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Champion jockey Tony McCoy defends the Grand National after critics said the race was too tough following the deaths of two horses on Saturday.
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The BBC’s Michael Voss asked people in Havana how they were coping
Cuba is facing its worst drought in half a century, with tens of thousands of families almost entirely reliant on water trucks for essential supplies.
The drought started two years ago, and reservoirs are now down to a fifth of their normal levels.
The government is providing road deliveries of water to more than 100,000 people in the worst affected areas of the capital, Havana.
The situation in Havana is compounded by a pipe network in poor condition.
The state-run newspaper Granma says up to 70% of water pipes supplying the capital are leaking and in urgent need of repair, the BBC’s Michael Voss in Havana says.
Residents are having to use buckets and bottles to fill up with water from the road deliveries.
“It’s completely out of control,” one resident, Ana Gomez, said. “Just imagine that you can’t wash when you want to, you have to wash when you are able to.”
Another, Enrique Olivera Gonzalez, said: “As there is no water, you can’t wash your clothes, cook, or clean your house.”
Cubans are hoping the rainy season in May and June will bring some respite.
But even a normal rainfall will not be enough to fill up the reservoirs, our correspondent says.
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Mr Berlusconi has been beset by scandals and trials during his 17 years in politics Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has confirmed that he will not run for office again when his current term expires in 2013.
He told reporters he intended to complete his plan to amend Italy’s judicial system, and to change the country’s constitution before leaving.
Mr Berlusconi has survived numerous scandals and criminal trials.
On Wednesday the lower house of parliament approved a bill that would cut the length of some trials.
The measure passed by 314 to 296, amid boos and shouts from opposition politicians. They said the bill was a “disgrace” and tailor-made for Mr Berlusconi.
It needs final approval from the Italian Senate, where Mr Berlusconi has a solid majority.
It would cut the length of trials for people with no previous convictions, and thereby effectively end a trial in which Mr Berlusconi is accused of bribing British lawyer David Mills to lie in court.
Mr Mills was convicted in the case 2009, but the ruling was overturned when the country’s highest criminal court said the statute of limitations had expired.
Mr Berlusconi denies wrongdoing and says he is the victim of a long-running campaign by left-wing judges – an accusation he repeated during a dinner with foreign journalists in Rome on Wednesday.
The BBC’s David Willey, who was at the dinner, said the prime minister did not intend to run for office at the end of his mandate. In December, he had announced that he would probably step aside in 2013.
Mr Berlusconi, 74, first became prime minister in 1994. He has a fortune estimated at $9bn (£5.6bn) and his business empire includes Italy’s three main private TV stations.
During Wednesday’s briefing, Mr Berlusconi also quashed rumours that he intends to stand for president in 2013. He offered his cabinet secretary Gianni Letta as a possible candidate.
He also suggested Angelo Alfano, Italy’s 40-year-old justice minister, might be a possible future leader of his Freedom Party – though he did not rule out some future political role for himself as a father figure who would advise future centre-right coalitions.
In the latest high-profile trial, Mr Berlusconi is accused of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute – accusations he denies.
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Find out where the space station is in real time
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Manchester City striker Carlos Tevez will definitely sit out Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United after being ruled out for “three to four weeks” with a hamstring injury.
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At least three Afghan policemen were killed when suicide bombers attacked a police training centre in the east of the country, officials say.
Police said two bombers also died in the raid on the base in Paktia province where dozens of men were being trained.
Two more suicide attacks took place in Kabul and Kandahar, police said. The Taliban claimed all three attacks.
Several policemen were wounded in the Kabul incident. In Kandahar, three people, two of them women, were hurt.
Paktia, close to Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, is said to be a stronghold for several militant groups.
According to police, four men with explosives tied to their bodies tried to enter the police training compound in Paktia and were challenged by security forces.
The first attacker blew himself up outside the base, killing three policemen and injuring another three who were guarding the front gate, police said.
A heavy exchange of fire followed in which the second attacker was killed. Police said the remaining two attackers managed to escape, the BBC’s Bilal Sarwary reports from Kabul.
In the Kabul attack, a truck laden with explosives blew up outside the district governor’s office. The attacker was killed and several policemen were injured, officials said.
In the third incident, police killed a suspected militant who was trying to enter a police station in the southern city of Kandahar. Officials said the man was wearing an explosive belt.
The attacks come a week after Taliban militants killed six security personnel in an attack on a police training centre near Kandahar. Three gunmen also died.
Tens of thousands of Afghan police and troops are being trained to assume full security control once Nato leaves.
Afghan forces are frequently targeted by the Taliban and their allies, who want to oust the Western-backed government of Hamid Karzai in Kabul.
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An annual MOT could help spot nurses who need extra support Nurses should have annual physical and psychological testing to ensure they are up to the demands of the job, nurses say.
The check-ups could take place alongside the normal appraisal, the Royal College of Nursing conference in Liverpool heard.
Nurses said there were more checks on basic equipment than on NHS staff.
And they said the move would help the profession set a good example to the rest of the population.
Those found wanting should be given support by occupational health teams to tackle their problems, they said.
Claire Topham-Brown, a critical care nurse from Peterborough, said: “There is no denying that nursing is a physically demanding job. You do need a certain level of physical fitness.
“One of our activists observed that we take better care of wheelchairs than we do of the staff. Bizarre but true, we now risk-assess everything, yearly, monthly, weekly and sometimes daily. But when do we ever assess that vital, delicate and most valuable part of the machine?”
She was supported by other nurses, including Karen Webb, the RCN’s director of the eastern region of England.
She suggested the testing and support was even more important given the expansion in nurses in training in recent years, which could lead to an increase in those that are unsuitable for a career in nursing.
“It is about making sure people have the right attributes.”
The call comes amid a drive to tackle staff sickness in the NHS.
The government’s NHS Health and Wellbeing report published a year ago said the health service needed to do more to improve the health of staff.
NHS staff take an average of 10.7 days off work a year – more than the public sector average and much higher than the 6.4 figure for the private sector.
In total, staff sickness costs the NHS £1.7bn a year.
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A 20-year-old has written off his dad’s Gumpert Apollo after taking it for a spin in Germany.
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Richard Barnes of Select Research talks about scanning children with 3D imaging technology as part of major research into the changing shapes of British children.
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Newcastle University caters for more than 20,000 students Newcastle University has announced plans to charge the maximum £9,000 tuition fees for new UK and EU undergraduates from 2012.
The university has promised that up to a third of students will be eligible for reduced fees and also set aside £29m for bursaries over five years.
Vice-Chancellor, Prof Chris Brink, said he was confident the higher fees would not “put off” potential students.
The National Union of Students said the move would hit poorer students.
A number of other universities have already announced £9,000 fees.
The university currently has 14,700 undergraduates and 5,700 postgraduates, and employs about 5,000 people.
In 2010 it generated almost £93m from academic fees and support grants.
Prof Brink added: “Newcastle University is a modern civic university with a proud tradition, committed to world-class academic excellence.
“We are consistently ranked in the top 20 in the UK for research power and student experience, and have a strong graduate employability record.
“We want to continue to attract the brightest and best students from all backgrounds to study here.
“We are planning to build on our existing wide range of activities to promote fair access, which will include a generous package of support to ensure that students will not be put off applying to us for financial reasons.”
Liam Burns, who is the newly-elected president of the National Union of Students, said the university’s decision was “bad news.”
He said: “Local students from poorer backgrounds will be put off by this. It doesn’t matter whether you pay it back up front.
“At 17 I would never have wanted to take on that sort of debt and so it will put off the poorest.”
University fees declared so far are listed in the table below. Please send further updates to [email protected]
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Big increases in lamb prices have led to a 500% jump in reported thefts of livestock, according to the agriculture insurance specialists NFU mutual.
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The most unusual weddings you have been to
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Research published in the Lancet shows that Britain’s stillbirth rates are above almost every other high-income country.
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Fidel Castro’s forces outnumbered the invaders by about 10 to one Fifty years ago, shortly before midnight on 16 April 1961, a group of some 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and financed by the CIA launched an ill-fated invasion of Cuba from the sea in the Bay of Pigs.
The plan was to overthrow Fidel Castro and his revolution.
Instead, it turned into a humiliating defeat which pushed Cuba firmly into the arms of the Soviet Union and has soured US-Cuban relations to this day.
The Bay of Pigs is a large isolated inlet on Cuba’s southern coast.
There is little here apart from mosquitoes and a crocodile-infested swamp.
The beach at Playa Giron, a village with a small airstrip at the mouth of the Bay of Pigs, was the invaders’ primary target. (To this day, it is referred to in Cuba as the Playa Giron invasion.)
A simultaneous landing was planned near the village of Playa Larga, 35km away at the far end of the bay.
“”We thought, ‘This is the invasion boys, be careful! They are trying to invade’ ”
Domingo Rodriguez
An old, fortified concrete trench dug into the coconut palm-fringed beach is one of the only visible reminders of the historic battle.
Fidel Castro had ordered defences like these to be built at key points throughout the island – an invasion was widely expected, but no-one had any idea where it was going to land.
The American plan was to sneak ashore virtually unopposed, secure the area, take the airfield and fly in a government-in-exile who would then call for direct US support.
Domingo Rodriguez believes the attempted invasion was a turning point for Cuba At the same time, they were relying on a mass uprising in Cuba against the revolutionaries.
It could not have gone more wrong: when an advance frogman lit a beacon to show the exiles where to land, it also alerted the Cuban militia to their presence.
Local fisherman Gregorio Moreira, who still lives in the same house beside the beach, was one of the first to raise the alarm.
“I went out of the house and saw a flare, like a candle, in the sky. So I headed to the trench with my father and my brothers,” 74-year-old Mr Moreira recalls.
He was joined on the beach by one of his neighbours, another fisherman, Domingo Rodriguez.
“We thought, ‘This is the invasion boys, be careful! They are trying to invade.’
“We had 11 rifles between us and at about 0400 they started the landing so we opened fire.”
Michael Voss revisits the site of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and meets some of those who remember what happened on 16 April 1961
Reinforcements, including Cuban air force planes, quickly arrived.
The exiles had some air support, but US President John F Kennedy was determined to keep the US involvement a secret and as the initiative turned against the invading force, he backed away from providing further critically needed air cover.
At the same time, Fidel Castro took personal charge of the operation, and within only three days the battle was over.
Mr Rodriguez is now 70 years old and losing his eyesight but his memories are as clear as ever.
“It was like a great school for the Cuban people, we finally learnt that we don’t have to be afraid of the enemy,” he said.
“As Fidel said afterwards, the people of Latin America have become a little freer.”
More than 1,000 of the anti-Castro fighters, known as Brigade 2506, were taken prisoner.
About a year-and-a-half later, they were sent back to Miami in exchange for $50m worth of food and medicine.
There is a small museum in Playa Giron.
In the forecourt are two of Fidel Castro’s tanks, along with a British-built Sea Fury fighter bomber, one of the Cuban air force planes used against the invaders.
“The secret to the Cuban victory was the ideal for which we were fighting”
The museum’s director, Barbara Sierra, says the exhibits are testimony to the “first great defeat of Yankee Imperialism” in the Latin America.
The US, she believes, completely underestimated the degree of support for Fidel Castro’s revolution inside Cuba.
“The secret to the Cuban victory was the ideal for which we were fighting. Our lives were very difficult before the revolution. That’s why everyone came here to fight.”
Among the visitors to the museum when I visited was American author Peter Kornbluh, who has written extensively on the Bay of Pigs, drawing heavily on declassified CIA documents.
Gregorio Moreira still lives by the beach where the US-backed troops landed He describes the Bay of Pigs as a “perfect failure” for the US, which the rest of the world quickly realised was behind the operation.
“It was supposed to rid the hemisphere of a potential Soviet base, but it pushed Fidel Castro into the waiting arms of the Soviet Union. It was meant to undermine his revolution but it truly helped him to consolidate it.”
Half a century after the failed invasion, this Caribbean island remains the only communist-run country in the Western hemisphere.
Despite countless attempts by the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro, it was ill health which finally forced him to hand over power in 2006 – to his brother, Raul.
It is no coincidence that the authorities have chosen this weekend to hold the long-delayed Communist Party Congress, which will kick off with a military parade through Revolution Square.
With the US trade embargo still in place, Cuba insists that it remains in a state of siege.
While it is set to ratify a series of market reforms, the Congress is also set to reaffirm the “socialist character of the revolution”.
Political change remains no nearer now than it did following Cuba’s victory at the Bay of Pigs.
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Not all Australians are surfers – but all have to vote As Britain decides whether to change the way MPs are elected, can we learn anything from Australia, the only major democracy that uses the method on offer? The BBC’s Rebecca Keating, an Australian herself, explains how elections work Down Under.
There is a carnival-like atmosphere on polling day in Australia.
Bunting in party colours adorns the fences of schools that serve as polling stations, and activists throng the gates jostling to hand out their how-to-vote cards.
Voters, compelled by law to cast their ballot, refresh themselves at the sausage sizzle or try their luck in the school’s fundraising raffle.
And, since 1918, in the little privacy the cardboard polling booths allow, they choose their governments using the alternative vote.
Australia is the only major democracy in the world to use the alternative vote for elections and across the country there are several variations.
For state elections in Queensland and New South Wales, voters use a form known as ‘optional preferential voting’ – the same system Britain would adopt if voters say “yes” to 5 May’s referendum question.
Under this system, voters can rank one, some or all of the the candidates on the ballot paper in order of preference.
The first preference votes are counted and if no candidate has secured 50% of the vote plus one, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated.
The second preferences of that candidate’s supporters are then distributed. This goes on until one candidate reaches an absolute majority.
Candidates are ranked in order of preference According to those campaigning for a Yes vote in 5 May’s referendum, introducing the alternative vote to UK general elections would eliminate safe seats and force MPs to work harder to woo their constituents.
Australian elections expert Antony Green says the Antipodean experience shows that in most cases using the alternative vote to elect a candidate delivers the same result as the first past the post system.
“It only really has an impact in contests where the leading candidate has well below 50% of the votes,” he said.
Mr Green says it is unusual for the outcome of more than 5% of contests to be changed by the distribution of preferences and cites the New South Wales election held in March.
“There was only one seat out of 99 where the result was changed from first past the post,” he said.
“The Liberal Party led the field with 32% of the vote in one electorate. The Labor Party and the Greens were just under 31% behind.
“The preferences flowed strongly between Labor and the Greens and the Liberal Party was defeated by the second-running Green candidate.”
The ‘No’ campaign argues this quirk of the alternative vote would favour extremist candidates, who could be behind in the early rounds of counting but win when preferences are distributed.
Mr Green says smaller parties may experience a surge in support on first preferences but will struggle to gain seats.
“It’s not an issue because we’ve had our system for so long. It’s not going to change”
John Howard Former Liberal Prime Minister
“The experience of parties in Australia like One Nation or the Communist Party is that they often would poll well but under AV they have no hope of getting elected because they are run down on preferences,” he said.
“It’s harder for a minority party or an extremist party to get elected because they need the majority of the vote.”
The quest for a majority is where the Australian tradition of how-to-vote cards – a method of tactical voting decided by party leaders – arose.
Voters entering polling stations run the gauntlet of activists brandishing these cards, which tell people how to allocate their preferences so allied parties benefit if their number one candidate is eliminated.
They can choose to accept these suggestions or number the ballot their own way.
Most Australian voters have never used anything but the alternative vote method Mr Green says in some contests, preference deals like these would see parties talking to others on their side of politics in a more conciliatory way.
“At the moment the tactical voting strategy in the UK is telling people not to vote for a small party and split the vote,” he said.
“That doesn’t apply any more and parties will have to appeal beyond their own supporters.
“For example, Conservatives might talk to UKIP candidates and get better relations with those.”
For all the barbecues and bonhomie on election days Down Under, ‘No’ campaigners have suggested Australians have a hankering to abandon the alternative vote.
A poll conducted for the Institute of Public Affairs late last year found 57% of voters preferred first past the post and 37% supported the current Australian system.
Tony Barry, a research fellow at the institute, said it showed “people are not satisfied with the status quo” and some sort of reform was needed.
But former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard senses no mood for change.
“It’s not an issue because we’ve had our system for so long. It’s not going to change,” he said.
Britain decides if it will change how it elects its members of Parliament on 5 May.
The experience of Australian voters suggests that whatever the outcome of the referendum, the outcome of future elections is likely to be largely unchanged.
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