Queen honours Westminster attack PC Keith Palmer for bravery

The police officer murdered in March's Westminster attack has been awarded a posthumous bravery medal by the Queen.

PC Keith Palmer's George Medal recognises actions that "saved lives".

Gallantry awards also go to pensioner Bernard Kenny, who went to the aid of murdered MP Jo Cox, and to two men who helped after the Tunisia beach attack.

The announcements coincide with the Queen's Birthday Honours list, in which comedian Billy Connolly is knighted and actress Julie Walters becomes a dame.

Glaswegian Sir Billy, 74, who was made a CBE in 2003, said he was "pleased and a little embarrassed" to become a knight for services to entertainment and charity.

TV star June Whitfield, mezzo soprano Sarah Connolly and 100-year-old Gone with the Wind actress Olivia de Havilland also join Dame Julie as new dames.

Meanwhile, author JK Rowling, musician Sir Paul McCartney, television cook Delia Smith and designer Sir Terence Conran are among nine new members of the prestigious Order of the Companion of Honour.

• Fourteen famous faces on the honours list
• In pictures: Entertainment and arts honours
• 'Hairy rebel' pleased to be Sir Billy
• Brave Two Zero author McNab honoured for literacy efforts
• Genome pioneer enters elite club
• Birthday Honours lists in full

Harry Potter creator Rowling, who is being recognised for her work in literature and philanthropy, said she was "proud" to be part of the "distinguished and diversely talented" order of 65 members.

'Ultimate sacrifice'

Pc Palmer, 48, was stabbed to death by Khalid Masood on 22 March this year outside the gates of the Palace of Westminster

His award on the Civilian Gallantry List is for "confronting an armed terrorist to protect others and Parliament".

The citation says: "His actions provided time for other officers to react and shoot and stop the assailant.

"PC Palmer's bravery and professionalism unquestionably saved lives. PC Palmer did his duty...

"In doing so he made the ultimate sacrifice."

As well as the George Medal for Mr Kenny, 78, three other people are being given honours following the murder of Jo Cox outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, West Yorkshire, in June 2016.

PC Craig Nicholls and PC Jonathan Wright, who arrested the killer, Thomas Mair, are awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal, while Sandra Major, a constituency worker who witnessed Ms Cox being shot, becomes an MBE on the honours list for parliamentary services and service to the community.

Tourists Allen Pembroke and Paul Short both receive the Queen's Commendation for Bravery for helping the wounded after a gunman opened fire on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia in 2015, killing 38 holidaymakers, 30 of them British

The honours list is being hailed as the most diverse ever.

Of the 1,109 recipients, half are female, 6.5% have a disability, three-quarters undertake work in their communities, and 10% are from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background.

Among them are musician Chi-chi Nwanoku, who set up a foundation to help provide career opportunities for young BAME classical musicians (OBE), and Nitin Palan, who co-founded the annual Diwali On Trafalgar Square event, who is made an MBE for services to interfaith relations.

Birthday Honours 2017

1,109

people on list

• 74% for outstanding work in their communities
• 50% are woman
• 18 men knighted
• 14 women become dames

Cabinet Office

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The honours system

Commonly awarded ranks:

• Companion of Honour - Recipients wear the initials CH after their name. Limited to 65 people
• Knight or Dame
• CBE - Commander of the Order of the British Empire
• OBE - Officer of the Order of the British Empire
• MBE - Member of the Order of the British Empire
• BEM - British Empire Medal

• Guide to the honours

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Former SAS soldier and best-selling novelist Andy McNab becomes a CBE for his work promoting adult literacy. The Bravo Two Zero author is a literacy ambassador for the Reading Agency and has written several of the charity's Quick Read titles for young adults.

Other CBEs include writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs, singer Sade and veteran Archers actress June Spencer.

From the entertainment world, there are also OBEs for comedian David Walliams, and actresses Sarah Lancashire and Patricia Hodge, while composer and conductor George Benjamin is knighted.

Broadcaster Gloria Hunniford, who lost her daughter Caron Keating to cancer, is made an OBE for services to cancer charities.

Another broadcaster, Natasha Kaplinsky, becomes an OBE for services to Holocaust commemoration. Kaplinsky, who lost relatives in the Slonim ghetto in present-day Belarus, has interviewed survivors as a member of the United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial Foundation advisory board.

Pop stars Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande and 1960s singer Sandie Shaw are among the new MBEs.

BBC NEWS

German reunification architect Helmut Kohl dies at 87

Helmut Kohl, Germany's ex-chancellor and architect of reunification in 1990, has died at 87.

Kohl led Germany for 16 years (from 1982 to 1998). He is credited with bringing East and West Germany together after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Together with his French ally President Francois Mitterrand, he was responsible for the introduction of the euro.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has ordered flags at EU institutions to be flown at half-mast.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Kohl's former protegee who later called for his resignation over a political funding scandal, said his death filled her with deep sadness.

"Helmut Kohl's efforts brought about the two greatest achievements in German politics of recent decades - German reunification and European unity," she said.

"Helmut Kohl understood that the two things were inseparable."

• An underrated political giant?
• Tributes to Kohl from around the world
• Obituary: Helmut Kohl
• Helmut Kohl's life in pictures

For his part, Mr Juncker said in a tweet: "Helmut's death hurts me deeply." "My mentor, my friend, the very essence of Europe, he will be greatly, greatly missed," he added.

Former US President George HW Bush paid tribute to the man he knew while in office from 1989 to 1993 as a "true friend of freedom" and "one of the greatest leaders in post-war Europe".

Thatcher's rival

Kohl suffered a bad fall in 2008 and had been using a wheelchair.

He died at his house in Ludwigshafen, in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Bild newspaper reports.

Kohl, who led the centre-right Christian Democrats, was the longest-serving chancellor of the 20th Century.

A passionate believer in European integration, he persuaded Germans to give up their cherished deutschmark in favour of the European single currency

In the UK, he is remembered for his differences over the EU with the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In France, he is the German leader who held hands with Mitterrand at a service at the Verdun war memorial in 1984 to mark the 70th anniversary of World War One.

But for Germans he is above all the man who reunified a country divided by the allied powers after World War Two, promising the people of the ex-communist East "flourishing landscapes", in unity with the richer West.

Obituary: Helmut Kohl

Helmut Josef Michael Kohl was born on 3 April 1930 into a conservative, Catholic family.

His political outlook was shaped by his experiences in his hometown of Ludwigshafen in the Rhineland during World War Two.

Because of its huge chemical works, the town was heavily bombed and, at the age of 12, the young Helmut found himself helping to recover the charred bodies of his neighbours from the rubble. What he once described as "the blessing of a late birth" freed him from any taints of Nazism.

Chancellor Merkel first entered government under Kohl's rule in 1991.

But she publicly denounced him and called for his resignation when it was revealed the party had received millions of dollars worth of illegal donations using secret bank accounts.

In 2011, in a series of interviews and statements, he spoke out against Mrs Merkel's policy of strict austerity to deal with the European debt crisis.

Kohl's later life was also marked by personal tragedy. His wife, Hannelore, killed herself in July 2001 after suffering from a rare skin condition and depression.

BBC NEWS

Trump partially rolls back Obama's Cuba thaw

US President Donald Trump says he is rolling back the Obama administration's "completely one-sided deal with Cuba".

Speaking in Miami, Florida, he said his new policy would tighten rules affecting travel and on sending funds to the Caribbean island nation.

But he is not reversing key diplomatic and commercial ties, and will not close the US embassy in Havana.

Commercial flights from the US will continue, as will allowing Americans to return home with Cuban goods.

Mr Trump said the Obama administration's March 2016 deal with the "brutal" Castro government was "terrible" and "misguided".

• Trump's promises before and after the election
• Trump's new Cuba policy: What's at stake?
• Trump accused of Cuba embargo breach

On Friday, Mr Trump signed a presidential directive calling for tighter enforcement of a longstanding ban on American tourists going to Cuba.

The new policy bans most US business transactions with the Armed Forces Business Enterprises Group, a Cuban entity involved in all sectors of the economy.

However, it exempts air and sea travel, allowing US airlines and cruise lines to continue serving the island.

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Back to adversaries - Barbara Plett Usher, BBC State Department correspondent

This is a rollback, not a reversal, of Obama's Cuba policy. In the main, it is a gift to the old guard Cuban Americans in Miami who opposed the detente and voted for Trump. So it bans financial transactions with the commercial arm of Cuba's military. But it also takes into account pressure from US businesses that don't want to turn the clock back.

So it does not "disrupt" existing joint ventures and carves out other exceptions. Probably the most visible effect will be a slowdown of American visitors, who took advantage of looser travel rules that Trump says he'll now strictly enforce.

The president framed his policy in the human rights concerns of his Miami constituency, which is passionate about the regime's repression of political freedoms. But critics questioned why he singled out Cuba for such treatment when he's made a point of not lecturing other nations for bad behaviour.

They also point out that Havana doesn't respond well to such treatment: - it's made very clear it will not be pressured into making political reforms.

And it won't have taken kindly to Trump's blistering take down of the "cruel and brutal" communist regime. Whatever the practical economic consequences of this new/old policy, it seems likely to reinstate the adversarial relationship Obama sought to transform.

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What has the criticism been like?

Mr Trump had faced calls from the business community not to completely reverse his Democratic predecessor's diplomatic rapprochement between the two former Cold War foes.

Myron Brilliant of the US Chamber of Commerce said: "Unfortunately, today's moves actually limit the possibility for positive change on the island and risk ceding growth opportunities to other countries that, frankly, may not share America's interest in a free and democratic Cuba that respects human rights. "

Zane Kerby of the American Society of Travel Agents said before the speech he was "disappointed" at Mr Trump's plans to "turn back the clock" in terms of expanded travel and trade between the U.S. and Cuba.

"The past few years have seen a growth in business for US travel agencies, tour operators, airlines, cruise lines, hotel and other travel companies. That progress now appears to be at great risk," he added.

Granma, the Cuban government's state-run newspaper, said the president was "stuck in a failed policy that has caused much damage to the Cuban people and has left the United States isolated".

Rolling back Obama

The Miami speech is the latest part of former President Barack Obama's legacy that Mr Trump has moved to dismantle.

He cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, announced he would withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, and is attempting to repeal and replace Obamacare, his predecessor's signature policy accomplishment.

In Friday's remarks, Mr Trump set out how his administration would seek to prevent US dollars from being used to fund what it regards as a repressive military-dominated government.

"The profits from investment and tourism flow directly to the military," he said to applause. "The regime take the money and owns the industry."

"We do not want US dollars to prop up a military monopoly that exploits and abuses the citizens of Cuba," he told the audience.

Earlier in the day, Vice-President Mike Pence visited Little Havana in Miami 

What are Cubans in Miami saying?

The embargo should continue. Why give credit to a country where the people don´t see a penny? They are still starving and there is no freedom whatsoever. Why should we keep feeding the people who are on top when they repress their own people." Jose Nadal

"I am 100% Republican. I agree 150% with everything Trump says and does. They should impose more sanctions against Cuba. When Obama made the agreement and restored relations with the Cuban government, he gave them everything they asked for. We received nothing from the Cuban government. This is why Trump wants to strengthen the sanctions." Cathy Henderson

"I am against the embargo. The Cuban tyranny uses the embargo as a pretext to justify that it has failed. Everything bad that happens in Cuba, they blame the embargo." Santiago Portal

Courtesy of BBC Mundo

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A history of the US trade embargo with Cuba

1959: Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro leads a guerrilla army into Havana overthrowing the Batista regime.

1960: In response to Castro's communist reforms, US breaks off diplomatic relations with Cuba and imposes a trade embargo.

1962: Castro agrees to allow the Soviet Union to deploy nuclear missiles on the island bringing the US and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war.

April 2009: President Barack Obama lifts restrictions on family travel and the sending of remittances to Cuba.

July 2015: The US and Cuba reopen embassies in each other's capitals and restore full diplomatic ties.

March 2016: President Obama makes a three-day visit to Cuba and holds talks with President Raul Castro. He expresses hope the embargo will be ended, but it can only be lifted by the US Congress which is controlled by Republicans who oppose the move.

BBC NEWS

London fire: Appeals for missing relatives

At least 30 people have died and 12 people are in critical care after a huge fire engulfed a west London tower block on Tuesday night.

Many people are unaccounted for, and loved ones have appealed on social media for information. An emergency number - 0800 0961 233 - has been set up for anyone concerned about friends or family.

Brkite and Biruk Haftom

Mother and son Brkite and Biruk Hafton live in Flat 155 of Grenfell Tower.

Family friend Dejan Araya says Brkite's sister and friend have been searching hospitals for news of their whereabouts and are inconsolable.

Dejan Araya said the last time there was any contact with them was at around 22:00 BST on the night of the fire.

Deborah Lamprell

Deborah Lamprell, 45, lives on the 16th floor. A family friend said she would always text her mother when she returned home from work.

The last text message Ms Lamprell sent her mother was at about 23:30 BST on the evening of the fire. She has not been heard from since.

Ms Lamprell's cousin made an appeal on Facebook for information. She posted: "Dear friends, I am desperate for your help. My cousin Deborah Lamprell lives in Grenfell Tower.

"We haven't had any news and don't know if she's been rescued and in hospital."

Gloria Trevisan and Marco Gottardi

It is believed Mr Gottardi, and his girlfriend Ms Trevisan were staying with friends at Grenfell Tower.

Mr Gottardi's father Giannino told Italy's ANSA news agency that he had been on the phone to his son and his girlfriend up until the last minute.

He told him that the flat was full of smoke and then communications were interrupted.

"We're just hoping for a miracle," he said.

Mr Gottardi, an architect, is from a town near Venice and Ms Trevisan is from the city of Padua.

El-Wahabi family

Five members of the El-Wahabi family are missing. Sanaa Jones says they are her uncle Abdul Aziz, 52, his wife Fouzia, 42, son Yasin, 21, daughter Nur Huda, 15, and youngest son Medhi, 8.

Sanaa's other aunt, her husband, and two children - who also live in the same block - were able to escape from the sixth floor, but the El-Wahabis were on the 21st floor.

My aunty told my uncle to get out but there was a lot of smoke," she said

"My uncle got on the phone to the fire brigade, who advised him to stay inside and to shut the door, and put blankets down around 02.30.

"That's the last time we heard from them.

"I went to one hospital, my cousins went to other hospitals. There is nothing and they are not there.

"It's very distressing time at the moment. We have to try to keep strong."

Hamid Kani

Iranian born Hamid Kani, 61, lived alone in flat 154 of Grenfell Tower. A London-based family friend says his relatives in Iran are devastated as they cannot reach him.

They have been trying to get information from hospitals but have not been able to locate him.

The family friend - who wishes to remain anonymous - said it has been a stressful and painful time for the whole family.

BBC NEWS

US destroyer collides with merchant vessel near Japan

A US Navy destroyer has collided with a merchant vessel close to Japan with reports of a number of injuries.

The crash involving the USS Fitzgerald happened 56 nautical miles (103km) south-west of the city of Yokosuka at about 2:30am local time (18:30 BST) on Saturday.

Japan's public broadcaster, NHK, showed aerial footage of the US ship with heavy damage on one side.

The US Navy has requested help from the Japanese coastguard.

One injured sailor is to be evacuated to hospital by the coastguard's helicopter, the navy said.

A spokesperson also told Reuters news agency that the ship was working to account for all personnel.

In a series of tweets, the US 7th Fleet earlier said the USS Fitzgerald had experienced flooding in some areas, and the extent of injuries was being determined.

It said the ship was now on its way to Yokosuka - under its own power, but with limited propulsion.

It also said the other ship carried a Filipino flag.

In a statement released on social media, Admiral John Richardson said: "As more information is learnt we will be sure to share it with the Fitzgerald families and when appropriate the public. [...] All our thoughts and concerns are with the Fitzgerald crew and their families."

BBC NEWS

Amazon to buy Whole Foods for $13.7bn

Online retail giant Amazon is buying Whole Foods in a $13.7bn (£10.7bn) deal that marks its biggest push into traditional retailing yet.

Amazon, which has been experimenting with grocery offerings, will buy the upscale supermarket for $42 a share.

Founded in 1978 in Texas, Whole Foods was a pioneer of the move towards natural and organic foods.

It has grown to more than 460 stores in the US, Canada and the UK, and employs about 87,000 people globally.

Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said: "Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy.

"Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades - they're doing an amazing job and we want that to continue."

'Maximise value'

Whole Foods has been under pressure from investors amid declining same-store sales. Last month, the company named a new chief financial officer and new board members.

In April, activist investor Jana Partners called the firm's shares undervalued, noting "chronic underperformance".

The price being paid by Amazon marks a 27% premium to the level Whole Foods' shares closed at on Thursday.

The takeover deal is expected to be completed in the second half of the year.

Whole Foods boss John Mackey said: "This partnership presents an opportunity to maximize value for Whole Foods Market's shareholders, while at the same time extending our mission and bringing the highest quality, experience, convenience and innovation to our customers."

BBC NEWS