Consumer rights group Which? said passengers needed more notice.
“It’s essential that Ryanair release a full list of flights that will be affected so that passengers have as much time as possible to make alternate arrangements.”
The cancellations could affect up to 400,000 passengers, who will be offered alternative flights or refunds.
Reports on Monday suggested recruitment problems were affecting the airline and that it had lost pilots to rival Norwegian Air.
A Norwegian spokesperson said: “We can confirm that 140 pilots have joined us from Ryanair this year. Pilot recruitment is also underway for more pilots for our new Dublin base opening later this year.”
Ryanair has not issued a response to the claims.
Customer anger
The airline has blamed a backlog of staff leave for the disruption, which has led to large numbers of its staff taking holidays towards the end of the year.
Ryanair is changing its holiday year, which currently runs from April to March, to run from January to December instead.
The carrier said the shift meant it had to allocate annual leave to pilots in September and October.
Ryanair also said air traffic control strikes and bad weather were factors, adding that flight cancellations would improve flight punctuality.
Customers have reacted angrily to the cancellations on social media and called for a full list of affected flights to be released.
Karen Higgins tweeted: “Yet another day of constant checking to see if our flights are safe or cancelled! Cmon @Ryanair help us all out! Get the updates done!!!!”
Dee Moloney tweeted: “Have 2 trips booked in the next couple of weeks. Excitement of trips now replaced with worry!… Won’t be flying with @Ryanair again.”
Richard Westcott, BBC transport correspondent
What’s really making people angry is the lack of information.
Ryanair has only published a list of cancelled flights until Wednesday, so people with tickets booked in the six weeks or so after that don’t yet know if they’ll be changed at the last minute.
The company’s under pressure to let everyone know where they stand, so they can make other arrangements.
140 Ryanair pilots have joined another airline, Norwegian, in the past year. That’s 140 out of around 400 taken on by the ever expanding new airline.
So it’s possible that a pilot shortage is contributing to Ryanair’s woes.
Regular updates
Ryanair marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said affected customers with bookings up to 20 September had been informed.
“We will cancel 40 to 50 flights daily for the next six weeks, less than 2% of our schedule, with a slightly higher number initially, as we begin to implement these cancellations,” he said.
“Flights are operating as scheduled unless an email confirming a cancellation has been received.”
He said the airline would continue to send regular updates and post information on its website, with the next set of cancellations to be issued on Monday.
Shares in Ryanair fell by up to 3% on Monday.
What rights do passengers have?
The EU compensation rules for cancelled flights are as follows:
Passengers are entitled to assistance and compensation, if the disruption was within an airline’s control.
Airlines have to offer full refunds, paid within seven days, or rebookings for a flight cancelled at short notice.
In addition, passengers can also claim compensation.
Cancellation amounts are: 250 euros (£218) for short-haul, 440 euros (£384) for medium-haul and 600 euros (£523) for long-haul.
Passengers who reach their destination more than three hours late can be compensated from 200 to 600 euros, depending on the length of flights and delay.
And he insisted his party still had a crucial role to play in British politics despite another disappointing general election in June.
He said the party had increased its membership and made gains in local elections, telling supporters: “We saved the Liberal Democrats and I am proud of every single one of you.”
“It is now clear if there is to be a realignment of progressive forces then it can only be around this party,” he added.
Mr Farron also branded Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn “cowards”, saying they had changed their mind on the EU “to suit the weather”.
Labour’s general election result had been “better than expected”, he said, but told MPs who had criticised the leadership: “You may have saved your seats, but you have lost your party.”
Much of the speech focused on Brexit, which he said would “reduce immigration without changing a single law”.
“Because if you turn Britain into a poorer, meaner, insular place, no-one in their right mind will choose to come here.
“So the Tories are breaking Britain to repel the immigrants. And they do it with Labour’s shameful connivance. What a disgrace.”
Mr Farron has called for a second vote on the terms of any Brexit deal.
It was Mr Farron’s first Lib Dem conference speech since quitting, when he said he was “torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader” having faced repeated questions about his attitude towards gay sex.
The four-day conference focusing on Brexit with a debate at the end of the week on the UK’s future relationship with the EU 27 (the other remaining countries in the European Union).
In October a new law comes into force in Germany that will impose huge fines on social networks if they don’t delete illegal content including hate speech. It’s touched off a huge debate over freedom of expression and has attracted an unusual collection of opponents.
The law is called Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz – NetzDG for short. It obliges the biggest social networks – those with more than two million German users – to take down “blatantly illegal” hate speech within 24 hours of it being reported. For material that’s less obviously violating the law, networks such as Facebook and Instagram will have seven days to consider and, if appropriate, delete posts. Failure to meet these deadlines could lead to fines of up to €50m.
Critics argue the short timeframes coupled with the potentially large fines will lead social networks to be overly cautious and delete huge amounts of content – even things that are perfectly legal. But the law’s supporters, and the German government, argue that it will force social media companies to proactively deal with online incitement and hate speech.
What counts as ‘illegal hate speech’ in Germany?
The law doesn’t actually change what’s considered hate speech in Germany. No new offences are created. The law simply cites sections of the German Criminal Code which details illegal speech online. The categories range from “forming terrorist organisations”, to the much vaguer “defamation of religions, religious and ideological associations.”
In addition, German law restricts some types of speech that are allowed in many other countries. For instance, the use of Nazi symbols is banned, as are the symbols and flags of some extremist groups.
An earlier draft of the NetzDG bill barred “defamation of the President of the Federation”, but the clause was removed after criticism. The law has also been criticised for containing no legal mechanism for people whose posts are wrongly deleted to appeal to get them reinstated.
So who is worried?
Opposition has come from a wide range of groups and politicians on both the left and right – and Facebook has also made its disagreement with the law clear.
The United Nations has also weighed in. David Kaye, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, has written to the German government to warn about the potential consequences of the law.
“With these 24 hour and seven day deadlines – if you are a company you are going to want avoid fines and bad public branding of your platform,” he says. “If there is a complaint about a post you are just going to take it down. What is in it for you to leave it up? I think the result is likely to be greater censorship.”
The group Reporters without Borders says the German law has already inspired a “draconian” new online media law in Russia.
But there are voices in Germany who are in favour of the law and who argue that making social networks more responsible for hate speech and illegal content on their platforms is a good thing.
Anas Modamani is a refugee from Syria who now lives in Berlin. In August 2015 he was catapulted to notoriety for taking a selfie with Angela Merkel while she was visiting a migrant shelter.
But the picture would come back to haunt him, as it was used to accuse him of attacks in Brussels and Berlin. His famous photograph was cropped and pasted into wanted posters and false news reports.
“When I read the fake news on the internet, I really cried, it was really bad in my life, it was all untrue,” Modamani says.
He decided to take Facebook to court for not doing enough to stop the lies being shared about him, but in March 2017 he lost the case. The court ruled Facebook had taken enough measures to attempt to block defamatory images of him for users in Germany.
Because of his experiences, Modamani is a supporter of NetzDG.
“I think the law is a good idea because people will be a little bit afraid, they can’t just write what they want,” he says. “I don’t mind if other comments get deleted along with the bad ones.”
Modamani’s lawyer, Chan-Jo Jun, is also optimistic about the new law, and plans to use it immediately after it comes into effect.
“I regularly report the post that was the subject of the [earlier] trial and I keep getting the answer [from Facebook] that it does not violate community standards,” Jun says. “Therefore it is still online. After October I will file a complaint against Facebook under the NetzDG – with the NetzDG, the court case would not have been necessary.”
On the other side of the legal debate is attorney Joachim Steinhoefel. While Chan-Jo Jun has taken Facebook to court to get them to remove posts, Steinhoefel has threatened the company with legal action to get a post reinstated.
In May, photojournalist Markus Hibbeler wrote a Facebook post about Islam and freedom of expression. Translated from German, the post read in part: “We shouldn’t shield Muslims, and certainly not Islam, which has never been through an enlightenment or reformation, from criticism and constantly protect them.”
His post was deleted by Facebook and his account was suspended for seven days. Hibbeler, with Steinhoefel’s help, threatened to sue Facebook if the post wasn’t put back up within a week and his account reinstated. They succeeded, and Facebook reinstated the post and apologised.
It’s cases like Hibbeler’s, Steinhoefel says, that show how NetzDG threatens freedom of expression. He says he doesn’t trust Facebook to decide what posts are legal and illegal and thinks the most likely outcome will be a mass deletion of legal posts that Facebook doesn’t want to take any risks with, out of an abundance of caution.
The attorney has started a blog where he posts examples of Facebook both deleting posts which he says break no laws. The blog also catalogues what Steinhoefel says are blatantly illegal posts which Facebook hasn’t removed.
For example, one of the latter posts reads: “Jews to the gas chambers”. Facebook has not removed it, despite it being reported to the company.
“It goes to show how unprofessional they are in dealing with this content,” Steinhoefel says. He is suspicious of the real motive behind the new law and says it will allow “the media and political elite to regain control over the political debate in Germany.”
“The law is superfluous,” he says. “The law as it is right now in Germany makes Facebook responsible for illegal content on its site from the moment they know about it. It just takes state prosecutors and courts to implement these laws.”
The German government, however, is determined to press forward with NetzDG. Gerd Billen, a State Secretary in the German Ministry of Justice, says that although existing laws oblige Facebook to delete illegal comments “there are no rules about when they have to do it, how they have to organise and what their complaint management system should look like.”
“There is a fear of ‘over-blocking’ but the reality is ‘under-blocking’,” Billen says. “They don’t block enough. We don’t believe there will be a problem (with over-blocking) because the social networks want to keep their customers.”
Billen downplays concerns about freedom of speech, and points out that social media companies already censor content that is perfectly legal.
“There is no obligation for any private company in Germany or somewhere else in the world to guarantee freedom of speech,” he says. “To guarantee freedom of speech is something a government does but not private companies. I didn’t find any notice in the terms and conditions of Facebook that the company will respect freedom of speech.
“For example they delete many things that are allowed in Germany. Facebook don’t accept naked people on their platform. They can decide if they don’t want it, so they delete it.”
Opposition from social media companies
A Facebook spokesperson admitted to the BBC that they can’t rule out the possibility of legal content being deleted.
“The law is not the right way to fight hate speech online,” the spokesperson says. “It provides an incentive to delete content that is not clearly illegal and would have the effect of transferring responsibility for complex legal decisions from public authorities to private companies.
“Several legal experts have assessed the draft law as being against the German constitution and non-compliant with EU law. Facebook is committed to working in partnership with governments and civil society on solutions that would have made this law unnecessary.”
The BBC also learnt that although the company will soon have another 500 content moderators based in Essen, in western Germany, Facebook has not hired any new staff in response to the law.
“We are still evaluating what the law really means for us,” the spokesperson says.
Police have released a new CCTV image of a jogger who appeared to push a woman into the path of a bus.
Footage of the incident showed a man running along Putney Bridge in west London and appearing to shove the 33-year-old into the road.
Two men, both aged 41, have previously been arrested but were later released without further action.
The Met said officers were continuing “to work through the information received to identify the man”.
The woman was knocked into the road as she was walking across Putney Bridge at about 07:40 BST on 5 May.
The new image of the jogger was captured on the Number 430 bus which narrowly avoided her.
About 15 minutes later the jogger returned to run back across the bridge.
The woman, who received minor injuries, tried to speak to him but he did not acknowledge her and carried on jogging.
He is described as a white man, aged in his 30s, with brown eyes and short brown hair.
Det Sgt Chris Griffith appealed for anyone who provided officers with a name of the potential suspect to contact police again “so we can fully follow up those lines of enquiry”.
When a group of Indonesian mothers sharing pictures of their children stumbled upon news of an online paedophile group earlier this year, they decided to infiltrate it to expose those behind it. The BBC’s Christine Franciska followed the story.
Capturing and posting the funny, sweet and memorable moments of children on social media is common for many proud parents in Indonesia and around the world.
Risrona Simorangkir has been uploading photos of her seven-year-old daughter and toddler son on Facebook ever since they were born.
But one day in March she stumbled across a blog about a group that shares child abuse pictures.
“This [Facebook] group has thousands of members, they share pictures and videos. Some of them said they produce the materials by themselves – taken from neighbour’s children or even relatives,” the article said. The group’s members called their victims “lolly” – short for lollipop candy.
Image copyrightRisrona SimorangkirImage caption Risrona Simorangkir infiltrated a paedophilia group on Facebook
Mrs Simorangkir, 29, warned her friends immediately and they decided to find out more by joining the group – which the BBC is not naming.
Indonesian president says castration ‘to end paedophilia’
How child sexual abuse is tackled around the world – BBC Newsbeat
“We have an online community for mothers talking about parenting, life, and anything. After I posted [the article], some of us tried to get into [the group] to collect evidence and we discussed the findings,” says Mrs Simorangkir.
Image copyrightFacebook
Four hours and I quit
“I joined the group for only four hours. I could not stand it. The content was so horrible. They are not human [for posting like that],” says Mrs Simorangkir.
“They talk about how you can approach and seduce a kid to have sex with you, what you can do to make sure those kids don’t say anything to their parents, and how you can have sex with children without making them bleed.”
“One person told a story about his victim and how he has been doing it to his nephew. It was terrifying.”
Michelle Lestari, Mrs Simorangkir’s friend, says they began to save and screen capture evidence, including conversations, administrators’ profile links, and even phone numbers.
“I reported it to the police,” said Mrs Lestari.
Other parenting groups had been reporting the group to Facebook, said Ms Lestari, and the social media giant took it down. A Facebook spokesperson also told the BBC that further investigations were conducting into the individuals.
On 14 March police arrested five suspects.
The case was heavily discussed in the local media and the efforts of the parents have been widely praised. “The power of mothers,” said one Twitter user.
Image copyrightAFP / Getty
This group had more than 7,000 members, who produced and distributed at least 400 videos and 100 photos of child abuse, Indonesian police said after the arrests.
The police said that they were co-ordinating with United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as they suspected some members were linked to international networks.
“One of the suspects joined 11 WhatsApp groups that linked 11 countries. They exchange pornographic material between countries. Indonesia sends one and someone in North America sends another,” said Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono to the BBC.
Child sex abuse online is a real threat in Indonesia, but society’s reaction in tackling online child sex abuse is still too lax, said the head of Indonesia’s Child Protection Commission (KPAI) Arist Merdeka Sirait.
“In Indonesia’s cultural context, people still think that paedophilia or sexual abuse is only related to penetration -committing rape. They have to realise that grabbing a child’s bottom is also considered molestation, for example,” said Mr Sirait.
Last year, the country’s parliament passed controversial laws authorising chemical castration and execution for convicted paedophiles.
Image copyrightAFP
But what Mrs Simorangkir and many internet users have done, by infiltrating the paedophile group, is dangerous because they are exposing their own identities, activists say.
“It is the equivalent of neighbourhood patrols, which is great but you need to realise the danger,” said the executive director of Indonesia’s civil society organisation ICT Watch Donny B.U.
“It is best if you just report it to the police. What you can do is be actively involved in building digital literacy in your community and take preventive action by being knowledgeable about data privacy,” he explains.
And this kind of action won’t necessarily solve the larger problem, he says. “This particular case is just the tip of the ice berg. People easily found it because they used Facebook as a platform, which is quite amateur. There are more threats in the dark web, encrypted.”
Mrs Simorangkir says she doesn’t regret what she did.
Her four-hour experience in the paedophile group makes her more afraid of the people around her family, but it also “opened my eyes to be more careful and teach my children about their private parts”.
“But I still have this disgusted feeling when I remember the kinds of thing they posted.”
She says she has now changed her Facebook setting to private mode. But before that, “I uploaded maybe thousands of pictures of my children online,” she says.
Han Tae Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, said he “categorically rejected” what he called an “illegal resolution”.
“The forthcoming measures by DPRK [the Democratic Republic of Korea] will make the US suffer the greatest pain it has ever experienced in its history,” he told a UN conference in Geneva.
“Instead of making [the] right choice with rational analysis… the Washington regime finally opted for political, economic and military confrontation, obsessed with the wild dream of reversing the DPRK’s development of nuclear force – which has already reached the completion phase.”
Media captionWas your T-shirt made in North Korea?
The resolution was only passed unanimously after North Korea’s allies Russia and China agreed to softer sanctions than those proposed by the US.
The initial text included a total ban on oil imports, a measure seen by some analysts as potentially destabilising for the regime.
The new sanctions agreed by the UN include:
Limits on imports of crude oil and oil products. China, Pyongyang’s main economic ally, supplies most of North Korea’s crude oil
A ban on exports of textiles, which is Pyongyang’s second-biggest export worth more than $700m (£530m) a year
A ban on new visas for North Korean overseas workers, which the US estimates would eventually cut off $500m of tax revenue per year
A proposed asset freeze and a travel ban on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un were dropped.
Reacting on Tuesday, Mr Trump said: “We think it’s just another very small step, not a big deal.
“I don’t know if it has any impact, but certainly it was nice to get a 15 to nothing vote. But those sanctions are nothing compared to what ultimately will have to happen,” he added, without giving details.
North Korea crisis in 300 words
Can the world live with a nuclear North Korea?
Media captionHow would war with North Korea unfold?
The US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, told the Security Council after the vote: “We don’t take pleasure in further strengthening sanctions today. We are not looking for war.”
“The North Korean regime has not yet passed the point of no return,” she added. “If North Korea continues its dangerous path, we will continue with further pressure. The choice is theirs.”
A South Korean presidential office spokesman said on Tuesday: “North Korea needs to realise that a reckless challenge against international peace will only bring about even stronger sanctions against them.”
Monday’s resolution was the ninth one unanimously adopted by the UN since 2006.
North Korea crisis: What will Russia do?
How do you defend against North Korea?
What have previous sanctions achieved?
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption The UN Security Council, which includes the US, has repeatedly slapped sanctions on North Korea
30 November 2016: UN targeted North Korea’s valuable coal trade with China, slashing exports by about 60% under a new sales cap. Exports of copper, nickel, silver, zinc and the sale of statues were also banned.
What happened next? On 14 May 2017, North Korea tested what it said was a “newly developed ballistic rocket” capable of carrying a large nuclear warhead.
2 June 2017: UN imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on four entities and 14 officials, including the head of North Korea’s overseas spying operations.
What happened next? On 4 July, North Korea claimed it carried out its first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
6 August: UN banned North Korean exports of coal, ore and other raw materials and limited investments in the country, costing Pyongyang an estimated $1bn – about a third of its export economy.
What happened next? On 3 September, North Korea said it tested a hydrogen bomb that could be miniaturised and loaded on a long-range missile.
North Korea’s missile programme
What we know about North Korea nuclear test site
How advanced is North Korea’s nuclear programme?
China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday (link in Chinese) that North Korea had “ignored international opposition and once again conducted a nuclear test, severely violating UN Security Council resolutions”.
It also repeated its call for a “peaceful resolution” instead of a military response, adding: “China will never allow the peninsula to descend into war and chaos.”
The BBC’s China editor Carrie Gracie says Beijing is treading a fine line and wants sanctions tough enough to signal its displeasure to Pyongyang and avoid American accusations of complicity, but not so tough as to threaten North Korea’s survival.
Both Russia and China reiterated their proposal that the US and South Korea freeze all military drills – which anger North Korea – and asked for a halt in the deployment of the controversial anti-missile system Thaad, in exchange for Pyongyang’s cessation of its weapons programmes.
Beijing believes Thaad, which employs a powerful radar, is a security threat to China and neighbouring countries.
Ms Haley last week dismissed this proposal as “insulting”.
The beauty of Hillary Clinton’s new book title, What Happened, is it can be interpreted in so many ways.
Perhaps it’s a definitive account of the 2016 presidential election. “Here’s what happened”.
Maybe it’s an exclamation, like someone reacting to an unexpectedly loud noise (or an electoral earthquake). “Yikes! What happened!?”
Then again, it could be a stern mom, who just walked in on the mess her children (the voters) made in the living room. “Whaaaaat happened …”
Or is she the dazed boxer, picking herself up off the canvas after getting knocked out by a surprise punch from her opponent.
“Wha-, wha-, what happened???”
It’s up to readers to decide for themselves, but in Mrs Clinton’s recent interviews and in her book, which was formally released on Tuesday, she offers plenty of explanations from which to choose.
Here’s a list of just some of the factors to blame for the fact that she’s hitting book stores across the country, while Donald Trump is redecorating the Oval Office.
James Comey
“If not for the dramatic intervention of the FBI director in the final days we would have won the White House.”
This isn’t the first time Mrs Clinton has said the former FBI director – who wrote a letter informing Congress that he had reopened the investigation into the handling of classified material on Mrs Clinton’s personal email server as secretary of state – is the main culprit behind her defeat.
In her book, Mrs Clinton calls the use of that server a “dumb mistake”, but the resulting scandal was “even dumber”. And in Mrs Clinton’s eyes, Mr Comey’s blame for the matter extends to his public announcement that he would not bring charges against Mrs Clinton, despite the fact that she had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified material.
“I don’t know quite what audience he was playing to, other than maybe some right-wing commentators, right-wing members of Congress, whatever,” Mrs Clinton said of Mr Comey’s press conference in July 2016.
Did it matter? Heading into the election home stretch, Mrs Clinton appeared to have all the momentum. Mr Trump was reeling after the decade-old Access Hollywood tape revealed he had boasted of making unwanted sexual advances. Then Comey’s letter happened, and for nearly a week the story dominated the media, casting a cloud over Mrs Clinton and giving Mr Trump room to win back his Republican base. In a race as close as this one turned out to be, it was likely enough to tip the balance to the Republican.
Vladimir Putin
“I never imagined that he would have the audacity to launch a massive covert attack against our own democracy, right under our noses – and that he’d get away with it.”
Although few knew it at the time, there was mounting evidence over the course of the 2016 election that Russia was attempting to influence the outcome.
Through hacking of Democratic Party emails and state electoral databases, social media advert purchases and bots, and the proliferation of political propaganda, the US intelligence community has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin was attempting to put his finger on the electoral scale in favour of the Republican.
Media captionAll you need to know about the Trump-Russia investigation
Mrs Clinton, needless to say, is not amused. What’s more, she is convinced that members of the Trump team colluded with Russia to help get the Republican nominee elected.
“There certainly was communication and there certainly was an understanding of some sort,” she said in an interview with USA Today.
Did it matter? If what we know Russia did is all that Russia actually did, then it almost certainly wasn’t enough to hand Mr Trump the election (although it is, and should be, a major cause for concern going forward). Mrs Clinton compares Russian influence to the equivalent of a major outside political action committee contributing to a candidate. Of course, the Democrat had plenty of those kind of organisations at her disposal – and vastly outspent her opponent – and she still lost.
Barack Obama
“I do wonder sometimes about what would have happened if President Obama had made a televised address to the nation in the fall of 2016 warning that our democracy was under attack. Maybe more Americans would have woken up to the threat in time. “
According to media reports, part of the reason why the nation didn’t know about the evidence implicating Russia in election meddling until after the election is because President Barack Obama wouldn’t go public unless he had the support of Republicans in Congress.
Without that support, the president kept quiet – concerned that any action he took would be viewed as being done for partisan benefit.
Mrs Clinton has plenty of words for Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well, who she said shamefully put partisanship ahead of national security.
“McConnell knew better,” she writes, “but he did it anyway.”
Did it matter? During the campaign Mrs Clinton tried to make the case that Mr Trump was a Russian “puppet”, who took too soft a stand against Mr Putin’s aggressive foreign policy. “You’re the puppet,” was the Republican’s famous debate-night retort. Americans largely shrugged it all off, but perhaps the attacks would have stuck if it had been clear that Russia’s machinations reached well beyond Ukraine.
“Many in the political media … can’t bear to face their own role in helping elect Trump, from providing him free airtime to giving my emails three times more coverage than all the issues affecting people’s lives combined.”
It’s no secret that Mrs Clinton isn’t happy about the way the media covered the presidential race. She singles out the New York Times, in particular, which she accuses of “shoddy reporting” about her use of a private email server and over-hyping Mr Comey’s election-eve letter announcing the FBI was reopening its investigation.
“The Times was by no means been the only – or even the worst – offender,” she writes, “but its treatment has stung the most.”
Did it matter? Mr Trump was an unconventional candidate who garnered an unprecedented amount of media attention – and ratings. His regular disregard for political norms, his seeming invulnerability to scandals that would sink typical politicians meant reporters were hard-pressed to cover the race in the traditional both-sides-get-their-say manner. Mrs Clinton may complain that the media weren’t being fair, but Mr Trump was playing by a different set of rules.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Bernie Sanders campaigned for Clinton in the autumn, but it’s his primary shots she remembers
Bernie Sanders (and his supporters)
“His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”
Mrs Clinton still has a bone to pick with her Democratic primary opponent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, as well.
She writes that he impugned her character, made unrealistic promises that put her in the position of being a wet-blanket realist and did little to confront those in his movement who were launching “ugly and more than a little sexist” attacks on her supporters.
Mrs Clinton also points out that Mr Sanders is not a member of the Democratic Party and, consequently, may not always have the party’s best interests in mind.
“I am proud to be a Democrat, and I wish Bernie were, too,” she writes.
Did it matter? According to several post-election surveys, as many as 12% of Sanders supporters ended up voting for Mr Trump. If they had opted for Mrs Clinton, that would have been more than enough to put her over the top in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – and give her the White House. Then again, the percentage of cross-party voting in 2016 wasn’t unusual compared to historical norms.
Jill Stein
“There were more than enough Stein voters to swing the result, just like Ralph Nader did in Florida and New Hampshire in 2000.”
The last time a presidential candidate won the popular vote but lost the election thanks to the state-by-state idiosyncrasies of the Electoral College was in 2000, when Republican George W Bush beat Democrat Al Gore.
This historical quirk was clearly in Mrs Clinton’s mind as she wrote this book, as she draws a comparison between Mr Nader’s Green Party campaign and Jill Stein’s in 2016.
The 2000 gap between Mr Bush and Mr Gore in Florida was 537 votes, so just a fraction of the 97,488 votes Mr Nader received in that state would have tipped the election to the Democrat.
Did it matter? In 2016 Ms Stein received 1,457,216 votes, the first time since 2000 that the Green Party had topped the million mark. Put Ms Stein’s Pennsylvanian, Wisconsin and Michigan voters in Mrs Clinton’s column, and the Democrat wins. Given that Ms Stein didn’t have much visibility during the election cycle, however, her performance probably was more a reflection of dissatisfaction with Ms Clinton, than anything the Green Party candidate did or didn’t do.
Sexism
“This has to be said. Sexism and misogyny played a role in the 2016 presidential election. Exhibit A is that the flagrantly sexist candidate won.”
Mrs Clinton was the first woman to be a major party presidential nominee. At key moments – such as when she locked up the nomination during the primaries and when she gave her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention – she explicitly acknowledged this fact. Other times, she downplayed it.
The groundbreaking nature of her campaign, however, was always in the background. On election day, women put flowers on the graves of famous leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, in anticipation of a historic night to come.
That, of course, didn’t happen – and, in Mrs Clinton’s view, her gender was an obstacle she had to overcome.
“I started the campaign knowing that I would have to work extra hard to make women and men feel comfortable with the idea of a woman president,” she said during a CBS interview. “It doesn’t fit into the stereotypes we all carry around in our head. And a lot of the sexism and the misogyny was in service of these attitudes. Like, you know, ‘We really don’t want a woman commander in chief’.”
Did it matter? The thing about historic firsts is that there is no standard by which to judge them. Mrs Clinton had remarkably high negative ratings for a modern presidential nominee (as did Mr Trump). Was this because of her gender or an aspect of her personality that some voters found off-putting? “What makes me such a lightning rod for fury?” Mrs Clinton writes. “I’m really asking. I’m at a loss.” Until there’s another female nominee (or more), it will be difficult to know for certain.
White resentment
“He was quite successful in referencing a nostalgia that would give hope, comfort, settle grievances, for millions of people who were upset about gains that were made by others … millions of white people.”
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Mrs Clinton accuses the president of stoking racial anger
Mrs Clinton has plenty of criticism of Mr Trump in her book, from his naivete to his sexism to his dangerous and ill-conceived policies. During her interview with CBS, however, the former Democratic nominee was particularly blunt about what she viewed as the explicit attempts by the Trump campaign to stoke racial resentment among white working-class voters.
Her critique picks up on a particularly testy exchange between Trump and Clinton campaign aides in a post-election forum, where Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri said Mr Trump gave a platform to white supremacists and that she would “rather lose than win the way you guys did”.
Did it matter? Whether you call it playing to racial grievances or giving hope to socially and economically anxious voters, there’s no question that Mr Trump had a message that resonated with many members of the white working-class.
Hillary Clinton
“You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want – but I was the candidate. It was my campaign. Those were my decisions.”
Political analyst Mark Shields likes to note that in few professions is failure on such prominent display as in the world of politics. If the average Joe doesn’t get a promotion, the local paper won’t devote entire articles to what character flaw or personal mistake is to blame.
“Politicians boldly risk public rejection of the kind that the rest of us will go to any lengths to avoid,” he writes.
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption Clinton is left wondering what happened – and what might have been
Any attempt by Mrs Clinton to explain “what happened” in 2016 was going to be ripe for criticism. Is she talking out too much? Or not enough? Why is she blaming other people? Will she devote 300 pages to delving into why people just don’t seem to connect with her?
Although Mrs Clinton in her book is liberal with apportioning responsibility for her defeat, she sets aside plenty of space to point the finger at herself.
She calls her labelling of a certain segment of Mr Trump’s base as being in a “basket of deplorables” as a “political gift” to her opponent. She says she deeply regrets her remarks about how government policies were going to put coal workers “out of business”, even if she insists they were taken out of context.
She laments that she was unable to connect with the anger and resentment that many Americans felt after the financial crash in 2008.
Most of all, she says she understands that something just didn’t click between her and many US voters.
“I have come to terms with the fact that a lot of people – millions and millions of people – decided they just didn’t like me,” she writes. “Imagine what that feels like,”
Did it matter? Mrs Clinton has written her book and stated her case that, despite any personal flaws, it was a perfect political storm that dashed her presidential dreams. In the end, history will be the judge.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that Tesla’s Autopilot system was partly to blame for a fatal accident in which a Model S collided with a lorry.
Federal investigators say Tesla “lacked understanding” of the semi-autonomous Autopilot’s limitations.
The NTSB recommended that car manufacturers and regulators take steps to ensure such systems are not misused.
It said the collision should never have happened.
The crash, in May 2016, led to the death of Tesla driver Joshua Brown, 40. The driver of the truck, which was pulling a trailer, was unhurt.
“In this crash, Tesla’s system worked as designed, but it was designed to perform limited tasks in a limited range of environments,” Christopher Hart, a member of the NTSB said in a meeting to discuss the findings of its investigation.
“Tesla allowed the driver to use the system outside of the environment for which it was designed, and the system gave far more leeway to the driver to divert his attention to something other than driving.”
Semi-autonomous driving
In June, the NTSB released a 500-page report stating that in 37 minutes of driving, Mr Brown had his hands on the wheel for just 25 seconds.
At the time, the lorry driver told the Associated Press that Mr Brown had been watching a Harry Potter film when the collision occurred.
However, the NTSB said today that there was no evidence that Mr Brown was watching a film while he was driving.
The safety board added that the lorry driver refused to be interviewed for its investigation.
Primary factors
The NTSB found that both Mr Brown and the lorry driver had sufficient sight distance to afford time for either party to have acted to prevent the collision.
The investigation found that Mr Brown’s inattention and the lorry driver’s unwillingness to give way were both primary factors of the crash.
The investigators could not find a reason why Mr Brown was inattentive.
However, they confirmed that neither driver was fatigued or impaired by alcohol and drugs, and neither driver was distracted by a mobile device.
Following the meeting, the NTSB’s report included seven safety recommendations requiring car manufacturers to add safeguards to prevent automated vehicle control systems from being used outside the conditions for which they were designed.
“At Tesla, the safety of our customers comes first, and one thing is very clear: Autopilot significantly increases safety, as NHTSA has found that it reduces accident rates by 40%,” the car-maker said in a statement.
“We appreciate the NTSB’s analysis of last year’s tragic accident and we will evaluate their recommendations as we continue to evolve our technology.
“We will also continue to be extremely clear with current and potential customers that Autopilot is not a fully self-driving technology and drivers need to remain attentive at all times.”
Police in India have reopened the case of a 10-year-old girl after forensic tests revealed that her baby’s DNA samples did not match those of her uncle who is charged with raping her.
After the Supreme Court denied her permission to abort, she gave birth to a baby girl last month.
The 10-year-old was not aware of her pregnancy. She was told her bulge was because she had a stone in her stomach.
She alleges she was raped several times in the past seven months by the uncle.
The accused, who is in his 40s, was arrested and is being tried in a special court dealing with crimes against children. He is in prison and has made no statement so far.
The BBC’s Geeta Pandey in Delhi says the result of the DNA test has now led to questions over whether the girl was abused by others.
The girl’s father had earlier told the BBC that the accused had not denied the charges against him. Police said the uncle had admitted to the allegations, our correspondent reports.
“So far no-one had thought of any other possibility. The girl had testified to the court on video conferencing and in her statement, she had very clearly named the uncle and revealed facts about her abuse,” an official involved with the investigation told the BBC on Wednesday.
The girl’s mother has reportedly told the investigators that they do not suspect anyone else, so the case has taken a very strange turn, the official added.
On Tuesday, police and counsellors visited the family again to speak to the 10-year-old.
A senior police official told BBC Punjabi that they would ask for a re-check of the forensic tests to ensure there had been no error in the DNA report.
The pregnant child caught in a media storm
No abortion for 10-year-old rape victim
Her pregnancy was discovered in mid-July when she complained of stomach ache and her parents took her to hospital.
A local court in Chandigarh turned down the abortion plea on the grounds that she was too far into her pregnancy after a doctors’ panel advised that termination of the pregnancy would be “too risky”. Later, the Supreme Court also refused to allow an abortion for her on similar grounds.
As her family refused to have anything to do with the newborn, the baby is in the care of child welfare personnel and will be put up for adoption.
The landmark case dominated global headlines for weeks, with officials saying they had never heard of a mother so young giving birth in an Indian hospital.
Indian law does not allow terminations after 20 weeks unless doctors certify that the mother’s life is in danger.
But in recent years, the courts have received several petitions, many from child rape survivors, seeking to terminate pregnancies after 20 weeks. In most cases, these pregnancies are discovered late because the children themselves are not aware of their condition.
Last Friday, a 13-year-old girl who was 32 weeks pregnant gave birth to a baby boy after the court allowed her to terminate her pregnancy. The infant died two days later.
In May, a similar case was reported from the northern state of Haryana where a 10-year-old, allegedly raped by her stepfather, was allowed to abort. She was about 20 weeks pregnant, doctors said.
None of the girls can be named for legal reasons.
The scale of abuse in India
A child under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 every 13 hours
More than 10,000 children were raped in 2015
240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18
53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse
50% of abusers are known to the child or are “persons in trust and care-givers”
They’ve been compulsory in new-build high-rises over 30 metres tall since 2007, but the stipulation doesn’t apply to older buildings, like Grenfell, which was built in 1974. “I support retrofitting – for me, where you can save one life, then it’s worth doing,” said Ms Cotton. “This can’t be optional. It can’t be a nice to have. This is something that must happen.”
The government said public safety was “paramount” and promised to look at all recommendations made by the independent review of building regulations and fire safety that it has commissioned.
What’s causing homelessness to rise?
The number of households living in temporary accommodation has risen by more than 60% since 2010/11, according to the National Audit Office – the public spending watchdog. It’s accused the government of having a “light-touch approach” to the problem of homelessness and it argues that reforms to the local housing allowance are “likely to have contributed”.
Welfare reforms announced in 2015 included a four-year freeze to housing benefit, which came in last year. The government said tackling homelessness was a “complex issue” and that it was working to “restore fairness” to the system and provide a “strong safety net” for the most vulnerable in society.
Storm Aileen hits UK
Parts of England and Wales will experience winds of up to 75mph (121km/h) as Storm Aileen hits. Gusts have already reached 69mph on the Isle of Wight and 60mph on the Welsh coast. But Met Office chief forecaster Frank Saunders said the winds should pass “swiftly from west to east”. Meanwhile, a yellow weather warning for rain is in place for parts of Northern Ireland, northern England and southern Scotland – with up to 1.6ins (40mm) of rain expected to fall within six to nine hours.
Boris Johnson to visit Irma victims
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is due to arrive in the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla later to survey the damage caused last week by Hurricane Irma. About 1,000 UK soldiers are now in the region to deliver aid, and officials say more personnel and supplies are due in the next few days. The UK and other European governments have faced criticism that they have not done enough to help hurricane victims – which they have denied.
Analysis: Is school uniform over-priced?
By BBC Reality Check
Clothing and shoes for young children have been charged a zero rate of VAT since the introduction of the tax on 1 April 1973. The problem is that there is no definition of the term “young children” in VAT law. Instead, the VAT relief is based on the maximum size an average child will be on their 14th birthday. So clothes for older children, as well as many children under the age of 14 who are larger than the average figures, are taxed at 20%. And this includes school uniform.
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What the papers say
There’s a mixed reaction to the government’s decision to stop the 1% pay cap for police and prison officers. The Financial Times says it ends “one of the most divisive austerity measures imposed by the Conservative-led government”, but the Guardian focuses on what it calls “derision” from Labour and unions, some of whom are threatening strike action in demand for higher wage increases and for the pay cap to be removed across the public sector. Elsewhere, the Daily Mirror reports that the NHS is facing a “huge ‘flu crisis” this winter. And The Daily Star headlines on Storm Aileen, calling it a “killer 75mph hurricane”.
Daily digest
Pregnancy antibiotics More women to get treatment for potentially deadly Group B Strep infection
Attitudes survey More than a quarter of British people hold at least one anti-Semitic view, study finds
Blame list All the people Clinton holds responsible for losing election to Trump
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Today’s lookahead
09:30 The Office for National Statistics publishes the latest UK unemployment statistics, for the three months to July.
10:30 The shortlist of six authors for the Man Booker 2017 prize is announced.
12:00 The funeral of former Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor takes place at Westminster Cathedral.
On this day
2001 Iain Duncan Smith becomes Conservative leader, beating Ken Clarke in a ballot of party members.