Thursday was the final chance clubs in the Football League had to bring players in on an emergency loan deal this season, but that has coincided with an unfortunately timed closing period for Fifa. The governing body's offices shut down at 11:00 GMT for the Easter period on Thursday because of the holiday season in Switzerland. That has left some Football League sides in the lurch, as Fifa's international clearance is needed for players to move between clubs under the umbrellas of the England's Football Association and the Football Association of Wales. That means the proposed loan moves of Peterborough's Souleymane Coulibaly to Newport and Swansea's Liam Shephard to Yeovil almost certainly will not go through until Fifa's offices next open on Tuesday - and both League Two clubs have two matches before then. Yeovil said in a statement: "With today being the final day of the loan window, the club are very disappointed that the offices at Fifa closed early, causing problems for clubs ahead of a busy weekend of football." And Yeovil manager Darren Way added: "Despite lodging the paperwork for the loan at 3:30pm yesterday (Wednesday 23 March) we are very disappointed that the clearance hasn't been granted in time for tomorrow's match." Not only is it the final emergency loan of the season, Thursday marks the end of the window altogether, with Fifa scrapping it to protect the "sporting integrity of competitions". At least there will not be anything like this ever again... Have you added the new Top Story alerts in the BBC Sport app? Simply head to the menu in the app - and don't forget you can also add score alerts for the Six Nations, your football team and more.

Question: We all know what @placeholder day is like . The mad scramble to get contracts signed and deals over the line in time .


5 March 2015 Last updated at 13:24 GMT At the same time, he has been meeting some of the artists that have featured on his 1xtra show, Destination Africa. In Botswana he met DJ Gouveia, the author of the country's most popular dance track in recent months, Ambuye - meaning God - and started by asking him about his DJing career. DJ Edu and team would like to know the name of your favourite club and why you like it. Get in touch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, using #ClubAfricaBBC. Make sure to include your location.

Question: BBC Radio 1 x tra 's DJ Edu is travelling across Africa looking for the continent 's best nightclub and exploring how clubbing reflects the growth of the middle @placeholder as part of the BBC 's A Richer World season ,


The film, starring Carey Mulligan, Helen Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep, tells the story of the British women who demanded the right to vote at the turn of the 20th Century. The film premiere will be simultaneously screened at cinemas across the UK on 7 October. Suffragette was written by Abi Morgan and has been directed by Sarah Gavron. Told through the eyes of the character of Maud, played by Carey Mulligan, the film tracks the story of the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement as they fought for the right to vote. BFI London Film Festival Director Clare Stewart called it "an urgent and compelling film - made by British women, about British women who changed the course of history and it is, quite simply, a film that everyone must see", Suffragette producers Faye Ward and Alison Owen added: "The Suffragettes would have felt very much at home here, surrounded by the energy, determination, hard work and inspiration that goes into both the Festival and the films that screen here." The full programme for the festival will be announced on 1 September.

Question: This year 's London Film Festival will open with the @placeholder drama Suffragette , it has been announced .


Emergency services were called to the incident on the A4232 near junction 33 of the M4 at 05:45 BST on Wednesday. Repairs were carried out and both carriageways to Culverhouse Cross were reopened at about 11:55. The Federation of Small Businesses said the incident "highlighted the fragility of Cardiff's transport infrastructure". FSB Wales spokesman Rhodri Evans said: "Getting around Cardiff can be a challenge for our members on normal working days, but the crash today has had a significant knock-on impact for business across Cardiff. "We need to find ways of reducing the strain on our roads network and finding other ways of getting people around our capital, particularly at peak times. "Today's incident underlines why we need to start seeing progress on the proposed South Wales Metro system so that we have a more resilient transport system in Cardiff should this sort of incident occur in future." The Welsh government said ?¡ê77m was being invested in the first phase of the metro project and work was being carried out to develop the next phase. A spokesperson added: "Securing additional investment from the European Structural Fund and private sector, together with the improvements to the Great Western Main Line and Valley Lines will deliver a step change in integrated transport for south Wales and provide a template for public transport across the whole of Wales." The incident caused tailbacks in neighbouring counties, with motorists reporting delays of up to two hours. Bus travel in and around the city was affected and pupils travelling to schools in Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan were caught up in the delays. Nikki Boniwell, who was travelling to Cardiff from Swansea, said her normal one-hour journey took two-and-a-half-hours. Earlier on Wednesday, Jennie Griffiths, head of South Wales Fire and Rescue Service's control room, said crews were using specialist absorbent materials to contain and secure further spillage of the tanker's load on to the road.

Question: A tanker carrying corrosive chemicals , which @placeholder and caused traffic delays around Cardiff , has been recovered and the road has reopened .


It found sixth formers at Willenhall E-ACT Academy in the West Midlands were afraid to leave their common room because of younger pupils' behaviour. Inspectors rated the school inadequate overall, noting that "during 2015 and 2016, 70% of teachers left". The BBC has contacted school sponsor E-ACT for comment. More stories from the Black Country In a letter sent to parents following the critical report's publication, E-ACT said it had "strong leadership" in place "driving standards" and was "confident that Willenhall Academy will continue to make rapid progress". The school - which Ofsted described as "coasting" - was inspected in March and almost a third of pupils were found to be regularly absent. Individual aspects of provision were also given a rating of "inadequate" - among them the quality of teaching, which was described in the report as "weak", and pupil behaviour. "Persistently poor behaviour at social times and in lessons leads to many pupils feeling unsafe and not learning well," the report said. A third of the staff who responded to an online questionnaire said they did not feel pupils were safe. Oftsed said E-ACT  "fully recognised the challenges" and had begun to "address aspects of greatest concern", with its leaders' judgements "fully in line with inspectors' experiences and evidence". However, it said leaders and sponsors had overseen a decline in standards since a previous inspection in 2015. "While there is an ambition to address inadequacies and to raise aspirations, there is not yet a sustainable track record in the school to suggest capacity for improvement," it continued. E-ACT's letter to parents said it was "proud of the fact that almost two thirds of our academies are rated at least good". Get news from the BBC in your inbox, each weekday morning

Question: Students pelted school inspectors with @placeholder and jostled them in corridors during an Ofsted visit , according to the watchdog 's report .


Lutfur Rahman was found guilty of corrupt practices last week and was immediately removed from office. He was addressing a meeting in east London organised by his supporters to protest against the judgment. Mr Rahman told supporters his party would win the mayoral race and he would challenge the High Court's ruling. "Those votes were cast freely and fairly. People in Tower Hamlets are smart, they're astute," he said. "They did not vote because they were bribed, coerced or intimidated. I don't think they just voted for me just because of who I am. I was voted in on my record." The High Court ruling prevents Mr Rahman from standing in the mayoral election which has to be re-run because he was found guilty of election fraud in May 2014. Activist group Counterfire said it wanted to "defend democracy" in the borough, "challenge racism" and ensure "anti-racist, anti-war and anti-austerity politics find their place in the council". Mr Rahman has consistently denied wrongdoing and announced via his website earlier this week that he would be appealing the High Court decision. The disgraced mayor was part of the Tower Hamlets First party. In his election court judgement, Commissioner Richard Mawrey predicted Mr Rahman would not accept the result. Mr Mawrey said: "On past form it appears inevitable that Mr Rahman will denounce this judgement as yet another example of the racism and Islamophobia that have hounded him throughout his political life. "It is nothing of the sort." In the case, Mr Mawrey said the mayor had "driven a coach and horses through election law and didn't care".

Question: The former mayor of Tower Hamlets has vowed to clear his name in his first public @placeholder since a High Court ruling found him guilty of election fraud .


They are the first to be included in the table since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were added. The first true iteration of the table was produced in 1869 by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. The new additions were formally verified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) on 30 December 2015. The body announced that a team of Russian and American researchers had provided sufficient evidence to claim the discovery of elements 115, 117 and 118. How do elements get their names? IUPAC awarded credit for the discovery of element 113 to a Japanese team at the Riken Institute. The teams responsible for the discoveries have been invited to come up with permanent names and chemical symbols for the now-confirmed elements. "The chemistry community is eager to see its most cherished table finally being completed down to the seventh row. IUPAC has now initiated the process of formalising names and symbols for these elements," said Prof Jan Reedijk, president of the inorganic chemistry division of IUPAC. New elements can be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property or a scientist. After the responsible IUPAC division accepts the new names and two-letter symbols, they will be presented for public review for five months. The chemistry organisation's council will then make a final decision.

Question: Four chemical elements have been formally added to the periodic table , completing the @placeholder 's seventh row .


Proposals in the government's White Paper  include cutting the number of different orders from 19 to six. A "community trigger" would also force police, councils and agencies to act if five households made a complaint. Labour said the new measures were a "weaker rebrand" of powers to tackle anti-social behaviour. The government says it wants to take the existing 19 powers and reduce them to six which are connected to the behaviour of people, the protection of places and the powers of the police. Under the new proposals: The trigger that they're talking about - five people causes trigger - is it five people on the same street? Five people in the community? Have four people got to suffer unless they can get a fifth person to come forward? The bottom line with Asbos - and any minor problems with them - is that the people that are getting them, the victims, they don't have enough support. And everything that comes out of the Home Office since I started in to them 10 years ago, there is never funding to support the victims and witnesses to anti-social behaviour. People may report anti-social behaviour to the police, but they might not follow it through with a statement in writing and that is the problem. And that is going to be the problem with this. They've still got to get people to come forward and report. I couldn't get five people on my street to report anything - regardless of what I've done over the years here. They might report it, but they won't follow it through and that's the problem, it's the fear factor. Source:  BBC Radio 5Live Home Secretary Theresa May told the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) annual conference in Manchester that the government's approach "empowers local communities, places victims' needs at its heart and puts more trust in the professionals than ever before". Mrs May said the community trigger would be piloted in three areas - Manchester, Brighton and Hove and West Lindsey, in Lincolnshire, from 1 June. It will force the police, councils and other agencies to act if five households complain, or the same individual complains three times. And she told Acpo the new approach "will not dump all of society's problems on the police". "We are challenging local agencies to do more to prevent crime and anti-social behaviour in the first place - lowering the burden on the police - and our new powers are available to range of agencies and explicitly include actions to change an offender's behaviour and stop future incidents." Mrs May earlier told the BBC that Asbos were "too bureaucratic" and took too long to put into place. The Home Office first signalled an end to Asbos, introduced under Tony Blair's Labour government, earlier at the start of last year. It believes the orders are seen by some youths as a badge of honour and it has pointed out that more than half are breached at least once. The shadow home office minister, Gloria De Piero, says while Asbos are imperfect, the new measures will only make matters worse. "Asbos are sometimes breached and that's a really serious thing. That's why you get a criminal record. "Actually half of the people who breach Asbos end up behind bars, that's how seriously Labour took it. The new Crime Prevention Injunction, you won't even get a criminal record." One woman from Backworth in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who has been a repeated victim of anti-social behaviour, told the BBC she supported the move to lower the burden of proof for anti-social acts. "You have to have a level of trust in the community, that people like me do not make things up. "But the main problem is that there is not enough of a multi-agency approach to the problem. "In my experience the police are proactive in trying to identify and find those who threaten us but the local authority is not. "There needs to be more intelligence shared between the agencies." Javed Khan, chief executive of Victim Support, said victims of anti-social behaviour should be taken seriously as soon as they made a report to the police. He added: "We hope that the new Criminal Behaviour Order will deliver the rapid response for victims that is needed. "But just dishing out the orders won't be enough. If the government really wants to put victims first, tough enforcement and follow-up will be required, to avoid making the CBO an empty sanction."

Question: The government has announced new plans to tackle anti-social behaviour in England and Wales , including orders to @placeholder Asbos .


He's hoping lady luck will be on his side this time after having lost $900 (?¡ê590) over the past two nights playing his favourite game - roulette. But as the ball settles in slot number four he realises he's lost another $200. "I don't come here to win, but just to have some fun," he says. The 37-year-old businessman claims he is not an active gambler but comes to the casino for the experience. And that's the story of most people who visit Goa's casinos. Goa is often referred as the Las Vegas of India. It's one of the three places in India that allows legal casinos to operate, and the only state that permits live gaming, though with restrictions. Live gaming, which means there's a person dealing you the cards, is allowed only on offshore casinos - so the gambling dens are onboard ships anchored on the Mandovi river overlooking Panaji, Goa's state capital. The casinos on land are only permitted to operate electronic games. Today, the state's 15 casinos - four of them offshore - receive some 15,000 visitors every day. Most of them are domestic tourists - who are in Goa on a holiday to enjoy the famous beaches, but end up visiting an offshore casino for the experience. The age group of these guests ranges from 25 to 40; working professionals, couples, businessmen or just a family from a small Indian city, can all be spotted here. The casinos consciously market themselves as entertainment destinations - providing unlimited food, alcohol, live performances and gaming - all at one ship - for an entry fee that costs around $40. This helps them draw a lot more people, who otherwise would be wary of visiting. "We are catering to the mass market, not the high rollers," says Jaydev Mody, chairman of Delta Corp, which operates two offshore casinos. An average player spends $200-300 on gambling, with roulette and blackjack being the most popular games - and 20% of the visitors are serious players who come here just to gamble like Senthil from Bangalore. He says: "Previously I used to travel to Macau twice a year, but now I come here every two months." Casino visitors have been rising 30% annually - and casinos are now a significant revenue generator for Goa. It's estimated the industry contributes more than $30m a year to the state's exchequer in the form of taxes and levies. But despite their rising popularity, casinos have been facing political heat and opposition in the state. The licences of the four offshore casinos will expire next year on 31 March, and there's pressure on the government not to renew them - till they move out of the river Mandovi and relocate in the deep sea, away from the city. There are two key reasons for this opposition. Political parties and non-government organisations say that casinos are a bad influence and they are making many people gambling addicts. "It is an evil affecting Goan society. Many young Goans are falling for this culture, ruining their life and destroying the families," Luizinho Faleiro, local leader of the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, said earlier this year. Critics also say the casinos are polluting the Mandovi river. Ironically, the campaign to shut these casinos was initiated by the Bhartiya Janta Party, which is now ruling the state, when it was in the opposition. There is also a proposal to ban local residents from entering casinos altogether. It's a suggestion that the state's chief minister, Laxmikant Parsekar, admits would be hard to implement. "It will probably be difficult to screen and check the all entrants," he says. Casino owners deny the allegation and argue that the industry is creating jobs for locals. Senior officials in the government say that any move to ban local residents from entering the casinos is unlikely. "Any such move will be unconstitutional and will be counterproductive," says William Britto, owner of Chances casino and resorts. Currently officials are scouting for an alternate location where the ships can be shifted after their licences expire. But like the last few times, the casinos are expected to get an extension again. Among all this cacophony, the industry is also worried about future growth. With footfalls rising sharply every year, offshore casinos are worried that they will need more capacity to meet the growing demand. Adding more ships won't help, they say, but if they were allowed to operate live games on land then that would help expand the market. "We can create a destination just like Singapore or Macau. Create resorts and casinos and fill them up," says Mr Mody. The current situation has left the local government in a dilemma - it is difficult to publicly acknowledge the crucial contribution made by casinos to the treasury, and on the other, it cannot create unfriendly policies that will harm casinos. For now the industry is hoping that opposition voices will die down in the future, paving the way for their expansion. And given that there is a huge dearth of places in the country where people can gamble legally, Goa may just still turn out to be a winning bet for investors.

Question: As the wheel spins , and the white ball bounces across different coloured @placeholder with distinct numbers , Bahlu Jai Singh waits with bated breath .


"In the end, it's not the years in your life that counts, it's the life in your years," was the message on Twitter and Instagram, also shared by President Trump. There was just one problem: the words have been attributed to Lincoln many times over the years, but there is no evidence he ever said them. The post has since been deleted. It was the latest example of a growing modern phenomenon, the fake political quote. Some have said "fake news" could have swung the outcome of November's US presidential election. Bogus stories like "Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President" were extensively shared online. Made up quotes are perhaps more benign than fictitious news stories with a clear political agenda. But they still raise concerns, says James Ball of Buzzfeed News, who is writing a book about "post-truth" politics. "If enough people share and believe these fake quotes, then they can contribute to the polarisation of politics, making each side think less of the other, especially as many partisans think fake news is a problem which affects primarily (or only) their opponents." These fake quotes don't just come from right-wing politicians and activists. In the days after the US election, a quote supposedly taken from a 1998 Donald Trump interview went viral online. "If I were to run, I'd run as a Republican. They're the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they'd still eat it up," the quote said. It seemed too obnoxious to be true - and it was. Fake George Orwell quotes are a specialty in left-wing social media circles. One example is "during times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." There is no evidence the 1984 author ever said these words, but social media is awash with shareable pictures of them alongside Orwell's monochrome face. So how do bogus quotes like this get into circulation? "Sometimes people just want new followers or shares on social media, and either invent a quote or (naively or otherwise) lift a questionable one," says James Ball. "Others invent quotes as a hoax or parody to show up people they disagree with, or to fire up their own side - or simply to make money from adverts on fake news sites." The internet means fake quotes can spread very quickly. "It's easier to fabricate things than it is to debunk them," says Rasmus Nielsen, director of research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. "As communication gets easier, there is going to be more and more of this stuff floating about online." Jenni Sargent runs First Draft News, which is working with social media companies and news organisations to look at innovative solutions to the problem. "People are experimenting with the most engaging way to spread false information," she says. She wants news websites to come up with entertaining ways of debunking fake facts and quotes. A blue tick next to a name on Twitter tells you the account has been verified as "authentic". Sargent wants to come up with ways to highlight unreliable sources, "like the opposite of a blue tick". Facebook is introducing tools for German users to flag false stories ahead of that country's parliamentary elections in the autumn. Third-party fact checkers would mark unreliable stories as "disputed". The BBC has also said it will fact check deliberately misleading stories "masquerading as news". British MP Damian Collins is chairing a parliamentary inquiry into these issues, which will look at the possibility of news websites having "verified" markers. Collins thinks fake quotes attributed to electoral candidates could end up "distorting the democratic process". Often verifying quotes is simply a case of rigorously searching through publicly available information, says Kim LaCapria, who works for rumour-busting website Snopes. The volume of dubious content online is greater than ever before, but verification can be easier because far more information is digitised, she says. "It's actually pretty easy for average social media users to fact check online." Her job involves looking at outright fake quotes, but also real quotes presented in a misleading way. For example, Al Gore has been ridiculed for claiming he "invented the internet". The former vice president did once say "I took the initiative in creating the Internet," but taken in full context, that line seems rather more modest. We are less likely to expend energy verifying a quote which confirms our political beliefs, says LaCapria, an effect which psychologists call confirmation bias. Whether a fake quote comes from the left or the right, it tends to have one common feature, she says. "It validates our preconceived beliefs or feelings, and that's often proffered as a valid reason to spread it."

Question: It was Abraham Lincoln 's 208th birthday last weekend . The US Republican Party 's social media feeds @placeholder the 16th president by sharing a picture of his iconic memorial in Washington DC , with an inspiring quote laid over the top .


But Mrs Justice Nicola Davies said medical staff acted professionally and in the best interest of Janet Tracey. Mrs Tracey, 63, died at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, in March 2011. Her husband David says the notice was put on unlawfully, which the Cambridge University Hospitals Trust denies. Mrs Justice Davies found a second notice, which followed three days afterwards and two days before Mrs Tracey's death, was put in place with the agreement of her family, who were unwilling to speak to her about it. The judge, who was determining disputed issues of fact, will rule on Friday whether the legal issues should now be considered at a judicial review hearing in February, which would also involve the Secretary of State for Health. Lawyers for Mrs Tracey's family said this would clarify whether there is a legal duty to inform patients with capacity whether a DNR has been placed on their notes. Mrs Tracey, a care home manager, died following a transfer to Addenbrooke's Hospital after breaking her neck in a car crash on 19 February - two weeks after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The first notice, on 27 February, was cancelled on 2 March, while a second was imposed on 5 March, two days before she died. Her husband, a retired engineer, said his wife believed she was being "badgered" into making a decision about resuscitation options. But Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has said the claims are unsound and unfair. It said cardiopulmonary resuscitation would have been wholly inappropriate and not in the best interests of Mrs Tracey, who also had pneumonia and required ventilation. Mrs Justice Davies said the failure to inform or involve Mrs Tracey had "minimal causative effect", as the notice was cancelled five days later when her family objected.

Question: A woman with a broken neck and cancer was not informed or involved in a decision to put a " do not resuscitate " notice in her @placeholder , a high court judge has ruled .


Eddie Jones' side play four Test matches in as many weeks, with Argentina and Australia still to come. "The autumn is pretty intense and is probably little bit harder mentally to stay focused," Marler told BBC 5 live. "Eddie mentioned it's very similar to a World Cup [in terms of] the intensity you have to go through in order to get through your pool." Ahead of Saturday's match with the Pumas, Marler says the England squad have spoken this week about the challenge of staying mentally refreshed after being in camp together for over a month. "We have discussed how this could be a tough week for boys who are missing home a bit," the Harlequins forward added. "It's a collective buy-in from boys to help each other out. We haven't got a specific senior leadership group, but there are boys who have been around long enough. "The Six Nations brings a lot of history and tradition but you get those two fallow weeks in the middle of it that breaks it up a little bit more - you get more of a change of environment and maybe a couple more days to get home and see the family. "It is tough, but it's part and parcel of rugby life, and you get on with it." However, Marler insists that the facilities at England's training base in Surrey means the players have no excuses around their preparation. "We haven't exactly got it hard, the accommodation and facilities we have here are incredible," the 26-year-old said. "They are here for a reason, and that's for us to improve as players and as a team. We have the best facilities; there is no excuse." Marler also says he has learnt from his past experiences, and is now able to act as a mentor to the younger members of the England squad, such as his Harlequins club team-mate Kyle Sinckler, who recently made his international debut. "Kyle Sinckler has been brilliant for the past 18 months and has finally got his shot, but there have been times with Kyle when I've had to sit down with him and say 'what are you doing?'" Marler said. "He'll listen and nod, but part of me also thinks is he saying 'what are you going on about Joe, you have done this and that before, you were bad once?' "I was once, but I like to think I am working on that now. "So it's little things like that, just to help each other out. It's all about that experience." Hear more from Joe Marler on 5 live Rugby from 20:00 GMT on Thursday. For the latest rugby union news follow @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter.

Question: England 's autumn international schedule mirrors the intensity of a Rugby World Cup , according to @placeholder Joe Marler .


The Gower Society wants new caravans to be "more sympathetic" to the surroundings by blending in. It was the UK's first area of outstanding natural beauty in 1956 and has dozens of caravan sites. "We're not saying existing caravans should be painted," chairman Robin Kirby said. "We're not saying they should be replaced either but when the caravans are upgraded, new caravans should be painted in darker colours so they blend into the countryside." "The society has been concerned for some time with the colour of static caravans which are light in colour. We believe they should be darker." Mr Kirby told BBC Radio Wales' Jason Mohammad programme some static caravans are "the wrong colour." "They should be juniper green or rustic brown," he said. "The surroundings are obviously green and brown and at the moment, they don't blend into the countryside as well as they should. "There are not local rules but we are concerned that there should be. "We are not opposed to caravan sites because caravans provide accommodation and enjoyment for many families to explore the Gower, which is beautiful. "And in fairness, when some caravan parks introduce new caravans they are more brown. "I feel their responsibility is when caravan parks do replace old ones, they consider the new ones are of a more acceptable colour."

Question: New static caravans on the Gower Peninsula should be painted brown or green , a Gower @placeholder protection group has said .


Victims were fooled by emails asking them to divert payments into criminals' accounts, leaving the genuine recipient unpaid. The number of cases of the scam - also known as "mandate" or "invoice" fraud - is up 71% on the previous year. Losses in the UK totalled ¡ê126m, according to police figures compiled for Radio 4's You & Yours. Police said people need to be suspicious of any persistent emails that suggest a change of bank account details. Georgia Morandi, from Carmarthenshire, lost ¡ê2,514 to this sort of scam after having a wood burning stove installed. She received messages - apparently from her stove fitter's email account - asking for the money she owed him to be paid into a different bank account. "The timing of it was perfect because, of course, it was a bill that I inevitably had to pay," she said. But the messages she had received were not really from her stove fitter. It is thought his email account had been compromised and somebody posed as him online. "It was a massive shock because I could instantly see that it would be an issue trying to get the money back," said Ms Morandi. "I went into a bit of a panic wondering how it was going to end. I couldn't afford to pay for the stove twice; the stove fitter couldn't afford to be out of pocket. It was very difficult to know who is responsible for that stolen money." In the end, Ms Morandi's bank refunded the money she had sent to criminals. But they called it a goodwill gesture and not everyone caught out in this way will get their money back. The police recorded 5,480 similar cases in 2015, compared with 3,206 in 2014. Of those affected, 36% of them said it had a severe or significant impact on them, meaning it affected their health or their ability to make ends meet. The scam tends to happen in two main ways. The first is where a company's IT system is infected with malware allowing criminals to spy on emails and then contact customers. The second is where a criminal pretends to be someone senior in a company and emails a junior member of staff asking them to make a business payment, known as CEO fraud. "Junior people in very large organisations need to feel comfortable to ask the question of someone senior whether or not this is a real transaction," said Commander Chris Greany from City of London Police, which monitors and investigates fraud across the UK. "Sadly email is just not safe and you cannot trust it all the time." Commander Greany thinks more people need to be suspicious of emails that ask for payment particularly if they are persistent and include new bank account details. "The best thing for any individual to do is to pick up the phone and speak to the business they are dealing with," he suggested. For more help, see the BBC iWonder guide "How do I avoid being ripped off by a scam?" Have you been affected by this story? Are you a victim of fraud? Share your comments and experiences. You can email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

Question: More than 5,000 people were conned into sending @placeholder payments to fraudsters ' bank accounts last year .


Readings showed that the water level in the canal connecting the river to the plant was going down rapidly. Water is used to produce steam to run the turbines and for cooling vital equipment of coal-fired power stations. By next day, authorities were forced to suspend generation at the 2,300-megawatt plant in Farakka town causing shortages in India's power grid. Next, the vast township on the river, where more than 1,000 families of plant workers live, ran out of water. Thousands of bottles of packaged drinking water were distributed to residents, and fire engines rushed to the river to extract water for cooking and cleaning. The power station - one of the 41 run by the state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation, which generates a quarter of India's electricity - was shut for 10 days, unprecedented in its 30-year history. "Never before have we shut down the plant because of a shortage of water," says Milan Kumar, a senior plant official. "We are being told by the authorities that water levels in the river have receded, and that they can do very little." Further downstream, say locals, ferries were suspended and sandbars emerged on the river. Some 13 barges carrying imported coal to the power station were stranded midstream because of insufficient water. Children were seen playing on a near-dry river bed. Nobody is sure why the water level on the Ganges receded at Farakka, where India built a barrage in the 1970s to divert water away from Bangladesh. Much later, in the mid-1990s, the countries signed a 30-year agreement to share water. (The precipitous decline in water levels happened during a 10-day cycle when India is bound by the pact to divert most of the water to Bangladesh. The fall in level left India with much less water than usual.) Monsoon rains have been scanty in India for the second year in succession. The melting of snow in the Himalayas - the mountain holds the world's largest body of ice outside the polar caps and contributes up to 15% of the river flow - has been delayed this year, says SK Haldar, general manager of the barrage. "There are fluctuations like this every year," he says. But the evidence about the declining water levels and waning health of the 2,500km (1,553 miles)-long Ganges, which supports a quarter of India's 1.3 billion people, is mounting. Part of a river's water level is determined by the groundwater reserves in the area drained by it and the duration and intensity of monsoon rains. Water tables have been declining in the Ganges basin due to the reckless extraction of groundwater. Much of the groundwater is, anyway, already contaminated with arsenic and fluoride. A controversial UN climate report said the Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of the current levels by 2035. Emmanuel Theophilus and his son, Theo, kayaked on the Ganges during their 87-day, 2,500km journey of India's rivers last year. They asked fishermen and people living on the river what had changed most about it. "All of them said there had been a reduction in water levels over the years. Also when we were sailing on the Ganges, we did not find a single turtle. The river was so dirty that it stank. There were effluents, sewage and dead bodies floating," says Mr Theophilus. The waning health of the sacred river underscores the rising crisis of water in India. Two successive bad monsoons have already led to a drought-like situation, and river basins are facing water shortages. The three-month-long summer is barely weeks away but water availability in India's 91 reservoirs is at its lowest in a decade, with stocks at a paltry 29% of their total storage capacity, according to the Central Water Commission. Some 85% of the country's drinking water comes from aquifers, but their levels are falling, according to WaterAid. No wonder then that conflicts over water are on the rise. Thousands of villagers in drought-hit region of Maharashtra depend on tankers for water; and authorities in Latur district, fearing violence, have imposed prohibitory orders on gatherings of more than five people around storage tanks. Tens of thousands of farmers and livestock have moved to camps providing free fodder and water for animals in parched districts. The government has asked local municipalities to stop supplying water to swimming pools. States like Punjab are squabbling over ownership of river waters. In water-scarce Orissa, farmers have reportedly breached embankments to save their crops. Back in Farakka, villagers are washing clothes in the shallow waters of the power station canal and children are crossing by foot. "We would dive into the canal earlier for a swim," says a villager. Not far away, near the shores of the Ganges, fisherman Balai Haldar looks at his meagre catch of prawns and bemoans the lack of water. "The river has very little water these days. It is also running out of fish. Tube wells in our village have run out of water," he says. "There's too much of uncertainty. People in our villages have moved to the cities to look for work." It is a concern you hear a lot on the river these days. At the power plant, Milan Kumar says he is "afraid that this can happen again". "We are being told that water levels in the Ganges have declined by a fourth. Being located on the banks of one of the world's largest rivers, we never thought we would face a scarcity of water. "The unthinkable is happening."

Question: On 11 March , panic struck @placeholder at a giant power station on the banks of the Ganges river in West Bengal state .


In South Sudan, a country of some 11 million people, there are only two trained psychiatrists. Dr Atong Ayuel is one of those two, and the new head of mental health care in South Sudan. The country's third trained psychiatrist apparently lives in London. A stocky, determined mother of three, Dr Atong is ambitious about what she, and her team of just 20 trained mental healthcare professionals, can achieve. However on our visit to Juba's main public hospital, there were only 10 patients undergoing treatment, despite the fact that the people of this land have suffered so much. The short history of South Sudan, which three years ago became the world's youngest nation, is scarred by violence. "The scale of the problem is huge," says Dr Atong. During the current civil war, which broke out in December, thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes. They now live in camps, often in squalid conditions. It is in that context that Dr Atong says the number of patients is increasing and she simply does not "have the resources or manpower" to treat them all. What is more, there was conflict in this land for decades before South Sudan's independence in 2011 and it has taken its toll on the people here. Drive through the capital Juba, and you can spot men walking naked through the streets. "Some men are becoming violent, they start shooting each other," says Dr Atong. "Some of them are having a full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder." What is shocking to many outside of South Sudan is that mentally ill people are kept not in a hospital, but at Juba's main prison. Human rights organisations have criticised the government and have campaigned for their release or transfer to another facility. While we were in Juba, Dr Atong started working at the prison in order to assess those patients being kept there. She told us some of them have already been released. Officials at Juba prison did not allow the BBC team inside. But they told us that there were still 150 people with mental health problems, being kept at the prison. Dr Atong rejects the criticism from human rights organisations and foreign journalists. She argues that the patients are not kept in the prison as criminals, but for their own safety, and that of others. "Mentally ill patients are people who are not predictable," she says. However, the fact that the authorities in Juba say they have to keep patients in the prison because there is nowhere else safe enough to house them underlines how basic South Sudan's mental health system is. The sight of dozens of policemen in military-style uniforms, with riot shields and long police batons, heading out to pick up the men with serious psychological problems who wander Juba's streets also seems primitive, when compared to the sensitivity shown towards the issue of mental health in more developed nations. We accompanied the squads on their patrol through the streets of Juba. But the role of the police is seen as an important part of the South Sudanese government's strategy of tackling mental health. Only they can safely remove men, whose behaviour can be unpredictable from the capital's dusty streets, and take them to the hospital, where they can be treated. At one point I ask Dr Atong, who is out on this patrol, whether the police have spotted a possible patient. She replies that the police saw a scruffy man wearing overalls, but it turned out "he was a mechanic". And when I questioned a senior police officer on the patrol about how he and his colleagues were able to tell if someone was mentally ill, or not, he said, with some confidence, that it was "because of the way someone was dressed, and the way they moved". But aside from such sensitivities, when addressing the issue of mental health, Dr Atong and her small team of mental health care professionals are trying to tackle a gargantuan task. In a dilapidated corridor of Juba Hospital's mental health ward, I meet George who is visiting his wife. He explains that a few days ago, his wife turned violent and was threatening to burn their house down. But in some way they are the lucky ones. Reports suggest that other people in South Sudan, whose relatives suffer severe mental health problems resort to tying them up at home, because they have nowhere to take them for treatment. Aid agencies also warn that treating mental health is crucial for South Sudan's future. Heke Huisman, from the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, argues that if people who experience violence are not helped, then they themselves are more prone to turn to violence. "If someone has been abused in his life, he becomes the abuser," she says. And stories of trauma and tragedy are alarmingly common in South Sudan. At a camp on the edge of Juba, where 1,700 people live who fled the recent fighting, we meet 12-year-old Mary. In a sweet, innocent, high-pitched voice she recalls how both her parents and her two brothers were killed in the violence earlier this year. Many believe that if South Sudan is to break-away from a self-destructive cycle of war, it must address the psychological cost of so much violence.

Question: South Sudan is desperately in need of mental health facilities to treat people brutalised by decades of conflict , writes the BBC 's Tom Burridge after visiting the world 's newest @placeholder .


This would see average bills fall in real terms by about ¡ê20 from ¡ê396 to ¡ê376. However, consumers will still pay more, as the companies are allowed to add on inflation, as measured by RPI. RPI is typically higher than CPI inflation, and is currently running at 2.3% a year. Nevertheless the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) said it was good news for consumers. "Most water companies and the regulator have listened to customers and delivered a deal which reflects the services they want, at a price most find acceptable," said Tony Smith, the chief executive of the CCW. After two years of deliberations, Ofwat has now determined the levels at which all 18 water and sewerage companies can set their prices for the five-year period beginning in April 2015. Thames has been told it will have to cut charges by 5% in real terms, United Utilities must cut by 3%, and Bristol Water - a water-only company - must cut charges by 21%. Ofwat said the ruling will allow water companies to invest ¡ê44bn over the next five years, or ¡ê2,000 per household. "With bills held down by 5% and service driven up over the next five years, customers will get more and pay less," said Cathryn Ross, Ofwat chief executive. For water and sewage charges, Anglian customers will see the greatest percentage drop in yearly bills, down 10% to an average of ¡ê390 by 2019-20. Northumbrian customers will see the smallest change in their bills, dropping 1% to ¡ê382. The main factor behind Ofwat ordering a drop in bills has been the sustained period in low interest rates. This has allowed water companies to borrow much more cheaply for infrastructure projects, which are among their main costs. Companies have two months to accept Ofwat's decision, or seek a referral to the Competition and Markets Authority. Both Thames Water and United Utilities said they would look at the ruling carefully before coming to a decision.

Question: Household water bills in England and Wales will fall by an average of 5 % - not @placeholder inflation - by 2020 , the regulator Ofwat has ruled .


A journalist with more than 13 years' experience covering stories of terror, violence, attending inquests, carrying out death knocks and focusing on the emerging field of "trauma journalism", there came a point last year when I was ready to take a step back and deep dive into the world of peace and conflict, which had come to underpin every bit of storytelling I was doing. So earlier this year, I took three months' unpaid leave to take up a Rotary International peace fellowship at Chulalongkorn University, in Thailand. This is a professional development programme for mid-career workers interested in understanding peace and learning conflict-resolution techniques. Fifty people from around the world had been selected for a funded scholarship this year, after a two-part face -to-face interview process and a long paper application system. Global education Get in touch with the Global education series. An article I had written for BBC History several years previously, on why people destroyed cultural heritage, had instigated a real interest in identity politics. The destruction of heritage sites Palmyra, in Syria, and Nimrud, in Iraq, was of real interest - how had we reached a point where monuments were under attack and why? My three months would be spent examining the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, in 2001, the role the media had played and lessons for the future. Peace and conflict study courses are on offer at universities and educational centres around the world - it's a popular subject. In 1948, peacemaker Gladys Muir established what is believed to be the world's first undergraduate programme in peace studies, at Manchester College, in Indiana, in the US. A quick online search for "peace fellowships" brings up a plethora of opportunities across the globe. King's College London is currently offering a fellowship for African women, while the United States Institute of Peace has schemes too. The peace fellowship in which I enrolled receives $3.4m (?¡ê2.6m) from the Rotary Foundation each year, although the running costs are more than that. Rotary International president John Germ says the organisation invests in the fellowship programme because it gives students "a tool, to use and pass on - to build a world of hope and peace for all of us". The foundation also funds master's courses at peace centres in Tokyo, Uppsala, North Carolina, Brisbane and Bradford, but the centre in Bangkok is currently the only one hosting this mid-career certificate. Taking two cohorts of up to 25 a year, the classes are intense and operate on a pass-or-fail basis. My 23 classmates came from 17 different countries and a wide variety of backgrounds - a farmer, development consultants, lecturers, a lawyer, women's rights activists, a government official and people with experience in the United Nations and smaller scale NGOs - all with the same intention of developing our experiences in this field and learning from each other. We had to live together in the same university accommodation and spend a lot of time together. But, as US classmate, Travis Burke, a consultant with experience in Afghanistan, Somalia and Ukraine, said: "The value of different voices and thoughts can't be underestimated when tackling these major issues." This particular Thai peace course began as a pilot in 2005. It has been running ever since, producing 203 male and 220 female peace alumni from 78 countries. Each cohort goes on a domestic and international field trip. Class 22 visited Chiang Rai, in northern Thailand, to examine the fight over the Mekong River. We then travelled to Sri Lanka to look at the after-effects of the civil war, which came close to devastating the country. People on all sides, from villagers to fishermen to military staff to government officials, all wanted to share their experiences. The course lecturers include lawyers, Buddhist monks and peace activists. The fellowship also uses its network of alumni as a resource - so who knows which of my classmates will be back in Thailand soon to pass on their expertise. We examined military approaches, the role of storytelling and the media, how women were integral to peace, mediation and human rights, within the designated modules. But the world is moving on, and cyber-warfare is becoming a norm. With fellows raising issues around disinformation and the role of fake media and technology in obstructing peace, the deputy director Vitoon Viriyasakultorn says changes to the course curricular are afoot. "As well as the changing political environments and emerging issues around the world, it is the right time to revisit the programme to make it more attractive and responsive to the world's changing environments and technologies," he says. For some of my classmates, the scholarship has already instigated change. Dan Noel Odaba, who teaches international relations at the United States International University Africa, in Nairobi, is using the skills he learned to help young people in slum areas to learn how to resolve conflict. Sharada Jnawali, from Kathmandu, has 15 years' experience in the development field. For her, the programme provided an immediate networking pool and some theoretical tools to complement the practical experience she had already accumulated, while Jill Mann, a peace activist from Leeds, says it's made her rethink how communities approach peace and conflict. Maybe soon we'll find the words of Benvolio, Tybalt's counterpart in Romeo and Juliet, will be far more influential in a world where conflict dominates the news agenda: "I do but keep the peace: put up thy sword, Or manage it to part these men with me." Follow Dhruti Shah on Twitter: @dhrutishah

Question: " What , @placeholder , and talk of peace ! I hate the word . " And with that , in Act One , Scene One , Tybalt , the violent " Prince of Cats " in William Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet begins a fight that could possibly have been avoided .


Matthew and John Hargreaves admitted participating in a fraudulent business, while Jean Hargreaves admitted engaging in an unfair commercial practice. The trio, from Knutsford, Cheshire, sold the product at the Royal Welsh Show in Builth Wells, Powys, in 2013. The two men got 18 months in prison and Jean Hargreaves received a six month sentence, suspended for two years. Sentencing the three, Judge Philip Harris-Jenkins said: "You put personal greed ahead of public safety." Merthyr Crown Court heard the family made ?¡ê3.4m from the venture - a figure disputed by defence counsel - with John Hargreaves, 69, playing a leading role until handing over to his son, Matthew, 44, in 2010. Jean Hargreaves, 71, was said to have played a lesser role than her husband and son. Powys council's trading standards team launched a three-year, ?¡ê400,000 investigation into the three after tests on the products at the agricultural show showed the hydrogen peroxide levels were "harmful". The council's investigations led them to 30 victims across the UK, including one who required hospital treatment. Investigators found the three had tried to sell the whitener at about 150 venues, including shopping centre, as well as online. The council said numerous unsubstantiated and false claims were discovered on banners at the Royal Welsh Show, including claims the product was "ideal for any age group" and was "used by leading dentists throughout the UK and Europe". The product was 11% hydrogen peroxide. It is legal for anyone to treat themselves with an over-the-counter kit, provided it contains less than 0.1% hydrogen peroxide. A dentist can legally use 6%. Excessive levels of the chemical compound can cause blistering, burns and other damage. Prosecutor Mark Wyeth QC said the whitening had "harmful levels of hydrogen peroxide, thereby putting at risk the health of anybody who happened to buy this product". The court heard the family would change the name of the company they operated under and dissolve businesses in order to evade unhappy customers and the authorities. The father and son's involvement stretched from 2007 to 2015, while Jean Hargreaves' crime was carried out between 2013 and 2015. The family have refused to disclose where the whitener was manufactured, as well as the supply chain. Mr Wyeth said since the broadcast of BBC's Fake Britain programme featuring the Hargreaves was broadcast, Walsall council had discovered Matthew Hargreaves was still trading in teeth whitening products. The court heard John Hargreaves, who accepted a caution in 2007 for selling similar teeth whitening products at Manchester Airport, used his wife to "provide a layer of protection against investigation". It was also told the two men had aspirations of producing even stronger products with hydrogen peroxide content of 22-38%. Sukhdev Garcha, defending Matthew Hargreaves, said he played a subordinate role but had accepted his actions and expressed remorse. Representing John Hargreaves, Amos Waldman said: "His involvement reduced towards the end - he effectively retired. He accepts entirely he was dishonest." Anthony Barraclough, defending Jean Hargreaves, said: "This lady would never have condoned the sale of dangerous chemicals. She has been devastated by all of this." Jean Hargreaves was disqualified from being a company director for five years while the two men were banned for 10 years.

Question: A father and son who sold teeth whitener with 110 times the legal limit of hydrogen peroxide , have been @placeholder .


On mine, some were fatalistic, others nervously pragmatic - one passenger told me he could not afford to change expensive, long-laid travel plans, however grim the news. Some were more openly apprehensive. Egypt sees itself as a regional power in the front line of a war against global jihadism and its strong-man President, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, portrays himself as the hammer of political Islamism at home. Privately many Egyptians appear to worry that might make their country an obvious target for jihadists - the fear being that a long-bubbling Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula might escalate elsewhere in Egypt. You do not find those fears reflected in the mainstream media, which sees its role in Mr Sisi's Egypt as cheerleading for the state where possible and downplaying criticism when necessary. But the fears are nonetheless real - most Egyptians firmly support the idea that their country should be a strong regional power but there is a genuine anxiety about the price tag such a role might ultimately carry. For the relatives of the missing gathered at a Cairo hotel, the absence of concrete information must be almost unendurable. They now face a very personal and agonising search for answers that cannot really begin until the search for the bulk of the missing wreckage yields results. The Egyptian air force has now reported finding debris in the Mediterranean somewhere between 125 miles (200km) and 185 miles north of Alexandria. That is a start, but the task of recovery remains immense - this is a search not just for evidence of what caused the crash but for the bodies of those who died in it. The performance of Egypt's armed forces and intelligence agencies will be closely scrutinised. If the loss of flight MS804 turns out to be the result of a terrorist attack, as most Egyptians now assume, it will raise further questions about the quality of security surrounding EgyptAir operations. A competent and efficient process that quickly identifies who did it and how, may go some way towards restoring that reputational damage. Alongside the mood of national mourning and a feeling that the grief of the passengers' families is widely shared here, there is also a sense that Egypt is once again the subject of hostile foreign scrutiny and part of the reaction in the media reflects a deeply felt resentment at any criticism. That has been reflected in part on social media where the Arabic hashtag "I will only fly EgyptAir" was created in the hours after the plane was reported missing. The defensive tone was also taken up by a television presenter who appeared on screen dressed in an EgyptAir pilot's uniform to decry criticism of the airline. He was careful to add, though, that he did not want to imply such criticism amounted to a "conspiracy". Conspiracy theories abound at moments of crisis in Egypt and they are particularly likely to flourish when there is a lag between speculation and concrete official information. No event creates those circumstances more starkly than the loss of an aircraft at sea, when there is a lag between the sort of speculation and interpretation which floods the internet and the dearth of hard, official information. There are now signs that the first evidence is being recovered but everything depends on finding the aircraft's black-box flight recorders which should include the details of its final, fatal moments. Nowhere is that evidence awaited more keenly than here in Egypt. There is sensitivity to outside criticism here but that is is vastly outweighed by a shared sense of shock and grief.

Question: On Egypt Air flights arriving in Cairo since flight MS804 disappeared from radar screens over the Eastern Mediterranean , one finds a mix of @placeholder .


Fire crews were called to the farm, in the village of Quothquan, near Thankerton, at 22:45 on Wednesday. They used four hose jets to contain the fire to one section of the building. The farmer removed livestock and about 150 bales of hay to allow firefighters better access. An investigation into the cause of the blaze is under way. Crews worked through the night to extinguish the blaze and a single crew remained at the scene on Thursday morning to continue dampening down operations. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said it was "liaising with police to determine the circumstances surrounding the incident".

Question: A farmer in South Lanarkshire was able to lead 35 livestock to safety after a fire broke out at a building @placeholder machinery and hay bales .


Forced to check into a hotel he found himself in a situation he had already experienced several times while travelling in India. "The receptionist was sleeping," he says. "Sockets did not work in the room, mattresses were torn apart, the bathroom was leaking, and at the end they wouldn't let me pay by card." "I felt if this was my problem, this had to be a problem for many travellers. Why can't India have a good standard of hotel rooms at a reasonable price?'' Four years later, at the age of 21, Mr Agarwal is now the founder and chief executive of Oyo Rooms - a network of 2,200 hotels operating in 100 cities across India - with monthly revenues of $3.5m (?¡ê2.3m) and 1,500 employees. The firm works with unbranded hotels to improve their facilities and train staff, rebrands them with its own name, and from then on takes a percentage of the hotel's revenues. The owner of the hotel benefits from a higher occupancy rate, thanks to Oyo's branding. And as part of the business, Mr Agarwal has also developed an app, which guests can use to book rooms, get directions to the hotel, and once they have arrived, to use the hotels amenities, for example to order room service. Tough journey Despite such rapid growth, he says the early days were "extremely difficult". "No one would believe that this could be a technology business in the future," he says. But some people did believe in him. A similar idea - which eventually evolved into Oyo Rooms - won him a coveted Thiel Fellowship - a programme sponsored by PayPal co-creator and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel - which pays for 20 teenagers each year to stop studying and try to set up a business instead. He used the funding from the fellowship to start the business. The firm launched in June 2013 with just $900 (?¡ê586; a??799) a month, working with one hotel in Gurgaon near Delhi. "I used to be the manager, engineer, receptionist for this one hotel and also deliver stuff in hotel rooms," says Mr Agarwal. "At night I would write codes to develop our app and improve our website. But alongside this I was also building strong teams because I knew I wanted to scale this up. '' But the only way he could persuade investors that it was a worthwhile idea was to show them just how bad some budget hotels in India were. "I took our first investor to the hotel we had developed and the other hotels where there were many problems. He saw the conviction in us and felt good about investing in something which he saw could make a difference.'' recalls Mr Agarwal. Now the business has grown, it has become much easier to attract investors, and the firm recently secured $100m from Japan's Softbank. Nonetheless when Mr Agarwal started the company, lots of people told him he was crazy. "But because it was crazy, it was doable. It's true:  if you think crazy stuff that is when it becomes a lot more doable." The journey from college dropout to business owner may appear smooth, but he says starting a business at 17 was not easy. Mr Agarwal says normal things like getting a bank account or hiring staff were more challenging. Plus some people saw his age as a chance to take advantage. '"There were some people who took me for a ride to achieve their short term goals. But I also met some very good people and experiences with them far superseded all the other problems," he says. Mr Agarwal was always ambitious, even from a young age. He grew up in Rayagada a small town in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, and started writing computer code at the age of eight. "I used my brother's books, and it was the first time I saw stuff happening on the computer, because of the things I had done. That is when I first felt the excitement of creating stuff from scratch and it never stopped." By the time Mr Agarwal was 13 he started helping people in his town design websites. He also wrote a book on engineering colleges in India when he was 17 years old, aimed at helping students choose the right course and college in India. Now his ambition shows in his plans for the firm, which Mr Agarwal wants to expand overseas. He hopes to create the world's largest network of hotel rooms. But he admits it won't be easy, saying recruiting the right people when it is growing so rapidly is tough. Currently, his focus is on making improvements based on customer feedback, and he remains optimistic about expanding the company at home, saying India's increasing smartphone and internet penetration offers "huge potential". For those keen to emulate his success, his advice - perhaps unsurprisingly - is to "start early". "Start really fast and, if you fail, you will learn and the chances of success in the next venture will increase," he says.

Question: One night , 18 - year - old Ritesh Agarwal was @placeholder out of his apartment in Delhi . It was an unfortunate minor incident that was to change his life .


Pictures went viral showing PIA ground staff slaughtering a black goat next to an ATR-42 aircraft which was about to leave for a domestic flight. It was the first such flight since PIA grounded its ATR fleet for tests after a 7 December crash killed 47 people. In Pakistan killing a black goat is supposed by many to ward off evil. But the move by ground staff in Islamabad prompted hoots of incredulity once it was established the images were genuine and had not been photo-shopped. A Pakistan International Airlines spokesman was swift to point out the goat had been slaughtered by employees on their own initiative and the airline management had no hand in it. The Dawn newspaper covered the event in a front page story headlined "PIA: on a wing and a prayer". The headline of the Express Tribune newspaper read: "PIA lampooned for bizarre goat slaughter". The Express Tribune commented that the "ritual sacrifice shows fear besetting the PIA employees associated with flight operations, especially those assigned to ATRs". Comments on social media were mixed - while many mocked PIA for indulging in superstition, others defended the slaughter as a practice endorsed by Islam. "Good move. Fresh mutton on flight menu," joked Nadeem Farooq Paracha, a Dawn blogger and columnist, in a tweet. Another journalist, Fasi Zaka, tweeted: "PIA sacrifices a black goat before resuming ATR services, they take their historical nickname 'Please Inform Allah' (PIA) very seriously." Television anchor Ejaz Haider tweeted: "When Charles Perrow was working on his theory of normal accidents, he totally missed out on 'kala bakra' [black goat] as a hedge against accidents." Meanwhile, one Twitter user by the name of MisBis spoke for many when she wrote: "There's nothing wrong in giving Sadqa [sacrificial offering]a€| Sadqa bari balao se bachata hai [it hedges against many troubles]a€| stop making it a joke". PIA had 11 ATR-42 planes in its fleet - the one that crashed in the Havelian region on 7 December killed all those on board. Days later, the pilot of another ATR had to abort take-off due to a malfunction in one of the engines, leading PIA to ground the rest of its ATRs for tests. This affected PIA operations to smaller destinations such as Chitral, Gilgit, Gwadar and many other destinations in Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab where small air strips and lack of technical cover do not allow larger planes to land. Did Sunday night's sacrifice help? All we can say is the flight departed safely for Multan, and later returned to Islamabad.

Question: Pakistan 's national airline has been mocked after a goat was sacrificed to ward off bad @placeholder following one of the country 's worst air disasters .


Election manifestos are written with single party government in mind. What is their place in elections where no single party wins a majority? At the 2010 general election all the contending parties fought campaigns based on published manifestos that set out for electors the policies they intended to pursue in government. But every party lost that election. The hung Parliament that resulted produced the first peacetime coalition government in the United Kingdom for 80 years, and one committed to a programme based on a coalition agreement. The Lib Dem cabinet minister, Vince Cable, summarised the difference in 2010 when challenged about breaking the party's manifesto commitment to abolish tuition fees. "We didn't break a promise. We made a commitment in our manifesto, and we didn't win the election. We then entered into a coalition agreement, and it's the coalition agreement that is binding upon us and which I'm trying to honour." But it was the Lib Dem manifesto that helped attract 6.8 million votes to the party in May 2010, not a coalition agreement that none of them had heard of, let alone seen. How could they? It was the result of a post-election deal. Such arrangements are quite common in many countries, especially those where proportional voting systems make single party government infrequent. But they lie outside the experience of voters in first-past-the-post Westminster elections. But why is there all this fuss about manifesto commitments? The late Labour politician Peter Shore once described manifestos as "a party's contract with the electorate". He did not mean a legal contract but rather a moral contract between MPs and voters based upon the programme the MPs committed themselves to implement if elected to government. And the potency of the mandate given to a government's election manifesto was recognised by the Salisbury convention. During the post-war Labour government, the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, the Marquess of Salisbury, formulated the doctrine that Conservative peers could use their inbuilt majority to amend legislation that the electorate had clearly voted for, but not defeat it. And manifestos, certainly in the post-war period, have held a special status among civil servants. Not only are these documents closely studied within every government department, but the commitments contained within them carry a distinct authority as far as the civil service is concerned. But where did all this come from? In 1834, whilst on holiday in Rome, Sir Robert Peel was invited by King William IV to form a minority government to replace the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne. The law at that time required him to resign his seat of Tamworth and seek re-election as a Minister of the Crown. He published a manifesto in the resulting by-election, stating: "I feel it incumbent on me to enter into a declaration of my views of public policy, as full and unreserved as I can make it". One reason for publishing it was his opinion that voters required "that frank exposition of general principles and views... which it ought not to be the inclination, and cannot be the interest of a minister of this country to withhold". Peel was robust about the terms on which he would accept re-election and government office: "I will not accept power on the condition of declaring myself an apostate from the principles on which I have heretofore acted." His manifesto reflected the political issues of the day and the restricted electorate whose votes he was seeking - currency, criminal law, the Reform Bill, municipal corporations, Church reform. At the end of this 2,300 word Tamworth Manifesto, Peel felt able to declare that he had said enough "with respect to general principles and their practical application to public measures, to indicate the spirit in which the King's government is prepared to act". Peel set out the essence of a party manifesto that we can easily recognise nearly 200 years later: a full and public declaration of policy that a party aspiring to government offers for the verdict of the electorate. Party manifestos have certainly developed since 1834 and not least in respect of the changing priorities addressed in them. In 1900, the Conservative election manifesto amounted to 887 words and contained (at a stretch) four pledges. The party's 2010 manifesto comprised 27,835 words and contained 620 pledges. But the Peel Principle remained unchallenged throughout this period: namely, voters are entitled to know what politicians intend to do in government before they cast their ballots.

Question: As Westminster 's largest parties launch their general election manifestos , here is a guide to the significance and @placeholder of these much -scrutinised documents .


Media reports suggest he may have been preparing a yacht to flee by sea to Russia - perhaps with the help of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which has a naval base on the strategically placed peninsula. This fuelled fears that the majority ethnic Russian Crimea, which enjoys autonomy in Ukraine, could become the next flashpoint in the ongoing political crisis. Crimea's post of president has been abolished, and instead it has a presidential representative from Kiev. The local government is led by a prime minister appointed by Ukraine's parliament. Tensions have been rising on the peninsula in recent days, with pro-Moscow politicians and activists organising rallies and urging Russia to help defend the territory from advancing "fascists" from the rest of Ukraine. Over the weekend, a crowd tore down a Ukrainian national flag in the eastern Crimean town of Kerch, replacing it with the Russian tricolor. And only last week, the speaker of the Crimean parliament, Volodymyr Konstantynov, warned he did not rule out separating from Kiev if the situation in the country deteriorated further. There are concerns that the current turmoil could offer the Kremlin a perfect chance to assert its claim on Crimea, a territory which many Russians believe is theirs anyway and has only come under Kiev by a bizarre twist of fate. Crimea was transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 by the then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, himself an ethnic Ukrainian. Before the Soviet times, it was known as "the playground of Russian tsars" because of its warm climate and the sea. Russian President Vladimir Putin has himself in recent months raised eyebrows in Ukraine and the West, when he seemed to question the territorial integrity of Ukraine. True, the Kremlin can count on a pro-Russian sentiment in Crimea. And Russia's own Black Sea Fleet has its base in Sevastopol - the "city of Russian glory" as it has been referred to by many Russians since the Crimean War in the 19th Century. But the territory is not as staunchly pro-Russian as it may seem at first glance, and several key factors may come into play. Although ethnic Russians are still a majority (58.5%), there are also a significant Ukrainian (24.4%) and Crimean Tatar populations (12.1%). And it is the latter two which have formed an unlikely alliance, resisting any secessionist attempts. They have their separate reasons to distrust Moscow. Many ethnic Ukrainians have natural loyalties towards Kiev and are happy with the territory's status quo. Meanwhile, the Muslim Tatars still remember the horrors of the mass deportation under Stalin in 1944 on the pretext of mass collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. Tatar national leaders have warned they will resist any attempts to transfer Crimea to Moscow. And then there is mass corruption. In 2011, the last time I visited Crimea, I was shocked by how many people there had a feeling of outrage towards what they described as corrupt authorities on every level. Cab drivers, fruit sellers, hotel managers - ethnic Russian, Ukrainian or Crimean Tatar - everyone was disgusted. The hope is that this could gradually start to change with "people power" and the pledge of war on corruption spreading from Kiev's Maidan. Many also believe that a promised association with the EU will help root out corruption. Finally, Ukraine is not Georgia, where the Russians fought a war in 2008, in support of the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Despite the present revolutionary chaos, Ukraine - Europe's second biggest country (by area) - still has capable armed forces, particularly its anti-aircraft defences. One may also count on many thousands of battle-hardened Maidan activists joining in to defend the country. And facing growing Western warnings, President Putin may think twice about whether Crimea - as well as Ukraine's south-eastern regions - is worth a fight.

Question: In fleeing revolutionary Kiev on Friday , Ukraine 's now ex-President Viktor Yanukovych @placeholder to fly to his stronghold in the south - east of the country before heading to Crimea in the deep south .


It built its reputation on the ability of its estimated 5,000 artists to paint cheap, well-executed copies of famous Western paintings. But in the last year, even the copy-art market has started to feel the impact of the global economic slowdown. Many of the painters are finding ways of adapting their brush-strokes to the change in demand, reflecting a more general economic shift in a very visual way. You know at once when you enter Dafen. Just a few minutes' walk from the main road, oil paintings appear on all sides. They are displayed from floor to ceiling in the windows of every shop, hanging three or four deep along the walls of a labyrinth of alleyways. In the past, Dafen artists churned out endless copies of iconic Western art. They were shipped mostly to buyers in Europe, especially Germany, and the United States. There are still versions of Van Gogh, Monet and others on show, many set in heavy gilded frames. But now the European staples are increasingly being replaced by Chinese traditional art. Source: Dafen Oil Painting Village website Ye Jianhong used to run a workshop of 500 artists. Then the global crisis hit. Now he has reduced his staff to about 30 and taken a job in sales to supplement his income. He spoke to me in a well-stocked shop. On one wall, there was a small selection of Western reproductions. Many of the pictures, though, were large-scale canvases of misty lakes, pagodas and jagged mountain tops, portraits of cheeky Chinese boys or archly posing Chinese beauties. "We used to export a lot to overseas markets," he said. "But now there's a big slump in sales. So we're shifting our focus to the domestic Chinese market. Chinese people are getting richer and richer." He pointed to a pile of small canvases. An artist could typically paint 10 such copies a day, he said. He could knock out 20. Now he was encouraging his artists to take time and improve the quality of their work. I heard the same story again and again as I spoke to artists of all ages and styles in the village. Overall figures were hard to verify but one local newspaper report said that exports fell by more than 50% in the first half of this year because of a collapse in Western orders. Further on, in a back alley, I bumped in to Weng Yuguo, a fashionable 27-year-old with spiky hair and trendy earrings. He was drawn to Shenzhen from his native Hainan Island and has been painting since he was 16. His speciality? Classical Western still life oil paintings of flowers in Grecian urns. When I first saw him, he was clutching a wet portrait of poppies, just finished, which he clipped to the wall to dry. Other examples of his work hung round it on the bare brick. Each one, he said, took about three days to paint. "Before I had some Western customers," he told me. "Now all my clients are Chinese." He paused, looking from the wet pink poppies to the rather depressing tones of the old school classical flowers. Was there a relationship between the shift in global purchasing power and his artist's palette? "There is a difference in taste," he said at last. "I'd say that Westerners prefer classical pictures which tend to be very dark. Chinese people like bright colours."

Question: Dafen oil painting village is one of the Shenzhen 's key attractions , well known to @placeholder and foreign visitors .


Vice-President Mike Pence spoke at the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity on Wednesday morning. "We want to hear the voice of the American voter," he said. "Because that's really what this is all about." That morning, members of the commission described their mandate: they'd examine registration and voting processes that were currently in place across the US. They said they would also look at vulnerabilities in the electoral system that could lead to improper voting. President Donald Trump established the commission with an executive order in May and spoke briefly in the room on Wednesday morning, describing the meeting as "very, very important". The presidential order stated that the commission would hold public meetings. But although its first gathering was live-streamed, it took place on the third floor of a Washington DC secure facility that is off limits to members of the public. The commission has a dozen members: voting experts as well as state and local officials, Republicans and Democrats, from across the US. The vice-chairman of the commission, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican, is running for governor of his state. As they met at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, near the White House, they talked about the importance of voting. One of the members, the Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky, said his mother grew up in Nazi Germany and taught him the value of the democratic process. The room was filled with people who worked for the White House, ranging from senior aides (Sebastian Gorka and Omarosa Manigault were there) to interns. Many of the interns had been invited at the last minute, one of them told me. "I don't know how they selected them," a White House staffer said, quietly, while glancing at them. Reporters watched the proceedings from behind a thick blue cord in the back of the room. Altogether about 115 people were in the viewing areas. None of them appeared to be ordinary citizens, men and women who hadn't been screened by security or outfitted with security badges. Critics of the administration said that holding the meeting behind closed doors violated democratic principles: transparency and openness. Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit earlier thi, saying the commission was required to hold open meetings under the federal advisory committee act. Even worse, said the critics, the commission was created in bad faith - largely because Mr Trump claimed he won the popular vote. "For months and months he has been trying to sell this lie," said the ACLU's Sophia Lin Lakin. Mr Kobach said this morning that the goal of the commission was to look at the electoral process and not to determine who'd won the most votes in 2016. He also told me the meeting had been held in "broad daylight". Anyway, said Mr Spakovsky, it was not a big deal. "It was simply an organisational meeting," he told me afterwards. Ms Lakin disagreed. She said that important issues were discussed. Besides that, she said, "scrutiny" can only occur when members of the public are in the room - not simply watching online (as she and her colleagues did). Those who observed the proceedings online could see the speakers - but only a glimpse of their surroundings. During the meeting, Mr Kobach sat at a long table with a wooden gavel in front of him. He and others discussed voting equipment, voter IDs and US census bureau surveys. Many people wanted to attend the meeting but weren't allowed in. Yet most of those who were invited didn't seem all that interested - or at least not enough to stick around. By the early afternoon Mr Gorka, Ms Manigault and most of the others had left - and dozens of chairs were empty.

Question: A commission on elections was created so American voters could be heard . But critics @placeholder the first meeting was held in a secure building with invited guests only .


The EcoHelmet is designed for people who use bike-sharing schemes and might not always have a helmet with them. Designer Isis Shiffer is delighted with the win but admits that a paper helmet may be a "tough sell". She describes herself as an "ardent but slow" cyclist and came up with the idea when she was using bike-sharing schemes around the world. "When I was exploring new cities I had no access to a helmet and I didn't want to spend $30 buying one," she told the BBC. She decided to design one, made of cheap, recyclable materials that would cost less than $5. The helmet uses a honeycomb structure to protect the head which, according to Ms Shiffer, is "incredibly good at absorbing impact". The design was tested at Imperial College in London. "They have a test rig for helmets and the professor in charge of the lab let me test out a lot of materials. It turns out it was a lot of fun. There is a frame with an anvil on the bottom and an accelerometer to measure speed and impact," explained Ms Shiffer. "It is so solid and everyone who had held it in their hands is surprised about how solid it is," she said. The helmet is coated with a material that makes it rain resistant for between three to four hours. She admitted that it may be a "tough sell" convincing people that it works. Since 2002, the James Dyson Award has been open to university or recent design graduates across the world. Ms Shiffer will receive ?¡ê30,000 to further develop the helmet. Describing it as "the holy grail" of design awards, she said that she was "astonished" to win it. She hopes to pilot the new helmet in New York in the spring, possibly offering it free to bike-share users at first. The helmet is designed for a limited number of uses and will deteriorate and weaken over time, especially if carried around at the bottom of a bag. The final design is likely to have a visible stripe that will wear off when it is time to throw it away or a clip that ceases to work after a certain amount of time. The UK's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said it was unable to comment as it did not know enough about the product and whether it would meet safety standards. The two runners-up for the award were Respia, an Australian group that has designed an asthma management system that tracks and records user's respiratory health; and a smart contact lens designer from Canada. Each will receive a prize of ?¡ê5,000.

Question: A recyclable , @placeholder cycling helmet made of paper has won this year 's international James Dyson Award .


It doesn't look like a business in turmoil and many regular customers are surprised to hear that its future is in doubt. "It's always busy," says Nayeli Gonzalez as she bags her groceries with her two young children. "It's convenient. I can walk from home. Otherwise I have to take a train." When Britain's largest supermarket chain opened in California six years ago, there was talk of revolutionising the way Americans shop and bringing fresh, wholesome food to all neighbourhoods, rich and poor. The stores had only self-checkouts, for example, an unusual concept in the US where Americans were used to being helped by a clerk, and typically having someone bag their groceries for them, or at least offer to help. Tesco's exit from US to cost ??1.2bnPeston: Tesco to lose its crown? But on Wednesday, Tesco announced it would be abandoning its 199 Fresh & Easy stores, which are all on America's West Coast. Critics say the chain miscalculated the market and failed to cater to American tastes. It has been an expensive mistake, costing Tesco ??1.2bn. "My sense is that what they tried to do was make a European model," says Prof Anthony Dukes, at the USC Marshall School of Business. "Europeans tend to make more frequent trips to grocery stores, maybe every day or every other day, where Americans are used to going for bigger trips less frequently," he says, adding that busy Americans prefer to buy in bulk. Nearly half of British retailers believe the US remains the hardest market in which to achieve commercial success, according to the findings of a survey released by Barclays last week. Despite a shared language and heritage, Britons view the US as more difficult to master than China, which ranked second in the survey. "The mistake many British retailers have made is to treat the US as one country," says Richard Lowe, head of retail at Barclays. "The US is a little bit like Europe. When you go there you have be more targeted. "Different states are not exactly like different countries, but they have very different markets." According to Prof Dukes, Fresh & Easy's shop-more-often convenience store format may have worked better on the East Coast of America. "The East Coast is denser and has perhaps more pedestrian traffic, on the West Coast we have more cars. That might make a difference," he says. But some UK retailers have had great commercial success in the US, and getting the location right played a big part, analysts say. By Shanaz MusaferBusiness reporter, BBC News, New York Early lunchtime in Manhattan and the Pret on the corner of 29th and Seventh is already filling up. "I come here every day," says one female customer. "I work right down the street. It's easy and fast and healthy." Convenience and a healthier alternative to other fast food outlets make Pret a popular choice in New York. There is no noticeable difference with the portion sizes in the UK, despite Americans' infamous love of large helpings. Despite its French name, most people seem aware that the company is actually British, though few in this cosmopolitan city seem to care. Some point out that the prices aren't always that cheap, but as one customer puts it, "This is New York, nothing's that cheap." Topshop now has four stores here including a new 25,000 sq-foot store in Los Angeles. Its boss Sir Philip Green has decided to concentrate on big cities and has said he hopes to turn the fashion into a $1bn US business in the next five years. And it is difficult to walk a few blocks in Manhattan without stumbling on a Pret A Manger restaurant. The chain has purposely grown gradually since it launched in 2000 and now has 34 locations in New York City, with another opening soon; seven in both Washington DC and Chicago and two in Boston. Pret A Manger's choice of New York as its entry point to America was a shrewd one, according to Faith Hope Consolo, chair of the retail group at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, which advises international retailers looking to enter the US. "London and New York are so similar in many ways, both demographically and architecturally. Both cities are on the go, with a desire for quick meals, not fast-food," she says. "Pret A Manger satisfies that. [It offers] quality food, but also the ability to grab it and go. "They're a natural for any great busy city, so yes, they really did choose their entries well." The packaged sandwich chain has also tailored its UK products to the local market, according to its marketing director Mark Palmer. "Rather than crayfish and rocket sandwich on sale in the UK, Pret has a Maryland spiced shrimp and spinach sandwich in the US," he tells BBC News. "Pret has also learned that there is a distinctive difference in the coffee tastes in the US. In the UK Pret sells more cappuccinos and lattes than the US, the US customers prefer filter - or drip - coffee." Fresh & Easy did its homework. It hired anthropologists and studied Californians' eating and shopping habits. Its stores opened to great fanfare in neighbourhoods around California considered "food deserts," dominated by the cheap, fast-food driving America's obesity epidemic. That noble goal to locate in gentrifying and poor neighbourhoods may have hurt their prospects, says Bryan Roberts, the UK-based director of retail insights for Kantar Retail. "No doubt they made some fundamental mistakes in terms of store locations, merchandise and marketing," Mr Roberts says, adding that the recession played a big part in Tesco's failings in the United States. "Not to absolve responsibility from Tesco but it was unfortunate timing. No one could have predicted the sub-prime crisis and the consequences of it. If they'd timed it five years earlier, it might have been a different story." It is also worth noting that the stores' smaller, neighbourhood market feel is one being adopted by mega discount retailer Wal-Mart. The big box chain plans to open a smaller store in LA's Chinatown - if it can get by a lawsuit filed by neighbourhood activists fighting its plans. The confirmation of Tesco's exit from the US puts the future of the stores in doubt, although it said it had received some expressions of interest from third parties. The Hollywood Fresh & Easy is one of the chain's busier branches and it is in an area with a lot of foot traffic, located on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. "I love it because it's a neighbourhood market," says aspiring actor Yohan Lefevre, while enjoying his Fresh & Easy sandwich after working out at the gym next door. "I like the size, there is not much else like this in Hollywood. I can walk here. If they close I will take a national day of mourning and mark it every year! I'm serious. I will be really sad."

Question: Aspiring actors , tourists , mothers and @placeholder workers are packing the Hollywood Fresh & Easy supermarket , shopping for a quick sushi lunch , a post-workout protein fix , or their weekly grocery stop .


Adrian Lewis, 43, of Ebbw Vale, piled up waste, including "asbestos in bags" at his site in Nantyglo, Blaenau Gwent. He admitted breaching permit conditions, illegally dumping waste and failing to comply with an environmental enforcement notice. Lewis was jailed for eight months at Newport Crown Court on Friday. The court heard the site was only meant to be used to store waste before it was moved elsewhere. But Lewis kept adding rubbish, even after environment body Natural Resources Wales told him he had exceeded his 620-tonne limit and it posed a serious environmental risk. There were skips full of hazardous waste, while rainwater which leaked through the site could have contained harmful chemicals and could have reached streams, the court heard. Statements from neighbours read to the court included complaints the site looked and smelled bad and "towered over" property boundaries. The court was told money problems led Lewis to store the waste. In 2013, the site was targeted by arsonists and the fire burned for days. At the time, residents said the smoke discoloured their clothes and homes and left an unpleasant smell in the air. The court heard the clean-up cost will be ?¡ê1,354,000.

Question: A man who @placeholder an illegal waste dump which was targeted by arsonists and burned for 10 days has been jailed for a series of waste offences .