An Indonesian military plane has crashed in Sumatra a few minutes after it took off. The plane crashed into the northern city, Medan, in a residential area filled with hotels and houses and then exploded.

Air Marshall Agus Supriatna, who is the air force chief, said there had been 12 crew members on the plane and more than 100 passengers before it got to Medan, but they are unsure of how many were still on there when the plane took off from Medan. So far, at least 49 bodies have been found. The number of people who could have died on the ground is also unknown.

It was on its way to the remote Natuna islands from an air force base but many of the passengers were family members of military staff . This is because Indonesia is spread out over a sprawling archipelago covering three different time zones , and it is common for the families to get rides on the military planes.

Click here to read the original article.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the convicted Boston Marathon bomber, killed three people and injured more than 260 in the April 2013 bombing. After that, he and his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed during the manhunt after the bombing, killed Sean Collier, an MIT police officer.

Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death and is the youngest person in the US on death row . Before being formally sentenced, he gave his first public statement since the attack.

"I would like to now apologize to the victims, to the survivors. I want to ask forgiveness of Allah and his creation. I am sorry for the lives I have taken, for the suffering that I have caused you, for the damage I have done – irreparable damage. In case there is any doubt, I am guilty of this attack, along with my brother. I pray for your relief, for your healing."

Many of the victims who had talked about their experiences in court did not answer any questions from the media, but one woman, Lynn Julian, called Tsarnaev's statement an "Oscar-type speech." She said, "I regret having ever wanted him to speak. There was nothing simple about what he said and there was nothing sincere .”

Click here to read the original article.

Documents from the British intelligence agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) have made people ask more questions about how much the UK was involved in the US fatal drone strike in Yemen.

The Guardian asked a top lawyer to look at the documents given to them by Edward Snowdon an NSA (National Security Agency) whistleblower .

The classified documents, including a top secret memo, raised questions about how much Britain was involved in US drone strikes that were done outside of areas recognised as war zone . The documents talk about a programme codenamed Overhead which involved the US, UK and Australia in the 2012 strike in Yemen.

Jemima Stratford QC, the lawyer who looked at the documents for the Guardian said, “Assuming that the documents which I have seen are genuine, in my view they raise questions about the extent to which UK officials may have had knowledge of, or helped to facilitate, certain US drone strikes which were not carried out in the context of an international armed conflict. These documents underline why greater transparency as to UK official policies would help to ensure legality from a domestic and international law persepctive .”

Click here to read the original article.

The body of a five-month-old foetus has been found hidden in a coffin of Bishop Peder Winstrup in Lund cathedral, Sweden. The bishop died 336 years ago, but the baby was only just found when scientists scanned the coffin. They believe the baby was born several months prematurely .

The bishops mummified body is one of the best preserved bodies in Europe from the 17th century. The coffin has been opened on several occasions and the bishop still is in amazing condition with his face still recognisable compared to his portrait . His clothes, including a velvet cape and leather gloves, are still perfectly preserved, although some of the colours have faded .

The baby's body was well hidden in some herbs that were under the bishop's feet. The scientists plan to test the DNA of the baby to see if it is any relation to the bishop, but Per Karsten, the director of the museum at Lund University, thinks the baby might have been illegitimate . This means it would have been buried in unsanctified ground so someone used the opportunity to give the baby a Christian burial.

Click here to read the original article.

Pork being sold in UK supermarkets Asda, the Co-operative, Sainsbury's and Tesco has been found to be contaminated with a type of MRSA . This is believed to be connected to the powerful antibiotics used on factory farms because they are used too much.

100 packets of pork were tested, including pork chops, gammon and bacon. Nine of them tested positive for the bacteria called MRSA CC398. CC398 comes from animals originally, but can pass on to humans by touching contaminated meat, animals or people. It can be killed by cooking the meat and most people do not show any signs of illness when they are carrying it. Some people have got skin problems and others have had infections that could be fatal, such as pneumonia and blood poisoning.

The MRSA CC398 superbug is a different form of the MRSA that is commonly found in hospitals. Experts believe that the UK could have a serious health crisis if this problem of intensive farming with antibiotics is not fixed.

Click here to read the original article.

Police are looking for a gunman after he opened fire in a church in Charleston, US. He was described as a clean-shaven white male who looked like he was around 21 years old with a small, slender build wearing a grey sweatshirt, jeans and boots.

The Charleston police chief, Gregory Mullen, said the man had been in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church for almost an hour during a prayer meeting before he started shooting. They believe this was a hate-crime.

The mayor of Charleston, Joseph P Riley Jr, said,“This is an unfathomable and unspeakable act by somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind. This person is dangerous, we need every tip we can get to bring this person into custody as soon as possible and of course will make sure that he pays the price for this horrible act”.

Click here to read the original article.

Three women and nine children are suspected of travelling to Syria after they went on an Islamic pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. The families have criticised the police saying they have not been getting any help.

The husbands of the women are very upset. Their lawyer, Balaal Khan, said that the police had given them no answers and that only one British police officer was in Turkey trying to stop the women from joining fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Khan said, "The family have said they need support, they need guidance , from police. So if it means travelling to Turkey we need to travel to Turkey - but they don't know what they're going to do. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack in Turkey."

Click here to read the original article.

Amnesty International have released a report called The Global Refugee Crisis: A Conspiracy of Neglect (click here to read the pdf) saying millions of refugees will live a terrible life after the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war. The organisation blames world leaders saying that through their neglect, thousands of people from the Middle East and Africa trying to escape the wars have died.

The report looks mostly at the crisis in Syria where almost 4 million people have fled . They mostly are then supported by the countries next to Syria, such as Lebanon, where one in five people is a Syrian refugee. The report also says that these countries supporting the refugees are getting very little support, less than a quarter of the money they need.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's secretary general said, "We are witnessing the worst refugee crisis of our era, with millions of women, men and children struggling to survive amidst brutal wars, networks of people traffickers and governments who pursue selfish political interests instead of showing basic human compassion . The refugee crisis is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century, but the response of the international community has been a shameful failure".

Click here to read the original article.

While writing something at work I was unsure how to spell a word: was it 'assertain' or 'ascertain'? I Googled it and found the answer, and also noticed that the spelling has a logical connection with the meaning.

When you ascertain something, you make sure it is true... so you can say it is true as certain. For example:

• The police have ascertained that the murderer used poison
• I tried to ascertain who wrote the letter, but I never found out.

This got me thinking about other words in English that look like a combination of two words.

To me 'island' looks like ' isolated land', which seems to make sense, but this was my mistake. Actually it means 'wet land' in old English.

An easy set of words are those that describe body parts using fore- to mean the front or end (the bit that comes beFORE!). For example, forehead, forearm and forefinger.

The final one I'll put here is my favourite because it's funny: 'scapegoat'. If you do something wrong, but you make everybody believe it was somebody else, that person is your scapegoat . My idea for the history of the word was: in the past people would take a goat with them so that if they bumped into a lion, they could run away while the lion was eating the goat. The actual meaning is similar, but related to religion and sacrifice to the Gods.

Sir Christopher Lee died at 8:30am on Sunday morning at the age of 93. He was at Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London because he had respiratory problems and heart failure.

Lee was known as the master of horror and had had roles in Dracula, The Wicker Man, James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun and more recently in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy and the last two films of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

He got his title 'Sir' after he was knighted in 2009 and given the medal for Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE). This medal was given to him for services to drama and charity . He was also given the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Fellowship, which was an award for his lifetime contribution in acting.

Many people sent their condolences including the director, Tim Burton, who said: "Christopher Lee has been an enormous inspiration to me my entire life. I had the honour and pleasure to work with him on five films. He was the last of his kind - a true legend - who I'm fortunate to have called a friend. He will continue to inspire me and I'm sure countless others for generations to come."

Click here to read the original article.

Kenlissia Jones, a 23-year-old woman, could be charged with murder after she took a pill to end her pregnancy. She gave birth to the five-and-a-half-month foetus on the way to hospital but it died about half an hour later.

Jones has been charged with malice murder and possession of a dangerous drug. She told a social worker that she had taken four pills she got from the internet to " induce labour". She said she did it because she had broken up with her boyfriend.

Jones was from Albany in the state of Georgia, in the United States. Many abortion clinics have been closing in Georgia and 96% of the counties in the state of Georgia have no abortion clinic at all. In Georgia, the sentence for 'feticide', which is the killing of a foetus, is life in prison.

An expert on state policy from the Guttmacher Institute, Elizabeth Nash, said, "The woman wasn’t able to access healthcare when she needed it, she took action on her own and then when she sought out healthcare she was then arrested. She was let down every step of the way."

Click here to read the original article.

Shafqat Hussain has had his execution postponed for the fourth time just a few hours before he was going to be hanged . He was sentenced for kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old boy and has been on death row since 2004.

There has been an international campaign to stop him from receiving the death penalty because he was a minor when the crime was committed. Human rights activists also say the confession is false because he was beaten by police into giving it.

As Hussain was only 14 when the seven-year-old boy was killed, he should not be executed because in Pakistani law, children cannot be sentenced to death.

After a massacre of over 130 boys in a Peshawar school by the Taliban, the laws have become a lot stricter on terrorism. The result has been that many cases that have no connection with terrorism have been handled very quickly.

Amnesty International said that in the last few months, at least 150 people have been executed, "Pakistan is fast turning into one of the world's top executioner ."

Click here to read the original article.

The former England captain, Sol Campbell, has confirmed that he will be standing for election for London's mayor next year. He is planning to replace the current mayor, Boris Johnson.

Campbell retired from football in 2012 when he was with Newcastle. He played 73 England matches and also played in three World Cups.

He said, "I'm going in with my eyes wide open. I know I'm not going to be a frontrunner. But I look at people who have been in politics for five, 10, 15 years, and muck up , you see them muck up and think, 'you guys are supposed to be pro !'

People that have gone to Oxbridge , had thousands spent on their education, and I mean they are royally mucking up."

He also said, "I bring something new to the table . This is a whole new road for me, something I can get my teeth into but I just felt it was something I had to do. I come from a working class background, it wasn't easy for me at all, but I worked hard. And now it's about giving something back."

Click here to read the original article.

The title is not a spelling mistake, it's an example of very bad English humour. We have a lot of homophones in English, and we love to play with them! In this case I was playing with bored (not interested) and board (that you use for games like Chess and Scrabble). The reason is, tonight I went to a special cafe where you can play board (not bored) games... and it wasn't boring!

When I was young, I really loved playing board games. It was a rare and wonderful chance for the whole family to gather together around the living room table, as opposed to the TV, and spend a couple of hours playfully battling to gather the most cash (Monopoly) or make the longest words (Scrabble). So last week when my girlfriend said "Some of my friends are going to a cafe where you can play board games. Do you wanna come?", I immediately said "Absolutely!"

The place itself is called Draughts and is situated in a rather hipster area, just a few minutes walk from Haggerston station. The cafe is actually built under the arch of the railway bridge: see the picture below, from their website.

I arrived a little bit early after a nice walk along the canal , so I had a little time to peruse their extensive selection of board games before our whole group arrived. I saw the usual classics - chess, monopoly, taboo - as well as a load of more obscure games with very beautiful box designs. Their menu caters for both serious gamers (with food, coffee and juices) and silly alcoholics such as myself, so I ordered a beer. There were three of us to begin with, and, while we waited for the others, we played a slightly educational game which required us to put famous historical events in chronological order . When the others arrived, we returned that game and chose another. The whole back wall of the cafe is stacked with games, so you could easily spend a full week there without running out .

The atmosphere of the place is really nice. If you think board games are just for geeks , think again. This cafe is not far from some of the most fashionable places in London at the moment, so the clientèle are mostly the young and cool (including myself!... hmmm, maybe not). But the people are there to relax and have a good, but gentle, time. Next to us was a couple who were laughing loudly as they went from one daft game to the next, while behind us was a serious group concentrating hard on their strategy game.

A couple of us ordered food, which was apparently OK, but a bit bland , but I was happy to just stick to beer! We left two and a half hours and five games later because it was getting late (work in the morning), but we all agreed that we would come back soon on a weekend so that we could spend more time and attempt some of the more complicated games on offer.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said that UN will have an external review of suggestions that French soldiers have been abusing children in Africa.

The review will look into how the UN and also the French government reacted to the information given by children that they were being sexually abused at a camp in Central African Republic last year.

This is a big controversy for the UN, especially after a senior UN official was suspended from his job in April for giving some internal documents to the French because he was worried the UN would not do anything to stop this abuse. He is now back working again but is being investigated and could still lose his job.

A spokesperson speaking for Ban Ki-moon said, "the secretary general is deeply disturbed by the allegations of sexual abuse by soldiers in the Central African Republic, as well as allegation of how this was handled by various parts of the UN system involved".

Click here to see the original article.

Charles Kennedy the ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats was found dead at his home in Fort William on Monday by his partner Carole Macdonald.

The police have said, "Police officers attended an address at Fort William on Monday 1 June to reports of the sudden death of a 55-year-old man. Police were notified by ambulance service personnel. There are no suspicious circumstances".

Kennedy became the youngest MP in 1983 when he was 23, after being elected as the Social Democrat party representative for the areas of Ross, Cromarty and Skye. In 1999, he became the leader of the Liberal Democrats (which was a party created when the Social Democrat party and the Liberal party joined together). He stopped being leader in 2006 when he admitted to having a problem with alcohol.

His nickname was "Chat Show Charlie" because he had a very friendly and easy style that people liked. But he will be remembered for keeping the fight for social justice and for the UK to stay in the EU as the main focus of his politics.

Click here to see the original article.

There has been a heatwave in southern India with temperatures reaching 47C since mid-April. The death toll is nearly 2,200 and the rainstorms that are expected will not help much to make the temperature go down.

There was hope that the thunderstorms over the weekend would help to end the heatwave but there was little change and the temperatures during the day were between 45C and 47C, 3-7C above the normal temperature. The states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are the most affected. 1,636 people have died in Andhra Pradesh and 561 people have died in Telangana. the state next to it.

The monsoon is expected to start in the south of India this week and then move north. The monsoon usually lasts until the end of September but weather forecasters did warn last week that there could be a longer drought period.

Click here to see the original article.

If you are an early bird , then you should know about the early morning events that are happening in London over the next five Fridays. Each one is something a little bit special - a little bit out of the ordinary . And they all begin at around 7 o'clock in the morning!

There is a fashion show (Fri 12th June). There is something that involves lots of water, lots of soap, and you wearing your swimming costume (Fri 19th June). There is a luxury boat ride (Fri 26th June). There is a cinema showing (Fri 3rd July). And, finally, there is a dawn party (Fri 10th July).

I repeat: these are all happening early in the morning. If you like waking up early, register to win tickets here . But you will NOT see me there - I'll be in bed!

Something which has been very popular in recent years in London is strange kinds of cinema. There is Hot Tub Cinema (watch a film in a bath!) and Secret Cinema (dress up and see a film with lots of special extras), but the new thing this year is Pillow Cinema. Quite simply, watch a film on a big pillow !

It will be happening in Shoreditch and you WILL have to book tickets early. Go here if you are interested.

There is something fascinating about the world under our feet. Every time I go down the escalator to the underground, I feel like an explorer, and there are many other cave -like places to explore apart from tube stations. This week's Time Out tells us about a few. Here's a summary:

Go to the place where the Royal Family keeps their wine!
Visit the place where Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister during World War II, made his decisions - the Churchill War Rooms.
22 miles (that's 35 kilometres!) of underground caves. They have been use for many things, from World War II hospitals to 1960s' rock concerts. Visit them here.
Alternatively, if you fancy a bit of food, drink or partying in an underground location, try either Cahoots. or the Ivory Vaults.
Finally, go and see a bit of underground art below Waterloo station.

Honestly, I don't think this is a good idea! It's cold, wet and crazy, but if you are a bit crazy, or if the English weather is somehow brilliant , then why not try and outdoor swim while you are in London? Here are a few locations.

Ashers Baking Company has been found guilty of discriminating against Gareth Lee by refusing to bake a cake with a theme promoting gay marriage.

Although the judge, District Judge Isobel Brownlie, accepted that the family who own Ashers "hold genuine deeply-held religious beliefs", she did say that the McArthur family had discriminated because of their customer's sexuality.

She said that the regulations were there "to protect people from having their sexual orientation used for having their business turned down".

Lee described the suggestion that Ashers return the money he had paid for the cake "made me feel I'm not worthy, a lesser person and to me that was wrong". Lee reported the baker to the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland which eventually led to the trial.

Read more here