Just a few days ago Russian warplanes, allegedly using cluster munitions, attacked a US-backed Syrian opposition group based near al-Tanf - a small town close to the border with Iraq.

The Syrian Observatory for Human rights has released images from the location that appear to show the tail-section of a typical RBK-500 cluster bomb canister. And the Americans - to put it mildly - are far from happy.
It is not just the use of the cluster munitions - which is controversial in itself. But it is also the target of the attack - a strike that the Russians have subsequently denied any responsibility for.
Immediately after the Russian air strikes on 16 June, the US invoked a high-level agreement to exchange views on the incident via a videoconference. For one thing the Americans were clearly enraged that a militia group they support was hit.
But the Pentagon insists that there were serious safety issues as well. US jets were diverted to the area after the initial strike. They tried to contact the Russian pilots and when they withdrew, more Russian jets appeared to carry out a second strike.
US and Russian warplanes operating in close proximity carries obvious dangers.
The Russians insist that the incident was caused by miscommunication on the part of the Americans. But to add an additional twist to the controversy, they have up to now shown little desire to prevent images of cluster munitions at their Syrian airfield from being distributed.
However Russia Today recently re-edited a news package dealing with the visit of the Russian defence minister to Syria, to remove the frames that showed RBK-500s on the pylons of a warplane.
But after a few hours they seemed to think better of it and - for whatever reason - re-instated the images.
There has been evidence of the consistent use of cluster munitions by Russian warplanes since the beginning of its air campaign in Syria.
Images of the RBK-500 family of weapons in particular have cropped up in several film reports carried by Russian television stations who have had reasonably unrestricted access to the base.
Human rights campaigners such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have spoken out against the use of these weapons by the Russian air force in Syria since last year.
And despite Russian denials, open source intelligence monitors including the Bellingcat web site and the Russia-based Conflict Investigation Team have analysed the imagery, proving incontrovertibly that the weapons are in regular use on Russian aircraft operating out of Russia's base in Syria.
Cluster munitions are a controversial weapon for two main reasons. They are essentially a canister filled with smaller bomblets or sub-munitions. When the canister opens after being released from the aircraft, the sub-munitions are spread over a large area. Arms campaigners insist that they can thus not discriminate between military and civilian targets. Furthermore many of the sub-munitions typically fail to explode, littering the battlefield long after the fighting has moved on, posing a risk to civilians and particularly children.
That is why there have been long-standing efforts to ban them. A convention to this effect entered into force in August 2010 and to date some 119 countries have signed up, agreeing not just to destroy their stocks of these weapons but also to halt their manufacture.
But not all countries have signed up. In particular two of the major military players, Russia and the United States, have so far refused to sign. The US State Department's website declares that "cluster munitions have demonstrated military utility. Their elimination from US stockpiles would put the lives of its soldiers and those of its coalition partners at risk".
Indeed the US military claims that "cluster munitions can often result in much less collateral damage than unitary weapons, such as a larger bomb or larger artillery shell would cause, if used for the same mission". No doubt the Russians would take a similar view.
It is clear that this incident near al-Tanf has further soured relations between Washington and Moscow, underlining once again that the purpose of Russia's air strikes continues to be far broader than simply striking so-called Islamic State.
But quite why Russia apparently chose to bomb this particular US-backed group far to the south in Syria, near to where the Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, still remains something of a mystery.


Saudi Arabia is halting a $3bn (Â£2.1bn) military aid package to Lebanon, as part of what one Saudi official called a "reassessment" of relations.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency said the money was to be used by the Lebanese army to buy French weapons.
A $1bn deal to equip the internal security forces is also being stopped.
The official said the Sunni-ruled kingdom had noted the "confiscation of the will" of the Lebanese state by the Iran-backed Shia Hezbollah movement.
Lebanon's national unity government, which includes Hezbollah and its allies, declined to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran last month by protesters angered by the execution of a prominent Shia cleric in Saudi Arabia.
The $3bn aid programme announced in 2013 was intended to help the Lebanese army strengthen its capabilities against jihadist militants encroaching from neighbouring Syria.
The first tranche of weapons, including Milan anti-tank guided missiles, was delivered last April, but after that the programme ran into obstacles, according to the AFP news agency.
On Friday, SPA quoted an unnamed official as saying Saudi Arabia had always stood with Lebanon and supported the country through difficult times.
"Despite these honourable stands, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia had been met with Lebanese stands that are against it on Arab, regional and international arenas, in the shadow of the confiscation of the will of the state by the so-called Lebanese Hezbollah," the official said.
At recent meetings of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, Lebanon had failed to condemn "the blatant attacks on the kingdom's embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad, which are contrary to international law and diplomatic norms", the official added.
"Saudi Arabia considers these positions as regrettable and unjustified."
The decision not to sign Saudi-drafted resolutions condemning the attacks was made by Lebanese Foreign Minister Gibran Bassil. He is the president of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, one of Hezbollah's strongest allies.


The latest forensic science is being harnessed in a bid to combat the international crime gangs killing and smuggling endangered species.

A new laboratory in the Thai capital Bangkok, equipped to gather DNA from elephant tusk, rhino horn and tiger skin, is on the front line in an increasingly desperate effort.
The move comes as wildlife trading moves into the major league of lucrative international criminal activities including the trafficking of drugs and weapons.
Rapidly growing demand for animal parts believed to have cultural or medicinal value has fuelled soaring prices and created greater incentives for poachers and dealers.
The lab's aim is to "prove the link between the victim and the suspect and support prosecutions", according to the scientists running the facility.
Conservation groups say the slaughter of elephant, rhino and tiger, along with other threatened species, has reached alarming levels and that only a concerted and sophisticated campaign will help.
The developments highlight the weakness of the only global agreement to halt the trade in endangered species, the CITES convention, set up 40 years ago. The latest round of talks on CITES opened in Bangkok yesterday.
The lab, located within the Thai Department for National Parks, was set up with the support of the specialist wildlife groups Traffic and Trace and the regional environmental organization ASEAN-WEN.
Its director, Dr Kanita Ouitavon, says the first samples of animals and animal parts have been analysed for their DNA and that a genetic database of Thai species is gradually being built up.
"It is very necessary to have new technology in my work - when we want to know about confiscated animals or animal parts, we can now find out about species or sub species or even learn about family links, the origins, where they're from and how they're related," she said.
"The illegal wildlife trade involves low investment but high profit and because no one owns the animals or the land it's so easy to commit the crimes.
"So I can consider this lab is a useful tool to crack down on this trade. Using DNA can prove a link between the suspects and the animals."
The lab, with 10 staff, receives samples almost every week including segments of elephant tusk, rhino horn, entire tiger skins and pieces of fur and flesh from a host of other creatures.
Each sample is catalogued and photographed before extracts are run through a DNA sequencing process. For animal parts from outside Thailand, the sequences are checked against an international database.
Dr Ouitavon acknowledges that her team will need patience - and larger numbers of staff - to build up evidence against poachers and smugglers
She also highlights the reality of being a small band fighting some very powerful interests. The gangs are expert at securing support from within the authorities - for example, officers from The Royal Thai Police are regularly accused of aiding the trade or being involved in it themselves.
In fact, during our visit to the lab, news came through of the seizure, in southern Thailand, of a load of ivory in a van actually driven by a police captain.
Dr Ouitavon is open about the challenge she faces: "We know from the beginning that those who are behind the illegal wildlife illegal trade are mostly influential and powerful people," she explained.
"If there is no check and balance like our unit so the problem will be worseâ€¦ sometimes it may succeed or it may fail. That's not the main point. The important thing is we do it and we try to fight against it."
Customs officers also acknowledge that the Thai authorities have for years been notorious for turning a blind eye to wildlife smuggling, making Thailand an easy 'transit route' between Africa and China.
Now they insist that their procedures and intelligence have led to tightening up of controls, with better international cooperation, encouraged by the World Customs Union, and X-ray scanners to search cargo. Samples of hauls are now routinely sent to the forensics lab.
None of the customs officers wanted to be interviewed but they described a long list of recent seizures:
The total haul of ivory between 2009-12 at Bangkok airport alone weighs about 7 tonnes and is valued at least $7m, they say.
The officers believe their clampdown is successful because the smugglers have been forced to try new routes. Rather than flying their goods directly from Africa, they are now routing it through the Gulf or Europe to try to avoid suspicion.
I was shown six crates packed with sections of tusk, all seized on a flight from Kenya. A total of 79 elephants had been slaughtered to produce this one sorry haul.
The customs officer who led the operation seemed genuinely upset by it. The ivory, he said, "smells like a dead body" - it did have an intense musty odour and was a depressing sight.
But with more than 70 flights landing with cargo in Bangkok every day, maintaining a total screening is virtually impossible. I asked if the police would help them in the task, a question that produced a shake of the head and laughter.
Given the accusations levelled at them, I asked for a police response. Captain Marc Suranartyuth acts as a liaison officer with Interpol. He says he believes passionately in the need to fight wildlife crime and is clearly embarrassed by cases of police involvement.
"If I saw that I would feel really bad," he said, "since we are the government officials so we do our best to protect and serve people in our country and try to cooperate to solve crimes.
"That's why we want to solve the problem not create a problem."
Mary Rice of the Environmental Investigation Agency, an NGO specialising in wildlife crime, says one problem with international efforts is a lack of political will to tackle the biggest figures in the trade.
"They're catching foot soldiers and occasionally they're also catching the middlemen but to my knowledge they've never gone after the kingpins, the people driving the crime," she told BBC News.
"Since 2009 there's been a huge escalation in poaching and the current populations of elephants, for example, can't possibly keep up with demand."
Forensic science can play a part in saving species from extinction but only if governments are genuinely determined to stop the crime in the first place.


Smouldering bread was found on a disposable barbecue that caused a fire on 50 hectares of moorland.

Up to 70 firefighters tackled the blaze in Foulridge, near Colne, Lancashire, after flames from the barbecue set grass alight on Sunday.
The fire service said it had smouldering bread on it when crews arrived. No-one was injured.
It said those responsible were "not only careless but very irresponsible, ducking out" of reporting it.


New Zealand's Sophie Devine became the first batter in women's one-day international history to hit nine sixes in an innings as the White Ferns hammered Pakistan in the World Cup.

Devine smashed 93 off 41 balls as New Zealand raced to their target with 35 overs and eight wickets to spare.
Earlier, seamer Hannah Rowe had starred with the ball, taking 3-22 as Pakistan were bowled out for 144.
New Zealand's next match is against hosts England at Derby on Wednesday.
In Saturday's other match, South Africa beat India by 115 runs.
Proteas opener Lizelle Lee hit seven sixes in her 65-ball 92 to lay the platform for a total of 273-9.
India were never in the hunt and slumped to 158 all out - Dane van Niekerk taking 4-22.
The result means England drop out of the top four - the qualifying spots for the semi-finals - before Sunday's clash with Australia.


More than two years after it began, a movement to raise wages in the US, known as Fast for 15, is expanding.

Organisers say today's effort is the group's biggest protest yet, with actions planned in 230 cities across the US.
Workers in industries from fast food to homecare are demanding that employers raise the minimum wage paid to service workers.
The current US minimum wage is $7.25 (Â£4.90) per hour.
Workers have said that that wage is not enough to support a family, and have called for a living wage of $15 per hour.
US President Barack Obama has said he supports raising the minimum wage, and as a result of several ballot initiatives in last year's midterm elections, more than 20 states have raised their floor for workers.
Although the Fast for 15 group initially focused on fast-food workers, since 2012, the coalition has expanded to include retail employees, airport workers, and homecare aides.
Today's effort includes planned protests at McDonald's, airports, and other sites across the US. The hashtag, #Fastfor15, was trending nationally on Twitter as of this morning.
The movement has been credited with some successes, including stated initiatives by firms such as Wal-mart, Target, TJ Maxx and McDonalds to raise the base wages paid to workers.
They have also spearheaded several legal actions, including cases against McDonald's alleging workplace harassment and racism.
However, while workers and union supporters have applauded those moves, they have said that they are still not enough to ensure that workers are paid fair wages.


Protesters have attacked a police station on the southern outskirts of Paris amid anger over the alleged rape of a young black man by French police.

The overnight violence in Les Ulis followed earlier clashes between police and protesters at the weekend, in which several dozen people were detained.
In Les Ulis three police cars were damaged, French media report.
Tension has gripped some Paris suburbs since 2 February, when a man called Theo was allegedly beaten up and raped.
At the weekend there were clashes between youths and police in Bobigny and Aulnay-sous-Bois - north-eastern suburbs - and in Argenteuil, a north-western suburb.
French media say youths hurled paving stones and petrol bombs at police, who responded with tear gas. Several cars were set ablaze and some bus shelters were vandalised.
High unemployment and racial tension blight several struggling neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Paris - commonly called the "banlieues". Police have been accused of heavy-handed methods in areas with large immigrant populations.
Frenchman describes brutal 'police rape'
Fears the banlieues could burn again
Who would be a French cop?
Theo, a youth worker, said that in Aulnay-sous-Bois he was sodomised by police with a truncheon, as well as racially abused, spat on and beaten around his genitals.
One officer has been charged with rape, and three more with assault since Theo was hospitalised. He underwent emergency surgery and President Francois Hollande visited him last week.
On Tuesday, Mr Hollande plans to visit Aubervilliers, one of the banlieues, the daily Le Monde reports.
There are fears of banlieue riots on the scale of 2005, when violence gripped several French cities. The violence coincides with political tensions as the French presidential election campaign gains momentum.
National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen, widely expected to reach the decisive second round of the election, accuses the political "establishment" of neglecting the banlieues and allowing extremism to fester there.


A woman who pretended to be a doctor and gave a woman with a terminal illness "false hope" has escaped a jail sentence.

Julie Higgins, 54, claimed to be an oncologist at London's Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.
She also falsely claimed she had located transplant organs for a terminally ill woman she befriended.
The judge said he wanted to jail her but his hands were tied by the law, and he gave her a 12-month community order.
Higgins, of Spruce Close, Poole, Dorset, previously admitted pretending to be a medical practitioner and fraud by false representation.
She was also given 20 rehab activity requirement (RAR) days, 200 hours of unpaid work, a criminal Asbo and ordered to pay a Â£140 victim surcharge.
Bournemouth Crown Court heard that Higgins, who has been diagnosed with a personality disorder, had met Angela Murray, from Swanage, through a beauty salon. She had told her to go nil-by-mouth in preparation for a life-saving heart and lung transplant, claiming she had located suitable organs in Germany.
Mrs Murray, who had been told she had five years to live without the operation, was devastated when the deception was uncovered and died three weeks later in October last year.
Higgins said she had her head shaved to make her young patients feel less self-conscious. She also sent texts claiming she was on an aid mission to Syria and promised Mrs Murray her own organs if she did not make it back alive, the court was told.
Judge Donald Tait told Higgins: "You created false hope in someone who was seriously ill.
"You are a manipulative individual and you gained, for some reason, pleasure from pretending to be a medically qualified person when you weren't."
The judge said that due to the constraints of the Medical Act 1983, he was unable to jail Higgins.
"When I first read these papers I had every intention of sentencing her to prison for what she did to you but my hands are tied."


Carrick Rangers' Premiership status is secure after an IFA Disciplinary Committee opted not to apply any sanction following a hearing into manager Gary Haveron's touchline ban.

The club could have been deducted three points and relegated from the top flight, or been fined at least £350.
In a statement the committee said the club did not not explain the failure to properly implement the three-game ban.
However it opted to "exercise its discretion" in not imposing a sanction.
The Committee indicated that "the interests of justice were best served by not imposing a sanction in all the circumstances".
The decision confirms Warrenpoint Town's relegation from the Premiership, with the second leg of the promotion/relegation play-off between Ballinamallard United and Institute set to be rescheduled.
The Mallards defeated the Championship side 2-1 in the first leg at the Riverside Stadium on 6 May.
Haveron sat out a three-game ban handed out by the IFA, but was in the dugout for his club's match against Dungannon Swifts on 23 April when he should not have been there.
"The club did not explain to the Committee's satisfaction the reasons why the start date for the suspension set out in the initial charge letter (18 April 2016)  was not complied with and therefore the challenge from Carrick Rangers was not upheld," read the statement released on Wednesday night.
"The Committee took into account the points made on behalf of the club and decided to exercise its discretion under the overriding objective as outlined in Articles 1.6 and 1.7 of the Disciplinary Code and found that no sanction should be applied."
"In applying its discretion it took into account, what it found to be the honest intention of the club to serve a suspension, the fact that three matches had been served and points made regarding possible confusion in the way in which the suspension was to be implemented."


An Irish island used as location in the latest Star Wars film is to undergo safety inspections after it felt the full force of winter storms.

Skellig Michael, off County Kerry coast, is a Unesco World Heritage Site that has played host to 8th Century monks and 21st Century film crews.
Parts of Star Wars Episode VII were filmed on the rocky landmass in 2014.
The Irish government is to carry out risk assessments after storms brought down walls along visitor pathways.
The government agency responsible for protecting and maintaining Irish heritage sites - the Office of Public Works (OPW) - confirmed that it has received "reports of significant winter storm damage" to the famous landmark.
An OPW spokeswoman said part of a wall at Cross Cove has been "swept away" and another wall along the main visitor path, known as the Lighthouse Road, has also been damaged.
She said this could have been caused by either waves or rock debris falling from higher parts of the island during stormy weather and said there was "significant concern for visitor safety".
Experts from OPW and the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht will be brought to Skellig Michael by boat in the coming days to assess the extent of damage and any risk to tourists.
"It will be a priority for the inspection team therefore to establish urgently what the safety implications for visitors are this coming summer and how to address the matter, given the importance of the site to the local tourism economy in Kerry," the OPW spokeswoman said.
She added that staff had no information to suggest the monastery located high up on the island had been damaged, and said it was "not vulnerable to either wave or landslide action".
Frank Shalvey from the OPW's monuments section told the Irish Times newspaper: "It is going to take time to visit, to assess and rebuild.
"Visitor access could be compromised. We can only allow access where we are certain of the safety of visitors."
Skellig Michael was designated as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1996 and conservation campaigners unsuccessfully opposed the decision to allow the Star Wars crew to film on the island.


Fog on Mars, storms on Jupiter and fiery flares on the Sun - stunning close up images of our nearest planetary neighbours are going on show at London's Natural History Museum.

What would you see if you travelled to the surface of Mars? Or were able to drift in and out of Saturn's rings?
A new exhibition - Otherworlds - focuses on the creative work of US-based artist Michael Benson. He mixes art with science - to make crisp, colourful and seamless digital images from data sent back to Earth by Nasa and ESA spacecraft.
The museum's Poppy Cooper, who helped put the show together, says the 77 images are meant to represent what humans would see if they went to visit those places.
Scroll down and travel deep into the Solar System yourself.
Moonlight on the Adriatic
As seen from the International Space Station, this first image looks back to Earth.
The boot of Italy is clearly visible. The bright lights in the bottom right hand corner is Milan.
The Adriatic Sea sparkles in the moonlight - although, as Poppy Cooper points out, moonlight is of course reflected sunlight.
Mosaic composite photograph. ISS 023 crew, 29 April 2010
Credit: Nasa JSC/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Picture, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Typhoon over Bay of Bengal
This immense vortex of Tropical Cyclone 03B slammed into India's east coast at the end of 2003, with wind speeds approaching 120 kilometres an hour.
Below, the top of the island of Sri Lanka is relatively cloud free.
Photograph. Terra, 15 December 2003
Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, Lucian Plesea, Modis Land Rapid Response Team/Nasa GSFC/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Eclipse of the Sun by Earth
"Incredibly violent, energetic and quite frightening" is how Poppy Cooper describes the next image, which shows giant solar flares leaping out from the surface of the Sun.
The view - based on an ultraviolet exposure taken in space by the Solar Dynamics Observatory - shows the Sun appearing to be in the Earth's shadow.
The shadow is due to the increased density of the Earth's atmosphere - from left to right in the image - which blocks UV light.
Ultraviolet exposure. Solar Dynamics Observatory, 2 April 2011
Credit: Nasa SDO/Nasa GSFC/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Ground fog in Valles Marineris
It is foggy on Mars.
This next image shows the planet's Valles Marineris canyon system - which is about as wide as Australia, and at almost 4,000km long, is the largest in the Solar System.
A fog hugs the canyon floor, which is more than 6.5km deep in places - more than three times deeper than the Grand Canyon in the United States.
Mosaic composite photograph. Mars Express, 25 May 2004
Credit: ESA/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Global dust storm on Mars
Mars can also bear witness to giant dust storms which can last for months.
This image was put together using data from a Nasa mission in 1977.
"The scale is amazing. It just reminds you how active all these other worlds are," says Poppy Cooper.
"Our planet is not unique in that respect - other planets are constantly changing and moving."
Mosaic composite photograph. Viking Orbiter 2, 19 February 1977
Credit: Nasa/JPL/Dr Paul Geissler/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Late afternoon on Mars
This more peaceful image was taken late afternoon during a Martian day.
In the distance is Husband Hill - named in memory of Columbia Space Shuttle Commander Rick Husband.
He died with six other astronauts in 2003, when Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.
Mosaic composite photograph. Spirit Rover, 16 April 2006
Credit: Nasa/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
A Warming Comet
There are hundreds of comets flying around the Solar System - celestial bodies moving about the Sun in stretched orbits.
This image is of the oddly twin-lobed Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko - which was discovered in 1969.
It starts to vent gas and dust as it heats up - about a month before perihelion, the point at which it is closest to the Sun along its orbit.
Rosetta, 7 July 2015
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Navcam-CC BY-SA IGO 3.0/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Stormy Jupiter
Jupiter's Great Red Spot can be clearly seen here.
A persistent anti-cyclonic storm, it impedes the progress of the white clouds to its right - funnelling them into streaming tendrils below.
The churning dynamo is three times the size of Earth and has been raging for at least 348 years.
Photograph. Cassini, 1 January 2001
Credit: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Europa, an ice-covered ocean moon
This next image shows the jumbled faults and curving ridges that sprawl out across the icy surface of Europa - one of the dozens of moons of Jupiter.
It is slightly smaller than our own Moon.
Mosaic composite photograph, Galileo, 29 March 1998
Credit: Nasa/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Crescent Jupiter and Ganymede
Jupiter - the Solar System's largest planet - dwarfs its largest moon Ganymede, seen here on the right.
Ganymede is the ninth largest object in the solar system and is bigger than the planet Mercury.
Like Europa, Ganymede's surface is composed of water ice, and is thought to have a sub-surface ocean.
Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, 10 January 2001
Credit: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Dark side of the rings
"It looks a bit like a marble or a hat you might wear to a wedding - the colours are beautiful," says Poppy Cooper of this image which looks down on Saturn's northern regions.
Dust and ice make up the distinctive rings which circle the planet - into which you could fit 763 (and a bit) Earths.
"Their relative dimensions are thinner than a sheet of paper. They are hundreds of kilometres long, but only about 10 metres deep."
Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, 20 January 2007
Credit: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Enceladus vents water into space
"A lot of people have been drawn to this image of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, because it looks a bit like the Death Star in Star Wars," says Cooper.
The moon is bathed in direct sunlight on the left, with reflected sunlight from Saturn illuminating it on the right.
At the top of the moon, erupts a vast spray of water into space - which immediately freezes.
"Enceladus is very reminiscent of our own moon but it is much more active," says Cooper.
"It is believed to have a sub-surface ocean - which leaves people wondering if it might have the conditions to host life."
Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, 25 December 2009
Credit: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Uranus and its rings
"I like this because it's so perfect and symmetrical - like a computer graphic - but it is actually real," says Cooper of this image of the planet Uranus.
"The blue comes from the methane in the atmosphere - reacting with the light from the Sun."
The third largest planet in our Solar System, Uranus was discovered in 1781 by the astronomer William Herschel - but its faint rings were only spotted in 1977.
Mosaic composite photograph. Voyager, 24 January 1986
Credit: Nasa/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
A Plutonian Haze
This final glowing image is of the chilly dwarf planet Pluto - on the edge of our Solar System.
"I love the idea there might be blue skies on Pluto - it's romantic," says Poppy Cooper.
"It's so other-worldly it couldn't be Earth. It looks cold, distant, inhospitable."
But the blue haze - captured last year by Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft - is light from the giant Sun, hidden here behind tiny Pluto.
Mosaic composite photograph. New Horizons, 14 July  2015
Credit: Nasa/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures, courtesy Flowers Gallery
Otherworlds: Visions of our Solar System can be seen at the Natural History Museum, London, from 22 January - 15 May 2016.


The Beatles' first recording contract is to go up for auction next month, with an estimated valued of $150,000 (£95,700).

The six-page contract was signed in 1961 in Hamburg, where the band cut their teeth playing in nightclubs.
It led to the single My Bonnie, which was released on Polydor in Germany under the name Tony Sheridan and the Beat Boys.
It will be sold by Heritage Auctions in New York on 19 September.
John Lennon signed the document JW Lennon and Paul McCartney signed his full name James Paul McCartney.
It was also signed by George Harrison and Pete Best, the drummer who was to be replaced by Ringo Starr the following year.
The band were backing British singer Tony Sheridan at Hamburg's Top Ten Club at the time, and together they were signed by German record producer Bert Kaempfert to record a rock'n'roll version of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.
The papers are being sold by the estate of Uwe Blaschke, a German graphic designer and Beatles historian, who died in 2010.
The auction also includes a signed copy of the band's first UK single Love Me Do and a postcard Ringo Starr sent to his mother from Hamburg.


All photographs and interviews by Ed Gold.

The Northern Warfare Training Center in Alaska is where soldiers in the US Army learn how to survive and fight in extreme cold weather.  Photographer Ed Gold spent two weeks with the team, shadowing the students as they went on exercises.
The course takes a "train the trainer" approach, with soldiers who complete the training passing on their new skills to comrades when they return to their units.
The Alaskan terrain provides a wide range of natural challenges and, at sub-zero temperatures, most tasks are more difficult and take longer.
"We are not a tactics school; we get you ready to operate in cold weather," says Lt Col Mick Braun.
"A lot of it is mental toughness. It builds a soldier's toughness so they know they can operate in cold conditions. I'm a firm believer that if a soldier can serve here they can serve anywhere.
The centre also works with other countries whose militaries operate in cold conditions, such as Japan, the Scandinavian countries, Nepal and Mongolia, to build relationships and share knowledge.
Part of the course involves learning how to survive avalanches. Soldiers are taught how to use poles to find those buried in the snow, having first  picked up a signal using locator equipment.
"This pit shows that it is important to see what the snow is doing. Look at the layers in the snow," says instructor Steven Decker.
"You can get some value out of this, it's a low consequence slope. If this slope was going to slide it wouldn't go very far as it has an inch and a half of 'depth hoar' slab."
"Whenever you are in this environment stop every three or four hours or so and pay attention to your surroundings. Look up at the clouds to check what the weather is doing. What is the wind doing?"
Decker notes that a lack of snow in this training area shows that the winter has been warmer than normal. Despite the absence of snow the slippery surface still makes the going tricky and tries the patience of soldiers as they practise casualty evacuation using a rescue stretcher.
The belayer further up the slope cannot be relied upon to pull up or lower the casualty on their own. They only brake the rope when the four man team below pause their effort.
To keep warm overnight, trainees build a thermal shelter using wood and parachute cord.
The shelter is then covered with a parachute and snow is piled on top. It provides a warm sleeping area, protected from the wind.
The soldiers are shown how to make the improvised thermal shelter and then given three hours to build their own to share with one or two others. They then spend a night in it, dismantling it early the following morning.
"It's my first winter in Alaska so getting this class really opens my mind," says Staff Sgt Ali Baharanyi (right) who was born in Congo and joined the US Army in 2010.
"Most of the time you really don't know how to use the gear to its maximum so we don't always benefit entirely but now with this training I'm going to maximise my understanding and involvement with Alaska."
Students are also told how to use packed snow to stop bullets. About two metres (6,5ft) of packed snow will stop a 7.62mm bullet, but if the snow is freshly fallen and looser, the width must be doubled.
"We train for sustained operations in an arctic environment," says Staff Sgt Ben Kueter (speaking, right).
"I'm confident that we give soldiers a very good knowledge base and that they would be able to operate in any cold region in the world. This Arctic area is brutal and it takes specialised training to be able to survive out here."
"I want soldiers to thrive in the wild," says 2nd Lt Jessica Hayashida (second from right), a student on the course.
"What builds a team more than enduring some awful pain together. We have a really great mentality about it. I think the instructors are incredible. Not only are they proficient and confident but they have a genuine passion."
Lt Ryan Morrill, Sgt Thomas Trask, Lt Zachary Schroeder, Staff Sgt Noe Saldana and Capt Dave Luce are part of a team training to climb Denali, formerly known as Mt McKinley, the highest peak in North America. Four of the five will be selected to make the ascent in May.
Sgt Bell demonstrates how to use camouflage, wearing an "overwhite" top when the elevated mountainside has snow and the ground is bare.
Sgt Joshua Vermote carries the Stars and Stripes on his pack.
"I just got this flag last year - it's flown in Germany, Ireland, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and it's been through pretty much half the United States," says Vermote.
"I put it on my rucksack to boost morale for everybody as I knew it was going to be a physical endeavour for everybody and I believe that when any American sees that flag it boosts morale."
"Everything on this course is designed for a reason - we had to adapt and overcome and deal with it. I'm deploying to Kuwait and after that I'm hoping to come back here to work as an instructor. I love the cold, born and raised in it. I strongly dislike the heat."
The squads were timed around a 5km (3 mile) course using snow shoes and carrying their equipment. They were then marked on their collective scores on a 25m (80ft) firing range using 20 rounds each in their M4 Carbine Assault Rifles.
Two fighting positions were adopted, with 10 rounds fired in a crouching position and 10 kneeling, all the time wearing snow shoes.
Kristine Isherwood (far right) is part of a team helping material developers and uniform designers understand the impact of the natural environment on combat clothing.
"You've got to get out from behind your desk and walk with the soldiers to understand what works and what doesn't," says Isherwood. "You will encounter things outdoors that you didn't consider in a lab environment."
Staff Sgt Rinson Neth (right) is from Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia.
"I was deployed to the mountains of Afghanistan and I wish I had been to this school beforehand.
"Having the knowledge means that we can get dropped anywhere in the world and we'll do well. If you don't have that knowledge it's going to be a bad day for you. I prefer the cold. With cold you can always upgrade but with heat you can't downgrade."
"We never know where we're going to go next, where we're going to fight. It's extremely valuable to train soldiers in being able to fight in mountainous regions," says Sgt First Class Adam McQuiston.
"The course definitely prepares for the mountains and the cold and sets up our soldiers for success in any Arctic environment.
"I have 20 instructors here right now, five medics and the lieutenant and myself," he says. "We're continually busy."


The late husband of Labour MP Ann Clwyd was kept on a trolley in the emergency department of Wales' largest hospital for 27 hours, she has revealed.

Ms Clwyd was speaking for the first time about the report into Owen Roberts' death at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff in 2012.
She has said her husband was treated like a "battery hen."
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has apologised unreservedly and said the failings were "unacceptable".
The Cynon Valley MP has made a public protest about the care her late husband received while he was in hospital last year.
She said her husband was treated with coldness, indifference and even contempt by NHS staff "who didn't care".
After speaking out about her concerns, Prime Minister David Cameron asked her to review how hospitals in England deal with complaints from patients and their families.
She has now received a confidential report from the health board and spoke about her husband's care in a Commons debate on NHS complaints.
Speaking on BBC Radio Wales she said: "I did feel that it was very difficult to speak to nursing staff.
"In fact, on the night before he died I stopped a nurse in a corridor and asked why he wasn't in intensive care and she brushed me aside and said 'there are a lot worse than he is' and then walked on.
"So I didn't even have a discussion with her and, of course, the next day Owen died."
Ms Clwyd compared her husband's 27 hours on a trolley in A&E or its spill-over ward with the four-hour target introduced in England a decade ago.
She said: "If they think four hours is too long, then 27 hours definitely is.
"There is an admission that he should not have been nursed in that area for the length of time he remained there and that it fell significantly below the standard expected and this is unacceptable.
"That's just one aspect of it. There were lots of things about his care I was concerned about."
Ms Clwyd said that she had asked a GP friend to examine the report and said her conclusion was that "Owen was not properly treated or investigated".
The health board said it wanted to offer its "sincere condolences" to Ms Clwyd and her family.
It said: "Given the gravity of the concerns raised by Ms Clwyd about her husband's care, we set up an independent panel to oversee an investigation.
"The panel was made up of Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan Community Health Council, the patient watchdog, Health Inspectorate Wales and an independent member of the health board.
"The investigation was undertaken in line with the requirements of the NHS concerns process, Putting Things Right.  Every concern raised by Ms Clwyd was investigated.
"We have shared the outcome of the investigation with Ms Clwyd and have offered to meet with her to discuss the findings.
"It would not be right for us to publish what is a private report for Ms Clwyd. In view of Ms Clwyd's comments however, we would welcome Ms Clwyd releasing the report in its entirety into the public domain.
"We fully appreciate how difficult it is for anyone to raise concerns about the care of a loved one at such an emotional time and we would like to thank Ms Clwyd for her input into the investigation, which has been invaluable in helping us understand her experience."


Yelena Isinbayeva's election to a key role within Russia's anti-doping agency (Rusada) has been criticised by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada).

Former Olympic champion pole-vaulter Isinbayeva, 34, had described Russia's athletics team's suspension from Rio 2016 as "a blatant political order".
The ban came after evidence of a state-sponsored doping programme in Russia.
Wada said Isinbayeva's appointment was "not consistent" with plans it had agreed over necessary reforms.
A statement read: "Whilst it is the decision of the Russian authorities to elect its board members, the agency shall be passing this information on to its independent Compliance Review Committee for their review."
Russia's sport leaders have promised to improve their record on doping, but the pace of progress has also been criticised.
Speaking to BBC Sport on Tuesday, Wada director-general Olivier Niggli said reforms were "not happening at the speed I would have liked to see".
Isinbayeva, Olympic champion in 2004 and 2008, was elected chair of Rusada's supervisory board on Thursday.
"We will watch and control everybody and everything," she said on Russian state TV on Friday.
"We have just one attempt to clear our sport of this dirt."
Wada had previously said it was "encouraged" by President Vladimir Putin's recent admission that Russia's anti-doping system "didn't work".
While denying allegations of state-sponsored, systematic cheating, Putin said his country should acknowledge its anti-doping failures.
Media playback is not supported on this device
The McLaren report, commissioned by Wada, detailed evidence of an "institutionalised and disciplined medal-winning conspiracy" that operated in Russia between 2011 and 2015.
More than 1,000 Russian athletes - including Olympic medallists - were said to have benefited.
As a consequence, Wada recommended banning all Russian athletes from competing at the Olympics in Brazil last summer, but the International Olympic Committee ruled that individual sporting federations should decide.
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) was the only governing body to enforce a blanket ban on Russian athletes.
Russia's athletics team will also be absent from the World Championships in London in August, after the IAAF extended that suspension in December.


Hosts Chile began their quest for a maiden Copa America title with victory over Ecuador in Santiago.

Midfielder Arturo Vidal was brought down in the box by Miller Bolanos in the second half and picked himself up to convert the penalty for Chile.
Former QPR man Eduardo Vargas netted the second, calmly slotting home, as Matias Fernandez was sent off late on.
Ecuador's best chance fell to West Ham striker Enner Valencia, who struck the crossbar with a close-range header.
Chile have never won the competition in its 99-year history, coming runners-up on four occasions, the last being in 1987.
And having reached the last-16 of the 2014 World Cup, the Chileans are third favourites behind Argentina and Brazil to lift the trophy this year.
The top two sides from the three groups will progress to the quarter-finals, as well as the two best third-placed teams, with these sides lining up alongside Mexico and Bolivia in Group A.
Chile showed more intent in the encounter with some sharp, crisp passing, while Juventus's Vidal and Arsenal forward Alexis Sanchez combined well in the final third.
But they were unable to find a killer touch in front of goal early on as Sanchez stabbed an effort wide, while ex-QPR full-back Mauricio Isla came close as well.
Ecuador, who failed to make it out of their group at last year's World Cup, were happy to sit back and use their pace on the counter-attack.
Striker Fidel Martinez forced Barcelona goalkeeper Claudio Bravo into a full stretch save.
The game's defining moment came from Vidal, who seemed to go down easily in the penalty area, but stepped up to score an unstoppable spot-kick into the top corner of the net.
They got their second six minutes from time, punishing poor Ecuador defending, as Sanchez played in Vargas who struck a low finish.
The match ended on a sour note for Chile after substitute Fernandez was dismissed for hacking down Juan Carlos Paredes in injury time.


Wales coach Warren Gatland resisted making more changes to his team against Italy to give his men a chance to make up for their poor start at Twickenham.

The New Zealander made only one unenforced switch, bringing in Rhys Webb for Gareth Davies at scrum-half.
Sam Warburton, Alun Wyn Jones and Alex Cuthbert miss out with injuries.
"We wanted to give the players a chance to sort of put behind us a disappointing first half from last week," said Gatland.
Flanker Justin Tipuric, second row Luke Charteris and Hallam Amos are drafted in to the team in place of the injured players.
Dan Lydiate will captain the side in the absence of Warburton and regular stand-in Jones.
Gatland said he had shown faith in players who had performed well in earlier matches, a fact he acknowledged was hard on hooker Ken Owens who makes his fourth appearance on the bench in this Six Nations championship.
"He's unlucky, really unlucky," he added.
"We felt that [hooker] Scott Baldwin has gone pretty well throughout the campaign.
"Ken has been brilliant for us coming off the bench and I know that's a tag he doesn't want to keep, but he is unlucky not to get a start."
Scarlets hooker Owens had made 38 appearances for Wales, but started in only eight of those games.
Wales go into the match against Italy knowing a win will secure second place in the championship for the first time since it was expended to include six countries.
Lydiate will lead Wales for the first time in a Test match, having previously led them in a midweek match against EP Kings on the summer tour of South Africa in 2014.
He said it was a "personal honour for me and my family" and added his captaincy style was unsophisticated.
"I wouldn't ask someone to do something that I wouldn't do myself, so I'll throw myself in front of a bus so that's what I expect everyone else to do," he said.
"There are plenty of leaders and a wealth of experience in the team."


Gareth Southgate has had a formal interview for the job of England Manager.

21 November 2016 Last updated at 17:39 GMT
If chosen he could be given the job before the end of the month.
Southgate met with the panel who will make the decision and footie experts seem to think he's in with a very good shot.
He has been in charge of the England squad for the past four matches as a stand-in after big Sam Allardyce's shock departure from the position.
But who exactly is Gareth Southgate? Well Ricky is here with some info.
Check out the video.


The reported sentencing of paralysis for a Saudi man as punishment for paralysing another man has been described as "outrageous" by a leading human rights group.

Saudi reports say the 24-year-old man could be paralysed from the waist down if he cannot pay his victim one million riyals (Â£250,000) in compensation.
Amnesty International says the sentence is a form of torture.
The man has been in prison for 10 years since he stabbed a friend in the back.
Saudi newspapers say Ali al-Khawahir was 14 when he paralysed his friend in the attack in the Eastern Province town of al-Ahsa.
The law of qisas, or retribution, in Saudi Arabia means his victim can demand that he suffers exactly the same punishment as he caused.
"Paralysing someone as punishment for a crime would be torture," said Ann Harrison, Middle East and North Africa deputy director at Amnesty.
"It is time the authorities in Saudi Arabia start respecting their international legal obligations and remove these terrible punishments from the law."
This is the latest example of Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law attracting international criticism.
Amnesty says the law has seen judicially approved eye-gougings and tooth extractions.
The rights group condemns the practice as tantamount to torture, urging that the latest punishment must not be enforced.
Amnesty's intervention will certainly fuel a growing debate in Saudi Arabia itself over its style of justice, says the BBC's Arab affairs editor, Sebastian Usher.


An 81-year-old woman was raped after being followed when she got off a bus on a busy road, police say.

The victim was attacked after leaving the 155 bus in Balham High Road, south London, at 20:30 GMT on Friday.
The woman was taken to hospital after the attack.
A man from Tooting was charged with two counts of rape and one count of kidnap/false imprisonment on Sunday. The 41-year-old is due to appear at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court on Monday.
Police are trying to find the victim's coat, which went missing after the attack.
Det Insp Melissa Laremore said the red Marks and Spencer jacket has "important evidential value".
She added: "My team are keen to trace a male witness seen on Rinaldo Road, Balham, on the evening of the incident.
"He was wearing a jacket with a distinctive American flag design on the back.
"I would urge him to come forward and contact police."


India has taken al-Jazeera off air for five days, claiming that it had shown wrong maps of Kashmir.

The news channel showed a blue screen on Wednesday with a sign saying it would not be available until Monday.
India says maps used by the channel are incorrect, as they show the region of Kashmir as divided between Pakistan, India and China.
Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety but has effectively been divided since 1948.
Failure to agree on the status of the territory by diplomatic means has brought India and Pakistan to war on a number of occasions, and ignited an insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Maps approved by the Indian government still show the entirety of the former princely state as lying within Indian control - while other maps seek to show the de facto border between areas administered by India and Pakistan.
On Wednesday, al-Jazeera programmes in India were replaced by a sign saying the channel would not be available until 27 April, "as instructed by the ministry of information and broadcasting".
The channel's bureau chief in India, Anmol Saxena, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that the channel has "made representations to the ministry" and was hopeful of having the order revoked.
Indian officials reportedly issued the order for al-Jazeera to be taken off-air earlier this month, accusing the Qatar-based broadcaster of "cartographic aggression".
The country's authorities routinely criticise the international media, saying they have failed to reflect India's claims regarding Kashmir's borders.
In 2011, the Economist magazine was forced by the country's authorities to cover up a map to illustrate a cover story about the border between India and Pakistan.
The magazine responded by accusing India of censorship.


The Iranian government says it will cap salaries of public officials after a row over the high level of pay of some employees.

Recent online leaks showed some officials were receiving over 100 times more than an average public sector worker on about $400 (Â£305) a month.
The cap for government officials is now set for $2,630 and $5,250 for those in the mixed state-private sector.
Public anger has already led to the sacking of several bank directors.
One of them was paid about $60,000 a month, according to leaked payslips. However, it was not clear whether it was the director's monthly salary or total earnings, including a bonus.
Any payment beyond the new limits would now be seen as "a violation and crime", government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht said on Tuesday.
The row has also given conservative critics of President Hassan Rouhani new ammunition to attack him ahead of his likely bid for re-election next year.


Preston North End have re-signed goalkeeper Anders Lindegaard on a one-year deal after he had his contract cancelled at West Bromwich Albion.

The 32-year-old Dane spent the second half of last season on loan at the Lilywhites where he made 14 outings.
Lindegaard made 29 appearances for Manchester United over five years before his move to the Baggies.
"I'm really happy that things have fallen into place before we get closer to the season," he said.
"It was a very easy decision. I could have gone to several other clubs in England but it was a no brainer, I wanted to stay here."
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page.


A man has appeared in court charged with assault and robbery after an incident outside an Aberdeen petrol station.

A 24-year-old man was said to have had money taken from him outside Esso on Aberdeen's North Anderson Drive, at the Haudagain roundabout, on Tuesday night.
George Hanratty, 32, of Aberdeen, appeared at the city's sheriff court.
He made no plea and was remanded in custody.


Omelettes, meringues and pasta could one-day be back on the menu for some people with egg allergies after they are treated with the very food they are allergic to, say US researchers.

The only option for patients is to completely avoid foods containing egg.
A study on 55 children showed some were able to eat egg after minuscule amounts were gradually added to their diets.
However, the treatment is still experimental and doctors say it should not be tried at home.
Egg allergies are one of the most common allergies and are thought to affect up to 2.5% of children.
Gradually introducing the food which causes an allergic reaction has been successful in other foods such as
          such as peanuts
.
Parents were given powdered egg to mix into their children's food, building up to about a third of an egg every day.
The findings,
          presented in the New England Journal of Medicine
, report that after 22 months of egg therapy, 75% of the children were able to eat the equivalent of two eggs without reacting.
The children were tested again after at least a month of no longer having the daily egg treatment. Of these, 28% could still eat egg without reacting and were considered allergy-free.
One of the researchers Dr Wesley Burks, from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said: "This study gives us hope that we're closer to developing a treatment.
"Almost a third of the children had a permanent change and were no longer egg-allergic."
Dr Stacie Jones, from University of Arkansas, said: "Reducing these kids' allergic response to egg also lessened parental anxiety over how their children might react if accidentally exposed to egg at school or at someone else's house."
However, about 15% of children did not finish the treatment, mostly due to allergic reactions.
Lindsey McManus, from the charity Allergy UK, said: "This is a very exciting development into immunotherapy for food allergy.
"Similar to recent trials being carried out into immunotherapy for peanut allergy at Addenbrookes hospital, the results are very promising.
"It is however very early days and more research will be needed before this is used as a regular form of treatment.  We would echo the warning in the report that this should never be tried at home due to the risk of serious allergic reactions."


US businesses added 227,000 jobs in January, way above economists' forecasts of about 175,000.

The figure, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compares with December's rise of 157,000, revised up slightly from last month's first estimate.
However, average pay barely rose, and the number of people working part-time but looking for full-time work rose.
Even so, the jobs growth suggests that new president Donald Trump has inherited a stronger jobs market.
He has promised to to create 25 million jobs over 10 years to become "the greatest jobs president... ever".
President Barack Obama's term from January 2009-17 saw the number of people with jobs increase by 11.25 million.
The job gains in January occurred in retailing, construction, and financial activities.
The number of unemployed people at 7.6 million was little changed. The unemployment rate edged up slightly to 4.8% from 4.7% in December, but this was due to more people looking for work.
The percentage of adults working or looking for jobs increased to its highest level since September.
Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, in California, said: "Continued strong job creation is tempered by the renewed sluggishness in wage growth, raising questions once again about the extent to which the functioning of the labour market has evolved.
"The sluggish wage growth will make the [Federal Reserve] more cautious about hiking [interest rates] in March," he said.
As a US presidential candidate, Mr Trump frequently argued that the government's jobs data exaggerated the health of the economy.
He called the unemployment rate a "hoax'' and said it declined after the recession under Barack Obama mainly because many Americans stopped working or looking for work.


Four County Tyrone men have admitted involvement in the kidnapping of a cattle dealer who was held captive for five days as part of an extortion plot.

The victim travelled to Northern Ireland in 2012 on the pretext of viewing a meat factory.
He was tied up, hooded and bundled into a van by an armed gang near Omagh. A ransom of 400,000 euros (Â£342,000) was then demanded from the man's father.
He was released across the Irish border after 100,000 euros (Â£85,000) was paid.
The man had been accompanied on his trip to Northern Ireland by Robert Vevers, 59, from Crawick in Dumfries, Scotland.
He pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to kidnapping, false imprisonment and blackmail.
Four other men appeared at Dungannon Crown Court on Wednesday.
Patrick McCaul, 44, from Slieveard Rise in Omagh and Matthew McLean, 27, from Glenpark Road in Omagh each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit blackmail.
Robert McLean, 22, from Deverney Park, Omagh and Martin Arkinson, 21, from Ballycolman Estate, Strabane, entered guilty pleas to assisting offenders.
The charge stated that they had bought food and telephone top-up cards to assist in the blackmail.
All four had been due to face trial on charges of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit blackmail and conspiring to falsely imprison.
The prosecution applied for the remaining charges to be left on the books.
Sentencing was adjourned until 20 January 2017.


A teenager was arrested as he made his way to behead a British soldier, the Old Bailey has heard.

Brusthom Ziamani, 19, had a rucksack containing a 12in knife, a hammer and an "Islamic flag" when he was held on a street in east London in August 2014.
He idolised the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, researched Army cadet base sites and told an ex-girlfriend of a plan to "kill soldiers", the court was told.
Mr Ziamani, of Camberwell, London, denies preparing an act of terrorism.
Jurors heard Mr Ziamani had converted to Islam in early 2014 and his arrest came after he had shown the former girlfriend the weapons and described Fusilier Rigby's killer Michael Adebolajo as a "legend".
Prosecutor Annabel Darlow told the court: "He didn't say anything when he was arrested but he was remanded and told a security officer that he had been on his way to kill a British soldier at an Army barracks when he had been arrested.
"He said that he was going to behead the soldier and hold that soldier's head up in the air so that a friend could take a photograph.
"You may think that his aim was to emulate the dubious feats of his hero Michael Adebolajo, who had murdered a British soldier close to the Woolwich barracks where he worked."
The jury heard Mr Ziamani also put posts on Facebook under the name Mujahid Karim, supporting Sharia law and stating he was "willing to die in the cause of Allah".
Mr Ziamani is charged with preparing an act of terrorism on or before 20 August 2014.
Mr Ziamani had previously been arrested in June 2014, the court heard.
The court was told that on 20 June he had searched the internet for "Camberwell Army cadets" and for cadets in Lewisham.
Jurors also heard he had looked at the website of the London Irish Rifles Association and found details of the Army Cadet Force in Blackheath.
After this arrest police found a letter in his jeans addressed to his "beloved parents" saying he was a "changed person".
He wrote of being martyred and going to paradise and referenced people being raped, tortured and killed in Iraq and Syria, saying he had a "duty" to help them.
He wrote: "Because I have no means ov gettin there I will wage war against the british government on this soil the british government will have a taste of there own medicine they will be humiliated this is ISIB Islamic State of Ireland and Britain.
"Now we will take a thousand ov yours then ten thousand and send you all to the hell-fire you want war you got it British soldiers heads will be removed and burned u cannot defeat the Muslims we love to die the way you love to live my fellow muslim brothers these people want war lets kill them slaughter them and implement sharia in our lands and UK."
He went on: "Lee Rigby is burnin in hell im dying good for him this is what you get for voting Cameron and democracy."
He told police he looked up to radical preachers including Abu Hamza and Anjem Choudary, but denied he was planning an attack.
He was later released on bail and spoken to in July by engagement officers from the anti-radicalisation Prevent programme.
The court heard Mr Ziamani was unresponsive and said he "did not need help with his religion" and had left the home of his Christian family.
Mr Ziamani continued to post extremist material on Facebook, including a photo of six severed heads, the court head.
The jury, of eight women and four men, also heard he researched the murder of Fusilier Rigby, reading news articles about the attack and Adebolajo.
The prosecution said Mr Ziamani identified with Adebolajo, as he was also a convert from a Christian family.
His arrest on 19 August 2014 came three days after he got back in touch with his former girlfriend.
Giving evidence from behind a screen, the former girlfriend told the court Mr Ziamani had turned up at her home several times and showed her the hammer and knife wrapped in the flag.
She said: "I asked why he had these and he said 'me and the brothers are planning a terrorist attack'. I said what, like a bomb or something and he said 'no, a soldier or a member of government."'
The jury was told their relationship had ended after he converted to Islam and began wearing Islamic clothing.
"He said things like when the Lee Rigby murder happened, he respected the people that had done it," she told the court.
Cross examined by defence barrister Naeem Mian, she agreed with the suggestion that Mr Ziamani was someone who sometimes "made things up".
She added she did not call police after Mr Ziamani left her home, telling them about what he had said when officers turned up after the arrest.


Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick has signed a new one-year deal with the club.

Carrick, 35, joined the Old Trafford side from Tottenham in an £18.6m deal in 2006 and has played 458 games in all competitions, scoring 24 goals.
"I am delighted that my journey with this great club is going to continue," Carrick told the club's website.
Carrick, whose contract was coming to an end in June, has a testimonial on 4 June.
Manager Jose Mourinho said: "I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Michael over this past season.
"Not only is he a great footballer, he is also a fantastic human being and a great role model to our younger members of the team."
The former England international has won five Premier League titles, the Champions League, Europa League, an FA Cup and two League Cups during his time at United.
His side will be playing Champions League football again next season after winning the Europa League with a 2-0 victory against Ajax on Wednesday.
Carrick added: "What a fantastic way to finish off the season, with a new trophy in our cabinet. I am thrilled that the fans will also get to see our shiny new Europa League trophy on 4 June."


An ancient Greek statue of Zeus has been recreated using 3D printing, after it was lost in the 5th Century.

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the statue of Zeus at Olympia was recorded only in descriptions and illustrations on coins.
3D printing firms Stratasys and 3DPTree made the recreation for the Millennium Gate Museum in the US city of Atlanta.
One expert in classical sculpture said 3D printing was a "powerful tool" for learning about lost artefacts.
The Greek statue was roughly 13m tall but the 3D-printed version stands at a more modest 1.8m.
It is an attempt to replicate the figure - made of wood, ivory and gold - which was lost in a fire at the Palace of Lausus in Constantinople, the city now known as Istanbul.
The parts were printed in thermoplastics, using a 3D model that approximated the design of the statue.
3D printing had brought a long lost artefact "to life", according to Jesse Roitenberg at Stratasys.
"It's not just for engineers, it's not just for designers - it's for art, it's for archaeologists," he told the BBC.
Mr Roitenberg, a former schoolteacher, said it took two days to 3D print Zeus's body and 20 hours to print his legs.
After some finishing of the statue's surface, the pieces were shipped to another location for assembly.
"Often, studying the ancient world is like trying to put the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle back together - but you've lost the cover with the picture and half the pieces," said Susanne Turner, curator at the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge, who was not involved with the project.
"Anything that allows academics and interested members of the public to be able to visualise and imagine what these lost things may have looked like is an extremely powerful tool," she told the BBC.
However, Dr Turner pointed out that many museums - including her own - had featured replicas produced with other media for many years.
Artefacts that have been lost in modern times have also been recreated using 3D technologies, such as those at the ancient Semitic city of Palmyra in present-day Syria.
Recently, one group of archaeologists reconstructed Palmyra's Arch of Triumph in Trafalgar Square in London with the help of 3D technology.
"I think [3D technologies] are going to become increasingly important," said Dr Turner, "because it's so terribly distressing that those artefacts were lost."


The number of people in the UK donating organs after death has fallen for the first time in more than a decade, figures show.

Last year the number fell by 3% compared with the previous 12 months to 1,282.
NHS Blood and Transplant said fewer people were suitable for donating organs and there had been a fall in families giving consent.
However, the figures are still considerably higher than a decade ago.
A donated heart, kidney or liver can save a life, however, there are massive shortages.
The annual Organ Donation and Transplantation Activity Report showed more than 1,200 people either died on the waiting list or were removed because of deteriorating health.
Yet now the NHS is reporting a 5% drop in the number of live donors - which include people donating a spare kidney or part of their liver - and the first drop in donations after death for 11 years.
The consequence was:
There are many potential factors behind the fall, but doctors are being hit by a shrinking pool of potential donors and families being more likely to reject permission for donation.
Out of the half a million people who die in the UK each year only a tiny fraction die in circumstances that are suitable for donation.
Yet improvements in fields such as stroke and trauma mean patients are more likely to survive and as a result there are fewer donors.
The pool of potential donors shrank to 7,450 in 2014-15 from 8,157 the year before.
However, families giving consent has also fallen from 59% to 58% including 120 families who went against the deceased person's own wishes to donate.
NHS Blood and Transplant is calling for a "revolution in attitudes to organ donation".
Sally Johnson, from NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "The decreases we can see across all types of organ transplant will lead to more deaths if we do not reverse this trend.
"We have always known that because the opportunities to donate are so small, it is essential to increase the number of people who say yes to organ donation.
"If the pool of potential donors is reduced then this is even more important.
"We understand that families are expected to consider donation in their darkest hour so we would remind everyone to tell those closest to you now if you want to donate your organs and then record that decision on the NHS Organ Donor Register."
Wales is due to become the first part of the UK to change their rules to a system where everyone is presumed to have given their consent for their organs to be donated.
People will have to opt out from December 2015.
The British Heart Foundation said the rest of the UK needed to follow suit in order to tackle the number of people waiting for a heart transplant, which has doubled in the past five years.
The charity's chief executive said: "Tragically, these figures show that the number of available organs is outstripped by the number of heart patients waiting for a lifeline.
"We hope the rest of the UK will follow Wales' trailblazing lead."


The parents of a 12-year-old boy swept out to sea while on holiday on Anglesey said they have returned to the beach where he was last seen.

Isaac Nash, 12, from Huddersfield, got into difficulties at Aberffraw on 29 August and was swept away despite attempts to pull him to safety.
His brother Xander, 10, was saved but Isaac has not been found.
More than 150 people attended a memorial service for the schoolboy on Sunday, with Adam and Zoe Nash.
After the service at Aberffraw's St Beuno's Church the couple told BBC Wales they wanted to thank people for the support they had shown, and said they will continue to return to area because it is "where he (Issac) is now".
Mr Nash said: "We feel a lot closer to the community here after what's happened. They've been very supportive."
He added he had been back to the beach with his daughter, Greta, and said he "felt very at home, very comfortable".
He added: "I thought I was going to be extremely upset but wasn't.
"Again I think that's down to the people around here and how supportive everyone's been. That's helped us through it."
Mrs Nash said the area was somewhere they could bring Xander and Greta.
She said: "This is where Isaac is now and it's a beautiful place for him."
So many people were present at the church service that some local people had to stand in the churchyard.
The search for Isaac was scaled down earlier this month.
Since the tragedy more than Â£11,400 has been raised in memory of the sport-loving youngster.
Organisers hope to raise Â£100,000 to build a skate park near Isaac's family home in Huddersfield.


The free movement of workers within the EU makes it more difficult to curb immigration to the UK, Home Secretary Theresa May has admitted.

But she told the BBC it did not make it "impossible", as she made the case for a vote to stay in the EU on 23 June.
If the UK left the EU it would have to accept free movement rules "without any say" over them in order to access the single market, she warned.
Vote Leave said Mrs May had "given up" on trying to control immigration.
"The only way to take back control of our borders and have a fair immigration policy is to vote Leave on 23 June," its chief executive, Matthew Elliot said.
But speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show, Mrs May - who has so far kept a low profile in the referendum debate - said immigration policy and border control were "different" issues and should not be conflated.
In her first major intervention in the campaign since backing Remain, the home secretary said: "Yes, free movement makes it harder to control immigration but it doesn't make it impossible to control immigration."
She said controlling immigration - whether from inside or outside the EU - "is hard", and added: "We have constantly to be working at it, which is exactly what we're doing, so you can't just change one feature and assume that is going to have an impact."
Warning against an EU exit, Mrs May said: "If we were to be outside the European Union and still want the sort of access to the single market that people talk about... where that's been done for other countries, they have to accept the free movement rules without any say over those rules."
Free movement of people gives all EU citizens the right to travel, live and work wherever they wish within the bloc of countries.
An independent analysis recently forecast that three million more people would come to the UK by 2030 if Britain stayed in the EU.
Mrs May said she understood the public's "concerns" over immigration, and conceded the current level - well above the government's "tens of thousands" target - is "too high".
But she insisted the government was taking steps to address it, citing action to tackle "abuse" of free movement rules.
She also said the UK had "an opportunity" to change the rules in Britain's favour from within the EU, and said this is what David Cameron had achieved through his EU renegotiation, by reducing "pull factors" for migrants.
Mrs May contested claims by Leave campaigner and cabinet minister Michael Gove that EU membership means the UK cannot control its borders, saying the UK is not in the border-free Schengen area and "can stop people entering" the country.
"But crucially we can only do that if we've got the information we need to have," she added, as she made the case for continued EU membership.
Commenting on the home secretary's remarks, Vote Leave's Mr Elliott said: "It's clear that even Theresa May has given up on the government's promise to control immigration.
"She admitted that EU membership makes this impossible and that David Cameron has failed to bring any powers back from the EU to change that."
Meanwhile, justice minister Dominic Raab, who supports an EU exit, said negotiations following a potential vote to leave could include discussions on implementing visas for EU travellers heading to Britain.
"At the moment President Obama's administration... is looking at new visa requirements and screening from Germany, Belgium, Greece, France because of the recent terrorist attacks.
"I think we should at least have the power and the control to do that to make sure we keep Britain safe," he told the BBC's Sunday Politics programme.
Asked whether that would mean UK citizens requiring visas to travel to Europe, Mr Raab said: "Or some other kind of check".


Pete McGrath believes his future as manager of Fermanagh will be clarified in a matter of days.

After Sunday's defeat by Armagh in the first round of the All-Ireland qualifiers, McGrath said his management team would think things over.
This year Fermanagh lost to Monaghan in the preliminary round of the Ulster Championship, and were relegated to Division Three in the league.
"We will take a few days and then make a decision," said McGrath.
"You have to make a decision which is going to be best for everyone  - the players, the county and myself.
"We will look at the whole landscape.
"If we decide to go, we'll go. If we decide to stay it is up to the county board if they want us."
McGrath accepted 2017 had been the worst of his four-year spell as Fermanagh manager.
However, the former Down manager has his backers who believe he has done a creditable job, including taking the Erne county to the All-Ireland quarter-finals two years ago.


The new Confederation of African Football (Caf) President, Ahmad, says he has refused to accept a salary from African football's governing body.

His election in March ended Cameroonian Issa Hayatou's 29-year reign.
"I've refused a Caf salary for the simple reason it doesn't respect good administration," he told BBC Sport.
"The salaries of all Caf employees, from administrators to the executive committee and president, all have to be transparent."
The 57-year-old from Madagascar held his first senior Caf meetings on Monday ahead of the Fifa Congress on Thursday 11 May.
Key among the topics being discussed are how to reform Caf.
We will take a decision that suits everyone so that this competition is valued again and attracts more resources and attract bigger audiences in Africa.
"The reform of the administration is a very important point - everyone must know what is happening" said Ahmad.
"First we must review the standards of management so that we can apply the reforms.
Ahmad, who goes by a single name, says there is much work to be done - in lots of areas - to make Caf work "as it should.
"I'm sorry to tell you when I was part of the Caf Executive Committee there was no separation of powers - the judicial body, the executive one and the congress - and we have to respect the independence of each body," he continued.
"There is a big tendency to monopolise power in the executive committee.
"It has to be reviewed and reformed with new statutes for Caf so that everyone can concentrate on their proper tasks.
Ahmad has also voiced concerns about the popularity of their flagship Africa Cup of Nations tournament saying it's in danger of being overshadowed by the African Nations Championship (CHAN) which is for locally based players.
He says in light of these concerns, there will also be a full review of all the Caf competitions, and as such, a symposium will be organised to discuss the future of the events.
"The symposium will be made up of representatives from all parts of African football so we can discuss what we are going to do in all the competitions - Afcon [Africa Cup of Nations], CHAN, the youth tournaments and the women's events," he explained.
Ahmad said he was particularly keen to address issues such as dwindling numbers of spectators at recent tournaments, and players increasingly finding themselves in compromised situations with their clubs during Nations Cups.
"We need to take into account their situation. We must ensure that the Nations Cup doesn't destroy their careers," he insisted.
"So we are going to review all of that and we will take a decision that suits everyone so that this competition is valued again and attracts more resources and attract bigger audiences in Africa."
Ahmad also spoke about giving more power to the presidents of the individual federations, describing them as the "Sovereign Body" - who "have to make the big decisions for the confederation."
Ahmad has promised to arrange a new Caf congress in due course in order to validate the proposed changes.
He also wants to look at the re-investment of Caf resources to aid the development of football across the continent, stressing that "Caf is not here to make money to enrich itself."


Beryl Casey has devoted 20 years to caring for hundreds of hedgehogs at her home in Portishead, near Bristol.

27 January 2016 Last updated at 14:06 GMT
Known locally as "the hedgehog lady", she has turned her home into a hospital - with hedgehog pens for those needing extra care.
She told BBC Radio Bristol she could not imagine life without the hedgehogs: "I just love them to bits."


Antonio Cassano's eventful career has come to an eventful conclusion.

The former Roma and Real Madrid forward caused raised eyebrows earlier this month when he announced he was retiring just eight days after signing for Serie A side Hellas Verona.
But within hours he had a change of heart and said he would stay, adding he wanted to "rise to the challenge" and have a "crazy season".
Six days later, and after playing in two pre-season friendlies for his new side, the 35-year-old has again said he is retiring.
Cassano, who won 39 caps for Italy, has not played a league game since May 2016 and was released by Sampdoria in January.
On Monday, his wife Carolina Marcialis said he would leave Verona but still hoped to find another club. Cassano later clarified that he had retired.
"As opposed to what appeared on my wife's official social profiles, I would like to clarify my future," he said in a statement.
"Carolina got it wrong. After thinking and reflecting in the end I decided - Antonio Cassano will not be playing football any more.
"I apologise to the city of Verona, to all the fans, to president Maurizio Setti, to sports director Filippo Fusco, to coach Fabio Pecchia, to my team-mates and to the medical and technical staff.
"For a 35-year-old man it's the motivation that guides my life, and at this moment I feel that my priority is that I'll be staying close to my children and my wife."
Cassano and his family live in Genoa, which is about 300km (186 miles) away from Verona.
Having called a news conference last week to announce his retirement, Cassano told the reporters who attended that he had been homesick but regretted saying he would quit.
"I had a moment of weakness," he said at the time. "I had a meeting with Fabio Pecchia and the others to say that I wanted to stop.
"I was yearning for my family but the club's management has asked them to come and they gave me the strength to carry on. I want to rise to the challenge and have a crazy season."
Cassano started his career at his hometown club Bari before rising to prominence at Roma, where he scored 39 goals in 118 games.
He then had an unsuccessful season at Real Madrid before spells at Sampdoria, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Parma.
Cassano, who scored 10 times for Italy, was diagnosed with a defect in his heart and had surgery in November 2011.
He was fined by Uefa after saying he hoped there were no homosexuals in the Italy squad for Euro 2012.


The vivid prose of Gabriel Garcia Marquez described a world as exotic as a Latin American carnival.

His backdrop was the poverty-stricken, and often violent world of his Colombian home where democracy never really found roots.
His stories wove imaginary magical elements into real life and were often set in a fictional village called Macondo.
A left-winger by conviction he was not slow to criticise the Colombian government and spent a great part of his life in exile.
Garcia Marquez was born in the town of Aracataca, Colombia on 6 March 1927.
Shortly after he was born, his father became a pharmacist and his parents moved away. The young Marquez was left in the care of his maternal grandparents.
His grandfather, a veteran of Colombia's Thousand Days' War and a liberal activist, gave him an awareness of politics.
From his grandmother, Garcia Marquez learned of superstitions and folk tales.  She spoke to him of dead ancestors, ghosts and spirits dancing round the house, all in a deadpan style that he would later adopt for his greatest novel.
Garcia Marquez went to a Jesuit college and began to study law, but soon broke off his studies to work as a journalist.
In 1954, he was sent to Rome on a newspaper assignment, and since that time, lived mostly abroad, in Paris, Venezuela, and finally Mexico City.
He always continued his work as a journalist, even when his fiction increased in popularity.
Heavily influenced by the work of William Faulkner, Garcia Marquez wrote his first novel at the age of 23 although it took seven years to find a publisher.
Published in 1955, Leaf Storm and his three subsequent novels received critical acclaim from the literary establishment but did not reach the wide audience he would win with his later books.
In 1965, the idea for the first chapter of One Hundred Years of Solitude came to him while he was driving to Acapulco.
He turned the car, drove home and locked himself into his room with six packets of cigarettes a day for company.
He emerged 18 months later to find his family $12,000 in debt.  Fortunately, he had thirteen hundred pages of phenomenal best-selling text in his hands.
The novel's first printing in Spanish sold out within a week, and during the next thirty years One Hundred Years of Solitude sold more than twenty million copies and was translated into more than thirty languages.
The New York Times called it the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.
Following its publication, Garcia Marquez was asked to act as a facilitator in negotiations between the Colombian government and a number of guerrilla organisations including Farc and ELN.
He also became friends with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a relationship that Garcia Marquez insisted was based on books.
"Fidel is a very cultured man," he said in an interview. "When we're together we talk about literature."
In 1982 Garcia Marquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He received praise for the vibrancy of his prose and the rich language he used to convey his overflowing imagination.
Some saw his work as deliberate exaggeration, a supernatural, mythical approach he effected to escape the unrest of his country.
He said himself that "surrealism came from the reality of Latin America," and such works as The General in his Labyrinth and The Autumn of the Patriarch illustrate his growing political opposition to the increasing violence in Colombia.
Garcia Marquez's place in the ranks of literary masters was further assured by the publication of another best-selling work, Love in the Time of Cholera in 1986.
In the story of two couples, the younger based on the love affair between his own parents.
The Mexican novelist, Carlos Macias described Garcia Marquez as perhaps the best writer in Spanish since Cervantes.
"He is one of those rare artists who succeed in chronicling, not only a nation's life, culture and history, but also those of an entire continent."


Fourth place is often described by athletes and commentators as the "worst position to finish" at the Olympic Games.

Media playback is not supported on this device
A lifetime of preparation can amount to missing the podium by a fraction of a second on the track, a finger length in the pool or a stumble on the gym apparatus.
As Rio 2016 enters its fifth day of competition, Great Britain are 11th in the medal table, with six medals.
But for fourth-place finishes, and the heartbreak that ensues, British athletes are out on their own.
Of the completed events, Team GB competitors have finished six in fourth place.
They are: James Guy in the 200m freestyle, Max Litchfield and Hannah Miley in their respective 400m individual medleys, Richard Kruse in the men's foil, the women's rugby sevens team and the men's gymnastics team.
The full 'fourth-place table' is:
6: Great Britain
4: China; US
3: Australia
2: Italy, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, Colombia
1: North Korea, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, Ukraine, India, Slovakia, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, Russia, Hungary, Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Dominica, Latvia, Ecuador
According to Gracenote Sports' 'Virtual Medal Table, Team GB were forecast to take 17 fourth-place finishes in total - up from eight at London 2012.
That would put GB second in a fourth place table, behind the US with 28, and ahead of France (15) and China (14).
Team GB's medal target is a minimum of 48 to make it their best overseas Olympics. UK Sport said the best medal tally it could hope for was 79.
GB finished with 65 medals at London 2012 - a best ever total.
Gracenote Sport's Virtual Medal Table predicted 56 medals for Britain before the Games - with 18 golds, 16 silvers and 22 bronzes putting them in third place.
Their projections also suggested GB should have won 13 medals by the start of day five.
Head of analysis Simon Gleave said: "There is a shortfall of seven medals. These will have to be made up somewhere if GB is going to get anywhere near that total of 56.
Gleave acknowledged that GB got off to a slow start at London 2012, but added that they then claimed five medals including two golds on day five, and three more golds on 'Super Saturday'.
"Obviously we get some medals wrong but generally most right," said Gleave. "The only other country which is currently underperforming what we predicted by more than two medals is Mongolia - who have one instead of our predicted four at this stage."


Fifa has recommended that its suspended secretary general Jerome Valcke is banned from football for nine years.

The Frenchman was alleged to be implicated in a scheme to profit from the sale of World Cup tickets.
Valcke, 55, who also faces bribery allegations, denies any wrongdoing.
Sepp Blatter, the outgoing president of world football's governing body, and vice-president Michel Platini were both suspended for eight years in December following a Fifa ethics investigation.
A statement from the ethics committee also recommended Valcke pay a fine of 100,000 Swiss francs (£67,400) for alleged "misuse of expenses and other infringements of Fifa's rules and regulations".
Fifa's ethics committee provisionally suspended Valcke from all football on 8 October for 90 days and on Tuesday - the day that ban expired - the organisation also recommended an extension of 45 days.
That extension was confirmed by Fifa's adjudicatory committee on Wednesday.
Valcke has been accused of being party to a potential $10m (£6.8m) bribe paid to Jack Warner, the former head of the North and Central America football governing body Concacaf, in return for his vote and backing to South Africa's successful bid to host the 2010 World Cup.
He denies the allegations.
When Valcke was Fifa's director of marketing and TV, he was released from the organisation in 2006 over a scandal involving its long-time sponsorship partner Mastercard.
He was found to have negotiated with Mastercard's rival Visa in violation of the former company's right of first negotiation, a mistake that cost Fifa $90m (£61.3m) in a settlement.
He returned in 2007 when Blatter appointed him secretary general.


Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, whose husband is former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, has complained after being invited to an International Women's Day event in her married name.

Posting a picture of a letter addressed to "Mrs Clegg" on Instagram, she noted the "irony" of the situation.
The event, on 8 March, is designed to "celebrate women's success", she added.
Ms Gonzalez Durantez is a lawyer specialising in international and EU trade law.
She wrote: "The irony of being invited to speak at an International Women's Day event to celebrate women's success, addressed to me as 'Mrs Clegg'."
Ms Gonzalez Durantez set up the Inspiring Women group, which recruits women with successful careers to visit and speak to girls at state schools in England.
This is not the first time she has criticised the way she is perceived or described.
Last year she told Marie Claire magazine: "I find people say of me 'She wears the trousers' and as you can see, it is true, I have very nice trousers.
"Or if my husband and I share the school run, it's me who has forced him, dragged him away from his work.
"But when people, or in my case the media, are using that label on you, they are not saying you are strong, they are saying you should get back in your box. You should make the dinner and have his slippers ready with a gin and tonic."


Boston Dynamics' latest robot appears to be designed to help in the kitchen.

27 June 2016 Last updated at 15:31 BST
The robotics business - which is owned by Google's parent Alphabet - has created a dog-themed machine that replaces the liquid-powered pistons of earlier designs with an all-electric system.
As a consequence, SpotMini's engineers say it is one of the quietest robots they have ever built. They made a video showing the robot loading a dishwasher.


Nicola Sturgeon has called for the "indefensible" decision of Muirfield Golf Club to reject women as members to be overturned.

A vote at the East Lothian club failed to rally a two-thirds majority of members behind allowing women to join.
The club has been barred from hosting the Open Championship as a result.
The first minister said the club had the right to set its own rules, but said the decision was "wrong" and "damaging".
Prime Minister David Cameron has also criticised Muirfield, and backed the decision to bar it from hosting the Open Championship.
Mr Cameron told LBC Radio: "My general rule is that sports clubs should be totally open to both sexes, and it's outdated not to do that, particularly if you think that you're up to hosting important championships."
A majority of members taking part in the vote at Muirfield backed allowing women to join, but did not achieve the necessary two-thirds of eligible members to push the move through.
Golf's governing body, the Royal and Ancient, said it would not stage the Open "at a venue that does not admit women as members".
Ms Sturgeon told BBC Scotland that she was "disappointed" by the "indefensible" decision.
She said: "Muirfield is a private club and they're in charge of their own rules and regulations, and I accept that, but this is 2016.
"Scotland has women leaders in every walk of life, in politics, in law, in business and everywhere else. I think this decision is wrong, and I hope there's a way of of looking at it again and overturning it.
"As well as being wrong, it's damaging to Muirfield as a club - I want to see the Open played at Muirfield, it's a fantastic golf course, so this really is a regrettable decision."
Ms Sturgeon rejected the suggestion that the decision had any wider message about Scottish society.
She said: "The fact that I'm sitting here in the first minister's office says that Scotland is a country that values the contribution of women.
"There are still barriers to women in every walk of life, but women also make progress in Scotland. Scotland is a welcoming place for women to progress in, so I don't want this decision to be seen as as reflection on modern Scotland, it's a reflection of a minority of members at Muirfield."
Other politicians have also been quick to condemn the decision.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said the golf club's decision was "hugely disappointing".
She added: "I would urge Muirfield Golf Club to think again and find a way to reverse this decision, otherwise it will rightly find itself ostracised from the Scottish golfing community.
"If ever a decision highlighted how much we need to keep up the fight for equality in Scotland this is it."
Scottish Conservative MSP Rachael Hamilton, who had campaigned for allowing women members ahead of the vote, said it was "very disappointing".
She said: "I understand that there are traditions involved here, and the members knew fine well what the consequences of this decision would be.
"But we have to move with the times, and this will be seen widely as a very outdated attitude for a sporting club to have."
Alison Johnstone  of the Scottish Greens, said: "There is simply no excuse for such a backward policy, and it's galling to see such a large number of this club's members voting to bring it into the 21st century yet they are blocked due to falling just short of a two-thirds majority.
"If the management of Muirfield had any sense, they'd acknowledge the strength of support from their members for a change in policy and they'd do the right thing to prevent further damage to the reputation of their venue and Scottish sport."


Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway will co-host this year's Nobel peace prize concert in Norway with Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington.

Barry Manilow, Elvis Costello and Jamiroquai will perform at the Oslo event on 11 December - one day after the prize-giving ceremony.
AR Rahman, Florence and the Machine and Herbie Hancock are also on the bill.
This year's concert will honour jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, winner of the 2010 prize.
The 54-year-old received an 11-year sentence last year for "inciting subversion" after drafting a charter calling for multi-party democracy and respect for human rights in China.
It is doubtful whether the prize will be handed out this year as China may not allow Mr Liu's family to attend the ceremony.
According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, its prestigious award can only be collected by the laureate in person or by close family members.
Swedish chart-topper Robyn, US singer Colbie Caillat and soul star India.Arie will also perform at the concert, an annual event since 1994.
Will Smith, Tom Cruise and Sir Michael Caine are among those who have hosted the concert in previous years.