National / International News

The UN should begin planning for African-led forces in Mali to become a full peacekeeping mission, France tells the Security Council, as clashes continue.

Local dialect is often heard in classrooms around the UK, but one primary school in Middlesbrough has banned pupils from using some words such as 'nowt' and 'yous' in school.

The Monopoly board game is getting a minor makeover. Toy-maker Hasbro asked the public to vote on changes to its iconic tokens. Businesses took note. A footwear company and a garden tool maker launched campaigns to protect the shoe and wheelbarrow tokens. Their fans prevailed. The big loser was the iron figurine.

Simon Doonan, creative ambassador for Barney’s New York, reacted to the loss with “a terrible dull sinking feeling of shock and horror.” He notes that the Monopoly iron was the old-fashioned 19th century kind you heated on a stove, which became obsolete decades ago.

“Historically, the idea of being pressed and Sunday-best was fashionably required,” says Cameron Silver, author of "Decades: A Century of Fashion." “In our casual society, ironing is not a requirement. There’s sort of schlubby-chic look that says it’s okay to be a little wrinkly.”

The notion of business casual has been taken to extremes. People consider it acceptable to wear yoga pants and sweats in public.

In fact, wrinkles can even be considered fashionable.

“It’s perfectly okay and perfectly groovy to wear a nice button-down shirt that is very creased,” says Doonan.

And technology has led to more wrinkle-resistant fabrics. Silver swears by his Brooks Brothers wrinkle-free shirts.

“We dress more like the Flintstones than the Jetsons because there hasn’t been that much change in the way we dress,” says Silver. “But fabrics have changed. And this is one of the reasons why irons might be anachronistic in some households where your fabrics are all permanently pressed.”

But the iron is still an essential tool in high fashion.

“In the creation of design, and in every couture salon, the iron is almost like a religious symbol,” says Doonan.

Speaking of religious symbols, you can still count on most hotel rooms to have a bible in the bedside drawer and an iron in the closet.

Harvard Business School retail historian Nancy Koehn says the number of irons in hotel rooms has increased “because hotel rooms, particularly large chains, have spent a lot of energy and money in the last five years trying to make hotel rooms much more comfortable and amenable to women business travelers.”

She says she doesn’t iron nearly as much as her mother did. But at the same time, Koehn hasn’t retired her iron.

“I iron a few of my clothes. And I have someone who irons a whole lot of my clothes. So my household is pulling up the national average by some measure,” says Koehn.

And just because business for iron-makers is declining in the U.S., the industry isn’t necessarily doomed. Koehn says the market for iron manufacturers is better in the United Kingdom, where the average woman spends 55 minutes a week ironing.

President Obama this afternoon nominated a former petroleum engineer and conservationist as his new interior secretary. His nominee, Sally Jewell, has worn many hats, and the president says that’ll help her balance the need for development and preservation.

“She knows that there’s no contradiction between being good stewards of the land and our economic progress," he says. "That in fact those two things need to go hand-in-hand.”

Sally Jewell once spent a month climbing mountains in Antarctica. Thomas Kiernan is one of her climbing companions and head of the National Park Conservation Association. Jewell serves on the association’s board. Kiernan says he learned a lot about her character during a harrowing climb up Mount Rainier.

“And that was a great example in my mind of her judgment," he explains. "We could handle a little wind, we could handle some snow, a little bit of hail. But lightning, that’s over the top and we need to back down.”

Jewell’s experience with rocky terrain would come in handy at the Interior Department. Oil and natural gas companies are clamoring to drill more on public lands, which environmentalists want left untouched. But she’s got street cred with both sides.

Bob Irvin is president of American Rivers. He likes Jewell’s conservation credentials and the fact that she’s chief executive of REI, a retailer of outdoor gear. Irvin was just in an REI store a few months ago.

“I bought a new sleeping pad," he says. "For camping.”

Irvin says Jewell realized a clean environment was essential for REI’s bottom line. “She has experience as the leader of a company that depends on a healthy environment for its profitability.”

But energy producers also like Jewell’s experience. Kathleen Sgamma is with the Western Energy Alliance, a trade group for independent oil and gas companies. She points out that Jewell once worked as a petroleum engineer. Says Sgamma, “We’re hoping she understands that oil and natural gas development can be done in a very environmentally protective way.”

Sgamma says she’s “cautiously optimistic” about Jewell’s nomination.

The incident comes just after Kevin Prince-Boateng walked off the pitch after hearing racist chants. At the time, the club's president praised the move.

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Police in China detain two government workers after a baby was killed amid an altercation with a couple who had violated the one-child policy.

The supermarket chain, Asda, withdraws four frozen burger products supplied by a Northern Ireland company as a precaution, in the wake of the horsemeat controversy.

All 50 of Boeing's 787 Dreamliners remain grounded after a series of incidents linked to its lithium ion batteries. As a result Japan's All Nippon Airways has cancelled more than 350 flights in February, including international flights to Seattle. But Boeing remains upbeat about the plane's future and is confident that despite the safety scares, airlines won't be cancelling future orders for the aircraft.

Dinesh Keskar is Boeing's senior vice president for Asia Pacific and India. He told the BBC no companies have asked for compensation following the grounding of the Dreamliner and defended the safety of the battery.

"Lithium ion batteries, there have been issues in the past, but at the same time we carefully analyzed everything. Went through the process of certification and we believe that's the right choice even today."

Authorities in Japan and the U.S. are currently investigating whether the batteries are the cause of the problem, but nothing conclusive has yet been found. In the meantime, Boeing has asked U.S. regulators for permission to run test flights of the Dreamliner. Keskar admits the company still doesn't know when the plane will be back in the skies.

Time to pull out your planner and mark your calendar. June 28th is the day Beyonce will launch her U.S. tour. She's performing at L.A.'s Staples Center -- the busiest concert venue in the country. Tickets for that show go on sale this Monday. It's the first time that customers will be able to buy tickets exclusively from AXS, the ticket selling platform developed by entertainment conglomerate AEG.

It is the most recent in a long line of companies that have tried to take on Ticketmaster, and the Beyonce ticket sale will be a big test for the AXS system. Thousands of people will log onto the site all at once, and very few companies outside Ticketmaster have been able to that pull off.

Agata Kaczanowska is a senior analyst at IBIS World. She calls the gamble ”a no-brainer for them because it will boost their income.”

Ticketmaster sold about 150 million tickets last year. Twenty million of those were at AEG venues. So with its own platform, AEG would get to keep ticket fees on those 20 million tickets. And it would have more control over prices.

“And on the flip side, if talent is deciding between several venues AEG can make a more competitive offer for them,” Kaczanowska said.

Most smaller venue owners avoid using Ticketmaster which is known for its high fees. But not all of them.

Barbara Wiggins is the executive director of the Topeka Performing Arts Center in Topeka, Kansas. The 2,500-seat venue has an exclusive contract with Ticketmaster. Wiggins says that the advantage to using Ticketmaster is the massive amount of data the company has collected over the years.

“Well if we're selling a touring Broadway show and Ticketmaster has a database for people that are typically theater buyers in the region then we are able to have access to that information,” she said.

Of course, Ticketmaster's massive size also means it's slower to innovate. This is where AEG hopes to capitalize. One of the features of AXS allows customers to control their entire concert-going experience from purchasing a ticket to buying snacks at the concession window. So you could pre-order a pretzel and a soda and have it waiting for you at your seat.

That way, you won't miss a minute of Beyonce.

An "outdated" measure of educational achievement, focused on a narrow group of academic subjects, is being pushed by the government, Labour has claimed.

There's nothing better on a cold day than a warm bowl of soup. But when did our ancestors first brew up this tasty broth? New archaeological evidence suggests that soup making could be tens of thousands of years old.

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Rupert Murdoch tweets that the Wall Street Journal newspaper is still being attacked by Chinese hackers.

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross who nests at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the North Pacific Ocean, is thought to be at least 62 years old. She's raised an estimated 30 to 35 chicks over the years and flown at least 2 million miles, scientists say.

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Researchers find that 6% of red dwarf stars host habitable, Earth-sized planets - meaning the closest may be just 13 light-years away.

The by-election in Eastleigh to replace former cabinet minister Chris Huhne will be held on 28 February, the Liberal Democrats say.

Tunisia's opposition calls for a nationwide strike over the murder of prominent anti-Islamist politician Chokri Belaid after a day of street protests.

Deutsche Bank suspends traders as part of its inquiries into whether staff attempted to manipulate Libor and other interest rates.

Wales manager Chris Coleman has been hit by the withdrawal of Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey from the friendly against Austria.

As the 2014 deadline looms for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, there's a debate over what kind of military hardware the U.S. will provide in its wake. Afghanistan wants tanks and planes for conventional warfare. But the U.S. says the Afghans need to focus on counterinsurgency.

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As the 2014 deadline looms for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, there's a debate over what kind of military hardware the U.S. will provide in its wake. Afghanistan wants tanks and planes for conventional warfare. But the U.S. says the Afghans need to focus on counterinsurgency.

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