A housing developer has unveiled plans to convert a fire damaged Victorian hospital in Inverness into luxury homes.

Robertson Homes said the project at Craig Dunain would be one of the most complex ever attempted in the city and would cost about Â£13m to complete.
It has submitted plans to Highland Council to create 26 townhouses and 30 apartments.
The former hospital was damaged by fire in September 2007.
Robertson Homes said its Gleann Mor House construction project would provide work for more than 100 people.
About 40 firefighters took 12 hours to bring the blaze in 2007 under control.
Three teenagers admitted causing the fire.


Alton Towers will remain closed until the cause of a rollercoaster crash that left 16 people injured is discovered, the theme park's boss has said.

The Staffordshire attraction's gates are shut for a second day while the Health and Safety Executive investigates Tuesday's crash.
Nick Varney, of Merlin Entertainments, which runs the park, said it could only reopen when they knew the problem was isolated to the rollercoaster.
However, he did not give a time frame.
Two carriages collided at the park's Â£18m ride The Smiler at about 14:00 BST on Tuesday.
The accident left people trapped 25ft (7.6m up) at an angle of 45 degrees for up to four-and-a-half hours.
Writing in the Sun, Merlin Entertainments chief executive Mr Varney said: "At this point I don't know if it was a technological or a human error.
"We want to know if this issue is isolated to The Smiler. We can't open again until we're sure."
A total of 16 people were hurt, including Joe Pugh, 18, and his girlfriend Leah Washington, 17, both from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and 27-year-old Daniel Thorpe from Buxton in Derbyshire.
They suffered serious injuries, along with a woman aged 19.
All four were airlifted to major trauma centres across the West Midlands.
Mr Thorpe's father has said his son is being treated at Coventry hospital. A spokesperson for Royal Stoke University Hospital said it continues to treat the other three, "following serious injuries sustained in the incident at Alton Towers on Tuesday."
Among those on board The Smiler was Vanisha Singh, who was in the second row of the carriage with her mother Chanda, 49, and her sister Meera, 26.
She told the Sun there had been "technical difficulties" moments before they embarked on the ride, as several test cars were sent ahead of them.
Paul Kelly, from the British Association of Leisure Parks, Piers and Attractions (BALPPA) said the industry was "shocked and devastated" by the news.
"It's very rare and a lot of people are very upset. This is something which happened outside normal parameters."
Mr Kelly said the investigation into what happened would cover everything, including the people working the ride, the manufacturer's instructions, and the climactic conditions.
He added: "I would like to reassure the public that theme parks are a very safe environment on a normal day out".
The rollercoaster, which has a world-record 14 loops, has been closed twice over safety concerns since opening two years ago.
An Alton Towers spokesman said: "The decision has been taken that Alton Towers theme park will remain closed on Thursday following the incident on The Smiler.
"Guests with pre-booked tickets and those arriving at the theme park will have the choice of a full refund or an alternative dated ticket.
"Guests with pre-booked tickets have the option to use their tickets tomorrow at an alternative attraction. See website for more info."
Were you at Alton Towers on Tuesday? Do you know anyone affected by the accident? If you have any information you would like to share with the BBC please email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.


A US Senate panel investigating Russian interference in last year's election has issued a formal demand for documents from President Donald Trump's former national security adviser.

Michael Flynn has failed to voluntarily co-operate with the investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee says.
He was forced to resign in February after failing to disclose the content of his talks with Russian diplomats.
Meanwhile, the fallout continues over the firing of the FBI director.
The White House maintained that James Comey was removed on Tuesday for his handling of the inquiry over Hillary Clinton's emails.
But US media reported that he had recently asked the Justice Department for more resources for his Trump-Russia investigation.
The Senate Intelligence Committee said it issued a subpoena after Mr Flynn rejected its request on 28 April to submit documents relevant to the investigation.
Mr Flynn, a retired army lieutenant-general, misled the White House about discussing US sanctions against Russia with the country's envoy, Sergei Kislyak, before Donald Trump's inauguration in January.
His links to Russia are being scrutinised by the FBI and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as part of wider investigations into claims Moscow sought to tip the election in favour of Mr Trump, and into contacts between Russia and members of the president's campaign team.
The rare use of a subpoena by senators makes it clear that the committee is forging ahead with its investigation into the alleged Trump-Russia links, the BBC's Laura Bicker in Washington says.
Flynn: No stranger to controversy
Timeline of events
Reaction to Mr Comey's firing continued on Wednesday, with a White House spokeswoman saying that President Trump had been considering sacking the FBI director since he was elected.
But critics accuse the Republican president of firing the nation's top law enforcement official because he was leading the Russian inquiry.
The White House has rejected calls to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin over last year's election.
The Senate Intelligence Committee invited Mr Comey to testify next week.
In a farewell letter to staff, Mr Comey said he would not "spend time on the decision or the way it was executed".
"It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing," he added.
"My hope is that you will continue to live our values and the mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution."
Flynn fired: Is this a cover-up?
Your questions answered
President Trump stood by his actions, saying Mr Comey was fired "because he was not doing a good job".
On Wednesday, Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Durbin told US media that Mr Comey had asked the deputy attorney general for more resources - mainly staff - for the FBI investigation.
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores called those reports "totally false".
Either way, Republicans and Democrats vowed the House and Senate Intelligence Committees' investigations into the Russia claims would continue.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said if Mr Trump believed replacing Mr Comey would halt the inquiries "he made a big mistake".


An NHS trust that runs two hospitals in Gloucestershire has taken out an emergency loan of £20m to cover an £11m deficit.

Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust began an independent review after it was found suppliers were not being paid on time.
The trust overspent on developing and improving buildings and equipment.
It had previously forecasted a £5.3m surplus for the end of this financial year.
The trust, which runs Cheltenham General Hospital, Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and services at Stroud Maternity Unit, hopes the Department of Health loan will ensure staff salaries are not affected by the large debt.
The trust's chief executive Deborah Lee, in post since June, said: "It's a really disappointing day. I certainly didn't expect to be coming into post making these announcements.
"The board is devastated, and deeply regrets the oversights in respect of financial management and accepts that it is the collective responsibility of the board and needs to look at itself very, very carefully to understand how did this happen."
The review also found the trust failed to deliver its savings plans.
Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group's chief accountable officer, Mary Hutton, said: "We acknowledge the pressures facing the trust but we believe strongly that, moving forward, the right leadership is in place to stabilise their finances and to ensure their internal procedures and oversight arrangements are strengthened.
"We are committed to working in partnership to tackle the underlying challenges which face the trust and the whole healthcare system in Gloucestershire."
The BBC has learned the trust's finance director Helen Simpson has resigned from her post.
The trust confirmed she had left but would not confirm whether it was as a direct result of the review's findings or whether she would get severance pay.
The trust also said it would continue to run as normal and patient care would be unaffected.


China's 16-year-old swimming prodigy Ye Shiwen has denied taking performance-enhancing drugs, after smashing a world record at the London Olympics.

Ye won gold in the 400m individual medley after breaking her personal best by at least five seconds.
She swam the last 50m quicker than the men's champion, prompting leading US coach John Leonard to describe her performance as "disturbing".
There is no evidence against her and all medal winners are drug-tested.
She is due to race in the final of the  200m individual medley later on Tuesday.
Commentators were stunned at her performance in the 400m on Saturday, and the BBC's Clare Balding said after the race that questions would be asked about how she achieved the world-record time.
The BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing says the accusations against Ye have sparked an angry reaction from Chinese internet users, who have accused other nations of jealousy.
Mr Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, said her performance reminded him of the East German women swimmers in the 1980s who were doping on a systematic basis.
"History in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I will put quotation marks around this, unbelievable, history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved," he told the UK's Guardian newspaper.
Ye denied the allegations against her, telling reporters: "My results come from hard work and training and I would never use any banned drugs. The Chinese people have clean hands."
And Chinese swimming team leader Xu Qi told China's state-run Xinhua news agency that comparisons between Ye and Lochte were meaningless.
"Ye was behind after 300m and she needed to try her best to win the race, but Lochte had already established the lead before the freestyle and didn't need to do his upmost," he said.
China's swimming team was repeatedly hit by doping scandals in the 1990s.
Seven swimmers tested positive for drugs in the 1994 Asian Games, and four years later four Chinese swimmers failed pre-tournament drug tests before swimming world championships in Australia.
Chinese officials insist they have cleaned up the sport, but earlier this year another 16-year-old swimming prodigy, Li Zhesi, failed a drug test.
Experts and former swimmers have said Ye's rapidly improved performance was not unprecedented.
Former Olympic champion Ian Thorpe told the BBC he had also improved his personal-best time by five seconds in a year during the early part of his career.
Profile: Ye Shiwen
Netizens leap to Ye's defence
"We have to remember that young swimmers can take chunks of time off that other people can't," Thorpe said.
Biomechanics expert Andrew Cresswell said swimmers could achieve dramatic improvements by working on their strength and technique.
"Those two factors combined can lead to large increases. [Ye's performance] certainly is possible if those right combinations were improved," he told the BBC.
Arne Ljungqvist, medical commission chairman for the International Olympic Committee, called the speculation sad.
"To raise suspicion immediately when you see an extraordinary performance - to me it is against the fascination of sport," he said.
All medal winners at the Olympics are drug tested. In addition, any athlete whose performance is far better than anything they have achieved before can be targeted for extra tests.
China's anti-doping chief has said that Chinese athletes have undergone nearly 100 drugs tests since arriving in London, and that not a single Chinese athlete had tested positive.


Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, has dismissed the ruling by the European Commission as politically motivated.

He then went on to show he's no slouch as a politician himself.
In comments in Irish media, Mr Cook circled his own wagons in what is undoubtedly a political as well as a financial tussle.
First there was the personal touch. He spoke of the outrage he personally felt at being charged with conduct so "contrary to our values".
Then he tried to shore up the support of the Irish government by talking about 37 years of achieving great things together through some thick and thin times.
He described a time in 1998 when Apple almost closed its Cork facility before he realised how great its Irish employees were.
Just in case anyone missed the fact they were on the same side he repeated, "Apple hasn't done anything wrong and the Irish government hasn't done anything wrong".
Lastly, there was a bone thrown to the US government with a promise to repatriate "several billion dollars" to the US next year - lest we forget that in the minds of US politicians, if anyone is owed back taxes, it sure as hell ain't Ireland.
He knows that back home in the US, his bafflement at European officials exacting retrospective taxes on American companies will be shared.
It was a skilful and very nuanced performance, but one which obscured a few key truths.
He claimed that Apple paid tax at a rate of 26% around the world, that isn't the whole story.
Apple works out its tax rate as if it had paid taxes due in the US at a rate of 35%.
But the actual payment of those taxes is deferred - till when, nobody knows.
Maybe until US taxes come down or some special tax amnesty is agreed to repatriate hundreds of billions that Apple and others keep off US shores in the tax equivalent of outer space.
In fact, the scramble to avoid paying tax at 35% is the reason the whole structure exists in the first place.
Tim Cook flatly denied that Apple had any kind of sweetheart deal - anyone else could have parked money in Ireland untaxed for years if they had just asked he said.
That is a bit like saying any pub team could win the FA Cup - in theory they can, but without the Pogbas and Ibrahimovices of the tax lawyer world, they can't.
The European Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has enormous powers thanks to her personal role in determining what constitutes illegal state aid.
She has used them to the full with this bold move against one of the world's most powerful companies. She has also picked a very wily political opponent.


Video games makers may soon find a shortage of actors to voice their characters after 96% of union members voted in favour of strike action.

The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra) now want more talks to try to resolve the dispute.
Actors want royalties for games - some of which sell millions of copies.
They also want stunt co-ordinators for motion-capture shoots and stunt pay for "vocally stressful" recording sessions.
Sag-Aftra had needed more than 75% of members to agree before it could authorise a strike.
"It is important to note that the referendum result does not mean that members are on strike, rather, it gives the National Board the authority to declare a strike," the union said in a statement.
"With this result in hand, the Negotiating Committee will seek to return to the bargaining table and continue to press for a fair resolution on behalf of performers working in video games."
Actors have complained that sessions for games such as Call of Duty, which require a lot of vocally stressful sessions, often go on for hours. The union has called for such sessions to be limited to two hours, with actors receiving higher pay for them.
The union also wants actors to be given more information about the roles that they are auditioning for and what they will be required to do, after reports that voice actors were also be asked to perform motion-capture work.


US President Barack Obama has signed a memorandum to expand a vast marine reserve in the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument will become the largest network of oceanic protected areas in the world.
The memorandum bans commercial fishing, deep-sea mining and other extraction of underwater resources in the area.
Environmental campaigners welcomed the move although some critics say President Obama could have done more.
"This really is a matter of stewardship. It's also a matter of generational responsibility," said US Secretary of State John Kerry.
"We have a responsibility to make sure... the future has the same ocean to serve it. Not to be abused, but to preserve and utilise."
The Pacific Remote Islands Area consists of seven scattered islands, atolls and reefs that lie between Hawaii and American Samoa.
The waters that surround these islands are home to corals, seabirds, sharks and vegetation not found anywhere else in the world.
President George W Bush set up the marine preserve in 2009 but until now it only encompassed an area 50 nautical miles (92km) from the islands' shores.
Now the protected area is being expanded to 200 nautical miles from the unique atolls. It will cover 490,000 sq miles (1.2m sq km) - an area roughly three times the size of California.
Mr Obama first signalled his intention to expand the monument in June and asked for comments on the final boundaries from fishermen, lawmakers and scientists.
Environmental groups greeted the announcement and said they hoped it would spur other nations to take similar steps.
"The president acted expeditiously, while the area is still largely pristine and undisturbed," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
However, some critics say the expansion falls short of what Mr Obama could have done had he used the full extent of his powers.
The islands affected are divided into five regions and the expansion only involves three of them.
If Mr Obama had expanded the preserve in all five regions he could have protected more than 780,000 sq miles, some environmentalists say.


Up to £50m is still needed to fund a flood alleviation scheme on the lower part of the River Thames, the Environment Agency has said.

The news comes as frustrated Berkshire residents hit by the 2014 floods say "not a lot has happened" so far to stop the river from overflowing again.
The section from Datchet in Berkshire to Teddington in London needs £300m for a flood channel and weir improvements.
The Environment Agency said a lot of work had been done since last year.
East Berkshire was one of the areas worst hit in the UK by the flooding in February 2014.
Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead councillor for Wraysbury, Colin Rayner, said in 18 months "not a lot has happened apart from lots of talk, paperwork and lots of schemes".
He said: "I believe not one bit of the River Thames has been dredged since the floods, and no improvements made to the weirs.
"My fear is that we might be in the same place again if we have heavy rains again."
David Murphy, who heads up the flood alleviation project at the Environment Agency, said the scheme was actually "progressing really well".
He said, as well as repairing all the affected flood defences, the agency had "carried out site and ground investigation works along the proposed route of the flood channel".
He said funding had been found for the first phase of the scheme, which looks at development and design of the flood channel.
But he added that another "£45m to £50m" was needed for the construction phase of the scheme.
"We're looking at a number of sources from European funds to local levies," he said.
The River Thames scheme includes work to construct a flood channel and improve three of the existing Thames weirs.
Construction of the flood channel is expected to start in 2020 and is expected to take about five years to complete.


Sunderland need to make significant progress before they can attract players of the calibre of Marouane Fellaini, says new boss David Moyes.

Media playback is not supported on this device
The Manchester United midfielder played at Everton for Moyes, who then took him to Old Trafford in 2013.
Sunderland's boss suggested the door would be "wide open" for players of that quality to come to the club.
"I'd love to have that level of player," said the Scot. "Realistically, that's probably not going to happen."
Sunderland have yet to make a senior signing this summer, partly because of the uncertainty surrounding Sam Allardyce, who eventually left to become England manager last month.
"We've got bids in for players just now," said the 53-year-old Moyes, who signed a four-year contract on 23 July.
"We're trying to strengthen the squad and I'm hopeful some of them will come off. In this market at the moment, you just never know."
Moyes takes over a club that have finished in the Premier League's bottom eight in all but one of the nine seasons since they were promoted from the Championship in 2007.
He believes that Sunderland can become a regular presence in the top half of the table but has acknowledged that it will take time.
"It wouldn't be outrageous to see Sunderland being a regular top-10 team, but for some reason it hasn't happened," he said.
"We need to do the work, get it right and give everybody something to shout about. We have to feel that we're not in this league just to survive every year."


Former world number one Victoria Azarenka is going for glory at Wimbledon - less than seven months after giving birth to son Leo.

Azarenka, 27, who plays Britain's Heather Watson in round three on Friday, has been speaking this week about the challenges of juggling a professional tennis career with motherhood.
Kim Clijsters, who won the 2009 US Open 18 months after the arrival of daughter Jada, is one of only three women to have won Grand Slam titles after becoming a mother.
"For a first-time mum, travelling on the road full-time is hard - but I am very glad I did it," Clijsters told BBC Sport.
"It was a big adventure for us as a family and I would not have changed anything."
There has been plenty of baby-talk at SW19, with Luxembourg player Mandy Minella competing while four and a half months pregnant and seven-time Wimbledon winner Serena Williams absent because she is expecting.
Like Azarenka, Williams intends to return to the Tour after giving birth - but what will change for her?
From sleeping babies in walk-in wardrobes to emptying the mini-bar, Clijsters tells BBC Sport what it is like to be a tennis mum.
Azarenka is playing only her second tournament since Leo was born in December. She is bidding to emulate Clijsters, Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong by winning a Grand Slam title as a mother - Goolagong, who won at SW19 in 1980, is the only mother to have won a Wimbledon singles title in the tournament's 140-year history.
Clijsters: "My mum cooked every day for us when I was young. She was there all the time and that was the vision I had for Jada too.
"I had to adjust, of course, because at home I was changing nappies and preparing food myself as soon as she woke up, but I still felt like we had it all organised when we went on the road.
"My husband Brian was always there and we also travelled with a nanny who took care of Jada. It meant Brian and I had our own time as well and could even go out to dinner occasionally. That was important.
"We just tried to balance things like that and have the same routine, and it worked really well for her, and for us.
"As a player, you don't normally have much order to your life but I wanted to structure things for Jada. I didn't want different people to be taking care of her at different tournaments.
"It was the same with food, although she eats almost everything. We travelled the world with a portable steamer-blender and I must know every organic store near all of the tournaments I played at.
"That was the first thing we did - we would ask for a fridge to be added to our hotel room or we would empty the mini-bar out so we could stock up on vegetables and fish, or whatever she had to eat.
"Jada was potty-trained in a hotel room too. All the little things like that happened while we were travelling the world.
"She is nine now and will adjust to anything, and I think that is something to do what she was doing at such a young age.
Clijsters took daughter Jada for a walk in her buggy in New York's Central Park on the morning of the 2009 US Open final - she beat Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki on Arthur Ashe Stadium later that day, and successfully defended her title the following year.
Clijsters: "With Jada, it was so hectic in the beginning for us with the media at tournaments that I just tried to keep her away from it.
"When I won the US Open in 2009, she hardly ever came out to Flushing Meadows. She came for the final and was able to sit in one of the boxes upstairs, and that was it.
"That day I had delayed her nap time a little bit, so she was able to stay up a bit later for the final.
"Sometimes things happen and you just have to juggle your routine. I have three children now and it is still the same. There are always different challenges but that is the great thing about being a mum.
"For me I love that everything is not perfect. When we lie in bed or sit on the couch, my husband and I can talk and laugh sometimes and say 'what happened today? It was chaos all over'.
"It was the same on the tour too. Sometimes we would stay in hotels and would not know how the rooms would be divided - we would ask for an extra room, but it would be on a different floor.
"We did not just throw money at the problem because that was not the way I was brought up - we tried to figure it out ourselves. Sometimes Jada even slept in a walk-in closet because there was nowhere else for her.
"She was a pretty good sleeper, which really helped around my matches.
"The one thing I was worried about was her getting sick because it is easy to deal with that at home but if you are in, say, Thailand I would not know where to go or who to ask.
"But it all went pretty smoothly in the end. She needed some medication from time to time but we have doctors and physios with us on tour so in that sense we were lucky because we had some of the best medical staff and facilities around."
Clijsters now has three children - Jada, nine, three-year-old Jack and Blake, who is eight months old.
Clijsters: "My husband would be there to watch my matches but if I had to practise, it would just be with my coach and trainer.
"Brian would do something with Jada so their bond is very strong because they have been together so much - it is the same as I had with my father, and I love seeing it with them too.
"But sometimes, as a mother, I felt guilty for leaving Jada behind and me going off to tennis.
"I know I was lucky because I was probably still seeing more of her than most mums but I also wanted to spend time with her wherever we were.
"I remember when she went to the zoo and held a koala bear before the Australian Open. There were a lot of times like that, when I wanted to be a part of it.
"So it was hard but I still wanted to keep my tennis separate. It was my work, and then her free time was different.
"Then I could come back to the hotel room to come back to her, and leave my working life behind.
"It was hard sometimes but you make it work. I spoke to Victoria on the Wimbledon practice courts this week and we talked about what we did when we didn't have kids on tour.
"What do you do? You just lay around - you rest in your bed, you read a book or you watch a movie, or you catch some tennis on TV.
"That it is so useless - life now is far more meaningful.
"I don't want to sound disrespectful to the sport but becoming a parent gives you a totally different perspective and, at the end of the day, nobody cares about whatever you did in sport.
"It is your family and kids that are important - and bringing them up the right way. No trophy even comes close."
Clijsters, 34, retired in 2012 and now runs a tennis academy in her hometown of Bree in Belgium. She is working as a co-commentator for BBC Sport at Wimbledon 2017 and also working with Belgian player Yanina Wickmayer, who lost in round two on Thursday.
Clijsters: "I love being here but I cannot watch this much tennis when I am in Belgium. I have a tennis school, and I am busy with the kids.
"My husband is American so I have to deal with all the school stuff because it is in Flemish and he can't help. When I was in Paris for the French Open I noticed there was some slacking off in Jada's homework - it was down to me to put that right!
"Brian coaches basketball and his season has just finished so he is not around that much, so everything from when we wake up until about 8.30pm when the boys go to sleep falls on me.
"That is fine because it is very satisfying knowing that everything went well. It is draining but when they are in bed I am like 'aaah, done - now I have to clean the kitchen'."


Great Britain's Helen Glover and Heather Stanning successfully defended their Olympic title by winning gold in the women's pair at Rio 2016.

Media playback is not supported on this device
The world champions, who won Britain's first gold of the London Games in 2012, led from the start as they finished 1.2 seconds clear of New Zealand in a time of seven minutes 18.29 seconds.
Denmark finished third to take bronze.
It was Great Britain's 17th medal of the Games and moved them up to fourth in the table, ahead of Australia.
Watch: TV wildlife presenter Steve Backshall breaks down in tears as fiance Helen Glover takes gold
Britain's 18th medal came just 20 minutes later as Alex Gregory, George Nash, Moe Sbihi and Constantine Louloudis took victory in the men's four.
Glover and Stanning are now unbeaten in 39 races, a run that stretches back five years.
They became the first British female rowers to win an Olympic title when they won four years ago, but Stanning said Friday's victory in Rio eclipsed their London success.
"This means so much more," she said. "We have been so emotional this week and it means so much to us."
Glover added: "The pressure was immense. London was a home games and there was nothing more special but this is defending a title - it means so much."
Find out how to get into rowing with our special guide.
Glover and Stanning dominated from the start, building up a 3.58s lead at the halfway mark.
New Zealand surged late on but the Britons had enough in hand to take victory.
"I think they had another gear," said retired rower Sir Steve Redgrave, who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games.
"It is difficult to repeat what they did four years ago when they had a big lead because you have to keep going through the motions of it."
Singer Pixie Lott: Yessssss golden girls!!!! You're amazing
BBC presenter Dan Walker: Glover and Stanning have ripped this race to bits. What a performance. Solid gold... again
Former world and European champion rower Polly Swann Amazing job by @Helenglovergb and Heather! So commanding. Double Olympic champions has a nice ring to it! Well done girls. Xx


If the US National Security Agency really has been listening in to Angela Merkel's cell phone, as the Germans believe, then, courtesy of the fugitive US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, the Americans have broken a cardinal rule in the espionage play-book.

Put simply, they have been caught. There has, over recent days, been a flurry of reports indicating the reach of US surveillance activities - to France, Germany and Italy. European governments friendly to the United States are somewhat upset and the Obama Administration is somewhat embarrassed.
I say "somewhat" because, as much of the commentary in the wake of these disclosures has indicated, there is a kind of shadow game going on here.
It is a bit like that moment in the classic film "Casablanca" when the police chief expresses his shock that gambling is going on in an establishment he well knows is a casino, only moments before being handed his own winnings by a clerk.
Almost all governments conduct surveillance or espionage operations against other countries whose activities matter to them.
Some are friends; some are enemies; some may just be in interesting locations or have ties to other countries that are of interest.
What differs is the scope and scale of these operations. This depends upon the motivation and resources available.
Not surprisingly the United States, with its global sense of mission; its constellation of different security agencies; and its technical abilities, has a much longer reach than most.
Governments may express surprise when such activities are opened up to the full light of day.
Sometimes there can be serious consequences.
Israel and the US are close allies but they each try to get the inside track by collecting information about each other.
But when in 1985 a civilian US naval analyst, Jonathan Pollard, was revealed as an Israeli spy - something the Israelis were slow to acknowledge - he was put on trial and still languishes in prison.  For a period, intelligence ties were severely strained.
At other times surveillance can be unmasked but no culprit can definitively be identified.
Back in May 2012 various "back-doors" were found into computer software in the innermost offices of the Elysee Palace - the French president's residence.
The French strongly suspected the US National Security Agency, though the Americans firmly deny any responsibility.
Did that stop the new French President Francois Hollande standing four-square with the Americans and backing military action against Syria?
No - no more than the fact that Israel and the US got over the Pollard Affair and retain close military and security ties.
So "stuff happens" as the former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once put it.
When such episodes are revealed the wronged party, in this current case the French, German, Brazilian and Mexican governments (and the list will only grow) are annoyed.
They have protested. They are saying all the things their own electorates would expect them to say in such circumstances.
France and Germany want to go further and extract some kind of document from Washington certifying that it will "behave itself" in the future.
Other than an act of public contrition, such a document will probably not be worth the paper it is written on.
Very soon the spies will be back in business as usual.
Or will they?
Because while some of the surprise at the scope of US surveillance activities may be false, this is not all play-acting.
There are genuine concerns and it would be wrong to dismiss all of the condemnation of Washington as hyperbole. Big things are happening in the world and two are of central importance here.
For one thing this is the age of big data, the cloud, and our growing reliance upon machines.
Alongside this the technical ability to monitor, store and sift information is also growing exponentially.
This raises all sorts of real concerns about privacy, the extent of state action and so on, issues that have all been thrust into the limelight by Edward Snowden's revelations. Big data also potentially puts us all at greater risk of cyber-attack and so on.
So where the boundaries of surveillance should lie is almost permanently problematic.
Indeed, so far this discussion has only been framed in terms of surveillance and counter-terrorism.
But the arguments are equally important in the field of defence against cyber-attack, where some argue that similarly large bodies of data - much of it private but transiting, if you like, the public realm - may need to be interrogated.
The other great change is in the international arena. New economic powers are rising.
The US remains a major player but in absolute terms it is less dominant.
It needs to act more with allies to get things done. Concerted action requires trust. US leadership requires a positive image. Today America's soft power - its force of example - matters as much as its hard military might.
That image has been damaged by these revelations.
Those who are sceptical about US power have been given more reason to hold such views and those who welcomed President Barack Obama's desire to turn American foreign policy away from torture and Guantanamo back to one based more on US values will be a little frustrated.


Online fashion retailer Asos has reported an 18% rise in half-year profit, helped by what it called "improving momentum" within the business.

Pre-tax profit for the six months to the end of February was £21.2m compared with £18m a year earlier.
The results are the first under new chief executive Nick Beighton.
Asos said the half-year figure was in line with expectations and maintained its outlook for the year.
The online retailer reported a 17% rise in active customers to 10.9 million people.
The UK market remained its strongest, with sales up 25% to £289.5m, accounting for almost half of the firm's revenue. International sales rose 24% to £359.1m.
Mr Beighton said: "We've had a good start to the year and I'm pleased with progress on a number of fronts. These results demonstrate improving momentum in the business with group sales up 21% (25% in constant currency)."
Nick Robertson, the founder of Asos, stood down in September last year after 15 years at the helm. although he remains on the company's board as a non-executive director.


A massive report on the future of the UK's investigatory powers has been published.

David Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, calls for a complete rethink of the current framework that allows agencies to collect communications and data - and says the laws need to be "comprehensive and comprehensible".
Ministers want to extend current powers - but critics such as campaign group Liberty say that the proposals amount to a "snooper's charter".
Just to be clear - the powers themselves shouldn't necessarily be characterised as secret because they are set out in legislation. But the actual techniques devised thanks to those laws are.
So how are the existing powers actually used?
Interception means using intrusive techniques to listen in or read real communications. In the old days of black and white television, that meant opening mail or tapping a phone line. In the modern world, the principle could be applied to all manner of communications.
David Anderson's report explains how intercept can be used to break drugs gangs.
In one case, police were running a major investigation into escalating violence between rival gangs across London.
Intercept was at the heart of the operation. That could mean the police were listening in to mobile phones, but who knows - that's just speculation.
The important part is this. The intercepts told the police an awful lot more about how the groups were organised, what they were seeking to do, how they were considering using guns, the identities of key individuals in the drugs supply chain, junior members used to deliver the goods and, ultimately, a location where the bulk product was kept.
Police took that intercept evidence and began building a criminal case. The intercepts revealed the kingpin was planning to shoot a rival - and he ended up being arrested while en route with a loaded gun.
Over the course of the operation, police arrested 100 people, seized 40 firearms, more than 200kg of Class A drugs and Â£500,000.
Intercept evidence is used in some country's criminal courts - but British intercepts are not used in our trials. There's a long-standing ban on their use because security chiefs fear that their use in evidence would ultimately lead to the disclosure of techniques and sources - rendering them unusable.
More than half of the intelligence reports that are produced by GCHQ, the UK's eavesdropping agency, including instances of bulk interception.
This is where there is a warrant to collect lots of information as part of an operation where one or both of the senders or recipients is based overseas. GCHQ can seek a warrant to collect this information - although it must also explain if it is going to end up collecting private information of people unrelated to the operation.
Now, depending on your position, bulk collection is either mass surveillance or "target discovery" - security jargon for fishing for bad people you previously didn't know existed.
This type of interception has played an important role in terrorism investigations. Rajib Karim was a software engineer at British Airways. But he was also working for Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-Yemeni preacher who played a key role in recruiting people to extremism until he was killed in a drone strike.
He was initially identified by GCHQ analysts - prompting a major and complex police investigation to uncover evidence that he wanted to use his airport access to launch an attack.
In another case. GCHQ analysis revealed how four Luton men had made contact with al-Qaeda in Pakistan. That initial lead sparked a police investigation back home, leading to their conviction for preparing for acts of terrorism.
"Retained data" is information that is already collected, such as for telephone billing, which the police or intelligence agencies can use to piece together events in the past. This kind of material regularly features in criminal trials - it was a key feature of the evidence in the News of the World mobile phone hacking investigation.
But it can also bring killers to justice. Stuart Ludlam was a taxi driver found dead from two gunshot wounds in 2009.
Derbyshire Police began looking into the last number to contact him through the taxi company. The call came from a pre-pay Sim card which was not registered to anyone - but they worked out that it had been topped up at a petrol station.
These investigations ultimately led them to the killer.
Retained data has also played a key role in solving international abuse. In 2008, FBI investigators were sifting online images of abuse and found a file that linked to two abusers in the UK.
The link was established because the imagery had been shared by email - and that included the technical details that pointed towards the location of the computer that sent the file. The recently passed Counter Terrorism and Security Act means that British internet service providers can now be ordered to keep a record of how their customers were connected and when.
This is different to logs of actual activity - and David Anderson has said in his report that the authorities need to work harder to make the case for a power that wide.


A giant sinkhole has opened up in Naples, in Italy.

24 February 2015 Last updated at 09:07 GMT
The huge hole is 10 metres (33 ft) wide and has forced more than 300 people to leave their homes for safety.
A smaller crater first appeared a few days ago, but a broken water pipe and heavy rain made the ground to give way, creating a larger crater.


A US federal court has ordered Google to remove from YouTube a crude anti-Islam film which sparked deadly riots across the Muslim world.

In a 2-1 decision, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favour of an actress who said she was tricked into appearing in the film.
The film denounces the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud and worse.
The ruling turned on a copyright issue, not the film's content, which YouTube said did not violate its standards.
The clip from the film entitled Innocence of Muslims sparked violence in several places around the world in 2012. Dozens of people died in the Middle East during the protests.
The film has also been linked to the attack on a US diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, in which killed four Americans including the US ambassador were killed.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, had rebuffed requests to remove the film from the website, arguing only the filmmaker and not the actress, Cindy Lee Garcia, owned the copyright and thus had the authority to take the video down.
Garcia sued Google to demand the company remove the video, arguing the man behind it, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, gave her a script that referred neither to Muslims nor to the Prophet.
She said her voice was dubbed over in post-production to make it appear as though she was speaking the inflammatory words.
Depicting the Prophet Muhammad in any way defies Islamic belief and offends Muslims, let alone satirising and mocking him, as the film does.
In its ruling on Wednesday, the court in San Francisco said Garcia owned the copyright to her performance because she had agreed to appear in a film far different than the one ultimately produced.
"While answering a casting call for a low-budget amateur film doesn't often lead to stardom, it also rarely turns an aspiring actress into the subject of a fatwa," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in the opinion.
"Garcia's performance was used in a way that she found abhorrent and her appearance in the film subjected her to threats of physical harm and even death. Despite these harms, and despite Garcia's viable copyright claim, Google refused to remove the film from YouTube."
Nakoula was sentenced to a year in prison in late 2012 for violating probation in a separate case, which imposed a total ban on using computers or the internet for five years.


Royal Mail has stopped delivering post to a Caerphilly county street after staff were "threatened and intimidated".

The company said it has suspended deliveries at Holly Road in Risca.
The move comes after staff had items "regularly thrown" at them as they tried to deliver residents' mail, it said.
Residents will now have to collect their post from Abercarn Delivery Office, about three miles (4.8km) away.
"The safety of our staff is of paramount importance to us and the decision to suspend mail deliveries is never one we take lightly," a company spokeswoman said.
"We are working with the local council and the police to find a way to resume deliveries safely as soon as possible."
A Gwent Police spokeswoman said: "We have been informed that deliveries have been suspended in the area and we understand the concerns raised.
"Local officers patrol the area on a regular basis and we are liaising with the council concerning anti-social behaviour."


A ewe was left looking "pretty sheepish" after getting her head firmly wedged in a stile.

The "distressed" sheep was spotted "stuck fast" in the middle of a field near Ware in Hertfordshire on Thursday.
"She wasn't the smartest in the flock," RSPCA rescuer Kate Wright said.
"There's no fence most of the way along the field, yet she managed to find a tiny bit to get trapped in.  She only had to walk around it." The freed ewe was unharmed and returned to the flock.
Stay ahead by clicking here for more news from Hertfordshire
Ms Wright said the ewe could have been badly cut had she not been spotted by passing walkers.
"She had her head through one of the square meshes of this 'stock fence' and became stuck fast.
"When I arrived she was bleating in distress and really panicking. There were sharp wires in the fence and I have no doubt she would have hurt herself had she been left in that panicked state for much longer," she said.
Once cut free, the ewe "went charging straight off to rejoin her flock - danger averted," Ms Wright added.


Arsenal have appointed former Barcelona assistant coach Andries Jonker as head of their academy.

The Dutchman, 51, is currently assistant manager at German side Wolfsburg and will succeed Liam Brady as academy head on 1 July.
He has also worked for the Dutch Football Association, the KNVB.
"Andries helped develop the structures which are now producing such strong young players in Holland," said Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.
After working as technical director for the KNVB, Jonker worked under Louis van Gaal at Barcelona and Bayern Munich where he later had a spell as interim head coach.
"I am very pleased that Andries is joining us," added Wenger, 64.
"He has a big reputation in the game. I would also like to thank Liam for his work which has been outstanding over many years."


Former UKIP - and now independent - MP Douglas Carswell says he thinks he will be "the first and the last UKIP MP".

The Clacton MP says he will not be standing in the UK general election - but would be backing the Conservative candidate instead.
The 45-year-old was the only UKIP candidate to be elected as an MP at the 2015 poll. He quit the party last month after falling out with its leadership.
UKIP donor Arron Banks had vowed to stand against him in Clacton.
Mr Carswell defected from the Conservatives to UKIP three years ago but clashed with then leader Nigel Farage and other senior figures over the direction the party was taking.
UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said at the time that Mr Carswell was "committed to Brexit, but was never a comfortable Ukipper".
Mr Carswell admitted that he had been tempted to quit UKIP following last year's EU referendum - he now believes he will be "just a footnote in political history" that will say "he was the first and the last elected UKIP MP".
Saying that he feels UKIP's job is mainly done, he said: "Britain is about to become a sovereign country again - I feel I've done what I set out to do."
He now supports Theresa May, adding: "I think she will deliver the sort of Brexit I want."
Asked if he had wanted to be the Conservative candidate for Clacton, he commented: "I've never sought and never asked for the nomination.
"I very nearly announced my departure from UKIP and my intention to stand down on June 24 last year... I was quite close to doing it."
Pressed on whether he would consider a return to politics, he conceded: "Perhaps if we were dragged back into the European Union [but] that's not going to happen.
"No, I'd never rule anything out, but I genuinely would like to go on and do other things with my life."
Suzanne Evans, seen as one of Mr Carswell's former allies in UKIP, said she was "very surprised" by his decision not to seek re-election.
She told the BBC's Daily Politics it might be "a little bit premature", as the UKIP candidate for Clacton has not yet been selected.
Arron Banks - who described Mr Carswell's departure from the party as "a rare piece of good news for UKIP" - was planning to stand against him in Clacton, although it is not clear whether he would be UKIP's candidate.
After Mr Carswell's announcement, Mr Banks tweeted saying: "The Clacton swamp has been drained without a shot fired! Now for the Clacton plan..."
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Tom Brake said: "This is yet another top Brexiteer leaving a sinking ship.
"It speaks volumes that UKIP's first elected MP is throwing his weight behind Theresa May, who has adopted UKIP's hard Brexit agenda to the letter."
When he quit UKIP last month, Mr Carswell said: "I switched to UKIP because I desperately wanted us to leave the EU. Now we can be certain that that is going to happen, I have decided that I will be leaving UKIP."


A 45-year-old man has been charged with the murder of a man who was stabbed to death in a south-west London street.

Andrew Thompson, from Kennington, was attacked in Atlantic Road in Brixton at 12:50 BST on Friday.
The 30-year-old was taken to a south London hospital but died soon after. A post-mortem examination found he died from a stab wound to the chest.
The man who has been charged with murder will appear at Hendon Magistrates' Court on Monday.


A Chinese man has been arrested in the US for allegedly selling malware used to hack into American companies.

US authorities claim in court papers that Yu Pingan bought and sold malicious software including the rarely used Sakula program.
That malware has been implicated in the 2014 hack attack on the US federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Information on a huge number of US workers employed in sensitive or secret work was stolen in that data breach.
Mr Yu was arrested earlier this week soon after he disembarked from a flight that landed at Los Angeles international airport. He has been charged with breaching computer networks owned by several US firms.
Legal papers filed to support the arrest do not explicitly mention the OPM as one of the targets of the suspected attacks. Instead, they claim Mr Yu was a key member of a gang that carried out hack attacks on US firms between 2011 and 2014.
The hackers are alleged to have used fake web domains and previously unseen software vulnerabilities to gain a foothold on the networks of companies being targeted, say the court documents.
The targeted firms have not been named but the papers say they were based in California, Massachusetts and Arizona.
The arrest is believed to be linked to the OPM breach because, unlike many other malicious programs, Sakula has only been used to carry out a small number of attacks. As well as being implicated in the OPM breach it was also used in a 2015 attack on US health insurance giant Anthem.


The locations and details of all ancient hill forts in the UK and Ireland have been mapped in an online database for the first time.

Scientists found 4,147 sites - ranging from well-preserved forts to those where only crop marks are left.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford and University College Cork spent five years on the project.
Nearly 40% are in Scotland, with 408 in the Scottish Borders alone.
Information on all the hill forts has been collated onto a website that will be freely accessible to the public so they can discover details of the ancient sites they see in the countryside.
The University of Edinburgh's Prof Ian Ralston, who co-led the project, said: "Standing on a windswept hill fort with dramatic views across the countryside, you really feel like you're fully immersed in history.
"This research project is all about sharing the stories of the thousands of hill forts across Britain and Ireland in one place that is accessible to the public and researchers."
Prof Gary Lock, from the University of Oxford, said it was important the online database was freely available to researchers and others, such as heritage managers, and would provide the baseline for future research on hill forts.
He added: "We hope it will encourage people to visit some incredible hill forts that they may never have known were right under their feet."
In England, Northumberland leads the way with 271 hill forts, while in the Republic of Ireland, Mayo and Cork each have more than 70 sites.
Powys is the county with the most hill forts in Wales, with 147, and in Northern Ireland, Antrim has the most, with 15.
Hill forts were mostly built during the Iron Age, with the oldest dating to around 1000 BC and the most recent to 700 AD, and had numerous functions, some of which have not been fully discovered.
Despite the name, not all hill forts are on hills, and not all are forts, the experts said.
Excavations show many were used predominantly as regional gathering spots for festivals and trade, and some are on low-lying land.
The research team from the University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford and University College Cork were funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to gather information from citizen scientists.
About 100 members of the public collected data about the hill forts they visited, identifying and recording the characteristics of forts, which was then analysed by the team.


David Cameron has been criticised for his description of migrants trying to reach Britain as a "swarm".

Speaking on the Calais crisis, he spoke of "a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain".
Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham said his choice of language was "disgraceful", and UKIP leader Nigel Farage distanced himself from the term.
It comes as hundreds more migrants stormed the Channel Tunnel overnight.
Several hundred people were escorted away from the terminal by French police on Wednesday night - a third night of large-scale attempts to storm the Channel Tunnel.
Thousands of migrants have been trying to reach the UK from Calais this week, and nine people have been killed attempting to cross the Channel in the past month.
Mr Cameron, who is on a tour of South East Asia, warned that illegal immigrants would be removed from the UK, saying Britain will not become a "safe haven" for migrants in Calais.
Speaking to ITV News, he said the situation was "very testing".
"I accept that, because you have got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain because Britain has got jobs, it's got a growing economy, it's an incredible place to live," he added.
His language drew criticism from Mr Burnham, who tweeted: "Cameron calling Calais migrants a "swarm" is nothing short of disgraceful. Confirms there's no dog-whistle these Bullingdon Boys won't blow."
And the Refugee Council, which works with refugees in the UK, said his comments were "irresponsible" and "dehumanising".
"This sort of rhetoric is extremely inflammatory and comes at a time when the Government should be focused on working with its European counterparts to respond calmly and compassionately to this dreadful humanitarian crisis," it added.
Mr Farage, meanwhile, suggested it was part of an effort by Mr Cameron to sound "tough" on immigration.
"I'm not seeking to use language like that," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "The prime minister is trying to sound tough, whether he actually means it or not is a separate question."
But speaking about his personal experience of the chaos at Calais earlier that morning Mr Farage told ITV's Good Morning Britain: "A couple of times I've been stuck on the motorway and surrounded by swarms of potential migrants to Britain and once, even, they tried the back door of the car to see whether they could get in."
The UN Special Representative for International Migration accused British politicians of adopting a "xenophobic response" to the migrants crisis and said their the language had been "grossly excessive".


A Carmarthenshire teacher who sent thousands of sexual messages to three pupils has been banned from teaching for five years.

Christopher Clarke, 29, contacted girls, aged 15 and 16 at the time, via Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter.
He also bought the Ysgol Bro Dinefwr pupils gifts including T-shirts, earrings, sweets and games consoles.
An Education Workforce Council hearing concluded his actions amounted to professional misconduct.
One girl told how Mr Clarke sent her a message saying: "I kept having the same thought over and over again. How much I wanted to grab you, kiss you..."
The girl, now 19, said he also invited her to one-on-one sessions in his chemistry office and told her not to show anyone the gifts her gave her.
Another girl, now 17, said his actions made her feel uncomfortable and he was "acting in a creepy nature".
A third student said she told Mr Clarke she thought his messages were inappropriate and he later asked her to delete their conversation.
Police investigated but no charges were brought against Mr Clarke.
The school also began an investigation but he resigned before any findings were made.
Education Workforce Council chairman, Steve Powell, said Mr Clarke's conduct "clearly breached boundaries between teachers and pupils".
"His actions fell very short of the standards expected of a registered person and amounted to unacceptable professional conduct," he added.


Seeing the corner of her beloved bungalow teetering over a cliff and her bathroom on the sand below, Bryony Nierop-Reading feels emotionally numb.

Last Easter, she hoped her home in Happisburgh, Norfolk, would still be hers for the next three years.
But the force of last Thursday's tidal surge took away the final 6ft of garden she had left and now she accepts that diggers will demolish what remains of her property.
"I knew it would come one day, but I suppose I'm just in shock. I'm not feeling a lot," said Ms Nierop-Reading, who is facing the prospect of spending Christmas in a caravan.
"Set against the horrors of what happened at Walcott and Hemsby, I can't complain. There is always someone who is worse off than you.
"But David the postman, who comes all the way down to me every morning, says it is an 'end of an era', and I guess it is."
For decades, Beach Road has drawn in tourists intrigued by the onset of the sea, but it has turned eerily quiet since the last of the homes and the tea room were bulldozed last year.
Wanting to keep her "million dollar view" for as long as possible, Ms Nierop-Reading rejected a compensation offer from the council to move, leaving her on her own.
But a few weeks before the surge struck, she said she had already started seeing "the writing on the wall".
"I chose to spend the night [of the surge] in the mobile in my field because I wasn't going to sleep in the house," she said.
"The next morning the damage was pretty shocking. I didn't expect to see half of my house hanging over the cliff.
"I had written to the council saying I wanted the house demolished in two years time, but everything has just had to happen sooner."
Having moved to the 1930s bungalow from a bit further inland just five years ago, there is no doubt Ms Nierop-Reading knew Thursday's demolition would happen at some point.
But she said by living there she hoped it would keep her in the "public eye", so people and governments would see the true cost of what is happening to livelihoods around the coast.
"If we don't talk about the need to stop erosion, this country will suffer so badly," she said.
"I don't know what I'll do next, but people have been coming round and helping me move my stuff out and it's been really heart-warming."
Malcolm Kirby, from Happisburgh's Coastal Concern Action Group, said: "I'd never seen anything like last week - it was like the whole sea was boiling over.
"I admire Bryony tremendously because I know she thought it would have been wrong to take the money, but in this surge so many people have been put in this position through no fault of their own.
"It has sent us some clear warnings. We can't just keep losing land to the sea and not doing anything about it."


Sale Sharks have been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Concussion Management Review Group (CMRG) for an incident involving back-row forward TJ Ioane.

He fell to the floor after an attempted tackle on flanker Dave Ward in Sale's loss at Harlequins on 7 January but played on for the rest of the game.
The 27-year-old Samoan was not treated on the field but was assessed by the Sale team doctor after the tackle.
The report concluded it "was matter of clinical judgement by the team doctor".
"The team doctor's decision was based on his view of the injury mechanism in both real-time and following video review, and his direct assessment of the player's immediate and subsequent response to the injury event," it said.
"The team doctor was in the immediate vicinity of the player, reviewed the real-time video footage and was best placed to make that decision.
"In continuing to monitor, reassess and question the player, both during and after the match, the team doctor was continuing his responsibility to evaluate the player's condition for any signs of a suspected head injury or concussion; none was apparent."
The CMRG panel was chaired by Dr Julian Morris and includes the Rugby Football Union's director of professional rugby Nigel Melville and Premiership rugby director Phil Winstanley.


Tata Steel will begin looking at what prospective buyers of its loss-making UK business are prepared to offer after receiving letters of intent.

Two firms are known to have put forward takeover proposals for Tata's sites, which include the Port Talbot plant where more than 4,000 people work.
A management buyout team under the name of Excalibur Steel UK Limited and Liberty House, which runs a steelworks in Newport, are interested.
Tata is hoping for a quick sale.
It has reached out to 190 potential bidders for the Port Talbot site, which is the biggest in the UK.
Tata has not publicly set a deadline for any deal, but has made it clear it cannot sustain its Â£1m-a-day losses indefinitely and does not want to prolong the uncertainty for workers and customers.
The UK government has said it would consider taking a stake in any rescue plan for Tata's Steel's UK assets, which also include sites at Llanwern, Shotton and Trostre.
Stuart Wilkie, chief executive of Excalibur and previously the hub director of Tata Steel's Strip Products, UK, said: "We believe we have a large number of the pieces in place required to make this a success, including a management team with vast experience of steel-making and processing.
"We are confident we can turn the business around and sustain profitable steel-making in the United Kingdom, including both the down-stream and up-stream operations."
A Liberty House statement said: "The bid is based on Liberty's Greensteel business model and would involve a transition from steelmaking in blast furnaces to recycling steel in electric arc furnaces over time while ensuring the company continues to meet key customers' quality requirements.
"Steelmaking would be ultimately powered by renewable energy sources."


Lift-sharing company Uber has reached a settlement with the family of a girl who died after she was hit by a car.

Sofia Liu, six, was struck while crossing the road in San Francisco, on New Year's Eve in 2013.
Uber had argued it could not be held responsible for Sofia's death because the driver, Syed Muzzafar, had not had a passenger in his car at the time.
Court documents say the family has asked the court to keep details of the settlement private.
Uber lets people find a car close to their location and catch a ride, like hailing a taxi using a smartphone app.
The company described its drivers as freelancers who were free to log in to the app and accept jobs whenever they pleased.
It said its function was simply to connect a buyer and seller and therefore it was not responsible for what happened between them.
But the family held Uber responsible because the man behind the wheel had been an Uber driver logged into its app at the time of the collision.
Sofia's brother and mother were also struck by the car while the family was crossing the road.
"While nothing will ever bring Sofia back, [the family] is grateful to the American judicial system for providing them a way to resolve the legal issues raised by Sofia's death," the family's lawyer, Christopher Dolan, said.
Uber said: "While we cannot ease their pain, we do hope that this settlement helps the family move forward.
"The Lius suffered a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to them."
Uber now operates in 57 countries, but has attracted criticism over some of its practices.
In 2013, there were safety concerns after a driver and passenger got into a fight, and it emerged that the driver had had a history of clashes with the law.
More recently, taxi drivers in France have staged protests against the company, with some describing its operations as "illegal".


Championship strugglers Bolton Wanderers have parted company with manager Neil Lennon by mutual consent.

The 44-year-old former Celtic manager was appointed in October 2014 and leaves with the club 11 points from safety at the foot of the table with nine games left to play.
Lennon's departure comes five days after the Sports Shield consortium completed their takeover of Wanderers.
Academy boss Jimmy Phillips will take over the first team as interim manager.
"All at Bolton Wanderers would like to thank Neil for his contributions during his time at the club," a short statement on the club's website read.
Much of Lennon's 17-month reign was dominated by Bolton's financial troubles.
They were £172.9m in debt but it is believed the majority has been written off by former owner Eddie Davies, who does not wish to reclaim the money owed to him.
Bolton, who have won just four of their 37 Championship games this season, are back in the High Court on Monday over a winding-up petition brought by Revenue and Customs over an unpaid tax bill.
Ex-striker Dean Holdsworth, who leads the Sports Shield group and became Bolton's chief executive following the takeover, says the bill has been paid in full.
Bolton have not played in the third tier of English football since 1992-93 but are faced with that prospect unless they can achieve an unlikely escape from relegation.
Media playback is not supported on this device
Former Bolton striker Kevin Davies, who played 407 games during a 10-year spell with the Trotters, said Phillips has little time to prove himself as a permanent replacement, while Southend manager Phil Brown - who was among the first to be linked with the vacant job - would find it difficult to turn down an offer.
Brown, 56, is a former Bolton player and worked under both Colin Todd and Sam Allardyce at the club. He also had a stint as caretaker boss of Wanderers in 1999, winning four of the six games he was in charge of.
"I know Jimmy would be keen to take the job full-time, so it'll be interesting to see how he does but I think they've probably left it a little bit too late," Davies told BBC Radio 5 live.
"If they did make an approach [for Brown] I think he would be interested. His family's still up here and it's obviously a very big football club."
Prior to his arrival at Bolton, Lennon won three Scottish league titles and two Scottish Cups with Celtic, as well as leading the Hoops to a famous victory over Barcelona on their way to the last 16 of the Champions League in 2012-13.
BBC Radio Manchester's Bolton reporter Jack Dearden:
"Four wins all season, bottom of the Championship table, nine games remaining, 11 points adrift.
"I don't think anyone will be surprised. It's a results-driven business and Neil Lennon himself has admitted that, but to be fair to him, he has been the manager in suitably difficult circumstances.
"Mathematically it is still possible (that Bolton could stay up). Realistically, not a chance at all. The players have got to accept their share of the responsibility as well and I'm sure that they would do."


A newborn baby whose body was found by workers at a waste management plant has not been identified nearly six years on, an inquest has heard.

A coroner said it may never be known what "desperate circumstances" led to "such a callous disposal" of the body of the little girl in Shipley in 2011.
The Bradford inquest heard staff found parts of the baby's body on a conveyor belt at Associated Waste Management.
Coroner Martin Fleming called it a "desperately tragic case".
Read more on this and other stories in West Yorkshire
Speaking at the inquest, Det Supt Nick Wallen, of West Yorkshire Police, said night shift workers made the discovery in May while sorting rubbish brought in from across West Yorkshire.
The search was narrowed down to 36,000 homes where the rubbish could have come from and letters were sent appealing for help.
Mr Wallen said 200 women were interviewed after a media appeal by detectives, but the mother still has not been traced.
The detective said: "This is not an inquiry that will ever be closed - if we ever receive information to suggest who mum may have been we will act on that."
Two pathologists and a further specialist could not ascertain the cause of death, the inquest heard, with a post-mortem examination unable to conclude whether the baby had been born alive.
It did show that she was full-term and had died two to three days before her body was discovered.
Recording an open verdict, Mr Fleming said: "It is never too late to come forward and do the right thing.
"We may never know the desperate circumstances that led to such a callous disposal."
A funeral organised by a local toddler group and staff from the plant was held for the baby more than a year after her body was found.


Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz has died, royal officials have announced, weeks after he was admitted to hospital.

Abdullah, who had ruled since 2005 and was said to be aged about 90, had been suffering from a lung infection.
His 79-year-old half-brother, Salman, has been confirmed as the new king.
Within hours of his accession to the throne of the oil-rich kingdom, King Salman vowed to maintain the same policies as his predecessors.
"We will continue adhering to the correct policies which Saudi Arabia has followed since its establishment," he said in a speech broadcast on state television.
Abdullah had suffered frequent bouts of ill health in recent years, and King Salman had recently taken on the ailing monarch's responsibilities.
Prior to announcing Abdullah's death, Saudi television cut to Koranic verses, which often signifies the passing of a senior royal.
A statement said Abdullah had died at 01:00 (22:00 GMT Thursday).
Here in Saudi Arabia's second city, the streets were quiet this morning as many people flocked to mosques for Friday prayers. There is a subdued sadness in the air as Saudis take in the loss of their king.
People throughout the kingdom are mourning a man whom many viewed as a good monarch. A Jedawi I spoke to said that although it was known that Abdullah was ailing, to wake up to news of the king's death was distressing. Another Jedawi referred to the loss as like a family member passing away.
It is only after the king is later laid to rest, that people here and in the kingdom at large can begin to adjust to his passing.
Another of the late king's half-brothers, Muqrin, who is in his late 60s, has been named the new crown prince, according to an official statement.
Abdullah, Salman and Muqrin are all sons of the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz, usually referred to as Ibn Saud, who died in 1953.
King Salman called on the royal family's Allegiance Council to recognise Muqrin as his heir. He swiftly appointed Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as deputy crown prince, making him second in line to the throne, and named his own son, Mohammed bin Salman, as defence minister.
Other ministers, including foreign, oil and finance were kept in place, state TV reported.
The new king's profile was updated on his official Twitter account, where he wrote: "I ask God to help me succeed in my service of the dear [Saudi] people."
In keeping with traditions of Wahhabism - the ultra-conservative form of Sunni Islam followed by the kingdom - King Abdullah will be buried in an unmarked grave immediately after Friday prayers.
The Saudi religious establishment views every aspect of life and death as a submission to God's supreme will, and protocol permits no official mourning period. Government offices stay open and flags remain at full mast.
Saudi Arabia under King Salman faces a number of challenges. The first is ensuring the succession passes smoothly without any divisive jockeying for power within the ruling family. Then there is the ongoing threat from jihadists, both at home and across its borders.
Saudi Arabia is now sandwiched between an aggressive Islamic State (IS) to the north and al-Qaeda in Yemen to the south. Saudi warplanes have joined the US-led coalition in air strikes against IS, but this is deeply unpopular with many Saudis.
The government has yet to find a way to cope with mild calls for reforms, and is abusing anti-terror laws to silence reformers and punish its critics. Longer term, it faces a growing unemployment problem. About half the population is under 25 and there are nowhere near enough meaningful jobs for young Saudis.
But the country does at least have oil in its favour. With prices below $45 a barrel, Saudi Arabia is one of the very few exporting countries to still make big margins on production and exploration. That puts it in a powerful position on the world stage.
US President Barack Obama expressed his personal sympathies, and those of the American people, on Abdullah's death.
"As a leader, he was always candid and had the courage of his convictions. One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the US-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond," he said.
Vice-President Joe Biden tweeted that he would lead a delegation to Riyadh to pay respects.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron said Abdullah would be remembered for his "commitment to peace and for strengthening understanding between faiths".
Jordan's King Abdullah II cut short a visit to Davos, Switzerland, to travel to Saudi Arabia, as Jordan's royal court declared 40 days of mourning.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin praised Abdullah's "grounded, considered and responsible leadership", while Iran offered Saudi Arabia its condolences and said its foreign minister would travel to Riyadh for an "official ceremony" on Saturday.
King Abdullah was the 13th of the 45 sons of King Abdulaziz. He is believed to have been born in August 1924 in Riyadh, although there is some dispute about his actual birth date.
When he came to the throne in 2005 he succeeded another half-brother, Fahd. However, he had already been Saudi Arabia's de-facto leader for 10 years because his predecessor had been debilitated by a stroke.
In recent months Abdullah's age and failing health had led to increasing focus on the issue of the Saudi royal succession.
The crown has traditionally passed between Ibn Saud's sons, but few are still alive.
King Salman's appointment of Mohammed bin Nayef - a grandson of Ibn Saud - as deputy crown prince effectively smoothes the line of succession for years to come.
Correspondents say Abdullah was seen as a reformer at home, albeit a slow and steady one.
He allowed mild criticism of his government in the press, and hinted that more women should be allowed to work.
King Salman spent 48 years as governor of Riyadh Province before becoming crown prince and defence minister.
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says it is thought unlikely that he will embark on any great changes.
In a recent meeting with the BBC in Jeddah, he appeared alert and well-briefed but walked with the aid of a stick, our correspondent adds.
Profile: King Salman


Liverpool have named England Under-19s boss Sean O'Driscoll as their new assistant manager.

The 58-year-old, who will leave his England post, has managed Bournemouth, Doncaster Rovers, Crawley Town, Nottingham Forest and Bristol City.
Reds academy coach Pep Lijnders joins the first-team staff, with talks continuing over a third new coach.
Manager Brendan Rodgers needed replacements after the sackings of Colin Pascoe and Mike Marsh.
He said: "I have made these appointments because I want to take us in a new technical direction, in terms of coaching.
"I believe the entire first-team set-up will benefit and I am extremely positive and excited about what we can achieve, as a group, going forward.
"My admiration for Sean, as a professional, is well documented. He is someone with a clear vision and philosophy and has proved he has the ability to transfer that knowledge, through his coaching, to the players."
O'Driscoll, who had only been England Under-19s head coach since September, added: "I am excited to be joining one of the world's most iconic football clubs.
"The hallmark of any successful club is its culture and that comes from the people who work there, from the chief executive and first-team manager to those people behind the scenes whose faces may not be known but who are the lifeblood of the club."
The majority of Liverpool's players have reported back for pre-season training to be greeted by the revamped management team - put in place after an end-of-season review between Rodgers and owners Fenway Sports Group following a disappointing season in which Liverpool faded to finish sixth.
Rodgers became the first Reds boss since the 1950s to fail to win a trophy in his first three seasons and, after a 6-1 thrashing at Stoke on the last day of the season, accepted his position was under threat.
Liverpool are also expected to appoint another new face to the coaching set-up before the start of the season as Lijnders is likely to be involved in elite player development and will continue to oversee some top academy players rather than acting as a direct replacement for Marsh.


Northern Ireland is accustomed to flying visits from dignitaries and celebrities, usually travelling under several layers of smothering security.

But a World Cup winning manager on a bus? That's a much rarer sight.
This week legendary Brazilian coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, best known as Big Phil, has been turning heads popping up everywhere from Londonderry to Belfast.
It's understood sightings have often been accompanied with a muttered: "Can't be him, can it?"
But, yes, it really was him on the 212 bus service from Derry to Belfast, and it really was him drinking Guinness in the Belfast Empire Bar on Thursday night.
The former Chelsea manager is in the country visiting his son, who works in Lisburn, County Antrim.
Zhana Nikolova, a duty manager at the Empire, grabbed a photo with Scolari when he popped in for a blues night with his family.
"We did have an initial thought of 'is it really him?' But the word spread and we realised it was him.
"He seemed to enjoy the music, had a few Guinness and was happy to get his photo taken.
"It's just hard to place someone like that in Northern Ireland. People knew it was him but were very respectful and generally left him alone."
Big Phil is best known for winning the World Cup with Brazil in 2002, and enjoyed a second stint with the national side that ended in 2014.
He is currently managing the likes of Paulinho, Jackson Martinez and Alan Carvalho with Chinese Super League champions Guangzhou Evergrande.
As a manager in the cash-rich Chinese league, Scolari's yearly salary would be understood to be comprehensive - but that didn't stop him taking the 212 service from Derry to Belfast after a flying visiting to Northern Ireland's north west.
Fellow passenger Dylan J Burke, a Manchester United fan, told the Irish News he was more than a little bit surprised to be sitting beside the Brazilian World Cup winner.
"I saw him and I thought, that couldn't really be him, but then I saw the crest of his current club on his top and I spoke to him," said Mr Burke.
"He was very nice and down to earth. I can't believe I met the great Luiz Felipe Scolari. What a start to 2017."


A BBC investigation has found that more than 5,000 people around the world died during November as a result of violence caused by al-Qaeda, its offshoots and groups which subscribe to a similar ideology, commonly referred to as "jihadism".

The word "jihad" is widely used, though often inaccurately, by Western politicians and media.
In Arabic, the word means "effort" or "struggle". In Islam, it could be an individual's internal struggle against baser instincts, the struggle to build a good Muslim society, or a war for the faith against unbelievers.
BBC Religion: Jihad
The term "jihadist" has been used by Western academics since the 1990s, and more widely since the 11 September 2001 attacks, as a way to distinguish between violent and non-violent Sunni Islamists.
Islamists aim to reorder government and society in accordance with Islamic law, or Sharia.
Jihadists see violent struggle as necessary to eradicate obstacles to restoring God's rule on Earth and defending the Muslim community, or umma, against infidels and apostates. If the umma is threatened by an aggressor, they hold that jihad is not just a collective obligation (fard kifaya), but an individual duty (fard ayn) that must be fulfilled by every able Muslim, just like ritual prayer and fasting during Ramadan.
The term "jihadist" is not used by many Muslims because they see it as wrongly associating a noble religious concept with illegitimate violence. Instead, they use delegitimising terms like "deviants".
How Islam got political: Founding fathers
Jihadists share the basic aims of advancing Islam and countering danger to it, but their priorities can vary. A recent study by Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment identified five prominent objectives:
Jihadists divide the world into the "realm of Islam" (dar al-Islam), lands under Muslim rule where Sharia prevails, and the "realm of war" (dar al-harb), lands not under Muslim rule and where under certain circumstances war in defence of the faith can be sanctioned.
Muslim rulers and governments who jihadists believe have abandoned the prescriptions of Sharia are considered by them to be outside dar al-Islam and therefore legitimate targets for attack.
Jihadist groups targeted civilians before the emergence of al-Qaeda, but it resorted to violence against them on a scale which no other had until then envisaged.
In 1998, Osama Bin Laden and the heads of four jihadist groups in Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh signed a declaration of total war against the United States and its allies, and called for the targeting of both soldiers and civilians.
The Prophet Muhammad said Muslim armies should do their best to avoid harming children and other non-combatants. But the declaration says that killing them is an act of reciprocity for the death of Muslim civilians. After 11 September 2001, Bin Laden sought to justify attacking American civilians by arguing that as citizens of a democratic state who elected its leaders, they bore responsibility for their leaders' actions.
The targeting of Muslim civilians has proved more controversial. In 2005, Bin Laden's then deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, advised the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that killing Shia civilians - particularly by beheading them - "won't be acceptable to the Muslim populace however much you have tried to explain it". The use of similar tactics in Iraq and Syria by Islamic State (IS), which grew out of AQI, was a factor in Zawahiri's decision to disavow the group in February 2014.
Islamic State: Can its savagery be explained?
In his 1998 declaration, Osama Bin Laden accused the US of "occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorising its neighbours, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples". These "crimes and sins" amounted to a "clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims", it concluded.
In 2013, two years after Bin Laden's death, Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote in his General Guidelines for Jihad that "the purpose of targeting America is to exhaust her and bleed her to death, so that it meets the fate of the former Soviet Union and collapses under its own weight as a result of its military, human, and financial losses. Consequently, its grip on our lands will weaken and its allies will begin to fall one after another."
Many jihadist groups seek to establish Islamic states in their respective countries of origin, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Other groups want to establish a "caliphate" - governed in accordance with Sharia by God's deputy on Earth (khalifa, or caliph) - that extends across regions. Some, like al-Qaeda, want to re-establish the caliphate that once stretched from Spain and North Africa to China and India. Its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has vowed to "liberate all occupied Muslim lands and reject each and every international treaty, agreement and resolution which gives the infidels the right to seize Muslim lands", including historic Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir.
IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi also wants to "demolish" the borders established by the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, but his group has already acted on this by declaring the creation of a caliphate that stretches across eastern Syria and western Iraq. Al-Qaeda and IS also differ in their approaches to establishing Islamic rule. Al-Qaeda's has been more long-term, while IS has immediately sought to implement Sharia in its territories.
What's the appeal of a caliphate?
While there are militant Shia Islamist groups that are jihadist in nature, they differ in many regards to Sunni groups. According to Shia tradition, mujtahids - the most senior religious scholars - have the authority to declare a "defensive" jihad. But only the 12th or "hidden" Imam - who Shia believe did not die when he disappeared 1,100 years ago - can declare an "offensive" jihad.  For centuries, most Shia clerics advocated political quietism while they awaited the Imam's return. But that outlook changed in the 1960s and 1970s, giving rise to the activism that culminated in the 1979 revolution in Iran and the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
In recent years, the sectarian nature of the conflict in Syria has seen Iranian-backed Shia groups come to the aid of forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the heterodox Shia Alawite sect. The groups and their thousands of "volunteer" fighters - from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Yemen - say they are in Syria to defend the key Shia shrine of Sayyida Zaineb in Damascus. Lebanon's Hezbollah movement has described members killed in Syria as martyrs who died "while performing jihadist duties". Similarly, the advance of IS across Iraq in 2014 saw the mass mobilisation of Shia militia to defend holy sites.


Tickets to next year's commemorations of the Battle of the Somme centenary will be free and allocated by ballot, the culture secretary has announced.

Residents of the UK, France and Irish Republic will be able to apply online to attend, said John Whittingdale.
The Somme was one of the bloodiest battles of World War One with more than one million casualties over 141 days.
The ceremony will take place at France's Thiepval Memorial on 1 July 2016. The ballot opens on 28 September.
The ballot will be for pairs of tickets.
A ceremony is held at the Thiepval Memorial every year, but the joint Anglo-French centenary event will be on a larger scale, with 10,000 people attending - 8,000 of whom will be selected by ballot.
The monument, erected in 1932, includes the graves of 600 British and French soldiers, along with the names of 72,000 more who died engraved on to the stone.
"Nearly everyone in the UK will have an ancestor who fought or died at the Somme," said Mr Whittingdale.
"It is important that people across the UK have the chance to remember and honour these brave soldiers.
"The centenary event will be an opportunity to not only pay tribute to those that sacrificed so much but to ensure that their legacy continues for generations."
Mr Whittingdale also expressed gratitude to the the French for their collaboration "on what will be an incredibly important and deeply moving event".


Yemen's foreign minister has said air strikes being carried out by a Saudi-led coalition against Shia Houthi rebels should end as soon as possible.

Riad Yassin told the BBC a "short, sharp" campaign was needed to weaken the rebels, who have forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee abroad.
Fresh overnight air raids reportedly targeted a number of Houthi positions.
Rebel leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi has vowed not to surrender to what he called the "unjustified aggression".
Regional Shia power Iran, who Mr Yassin accused of backing the rebels, has also denounced the US-backed air strikes.
"They have to stop. Everybody has to encourage dialogue and national reconciliation in Yemen rather than making it more difficult for Yemenis to come together," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.
Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia has said its main objective is to "protect the government in Aden".
Mr Hadi took refuge in the second city of Aden last month after fleeing Sanaa, where he had been under house arrest since the rebels took full control of the capital in January.
On Friday, Mr Hadi travelled from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to attend an Arab League summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
In an interview with the BBC at the summit on Thursday evening, Mr Yassin said no-one was happy about the intervention by the Saudi-led coalition.
But he added: "I think if they completed their mission in the coming few days or few hours it will be stopped. It is a short, sharp campaign which really we have been forced to request."
Mr Yassin said he did not know if Arab leaders would approve a ground offensive, which coalition members have said they are prepared to launch if the raids fail to halt the rebels' advance and force them to negotiate.
Sanaa was again rocked by explosions and anti-aircraft fire overnight. Warplanes bombed bases around the city used by units of the security forces allied to the rebels, as well as al-Anad air base in Lahj province, from which US military advisers were evacuated last week.
Headline in Al-Thawrah, a Yemeni newspaper which used to back the government but now backs the Houthis: "We will not kneel down and the aggressor will pay the price".
Saudi newspaper Ukaz: "Operation Storm of Resolve... means that a new force is being born, one that will positively contribute to balancing the region so that peace prevails."
Nadir Bakar of Egypt's Salafist Al-Nour Party writes in newspaper Al-Shuruq: "The Arabs have finally acted. Decisiveness has become their only option to save Yemen from falling into the chaos of a civil war."
Kuwaiti daily Al-Ray: "The Gulf has been forced to go into war despite its heavy price and painful results. If it had not been for the US administration's policy in the region, the Gulf would not have faced the hard choice."
Iranian conservative news agency Fars, in English: "The US-backed and Saudi-led campaign to unravel Yemen is foolish. To a large degree, the wide-scale bombing campaign is supposed to be the answer to all their shortcomings in the region. Quite the opposite, it will be a total failure."
Source: BBC Monitoring
Meanwhile, air strikes in the Houthis' northern heartland of Saada targeted arms depots and the movement's leaders, residents and military officials said.
Since the air campaign began, at least 39 civilians - including six children under the age of 10 - have been killed, health ministry officials say.
People have been fleeing the capital, with long queues at petrol stations, and many shops and firms have shut.
Rebel forces are still fighting Popular Resistance Committees militiamen and Sunni tribesmen loyal to President Hadi in the south.
On Friday, at least 21 Houthis were killed when they were ambushed about 15km (9 miles) north of Aden, witnesses told the AFP news agency. Another eight people reportedly died in clashes around Aden's international airport.
Saudi and Egyptian warships were also believed to have been deployed to the Bab al-Mandab strait to secure the strategic passage between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
In addition to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan are contributing aircraft to "Operation Storm of Resolve", while Egypt, Jordan and Sudan were ready to take part in any ground offensive, Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV reported on Wednesday.
The channel also claimed that Pakistan was prepared to send troops, but on Friday the country's defence minister said it had made no decision.
The Houthis have said their aim is to replace Mr Hadi's government, which they accuse of being corrupt, and to implement the outcomes of a National Dialogue that was convened after Mr Hadi's predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to hand over power in 2011.
In a televised address on Thursday night, Abdul Malik al-Houthi said: "If any armies come to occupy, the Yemeni people will prove once again that Yemen is the graveyard of invaders."
Yemen - who is fighting whom?
The Houthis: Zaidi Shia-led rebels from the north, who seized control of Sanaa last year and have since been expanding their control
President Hadi: Fled to Saudi Arabia after rebel forces advanced on his stronghold in the southern city of Aden
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula: Seen by the US as the most dangerous offshoot of al-Qaeda, AQAP opposes both the Houthis and President Hadi.
Islamic State: A Yemeni affiliate of IS has recently emerged, which seeks to eclipse AQAP
Yemen crisis: An Iranian-Saudi battleground?
Yemen: Waiting for the war
Meeting the Houthis - and their enemies
The rise of Yemen's Houthi rebels


Injury-hit Scott Hogan showed character to score his first goal for the club in Brentford's 1-1 draw with Bristol City, according to Bees boss Dean Smith.

After missing a penalty, Hogan grabbed a late equaliser against the Robins.
"I'm really pleased for him. He got a well-deserved round of applause in the dressing room," said Smith.
The 24-year-old striker suffered a cruciate ligament injury on only his second appearance for the Bees in August 2014, requiring two operations.
Hogan returned from 19 months on the sidelines for the west London club last month, having re-ruptured his cruciate ligament last year when close to his first comeback.
In his fourth match back, Hogan was initially denied his first Bees goal when City goalkeeper Richard O'Donnell saved his spot-kick with four minutes remaining.
However, the former Rochdale frontman notched from close range in the first minute of stoppage time.
"He could easily have been distraught after that but he wasn't," Smith told BBC Radio London.
"He snapped up a chance right at the death. That is one for him, his family and all the medical team who have nursed him back to full fitness."
Hogan's goal was his first since hitting a hat-trick for Rochdale against Oxford United in March 2014, prior to his move to Brentford later that summer on a three-year contract.


A woman was attacked with a stun device during a car-jacking in Birmingham - the sixth such attack in as many days.

She had arrived at a running club meeting in Kings Heath when three men demanded she hand over her car keys before using a stun device on her, police said.
She alerted a passing van and the men ran away.  She was left "shaken, bruised and with burns", the club said.
There were similar reports between 5 and 10 February.
Read more Birmingham and Black Country stories.
West Midlands Police said there were six reports of alleged assaults involving "small stun devices" in Moseley, Kings Heath and Acocks Green.
It is not yet clear whether the incidents are linked.
Four teenage boys, two aged 15 and two aged 16, were arrested and bailed in connection with a robbery in Acocks Green on 5 February. Witnesses are being urged to come forward.
A post on Kings Heath Running Club's Facebook page said: "There was a serious incident prior to club run last Thursday.
"It was an attempted car theft by three young men who demanded a runner's car keys.
"She refused and an electric Taser device was used on her during a physical struggle.
"She was shaken, is bruised and has seen a doctor who has assessed the burns left by the Taser.
"This was a random event - the runner took no risks in parking her car on a well-lit road next to the school."