General news

• VIDEO: Trafalgar Square vigil for Paris

  07-01-2015 23:49 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Hundreds of people have gathered in London's Trafalgar Square to pay their respects to the 12 people killed at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
  
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• Schools minister Nick Gibb sets out his timetable for educational reform in 2015

  07-01-2015 23:45
  
  This is a year of historic anniversaries: 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta, 600 years since the Battle of Agincourt, and the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo. Sadly, these seminal events will mean little to many young people. A 2009 survey of undergraduates conducted by Professor Derek Matthews of Cardiff University found that 83 per cent of his students did not know that Wellington led the British and their allies to victory at Waterloo and 88 per cent could not name a single 19
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: Former editor urges people to use laughter as the 'ultimate weapon' against extremists

  07-01-2015 23:43
  
  The former director and editor of Charlie Hebdo has urged people to use laughter as the “ultimate weapon” against extremism and hate following the massacre of his friends and former colleagues.
  
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• VIDEO: Hospitals declare 'major incidents'

  07-01-2015 23:40 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The BBC's Hugh Pym reports on the political rows which have erupted around the latest problems facing A&E departments
  
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• Atletico Madrid 2-0 Real Madrid

  07-01-2015 23:32 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Fernando Torres's Atletico Madrid beat city rivals Real in the first leg of their last-16 Copa del Rey tie.
  
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• Hopkins 'to swat away' housemates

  07-01-2015 23:30
  
  Controversial TV star Katie Hopkins says she will "swat" any of her Celebrity Big Brother housemates who annoy her.
  
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• VIDEO: Corden and Blunt on the red carpet

  07-01-2015 23:28 via bbc.co.uk
  
  James Corden and Emily Blunt talk to Lizo Mzimba about the film version of Into the Woods.
  
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• Ched Evans to Oldham: Convicted rapist on brink of winning deal with League One club after family put £2m on table

  07-01-2015 23:25
  The father of Ched Evans’ fiancée is on the brink of securing a route back into football for the 26-year-old player, as Oldham Athletic’s owner said that he wanted – on principle – to sign Evans.
  
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• Once the stuff of history, airships are making a surprise return - from Nasa to Bedfordshire

  07-01-2015 23:25
  
  You would be forgiven for thinking that airships lived on only in steampunk fantasies or celluloid – in films such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But like other forms of transportation technology that we assumed was moribund only to return from the dead like a horror-movie villain – trams, maglevs, double-decker buses, propeller planes – airships are back.
  
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• Missing hillwalkers found safe

  07-01-2015 23:21 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Two hillwalkers who went missing on the Cairngorm Plateau are found safe by mountain rescuers.
  
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• Paris shooting suspects identified

  07-01-2015 23:18
  
  French police say they have identified three men as suspects in the deadly attack on a French satirical magazine which killed 12 people.
  
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• Labour's 'manifesto for women' will target the 9m who didn't vote at the last election

  07-01-2015 23:16
  
  Labour will target the nine million women who did not vote at the last general election after new figures showed that more women than men have turned their backs on politics.
  
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• From pygmies to hipsters, scientists find music really is universal

  07-01-2015 23:13
  
  The 19th century writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called music the “universal language of mankind” and now there may be scientific proof he was right.
  
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• Bandaging the NHS: Our health service needs saving. Sticking plasters won't do

  07-01-2015 23:04
  
  How crafty of the shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham to call for a “summit” to deal with the crisis in A&E departments. If the Government refuses, it looks callous. If it agrees, it dances to Mr Burnham’s tune. In fact, a summit would solve little: it would not free up a single bed, or deliver a single X-ray, or bandage a single wound. It would do even less to deal with the long-term challenges facing the NHS.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: The killers' sophistication suggests they had powerful backers

  07-01-2015 23:03
  
  What took place at the offices of Charlie Hebdo was a mission of targeted assassinations carried out by proficient killers armed with Kalashnikovs for urban guerrilla fighting. And, as such, it is markedly different from bombings such as the ones in London and Madrid which sought to inflict the maximum number of indiscriminate casualties.
  
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• Cameron: I can fix EU 'problem'

  07-01-2015 23:02 via bbc.co.uk
  
  David Cameron says he is "convinced" he can "fix the problems" in Britain's relationship with Europe, as he held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: A ceasefire with Syria's President Assad may help to turn the jihadi tide

  07-01-2015 23:01
  
  There is a feeling of inevitability about the attack in Paris.
  
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• Remembering Kate Gross: Tony Blair's former aide died on Christmas day aged 36

  07-01-2015 23:00
  
  It is after a poem by Raymond Carver that Kate Gross named her book, Late Fragments.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: The gunmen burst into the offices, opened fire, and cried 'vengeance'

  07-01-2015 22:58
  
  It takes a special kind of brutality to murder a nation’s jesters. At 11.30am today Charlie Hebdo’s editorial staff – a loose constellation of mostly freelance lampooners – had gathered to decide what might make their 40,000 readers chuckle this week. They were considering returning to one of their favourite subjects, the comical absurdities of extremist Islam.
  
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• VIDEO: Schools 'struggle' with self harm

  07-01-2015 22:57 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Two of the UK's largest teaching unions say schools are struggling to deal with the rising numbers of students who are self-harming.
  
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• VIDEO: Gerrard: Right time for LA Galaxy

  07-01-2015 22:56 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard says his summer move to LA Galaxy comes at the "right time for a new challenge".
  
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• PM vows co-operation on Paris attack

  07-01-2015 22:48 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The UK's political leaders and the Queen offer statements of support and solidarity following the Paris terror attack.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: 'My reporters told me all they saw was blood'

  07-01-2015 22:40
  
  Above Rue Nicolas Appert, a group of men and women watched two gunmen walking freely in the street below.
  
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• Stricken cargo ship 'held' in water

  07-01-2015 22:30 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The cargo ship that has been stricken in the Solent since Saturday is "held" by two tug boats before salvors carry out a full assessment.
  
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• Author Joan Didion is unveiled as model for ultra-chic fashion label Céline

  07-01-2015 22:25
  
  Not since Kim Kardashian balanced a champagne coupe on her generous behind has a single editorial image generated such a frenzied response online.
  
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• Man arrested over Christmas murder

  07-01-2015 22:10 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A man is arrested in connection with the murder of a man in east Belfast over the Christmas holidays.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo vigils: Across France, hundreds of thousands gather in a show of defiant solidarity against the gunmen who brought murder and mayhem to Paris

  07-01-2015 22:04
  As the chants of “liberté” echoed around the Place de la République in Paris tonight, Jamilla held up a poster of a front page from Charlie Hebdo. It read: “Love: stronger than hate.”
  
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• Tanisha Anderson death: Family file civil rights lawsuit against Cleveland authorities

  07-01-2015 22:03
  
  Relatives of a black woman suffering from mental health issues who died after police responded to an emergency call by her family have filed a legal action against of Cleveland – alleging that her constitutional rights were violated.
  
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• 70th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation: 'Why I had to visit this monstrous memorial'

  07-01-2015 22:00
  
  In the late 1970s, two American television series were shown in the UK. One was called The Holocaust, the other was called Roots. As an impressionable 13-year-old boy living in what was then a predominantly Jewish north London suburb, one of these shows was to have a deep and lasting effect on me. Over the following decades, I would read everything I could lay my hands on related to the subject. From the horrors of the Middle Passage to the bruised optimism of the civil rights movement to the a
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: Cartoonist says gunmen threatened to kill her toddler daughter unless she let them in

  07-01-2015 21:51
  
  A Charlie Hebdo cartoonist has told how she was forced to let the gunmen that massacred her colleagues into the satirical magazine's office after they threatened to kill her daughter.
  
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• VIDEO: Boy survives skull part in belly op

  07-01-2015 21:50 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Jahfari Martin, nine, is recovering well four months after doctors removed part of his skull and kept it in his "sterile" stomach for weeks.
  
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• FA urged to intervene over Evans

  07-01-2015 21:22
  
  The Football Association (FA) has been urged to intervene to prevent convicted rapist Ched Evans returning to the professional game.
  
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• VIDEO: 'Callous' visa move halts funeral

  07-01-2015 21:12 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The parents of a girl who died after she was hit by a car have postponed her funeral because their relatives were denied visas.
  
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• Merkel gives little ground to Cameron over EU reform on visit

  07-01-2015 21:04
  
  By Kylie MacLellan LONDON (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she would help Prime Minister David Cameron tackle abuses of Britain's welfare system by EU migrants but insisted the bloc's principle of freedom of movement should not be touched. Cameron, whose Conservatives are losing support to the Eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) before an election in May, was due to raise his proposals on reforming the European Union during a meeting with Merkel in Lon
  
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• Honeymoon 'wife' eBay bids top £1,800

  07-01-2015 20:55 via bbc.co.uk
  
  An online auction to join a man on his honeymoon after he split with his fiancée has reached £1,800.
  
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• World rallies around French victims

  07-01-2015 20:52
  
  British spies are ready to join in the international manhunt for three fugitive gunmen who carried out a deadly terror attack on a French satirical magazine, killing 12 people.
  
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• Merkel to seek 'common solutions'

  07-01-2015 20:52
  
  German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she is ready to seek "common solutions" to concerns raised by the UK about the functioning of the European Union, saying: "Where there's a will there's a way."
  
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• What is Charlie Hebdo? Banned and resurrected but always in the grand tradition of Gallic satire

  07-01-2015 20:47
  
  Left-wing scandal sheets have been a proud French tradition since Marie Antoinette was led to the guillotine.
  
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• NHS crisis: Extra cash is not reaching critical areas effectively

  07-01-2015 20:45
  
  Government bailouts to help the NHS cope with winter pressures have not reached frontline services in some parts of the country, Britain’s top emergency doctor has said, as the political dispute over crumbling A&E performance deepened.
  
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• Angela Merkel backs David Cameron's migrant benefits plans - in part

  07-01-2015 20:41
  
  Angela Merkel has lent qualified support to David Cameron’s plans to restrict state benefits to EU migrants, boosting his hopes of winning a new deal for Britain ahead of an in/out referendum.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: Killers carry out their deadly mission with military precision

  07-01-2015 20:27
  
  The killers carried out their lethal mission with military precision. They sought out the cartoonists by name before executing them and turning their guns on the others.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: Killers carried out their deadly mission with military precision

  07-01-2015 20:27
  
  The killers carried out their lethal mission with military precision. They sought out the cartoonists by name before executing them and turning their guns on the others.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attacks: Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten increases office security

  07-01-2015 20:24
  
  The Danish newspaper which set off a storm of protest in 2005 after it printed caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed increased security at its offices today, while other European publications that ran similar cartoons vowed not to be silenced by the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
  
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• The tragic story of a Gaza family drowned on a smugglers' boat as they tried to escape the death and destruction that claimed the lives of four young relatives

  07-01-2015 20:13
  They were four boys, cousins, killed by Israeli missiles while playing on a beach in July. The lethal attack took place next to a hotel where journalists were staying and received international media coverage, a dreadful and poignant symbol of the terrible suffering of Gaza’s people during last summer’s savage war.
  
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• NHS Q&A: What caused the current crisis and what are the solutions?

  07-01-2015 20:01
  
  Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing
  
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• Research hope for prostate cancer

  07-01-2015 20:00
  
  Pouring petrol on the fire can potentially reverse resistance to hormone treatments for prostate cancer, new research suggests.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: World leaders condemn 'barbaric' killings

  07-01-2015 19:39
  
  David Cameron condemned the “barbaric” killings in Paris as world leaders spoke of their horror and anger over the murders and vowed to stand up for freedom of expression.
  
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• Charlie Hebdo attack: Thousands join vigils in Paris, London and around the world

  07-01-2015 19:39
  
  Thousands of people have flooded Paris’ Place de la Republique in a vigil to pay tribute to the victims of the attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
  
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• Private Eye editor Ian Hislop responds to Charlie Hebdo attack: 'Very little seems funny today'

  07-01-2015 19:36
  
  Ian Hislop has issued a statement following the shooting dead of 12 people at the office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
  
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• Prosecco makers’ call for EU fines takes fizz out of Britain’s soaring sales

  07-01-2015 19:32
  
  It’s been described as flowery, fruity and alluring – and at less than half the price of a bottle of Champagne, Prosecco has found favour among connoisseurs and Friday night pub-goers alike.
  
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