title stringlengths 13 112 | published_date stringlengths 10 10 | authors stringclasses 3
values | description stringlengths 0 382 ⌀ | section stringlengths 2 31 ⌀ | content stringlengths 0 81.9k | link stringlengths 21 189 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Reality Check: Are business rates figures misleading? - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Aggregate figures exclude inflation and an adjustment for successful appeals. | UK Politics | The claim: The government's figures on business rates are misleading because they exclude inflation and an appeals adjustment.
Reality Check verdict: The figures do exclude both those things, but government publications specify that they do. The government's figures are for the situation after any appeals have been completed, so they depend on how accurately it has predicted their outcome.
The government has produced tables showing how much business rates would rise or fall in the coming year, broken down by region of the country and type of business.
The overall effect of all the changes comes to zero, which means that the policy is revenue neutral.
But there is a key caveat at the bottom of the table, which is that the figures are: "Before inflation and the adjustment to the multiplier for future appeal outcomes."
The inflation part is widely known. The measure of inflation used will become CPI (Consumer Price Index) instead of RPI (Retail Price Index), which will usually mean the increase is smaller, but that change will not happen until 2020. Increasing rates for RPI will add about 2% per year.
But the other part is a bit more complicated - it is the adjustment required to make sure that the changes in rates are revenue neutral even after some businesses have appealed against the rated value of their premises and won.
Analysis from the property consultants Gerald Eve suggested that the adjustment would be between four and five percentage points. They did that by working out how much business rates would change across the country to find out what adjustment would then be needed to make the policy revenue neutral again.
They add that including both the inflation and the appeals adjustment means that business rates will fall in 135 of the 326 local authorities in England, not 259 as the government claimed.
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has strongly disputed suggestions that it has misled people with its figures, but has not disputed the suggestion that the appeals adjustment is between four and five percentage points.
Speaking on the Today Programme, Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said he thought the figures provided, "might not be giving the picture that businesses in the real world are going to get when they get their bills".
This is certainly true. The DCLG has been clear that its figures are before inflation and the appeals adjustment.
The government's figures are for the situation after any appeals have been completed, so they depend on how accurately it has predicted their outcome.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39041300 |
'Magical thinking' on Heathrow expansion - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A third runway at Heathrow can only be justified if it does not breach climate change laws, MPs say. | Business | Heathrow expansion can only be justified if the government proves it will not breach laws on climate change and pollution, MPs say.
Ministers say a third runway will not exceed environment limits.
However, the Commons Environmental Audit Committee has accused the government of "magical thinking" - wishing the problem away without a proper solution.
They say ministers must show the expansion will not fuel climate change.
Committee chair Mary Creagh told BBC News: "There's plenty of talk about how the government wants to solve environmental problems at Heathrow, but a total absence of any policy guarantees.
"The implication of this is that they think other sectors of the economy like energy and industry are going to have to cut their carbon emissions even more so people can fly more - but the government's been told by its own advisors (the Committee on Climate Change) that's not possible."
The MPs also criticised the government's reliance on a projected increase in electric vehicles on the roads to keep local air pollution within safe limits.
"The government has missed already its targets for electric vehicles," Ms Creagh said. "Our committee has no confidence it will meet its target for 2020 or 2030. Ministers have got to put proper policies in place instead of relying on magical thinking."
The committee previously urged a step change in the way the government tackles environmental issues at Heathrow, but says there is little evidence this has happened.
The UK has already breached EU limits in London for the pollutant NO2 for 2017. The committee says a new air quality strategy is urgently needed to ensure that airport expansion does not harm public health.
The government has said after Brexit that EU environmental laws will be imported wholesale into the UK, but the MPs say they have seen no guarantees that the government will keep pace with future EU air quality laws.
The report calls on the ministers to implement an alert system for nearby residents who are especially vulnerable to short-term exposure to air pollution.
On climate change, the MPs complain that international aviation emissions from an expanded Heathrow will be 15% higher than the level previously set for 2028-32. They say the government must show how the slack will be taken up by other sectors of the economy, which are already struggling to meet their own emissions targets.
They say measures on noise lack ambition, with no precision on the timing of a night flight ban and little evidence that predictable respite can be achieved.
The report was welcomed by John Stewart, the chair of HACAN, the campaign group that opposes Heathrow expansion.
"The government and Heathrow Airport have got to up their game big-time if they are to have any chance of getting a third runway," he said.
"They have got to prove they can deliver on noise, climate and air pollution - not just say they can."
The report comes just weeks after the government launched a public consultation on a third runway, which ends on 25 May.
Later this year or early next year MPs are expected to be asked to vote on the runway.
A Department for Transport spokesman said: "We take our air quality commitments extremely seriously and have been very clear that the new runway will not get the go-ahead unless air quality requirements can be met."
The spokesman said the government has no plans to "water down" its ambitions on cutting aviation emissions and remains committed to meeting emission reductions targets under the Climate Change Act. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39053172 |
Champions League: Leicester City showed big heart, says Claudio Ranieri - BBC Sport | 2017-02-23 | null | Leicester boss Claudio Ranieri praises his side's "big heart" after scoring an away goal in their Champions League last 16 tie at Sevilla. | null | Leicester City boss Claudio Ranieri praised his side's "big heart" after Jamie Vardy grabbed a potentially crucial away goal in their Champions League last 16 tie at Sevilla.
The Foxes were 2-0 down before Vardy scored for the first time since 10 December to give the Foxes an away goal in a 2-1 defeat.
The second leg at the King Power Stadium takes place on 14 March.
"When we play with this character, the luck comes to your side. We have to keep going."
Vardy played a significant role in Leicester's run to the Premier League title last season, scoring 24 league goals.
His goal on Wednesday ended a run of nine games without scoring and Ranieri is hopeful it will give the England striker, and the rest of the Leicester team, confidence for the remainder of the season.
"The goalscorer needs to score, needs to get confidence," he added. "This goal reopens our confidence."
Another defeat, but a corner turned for Leicester?
Ranieri had spoken before the game that this fixture could prove to be a turning point in a difficult season.
After winning the league last season they now find themselves one point above the relegation zone.
"We came in the dressing room and I know we lost but I felt that buzz again from the boys and that togetherness," said Leicester defender Danny Simpson.
"I really hope that can kick us on in the league. I know the Champions League is a big competition but the Premier League is the bread and butter and we've got Liverpool next which is a massive game."
'Performance of the season by Leicester'
Former Manchester United defender Phil Neville, who was watching the game for BBC Radio 5 live, believes the Foxes showed more fight in the game than they had all season, particularly after Kasper Schmeichel saved Joaquin Correa's first-half penalty.
"I thought the penalty save in the first half could be a turning point in the whole season for Leicester," he said. "Not much luck has been going their way and you saw a real lift and team spirit.
"Sir Alex Ferguson always used to say to us to remember the hard work and the pain we put in last season and put in an extra 10%. Leicester came off shattered after running their socks off and that should be the norm. We haven't seen that from them all season.
"That's the performance of the season for me by Leicester. Particularly in the second half. They were courageous on the ball and took the came to Sevilla. Well done Claudio Ranieri, well done Leicester City. They are still in this tie." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39058307 |
BBC iPlayer - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | null | null | null | JavaScript seems to be disabled. Please enable JavaScript to take full advantage of iPlayer. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10318089 |
Brazil's samba for the disabled - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | null | The first samba school in the world designed for people with disabilities helps them take part in Carnival. | null | Taking part in the Rio carnival can often be a challenge for many of the 45 million people with disabilities living in Brazil. But one samba school is making it possible. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-38896756 |
Tottenham 2-2 Gent (agg 2-3) - BBC Sport | 2017-02-23 | null | Tottenham Hotspur are knocked out of the Europa League at the last-32 stage as Gent hold them to a draw at a sell-out Wembley. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Ten-man Tottenham Hotspur were knocked out of the Europa League as Gent held them to a draw at a sell-out Wembley.
Spurs, who trailed 1-0 after the first leg of the last-32 tie, made a great start as Christian Eriksen slipped an angled shot under Gent keeper Lovre Kalinic.
The visitors equalised through Harry Kane's own goal, leaving Spurs needing to score twice more in front of a Europa League record attendance of 80,465.
Their task became harder when midfielder Dele Alli was sent off shortly before half-time for a dangerous high tackle.
Victor Wanyama's curler into the top-left corner revived Spurs' hopes, only for substitute Jeremy Perbet to prod Gent into the last 16 with fewer than 10 minutes left.
Spurs' elimination means they have only reached the Europa League quarter-finals once in the past six seasons.
Manchester United, who beat French side Saint-Etienne 4-0 on aggregate, will be the only British side in the last-16 draw on Friday (12:00 GMT).
Despite them needing to score at least twice as the match approached half-time, few would have written off Spurs.
But they were then reduced to 10 men after Alli's poor tackle.
The 20-year-old England midfielder has previously shown glimpses of a fiery streak, alongside his technical brilliance, but this was the first red card of his career.
Alli felt referee Manuel de Sousa should have given him a free-kick close to the halfway line and briefly remonstrated with the Portuguese official before turning and launching into Genk midfielder Brecht Dejaegere with a studs-up challenge.
Alli caught Dejaegere just under his right knee - and luckily the Belgian appeared to escape serious injury.
Tottenham did not escape without damage, though.
Tottenham, particularly since Mauricio Pochettino became manager, have often drawn praise for their fearless and confident approach, and they have become regular title challengers.
But it is a different story in Europe.
In truth, they should still have progressed despite Alli's dismissal, only poor finishing costing them in a dominant performance against a team containing a man extra.
The blame largely lies in a lifeless performance in Belgium.
Gent's first-leg victory was only their third win in 13 matches, with their recent form dropping them to eighth place in a Belgian top flight ranked as only the ninth-best European league.
Indeed Belgian leaders Club Brugge, the reigning champions, lost all six matches in their Champions League group, including a 3-0 home defeat and 2-1 loss against Leicester City.
While Tottenham's deficiencies were clear, Gent deserve credit. They were organised, disciplined and clinical when their rare chances arrived.
Perbet, who scored the winner last week, put the tie beyond Spurs with the away team's first shot on target at Wembley, sparking exuberant scenes among the 10,000 visiting fans.
"I am very disappointed. Once again we were excited to play today in front of our fans. We started well and scored. The tie was open but we conceded a goal in one action in the first half. After that it was complicated.
"I was very proud. We were brave and created chances and scored the second but could not get another. In the second half we played with energy."
• None Tottenham have won just one of their past eight matches at Wembley
• None Mauricio Pochettino's side have conceded more goals in four European home games at Wembley this season (six) than they have in 12 Premier League games at White Hart Lane (five)
• None Gent became the first Belgian side to eliminate English opposition in major European competition (excluding qualifiers) since Standard Liege knocked out Everton in the 2008-09 Uefa Cup.
• None Spurs have been eliminated from eight of their past nine European knockout ties in which they have lost the first leg.
• None Since the start of 2013-14, Harry Kane has scored four own goals - twice as many as any other Tottenham player.
Tottenham, who remain without a trophy since 2008, will focus their attention on trying to catch runaway Premier League leaders Chelsea.
• None Offside, KAA Gent. Kalifa Coulibaly tries a through ball, but Samuel Gigot is caught offside.
• None Attempt missed. Harry Kane (Tottenham Hotspur) right footed shot from the left side of the box is close, but misses to the right. Assisted by Jan Vertonghen.
• None Attempt blocked. Victor Wanyama (Tottenham Hotspur) left footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
• None Attempt missed. Son Heung-Min (Tottenham Hotspur) right footed shot from the right side of the box is too high. Assisted by Harry Kane. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39033491 |
NHS 'rapped' over leaks of A&E data - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The health service is advised to publish performance data more quickly. | Health | Pressures have been building on the NHS this winter
NHS leaders in England have been asked by the statistics watchdog to rethink current policies that delay publishing official data on accident and emergency waiting times.
This follows two separate leaks to BBC News of A&E data for January, which suggested the worst performance by hospitals since records began.
NHS England and the regulator NHS Improvement have been told by the UK Statistics Authority to review the practice of publishing the data six weeks after collecting it.
Their leaders have been asked to "to determine how you could reduce the time lag in publication".
The call for a review comes in a letter from Ed Humpherson, director general for regulation at the authority, to those who chair the organisations.
The two leaks of A&E statistics to BBC News came from management information collected by NHS Improvement.
The second leak - relating to the full month of January - suggested that from a total of more than 1.4 million attendances at A&E:
At the time the leaked data, obtained by BBC reporter Faye Kirkland, was dismissed as incomplete by NHS sources.
Mr Humpherson described the leaks of management information as "a disorderly release of data", which had created "a confused picture".
But, in what amounts to a rap over the knuckles, he goes on to urge the NHS organisations to "undertake the appropriate reviews of how this management information is used and shared".
Embarrassingly for NHS leaders, the Statistics Authority chief criticises the publication policy for A&E attendance stats.
In the summer of 2015, NHS England announced it would stop publishing this data weekly and would shift to a monthly cycle to "standardise reporting arrangements" with other information such as cancer waiting times and ambulance response times.
This was criticised at the time as a reduction in timely information flow from hospitals, especially during winter months.
Mr Humpherson notes that the monthly publication policy creates a six-week lag for A&E data, which "leaves the system vulnerable to leaks because management information circulates around the NHS system for operational purposes well in advance of the publication of the statistics".
He has called on the NHS bodies to review the "timeliness" of the official performance data by the end of April and talks of the importance of "maintaining trust".
In effect, the statistics watchdog is saying that if the information is available to NHS managers in January, it should also be made available to the media and the public rather than held until March for publication.
It amounts to a warning to NHS England that leaks are inevitable under the current arrangements.
A spokesperson for NHS England said: "UKSA has approached the NHS following a leak of unvalidated NHS improvement material to the BBC ahead of its official publication, and NHS Improvement is now considering with other national bodies how best to ensure timely official publication while ensuring this doesn't happen again."
This will no doubt create headaches for NHS chiefs who have tried hard to justify the adoption of monthly rather than weekly data releases.
Their case was weakened when the Scottish government opted to move to a weekly A&E publication schedule just as NHS England was going in the opposite direction.
And the case has certainly been weakened even further by the UK Statistics Authority's intervention and what amounts to a clarion call for transparency. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39056969 |
Footage released of Harrison Ford's plane near-miss - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | null | An airport in California has released video of a plane, being flown by the actor Harrison Ford, mistakenly flying low over an airliner. | null | An airport in California has released video of a plane, being flown by the actor Harrison Ford, mistakenly flying low over an airliner.
Ford's single-engine plane landed on a taxiway instead of a runway at John Wayne airport in Orange County earlier this month. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39048670 |
Jack Barsky: The KGB spy who lived the American dream - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The remarkable double life of undercover agent Jack Barsky who lived the American dream at the KGB's expense. | Magazine | It's no secret that the Russians have long tried to plant "sleeper agents" in the US - men and women indistinguishable from normal Americans, who live - on the surface - completely normal lives. But what happens when one of them doesn't want to go home?
Jack Barsky died in September 1955, at the age of 10, and was buried in the Mount Lebanon Cemetery in the suburbs of Washington DC.
His name is on the passport of the man sitting before me now - a youthful 67-year-old East German, born Albert Dittrich. The passport is not a fake. Albert Dittrich is Jack Barsky in the eyes of the US government.
The story of how this came to be is, by Barsky's own admission, "implausible" and "ridiculous", even by the standards of Cold War espionage. But as he explains in a new memoir, Deep Undercover, it has been thoroughly checked out by the FBI. As far as anyone can tell, it is all true.
It began in the mid-70s, when Dittrich, destined at the time to become a chemistry professor at an East German university, was talent-spotted by the KGB and sent to Moscow for training in how to behave like an American.
His mission was to live under a false identity in the heart of the capitalist enemy, as one of an elite band of undercover Soviet agents known as "illegals".
"I was sent to the United States to establish myself as a citizen and then make contact, to the extent possible, at the highest levels possible of decision makers - particularly political decision makers," he says.
This "idiotic adventure," as he now calls it, had "a lot of appeal to an arrogant young man, a smart young man" intoxicated by the idea of foreign travel and living "above the law".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. "This kind of double life wears on you"
He arrived in New York in the Autumn of 1978, at the age of 29, posing as a Canadian national, William Dyson. Dyson, who had travelled via Belgrade, Rome, Mexico City and Chicago, "immediately vanished into thin air", having served his purpose. And Dittrich began his new life as Jack Barsky.
He was a man with no past and no identification papers - except for a birth certificate obtained by an employee of the Soviet embassy in Washington, who had kept his eyes open during a walk in the Mount Lebanon cemetery.
Barsky had supreme self-confidence, a near-flawless American accent, and $10,000 in cash.
He also had a "legend" to explain why he did not have a social security number. He told people he had had a "tough start in life" in New Jersey and had dropped out of high school. He had then worked on a remote farm for years before deciding "to give life another chance and move back to New York city".
He rented a room in a Manhattan hotel and set about the laborious task of building a fake identity. Over the next year, he parlayed Jack Barsky's birth certificate into a library card, then a driver's licence and, finally, a social security card.
But without qualifications in Barsky's name, or any employment history, his career options were limited. Rather than rubbing shoulders with the upper echelons of American society, as his KGB handlers had wanted, he initially found himself delivering parcels to them, as a cycle courier in the smarter parts of Manhattan.
The young KGB agent arrived in New York in the late 1970s
"By chance it turned out that the messenger job was actually really good for me to become Americanised because I was interacting with people who didn't care much where I came from, what my history was, where I was going," he says.
"Yet I was able to observe and listen and become more familiar with American customs. So for the first two, three years I had very few questions that I had to answer."
The advice from his handlers on blending in - gleaned from Soviet diplomats and resident agents in the US - "turned out to be, at minimum, weak but, at worst, totally false", he says.
"I'll give you an example. One of the things I was told explicitly was to stay away from the Jews. Now, obviously, there is anti-Semitism in there, but secondly, the stupidity of that statement is that they sent me to New York. There are more Jews in New York than in Israel, I think."
Barsky would later use his handlers' prejudices and ignorance of American society against them.
But as a "rookie" agent he was eager to please and threw himself into the undercover life. He spent much of his free time zig-zagging across New York on counter-surveillance missions designed to flush out any enemy agents who might be following him.
He would update Moscow Centre on his progress in weekly radio transmissions, or letters in secret writing, and deposit microfilm at dead drop sites in various New York parks, where he would also periodically pick up canisters stuffed with cash or the fake passports he needed for his trips back to Moscow for debriefing.
He would return the to the East every two years, where he would be reunited with his German wife Gerlinde, and young son Matthias, who had no idea what he had been up to. They thought he was doing top secret but very well-paid work at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Barsky's handlers were delighted with his progress except for one thing - he could not get hold of an American passport. This failure weighed heavily on him.
On one early trip to the passport office in New York an official asked him to fill out a questionnaire which asked, among other things, the name of the high school he had attended.
"I had a legend but it could not be verified," he says. "So if somebody went to check on that they would have found out that I wasn't real."
Terrified that his cover might be blown, he scooped up any documents with his name on them and marched out of the office in a feigned temper at all this red tape.
The real Jack Barsky is buried in a Washington DC cemetery
Without a passport, Barsky was limited to low-level intelligence work and his achievements as a spy were, by his own account, "minimal".
He profiled potential recruits and compiled reports on the mood of the country during events such as the 1983 downing of a Korean Airlines flight by a Soviet fighter, which ratcheted up tensions between the US and the Soviet Union.
On one occasion, he flew to California to track down a defector (he later learned, to his immense relief, that the man, a psychology professor, had not been assassinated).
He also carried out some industrial espionage, stealing software from his office - all of it commercially available - which was spirited away on microfilm to aid the floundering Soviet economy.
But it often seemed the very fact of him being in the US, moving around freely without the knowledge of the authorities, was enough for Moscow.
"They were very much focused on having people on the other side just in case of a war. Which I think, in hindsight, was pretty stupid. That indicated very old thinking."
The myth of the "Great Illegals" - heroic undercover agents who had helped Russia defeat the Nazis and gather vital pre-war intelligence in hostile countries - loomed large over the Soviet intelligence agencies, who spent a lot of time and effort during the Cold War trying to recapture these former glories, with apparently limited success.
Barsky later found out that he was part of a "third wave" of Soviet illegals in the US - the first two waves having failed. And we now know that illegals continued to be infiltrated in the 1980s and beyond.
He believes about "10 to 12" agents were trained up at the same time as him. Some, he says, could still be out there, living undercover in the United States, though he finds it hard to believe that anyone exposed to life in the US would retain an unwavering communist faith for long.
He is scathing about his KGB handlers, who were "very smart" and the "cream of the crop" but who seemed chiefly concerned with making his mission appear a success to please their bosses.
"The expectations of us, of me - I didn't know anybody else - were far, far too high. It was just really wishful thinking," he now says of his mission.
On the other hand, the KGB's original plan for him might actually have worked, he says.
"I am glad it didn't work out because I could have done some damage.
"The idea was for me to get genuine American documentation and move to Europe, say to a German-speaking country, where the Russians were going to set me up with a flourishing business. And they knew how to do that.
"And so I would become quite wealthy and then go back to the United States without having to explain where the money came from. At that point, I would have been in a situation to socialise with people that were of value."
This plan fell through because of his failure to get a passport, so the KGB reverted to Plan B.
This was for Barsky was to study for a degree and gradually work his way up the social order to the point where he could gather useful intelligence - a mission he describes as "nearly impossible".
The degree part was relatively straightforward. He was, after all, a university professor in his former life. He graduated top of his class in computer systems at Baruch College, which enabled him to get a job as a programmer at Met Life insurance in New York.
Like many undercover agents before him, he began to realise that much of what he had been taught about the West - that it was an "evil" system on the brink of economic and social collapse - was a lie.
Barsky (fourth right) felt at home with co-workers at Met Life
"There was a way to rationalise that because we were taught that the West was doing so well because they took all the riches out of the Third World," he says.
But, he adds, "what eventually softened my attitude" was the "normal, nice people" he met in his daily life.
"[My] sense was that the enemy was not really evil. So I was always waiting to eventually find the real evil people and I didn't even find them in the insurance company."
Met Life almost felt like home, he says, "because it was a very paternalistic, 'we take care of you' kind of a culture".
"There was nothing like we were taught. Nothing that I expected. I wanted to really hate the people and the country and I couldn't bring myself to hate them. Not even dislike them."
But he was keeping a far bigger secret from his KGB bosses than his wavering commitment to communism.
In 1985, he had married an illegal immigrant from Guyana he had met through a personal ad in the Village Voice newspaper - and they now had a daughter together.
He now had two families to go with his two identities, and he knew the time would come when he had to choose between them.
It finally happened in 1988, when after 10 years undercover he was suddenly ordered to return home immediately. Moscow was in a panic, believing the FBI was on to him.
To do anything other than run as ordered - grab his emergency Canadian birth certificate and driver's licence and get out of the US - would be potentially suicidal.
He dithered and stalled for a week. Could he really leave his beloved baby daughter Chelsea behind forever?
But the KGB was losing patience. One morning, on a subway platform a resident agent delivered a chilling message: "You have got to come home or else you're dead."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The Americans producers: 'Here was someone who lived it'
It was time for some lateral thinking.
From discussions with his handlers in Moscow, Barsky had come to believe the Soviet hierarchy feared three things about America.
He already knew about their anti-Semitism and their fear of Ronald Reagan, who they saw as an unpredictable religious zealot who might launch a nuclear strike to "accelerate" the Biblical "end times".
But he also remembered their "morally superior" attitude to the Aids epidemic - their belief that it "served the Americans right" and their determination to protect the motherland from infection.
Barsky stalled a bit more and then hatched a plan.
"I wrote this letter, in secret writing, that I wouldn't come back because I had contracted Aids, and the only way for me to get treatment would be in the United States.
"I also told the Russians in the same letter that I would not defect, I would not give up any secrets. I would just disappear and try to get healthy."
To begin with Barsky lived in constant fear for his life, remembering that threat on the subway platform. But after a few months, he began to breathe more easily.
"I started thinking 'I think I got away with this.' The FBI had not knocked on the door. The KGB had not done anything."
He gradually let his guard down and settled into the life of a typical middle-class American in a comfortable new home in upstate New York.
While he had fallen for the American Dream and the trappings of the consumer society, he still had some conflicting feelings.
"My loyalties to communism and the homeland and Russia, they were still pretty strong. My resignation, you can also call it a 'soft defection' - that was triggered by having this child here. It was not ideological. It would be easy to claim that. But it wasn't true."
Playing at the back of his mind was always the question of whether his past would catch up with him. And, finally, one day, it did.
The man who exposed him was a KGB archivist, Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin, who defected to the West in 1992 - after the fall of communism - with a vast trove of Soviet secrets, including the true identity of Jack Barsky.
The FBI watched him for more than three years, even buying the house next door to his as they tried to figure out whether he really was a KGB agent and, if so, whether he was still active.
In the end, Barsky himself gave the game away, during an argument with his wife, Penelope, that was picked up by the FBI's bugs.
"I was trying to repair a marriage that was slowly falling apart. I was trying to tell my wife the 'sacrifice' I had made to stay with Chelsea and her. So in the kitchen I told her, 'By the way, this is what I did. I am a German. I used to work for the KGB and they told me to come home and I stayed here with you and it was quite dangerous for me. This is what I sacrificed.'
"And that completely backfired. Instead of bringing her over to my side, she said: 'What does that mean for me if they ever catch you?'"
It was the evidence the FBI needed to pick him up. In a meticulously planned operation, Barsky was pulled over by a Pennsylvania state trooper as he drove away from a toll booth on his way home from work one evening.
After stepping out of his car, he was approached by a man in civilian clothes, who held up a badge and said in a calm voice: "Special agent Reilly, FBI. We would like to talk with you."
The colour drained from Barsky's face. "I knew the gig was up," he says. But with characteristic bravado he asked the FBI man: "What took you so long?"
He kidded around with Joe Reilly and the other agents who interrogated him, and tried to give them as much information about the KGB's operations as he could. But inside he was panicking that he would be sent to jail and that his American family, which he had been trying to hold together, would be broken up.
In fact, luck was on his side. After passing a lie-detector test he was told that he was free to go and, even more remarkably, that the FBI would help him fulfil his dream of becoming an American citizen.
Reilly, who went on to become Barsky's best friend and golfing partner, even visited the elderly parents of the real Jack Barsky, who agreed not to reveal that their son's identity had been stolen.
"I was so lucky and so was my family that the decision-makers were nice enough to say, 'Well, you were so well-established, we don't want to disrupt your life,'" he says.
"It required some interesting gymnastics to make me legal because one thing I didn't have was proof of entry into the country. I came here on documentation that was fraudulently obtained, so it took 10-plus years to finally become a citizen. And when it did, it felt good."
Barsky is now married for a third time and has a young daughter. He has also found God, completing his journey from a hardline communist and atheist to a churchgoing, all-American patriot.
He has even managed to reconnect with the family he left behind in Germany, although his first wife, Gerlinde, is still not speaking to him.
"I have a very good relationship with Matthias, my son, and his wife. And I am now a grandfather. When we talk about things like Americans playing soccer against Germans, I say 'us'. I mean the Americans. I am not German any more. The metamorphosis is complete."
The final act in his story came two years ago when he revealed the secret of his extraordinary double life on the US current affairs programme, 60 Minutes.
He had long wanted to share his story with the world, but his bosses at the New York electricity company where he worked as a software developer were less than impressed to find they had a former KGB agent on the payroll, and promptly fired him.
Barsky says he has no regrets. He knows how fortunate he has been.
"This kind of double life wears on you. And most people can't handle it. I am not saying that I lived a charmed life but I got away with it.
"I am in good health. I have had some issues with alcohol that I have overcome and I got another chance to have a good family life. And another child. And I am finally getting to live the life that I should have lived a long time ago. I am really lucky."
Perhaps the supreme irony of Jack Barsky's story is that he was only able to complete the mission the KGB had set him - to obtain an American passport and citizenship - with the help of the FBI. He cannot resist a smile at the thought of telling his KGB handlers that he has not been such a failure after all.
"I wouldn't mind meeting one or two of those fellows I worked with and saying 'Hey, see I did it!'"
Deep Undercover - My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America, by Jack Barsky and Cindy Coloma, is published next month
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38846022 |
Six Nations 2017: England leave out Jonathan Joseph for Italy game - BBC Sport | 2017-02-23 | null | England centre Jonathan Joseph will not face Italy in Sunday's Six Nations match after being left out of the 24-man training squad. | null | Last updated on .From the section Rugby Union
Coverage: Live on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra, BBC Sport website and BBC Sport app, plus live text commentary
England centre Jonathan Joseph has been left out of the squad preparing to face Italy in the Six Nations on Sunday.
Joseph, 25, has played in all 15 Tests under Eddie Jones but is back with Bath after being cut from a 24-man squad.
Elliot Daly is favourite to start at outside centre, with Ben Te'o also pushing for a starting berth, while James Haskell is set to return on the open-side flank.
England will confirm their starting XV and replacements on Friday morning.
They need to shed one more player from the retained squad when they select their matchday 23.
If selected in the run-on XV Haskell would be making his first start since June 2016.
The 31-year-old spent six months out with a foot injury before featuring as a replacement in victories over France and Wales in this year's Six Nations.
Prop Mako Vunipola and wing Anthony Watson have been included after recovering from injury, but both may be used from the bench against the Azzurri.
England trained last week with Owen Farrell at fly-half and Teo'o and Daly in the centre, a combination which has yet to start a Test.
In recent matches Farrell has played at inside centre, outside starting fly-half George Ford.
But assistant coach Steve Borthwick says vice-captain Farrell, who is set to win his 50th cap, will be an influence wherever he is selected.
"It's great we have versatility there, it allows flexibility," Borthwick said. "He is a great player and a fantastic leader."
Italy have recalled Exeter centre Michele Campagnaro as they make four changes for Sunday's match.
Three come in the backs, with fly-half Tommaso Allan and wing Giulio Bisegni joining Campagnaro in the starting XV.
Braam Steyn replaces Maxime Mbanda at blind-side flanker as Italy search for their first win of the tournament.
Conor O'Shea's side are bottom of the Six Nations table after heavy defeats by Wales and Ireland. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39056869 |
Dakota pipeline protesters leave site after year-long occupation - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | null | The year-long occupation near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation is over. | null | A year-long protest against an oil pipeline in North Dakota appears to be nearing its end, as a government deadline for demonstrators to leave the area passes.
Some demonstrators who ignored requests to depart were arrested, and makeshift wooden structures were set ablaze. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39063383 |
Sevilla 2-1 Leicester - BBC Sport | 2017-02-23 | null | Jamie Vardy's away goal keeps alive Leicester's hopes of reaching the last eight of the Champions League despite a narrow first-leg defeat in Sevilla. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Jamie Vardy broke his recent goal-drought to give Leicester an away goal and keep alive their hopes of reaching the last eight of the Champions League despite a narrow first-leg defeat away to Sevilla.
The England international had gone nine games without scoring and was a peripheral figure for much of Wednesday's game but sprang into life to finish Danny Drinkwater's superb cross with 17 minutes remaining in Spain.
It was one of only two shots on target the Foxes produced during a game in which they were largely under the cosh and had trailed 2-0 in thanks to Pablo Sarabia's header and a close-range finish from Joaquin Correa for Sevilla.
City's other hero was Kasper Schmeichel, who saved a Correa penalty with the score at 0-0 and made a number of other good saves.
Sevilla also hit the post and bar had over 70% possession but will only take a slender lead to the King Power Stadium for the second leg on 14 March.
Amidst Leicester's dire domestic form, which has seen them lose 14 league games already, including their last five, and exit the FA Cup at the hands of League One Millwall, their Champions League displays have acted as timely reminders of last season's stunning Premier League title success.
And there will have been none more timely than this.
Prior to the game, manager Claudio Ranieri suggested a positive display could act as a turning point for their season, and while they were outclassed for long periods, the rediscovery of a stubbornness and spirit could prove crucial not just for this tie but the rest of the campaign.
The tie looked to be over after Correa's calm close-range finish in the second half had doubled the lead given to the home side by Sarabia's powerful, pinpoint header before the break.
But with less than a quarter of the game to go, Drinkwater produced Leicester's one incisive attacking ball of the night to find Vardy, whose run into space behind his marker and first-time finish bore all the instinctual qualities he showed so often last season.
Vardy's goal not only keeps the tie alive but offers hope to Leicester that he can return to form and fire them to Premier League safety.
His goal-drought, following the hat-trick against Manchester City on 10 December, coincided with a nine-game winless streak for the Foxes that has left them just a point and a place above the relegation zone.
The 30-year-old managed just 25 touches in total on Wednesday, but he made the one that mattered - his only shot on goal - count.
Jorge Sampaoli's Sevilla side justified their position as La Liga title challengers with a dominant display that lacked only a goal-tally to match.
Schmeichel can take much of the credit for that and following his penalty save, he showed superb awareness and reflexes to tip away shots from Sergio Escudero and Correa.
City were also indebted to the woodwork, with the post denying Vitolo from a tight angle and the bar halting Adil Rami's late header.
'Every result is still open'
Leicester manager Claudio Ranieri: "We knew they are better than us, they have high quality in possession. We suffered. They showed their quality but we showed our heart. We showed belief and never game up. That makes me satisfied.
"Kasper Schmeichel and everybody had a good game. Kasper saved the penalty and gave lot of support to his defenders.
"For us, it is important to continue to show our performance and our football."
Sevilla manager Jorge Sampaoli: "It is difficult to imagine such a big difference [between the sides] in a Champions League game.
"I am happy with how the game went because we had chances, but disappointed with the result because we deserved more."
Vardy's first shot in 380 minutes - the stats you need to know
• None Leicester have kept just two clean sheets in their last 22 games in all competitions (and none in their last 10).
• None Leicester failed to direct a single shot on target in the first half, registering just one shot on target in total in their last four first halves in all competitions.
• None Pablo Sarabia has scored in consecutive games for Sevilla for the first time ever, after netting against Eibar at the weekend.
• None Stevan Jovetic has been involved in seven goals in his eight games for Sevilla in all comps (3 goals, 4 assists).
• None Jamie Vardy scored for the first time in 758 minutes of action for Leicester in all competitions.
• None It was also Vardy's first shot on target in 380 minutes of action.
Leicester host Liverpool next Monday and then Hull the following Saturday in the Premier League before the return leg against Sevilla.
• None Daniel Carriço (Sevilla) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Adil Rami (Sevilla) hits the bar with a header from the centre of the box. Assisted by Pablo Sarabia with a cross following a corner.
• None Attempt blocked. Stevan Jovetic (Sevilla) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Assisted by Vitolo.
• None Attempt blocked. Pablo Sarabia (Sevilla) left footed shot from outside the box is blocked. Assisted by Steven N'Zonzi.
• None Attempt saved. Vitolo (Sevilla) header from the left side of the six yard box is saved in the bottom left corner.
• None Attempt missed. Stevan Jovetic (Sevilla) right footed shot from the centre of the box misses to the left. Assisted by Vitolo. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39043648 |
Daily Politics coverage of PMQs - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | null | Prime Minister's Questions on the BBC's Daily Politics. | null | This video can not be played. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27901933 |
Brit Awards 2017: Ceremony highlights - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | null | Little Mix, Emeli Sande and Rag 'N' Bone Man on winning Brit Awards. | null | This video can not be played
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39059583 |
Wayne Rooney: Manchester United striker staying after links with China - BBC Sport | 2017-02-23 | null | England captain Wayne Rooney says he is staying at Manchester United, after being linked with a move to China. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
England captain Wayne Rooney says he is staying at Manchester United, after being linked with a move to China.
The 31-year-old striker said he hoped to "play a full part" in the rest of the Premier League club's season.
United boss Jose Mourinho had refused to rule out the prospect of Rooney's exit this month, although a deal before the Chinese transfer window closes on 28 February was always unlikely.
"It's an exciting time at the club and I want to remain a part," said Rooney.
Rooney's agent, Paul Stretford, had travelled to China to see if he could negotiate a deal, although it is not known which clubs he spoke to.
Two of the three clubs who looked the most likely options - Beijing Guoan and Jiangsu Suning - dismissed speculation about a transfer.
Rooney's representatives had already spoken to the third option - Tianjin Quanjian - but their coach, Fabio Cannavaro, said talks did not progress.
Rooney is United's record goalscorer and has won five Premier League titles and a Champions League trophy since joining them as an 18-year-old for £27m from Everton in 2004.
The forward, whose contract expires in 2019, has said he would not play for an English club other than United or Everton.
United are sixth in the Premier League and remain in three cup competitions, having reached the last 16 of the Europa League on Wednesday.
They face Southampton in the EFL Cup final on Sunday before taking on Chelsea in the FA Cup quarter-finals on 13 March.
"Despite the interest which has been shown from other clubs, for which I'm grateful, I want to end recent speculation and say that I am staying at Manchester United.
"I hope I will play a full part in helping the team in its fight for success on four fronts.
"It's an exciting time at the club and I want to remain a part of it."
Rooney's statement settles his short-term future but does nothing to address long-term issues over his future.
Rooney has only started eight Premier League games this season - fewer than Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Henrikh Mkhitaryan - and has featured only three times since breaking United's goalscoring record at Stoke last month.
He remains committed to United and ideally would stay at Old Trafford.
However, should he not play regularly between now and the end of the season, he would explore other options.
These would include Major League Soccer, as well as China. It is understood his previous statement, that he would only play for United or Everton in the Premier League, still stands.
Interest from China is genuine but despite long-time adviser Paul Stretford travelling to the country this week, there was never any realistic possibility of completing a deal before Tuesday's Chinese Super League transfer deadline.
Rooney has scored five goals in 29 appearances for the Red Devils this season, but has started only three games since 17 December and may yet leave in the summer.
Former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp says Rooney would be an "ideal" signing for United's Premier League rivals Arsenal.
"Arsenal lack somebody like Rooney - a winner, a leader," he told BBC Radio 5 live.
"He could easily go into somewhere like Arsenal and get a few of their players by the scruff of the neck on the pitch and improve their performances."
Redknapp, who was speaking before Rooney's announcement, also suggested the player could make "a dream move" back to Everton.
But Rooney's former team-mate Phil Neville said the striker "shouldn't write off his United career" and he could not see him moving to China. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39070917 |
Couples speak of pain over spouse visa rules - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Three couples speak of their struggle to stay in the UK with their partners because of visa rules. | UK | Immigration rules that require a Briton to be earning a minimum amount before they can bring a non-EU spouse to the UK have been upheld in the Supreme Court. How does this policy affect families?
"My son has seen his father a few times only," says British national Toni Stew.
"I feel like a single mother rather than a wife."
Ms Stew, from Worcester, met her Egyptian husband Mohamed El Faramawi, 33, while on holiday in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2009. They got married six years later.
But, as the 25-year-old does not earn a minimum of £18,600 per year, her husband has been unable to join her and their 17-month-old son Ali in the UK.
"I feel very guilty towards my baby," she says.
"He hasn't done anything to deserve being without his father."
Ms Stew, who works as a part-time sales assistant, says she can't afford to work full-time as she also needs to care for Ali.
They are just one couple out of thousands who are said to be unable to meet the minimum income requirement that came into force in July 2012.
Under the family migration policy, only British citizens, foreign nationals who are deemed to be "present and settled" in the UK, or those with refugee status can apply to sponsor their non-European partner's visa.
And whichever of those three categories they are in, they must also show they have sufficient funding. In most cases, this is proof of an annual salary of £18,600, held for at least six months prior to the application. This level rises to £22,400 for a non-European partner and child, with an additional levy of £2,400 for each additional child. The rule does not apply to EU citizens.
Those who are granted the "family of a settled person" visa cannot usually claim benefits or other public funds.
The Home Office introduced the rules as part of attempts to control immigration from outside Europe, with ministers in the then coalition government arguing that the rules would ensure no incoming families would burden the UK taxpayer.
Mohamed El Faramawi has been unable to join his son Ali in the UK
But the minimum income requirement policy was challenged in the High Court in 2013 and again in the Court of Appeal in 2014 by two British claimants and one claimant who has refugee status who want to bring their non-EU spouses to the UK.
They said the rules were discriminatory and interfered with Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, the right to a private and family life.
The case then went to the Supreme Court, which said that while family immigration rules requiring minimum income cause hardship, they are lawful.
These rules need to be changed as the income threshold is too high, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants says.
The charity's chief executive Saira Grant says it would "greatly help" if the income of the foreign partner was taken into account.
Thousands of people are impacted by the rules, she says.
British national Laura Segan and her American husband Spencer Russ are facing the possibility of separation less than a year after they have got married.
"Just because she happens to fall in love with me and I have the wrong passport, she isn't allowed to live with me in her own country," says Spencer, 28.
His student visa expired in January and he has applied for leave to remain in the UK, but if that is rejected he fears he will have to leave the country.
Laura Segan and Spencer Russ have found their relationship complicated by visa rules
Full-time graduate student Laura would then need to earn a minimum of £18,600 per year for a minimum amount of six months in order to bring her husband back to the UK.
Laura, from Devon, says she cannot work full-time while she is studying. "It doesn't seem right," the 28-year-old says.
"I think it is ridiculous to put a financial requirement on love," adds Spencer, who met his wife when they were both teaching English in Russia.
Andy Russell, from Bath, reluctantly describes himself as "one of the lucky ones".
"Yet I don't feel that," he says.
Molly's only contact with her family for a year was on Skype
The 43-year-old teacher faced a long battle to get his Chinese wife Molly, 36, a partner visa after they decided to move to the UK from China in 2012 with their two sons - then just three and five years old.
Molly had to return to China to apply for the visa while Andy searched for a job that met the income requirement.
She was told she could not enter the UK on a visitor visa because she had expressed her intention to get a partner visa.
A year of separation with Molly able to see her family only via Skype led to her youngest son referring to her as "computer mummy".
"It broke my heart," Andy says.
He says their sons lost the ability to speak Chinese, which affected their bond with their mother as she struggled with English, and led to them "losing some respect for her", although their relationship is "much better now".
"They [the government] have got to deal with migration, but not at the expense of genuine, honest families. It is a scandal," Andy says.
The Children's Commissioner for England says that at least 15,000 children are separated from a parent because of the income rules and are growing up in "Skype families".
Andy Russell with his two sons and wife Molly before she left for China
Some Britons who are unable to meet the sufficient funding requirements have used the "Surinder Singh" route to get their non-EU partners into the country. This involves working in another nation in the European Economic Area (EEA) for about three months.
It means that when they return to the UK, their case is considered under different rules - as they are treated as a citizen of the EEA rather than a British citizen.
But the Home Office must be satisfied that people who have demonstrated they did actually "move" to their new EEA country for the period they lived there and did not just simply take a short-term job there for immigration purposes.
Home Office figures show the number of partner visas granted fell from 46,906 in the year ending June 2006 to 27,345 in the year ending June 2015, when it says 66% of applications were approved.
A Home Office spokesman said those who wish to make a life in the UK were welcomed "but family life must not be established here at the taxpayer's expense".
He said that was "why we established clear rules" based on advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee.
All cases are "considered on their individual merits," he said.
• None Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35552289 |
Six Nations: John Barclay to lead much-changed Scotland v Wales - BBC Sport | 2017-02-23 | null | John Barclay will captain a Scotland side featuring five changes for the Six Nations encounter at home to Wales. | null | Last updated on .From the section Scottish Rugby
Coverage: Live on BBC One, S4C, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru & BBC Sport website and BBC Sport app, plus live text commentary
John Barclay will captain a Scotland side featuring five changes for the Six Nations encounter at home to Wales.
Barclay, 30, is skipper in the absence of Greig Laidlaw, who misses the rest of the campaign with an ankle injury.
Ali Price replaces Laidlaw at scrum-half, with Sean Maitland dropping out and Tim Visser starting on the wing.
Gordon Reid is in for Allan Dell in the front row, while John Hardie replaces Hamish Watson and Ryan Wilson steps in for Josh Strauss at number eight.
"John has played a vital role in our leadership group and has led by example throughout this and previous campaigns," said head coach Vern Cotter of his new captain.
"It was disappointing to lose Greig Laidlaw. However, we continue to develop a system of shared leadership in this squad, which has supported the transition. It'll be a proud moment for John and one which he thoroughly deserves."
The Scarlets loose forward took over the captaincy temporarily when Laidlaw sustained his injury in the gruelling 22-16 defeat by France in Paris two weeks ago. However, he had to be replaced after suffering shoulder and head injuries, from which he has since recovered.
Barclay will be joined in the back row by Edinburgh's Hardie and Wilson, the latter having recovered from the elbow infection that kept him out of the France game and who replaces the injured Strauss.
Harlequins wing Visser gets his first opportunity of the championship as a straight swap for Maitland, who has failed to recover sufficiently from the rib injury sustained representing Saracens last weekend.
Since the Six Nations started in 2000, Scotland have beaten Wales just three times, the last success coming in Edinburgh in 2007.
"We know the Welsh will throw everything at us but we will keep our attacking mind-set and look to convert pressure to points as often as possible," said Cotter.
"The players have worked hard to prepare for this game and are really looking forward to putting in a top performance.
"It's a huge weekend in the championship and we're still right in the mix." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39066067 |
Maddie Hinch named goalkeeper of the year as GB win trio of awards - BBC Sport | 2017-02-23 | null | Maddie Hinch is named Female Goalkeeper of the Year as Great Britain win a hat-trick of world hockey awards. | null | Last updated on .From the section Hockey
Maddie Hinch has been named Female Goalkeeper of the Year as Great Britain won three world hockey awards.
The 28-year-old saved four penalties as Great Britain beat the Netherlands in a shootout to win Olympic gold in Rio.
GB women's coach Danny Kerry and assistant coach Karen Brown won the world's best male and female coaches.
Hockey players, coaches and fans vote for the annual International Hockey Federation Hockey Stars awards, which were held in India on Thursday.
Ireland hockey captain David Harte, 28, was named Male Goalkeeper of the Year for the second year in a row.
The 28-year-old led Ireland to a first Olympic Games in 108 years in 2016.
England Hockey chief executive Sally Munday said: "Maddie's heroics at the Olympic Games will be remembered by millions who watched our women win gold.
"She is the goalkeeper no player wants to face when taking a penalty and I am thrilled to see her receive this award."
England women are currently in South Africa preparing for two Tests on Saturday and Sunday with both games starting at 18:00 GMT.
England's men's team are also set to fly out as they take on both South Africa and Germany between 2 and 8 March. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/hockey/39071633 |
London Fashion Week: The highlights - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A round-up of some of the weird and wonderful outfits to have come out of this season's London Fashion Week. | Entertainment & Arts | You may remember Roland Mouret as the designer who came up with the famous Galaxy dress in 2005, which went on to be worn by the likes of Victoria Beckham and Cameron Diaz. He made a triumphant return to LFW to unveil his 20th anniversary collection - an homage to his design work so far. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38968872 |
Crystal Palace: Has the Sam Allardyce effect deserted Palace? - BBC Sport | 2017-02-23 | null | Sam Allardyce has traditionally made an instant impact at clubs - so why is it not happening at Crystal Palace? | null | Historically, if you need a manager to make a quick impact at a club, Big Sam tends to be your man.
Sam Allardyce has enjoyed impressive starts to life at previous clubs, including Bolton, Newcastle, Blackburn and West Ham.
So when Crystal Palace decided Alan Pardew was no longer needed in December, it made sense that the Londoners turned to the quick-fixer in their bid to remain in the Premier League.
In a BBC Sport poll, 52% of voters think that Allardyce will not be able to keep Crystal Palace up this season.
It was a swift return to the familiarity of club football for Allardyce, 62, who had suffered the ignominy of seeing his spell as England boss end after one game.
So why have the Eagles, now 19th in the table and two points from safety, not benefited from the traditional Big Sam bounce?
How bad has Allardyce's start been?
Allardyce has a reputation for achieving positive results when he joins a club mid-season and, similarly, clubs generally see a downturn in results if he leaves in mid-season.
In fact, Palace are the first team where that pattern has not continued for Allardyce.
His first eight league games in charge at Selhurst Park have produced an average of 0.5 points, the exact same average of his predecessor Pardew's last eight games before he was sacked.
Overall, this is one of the worst starts Allardyce has ever made at a new club.
Aside from Notts County, whom he failed to steer away from relegation to League Two in 1996-97 (although they were promoted again by March the next year), Allardyce is on course for his lowest points average from his first 10 league games.
Allardyce's average of 0.5 points from his eight Premier League matches at Palace is 0.4 points lower than the average for his first 10 games at Sunderland and way below the 1.8 average of his start at West Ham.
There is hope for Eagles fans, though, as Allardyce has guided the last two clubs he joined in mid-season away from the drop zone - Blackburn in 2008-09 and Sunderland in 2015-16, the latter despite eight defeats in his first 10 games.
Where Allardyce's teams finish when he joins mid-season
Why the change in fortune?
One argument could be that Allardyce has not been his usual cunning self in his first transfer window.
Allardyce spent £34.6m in January - more than he has spent in any of his first transfer windows at new clubs - and that outlay was splurged on just four players: Jeffrey Schlupp (£11.7m), Luka Milivojevic (£10.8m), Patrick van Aanholt (£10m) and Mamadou Sakho (loan fee of £1.9m).
In the 2007 summer transfer window at Newcastle, he spent a comparable £30.8m, but that was on nine players.
And his most successful start at a club - West Ham in 2011 - coincided with the mass influx of 12 new players during the summer window
It should be noted that clubs generally bring in fewer players in winter windows, and have less time to line up signings.
But Allardyce managed to bring in six players at a cost of £17.6m at Sunderland in January 2016, and went on to save the club from relegation.
Alternatively, perhaps a change in tactics is the source of Allardyce's struggles?
Renowned for his preference for a pragmatic, long-ball style of play, Allardyce seems to have forgone that approach in an attempt to play a more compact version of the game.
Only 18% of his side's passes have been long passes (defined as a pass over 35 yards with an intended target) - lower than at Newcastle, Blackburn and Sunderland.
And what about the old cliche that Allardyce's sides are the masters of the set-piece?
Allardyce has become associated with well-drilled teams when it comes to the dead ball - a threat at the opposition end and organised in their own box.
Well, Allardyce does seem to have firmed Palace up at the back in that respect, conceding from just 24% of defensive set-pieces (three of 14) since his arrival, compared with 47% (15 from 32) under Pardew this term.
But the same effect has yet to register at the other end, Palace scoring from 25% of their attacking set plays (1/4) compared with 43% (12/28) under Pardew this season.
Analysis - Can Allardyce keep Palace up?
Crystal Palace assumed they were appointing a guarantee of Premier League safety when Sam Allardyce was hastily ushered through the door at Selhurst Park to replace sacked Alan Pardew in December.
Allardyce was the impact manager and arch-pragmatist whose record had never been stained by relegation from the Premier League, proving his ability to navigate a route out of danger at Sunderland last season, a task he performed with such success it landed him the job as England manager. Briefly.
To say the move has yet to have the desired effect is an understatement, with Palace now in a far more perilous plight than when he arrived after a home defeat by Chelsea that left them lying 17th.
Allardyce's tried and trusted methods have so far failed miserably, despite inheriting a squad that looked built for his favoured method of using wide players and a powerful striker, with Christian Benteke a disappointment, Wilfried Zaha's role reduced by his presence at the Africa Cup Of Nations with the Ivory Coast and Andros Townsend out of favour.
But is the real problem with Allardyce himself? Has the man whose concrete-clad self-confidence in everything he did been scarred by his calamitous one-match, 67-day reign as England manager, which ended after he was caught in a newspaper sting? Certainly Allardyce has not seemed the bullish, brash operator of old.
The England job was meant to be the pinnacle of his career, the job he had craved for more than a decade, not an embarrassing "blink and you'll miss it" interlude before another Premier League relegation battle.
Is the man who prides himself on breathing life into his squad battling to motivate himself to the old levels? It is hard to imagine but the loss of his managerial life's dream will have had a devastating impact, even on an experienced campaigner such as Allardyce.
There was a brief flash of the old Allardyce when he danced in front of Crystal Palace's mascot before the home game with Sunderland - but the music soon stopped as his side were 4-0 down to their relegation rivals by half-time.
It was a result that snuffed out the brief optimism of his only league win, a 2-0 victory at Bournemouth. Palace's fans are unimpressed with Allardyce and his methods, but more significantly by his results.
Palace and Allardyce simply cannot wait any longer to get their act together - they must start getting results to move out of trouble and for their manager to prove he has not arrived at Selhurst Park as badly damaged goods. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38986643 |
Helen Bailey murder: Fiance Ian Stewart found guilty - BBC News | 2017-02-23 | null | The fiance of the suffocated children's author Helen Bailey has been found guilty of murder. | null | The fiance of a children's author who drugged and suffocated her before throwing her body in a hidden cesspit has been found guilty of murder.
Ian Stewart, 56, had denied murdering Helen Bailey but was convicted at St Albans Crown Court. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39051642 |
Kim Jong-nam: How N Korea could have used potent VX to kill - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The substance could have easily been smuggled into Malaysia without detection, expert Bruce Bennett says. | Asia | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. CCTV footage appears to show the moment Kim Jong-nam is attacked
Malaysian authorities have identified the substance that killed Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur airport as VX, which is classified as a weapon of mass destruction. Bruce Bennett, a defence expert with the Rand Corporation, dissects how this could have happened.
VX is an extraordinarily potent chemical weapon. About 0.01g - less than a drop - on the skin can kill. The chemical goes through the skin and disrupts the nerve system.
It is an oil-like substance; it would normally not mix well with water, which raises questions about how it was applied on Mr Kim without killing those who carried out the mission. This is the first time VX has been used in such a way, so there are plenty of imponderables.
The CCTV footage and police statements do not lay out the full sequence of events. Two women appear to assault him, at least one with a cloth wiping his face.
Molecular model of VX nerve agent shows atoms represented as spheres: Carbon (grey), hydrogen (white), nitrogen (blue) oxygen (red), phosphorous (orange) and sulphur (yellow)
Malaysian investigators said the two women coated their hands with the liquid toxin and wiped Kim's face afterwards. But if that were the case, they would have died immediately.
So if a liquid was sprayed or wiped on Kim Jong-nam it is likely that it did not contain VX and that would help to explain why the women seen accosting him did not die despite apparently getting the liquid on their hands.
In that case it appears likely that a very small quantity of VX - possibly just a drop - was actually on the cloths used by the women to wipe his face.
We do know now that one of the women involved has been vomiting since the attack.
The perpetrators would have really wanted to practise with this to make sure the drop touched Kim, and that they did not touch the drop. And that is what we are told happened.
Police say that they are believed to have repeated this move in shopping malls ahead of the actual event on 13 February.
As the drop absorbed into Kim Jong-nam's skin, it would have started affecting his nerve system, causing symptoms that take effect within minutes. The subject will experience coughing, chest tightness, blurry vision, fatigue and eventually seizures as the nervous system is shut down. He is likely to have died within minutes.
Kim, seen here in a file photo, reportedly died before he could be taken to hospital
It appears that the North Korean government may have felt that they could claim the body and avoid an autopsy, thus denying the outside world knowledge of what had happened.
Malaysia has proven diligent in insisting on an autopsy and clearly North Korea failed in its efforts to prevent this. This has led to a row between the two nations, Malaysia being one of few that had diplomatic relations with the North.
So how could the VX have actually got into Malaysia?
A woman wearing a white top was thought to have attacked Mr Kim
Because the quantity required to kill is extraordinarily small, it could have been smuggled into Malaysia in a cartridge in a pen or some such thing. The security forces would have had no idea it was being smuggled in unless someone had tipped them off, which clearly did not happen.
It is unlikely that VX was made in Malaysia - it is not something that can be made safely in a kitchen sink.
Of course, we don't know for sure that North Korea made it and it is also possible they may have purchased it from a third country. There is both a US and a Soviet/Russian version of VX and it will be interesting to see which version was eventually used.
It would take sophisticated laboratory analysis to tell them apart, which may already have been done.
VX is extremely stable - like oil, it does not evaporate quickly. That made the VX safe on a cloth or some other surface until it touched human skin.
VX, seen here in a container held by a US Army chemical school instructor, is a clear amber-coloured and oily liquid
But this use of VX, unheard of previously, is a serious violation of international standards. The fact that it was used in a foreign country means that Malaysia and other countries will be both appalled and furious.
Of key importance will be how China responds. After all, China was reportedly providing protection for Kim Jong-nam.
If North Korea seriously violated international law, China should presumably do more than just cut off imports of North Korean coal.
China has the opportunity to punish North Korea and thereby hopefully deter it from carrying out this kind of attack again. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39073837 |
Why some fear a shortage of immigrants - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Statistics suggesting a fall in UK net migration are likely to worry employers reliant on foreign labour. | UK | Britain's anxiety about immigration has long been that there is far too much of it. Concerns about the record number of foreign arrivals were a key factor in the vote for Brexit, and the national debate in Parliament and the press has tended to focus on who has got the best policies to reduce it as quickly as possible.
So one would think statistics suggesting a fall in net migration and a big drop on EU workers coming from the eight so-called accession countries (A8) like Poland would be a cause for rejoicing. Well, not entirely.
Nothing has changed at the UK Border since the Brexit vote - this isn't about Britain "taking control".
What has happened is that more than 100,000 EU citizens have left Britain - 17% more than in the previous year. And arrivals from the A8 countries have fallen sharply.
The number of new registered workers from Poland is down 16% year on year, Hungary is down 14%, Slovakia down 20% and Lithuania down 6%.
More workers have come from Romania and Bulgaria, up 11% and 8% respectively, but this may be because free movement from those countries came in much more recently.
Some may have packed their bags fearing the brief window allowing them access to Britain might soon close.
For most European nationals, though, uncertainty over the status of EU citizens in a post-Brexit Britain, and the sharp fall in the pound, has made the UK a much less attractive prospect.
Some British employers are very worried.
The growth of our hugely profitable tourism and hospitality sector, for instance, has relied upon importing foreign labour.
I recently went to York, where the tourist industry is booming. In that city alone it is now worth an astonishing £500m a year and supports more than 20,000 jobs.
But the expansion could not have happened without immigration. The city has close to full employment - there are estimated to be fewer than a thousand local job seekers.
The news of a fall in migrant workers from countries which have traditionally filled tourist jobs makes grim reading for York's hoteliers, restaurateurs and bar owners.
If the numbers continue to fall, some fear the worst.
"It would create a staffing crisis," says Graham Usher, who heads York's Hoteliers' Association. "If we get to the point where we can't fill vacancies with European workers then there's a big gap that we just can't fill."
What about using British workers? I ask.
"There just aren't enough of them around. York only has about 700 unemployed people and that is it."
A quarter of hospitality businesses across Britain say they currently have vacancies they are struggling to fill and the sector has been holding urgent talks with government officials on how to deal with the shortage of workers.
It is not just the tourism and hospitality sector, of course. Britain's record employment rate means there is often no immediate domestic alternative to migrant labour for many businesses looking to expand or simply survive.
Poskitt's Carrots is a £35m a year business in the East Riding of Yorkshire, supplying vegetables to many of Britain's big supermarkets.
In the shed where 50,000 tonnes of carrots are washed and packed, 80% of the staff are Eastern Europeans.
"If we didn't have access to non-UK labour we just could not run this business," says managing director Guy Poskitt. "I wouldn't even attempt to try and run it. Take away 80% of my workforce how can I operate?"
Guy Poskitt doesn't want to be reliant on migrant labour, but argues that there just aren't the domestic workers available from the rural communities nearby.
Some argue that Britain needs to rid itself of its addiction to cheap migrant labour, that employers should do more to train and recruit home-grown workers.
Many sectors are now thinking how they might adapt to Britain becoming a lower immigration economy.
Health ministers hope that universities will expand the number of training places for nurses in England to reduce the reliance on foreign staff.
The government recently lifted the cap on state-funded bursaries, but replaced them with student loans. Since the announcement, the number of applicants for nurse training in England has fallen 23%.
Britain's creative industries, which are worth more to the UK economy than the finance sector, are often collaborative ventures involving highly skilled but relatively low paid workers from around the world.
From ballet companies to computer gaming firms, there is concern that an inability to attract or employ foreign staff will damage their international standing and profitability.
The social care sector is also extremely concerned about the lack of suitable domestic staff to replace foreign workers who, in parts of the country make up the majority of employees.
Earlier this week the Brexit Secretary David Davies told an audience in Estonia that in sectors requiring low-skilled labour including hospitality, agriculture and social care "it will be years and years before we get British citizens to do those jobs".
"Don't expect just because we're changing who makes the decision on the policy, the door will suddenly shut: It won't," he said.
What the figures remind us, however, is that immigration works both ways.
We may not suddenly shut the door, but that doesn't mean foreigners will choose to walk through it. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39066609 |
Are we tough enough on animal cruelty? - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | High-profile cases of animal cruelty have provoked public outcry over apparent leniency. Is the law tough enough? | England | Andrew Frankish was filmed stamping on a bulldog and throwing her down stairs
When two brothers who filmed themselves torturing a dog were spared jail it provoked an outcry. Yet England and Wales has the lightest maximum sentence in Europe for animal cruelty offences. Now an MP is hoping to make the law tougher on perpetrators.
There was outrage when the abuse to which Andrew and Daniel Frankish subjected a bulldog became public knowledge.
The brothers, from Redcar in Teesside, had repeatedly stamped on the dog and thrown it down stairs. As a result the dog became paralysed in the back legs and was eventually put down.
Yet they were given only a suspended sentence at Hartlepool Magistrates Court. Even if they had been jailed, the maximum prison sentence they could have faced was six months - meaning they would be released in just three.
The sentence attracted widespread criticism. Nearly 500,000 people signed an online petition calling for a tougher penalty. Others held a vigil for the abused dog while a plane was flown over Middlesbrough FC's stadium during a match, calling for the brothers to be locked up.
Redcar's Labour MP Anna Turley, who was among those outraged by the sentence, has secured a parliamentary debate about the issue later on Friday.
Between 2013 and 2015 more than 3,000 people in England and Wales were convicted of animal cruelty but just 7% received jail terms.
Currently sentences in England and Wales are the lowest in Europe. In France the maximum is two years and in Germany it is three.
Ms Turley's Animal Cruelty (Sentencing) Bill - which will have its second reading on Friday - would increase the maximum to five years, matching the current situation in Northern Ireland.
This dog was nailed in the head and buried alive. It had to be put down
"The current sentences available to courts to punish animal abuse are not working," she says. "They often mean the perpetrators of cruel acts towards animals just receive a slap on the wrist.
"If we do not properly punish these people then as a society we are essentially legitimising abuse against animals".
She reiterated her stance when another pair of her constituents admitted hammering a nail into a dog's head and burying it alive in what a court heard was "the worst case" a vet had ever seen.
Claire Horton, chief executive of Battersea Dogs' and Cats' Home, said the sentences for animal cruelty were too gentle.
"Six months in prison for the gravest act of animal cruelty, such as torturing an animal to death, is a fraction of the maximum sentence for fly tipping [five years] or theft [seven years]," she said.
"So let's get this into proportion and let the punishment for abusing animals truly fit the crime."
The current sentencing guidelines have not changed since the Protection of Animals Act 1911. The Act was introduced essentially to make it an offence to override or overload animals pulling loads on the street.
The Animal Welfare Act 2006 actually made provision to increase sentencing to 51 weeks, but the provision was never enacted.
Puppies were rescued from a farm in Solihull
The RSPCA is firmly behind the idea that sentences should be tougher.
Its chief veterinary officer James Yeates says people are not only being deliberately cruel, but "in disturbingly inventive ways."
There have been five prosecutions relating to the "Neknomination" online craze in which people took part in "dares" involving swallowing live fish, frogs and even a lizard.
In Gloucestershire a man was jailed for 16 weeks for microwaving a rabbit to death because he "was angry". Paul Rogers said he had "no remorse whatsoever. Not even a grain of sand on a beach. I would be lying if I said I did."
Dozens of dogs were found in squalid conditions at a farm in Bradford, including dead puppies in a wheelbarrow
The RSPCA has highlighted several "shocking" cases, including that of a man who stabbed his dog and then hid her behind the washing machine. He was jailed for 12 weeks.
There are wider issues too. There is a substantial body of evidence that animal cruelty offenders also commit other serious crimes. A study carried out on behalf of the NSPCC found the children of pet abusers were more at risk of neglect or abuse themselves.
The charity says professionals "can no longer afford to ignore the potential links between child abuse and animal cruelty. The two forms of abuse should not be seen as mutually exclusive; it needs to be recognised that they can co-exist, or there may be associations between the two".
League Against Cruel Sports chief executive Eduardo Goncalves added: "If we don't offer a serious punishment to animal abusers then they will continue abusing animals.
"I spend a lot of my time looking at horrific dog fighting footage as the League is working hard to stamp this out in the UK, but I know in the back of my mind that if we catch a dog fighter, the most they will get is six months in prison - and probably much less.
"That's utterly inadequate and would be laughable if it wasn't so shocking."
When discussing the five-year proposal in November, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Sam Gyimah, pointed out that the average custodial sentence for animal cruelty was about three and a half months.
"If judges are not going up to the maximum six months, there is a question whether the issue is with the maximum sentence length or the courts are finding the current sentencing powers inadequate or restrictive in dealing with those cases. We have to look at that.
"The maximum penalty for animal cruelty offences is under review." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39042626 |
Six Nations 2017: Ben Te'o to start for England against Italy - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Rugby league convert Ben Te'o makes his first Test start and scrum-half Danny Care is recalled in the England team to face Italy. | null | Last updated on .From the section Rugby Union
Coverage : Live on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra, BBC Sport website and BBC Sport app, plus live text commentary
Ben Te'o will make his first start for England in Sunday's Six Nations match with Italy.
Te'o, 30, has won five caps as a replacement, but has been named at outside centre for the meeting with the Azzurri.
Danny Care partners George Ford at half-back, with Owen Farrell at inside centre and Elliot Daly on the wing.
"Ben Te'o at 13 gives us another way of playing the game," said head coach Eddie Jones.
"We are excited about seeing him, George Ford and Owen Farrell play together in the midfield."
Watch Eddie Jones answer your questions on Conte, player power and Buddhism.
Care last started for England in the Grand Slam showdown with France in Paris a year ago.
"Ben Youngs has been outstanding for us at number nine, but Danny Care gets the starting jersey this week," added Jones.
"For the first half he'll give us a lot of speed and running at the base of the ruck as well as the scrum. Ben will then come on and finish the game."
Elsewhere wing Jonny May and flanker James Haskell both return to the starting XV, as Jones makes four changes from the side that beat Wales.
Haskell came off the bench in the wins over France and Wales.
Find out how to get into rugby union with our special guide.
"Tom Wood has been great for us at seven, and Jack Clifford did well against Wales but James Haskell has the starting role on Sunday; he has come back to a much better level of fitness and we are sure his explosive actions will help us in the first part of the game," Jones continued.
Mako Vunipola has been included among the replacements after recovering from a knee injury, while Henry Slade is also included in the squad, with Anthony Watson missing out.
Farrell, 25, wins his 50th cap at Twickenham as England look to win their 16th straight game under Jones.
"It is an important Test match for us and our only consideration is to play well. Italy have a proud record in Test rugby, they beat South Africa in November, and we will not underestimate them," said the Australian.
"I know the Twickenham crowd will give Owen Farrell a big cheer. To reach 50 caps at such a young age is a fine achievement. The one thing I know about Owen is that his next 50 are going to be more impressive than his first."
Te'o has made an explosive impact off the bench in the first two Six Nations matches, and is rewarded with a place in the starting XV for the first time.
Normally an inside centre, Jones has surprisingly selected him in the number 13 shirt, and he will provide the ball-carrying power England have missed in the absence of Manu Tuilagi, and which the last coaching regime hoped would be provided by another cross-code convert, Sam Burgess.
There were suggestions Owen Farrell would move to fly-half on the occasion of his 50th cap, but Jones has persisted with the playmaking combination of George Ford and Farrell at 10 and 12.
• None Get all the latest Six Nations news by adding | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39076481 |
The secret of why we like to eat chocolate - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | It may seem simple - we like chocolate because it tastes nice. But there's more to it than that - and it relates to a balance that is set right from the very beginning of our lives. | Health | It may seem simple - we like chocolate because it tastes nice. But there's more to it than that - and it relates to a fat/carbohydrates balance that is set right from the very beginning of our lives.
I love chocolate and once I start on a bar I can't stop until it's all gone. One square, or even a few, are never enough. My family know that if they bring chocolate into our house they will have to hide it.
So what is it about the food that so many of us find irresistible? And what characteristics does chocolate share with other foods that we simply can't say, "no" to?
As part of a new series on the science of food, botanist James Wong and I went looking for answers.
Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which have been grown and consumed in the Americas for thousands of years.
The Maya and the Aztecs made a drink out of cocoa beans called xocolatl, which means "bitter water."
That's because in its raw form cocoa beans are intensely bitter.
To get at the beans you first have to crack open the thick husk of the cocoa pod, releasing a pulp that has an intense tropical flavour that's halfway between lemonade and a custard apple. Known as baba de cacao, it's sweet, acidic and very sticky.
The beans and pulp are then sweated and allowed to ferment for several days before being dried and roasted.
Roasting releases a range of chemical compounds including 3-methylbutanoic acid, which on its own has a sweaty rancid odour, and dimethyl trisulfide, the smell of over-cooked cabbage.
The combination of these and other aroma molecules creates a unique chemical signature that our brains love.
But the rich, chocolaty smells and the happy memories of youth that those smells provoke, are just part of chocolate's attraction.
Chocolate contains a number of interesting psychoactive chemicals. These include anandamide, a neurotransmitter whose name comes from the Sanskrit - "ananda", meaning "joy, bliss, delight". Anandamides stimulate the brain in much the same way that cannabis does.
It also contains tyramine and phenylethylamine, both of which have similar effects to amphetamines.
Finally, if you look hard enough, you will find small traces of theobromine and caffeine, both of which are well-known stimulants.
For a while, some food scientists got very excited about the discovery but to be honest, although chocolate contains these substances, we now know they are only there in trace amounts.
Your brain is not going to get much of a chemical rush from eating a few squares. None the less, they may play a small part in seducing our senses.
So what else does chocolate have going for it?
Well, it also has a creamy viscosity. When you take it out of its wrapper and put a bit in your mouth without biting, you will notice that it rapidly melts on your tongue, leaving a lingering sensation of smoothness.
Special touch receptors on our tongues detect this textural change, which then stimulates feelings of pleasure.
But the thing that really transformed the cocoa from a bitter and watery drink into the snack we adore today was the addition of sugar and fat.
The addition of just the right amount of each is crucial to our enjoyment of chocolate. Look at the side of a packet of milk chocolate and you will see that it is normally contains around 20-25% fat and 40-50% sugar.
In nature such high levels of sugar and fat are rarely found, or at least not together.
You can get lots of natural sugars from fruits and roots, and there is plenty of fat to be found in nuts or a tasty chunk of salmon, but one of the few places where you will find both together is in milk.
Human breast milk is particularly rich in natural sugars, mainly lactose. Roughly 4% of human breast milk is fat, while about 8% is made up of sugars. Formula milk, which is fed to babies, contains a similar ratio of fats to sugars.
This ratio, 1g of fat to 2g of sugars, is the same ratio of fats to sugars that you find in milk chocolate. And in biscuits, doughnuts, ice cream. In fact this particular ratio is reflected in many of the foods that we find hard to resist.
So why do I love chocolate? For a whole host of reasons. But it may also be that I, and chocoholics like me, are trying to recapture the taste and sense of closeness we got from the first food we ever sampled; human breast milk.
The Secrets of Your Food begins on BBC2 at 2100GMT on Friday February 24th.
Join the conversation on our Facebook page.
• None BBC Two - The Secrets of Your Food | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39067088 |
Women's Six Nations 2017: Scotland 15-14 Wales - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Scotland secure their first Women's Six Nations win since 2010 after recovering from two tries down to beat Wales. | null | Last updated on .From the section Scottish Rugby
Scotland secured their first Women's Six Nations win since 2010 as they recovered from two tries down to beat Wales.
Carys Phillips' score was followed by a penalty try for the visitors, with Elinor Snowsill converting both.
The Scots responded with Lisa Thomson's converted try, and Rhona Lloyd crossing in the second half.
Lana Skeldon missed the conversion for Lloyd's try, but Sarah Law's late penalty gave the Scots victory.
A shaky start by Wales allowed Scotland to camp in their 22 early on. However, the opening was plagued with unforced errors from both sides, one of which by Wales allowed Skeldon and Jemma Forsyth to gain a penalty but Law's attempt was wide.
Dyddgu Hywel and debutant Jasmine Joyce's use of wide spaces meant Scotland were soon on the back foot and from a driven maul off a line-out Wales captain Phillips touched down.
The Welsh then utilised a powerful scrum drive to force their penalty try and Snowsill added her second conversion.
However, the tide started to turn when Law offloaded for Thomson to cross and scrum-half Law converted.
The try gave Scotland renewed impetus after the break, but Amy Evans, Hywells and Phillips all threatened to add to the Welsh advantage.
A rolling maul applied more pressure to the hosts and only Jade Konkel's interception and burst forward allowed space for the Scots to breathe.
And it was from Konkel's pass to Lloyd that the hosts were finally back in contention. The winger managed to soar over the line in the left corner for her third international try.
The closing stages were fiery and Thomson's powerful drive through the Welsh defence resulted in a scrum dangerously close to the line.
Wales managed to get the ball away and were safe, momentarily, but their inability to disrupt the Scottish line-out meant the hosts were back on the attack and Law held her nerve with the decisive kick after the visitors had been penalised for offside. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39083065 |
IAAF clears three Russians to compete as neutral athletes - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Three Russian athletes given clearance to compete internationally under a neutral flag by athletics' world governing body the IAAF. | null | Last updated on .From the section Athletics
Three Russian athletes have been cleared to return to competition by the IAAF's doping review board.
Pole vaulter Anzhelika Sidorova, sprinter Kristina Sivkova and hammer thrower Aleksei Sokirskii all met the "exceptional eligibility criteria".
Russia's athletics federation remains suspended from international competition after claims of state-sponsored doping.
Sidorova, Sivkova and Sokirskii would compete as neutral athletes.
Their participation in competitions is still subject to approval by the organisers of individual events.
The three could compete in the European Indoor Championships in Belgrade and European Throwing Cup next month.
Long jumper Darya Klishina and sprinter Yulia Stepanova had previously been declared eligible and will remain so.
The IAAF has received 48 applications from Russian athletes to compete independently, 28 of which were endorsed by Russia's athletics federation.
In a statement, the IAAF said six applications had been declined, but did not give the names of the athletes in question.
Russian officials say they do not expect any more of their athletes to be cleared for the European Indoors as they expect the remaining rulings "no earlier than the middle of March".
IAAF president Lord Coe said: "The application process to compete internationally as neutral athletes is about our desire to support the hopes and aspirations of all clean athletes including Russian athletes who have been failed by their national system.
"While prioritising applications based upon the entry deadlines of the competitions concerned, the primary responsibility of the doping review board must always be to safeguard the integrity of competition."
Before last summer's Olympic Games in Rio, the governing body outlined "strict criteria" any Russian athletes must meet if they wanted to take part in the Games.
Only US-based Klishina was able to meet the criteria - and she entered as a neutral. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/39072225 |
Who are Britain’s jihadists? - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | At least 800 people from the UK have travelled to support or fight for jihadist organisations in Syria and Iraq, according to British officials. But what do we know about them? | UK | Approximately 850 people from the UK have travelled to support or fight for jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, say the British authorities.
This BBC News database is the most comprehensive public record of its kind, telling the story of over 100 people from the UK who have been convicted of offences relating to the conflict and over 150 others who have either died or are still in the region.
This interactive content is optimised for modern, javascript-enabled web browsers. Please ensure you have javascript enabled and a current browser.
The information above has been compiled from open sources and BBC research. Some details have been withheld for legal reasons or are unavailable. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32026985 |
'How my mother's organ donations brought new friendships' - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | When her late mother donated her organs, Ella hoped one of the recipients might contact her. It turned into two wonderful friendships. | England | Ella (pictured, centre) has made two lifelong friends thanks to her late mother's organ donations
When her mother died in 2013, Ella decided her organs should be donated in the hope of saving the lives of others. It has led to several successful transplants and two wonderful friendships. Now Ella is hoping to donate to one of the same women as her mother.
Ella Murtha had always hoped the recipients of her late mother's organs would contact her, and that it might bring some form of closure. But she never expected to gain such strong friendships.
"I hoped I'd hear something when I agreed to be contacted [by the recipients], but I didn't know," she tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.
Her mother Tish died unexpectedly in 2013 following a ruptured brain aneurysm, aged 56. Despite her not being on the organ donor list, Ella felt that it was right for her organs to be passed on.
Tish's heart, kidney, pancreas, liver, eye tissue and lungs were all donated, leading to successful transplants that doctors said saved the lives of four women and the eyesight of four men.
Many organ donors never have the opportunity to meet the person, or people, whose lives they have changed for the better.
The recipient's identity remains confidential, although a thank-you letter can often be passed on via a transplant co-ordinator.
For six months Ella, from Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, heard nothing back. But then two letters arrived on her doorstep in the same week.
Teresa Saunders, from Reading, was one of those who decided to write, wanting to express her gratitude for receiving a kidney and pancreas.
Three years earlier her diabetes had caused her kidneys to fail when she became pregnant, and she had been placed on a waiting list.
After the operation Teresa waited about five months before writing to Ella, in order "to fully recover and make sure I was well and the organs were OK".
Jane Holmes, of Hornsea, East Yorkshire, also decided to write. She was in a wheelchair and had struggled to breathe since being diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension.
"I wanted Ella to know what her decision had gone on to do - to help save a mum with four children," she explains.
"Initially it's like the lungs came off the shelf - it's clinical and you don't attach people to it.
"But when you start getting better you want to thank people for it, and you think you visualise the person."
The pair exchanged letters, but their friendship began to blossom when Jane's daughter Maisie sent Ella a Christmas card.
Aged eight at the time, Maisie had thought Ella might be lonely without her mother, and wrote a card that read: "Thank you for letting your mum save my mum's life."
Maisie sent a letter to Ella, thanking her for helping to save her mother's life
On the anniversary of Jane receiving her new lungs, the three women decided to meet, saying it felt like a natural progression.
"It sounds funny but we are like sisters because we have this bond - even like I'd known them for years," Teresa said.
"I feel really lucky," Ella said. "It's so hard to explain it because I see them like family, but almost special friends that my mum has introduced me to.
"Teresa and Jane share my mum's organs and that's a special bond as well. For whatever reason, we're meant to be in each other's life."
The women speak almost every day, but the connection between them may yet grow stronger.
Teresa's new kidney is deteriorating, meaning she will require a replacement.
About 3,000 kidney transplants are carried out each year
In up to 90% of cases, a kidney transplant lasts for five or more years. In this instance doctors believe Teresa needs a replacement kidney from a living donor - and Ella hopes to follow in her mother's footsteps by donating her own organ.
She has undertaken tests to see if their tissue types are compatible. It may not be possible for Ella to donate, but Teresa says she is "overwhelmed" by her kindness and knows she can rely on Ella's emotional support.
The three friends are currently fundraising for Jane's daughter Maisie, who has cerebral palsy, to have an operation to help her walk.
Watch the Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39053938 |
Lewis Hamilton: Mercedes's new car given debut at Silverstone - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Lewis Hamilton puts the first laps on the Mercedes car he hopes will make him world champion for the fourth time in 2017. | null | Lewis Hamilton has put the first laps on the Mercedes car he hopes will make him world champion for the fourth time in 2017.
The 32-year-old drove the new Mercedes W08 at Silverstone in blustery, damp conditions.
Hamilton said the car felt "incredible" and "pretty awesome" on his first outing.
It has been produced to new regulations aimed at making the cars faster, more dramatic and more demanding of drivers.
It features an elegant design, in contrast to some rivals, and a notably narrow rear.
• None Did these crazy car launches really happen?
Hamilton said: "Yesterday was the first time I saw [the car] together. It is the most detailed piece of machinery I have seen in F1.
"This is not an actual test - it's just a few laps to make sure the car will run. But I was able to go faster in the last couple of laps.
"It feels almost identical to last year's car in terms of ergonomics but you have this bigger, more powerful beast around you."
'You may see some sparks' - Bottas
His new team-mate Valtteri Bottas, signed by Mercedes last month to replace Nico Rosberg, who retired after winning his first world title last year, drove the car on Thursday afternoon.
Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff said he was hoping for a less fractious relationship between Hamilton and Bottas than between the Briton and Rosberg.
"It's a completely new dynamic," Wolff said. "I see it as an opportunity to start from square one with a healthy relationship. There are no games, no warfare because there is no history.
"There is a solid foundation that the relationship works well. But you have to be realistic that when they get out there, it is about winning races and championships, and the rivalry could be difficult."
However, Bottas told BBC TV that "you may see some sparks" and he wanted to be world champion himself at some stage.
"I am here to do a lot for the team, everything I can," he said,
"I'm here also to prove myself. I'm not here to be the second driver. We are both going to be fighting a lot on the track, but fairly, and for the team."
Mercedes have clearly worked extremely hard at shrink-wrapping the bodywork as much as possible around the engine and its ancillaries to ensure the cleanest airflow and maximum aerodynamic downforce.
And the aerodynamic detailing on the car looks especially intricate, with a cascading series of airflow conditioners - commonly known as 'barge boards' - either side of the cockpit, which are a clear advance on anything seen before in F1.
Bottas said: "What I really like about it is how clean it looks, but at the same time there's a massive amount of detail."
Wolff added: "It is a new era of technical innovation, maybe someone has found the silver bullet that makes the difference, like Brawn in 2009. Hopefully it will be us."
Fourth title 'there for the taking' - Hamilton
Hamilton is relishing the prospect of the new season, which starts in Australia on 26 March.
"It is a good day to get confidence in the car. It is a good way to brush off cobwebs and do the walking because next week we have to go straight into the running," he said.
"I definitely don't want to finish second. Every year you generally set the same goals but you might add more. All drivers want to win but not everyone has the ability or the opportunity.
"We will find out whether we have the car next week, whether it is a reliable fast car so I can exploit what's inside me. I am looking for that fourth world championship. It's there for the taking again, I am up against another great driver in Valtteri and hopefully Red Bull and Ferrari will be up there as well."
The new rules were introduced at least partly because Mercedes' rivals hoped a reset would allow them to make up some ground. But there was always a risk that the best team with the best engine would end up further ahead.
It's too early to say that, but the new car looks like a work of engineering art and Hamilton ought to be favourite to win a fourth world title this season. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/39063786 |
Claudio Ranieri: Leicester caretaker boss denies player revolt - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Leicester caretaker boss Craig Shakespeare denies a player revolt led to the sacking of Claudio Ranieri as manager. | null | Leicester City caretaker boss Craig Shakespeare has denied a player revolt led to the sacking of Claudio Ranieri.
BBC Sport understands some players were summoned to meet the chairman after the 2-1 loss to Sevilla and Ranieri's fate was sealed by the negative reaction.
The Italian was sacked by Leicester on Thursday nine months after leading the club to the Premier League title.
"There was a lot of frustration because of the results, but he had not lost the dressing room," Shakespeare said.
"A lot of the talk of unrest has been speculation. I've not had one problem with the players.
"I always feel sorry when people lose their jobs. My relationship with Claudio has been fine all along.
"I spoke to him last night and he thanked me for my support throughout. It was not brief and we exchanged views. A lot of what we said will stay private."
• None Hero to zero: Were Leicester right to sack Ranieri?
Leicester are 17th in the Premier League, one point above the relegation zone, with 13 matches left and are out of the FA Cup after losing 1-0 to Millwall in the fifth round.
Despite losing 2-1 to Sevilla in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie, they could yet reach the quarter-finals. The second leg is on 14 March.
Shakespeare, who will take charge of Monday's home league match against Liverpool, admitted he felt like a "pantomime villain" having been asked to face the media after Ranieri's "very sad" exit, but added the decision "must be respected".
"Whether I think it's right or not is irrelevant," he added.
"We all know in football people lose their jobs because of results - and the results haven't been good enough. He will get the utmost respect in terms of what he has achieved with this club."
Leicester started last season as 5,000-1 outsiders for the title, having almost been relegated the season before.
Former Leicester, Everton and England striker Gary Lineker described his hometown team's achievement as "the biggest sporting shock of my lifetime".
The remarkable title win saw Ranieri named best men's coach at Fifa's awards in January, and top coach at the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year awards in December.
The chairman and vice chairman had become increasingly concerned by the players' alienation from Ranieri this season over a variety of issues.
Elimination from the FA Cup at Millwall and the flattering scoreline in Seville hardened the hearts of the influential members of the dressing room.
So Ranieri was sacked by Director of Football, Jon Rudkin, yesterday afternoon when they flew back to the Midlands.
The favourite to replace him is Roberto Mancini, but at the moment it's understood he hasn't been sounded out by Leicester, nor is he particularly interested.
Judging by Shakespeare's assured performance at today's press conference, he wouldn't be fazed at the prospect of running the show for the final 13 matches of this season.
He was alongside Nigel Pearson two years ago when Leicester staged a remarkable escape from relegation. He's a highly capable, experienced coach, very popular with influential figures in the dressing-room.
Shakespeare is clinging to the 'it's just about Monday v Liverpool' mantra. but he seems at ease with any further challenges.
Jose Mourinho wrote on Instagram on Thursday: "Champion of England and Fifa manager of the year, sacked. That's the new football. Claudio, keep smiling. Nobody can delete the history you wrote."
Speaking on Friday, the Manchester United boss described his post as "my little homage to somebody that wrote the most beautiful history in the Premier League".
"He deserves to have Leicester's stadium named after him," the Portuguese added.
"It's a decision that has everyone in football united and is very difficult to accept. I was sacked as a champion, a giant negative as I thought - but it's peanuts compared to Claudio."
Former Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini, the bookmakers' early favourite to replace Ranieri, posted on social media: "I am sorry for my friend Ranieri. He will remain in the history of @LCFC, in the heart of Leicester fans and all football lovers."
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said: "Am I surprised that things like this can happen? No. It is not only football.
"For me there have been a few strange decisions in 2016-17. Brexit, Trump, Ranieri. I have no idea why Leicester did this. Everyone could see the situation in the league, the situation in the Champions League - which we are not in.
"He is a really special person in this business, a really nice guy. I met him before when he visited me at Dortmund and we had a nice talk. He is a wonderful person."
Chelsea boss Antonio Conte said: "I'm very sad, but this is our job. He is a friend, a good man and a good manager. He reached a dream to win the title. I am disappointed as a friend and a coach."
And when asked about reports of the players having a role in Ranieri's sacking, he added: "I don't like to follow this type of story, it's a lack of respect. If this happened, it means the club is poor, with no power. It's not right that players can control your destiny as a manager."
Roma coach Luciano Spalletti said: "It's inexplicable, there is no recognition. He was the one who created this chemistry in the team and the locker room that made it possible to win the championship.
"When you win a title ahead of Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea, if you have a little dignity, you even accept to be relegated without touching anything.
"It should be such a joy to have won that the following year you can accept to be relegated. It's always us (managers) who leave. Have you ever seen a president, an official or a player sacked before the end of the season?"
Aston Villa manager Steve Bruce said: "We understand as managers now that we are the whipping boys. I'm scratching my head, like everyone else is, asking myself how someone who delivered the finest achievement in football last year, could now be sacked. We're talking about Leicester here.
Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe said: "I was shocked at Claudio Ranieri's sacking. He's real gentleman and a positive person. But it doesn't taint Claudio's story and he will always be remembered for that historic achievement."
Sunderland manager David Moyes: "It's a disappointing day for managers all round the world, I'm really sad for Claudio.
"It made me think how lucky I was to go 11 years at Everton and how few people get to do that.
"A lot of clubs often decide to sack the manager so it has an impact on the players. I'm hoping it doesn't have an impact, and that it helps us - maybe they're a little bit rudderless at the moment and it might actually help us."
Richard Bevan, chief executive of the League Managers' Association, said: "A manager's lifespan is probably now about a year. It's baffling, and morally wrong.
"He delivered the holy grail to the football club and nine months later he's been sacked from his job.
"It's a very brutal game but certainly the timing of this is a surprise and disbelief and it's undermined the coaching profession."
Eddie Jones, the head coach of England's rugby union team, said: "When we first got together one of the things we talked about was Leicester City and what they went through last season, what we could learn from it.
"I must admit I felt a bit sick last night hearing the news because he's such a great, honourable guy and he's done a fantastic job." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39079683 |
Jose Mourinho defends Claudio Ranieri by blaming Leicester players - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho defends sacked Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri and says he was let down by "selfish" players. | null | Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho defends sacked Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri and says he was let down by "selfish" players.
WATCH MORE: Five things we'll miss about Claudio Ranieri | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39080073 |
Jasvinder Sanghera: I ran away to escape a forced marriage - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Honour crime campaigner Jasvinder Sanghera recounts her blighted childhood and her fight for change. | Magazine | Jasvinder Sanghera was locked in a room by her parents when she was 16, when she refused to marry the man they had chosen for her. Here she describes how she escaped with the help of a secret boyfriend - but lost all contact with her family as a result.
Growing up we had no freedom whatsoever. Everything was watched, monitored and controlled. We understood that we had to be careful how we behaved so as not to shame the family.
I'm one of seven sisters and there's only one younger than me so I'd watched my sisters having to be married at very young ages - as young as 15.
They would disappear to become a wife and go to India, come back, not go back to school and then go into these marriages and be physically and psychologically abused. And my impression of marriage was that this is what happens to you - you get married, you get beaten up, and then you're told to stay there.
My parents were Sikh and Sikhism was born on the foundation of compassion and equality of men and women, and yet here we have women who were treated very differently. My brother was allowed total freedom of expression. He was also allowed to choose who he wanted to marry. But the women were treated differently and that was reinforced within the communities. It's gone unchallenged and it's deeply ingrained.
I don't think I was smarter. I just don't know what it was within me. My mother used to say: "You were born upside down, you were different from birth."
Maybe she helped me out by saying that, because it made me question a number of things, and then when I was shown the photograph of this man, as a 14-year-old, knowing that I'd been promised to him from the age of eight and being expected to contemplate marriage, I looked at this picture thinking: "Well he's shorter than me and he's very much older than me and I don't want this."
And it was as simple as that.
But within our family dynamic we were taught to be silent.
Saying no to the marriage meant my family took me out of education and they held me a prisoner in my own home.
I was 15 and I was locked in this room and literally I was not allowed to leave the room until I agreed to the marriage. It was padlocked on the outside and I had to knock on the door to go the toilet and they brought food to the door.
My mother was the very person who enforced the rules. People don't think of women as the gatekeepers to an honour system.
So in the end I said yes, purely to plan my escape. And it was as simple as that, because then I had freedom of movement.
The only friends we were allowed had to be from an Indian community as well. And my best friend, who was Indian, it was her brother who helped me in the end.
He became my secret boyfriend. He saved some money and said, "I want to be with you and I'll help you to escape." He would come to the house at night and stand in the garden and we would secretly mouth things to each other through the window.
One day he dressed up as a woman and went into a shoe shop and pretended he was shopping. He handed me a note which said, "I'll be at the back of the house at this time - look out of the window." So I did, and he mouthed for me to pack my wardrobe and I lowered two cases down using sheets tied together, and flushed the toilets so my mother wouldn't hear.
And then one day I was at home with my dad, who was at home because he worked nights, and the front door was open, and I just ran out.
I ran all the way, a good three-and-a-half miles, to where my boyfriend worked and hid behind a wall and waited for him to come out. He went and got my cases and then picked me up in his Ford Escort and got me to close my eyes and put my finger on a map, and it landed on Newcastle.
Jasvinder, now 51, helps others who are in the same situation as she was
I sat in the footwell of the car all the way so no-one would see me and then when I saw the Tyne bridge I was absolutely amazed by it because I had never been anywhere outside Derby.
My parents reported me missing to the police and it was the police officer who told me I had to ring home to let them know I was safe and well.
My mother answered the phone and I said: "Mom, it's me. You know, I want to come home but I don't want to marry that stranger."
Her response has stayed with me for the rest of my life. She said: "You either come back and marry who we say, or from this day forward you are now dead in our eyes."
It was only later on when things settled down that I begin to think, "I've done it but where's my family? I want my family." I was missing them terribly. You feel like a dead person walking.
My boyfriend used to drive me to my hometown at 3am just so I could see my dad walking home from the foundry.
What changed how I felt was the death of my sister, Robina. She was taken out of school at 15 for nine months, married to a man in India, and then came back and put in the same year as me and nobody questioned this at all. But he treated her terribly and when her son was around six months old she severed the relationship.
She then married for love and my parents agreed to it because he was Indian - Sikh and from the same caste as us. She again suffered domestic abuse but my parents made it clear that because she had chosen him she had a duty, doubly, to make it work.
She went to see a local community leader - they have a lot of power, my parents would have seen his word as the word of God - and he told her: "You need to think of your husband's temper like a pan of milk - when it boils it rises to the top and a woman's role is to blow it to cool it down."
When she was 25 she set herself on fire and she died. When she was - I say - driven to commit suicide, that was the turning point for me.
BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. We create documentaries, features and interviews about their lives, giving more space for stories that put women at the centre.
Other stories you might like:
I've learned to live my life with no expectations of family whatsoever. I've never had a birthday card in 35 years and neither have my children. For my children it's a total blank on their mother's side when it comes to family. I've got nephews and nieces that I'll never meet because all of my siblings sided with my parents.
I have actually stipulated in my will that I do not want any of my estranged family to be at my funeral because I know the hypocrisy that exists within them. They will want to show their face, but if they couldn't show it when I was alive, I'm not going to give them that privilege when I'm gone.
I have three children - Natasha who's 31, Anna who's 22 and Jordan who's 19.
You almost live vicariously through your children because you want them to have everything you never had.
My daughter married an Asian man and I was worried - I didn't want this family to take it out on her that her mother was disowned and had run away from home. But thankfully for me my fears were completely unfounded because here was an Indian family that did the exact opposite of what my family did.
Starting a charity, Karma Nirvana, in 1993 from my kitchen table allowed me for the first time to start talking about my personal experiences and what had happened to my sister. My family wanted us to never speak about Robina again.
Sometimes at Christmas my children would meet these different women at the dinner table - survivors disowned by their family - and they had no idea who would be the next person at our table, but they understood why.
The charity will be 25 years old next year. We have helped make forced marriage a criminal offence, we have a helpline funded by the government which takes 750 calls a month - 58% of callers are victims and the others are professionals calling about a victim.
We do risk assessments, offer refuge and help plan escapes.
We still don't have enough responses from professionals and we've got to try to increase the reporting, but we're getting there. This is abuse, not part of culture where we make excuses - cultural acceptance does not mean accepting the unacceptable. Abuse is abuse.
I'm a grandmother now - my daughter's expecting her second child in March. And you know when I look at them I think to myself, 'they're never going to inherit that legacy of abuse because of that decision I made when I was 16.'
And that really makes me feel a lot stronger.
Jasvinder appeared on The Conversation, on the BBC World Service - listen to the programme here - and also spoke to Sarah Buckley for 100 Women.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38833804 |
Six Nations: Warburton, Stander, Itoje, Barclay, O'Brien, Nowell - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Forget jackals, these guys are hyenas - the aggressive beasts who are turnover kings at the ruck. Jeremy Guscott has picked his top six. | null | These men are the turnover kings at the ruck.
Rugby commentators call them jackals, but what they really mean is hyenas - aggressive beasts with huge upper bodies who spend half their lives buried up to their waists in the bloody carcass of the ruck, never happier than when ripping the ball from the grasp of a downed opponent.
Historically the hyenas have been open-side flankers - think outstanding Australian David Pocock, who played most of his career in the seven shirt before moving to number eight for the Wallabies.
But as the game has developed apace, winning turnovers is a skill that is increasingly being distributed throughout the team.
The former Wales captain has been a man revitalised after shedding the responsibility of leading the team.
Packing down on the blind-side in this Six Nations he has won three turnovers in the two games so far and is a constant menace at every ruck.
Warburton learned from former Wales flanker Martyn Williams, who was a master of the art, and has significantly bulked up over the years to be able to take the inevitable pounding players face when attempting to force turnovers.
The Ireland blind-side is having a superb Six Nations both with ball in hand and in defence.
A squat 6ft 1in - he packs getting on for 18 stone into that comparatively compact frame - getting over the ball at the ruck is just another of the skills he executes very well.
Stander is averaging a turnover a game over the past two Six Nations and is always looking to give his team an advantage - he views this as another area for him to exploit in order to wrest back momentum for the men in green.
Back in the day turnover specialists were rarely towering next-level athletes with the height and heft to play second row - but this is 2017 after all and Saracens forward Itoje is enjoying redefining the possibilities, having shifted from lock to blind-side for England this season.
At 6ft 5in and with a correspondingly higher centre of gravity, he should be - comparatively - easy to shift off the ball, but not only is he outstandingly quick to get in position at a ruck, once he is there he is impossible to blast out of the way.
Last season he was borderline for me at the breakdown as, rather than support his own weight legally, he flirted with illegality by putting his elbows on the ground to support himself, and although he has improved a little bit this season he still pushes his luck and can improve.
John Barclay has been rewarded for his influence by being handed the Scotland captaincy for Saturday's game against Wales.
The versatile back-rower - he will start at six at Murrayfield - missed out on the 2015 World Cup despite being in the top three for turnovers in the Pro12 the previous season.
The 30-year-old Scarlets player has persevered and his ability to turn over ball and force penalties at the breakdown will be key if Scotland are to end their long losing run against Wales at the weekend.
The second of Ireland's multi-purpose back row hunter-killers along with Stander, O'Brien was outstanding on the opening weekend in the defeat by Scotland.
Despite not having played for a month he was at the heart of their fightback and added two turnovers to his tally of tackles and metres made, before the Scots made the game safe once the Tullow Tank had finally run short of power after 65 minutes and been replaced.
The 30-year-old flanker epitomises the 'farm strength' that those raised on a farm accrue as they grow up, and the years spent chucking bales around are all too evident when he get his mitts on the ball and refuses to budge.
Remember what I said about the game changing? Towards the end of his career former Ireland centre Brian O'Driscoll had become so adept at the breakdown he was like another open-side playing in midfield when it came to winning turnovers and penalties at the ruck.
England winger Nowell is a similar size and build, and that stocky power means he was equal top of the turnover charts with seven in last year's Six Nations.
It is always good to see a back in the turnovers-won rankings and keep an eye out for Nowell over the next three games as he proves it's not just forwards who can be influential in this area.
Who has Guscott missed out?
What no John Hardie? And where's James Haskell? How about Alun Wyn Jones? And where's Joe Launchbury?
Whether you agree or disagree with Jerry's choices, why not rank his picks in the order you think they should be in using our interactive tool below. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/38769908 |
Claudio Ranieri: Leicester manager sacking made Gary Lineker 'shed a tear' - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Leicester's decision to sack Claudio Ranieri nine months after winning the Premier League made former Foxes striker Gary Lineker "shed a tear". | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Leicester's decision to sack Claudio Ranieri nine months after winning the Premier League made former Foxes striker Gary Lineker "shed a tear".
Ranieri guided Leicester to the title despite them being rated 5,000-1 shots at the start of the 2015-16 campaign.
The Foxes are 17th this season and lost to League One Millwall in the FA Cup.
"It is very sad," said Match of the Day presenter Lineker. "It is inexplicable to me. It's inexplicable to a lot football fans who love the game."
Speaking to BBC Radio 4, the 56-year-old added: "I suppose you can explain it in terms of a panic decision and for me a wrong decision.
"I shed a tear last night for Claudio, for football and for my club."
In Ranieri's last game in charge, the Foxes lost 2-1 to Sevilla in the first-leg of their Champions League last-16 tie on Wednesday, with the return leg on 14 March.
Speaking to BBC Sport on Friday, Lineker added: "Last season was the inexplicable one, not this season. The fact they are in a reasonable position in the Champions League, they are not in the bottom three and given the magic of last season surely he deserved more time.
"I think that the way everybody got behind Leicester was something I'd never witnessed before. Just to toss that all away over a premature decision and disloyal, lack of gratitude, is quite gobsmacking.
"I think they should be building statues to him, not sacking him."
Ranieri flew back to Rome on Friday, with his former assistant Craig Shakespeare replacing him at the club's scheduled news conference on Friday.
After news of the 65-year-old Italian's dismissal broke on Thursday, former England captain Lineker, who played for his hometown club for seven seasons, said the "game's gone" in a post on social media.
"It's a sign of modern football, what happened last season was truly extraordinary, " he added on Friday. "The lack of gratitude from the owners of the club and who knows who else involved in such a decision beggars belief.
"That season will remain with us forever, it was truly special and a lot of that was down to the management.
"The same guy cannot be considered incapable of doing the job a few months months later after achieving what, for me, was the biggest miracle in sport."
• None Analysis: Were Leicester right to sack Ranieri?
• None 'One of the worst things the owners have done'
• None 'Craig will step up to the plate'
Chelsea dismissed Jose Mourinho as manager the season after their 2015 title and Lineker says while that is "expected at big clubs", the decision to sack Ranieri "takes away from the glory" for the Foxes.
"For a club like Leicester to win the league last season, the magnificence of the story, the likeability of the club under Ranieri - the ultimate gentleman - it kind of demeans the club.
"Leicester were hugely popular right around the world. To do something like this now loses a lot of that popularity."
Former Leicester and England goalkeeper Peter Shilton, said the club's struggles this season made Ranieri's sacking understandable.
Speaking to Radio 4, he said: "Going down would be a disaster for Leicester and I suppose the board have made a very brave decision.
"If they stay in the Premier League then they've made the right decision. A lot of people will say there's no sentiment in football, look at what he's done for the club, but he's had a lot of the season to get things going.
"There's obviously some reason why not. We're not privy to that - maybe the board are. Maybe there's unrest in the dressing room, who knows? Maybe the players just aren't performing."
• None 'If they stay in the Premier League, they've made the right decision' - listen to more from Shilton
Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha used social media platform Instagram to explain why he sacked Ranieri.
"We have done our best as management, we do not have only one problem to solve, but there are a million things to do to make our club survive," the billionaire wrote.
"Please respect my decision, I will never let the club down."
Former Leicester player and Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini is the odds-on favourite with the bookmakers to replace his countryman.
The 52-year-old, who won the Premier League title with City in 2012, has current odds of 4-6.
He is followed by former Leicester manager Nigel Pearson, who was sacked in June 2015 (8-1), ex-Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew (10-1), ex-Chelsea boss Guus Hiddink (10-1) and former Ajax boss Frank de Boer (10-1).
"There's almost a sense of grief in the city today, with many having lost their 'favourite uncle'.
"Claudio Ranieri was the man that brought the dream to life by winning the Premier League title. It has gone sour this term with players underperforming, new signings not working out and baffling tactics at time from the Tinkerman.
"I thought they would get relegated with Ranieri in charge. I hated to say it. I hoped it wouldn't come true and I'd be proved wrong.
"This gives them a chance. A different kind of chance to stay up."
It is almost the thought that dare not speak its name amid the wave of shock, outrage and disgust at Leicester's decision. But is there actually method in what many see as the madness of the club's Thai owners?
Leicester's fall has been more dramatic than anything they could have foreseen in their worst nightmares. A win for any of Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Hull City this weekend would put the Foxes in the relegation places. Wins for all three and they would be bottom by the time they face Liverpool on what will now be a highly charged occasion at the King Power on Monday.
After 26 games last year they were top on 53 points, two ahead of Spurs. This season they are 17th after 25 games, with only 21 points. Last season they had lost only three games compared with 14 in this campaign, and conceded only 29 goals compared with 43 this term. Indeed, they only conceded 36 in the entire 2015-16 season.
The difference is stark and, very clearly in the opinion of Leicester's owners, dangerous.
I understand the players were summoned to a meeting by the chairman in Seville after the 2-1 defeat and Claudio Ranieri's fate was sealed by the negative reaction.
The chairman and vice-chairman had become increasingly concerned by the players' alienation from Ranieri this season over a variety of issues, and elimination from the FA Cup at Millwall and the flattering scoreline in Seville hardened the hearts of the influential members of the dressing room.
I understand some influential players, who were part of the Nigel Pearson squad a couple of years ago, were making graphic contrasts with team spirit and the organisational qualities of Pearson compared with Ranieri this season.
The club never really lost faith in Pearson this time two years ago. Despite the fact they were in the parlous position, the general feeling was that he had the dressing room and knew where he was going. He left in the summer of 2015 for different reasons - personal reasons associated with his son, who was on the staff.
The favourite to replace Ranieri is Roberto Mancini, but at the moment it's understood he hasn't been sounded out by Leicester nor is he particularly interested.
What did Leicester say?
On 7 February, Leicester issued a statement saying Ranieri had their "unwavering support". Sixteen days later they sacked the 65-year-old Italian, who had signed a new four-year deal in the summer.
His departure came a day after the Foxes won praise for their performance despite losing 2-1 in their Champions League last-16 first-leg tie at Sevilla.
"Ranieri was told he was sacked on Thursday afternoon in Leicester once the team returned from Spain, but the suggestion is the owners decided before that defeat by Sevilla," said BBC sports editor Dan Roan.
"The decision was taken very reluctantly but the club's owners are desperate to avoid relegation and its consequences."
Foxes vice-chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha said: "This has been the most difficult decision we have had to make in nearly seven years since King Power took ownership of Leicester City.
"But we are duty-bound to put the club's long-term interests above all sense of personal sentiment, no matter how strong that might be.
"Claudio has brought outstanding qualities to his office. His skilful management, powers of motivation and measured approach have been reflective of the rich experience we always knew he would bring to Leicester City."
Srivaddhanaprabha added: "His warmth, charm and charisma have helped transform perceptions of the club and develop its profile on a global scale. We will forever be grateful to him for what he has helped us to achieve.
"It was never our expectation that the extraordinary feats of last season should be replicated this season. Indeed, survival in the Premier League was our first and only target at the start of the campaign.
"But we are now faced with a fight to reach that objective and feel a change is necessary to maximise the opportunity presented by the final 13 games."
A year (and nine days) in the life of Ranieri
14 February 2016: Leicester lose 2-1 at Arsenal, their final defeat of the 2015-16 season before a 12-game unbeaten run.
2 May 2016: The Foxes are crowned champions of England for the first time in their history as Tottenham draw at Chelsea.
13 August 2016: Leicester lose their first game of the 2016-17 season - a 2-1 defeat at Hull City.
15 October 2016: The Foxes are hammered 3-0 by table-topping Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
22 November 2016: Leicester secure top spot in their Champions League group with one game to spare.
18 December 2016: Ranieri is named Coach of the Year at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards.
7 February 2017: After a run of two wins in 15 league games, Leicester give Ranieri their "unwavering support".
22 February 2017: The Foxes lose 2-1 to Sevilla in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie.
What the papers say... | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39072867 |
Copeland by-election: Three major problems for Labour - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Labour's defeat in Copeland illustrates three inter-linked problems facing the party. | UK Politics | Labour's failure to retain Copeland for the first time since the seat was created highlights three interlinked problems for the party.
The most serious is trust - or lack of it.
Labour insiders tell me they "got Jeremy to the right place on nuclear" - by not just committing to retaining the industry but also no longer opposing new capacity.
Yet very few voters here in Whitehaven that I spoke to this morning believed him - and some were still unaware of his position.
The second problem, though, is with Jeremy Corbyn himself.
Even some left-wing MPs tell me his leadership came up completely unprompted on the doorsteps. So messenger and message aren't fully trusted.
The third problem, though, is that while Labour is in opposition nationally - and Jeremy Corbyn says he will take on the political establishment - in areas which the party has controlled for decades it is seen as part of that establishment.
Voter after voter said to me "look at the town centre here" [pictured above] with pound shops, charity shops and bookies.
"Labour has done nothing for this area, we need new blood," said one. "I am 80 and Labour has been in charge all that time - we need a change," said another.
And that change was from the opposition to the government, standing conventional political wisdom on its head. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39076233 |
The town halls trying to tackle Trump's agenda - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Republican politicians are returning to their home districts to face a barrage of criticism | US & Canada | This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Republican politicians are returning to their home districts to a barrage of criticism, as many constituents demand to know how they'll hold President Trump to account.
There's never a good time to talk politics, but democracy starts early in the state of Iowa.
By 7:30 am, as the morning fog was still lifting and the sun was starting to appear, the meeting room in the Iowa Falls Fire department was already at full capacity.
A few hundred people had travelled from across the state to attend a town hall meeting, filling every chair and corner, and spilling into the hallway.
Town halls are traditionally a forum for constituents to discuss their concerns with elected officials, face to face.
But in the Trump era, they've taken on a new purpose - with many aggrieved voters seeing them as a way to put pressure on President Trump, by ensuring their members of Congress hold him to account.
Republican officials across the country have found themselves on the receiving end of questions and demands from voters.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Many, but not all, of those attending are Democrats, some from progressive groups who are organising around these events to ensure people show up.
But others are simply frustrated residents, who want their voices heard. All are represented by Senator Chuck Grassley.
The vast majority of the crowd at the fire station was older, in their fifties or above. Some of them came with handwritten protest signs, others clutched pieces of paper with their questions written on them.
"I'm new at this," a woman named Ingrid told me. She said Trump's victory made her angry.
"I felt I had to come. I'm hoping our voices get larger and that we can make sure Republicans don't just vote along party lines and listen to their constituents."
And listen is exactly what Senator Grassley did, even if some felt he didn't quite answer all of their concerns.
As the seven-term senator entered the room, he began by asking the group which topics they'd like to cover.
As hands flew in the air, and people jostled for his attention, a range of topics were raised - everything from Russia to guns, healthcare to education.
Senator Grassley wrote the questions down in a small notebook, promising to answer them in the order they were asked.
A large majority of questions were about President Obama's healthcare law - the Affordable Care Act.
The questions on this were impassioned, as people talked of their personal experiences of Obamacare, and their fears they could lose coverage under a Trump presidency.
One elderly man attended on behalf of a friend whose son was seriously ill. He told the senator of how "his parents will probably have to face bankruptcy just as they face retirement".
Other testimonies reflected the extent people here rely on government subsidised health insurance.
"I'm on Obamacare, if it wasn't for Obamacare we wouldn't be able to afford insurance," said Chris Petersen, an insulin dependent diabetic who runs a farm more than an hour away.
"I got a present for you," he told the senator, as he held up a box of Tums, a medicine used to relieve heartburn, "you're going to need them in the next few years."
When a bespectacled man in a grey sweater asked a question about the national debt, things got testy.
"Raise Trump's taxes," yelled a man at the back of the room.
"Everything is going to a pittance," shouted a woman.
As she did the questioner got angry.
"I asked him, not you, so shut your hole," he said, as he jabbed his finger in her direction.
At other times the mood in the room was calmer.
When Zalmay Naizy, an Afghan who'd been an interpreter for the US army, asked a question, the room fell near silent.
"I'm a Muslim in this country, who's going to save me here?
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Senator Grassley is one of many Republicans facing angry questions at town hall meetings
"I've been shot two times, I've been roadside bombed once, nobody cares about me. But I was with the US."
The room erupted in cheers, and while the senator didn't address his question right away, choosing to move onto another question about trade deals, he returned to it later, promising to help Zalmay, as he stood by his side.
This town hall was held in a county which voted for Donald Trump by a large margin.
Senator Grassley prides himself on holding meetings in every county in the state every year through his "99 county" pledge, but not all are town halls. He's faced criticism for holding most of those in solidly Republican areas.
The event at the fire station was one of two on the same day. Later, in the basement of the Hancock County Sheriff's jail, another crowd gathered.
Once again many were waiting outside as the room was at capacity. The mood was tense.
"I want impeachment," shouted one man from the back.
"Why are you against government healthcare, but take it yourself?" asked another.
Obamacare dominated the agenda here too, with more personal stories.
There was the mother, a former Republican voter, who was concerned about losing healthcare for her son who has disabilities. The veteran worried about treatment of the military.
And Jamet, an immigrant from Chile, told the senator "we're already making this country great" and asked "How will you stand up for immigrants?"
"We need people to stand up for the ordinary working person," said Chris Petersen, the farmer with the Tums, who I'd met at the first town hall.
His sentiment is not that different to the views of Donald Trump supporters, who told me during the campaign time and time again, that politicians don't represent them.
Some who voted for him were at Senator Grassley's town halls, in a show of solidarity. Jim Carson accused Democrats at the events of "trying to obstruct the good policies of Mr Trump."
When I asked Senator Grassley if the anger expressed at the town halls would mean he was more likely to confront the president over his agenda, he told me the focus for him was taking these concerns back to his colleagues on capitol hill.
"I don't think you should see it as challenging Trump I think you should see it as Congress doing its job and the president doing his job."
It was a popular grassroots movement that helped sow the seeds of a Trump presidency, now another is trying to challenge it.
For some voters, the only way to get to President Trump is by applying pressure on congress. Senators like Chuck Grassley have to balance their support for the Republican agenda, with the grievances of the voters who keep them in office.
Even a small number of people attending town halls can be enough to keep elected officials on edge.
These scenes we are seeing at these meetings across America are reminiscent of the early days of the Obama administration, when conservatives attended packed town halls to lobby their congressional representatives on healthcare, in what became known as the Tea Party movement.
"America is starting to boil," Chris Petersen told me as I met him afterwards at his farm.
As liberals try to exert pressure on their senators and representatives, it's clear that a new progressive movement is brewing. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39045707 |
Reality Check: Has a governing party gained a by-election since 1878? - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Was the last comparable by-election to Copeland 139 years ago? | UK Politics | The claim: The Conservatives' win in Copeland is the first time since 1878 that a governing party has made a comparable gain in a by-election
Reality Check verdict: A governing party gaining a seat at a by-election is an extremely unusual event. It has happened since 1878, but you could argue that those occasions had unusual circumstances that meant they were not comparable.
Governing parties rarely look forward to by-elections, which tend to have relatively low turnouts and are seen as having less at stake than general elections.
It is very rare for the governing party to pick up votes from the opposition. It is even rarer for them to gain a seat, as the Conservatives did when Trudy Harrison won Copeland in Cumbria.
The constituency and its predecessor, Whitehaven, had returned Labour MPs since 1935.
The Conservatives say this is "the first time since 1878 that a governing party has made a comparable gain in a by-election".
The party was referring to the Worcester by-election 139 years ago, when they won the seat from the Liberals.
Copeland is certainly not the first instance of a ruling party winning a seat at a by-election since that year, when Benjamin Disraeli was prime minister and women could not vote.
That has happened several times since, but in unusual circumstances which are perhaps not "comparable" to Copeland.
For example, in 1982 at the height of the Falklands War, a Labour MP defected to the Social Democratic Party in the south London seat of Mitcham and Morden.
This split the left-of-centre vote, meaning the Conservative candidate won despite getting a smaller share of the vote than at the previous general election.
A Conservative/National Liberal candidate won the Yorkshire seat of Brighouse and Spenborough from Labour in 1960, but that seat was very marginal. Labour won by just 47 votes at the 1959 general election, and lost by 666 a year later.
In 1953, the governing Conservatives took Sunderland South from Labour, but this was also very close and the Conservative vote share fell slightly because a Liberal picked up some votes.
Copeland was not nearly as tight as these examples, and the Conservatives increased their vote share substantially.
Labour's Jamie Reed won the seat by more than 2,000 votes in 2015, while the new Conservative MP took it by a similar margin.
The swing was 6.7%, a stunning result for a governing party.
There are various other examples of government by-election gains since 1878.
However, as Matt Singh of NumbrCrunchr Politics points out, these are "mostly the product of freakish circumstances… none of which apply to Copeland".
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39080605 |
Skeleton: Lizzy Yarnold fourth overnight in World Championships - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Olympic skeleton champion Lizzy Yarnold is fourth overnight at the World Championships after the second run is cancelled. | null | Last updated on .From the section Winter Sports
Coverage: Live coverage on Connected TV, BBC Red Button and the BBC Sport website
Olympic skeleton champion Lizzy Yarnold sits fourth at the World Championships after the second run was cancelled because of heavy snow.
Yarnold, 28, completed her first run in 52.29 seconds, just 0.02secs outside the medal places, but had fallen to 13th after her second run.
However, the second run times will now not count towards the final standings.
Fellow Briton Laura Deas, 28, had moved up to a provisional second but will now resume on Saturday 13th in Konigssee.
Run three will begin at 07:30 GMT, with run four to follow from 09:30 GMT.
Yarnold is competing in her first World Championships since taking a year-long sabbatical.
The 2015 world champion, starting 15th, held on to fourth after the first round before a slide of 54.02 in round two saw her fall down the standings as conditions worsened.
Deas improved from a first run of 52.76 to post a total time of one minute 45.29 seconds after two completed runs, putting her into the silver medal position until the results were annulled.
Germany's Jacqueline Loelling is first with a time of 52.02, with compatriot and 2016 champion Tina Hermann 0.06secs behind and Canada's Elisabeth Vathje in third place.
Briton Donna Creighton is 22nd out of the 31 sliders.
In the men's competition, sliders were able to complete both runs on day one - Dominic Parsons the highest-placed Briton in ninth, 1.93 seconds behind leader Martins Dukurs of Latvia.
Fellow Britons Jeremy Rice and Jack Thomas are in 18th and 21st respectively, with the men's event set to conclude on Sunday. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/39081238 |
Claudio Ranieri: Sacked Leicester manager says his 'dream died' - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Claudio Ranieri says his "dream died" when he was sacked as Leicester manager nine months after winning the title. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Claudio Ranieri says his "dream died" when he was sacked as Leicester manager nine months after winning the Premier League.
Ranieri, 65, guided the Foxes to the title despite them being rated 5,000-1 shots at the start of the campaign.
Leicester are one point above the relegation zone with 13 matches left.
"After the euphoria of last season and being crowned champions, all I dreamt of was staying with Leicester. Sadly this was not to be," Ranieri said.
"The adventure was amazing and will live with me forever. My heartfelt thanks to everybody at the club, everybody who was part of what we achieved, but mostly to the supporters.
"You took me into your hearts from day one and loved me. I love you too.
"No-one can ever take away what we achieved together and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will.
"It was a time of wonderfulness and happiness that I will never forget. It's been a pleasure and an honour to be a champion with all of you."
• None Mancini? O'Neill? Hodgson? Redknapp? Who next for Leicester?
Ranieri's departure came less than 24 hours after Wednesday's 2-1 defeat at Spanish side Sevilla in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie. The second leg is on 14 March.
On Saturday, Leicester were knocked out of the FA Cup by League One Millwall.
In explaining the club's decision, vice-chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha said "long-term interests" had been put above "personal sentiment, no matter how strong that might be".
The Foxes took last season's Premier League title by 10 points but have won just five top-flight games this season, and could become the first defending champions since 1938 to be relegated.
They have lost their past five league matches and are the only side in the top four English divisions without a league goal in 2017.
'He had not lost the dressing room'
BBC Sport understands some players were summoned to meet the chairman after the defeat by Sevilla, and Ranieri's fate was sealed by the negative reaction.
"There was a lot of frustration because of the results, but he had not lost the dressing room," Shakespeare said.
"A lot of the talk of unrest has been speculation. I've not had one problem with the players.
"I always feel sorry when people lose their jobs. My relationship with Claudio has been fine all along.
"I spoke to him last night and he thanked me for my support throughout. It was not brief and we exchanged views. A lot of what we said will stay private."
Shakespeare and first-team coach Mike Stowell will take charge of the squad until a new manager is appointed.
Ranieri's compatriots Paolo Benetti and Andrea Azzalin, both key members of his coaching staff, have left the club.
Ex-Manchester City and Inter Milan boss Roberto Mancini and Nigel Pearson, who Ranieri replaced in 2015, are the early bookmakers' favourites to take over at Leicester.
Former Birmingham boss Gary Rowett - a one-time Foxes player who is around fifth favourite - told BBC Radio 5 live: "I'm sat at home waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Leicester would be an amazing one, but it's still raw for everyone."
Rowett, who played for Leicester between 2000 and 2002, was controversially sacked by Birmingham in December, and replaced by former Chelsea striker Gianfranco Zola.
"I played there for two years so I've had good experiences at Leicester and it's an excellent club. It would be a daunting one for anyone and a fantastic opportunity for someone," he added.
The contenders: Read more from Phil McNulty
After the euphoria of last season and being crowned Premier League champions, all I dreamt of was staying with Leicester City, the club I love, for always.
Sadly this was not to be. I wish to thank my wife Rosanna and all my family for their never-ending support during my time at Leicester.
My thanks go to Paolo and Andrea, who accompanied me on this wonderful journey. To Steve Kutner [Ranieri's agent] and Franco Granello [his Italian agent] for bringing me the opportunity to become a champion.
Mostly I have to thank Leicester City Football Club. The adventure was amazing and will live with me forever.
Thank you to all the journalists and the media who came with us and enjoyed reporting on the greatest story in football.
My heartfelt thanks to everybody at the club, all the players, the staff, everybody who was there and was part of what we achieved. But mostly to the supporters. You took me into your hearts from day one and loved me. I love you too.
No-one can ever take away what we together have achieved, and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will.
It was a time of wonderfulness and happiness that I will never forget. It's been a pleasure and an honour to be a champion with all of you. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39083953 |
Tottenham 2-2 Gent (agg 2-3) - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Tottenham Hotspur are knocked out of the Europa League at the last-32 stage as Gent hold them to a draw at a sell-out Wembley. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Ten-man Tottenham Hotspur were knocked out of the Europa League as Gent held them to a draw at a sell-out Wembley.
Spurs, who trailed 1-0 after the first leg of the last-32 tie, made a great start as Christian Eriksen slipped an angled shot under Gent keeper Lovre Kalinic.
The visitors equalised through Harry Kane's own goal, leaving Spurs needing to score twice more in front of a Europa League record attendance of 80,465.
Their task became harder when midfielder Dele Alli was sent off shortly before half-time for a dangerous high tackle.
Victor Wanyama's curler into the top-left corner revived Spurs' hopes, only for substitute Jeremy Perbet to prod Gent into the last 16 with fewer than 10 minutes left.
Spurs' elimination means they have only reached the Europa League quarter-finals once in the past six seasons.
Manchester United, who beat French side Saint-Etienne 4-0 on aggregate, will be the only British side in the last-16 draw on Friday (12:00 GMT).
Despite them needing to score at least twice as the match approached half-time, few would have written off Spurs.
But they were then reduced to 10 men after Alli's poor tackle.
The 20-year-old England midfielder has previously shown glimpses of a fiery streak, alongside his technical brilliance, but this was the first red card of his career.
Alli felt referee Manuel de Sousa should have given him a free-kick close to the halfway line and briefly remonstrated with the Portuguese official before turning and launching into Genk midfielder Brecht Dejaegere with a studs-up challenge.
Alli caught Dejaegere just under his right knee - and luckily the Belgian appeared to escape serious injury.
Tottenham did not escape without damage, though.
Tottenham, particularly since Mauricio Pochettino became manager, have often drawn praise for their fearless and confident approach, and they have become regular title challengers.
But it is a different story in Europe.
In truth, they should still have progressed despite Alli's dismissal, only poor finishing costing them in a dominant performance against a team containing a man extra.
The blame largely lies in a lifeless performance in Belgium.
Gent's first-leg victory was only their third win in 13 matches, with their recent form dropping them to eighth place in a Belgian top flight ranked as only the ninth-best European league.
Indeed Belgian leaders Club Brugge, the reigning champions, lost all six matches in their Champions League group, including a 3-0 home defeat and 2-1 loss against Leicester City.
While Tottenham's deficiencies were clear, Gent deserve credit. They were organised, disciplined and clinical when their rare chances arrived.
Perbet, who scored the winner last week, put the tie beyond Spurs with the away team's first shot on target at Wembley, sparking exuberant scenes among the 10,000 visiting fans.
"I am very disappointed. Once again we were excited to play today in front of our fans. We started well and scored. The tie was open but we conceded a goal in one action in the first half. After that it was complicated.
"I was very proud. We were brave and created chances and scored the second but could not get another. In the second half we played with energy."
• None Tottenham have won just one of their past eight matches at Wembley
• None Mauricio Pochettino's side have conceded more goals in four European home games at Wembley this season (six) than they have in 12 Premier League games at White Hart Lane (five)
• None Gent became the first Belgian side to eliminate English opposition in major European competition (excluding qualifiers) since Standard Liege knocked out Everton in the 2008-09 Uefa Cup.
• None Spurs have been eliminated from eight of their past nine European knockout ties in which they have lost the first leg.
• None Since the start of 2013-14, Harry Kane has scored four own goals - twice as many as any other Tottenham player.
Tottenham, who remain without a trophy since 2008, will focus their attention on trying to catch runaway Premier League leaders Chelsea.
• None Offside, KAA Gent. Kalifa Coulibaly tries a through ball, but Samuel Gigot is caught offside.
• None Attempt missed. Harry Kane (Tottenham Hotspur) right footed shot from the left side of the box is close, but misses to the right. Assisted by Jan Vertonghen.
• None Attempt blocked. Victor Wanyama (Tottenham Hotspur) left footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
• None Attempt missed. Son Heung-Min (Tottenham Hotspur) right footed shot from the right side of the box is too high. Assisted by Harry Kane. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39033491 |
Fernando Alonso: McLaren driver says podium finishes are not enough in 2017 - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Fernando Alonso says podium finishes will “probably not” be enough to satisfy him in this year, but is realistic about McLaren's expectations. | null | Fernando Alonso said podium finishes would "probably not" be enough to satisfy him this year but he is realistic about McLaren's expectations.
The 35-year-old Spaniard said he was "100% committed to winning", adding: "I want to be world champion."
Alonso, champion in 2005 and 2006, has not won a race since 2013 as a result of a lack of performance from his cars.
He added that he had never considered joining Mercedes when Nico Rosberg retired at the end of last season.
In a news conference at McLaren's 2017 car launch, Alonso was in an expansive mood and discussed:
• None his future, with his contract up for renewal at the end of 2017
• None his motivation for his 16th year in F1
• None his feelings about Rosberg's decision to retire
Alonso, a winner of 32 grand prix and one of the biggest stars in F1, also gave a withering response to his old rival Lewis Hamilton's recent observation that he regretted the amount of data-sharing in F1 because he felt it allowed his team-mates to learn from him.
Alonso said: "If he was watching more data from Rosberg last year, maybe he would have won the championship."
McLaren have had two difficult seasons since the start of their engine partnership with Honda in 2015, with both chassis and engine less effective than those of world champions Mercedes.
Alonso said it was unrealistic to expect McLaren to close what was a 1.5-second gap at the end of last season in one winter.
"We need to recover a huge gap," he said. "Winning having come sixth in the previous constructors' championship is something no-one did apart from Brawn in 2009.
"We started 2017 early enough. We put a lot of resources in this year's car. We changed completely the philosophy of the engine, which is risky but needed if we want to win because the engine of the last two years was not good enough to win."
He added: "I expect Mercedes to still be very competitive. We saw their new car yesterday, which seems very well elaborated, and they have the advantage of the engine. They will be contenders. I am sure the Red Bull will be up there and hopefully we can put ourselves in that group."
McLaren have made it clear they wish Alonso to sign a new contract to keep him at the team after 2017, probably for at least another two years.
The driver reiterated his statements of last year that he hopes the new cars will see a return to "fighting spirit and racing spirit", allowing drivers to push hard at all times, before he commits. And he added that he was in no rush to make up his mind.
"After the summer break, around September, is a good time to start thinking and sitting with yourself and deciding what to do," Alonso said. "Until then, I will not think too much about the future.
"Obviously, I want to be world champion. That is what I am training for, why I was running and biking at -10C in the middle of the snow in the last month.
"Travelling to Australia (for the first race), normally I arrive on Monday or Tuesday, but this time I will arrive on the Friday before. I am 100% committed to win and if I can win this year it's better than next year."
Alonso was one of the drivers Mercedes considered as a replacement for Nico Rosberg, who announced his retirement five days after winning his first world title last November.
But the 35-year-old said he never seriously considered the possibility of moving.
"There were some phone calls that arrived to me but there was no point discussing anything because I was happy at McLaren," said Alonso.
"After the surprise of Rosberg they had to do a little check on everyone. It was nothing really strange or a deep conversation. It was a round-check they did with everyone - and me - to assess their situation.
"My situation was very clear. I had this year with McLaren and I am happy here. It was not a point to talk about any further."
Alonso said he understood Rosberg's decision to retire at 31, but it was counter to his own nature.
"In my case, I cannot stop. It is like a drug," he said.
"For him he was very brave to stop. I wish him all the best. It was in his character. I am more a racer. I will be 80 years old in a go-kart pushing kids out of the track. Everyone is different." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/39079883 |
Claudio Ranieri: Leicester got sacking wrong - Gary Lineker - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Match of the Day host and ex-Leicester striker Gary Lineker says the club should have built a statue in honour of Claudio Ranieri rather than sacking him. | null | Match of the Day host and former Leicester City striker Gary Lineker says the club should have built a statue in honour of Claudio Ranieri rather than sacking him as manager.
WATCH MORE: Five things we'll miss about Claudio Ranieri | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39077794 |
Jack Barsky: The KGB spy who lived the American dream - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | The remarkable double life of undercover agent Jack Barsky who lived the American dream at the KGB's expense. | Magazine | It's no secret that the Russians have long tried to plant "sleeper agents" in the US - men and women indistinguishable from normal Americans, who live - on the surface - completely normal lives. But what happens when one of them doesn't want to go home?
Jack Barsky died in September 1955, at the age of 10, and was buried in the Mount Lebanon Cemetery in the suburbs of Washington DC.
His name is on the passport of the man sitting before me now - a youthful 67-year-old East German, born Albert Dittrich. The passport is not a fake. Albert Dittrich is Jack Barsky in the eyes of the US government.
The story of how this came to be is, by Barsky's own admission, "implausible" and "ridiculous", even by the standards of Cold War espionage. But as he explains in a new memoir, Deep Undercover, it has been thoroughly checked out by the FBI. As far as anyone can tell, it is all true.
It began in the mid-70s, when Dittrich, destined at the time to become a chemistry professor at an East German university, was talent-spotted by the KGB and sent to Moscow for training in how to behave like an American.
His mission was to live under a false identity in the heart of the capitalist enemy, as one of an elite band of undercover Soviet agents known as "illegals".
"I was sent to the United States to establish myself as a citizen and then make contact, to the extent possible, at the highest levels possible of decision makers - particularly political decision makers," he says.
This "idiotic adventure," as he now calls it, had "a lot of appeal to an arrogant young man, a smart young man" intoxicated by the idea of foreign travel and living "above the law".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. "This kind of double life wears on you"
He arrived in New York in the Autumn of 1978, at the age of 29, posing as a Canadian national, William Dyson. Dyson, who had travelled via Belgrade, Rome, Mexico City and Chicago, "immediately vanished into thin air", having served his purpose. And Dittrich began his new life as Jack Barsky.
He was a man with no past and no identification papers - except for a birth certificate obtained by an employee of the Soviet embassy in Washington, who had kept his eyes open during a walk in the Mount Lebanon cemetery.
Barsky had supreme self-confidence, a near-flawless American accent, and $10,000 in cash.
He also had a "legend" to explain why he did not have a social security number. He told people he had had a "tough start in life" in New Jersey and had dropped out of high school. He had then worked on a remote farm for years before deciding "to give life another chance and move back to New York city".
He rented a room in a Manhattan hotel and set about the laborious task of building a fake identity. Over the next year, he parlayed Jack Barsky's birth certificate into a library card, then a driver's licence and, finally, a social security card.
But without qualifications in Barsky's name, or any employment history, his career options were limited. Rather than rubbing shoulders with the upper echelons of American society, as his KGB handlers had wanted, he initially found himself delivering parcels to them, as a cycle courier in the smarter parts of Manhattan.
The young KGB agent arrived in New York in the late 1970s
"By chance it turned out that the messenger job was actually really good for me to become Americanised because I was interacting with people who didn't care much where I came from, what my history was, where I was going," he says.
"Yet I was able to observe and listen and become more familiar with American customs. So for the first two, three years I had very few questions that I had to answer."
The advice from his handlers on blending in - gleaned from Soviet diplomats and resident agents in the US - "turned out to be, at minimum, weak but, at worst, totally false", he says.
"I'll give you an example. One of the things I was told explicitly was to stay away from the Jews. Now, obviously, there is anti-Semitism in there, but secondly, the stupidity of that statement is that they sent me to New York. There are more Jews in New York than in Israel, I think."
Barsky would later use his handlers' prejudices and ignorance of American society against them.
But as a "rookie" agent he was eager to please and threw himself into the undercover life. He spent much of his free time zig-zagging across New York on counter-surveillance missions designed to flush out any enemy agents who might be following him.
He would update Moscow Centre on his progress in weekly radio transmissions, or letters in secret writing, and deposit microfilm at dead drop sites in various New York parks, where he would also periodically pick up canisters stuffed with cash or the fake passports he needed for his trips back to Moscow for debriefing.
He would return the to the East every two years, where he would be reunited with his German wife Gerlinde, and young son Matthias, who had no idea what he had been up to. They thought he was doing top secret but very well-paid work at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Barsky's handlers were delighted with his progress except for one thing - he could not get hold of an American passport. This failure weighed heavily on him.
On one early trip to the passport office in New York an official asked him to fill out a questionnaire which asked, among other things, the name of the high school he had attended.
"I had a legend but it could not be verified," he says. "So if somebody went to check on that they would have found out that I wasn't real."
Terrified that his cover might be blown, he scooped up any documents with his name on them and marched out of the office in a feigned temper at all this red tape.
The real Jack Barsky is buried in a Washington DC cemetery
Without a passport, Barsky was limited to low-level intelligence work and his achievements as a spy were, by his own account, "minimal".
He profiled potential recruits and compiled reports on the mood of the country during events such as the 1983 downing of a Korean Airlines flight by a Soviet fighter, which ratcheted up tensions between the US and the Soviet Union.
On one occasion, he flew to California to track down a defector (he later learned, to his immense relief, that the man, a psychology professor, had not been assassinated).
He also carried out some industrial espionage, stealing software from his office - all of it commercially available - which was spirited away on microfilm to aid the floundering Soviet economy.
But it often seemed the very fact of him being in the US, moving around freely without the knowledge of the authorities, was enough for Moscow.
"They were very much focused on having people on the other side just in case of a war. Which I think, in hindsight, was pretty stupid. That indicated very old thinking."
The myth of the "Great Illegals" - heroic undercover agents who had helped Russia defeat the Nazis and gather vital pre-war intelligence in hostile countries - loomed large over the Soviet intelligence agencies, who spent a lot of time and effort during the Cold War trying to recapture these former glories, with apparently limited success.
Barsky later found out that he was part of a "third wave" of Soviet illegals in the US - the first two waves having failed. And we now know that illegals continued to be infiltrated in the 1980s and beyond.
He believes about "10 to 12" agents were trained up at the same time as him. Some, he says, could still be out there, living undercover in the United States, though he finds it hard to believe that anyone exposed to life in the US would retain an unwavering communist faith for long.
He is scathing about his KGB handlers, who were "very smart" and the "cream of the crop" but who seemed chiefly concerned with making his mission appear a success to please their bosses.
"The expectations of us, of me - I didn't know anybody else - were far, far too high. It was just really wishful thinking," he now says of his mission.
On the other hand, the KGB's original plan for him might actually have worked, he says.
"I am glad it didn't work out because I could have done some damage.
"The idea was for me to get genuine American documentation and move to Europe, say to a German-speaking country, where the Russians were going to set me up with a flourishing business. And they knew how to do that.
"And so I would become quite wealthy and then go back to the United States without having to explain where the money came from. At that point, I would have been in a situation to socialise with people that were of value."
This plan fell through because of his failure to get a passport, so the KGB reverted to Plan B.
This was for Barsky was to study for a degree and gradually work his way up the social order to the point where he could gather useful intelligence - a mission he describes as "nearly impossible".
The degree part was relatively straightforward. He was, after all, a university professor in his former life. He graduated top of his class in computer systems at Baruch College, which enabled him to get a job as a programmer at Met Life insurance in New York.
Like many undercover agents before him, he began to realise that much of what he had been taught about the West - that it was an "evil" system on the brink of economic and social collapse - was a lie.
Barsky (fourth right) felt at home with co-workers at Met Life
"There was a way to rationalise that because we were taught that the West was doing so well because they took all the riches out of the Third World," he says.
But, he adds, "what eventually softened my attitude" was the "normal, nice people" he met in his daily life.
"[My] sense was that the enemy was not really evil. So I was always waiting to eventually find the real evil people and I didn't even find them in the insurance company."
Met Life almost felt like home, he says, "because it was a very paternalistic, 'we take care of you' kind of a culture".
"There was nothing like we were taught. Nothing that I expected. I wanted to really hate the people and the country and I couldn't bring myself to hate them. Not even dislike them."
But he was keeping a far bigger secret from his KGB bosses than his wavering commitment to communism.
In 1985, he had married an illegal immigrant from Guyana he had met through a personal ad in the Village Voice newspaper - and they now had a daughter together.
He now had two families to go with his two identities, and he knew the time would come when he had to choose between them.
It finally happened in 1988, when after 10 years undercover he was suddenly ordered to return home immediately. Moscow was in a panic, believing the FBI was on to him.
To do anything other than run as ordered - grab his emergency Canadian birth certificate and driver's licence and get out of the US - would be potentially suicidal.
He dithered and stalled for a week. Could he really leave his beloved baby daughter Chelsea behind forever?
But the KGB was losing patience. One morning, on a subway platform a resident agent delivered a chilling message: "You have got to come home or else you're dead."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The Americans producers: 'Here was someone who lived it'
It was time for some lateral thinking.
From discussions with his handlers in Moscow, Barsky had come to believe the Soviet hierarchy feared three things about America.
He already knew about their anti-Semitism and their fear of Ronald Reagan, who they saw as an unpredictable religious zealot who might launch a nuclear strike to "accelerate" the Biblical "end times".
But he also remembered their "morally superior" attitude to the Aids epidemic - their belief that it "served the Americans right" and their determination to protect the motherland from infection.
Barsky stalled a bit more and then hatched a plan.
"I wrote this letter, in secret writing, that I wouldn't come back because I had contracted Aids, and the only way for me to get treatment would be in the United States.
"I also told the Russians in the same letter that I would not defect, I would not give up any secrets. I would just disappear and try to get healthy."
To begin with Barsky lived in constant fear for his life, remembering that threat on the subway platform. But after a few months, he began to breathe more easily.
"I started thinking 'I think I got away with this.' The FBI had not knocked on the door. The KGB had not done anything."
He gradually let his guard down and settled into the life of a typical middle-class American in a comfortable new home in upstate New York.
While he had fallen for the American Dream and the trappings of the consumer society, he still had some conflicting feelings.
"My loyalties to communism and the homeland and Russia, they were still pretty strong. My resignation, you can also call it a 'soft defection' - that was triggered by having this child here. It was not ideological. It would be easy to claim that. But it wasn't true."
Playing at the back of his mind was always the question of whether his past would catch up with him. And, finally, one day, it did.
The man who exposed him was a KGB archivist, Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin, who defected to the West in 1992 - after the fall of communism - with a vast trove of Soviet secrets, including the true identity of Jack Barsky.
The FBI watched him for more than three years, even buying the house next door to his as they tried to figure out whether he really was a KGB agent and, if so, whether he was still active.
In the end, Barsky himself gave the game away, during an argument with his wife, Penelope, that was picked up by the FBI's bugs.
"I was trying to repair a marriage that was slowly falling apart. I was trying to tell my wife the 'sacrifice' I had made to stay with Chelsea and her. So in the kitchen I told her, 'By the way, this is what I did. I am a German. I used to work for the KGB and they told me to come home and I stayed here with you and it was quite dangerous for me. This is what I sacrificed.'
"And that completely backfired. Instead of bringing her over to my side, she said: 'What does that mean for me if they ever catch you?'"
It was the evidence the FBI needed to pick him up. In a meticulously planned operation, Barsky was pulled over by a Pennsylvania state trooper as he drove away from a toll booth on his way home from work one evening.
After stepping out of his car, he was approached by a man in civilian clothes, who held up a badge and said in a calm voice: "Special agent Reilly, FBI. We would like to talk with you."
The colour drained from Barsky's face. "I knew the gig was up," he says. But with characteristic bravado he asked the FBI man: "What took you so long?"
He kidded around with Joe Reilly and the other agents who interrogated him, and tried to give them as much information about the KGB's operations as he could. But inside he was panicking that he would be sent to jail and that his American family, which he had been trying to hold together, would be broken up.
In fact, luck was on his side. After passing a lie-detector test he was told that he was free to go and, even more remarkably, that the FBI would help him fulfil his dream of becoming an American citizen.
Reilly, who went on to become Barsky's best friend and golfing partner, even visited the elderly parents of the real Jack Barsky, who agreed not to reveal that their son's identity had been stolen.
"I was so lucky and so was my family that the decision-makers were nice enough to say, 'Well, you were so well-established, we don't want to disrupt your life,'" he says.
"It required some interesting gymnastics to make me legal because one thing I didn't have was proof of entry into the country. I came here on documentation that was fraudulently obtained, so it took 10-plus years to finally become a citizen. And when it did, it felt good."
Barsky is now married for a third time and has a young daughter. He has also found God, completing his journey from a hardline communist and atheist to a churchgoing, all-American patriot.
He has even managed to reconnect with the family he left behind in Germany, although his first wife, Gerlinde, is still not speaking to him.
"I have a very good relationship with Matthias, my son, and his wife. And I am now a grandfather. When we talk about things like Americans playing soccer against Germans, I say 'us'. I mean the Americans. I am not German any more. The metamorphosis is complete."
The final act in his story came two years ago when he revealed the secret of his extraordinary double life on the US current affairs programme, 60 Minutes.
He had long wanted to share his story with the world, but his bosses at the New York electricity company where he worked as a software developer were less than impressed to find they had a former KGB agent on the payroll, and promptly fired him.
Barsky says he has no regrets. He knows how fortunate he has been.
"This kind of double life wears on you. And most people can't handle it. I am not saying that I lived a charmed life but I got away with it.
"I am in good health. I have had some issues with alcohol that I have overcome and I got another chance to have a good family life. And another child. And I am finally getting to live the life that I should have lived a long time ago. I am really lucky."
Perhaps the supreme irony of Jack Barsky's story is that he was only able to complete the mission the KGB had set him - to obtain an American passport and citizenship - with the help of the FBI. He cannot resist a smile at the thought of telling his KGB handlers that he has not been such a failure after all.
"I wouldn't mind meeting one or two of those fellows I worked with and saying 'Hey, see I did it!'"
Deep Undercover - My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America, by Jack Barsky and Cindy Coloma, is published next month
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38846022 |
Inverness Caledonian Thistle 2-1 Rangers - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Billy Mckay scores a stunning overhead kick as Inverness Caley Thistle beat Rangers to move off bottom spot in the table. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Billy Mckay scored a stunning overhead kick as Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Rangers to move off bottom spot in the Premiership.
Mckay's goal came minutes after Iain Vigurs had missed a penalty for the hosts.
Inverness took a first-half lead thanks to Greg Tansey's long-range strike.
Rangers levelled through Martyn Waghorn's penalty after Lee Wallace was downed but the Ibrox side ultimately fell to a second straight defeat.
They remain six points behind second-placed Aberdeen, who entertain Ross County on Saturday.
Victory takes Inverness one point above Hamilton Academical, who visit Celtic on Saturday.
Vigurs' spot-kick was poor and easily saved by Wes Foderingham. Amazingly, it did not matter.
What happened next was utterly fantastic from an Inverness point of view. Mckay, with his back to goal, angled a perfect overhead kick into the left corner to earn a monumental win.
And no-one celebrated more than Vigurs.
It was in the last minute and is a game-changer in terms of the outlook of this season for boss Richie Foran.
There is a renewed steel about Caley Thistle these past few weeks, a return to the "old Inverness' as Foran describes it. That was on show in spades against Rangers.
Tansey's opener was as good as Mckay's winner. He arrived on to a blocked Liam Polworth shot and curled a magnificent effort home.
Inverness might have had a penalty when Polworth stayed on his feet after looking like he was caught by Wallace.
Defensively, the home side harried, blocked, diverted. They dropped a little too deep and were made to pay despite surviving a few scary moments.
They reacted well to conceding, though, and Tansey was unlucky with a fierce drive that Foderingham save brilliantly.
The dramatic nature of the victory should give Inverness the shot in the arm they need. They were tremendous.
Rangers started the match superbly. They were incisive and crisp in their passing and created a few chances. But, as has so often been the case this season, they lacked a cutting edge.
Barrie McKay nodded over from a great position before Emerson Hyndman missed one great chance then hesitated and lost another.
Rangers began to hem Inverness in during the second half and got the break they badly needed.
Louis Laing was outfoxed by a one-two but rashly slid in, took Wallace out and conceded a soft spot-kick. Waghorn made no mistake.
It looked like Rangers would kick on on from there but Inverness had other ideas.
The Ibrox side have now won only once in their last seven league matches and face a huge struggle to overtake second-top Aberdeen.
• None Goal! Inverness CT 2, Rangers 1. Billy McKay (Inverness CT) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the top left corner.
• None Penalty saved! Iain Vigurs (Inverness CT) fails to capitalise on this great opportunity, right footed shot saved in the bottom left corner.
• None Danny Wilson (Rangers) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Penalty conceded by Danny Wilson (Rangers) after a foul in the penalty area.
• None Brad McKay (Inverness CT) wins a free kick on the right wing.
• None Attempt saved. Billy McKay (Inverness CT) right footed shot from a difficult angle on the left is saved in the centre of the goal.
• None Attempt missed. Danny Wilson (Rangers) header from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the left. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39000462 |
Why is RBS still losing money? - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A lost decade: watching RBS develop has not been a very rewarding experience - for anyone. | Business | When RBS lost £24bn in 2008, my daughter was half way through junior school.
She's now doing her A-levels and RBS is still losing billions.
Next year she'll apply for university - next year RBS will lose another few billion.
Watching RBS develop has not been a very rewarding experience - for anyone.
Taxpayers have seen the £45bn they sank into the bank more than offset by £58bn of losses and counting.
The RBS headcount has shrunk by 100,000 in that time, with thousands more yet to lose jobs as the bank shrinks further and branches close.
If there has been a scandal going, RBS has been involved.
Fines for PPI, Libor rigging, foreign exchange fixing, squeezing small businesses for profit, and selling risky mortgages have laid waste to any earnings the core UK bank has been making.
In terms of fines for past misconduct the worst is yet to come in the form of a whopping fine from US authorities for RBS's role in the subprime mortgage crisis.
That should be settled this year but if RBS gets much change out of £10bn it will be considered a pretty good result.
And yet... beneath all this wreckage is a UK-focused bank that lent £24bn into the UK economy and has been churning out a profit of about £1bn every three months.
Sadly, that bank will have to wait till 2018 to see the light of day.
So why has it taken RBS so much longer than others to heal itself?
Lloyds and Barclays are both making a profit, the US banks at the epicentre of the 2008 financial earthquake are flying high while RBS shares need to double in value for the UK taxpayer to break even.
A former senior Treasury official told the BBC: "You have to remember that wherever something bad or unwise was happening, RBS was at the forefront.
"It took the biggest risks, was involved in every scandal, was the most aggressive, made the most absurd acquisition (£50bn for ABN Amro in the teeth of the crisis) and had the biggest balance sheet in the world."
That put it in the worst possible position to recover from the crisis.
Which begs another question. Why wasn't the fix imposed in 2009 more radical?
Some £45bn was pumped in for an 81% stake. In hindsight, that was nowhere near enough and the coalition government of 2010 should have done more to fix it after it had survived the initial crisis.
He told the BBC: "We should have recapitalised the banks much quicker like in the United States and then allow the conduct issues to come back when the banks were making money.
"In the UK, the banks didn't have sufficient capital and got hit by the conduct issues at the same time, and this bank (RBS) had that in spades."
But remember, the economic and political picture looked very different in 2010.
Austerity was the name of the game and George Osborne could ill afford to be seen to be throwing more money at RBS, possibly paying to fully nationalise it, when he was making swingeing cuts elsewhere.
Not only that but there were real hopes that RBS would make a profit in 2011 and the share price was on the way up.
It looked like the government could get away without putting in any extra money. So it didn't.
That turned out to be a very false dawn as the eurozone crisis hit and the full magnitude of past misconduct began to emerge.
There was also a battle over what kind of bank RBS should try to be.
The man heading the bank at the time, Stephen Hester, wanted to hang on to the investment banking bits in the hope that when the world returned to normal, the high profits usually associated with trading - helping companies raise money and advising them - would help the bank return to health.
The Treasury disagreed and since it owned 80% of the bank, Stephen Hester was shown the door in 2013.
Former Treasury officials acknowledge that at least two of his five years in charge was wasted in strategic wrangling with the government.
We still care about this humbled giant because we still own so much of it and the prospect of the taxpayer getting its money back is still a very distant one.
Compare that to Lloyds which has paid back nearly all the £20bn put in.
As discussed, RBS was a much sicker bank than Lloyds - and failing to recognise that earlier led to another mistake.
The government overpaid for its stake.
Under enormous pressure, working all night, with the prospect of cash machines not working on a Monday morning, the government agreed to pay roughly 500p a share in today's money.
The financial crisis led to drastic action by the government
That was what each share was worth on paper at the time - or the so called "book value".
A couple of weeks later, the US government paid half that for the shares it bought in US banks.
That enabled the US government to sell off its stakes much earlier.
Now, the prospect of selling at a big loss is an unattractive one for the government and the prospect of a bank predominantly owned by the government is an unattractive one for investors.
They know that one day there will be a big seller of the shares. It's a stand-off that keeps the price stubbornly low.
There is a core bank churning out profits, a billion pounds a quarter and today's announcement included the first confident prediction of bottom line profit we have seen from Ross McEwan
There is still pain ahead but there is also light.
Who knows, by the time my daughter leaves home, RBS may be back in the black. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39074815 |
Should 'catfishing' be made illegal? - BBC News | 2017-02-24 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Anna Rowe is calling for a law change after being duped by a man with a fake profile online. | UK | Anna Rowe had a whirlwind romance with Antony Ray after meeting him through the dating app Tinder.
But their 14-month relationship came crashing down when she discovered his profile was a fake.
His name was not Antony and he was not single.
In fact, he was a married dad who had initially used photos of a Bollywood actor on his profile and had lured in other women too.
"He used me like a hotel with benefits under the disguise of a romantic, loving relationship that he knew I craved," says Anna.
The practice of using a fake profile to start an online romance is known as "catfishing".
Now Anna, 44, from Kent, has launched a petition calling for it to be made illegal.
But how serious is catfishing and is it practical to make it a crime?
Many dating apps and sites offer advice on how to spot fake profiles
More than half of online dating users say they have come across a fake profile, according to consumer group Which?
While the number of people defrauded in the UK by online dating scams reached a record high in 2016.
There were 3,889 victims of so-called romance fraud last year, who handed over a record £39m.
It has become so prevalent, that it led to the creation of reality TV show Catfish - which is dedicated to helping victims learn the true identity of their online romances.
Currently catfishing is not illegal but elements of the activity could be covered by different parts of the law.
If a victim hands over money, the "catfish" could be prosecuted for fraud.
Someone using a fake profile to post offensive messages or doctored images designed to humiliate could also face criminal action.
A review of social media and the law by the House of Lords in 2014 concluded there was enough current legislation to cover crimes committed online.
New guidance was also issued by the CPS in October to help the police identify online crimes - including trolling and virtual mobbing.
But Anna thinks the law needs to go further.
Writing on her petition, she said: "I did not or would not consent to have a sexual relationship with a married man, let alone a man who was actively having relations with multiple women simultaneously.
"His behaviour was definitely premeditated showing his intent to use women, yet the current law will not find his actions a criminal offence."
Tony Neate, chief executive of Get Safe Online, recognises the devastating impact catfishing can have on victims.
"It can ruin a life. I know there have been suicides because it's affected someone badly," he says.
"It can affect their mental stability and lead to depression and the victims feel they can't trust anyone again.
"I do think we need to look more wisely at this in relation to how it is tackled at the moment."
Mr Neate, a former police officer, says there should be a "discussion" about punishing the worst catfishing offenders.
But he raises concerns about how practical a new law would be to implement.
"I really feel for that poor woman [Anna] but we have got to be realistic on how far we got and how the police would be able to enforce it," he says.
"Let's have the discussion because we can't have people being hurt and it's something we have got to look at."
Many dating websites offer users advice on how to spot a scammer and tips to avoid being taken in by a fake profile. (See "Tips to avoid catfishes", below)
Popular dating site Match.com has a team which will remove unwanted accounts and check photos and personal ads.
It also has a built-in screening system that can help identify suspicious accounts, remove them and prevent re-registration.
Lovestruck has a verification service that can confirm members are single and professional by checking their profiles against their other social media sites.
But the advice has not stopped many people being duped.
Last month, university professor Judith Lathlean revealed how she was tricked out of £140,000 by a gang using a fake profile.
Ife Ojo, 31, and Olusegun Agbaje, 43, were jailed in 2016 after conning a woman out of £1.6m using a fictional character.
But Andrew McClelland, chief executive of the Online Dating Association - the trade body for the industry - believes legislating against catfishing would be "difficult".
He said there could be genuine reasons why someone might not use their real details online - for example if they had been in an abusive relationship and did not want their ex-partner to find them.
Data protection and freedom of expression would also be an issue when it came to enforcing such a law, he added.
"The biggest problem this faces is how do you legislate against someone lying?" says Mr McClelland.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39078201 |
Wayne Rooney: Manchester United striker staying after links with China - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | England captain Wayne Rooney says he is staying at Manchester United, after being linked with a move to China. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
England captain Wayne Rooney says he is staying at Manchester United, after being linked with a move to China.
The 31-year-old striker said he hoped to "play a full part" in the rest of the Premier League club's season.
United boss Jose Mourinho had refused to rule out the prospect of Rooney's exit this month, although a deal before the Chinese transfer window closes on 28 February was always unlikely.
"It's an exciting time at the club and I want to remain a part," said Rooney.
Rooney's agent, Paul Stretford, had travelled to China to see if he could negotiate a deal, although it is not known which clubs he spoke to.
Two of the three clubs who looked the most likely options - Beijing Guoan and Jiangsu Suning - dismissed speculation about a transfer.
Rooney's representatives had already spoken to the third option - Tianjin Quanjian - but their coach, Fabio Cannavaro, said talks did not progress.
Rooney is United's record goalscorer and has won five Premier League titles and a Champions League trophy since joining them as an 18-year-old for £27m from Everton in 2004.
The forward, whose contract expires in 2019, has said he would not play for an English club other than United or Everton.
United are sixth in the Premier League and remain in three cup competitions, having reached the last 16 of the Europa League on Wednesday.
They face Southampton in the EFL Cup final on Sunday before taking on Chelsea in the FA Cup quarter-finals on 13 March.
"Despite the interest which has been shown from other clubs, for which I'm grateful, I want to end recent speculation and say that I am staying at Manchester United.
"I hope I will play a full part in helping the team in its fight for success on four fronts.
"It's an exciting time at the club and I want to remain a part of it."
Rooney's statement settles his short-term future but does nothing to address long-term issues over his future.
Rooney has only started eight Premier League games this season - fewer than Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Henrikh Mkhitaryan - and has featured only three times since breaking United's goalscoring record at Stoke last month.
He remains committed to United and ideally would stay at Old Trafford.
However, should he not play regularly between now and the end of the season, he would explore other options.
These would include Major League Soccer, as well as China. It is understood his previous statement, that he would only play for United or Everton in the Premier League, still stands.
Interest from China is genuine but despite long-time adviser Paul Stretford travelling to the country this week, there was never any realistic possibility of completing a deal before Tuesday's Chinese Super League transfer deadline.
Rooney has scored five goals in 29 appearances for the Red Devils this season, but has started only three games since 17 December and may yet leave in the summer.
Former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp says Rooney would be an "ideal" signing for United's Premier League rivals Arsenal.
"Arsenal lack somebody like Rooney - a winner, a leader," he told BBC Radio 5 live.
"He could easily go into somewhere like Arsenal and get a few of their players by the scruff of the neck on the pitch and improve their performances."
Redknapp, who was speaking before Rooney's announcement, also suggested the player could make "a dream move" back to Everton.
But Rooney's former team-mate Phil Neville said the striker "shouldn't write off his United career" and he could not see him moving to China. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39070917 |
Wayne Rooney: Man Utd captain involved in EFL Cup final - Jose Mourinho - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Man Utd boss Jose Mourinho says Wayne Rooney will be part of the EFL Cup final squad, a day after the forward announced he was staying. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney "will be involved" in Sunday's EFL Cup final against Southampton, says manager Jose Mourinho.
Rooney, 31, announced on Thursday that he is staying at Old Trafford after being linked with a move to China.
The England captain has missed United's past three matches with a calf injury.
"He is fine, he has been training with the team," said Mourinho on Friday. "He made his statement about staying here exactly in the right moment."
The Portuguese added: "That should be the last question about it until the end of the season."
Rooney's agent, Paul Stretford, had travelled to China to see if he could negotiate a deal, although it is not known which clubs he spoke to.
However, United's record goalscorer released a statement on Thursday saying he hoped to "play a full part" in the rest of the Premier League club's season.
• None Man Utd drawn against Russian side in Europa League last 16
• None Why the Red Devils must keep Ibrahimovic - Shearer
Rooney has won five Premier League titles and the Champions League since arriving at Old Trafford as an 18-year-old for £27m from Everton in 2004.
The forward, whose contract expires in 2019, has said he would not play for another English club other than the Toffees.
United are sixth in the Premier League and remain in three cup competitions, having reached the last 16 of the Europa League on Wednesday with a 4-0 aggregate victory over French side Saint-Etienne.
Rooney will be part of the squad to face top-flight rivals Southampton at Wembley on Sunday (16:30 GMT kick-off).
"No doubts, he is involved," said Mourinho.
"He was not selected for Saint-Etienne because he was not ready to play. He stayed at home this week so he could have one more important training session."
Midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan misses the final with a hamstring injury and Mourinho says Rooney's role will depend on which system he decides to play.
"Without Mkhitaryan, if we want to play with a number 10, obviously Wayne, it's his position, it's where he was playing with us many matches, so he is an option for me," he added.
On Rooney staying, the 54-year-old added: "He said no way he moves and wants to help the team fight for trophies. I said I would be happy if that was the decision." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39080835 |
Six Nations 2017: Scotland v Wales starts pivotal weekend - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Injury-hit Scotland will attempt to end a decade-long winless streak against Wales as the Six Nations resumes this weekend. | null | Scotland will attempt to end their decade-long winless streak against Wales with a team missing five key men as the Six Nations resumes this weekend.
Not since 2007 have Vern Cotter's men won a Six Nations match against Wales, with the average margin of defeat 15 points in that period.
Ireland have recalled Lions fly-half Jonny Sexton as they look to re-establish themselves in the title race with a win over a resurgent France.
And Sexton's main rival to be the Lions' 10 this summer, Owen Farrell, will lead unbeaten England out against the Azzurri at Twickenham on Sunday as he wins his 50th cap in arguably his most impressive championship yet.
Farrell has a new partner at outside-centre in former rugby league star Ben Te'o for a fixture that England have never lost, coach Eddie Jones content to try out new combinations against at Italy side on a nine-match losing run in the Six Nations.
With James Haskell back at flanker after coming off the bench to great effect in the wins over France and Wales, it is a more direct, muscular selection from Jones, blessed with a greater depth of talent than either Scotland or Wales.
In an entertaining, free-scoring tournament so far, the clash at Murrayfield is pivotal to two sides who have shown both signs of rebirth and flashes of old flaws thus far.
With one win and one defeat apiece, Saturday's early kick-off will go a long way to defining the season not only of the two sides but of their coaches, Cotter in his last campaign in charge, Rob Howley once again in a caretaker role as Warren Gatland focuses on Lions preparation and selection.
The fixture has often produced classics - not least a Wales win in 1988 garlanded by superb tries from Jonathan Davies and Ieuan Evans, and the 31-24 thriller in 2010 when Wales were 10 points down on 76 minutes.
And despite recent history it is arguably the hardest of the third round matches to call, although the loss of Scotland's captain and place kicker Greig Laidlaw to injury and the return of talismanic winger George North to Wales's ranks may prove pivotal.
Ireland ran up 63 points against Italy in Rome a fortnight ago, and after a chastening opening-day defeat in Edinburgh a victory over France would keep their hopes of a third Six Nations title in four years alive.
France have lost their last four away matches in this competition but led England until late at Twickenham at the start of the month, and came past Scotland in Paris with a blend of power and guile that hinted that their long statistical and stylistic slump may be coming to an end.
While the return of captain Rory Best after a stomach bug will be welcomed in Dublin, Sexton's return is not without controversy.
He has played very little rugby this season, this most physical of fly-halves once again dogged by injury, and in his absence Paddy Jackson has appeared liberated from the unflattering comparisons of old, kicking 12 of his 13 goals to be leading points scorer in this year's tournament.
Farrell, meanwhile, has shown a craft with ball in hand this winter to match what was always considered his defining strength, that ability from kicking tee across the pitch and no matter what the pressure.
It was his long, flat pass that sent Daly away for the late try in Cardiff a fortnight ago that kept England on course for a final-day Grand Slam decider in Dublin and maintained the extraordinary 15-match unbeaten run under Jones.
England have not yet fired fully this year, coming from behind in the final quarter against both France and Wales.
But what is ominous for Italy is that strength in depth on the replacements' bench and the impact it is consistently having in big matches.
Under Jones England have scored a cumulative 83 points more than their various opponents in the last 20 minutes of matches, while Italy - weaker in their starting XV, weaker still on the bench - have shipped almost half their total points conceded in the last 20 minutes of their opening two matches.
So many options does Jones have that he can afford to leave Jonathan Joseph, scorer of three tries in the corresponding fixture last year, out of his match-day squad altogether.
And with star prop Mako Vunipola returning to the bench after recovering from a knee injury, anything else than a heavy defeat would count as a victory of sorts for Italy's Irish coach Conor O'Shea. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39076520 |
Lance Armstrong: Banned cyclist faces November trial in £79m US lawsuit - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Banned cyclist Lance Armstrong's $100m (£79m) legal fight with the US government has been set for trial in November. | null | Last updated on .From the section Cycling
Banned cyclist Lance Armstrong's fight against a $100m (£79m) lawsuit by the US government has been set for a trial starting in Washington on 6 November.
He is accused of fraud by cheating while riding for the publicly funded US Postal Service team.
The lawsuit was filed by Armstrong's former team-mate Floyd Landis before being joined by the government in 2013.
Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life in August 2012.
The 45-year-old won the seven titles between 1999 and 2005. The US Postal Service sponsored the team between 1996 and 2004.
Armstrong admitted to using drugs in all seven of his Tour wins in January 2013 while Landis was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for failing a doping test.
The government wants Armstrong to pay back money the US Postal Service paid his team for sponsorship, plus triple damages.
Landis could collect up to 25% of any damages awarded. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/39071963 |
Maddie Hinch named goalkeeper of the year as GB win trio of awards - BBC Sport | 2017-02-24 | null | Maddie Hinch is named Female Goalkeeper of the Year as Great Britain win a hat-trick of world hockey awards. | null | Last updated on .From the section Hockey
Maddie Hinch has been named Female Goalkeeper of the Year as Great Britain won three world hockey awards.
The 28-year-old saved four penalties as Great Britain beat the Netherlands in a shootout to win Olympic gold in Rio.
GB women's coach Danny Kerry and assistant coach Karen Brown won the world's best male and female coaches.
Hockey players, coaches and fans vote for the annual International Hockey Federation Hockey Stars awards, which were held in India on Thursday.
Ireland hockey captain David Harte, 28, was named Male Goalkeeper of the Year for the second year in a row.
The 28-year-old led Ireland to a first Olympic Games in 108 years in 2016.
England Hockey chief executive Sally Munday said: "Maddie's heroics at the Olympic Games will be remembered by millions who watched our women win gold.
"She is the goalkeeper no player wants to face when taking a penalty and I am thrilled to see her receive this award."
England women are currently in South Africa preparing for two Tests on Saturday and Sunday with both games starting at 18:00 GMT.
England's men's team are also set to fly out as they take on both South Africa and Germany between 2 and 8 March. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/hockey/39071633 |
Did Trump win because his name came first in key states? - BBC News | 2017-02-25 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A leading US political scientists thinks Donald Trump is president because his name came first on the ballot in some critical swing states. | Magazine | One of the world's leading political scientists believes Donald Trump most likely won the US presidential election for a very simple reason, writes Hannah Sander - his name came first on the ballot in some critical swing states.
Jon Krosnick has spent 30 years studying how voters choose one candidate rather than another, and says that "at least two" US presidents won their elections because their names were listed first on the ballot, in states where the margin of victory was narrow.
At first sight Krosnick's idea might seem to make little sense. Are voters really so easily swayed?
"Most of the people that voted Republican were always going to vote Republican and most of the people that voted Democrat were always going to vote Democrat," says James Tilley, professor of politics at the University of Oxford.
"There is a human tendency to lean towards the first name listed on the ballot," says Krosnick, a politics professor at Stanford University. "And that has caused increases on average of about three percentage points for candidates, across lots of races and states and years."
It has the biggest impact on those who know the least about the election they are voting in.
You are more likely to be affected, Krosnick says, "if you are feeling uninformed and yet feel obligated to cast a vote - or if you are feeling deeply conflicted, say between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump."
When an election is very close the effect can be decisive, Krosnick says - and in some US states, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the 2016 election was very close.
A ballot paper used in the 2016 presidential election in Wisconsin
"In the states where Trump won very narrowly, his name was also listed first on the ballot in most of those states," says Krosnick.
Some always list parties in the same order. Some allow the state's officials to make a new choice each time. Some put the party that lost in the last election at the top of the ballot. Some list alphabetically.
In 2002, a court overturned the result of the mayoral election in the Californian city of Compton, after hearing testimony about the name-order effect. The judge decided that in this instance, the decision to list one of the candidates first had been deliberate and unfair.
"Candidates whose last names begin with letters picked near the end of the lottery have it tough," Krosnick explained during the Compton court case. "They will never get the advantage that comes from being listed first on the ballot."
There are numerous cases where the primacy effect is thought to have influenced the result of an vote.
In January 2008, Hillary Clinton unexpectedly beat Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary - part of the long battle to decide which of them would become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. Professor Michael Traugott from the University of Michigan believes that name order enabled Clinton to pick up extra votes. Her name was at the top of a long list. Obama's was near the end.
The primacy effect can also affect polling.
The exit poll from the 2004 US presidential election led pundits on the night to believe that Democratic Party candidate John Kerry would win, when in fact he went on to lose to incumbent president George W Bush. The poll had listed Democrat candidate Kerry before Republican candidate Bush.
What can be done to prevent the primacy effect? One option is to randomise the ballot papers. The states of California and Ohio have both adopted this system. An equal number of ballot papers is issued with a different candidate at the top of the list. This spreads the benefit of the name-order effect across the candidates.
In 1996, Bill Clinton received 4% more votes in the regions of California that listed him first in the ballot papers than in those where he featured lower down the list.
Research by Robert Darcy of Oklahoma State University shows that, given the choice, most election officials tend to list their own party's candidates first.
In one famous example of this, Florida's rules meant that Republican governor Jeb Bush's brother George W Bush was placed at the top of the list of candidates in his state, in the 2000 presidential election.
Bush went on to win Florida - which turned out to be a decisive state - by a very narrow margin.
George Bush was listed first in Florida in 2000 - the "butterfly ballot" used in Palm Beach (pictured) also led to arguments in court
"Because of the fact that different states in the US order candidate names differently and idiosyncratically, and almost none of the states do what Ohio and California do which is to rotate candidate name order across ballots to be fair, we have unfortunately had at least two recent election outcomes that are the result of bias in the name ordering," says Krosnick.
"If all of those states had rotated name order fairly, most likely George W Bush would not have been elected president in 2000, nor would Donald Trump have been elected president in 2016."
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-39082465 |
Kim Jong-nam death: Unravelling the mystery - BBC News | 2017-02-25 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | All the markings of a John Le Carre novel: a world leader's brother, an international airport and a deadly nerve agent. | Asia | It's got all the markings of a John Le Carre novel: the killing of the North Korean leader's brother with one of the deadliest chemical weapons created by man. But who by? And why? Many questions remain unanswered.
Here's a look back at how the killing unfolded, the details that emerged, and the subsequent accusations and diplomatic row.
He was waiting at a budget departure hall inside Kuala Lumpur international airport when the attack happened. Leaked CCTV footage would later show the 45-year-old man loitering in the budget terminal, a rucksack slung over his shoulder, ahead of his return flight to the Chinese territory of Macau at 10:00.
Suddenly a woman in a long-sleeve white top approaches him from behind. Her hands grab his face, before she walks away. It's not clear if she uses a cloth or her bare hands to touch his face.
The attack is over in a matter of seconds.
CCTV footage appears to show a woman accosting Mr Kim in the airport
The man reportedly told airport staff that "someone had grabbed him from behind and splashed a liquid on his face".
He sought medical help at the airport, but later died en route to hospital.
A day later, he was confirmed to be Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Reports on the attack first start to emerge in South Korean media, who name the man as Kim Jong-nam - it's not until two days later that Malaysia confirms his identity.
To complicate matters, he was travelling on a passport under the name Kim Chol. It was not the first time Mr Kim had travelled under an assumed identity: he was caught trying to enter Japan using a false passport in 2001. He told officials he had been planning to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
Many believe it was this incident that led to his father's decision to pass him over for leadership, forcing him to live a life in exile. During a time of estrangement from his family, Mr Kim became one of the regime's highest-profile critics.
Theories abound that North Korea might have been involved in his murder - what some are already calling an assassination - despite a lack of proof.
South Korea was one of the first to point the finger at its northern neighbour.
Malaysian authorities begin the autopsy, ignoring demands from North Korea to send the body back for investigation.
Meanwhile, the first person suspected of involvement in the attack is arrested: a 28-year-old Vietnamese woman named Doan Thi Huong. Police say she was identified from CCTV footage taken at the airport, where she was seen wearing a white top emblazoned with the letters "LOL".
This CCTV image has been broadcast by South Korean and Malaysian media
Four days after the airport attack, Malaysia's deputy prime minister officially confirms the dead man is Kim Jong-nam.
Another female suspect, Siti Aisyah, a 25-year-old Indonesian, is named and arrested. Her Malaysian boyfriend, Muhammad Farid Jalaluddin, is briefly questioned by police.
Events take a bizarre turn when Siti Aisyah tells police she thought she was taking part in a bizarre TV prank with Mr Kim.
Indonesia's most senior policeman, Tito Karnavian, said Ms Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong had performed the prank on other men - persuading them to close their eyes before spraying them with water.
Siti Aisyah was the second suspect to be named
"She was not aware that it was an assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents," Mr Karnavian told reporters.
Tensions between Malaysia and North Korea also start to simmer after North Korea's ambassador to the country says Pyongyang will reject the results of the autopsy - he does not trust the inquiry, he says.
Malaysia also refuses to hand over the body until it receives a DNA sample from Mr Kim's next-of-kin.
Malaysian police arrest the first North Korean person over Mr Kim's death - a 46-year-old man called Ri Jong Chol.
A day later, Malaysian police widen their search to include four more suspects, all men from North Korea.
They are named as: Ri Ji Hyon, 33; Hong Song Hac, 34; O Jong Gil, 55, and Ri Jae Nam, 57.
Two of the suspects wanted by Malaysian police: Hong Song Hac, 34, and Ri Ji Hyon, 33
The deputy police chief said the men had left Malaysia on 13 February, the day Mr Kim was killed, after arriving on different days within the previous fortnight.
International police agency Interpol are later requested to issue an alert for the suspects.
At the same time, South Korea explicitly states it believes its northern neighbour was behind the killing of Kim Jong-nam.
Tensions between North Korea and Malaysia threaten to turn into a full-blown diplomatic row as the latter recalls its ambassador from the North Korean capital Pyongyang and summons the North Korean ambassador "to seek an explanation".
Fuji TV airs grainy CCTV footage of the attack for the first time. The lady with the white top emblazoned with the letters "LOL" is seen lunging at Kim Jong-nam.
Malaysian authorities say they are unable to formally identify the body because no family member has come forward. Security is high at the Kuala Lumpur mortuary, amid widespread speculation Mr Kim's son, Kim Han-sol, might travel to Malaysia.
Malaysia and North Korea continue to trade harsh words as the situation escalates.
A senior North Korean embassy official is named as one of two men wanted in connection with the killing as the investigation widens.
The men are Hyon Kwang Song, 44, the second secretary of the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur and Kim Uk II, 37, who works for North Korean airliner Air Koryo.
Malaysian police also confirm Mr Kim died after two women wiped a toxin on his face while he was waiting for his flight to Macau.
North Korea appears to blame Kim Jong-nam's death on Malaysia, without actually naming him.
The state news agency KCNA said only that "a citizen of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]" travelling on a diplomatic passport had died due to "a heart stroke".
Reports of poisoning were false, it said, slamming Malaysia for holding an autopsy without North Korea's permission.
It is the first time North Korean state media have referred to Mr Kim's killing.
One of the deadliest chemical weapons created by man is confirmed by Malaysia to have been the nerve agent that killed Kim Jong-nam.
Just a small drop of VX, which is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations, can kill a person within minutes.
One of the woman who attacked Mr Kim suffered symptoms of vomiting, which Malaysian officials say was probably due to exposure to the agent.
Weapons expert Bruce Bennett says a small quantity of VX was likely to have been put on cloths used by the attackers to touch his face, with a separate spray possibly used as a diversion.
Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar previously said the fact the woman who accosted Mr Kim immediately went to wash her hands showed she was "very aware" that she had been handling a toxin.
It would have begun affecting his nervous system immediately, causing first shaking and then death within minutes.
VX is not available commercially, which experts say points to some kind of government involvement. There are a number of North Korean organisations capable of directing such an attack, including the exclusive Guard Command. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39077603 |
Women's Six Nations 2017: Scotland 15-14 Wales - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Scotland secure their first Women's Six Nations win since 2010 after recovering from two tries down to beat Wales. | null | Last updated on .From the section Scottish Rugby
Scotland secured their first Women's Six Nations win since 2010 as they recovered from two tries down to beat Wales.
Carys Phillips' score was followed by a penalty try for the visitors, with Elinor Snowsill converting both.
The Scots responded with Lisa Thomson's converted try, and Rhona Lloyd crossing in the second half.
Lana Skeldon missed the conversion for Lloyd's try, but Sarah Law's late penalty gave the Scots victory.
A shaky start by Wales allowed Scotland to camp in their 22 early on. However, the opening was plagued with unforced errors from both sides, one of which by Wales allowed Skeldon and Jemma Forsyth to gain a penalty but Law's attempt was wide.
Dyddgu Hywel and debutant Jasmine Joyce's use of wide spaces meant Scotland were soon on the back foot and from a driven maul off a line-out Wales captain Phillips touched down.
The Welsh then utilised a powerful scrum drive to force their penalty try and Snowsill added her second conversion.
However, the tide started to turn when Law offloaded for Thomson to cross and scrum-half Law converted.
The try gave Scotland renewed impetus after the break, but Amy Evans, Hywells and Phillips all threatened to add to the Welsh advantage.
A rolling maul applied more pressure to the hosts and only Jade Konkel's interception and burst forward allowed space for the Scots to breathe.
And it was from Konkel's pass to Lloyd that the hosts were finally back in contention. The winger managed to soar over the line in the left corner for her third international try.
The closing stages were fiery and Thomson's powerful drive through the Welsh defence resulted in a scrum dangerously close to the line.
Wales managed to get the ball away and were safe, momentarily, but their inability to disrupt the Scottish line-out meant the hosts were back on the attack and Law held her nerve with the decisive kick after the visitors had been penalised for offside. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39083065 |
Chelsea 3-1 Swansea City - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Chelsea stretch their lead at the top of the Premier League table to 11 points after victory over Swansea City at Stamford Bridge. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Chelsea stretched their lead at the top of the Premier League table to 11 points after victory over battling Swansea City at Stamford Bridge.
Cesc Fabregas marked his 300th Premier League appearance by firing the Blues ahead, poking the ball through the legs of Jack Cork and into the net.
The hosts were stunned when Swansea equalised from their first serious attempt on target on the stroke of half-time - Fernando Llorente heading in Gylfi Sigurdsson's free-kick.
Fabregas hit the bar before Pedro's curling effort restored the lead and Diego Costa netted the third from close range.
Swansea were denied a penalty when Cesar Azpilicueta handled inside the area at 1-1.
• None 'Chelsea will take some stopping now' - 5 Live's Football Daily
• None Reaction from Stamford Bridge and Saturday's other Premier League games
This was far from straightforward for Antonio Conte's side and had referee Neil Swarbrick awarded Swansea a penalty shortly before Pedro made it 2-1 then the outcome might have been different.
However, in the end Chelsea's sweeping forward play earned them a 10th straight home Premier League win as they took another significant step towards a second title in three seasons.
On a weekend when the first major silverware of the season - the EFL Cup - is handed out at Wembley, the Blues look unstoppable. They have 63 points from 26 games - three more than at the same stage in 2014-15 when last crowned champions of England.
Fabregas could have ended the game with four goals on his return to the side.
The Spain midfielder had a goal-bound shot deflected behind shortly before he opened the scoring, was denied by former Arsenal team-mate Lukasz Fabianski and also rattled the bar.
With former Blues midfielder Frank Lampard watching on, Chelsea turned on the style.
While it required an error from Fabianski to restore the lead, Eden Hazard's exquisite timing and pass for Costa to make it 3-1 was a delight.
Chelsea were forced to work hard for three points thanks to a well organised and energetic Swansea side and the Swans looked a shadow of the team that was bottom of the Premier League table five weeks ago.
Their four-point safety cushion at the start of the day is down to three, but boss Paul Clement will have been pleased with the way his side frustrated the runaway leaders for long spells.
Llorente's equaliser shook Chelsea who were showing signs of frustration before Pedro made it 2-1.
Swansea's next four games - Burnley (home), Hull City (away), Bournemouth (away) and Middlesbrough (home) - give them a chance to stay clear of the bottom three before they entertain Tottenham on 4 April.
'It was a clear handball' - what they said
Chelsea manager Antonio Conte: "We played very well, it was a good performance, and we created many chances to score. We conceded at the end of the first half, after the time was finished, so in this case there was a bit of luck, but we showed great character in the second half.
"We deserved a lot to win the game, now it's important to continue in this way."
Swansea City boss Paul Clement: "Any game we play and don't win we are disappointed. Chelsea are a very good side, they have fantastic quality and that was the difference. We didn't have a lot of chances but we came in at 1-1 for half-time and for long periods we defended really well.
"There was a big moment with the handball, I thought Cesar Azpilicueta handled it at 1-1, it's a clear handball. That gives you a chance to go 2-1 up but three minutes later you're 2-1 down with a soft goal. Based on chances they deserved to win, but there was big moment that didn't go our way, and who knows what might have happened."
Former England midfielder Jermaine Jenas: "I don't think Swansea should have had a penalty as the distance from Gylfi Sigurdsson to Cesar Azpilicueta is too close and Azpilicueta's arm is already out. His hand is there because he's trying to stop Sigurdsson's run."
Ex-England captain Alan Shearer: "I think it was a penalty. I think it was a deliberate movement of his hand towards the ball and I think Chelsea got away with one there. It could have been very different if the ref had given it.
"We've seen in recent weeks with Swansea that they made it very difficult for Liverpool at Anfield, they were unlucky to lose at Manchester City. They are very organised. The difference between Liverpool and City with this Chelsea side is the pace with which they go forward. That's why Cesc Fabregas was in the team today. He was brilliant. He's the one that started the goal off.
"It's topical that players are not working for mangers. The irony is last season we were sat here with a large bunch of these same Chelsea players - they weren't working for their manager and we know what happened. It's such a transformation now. We saw how brilliant they were with the ball but look at them now without it. The transformation from then to now is incredible."
Another assist for Sigurdsson - the stats
• None No player has more assists in the Premier League this season than Gylfi Sigurdsson (nine, level with Kevin de Bruyne).
• None Chelsea conceded in consecutive home league games for the first time under Antonio Conte.
• None Swansea have conceded 26 goals in their past 10 Premier League away games, an average of 2.6 per game.
• None Pedro has been directly involved in 10 goals in his past nine games for Chelsea in all competitions (seven goals, three assists).
• None Fernando Llorente has scored nine goals in all competitions this season for Swansea, three with his head, three with his left foot and three with his right.
Chelsea have nine days to prepare for their next game away to West Ham United on Monday, 6 March (20:00 GMT). Swansea entertain Burnley on Saturday, 4 March (15:00 GMT).
• None Attempt missed. Cesc Fàbregas (Chelsea) right footed shot from outside the box is too high. Assisted by Willian.
• None Goal! Chelsea 3, Swansea City 1. Diego Costa (Chelsea) left footed shot from the centre of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Eden Hazard.
• None Attempt missed. N'Golo Kanté (Chelsea) right footed shot from the centre of the box is too high. Assisted by Nemanja Matic.
• None Leroy Fer (Swansea City) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Attempt saved. Gylfi Sigurdsson (Swansea City) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the top centre of the goal. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39012181 |
Six Nations 2017: 'I wanted three points, kickers said no' - Wales captain Jones - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Captain Alun Wyn Jones wanted to kick for goal at a crucial point against Scotland, but says his kickers said "no". | null | Last updated on .From the section Welsh Rugby
Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones wanted to kick for goal at a crucial stage of Saturday's 29-13 defeat by Scotland, but says his kickers said "no".
Wales opted to kick for the corner when trailing 16-13 in the 51st minute.
They were penalised at the ensuing line-out as Scotland recorded their first win over Wales since 2007.
"The kickers didn't want to so we just went for the corner," said 107-times capped Jones, who added he "would have liked to" have taken the points.
"We didn't do it, did we?" he added.
"And I got done for blocking at the back of the lift then, but, yeah, I would have liked to have gone for the three (points)."
The incident was more remarkable as Irish referee John Lacey could be heard saying a kick at goal had been indicated while Wales fly-half Dan Biggar could be heard asking Jones if he could kick for the corner.
After the match Jones said the referee had not been involved.
The penalty was awarded on the Scotland 22-metre line close to the touchline, so would normally be considered well within the range of place kickers Leigh Halfpenny, who kicked eight points, and Biggar.
Wales led 13-9 at half-time, but failed to add to their tally after the break as Scotland scored 20 unanswered points.
Jones felt the momentum shift started before the interval when Halfpenny missed a chance to give Wales a 10-point lead and man of the match Finn Russell cut the gap to four points with the last kick of the half.
"At the tail end of the first half they took an opportunity and then into the second half, but we coughed up possession a little too easily," he said.
Jones said he wanted Wales to improve their discipline for their next game against Ireland on Friday, 10 March in Cardiff.
"We gave away one or two soft penalties and Scotland did a good job of disrupting us at the breakdown in the second half," he added. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39092731 |
Is the reporter an endangered species? - BBC News | 2017-02-25 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Each US election heralds a new way to communicate to the masses, and increases the threat to old-school reporting. | Entertainment & Arts | I have a theory that every US election since the turn of the millennium is driven by a new form of digital media.
Moreover, the evolution of this media indicates a growing threat to the traditional role of reporters and editors.
I should say at the outset that this theory, which grew out of conversations I had in Chicago when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, is certainly not mine alone.
I've discussed it with many students and hacks, and the likes of Jim Rutenberg, author of the excellent Mediator column for the New York Times, have advanced similar positions - albeit with crucial differences.
In 2000, the internet itself was still relatively fresh to many of us, and perhaps the defining tool of that period, search engines aside, was email.
Email radically sped up the process by which politicians could directly reach millions of people, spreading campaign messages at virtually no cost, and keeping both allies and enemies abreast of their latest thinking.
The advent of email reduced the need to communicate to a mass market through the prism of journalistic scrutiny.
In 2004, weblogs, or blogs, initiated the fall of the opinion class. Of course, 13 years later, some columnists still get paid vast amounts to give us the benefit of their views.
But with blogs, a thousand opinionated flowers could bloom.
This gave more hard-line writers, who were further from the mainstream and therefore couldn't always be guaranteed a slot in conventional media, the chance to build their own fan bases. It also gave blogging politicians the chance to do the same.
In 2008, when I was in the Grant Park press pen as Mr Obama gave his victory speech, there was a unanimous feeling that his had been the most brilliant digital campaign in history.
Barack Obama's 2008 campaign was hailed for innovative use of social media
Led by David Plouffe and Jim Messina, Mr Obama's team harnessed the network effects of Facebook to reach tens of millions of supporters.
They drove donations using the power of peer to peer recommendation on social media.
In 2012, another social media phenomenon drove the news agenda: Twitter. Adored by journalists, not least because it is essentially a personalised news feed, Twitter radically sped up the news cycle, making it not so much "rolling" as relentless.
With instant rebuttals now open to politicians, and yet more opportunity to build a following and communicate directly to voters, Twitter became a key feature of President Obama's re-election.
Many people, Rutenberg included, wondered aloud whether or not Snapchat would be the new media of last year's election.
The stunning growth of this social media company, currently embarked on its initial public offering, suggested a new portal for engaging with hundreds of millions of young people.
However, the digital media that defined last year's election wasn't Snapchat, perhaps because young people don't vote in anything like the numbers that old people do, and partly because - save for a few social media superstars such as Michelle Obama - the political class hasn't really cottoned on to Snapchat yet.
In fact, the digital media that has suddenly come to the fore in US politics is fake news: the capacity of lies to go viral, spread maliciously by those with either a political or (much more common) financial motive.
Facebook has woken up to the threat from fake news, as I have noted on this blog.
Donald Trump has spoken out against fake news
I reported last week on how Germany is leading the fight back against fake news, but there is no question that the phenomenon really came to prominence during Donald Trump's campaign against Hillary Clinton.
Spread out as they are over a decade and a half, these digital media aren't of course the result of US politics; but in each case they have had an impact on the result of US elections.
And if you put them next to each other - email; blogs; Facebook; Twitter; fake news - you begin to detect some patterns. These patterns don't bode well for the news industry.
You could argue that these media demand progressively shorter attention spans, but I think that's too crude.
A more relevant pattern is the ever expanding number of people that can be reached, and the new ways to reach them. Facebook has nearly two billion users; Twitter over 300 million.
The world is becoming a giant, super-connected network. Politicians have more and more ways of touching the lives of voters.
The third (and to my mind most alarming) trend is that as digital media evolve, the role of journalists seems to diminish.
To the political campaigner, these digital media offer the chance to reach literally billions of people and encourage them to influence their peers and family - all without having to go through a pesky hack.
Moreover, with fake news, the traditional role of the journalist, to verify truth and separate it from falsehood, is completely traduced in favour of sensationalism and viral energy.
George Orwell said the journalist's first task was to get a hearing
Of course digital media offer journalists amazing opportunities. "My initial concern", wrote George Orwell in Why I Write, "is to get a hearing."
These days journalists can get a hearing as never before. That's one reason why we are living in a new golden age of journalism.
Nevertheless, the reality we are confronting is that politicians are using digital tools to circumvent journalists, and reaching vast audiences without necessarily making the same demands on their attention and time that journalists of yore did.
Perhaps 2020 will be the Snapchat election - a form of social media even more transitory than Twitter (it's full of videos, or "snaps", that quickly disappear).
In the era of fake news that is going to be our bridge to that election, redundancy will be a fact of life for some journalists: not just those who lose their job, but many of those who used to make a living out of being the intermediary between politics and the public.
In my view that just shows we need proper journalism more than ever. But then I'm biased. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39070886 |
Crystal Palace 1-0 Middlesbrough - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Patrick van Aanholt scores the winner for Crystal Palace, as they move out of the Premier League's relegation zone by beating Middlesbrough. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Patrick van Aanholt scored the winner for Crystal Palace, as they moved out of the Premier League relegation zone with victory over struggling Middlesbrough.
Palace had the better of the first half and deservedly took the lead through the Dutchman's low drive from the edge of the box - his first goal since joining the club in the January transfer window.
Chasing the game in the second half, Boro's Cristhian Stuani struck an effort straight at Wayne Hennessey from inside the area, and Fabio sent a shot over the crossbar late on.
The Teessiders have now failed to win in their past nine league games and are 16th in the table, one point above the relegation zone and level on points with their opponents.
The victory for Palace also drops champions Leicester into the bottom three.
Sam Allardyce had won just once in eight games since taking over as Palace boss in December and questions were being asked about whether he had returned to football too soon after his embarrassing departure from the England job, or been affected by that experience.
Allardyce has never been relegated from the top flight and told Football Focus before the game that the problems at Selhurst Park "were a lot deeper than he had expected".
But the Eagles collected a priceless win - their third at home this season - to boost their own survival hopes, while pushing managerless Leicester deeper into trouble.
Goalkeeper Hennessey made four comfortable saves as he helped his side to just their second clean sheet of the campaign, but debutant Mamadou Sakho was a towering presence at the back.
The Frenchman, signed on loan from Liverpool in January, was making his first start of the season and in an assured performance, he won the ball back 11 times and made six clearances, which was more than any team-mate.
Aitor Karanka's side have won just four games all season, fewer than any other side in the division.
Their biggest problem is scoring goals, having found the net a mere 19 times in 26 games on their return to the Premier League, and this was their third consecutive league game without a goal.
Uruguayan Stuani, who has scored four of those 19, had their best opportunity to claim a point, but his angled shot from inside the area caused Hennessey no problems.
Striker Rudy Gestede was signed from Aston Villa in the transfer window to boost their front line, but the £6m acquisition failed to make an impact after appearing as a half-time substitute.
Having lost against a relegation rival, Boro will be hoping to pick up maximum points against fellow strugglers Swansea, Hull and Bournemouth, who they face in their remaining 13 games.
'Our approach was not the best'
Crystal Palace manager Sam Allardyce: "Selhurst Park was rocking today. It felt like they really enjoyed the commitment from the players and really got behind us.
"For me it was all about the quality in the first half we continued to pepper Middlesbrough's box with crosses and shots and it came to Patrick van Aanholt and he scored with his weaker foot.
"We need that sort of quality if we are going to stay up and he has proved himself with four goals this season now - three for Sunderland, one for us."
Crystal Palace full-back Patrick Van Aanholt: "I lost my granddad last week. I am very pleased to get the goal for him. Obviously I am very sad to lose him but I thank him a lot."
Middlesbrough manager Aitor Karanka: "It difficult to lose but we have to keep going.
"This is not the first time I'm living this situation but the only thing I know is to keep working.
"The way we approached the game wasn't the best. I didn't need to say how important the game was to win - I think everyone knew."
Ex-England striker Alan Shearer: "It was a performance that deserved three points. Other than the 10 minutes after half-time I thought they were the much better team throughout.
"They understood what each other's roles were, how they were going to play the game. They just did not hesitate at all to get balls into the box. They knew, I think, that they had to do that.
"That was their first thought - can we hit the big man, even if there's no bodies around him? Second half, that didn't change either. They thoroughly deserved the three points today and it was three massive points for them.
"We say the same thing every week about Boro - 19 goals, 26 games, they haven't won since mid-December, not won in nine. They're in a slump and they're in big trouble, I think."
• None Palace ended their run of five home league defeats in a row, the longest such run by any team in the Premier League this season.
• None Middlesbrough remain on the current longest winless run in the Premier League, failing to win any of their past nine games, drawing four and losing five.
• None Sam Allardyce enjoyed his first win in his past 10 Premier League games against Middlesbrough (drawn six, lost three).
• None Aitor Karanka's Boro side have scored a league-low 19 goals, while their top-flight games have produced a total of 47 goals, 12 fewer than any other team in the competition this season.
• None Middlesbrough have failed to win on any of their past 13 Premier League visits to London (drawn four, lost nine), last winning in the capital at Fulham 2-1 in August 2007.
• None Patrick van Aanholt is the first player this season to score for two clubs in the Premier League (excluding own-goals), also netting for Sunderland.
• None Van Aanholt has scored eight goals in the Premier League since the start of last season - a joint-high for a defender (excluding penalties), with team-mate Scott Dann also netting eight.
• None Yohan Cabaye registered a Premier League assist for the first time in his past 48 Premier League appearances (since 3 October 2015 against West Brom).
Crystal Palace travel to West Brom next Saturday (kick-off 15:00 GMT), while Middlesbrough go to Stoke at the same time.
• None Attempt missed. Andros Townsend (Crystal Palace) right footed shot from the right side of the box is close, but misses the top right corner. Assisted by Christian Benteke following a fast break.
• None Attempt missed. Adlène Guédioura (Middlesbrough) right footed shot from outside the box misses to the right. Assisted by Gastón Ramírez.
• None Substitution, Crystal Palace. Jeffrey Schlupp replaces Patrick van Aanholt because of an injury.
• None Attempt missed. Fabio (Middlesbrough) right footed shot from the right side of the box is high and wide to the left. Assisted by Rudy Gestede with a headed pass.
• None Delay over. They are ready to continue.
• None Delay in match Patrick van Aanholt (Crystal Palace) because of an injury.
• None Attempt missed. Ben Gibson (Middlesbrough) header from the left side of the six yard box misses to the left. Assisted by Fabio with a cross.
• None Joel Ward (Crystal Palace) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39012179 |
Jose Mourinho defends Claudio Ranieri by blaming Leicester players - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho defends sacked Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri and says he was let down by "selfish" players. | null | Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho defends sacked Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri and says he was let down by "selfish" players.
WATCH MORE: Five things we'll miss about Claudio Ranieri | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39080073 |
Six Nations 2017: Scotland 29-13 Wales - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Scotland produce a spirited second-half display to defeat Wales at Murrayfield, with Tommy Seymour and Tim Visser the hosts' try-scorers. | null | A spirited second-half performance at Murrayfield earned Scotland their first Six Nations win over Wales since 2007.
For all their superior physicality in the first half, Wales led by only 13-9 at the interval, Liam Williams rounding off a slick move for their sole try.
Scotland were dominant thereafter, with Tommy Seymour and Tim Visser crossing the line and stand-off Finn Russell earning 19 points with his kicking.
The Scots' success ended Wales' run of four consecutive wins in Edinburgh.
The result put Vern Cotter's team top of the championship table before Ireland's 19-9 win over France saw the Scots drop back to second. For Wales, though, it was a second loss in three matches in this year's campaign.
It was compelling from the first whistle, a fire-cracker of a Test match, ferocious, error-strewn at times, but utterly fascinating all the way through.
Russell and Halfpenny had traded penalties in the opening quarter before Wales made the first significant move.
A free-kick at a scrum was tapped by the wonderful Rhys Webb, a whirling dervish at nine for the visitors. Wales' eye for the chance was quick and their execution was a delight. They came screaming across the field, Halfpenny putting Williams over in the left corner. Halfpenny then converted to put Wales precisely where they wanted to be - in the lead on the front foot.
Scotland then suffered another blow a minute later when John Hardie went off injured. Another injured body piled on top of the other injured bodies - Alasdair Dickinson and WP Nel, Sean Maitland and Duncan Taylor, Greig Laidlaw, their captain, and Josh Strauss, their principal back-row ball-carrier.
Their resilience, though, is astonishing. On came Hamish Watson, who was terrific as Scotland set sail. Russell made it 10-6 with the boot, before Halfpenny re-established the seven-point lead. It was the last time Wales troubled the scoreboard.
Even before the break there were signs of the Scots stirring. Justin Tipuric had to pull off a fine tackle to keep Huw Jones out, but Russell at least gave them the consolation of three more points. A four-point game at the break. Scotland were a bit fortunate, but they kicked-on magnificently from there.
Seymour's try electrified Murrayfield, Hogg's sweet delayed pass-and-give to Visser drew Halfpenny and created space for the Glasgow Warriors wing to go over. There was concern about obstruction earlier in the move but the try stood and so did the conversion after Russell's effort slapped off the inside of the post and obligingly fell over on the right side of the crossbar.
Wales came again through Webb, but Ali Price, wonderful on his first start, pulled off a try-saving tackle. The visitors quickly became ragged. They ran into blue walls, each error, each big hit stripping them of their belief.
Russell eased Scotland further clear just short of the hour; 19-13. Wales responded and once again they were repelled. It was Webb again, darting in at the corner only to be put in touch, just, by Visser, arguably playing the game of his life for Scotland.
The Scots had more pressure to soak up, but soak it up they did. There was a desperate lack of invention in the Wales attacks, a predictability that Scotland absorbed before striking out themselves. And here, again, we saw the difference between the sides. Scotland had elan and skill and invention. Wales did not.
Visser's score was a glorious illustration of it. Patience in the forwards through the phases and the ruthlessness when the chance arrived. Hogg's hands in delivering the try-scoring pass to the winger brought Murrayfield to its feet. Russell converted, then added another penalty and Scotland were home.
Twenty unanswered points in the second half was a thunderous response from a Scottish team that can no longer be deemed improving or emerging. They've arrived. In the here and now, they are reborn.
For the latest rugby union news follow @bbcrugbyunion on Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39054808 |
Six Nations 2017: Vern Cotter hails Scotland's second-half show against Wales - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Head coach Vern Cotter lauds Scotland's second-half display against Wales, as they rack up 20 unanswered points to win. | null | Last updated on .From the section Scottish Rugby
Vern Cotter hailed his Scotland side's second-half display, in which a haul of 20 unanswered points secured a first victory over Wales since 2007.
In round three of the Six Nations, the Welsh had led 13-9 at the break.
But two tries, and 10 points from the boot of Finn Russell after the interval, paved the way to a 29-13 win.
"We realised we were watching them play rather than playing ourselves," Cotter said after Scotland's second win of the championship.
"I'm very proud of that response. The boys went out and started taking the game to the Welsh team.
"We were more assertive and organised in the second half. We applied pressure and got over the line with well-scored tries.
"It means we're still in the competition and we can get back to work on Monday and prepare for Twickenham."
John Barclay, captaining Scotland from the back row, became only the fourth of 14 Scotland skippers in the Six Nations era to have tasted victory in his first game leading the team.
The 30-year-old, who took over from the injured Greig Laidlaw, was cautiously optimistic about Scotland's chances against England at Twickenham on 11 March.
He told BBC Sport: "We won very well against Ireland (in round one), then we didn't play particularly well (against France). We wanted to get out of that cycle of having a good win, then not backing it up.
"The second half, to go out there, no panicking and play with control and accuracy - we recovered from a poor first half to go on and beat a very good Welsh side.
"We believe within the group that we can do something. We go to England for the next game. We'll have a look at them. If we play well, we can win.
"If we play like we did in Paris, if we play like we did in the first half (against Wales), then it becomes very difficult."
England can re-take top spot in the Six Nations table from Ireland with victory over Italy on Sunday.
New Zealander Cotter has only two games remaining as Scotland head coach - the penultimate being the Calcutta Cup match - before he makes way for Gregor Townsend.
"Real guts and desire, the boys threw their bodies into it," was Cotter's assessment of his team's battling performance.
"We were competitive at the breakdown so, all in all, I'm happy we came away with the win.
"We will enjoy the evening, it's been a few years since we beat Wales. The boys can have a couple of quiet, cold beers. Then we go down to England.
"I think these experiences for the young players are great. John (Barclay) did a great job out there and steadied the ship." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39092776 |
Can community projects offer a way to affordable care? - BBC News | 2017-02-25 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Around the UK different schemes are trying to deliver better affordable care to those who need it. | Health | A few years ago Jessy would have been stuck in hospital because there was no provision of social care in her area
With health and social care budgets feeling the squeeze, the need to find ways to care for people that are both affordable and effective is one of the country's biggest challenges.
Around the UK many attempts are being made to deliver care in different ways and here are three different approaches to community-based care.
Kathryn Humpston, a local area co-ordinator for Derby City Council, says: "I try to help people help themselves."
One of the people she visits is John, an alcoholic who was in and out of hospital because of his condition. He often spent all his money on alcohol rather than food and Kathryn has to check what is in his larder.
As he only has two tins of beans and some powdered soup in stock, she tops up his supplies, gathered by an informal community food bank operating in the Boulton area of Derby.
Local area co-ordinators were introduced into Derby five years ago, copied from an existing scheme in Western Australia.
The idea is that vulnerable older people could find a lot of the support they need from within their own communities, rather than from council services, their GPs or from hospitals.
Just over half the £500,000 annual costs of the scheme are paid for by the NHS to reduce demand on those services,
The co-ordinators tap into an often hidden network of support from neighbours, friends, family, voluntary groups and churches, who all seem willing to help improve the communities they live in by looking out for people who need help.
"All this costs nothing," says Kathryn.
The 10 co-ordinators working in Derby's inner city have helped about 700 people, all of whom have very complex needs. Only 17 of them have actually gone on to need a taxpayer-funded package of support from social services.
"If those 700 people had just one episode of social care fewer in their lifetime that would be a system saving of some £600,000," explains Mick Burrows of the NHS Southern Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group.
Jessy has nothing but praise for her carer after coming home from hospital following a hip replacement operation.
"I wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for her. I'd probably be still in hospital waiting to get home," she says.
A few years ago she would have been stuck in hospital because there was no provision of social care in the rural area she lives in, south of Loch Ness.
Boleskine Community Care was set up by the local community, who recognised that their older people were having to move away to get help if family members could not help.
In the Scottish Highlands the NHS, not local councils, is responsible for providing home care
It is run by local women who work for Highland Home Carers, an employee-owned company in Inverness. The carers manage themselves and do their own assessments of old people's needs.
In the Scottish Highlands, spending on health and social care is fully integrated, meaning the NHS, rather than local councils, is responsible for providing care at home.
"The way we're funded helps us to give you what you want and gives you more choices," explains carer Julie Russell. "You can choose how you use your hours."
This is because of the Scottish system of Self Directed Support, or personal budgets. Once a person's needs are assessed, they can decide how their care budget is spent. It can lead to some surprising choices.
"We've cleared snow, chopped firewood, helped in the garden, as well as taken people to the GP and all the usual personal care," says Julie.
Angela is very clear about why she agreed to live with Gill.
"When I first saw her I thought she was very nice and I liked even more because she had a horse," Angela explains.
Gill, and her partner Pete, became Shared Lives carers for Angela about six years ago. It is a much greater commitment than the usual caring duties.
Gill and Pete share their home with her and also with Adrian, who moved in with them 14 years ago. Both Adrian and Angela have learning disabilities.
Angela and Adrian now live with Gill and her husband as an extended family
"At first I was a bit scared," says Angela. "But I thought I'll meet her and get to know her. I think it's a great idea. It's nice for families to take people like us in."
Angela and Adrian are among almost 400 people, most of them with learning disabilities, who live with their Shared Lives carers across Lancashire.
"It's the best thing I've ever done," says Gill. "We get more out of it than Adrian and Angela probably."
Carers are paid about £400 a week for each person they look after, which is a saving for the local authority compared to the alternative. For people with learning disabilities who are unable to look after themselves, the alternative would be supported living or a residential care home.
Shared Lives Plus, which oversees the Shared Lives schemes around the country, estimates it saves about £25,000 per person per year. The NHS is currently establishing five Shared Lives schemes to cater for people leaving hospital.
It estimates savings of £130m over the next five years by speeding up hospital discharges using the service.
Listen to the full series of Andrew Bomford's reports for BBC Radio 4's PM programme here. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39055630 |
Kyle Edmund loses to Milos Raonic in Delray Beach Open quarter-finals - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Kyle Edmund loses to Milos Raonic in the Delray Beach Open quarter-finals to miss out on his first win over a top-10 player. | null | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Kyle Edmund missed out on his first win over a top-10 player when he lost to world number four Milos Raonic in the Delray Beach Open quarter-finals.
The British number three started well and took the first set but the Canadian top seed hit back to win 4-6 6-3 6-4.
Raonic won five games in a row to seal the second set and go 2-0 up in the decider and help set up the victory.
Raonic will face Argentina's former US Open winner Juan Martin del Potro in Saturday's semi-final.
"I was a little bit slow off the block, got a little down on myself after that and wasn't necessarily focusing on the right things," Raonic told the ATP website.
"I was glad to be able to get out of that midway through the second set.
"But Kyle has very good potential. He takes it to you and has a forehand that's very hard to read. He's constantly improving, so things look bright for him."
Seventh seed Del Potro, who won the event in 2011, beat American wildcard Sam Querrey 7-5 7-5.
In the other semi-final, American world number 21 Jack Sock faces compatriot Donald Young, ranked 69. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/39088570 |
Claudio Ranieri: Sacked Leicester manager says his 'dream died' - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Claudio Ranieri says his "dream died" when he was sacked as Leicester manager nine months after winning the title. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Claudio Ranieri says his "dream died" when he was sacked as Leicester manager nine months after winning the Premier League.
Ranieri, 65, guided the Foxes to the title despite them being rated 5,000-1 shots at the start of the campaign.
Leicester are one point above the relegation zone with 13 matches left.
"After the euphoria of last season and being crowned champions, all I dreamt of was staying with Leicester. Sadly this was not to be," Ranieri said.
"The adventure was amazing and will live with me forever. My heartfelt thanks to everybody at the club, everybody who was part of what we achieved, but mostly to the supporters.
"You took me into your hearts from day one and loved me. I love you too.
"No-one can ever take away what we achieved together and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will.
"It was a time of wonderfulness and happiness that I will never forget. It's been a pleasure and an honour to be a champion with all of you."
• None Mancini? O'Neill? Hodgson? Redknapp? Who next for Leicester?
Ranieri's departure came less than 24 hours after Wednesday's 2-1 defeat at Spanish side Sevilla in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie. The second leg is on 14 March.
On Saturday, Leicester were knocked out of the FA Cup by League One Millwall.
In explaining the club's decision, vice-chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha said "long-term interests" had been put above "personal sentiment, no matter how strong that might be".
The Foxes took last season's Premier League title by 10 points but have won just five top-flight games this season, and could become the first defending champions since 1938 to be relegated.
They have lost their past five league matches and are the only side in the top four English divisions without a league goal in 2017.
'He had not lost the dressing room'
BBC Sport understands some players were summoned to meet the chairman after the defeat by Sevilla, and Ranieri's fate was sealed by the negative reaction.
"There was a lot of frustration because of the results, but he had not lost the dressing room," Shakespeare said.
"A lot of the talk of unrest has been speculation. I've not had one problem with the players.
"I always feel sorry when people lose their jobs. My relationship with Claudio has been fine all along.
"I spoke to him last night and he thanked me for my support throughout. It was not brief and we exchanged views. A lot of what we said will stay private."
Shakespeare and first-team coach Mike Stowell will take charge of the squad until a new manager is appointed.
Ranieri's compatriots Paolo Benetti and Andrea Azzalin, both key members of his coaching staff, have left the club.
Ex-Manchester City and Inter Milan boss Roberto Mancini and Nigel Pearson, who Ranieri replaced in 2015, are the early bookmakers' favourites to take over at Leicester.
Former Birmingham boss Gary Rowett - a one-time Foxes player who is around fifth favourite - told BBC Radio 5 live: "I'm sat at home waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Leicester would be an amazing one, but it's still raw for everyone."
Rowett, who played for Leicester between 2000 and 2002, was controversially sacked by Birmingham in December, and replaced by former Chelsea striker Gianfranco Zola.
"I played there for two years so I've had good experiences at Leicester and it's an excellent club. It would be a daunting one for anyone and a fantastic opportunity for someone," he added.
The contenders: Read more from Phil McNulty
After the euphoria of last season and being crowned Premier League champions, all I dreamt of was staying with Leicester City, the club I love, for always.
Sadly this was not to be. I wish to thank my wife Rosanna and all my family for their never-ending support during my time at Leicester.
My thanks go to Paolo and Andrea, who accompanied me on this wonderful journey. To Steve Kutner [Ranieri's agent] and Franco Granello [his Italian agent] for bringing me the opportunity to become a champion.
Mostly I have to thank Leicester City Football Club. The adventure was amazing and will live with me forever.
Thank you to all the journalists and the media who came with us and enjoyed reporting on the greatest story in football.
My heartfelt thanks to everybody at the club, all the players, the staff, everybody who was there and was part of what we achieved. But mostly to the supporters. You took me into your hearts from day one and loved me. I love you too.
No-one can ever take away what we together have achieved, and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will.
It was a time of wonderfulness and happiness that I will never forget. It's been a pleasure and an honour to be a champion with all of you. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39083953 |
Reality Check: Has a governing party gained a by-election since 1878? - BBC News | 2017-02-25 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Was the last comparable by-election to Copeland 139 years ago? | UK Politics | The claim: The Conservatives' win in Copeland is the first time since 1878 that a governing party has made a comparable gain in a by-election
Reality Check verdict: A governing party gaining a seat at a by-election is an extremely unusual event. It has happened since 1878, but you could argue that those occasions had unusual circumstances that meant they were not comparable.
Governing parties rarely look forward to by-elections, which tend to have relatively low turnouts and are seen as having less at stake than general elections.
It is very rare for the governing party to pick up votes from the opposition. It is even rarer for them to gain a seat, as the Conservatives did when Trudy Harrison won Copeland in Cumbria.
The constituency and its predecessor, Whitehaven, had returned Labour MPs since 1935.
The Conservatives say this is "the first time since 1878 that a governing party has made a comparable gain in a by-election".
The party was referring to the Worcester by-election 139 years ago, when they won the seat from the Liberals.
Copeland is certainly not the first instance of a ruling party winning a seat at a by-election since that year, when Benjamin Disraeli was prime minister and women could not vote.
That has happened several times since, but in unusual circumstances which are perhaps not "comparable" to Copeland.
For example, in 1982 at the height of the Falklands War, a Labour MP defected to the Social Democratic Party in the south London seat of Mitcham and Morden.
This split the left-of-centre vote, meaning the Conservative candidate won despite getting a smaller share of the vote than at the previous general election.
A Conservative/National Liberal candidate won the Yorkshire seat of Brighouse and Spenborough from Labour in 1960, but that seat was very marginal. Labour won by just 47 votes at the 1959 general election, and lost by 666 a year later.
In 1953, the governing Conservatives took Sunderland South from Labour, but this was also very close and the Conservative vote share fell slightly because a Liberal picked up some votes.
Copeland was not nearly as tight as these examples, and the Conservatives increased their vote share substantially.
Labour's Jamie Reed won the seat by more than 2,000 votes in 2015, while the new Conservative MP took it by a similar margin.
The swing was 6.7%, a stunning result for a governing party.
There are various other examples of government by-election gains since 1878.
However, as Matt Singh of NumbrCrunchr Politics points out, these are "mostly the product of freakish circumstances… none of which apply to Copeland".
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39080605 |
Claudio Ranieri: Jamie Vardy says speculation over manager's sacking 'untrue' - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy says speculation he was involved in Claudio Ranieri's dismissal is "untrue and extremely hurtful". | null | Leicester striker Jamie Vardy says speculation that he was involved in manager Claudio Ranieri's dismissal is "untrue and extremely hurtful".
Ranieri was sacked on Thursday, nine months after leading the club to the Premier League title.
"Claudio has and always will have my complete respect," Vardy said in a post on Instagram.
• None When Ranieri invited BBC reporters in for coffee
"There is speculation I was involved in his dismissal and this is completely untrue, unfounded and is extremely hurtful.
"The only thing we are guilty of as a team is underachieving, which we all acknowledge both in the dressing room and publicly, and will do our best to rectify."
Last season's champions dropped into the relegation zone on Saturday following Crystal Palace's win over Middlesbrough.
Vardy scored 24 goals as the Foxes secured an unlikely Premier League title in 2015-16, but the striker has struggled this season.
He ended a nine-game goal drought during Leicester's 2-1 Champions League loss at Sevilla, which proved to be Ranieri's last match in charge.
"He believed in me when many didn't and for that I owe him my eternal gratitude," former Fleetwood striker Vardy wrote.
"I wish Claudio the very, very best in whatever the future holds for him. Thank you Claudio for everything."
Former England captain Alan Shearer said: "I didn't need the sacking of Ranieri to tell me the players weren't working for him. I could see it. I've been saying it for the last two or three months, that the players just weren't working for him.
"I would say to the Leicester players, if you look in the mirror and ask yourself a question - have I worked as hard as I could and given the manager everything? I would pretty much say, for the vast majority of that Leicester squad, the answer would be no. They could do more, I'm certain of that.
"Fans will get over it, I'm sure. We saw what happened with Chelsea when Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas were booed after half an hour and then Chelsea go and score goals and get back to winning ways. Fans soon forget. However, you will never ever forget what happened last season. That was the best thing that has happened and will ever happen, in the Premier League, a team achieving what like Leicester did."
Former Tottenham midfielder Jermaine Jenas said: "The timing is ludicrous. They've just gone to Seville and in the second half they were back to their best defensively. Give Claudio Ranieri the chance to keep them in the Premier League."
'You believed in me' - Players thank Ranieri
BBC Sport understands some players were summoned to meet the chairman after the 2-1 loss to Sevilla and Ranieri's fate was sealed by the negative reaction.
However goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel said he had "no problem with Ranieri" while several players, including midfielder Andy King and winger Demarai Gray thanked Ranieri on social media.
"Big respect to this great man who helped us achieve history, you helped me build myself as a player and gave me the courage I needed," forward Riyad Mahrez wrote on Twitter.
"You believed in me from day one. Huge thank you for everything and good luck."
"My Leicester career was over, he believed in me and gave me a chance. That's something else I will also never forget," defender Danny Simpson added.
"I wish him luck for the future and I had the opportunity to say this today, however we really need the true Leicester fans to be with us and not against us through this tough period, starting on Monday night.
"What's happened has happened and we have to move on and stay in the Premier League." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39093177 |
Gavin McDonnell loses on points to Rey Vargas in WBC world title fight - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Gavin McDonnell fails in his bid to join his twin brother Jamie as a world champion with a majority-decision loss to Rey Vargas. | null | Gavin McDonnell's dream of joining twin brother Jamie as a world champion was shattered as classy Mexican Rey Vargas scored a points decision to land the vacant WBC super-bantamweight title.
The 30-year-old produced a display of immense grit - landing telling blows in the ninth round - but his 26-year-old opponent's confident work throughout saw him gain a 114-114 117-111 116-112 decision.
Victory would have delivered Britain's first simultaneous twin world champions, with Jamie McDonnell already in possession of the WBA bantamweight belt.
But Vargas - unbeaten in 29 bouts - was rewarded for his control of the early exchanges and left the noisy Ice Arena in Hull with his first world title.
Vargas, with Iganacio Beristain - who has trained Oscar de la Hoya and Juan Manuel Marquez to world titles - in his corner, took the middle of the ring early and confidently landed three-shot combinations with McDonnell visibly cautious against a man with 22 previous knockouts.
• None Listen to the fight again on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra, every hour from 06:00 GMT until 12:00 on Sunday
• None Relive the fight as it happened
In the build-up to the fight, McDonnell's promoter Eddie Hearn said he pushed for the bout to take place at the "down and dirty" Hull Ice Arena in the hope the "bear-pit" atmosphere could do "strange things" to the travelling fighter.
There were moments of home hope, as McDonnell landed a stinging right in the 10th but in just his third fight outside Mexico, Vargas even had the temerity to smile back at his man after taking some punishment late on.
The younger man's confidence to switch from making the fight to boxing on the back foot near the ropes perhaps showed he knew he had built a good early lead. McDonnell's head movement was energetic throughout, while his opponent was happy to remain static at times as he waited to pick his attacks.
Now 19 fights into his career, McDonnell can take great pride from the heart he showed and none of the 3,500 in the venue appeared to feel short-changed by his efforts.
In truth, he simply came up against a fighter who carried plenty of power in his 8st 10lb frame, and showed variation and a cool head to handle the occasion.
At the final bell, Vargas threw his hands into the air before slumping to the ropes and looking to the heavens. McDonnell in contrast seemed to know hopes of family history were over, for now.
Earlier in the night, London 2012 Olympic champion Luke Campbell maintained his momentum as he seeks a world title shot in 2017 - "the biggest year of my career", according to the Hull fighter.
The 29-year-old lightweight recorded his fourth straight win following a shock defeat in 2015 to Yvan Mendy, with a series of crushing left hands to Jairo Lopez.
The Mexican, down in the first, somehow made the second round but was flattened by a left uppercut. Campbell, who began training in Miami after the Mendy defeat, showed his typically energetic style and now has hopes of a shot at WBC champion Mikey Garcia.
Another Hull fighter, Tommy Coyle - beaten by Campbell in 2015 - kept his hopes of a return to world level alive with a third-round stoppage of Rakeem Noble.
'I lost by three rounds' - what they said
Gavin McDonnell, talking to BBC Radio 5 live, said: "I will learn, I know where I went wrong, I am disappointed, but I will work so hard.
"I had him winning by a couple of rounds, probably three rounds in my opinion. Everyone is in with a puncher's chance - if I can improve my speed and power I will land and I can beat that kid.
"If we do have a rematch, I know how to beat him in the future."
In an interview with Sky Sports, he added: "I gave it everything and I hope everyone enjoyed it. I feel like I let everyone down.
"I just fell short at the end. I felt all right in there, I was a bit too eager and I couldn't get close enough. I will come again - I have only had 18 fights and I want to show I belong at this level.
"I have no doubt I will be a world champion."
Promoter Eddie Hearn told BBC Radio 5 live: "I think Gavin started too slowly and he was always chasing it. Vargas was very good - he had excellent feet and confidence.
"To put in a performance like that, Gavin should be very proud but ultimately he was not good enough. I think Rey Vargas will go on to do a lot in the sport.
"Gavin has improved so much but he was not letting his hands go and that was the frustrating thing. It was a little bit of inexperience. If he did what he did in the ninth from the fifth round onwards then he would've had a chance." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing/39093588 |
Inverness Caledonian Thistle 2-1 Rangers - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Billy Mckay scores a stunning overhead kick as Inverness Caley Thistle beat Rangers to move off bottom spot in the table. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Billy Mckay scored a stunning overhead kick as Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Rangers to move off bottom spot in the Premiership.
Mckay's goal came minutes after Iain Vigurs had missed a penalty for the hosts.
Inverness took a first-half lead thanks to Greg Tansey's long-range strike.
Rangers levelled through Martyn Waghorn's penalty after Lee Wallace was downed but the Ibrox side ultimately fell to a second straight defeat.
They remain six points behind second-placed Aberdeen, who entertain Ross County on Saturday.
Victory takes Inverness one point above Hamilton Academical, who visit Celtic on Saturday.
Vigurs' spot-kick was poor and easily saved by Wes Foderingham. Amazingly, it did not matter.
What happened next was utterly fantastic from an Inverness point of view. Mckay, with his back to goal, angled a perfect overhead kick into the left corner to earn a monumental win.
And no-one celebrated more than Vigurs.
It was in the last minute and is a game-changer in terms of the outlook of this season for boss Richie Foran.
There is a renewed steel about Caley Thistle these past few weeks, a return to the "old Inverness' as Foran describes it. That was on show in spades against Rangers.
Tansey's opener was as good as Mckay's winner. He arrived on to a blocked Liam Polworth shot and curled a magnificent effort home.
Inverness might have had a penalty when Polworth stayed on his feet after looking like he was caught by Wallace.
Defensively, the home side harried, blocked, diverted. They dropped a little too deep and were made to pay despite surviving a few scary moments.
They reacted well to conceding, though, and Tansey was unlucky with a fierce drive that Foderingham save brilliantly.
The dramatic nature of the victory should give Inverness the shot in the arm they need. They were tremendous.
Rangers started the match superbly. They were incisive and crisp in their passing and created a few chances. But, as has so often been the case this season, they lacked a cutting edge.
Barrie McKay nodded over from a great position before Emerson Hyndman missed one great chance then hesitated and lost another.
Rangers began to hem Inverness in during the second half and got the break they badly needed.
Louis Laing was outfoxed by a one-two but rashly slid in, took Wallace out and conceded a soft spot-kick. Waghorn made no mistake.
It looked like Rangers would kick on on from there but Inverness had other ideas.
The Ibrox side have now won only once in their last seven league matches and face a huge struggle to overtake second-top Aberdeen.
• None Goal! Inverness CT 2, Rangers 1. Billy McKay (Inverness CT) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the top left corner.
• None Penalty saved! Iain Vigurs (Inverness CT) fails to capitalise on this great opportunity, right footed shot saved in the bottom left corner.
• None Danny Wilson (Rangers) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Penalty conceded by Danny Wilson (Rangers) after a foul in the penalty area.
• None Brad McKay (Inverness CT) wins a free kick on the right wing.
• None Attempt saved. Billy McKay (Inverness CT) right footed shot from a difficult angle on the left is saved in the centre of the goal.
• None Attempt missed. Danny Wilson (Rangers) header from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the left. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39000462 |
Why is RBS still losing money? - BBC News | 2017-02-25 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A lost decade: watching RBS develop has not been a very rewarding experience - for anyone. | Business | When RBS lost £24bn in 2008, my daughter was half way through junior school.
She's now doing her A-levels and RBS is still losing billions.
Next year she'll apply for university - next year RBS will lose another few billion.
Watching RBS develop has not been a very rewarding experience - for anyone.
Taxpayers have seen the £45bn they sank into the bank more than offset by £58bn of losses and counting.
The RBS headcount has shrunk by 100,000 in that time, with thousands more yet to lose jobs as the bank shrinks further and branches close.
If there has been a scandal going, RBS has been involved.
Fines for PPI, Libor rigging, foreign exchange fixing, squeezing small businesses for profit, and selling risky mortgages have laid waste to any earnings the core UK bank has been making.
In terms of fines for past misconduct the worst is yet to come in the form of a whopping fine from US authorities for RBS's role in the subprime mortgage crisis.
That should be settled this year but if RBS gets much change out of £10bn it will be considered a pretty good result.
And yet... beneath all this wreckage is a UK-focused bank that lent £24bn into the UK economy and has been churning out a profit of about £1bn every three months.
Sadly, that bank will have to wait till 2018 to see the light of day.
So why has it taken RBS so much longer than others to heal itself?
Lloyds and Barclays are both making a profit, the US banks at the epicentre of the 2008 financial earthquake are flying high while RBS shares need to double in value for the UK taxpayer to break even.
A former senior Treasury official told the BBC: "You have to remember that wherever something bad or unwise was happening, RBS was at the forefront.
"It took the biggest risks, was involved in every scandal, was the most aggressive, made the most absurd acquisition (£50bn for ABN Amro in the teeth of the crisis) and had the biggest balance sheet in the world."
That put it in the worst possible position to recover from the crisis.
Which begs another question. Why wasn't the fix imposed in 2009 more radical?
Some £45bn was pumped in for an 81% stake. In hindsight, that was nowhere near enough and the coalition government of 2010 should have done more to fix it after it had survived the initial crisis.
He told the BBC: "We should have recapitalised the banks much quicker like in the United States and then allow the conduct issues to come back when the banks were making money.
"In the UK, the banks didn't have sufficient capital and got hit by the conduct issues at the same time, and this bank (RBS) had that in spades."
But remember, the economic and political picture looked very different in 2010.
Austerity was the name of the game and George Osborne could ill afford to be seen to be throwing more money at RBS, possibly paying to fully nationalise it, when he was making swingeing cuts elsewhere.
Not only that but there were real hopes that RBS would make a profit in 2011 and the share price was on the way up.
It looked like the government could get away without putting in any extra money. So it didn't.
That turned out to be a very false dawn as the eurozone crisis hit and the full magnitude of past misconduct began to emerge.
There was also a battle over what kind of bank RBS should try to be.
The man heading the bank at the time, Stephen Hester, wanted to hang on to the investment banking bits in the hope that when the world returned to normal, the high profits usually associated with trading - helping companies raise money and advising them - would help the bank return to health.
The Treasury disagreed and since it owned 80% of the bank, Stephen Hester was shown the door in 2013.
Former Treasury officials acknowledge that at least two of his five years in charge was wasted in strategic wrangling with the government.
We still care about this humbled giant because we still own so much of it and the prospect of the taxpayer getting its money back is still a very distant one.
Compare that to Lloyds which has paid back nearly all the £20bn put in.
As discussed, RBS was a much sicker bank than Lloyds - and failing to recognise that earlier led to another mistake.
The government overpaid for its stake.
Under enormous pressure, working all night, with the prospect of cash machines not working on a Monday morning, the government agreed to pay roughly 500p a share in today's money.
The financial crisis led to drastic action by the government
That was what each share was worth on paper at the time - or the so called "book value".
A couple of weeks later, the US government paid half that for the shares it bought in US banks.
That enabled the US government to sell off its stakes much earlier.
Now, the prospect of selling at a big loss is an unattractive one for the government and the prospect of a bank predominantly owned by the government is an unattractive one for investors.
They know that one day there will be a big seller of the shares. It's a stand-off that keeps the price stubbornly low.
There is a core bank churning out profits, a billion pounds a quarter and today's announcement included the first confident prediction of bottom line profit we have seen from Ross McEwan
There is still pain ahead but there is also light.
Who knows, by the time my daughter leaves home, RBS may be back in the black. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39074815 |
Should 'catfishing' be made illegal? - BBC News | 2017-02-25 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Anna Rowe is calling for a law change after being duped by a man with a fake profile online. | UK | Anna Rowe had a whirlwind romance with Antony Ray after meeting him through the dating app Tinder.
But their 14-month relationship came crashing down when she discovered his profile was a fake.
His name was not Antony and he was not single.
In fact, he was a married dad who had initially used photos of a Bollywood actor on his profile and had lured in other women too.
"He used me like a hotel with benefits under the disguise of a romantic, loving relationship that he knew I craved," says Anna.
The practice of using a fake profile to start an online romance is known as "catfishing".
Now Anna, 44, from Kent, has launched a petition calling for it to be made illegal.
But how serious is catfishing and is it practical to make it a crime?
Many dating apps and sites offer advice on how to spot fake profiles
More than half of online dating users say they have come across a fake profile, according to consumer group Which?
While the number of people defrauded in the UK by online dating scams reached a record high in 2016.
There were 3,889 victims of so-called romance fraud last year, who handed over a record £39m.
It has become so prevalent, that it led to the creation of reality TV show Catfish - which is dedicated to helping victims learn the true identity of their online romances.
Currently catfishing is not illegal but elements of the activity could be covered by different parts of the law.
If a victim hands over money, the "catfish" could be prosecuted for fraud.
Someone using a fake profile to post offensive messages or doctored images designed to humiliate could also face criminal action.
A review of social media and the law by the House of Lords in 2014 concluded there was enough current legislation to cover crimes committed online.
New guidance was also issued by the CPS in October to help the police identify online crimes - including trolling and virtual mobbing.
But Anna thinks the law needs to go further.
Writing on her petition, she said: "I did not or would not consent to have a sexual relationship with a married man, let alone a man who was actively having relations with multiple women simultaneously.
"His behaviour was definitely premeditated showing his intent to use women, yet the current law will not find his actions a criminal offence."
Tony Neate, chief executive of Get Safe Online, recognises the devastating impact catfishing can have on victims.
"It can ruin a life. I know there have been suicides because it's affected someone badly," he says.
"It can affect their mental stability and lead to depression and the victims feel they can't trust anyone again.
"I do think we need to look more wisely at this in relation to how it is tackled at the moment."
Mr Neate, a former police officer, says there should be a "discussion" about punishing the worst catfishing offenders.
But he raises concerns about how practical a new law would be to implement.
"I really feel for that poor woman [Anna] but we have got to be realistic on how far we got and how the police would be able to enforce it," he says.
"Let's have the discussion because we can't have people being hurt and it's something we have got to look at."
Many dating websites offer users advice on how to spot a scammer and tips to avoid being taken in by a fake profile. (See "Tips to avoid catfishes", below)
Popular dating site Match.com has a team which will remove unwanted accounts and check photos and personal ads.
It also has a built-in screening system that can help identify suspicious accounts, remove them and prevent re-registration.
Lovestruck has a verification service that can confirm members are single and professional by checking their profiles against their other social media sites.
But the advice has not stopped many people being duped.
Last month, university professor Judith Lathlean revealed how she was tricked out of £140,000 by a gang using a fake profile.
Ife Ojo, 31, and Olusegun Agbaje, 43, were jailed in 2016 after conning a woman out of £1.6m using a fictional character.
But Andrew McClelland, chief executive of the Online Dating Association - the trade body for the industry - believes legislating against catfishing would be "difficult".
He said there could be genuine reasons why someone might not use their real details online - for example if they had been in an abusive relationship and did not want their ex-partner to find them.
Data protection and freedom of expression would also be an issue when it came to enforcing such a law, he added.
"The biggest problem this faces is how do you legislate against someone lying?" says Mr McClelland.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39078201 |
Six Nations 2017: Scotland v Wales starts pivotal weekend - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Injury-hit Scotland will attempt to end a decade-long winless streak against Wales as the Six Nations resumes this weekend. | null | Scotland will attempt to end their decade-long winless streak against Wales with a team missing five key men as the Six Nations resumes this weekend.
Not since 2007 have Vern Cotter's men won a Six Nations match against Wales, with the average margin of defeat 15 points in that period.
Ireland have recalled Lions fly-half Jonny Sexton as they look to re-establish themselves in the title race with a win over a resurgent France.
And Sexton's main rival to be the Lions' 10 this summer, Owen Farrell, will lead unbeaten England out against the Azzurri at Twickenham on Sunday as he wins his 50th cap in arguably his most impressive championship yet.
Farrell has a new partner at outside-centre in former rugby league star Ben Te'o for a fixture that England have never lost, coach Eddie Jones content to try out new combinations against at Italy side on a nine-match losing run in the Six Nations.
With James Haskell back at flanker after coming off the bench to great effect in the wins over France and Wales, it is a more direct, muscular selection from Jones, blessed with a greater depth of talent than either Scotland or Wales.
In an entertaining, free-scoring tournament so far, the clash at Murrayfield is pivotal to two sides who have shown both signs of rebirth and flashes of old flaws thus far.
With one win and one defeat apiece, Saturday's early kick-off will go a long way to defining the season not only of the two sides but of their coaches, Cotter in his last campaign in charge, Rob Howley once again in a caretaker role as Warren Gatland focuses on Lions preparation and selection.
The fixture has often produced classics - not least a Wales win in 1988 garlanded by superb tries from Jonathan Davies and Ieuan Evans, and the 31-24 thriller in 2010 when Wales were 10 points down on 76 minutes.
And despite recent history it is arguably the hardest of the third round matches to call, although the loss of Scotland's captain and place kicker Greig Laidlaw to injury and the return of talismanic winger George North to Wales's ranks may prove pivotal.
Ireland ran up 63 points against Italy in Rome a fortnight ago, and after a chastening opening-day defeat in Edinburgh a victory over France would keep their hopes of a third Six Nations title in four years alive.
France have lost their last four away matches in this competition but led England until late at Twickenham at the start of the month, and came past Scotland in Paris with a blend of power and guile that hinted that their long statistical and stylistic slump may be coming to an end.
While the return of captain Rory Best after a stomach bug will be welcomed in Dublin, Sexton's return is not without controversy.
He has played very little rugby this season, this most physical of fly-halves once again dogged by injury, and in his absence Paddy Jackson has appeared liberated from the unflattering comparisons of old, kicking 12 of his 13 goals to be leading points scorer in this year's tournament.
Farrell, meanwhile, has shown a craft with ball in hand this winter to match what was always considered his defining strength, that ability from kicking tee across the pitch and no matter what the pressure.
It was his long, flat pass that sent Daly away for the late try in Cardiff a fortnight ago that kept England on course for a final-day Grand Slam decider in Dublin and maintained the extraordinary 15-match unbeaten run under Jones.
England have not yet fired fully this year, coming from behind in the final quarter against both France and Wales.
But what is ominous for Italy is that strength in depth on the replacements' bench and the impact it is consistently having in big matches.
Under Jones England have scored a cumulative 83 points more than their various opponents in the last 20 minutes of matches, while Italy - weaker in their starting XV, weaker still on the bench - have shipped almost half their total points conceded in the last 20 minutes of their opening two matches.
So many options does Jones have that he can afford to leave Jonathan Joseph, scorer of three tries in the corresponding fixture last year, out of his match-day squad altogether.
And with star prop Mako Vunipola returning to the bench after recovering from a knee injury, anything else than a heavy defeat would count as a victory of sorts for Italy's Irish coach Conor O'Shea. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39076520 |
Andrew Trimble: Rugby, religion and me - BBC News | 2017-02-25 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Ireland rugby international Andrew Trimble on how his spirituality enhances his love of the game. | Northern Ireland | They are some of the best-known lines from one of the nation's favourite poems, the mantra of numerous self-help manuals and an inspiration for a range of politicians from President Franklin D Roosevelt to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same."
But while the words of Rudyard Kipling's poem are familiar, the application of them is altogether more challenging. How does one live without being lifted by success or dumped by failure? How can anyone maintain such detachment from the vicissitudes of life?
After playing in 69 international rugby matches, Ireland's wing three-quarter Andrew Trimble knows the highs and lows of professional sport. Last year, the team achieved its best ever series of results, with victories over southern hemisphere giants Australia and South Africa and then, for the first time in 111 years, Ireland beat the reigning world champions, the New Zealand All Blacks.
"There's no bigger moment than beating the All Blacks," Trimble explains. "After the game, we were walking around just shaking our heads and saying, 'What have we done? We've just beaten the All Blacks!' No Irish team has ever done this before."
Andrew Trimble says his spirituality enhances his love of rugby
So was his life suddenly and completely fulfilled by winning these important matches?
"I love the game," he says. "It's a driving force and a massive part of what I want to do. But it's important to be reminded that there's something else out there, there's something more important than rugby."
We're seated in the wooden pews of Ballyalbany Presbyterian Church in County Monaghan, about two miles from where the international team has just completed an open training session in preparation for Saturday's Six Nations match against France.
Standing on the touchline throughout the session, it's hard to imagine how rugby union professionals can do anything other than submit themselves to the demands of the game. It's relentlessly fast, consistently ferocious. It is all-consuming.
Off the field, Trimble is impeccably courteous to every autograph-hunter and maintains that having "something more important than rugby" actually enables him to cope better with the pressures of professional sport.
Just 16 months ago, after two operations on the same foot injury were followed by a stress fracture, he began to believe that his career might be over. Trimble was dropped from Ireland's squad for World Cup 2015 and, aged 29, was faced with losing something that had dominated his life since the age of seven.
"If it's over, you have to draw on something else so rugby doesn't become the be-all-and-end-all. It doesn't define me, I'm defined by something more important. It's a different mindset and perspective."
So what is that perspective?
"There's an eternal perspective," he explains. "Rugby lasts for 10, 15 years but the perspective of having a faith, and a sincere faith, is something that doesn't end and something that lasts forever."
Trimble believes that spirituality enhances his love for the sport.
"I'm far happier having that perspective and knowing that there is a bigger picture than putting all my trust in rugby, in a career that can be over in 10 years or a lot less than 10 years."
He says that his Christian faith has also enabled him to fight against the temptation to become entirely self-absorbed.
Last year, he visited a camp in Tanzania. It's run by Oxfam and houses hundreds of refugees from Burundi. He was profoundly moved by the experience.
"Some of these people will live their entire lives in refugee camps. They had families, they had careers, they had hopes and dreams and they've been cut short."
Trimble laments his own ignorance of the issue and says if he hadn't been taken to Tanzania by Oxfam, he would never have known about the refugee crisis in Africa. And his motivation to do something is shaped by his theology.
Andrew Trimble during his visit to Tanzania
"Pope Francis says they're all created in the image of God. They're just like you and me, they're no less special. It's a real shame that they're forgotten about because they're considered less important."
With that, our time together runs out and Trimble returns to the Ireland training camp - with the French in his sights.
He certainly embodies Kipling's view that triumph and disaster should be treated "just the same". But in some ways, his approach is closer to that of 17th Century poet Richard Lovelace. In his poem, To Lucasta, Going to the Wars, Lovelace argues that his affections are only heightened by being answerable to a higher authority.
"I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not honour more."
According to Andrew Trimble, an eternal perspective does the same for him - win, lose or draw. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39070127 |
Lizzy Yarnold wins Skeleton World Championships bronze - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | British Olympic champion Lizzy Yarnold holds her nerve to finish third at the Skeleton World Championships in Germany. | null | Last updated on .From the section Winter Sports
Coverage: Live coverage on Connected TV, BBC Red Button and the BBC Sport website
Olympic champion Lizzy Yarnold won bronze at the Skeleton World Championships in Germany.
The 28-year-old Briton was fastest in the first of Saturday's two runs to climb from fourth to third and she held her position in the final run.
Gold went to World Cup leader Jacqueline Lolling, with fellow German Tina Hermann finishing second.
Yarnold's overall time of two minutes 36.08 seconds was 0.73secs behind Lolling.
She returned to competition in December after taking a year out and will attempt to retain her Olympic title in South Korea next year.
"This is where I want and need to be - and is a major stepping stone," Yarnold told BBC Sport.
"It shows I've made the right decisions over the past couple of years and means more than I could ever explain.
"I've had a few head and back issues recently and I physically wouldn't be here without the help of my physio and my family.
"I am still dealing with some stuff but I am lucky with the team I have and that helps make me a stronger person and a better athlete."
Despite all of Lizzy Yarnold's previous gold medals, World Championships bronze is a huge result both for her at the British skeleton team.
She seemed to ease to Olympic, World Championship, European and World Cup titles between 2013 and 2015 - but, in truth, those successes left her exhausted.
Although a year sabbatical has seen her return refreshed, younger rivals have emerged and the reappearance of dizzy spells - which first emerged in late 2014 - as well as the appearance of a new serious back problem, has made her comeback challenging than expected.
However, despite just one World Cup podium finish this season Yarnold states she's now a "better slider" than before her break - and she has proved that when the big occasion arises she can still deliver.
That is a crucial confidence boost for the British team, because with Laura Deas yet to rediscover the form that led to World Cup podiums last season and the GB men some way off he pace, Yarnold remains their only realistic hope of an Olympic skeleton medal in 2018. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/39088575 |
Six Nations 2017: Ireland 19-9 France - BBC Sport | 2017-02-25 | null | Ireland beat France 19-9 in Dublin to keep alive their hopes of winning a third Six Nations Championship in four years. | null | Last updated on .From the section Irish Rugby
Ireland kept their hopes of a third Six Nations title in four years alive by recovering from an early deficit to beat France in a bruising encounter.
Two Camille Lopez penalties put France 6-0 up but Conor Murray's converted try edged Ireland into a one-point lead.
Johnny Sexton added two penalties and a drop goal in a keenly contested second half, with Lopez and replacement Paddy Jackson trading late penalties.
Sexton, back after injury, passed the 600-point mark in international rugby.
• None Win keeps us in title hunt - Murray
Ireland move a point ahead of Scotland at the top of the table, with England's game at home to Italy to come on Sunday.
Joe Schmidt's men, beaten in their first match in Scotland, have 10 points from their three matches and now face Wales away and England at home.
France left the Aviva Stadium empty-handed to remain on five points and they next host Italy before a final-day trip to Cardiff.
Ireland remain unbeaten at home in the Six Nations during the tenure of coach Schmidt, a run stretching back to 2014, and they will go into their next game in Cardiff on 10 March with confidence.
France displayed glimpses of their much-heralded revival under their coach Guy Noves but showed signs of tiredness throughout the second half and their hopes of a first championship success since 2010 are now surely over.
Only once in the past 10 Six Nations meetings between these sides had the winning margin reached double digits, so Ireland will be happy to come away with a hard-fought win and deny their opponents a losing bonus point.
• Get all the latest Six Nations news by adding in the BBC Sport app.
France began in intense fashion as they sought to carry through the momentum gained from their narrow defeat by England and morale-boosting success over Scotland.
Their enterprising start was epitomised by an outrageous dummy by scrum-half Baptiste Serin, which almost yielded a try, while centre Remi Lamerat was only denied a score by a knock-on by his midfield partner Gael Fickou after Lopez's audacious cross-field kick had set up the chance.
In the event, the visitors only had two Lopez penalties to show for their early dominance and it was Ireland who assumed control for the remainder of the half.
The hosts were rewarded for their superiority in territory and possession when Robbie Henshaw made ground after a five-metre scrum and passed to man-of-the-match Murray, who dived over from close range for the only try of the game.
Ireland should have gone in at half-time further ahead, but turned down a couple of kickable penalties in favour of kicking for the corner, while the French defended stoutly to keep their half-time arrears to a single point.
France looked a more confident, settled and better prepared side for periods in the first half, but despite their squad having enjoyed an unaccustomed break from Top 14 action last weekend, they were already showing signs of fatigue by the interval.
It was Ireland who showed the greater purpose and spirit after the break, with fly-half Sexton defying the fact that he had been out of action through injury for the past five weeks by pulling the strings and piling on the points.
In the first half, the Leinster man converted Murray's try and almost created a try for Keith Earls when he kicked towards the corner after a fine Ireland wraparound move along the backs, only for wing Noa Nakaitaci to ground the ball first.
The number 10's early second-half penalty was followed by an exquisite drop-goal, which brought the home supporters to their feet and the Aviva Stadium to life.
A further penalty extended Ireland's advantage in a breathless second half and although the French put up some resistance, the hosts showed the greater resilience and, with the Ireland pack largely in control, the outcome never looked in doubt.
After Sexton was withdrawn to a rapturous reception, Lopez pulled France back to bonus-point range with his third penalty, but Jackson's kick with four minutes remaining ensured the Noves' side went home empty-handed and broken-hearted.
Replacements: Trimble for Kearney (51), Jackson for Sexton (69), Marmion for Murray (79), C. Healy for McGrath (60), Scannell for Best (68), J. Ryan for Furlong (74), Henderson for D. Ryan (60), O'Mahony for O'Brien (68).
Replacements: Camara for Spedding (74), Chavancy for Lamerat (60), Machenaud for Serin (62), Ben Arous for Baille (51), Tolofua for Guirado (62), Atonio for Slimani (51), Le Devedec for Vahaamahina (51), Ollivon for Le Roux (60). | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39072577 |
England 36-15 Italy: Eddie Jones says match 'not proper rugby' - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | England head coach Eddie Jones says his side weren't allowed to play "proper rugby", but Italy boss Conor O'Shea insists that any criticism is "hypocritical". | null | England head coach Eddie Jones says his side weren't allowed to play "proper rugby" during their 36-15 Six Nations victory over Italy in which the Azzurri employed an unusual tactic at the breakdown to disrupt the game.
However, Italy head coach Conor O'Shea insists that any criticism is "hypocritical" and that his team should be proud. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39095919 |
Did Trump win because his name came first in key states? - BBC News | 2017-02-26 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | A leading US political scientists thinks Donald Trump is president because his name came first on the ballot in some critical swing states. | Magazine | One of the world's leading political scientists believes Donald Trump most likely won the US presidential election for a very simple reason, writes Hannah Sander - his name came first on the ballot in some critical swing states.
Jon Krosnick has spent 30 years studying how voters choose one candidate rather than another, and says that "at least two" US presidents won their elections because their names were listed first on the ballot, in states where the margin of victory was narrow.
At first sight Krosnick's idea might seem to make little sense. Are voters really so easily swayed?
"Most of the people that voted Republican were always going to vote Republican and most of the people that voted Democrat were always going to vote Democrat," says James Tilley, professor of politics at the University of Oxford.
"There is a human tendency to lean towards the first name listed on the ballot," says Krosnick, a politics professor at Stanford University. "And that has caused increases on average of about three percentage points for candidates, across lots of races and states and years."
It has the biggest impact on those who know the least about the election they are voting in.
You are more likely to be affected, Krosnick says, "if you are feeling uninformed and yet feel obligated to cast a vote - or if you are feeling deeply conflicted, say between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump."
When an election is very close the effect can be decisive, Krosnick says - and in some US states, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the 2016 election was very close.
A ballot paper used in the 2016 presidential election in Wisconsin
"In the states where Trump won very narrowly, his name was also listed first on the ballot in most of those states," says Krosnick.
Some always list parties in the same order. Some allow the state's officials to make a new choice each time. Some put the party that lost in the last election at the top of the ballot. Some list alphabetically.
In 2002, a court overturned the result of the mayoral election in the Californian city of Compton, after hearing testimony about the name-order effect. The judge decided that in this instance, the decision to list one of the candidates first had been deliberate and unfair.
"Candidates whose last names begin with letters picked near the end of the lottery have it tough," Krosnick explained during the Compton court case. "They will never get the advantage that comes from being listed first on the ballot."
There are numerous cases where the primacy effect is thought to have influenced the result of an vote.
In January 2008, Hillary Clinton unexpectedly beat Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary - part of the long battle to decide which of them would become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. Professor Michael Traugott from the University of Michigan believes that name order enabled Clinton to pick up extra votes. Her name was at the top of a long list. Obama's was near the end.
The primacy effect can also affect polling.
The exit poll from the 2004 US presidential election led pundits on the night to believe that Democratic Party candidate John Kerry would win, when in fact he went on to lose to incumbent president George W Bush. The poll had listed Democrat candidate Kerry before Republican candidate Bush.
What can be done to prevent the primacy effect? One option is to randomise the ballot papers. The states of California and Ohio have both adopted this system. An equal number of ballot papers is issued with a different candidate at the top of the list. This spreads the benefit of the name-order effect across the candidates.
In 1996, Bill Clinton received 4% more votes in the regions of California that listed him first in the ballot papers than in those where he featured lower down the list.
Research by Robert Darcy of Oklahoma State University shows that, given the choice, most election officials tend to list their own party's candidates first.
In one famous example of this, Florida's rules meant that Republican governor Jeb Bush's brother George W Bush was placed at the top of the list of candidates in his state, in the 2000 presidential election.
Bush went on to win Florida - which turned out to be a decisive state - by a very narrow margin.
George Bush was listed first in Florida in 2000 - the "butterfly ballot" used in Palm Beach (pictured) also led to arguments in court
"Because of the fact that different states in the US order candidate names differently and idiosyncratically, and almost none of the states do what Ohio and California do which is to rotate candidate name order across ballots to be fair, we have unfortunately had at least two recent election outcomes that are the result of bias in the name ordering," says Krosnick.
"If all of those states had rotated name order fairly, most likely George W Bush would not have been elected president in 2000, nor would Donald Trump have been elected president in 2016."
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-39082465 |
Garth Crooks' team of the week: Ibrahimovic, Gabbiadini, Kane, Fabregas, Kante - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Which two players are 'the coach's dream? Whose presence at Old Trafford is like that of Roy Keane? Find out in Garth's team of the week. | null | Jose Mourinho won his first trophy as Manchester United manager, his side beating Southampton in a thrilling EFL Cup final.
In the Premier League, Chelsea maintained their surge to the title by beating Swansea, while Tottenham are looking to chase them down after thrashing Stoke.
At the bottom end, Crystal Palace picked up a priceless win over Middlesbrough to move out of the relegation zone, but bottom side Sunderland lost to Everton.
Do you agree with my team of the week or would you go for a different team? Why not pick your very own team of the week from the shortlist selected by BBC Sport journalists and share it with your friends?
Pick your Team of the Week Pick your XI from our list and share with your friends.
What a save from Tyrone Mings. The Bournemouth centre-half directed a sensational header towards the top corner of Ben Foster's net only for the England keeper to pull off a match-winning left-handed stop.
But how does Tony Pulis keep producing such effective teams? He always seems to leave clubs in better condition than when he arrived and currently West Brom are a pleasure to watch, which is something I can't say with all of Pulis' teams. The Baggies have 12 games left and need 10 points to achieve their best ever Premier League tally. With Foster in this form it looks like they have every chance.
It was a tremendous ball for Idrissa Gueye and Ross Barkley should have scored in the second half after another wonderful cross by Seamus Coleman. The Irishman is playing out of his skin at the moment and for my money is Everton's player of the season.
And yet I can't understand for the life of me (and I apologise to Evertonians) how Manchester United or City haven't lured him away from Goodison Park. Coleman brings a dimension to Everton very few full-backs bring to a team. The problem for the opposition is that Coleman has been doing it for some considerable time. Coleman is an infectious player and it's a joy to watch him play.
It has been a long and somewhat distinguished career for Gareth McAuley and he couldn't have spent his 500th appearance in football better than this. West Brom's 2-1 win over Bournemouth had an element of good fortune about it. The Baggies' first goal was a deflection before McAuley was handed a celebratory gift by the Cherries' unpredictable keeper Artur Boruc.
I have seen Boruc perform heroics for Bournemouth in the past and then he goes and does something that leaves you utterly puzzled. Not that McAuley wasn't grateful for the present - in fact he could have scored a second but for the intervention of the crossbar. Nevertheless, McAuley did grab his sixth league goal of the season, which is not bad for a centre-half who started his career at Linfield.
I thought that referee Martin Atkinson made absolutely the right call in giving a penalty to Hull when Michael Keane was adjudged to have raised his arm above his head and gained an advantage. At that point the game looked to be running away from Burnley. It took something a bit special to get the Clarets back into the match - but who would have thought it would have been the very man responsible for putting them behind in the first place?
Keane brought the ball down on his chest, allowed it to fall to the ground before dispatching the strike past the goalkeeper. You also have to bear in mind that all this happened in a crowded penalty area. Not only was it impressive it also was nothing less than Burnley deserved.
I have seen Patrick van Aanholt in this mood before - looking mean and searching for goals. A useful attribute to have, particularly if you are a full-back, which is precisely why Sam Allardyce brought his former player at Sunderland to Selhurst Park.
A poor signing can cripple a manager while the right one can save him. Premier League survival is by no means guaranteed for the Eagles and that is why it is imperative to have a player like Van Aanholt in your team who knows exactly what is required.
At the end of the fixture at Stamford Bridge I engaged in a debate over just how good N'Golo Kante actually was. One journalist suggested he was the best player he had ever seen without the ball at his feet, and another thought he was better than the only other Chelsea player with a similar reputation, Claude Makelele - now part of the Swansea backroom staff and arguably the best holding midfield player of his generation.
I thought Kante's performance against the Swans was as effective as any he has produced this season. The 'silent force' continues to carry Chelsea through sticky periods when they carelessly lose the ball, only for the Frenchman to win it back with the minimum of fuss. To hear Swans manager Paul Clement say that Kante had a fantastic performance said it all really.
This was by no means a stellar performance from Chelsea but it was by Cesc Fabregas. Manager Antonio Conte left out Nemanja Matic against a most impressive Swansea for the one player in his squad who is a world-class passer of the ball. Fabregas may not have the running power of Matic but he can cut a defence to ribbons with a swing of his left foot.
The Spaniard could have had a hat-trick in this game but for some poor finishing, but it didn't matter in the end. Chelsea were comfortable winners after a couple of scary moments by Swansea - notably a stonewall penalty which referee Neil Swarbrick chose to ignore at a crucial time in the match. The Blues are now 10 points clear at the top of the table having played some unconvincing football recently but what they have shown is the sort of maturity and consistency some of their competitors have lacked.
This player is the nearest thing I've seen to N'Golo Kante. His ability to cover the ground is also remarkable. There are those of us who found running, unless it was absolutely necessary, tedious, but players like Gueye and Kante see it as their life support. They are the coach's dream, particularly if the coach has little to offer the team other than effort.
Not so with Antonio Conte and especially Ronald Koeman. The Dutch insist that players in their country must know what to do with the ball when it arrives at their feet, and Gueye certainly does. What I like about Gueye is that when he wins the ball he almost without fail completes the pass, which makes winning the ball in the first place much more fun.
Against Sunderland he scored his first goal for the Toffees with a delicious strike into the roof of the net. The problem with these defensive midfield players is that when they score one, rather like tasting Champagne for the first time, they tend to want another.
To see Spurs go three goals up after just 37 minutes at White Hart Lane, even against a non-existent Stoke City, was impressive, particularly after the no-show against Gent in the Europa League a few days earlier.
In a first half where everything Harry Kane touched seemed to turn to gold, the striker's best effort, struck with the inside of this right foot, screamed past the upright. Had he scored, it would have been my goal of the season.
Equally, Stoke's first-half performance was so distressing I was beginning to wonder if their players had spent the entire week trawling the streets of the city campaigning in the Stoke central by-election. I can't recall seeing a more abject performance from a Premier League side. Woeful.
Ninety-two minutes into the game and he was still putting his body on the line for the team. His goals were brilliantly taken and he seems made for the big occasion. Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the difference in the EFL Cup final between Manchester United and Southampton who, by the way, were also fantastic.
However, what this victory signified was that a manager is nothing without his star players and a benevolent chairman, a fact that will not be lost on Claudio Ranieri this week. Manchester United have seriously benefited from bringing Ibrahimovic to Old Trafford. He has almost single-handedly injected a presence into the United set-up that has not been seen since the departure of Roy Keane.
Nevertheless the reality is that Ibrahimovic is a football 'senior citizen' and cannot continue to punish himself like this indefinitely. At some stage Paul Pogba (who went AWOL again against the Saints) has to step up to the plate and start showing some true leadership, especially in the big games. Mourinho has no choice but to keep Ibrahimovic onside, at least until Pogba grows up.
It is not very often a footballer scores two goals in a cup final, one of which is worthy of winning the trophy, but leaves the arena with absolutely nothing. Well, that is the tale of Manolo Gabbiadini, who for me was sensational against Manchester United in the EFL Cup final.
In fact, Gabbiadini's evening started very badly. What should have been a perfectly good goal was disallowed by an overzealous referee's assistant. Nevertheless, everything about Gabbiadini's play was perfect. His touch and hold-up play were wonderful.
Yet it was his second goal that put Southampton level that did it for me. To turn on a sixpence, provide Chris Smalling no opportunity to intervene, and leave a world-class goalkeeper like David de Gea rooted to the spot to watch the ball roll agonisingly past was pure genius.
I have sung the praises of Gabbiadini in my team of the week before but this performance was really of the highest quality. And a tragedy in some ways that he left with nothing to show for his exploits. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39098821 |
Kim Jong-nam death: Unravelling the mystery - BBC News | 2017-02-26 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | All the markings of a John Le Carre novel: a world leader's brother, an international airport and a deadly nerve agent. | Asia | It's got all the markings of a John Le Carre novel: the killing of the North Korean leader's brother with one of the deadliest chemical weapons created by man. But who by? And why? Many questions remain unanswered.
Here's a look back at how the killing unfolded, the details that emerged, and the subsequent accusations and diplomatic row.
He was waiting at a budget departure hall inside Kuala Lumpur international airport when the attack happened. Leaked CCTV footage would later show the 45-year-old man loitering in the budget terminal, a rucksack slung over his shoulder, ahead of his return flight to the Chinese territory of Macau at 10:00.
Suddenly a woman in a long-sleeve white top approaches him from behind. Her hands grab his face, before she walks away. It's not clear if she uses a cloth or her bare hands to touch his face.
The attack is over in a matter of seconds.
CCTV footage appears to show a woman accosting Mr Kim in the airport
The man reportedly told airport staff that "someone had grabbed him from behind and splashed a liquid on his face".
He sought medical help at the airport, but later died en route to hospital.
A day later, he was confirmed to be Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Reports on the attack first start to emerge in South Korean media, who name the man as Kim Jong-nam - it's not until two days later that Malaysia confirms his identity.
To complicate matters, he was travelling on a passport under the name Kim Chol. It was not the first time Mr Kim had travelled under an assumed identity: he was caught trying to enter Japan using a false passport in 2001. He told officials he had been planning to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
Many believe it was this incident that led to his father's decision to pass him over for leadership, forcing him to live a life in exile. During a time of estrangement from his family, Mr Kim became one of the regime's highest-profile critics.
Theories abound that North Korea might have been involved in his murder - what some are already calling an assassination - despite a lack of proof.
South Korea was one of the first to point the finger at its northern neighbour.
Malaysian authorities begin the autopsy, ignoring demands from North Korea to send the body back for investigation.
Meanwhile, the first person suspected of involvement in the attack is arrested: a 28-year-old Vietnamese woman named Doan Thi Huong. Police say she was identified from CCTV footage taken at the airport, where she was seen wearing a white top emblazoned with the letters "LOL".
This CCTV image has been broadcast by South Korean and Malaysian media
Four days after the airport attack, Malaysia's deputy prime minister officially confirms the dead man is Kim Jong-nam.
Another female suspect, Siti Aisyah, a 25-year-old Indonesian, is named and arrested. Her Malaysian boyfriend, Muhammad Farid Jalaluddin, is briefly questioned by police.
Events take a bizarre turn when Siti Aisyah tells police she thought she was taking part in a bizarre TV prank with Mr Kim.
Indonesia's most senior policeman, Tito Karnavian, said Ms Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong had performed the prank on other men - persuading them to close their eyes before spraying them with water.
Siti Aisyah was the second suspect to be named
"She was not aware that it was an assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents," Mr Karnavian told reporters.
Tensions between Malaysia and North Korea also start to simmer after North Korea's ambassador to the country says Pyongyang will reject the results of the autopsy - he does not trust the inquiry, he says.
Malaysia also refuses to hand over the body until it receives a DNA sample from Mr Kim's next-of-kin.
Malaysian police arrest the first North Korean person over Mr Kim's death - a 46-year-old man called Ri Jong Chol.
A day later, Malaysian police widen their search to include four more suspects, all men from North Korea.
They are named as: Ri Ji Hyon, 33; Hong Song Hac, 34; O Jong Gil, 55, and Ri Jae Nam, 57.
Two of the suspects wanted by Malaysian police: Hong Song Hac, 34, and Ri Ji Hyon, 33
The deputy police chief said the men had left Malaysia on 13 February, the day Mr Kim was killed, after arriving on different days within the previous fortnight.
International police agency Interpol are later requested to issue an alert for the suspects.
At the same time, South Korea explicitly states it believes its northern neighbour was behind the killing of Kim Jong-nam.
Tensions between North Korea and Malaysia threaten to turn into a full-blown diplomatic row as the latter recalls its ambassador from the North Korean capital Pyongyang and summons the North Korean ambassador "to seek an explanation".
Fuji TV airs grainy CCTV footage of the attack for the first time. The lady with the white top emblazoned with the letters "LOL" is seen lunging at Kim Jong-nam.
Malaysian authorities say they are unable to formally identify the body because no family member has come forward. Security is high at the Kuala Lumpur mortuary, amid widespread speculation Mr Kim's son, Kim Han-sol, might travel to Malaysia.
Malaysia and North Korea continue to trade harsh words as the situation escalates.
A senior North Korean embassy official is named as one of two men wanted in connection with the killing as the investigation widens.
The men are Hyon Kwang Song, 44, the second secretary of the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur and Kim Uk II, 37, who works for North Korean airliner Air Koryo.
Malaysian police also confirm Mr Kim died after two women wiped a toxin on his face while he was waiting for his flight to Macau.
North Korea appears to blame Kim Jong-nam's death on Malaysia, without actually naming him.
The state news agency KCNA said only that "a citizen of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]" travelling on a diplomatic passport had died due to "a heart stroke".
Reports of poisoning were false, it said, slamming Malaysia for holding an autopsy without North Korea's permission.
It is the first time North Korean state media have referred to Mr Kim's killing.
One of the deadliest chemical weapons created by man is confirmed by Malaysia to have been the nerve agent that killed Kim Jong-nam.
Just a small drop of VX, which is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations, can kill a person within minutes.
One of the woman who attacked Mr Kim suffered symptoms of vomiting, which Malaysian officials say was probably due to exposure to the agent.
Weapons expert Bruce Bennett says a small quantity of VX was likely to have been put on cloths used by the attackers to touch his face, with a separate spray possibly used as a diversion.
Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar previously said the fact the woman who accosted Mr Kim immediately went to wash her hands showed she was "very aware" that she had been handling a toxin.
It would have begun affecting his nervous system immediately, causing first shaking and then death within minutes.
VX is not available commercially, which experts say points to some kind of government involvement. There are a number of North Korean organisations capable of directing such an attack, including the exclusive Guard Command. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39077603 |
Chelsea 3-1 Swansea City - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Chelsea stretch their lead at the top of the Premier League table to 11 points after victory over Swansea City at Stamford Bridge. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Chelsea stretched their lead at the top of the Premier League table to 11 points after victory over battling Swansea City at Stamford Bridge.
Cesc Fabregas marked his 300th Premier League appearance by firing the Blues ahead, poking the ball through the legs of Jack Cork and into the net.
The hosts were stunned when Swansea equalised from their first serious attempt on target on the stroke of half-time - Fernando Llorente heading in Gylfi Sigurdsson's free-kick.
Fabregas hit the bar before Pedro's curling effort restored the lead and Diego Costa netted the third from close range.
Swansea were denied a penalty when Cesar Azpilicueta handled inside the area at 1-1.
• None 'Chelsea will take some stopping now' - 5 Live's Football Daily
• None Reaction from Stamford Bridge and Saturday's other Premier League games
This was far from straightforward for Antonio Conte's side and had referee Neil Swarbrick awarded Swansea a penalty shortly before Pedro made it 2-1 then the outcome might have been different.
However, in the end Chelsea's sweeping forward play earned them a 10th straight home Premier League win as they took another significant step towards a second title in three seasons.
On a weekend when the first major silverware of the season - the EFL Cup - is handed out at Wembley, the Blues look unstoppable. They have 63 points from 26 games - three more than at the same stage in 2014-15 when last crowned champions of England.
Fabregas could have ended the game with four goals on his return to the side.
The Spain midfielder had a goal-bound shot deflected behind shortly before he opened the scoring, was denied by former Arsenal team-mate Lukasz Fabianski and also rattled the bar.
With former Blues midfielder Frank Lampard watching on, Chelsea turned on the style.
While it required an error from Fabianski to restore the lead, Eden Hazard's exquisite timing and pass for Costa to make it 3-1 was a delight.
Chelsea were forced to work hard for three points thanks to a well organised and energetic Swansea side and the Swans looked a shadow of the team that was bottom of the Premier League table five weeks ago.
Their four-point safety cushion at the start of the day is down to three, but boss Paul Clement will have been pleased with the way his side frustrated the runaway leaders for long spells.
Llorente's equaliser shook Chelsea who were showing signs of frustration before Pedro made it 2-1.
Swansea's next four games - Burnley (home), Hull City (away), Bournemouth (away) and Middlesbrough (home) - give them a chance to stay clear of the bottom three before they entertain Tottenham on 4 April.
'It was a clear handball' - what they said
Chelsea manager Antonio Conte: "We played very well, it was a good performance, and we created many chances to score. We conceded at the end of the first half, after the time was finished, so in this case there was a bit of luck, but we showed great character in the second half.
"We deserved a lot to win the game, now it's important to continue in this way."
Swansea City boss Paul Clement: "Any game we play and don't win we are disappointed. Chelsea are a very good side, they have fantastic quality and that was the difference. We didn't have a lot of chances but we came in at 1-1 for half-time and for long periods we defended really well.
"There was a big moment with the handball, I thought Cesar Azpilicueta handled it at 1-1, it's a clear handball. That gives you a chance to go 2-1 up but three minutes later you're 2-1 down with a soft goal. Based on chances they deserved to win, but there was big moment that didn't go our way, and who knows what might have happened."
Former England midfielder Jermaine Jenas: "I don't think Swansea should have had a penalty as the distance from Gylfi Sigurdsson to Cesar Azpilicueta is too close and Azpilicueta's arm is already out. His hand is there because he's trying to stop Sigurdsson's run."
Ex-England captain Alan Shearer: "I think it was a penalty. I think it was a deliberate movement of his hand towards the ball and I think Chelsea got away with one there. It could have been very different if the ref had given it.
"We've seen in recent weeks with Swansea that they made it very difficult for Liverpool at Anfield, they were unlucky to lose at Manchester City. They are very organised. The difference between Liverpool and City with this Chelsea side is the pace with which they go forward. That's why Cesc Fabregas was in the team today. He was brilliant. He's the one that started the goal off.
"It's topical that players are not working for mangers. The irony is last season we were sat here with a large bunch of these same Chelsea players - they weren't working for their manager and we know what happened. It's such a transformation now. We saw how brilliant they were with the ball but look at them now without it. The transformation from then to now is incredible."
Another assist for Sigurdsson - the stats
• None No player has more assists in the Premier League this season than Gylfi Sigurdsson (nine, level with Kevin de Bruyne).
• None Chelsea conceded in consecutive home league games for the first time under Antonio Conte.
• None Swansea have conceded 26 goals in their past 10 Premier League away games, an average of 2.6 per game.
• None Pedro has been directly involved in 10 goals in his past nine games for Chelsea in all competitions (seven goals, three assists).
• None Fernando Llorente has scored nine goals in all competitions this season for Swansea, three with his head, three with his left foot and three with his right.
Chelsea have nine days to prepare for their next game away to West Ham United on Monday, 6 March (20:00 GMT). Swansea entertain Burnley on Saturday, 4 March (15:00 GMT).
• None Attempt missed. Cesc Fàbregas (Chelsea) right footed shot from outside the box is too high. Assisted by Willian.
• None Goal! Chelsea 3, Swansea City 1. Diego Costa (Chelsea) left footed shot from the centre of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Eden Hazard.
• None Attempt missed. N'Golo Kanté (Chelsea) right footed shot from the centre of the box is too high. Assisted by Nemanja Matic.
• None Leroy Fer (Swansea City) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
• None Attempt saved. Gylfi Sigurdsson (Swansea City) right footed shot from outside the box is saved in the top centre of the goal. Navigate to the next page Navigate to the last page | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39012181 |
Six Nations 2017: 'I wanted three points, kickers said no' - Wales captain Jones - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Captain Alun Wyn Jones wanted to kick for goal at a crucial point against Scotland, but says his kickers said "no". | null | Last updated on .From the section Welsh Rugby
Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones wanted to kick for goal at a crucial stage of Saturday's 29-13 defeat by Scotland, but says his kickers said "no".
Wales opted to kick for the corner when trailing 16-13 in the 51st minute.
They were penalised at the ensuing line-out as Scotland recorded their first win over Wales since 2007.
"The kickers didn't want to so we just went for the corner," said 107-times capped Jones, who added he "would have liked to" have taken the points.
"We didn't do it, did we?" he added.
"And I got done for blocking at the back of the lift then, but, yeah, I would have liked to have gone for the three (points)."
The incident was more remarkable as Irish referee John Lacey could be heard saying a kick at goal had been indicated while Wales fly-half Dan Biggar could be heard asking Jones if he could kick for the corner.
After the match Jones said the referee had not been involved.
The penalty was awarded on the Scotland 22-metre line close to the touchline, so would normally be considered well within the range of place kickers Leigh Halfpenny, who kicked eight points, and Biggar.
Wales led 13-9 at half-time, but failed to add to their tally after the break as Scotland scored 20 unanswered points.
Jones felt the momentum shift started before the interval when Halfpenny missed a chance to give Wales a 10-point lead and man of the match Finn Russell cut the gap to four points with the last kick of the half.
"At the tail end of the first half they took an opportunity and then into the second half, but we coughed up possession a little too easily," he said.
Jones said he wanted Wales to improve their discipline for their next game against Ireland on Friday, 10 March in Cardiff.
"We gave away one or two soft penalties and Scotland did a good job of disrupting us at the breakdown in the second half," he added. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39092731 |
EFL Cup final: Does Manchester United win make season a success? - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Jose Mourinho and Zlatan Ibrahimovic's partnership hints at more success for Manchester United, writes Phil McNulty. | null | Jose Mourinho was back doing what he does best at Wembley on Sunday - lifting silverware, as Manchester United beat Southampton in the EFL Cup final.
Mourinho claimed the season's first major trophy and ensured success just months after his appointment despite a largely disappointing United performance which was rescued by two-goal inspiration Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
The 35-year-old Swede and Mourinho - instrumental in bringing him to Old Trafford after the pair forged a bond at Inter Milan - are now the two central figures leading United forward.
Can Mourinho and Ibrahimovic make Man Utd great again?
Mourinho was brought into Old Trafford as the manager who is as close to a guarantee of success and trophies as it gets after a silverware-lined career at Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
Old Trafford's joyless existence under Louis van Gaal demanded change and Mourinho was the identikit of the sort of manager required at the 'Theatre of Dreams' - a personality who would relish its history and surroundings rather than shrink from it.
Mourinho was also available and had a third Premier League triumph on his CV only 12 months earlier at Chelsea. It meant United were prepared to set to one side his track record for short-term stays in exchange for a quick fix.
United were thoroughly unconvincing at Wembley, but Mourinho and his teams invariably find a way to win trophies. And so it proved as Ibrahimovic headed home an 87th-minute winner.
Mourinho's move to bring the Swede in on a free transfer from Paris St-Germain was strategic and wise. He is a personality of equal stature and confidence, had a point to prove having never played in England and could provide the sort of charisma that had echoes of the great Eric Cantona.
How United needed Ibrahimovic on Sunday because for long periods they were desperately average, outplayed by Southampton and had their hand held by Lady Luck throughout.
If United are to build on this first trophy of the Mourinho era, Ibrahimovic's continued presence is essential because the EFL Cup final win is only the first building block in an edifice that requires considerable renovation after the dismal post-Sir Alex Ferguson years of David Moyes and Van Gaal.
Mourinho, however, is safe hands when it comes to winning trophies and United remain in serious contention for two more in the Europa League and FA Cup. This is a good start, but the success-hungry Portuguese will want more.
United's lean years simply could not continue with Pep Guardiola arriving at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp settling at Liverpool and Antonio Conte conducting a brilliant transformation of Mourinho's former charges Chelsea.
Mourinho won the Premier League twice, as well as the FA Cup and two League Cups, in his first spell at Chelsea. He won 124 games out of 185 in that period, a win ratio of 67%.
He won 80 out of 136 (59%) in his second stint at Stamford Bridge - winning the title again and the League Cup - while he has won 28 of 43 at United at an impressive 65%.
The statistics add up to exactly what is required at Old Trafford.
He will chase the Champions League prize either through the Premier League or the Europa League because this is vital to his future plans.
In the meantime, Ibrahimovic once again proved himself indispensable. He was the difference here. He made the decisive contribution to clinch a game United did not deserve to win.
He is head and shoulders - quite literally - above every other player at United. He has scored 26 goals this season, with Juan Mata next with nine. He has had 143 shots compared to Paul Pogba's 117, and 65 shots on target compared to Pogba's 39.
United are a long way from their former greatness - but this EFL Cup final proved conclusively that if they are going to get anywhere near that status again, Ibrahimovic is the man who is integral to Mourinho's plans, even at 35.
• None Quotes: We want Ibrahimovic to stay - Mourinho
United winning a Wembley final equates to tangible success - but successful seasons are measured in different currency in the modern era and Mourinho will need more than this to achieve full satisfaction.
Van Gaal, who led United to FA Cup success in May, was on his way out almost as soon as he placed the trophy on the same table Mourinho sat at on Sunday.
If winning the FA Cup was not enough to satisfy United's desires for success under Van Gaal then it would take a re-drawing of the boundaries to now paint the EFL Cup as fulfilling their ambitions.
There is a key difference in mood here - whereas Van Gaal's Wembley win felt like the end of a story, this victory, for all its good fortune, had the sense of new start.
Mourinho must now make this season feel like the full package of progress by leading United back into the Champions League, which is surely the minimum requirement after the world record transfer expenditure of £89m on Pogba and the Ibrahimovic coup.
And United still have an excellent chance of ensuring this season can be viewed as a success as they stand among the favourites for the Europa League, which offers a Champions League place to its winners.
Mourinho has already painted the last-16 meeting with Russians FC Rostov as a tough tie but he also has the chance to reach the top four in the Premier League, with United only two points behind Arsenal.
United have a potentially hazardous FA Cup quarter-final tie at Premier League leaders Chelsea to negotiate, but this is a season still moving on three fronts after securing that first major trophy.
The new reality is, though, that while the EFL Cup provides a trophy and satisfaction, United's season will only be a success if they conclude it back in Europe's elite competition.
What now for Wayne Rooney?
Wayne Rooney lifted the EFL Cup and demonstrated he is the consummate team player with his wild celebration of Ibrahimovic's winner - but this was still a player on the outside looking in.
The 31-year-old, who this week confirmed he was staying at United despite speculation linking him with a move to China, was denied a piece of the action by the match-winning contribution of the elder statesman who has usurped him as the team's spiritual leader.
Rooney was stripped and ready for action. With the words of Mourinho ringing in his ears and assistant manager Rui Faria showing him the diagrams United hoped would lead to a defining contribution, Ibrahimovic struck.
The United and England captain was sent back to the bench with no chance to add to his 250 goals for the club as Marouane Fellaini was called in for a late lockdown. It was a symbolic moment.
United's captain for the day, Chris Smalling, let the club's all-time record goalscorer Rooney lift the trophy and it is to his credit that there was no sense of personal denial or disappointment that he was left out then denied even the smallest part.
Rooney was delighted for his team-mates, which is a mark of his approach.
Despite this, there was no escaping the belief the guard has changed at Old Trafford. Rooney is no longer the main man - he is now well down the ranks and this was simply another piece of evidence of his declining influence and the credits rolling on a magnificent career at United.
Mourinho's downbeat demeanour was a talking point throughout the EFL Cup final as he cut an unsmiling, subdued figure who barely showed any emotion even when United scored.
He insisted afterwards he was delighted: "I am very happy. It is important for the fans, for the club and for the players. I always try to put myself in the secondary position but the reality is it is also important for me."
United's performance was not designed to lighten Mourinho's mood until the moment of victory and it is likely his behaviour was shaped by concerns about how Southampton dominated his side for long periods and troubled his defence - normally his tactical strong point - throughout.
Victory will, however, lighten his mood, bolster his already high standing with United's fans and release any personal pressure he may have been feeling. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39099043 |
Mo Farah's coach Alberto Salazar may have breached drug rules - leaked Usada report - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | The American coach of Olympic champion Mo Farah may have broken anti-doping rules to boost the performance of some of his athletes, says a leaked report. | null | Last updated on .From the section Athletics
The American coach of Olympic champion Sir Mo Farah may have broken anti-doping rules to boost the performance of some of his athletes, says a leaked report.
Alberto Salazar has been under investigation since a BBC Panorama programme made allegations about drugs use at his US training base.
A leaked US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) report, dated March 2016, has been obtained by the Sunday Times.
Salazar and Briton Farah deny they have ever broken anti-doping rules.
The leaked report also alleges Salazar, head coach of the world famous endurance Nike Oregon Project (NOP), routinely gave Farah and other athletes legal prescription drugs with potentially harmful side-effects without a justifiable medical reason.
The investigation into Salazar, who is also a consultant to UK Athletics (UKA), has been under way since at least June 2015.
The Usada interim report was passed to the Sunday Times by the suspected Russian hacking group Fancy Bears.
The BBC has so far been unable to verify its authenticity with Usada, or establish whether any of its reported conclusions are out of date.
In a statement, Usada said it could "confirm that it has prepared a report in response to a subpoena from a state medical licensing body regarding care given by a physician to athletes associated with the Nike Oregon Project".
It said: "We understand that the licensing body is still deciding its case and as we continue to investigate whether anti-doping rules were broken, no further comment will be made at this time.
"Importantly, all athletes, coaches and others under the jurisdiction of the World Anti-Doping Code are innocent and presumed to have complied with the rules unless and until the established anti-doping process declares otherwise. It is unfair and reckless to state, infer or imply differently."
According to the Sunday Times, the leaked report claims that Salazar:
• None risked the health of his athletes, including Farah, by issuing potentially harmful prescription medicines to improve testosterone levels and boost recovery, despite no obvious medical need.
Salazar maintains that drug use has always fully complied with the Wada code and that athletes were administered with L-carnitine in "exactly the way Usada directed".
The Sunday Times claims the Usada report also reveals:
• None investigators have been impeded because Salazar and several athletes have "largely refused to permit Usada to review their medical records";
• None Farah received an infusion of the legal supplement L-carnitine in 2014, which Usada is continuing to investigate in case the method of infusion broke doping rules by going over the legal limit of 50ml.
The report, apparently written in March 2016, allegedly states: "Usada continues to investigate circumstances related to L-carnitine use" by Farah.
Farah, who has won 5,000m and 10,000m gold at the past two Olympic Games, told The Sunday Times two years ago that he had "tried a legal energy drink" containing L-carnitine but "saw no benefit" and did not continue with it.
The newspaper also claims the report says Dr John Rogers, a medic for the British athletics team, told Usada in an interview that conversations he had with Salazar at a training camp in the French Pyrenees before the 2011 World Championships in Daegu gave him such "concern" that he wrote an email at the time to his medical colleagues at UK Athletics.
It also says Rogers told Usada that Salazar had told him about "off-label and unconventional" uses of the prescription medications calcitonin and thyroxine (hormones) and high doses of vitamin D and ferrous sulphate.
The revelations will pile more pressure on Britain's greatest ever endurance runner, who has steadfastly refused to end his association with Salazar.
It raises questions too for UKA, which gave the Briton the all-clear to continue working with Salazar after an inquiry was launched following the BBC Panorama programme.
In June 2015, in conjunction with the US website ProPublica, the BBC's Panorama programme Catch Me If You Can made a series of allegations about the methods at NOP, and included testimony from a number of former athletes and coaches, including Kara Goucher and Steve Magness.
The film alleged Salazar had a fixation on the testosterone levels of his athletes, and may have doped American Olympic medallist Galen Rupp with the banned steroid version when he was 16. The programme also alleged Salazar had conducted testosterone experiments on his sons to see how much of the drug he could apply to them before it triggered positive tests.
The film also alleged Salazar used thyroid medicine inappropriately with his athletes, and encouraged the use of prescription medication when there was no justifiable need.
Salazar denied the wrongdoing alleged in the programme, and issued a 12,000-word rebuttal.
Usada took the unusual step of confirming it had launched an investigation into NOP following the BBC and ProPublica's revelations in 2015. Earlier stories by the New York Times and the Sunday Times had also raised concerns about some of Salazar's methods.
It is not clear why the Usada report remains unpublished.
The BBC has sought comment from Alberto Salazar, Sir Mo Farah and UK Athletics.
Nine months ago, amid rumours Usada had dropped an investigation into his coach, Sir Mo Farah said he felt vindicated after standing by Alberto Salazar, the man who has helped him achieve so much success. This will raise more questions over that association.
Last year Farah distanced himself from another controversial coach, Somalian Jama Aden. And he could now face renewed pressure to do something similar with a man who we now know Usada is still looking into.
This could also be awkward for Salazar's employers Nike, and for UK Athletics - not least how it came to clear Salazar in 2015, even though it now seems one of its senior medics, Dr John Rogers, says he had raised concerns to them over the coach's methods. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/39093398 |
Andy Murray says he is 'ready to go' for Dubai Tennis Championships - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | World number one Andy Murray says he is "ready to go" at the Dubai Tennis Championships after a bout of shingles. | null | Last updated on .From the section Tennis
Andy Murray says he has recovered from a bout of shingles as he prepares to return to action at the Dubai Tennis Championships this week.
The British world number one has not played since losing in the fourth round of the Australian Open five weeks ago.
Also in the Dubai draw is Roger Federer in his first tournament since winning his 18th Grand Slam title in Melbourne.
"I'm fine now, I've been training flat-out for the past few weeks," 29-year-old Murray said.
"I was a bit sick for 10 days, a couple of weeks, after I got back from Australia.
"I feel fresh and ready to go here. I had shingles. It's not terrible, but it's not great. I had to go easy for a little while, so I wasn't able to push that hard in training when I got back into it."
Murray, who lost in four sets to unseeded Mischa Zverev at the Australian Open, said he was not sure if the illness had started developing while he was playing in Melbourne.
Murray is the top seed in Dubai and faces Tunisian world number 47 Malek Jaziri in the first round, while Federer is in action on Monday against Frenchman Benoit Paire, ranked 41.
US Open champion Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland is seeded second and takes on Bosnia's Damir Dzumhur in the first round.
Briton Dan Evans, up to a career-high ranking of 44 after reaching the last 16 in Melbourne, faces Germany's Dustin Brown in round one.
Murray plays on day one in the doubles, partnering Serbia's Nenad Zimonjic against Evans and Gilles Muller of Luxembourg. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/39097755 |
Six Nations 2017: England 36-15 Italy - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | England overcome a stern challenge from Italy to remain unbeaten in this year's Six Nations and stretch their winning run to 17 matches. | null | Last updated on .From the section Rugby Union
England were given a huge scare by Italy before five second-half tries saw them extend their winning run to 17 matches.
Italy had led 10-5 at half-time, a combination of an extraordinary tactic at the breakdown and the hosts' ineptitude threatening a huge upset at Twickenham.
But two quick tries after the break from Danny Care and Elliot Daly calmed nerves, and although Michele Campagnaro's bullocking try made it 17-15 with 20 minutes remaining, another from Ben Te'o and two from replacement Jack Nowell saved England's blushes.
Those tries meant Eddie Jones' men also picked up their bonus point, which may prove critical in the final championship standings.
But this 10th successive Six Nations win felt anything but a celebration, Owen Farrell off form on the occasion of his 50th cap and Jones' replacements once again required to come to their coach's rescue.
Italy left points aplenty out on the field through missed kicks, and while a second consecutive Grand Slam remains a possibility for England, the visit of in-form Scotland in a fortnight's time now represents a serious threat.
• None Follow the Six Nations across the BBC
England had been completely thrown by Italy's novel tactic of not committing any men to the breakdown beyond the initial tackler, meaning no ruck was formed and so the offside became irrelevant.
It meant Italian defenders could stand between England's half-backs, creating initial confusion both in white-shirted ranks and in the stands.
Captain Dylan Hartley and James Haskell were both left asking referee Romain Poite to explain the laws of the game to them, the Frenchman testily telling them to ask their own coach.
And only when England began to solve that problem by putting runners up the middle did they begin to get any sort of grip on a contest they had been expected to run away with.
By the end, Jones's men were also utilising the same ploy, a strange sight on the strangest of afternoons at Twickenham.
England were not so much slow out of the blocks as asleep, repeatedly giving away penalties at the scrum and breakdown, while Farrell, Care and George Ford all kicked poorly from hand.
Had Italy kicked all their penalties - Allan missed two, and the others were sent into the corner - they could have led 12-0 after the opening quarter.
Cole's try from a rolling maul came as a relief to a somnolent crowd, but Italy continued to dominate possession and territory, even as they spurned further shots at the posts and failed to capitalise from their attacking line-outs.
But when Allan's penalty from bang in front on the stroke of half-time came back off the upright, wing Giovanbattista Venditti grabbed the loose ball and dived over, Allan's conversion making it 10-5.
Tries flow as England find a way
Jones had every reason to tear into his men at the interval, and within moments Care's quick tap penalty sent him slicing through the blue wall and into the corner.
Daly then ran on to Te'o's well-timed pass to go over in the left-hand corner, and the danger seemed over.
Yet with England spluttering again, Campagnaro ran through Ford and Mike Brown down the right to bring it back to 17-15.
A brilliant clearing kick by Carlo Canna denied Daly another, but from the subsequent line-out a driving maul sucked in the Italian defence and Nowell exploited vast open spaces on the right to dive into the corner.
Nowell then added another, punching through a weary defence, and relief mixed with the roars from the packed stands.
For the second match running it was Joe Launchbury who was offically seen as the standout performer, with the third most-carries (11), the second-most metres made (60) and the second-most lineouts won (2) on the victorious England side.
A special mention goes to Mike Brown, who made a total of 110 metres with ball in hand - 41 metres ahead of his closest competition in Italy's Edoardo Padovani.
England head coach Eddie Jones: "Congratulations to Italy, strategically they were smart today, but it's not rugby so let's be serious about it, it's not rugby today.
"I'm not happy what happened today, I don't think that's rugby. I played rugby a long time ago, I've coached rugby. I understand what Italy did and I'm not angry with what they did, but I just don't think it's rugby."
Italy coach Conor O'Shea: "We have a massive job to do but we will do it and we have to think differently like we did today.
"We didn't come here to make up numbers. But you're playing against a brilliant team who are on-form and they worked their way through it."
Paul Grayson, former England fly-half, on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra: "From an England point of view, today will feel like a loss. They were the opposite of what everyone expected.
"If they haven't seen the ugly side of Eddie Jones yet, I've got a suspicion they'll see it this week. He will have a problem with the team being nowhere near the levels he expects.
"You've got to give credit to Italy for their tactics, it certainly upset England, but they'll be disappointed about conceding so many tries late on."
Replacements: Nowell for May (56), Slade for Te'o (76), Youngs for Care (52), M. Vunipola for Marler (56), George for Hartley (56), Sinckler for Cole (72).
Replacements: Benvenuti for Bisegni (52), Canna for Allan (62), Bronzini for Gori (36), D'Apice for Gega (65), Ceccarelli for Cittadini (52), Biagi for Fuser (75), Mbanda for Favaro (58). | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39067728 |
Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan to fight in April - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | WBO world welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao and Great Britain's Amir Khan agree to fight on 23 April. | null | The bout has been arranged after Pacquiao's followers on Twitter voted Khan as the opponent they would like to see the Filipino fight next.
"This is what the fans wanted," Pacquiao, 38, said on social media.
Khan, 30, also confirmed the fight but, although Pacquiao has said his next fight would be in the United Arab Emirates, no venue has been announced.
Speaking on a social media video, Khan said the UK, Dubai and US were being looked at as possible locations and that they "should find out in the next couple of days".
The Briton, who won silver as a lightweight at the 2004 Olympics, beat compatriot Kell Brook, Australia's Jeff Horn and American Terence Crawford with 48% of the vote carried out by Pacquiao.
Khan's last fight was in May 2016 when he was knocked out by Mexican Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez.
Six-weight world champion Pacquiao retired in April last year but returned to claim his belt by beating Jessie Vargas in November.
Khan's typically fast work will come up against a man who - in his prime, at least - dazzled the world with his own hand speed.
Pacquiao of course is still a world champion, but there will be some British fight fans who would rather see Khan face off against bitter rival Kell Brook - who himself has gone elsewhere and meets Errol Spence in May.
Fans of trash talk may also be disappointed as a clear respect exists in the Khan-Pacquiao relationship - the pair have sparred one another under trainer Freddie Roach, whom Khan left in 2012.
There is no doubt Pacquiao's standing in the sport will give Khan the opportunity to take a giant leap forward from his brutal KO defeat by Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez last time out.
One point on the marked date - 23 April is a Sunday. So it does look like this will take place east of the UK, so the time difference will suit British and American viewers on a Saturday night.
Will it happen? It's a tight turnaround for two stellar names, especially accounting for the huge promotional commitments they will also have to squeeze in. If it does of course, fans can look forward to Nicola Adams, Ricky Burns, Khan and Anthony Joshua fighting on successive weekends. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing/39094500 |
Six Nations 2017: Italy tactic wasn't rugby, says England coach Eddie Jones - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | England coach Eddie Jones says an unexpected Italy tactic "wasn't rugby" as the Six Nations champions struggle to victory. | null | Last updated on .From the section English Rugby
England coach Eddie Jones said an unexpected Italy tactic "wasn't rugby" as they frustrated the Six Nations champions before finally losing 36-15.
Italy led 10-5 at half-time as they chose not to compete at the breakdown, allowing them to step into the England line without going offside.
But the hosts found a way through with five tries in the second period.
"Well done Italy, very smart. We knew they'd come with something," Jones told BBC Radio 5 live.
"But it wasn't rugby. We haven't played a game of rugby yet.
• None Follow the Six Nations across the BBC
"I'm not critical of Italy, they did what they needed to do to stay in the game."
Italy coach Conor O'Shea defended the tactic, saying: "Everything we did was completely legal; I was incredibly proud of what the players put out there."
At one stage, England captain Dylan Hartley and team-mate James Haskell asked referee Romain Poite to clarify the law, but the Frenchman replied: "I am a referee, not a coach."
Jones added: "Did we react quick enough? It's hard when you don't play rugby, it's like playing a different game out there.
"If your half-back can't pass the ball, the game becomes difficult. It's not the way you want to play the game. We wanted to move the ball and play some good rugby.
"We scored six tries and at the end of three rounds, if we were undefeated and with a bonus points, we'd be doing handstands. So we're doing handstands."
Italy played a novel tactic of not committing any men to the breakdown beyond the initial tackler, meaning no ruck was formed and any offside became irrelevant.
Italian defenders could therefore stand between England's half-backs, creating confusion for the men in white.
"How can you have players standing in your attack line? Even when there were rucks, there were people standing in our attack line.
"You look to pass the ball and there's a blue jumper there. You look in front and there's a blue jumper there. There's blue jumpers everywhere.
"He [Poite] had a terrible day. He wasn't refereeing rugby."
Asked if rugby's laws need to change following the game, Jones said: "I don't think anyone wants to see a game like that. No-one likes to see rugby not played in its proper form so World Rugby will have to have a very close look at it.
"I don't think there was anything good in that today. It didn't improve the game."
The innovative tactics caused confusion among the spectators as well as those on the field, and former England scrum-half Matt Dawson laid the blame for a disjointed contest firmly with Italy.
The 2003 World Cup winner said on Twitter: "Well done Italy on ruining this international. Now World Rugby have to change the laws because of your inability to compete at this level."
O'Shea was not about to back down when Dawson's comment was put to him, saying: "I'd like him to sit down with World Rugby to look at some of the other games we've played this year, and if he's that good in the rules, actually make a comment after we were impacted as we were in the first game of this championship - but that's not for me to talk about now.
"We came here to have a go. If they want us to lose by 100 points, why should we? Why should we be normal? We should be ourselves. Rather than having a go, have a bit of humility and respect for guys who have very little in comparison to their counterparts.
"I was expecting this, if I'm honest."
Jones went on to compare the Italian tactic to a famous one-day international cricket match between Australia and New Zealand in 1981.
With one ball remaining, New Zealand needed a six to tie the match.
To ensure this couldn't happen, Australia's captain Greg Chappell ordered his brother Trevor to bowl the last ball underarm, a legal action at the time.
"Well, obviously they've been watching Trevor Chappell with the underarm bowl along the ground to make sure they couldn't hit a six," said Australian Jones.
England have a two-week rest before they take on Scotland at Twickenham on Saturday, 11 March, and another victory would see them equal New Zealand's world record of 18 Test matches unbeaten.
"We've got Scotland in two weeks and they've got belief and confidence," said Jones. "We are looking forward to them coming down and I'm sure they're going to play proper rugby.
"This is our next test, and I'm sure [Scotland coach] Vern Cotter won't have those tactics. He's a New Zealander. They like the breakdown and the contest.
"I feel like I haven't coached today. Let's be serious. It wasn't rugby today." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39096603 |
Six Nations 2017: Vern Cotter hails Scotland's second-half show against Wales - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Head coach Vern Cotter lauds Scotland's second-half display against Wales, as they rack up 20 unanswered points to win. | null | Last updated on .From the section Scottish Rugby
Vern Cotter hailed his Scotland side's second-half display, in which a haul of 20 unanswered points secured a first victory over Wales since 2007.
In round three of the Six Nations, the Welsh had led 13-9 at the break.
But two tries, and 10 points from the boot of Finn Russell after the interval, paved the way to a 29-13 win.
"We realised we were watching them play rather than playing ourselves," Cotter said after Scotland's second win of the championship.
"I'm very proud of that response. The boys went out and started taking the game to the Welsh team.
"We were more assertive and organised in the second half. We applied pressure and got over the line with well-scored tries.
"It means we're still in the competition and we can get back to work on Monday and prepare for Twickenham."
John Barclay, captaining Scotland from the back row, became only the fourth of 14 Scotland skippers in the Six Nations era to have tasted victory in his first game leading the team.
The 30-year-old, who took over from the injured Greig Laidlaw, was cautiously optimistic about Scotland's chances against England at Twickenham on 11 March.
He told BBC Sport: "We won very well against Ireland (in round one), then we didn't play particularly well (against France). We wanted to get out of that cycle of having a good win, then not backing it up.
"The second half, to go out there, no panicking and play with control and accuracy - we recovered from a poor first half to go on and beat a very good Welsh side.
"We believe within the group that we can do something. We go to England for the next game. We'll have a look at them. If we play well, we can win.
"If we play like we did in Paris, if we play like we did in the first half (against Wales), then it becomes very difficult."
England can re-take top spot in the Six Nations table from Ireland with victory over Italy on Sunday.
New Zealander Cotter has only two games remaining as Scotland head coach - the penultimate being the Calcutta Cup match - before he makes way for Gregor Townsend.
"Real guts and desire, the boys threw their bodies into it," was Cotter's assessment of his team's battling performance.
"We were competitive at the breakdown so, all in all, I'm happy we came away with the win.
"We will enjoy the evening, it's been a few years since we beat Wales. The boys can have a couple of quiet, cold beers. Then we go down to England.
"I think these experiences for the young players are great. John (Barclay) did a great job out there and steadied the ship." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39092776 |
Can community projects offer a way to affordable care? - BBC News | 2017-02-26 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Around the UK different schemes are trying to deliver better affordable care to those who need it. | Health | A few years ago Jessy would have been stuck in hospital because there was no provision of social care in her area
With health and social care budgets feeling the squeeze, the need to find ways to care for people that are both affordable and effective is one of the country's biggest challenges.
Around the UK many attempts are being made to deliver care in different ways and here are three different approaches to community-based care.
Kathryn Humpston, a local area co-ordinator for Derby City Council, says: "I try to help people help themselves."
One of the people she visits is John, an alcoholic who was in and out of hospital because of his condition. He often spent all his money on alcohol rather than food and Kathryn has to check what is in his larder.
As he only has two tins of beans and some powdered soup in stock, she tops up his supplies, gathered by an informal community food bank operating in the Boulton area of Derby.
Local area co-ordinators were introduced into Derby five years ago, copied from an existing scheme in Western Australia.
The idea is that vulnerable older people could find a lot of the support they need from within their own communities, rather than from council services, their GPs or from hospitals.
Just over half the £500,000 annual costs of the scheme are paid for by the NHS to reduce demand on those services,
The co-ordinators tap into an often hidden network of support from neighbours, friends, family, voluntary groups and churches, who all seem willing to help improve the communities they live in by looking out for people who need help.
"All this costs nothing," says Kathryn.
The 10 co-ordinators working in Derby's inner city have helped about 700 people, all of whom have very complex needs. Only 17 of them have actually gone on to need a taxpayer-funded package of support from social services.
"If those 700 people had just one episode of social care fewer in their lifetime that would be a system saving of some £600,000," explains Mick Burrows of the NHS Southern Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group.
Jessy has nothing but praise for her carer after coming home from hospital following a hip replacement operation.
"I wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for her. I'd probably be still in hospital waiting to get home," she says.
A few years ago she would have been stuck in hospital because there was no provision of social care in the rural area she lives in, south of Loch Ness.
Boleskine Community Care was set up by the local community, who recognised that their older people were having to move away to get help if family members could not help.
In the Scottish Highlands the NHS, not local councils, is responsible for providing home care
It is run by local women who work for Highland Home Carers, an employee-owned company in Inverness. The carers manage themselves and do their own assessments of old people's needs.
In the Scottish Highlands, spending on health and social care is fully integrated, meaning the NHS, rather than local councils, is responsible for providing care at home.
"The way we're funded helps us to give you what you want and gives you more choices," explains carer Julie Russell. "You can choose how you use your hours."
This is because of the Scottish system of Self Directed Support, or personal budgets. Once a person's needs are assessed, they can decide how their care budget is spent. It can lead to some surprising choices.
"We've cleared snow, chopped firewood, helped in the garden, as well as taken people to the GP and all the usual personal care," says Julie.
Angela is very clear about why she agreed to live with Gill.
"When I first saw her I thought she was very nice and I liked even more because she had a horse," Angela explains.
Gill, and her partner Pete, became Shared Lives carers for Angela about six years ago. It is a much greater commitment than the usual caring duties.
Gill and Pete share their home with her and also with Adrian, who moved in with them 14 years ago. Both Adrian and Angela have learning disabilities.
Angela and Adrian now live with Gill and her husband as an extended family
"At first I was a bit scared," says Angela. "But I thought I'll meet her and get to know her. I think it's a great idea. It's nice for families to take people like us in."
Angela and Adrian are among almost 400 people, most of them with learning disabilities, who live with their Shared Lives carers across Lancashire.
"It's the best thing I've ever done," says Gill. "We get more out of it than Adrian and Angela probably."
Carers are paid about £400 a week for each person they look after, which is a saving for the local authority compared to the alternative. For people with learning disabilities who are unable to look after themselves, the alternative would be supported living or a residential care home.
Shared Lives Plus, which oversees the Shared Lives schemes around the country, estimates it saves about £25,000 per person per year. The NHS is currently establishing five Shared Lives schemes to cater for people leaving hospital.
It estimates savings of £130m over the next five years by speeding up hospital discharges using the service.
Listen to the full series of Andrew Bomford's reports for BBC Radio 4's PM programme here. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39055630 |
Mo Farah says he is 'a clean athlete' and 'frustrated' by leaked report on Salazar - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Mo Farah says he is a "clean athlete" after a leaked report suggested his American coach may have broken anti-doping rules. | null | Great Britain's Mo Farah says he is a "clean athlete" after a leaked report suggested his American coach may have broken anti-doping rules to boost the performance of some of his athletes.
The leaked US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) report, dated March 2016, was obtained by the Sunday Times.
"If Usada or any other anti-doping body has evidence of wrongdoing they should publish it and take action rather than allow the media to be judge and jury," said Farah, who has won 5,000m and 10,000m gold at the past two Olympics.
The coach in question, Alberto Salazar, has been under investigation since a BBC Panorama programme made allegations about drugs use at his US training base.
According to the Sunday Times, the leaked report also alleges Salazar, head coach of the world famous endurance Nike Oregon Project (NOP), routinely gave Farah and other athletes legal prescription drugs with potentially harmful side-effects without a justifiable medical reason.
The investigation into Salazar, who is also a consultant to UK Athletics (UKA), has been under way since at least June 2015.
Salazar and Farah deny they have ever broken anti-doping rules.
"It's deeply frustrating that I'm having to make an announcement on this subject," said 33-year-old Farah in a statement.
"I am a clean athlete who has never broken the rules in regards to substances, methods or dosages and it is upsetting that some parts of the media, despite the clear facts, continue to try to associate me with allegations of drug misuse.
"I'm unclear as to the Sunday Times's motivations towards me but I do understand that using my name and profile makes the story more interesting but it's entirely unfair to make assertions when it is clear from their own statements that I have done nothing wrong.
"As I've said many times before we all should do everything we can to have a clean sport and it is entirely right that anyone who breaks the rules should be punished."
In a statement UK Athletics said it stood by the findings of an investigation published in 2016 that found "there was no evidence of any impropriety on the part of Mo Farah and no reason to lack confidence in his training programme".
The statement said: "Usada have not reported back to UKA on any aspect of their investigations but we remain, at all times, completely open and cooperative with them.
"L-carnitine is a legal and scientifically legitimate supplement that can be used by endurance athletes. To our knowledge, all doses administered and methods of administration have been fully in accordance with Wada-approved protocol and guidelines."
The Usada interim report was passed to the Sunday Times by the suspected Russian hacking group Fancy Bears.
The BBC has so far been unable to verify its authenticity with Usada, or establish whether any of its reported conclusions are out of date.
In a statement, Usada said it could "confirm that it has prepared a report in response to a subpoena from a state medical licensing body regarding care given by a physician to athletes associated with the Nike Oregon Project".
It said: "We understand that the licensing body is still deciding its case and as we continue to investigate whether anti-doping rules were broken, no further comment will be made at this time.
"Importantly, all athletes, coaches and others under the jurisdiction of the World Anti-Doping Code are innocent and presumed to have complied with the rules unless and until the established anti-doping process declares otherwise. It is unfair and reckless to state, infer or imply differently."
According to the Sunday Times, the leaked report claims that Salazar:
• None risked the health of his athletes, including Farah, by issuing potentially harmful prescription medicines to improve testosterone levels and boost recovery, despite no obvious medical need.
Salazar maintains that drug use has always fully complied with the Wada code and that athletes were administered with L-carnitine in "exactly the way Usada directed".
The Sunday Times claims the Usada report also reveals:
• None investigators have been impeded because Salazar and several athletes have "largely refused to permit Usada to review their medical records";
• None Farah received an infusion of the legal supplement L-carnitine in 2014, which Usada is continuing to investigate in case the method of infusion broke doping rules by going over the legal limit of 50ml.
The report, apparently written in March 2016, allegedly states: "Usada continues to investigate circumstances related to L-carnitine use" by Farah.
Farah told the Sunday Times two years ago that he had "tried a legal energy drink" containing L-carnitine but "saw no benefit" and did not continue with it.
The newspaper also claims the report says Dr John Rogers, a medic for the British athletics team, told Usada in an interview that conversations he had with Salazar at a training camp in the French Pyrenees before the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, gave him such "concern" that he wrote an email at the time to his medical colleagues at UK Athletics.
It also says Rogers told Usada that Salazar had told him about "off-label and unconventional" uses of the prescription medications calcitonin and thyroxine (hormones) and high doses of vitamin D and ferrous sulphate.
The revelations will pile more pressure on Britain's greatest ever endurance runner, who has steadfastly refused to end his association with Salazar.
It raises questions too for UKA, which gave the Briton the all-clear to continue working with Salazar after an inquiry was launched following the BBC Panorama programme.
In June 2015, in conjunction with the US website ProPublica, the BBC's Panorama programme Catch Me If You Can made a series of allegations about the methods at NOP, and included testimony from a number of former athletes and coaches, including Kara Goucher and Steve Magness.
The film alleged Salazar had a fixation on the testosterone levels of his athletes, and may have doped American Olympic medallist Galen Rupp with the banned steroid version when he was 16. The programme also alleged Salazar had conducted testosterone experiments on his sons to see how much of the drug he could apply to them before it triggered positive tests.
The film also alleged Salazar used thyroid medicine inappropriately with his athletes, and encouraged the use of prescription medication when there was no justifiable need.
Salazar denied the wrongdoing alleged in the programme, and issued a 12,000-word rebuttal.
Usada took the unusual step of confirming it had launched an investigation into NOP following the BBC and ProPublica's revelations in 2015. Earlier stories by the New York Times and the Sunday Times had also raised concerns about some of Salazar's methods.
It is not clear why the Usada report remains unpublished.
The BBC has sought comment from Alberto Salazar and UK Athletics.
Nine months ago, amid rumours Usada had dropped an investigation into his coach, Sir Mo Farah said he felt vindicated after standing by Alberto Salazar, the man who has helped him achieve so much success. This will raise more questions over that association.
Last year Farah distanced himself from another controversial coach - Somalian Jama Aden. And he could now face renewed pressure to do something similar with a man who we now know Usada is still looking into.
This could also be awkward for Salazar's employers Nike - and for UK Athletics; not least how they came to clear Salazar in 2015 - even though it now seems one of their senior medics - Dr John Rogers - says he had raised concerns to them over the coach's methods. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/39095377 |
Mo Farah's trainer rejects allegations he broke anti-doping rules - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | The American coach of Olympic champion Mo Farah rejects claims he may have broken anti-doping rules. | null | The American coach of Olympic champion Mo Farah rejected claims he may have broken anti-doping rules to boost the performance of some of his athletes.
Alberto Salazar has been under investigation since a BBC Panorama programme in 2015 made allegations about drugs use at his US training base, and a leaked report from the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) was obtained by the Sunday Times this weekend.
"I believe in a clean sport, " he said. "I do not use supplements that are banned."
The leaked report also alleged Salazar - head coach of the world famous endurance Nike Oregon Project (NOP) - routinely gave Farah and other athletes prescription drugs with potentially harmful side-effects without a justifiable medical reason.
According to the Sunday Times, the leaked report claims Salazar used a banned method of infusing a legal supplement called L-carnitine.
"I have clearly and repeatedly refuted allegations directed against me and the Oregon Project," Salazar said.
"I believe in a clean sport and a methodical, dedicated approach to training. The Oregon Project will never permit doping and all Oregon Project athletes are required to comply with the Wada Code and IAAF rules.
"L-carnitine is a widely available, legal nutritional supplement that is not banned by Wada. Any use of L-carnitine was done so within Wada guidelines.
"In this case, to ensure my interpretation of Wada rules was correct, I also communicated in writing with Usada in advance of the use and administration of L-carnitine with Oregon Project athletes.
"I have voluntarily cooperated with Usada for years and met with them more than a year ago. The leaking of information and the litigation of false allegations in the press is disturbing, desperate and a denial of due process. I look forward to this unfair and protracted process reaching the conclusion I know to be true."
Salazar and Farah deny they have ever broken anti-doping rules.
"It's deeply frustrating that I'm having to make an announcement on this subject," said 33-year-old Farah in a statement.
"I am a clean athlete who has never broken the rules in regards to substances, methods or dosages and it is upsetting that some parts of the media, despite the clear facts, continue to try to associate me with allegations of drug misuse.
"I'm unclear as to the Sunday Times' motivation towards me but I do understand that using my name and profile makes the story more interesting. It's entirely unfair to make assertions when it is clear from their own statements that I have done nothing wrong.
"As I've said many times before we all should do everything we can to have a clean sport and it is entirely right that anyone who breaks the rules should be punished."
In a statement, UK Athletics said it stood by the findings of an investigation published in 2016 that found "there was no evidence of any impropriety on the part of Mo Farah and no reason to lack confidence in his training programme".
The statement said: "Usada have not reported back to UKA on any aspect of their investigations but we remain, at all times, completely open and cooperative with them.
"L-carnitine is a legal and scientifically legitimate supplement that can be used by endurance athletes. To our knowledge, all doses administered and methods of administration have been fully in accordance with Wada-approved protocol and guidelines."
The Usada interim report was passed to the Sunday Times by the suspected Russian hacking group Fancy Bears.
The BBC has so far been unable to verify its authenticity with Usada, or establish whether any of its reported conclusions are out of date.
In a statement, Usada said it could "confirm that it has prepared a report in response to a subpoena from a state medical licensing body regarding care given by a physician to athletes associated with the Nike Oregon Project".
It said: "We understand that the licensing body is still deciding its case and as we continue to investigate whether anti-doping rules were broken, no further comment will be made at this time.
"Importantly, all athletes, coaches and others under the jurisdiction of the World Anti-Doping Code are innocent and presumed to have complied with the rules unless and until the established anti-doping process declares otherwise. It is unfair and reckless to state, infer or imply differently."
According to the Sunday Times, the leaked report claims that Salazar:
• None risked the health of his athletes, including Farah, by issuing potentially harmful prescription medicines to improve testosterone levels and boost recovery, despite no obvious medical need.
Salazar maintains that drug use has always fully complied with the Wada code and that athletes were administered with L-carnitine in "exactly the way Usada directed".
The Sunday Times claims the Usada report also reveals:
• None investigators have been impeded because Salazar and several athletes have "largely refused to permit Usada to review their medical records";
• None Farah received an infusion of the legal supplement L-carnitine in 2014, which Usada is continuing to investigate in case the method of infusion broke doping rules by going over the legal limit of 50ml.
The report, apparently written in March 2016, allegedly states: "Usada continues to investigate circumstances related to L-carnitine use" by Farah.
Farah told the Sunday Times two years ago that he had "tried a legal energy drink" containing L-carnitine but "saw no benefit" and did not continue with it.
The newspaper also claims the report says Dr John Rogers, a medic for the British athletics team, told Usada in an interview that conversations he had with Salazar at a training camp in the French Pyrenees before the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, gave him such "concern" that he wrote an email at the time to his medical colleagues at UK Athletics.
It also says Rogers told Usada that Salazar had told him about "off-label and unconventional" uses of the prescription medications calcitonin and thyroxine (hormones) and high doses of vitamin D and ferrous sulphate.
The revelations will pile more pressure on Britain's greatest ever endurance runner, who has steadfastly refused to end his association with Salazar.
It raises questions too for UKA, which gave the Briton the all-clear to continue working with Salazar after an inquiry was launched following the BBC Panorama programme.
In June 2015, in conjunction with the US website ProPublica, the BBC's Panorama programme Catch Me If You Can made a series of allegations about the methods at NOP, and included testimony from a number of former athletes and coaches, including Kara Goucher and Steve Magness.
The film alleged Salazar had a fixation on the testosterone levels of his athletes, and may have doped American Olympic medallist Galen Rupp with the banned steroid version when he was 16. The programme also alleged Salazar had conducted testosterone experiments on his sons to see how much of the drug he could apply to them before it triggered positive tests.
The film also alleged Salazar used thyroid medicine inappropriately with his athletes, and encouraged the use of prescription medication when there was no justifiable need.
Salazar denied the wrongdoing alleged in the programme, and issued a 12,000-word rebuttal.
Usada took the unusual step of confirming it had launched an investigation into NOP following the BBC and ProPublica's revelations in 2015. Earlier stories by the New York Times and the Sunday Times had also raised concerns about some of Salazar's methods.
It is not clear why the Usada report remains unpublished.
Nine months ago, amid rumours Usada had dropped an investigation into his coach, Sir Mo Farah said he felt vindicated after standing by Alberto Salazar, the man who has helped him achieve so much success. This will raise more questions over that association.
Last year Farah distanced himself from another controversial coach - Somalian Jama Aden. And he could now face renewed pressure to do something similar with a man who we now know Usada is still looking into.
This could also be awkward for Salazar's employers Nike - and for UK Athletics; not least how they came to clear Salazar in 2015 - even though it now seems one of their senior medics - Dr John Rogers - says he had raised concerns to them over the coach's methods. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/39097761 |
Tottenham Hotspur 4-0 Stoke City - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Harry Kane scores his third hat-trick in nine games as Tottenham react to their European exit by hammering Stoke to go second in the league. | null | Last updated on .From the section Football
Harry Kane scored his third hat-trick in nine games as Tottenham Hotspur reacted to their European exit by hammering Stoke to move second in the Premier League.
The England forward struck three times in 23 minutes before the break, his first a well-taken finish into the bottom corner as the ball dropped to him in the area before an exquisite half-volley with his left foot from Christian Eriksen's corner.
Kane completed his third treble of 2017 when his low drive from Eriksen's tapped free-kick took a huge deflection off Peter Crouch in the Stoke wall, leaving goalkeeper Lee Grant stranded.
Dele Alli then added a fourth first-half goal for the hosts, sliding in to convert Kane's cross from the right as an abject Stoke fell apart at White Hart Lane.
After the interval, Grant made a fine save to deny Kane his fourth, while centre-back Toby Alderweireld limping off injured was the only sour note for Spurs on an otherwise perfect response to being knocked out of the Europa League by Gent on Thursday.
Stoke, who stay 10th, improved marginally in the second half but Mauricio Pochettino's side eased to a victory that takes them above Manchester City, although they remain 10 points behind runaway leaders Chelsea.
• None Kane one of world's best strikers - Pochettino
• None Relive the action as Spurs thrashed Stoke at White Hart Lane
Kane now has 12 goals in 11 games in all competitions since the start of 2017, having scored his second hat-trick in a week following Spurs' FA Cup fifth-round victory over Fulham last Sunday.
His three goals against Stoke were reminiscent of his treble in the 4-0 win at home to West Brom on 14 January, the 23-year-old's expert finishing helped a precise and pacy Spurs dismantle limited opponents.
He took ruthless advantage of Ryan Shawcross' inadvertent flick to fire Spurs ahead on 14 minutes, while his second showed superb technical proficiency as he hooked in Eriksen's delivery with the ball going away from him on the edge of the area.
His third was somewhat farcical as former Spurs striker Crouch provided unwitting assistance but the White Hart Lane crowd celebrated jubilantly nonetheless, a stark contract to the sombre atmosphere at their adopted European home Wembley in midweek.
That strike took Kane to 22 goals in all competitions this season, the third consecutive campaign in which he has surpassed 20 goals, remarkable consistency that makes him indispensible to Spurs' future.
Alli's goal might be described as an act of redemption following his reckless red card in Thursday's Europa League exit, but it capped another fine performance by the 20-year-old midfielder.
His desire to impress characterised a Spurs side clearly looking to remind observers of their actual and potential qualities after that insipid Wembley showing.
Pochettino's use of Walker and Ben Davies as wing-backs stretched Stoke to breaking point, while Eriksen was at his influential best, becoming the first player to 10 assists this season in the process.
They may fall short of challenging Chelsea this year, but the manner in which Spurs can use the same formation to torment sides suggests they could go toe-to-toe with their London rivals in future campaigns.
With Stoke 11 points clear of the bottom three, Mark Hughes' side have been all but certain of avoiding a relegation fight for some time now.
Yet this defeat was a chastening reminder of their limitations.
Central midfielders Charlie Adam and Glenn Whelan were completely left behind by the pace of Spurs in the first half, offering no protection to their back four and having to resort to simply hacking down their midfield opponents.
Both were wisely withdrawn by Hughes before either could receive a second yellow card that often seemed imminent, while Joe Allen was ineffectual following his recent good form and at fault for not closing down Kane for the striker's third.
Without the spark provided by Xherdan Shaqiri, absent despite being declared fit for this game, Stoke were bereft of ideas going forward too.
They might look enviously at West Brom, whom former Potters manager Tony Pulis has steered to 40 points by February, perhaps suggesting Stoke have stagnated this season compared with their fellow mid-table sides.
Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino: "[Harry Kane] is playing at a very good level. He's one of the best strikers in the world. He deserves it because he's a great professional.
"It was a fantastic performance. It was a good response from the team.
"Ten points is a big gap [to Chelsea] - but we keep going and believe. We try to put on pressure."
Stoke boss Mark Hughes: "The game was done in the first half. The manner of the goals we conceded was not good enough at any level.
"The second half was zero conceded and I guess that's a positive but that's because Spurs didn't push.
"We were too passive and not doing enough to stop balls going to our goal. Clearly Spurs are very good but if you allow teams time and space then good players will hurt you."
• None In scoring a hat-trick, Harry Kane went past 100 goals in his club career (102) - with 86 of those coming for Tottenham.
• None Kane's hat-trick was his fourth in the Premier League for Spurs - no player in club history has registered more in the competition (Robbie Keane and Jermain Defoe both have three).
• None Mark Hughes has won only one of his past 13 Premier League games against opponents who began the day occupying a top-six position (D2 L10) - they have conceded at least three goals in nine of those 13 games.
• None Spurs scored four first-half goals in a Premier League match for the first time since February 2012 (v Newcastle).
Tottenham host Everton at White Hart Lane on Sunday 5 March, with kick-off at 13:30 GMT. Stoke play the day before, at home to Middlesbrough, kicking off at 15:00 GMT. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39018820 |
Claudio Ranieri: Jamie Vardy says speculation over manager's sacking 'untrue' - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy says speculation he was involved in Claudio Ranieri's dismissal is "untrue and extremely hurtful". | null | Leicester striker Jamie Vardy says speculation that he was involved in manager Claudio Ranieri's dismissal is "untrue and extremely hurtful".
Ranieri was sacked on Thursday, nine months after leading the club to the Premier League title.
"Claudio has and always will have my complete respect," Vardy said in a post on Instagram.
• None When Ranieri invited BBC reporters in for coffee
"There is speculation I was involved in his dismissal and this is completely untrue, unfounded and is extremely hurtful.
"The only thing we are guilty of as a team is underachieving, which we all acknowledge both in the dressing room and publicly, and will do our best to rectify."
Last season's champions dropped into the relegation zone on Saturday following Crystal Palace's win over Middlesbrough.
Vardy scored 24 goals as the Foxes secured an unlikely Premier League title in 2015-16, but the striker has struggled this season.
He ended a nine-game goal drought during Leicester's 2-1 Champions League loss at Sevilla, which proved to be Ranieri's last match in charge.
"He believed in me when many didn't and for that I owe him my eternal gratitude," former Fleetwood striker Vardy wrote.
"I wish Claudio the very, very best in whatever the future holds for him. Thank you Claudio for everything."
Former England captain Alan Shearer said: "I didn't need the sacking of Ranieri to tell me the players weren't working for him. I could see it. I've been saying it for the last two or three months, that the players just weren't working for him.
"I would say to the Leicester players, if you look in the mirror and ask yourself a question - have I worked as hard as I could and given the manager everything? I would pretty much say, for the vast majority of that Leicester squad, the answer would be no. They could do more, I'm certain of that.
"Fans will get over it, I'm sure. We saw what happened with Chelsea when Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas were booed after half an hour and then Chelsea go and score goals and get back to winning ways. Fans soon forget. However, you will never ever forget what happened last season. That was the best thing that has happened and will ever happen, in the Premier League, a team achieving what like Leicester did."
Former Tottenham midfielder Jermaine Jenas said: "The timing is ludicrous. They've just gone to Seville and in the second half they were back to their best defensively. Give Claudio Ranieri the chance to keep them in the Premier League."
'You believed in me' - Players thank Ranieri
BBC Sport understands some players were summoned to meet the chairman after the 2-1 loss to Sevilla and Ranieri's fate was sealed by the negative reaction.
However goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel said he had "no problem with Ranieri" while several players, including midfielder Andy King and winger Demarai Gray thanked Ranieri on social media.
"Big respect to this great man who helped us achieve history, you helped me build myself as a player and gave me the courage I needed," forward Riyad Mahrez wrote on Twitter.
"You believed in me from day one. Huge thank you for everything and good luck."
"My Leicester career was over, he believed in me and gave me a chance. That's something else I will also never forget," defender Danny Simpson added.
"I wish him luck for the future and I had the opportunity to say this today, however we really need the true Leicester fans to be with us and not against us through this tough period, starting on Monday night.
"What's happened has happened and we have to move on and stay in the Premier League." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39093177 |
Gavin McDonnell loses on points to Rey Vargas in WBC world title fight - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Gavin McDonnell fails in his bid to join his twin brother Jamie as a world champion with a majority-decision loss to Rey Vargas. | null | Gavin McDonnell's dream of joining twin brother Jamie as a world champion was shattered as classy Mexican Rey Vargas scored a points decision to land the vacant WBC super-bantamweight title.
The 30-year-old produced a display of immense grit - landing telling blows in the ninth round - but his 26-year-old opponent's confident work throughout saw him gain a 114-114 117-111 116-112 decision.
Victory would have delivered Britain's first simultaneous twin world champions, with Jamie McDonnell already in possession of the WBA bantamweight belt.
But Vargas - unbeaten in 29 bouts - was rewarded for his control of the early exchanges and left the noisy Ice Arena in Hull with his first world title.
Vargas, with Iganacio Beristain - who has trained Oscar de la Hoya and Juan Manuel Marquez to world titles - in his corner, took the middle of the ring early and confidently landed three-shot combinations with McDonnell visibly cautious against a man with 22 previous knockouts.
• None Listen to the fight again on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra, every hour from 06:00 GMT until 12:00 on Sunday
• None Relive the fight as it happened
In the build-up to the fight, McDonnell's promoter Eddie Hearn said he pushed for the bout to take place at the "down and dirty" Hull Ice Arena in the hope the "bear-pit" atmosphere could do "strange things" to the travelling fighter.
There were moments of home hope, as McDonnell landed a stinging right in the 10th but in just his third fight outside Mexico, Vargas even had the temerity to smile back at his man after taking some punishment late on.
The younger man's confidence to switch from making the fight to boxing on the back foot near the ropes perhaps showed he knew he had built a good early lead. McDonnell's head movement was energetic throughout, while his opponent was happy to remain static at times as he waited to pick his attacks.
Now 19 fights into his career, McDonnell can take great pride from the heart he showed and none of the 3,500 in the venue appeared to feel short-changed by his efforts.
In truth, he simply came up against a fighter who carried plenty of power in his 8st 10lb frame, and showed variation and a cool head to handle the occasion.
At the final bell, Vargas threw his hands into the air before slumping to the ropes and looking to the heavens. McDonnell in contrast seemed to know hopes of family history were over, for now.
Earlier in the night, London 2012 Olympic champion Luke Campbell maintained his momentum as he seeks a world title shot in 2017 - "the biggest year of my career", according to the Hull fighter.
The 29-year-old lightweight recorded his fourth straight win following a shock defeat in 2015 to Yvan Mendy, with a series of crushing left hands to Jairo Lopez.
The Mexican, down in the first, somehow made the second round but was flattened by a left uppercut. Campbell, who began training in Miami after the Mendy defeat, showed his typically energetic style and now has hopes of a shot at WBC champion Mikey Garcia.
Another Hull fighter, Tommy Coyle - beaten by Campbell in 2015 - kept his hopes of a return to world level alive with a third-round stoppage of Rakeem Noble.
'I lost by three rounds' - what they said
Gavin McDonnell, talking to BBC Radio 5 live, said: "I will learn, I know where I went wrong, I am disappointed, but I will work so hard.
"I had him winning by a couple of rounds, probably three rounds in my opinion. Everyone is in with a puncher's chance - if I can improve my speed and power I will land and I can beat that kid.
"If we do have a rematch, I know how to beat him in the future."
In an interview with Sky Sports, he added: "I gave it everything and I hope everyone enjoyed it. I feel like I let everyone down.
"I just fell short at the end. I felt all right in there, I was a bit too eager and I couldn't get close enough. I will come again - I have only had 18 fights and I want to show I belong at this level.
"I have no doubt I will be a world champion."
Promoter Eddie Hearn told BBC Radio 5 live: "I think Gavin started too slowly and he was always chasing it. Vargas was very good - he had excellent feet and confidence.
"To put in a performance like that, Gavin should be very proud but ultimately he was not good enough. I think Rey Vargas will go on to do a lot in the sport.
"Gavin has improved so much but he was not letting his hands go and that was the frustrating thing. It was a little bit of inexperience. If he did what he did in the ninth from the fifth round onwards then he would've had a chance." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing/39093588 |
Should 'catfishing' be made illegal? - BBC News | 2017-02-26 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Anna Rowe is calling for a law change after being duped by a man with a fake profile online. | UK | Anna Rowe had a whirlwind romance with Antony Ray after meeting him through the dating app Tinder.
But their 14-month relationship came crashing down when she discovered his profile was a fake.
His name was not Antony and he was not single.
In fact, he was a married dad who had initially used photos of a Bollywood actor on his profile and had lured in other women too.
"He used me like a hotel with benefits under the disguise of a romantic, loving relationship that he knew I craved," says Anna.
The practice of using a fake profile to start an online romance is known as "catfishing".
Now Anna, 44, from Kent, has launched a petition calling for it to be made illegal.
But how serious is catfishing and is it practical to make it a crime?
Many dating apps and sites offer advice on how to spot fake profiles
More than half of online dating users say they have come across a fake profile, according to consumer group Which?
While the number of people defrauded in the UK by online dating scams reached a record high in 2016.
There were 3,889 victims of so-called romance fraud last year, who handed over a record £39m.
It has become so prevalent, that it led to the creation of reality TV show Catfish - which is dedicated to helping victims learn the true identity of their online romances.
Currently catfishing is not illegal but elements of the activity could be covered by different parts of the law.
If a victim hands over money, the "catfish" could be prosecuted for fraud.
Someone using a fake profile to post offensive messages or doctored images designed to humiliate could also face criminal action.
A review of social media and the law by the House of Lords in 2014 concluded there was enough current legislation to cover crimes committed online.
New guidance was also issued by the CPS in October to help the police identify online crimes - including trolling and virtual mobbing.
But Anna thinks the law needs to go further.
Writing on her petition, she said: "I did not or would not consent to have a sexual relationship with a married man, let alone a man who was actively having relations with multiple women simultaneously.
"His behaviour was definitely premeditated showing his intent to use women, yet the current law will not find his actions a criminal offence."
Tony Neate, chief executive of Get Safe Online, recognises the devastating impact catfishing can have on victims.
"It can ruin a life. I know there have been suicides because it's affected someone badly," he says.
"It can affect their mental stability and lead to depression and the victims feel they can't trust anyone again.
"I do think we need to look more wisely at this in relation to how it is tackled at the moment."
Mr Neate, a former police officer, says there should be a "discussion" about punishing the worst catfishing offenders.
But he raises concerns about how practical a new law would be to implement.
"I really feel for that poor woman [Anna] but we have got to be realistic on how far we got and how the police would be able to enforce it," he says.
"Let's have the discussion because we can't have people being hurt and it's something we have got to look at."
Many dating websites offer users advice on how to spot a scammer and tips to avoid being taken in by a fake profile. (See "Tips to avoid catfishes", below)
Popular dating site Match.com has a team which will remove unwanted accounts and check photos and personal ads.
It also has a built-in screening system that can help identify suspicious accounts, remove them and prevent re-registration.
Lovestruck has a verification service that can confirm members are single and professional by checking their profiles against their other social media sites.
But the advice has not stopped many people being duped.
Last month, university professor Judith Lathlean revealed how she was tricked out of £140,000 by a gang using a fake profile.
Ife Ojo, 31, and Olusegun Agbaje, 43, were jailed in 2016 after conning a woman out of £1.6m using a fictional character.
But Andrew McClelland, chief executive of the Online Dating Association - the trade body for the industry - believes legislating against catfishing would be "difficult".
He said there could be genuine reasons why someone might not use their real details online - for example if they had been in an abusive relationship and did not want their ex-partner to find them.
Data protection and freedom of expression would also be an issue when it came to enforcing such a law, he added.
"The biggest problem this faces is how do you legislate against someone lying?" says Mr McClelland.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39078201 |
Bobsleigh World Championships: Germany win double gold in four-man bob - BBC Sport | 2017-02-26 | null | Germany's Francesco Friedrich and Johannes Lochner both win gold in the four-man bobsleigh, after finishing with the same time after four heats at the World Championships in Konigssee, Germany. | null | Germany's Francesco Friedrich and Johannes Lochner both win gold in the four-man bobsleigh, after finishing with the same time after four heats at the World Championships in Konigssee, Germany.
WATCH MORE: GB crash out of four-man bob
Available to UK users only. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/39095916 |
Andrew Trimble: Rugby, religion and me - BBC News | 2017-02-26 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Ireland rugby international Andrew Trimble on how his spirituality enhances his love of the game. | Northern Ireland | They are some of the best-known lines from one of the nation's favourite poems, the mantra of numerous self-help manuals and an inspiration for a range of politicians from President Franklin D Roosevelt to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same."
But while the words of Rudyard Kipling's poem are familiar, the application of them is altogether more challenging. How does one live without being lifted by success or dumped by failure? How can anyone maintain such detachment from the vicissitudes of life?
After playing in 69 international rugby matches, Ireland's wing three-quarter Andrew Trimble knows the highs and lows of professional sport. Last year, the team achieved its best ever series of results, with victories over southern hemisphere giants Australia and South Africa and then, for the first time in 111 years, Ireland beat the reigning world champions, the New Zealand All Blacks.
"There's no bigger moment than beating the All Blacks," Trimble explains. "After the game, we were walking around just shaking our heads and saying, 'What have we done? We've just beaten the All Blacks!' No Irish team has ever done this before."
Andrew Trimble says his spirituality enhances his love of rugby
So was his life suddenly and completely fulfilled by winning these important matches?
"I love the game," he says. "It's a driving force and a massive part of what I want to do. But it's important to be reminded that there's something else out there, there's something more important than rugby."
We're seated in the wooden pews of Ballyalbany Presbyterian Church in County Monaghan, about two miles from where the international team has just completed an open training session in preparation for Saturday's Six Nations match against France.
Standing on the touchline throughout the session, it's hard to imagine how rugby union professionals can do anything other than submit themselves to the demands of the game. It's relentlessly fast, consistently ferocious. It is all-consuming.
Off the field, Trimble is impeccably courteous to every autograph-hunter and maintains that having "something more important than rugby" actually enables him to cope better with the pressures of professional sport.
Just 16 months ago, after two operations on the same foot injury were followed by a stress fracture, he began to believe that his career might be over. Trimble was dropped from Ireland's squad for World Cup 2015 and, aged 29, was faced with losing something that had dominated his life since the age of seven.
"If it's over, you have to draw on something else so rugby doesn't become the be-all-and-end-all. It doesn't define me, I'm defined by something more important. It's a different mindset and perspective."
So what is that perspective?
"There's an eternal perspective," he explains. "Rugby lasts for 10, 15 years but the perspective of having a faith, and a sincere faith, is something that doesn't end and something that lasts forever."
Trimble believes that spirituality enhances his love for the sport.
"I'm far happier having that perspective and knowing that there is a bigger picture than putting all my trust in rugby, in a career that can be over in 10 years or a lot less than 10 years."
He says that his Christian faith has also enabled him to fight against the temptation to become entirely self-absorbed.
Last year, he visited a camp in Tanzania. It's run by Oxfam and houses hundreds of refugees from Burundi. He was profoundly moved by the experience.
"Some of these people will live their entire lives in refugee camps. They had families, they had careers, they had hopes and dreams and they've been cut short."
Trimble laments his own ignorance of the issue and says if he hadn't been taken to Tanzania by Oxfam, he would never have known about the refugee crisis in Africa. And his motivation to do something is shaped by his theology.
Andrew Trimble during his visit to Tanzania
"Pope Francis says they're all created in the image of God. They're just like you and me, they're no less special. It's a real shame that they're forgotten about because they're considered less important."
With that, our time together runs out and Trimble returns to the Ireland training camp - with the French in his sights.
He certainly embodies Kipling's view that triumph and disaster should be treated "just the same". But in some ways, his approach is closer to that of 17th Century poet Richard Lovelace. In his poem, To Lucasta, Going to the Wars, Lovelace argues that his affections are only heightened by being answerable to a higher authority.
"I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not honour more."
According to Andrew Trimble, an eternal perspective does the same for him - win, lose or draw. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39070127 |
Rex Tillerson is the opposite of Donald Trump. Will he have any sway? - BBC News | 2017-02-27 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Can the outsider secretary of state find a way to wield power in a chaotic Washington? | US & Canada | Rex Tillerson is the antithesis of his boss, the Disrupter-in-Chief Donald Trump.
He is also, in some respects, the antithesis of his predecessor, the garrulous former Secretary of State John Kerry.
For the man who is the public face of US diplomacy, Tillerson keeps a remarkably low profile.
Which has left staff at the State Department, and the journalists who cover it, wondering how he will fare against competing power centres in the White House, and how he will represent America to the world.
Early signs have not been promising.
For the entire first month of the Trump administration the State Department has given no public briefings. It's just been announced that they're set to resume early next month after an unprecedented six-week hiatus.
It was not just the matter of being absent from the cacophony of a new order asserting itself in Washington. It was the noticeable absence of an American voice to the world, a tool of diplomacy that has regularly inserted US positions into the internal debates of allies and foes alike.
Tillerson himself has rarely spoken publicly. On his inaugural trip to a G20 Foreign Ministers meeting in Bonn and again in Mexico, he read prepared statements but didn't make room for reporters' questions and didn't respond when we tried to ask them anyway.
This reticence is consistent with both his corporate background as former head of Exxon Mobil, and his personal style - a lifelong Eagle Scout who values actions more than words.
He does at least avoid the pitfalls of Kerry, who thoroughly embraced the public role of top diplomat, but whose shoot-from-the-hip style sometimes left his aides backtracking after he'd departed the podium.
Still, says one State Department employee, "I think Tillerson hurts himself with this quiet diplomacy approach, because Washington is not a quiet town."
This reluctance is perhaps understandable given the freewheeling approach of the noisiest voice in town, the White House. It has, at best, sent mixed signals on key foreign policy issues such as Nato, Russia and China.
But Tillerson's recent absence from Donald Trump's meetings with key foreign leaders has left many questioning just how much influence he has.
State department officials point out that his acting deputy Tom Shannon was in the room for the visits of the Canadian and Japanese Prime Ministers. And that Tillerson was travelling during the official part of Benjamin Netanyahu's Washington trip, so he met the Israeli leader separately before he left.
Yet while they were at dinner, the White House appeared to blindside him with suggestions it might depart from a long-standing insistence on a two-state solution to the Mideast conflict.
"If there's going to be a policy change, the State Department needs to know about it," a US official told the BBC.
To a large degree, Mr Tillerson's understated performance reflects this confusion in the administration over who's in charge.
The National Security Council - the traditional centre of influence in the White House, which usually works closely with the State Department - has been paralysed by staffing shortages and a leadership change.
As CEO of Exxon Mobile, Tillerson was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship and had dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin
Meanwhile alternative centres of power with undefined parameters have emerged: Trump's Chief White House Strategist Steve Bannon has set up a "strategic initiatives" thinktank to inform policy making.
And his son-in-law Jared Kushner has been tasked with taking the lead on foreign policy issues like Middle East peace, with no formal connection to established State Department channels.
Tillerson has his own channel to the president, says his aide, RC Hammond: "The secretary and the president are in frequent contact, meeting in person and speaking regularly over the phone."
The secretary has, however, reportedly been frustrated with the administration over staffing appointments.
The president had promised to let him pick ambassadors for many of the top-tier postings, two people close to the transition process told the BBC.
But they said White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus circumvented the arrangement by winning Trump's approval for at least 10 nominees before Tillerson was confirmed. These are still going through the vetting process.
The White House has not yet responded to BBC requests for comment.
Battles between the administration and government ministries over appointments during transitions are not necessarily unusual.
"It sounds like part of the usual Washington game," said a senior State Department official. "But what is unusual right now is the absence of a clear process, of who's in charge of policy formation or policy appointments."
Even if it was clear, the State Department is not fully equipped to help make policy.
The White House did not approve Tillerson's initial choice for a deputy and almost all of the high level jobs are still vacant.
Just two out of the 116 requiring congressional confirmation have been filled, according to the non-partisan organisation Partnership for Public Service: the secretary of state and the UN ambassador Nikki Haley.
Shake ups on the top floor are standard practice in changeovers between administrations, but this one was done "in a manner considered highly offensive to all of us," said the State Department official.
Some were given only 48 hours to vacate their offices and none were left to backfill until new appointments could be made, which is the normal procedure.
Tillerson's role in these decisions was not clear, as much of it happened before he was confirmed.
And there is plenty of expertise on hand to run the department in the meantime. But those who are acting in senior positions do not necessarily wield the same authority as those who've been officially confirmed for the roles, especially in the uncertain policy environment.
We are "treading water" said one career diplomat, noting the difficulty of getting guidance on even routine policy decisions from the top floor.
With such an introduction to the Trump administration the diplomat had been "highly sceptical" about Tillerson's appointment but was "pleasantly surprised" by his debut.
Tillerson had wanted Elliott Abrams to serve as his deputy, but he was disqualified due to negative comments about Trump
He came in strong with an opening speech that said all the right things - promising to make full use of the expertise on hand and suggesting that he'd have an open mind about dissenting opinions.
That is what he seems to be doing, working his way through the building in methodical consultations that include not just senior officials but mid-level officers, as he navigates the steep learning curve from CEO to diplomat. This approach has been well received, although I understand there are concerns that he is not as accessible as was hoped.
I have met Mr Tillerson in off-the-record settings and he seemed to me a thoughtful, deliberate man with an interest in taking a long-term strategic view.
And while he is not anti-establishment in the iconoclastic mould of Mr Trump, he is an outsider - to diplomacy but also to the city. Perhaps that makes him less inclined to play by its rules.
Whether that will work in this town, and with this administration, is too soon to say. | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39083336 |
Germany's Bundesbank plays down Brexit 'punishment' - BBC News | 2017-02-27 | https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews | Bundesbank official says leaving the EU should not be used to "penalise" the City, but argues jobs could be lost. | Business | One of Germany's most senior banking executives has said the vote to leave the European Union should not be taken as an excuse to "penalise" the City.
Dr Andreas Dombret, executive board member for the German central bank, the Bundesbank, said that the approach to Brexit should be "pragmatic".
Although he said some jobs could be lost, London would remain "the most important financial centre in Europe".
"As there has been this vote, there will be a Brexit," he told the BBC.
"I see it as my job to make sure the transition is as smooth as possible, and we, I can promise, will be as pragmatic as possible."
Dr Dombret said he did not believe that Brexit was risk free.
In a private meeting in Frankfurt earlier this month, he said that London's position as the financial services "gateway" to the EU could be undermined.
Further, trillions of pounds worth of euro currency transactions and insurance products - called clearing - would be likely to move to the continent from the City.
Andreas Dombret, of the Bundesbank, says the Brexit negotiations will be a "two way street"
But he made it clear that Germany saw Britain as an ally, particularly when it came to maintaining global regulatory standards.
Dr Dombret said he did not want to see either the EU or the UK engaged in a "regulatory rush to the bottom" to try and gain competitive advantage.
And he admitted that any risks to financial services were "two-way".
"I see risks not only for London; I see risks for Germany and for the rest of Europe, should there be an impact of Brexit on economic circumstances it will not be concentrated on Great Britain it will be also in the rest of Europe," he said.
"I see this as a two-way street. Of course there will be costs to such a development, but it is far too early to say what these costs will be and what kind of unintended costs we will have to face."
Asked how many jobs might relocate in the financial services sector after Britain has left the EU, Mr Dombret answered: "It is very hard to put a number on it.
"They may not all necessarily go to Europe, maybe some of those job losses could go to the United States.
"I am not expecting those job losses from the UK point of view all to go to one city.
"[That] is also not that bad because then the risk is also diversified over several financial centres, I see some benefit in that too from a financial stability point of view."
Turning to the chances of a free trade deal for financial services between the UK and the EU, Dr Dombret admitted that there were a number of hurdles.
"I don't have 100% confidence this will work," he said, pointing out that the EU had never signed a free trade deal for financial services with a non-EU country.
"You have to have some scepticism. But, again, I know the government of the United Kingdom is very sincerely trying to negotiate this and we should be open, especially from the German point of view, to the EU 27, to everything in order to help Great Britain.
"By no means does it make sense to penalise the United Kingdom for having taken this view [Brexit]."
Mr Dombret says a number of banks have contacted Frankfurt about moving some services from London
The Bundesbank has recently put information on its website for banks looking to move jobs to Frankfurt, the country's financial capital.
"This is only logical, if you as a bank are thinking of relocating part of your business to a city like Frankfurt, that you speak to potential future supervisors," Dr Dombret said.
"That is the most logical thing to do.
"So, I am not promoting Frankfurt as a financial centre, but of course I am willing to answer all questions and willing to entertain all meetings because it is only good for the stability of the financial system that there is as much transparency as possible and that all questions are being answered.
"It is just a service because so many banks are contacting us." | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39095438 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.