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Britain’s Andy Murray takes on Frederico Gil of Portugal for the right to face Rafael Nadal in the semi-finals of the Monte Carlo Masters.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Unrest within the army has been simmering Shooting has been heard at an elite barracks in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, where unrest within the military has been simmering.
Soldiers at the presidential guard barracks in the presidential compound reportedly fired into the air in protest at unpaid housing subsidies.
Gunfire was later heard elsewhere, possibly at another barracks.
President Blaise Compaore sought to calm soldiers earlier this month after protests over pay and conditions.
Earlier on Thursday, marches were held in the capital and other towns to protest at rising food prices and alleged civil rights abuses, AFP news agency reports.
Burkina Faso, a struggling country of 16.3 million people, has been affected by the turmoil in neighbouring Ivory Coast.
The World Bank warned on Thursday that the Ivorian conflict had disrupted supplies and also pushed prices up for processed foods such as dried milk, sugar and vegetable oil in Burkina Faso and other landlocked countries in the region such as Mali and Niger.
There was no official comment on the cause of the shooting but a presidential guard officer told AFP, on condition of anonymity, that it was over housing subsidies.
“A couple of young soldiers have gone crazy,” a source at the barracks told the agency.
President Compaore was reportedly not in the presidential compound at the time.
Reports varied about the second shooting, saying variously that it had occurred at a second guard barracks about 3km (two miles) from the presidential palace, or near the state radio station.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Mr Compaore has ruled the country since taking power in a coup in 1987, after which he won four presidential elections, the latest in November 2010.
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Kate Middleton will be staying in the hotel’s Royal suite
More details of the royal wedding have been released by Buckingham Palace.
Kate Middleton and her immediate family will spend the night before the wedding at the Goring Hotel in Belgravia, central London.
The five-star hotel was the Middleton family’s personal choice according to press reports, she will stay in the Royal suite.
Prince William, second in line to the throne, will marry Miss Middleton on 29 April at Westminster Abbey.
Jeremy Goring, Chief Executive Officer of the Goring Hotel, said: “We are honoured and delighted to be playing a small part in such a great day. We wish Miss Middleton and Prince William every happiness, and we are all looking forward to a momentous celebration.”
He said: “The Goring is the only five-star hotel in London that is still owned and run by the family that built it.”
Mr Goring said the 100-year-old hotel was famous for its “superbly cooked British food” and “uniquely personable English style of service”.
Clarence House has also revealed the exact timings of the wedding day.
The route will pass along The Mall, Horse Guards Road, Horse Guards Parade, through Horse Guards Arch, Whitehall, along the south side of Parliament Square and into Broad Sanctuary.
The wedding service will be relayed to the gathered crowds by speakers along the route.
There will also be screens at Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square.
More information for people wanting to watch the service in central London is available at www.direct.gov.uk/royalwedding.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A teacher with responsibility for vulnerable pupils at a Powys school was seen drinking alcohol while on duty, a disciplinary hearing has heard.
Penelope Haddon was suspected of drinking white wine from a water bottle at Llandrindod Wells Church in Wales Primary School last May.
Two witnesses said she smelled of alcohol. Miss Haddon denies claims she was under the influence of alcohol.
A General Teaching Council for Wales panel is considering its verdict.
Andrea Burton, a student on placement from Coleg Powys, said: “She was quite stumbly, walking around the class.”
Miss Burton told the panel how Miss Haddon smelled of alcohol, as did the empty bottle which she later recovered from the classroom bin.
She said: “I was concerned for the children.”
“They were particularly vulnerable children she was looking after on those days”
Huw Roberts Presenting the case
Senior teacher Janice Baynham said she also smelled alcohol on Miss Haddon’s breath, and was aware that she had had worries about the health of her parents at that time.
The hearing was told that deputy headteacher Colin Williams had tasted residue from the bottle and believed it to be white wine.
Huw Roberts, presenting the case, said the serious allegations had been backed up by “consistent and compelling witnesses”.
“She had children in her care and they were particularly vulnerable children she was looking after on those days. It doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened.”
Miss Haddon, who is no longer working at the school, was not present at the hearing and denies allegations that she was under the influence of alcohol at work and had brought and consumed alcohol on school premises.
The disciplinary panel has retired to consider whether the allegations are true and whether to reprimand, suspend or prohibit Miss Haddon from teaching.
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Earnings at America’s largest bank have disappointed investors Bank of America Merrill Lynch has reported a 38% decline in profits for the first three months of the 2010 compared with the same period in 2010.
The US’s largest bank reported lower-than-expected profits of $2bn (£1.23bn) compared with $3.2bn in the same period last year.
The bank had made a net loss of $1.2bn in the final quarter of 2010.
The bank continued to struggle with residential mortgages, losing $2.39bn as debts were not repaid.
High unemployment and falling property prices in the US has seen many US households falling behind on their mortgages.
Analysts were disappointed by the figures which came after unexpectedly good results from rival JP Morgan.
“I think the reason seems to be Bank of America is struggling with the mortgage mess and cleaning up what is going on there,” said David Morrison a market strategist at GFT Global Markets.
The bank announced that Bruce Thompson, its chief risk officer, will also become chief financial officer in July.
Chuck Noski, the current CFO, will become vice chairman of Bank of America.
Mortgage losses were one of the main causes of the financial crisis in 2008 which saw Bank of America merge with investment bank Merryl Lynch.
Heavy losses in the merged unit forced the bank to rely heavily on Federal funds through the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
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Four firms that misled people in debt have been closed down by the Office of Fair Trading for offering poor advice.
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Royal fans in the US can get themselves a lifelike Kate Middleton doll, as Rajesh Mirchandani discovered when he visited the Franklin Mint.
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James Bull said he and Mr Williams had been asked to leave after “a quick peck on the lips” A gay couple who say they were removed from a pub after kissing should have left earlier after being warned, a former LVA boss has claimed.
James Bull and Jonathan Williams said they were thrown out of the John Snow on Broadwick Street in London’s Soho.
Daniel Griffiths, ex-president of the Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations, said the pair should have gone “where the matter is accepted”.
Mr Williams, 26, said they were kissing but it “wasn’t anything indecent”.
Mr Bull, 23, said a man claiming to be the pub’s landlord first objected to their kissing shortly after 2145 BST on Wednesday, but they had been asked to leave an hour later after a “quick peck on the lips”.
The John Snow pub and Samuel Smith’s brewery, which owns the central London venue, have not commented on the incident.
“We make the house rules and we stand by those house rules”
Dennis Griffiths Ex-president of the Federation of LVAs
Mr Griffiths, owner of the Miners Rest in Barnsley, said every pub landlord was free to make in-house rules which “brings respect to the rest of the clientele”.
He said: “From a personal point of view, whether they were gay, whether they were lesbians or whether they were heterosexuals, I would still have thrown them out.
“It’s very, very hard times and we have got to keep as many people in the pub [as possible]. We make the house rules and we stand by those house rules. If he doesn’t like the house rules, don’t use the pub.”
He added: “When he was asked at quarter to 10 to leave or to stop doing it, if he intended to carry on he should have left them premises, in an orderly fashion, and gone to premises where the matter is accepted and stayed there.”
Mr Williams said: “We had been kissing but my hands and James’s hands were above the table so I don’t think it’s really a problem.
“Should I be stopped from kissing my partner in public just because I am not in a supposedly gay area? That is just utterly wrong, surely. We shouldn’t ghettoize people.
“If they want us out then there’s a better way of doing it and a polite way of doing it and a way that doesn’t make us feel like we have just been kicked out purely for being gay.”
The Metropolitan Police is investigating the incident.
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Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti would not have a “problem” if the club sacked him at the end of the season.
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Microsoft and Google and embroiled in an EU competition dispute Google has defended recent changes to its search system that reduced the prominence of some popular websites.
One of the worst hit by the “Panda” update was Ciao.co.uk, a Microsoft-owned company that had been leading an EU competition case against Google.
Its web visibility fell by 94% according to analysis by Searchmetrics.
Google’s head of search evaluation, Scott Huffman, said it was “almost absurd” to suggest that the results were rigged.
The company regularly changes the algorithms that determine what users sees when they search for something.
Such updates are often done to weed out “content farms” – websites that copy material from other sites in order to get hits.
Where a keyword search may previously have returned their site on Google’s first page, afterwards it may be relegated to further down the rankings.
When the update, known as “Panda”, was rolled out on 11 April, Google published a blog post explaining that it was designed to “reduce rankings for low-quality sites-sites which are low-value add for users.”
Shopping and price comparison sites such as Ciao.co.uk sometimes suffer when Google algorithms change because they carry comments and reviews replicated elsewhere on the internet.
However, experts said that it was unusual to see a legitimate website hit as badly as Ciao.
“A 94% drop is astronomical,” said Sanjay Shelat, a search engine optimisation (SEO) specialist at Edit Optimisation.
“It is very unusual to take such a hit in an update. That is enough to put a company under.”
Searchmetrics claims that the search visibility of Ciao.co.uk fell by 94% after Google’s Panda update. Ciao.co.uk was involved in initiating an EU investigation into Google in November 2010.
Its parent company, Microsoft claims that the Google has used its dominant position to limit rivals’ products.
The BBC asked Microsoft if it thought the current downgrading of Ciao results was related to the legal action, Microsoft said it would not be commenting on the situation “at this time”.
When questioned by news agency AFP, Google’s Scott Huffman said: “If you think of the scale of what we are talking about, it is almost absurd to say we could rig results.”
Mr Huffman pointed-out that the update had received a very positive response from Google users.
Searchmetrics analysed Google results in response to a range of keywords, both before and after the Panda update.
Alongside Ciao’s 94% reduction in visibility, it found that hubpages.com fell by 85% and eHow.co.uk dropped 53%.
A Similar analysis by Sistrix found a 81% drop in visibility for Ciao.co.uk, 72% reduction for hubpages.com and an 84% fall for eHow.co.uk.
While a sharp drop in visibility may constitute a crisis for some websites and their search engine optimisation (SEO) engineers, it does not necessarily spell disaster.
Technology news website Electricpig.co.uk was downgraded by 94% by the Panda update, according to Searchmetrics.
Site editor James Holland told BBC News: “We haven’t seen an immediate impact.
“Comparing our traffic from Google for that week, we’re actually only down 0.5% versus the week before Panda took effect.
“That suggests most of the keywords Searchmetrics are measuring us against weren’t being clicked anyway, and our best-performing stuff is still doing the business.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Vittorio Arrigoni is a pro-Palestinian activist who has been in Gaza for several years A radical Islamic group in the Gaza Strip has kidnapped an Italian activist.
Italian consular officials in the Palestinian territory say Vittorio Arrigoni was taken on Thursday morning.
In a video posted on YouTube, Mr Arrigoni appears blindfolded with what looks like thick black tape. He seems to have been beaten.
Mr Arrigoni is the first foreigner kidnapped in Gaza since BBC journalist Alan Johnston was snatched in 2007.
The BBC’s Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison says the group that is thought to have taken Mr Arrigoni is part of a movement sometimes called Salafism.
Salafists have often been in conflict with Hamas, the Islamist movement that governs Gaza, and they consider Hamas too moderate, says our correspondent.
In the video, the kidnappers demand that Hamas release a number of Salafist prisoners.
Mr Arrigoni is a pro-Palestinian activist who has been in Gaza for several years campaigning against Israel’s ongoing blockade of the territory.
Hamas has been credited with eliminating the threat of kidnapping in Gaza up to now.
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Inflation in China rises to highest level since 2008 in March, despite government efforts to cool prices.
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For the first time ever, more girls than boys have joined the Scout Association in one year.
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Most of the 13 airports being upgraded for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil will not be ready in time, a report warns.
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Sebastian Vettel continues his defence of the world drivers’ title on Thursday practice in Shanghai.
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