advice on how to avoid falling on icy surfaces - march like a penguin. According to the Times, penguins may look silly as they waddle around on their stubby legs but their walk is the ideal way to stay safe in cold weather. No slips: Penguins appear to push their centre of gravity forward A German study has found that penguins manage to stay upright by leaning forward so the centre of gravity lies on their front leg, whereas we usually split our weight between two legs - causing them to lose balance on slippery surfaces.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-38526284

CES 2017: Samsung and LG TVs battle to blend in - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Samsung and LG launch TVs that aim to better blend in to consumers' living rooms at the CES tech show.

Technology

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. LG unveiled its "wallpaper TV' at the CES tech show in Las Vegas South Korean tech giants LG and Samsung have launched TVs that aim to better blend in to consumers' living rooms. LG showed off a set that can be fitted almost flat against a wall while Samsung teased a new kind of TV - designed to look like a painting - that displays art when not in use. Samsung also unveiled a flagship set boasting greater brightness levels than before. Others, including Sony, also revealed new models. Samsung's flagship 75in (190cm) QLED 4K TV features the latest version of its quantum dot technology - tiny particles that emit different colours of light. These now feature a metal material that the firm says allows for better colour reproduction. Samsung has decided to stick with a curved display for its high-end models - despite criticism from some experts that viewing angles suffer with such designs. Samsung's quantum dots are tiny particles that emit light of different colours The QLED TV can achieve HDR (high dynamic range) brightness of between 1,500 and 2,000 nits - one nit equalling the light from a candle. "It's insanely bright," said Jack Wetherill, a tech analyst at Futuresource. "That is pretty power hungry one would imagine, but if they're going down the route of getting as good a picture as they can out of it, then fair enough." This sets it apart from other set makers who use another premium TV screen technology, OLED (organic light-emitting diode). Such screens use a carbon-based film allowing the panel to emit its own light, rather than being backlit - this enables the ultra thin designs. Quantum dot TVs might not be able to display the deepest blacks possible with OLED, but they are generally brighter. LG's newest TV sticks out just 3.85mm from a wall when mounted against it LG's new OLED 4K TV was as thin as last year's - just 2.57mm thick - and will be available in 65 and 77in models. But the firm has now designed a new mount that uses magnets so the set can be fixed flat against a wall, which the firm says means it doesn't cast "a single shadow". LG also announced its latest TVs would support four HDR formats - including Hybrid Log-Gamma jointly developed by the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK. This will allow sport and other live broadcasts to be shown in the format. Many experts agree that HDR makes a huge difference to the TV picture, making it seem richer and allowing for higher levels of contrast between light and dark tones. "It is more vibrant, the colours are more distinctive," said Mr Wetherill. "It does bring a much more impressive and immersive experience - no question about that." It is not yet clear which format will become popular with content-makers, so LG's inclusion of all four should ensure it does not become obsolete if and when a winner emerges. The Samsung Lifestyle TV could be mistaken for a painting Samsung also showed off images of its new Lifestyle TV, which it described as "a beautiful, always-on, truly smart display that transforms the TV to art". It comes in a wooden frame, in an attempt to look like a painting. Sony also announced a new 4K OLED TV - its first - the latest in its Bravia range. As well as an HDR processor that can upscale standard dynamic range content to "near 4K HDR quality", the set has also dispensed with in-built speakers. Instead, it emits sound via vibrations produced on the surface of the screen itself. The new Bravia TV doesn't have speakers - the screen vibrates instead, which emits sounds This wasn't demonstrated at the press conference, noted Mr Wetherill, but it was, he said, "an interesting concept". Panasonic did not discuss its OLED TV plans at its press conference, though it is possible a prototype will be on the CES trade show floor. At last year's consumer electronics show IFA in Berlin, the company had said it would release details of the TV during the winter. Follow all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38514171

BBC Sound Of 2017 winner: Ray BLK - BBC News

2017-01-06

Ray BLK, the Sound Of 2017 winner, explains how her south London neighbourhood shaped her music

It helped her deal with growing up in a tough south London neighbourhood. And that "hood" has shaped the music she has created so far. She says 2016 was a whirlwind of a year - and it looks like 2017 could follow suit with Ray BLK named the winner of BBC Sound of 2017.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38499321

Football sex abuse: Junior clubs must get coaches cleared or face suspension - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Junior football clubs in England face immediate suspension from the Football Association if their coaches are not cleared to work with children.

Last updated on .From the section Football Junior football clubs in England face suspension from the Football Association if their coaches have not been cleared to work with children. The warning, in a letter to clubs from the FA, follows allegations of historical child abuse in the sport. It is FA policy that all coaches of youth teams must have an FA accepted in-date criminal records check (CRC). The FA says while 99.7% of clubs have been compliant, there are more than 2,500 coaches without an in-date CRC. There are also nearly 5,000 youth teams without a named coach. FA chairman Greg Clarke has written to clubs demanding they update their information on the FA's Whole Game System (WGS) by midnight on 15 January. Failure to do so will mean "clubs will face suspension from all football activity without further notice", the FA says. Furthermore, a club's affiliation will be removed as of midnight on 28 February if they remain non-compliant with the requirement that their coaches having an in-date CRC. The letter warns clubs that if they "have a coach who is not compliant with this, you must not allow them to coach, train, supervise or assist at matches with any youth teams, until this requirement is met". It continues: "This is an essential aspect of any club's responsibilities when working with U18s and, as a club, you are responsible for ensuring that no-one coaches, or has unsupervised access to children, until they have an FA accepted check." The spotlight has fallen on abuse in football since a number of former footballers came forward publicly to tell their stories. Police said in December there are 429 potential victims linked to football, some as young as four at the time of the alleged offence, and 148 clubs are now involved, with 155 potential suspects identified.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38537776

Qatar Open: Sir Andy Murray reaches semi-final after Nicolas Almagro win - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Sir Andy Murray reaches the last four of the Qatar Open with a hard-fought victory over Spain's Nicolas Almagro.

Last updated on .From the section Tennis Sir Andy Murray progressed to the Qatar Open semi-finals by beating Spain's Nicolas Almagro 7-6 (7-4) 7-5. The top seed was broken in his opening service game by 31-year-old Almagro, ranked 44th in the world, but recovered to take the first set tie-break. The pair exchanged breaks early in the second set before the Briton prevailed. Murray will face third seed Tomas Berdych in the semis and, if he progresses, could meet Novak Djokovic in Saturday's final. Djokovic, whom Murray replaced as world number one in November, beat veteran Radek Stepanek 6-3 6-3 in their quarter-final to book a meeting with Fernando Verdasco of Spain in the last four. Elsewhere, Britain's Aljaz Bedene beat Slovakia's Martin Klizan to reach the quarter-finals of the Chennai Open in India. And Australia's Nick Kyrgios was beaten 6-2 6-2 by Jack Sock at the mixed teams Hopman Cup, in the tie between Australia and the United States. Kyrigos was defeated in under an hour and later pulled out of the mixed doubles event with a knee problem. His injury comes less than two weeks before the Australian Open - the first Grand Slam of the year in Melbourne.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38524526

Johanna Konta knocked out in Shenzen Open semi-finals by Katerina Siniakova - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

British number one Johanna Konta is knocked out of the Shenzhen Open in the semi-finals by world number 52 Katerina Siniakova.

Last updated on .From the section Tennis Johanna Konta suffered a shock defeat in the Shenzhen Open semi-finals, losing in three sets to world number 52 Katerina Siniakova. The British number one lost 1-6 6-4 6-4 to her 20-year-old opponent in China. Third seed Konta - the world number 10 - was the highest-ranked player remaining in the draw. "I'm happy I got to play four really great matches in the first week of the season. I feel very fortunate to have gotten that time on court," said Konta. The Briton won the opening set in just 22 minutes and led 4-2 in the decider, but Siniakova won four successive games to reach her third WTA final. Konta said: "I think she definitely started slower, and me, quite well. But all credit to her, she really raised her level in the next two sets. "She was going for every single shot and played quite freely, so it was a difficult match for me to do what I would have liked." Czech Republic's Siniakova, who beat second seed Simona Halep in the second round, will play American Alison Riske in Saturday's final. World number 39 Riske reached the final for the second year in a row by beating Camila Giorgi 6-3 6-3.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38527660

Is your child a cyberbully and if so, what should you do? - BBC News

2017-01-06

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What should you do if you find out your child has been bullying others online?

Technology

One in five teens claims to have been cyberbullied but few admit to being the bully Parents worry about their children being bullied online, but what if it is your child who is doing the bullying? That was the question posed by a BBC reader, following a report on how children struggle to cope online. There is plenty of information about how to deal with cyberbullies, but far less about what to do if you find out that your own child is the source. The BBC took advice from experts and a mother who found out her daughter had been cyberbullying her school friends. Nicola Jenkins found out that her 12-year-old daughter was posting unpleasant comments online from her teacher Few parents would want to admit that their child was a bully but Nicola Jenkins has gone on record with her story. You can watch her tell it here. "Nobody thinks that their own child is saying unkind things to other children, do they? I let them go on all the social media sites and trusted the children to use it appropriately. "Our form tutor phoned me up during school hours one day to tell me that there'd been some messages sent between my daughter and two other friends that weren't very nice. One of the children in particular was very upset about some of the things that had been said to her. "Her friend's mum spoke to me about it and showed me the messages that had been sent. When I approached my daughter about it, she denied that there had been anything going on. It took a while to get it out of her, but I was angry with her once I actually found out that she had been sending these messages. "I spoke to her teacher and to the other parents, and between us we spoke to the children to let them know that they can't be saying unkind things and to just make them aware that whatever they do is recorded and can be kept. And they all did learn a lesson from it. "I removed all the social media websites from her so she wasn't able to access them for a while and then monitored her input and what she's been saying to people. "But it did make me feel angry and quite ashamed that my daughter could be saying things like that to her friends, but she has grown up a bit since then and she's learnt her lesson. "You want to trust your children, but they can get themselves into situations that they can't get out of. "And as they get older, they look at different things. I know my son looks at totally different things to what my daughter does, so it's just being aware of what they are accessing and make sure that they are happy for you to look at what they are looking at as well." There is plenty of advice for parents on coping with cyberbullying but less on what to do if your child is the bully According to not-for-profit organisation Internet Matters, one in five 13-18 year olds claim to have experienced cyberbullying but there are few statistics on how many children are bullying. Carolyn Bunting, general manager of Internet Matters, offers the following advice: "First, sit down with them and try to establish the facts around the incident with an open mind. As parents, we can sometimes have a blind spot when it comes to the behaviour of our own children - so try not to be on the defensive. Talk about areas that may be causing them distress or anger and leading them to express these feelings online. "Make clear the distinction between uploading and sharing content because it's funny or might get lots of 'likes', versus the potential to cause offence or hurt. Tell them: this is serious. It's vital they understand that bullying others online is unacceptable behaviour. As well as potentially losing friends, it could get them into trouble with their school or the police. "If your child was cyberbullying in retaliation, you should tell them that two wrongs cannot make a right and it will only encourage further bullying behaviour. Stay calm when discussing it with your child and try to talk with other adults to work through any emotions you have about the situation. "Taking away devices can be counterproductive. It could make the situation worse and encourage them to find other ways to get online. Instead, think about restricting access and take away some privileges if they don't stop the behaviour. "As a role model, show your child that taking responsibility for your own actions is the right thing to do. Above all, help your child learn from what has happened. Think about what you could do differently as a parent or as a family and share your learning with other parents and carers." Twitter's image has been tarnished by trolls Many critics blame social media for not doing enough to deal with cyberbullying. Abuse is prolific on Twitter and it has pledged to do more, including improving tools that allow users to mute, block and report so-called trolls. Sinead McSweeney, vice-president of public policy at Twitter, explained why the issue is close to her heart: "As a mother of a seven-year-old boy, I've always tried to strike the right balance between promoting internet safety and encouraging the type of exploration, learning and creativity that the internet can unlock." She offered the following advice: "If you find that your child is participating in this type of behaviour, a good first step is to understand the nature of the type of material they're creating, who is the target, and try to ascertain their motivations. "If the bullying is taking place on a social media platform, make sure to explain to them why the behaviour is inappropriate and harmful, and to supervise the deletion of the bullying content they have created. If it continues, it may be worth seeking additional advice from a teacher or trusted confidant." The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38529437

Online career tips: How to get the job you want - BBC News

2017-01-06

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How do you go about making sure that your online professional profile is helping rather than hindering your career?

Business

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Jess Ratty talks about how she built her LinkedIn profile "I've gone from being a 16-year-old waitress to being a business owner and senior executive, and I couldn't have done that without my online network." Jess Ratty is a woman with a mission. She wants us all to get better at promoting ourselves professionally online - and creating our own career opportunities along the way. Given that changing jobs can be one of the hardest things we do, many of us might welcome anything that makes switching jobs easier. According to a survey by Hired, eight in 10 of us say we find changing jobs stressful - and more stressful than moving house, planning a wedding or even having root canal work. When it comes to job-hunting, Jess says the key is not to let your stress stop you from taking action: "Don't fret about things so much, or worry about how you might come across." It's something she has put into practice in her own career. Now a senior executive at Crowdfunder, the UK's biggest crowd-funding platform which raises funds from small investors, Jess says she's come a long way since dropping out of school. She started work at the Eden Project in Cornwall as a waitress, and says it was her colleagues who helped her realise she "could maybe start achieving great things myself." So she set about creating an online professional profile as a shop window for herself - and says having an active online presence has been crucial for her career. Being creative with your online profile helps you stand out from the crowd, says Jess "Crowdfunder found me through LinkedIn and went on to offer me a job." Crowdfunder's Dawn Bebe, who recruited Jess, says what's important for her when recruiting someone "is getting a sense of what they are like and what they are passionate about". Jess's experience is increasingly common, says Darain Faraz of LinkedIn. "A lot of the time, most people aren't looking for work, they are what we call passive candidates. But LinkedIn can help jobs look for you." Yet this only works if you have a complete profile, and sadly us Brits are not very good at self-promotion. We're more likely to share food pictures on our social media channels than our work successes or announcements of a new job. Even if you're not looking for a job "promoting yourself professionally" will put you on firms' radars, says LinkedIn's Darain Faraz "People do make judgements based on our online profiles," says Darain. And be assured, recruiters will also check your Twitter activity and Facebook profile as well: "Make sure that how you position yourself online is how you want to be seen," he adds. "You don't want your Saturday night becoming your Monday morning." Even if you're not looking for work it makes sense to keep you online profile updated, say recruiters The mistake many of us make is to only use professional networking sites when we're looking for a new role, says Darain. But what recruiters want to see is a track record, so that they can judge whether or not we are right for a job. "One of the first things we do is check [online] for potential candidates in the right geographical area who have the skills and interests that we think would work for us," says Crowdfunder's Dawn Bebe. The jobs recruitment sector has changed markedly in the past few years, with a vast amount of job searching and head-hunting now done online with sites such as Monster, Reed, Viadeo and Xing. LinkedIn has about 400 million members worldwide (in the UK it has 20 million members - some 60% of Britain's working population and students) and last year Microsoft paid over $26bn (£18bn) for LinkedIn. Now Facebook, with more than a billion monthly active users, has launched Workplace; it's a platform designed to help workers talk to each other, in-house. Could Facebook come to challenge LinkedIn? While it is currently for use within firms, given Facebook's size it has the potential to be a serious rival to LinkedIn. Jess has her own tip for young professionals. "You need to be creative and inventive with your online profile if you want to stand out," she says. "You need to be consistent if you are using it to develop your career." If you are thinking about potential downsides " you'll probably avoid them anyway," says Jess Jess says she always wanted to make her career in her home county - Cornwall. Besides working for Crowdfunder, she and her partner have now set up the Cornwall Camper Company, hiring out restored VW campervans to holidaymakers. She points out that thanks to online networking sites, "you can make a big impact wherever you are". But she also has this important piece of advice. Merely being online is no substitute for professional knowledge and commitment, she cautions: "You've got to know your stuff."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37047456

Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier: Hardliner or deal maker? - BBC News

2017-01-06

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Who is Michel Barnier? Nicholas Watt has an in-depth profile of the EU's chief Brexit negotiator.

UK Politics

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Just over half a century ago Britain's place as an estranged member of the European family was cemented by a Frenchman when President Charles De Gaulle vetoed the UK's attempts to join the EEC. Britain eventually joined the club. Now, as it leaves the EU, a political descendant of the wartime Free French leader will play the decisive role in deciding the nature of the UK's future relationship with the EU. Michel Barnier, the former French foreign minister who is the EU's chief negotiator on Brexit, has spent the last few months on a Grand Tour of Europe to agree a common front once the formal talks start in the spring. So just who is Michel Barnier? Is he a European federalist out to punish Britain or is he more of a deal maker who will work hard to avoid a so-called train crash Brexit in which the UK falls out of the EU in a disorderly fashion? The Barnier story begins in his backyard in the French Alps where he organised the 1992 Winter Olympic Games - one of his proudest achievements. To the Paris elite the Olympics marked Barnier out as something of provincial figure who is guilty of a grave offence for a senior French public official; he failed to attend the elite Ecole nationale d'administration. Baroness Bowles, the former Liberal Democrat MEP who knows Barnier from her time as chair of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs committee, says he was known as the "ski instructor". Lord Patten of Barnes, the former Tory chairman, who knew Barnier from his time as France's junior European commissioner, did not see him as a top flight politician. "He's not a joke. He's not a second rater - he'd be perfectly plausible, given our national differences, in a British cabinet in a sort of job like minister of transport," he said. "I'm not being too condescending but I don't think he'd be home secretary or foreign secretary." As someone who was shunned by the gilded elite of Paris, Barnier potentially has common ground with his UK counterpart, David Davis, whose friends feel he was patronised by former PM David Cameron's circle. But friends of Barnier suggest they were hardly soulmates when they both served as Europe minister because Davis opposed the EU's social chapter. As Europe minister, Barnier showed that he hailed from the Gaullist tradition in France which is suspicious of the Anglo-Saxon world view. But he is no diehard Gaullist and bears no ill will to Britain, according to an old ally. Michel Dantin, who is now an MEP, told Newsnight: "Michel Barnier is a Gaullist, a social Gaullist. His idea of Europe is a Europe of nations and not a federation. "I think that in the forthcoming negotiations he will respect the British nation because he is aware of history and his approach is to respect others." Barnier's Brussels breakthrough came in 2010 when he landed one of the biggest jobs in the European Commission - as internal market commissioner. This gave him oversight of the City of London, prompting howls of outrage that a Frenchman would undermine a key part of the UK economy. Lord King of Lothbury, the former governor of the Bank of England, raised his voice in a meeting with Barnier in his office in 2011 after he put forward proposals to regulate banks. King told Barnier that his ideas on the amount of equity finance banks should issue and the amount of liquidity the banks should hold ran were inconsistent with the proposals of the Basel committee. Bank sources said that King did not believe Barnier was hostile to the City; he was simply wedded to the idea of pan-European regulation. Mark Hoban, City minister at the time, saw a more pragmatic figure who underwent a learning curve. "Certainly I found him, at the beginnings of my dealings with him in the aftermath of the crisis, very keen to talk about the failure of Anglo Saxon capitalism because he knew that played well in continental Europe," he said. "Two years later, as I was leaving the Treasury, [I found him] more attuned to jobs and growth." Barnier's track record in Brussels made him the natural choice as the chief Brexit negotiator. Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, believes Barnier will be guided entirely by maintaining the sanctity of the European project. "Crucially he's of the project. He's a true believer in the religion of building a united states of Europe and so he's the man they're going to trust." Jonathan Faull, who has just retired after 38 years of service in the European Commission where he worked with Barnier, says he will not set out to punish Britain. But he will have red lines. "Mr Barnier will want to be constructive I have no doubt," said Faull. "He will want to secure the best possible deal for the 27 states of the EU, a deal which maintains their integrity and their fundamental principles governing their internal market." In private, Davis believes there are two Michel Barniers. One is the hardliner who vented frustration over Britain's approach at an informal meeting last year. But the Brexit secretary is expecting to meet a flexible deal maker once the formal negotiations are under way this spring. Dantin, one of Barnier's oldest political allies, warns Davis to work hard on building a relationship with him. "If we want the negotiations to succeed it is necessary to have confidence between the two main negotiators," he said. "If the negotiations go wrong the EU will not have much to lose but the UK will have much to lose. That is because the UK is effectively the supplicant." The future of Britain's scratchy relationship with the EU will, in the initial negotiations, rest in the hands of two political outsiders. Perhaps they will find common ground over their shared love of outdoors sport, though the silver haired and suave Frenchman would probably never be seen dead hiking across mountains in the style of his British counterpart.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38526355

West Ham United 0-5 Manchester City - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

Pep Guardiola's first taste of the FA Cup sees Manchester City thrash Premier League rivals West Ham 5-0 in the third round.

Last updated on .From the section Football Pep Guardiola's first taste of the FA Cup ended triumphantly as his Manchester City side thrashed Premier League rivals West Ham in the third round. City led 3-0 at the break, Yaya Toure starting the rout by firing a debatable penalty into the bottom left corner. Havard Nordtveit bundled Bacary Sagna's teasing cross into his own net, just 146 seconds before David Silva's composed tap-in. Shortly after the restart, Sergio Aguero cheekily diverted in Toure's shot to become the third-highest goalscorer in City's history. And John Stones headed in his first Blues goal as the visitors comfortably saw the game out in a rapidly emptying London Stadium. Following Friday's opening third-round tie, City are the first team in the pot for Monday's draw, which is live on BBC Two and online at 19:00 GMT. Watch all the FA Cup goals and read the reaction Guardiola has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks thanks to a combination of City's faltering form and his tetchy interviews. But his team responded with a devastating performance against the hapless Hammers. West Ham could not cope with the pace, power and precision of the visitors. Toure whipped in the spot-kick after Pablo Zabaleta fell over Angelo Ogbonna's standing leg before Nordtveit and Silva ensured City scored three first-half goals for the first time under their Spanish manager. The Blues were relentless as they condemned West Ham to their heaviest FA Cup home defeat. Former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach Guardiola has regularly been forced into defending his footballing philosophy in recent months but performances like this justify his perseverance. "West Ham could not live with their passing, their movement, their one-touch football," former England striker Alan Shearer said on Match of the Day. Hammers manager Slaven Bilic claimed ahead of the game that City "were not that confident anymore" after Guardiola's methods had been questioned following his team's mixed form in the past couple of months. How wrong the Croat was. But that, in part, was down to his team's inability - or refusal - to put the away side under any serious pressure when they were in possession. Sign up for the 2017 FA People's Cup and take your chance to win tickets to the FA Cup final and achieve national five-a-side glory. The Hammers failed to press the visitors in their own half, allowing Toure - who had more touches and made more passes than anyone else in his 78 minutes on the pitch - to dictate from his holding midfield role. However, it could all have been very different had Sofiane Feghouli not spurned a golden chance to pull the Hammers level at 1-1. The Algeria winger - only playing after his red card against Manchester United was rescinded - sidefooted wide of a gaping goal just seconds after Toure's penalty. And that proved the catalyst for the Hammers' collapse. "The way West Ham's heads went down is alarming. Alarming for the fans and for the manager. It was embarrassing," Shearer added. The Hammers have struggled for consistency in front of goal this season, scoring just 23 times in their 20 Premier League matches - four of which were netted against Swansea on Boxing Day. Regular injuries to Andy Carroll, Diafra Sakho and Andre Ayew have not helped matters, nor has on-loan Juventus forward Simone Zaza's inability to find his feet - or the net - in England. No wonder they have targeted an attacker in this transfer window, already having bids turned down for Sunderland's Jermain Defoe and Hull City's Robert Snodgrass. This was another toothless performance. And, like the humiliating 5-1 defeat against Arsenal last month, they were worryingly disorganised and open at the back. With some home fans leaving after City's third goal and those left at the final whistle jeering his team, could Hammers hero Bilic be starting to come under pressure? What they said Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola: "We were able to keep the ball more than the last games. We created more chances. Before the penalty we had three or four clear chances. After the second and third goal it was easy in the second half. "It's important to win away but it's not easy. I'd like to involve the fans and make them believe we are good. We are the good guys - we run a lot and fight." West Ham boss Slaven Bilic: "The penalty was the turning point because we looked good until then. It was maybe a soft one. "We had a great chance to equalise but we didn't. We made mistakes after the goal and started to chase the ball. Quickly it was 3-0 and game over. "It's a very bad day for us. It wasn't good enough. "What disappointed me the most is that we started to chase them all over the pitch and then conceded two more and it was all over." • None The Hammers suffered their worst home defeat in FA Cup history, having never previously lost by a five-goal margin • None Only once have West Ham suffered a bigger FA Cup defeat - 6-0 against Manchester United in January 2003 • None Sergio Aguero has been involved in 12 goals in 11 FA Cup appearances for Manchester City (10 goals, two assists) • None West Ham have shipped three or more goals in a game on eight occasions this season - twice as many as they did in the whole of 2015-16 • None John Stones scored his first club goal since April 2015 (for Everton against Manchester United in the Premier League) Back to the Premier League for both clubs next weekend. West Ham, who are 13th in the top flight, host London rivals Crystal Palace on Saturday (15:00 GMT), while fourth-placed City go to Everton on Sunday (13:30 GMT). • None Delay over. They are ready to continue. • None Attempt blocked. Nolito (Manchester City) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked. • None Attempt saved. Sergio Agüero (Manchester City) right footed shot from a difficult angle on the right is saved in the top left corner. Assisted by Nolito. • None Goal! West Ham United 0, Manchester City 5. John Stones (Manchester City) header from the centre of the box to the bottom right corner. Assisted by Nolito with a cross following a corner. • None Delay over. They are ready to continue. • None Delay in match Bacary Sagna (Manchester City) because of an injury. • None Offside, Manchester City. Bacary Sagna tries a through ball, but Pablo Zabaleta is caught offside. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38465098

CES 2017: The jacket that lets you stash 42 gadgets - BBC News

2017-01-06

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A gadget-friendly jacket shown off at CES has 42 secret pockets.

Technology

Scotte Vest doesn't advise using all 42 pockets at once As I swim in the ocean of shiny new tech that surrounds me at CES, I find myself wondering where on earth I would put all this stuff if I had to take it with me. One firm I met there thinks it has the answer - in the form of a jacket with 42 secret pockets, each tailored for a specific device. Scotte Vest's $150 (£120) sleeveless gilet is an Aladdin's cave of pockets: it includes a laptop-sized space on the back, somewhere to store a tablet in each of the front panels, an inside breast pocket for smartphones made out of touchscreen-friendly material and a channel for headphone cables or chargers. It also contains a sunglasses pouch with attached cleaning cloth. However, the firm does not recommend using all 42 pockets at once. "It is having a pocket for what you need at the moment," said spokesman Luke Lappala. "If style isn't necessarily your number one priority, you could fit everything you ever need in there." I can vouch for that, after stashing my 11in (28cm) laptop, charging cable and plug, smartphone, tablet, radio equipment, battery power bar and notebook in a single Scotte Vest garment. I didn't look or feel particularly elegant, and the weight of the laptop alone almost tipped me over twice - but once the load had settled onto my shoulders I began to feel like I was wearing a backpack rather than a gilet. It was surprisingly difficult to get everything back out again after this little experiment. I could feel the charger about my person but it took me a while to locate the pocket it was in. Helpfully, each garment comes with a small fabric map setting out the location of all the pockets. The idea was born in the year 2000 when chief executive Scott Jordan almost damaged his ears in an airport after getting a headphone cable tangled on a doorknob, Mr Lappala told me. It was inspired by the traditional fisherman's vest. The laptop pocket is on the back of the coat, making it feel like a backpack Scotte Vest claims to have sold more than 10 million garments so far, ranging from trench coats to shorts, all with varying tallies of pockets. It is great for travellers, said Mr Lappala. And drone pilots. The firm even has a rival in the form of the J25 made by AyeGear - although as its name suggests, that one has a mere 25 storage areas. I can't believe I've come to Las Vegas to write about pockets. Read all our CES coverage at bbc.co.uk/ces2017

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38527350

Cowboy lassoes runaway calf on highway - BBC News

2017-01-06

A Tennessee cowboy named David Bevill has lassoed a runaway calf on a highway from the bonnet of a sheriff's car.

A Tennessee cowboy named David Bevill has lassoed a runaway calf on a highway from the bonnet of a sheriff's car.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38524053

British Grand Prix: Silverstone race 'under threat because of costs' - BBC Sport

2017-01-06

The future of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone is reportedly under threat because of the financial risk of staging it.

Last updated on .From the section Formula 1 The future of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone could be under threat because of the "potentially ruinous risk" of staging the loss-making race. Circuit owner the British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC) is considering giving notice to exercise a contract-break clause at the end of 2019. A letter written by BRDC chairman John Grant - seen by ITV News - says a decision will be made by "mid-year". The BRDC's contract with Formula 1 runs until 2026. Silverstone first hosted the British Grand Prix in 1950 and has been the event's permanent home since 1987. Formula 1 chief Bernie Ecclestone told ITV News: "If they want to activate a break clause, there is nothing we can do. "Two other tracks have contacted us and we are keen to keep a British Grand Prix, there is no doubt about it, we want to have one." Three-time world champion Sir Jackie Stewart added: "I think it's a credible threat, not impossible for it to happen. I would be very sad if it did. "There's no other race track that would be able to host the British Grand Prix." For anyone who has followed Formula 1 for the last decade or two, another story questioning the future of the British Grand Prix is about as surprising as cold weather in winter. There is no doubt the British Racing Drivers' Club mean it when they say they are considering activating a break clause. But, equally, there is no doubt that it fundamentally amounts to posturing - Silverstone does not want to lose the British Grand Prix any more than do the 140,000 fans who went there to watch it last year. The issue is the cost of the 17-year contract - £12m in 2010; a 5% annual escalator means the race will cost nearly £17m this year and more than £26m by 2027. This is small by comparison with Russia, which pays $50m (£40.3m) a year. It's not that far out of line with the new deal signed by Italy for €68m (£58m) over 2017-19, which averages out at £19.3m a year. But Silverstone - almost alone among grands prix - receives no government funding of any kind. No other circuit in Britain is even remotely close to being able to replace it - so ignore any suggestions from F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone to that end. The solution lies in new F1 owner Liberty Media, which has made it abundantly clear it wants to retain and nurture the historic European races, home of the sport's core audience, as a bedrock of its new-look F1. Liberty will complete its takeover deal before the end of the first quarter of this year. So expect some time between then and this year's British Grand Prix on 16 July a compromise deal that revises the terms of the contract and secures the race's future.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38526002

Premature babies benefit from compact MRI scanner - BBC News

2017-01-24

Doctors in Sheffield are pioneering the use of a compact neonatal MRI scanner, one of only two in the world.

Doctors in Sheffield are pioneering the use of a compact neonatal MRI scanner to scan the brains of premature babies. The machine at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, one of only two in the world, is being used instead of ultrasound.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38724048

Supreme Court judgement on Brexit - BBC News

2017-01-24

The Supreme Court rules on whether Parliament or ministers have the power to begin the Brexit process.

The Supreme Court rules on whether Parliament or ministers have the power to begin the Brexit process.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38729017

Driving standing up conviction for tall Newcastle man - BBC News

2017-01-24

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A 6ft 7in (2m) Newcastle man admits driving standing up but later claims he was "just tall".

Tyne & Wear

Adam Elliott had photographs taken to show his height in relation to the size of his car A tall man has been convicted of driving while standing up after admitting dangerous driving. Adam Elliott was accused of showing off to other motorists with his head poking out of the roof of a convertible Ford Ka. The 26-year-old from Newcastle, who is 6ft 7in (2m) tall, pleaded guilty at Newcastle Crown Court but later blamed his height. Speaking after the hearing, he said: "I was not stood up, I am just tall." Judge Robert Adams said it was "pretty obvious" Elliott had been "showing off, demonstrating your height to people in an open top small car". "It was a dangerous thing to do," he said. Adam Elliott pleaded guilty to dangerous driving but later insisted he was just tall and not standing up in the car Mr Elliott, a car dealer, was seen in Gateshead and on the Tyne Bridge driving the car with the top down in January last year. He had been delivering the vehicle to a customer, he said. "I pleaded guilty to this because I was advised to, but I still insist I was not standing up," he said. "It's just because of my height. "I'm an excellent driver but I was advised to plead guilty to get it over with." The court heard Elliott had 12 previous convictions for driving while disqualified. He was given an interim driving ban of 12 months and will be sentenced next month. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-38730051

Davis Cup: Andy Murray set to miss Britain's World Group tie in Canada - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

Andy Murray is set to miss Britain's Davis Cup tie in Canada as he recuperates following his shock Australian Open loss.

Last updated on .From the section Tennis World number one Andy Murray has not been included in Britain's Davis Cup team for next month's tie in Canada as he recuperates following his shock exit from the Australian Open. The team, captained by Leon Smith, includes Kyle Edmund, Dan Evans, Jamie Murray and Dominic Inglot. But Smith said Andy Murray could still feature in Ottawa, from 3-5 February. "We'll just keep some dialogue going with Andy and see how he feels in the coming days," he told BBC Sport. Murray, who lost to Mischa Zverev in the fourth round in Melbourne, played a packed schedule in the second half of 2016 to reach the top of the world rankings. Smith added: "Andy has been unbelievable for our team. He gets on great with all the players and the staff and loves playing for Great Britain. "But he has to look after himself and has played an awful lot of tennis, particularly in the last six months of the year. "At some point you need to take a break." Find out how to get into tennis in our special guide. "We know the challenge the Canadian team poses," added Smith. Murray won 11 of a possible 12 points when he led Britain to their first Davis Cup victory for 79 years in 2015, and the Scot played in two of three ties last year as they reached the semi-finals. "There's no let-up, and especially when it's in Ottawa - where the logistics of it make it challenging," said Smith. "There's a lot of people, whether it's Tomas Berdych, Kei Nishikori, Roger Federer or Stan Wawrinka, having to look at the schedule and figure out what is best for them to be able to go through the whole year."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38728268

Lagos living: Solving Nigeria's megacity housing crisis - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Nigeria's largest city Lagos is facing a housing crisis. The BBC's Nancy Kacungira looks at how entrepreneurs are trying to solve the crisis.

Africa

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. New Nigerian homes are being built on land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean Nigeria's largest city Lagos is facing a housing crisis. The BBC's Nancy Kacungira looks at how entrepreneurs are trying to solve the crisis. Affordable housing is a considerable challenge for urban areas with large populations, and this is particularly prevalent in the Nigeria's city of Lagos. More than 500,000 people move to the city every year, and across Nigeria, there is already a housing deficit of more than 17 million units. There are on-going projects of varying scale trying to address the shortage; one is reclaiming land from the Atlantic Ocean to build a new city suburb called Eko Atlantic on the shores of Victoria Island. Tonnes of sand and heavy rock were poured into the ocean to provide 10 sq km (3.8 sq miles) of land for shops, offices and homes. Protected by an 8km long sea wall, the city will have its own power and water supply, and even an independent road network. Developers say Eko Atlantic is aimed at those on a middle income Eko Atlantic will be able to accommodate more than 500,000 people, but the multibillion dollar project has been perceived as being "only for the rich". Ronald Chagoury Jr, one of the developers, says it is a perception they have been trying to shake off. "From the beginning we always thought that this would be a city for the middle income. "We know that the middle income has grown significantly in the past 15 years and we know that it is going to grow even more." Still, some residents of Lagos feel that there are already many housing options - they just cannot afford them. Properties are pricey and landlords typically require annual, not monthly rent payments. Banking consultant Abimbola Agbalu tells me that he has to live at his grandmother's house, because renting his own place would be too expensive. Some housing projects remain unoccupied because they are pricey "If I wanted to rent a house where I would prefer in Lagos I would be spending at least 80% of my pay cheque to move in because I would have to pay two years' rent upfront, agency fees and maintenance fees. "And from then on I would have to spend another 60-70% of my pay cheque every year on rent, which doesn't make sense. "The problem is not that there are no houses. If you look around, there are empty houses all over Lagos; some can even go a year without being rented out. "The problem is that people can't afford them. We need better alternatives." One Nigerian company is thinking inside the box in order to provide a cheaper housing option - by making homes out of cargo containers. Dele Ijaiya-Oladipo says he co-founded Tempohousing Nigeria to provide a creative solution in a city that desperately needs low-cost housing. Shipping containers are modified to make houses but Nigerians are not keen on them "The only way we can get the housing deficit sorted is by providing good quality houses at affordable rates. "You can't build a million homes at a price that no-one will ever afford - that doesn't achieve anything." Mr Ijaiya-Oladipo's container homes are 25% cheaper than traditional housing, and can be built in as little as two weeks. "But the concept is still foreign to many Nigerians; so most of his clients tend to use the containers to build office spaces, not homes," he says. "Until a potential client actually sees our past work, they can't really picture how a shipping container can be used as a finished house or office. "We have to encourage people to visit our office which is made out of containers, so they can see what we are talking about." From a self-sustaining city to refurbished-shipping containers, private sector real-estate developers are offering both big and small solutions - and Lagos needs them all. The city is Africa's largest, and its population is expected to double by 2050; putting even more pressure on already limited housing options.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-38688796

The dental nurse who became an alligator catcher - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Texan Christy Kroboth used to have a quiet job in a dentist's surgery. Now she spends her time jumping on animals many times her size - and taping their jaws tightly shut.

Magazine

Christy Kroboth gave up her career as a dental nurse to focus on animals with a lot more teeth - alligators. When she started training as an alligator catcher she was the only woman in her class, but - as she describes here - that made her even more determined to show she could jump on an animal many times her size, and tape its jaws tightly shut. When I first got my licence I was only doing this as a hobby, I'd go to work as a dental assistant and catch my alligators on the side. But I got well known for taking the alligators alive, and I'm now doing this as my full time job. I've been a true animal lover all my life. I blame it on my mom. When we were little she was the one that would stop the car, pull over, and help turtles and ducks cross the road. We took in all the strays - cats, dogs, whatever needed a home. Where I live in the south part of Texas we have a lot of alligators and there are these big master-plan communities that have manmade ponds and these ponds have alligators in them. The homeowners are so afraid that they're going to eat their kids and that they're going to eat their dogs, but in the past 100 years we've only had one person killed by an alligator, so it's all just superstition. These alligators have been around since the dinosaurs. They're great for the ecosystem, they keep all the aquatic life in check. They're actually really shy animals and they don't want to hurt anybody. But people think of these guys as monsters. They have this vision in their head, and when I noticed this I thought, "What can I do to help change people's mindset?" After reports that golfers were being mean to this giant alligator, Kroboth was called in to safely remove it from a Texan golf course You can't just go out and catch an alligator because alligators are protected by the state here in Texas. You have to have a special licence and a permit. I registered to be an alligator hunter with Texas Parks and Wildlife and we had to go through a whole training course. I was the only girl in the class and also the youngest. We had to go through the rules, laws and regulations, and then the trainer told us: "OK, you've all passed the paperwork, now let's go do this hands-on." I'd never even touched an alligator before and for a split second I thought, "I can't do this." I called my mom and I said, "Mom, I can't do this!" And, of course, mom is like, "Come home right now, don't do it!" But something told me: "I have to do this - not only for the alligators, but to prove to these big ol' country boys that I can." I ran out to the pond, got the alligator, taped him up and ended up passing the test. It was one of the happiest moments of my life and that adrenaline rush lasted the whole day. The biggest alligator I've ever caught was a 13ft (4m) male weighing more than 900lb (408kg). I'm 120lb (54kg), so he outweighed me by a good amount. He was blind and lost in a parking lot and could not find his way back to the water. Usually we catch alligators by grabbing their jaws with both hands. Once you feel comfortable enough you let go with one hand and you reach the other hand into your pocket, grab your electrical [insulating] tape and tape his mouth shut. You've got to move fast. Well, this alligator was so big that my hands would not fit around his jaws. I was trying to call my buddies to help, but it was six o'clock in the morning and none of my volunteers were answering. I was able to sucker one of the local cops into trying to help me, but he didn't want to put his hands around the alligator's mouth, which is understandable. Another way to catch an alligator is to try to outweigh them by jumping on their back, so I talked this poor cop into jumping on to the back of this alligator with me. The trick is you put all your weight down and sit completely down on the alligator. Well, the officer didn't and he kind of just danced around the alligator which any untrained person probably would. The alligator didn't like that, so he started wiggling around, trying to get away. I knew instantly this was not going to work, so I stood up to back off and the alligator swatted me with his tail and made me fall on my bottom right there beside his un-taped mouth. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Christy Kroboth and police officer in action in the car park We were all worn out from trying to catch this alligator for four hours, the parking lot was getting busy and stores were starting to open so I had to make the decision to call in a game warden. I got very sad because game wardens usually don't come out and catch alligators, game wardens usually come out and kill alligators. I went to my car and I started crying because I'd been defeated by this animal. I called the game warden and he said, "Christy, stop crying. I am going to come help you. Do not touch that alligator until I get there." Well, when he said that I just got so much energy, I was so happy. I got out of my car like I could just conquer the world because somebody was coming to help me. Somehow I was able to go up to the alligator and hold his jaws in my arm and tape his mouth shut with my right hand. We ran to Home Depot and got zip ties to tie the alligator's hands behind his back like he was in handcuffs so he couldn't walk off. Then the game warden showed up and he said, "I told you not to catch him!" I said, "I'm sorry, I just had all this confidence and I was able to do it!" We had to borrow a forklift to pick the alligator up and load him in to my buddy's truck, because he was so big. Potentially dangerous alligators that cannot be released back into the wild are taken to a farm with tons of acreage and tons of ponds. But if the alligator can be released in the wild we have certain release sites where we can drop them off. I have an SUV and sometimes the smaller alligators will want to climb over the seats and try to make their way to the front to help me drive, so it's me and the alligator waving at people going down the freeways. I've found out if you make it freezing cold in your car the alligators are calmer. So although it's the middle of summertime here in Houston - 97F (36C), humidity - I'm on the freeway in a jacket with gloves and a scarf and a blanket wrapped around me because my car is freezing cold. But the alligator is behaving, so that's all that matters. Sometimes they go to the bathroom, and alligator poo is not that great, so we'll have to roll down the windows and travel on down the road. Being the animal lover I am I think it's very important that we educate everybody on the animals that are living in their backyards and help them understand that we can all live together. I have three educational alligators, their names are Cam, Taylor and Halo. We call them our "edugators" because we take them to schools and we teach people alligator safety and alligator education. I work with these alligators every single day, they're used to being handled so they don't see us as a threat. They'll even sit on the couch and watch TV with me when they're not in their enclosures. When I go out on a catch sometimes there's a very afraid person there whose mindset is changed. They may say, "Oh, I understand his importance now, I like him, let's name him." When I see that change in people that's what really drives me to do what I do. That's why I wake up and why I do my job every single day. Listen to Christy Kroboth speaking to Outlook on the BBC World Service Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38641709

Ryan Mason: Hull City midfielder talking again after fracturing skull - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

Hull midfielder Ryan Mason is conscious and has been speaking about the incident in which he fractured his skull during Sunday's game at Chelsea.

Last updated on .From the section Football Hull City midfielder Ryan Mason is conscious and has been speaking about the incident in which he fractured his skull during Sunday's game at Chelsea, the club said in a statement. Mason, 25, clashed heads with Blues defender Gary Cahill 13 minutes into the Premier League match. He was taken to St Mary's Hospital in London, where he had surgery. "Ryan and his family have been extremely touched by the overwhelming support," added the statement. "They would very much like to thank all of those who have posted such positive comments both on social media and in the press over the last 24 hours." Hull added Mason would continue to be monitored at the hospital "over the coming days". Tigers captain Michael Dawson, club doctor Mark Waller, head of medical Rob Price and club secretary Matt Wild visited Mason in hospital on Monday. Cahill, Chelsea captain John Terry and assistant manager Steve Holland had visited on Sunday to check on Mason's well-being, and spent time with his family. Mason, Hull's record signing, fractured his skull as he attempted to head the ball clear of his own box following a cross from Pedro. He got to the ball a split second before Cahill, who was already committed to his attempted header, and the pair collided. Both players spent a lengthy period receiving treatment, though Cahill was able to continue. Mason joined Hull from Tottenham last August for a club-record undisclosed fee. He has scored one goal in 16 Premier League appearances for the Tigers. Prior to his move, he made 53 top-flight appearances for Tottenham, and had loan spells at Yeovil, Doncaster, Millwall, Lorient and Swindon. Hull lost Sunday's game 2-0 as goals from Diego Costa and Cahill gave Chelsea a victory that took them eight points clear at the top. Head traumas and the damage they can cause When head trauma happens, doctors are obviously concerned about how much damage there might be to the brain. Some skull fractures need little or no treatment and will heal by themselves with time. Others need urgent treatment. Any bits of bone that have been pressed inwards can be removed and returned to their correct position. If necessary, metal wire or mesh may be used to reconnect the pieces. Once the bone is back in place, it should heal. 'Lessons appear to have been learned' Peter McCabe, chief executive of brain injury association Headway, said the reaction of the medical teams was "exemplary". McCabe, who was at Stamford Bridge, added: "Headway has been critical of the way in which head injuries have been treated in many high-profile football incidents in recent years, but it is positive to see that lessons appear to have been learned."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38718324

Newspaper headlines: MPs' 'new plot to thwart Brexit' - BBC News

2017-01-24

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The Supreme Court's ruling that Parliament must vote on whether the government can start the Brexit process dominates Wednesday's front pages.

The Papers

Most of the papers lead on the fall-out from the government's Brexit court defeat The Brexit Supreme Court ruling makes the lead for nearly all the papers, but one of the most eye-catching headlines can be found in the inside pages of the Daily Mail. "Champions of the People", it proclaims, praising the three justices who found themselves in the minority as they sided with the government in the case. The Mail attracted controversy in November when it branded three High Court judges "enemies of the people" for ruling Parliament had to be consulted over Brexit. The Mail thinks it is not good for democracy that this decision has been now backed by the Supreme Court, arguing this, in effect, turns the EU referendum into a "mere opinion poll". The Guardian is pleased with the Supreme Court judgement, saying it upheld a major constitutional principle in the face of what it describes as "shameful attacks" by the Brexit press. It think the government should now publish a formal White Paper on its goals for Brexit. But the Financial Times warns MPs against trying to micro-manage the negotiations. The Daily Telegraph says Parliament has a duty to act responsibly and not seek a re-run of the referendum campaign. "What's not to like when British judges in Britain's Supreme Court rule that British law makes the British Parliament sovereign," is the Daily Mirror take on Tuesday's Brexit ruling. But it is not an opinion that is shared by all the leader writers. The Times warns the Lords against trying to frustrate Brexit. It would do so at its peril, says the paper, adding: "Showdowns between the two houses rarely end well for the Lords and the country does not need yet another constitutional headache." The Daily Telegraph says that ministers are privately warning the government is prepared to flood the Lords with hundreds of Conservative peers if it obstructs the process of leaving the EU. The Daily Mail believes new recruits are being discouraged from joining the Army because of historical inquiries into soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. It says the Army remains 4% below its required strength, the nearly 7,000 cadets who signed up in the past year being about 3,000 short of the target. A group campaigning to end the investigations tells the Mail that the figures are no surprise, asking why anyone would want to join the forces when they could be hounded for years. The Financial Times thinks the world ought to start taking seriously US President Donald Trump's threat to impose trade tariffs in order to protect American goods. In an editorial it argues that many still assume he is bluffing in order to win better deals. But, it says, the first few days of his presidency have shown that he is not posturing and he thinks protectionism will make America richer. The FT wonders how far he will get before he and his country both discover just how wrong he is. The reported Trident missile failure may have made the headlines in recent days, but the Times reminds us that problems involving nuclear submarines are not new. It reports on a CIA document which has revealed that a Soviet submarine and an American one, which was carrying a 160 nuclear warheads, crashed into each other in 1974 near Holy Loch, about 30 miles from Glasgow. One expert says the crash was so serious there was a danger that the crews could have tried to defend themselves - believing they were under attack - leading to the possibility of war. The growing number of homes with wood-burning stoves is partly being blamed for worsening air pollution levels in London, according to the Daily Telegraph. Air quality readings in some parts of the capital were worse this week than in Beijing. The weather and traffic pollution have led to the alert but, according to experts at King's College, wood fires were also responsible with more than a million homes now having the stoves. David Cameron explains in the Times why he is becoming the president of Alzheimer's Research UK On its front page, the Daily Mirror again has photos of drivers clutching their mobiles while out on the road. Four months after the paper began its campaign to change public attitudes, it asks, "When will we ever learn?" A traffic officer tells the paper he has heard every excuse in the book from the drivers he has pulled over. He says one builder tried to throw his phone out the window when he was caught, while another woman insisted she did not own one, until it went off under the seat where she had hidden it. The Mirror says cars and vans are deadly weapons in the hands of what it calls "mobile phone morons" and calls for more of them to be banned. In the Times, David Cameron explains why he is becoming the president of Alzheimer's Research UK. He says there needs to be a deeper understanding of the disease so that dementia is not accepted as inevitable in later life. The paper says the article represents his "first important political intervention since leaving Downing Street". It thinks Mr Cameron is concerned that Theresa May could downgrade funding for dementia research which for him was a "personal priority."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-38739900

Why Brexit ruling is a relief for the government - BBC News

2017-01-24

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The government lost its Supreme Court appeal, but ministers will still be relieved at the ruling.

UK Politics

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg sets out three key points from the ruling Certainly, the prime minister did not want to find herself in the position of having to ask MPs for permission to start our divorce from the European Union. Today's verdict from the justices doesn't take away from the reality that having to go to Parliament before triggering Article 50 is a political inconvenience Theresa May very much wanted to avoid. Nor does it change the sentiment among opposition MPs, some of whom are determined to try to amend whatever legislation the government puts forward to include guarantees of this or that, to try to force a vote on staying in the single market, or to push for final binding votes on the process when negotiations are complete. However, the sighs of relief are real in Whitehall this morning for two reasons. Nicola Sturgeon wanted the Scottish government to be consulted before Article 50 was triggered The justices held back from insisting that the devolved administrations would have a vote or a say on the process. That was, as described by a member of Team May, the "nightmare scenario". The Scottish National Party has said it would not try to veto Brexit, but there is no question that having a vote on Article 50 in the Holyrood Parliament could have been politically troublesome for the government. After the judgement it seems like an unexploded bomb. And second, the Supreme Court also held back from telling the government explicitly what it has to do next. The judgement is clear that it was not for the courts but for politicians to decide how to proceed next. That means, possibly as early as tomorrow, ministers will put forward what is expected to be an extremely short piece of legislation in the hope of getting MPs to approve it, perhaps within a fortnight. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Attorney General Jeremy Wright: "The government will comply with the judgement of the court" Nightmare number two for the government would have been explicit instructions from the court about the kind of legislation they had to introduce. That wouldn't just have made ministers' lives very difficult when they want, above all else, to produce something that gives their opponents minimal room for manoeuvre. But it would have raised spiky questions about the power of the courts versus our politicians and parliaments - a fight few had the appetite to have.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38730907

Australian Open 2017: Johanna Konta showing mental strength in bid for major title - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

British number one Johanna Konta takes on Serena Williams against the background of upheaval and new pressures, writes Russell Fuller.

Coverage: Daily live commentary on BBC Radio 5 live; live text on selected matches on the BBC Sport website; TV highlights on BBC Two and online. As a hugely successful former coach to Grand Slam winners Kim Clijsters and Victoria Azarenka, Wim Fissette was not short of job offers for the 2017 season. But after British number one Johanna Konta made her interest clear, the softly spoken 36-year-old Belgian spotted a wonderful opportunity. "From the outside, she looked like a very ambitious, hard-working player with a very strong body," Fissette recalled on the eve of Konta's Australian Open quarter-final against Serena Williams (02:00 GMT, Wednesday). 'No weaknesses - but she can be better in every aspect' Fisette and Konta started working together a couple of weeks after her rewarding partnership with Esteban Carril reached the end of the road. The two had been unable to agree financial terms for the new year, but after a promising week with Fissette at the Mouratoglou Academy in Nice, Konta had a plan in place for the next stage of her career. The omens are extremely encouraging. After losing in the semi-finals in Shenzhen in the first week of the year, Konta beat Agnieszka Radwanska for the first time in her career to win the prestigious WTA title in Sydney. She won 10 sets in a row in the process, and has now extended her unbroken run to 18 after four comprehensive victories in Melbourne. "The more I know about her, the more I like her as a player," Fissette told BBC Sport. "She's physically very strong, she's got a big serve - for sure top three in women's tennis - and she's got big groundstrokes. I think there's not a weakness in her game, but I do believe she can be better in every aspect." What is so impressive is that 2016 should be such a hard act to follow. Konta won her first WTA title in Stanford, and finished as the runner-up in Beijing (one of the four most important tournaments on the women's tour) having started the year with that semi-final appearance at the Australian Open. Players often struggle to reproduce the form of a breakthrough season, but Konta is bucking the trend. "We've seen this time and time again on both tours," says Courtney Nguyen, a senior writer for the WTA Tour. "You get a big result, you have a breakout season, and the following season you end up suffering a bit of a sophomore slump. "It can be very difficult playing with that pressure of knowing what can be expected of you. What's so refreshing with Jo is that's just not how she sees the world. She takes it all in her stride." It is also remarkable how Konta appears to have dealt so well with the end of her partnership with Carril, as well as the untimely death of her mental coach. Juan Coto was a vital component of her team and it was his counsel which helped kick-start her rapid rise through the rankings. Konta prefers not to reflect publicly on that difficult period, or how she has adjusted so successfully since, which is perhaps a strategy of which Coto would have approved. 'There will be a day when she wins a Grand Slam' The 25-year-old is now very much in demand with the international - as well as the British - media. She conducted six meaty television interviews - including with Australia's Channel 7 and the US-orientated Tennis Channel - after her fourth-round victory over Ekaterina Makarova. She is increasingly confident in her conversations, happy to discuss changing her two-month-old nephew's nappy, and slowly but surely prepared to give a little more insight into her approach. But will all this be enough to bring her victory over Serena Williams the first time they ever share a court together? Some opponents seem to have lost such a match in their mind before a ball is struck, but Konta is different and will genuinely, and quite rightly, believe she can win. No other current player can quite compare to the 22-time Grand Slam champion, but Konta was not at all overawed by Serena's sister Venus in their three meetings. Two of them she won: in the opening round of last year's Australian Open, and then in the final in Stanford last July. And Fissette's very first impressions of Konta are also worth recalling. "The first time she played a player I was coaching - that was Victoria Azarenka in China - I was very impressed with the attitude she had," he says. "She showed respect to the player but she was there to win the match. She came on the court with the belief that she could beat a top player like her and I still see that. "I believe there will be a day when she will win a Grand Slam."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38721582

2018 Paralympics: Russia could miss Games, says IPC president Sir Philip Craven - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

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Russian athletes could be banned from next year's Winter Paralympics, says the president of the International Paralympic Committee.

Disability Sport

Russian athletes may still be banned at next year's Winter Paralympics, says the president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). Sir Philip Craven also said the achievements of athletes at the Sochi Games in 2014 have been "tarnished" by the Russian doping scandal. Asked if Russia will have a team in Pyeongchang, Craven said: "I don't know and I don't think many people do. "I'm not looking for someone to say sorry, but let's get it fixed." Russian athletes were banned from all Paralympic competition - starting with the Rio Games - following the publication of the initial McLaren report in July. The second report found more than 1,000 Russians may have benefited from a state-sponsored doping programme over a four-year period, including London 2012 and Sochi 2014. Craven, speaking before this week's IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships, which will not feature a Russian team, insisted the ban was the "right thing to do". However, he said he wants Russia to return in time for athletes to be eligible for the final qualification phase for next year's Paralympics in South Korea. "Russia is a great sporting nation and without them being here they are missed in a sporting sense," he told BBC Sport. "But we can't have nations competing when their performances have been tarnished by what's gone on before." In December, the IPC set up an independent taskforce which has set the Russian Paralympic authorities a number of conditions which must be met before their athletes can return to competitive disability sport events run by IPC. Of the six Winter Paralympic sports, only wheelchair curlers are able to compete internationally in Paralympic qualification events as their sport is run by the World Curling Federation. The other five - alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, snowboard and ice sledge hockey - are all governed by IPC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/38728407

Australian Open 2017: Venus Williams & Coco Vandeweghe through to semi-finals - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

Venus Williams beats Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to reach the Australian Open semi-finals for the first time in 14 years.

Last updated on .From the section Tennis Coverage: Daily live commentary on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra; live text on selected matches on the BBC Sport website; TV highlights on BBC Two and online from 21 January. Venus Williams reached the Australian Open semi-finals for the first time in 14 years with a straight-set win over Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Williams, the 13th seed, saw off 24th seed Pavlyuchenkova 6-4 7-6 (7-3) in the first of the quarter-finals. The 36-year-old American has never won the title, her best effort a runner-up finish to sister Serena in 2003. She goes on to face unseeded American Coco Vandeweghe, who thrashed Spain's seventh seed Garbine Muguruza 6-4 6-0. • None Watch day nine highlights on BBC Two from 16:45 GMT on Tuesday • None Konta 'as prepared as possible' for first Serena meeting Vandeweghe, 25, followed up her win over world number one and defending champion Angelique Kerber with a crushing defeat of French Open champion Muguruza. "I really wasn't feeling all that great out there, I was feeling kind of nervous," said Vandeweghe. "I just tried to play my best, stay within myself, keep my patterns. I fought through a few break points on her serve, kept on the pressure in the first set and then she finally cracked. "Once I got rolling in the second it was like a freight train. You couldn't stop it." "I'd like to be champion" - Venus Williams, meanwhile, dropped serve four times against Pavlyuchenkova but was much the stronger in the decisive moments, becoming the oldest woman to reach a Grand Slam semi-final since Martina Navratilova at Wimbledon in 1994. "I'm so excited. Today was such a hard-fought match. She never let up," said the seven-time Grand Slam champion. "It's wonderful to be here at the start of the year. I want to go further. I'm not happy with this. "I try to believe. Should I look across the net and believe the person across the net deserves it more? "This mentality is not how champions are made. I'd like to be a champion, in particular this year. The mentality I walk on court with is: I deserve this." On Wednesday, Serena Williams will play Britain's Johanna Konta at about 02:00 GMT, following the match between Czech fifth seed Karolina Plisokva and Croatia's Mirjana Lucic-Baroni.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38727575

Oscars 2017: Bluff your way through this year's best picture nominees - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Not seen the films up for the best picture Oscar? Let this guide bring you up to speed.

Entertainment & Arts

The biggest prize at the Oscars on Sunday is saved for last - the Academy Award for best picture. This year, nine films are nominated. If you've not had a chance (or the desire) to see them all, here's a guide to what you need to know - which means that this contains spoilers. Make sure you read this before going anywhere near a water cooler on Monday morning. "What do you mean, I'm not nominated for best actress?" Who's in it and who directed it? Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker and some aliens that look like giant squid are the main stars. Denis Villeneuve is the director. What's it about? Aliens. NO WAIT COME BACK. Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, a linguistics expert who is called in by the US Army to translate what aliens who have landed at random spots around the world are trying to say. Oh, one small thing, she can also see into the future. And has to deal with the fact that she knows her future daughter is going to die of cancer. So yeah, it's pretty intense. What did the critics say? "An intelligent, eloquent and stirring sci-fi that grips from start to finish, Arrival is up there with the year's best movies." [Total Film] How likely is it to win? It's picked up a string of trophies during awards season already, but it would it's unlikely to take home the main prize at the Oscars. Talking point: Even though it's up for best picture, Amy Adams failed to secure a nomination in the best actress category - she was nominated at the Golden Globes and Baftas, though. Who's in it and who directed it? Viola Davis and Denzel Washington play husband and wife Troy and Rose Maxson. Washington also directed the film, based on the August Wilson play Fences. What's it about? This family drama set in 1950s America is centred around the domineering Troy Maxson, who rules his home with an iron fist and has a volatile relationship with his son Cory. That's not to say he doesn't have a loving relationship with Rose, but it's fair to say her patience is tested by his behaviour later in the film (spoiler: he cheats). What did the critics say? "It's all too seldom that a feature film combines brilliant acting with a spellbinding flow of language." [The Wall Street Journal] How likely is it to win? While Washington and Davis are great, the film isn't exactly... cinematic. This one is an outsider. Talking point: It's not the first time Washington and Davis have played these roles - they were the Maxsons on Broadway in 2010, winning Tony Awards for their performances. Who's in it and who directed it? Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn, Hugo Weaving and Teresa Palmer are in the cast of this Mel Gibson war epic. What's it about? The true story of a guy called Desmond Doss, a World War Two medic who joined the army but refused to even touch a gun - due both to his Christian faith and the fact he has a violent father. He struggles to be accepted in the army at first but goes on to single-handedly save the lives of 75 men. Warning: it's quite (okay, extremely) gory. What did the critics say? "Thanks to some of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed, Gibson once again shows his staggering gifts as a film-maker, able to juxtapose savagery with aching tenderness." [Rolling Stone] How likely is it to win? It's currently the seventh favourite out of the nine - so not very. Talking point: The film has been seen as something of a comeback for Mel Gibson. His nomination of best director is a sign of him being welcomed back into Hollywood after his career hit rock bottom. Who's in it and who directed it? Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster and Chris Pine star; David Mackenzie directed. What's it about? An ex-con (Foster) and his brother (Pine) resort to robbing banks in an attempt save their family's Texan ranch after the death of their mother. Bridges plays the ranger on their case. It's been described as a modern Western, but it could also be described as a cops and robbers drama with slices of sharp comedy, or a study of two brothers battling against the system. What did the critics say?: "Hell or High Water is a thrillingly good movie - a crackerjack drama of crime, fear and brotherly love set in a sun-roasted, deceptively sleepy West Texas that feels completely exotic for being so authentic." [Variety] How likely is it to win? It's gritty, heartfelt and beautifully written, but it's fair to say this is the rank outsider. And you could be forgiven for it having gone under your radar - it was released in the UK last September, and in August in the US. Talking point: The producers had to deal with sweltering conditions and rattlesnakes during filming, describing the conditions as "insufferable". What's that saying about suffering for your art..? Who's in it and who directed it? Taraji P Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae play the three leads. Theodore Melfi directs. What's it about? Three female mathematicians take jobs at Nasa during the 1960s space race, challenging racial and sexist prejudice along the way. Katherine Johnson is made to drink from a "coloured" coffee urn and go on 40-minute breaks to get to the "coloured" toilets on the other side of the NASA campus, despite being one of the brightest brains of the whole project. What did the critics say? "Hidden Figures, both a dazzling piece of entertainment and a window into history, bucks the trend of the boring-math-guy movie." [Time] How likely is it to win? Could be a surprise winner - and it would definitely be a popular one. The film has done incredibly well at the box office. Talking point: Free screenings of the film have been put on in the US for young girls who are likely to be inspired by it. Who's in it and who directed it? Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are the all-singing, all-dancing stars in Damien Chazelle's film. What's it about? For those who've been buried under a rock (or just refuse to be swept along by the hype)... the musical traces the stories of aspiring actress Mia and pianist Sebastian, who dreams of opening his own jazz club. What did the critics say? "Audacious, retro, funny and heartfelt, La La Land is the latest great musical for people who don't like musicals - and will slap a mile-wide smile across the most miserable of faces." [Empire] How likely is it to win? Very. Like, very very. Bookies say it is the overwhelming favourite - and it doesn't hurt that it's a film all about Hollywood itself. Talking point: Some have deigned to suggest that La La Land is overhyped and overrated - but that hasn't stopped its juggernaut-like journey through awards season. Who's in it and who directed it? Sunny Pawar is Saroo as a young boy, with Dev Patel playing him as an adult. There's also Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman. The film is directed by Garth Davis. What's it about? This is the staggering true story of a young Indian boy who is adopted after losing his family at a young age. But he manages to find them again, decades later. With a bit of help from Google Earth. What did the critics say? "The beauty of Lion is that it explores and allows for the unique possibilities and power of multiple homes, multiple families and multiple selves." [The Chicago Tribune] How likely is it to win? Dev is certainly in the frame for best supporting actor, but it's not that likely to translate to best picture success. Talking point: It's been making people cry. A lot. And not just audiences - both Dev and Nicole Kidman say the script made them weep. So if you go to see it, take tissues. Who's in it and who directed it? Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams star, with Kenneth Lonergan the director. What's it about? Caretaker Lee Chandler, played by Affleck, has to look after his teenage nephew after his brother (the boy's father) dies. And he does this while still grieving for his own young children, who died in a house fire. It's safe to say this film is short on laughs. What did the critics say? "Manchester by the Sea is heartbreaking yet somehow heartening, a film that just wallops you with its honesty, its authenticity and its access to despair." [Los Angeles Times] How likely is it to win? The Academy tends to like gritty, serious films which could explain why it's currently fourth favourite. Talking point: The original idea was thought up by Matt Damon and John Krasinski, from the US version of The Office. Damon was actually meant to star as Lee originally, but had other filming commitments. Who's in it and who directed it? Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris and Janelle Monae star in Barry Jenkins's film. What's it about? Moonlight tells the story of a young man named Chiron through three stages of his life, as he battles life in extreme poverty with an abusive drug addict mother, all the while trying to come to terms with his sexuality. He has one gay experience in his teenage years but struggles to accept his sexuality in a neighbourhood that is largely hostile towards it. What did the critics say? "It's a thrilling, deeply necessary work that opens up a much-needed and rarely approached on-screen conversation about the nature of gay masculinity." [The Guardian] How likely is it to win? It's currently second favourite and has been picking up awards left, right and centre - so watch this space. Talking point: Naomie Harris is nominated for best supporting actress - yet she managed to squeeze all of her filming into just three days. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38586840

Rare bat born by C-section in San Diego Zoo - BBC News

2017-01-24

A Rodrigues fruit bat has been born by C-section at San Diego Zoo.

A Rodrigues fruit bat has been born by C-section at San Diego Zoo. The species is critically endangered and only found on Rodrigues Island, which is 300 miles east of Madagascar.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38727488

Ross Brawn eyes Formula 1 changes to make sport 'purer & simpler' - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

The new racing boss of F1, Ross Brawn, says he wants to make changes that will make the sport "purer & simpler".

Formula 1's new racing boss Ross Brawn says he wants to develop a purer, simpler sport in which more teams and drivers can win. The ex-Mercedes team boss, who has been appointed managing director of racing by F1's new owner, was critical of some rule changes of recent years. Brawn said he wanted to "narrow the gap between the top and bottom" of the field and give F1 a broader appeal. "I have ideas we should study and perhaps use in 2018 or 19," he said. Brawn pointed to the example of football's Premier League, where Leicester City were able to transform themselves from relegation candidates to champions in the space of 12 months and on a limited budget. The 62-year-old said: "We all know the analogy of Leicester City - that would be the ideal in F1, when a good team on a great year with a great driver could really mount a challenge. But at the moment that's not really possible." Brawn is a member of a new senior management team appointed following the removal of Bernie Ecclestone from his position as chief executive. American media executive Chase Carey, who was appointed president when new owner Liberty Media began its takeover in September, has now also taken on Ecclestone's former title. Brawn is heading up the sporting and technical side of Liberty's business and former ESPN sales and marketing chief Sean Bratches is to run the commercial side. What needs to change? Carey has outlined plans to better promote the sport, by making more of grands prix as events in their host country and with a much wider use of digital media. Brawn's job is to hone the on-track show to make it more appealing after criticism it has become predictable and has lost some of its edge in recent years. He was critical of decisions made by Ecclestone, such as the adoption of a double-points finale in 2014 and a short-lived attempt to change the format of qualifying at the start of last season. He told BBC Sport: "These have been short-term, knee-jerk reactions and that is exactly what we mustn't do. "We need to stabilise the small teams and get them on a better financial footing. "We need to reduce the scope of the technology because there is too big a gap between the bigger and smaller teams." He also hinted he wanted to remove the controversial drag reduction system, an overtaking aid that drivers can use at the press of a button to give them a boost in straight-line speed. "We need to make sure there is no artificial solutions," Brawn said. "The drag reduction system; everyone knows it's artificial. We need to find purer solutions. "We need to think through the solutions. I have ideas - I can't share them all with you because I want to share them with the teams first - but I have ideas of things we should start to study and perhaps use in '18 or '19." Will the technology have to change? Brawn said the high-technology aspect of F1 was a crucial part of its appeal but added: "You must balance the technology with the sporting side." He indicated he would be open to trying to change the turbo hybrid engines introduced in 2014, which have seen revolutionary steps forward in terms of fuel efficiency but which have been criticised for being too expensive and sounding dull. "That is something we need to discuss with the teams," Brawn said. "They have made a huge investment in these engines so you can't just discard them and say: 'We are going to change the engines.' "But how do we get from where we are today to where we want to be in two or three years' time with a great racing engine that everyone admires and enjoys?" Could a driver at a smaller team win the F1 title? Part of the reason for the lack of competitiveness is the huge spread of budgets between the front and back of the grid. Brawn said: "The level of resource the top teams are using has made an enormous gap. My nirvana would be you get slightly odd circumstances and suddenly a team from the back wins. But at the moment you have two or three teams who can win and we need to spread that." He said a budget cap was a "delicate" issue, but added: "It has never really been tried, it was never fully adopted by Formula 1, and I think we should at least discuss it again and see if there's potential." But he said there were other ways of closing up the field. "We have to see if we can develop the rules to reward innovation less," Brawn said. "Because as it is now innovation is heavily rewarded and if you can afford it, the slope is still quite steep - more money, faster cars. If we can flatten that off with the regulations that would go in the right direction." He also said he would like to try to establish a 'draft' system for promoting drivers from junior categories so the drivers who make it into F1 were there "purely on merit". Historically, some drivers at the back of the grid have paid for their seats in F1. "What I'd love to see is a proper progression of talent into F1 where you could even introduce a draft system where the guys who win the GP2 or Formula 2 are available for the lower teams to use in their first year or two in Formula 1."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38734708

Is hotel art a waste of time? - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Chinese hotels are using art to try and stand out from their competitors, but does it make business sense?

Business

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Does using art to sell hotels make good business sense? If you visit the Emperor Qianmen hotel, near the Forbidden City in Beijing, be sure to bring an umbrella - otherwise you may get drenched. That's because it sometimes rains inside the lobby. This is not due to a leaking roof. The "rain" comes from an installation by the Canadian artist Dan Euser, whose other pieces at the Emperor include an astonishingly realistic "waterfall" in the hotel's spa. The Emperor is a "water hotel", explains the Chinese artist Bingyi, another member of the team behind the establishment's design. It is built on the site of an old bath house, and it was this, Bingyi adds, that gave the hotel's architect, Adam Sokol, the idea for an aquatic theme for the project. At the Emperor Hotel in Beijing an art installation creates rain inside the lobby Art can be found almost everywhere at the Emperor. Bingyi's work on display includes Cave in Heaven, a vast ink and paper mural covering 400 square metres, over the entire walls of a large space. Bingyi believes that China today is a fruitful place for collaborations between artists and hotels, like the one at the Emperor. "Cultural significance is very important to Chinese. "We take the greatest pride in our cultural heritage… we write calligraphy, we write poetry, we have this kind of particular passion to turn every little craft into this magnificent habit of living, and we're just obsessed with it," she says. The lobby of luxury hotel Nuo displays huge vases made from Chinese porcelain The Emperor is far from the only hotel in Beijing to place an emphasis on the role of art. Enter the lobby of the Nuo, a new luxury hotel, and you could be forgiven for thinking you had stepped into a museum. Throughout the vast space a series of giant vases are arrayed, each one more than two metres tall. They were made in Jingdezhen, home of fine Chinese porcelain for thousands of years. The blue and white vases echo the Ming Dynasty theme that pervades much of the hotel's design. But they are only the beginning, says Adrian Rudin, the hotel's general manager: "Wherever you go, from the lobby lounge to the bar, there are different art pieces, some sculptures, some paintings, from different young and upcoming artists." He estimates the value of artworks at the hotel at around $50m [£40m; 46m euros]." Beijing hotel managers say that art is one way for luxury lodgings to set themselves apart from rivals Why so much - or indeed, any - art? "It is a selling point in terms of consumers who are interested in fine art and culture," says Mr Rudin. But, he adds, there are other reasons too. The hotel is the starting point of a new venture with the aim of creating an "international luxury Chinese brand" Mr Rudin explains. In this context, he believes that art has a key role to play in helping the new enterprise to find a distinctive voice. Other luxury groups also see merit in this kind of approach. The Rosewood Hotel says its aim is to create a space that feels like a "luxury private home" One of the troubles of the modern international hotel scene, says Marc Brugger, is that it is an "ocean of sameness". Mr Brugger is managing director of the Rosewood hotel, another recently-launched luxury property in Beijing. He believes that art can play a valuable role for luxury lodgings seeking to find new ways to set themselves apart. However, for this to be successful, time and careful thought are required. When the hotel was being conceived, Mr Brugger recalls, the idea of creating somewhere that felt like a "luxury private home" emerged. In such an establishment, art would have its natural place. This meant departing from the usual hotel design process. Chinese artist Bingyi's work for the Emperor Hotel includes Cave in Heaven, a vast ink and paper mural covering 400 square metres According to Mr Brugger, what often happens is that plans will be drawn up and some blank spaces will be left for "art" to be added later. "That method is much faster" he says, than the "holistic" approach taken in designing the Rosewood, where most of the art was specially commissioned and integrated into the design. The design team searched for up-and-coming artists who could create work that would fit well into the scheme, rather than existing pieces from established names which might overpower or destabilise the overall look. It took a long time to find the right artists, says Mr Brugger, but he feels that the results were well worth it. Do collaborations between artists and hotels like these make good commercial and creative sense? Up to a point, say experts. "There is a rationale for doing this, in a crowded hotel market" says Peter York, who has been an adviser to many large luxury enterprises. Companies need to find ways "to stand out from the ordinariness of luxury now, because luxury has become very ordinary". But he says there can be risks, both for the hotels, and more particularly for the artists: "It's a sensitive balance between what you do to make a lot of money, and to pump your brand, and the verdict of history - and you don't want the verdict of history to come in too fast", he warns. Still, Chinese hotel operators, and the artists they work with, remain optimistic about the future and the benefits that can flow from working together. "We're really re-imagining what is luxury" says Bingyi. "We just all need to be reminded every single day how beautiful things can be."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38719405

Bernie Ecclestone removed as Liberty Media completes $8bn takeover - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

Bernie Ecclestone is removed from his position running F1 as US giant Liberty Media completes its $8bn (£6.4bn) takeover of the sport.

Bernie Ecclestone has been removed from his position running Formula 1 as US giant Liberty Media completed its $8bn (£6.4bn) takeover of the sport. Ecclestone, 86, who has been in charge for nearly 40 years, has been appointed chairman emeritus and will act as an adviser to the board. Chase Carey has had Ecclestone's former role of chief executive officer added to his existing position of chairman. Liberty has also brought ex-Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn back to F1. The former Ferrari technical director, who had been acting as a consultant to Liberty, has been appointed to lead the sporting and technical side of F1. Ecclestone said earlier on Monday he had been "forced out". He told Germany's Auto Motor und Sport: "I was dismissed. This is official. I no longer run the company. My position has been taken by Chase Carey." • None Why F1's titanic leader was loved and loathed Ecclestone, who added he did not know what his new job title meant, declined to comment when approached by BBC Sport, who revealed on Sunday he would leave his job this week. Liberty began its takeover of the sport in September and earlier in January cleared the last two regulatory hurdles. The deal was completed on Monday and Liberty Media is to be renamed the Formula 1 Group following the takeover. As well as Brawn's return, former ESPN executive Sean Bratches has been hired to run the commercial side of the sport. Brawn, 62, masterminded all seven of Michael Schumacher's world titles at Benetton and Ferrari and also won the championship with Jenson Button with his own team in 2009. He then moved to Mercedes, where he laid the foundations for Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg's title wins. Both he and Bratches will report to Carey, a former long-time lieutenant of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and chairman of his 21st Century Fox company. What they said Bernie Ecclestone: "I'm proud of the business that I built over the past 40 years and all that I have achieved with Formula 1. I would like to thank all of the promoters, teams, sponsors and television companies that I have worked with. "I'm very pleased that the business has been acquired by Liberty and that it intends to invest in the future of F1. I am sure that Chase will execute his role in a way that will benefit the sport." Chase Carey: "I am excited to be taking on the additional role of CEO. F1 has huge potential with multiple untapped opportunities. I have enjoyed hearing from the fans, teams, [governing body] FIA, promoters and sponsors on their ideas and hopes for the sport. "I would like to recognise and thank Bernie for his leadership over the decades. The sport is what it is today because of him and the talented team of executives he has led, and he will always be part of the F1 family. "Bernie's role as chairman emeritus befits his tremendous contribution to the sport and I am grateful for his continued insight and guidance as we build F1 for long-term success and the enjoyment of all those involved." Greg Maffei, president and CEO of Liberty Media Corporation: "We are delighted to have completed the acquisition of F1 and that Chase will lead this business as CEO. I'd like to thank Bernie Ecclestone for his tremendous success in building this remarkable global sport." Zak Brown, executive director, McLaren Technology Group: "Formula 1 wouldn't be the international sporting powerhouse that it is today without the truly enormous contribution made over the past half-century by Bernie Ecclestone. Indeed, I can't think of a single other person who has had anything like as much influence on building a global sport as he has. "Today is a day on which we should all pay tribute to a remarkable visionary entrepreneur called Bernie Ecclestone, and to say thank you to him too." Murray Walker, F1 commentator, speaking to BBC Radio 5 live: "Formula 1 owes him an immeasurable debt. He is a very tough businessman but if he shakes your hand you don't need a contract. He's as good as his word. "The most important thing under Bernie's rule was the safety aspect. Formula 1 has been absolutely transformed. There was a time when four or five people were being killed every year but Bernie, with the help of Professor Sid Watkins, transformed that situation." What did Ecclestone do for F1? Ecclestone, the former team boss of Brabham, began in the 1970s as a representative of his colleagues in negotiations with circuits, television and authorities and slowly moved into a position of almost absolute power. He was central in turning F1 from a relatively minority activity into one of the biggest television sports in the world outside the Olympics and the football World Cup. After selling Brabham in the late 1980s, he moved full-time into administration. He took over the ownership of the commercial rights of F1 from the teams in the mid-1990s. He then struck a deal in 2000 with his long-time ally Max Mosley, then president of the FIA, to lease them for 110 years at what critics said was an absurdly low price of $360m (£287m). That set in motion a series of sales where the rights were passed from one entity to another, a process that led Ecclestone to stand trial for bribery in Germany in 2014. The case was dropped after a payment of $100m (£79m) without presumption of guilt or innocence. Subsequently Liberty took over from previous owner CVC Capital Partners. Ecclestone built F1 into a sport that could be valued by one of the world's biggest media groups at $8bn. He did this by building up F1's exposure on television, forcing companies to transmit the whole championship rather than cherry-picking the odd race here and there as had been normal until the early 1980s. But he has been criticised for his authoritarian grip on the sport and his controversial approach. In recent years, his demands for ever-higher fees from race tracks led to several European races struggling to make ends meet. His decision-making was also questioned, particularly over issues such as the introduction of double points for the final race of the 2014 season, and the quickly abandoned change of the qualifying format in 2016. A prize-money structure he created in the early years of this decade is believed by many insiders to be unfairly skewed in favour of the bigger and richer teams, and the governance system he set up at the same time has led to a log-jam when it comes to decision-making. Equally, his public utterances were sometimes ill-advised, such as praising Adolf Hitler for "being able to get things done" and calling women "domestic appliances". And some of his choices of locations for new races were also controversial - in countries such as Bahrain, Russia and Azerbaijan which secured huge fees for CVC but were criticised because of the regimes' records on human rights. What changes does Liberty plan? Liberty has not publicly revealed what changes it will make to F1 but insiders say it plans to act on many of the areas that were considered a weakness under Ecclestone. In particular, it wants to exploit digital media, an area with which Ecclestone refused to engage, and it intends to invest in securing the futures of certain races which it considers valuable. It also wants to grow the sport in the USA, where F1 has long struggled to gain a sure foothold and promote it much more extensively, talking of creating "20 Super Bowls", in terms of making much more of the build-up to each race.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38723001

Newspaper headlines: Trident 'cover-up' and food cancer risk - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Fall-out from the reported malfunction of a Trident missile test continues to lead a number of papers, while the cancer risk of certain foods is among the other stories to appear.

The Papers

The papers look at whether Prime Minister Theresa May will have to give MPs a vote before triggering Article 50 The Trident missile row is the lead for the Times, the Guardian and the Mirror. According to the Times, the Obama administration asked Britain to keep details of the botched test secret. It quotes a British military source as saying the British submarine successfully carried and launched the missile, but the bit that went wrong was the US proprietary technology. Prime Minister Theresa May and the Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, come in for heavy criticism in some quarters for their refusal to answer questions about the alleged failure of the Trident missile test. The Mirror accuses them of treating the public like children - and urges them to be open and straight with the British people. The Guardian says the test raises critical questions about the safety and effectiveness of Britain's nuclear weapons system - and should not be concealed from MPs. For the Times, the merits of Trident should be shouted from the rooftops - but that is no reason to hide failings. They should be examined seriously and openly, with a view to putting them right, it adds. The papers look ahead to Tuesday morning's Supreme Court ruling on whether the prime minister will have to give MPs a vote before triggering Article 50. The Times says most experts think it is unlikely the judges will overrule the decision of the lower High Court - and the government is preparing for defeat. According to the Guardian, government lawyers have warned Theresa May that drawing up a very short piece of legislation in response to the ruling may not be adequate. It says the legal advice is that failure to provide enough detail could open the government to further legal appeals in the future. The Express says the Supreme Court is expected to agree with the High Court judgement that a vote in Parliament on triggering Article 50 will be necessary. If that is so - the Sun says - then campaigners will have made their point, parliamentary sovereignty will have been upheld and the government must immediately bring forward a Brexit Bill. Parliament must then do its duty and enact the will of the biggest mandate in our history, the paper adds. It warns that MPs and peers will be "playing with fire" if they draft amendments pushing for what it calls some phoney compromise. The Mail, too, urges Parliament not to "sabotage" a Brexit Bill with any wrecking amendments. It says any MP or peer who backed them would be treating the electorate with contempt, and the referendum result with disdain - and defying the will of the people. The Mail reports that ambulance trusts across England are so desperate to recruit paramedics that they are offering generous packages to fill gaping vacancy lists, including sign-on bonuses of up to £10,000 and relocation expenses. Figures obtained by the paper show that regional ambulance services are short of 745 paramedics. It says morale is so low that more paramedics are leaving than the number signing up. The government has increased training places, but that is unlikely to have an effect for many years, the paper adds. The Sun reports that staff at the Baftas are concerned the Duchess of Cambridge could outshine A-list actresses The Sun leads with a report that the Baftas are involved in an awkward behind-the-scenes stand-off with their president, Prince William, over whether he will attend the awards with his wife. It says the prince had intended to go to the ceremony next month, after missing it for the last two years. Two separate Bafta sources have told the paper that senior staff at the organisation fear that the Duchess of Cambridge could steal the spotlight from A-list actresses if she comes too - and have suggested it would be preferable for him to turn up alone. An official Bafta statement published by the paper says the organisation would be delighted to welcome both of them any year they are able to attend. Finally, a British company has developed a smartphone app that helps commuters overcome an awkward social situation: you want to offer your seat on a crowded bus or train to a woman you think is pregnant - but are not sure and do not want to give offence. The Times reports that it alerts passengers within 15ft if a pregnant woman would like a seat - effectively a "smart" version of a "baby on board" badge. The app comes in two parts: mothers-to-be download a "request seat" app to send the alerts, while anyone else can download the second app to receive the alerts. According to the paper, once a passenger has received a notification - causing their phone to ping or vibrate - both parties must rely on eye contact to spot each other and the seat can then be offered.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-38726376

Freezing fog covers London landmarks - BBC News

2017-01-24

Freezing fog has covered most of southern England, cancelling flights at London airports and raising pollution levels.

Freezing fog has covered most of southern England, cancelling flights at London airports and raising pollution levels.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38723923

Chase Carey says Bernie Ecclestone exit means Formula 1 can be run differently - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

Bernie Ecclestone has been removed as boss of F1 because the sport "needs a fresh start", new chairman Chase Carey tells BBC Sport.

Bernie Ecclestone has been removed as Formula 1's boss because the sport "needs a fresh start", says new chairman Chase Carey. Carey has been put in charge by Liberty Media, the US group which completed its $8bn (£6.4bn) takeover of the sport. The American told BBC Sport he had "tremendous respect" for Ecclestone, but F1 "needs to be run differently than for the last four or five years". "Bernie is a one-man team. It was not right in today's world," he said. "The decision-making is not as effective as it needs to be. Clearly it has to be improved." Ecclestone has been removed as chief executive but offered a new advisory role as chairman emeritus. Carey said Liberty had major plans to grow F1 around the world. He said: • None F1 is a "unique, iconic, global event that is a spectacle second to none" • None The sport has not grown in recent years as much as it needed to and Liberty could exploit new technologies to do that • None Liberty would protect historic races and sees Europe as the "foundation" of the sport • None It would expand, particularly with a view to new events in the US • None Liberty wanted to make much more of the promotion of F1 itself, its participants and individual events • None despite speculation Silverstone could be dropped by 2019 Carey was installed in September and said he had decided over the past four months that Ecclestone, 86, was no longer the right person to run F1. "We needed a sport that while respecting what made it great has a sense of energy and innovation," Carey said. "In many ways, in a simplistic sense, the sport said 'no' too much and we have to start saying 'yes' - not gimmick it up but find ways to do new and exciting things to have the sport continue to grow and interest and excite people." He said Ecclestone had not been happy about the change but had accepted his new role. "I would expect this is difficult for Bernie," Carey said. "He has run this sport for his entire adult life and I respect completely that this is a difficult change. "We have tried to deal with him with the respect he's due, which is why we offered him the chairman emeritus title. "I have been sincere in saying I value his help and advice as we go forward. "He calls himself a dictator. He has run it as a one-man dictator for a long time. I think the sport needs a fresh perspective. But he has a lot to continue to offer and he will always be part of the F1 family." Liberty has brought in former Mercedes F1 team boss Ross Brawn and ex-ESPN sales executive Sean Bratches to run the sporting and commercial sides of F1 under him. • None We will have a British Grand Prix - Carey 'One of the benefits is a fresh start' Carey added the governance of F1 needed an overhaul. "I don't know whether the decision-making is not what it should be because there is too much history amongst the players," he said. "One of the benefits we bring is a fresh start. We don't have an agenda other than to make the sport great for its fans and that gives us an opportunity to look at how do we create more of a partnership - everybody has a shared vision of where do we want to go and we can align that vision and have everybody trying to move in the same direction." 'We must make the story everything it can be' Carey said he felt F1 was not making the most of its appeal to fans around the world. "Bernie deserves enormous credit for the sport he built," Carey said. "It just got sold for $8bn so the proof is in the numbers. "But the reality is to be competitive in today's world you need to continue to find ways to connect and excite fans and we need to use all the digital platforms available, have a marketing capability to tell the stories of the rivalries of the stars. "They are larger-than-life personalities and you have to take advantage of all the rules to make that story everything it can be, have to make events larger than ever, music and entertainment with sport at the centre of it. "I have talked about 21 Super Bowls and that is really what we should have. And then work with our partners - teams, sponsors, promoters, regulator - to ensure the race itself is everything it can be." Will the teams buy shares in F1? Liberty is to give F1 teams the opportunity to buy equity in the sport. They have rejected an initial offer but talks are ongoing. "We would like to be more aligned with the teams and those discussions are ongoing," Carey said. "We initially made a proposal that had too short a timeframe and we have found a way to have discussion that can have an appropriate level of exchange. "Out of discussions of equity will be discussions of where do we want the sport to be. There is a great deal of interest in the equity but first and foremost it is about trying to create more of an alignment with the teams about the future of the business." He added Liberty would look at the prize-money structure, which many inside the sport believe is too skewed in favour of the leading teams. "We'd like owning a team to be good business, running a track to be good business and F1 is a good business, and together we are all figuring out how to share in making the whole business stronger," Carey said. "But dealing with revenue is complicated." 'We want races to be more successful' Many European races are struggling to cope with the high race fees Ecclestone demanded, but Carey said he hoped to find a way to make them more successful financially. "I don't think we will make them more affordable," he said. "We will make them more successful. We want to be more of a partner. To be in the US we are not going to own tracks but we will be more of a partner in trying to figure it out. "We think these events should be bigger and more profitable than they are and we think, properly run, these events should continue to grow and be even more successful." 'What drivers do is unique' Carey said the leading drivers were "great personalities" and he wanted to "provide enough opportunities for fans to connect with those personalities". And he added safety was "critical". "Go and watch one of these cars drive down a track," he said. "Anyone who tells me that is not dangerous by definition and awe-inspiring hasn't been to one of these races. "What they do is truly unique. We have a responsibility to make it as safe as we can without undermining the sport."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38731760

'Allo 'Allo! star Gorden Kaye dies at 75 - BBC News

2017-01-24

Gorden Kaye, best known for playing Rene Artois in the long-running BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!, has died aged 75.

Gorden Kaye, best known for playing Rene Artois in the long-running BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!, has died aged 75. The star's former agency confirmed to BBC News he died at a care home on Monday morning. David Sillito looks back at his career.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38724051

In pictures: The Pole who works in a UK hospital - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Photographer Ed Gold spends a day in the life of a Pole working in a UK hospital.

In Pictures

Anna Maria Bak, 27, is Polish and works in A&E at Colchester General Hospital. Here, photographer Ed Gold takes a snapshot of her life in Britain. "I came to the UK for the first time in 2010. I had studied English philology at university in the Polish town of Krosno. Philology is the study of language in historical literature and I learnt a lot about Great Britain. I wanted a new challenge in my life and decided to try my luck abroad. "My friend and I rented a room for two weeks in Stratford in London. We were supposed to earn money but we lost it instead by paying for too many travel tickets. "I moved back to Poland for another year but I'm tough. My surname Bak means bumblebee in Polish. We are fighters because we've been through hard times. "I was lucky when I returned to England as I got a job at the Italian restaurant Carluccio's. I had a friend working there as a waiter. I learnt a lot about customer service. People are more polite in the UK than in Poland. "I left that job as it was only part-time and I couldn't afford my Oyster card and rent. I was in debt. I then found a Polish woman on the internet who was finding jobs for people in nursing homes, but she ripped me off and took £70 from me for certificates I never needed. "Still we have a saying in Poland, 'If you have enough oil in your head' - it means if you have enough intelligence, you will make it work. "I found myself a job at a nursing home. I did that for two years in north London. I remember a patient asking me 'Where they could spend a penny?' and I asked them what did they want to buy? "I wanted a more challenging job so I moved to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, working as an admin assistant in the radiology department. Now I'm working in the A&E at Colchester General Hospital. I'm really happy to work in health as I make a difference. I go the extra mile. "The Polish NHS is not too bad but I think the quality of care provided in the English hospitals is much higher. The staff are always friendly and helpful and patients get treated with respect and dignity. Unfortunately I can't say the same about Polish hospitals. I've been a patient in Poland and found communication between staff and patient to be very poor. "Renting is much cheaper outside London and my quality of life is higher in Colchester. I am careful with my money and saving up so that I can buy a house one day. "Everything costs less in the UK, even the food. I really like The Body Shop - it is mission impossible to get those cosmetics in Poland. Plus in Poland you earn a third of what you can here. "I also love the full English breakfast - it's the best breakfast ever. Usually for Polish breakfast you'd have cottage cheese, fresh bread and butter but you wouldn't get that protein boost in the morning - a full English keeps you going for hours. I do miss the Polish food though and the snow we get in winter. "It's hard though being miles away from my mum. I send her parcels full of goodies like food and cosmetics twice a year. Recently I've been sending hats to her because she is ill. I know how to deal with stress at work but I cry at home when I hear bad news about mum. "I live with my flat mate Zelda, who is from Latvia. I have friends from all over the world - it's one thing I really like about living in the UK. I met Zelda at work. We like to watch movies and eat Chinese takeaways. We don't have much time to go out but we're planning to. We'd normally go out to a local pub and then find somewhere to dance. I like my flat and feel very comfortable here. "I haven't seen things change because of Brexit and I've never suffered racism. "No-one has the right to say to me 'You're out of the UK', because I pay my taxes, I'm not here just to make money. It really bugs me if people come here from abroad who claim benefits after three months and have access to the free health service. I think to be here from abroad you should pay taxes. "I get on better with English people now than Polish people and I think in English. Although I was born in Poland and have a Polish passport, I've found it easier to live here than other Poles as I've adapted to British society so well. "I will apply for citizenship in Britain but only when I get enough money. It's expensive and costs about £2,000."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-38637627

Is Saatchi Gallery selfie exhibition just self-promotion? - BBC News

2017-01-24

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What happens when an art gallery gets together with a PR company and a smartphone manufacturer?

Entertainment & Arts

Taj Mahal Self-Portrait, a 1966 photograph by George Harrison that features in the exhibition I have never taken a selfie. I'm far too ugly. That said, I have ruined other people's, on those occasions when asked by a friend or arts fan to join them in a smartphone photo. I'm happy to say yes - it's not as if I'm ever going to have to look back at the image. I'd be horrified if I did, and mortified if it appeared in some public context like an art exhibition. I don't like causing offence. Fortunately for us, such an occurrence is highly unlikely but it is possible, and increasingly so. Selfie-themed exhibitions are to museums and galleries what dancefloors are to dads: a tempting opportunity to show how young and trendy they are while in reality communicating the exact opposite. They all seem to be at it, from the venerable Mauritshuis in The Hague to the yoof-loving Tate Modern. The Saatchi Gallery is the latest to jump aboard the selfie bandwagon with a show it says "will be the world's first exhibition exploring the history of the selfie from old masters to the present day, and will celebrate the truly creative potential of a form of expression often derided for its inanity". I'm not sure if the "world's first" claim is valid, but I'm absolutely certain that the long history of the self-portrait has not been "derided for its inanity". Some of the greatest works of art ever produced are self-portraits. We know that. It has long been a respected genre used by artists to demonstrate their virtuosity, while having the added advantage of the sitter/model being free. Anyway, to compare a painstakingly painted Rembrandt self-portrait with an opportunist snap taken by Helle Thorning-Schmidt flanked by David Cameron and Barak Obama at Nelson Mandela's funeral is silly. It's like equating the diary entry of a lovelorn teenager with a novel by Alice Munro - they don't stand comparison. Both have their place, both can be art, but they are quite different. When I first heard about the show, it sounded like the sort of idea the gallery's communications department might come up with to attract "new audiences". And then I read the press release and discovered it WAS the communications department that came up with the concept. It had help from a PR company called H+K Strategies, part of the globe-spanning WPP Group, which counts Huawei, a Chinese smartphone brand, among its clients. This is not an unconnected fact. Huawei are the sponsors of the Saatchi Gallery show. In fact, according to the press release, they are its co-authors: "Saatchi Gallery and Huawei, the world's number three smartphone brand, announce they have teamed up to present From Selfie to Self-Expression." One of the team from H+K Strategies to whom I spoke talked of brainstorming sessions between the parties. She made no mention of breakout groups and brightly coloured pens - but I'd hazard a guess they were present. Selfie to Self-Expression feels like a show that started life writ large in pink letters (with yellow asterisk to the side) on front of a flip-chart. Huawei's involvement explains the comment in the press release about the self-portrait genre being "derided for its inanity". I don't think it meant self-portraiture, but selfie-portraiture. This is a show designed to elevate the status of the selfie from what they say can be viewed as an inane activity to an artform. Hence the stated aim to "celebrate the creative potential of a form of expression…". Add to this its commitment to "highlight the emerging role of the smartphone as an artistic medium for self-expression", and I think we know the corporate tail is wagging the art gallery dog. I'm not saying this to criticise - needs must and all that. It might be a great show, and even if it isn't there is something marvellously Warholian about an art gallery founded by an ad man conceiving an exhibition with the world's largest ad agency network. As Warhol once said: "Good business is the best art." No, the reason I mention the corporate sponsor is because I think its collaboration with the Saatchi Gallery is potentially more interesting than the show itself. The whole project would appear to be rooted in the notion of a new "purposeful age" in public relations as spelt out by H+K Strategies. They say: "In the Purposeful Age companies and institutions have the opportunity to join a meaningful conversation around things that matter, take their place in culture and demonstrate their responsibility to society. "At H+K our purpose in this new age is to inspire creative and curious conversations that help brands and the public communicate to build better outcomes for everyone." Okay, it's a tad hyperbolic, but you've got to hand it to them - the Saatchi show is a good example of them practising what they preach. It also helps makes sense of the whole enterprise, unifying the subject matter and the sponsor, which can be captured by simply adding three words to the current exhibition title: Selfie to Self-Expression - to Self-Promotion. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38724303

Fire brigade help Yorkshire Wildlife Park give polar bear dental check-up - BBC News

2017-01-24

South Yorkshire Fire Brigade were called in to assist in giving a polar bear a dental check-up.

South Yorkshire Fire Brigade were called in to assist in giving a polar bear a dental check-up. Staff at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park noticed Victor had a discoloured tooth. After being put to sleep and moved by fire officers, the 18-year-old was ready for his "scrape and polish".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-38729348

Why Bill Clinton helped a 33-year-old build a $1bn firm - BBC News

2017-01-24

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How Andy Kuper built investment firm Leapfrog, which aims to help pull people out of poverty in the developing world by investing in insurance and healthcare firms.

Business

It took Andy Kuper a year and a half before he secured any investment for his company If you are going to get someone famous to launch your global business officially, it is hard to do better than President Bill Clinton. Yet as Andy Kuper will attest, it can be a nerve-racking experience. Back in September 2008, President Clinton was so impressed with Andy's new company, Leapfrog Investments, that he decided he would unveil it during his keynote speech at the annual meeting of his Clinton Global Initiative foundation. It meant that President Clinton would invite the then 33-year-old Andy on to the stage to speak to the few hundred attendees at the event in New York. Andy says: "I had done a lot of public speaking before, but this was a rock 'n' roll thing. I was worried about stumbling on the stairs and falling on the president." Thankfully for Andy, he managed to stay on his feet and give a speech that wasn't too overshadowed by President Clinton's well-known oratorical talents. Andy says: "President Clinton was amazing, he is an incredible public speaker, I owe him a great deal." But why was President Clinton so impressed with a South African businessman he had only recently met? Andy had ambitious plans to help transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, to help pull them out of poverty. Instead of giving them aid, his plan was to invest in, help run and expand indigenous companies, mostly insurance and healthcare funds, so that populations would not be blighted by ill-health. And instead of being a charity or non-profit organisation, Leapfrog planned to be very much profit-making and offer its investors a decent rate of return. The idea was to make globalisation and capitalism work for the world's poorest people. After a very slow start, the business today has more than $1bn (£800m) of funds on its books. It currently invests in 16 companies across 22 countries in Africa and Asia that have a combined 100,000 employees and serve 91 million people. The son of anti-apartheid campaigners and brought up on a farm outside of Johannesburg, Andy doesn't seem qualified to run a global investment firm on first glance at his CV. He has no business qualifications and instead studied philosophy at university, before going on to lecture in the subject. Leapfrog typically invests in insurance and healthcare firms across Africa and Asia Yet he started investing in the stock market aged 10, using money he made from selling the family's crops on the side of the road. By aged 13, he was making money for clients. After attending the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Andy went to Cambridge University. It was while at Cambridge that Andy spent a summer working for a non-government organisation in India, which he said was "one of his most formative experiences" and is the genesis of his future idea for Leapfrog. "We were trying to get Indian farmers to adopt drip irrigation, which could triple their production and lift them out of poverty," says Andy, now 41. "But they just wouldn't do it. At the time, I thought they were being so irrational, but they weren't - they weren't prepared to take the risk of doing something new and seeing their crops fail as a result. Why? Because this would have meant that their children starved. "So I thought, why don't we give these people a safety net to enable them to take a chance on bettering themselves, such as insurance cover." After spending his 20s lecturing and heading up an organisation that supports social entrepreneurs, Andy started work on Leapfrog. Initially, he got nowhere fast, because, he says, the idea was so new. Most Leapfrog firms, such as insurer Bima, utilise mobile technology He says: "It seemed close to impossible to begin with, but I just believed so fundamentally in the idea, which I call profit with purpose, of investing in companies that serve the other half of humanity - the four billion people that conventionally have not been served." With no money coming in, Andy had to live off his and his wife's savings until Leapfrog got its first small investment after a year and a half. The Clinton connection then followed, thanks to Andy knowing someone who worked for the organisation. However, the president's September 2008 speech failed to immediately open the investment floodgates, because it was quickly overshadowed by global events. A week later, investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed and the world was plunged into the global financial crisis. Yet despite this backdrop, Leapfrog was able to secure $135m of investment by late 2009. Today its institutional investors include Goldman Sachs, Axa, JP Morgan, AIG, Swiss Re and the European Investment Bank. Companies that Leapfrog invests in and helps run include All Life, a South African insurance firm that gives low cost cover to people with HIV, Kenyan pharmacy chain Goodlife, and India's Mahindra Insurance Brokers. Andy says that Leapfrog helps the firms see revenues grow by an average 43% per year. Robert van Zwieten, president of Emerging Market Private Equity Association, the trade group for firms that invest in the developing world, says that Andy and Leapfrog have been "trailblazers" in helping to create a new industry known as "impact investing". These are firms that invest both to make money and to achieve a positive social impact. He adds: "The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) event at Davos has for several years been struggling to work out how to make globalisation and capitalism work for the many and not just the few, but Andy and his team at Leapfrog are already doing just that." Now based in Sydney, Australia, after previously being in New York, Andy says: "You can do more good if you are profitable, and make more profit because you are good [doing virtuous things]." Follow The Boss series editor Will Smale on Twitter @WillSmale1 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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How the barcode changed retailing and manufacturing - BBC News

2017-01-24

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How a design originally drawn in the sand led to the growth of giant supermarkets.

Business

In 1948, N Joseph Woodland - a graduate student at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia - was pondering a challenge from a local retailer: how to speed up the tedious process of checking out in his stores by automating transactions. A smart young man, Woodland - known as Joseph - had worked on the Manhattan Project during the War, and had designed a better system for playing elevator music. But he was stumped. Then, sitting on Miami Beach while visiting his grandparents, his fingertips idly combing through the sand, a thought struck him. Just like Morse code used dots and dashes to convey a message, he could use thin lines and thick lines to encode information. A zebra-striped bull's-eye could describe a product and its price in a code that a machine could read. The idea was workable, but with the technology of the time it was costly. But as computers advanced and lasers were invented, it became more realistic. 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy highlights the inventions, ideas and innovations that have helped create the economic world we live in. The striped-scan system was independently rediscovered and refined several times over the years. In the 1950s, an engineer, David Collins, put thin and thick lines on railway cars so they could be read automatically by a trackside scanner. In the early 1970s, IBM engineer George Laurer figured out that a rectangle would be more compact than Woodland's bull's-eye. He developed a system that used lasers and computers that were so quick they could process labelled beanbags hurled over the scanner. Meanwhile American's grocers were also pondering the benefits of a pan-industry product code. In September 1969, members of the administrative systems committee of the Grocery Manufacturers of America met their opposite numbers from the National Association of Food Chains. Could the retailers and the producers agree? Wrigley's chewing gum would be the first product sold via a barcode in 1974 The GMA wanted an 11-digit code, which would encompass various labelling schemes they were already using. The NAFC wanted a shorter, seven-digit code, which could be read by simpler and cheaper checkout systems. The meeting broke up in frustration. Years of careful diplomacy - and innumerable committees, subcommittees and ad hoc committees were required before, finally, the US grocery industry agreed upon a standard for the universal product code, or UPC. It all came to fruition in June 1974 at the checkout counter of Marsh's Supermarket in the town of Troy, Ohio, when a 31-year-old checkout assistant named Sharon Buchanan scanned a 10-pack of 50 sticks of Wrigley's juicy fruit chewing gum across a laser scanner, automatically registering the price of $0.67 (£0.55). The gum was sold. The barcode had been born. We tend to think of the barcode as a simple piece of cost-cutting technology: it helps supermarkets do their business more efficiently, and so it helps us to enjoy lower prices. But the barcode does more than that. It changes the balance of power in the grocery industry. That is why all those committee meetings were necessary, and it is why the food retailing industry was able to reach agreement only when the technical geeks on the committees were replaced by their bosses' bosses, the chief executives. Part of the difficulty was getting everyone to move forward on a system that did not really work without a critical mass of adopters. It was expensive to install scanners. It was expensive to redesign packaging with barcodes - bear in mind the Miller Brewing Company was still printing labels for its bottles on a 1908 printing press. The retailers did not want to install scanners until the manufacturers had put barcodes on their products. The manufacturers did not want to put barcodes on their products until the retailers had installed enough scanners. But it also became apparent over time that the barcode was changing the tilt of the playing field in favour of a certain kind of retailer. For a small, family-run convenience store, the barcode scanner was an expensive solution to problems they did not really have. But big supermarkets could spread the cost of the scanners across many more sales. They valued shorter lines at the checkout. They needed to keep track of inventory. With a manual checkout, a shop assistant might charge a customer for a product, then slip the cash into a pocket without registering the sale. With a barcode and scanner system, such behaviour would become conspicuous. And in the 1970s, a time of high inflation in America, barcodes let supermarkets change the price of products by sticking a new price tag on the shelf rather than on each item. It is hardly surprising that as the barcode spread in the 1970s and 1980s, large retailers also expanded. The scanner data underpinned customer databases and loyalty cards. By tracking and automating inventory, it made just-in-time deliveries more attractive, and lowered the cost of having a wide variety of products. Shops in general - and supermarkets in particular - started to generalise, selling flowers, clothes, and electronic products. Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton was able to exploit the possibilities barcodes offered Running a huge, diversified, logistically complex operation was all so much easier in the world of the barcode. Perhaps the ultimate expression of that fact came in 1988 when the discount department store Wal-Mart decided to start selling food. It is now the largest grocery chain in America - and by far the largest general retailer on the planet, about as large as its five closest rivals combined. Wal-Mart was an early adopter of the barcode and has continued to invest in cutting-edge computer-driven logistics and inventory management. The company is now a major gateway between Chinese manufacturers and American consumers. Its embrace of technology helped it grow to a vast scale, meaning it can send buyers to China and commission cheap products in bulk. From a Chinese manufacturer's perspective, you can justify setting up an entire production line for just one customer - as long as that customer is Wal-Mart. The cost of adopting barcodes initially put off some manufacturers such as Miller Geeks rightly celebrate the moment of inspiration as Joseph Woodland languidly pulled his fingers through the sands of Miami Beach - or the perspiration of George Laurer as he perfected the barcode as we know it. But it is not just a way to do business more efficiently. It also changes what kind of business can be efficient. The barcode is now such a symbol of the forces of impersonal global capitalism that it has spawned its own ironic protest. Since the 1980s, people have been registering their opposition to "The Man" by getting themselves tattooed with a barcode. Yes, those distinctive black and white stripes are a neat little piece of engineering. But that neat little piece of engineering has changed how the world economy fits together.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38498700

Milton Keynes: The middle-aged new town - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Milton Keynes is perhaps the best known of the 20th Century's "new towns", but how has it changed over the past 50 years?

Beds, Herts & Bucks

The rhythm of the tree planting and its relationship to the columns of the buildings they stand near are "not accidental", says Mr Shostak Most towns grow and evolve over hundreds if not thousands of years. Not so Milton Keynes, which is 50 years old. Perhaps the best known of the 20th Century "new towns", it has its detractors but is also much loved by its residents. The town was born with an Act of Parliament in 1967 which approved the building of a new community of 250,000 people covering 8,850 hectares (21,869 acres) of Buckinghamshire farmland and villages. Built to ease the housing shortages in overcrowded London, its founding principles were for an "attractive" town that enshrined "opportunity and freedom of choice". App users should tap here to fully explore the interactive images, showing archive and current photographs The media has not always been kind to Milton Keynes: it has mocked its concrete cows (now housed in a museum), accused it of blandness and told of the "new city blues" suffered by early residents. Those who have grown up there tell of a very different Milton Keynes. Simon Clawson arrived in MK aged four. He now lives there with his two children and wife Hannah. "It was fantastic," he says of his childhood. "I remember summer days were always outside. "Somebody once told me that with all the lakes we have here, we have more waterline than Brighton." His youth in the town was marked by a series of exciting arrivals - the first cinema called The Point, the football stadium and the Snowdome building. "We had to wait for a lot of things here but when they came they tend to be more modern and spectacular than anywhere else. "We are adaptable here because everything is always changing." Former Team GB Olympic badminton player Gail Emms has also made Milton Keynes her home, having first moved there to train. "Milton Keynes is one of the best places for families - I am spoilt for choice here," she says. "So many of my friends take the Mickey about where I live. "But then I tell them we have a great school a short walk away and about the facilities we have. "It is so family-centred now. My kids are going to grow up in Milton Keynes, so it is now about what they need and want." Not everybody feels that way. Theo Chalmers, of the campaign group Urban Eden, claims recent development in the town has "betrayed" its founding principles. "The principles of the original master plan were brilliant," he says. "But those who have been in charge have bit by bit, like a death by a thousand cuts, destroyed the very things that made Milton Keynes extremely special and a user-friendly community." He cites the narrowing of boulevards around The Hub leisure quarter and the filling in of underpasses as examples. The Snowdome building created a great deal of excitement in Milton Keynes when it was built Some claim the closing of some of the town's network of underpasses goes against its founding principles So how will Milton Keynes look in 100 years' time? It will be bigger, with greater architectural diversity and more homes, says Lee Shostak, one of the town's early planners. He arrived in 1971 as a PhD student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) intent on studying the new development. "Very little had actually been built," he says, "and trying to understand what was going on from outside the (Milton Keynes) Development Corporation was going to be impossible." So, in 1972, the American research student joined the development corporation as a planner. "People came to Milton Keynes to be part of something new where everyone could shape their place called home," says the council leader Peter Marland The colourful weather boarded homes of Far Holme in Milton Keynes Village are one of the town's newer developments Mr Shostak, who made Milton Keynes his home from 1972 until 1995, said the town had been an "outstanding success". As the years pass the "city's parks and trees will be even bigger and more luxurious". "The achievements of making the landscape in Milton Keynes rivals that of Capability Brown," he added. "In garden city terms Milton Keynes is a grown up. But by real city standards, Milton Keynes is at best an adolescent." "By real city standards, it is at best an adolescent," says former planner Lee Shostak The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-38594140

'How we built India's biggest robot company' - BBC News

2017-01-24

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GreyOrange is India's biggest robotics company, making machines which support the country's booming online retail industry.

Business

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. How GreyOrange is becoming India's home-grown robotics giant In 2008, engineering student Samay Kohli wanted to build a humanoid robot, but his professor told him it would not be possible. Along with his fellow student Akash Gupta, not only did they achieve that task, but they have also built GreyOrange, a multi-national robotics company based in India and operating across Asia. "We've done some stuff that India was not supposed to do," Mr Kohli told the BBC. "People are not supposed to build hardware, robot products, out of India and we've been able to do that." Acyut was India's first home-grown humanoid robot and the first robot the team behind GreyOrange built So how did GreyOrange grow from an engineering classroom to an international robotics player? Mr Kohli and Mr Gupta proved their teacher wrong, building India's first humanoid robot, which they called Acyut. They then entered their creation in kung fu competitions and international robot football championships. The team also won several robotic competitions around the world. But it was a different passion that has seen GreyOrange grow - not for sport, but for online shopping. India's online shopping boom is driving massive international investment in the country's e-commerce sector The e-commerce sector in India has seen unprecedented growth in the last few years. Roughly 350 million Indian citizens are online and according to international payment company Worldpay, that will nearly double by 2020, when they will spend $63.7bn (£51.8bn) online. Despite companies often making a loss as they offer deeper and deeper discounts to attract customers, investors have flooded into the sector. More than $5bn (£4bn) of private investment was ploughed into the sector in 2015, according to global consultancy PwC. Amazon recently announced it would invest an additional $3bn in India, on top of the $2bn it announced in 2014. While online retailing is only a part of e-commerce, it is the area that many see as the one with the biggest growth potential. Those retailers servicing millions of consumers will need to keep their goods in warehouses, and those warehouses need to be efficient. That's where GreyOrange has positioned itself. In India, GreyOrange says it has 90% of the warehouse automation market and it has worked with leading e-commerce and logistics firms in the country. They also run eight offices in five countries and employ more than 650 people. GreyOrange claims AI robot Butler can make a warehouse up to five times more efficient "Warehouses are everywhere and they are supposed to become more and more intelligent as consumer demand increases.'' says Mr Kohli. GreyOrange has two different robots to help warehouses become more productive. Butler, an artificial intelligence-powered robotic system, helps pick products from shelves in the warehouse. ''A single person would pick about 100 to 120 items in one hour. With our Butler robot, he is able to pick 400 to 500 items every hour." Mr Kohli says. The second robot, Sorter, automates the sorting of outgoing packages in a distribution centre. They say that the robots they already have installed can potentially sort three million packages every day. Samay Kohli (left) and Akash Gupta are the founders of GreyOrange One of the biggest challenges to the company's success has been sourcing parts. ''India does not have a very strong hardware ecosystem." explains Paula Mariwala, who invests in technology based start-ups for SeedFund. "So to source the right products and to get manufacturing going at a large scale in the early stages is particularly difficult. You would not be able to try out different components to have different versions of the product very easily - your time cycles will be longer. '' The size of the potential prize is what has helped the founders overcome these problems. ''We were looking at how robots are going to be the next revolution that is coming right, the next decade is going to be all about making humans more efficient by using robots more and that's essentially how we got started.'' Mr Kohli says. ''Robots are needed to work with humans and not to replace them. Humans will always be there in the workplace, but robots make a very important part of the ecosystem they work with. "Ten years ago, every person did not have a computer, today every person has one computer. We look at robots in that sense: as everyone has one computer, in the future they will have one robot with them to help them do their work better. "It's a trillion-dollar opportunity, that's the space we're fighting in. ''

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38664034

Trump and truth - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Why the struggle over who defines the facts will be a central feature of the Trump administration

US & Canada

This is a critical moment for journalism, particularly in the United States. More than 40 years ago, the unmasking of the Watergate break-in inspired journalists around the world. Reporters appeared as tireless investigators holding the most powerful to account. Now, a new president declares the fourth estate "dishonest human beings". A global survey published last week found only 43% of people trusted the traditional media. Journalists find themselves on the defensive having to demonstrate their integrity to a sceptical public. Donald Trump believes he is in a "running war" with parts of the media. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Where do Donald Trump supporters get their news from? This struggle over who defines the facts will be a central feature of his administration. Social media enables leaders to bypass traditional media and to talk to the public directly. Donald Trump, with his 34,000 tweets, understands the reach and the power this gives him. He can sit in the White House and, with a single tweet, define the news agenda of the day or distract attention away from uncomfortable news. Some of the traditional media now accept they were instrumental in the rise of Donald Trump. He was the "candidate that kept on giving", as you would regularly hear in Washington. Controversy surrounded the size of the crowd at Donald Trump's inauguration But President Trump's rise to power was partly built on attacking the media. At rally after rally, I watched Donald Trump point at the press pen and denounce journalists as "terrible" people, the "worst". He wanted to define much of the media as part of the establishment elite who had ignored the plight of ordinary Americans. He sowed the seed that journalists and their stories about him could not be trusted. Painting journalists as untrustworthy gave him cover when he was accused of lying and exaggeration. And so we inhabit the "post-truth world". Democracy can't function without facts that are widely accepted. It doesn't mean that facts shouldn't be disputed or their meaning argued over, but societies need a bedrock of information to inform their decisions. If conspiracies and exaggerations are accepted as alternative realities, then it is much more difficult for a leader to be judged in the court of public opinion. When, a few days ago, the senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway was asked why the president's press secretary had lied about the crowd size at the inauguration, she defended him by saying he was offering "alternative facts". Kellyanne Conway used the term "alternative facts" to defend the White House press secretary Her interviewer, Chuck Todd, of NBC, retorted that "alternative facts aren't facts, they're falsehoods". It was an early round in the battle for the truth. I recall an exchange I had at a Trump event where it was explained to me that the fact that a lot of people believed something gave it an element of truth. Most Americans still get their news from TV, but more than 30% get it from the internet and particularly from Facebook. There is now a lot of research on the role of social media in spreading false information. In Europe, too, the reputation of the media is under fire. Journalists have been damaged by hacking, by intrusion and the suspicion that they don't tell the whole story. In Germany, parts of the mainstream media were accused of covering up reports of assaults on women in Cologne on New Year's Day 2016 because many of the allegations related to men believed to be migrants. In the Edelman Trust barometer - published last week - trust in the media had fallen to an all-time low in 17 of the 28 countries polled. White House press secretary Sean Spicer says the administration will "hold the press accountable" In the United States, news organisations are grappling with difficult questions. One TV executive said the biggest challenge was to avoid being seen as part of the "running war" that President Trump describes. Some organisations in the US, the UK and Germany - including the BBC - are embracing "reality checks" as part of their coverage, but they are time consuming and difficult. Governments, too, are looking into how to boost trust in statistics and official information. It might mean the creation of more agencies that are truly independent of government and politicians. The new White House press secretary has said: "We are going to hold the press accountable." It signals a battle over who defines the truth and who defines the facts. American journalism will face one of its severest tests. • None The hotel developer who became president

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38731191

Rubbish including a bathtub and toilet strewn in Houghton Conquest road - BBC News

2017-01-24

Fly-tippers have left a Bedfordshire road littered with rubbish, including a toilet, a bathtub and a fridge.

A road was left blocked with fly-tipped rubbish including a toilet, bathtub and pool table. Police say the person responsible for the fly-tip along London Lane in Houghton Conquest, Bedfordshire, may have struck locally before. Cyclist Martin Galpin, who came across the debris, described it as "obscene".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-38735164

Voter fraud claims: White House defends Trump's stance - BBC News

2017-01-24

White House press secretary Sean Spicer spars with reporters over unproven voter fraud claims.

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What will happen in Donald Trump's first 100 days? - BBC News

2017-01-24

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A new BBC News series will analyse the all-important first weeks of Donald Trump's presidency

US & Canada

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Can Trump accomplish what he wants? Donald Trump has promised to take Washington by storm. There is almost nothing the new American president does not want to change - policy, tone, foreign relations, the press pool. Mr Trump has told his cabinet nominees to be bold and be bold now. He wants a shake-up of US government and he wants it soon. That is why his first 100 days will be so definitive. He has set the timetable for an ambitious agenda and in the next three months we will find out how much he can really shift. There is a lot happening in Europe also during this 100 days. Britain is beginning the formal process of Brexit and the Dutch will hold elections which could herald the next step in the transatlantic populist march. And of course, the French will gear up for their own election in which the National Front will be the focus of much attention. It is an extraordinary time on both sides of the Atlantic. Former President Obama has sent veiled warnings about the consequences of bold action This exceptional moment demands examination and analysis. So the BBC is launching 100 Days, a daily programme that gives us the chance to look at these global shifts. In many ways, the inauguration of Donald Trump marks the beginning of the test of the populist experiment. Now he owns the problems he campaigned against. Can his bold approach work, who will benefit and who won't and how will he engage with the rest of the world? Every day for the next 100 days, with Christian Fraser in London and me in Washington, we will try to answer those questions. As he left office, President Obama had a veiled warning for his successor - if you're going to try to change things and bring in bold ideas, make sure you're aware of the consequences. He also suggested that the weight of office would soon settle on Mr Trump's shoulders and cause him to look carefully and humbly at what he has taken on. Katty Kay and Christian Fraser will present 100 Days from Washington and London Mr Trump goes into the White House as the least popular incoming president on record. He won't like that. We know from his election campaign that he watches polls closely and however hard he tries to dismiss them as "phony" or "lying," they matter to him. His low ratings today give him a powerful incentive to do better. That could mean a combination of both working on his tone (something which appears to be unpopular with large sections of the American public) and pushing hard with his agenda (much of which also seems to be popular with many Americans). That too, will make this a fascinating time. Some of this is under Mr Trump's control, but some of it is not. The Republican Party will have a big impact in making his first 100 days successful - they can boost his legislative agenda or kill it. The party owes Mr Trump a lot, he has just handed them Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court, that will win him a lot of favours. But many Conservatives do not agree with everything he wants to do and, if his poll numbers stay low, they will have less incentive to help him out. So we have a busy, fascinating few months ahead of us. This populist trend is global and the test starts now. Mr Trump wants to change the look, feel and smell of Washington. Funny that, so did Mr Obama eight years ago. 100 Days, presented by Katty Kay and Christian Fraser, Monday - Thursday at 19:00 GMT on BBC News Channel and BBC Four and BBC World News at 19:00 GMT.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38720658

France's Benoit Hamon rouses Socialists with basic income plan - BBC News

2017-01-24

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What does the rise of left-wing presidential hopeful Benoit Hamon say about France's Socialists?

Europe

Benoit Hamon has been short on detail with his plan for basic income in France He's been called the "French Bernie Sanders". After his decisive win in the first round of France's Socialist party primary, left-wing rebel, Benoit Hamon is suddenly the centre of attention. But what do his rapid rise and eye-catching policies say about the future of the French left? With his designer stubble and cheeky grin, the 49-year-old Socialist party rebel has been grabbing more than his share of the limelight over the past few weeks. The most left-leaning of the seven initial candidates in the Socialist race, his programme has been built around the radical proposal of a universal monthly payment for all French citizens, regardless of income. He also wants to legalise cannabis, to tax the wealth created by robots and to ditch the labour law passed last year that made it easier to hire and fire. The income plan he has outlined would be put into effect in three stages. Critics have pilloried the plan as unworkable, estimating its cost at between €300-€400bn. It's true that Mr Hamon has been short on detail when it comes to how his vision for France would be funded. But that doesn't seem to have affected his popularity among left-wing voters. By finishing several points ahead of former Prime Minister Manuel Valls during the first round of voting on Sunday, Mr Hamon has drawn attention to some important questions for France's ruling left-wing party: most obviously, the deep split between the Socialist party's left-wing supporters and the more liberal, centrist line taken by the current Socialist government. Manuel Valls was the prime minister who pushed through some of that government's most unpopular labour reforms and security measures. That left a rift with the party that may force him out of the presidential race in the run-off on Sunday. Benoit Hamon is going into round two in a strong position, having secured the support of fellow left-winger Arnaud Montebourg, who came third in the first round. Benoit Hamon (L) resigned as a minister with Arnaud Montebourg in 2014 after they called for an end to austerity If Mr Hamon wins, it will reorient the Socialist party away from the centre of French politics, and back to its traditional left-wing positions. That may not help him much during the presidential race. Whoever wins the Socialist nomination is tipped to come fifth, according to the opinion polls. But it could have two important consequences for France. A nomination for Mr Hamon is likely to funnel centrist votes towards liberal former banker Emmanuel Macron, whose growing popularity is starting to worry the far-right National Front (FN), which is now banking on a place in the second round of the presidential poll. Francois Fillon, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron are leading the field in the presidential race And, even as the populist campaigns gather speed in France, the appearance of Benoit Hamon at the head of the Socialist campaign could also signal a return to the politics of a previous era. For years France's established parties have drifted to the centre ground and voter apathy has grown. But now voters already have the prospect of an old-school Catholic conservative heading the main right-wing Republican party. And if Benoit Hamon wins the Socialist nomination on Sunday, the main left-wing party will once again embrace its traditional positions on workers' rights, redistribution, civil liberties and the environment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38723219

Trainspotting: Using Born Slippy 'serendipitous' - BBC News

2017-01-24

Underworld talks about how life has changed since Trainspotting

Born Slippy by Underworld, from the original Trainspotting, was released in 1996. It was co-written by Rick Smith who went on to work with Trainspotting's director Danny Boyle on the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Rick Smith tells the Today programme life for the band completely changed after Born Slippy was used in the film.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38729414

Australian Open 2017: Roger Federer wins to set up Stan Wawrinka semi-final - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

Four-time champion Roger Federer beats Mischa Zverev in straight sets to set up an Australian Open semi-final against Stan Wawrinka.

Last updated on .From the section Tennis Coverage: Daily live commentary on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra; live text on selected matches on the BBC Sport website; TV highlights on BBC Two and online from 21 January. Four-time champion Roger Federer coasted into the Australian Open semi-finals with a straight-set defeat of unseeded Mischa Zverev in 92 minutes. The 35-year-old reached the last four in Melbourne for a 13th time with a 6-1 7-5 6-2 win over Zverev, who upset world number one Andy Murray on Sunday. Federer, seeded 17th as he seeks an 18th Grand Slam title, faces compatriot Stan Wawrinka in the last four. Wawrinka won his first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in 2014. The 31-year-old has since added victories at the French Open in 2015 and the US Open last September, and is rated by many as the favourite in Melbourne following surprise defeats for Murray and Novak Djokovic. • None Watch day nine highlights on BBC Two from 16:45 GMT on Tuesday Federer, playing his first competitive event since Wimbledon six months ago following a knee injury, brushed aside Zverev with the minimum of fuss. He blitzed through the first set in just 19 minutes, and soon levelled in the second when he was broken by the world number 50. Federer won 23 of 32 points at the net (72%) as he reached his 41st Grand Slam semi-final. "My expectation was not to play Stan Wawrinka in the semis. I thought maybe I could get to the fourth round or quarters - that's what I told the Swiss press," he said. "For me to play against Stan I have to play aggressive, the more time I give him the better he is. I'm happy he's got this far but he doesn't need to go a step further - Stan knows I'm joking." Federer is the oldest men's singles semi-finalist at the tournament since Arthur Ashe in 1978, and the oldest at any Grand Slam since Jimmy Connors reached the 1991 US Open last four aged 39. Wawrinka edged a tight opening set against Tsonga, with the pair exchanging words after the tie-break. "What did you say? You're the one looking at me and talking to me. What are you looking for?" Wawrinka said to Tsonga in French. "Come on, let it go. Did I look at you once?" It appeared as though Tsonga was fighting back when he finally broke serve to lead 4-3 in the second set, but Wawrinka snuffed out the danger with two successive breaks for a two-set lead. An early break was enough to give Wawrinka the final set and he closed out a straightforward win to reach an eighth Grand Slam semi-final. On the possibility of facing friend and compatriot Federer, he said: "Playing in a semi here is always special - I won my first Grand Slam here in front of amazing fans. If it's against Roger, I hope a few will cheer for me." Asked about the exchange after the first set, Tsonga replied: "Sometimes it happens. We can talk during the game. Nothing special, yeah. "We just spoke about things that I think is only between him and me, and that's it." Wawrinka added: "You can have some tension during the match between players. Sometimes it can happen. Most important is that after the match it's all good."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/38728046

Arsene Wenger: Arsenal manager is charged with misconduct by FA - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is charged by the Football Association for verbally abusing and pushing a fourth official.

Last updated on .From the section Football Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has been charged by the Football Association with verbal abusing and pushing fourth official Anthony Taylor during Sunday's Premier League game against Burnley. Wenger, 67, pushed Taylor after being sent off in the closing stages of the Gunners' 2-1 win at Emirates Stadium. He had been dismissed for reacting angrily to a 93rd-minute penalty given to Burnley, who trailed 1-0. Wenger, who later apologised, has until 18:00 GMT on Thursday to respond. An FA statement read: "It is alleged that in or around the 92nd minute, Wenger used abusive and/or insulting words towards the fourth official. "It is further alleged that following his dismissal from the technical area, his behaviour in remaining in the tunnel area and making physical contact with the fourth official amounted to improper conduct." After being sent to the stands by referee Jon Moss, Wenger moved away from the pitch but stood at the tunnel entrance and refused to move as he tried to watch the remaining few minutes of Sunday's match. As Taylor encouraged him to move away, Wenger was seen to push back against him. When asked about what had led to his dismissal, Wenger said: "Look, it was nothing bad. I said something that you hear every day in football. Overall, nine times out of 10, you are not sent to the stand for that." He added: "But if I am, I am, and I should have shut up completely. I was quite calm for the whole game, more than usual." In 2012, then-Newcastle manager Alan Pardew was fined £20,000 and given a two-match touchline ban for pushing an assistant referee during a game against Tottenham.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38722906

British Grand Prix staying on the calendar, says new F1 boss Chase Carey - BBC Sport

2017-01-24

New Formula 1 boss Chase Carey says there will be a race in Britain despite speculation Silverstone could be dropped by 2019.

Last updated on .From the section Formula 1 New Formula 1 boss Chase Carey says there will be a British Grand Prix despite speculation Silverstone could be dropped by 2019. The circuit's presence on the calendar had been under threat because of the "potentially ruinous risk" of staging the loss-making race. However, Carey - who has been put in charge of F1 by new owners Liberty Media - says its future is safe. "We will have a British Grand Prix," he told BBC Sport. "The foundation of the sport is western Europe. We want to grow it. There's a negotiating dynamic that exists, but we want a healthy relationship with our promoters. "We are going to look at ways of making events bigger and better." • None Ecclestone: why F1's titanic leader was loved and loathed • None Can F1 be liberated from its 'dysfunction'? Carey has taken over as F1's chief executive from Bernie Ecclestone following US giant Liberty Media's $8bn (£6.4bn) takeover. Ross Brawn has been appointed managing director as part of a restructuring of F1's management. And the former Mercedes boss said Silverstone is "very important" to the tradition of the sport. "A lot of the new circuits are very exciting and they bring their own element to F1," he said. "They are in it because they want to be part of that show that includes Monaco, Silverstone, Monza, Hockenheimring and the Nurburgring. "You have still got to maintain those traditions to have the values in F1." Silverstone first hosted the British Grand Prix in 1950 and has been the event's permanent home since 1987.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/38730606

Mel Giedroyc: Why I turned down Strictly Come Dancing - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Ex-Bake Off host Mel Giedroyc says she is too young to be Strictly Come Dancing's "comedy old bag".

Entertainment & Arts

Mel Giedroyc can currently be seen on a different Saturday night show - Let It Shine Former Great British Bake Off host Mel Giedroyc has revealed she was once offered the chance to appear as a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing - but turned it down. "I love watching it so much I almost didn't want to spoil the pleasure by being on it," she told Radio Times. The 48-year-old said it was tricky for a woman her age to be on the show. "You're not the comedy old bag yet, which would be the joy of going on Strictly," she said. "If I did it, I'd want to be Ann Widdecombe. I'd want to be out there getting the laughs, being dragged around." The presenter may not have strutted her stuff in a ball gown, but she can still be seen on a prime time Saturday night show - fronting BBC One's talent search Let It Shine. Mel and Sue announced their departure from The Great British Bake Off in September The gig comes after Giedroyc stepped down as co-host of the Great British Bake Off, along with Sue Perkins, when it was announced the hit show was moving to Channel 4. Giedroyc said the furore surrounding the move was "a pretty weird time". "The press were camped out on my doorstep. My eldest daughter actually saw a few of them off, which I was very, very proud of," she said. "I'm not the kind of person who would court that sort of attention. I have a very private existence and I had to slightly clench my buttocks during that." Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. • None Mel and Sue to quit as Bake Off hosts The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38718281

Cable warns of 'appalling' record on skills - BBC News

2017-01-24

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Britain has done appallingly badly at vocational education for many years, says Sir Vince Cable.

Education & Family

Vince Cable says the low status of vocational qualifications has deep roots "Britain has done appallingly badly at vocational education for many years," says Sir Vince Cable, former business secretary, as Theresa May's industrial strategy promises to regenerate technical training and tackle the skills shortage. But why has this always been such a struggle? You could build a paper mountain out of all the plans to give vocational education the same status as university degrees, A-levels and GCSEs. "It's a deeply cultural thing," says Sir Vince, who held office during the Coalition government. "It got built into the British mindset... if you're clever, you go to university, and if you're not so clever you go off and do a trade of some sort," he says. "It's still the case that if you're academically inclined and you don't know what to do, you go to university. "The others are told, 'Why not do an apprenticeship?' without being given much of a steer as to how to do it. "And that's completely wrong, for many people it would be better if they went down that route from day one." Sir Vince, who once taught Open University economics courses, is now getting back to his own educational roots. He is leading an online course on economics and politics, with the University of Nottingham, which will be available free on the Futurelearn online university network set up by the Open University. Vince Cable says the Chinese are now the free trade defenders, while the US puts up walls There will be no shortage of contemporary upheavals for these online students to talk about. Sir Vince talks of a "bizarre Alice in Wonderland world" in which the Chinese Communists are now the advocates of free trade while the United States, under President Donald Trump, is raising the banner of protectionism. "You've got a hard-line Communist out there defending the liberal international economic order," he says. He describes himself as a "big fan of the Chinese", adding: "like George Osborne". Sir Vince had a close-up view of economic decision-making by politicians. He ranks Gordon Brown above David Cameron or Tony Blair on their grasp of economics - and says that all politicians can be guilty of looking for economic theories that confirm their political inclinations. George Osborne's approach to cutting the deficit, in the wake of the financial crash of 2008, was shaped by the rules set by US economist Kenneth Rogoff, says Sir Vince. And he says that the current rise of nationalism, populism and the push for protectionism are the direct fallout from the economic hangover from the recession. "The real energy behind this new populism does come from 2008," he says. "Real wages have declined, particularly in deprived parts of the country, public spending has been cut because of the deficit." He says this has delivered a shock to a political system built on a post-War assumption of rising living standards. Sir Vince's new teaching project forms part of the wave of so-called Moocs - massive open online courses. Moocs are also characterised by being free - and his period in office as business secretary saw him taking the controversial decision to raise university tuition fees in England to £9,000 per year. Tuition fees have hung like a dark cloud over the Liberal Democrats ever since - but he remains a stout defender of the fee increase. Vince Cable, who put up tuition fees, says the alternative was to cut further education "It was the right thing to do, but very, very politically painful," he says. The alternative was to cut the further education budget. "I wasn't willing to go along with that." The fees are in effect a graduate tax, rather than a fee, he says, and the Liberal Democrats' big mistake was signing a pledge not to increase fees. He says he was "vehemently opposed" to this promise before the 2010 election. "I could see that if ever we got into government, it would be a disaster. "But there was a very strong head of steam and the leader felt he had to go along with it, and once we were in government we were inevitably exposed." The Politics of Economics and The Economics of Politicians will be available on Futurelearn from 20 March. • None New York to scrap tuition fees for middle class

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38723070

What executive actions has Trump taken? - BBC News

2017-01-24

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President Trump signs a flurry of orders as he lays out his presidential agenda.

US & Canada

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. What exactly is an executive order, and how significant are they to a president's legacy? One of the first ways a new president is able to exercise political power is through unilateral executive orders. While legislative efforts take time, a swipe of the pen from the White House can often enact broad changes in government policy and practice. President Donald Trump has wasted little time in taking advantage of this privilege. Given his predecessor's reliance on executive orders to circumvent Congress in the later days of his presidency, he has a broad range of areas in which to flex his muscle. Here's a look at some of what Mr Trump has done so far: Mr Trump signed the order at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) undoing a key part of the Obama administration's efforts to tackle global warming. The order reverses the Clean Power Plan, which had required states to regulate power plants, but had been on hold while being challenged in court. Before signing the order, a White House official told the press that Mr Trump does believe in human-caused climate change, but that the order was necessary to ensure American energy independence and jobs. Environmental groups warn that undoing those regulations will have serious consequences at home and abroad. "I think it is a climate destruction plan in place of a climate action plan," the Natural Resources Defense Council's David Doniger told the BBC, adding that they will fight the president in court. Immediate impact: A coalition of 17 states filed a legal challenge against the Trump administration's decision to roll back climate change regulations. The challenge, led by New York state, argued that the administration has a legal obligation to regulate emissions of the gases believed to cause global climate change. Mars Inc, Staples and The Gap are among US corporations who are also challenging Mr Trump's reversal on climate change policy. After an angry weekend in Florida in which he accused former-president Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones at Trump Tower, Mr Trump returned to the White House to sign a revised version of his controversial travel ban. The executive order titled "protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States" was signed out of the view of the White House press corps on 6 March. The order's new language is intended to skirt the legal pitfalls that caused his first travel ban to be halted by the court system. Immediate impact: Soon after the order was signed, it was once again blocked by a federal judge, this time in Hawaii. Surrounded by farmers and Republican lawmakers, Mr Trump signed an order on 28 February directing the EPA and the Army Corp of Engineers to reconsider a rule issued by President Obama. The 2015 regulation - known as the Waters of the United States rule - gave authority to the federal government over small waterways, including wetlands, headwaters and small ponds. The rule required Clean Water Act permits for any developer that wished to alter or damage these relatively small water resources, which the president described as "puddles" in his signing remarks. Opponents of Mr Obama's rule, including industry leaders, condemned it as a massive power grab by Washington. Scott Pruitt, Mr Trump's pick to lead the EPA, will now begin the task of rewriting the rule, and a new draft is not expected for several years. Immediate impact: The EPA has been ordered to rewrite, or even repeal the rule, but first it must be reviewed. Water protection laws were passed by Congress long before Mr Obama's rule was announced, so it cannot simply be undone with the stroke of a pen. Instead the EPA must re-evaluate how to interpret the 1972 Clean Water Act. A bill the president signed on 16 February put an end to an Obama-era regulation that aimed at protecting waterways from coal mining waste. Senator Mitch McConnell had called the rule an "attack on coal miners". The US Interior Department, which reportedly spent years drawing up the regulation before it was issued in December, had said it would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests. An attempt to cut down on the burden of small businesses. Described as a "two-out, one-in" approach, the order asked government departments that request a new regulation to specify two other regulations they will drop. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will manage the regulations and is expected to be led by the Republican Mick Mulvaney. Some categories of regulation will be exempt from the "two-out, one-in" clause - such as those dealing with the military and national security and "any other category of regulations exempted by the Director". Immediate impact: Wait and see. Probably his most controversial action, so far, taken to keep the country safe from terrorists, the president said. The effect was felt at airports in the US and around the world as people were stopped boarding US-bound flights or held when they landed in the US. Immediate impact: Enacted pretty much straight away. But there are battles ahead. Federal judges brought a halt to deportations, and legal rulings appear to have put an end to the travel ban - much to the president's displeasure. A fence is already in place along much of the US-Mexico border On Mr Trump's first day as a presidential candidate in June 2015, he made securing the border with Mexico a priority. He pledged repeatedly at rallies to "build the wall" along the southern border, saying it would be "big, beautiful, and powerful". Now he has signed a pair of executive orders designed to fulfil that campaign promise. One order declares that the US will create "a contiguous, physical wall or other similarly secure, contiguous, and impassable physical barrier". The second order pledges to hire 10,000 more immigration officers, and to revoke federal grant money from so-called "sanctuary cities" which refuse to deport undocumented immigrants. It remains to be seen how Mr Trump will pay for the wall, although he has repeatedly insisted that it will be fully paid for by the Mexican government, despite their leaders saying otherwise. Immediate impact: The Department of Homeland Security has a "small" amount of money available (about $100m) to use immediately, but that won't get them very far. Construction of the wall will cost billions of dollars - money that Congress will need to approve. Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the Republican-led Congress will need to come up with $12-$15bn more, and the funding fight - and any construction - will come up against issues with harsh terrain, private land owners and opposition from both Democrats and some Republicans. The department will also need additional funds from Congress to hire more immigration officers, but the order will direct the head of the agency to start changing deportation priorities. Cities targeted by the threat to remove federal grants will likely build legal challenges, but without a court injunction, the money can be removed. The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, along with Arizona Democrat Raul Graijalva, have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. They argue the Department of Homeland Security is required to draft a new environmental review of the impacts of the wall and other border enforcement activities as it could damage public lands. With the stroke of a pen... On his second full working day, the president signed two orders to advance construction of two controversial pipelines - the Keystone XL and Dakota Access. Mr Trump told reporters the terms of both deals would be renegotiated, and using American steel was a requirement. Keystone, a 1,179-mile (1,897km) pipeline running from Canada to US refineries in the Gulf Coast, was halted by President Barack Obama in 2015 due to concerns over the message it would send about climate change. The second pipeline was halted last year as the Army looked at other routes, amid huge protests by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe at a North Dakota site. Immediate impact: Mr Trump has granted a permit to TransCanada, the Keystone XL builder, to move forward with the controversial pipeline. As a result, TransCanada will drop an arbitration claim for $15bn in damages it filed under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr Trump made no mention of an American steel requirement. Construction will not start until the company obtains a permit from Nebraska's Public Service Commission. The Dakota Access pipeline has since been filled with oil and the company is in the process of preparing to begin moving oil. In one of his first actions as president, Mr Trump issued a multi-paragraph directive to the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies involved in managing the nation's healthcare system. The order states that agencies must "waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay" any portions of the Affordable Care Act that creates financial burden on states, individuals or healthcare providers. Although the order technically does not authorise any powers the executive agencies do not already have, it's viewed as a clear signal that the Trump administration will be rolling back Obama-era healthcare regulations wherever possible. Immediate impact: Republicans failed to secure an overhaul of the US healthcare system due to a lack of support for the legislation. That means Mr Trump's executive order is one of the only remaining efforts to undermine Obamacare. Abortion activists were among the many protesters that came out against Trump's presidency one day after his inauguration What's called the Mexico City policy, first implemented in 1984 under Republican President Ronald Reagan, prevents foreign non-governmental organisations that receive any US cash from "providing counselling or referrals for abortion or advocating for access to abortion services in their country", even if they do so with other funding. The ban, derided as a "global gag rule" by its critics, has been the subject of a political tug-of-war ever since its inception, with every Democratic president rescinding the measure, and every Republican bringing it back. Anti-abortion activists expected Mr Trump to act quickly on this - and he didn't disappoint them. Immediate impact: The policy will come into force as soon as the Secretaries of State and Heath write an implementation plan and apply to both renewals and new grants. The US State Department has notified the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that US funding for United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) would be withdrawn, arguing that it supports coercive abortion or involuntary sterilisation. The agency has denied this, pointing to examples of its life-saving work in more than 150 countries and territories. This policy will be much broader than the last time the rule was in place - the Guttmacher Institute, Kaiser Family Foundation and Population Action International believe the order, as written, will apply to all global health funding by the US, instead of only reproductive health or family planning. The TPP pact would have affected 40% of global trade. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, once viewed as the crown jewel of Barack Obama's international trade policy, was a regular punching bag for Mr Trump on the campaign trail (although he at times seemed uncertain about what nations were actually involved). The deal was never approved by Congress so it had yet to go into effect in the US. Therefore the formal "withdrawal" is more akin to a decision on the part of the US to end ongoing international negotiations and let the deal wither and die. Immediate impact: Takes effect immediately. In the meantime, some experts are worried China will seek to replace itself in the deal or add TPP nations to its own free trade negotiations, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), excluding the US.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38695593