Image copyrightGOOGLEImage captionThe site of the proposed development has been owned by Conwy council since 1990
Previously abandoned plans to develop land on a Conwy floodplain for jobs could be rekindled.
Conwy council is reconsidering plans to attract investment to develop parts of the Tir Llwyd industrial site in Kinmel Bay.
Natural Resources Wales previously raised concerns about the risk of flooding due to its proximity to the coast.
The new plans will be discussed by a scrutiny committee on Monday.
After initial plans to develop the area fell through, a task and finish group was set up to thoroughly look at potential benefits and risks and report back to the council.
‘Firm interest’
It found that the risk of flooding was not as significant as first thought as the sea level had not risen as much as predicted and effective sea defences existed in the area.
The site received planning permission in October 2017.
A report going before councillors said two parties are interested in the land, “with two further businesses having expressed firm interest since the planning decision”.
Conwy council hopes the site, if plans are approved, will attract investment from potential developers to help increase employment in the area.
An asylum seeker who fled Iran over fears he would be killed for converting to Christianity is one of 300 to be baptised at a Cardiff church in the past two years.
Conversion from Islam to Christianity is punishable by death in Iran and converters said their decisions mean they can never go home.
Its constitution recognises the faith of Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.
But people from a Muslim background are not free to worship in a church.
Daniel, not his real name, fled to the UK after authorities in Iran discovered he was worshipping Jesus in an underground Christian movement known as “house churches”.
Now living in Cardiff, he officially converted from Islam when he was baptised two years ago.
Image captionPastor Phylip Rees said he had seen wounds on a parishioner who claimed he had been tortured because of his faith
Daniel, 31, said he was in no doubt he would be killed if he returned to Iran.
“If I went back, the authorities would arrest me. They would put me in jail and I would be killed, I would be hanged,” he said.
“They will kill me, me and my family. I am not afraid because I will be meeting Jesus but I am afraid about my family.”
Daniel claims an Iranian Christian convert friend was murdered and his remains were scattered outside the doors of four churches in his home city as a warning to others thinking of renouncing Islam.
In the past two years, 324 asylum-seekers have been baptised by Tredegarville Baptist Church in Cardiff, where 95% of the congregation are immigrants.
The majority baptised there are Iranian but some are Kurds and Afghans.
Image captionAbout 60 converts including Daniel were baptised in a mass ceremony at Jackson Bay, Vale of Glamorgan, two years ago
Pastor Phylip Rees, who has baptised many asylum seekers in Cardiff and helps with their bids to remain in the UK, said he was in no doubt the vast majority who attend the church were genuine in their faith.
He said he seen evidence Iranian converts at the church had suffered torture in their homeland, including one man who claims he was branded by the authorities.
Pastor Rees also rejected suggestions some parishioners could be using baptism as a way to secure permanent residence.
He said he had refused to support applications previously when he had doubts.
Home Office guidelines for examining asylum claims state the credibility of a faith conversion “needs to be established to a reasonable degree of likelihood”.
It said that was likely to include being baptised, preparing for baptism, attending worship and being known to the church’s leadership and fellow believers.
The Home Office said: “Those who demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in their country on account of their religion or belief are not expected to return there.”
Image captionDozens of Iranian parishioners attend weekly prayer groups at the church in Cardiff
There are no official figures for genuine religious asylum seekers and some in the congregation said they had been waiting more than six years for a decision to be made about their claim.
But Iranian Christian groups are growing in number and can now be found in churches in cities including Glasgow, Liverpool and Birmingham.
Without them, Pastor Rees said the future of some churches would have been uncertain.
“Tredegarville would have closed but for this opportunity to join the Lord in his work of reaching these people,” Pastor Rees said.
I’m sure that the other churches would say that the people who are coming to them from other lands as refugees and asylum seekers are a blessing to them as they are to us.”
It said rural west and north Wales are the most vulnerable to economic decline as the UK leaves the European Union.
The Welsh Government welcomed the report and said it was developing programmes to prepare businesses.
Exports of Welsh red meat to the EU are expected to fall after Brexit, depending on the detail of any future trade deal.
The study said the Welsh Government should work with industry partners – for example supermarkets and dairies – to secure new markets for Welsh food.
Report author Prof Janet Dwyer, from the University of Gloucester, argued that while farming only employs a relatively small proportion of people directly, its success has a ripple effect across rural communities.
“People need to be more willing to think outside the box, to think about working together, think about understanding the way in which one person’s business affects what other people do because farming affects the landscape, which affects tourism, which is an important sector in Wales, so a lot of these things are connected,” she said.
Media captionWill Jones, 22, has been a tenant farmer near Tal-y-llyn in Gwynedd for the last 18 months
Prof Dwyer said a network on Exmoor in Somerset and Devon was a good example of different groups in rural life working well together.
Instead of a Wales-wide approach, she recommended policies designed by the communities themselves.
“I farm sheep – and sell art to America”
Image captionClare Maryan Green delivering a lamb – and working in her stained glass studio
Clare Maryan Green is a stained glass artist from Bristol, who branched out into sheep farming after moving to Exmoor.
“With my stained glass, if I make something for Valentine’s Day and I don’t sell it by Valentine’s Day, I can sell it next [year],” she said.
“With sheep, if the market decides it’s going to take a dive you’ve got to sell those sheep whatever the market’s doing. That’s really tough.”
Joining the Exmoor Hill farming network provided her with a support system and an unexpected boost to her art business.
“As a result of [mentoring] I started online selling. I’ve never sold work in America before, now I do. And that’s come about because of the network,” she said.
Helping incomers to integrate is part of the network’s ethos, according to its chairman, sheep and beef farmer David Knight.
One of their initiatives is a micro-farming group for new owners of smallholdings to introduce them to alien environments, like the local livestock market.
He said they also recognise the role farming plays in the fabric of the local community.
The PPIW is a think-tank co-funded by the Welsh Government and Economic and Social Research Council.
A Welsh Government spokeswoman said it welcomed the report, saying it highlighted the possible impact of Brexit not just on trade and markets but on people’s lives.
“However, Brexit also presents the opportunity to put in place new Welsh policy frameworks to help them adjust and thrive,” she said.
“We recognise that many of these changes will impact businesses in different ways and agree the best approach will be on an individual business level.”
She said they have already begun work to develop “sector readiness” programmes to support businesses to prepare for the change.
“We continue to press the UK government on the need for a multi-year transition period to enable all businesses to prepare and for clarity on the level of funding that Wales will receive after Brexit,” she added.
An awards event often called the Oscars of traditional music – TG4’s Gradam Ceoil – is to be held in Belfast until 2021, it has been confirmed.
The announcement was made as the city hosted the awards and concert for the first time in its 21-year history.
Sunday night’s ceremony was staged at the Waterfront Hall and was attended by Irish President Michael D Higgins.
Participants included Matt Molloy of The Chieftains, members of Altan and De Dannan and the actor Stephen Rea.
The Field Marshall Montgomery Pipe Band was among the award-winners, and its members performed at the Gradam Ceoil for the first time.
‘Very honoured’
The band’s pipe-major, Richard Parkes, said their presence sent out an important message about the breadth of traditional music.
Image captionRichard Parkes leads Northern Ireland’s most successful pipe band in history
“We’re the first pipe band to have received an award like this and it’s great respect from the traditional music community,” he said.
“A lot of the tunes that we play are traditional tunes – either traditional Irish or traditional Scottish.
“We’re all very pleased and very honoured to receive this award.”
The County Armagh-based singer Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin received a special contribution award, presented by Stephen Rea.
‘Unifying force’
She also performed two songs during the ceremony and said it was significant that it was being held in Northern Ireland for the first time.
“The awards are the pinnacle for a lot of musicians,” she said.
“I think for too long the north has been forgotten in the story of traditional music.
Image captionPádraigín Ní Uallacháin said people found common ground through traditional music
“The Troubles had something to do with that but traditional music has been such a unifying force between two sides of the divide in the north.
“I’m not even sure in traditional music there’s any divide at all.
“The tradition is a common tradition among Catholics and Protestants – for want of better terms. The same tunes are played and the same songs in English are played.
“So, to celebrate that tradition that kept going through those hard times, it’s wonderful to have this in Belfast.”
‘Time to grow’
The director general for TG4, Alan Esslemont, was in the Waterfront Hall to oversee the live broadcast of the ceremony on the channel.
“We call these the Oscars of traditional music with very good reason,” he said.
Image captionAlan Esslemont said it was the “right time” for the awards to come to Belfast
“Over the 21 years, it’s really grown. In the same way that the Irish language used to be quite backward-looking, maybe traditional music seemed to have an old-fashioned cache.
“It’s now the thing that lots of young people do, both in Ireland and Scotland. This is the right time to come to Belfast.”
“We’ve never really been invited but we sat with the city council and Northern Ireland Screen and we think this is the right time to come north.
“Being here for four years gives us time to grow into Belfast but also to grow with Belfast and I’m really looking forward to that.”
Among the other award winners at Sunday night’s ceremony were Frankie Gavin, who was named musician of the year, and Clare Friel who was named young musician of the year.
Two judges sitting at the High Court in London are expected to give their decision on Mr Love’s appeal later.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and Mr Justice Ouseley heard argument on his behalf during a hearing in November that extradition would not be in the “interests of justice” for a number of reasons.
These included the “high risk” that Mr Love, who suffers from Asperger syndrome, would kill himself.
He also suffers from a depressive illness and severe eczema.
‘Justice and humanity’
Authorities in America have been fighting for Mr Love to face trial on charges of cyber-hacking, which lawyers have said could mean a sentence of up to 99 years in prison if he is found guilty.
Mr Love is alleged to have stolen huge amounts of data from US agencies, including the Federal Reserve, the US army, the defence department, Nasa and the FBI in a spate of online attacks in 2012 and 2013.
Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Mr Love, submitted there were “overwhelming reasons of justice and humanity” why any trial should take place in the UK.
He argued it would be “unjust and oppressive” to extradite him because of his severe mental disorders.
Peter Caldwell, representing the US, said the district judge’s conclusion on extradition was “reasonably open to her on the findings of fact she made”.
Having identified a high risk of suicide, she [the district judge] “properly assessed whether and how that risk could be managed were the appellant to be extradited”.
“If both governments continue to take a hands-off approach with this process, the DUP and Sinn Féin will carry on threatening to write the obituary of the Good Friday Agreement,” he said.
“They are not bystanders in our politics. It is the authority and the balance provided by the two governments, which ultimately underpins the politics of Northern Ireland.”
Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGESImage captionKaren Bradley made her first appearance at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
In an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, he said: “I’ve every confidence in Michelle O’Neill (Sinn Féin Stormont leader) in terms of her ability to make friends with the unionists and to go forward on the basis of equality.”
The Sinn Féin leader said some unionists held “very hard positions”, but others lived in the “real world”.
“They know they have to make friends with their neighbours and would have to go on. It is not about us any more, it is about the next generation.”
Last week, Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley was questioned by MPs about progress in the Stormont talks. She appeared before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster on Wednesday.
She provided an update on the ongoing negotiations at Stormont.
When women become mothers they may move out of full-time employment – where experience is rewarded with progression and higher pay – and into part-time work, the report said.
“The effect of part-time work in shutting down wage progression is especially striking,” it added.
“Whereas, in general, people in paid work see their pay rise year on year as they gain more experience, our new research shows that part-time workers miss out on these gains.”
The vast majority of part-time workers were women, especially mothers of young children, the report said.
It also found that mothers were likely to lag 30% behind in earnings than fathers with a similar educational background by the time their children reach 20.
‘Lose out’
The report, which was compiled on behalf of the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation charity, says the lack of earnings growth in part-time work particularly affects graduate women, “because they are the women for whom continuing in full-time paid work would have led to the most wage progression”.
It says, for example, that a graduate who has worked full-time for seven years before having a child would, on average, see her hourly wage rise by a further 6% as a result of continuing in full-time work for another year, “but would see none of that wage progression if she switched to part-time work instead”.
Monica Costa Dias, associate director at the IFS and a co-author of the report, said: “It is remarkable that periods spent in part-time work lead to virtually no wage progression at all.”
The pay gap has narrowed most considerably between women and men educated to GCSE-level with the difference in average hourly pay falling from 28% in the early 1990s to about 18% in 2016.
The report said this change from 1993 is because “women in work are now better educated relative to men than they were”.
The research shows women with A-levels have seen the wage gap close from 29% in 1993 to around 22%.
Robert Joyce, associate director at the IFS and co-author of the report, said: “Traditionally it has been lower-educated women whose wages were especially low relative to similarly educated men.
“It is now the highest-educated women whose wages are the furthest behind their male counterparts – and this is particularly related to the fact that they lose out so badly from working part-time.”
Part-time progression
The report said a key challenge for future research was to understand why part-time work shuts down wage progression so much.
“There are a number of possibilities, including less training provision, missing out on informal interactions and networking opportunities, and genuine constraints placed upon the build-up of skill by working fewer hours,” it said.
However, even before women have their first child, the IFS said they were paid 10% less than men on average.
Mr Joyce said new legislation that requires UK companies with more than 250 employees to publish their gender pay gaps “could be part of the solution” since women may not be aware that men were being paid more than them.
Bach was speaking just five days before the Winter Olympics begin
XXIII Olympic Winter Games
Venue: Pyeongchang, South Korea Dates: 9-25 February
Coverage: Watch live on BBC TV, Red Button, Connected TVs, BBC Sport website and mobile app.
A decision to lift life bans for doping on 28 Russian athletes was “extremely disappointing and surprising”, says International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach.
“We would never have expected this,” said the 64-year-old German.
He said Olympic officials had asked Cas for an explanation for their ruling.
Cas ruled there was “insufficient” evidence the athletes had benefited from a system of state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Winter Games, hosted by Russia.
Speaking at a news conference in Pyeongchang, South Korea, five days before the opening of the Winter Olympics, Bach said the IOC had been told no full explanation of the verdict would be released until the end of February.
He said the IOC knew only what had been released by Cas in a statement and that this was “extremely unsatisfactory given the gravity of the cases”.
“We feel this decision shows the urgent need for reforms in the internal structure of Cas,” he added.
Bach said the IOC would consider appealing against the ruling once it had seen the full reasoning behind Cas’s decision.
The IOC has also turned down a request for 13 of the 28 athletes cleared by Cas – and two coaches – to be invited to take part in Pyeongchang.
A special IOC panel was set up to look at the request but it “agreed that the decision of the Cas had not lifted the suspicion of doping or given the panel sufficient confidence to recommend that those 13 athletes could be considered as clean”.
Earlier, Bach had said: “The absence of sanctions by Cas does not mean that you are entitled to receive an invitation from the IOC because receiving this invitation is a privilege of clean Russian athletes.”
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionLee Jae-Yong, pictured at an earlier court appearance,
Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong has been freed from jail after a South Korean court suspended his five year jail term for bribing the country’s ex-president.
An appeals court upheld parts of the conviction, but used its discretion to release the executive.
South Korea’s supreme court is expected to appeal against the decision.
The case gripped the public amid growing anger against the country’s biggest companies, known as chaebols, and their influence on wider society.
Scandal
Last year a lower court jailed Lee for corruption in a political scandal that ultimately brought down former President Park Geun-hye.
The Samsung Electronics vice chairman, who is also known as Jay Y Lee, had appealed against both the verdict and sentence.
The scandal exposed the ties between family-run conglomerates and political powers.
Samsung Electronics is regarded as the jewel in the crown of the Samsung Group conglomerate, which is made up of 60 interlinked companies.
Lee, 49, has effectively directed operations at the mobile phone and chip maker since his father, Lee Kun-hee, was incapacitated by a heart attack in 2014.
‘A dramatic turnaround’ – Analysis by Karishma Vaswani, Asia Business Correspondent
A dramatic turnaround in fortunes for Samsung scion Lee Jae-yong.
There were many outcomes that could have taken place today. But it would be fair to say that Mr Lee walking out of jail was the one that was least likely
Mr Lee’s release today will be a major relief to the world’s biggest smartphone marker and arguably the most important company in Corporate Korea.
Sources inside Samsung tell me that while the company hasn’t seen its share price or profits affected in the short term from Mr Lee’s absence, long term it was going to struggle especially with strategy and future direction.
And you can see the immediate impact of that from the pop in Samsung’s share price this Monday – a sign that investors are looking forward to Mr Lee back in the driving seat.
While Samsung insiders won’t confirm to me whether it will be back to work as usual, we can expect a Supreme Court challenge is extremely likely.
But there are also political consequences to this latest move.
South Korea’s new President Moon Jai-in won office by campaigning to cleaning up the powerful chaebol sector in Korea.
But many will see the court ruling as effectively a get out of jail card to Mr Lee that goes against everything the president stood for.
In an ironic twist, in 2009, Mr Lee’s father, the elder Lee was also released from prison on embezzlement and tax evasion charges so that he could help lobby for the 2018 Seoul Winter Olympics – an event which begins this week.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionOutput from the housing sector in Scotland rose by 16% last year, according to ONS figures
An industry body has forecast marginal growth in Scottish construction output over the next five years.
The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) predicted average annual growth of 0.1% between 2018 and 2022.
Its report suggested falls in infrastructure work would be mitigated by growth in most of the remaining sectors.
A small drop in overall employment of 0.7% per year is expected over the five-year period.
However, it added that Scotland needed more than 10,000 new workers between 2018 and 2022 because of an ageing workforce – with demand for supervisors, logistics and civil engineers, among other roles.
Figures recently released by the Scottish government showed that construction output fell in Scotland for a seventh quarter in a row between July and September last year.
Looking ahead, the CITB report forecasts growth of 3.9% a year in public housing over the next five years, with private housing growing at 2.9%.
It said expansion in the industry was being driven by the Scottish government’s target of building 50,000 new affordable homes by 2021.
Repair and maintenance of existing buildings is also expected to grow, with a year-on-year average rise of 2.6%, and 1.7% for non-housing related work.
Image copyrightTHINKSTOCK
The report highlighted a number of major projects in the pipeline in the industrial construction sector, including the £700m Edinburgh International Business Gateway mixed-use development and a £110m expansion of GlaxoSmithKline’s Montrose site.
It also cited plans by spirits firm Chivas Brothers to construct a new £40m bottling plant and offices at its Kilmalid site near Dumbarton.
Ian Hughes, partnership director at CITB Scotland, said: “The forecast for Scottish construction sees a stable five years to 2022.
“It is encouraging to see strong growth for housing in particular.”
He added: “With over 10,000 new workers needed over the next five years, there remain excellent, rewarding career opportunities in construction.
“Our modern apprenticeship programme in Scotland continues to go from strength to strength, with over 5,000 apprentices currently being trained.
“We want to support firms in Scotland to take on more apprentices, to upskill their workforce, and to champion construction as a rewarding lifelong career.”
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