Plus: Gang violence in Ecuador, and the men taken in by a pay-for-pregnancy scam
| | | | | | | Hello. Quite often a story is all over the news in one country, and virtually unheard of beyond its borders. This is very much the case for the UK's Post Office scandal. But today we shed light on what is a fascinating case of a TV true-story drama having a massive political impact. In India, Geeta Pandey reports on a scam luring men with both sex and money. And finally, are you more of a Bill or a Michael? There might be more to it than you think. |
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| | | | Top of the agenda | | How a TV drama reignited UK's Post Office scandal | | | | Mr Bates and the Post Office has been seen by nine million viewers so far in the UK. Credit: ITV |
| | Sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are part of the fabric of British life. They run small post offices within their communities, often alongside their village shop or newsagent business. But between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 of them were convicted of theft or fraud because faulty accounting software suggested money had gone missing. Some served jail time. Many say their lives and reputations were shattered. For years, they have been at the heart of one of the biggest judicial scandals in recent British history. And it has been brought back to the front pages by a TV drama aired last week. Mr Bates vs the Post Office focuses on the true story of one sub-postmaster's quest for compensation and accountability. It has resonated so strongly with the British public that the government has reacted. It is "very, very close" to announcing how it will overturn wrongful convictions, a minister said. | | | | |
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| | | | | | | | AT THE SCENE | India | | The All India Pregnant Job Service con | | Police in India say hundreds of men have fallen victim to a scam in which they were tempted by a job advert promising big money in return for getting a woman pregnant. We hear from two of them, including a 33-year-old father-of-two who earns 15,000 rupees ($180; £142) per month. | | | | Mangesh was asked to fork out more than 16,000 rupees to obtain court documents, as safety deposit and as Goods and Services Tax on the money he would get. The scammers sent him photos of "seven-eight women", asking him to choose the one he would like to impregnate. "They said they would book a hotel room in the town where I lived," he said. When Mangesh kept asking for the promised money, they sent him a receipt saying they had credited his bank account with 512,400 rupees but the money would be paid after he'd paid 12,600 as income tax. |
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| | | | Beyond the headlines | | Looking like a Michael | | | | Nikki Haley thinks her husband looks more like a Michael than a Bill. Credit: Getty Images |
| | Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley's husband was born Bill Haley. But when they first started dating, she said she told him: "You just don't look like a Bill." She started to call him Michael, his middle name. It became his actual name. The anecdote has sparked a conversation on the personalities - and political leanings - Americans assign to first names. | | | | |
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| | | | Something different | | Mamma mia | | How The Sopranos started out as a comedy about an overbearing mother. | | |
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| | | | And finally... | | Picture this. You're invited at the last minute to a costume party (theme: fin de siècle decadence) and you can't get your hands on the false moustache you bought four years ago for another event (theme: Super Mario). Well, you wouldn't be the only one. At least 1,700 items are missing from English museums, according to replies to freedom of information requests. They include an upper-lip postiche, a gun-sighting telescope and a Saddam Hussein calendar. Check out the other missing artefacts. |
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