Homes evacuated as flooding persists

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Media captionA man is rescued from his near-submerged car in Mytholmroyd, Calderdale

Emergency teams are working to evacuate people from homes in York, as flooding continues to hit northern England.

Police advised between 300 and 400 people to evacuate near the River Ouse and River Foss in York, with up to 3,500 properties at risk.

Hundreds of flood alerts and warnings are in place for England, Wales and Scotland, including more than 30 severe warnings - indicating danger to life.

The environment minister said the government will review flood defences.

Liz Truss said there had been "unprecedented" levels of rainfall in parts of northern England, saying it was "right to say" flood defences had been "overwhelmed".

She warned some rivers had not yet reached their expected high peak, saying the Army had been deployed in York, Leeds, and parts of Lancashire.

PM David Cameron is due to chair an emergency conference call later and will visit some of the flood-affected areas on Monday.

Latest updates from northern England

In pictures: North of England flooding

Officials said pumps at the Foss Barrier - where the River Foss joins the River Ouse - had been overwhelmed and flood barriers had to be lifted, meaning areas in York that would usually be protected were now vulnerable to flooding.

York City Council said the River Ouse was expected to peak at more than 5m - close to to its highest recorded level of 5.40m.

The Environment Agency said the River Ouse's water level had reached 4.65m at 04:00 GMT on Sunday. Its typical level is between 0.5m and 1.9m.

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Media captionDrone footage of the collapsed Waterside pub in Summerseat

In other developments:

• The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued a number of warnings and alerts
• Homes have been evacuated after flooding brought "chaos" to roads in north Wales
• Red Cross volunteers are using 4x4s to transport doctors and nurses to Bangor Hospital due to flooding on the A55
• The River Aire in Leeds reached "record levels" at 23:00 GMT on Saturday, the Environment Agency said
• Electricity North West warned power may not be restored to some homes until Monday
• Residents of the Windsor House residential home, in York, were moved to other care homes after the basement flooded
• North Yorkshire Police said they had run out of "road closed" signs
• More than 50 people, mostly elderly residents, spent the night in a British Red Cross shelter in Bury
• Northern Rail is advising passengers not to travel in Cumbria, East Lancashire and West Yorkshire on Sunday journey

Resident Brian Marshall said flood waters in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, had been running with such force on Saturday night that sandbags had been "ripped up".

He said: "It was just impossible to do anything."

Meanwhile, Nigel Evans, the Conservative MP for Ribble Valley, called on the government to release funds immediately to help those affected.

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Media captionOnlookers watch as a caravan smashes into a bridge in Shipley, West Yorkshire

On Saturday, Lancashire bore the brunt of the flooding, along with parts of Yorkshire.

People in 3,500 York properties near the River Foss, a tributary of the Ouse, were advised to move belongings upstairs and to be ready to leave.

Areas of Greater Manchester, including Salford, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Wigan, were also badly affected by flooding, with more than 300 flood-related calls to the fire service in 24 hours.

Further rain

BBC Weather forecaster Alex Deakin said while there would be more rain in the north of England during Sunday, it would not be as intense or prolonged as the downpours on Saturday.

The Met Office issued a yellow warning for ice in parts of Scotland, but no further weather warnings were in place on Sunday morning.

People can access information from council websites and the Environment Agency Floodline.

The agency is also operating a phone line - 0345 988 1188 - which will be staffed rather than offering recorded information.

Image captionBBC reporter Lauren Potts captured this scene in Kirkstall Road, Leeds

Image copyrightGetty Images

Image captionThe River Calder bursts its banks in Mytholmroyd bringing flooding to many properties

Live flood warnings from the Environment Agency and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

Note: the Environment Agency and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency display their flood alert data differently. While the Environment Agency highlights individual rivers only, in Scotland the entire region is coloured to indicate the level of alert. This map and flood alert data are supplied to the BBC by third parties. The BBC is not responsible for its accuracy and you use it at your own risk.

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Will pollsters redeem themselves in 2016? By David Cowling

Image copyrightGetty Images

There is a theory that political polls in the UK suffer a car crash once every 20 years or so.

In 1970, the majority of polls suggested a Labour victory but the Conservatives won the election.

In 1992, 38 out of 50 campaign polls suggested narrow Labour leads yet the Conservatives won with a seven-point lead in the national vote.

And in 2015, out of 92 campaign polls, 17 registered a dead heat between the Conservatives and Labour and 42 recorded Labour leads when the election outcome was a seven-point Conservative lead.

% gap between Conservative and Labour	All polls	Conservative leads	Labour leads
0	17	-	-
1	32	15	17
2	22	7	15
3	10	3	7
4	7	5	2
5	1	1	-
6	3	2	1
Total	92	33	42

In retrospect, 2015 began with powerful indicators of the shape of things to come. The Lib Dems languished well below the 24% share of the vote they received in the 2010 general election, UKIP maintained their place as the third party in GB-wide opinion polls, and the SNP totally dominated Scottish public opinion.

However, on the critical issue of support for Conservative versus Labour, the polls in January 2015 overwhelmingly suggested both were neck and neck and that a hung parliament was the most likely outcome in May.

Benefit of hindsight

Looking below the surface of the headline voting intention figures, Mori's question on satisfaction/dissatisfaction with party leaders in January 2015 found David Cameron at -17, Ed Miliband at -35 and Nick Clegg at -39.

And in the same month, a Lord Ashcroft poll recorded a 15-point lead for the Conservatives on which party was best to manage the economy.

Another Lord Ashcroft poll in February found David Cameron with a 31% lead over Ed Miliband as the one best at "doing the job of prime minister overall".

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionDespite many polls saying the May election was too close to call, Labour were roundly defeated and Mr Miliband resigned as leader

A number of people suggest that if we had all paid more attention to these findings then the eventual outcome would not have been such a surprise. Given the result it is difficult to disagree with such advice - but all of us would have benefited if more of it had been given before rather than after polling day.

In the event, the final 2015 election campaign polls from nine polling companies resulted in three giving Labour leads, three offering a dead heat and three suggesting Conservative leads - two registering one-point leads and the other a lead of three points - far below the eventual seven-point gap.

Weighting

Within 24 hours of the election result, the British Polling Council launched an independent inquiry into the performance of the polls. Chaired by Prof Patrick Sturgis and assisted by colleagues such as Prof Jane Green, their conclusions will be made public in mid-January.

They will be looking closely at a number of possible explanations: late swing, shy Tories, lazy Labour voters, differential turnout, sample weighting and whether we are any longer able to contact representative samples of the population.

But the impact of the 2015 polling experience has already been felt. During the months May-December following the 2010 general election, more than 190 voting intention polls were published; in the comparable period in 2015, the figure was 34.

Organisations that commission Westminster voting polls may not have lost their appetite completely but they seem to have been on a pretty fierce diet since May.

Image copyrightReuters

Image captionWill the pollsters redeem themselves in the run-up to the EU referendum?

However, those who thought the opinion polls would take a long time to emerge from the rubble of the May 2015 general election appear to have been rather premature.

Polling on the forthcoming European referendum is alive and kicking; and the seeming neck-and-neck support for "Remain" and "Leave" that emerged in December will do little to discourage the commissioning of further polls on the subject.

How the polls perform in predicting the result of that referendum, following the scale of their failure in the general election, will be of great significance.

Will the pollsters prove that 2015 was simply the latest in a 20-year cycle of significant mishits, or will their performance lead us to conclude that there are some really fundamental problems facing political polling in this country?

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Argentina activist reunited with 'wrong granddaughter'

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionMaria "Chicha" Mariani (left) met the woman mistakenly identified as Clara Anahi Mariani Teruggi (right) on Thursday

A 92-year-old Argentine activist who spent nearly half of her life looking for her missing granddaughter will need to resume her search after a case of mistaken identity.

Maria Isabel Mariani, known as Chicha, announced on Thursday that she had finally met her granddaughter.

Clara Anahi Mariani Teruggi was abducted by the military in 1976.

But a prosecutor working on the case said Ms Mariani had been introduced to the wrong woman.

The announcement on Thursday was hailed as another triumph for the campaign group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which was formed to reunite families with their missing children.

Even President Mauricio Macri celebrated the news on his Twitter account.

But two days later DNA tests were released showing that the woman Ms Mariani met was not her missing granddaughter.

"There is no genetic match between Ms Mariani and her alleged granddaughter," said prosecutor Pablo Parenti, Head of the Attorney General's Unit for Cases of Child Appropriation.

Image copyrightTwitter/@mauriciomacri

Image captionArgentina's president tweeted: "I want to wish Chicha Mariani, her granddaughter, and all the family a happy Christmas reunion."

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionMs Mariani is a former president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo

She founded her own organisation, the Anahi Foundation, which includes one of her granddaughter's names, after stepping down as president of the Grandmothers in 1989.

Results from an official bank of genetic samples were negative.

Ms Mariani, who is nearly blind, is devastated, said Anahi Foundation spokesman Juan Martin Ramos Padilla.

"It was a hard blow for Chicha," he said, adding that she is determined to carry on.

"She is 92 and will continue searching for her granddaughter. We just hope to be able to find her."

Parents targeted

Her granddaughter was abducted 39 years ago at just three months old.

Her parents, Daniel Mariani and Diana Teruggi, were members of the Montoneros left-wing group.

The baby was taken from their home in an operation in which Diana Teruggi was killed.

Ms Mariani's son, Daniel, escaped but went into hiding and was killed a few months later.

There is no suggestion that the woman who met Ms Mariani had attempted to deceive her. The Buenos Aires Herald identified her as Maria Elena Wehrli.

She arrived at Ms Mariani's house on Christmas Eve with the results of a DNA test carried out by a private laboratory," said Mr Parenti.

"The National Genetic Database is the only body authorised to determine the identity in these cases," he added.

The grandmothers and the missing

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionFormer military leader Jorge Rafael Videla died aged 87 while serving a sentence for crimes against humanity

The Grandmothers encourage children who were born during the military government, between 1976 and 1983, and have any doubts over their identity to come forward and do a DNA test.

The organisation has already reunited 119 children to their families, the most recent last month.

Most pregnant women arrested by Argentina's secret police were killed shortly after giving birth.

Some 500 children were abducted from their mothers in captivity.

They were often given for adoption for non-communist families. In other cases they were just handed over to orphanages.

Some of the adoptive parents knew of their children's backgrounds, but many of them did not.

Some 30,000 people are estimated to have been killed during more than seven years of military rule in Argentina.

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Chinese mine owner kills himself as 17 miners remain trapped

Image copyrightAP

Image captionA number of miners have so far been rescued (pictured), with one body recovered

The owner of a gypsum mine in China's eastern Shandong province has killed himself, as rescuers try to reach 17 miners who have been trapped for two days, state media report.

One person died and four miners escaped when the mine collapsed on Friday.

Since then, rescue workers have managed to pull a number of miners to safety.

China has a long history of industrial accidents. The latest incident comes days after a deadly landslide caused by construction waste in southern China.

Ma Congbo, the chairman of Yurong company which owns the mine, drowned himself by jumping into a mine well early on Sunday, China's Xinhua news agency reports.

His motive is not clear but the Chinese authorities have toughened the punishment of employers who are negligent, says the BBC's Stephen Evans in Beijing.

Mr Ma killed himself two days after the mine collapsed in Pingyi County's Linyi city, Shandong Province, just before 20:00 local time. It is not yet clear what caused the collapse.

Rescuers have drilled a hole to access some of the trapped workers, and are trying to transfer food and water, officials say. More than 700 emergency officials are involved in rescue efforts, according to Linyi Mayor Zhang Shuping.

Image copyrightReuters

Image captionHundreds of emergency officials are said to be involved in the rescue operation

Xinhua news agency reports that seven people have been rescued so far.

The facility was used to mine gypsum, a soft mineral that is widely used in construction.

The latest incident comes a week after a landslide in the southern city of Shenzhen killed one person and left another 75 people missing, presumed dead.

Authorities say the landslide was caused when a huge man-made mound of earth and construction debris lost stability and collapsed.

It is one in a series of industrial accidents to occur this year, with questions raised about rapid industrialisation and safety standards in China.

This tightening of safety law in recent years is credited with bringing a fall in the number of deaths of miners at work from 7,000 a year in 2002 to 931 last year, our correspondent says.

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