Cousins will receive a £15,000 grant to help him create new solo work
The winner of the first New Adventures Choreographer Award, set up by dancer and choreographer Matthew Bourne, has been named as James Cousins.
The 22-year-old, who beat 14 other finalists, was praised by judges for his "refreshing desire to entertain".
The London Contemporary Dance School graduate will receive a £15,000 grant to work on his choreographic skills.
He will also be mentored by Bourne and will give a showcase performance of his new work next year.
Cousins, from Newbury in Berkshire, graduated from LCDS in 2010 where he received an award for most promising dance artist.
Tom Jackson Greaves was awarded a runner-up prize
Last year he also appeared in Bourne's Swan Lake during its New York season.
The judges, which included Bourne, said they were impressed by Cousins' ambition to form his own company.
Nearly 100 aspiring choreographers applied for the award, set up by Bourne's New Adventures company to mark his 50th birthday last year.
Only one prize was to have been awarded, but the judges decided to create a runner-up prize which they gave to 19-year-old Tom Jackson Greaves.
"Our aim was to find a winner that we feel will benefit most from what New Adventures has to offer, at this stage in their careers," said Bourne.
"I am personally very excited to work with James Cousins and our runner-up Tom Jackson Greaves in helping them to realise some of their ambitions."
The next New Adventures Choreographer Award will be presented in 2013.
More than two million people on the US east coast have been told to evacuate their homes as Hurricane Irene nears, packing winds of 90mph (150km/h).
The mayor of New York has ordered an unprecedented evacuation of a quarter of a million people living in low-lying parts of the city.
Seven states from North Carolina to Connecticut have declared emergencies ahead of Irene's arrival.
US President Barack Obama has warned Irene could be "a historic hurricane".
He has urged people in the projected path of Hurricane Irene - the first hurricane of the Atlantic season - to take precautions.
"Don't wait, don't delay. We all hope for the best, but we have to be prepared for the worst. All of us have to take this storm seriously," he said on Friday, before cutting short his holiday in Martha's Vineyard, an island on the Massachusetts coast, a day early to head back to Washington.
The National Hurricane Center has downgraded Irene from a category two to a category one hurricane but says it is still packing hurricane-force winds of 90mph (150km/h) that extend outwards some 90 miles (150km). Tropical-force winds extend as far as 290m (465km).
The NHC says Irene is expected to weaken in strength after it hits the coast of North Carolina later on Saturday morning, but is forecast to remain a hurricane as it moves north along the mid-Atlantic coast on Sunday.
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President Obama: "If you're in the way of this hurricane you should be preparing now"
More than 200,000 people have already evacuated coastal parts of North Carolina as high waves and strong winds began to lash islands just off the mainland. Residents hoping to ride out the storm have stocked up on food, water and fuel.
Forecasters have warned of "extremely dangerous" storm surges in parts of North Carolina that could raise water levels by as much as 11 ft (3.35m).
"Stores are busy, petrol stations are running dry but thankfully I prepared myself last night with supplies," said Alex Schlesinger of Virginia Beach in the neighbouring state of Virginia, also in the hurricane's path. Grounded flights Tens of thousands of people were also on the move in parts of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and New York City after mandatory evacuations were ordered for people living in low-lying areas.
Parts of New York City affected include the financial district around Wall Street in Manhattan. Hospitals in affected areas of the city had begun evacuating patients.
"We've never done a mandatory evacuation before and we wouldn't be doing it now if we didn't think this storm had the potential to be very serious," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state's transport network, including the New York City subway, would close from midday (16:00 GMT) on Saturday.
Airports operating by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey - including JFK, La Guardia and Newark - will close to arriving flights at the same time.
However, the airports will remain open for departing flights until further notice.
In Washington DC, Sunday's dedication of the new memorial for Martin Luther King Jr - which President Obama had been expected to attend - has been postponed until at least September.
Manhattan, like other parts of the east coast, braces itself for Hurricane Irene
The power company serving the Washington area advised of "potential widespread power outages" at the weekend.
Amtrak, the US rail network, announced it was cancelling services between Washington and Boston from Saturday, having already suspended operations south to Virginia and beyond.
The Pentagon has loaded 200 trucks with emergency supplies, and 100,000 National Guard troops are on standby, the BBC's Steve Kingstone in New York reports.
The American Red Cross said it was preparing dozens of emergency shelters along the east coast.
The eastern seaboard is the most densely populated corridor in the US, with more than 65 million people living in major cities along the coast from Washington to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
States of emergency have been declared in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.
"We're going to have damages, we just don't know how bad," Craig Fugate, head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the Associated Press news agency.
"This is one of the largest populations that will be impacted by one storm at one time."
If Irene hits New York and New England at category two, it will be the region's strongest storm since Hurricane Bob glanced off Massachusetts in 1991, and Hurricane Gloria, which caused extensive damage to New York City in 1985.
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Motown executive Esther Gordy Edwards - the sister of label founder Berry Gordy - has died at the age of 91.
She served as senior vice-president and was charged with exposing the unique Motown sound to international audiences.
She also led the efforts to turn Motown's original headquarters in Detroit into a museum.
Berry Gordy started the famed label, home to such artists as Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, in 1959.
A statement on the Motown Museum's website said Edwards died "surrounded by family and friends" on 24 August.
Edwards - Gordy's eldest sister - held several positions within the label but is best known for turning Motown's famed Studio A in Detroit into an attraction after the company moved to Los Angeles.
Gordy called her "one of my biggest assets at Motown".
He said: "Esther turned the so-called trash left behind after I sold the company in 1988 into a phenomenal world-class monument."
She also worked with several of Motown's biggest artists through the years such as Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye
Stevie Wonder said in a statement: "She believed in me. When I was 14 years old and many other people didn't or could only see what they could at the time, she championed me being in Motown."
"I shared with her many of my songs first before anyone else," he added.
Playwright Sir David Hare has been awarded this year's Pen/Pinter Prize, it has been announced.
The award, set up by the writers' charity Pen in memory of playwright Harold Pinter, is given to a British writer who casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze upon the world.
Pinter's widow, Lady Antonia Fraser, said Sir David was a "worthy winner".
He will be presented with his prize on 10 October at the British Library.
The award will be shared with an imprisoned "writer of courage" who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs, to be announced at the event.
Lady Antonia said: "In the course of his long, distinguished career, David Hare has never failed to speak out fearlessly on the subject of politics in the broadest sense.
"This courage, combined with his rich creative talent, makes him a worthy winner of the Pen/Pinter Prize".
Known for his gritty portrayals of contemporary Britain, Sir David's notable works include Plenty, a portrait of disillusionment in post-war Britain, and The Absence of War, a drama about the Labour Party.
He was nominated for Oscars for The Hours, in 2003, and for Kate Winslet drama The Reader, in 2008.
He has also directed and written spy thriller Page Eight, starring Bill Nighy and Rachel Weisz, which will be screened on BBC Two on Sunday 28 August at 21:00 BST.
Pete Postlethwaite's widow Jacqueline (second left) and son William (second right) were among those at the event
The family of the late actor Pete Postlethwaite have attended a ceremony to name a drama studio in his honour.
The star's widow Jacqueline Morrish and son William were among the family members at the Postlethwaite Studio in the Pyramid Arts Centre in Warrington.
Mrs Morrish said: "I understand why he means so much to everybody in Warrington and I think it's lovely."
The Brassed Off actor was born and grew up in the Cheshire town. He died of cancer in January at the age of 64.
Postlethwaite was nominated for an Oscar in 1993 for his role in In the Name of the Father and is also remembered for films including The Usual Suspects and Jurassic Park.
Postlethwaite's cousin Joe Lawless, a headteacher, recalled how the actor would take a string of co-stars to his mother's house in Warrington for Sunday lunch because he was proud of his roots in the town.
Mr Lawless said: "I could give you a roll of honour of all the people who had Pete's mum's Sunday roast."
He added: "He was determined, he was articulate, he was driven for perfection but he was also a very affectionate, a very loving, a very polite and kind person."
The studio in the council-run arts centre is used for training, therapy and rehearsals in the arts. Warrington Borough Council leader Terry O'Neill said it would help young performers.
"If we can put something in place where we can remember Pete and give a chance for local kids to do what Pete did, they may go on to great things," he said.
Gunmen have fired at an Israeli bus which was travelling near the Egyptian border, wounding at least four people, Israeli sources say.
The bus was attacked north of the Israeli Red Sea resort city of Eilat.
Several gunmen ambushed the civilian bus, Israeli radio said.
The gunfire appeared to come from the Egyptian side of the border, and came shortly after an Egged bus left Eilat, heading north, security sources told the AFP news agency.
A vehicle carrying the gunmen seemed to have followed the bus, then two to three men jumped out and opened fire with automatic weapons, Israeli radio reported quoting Israeli officials.
Security forces are said to be in pursuit of the gunmen's vehicle.
About 2,000 families from Zawiyah, Tripoli and other cities near the fighting on the Libyan coast passed through one rebel checkpoint on Wednesday, according to rebel officials registering the names. Cars and trucks, piled high with refrigerators and other household items, filled a road to the Nafusah Mountains.
People fleeing Tripoli said there was no electricity there on Wednesday, a further sign of the toll the rebellion has taken in Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold, where prices of basic goods have soared amid shortages.
The exodus was occurring five days after a broad offensive by the rebels, in which they have collaborated with local fighters to seize strategic towns in a bid to shift the course of a stalled war. Their gains have been hard to tally: reports of towns falling to the rebels are frequently amended hours later.
A U.S. official said Wednesday that the United States had deployed two more Predator drones for surveillance operations over Libya, further increasing the pressure on Qaddafi’s forces, according to Reuters. The drones arrived earlier this week, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was not immediately clear how many U.S. drones had been deployed for the NATO mission so far.
As rebel officials chased rumors of high-level defections from Colonel Qaddafi’s inner circle, his government confirmed on Tuesday that a senior security official had left. The Libyan government’s chief spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, said that the official, Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah, who flew to Cairo on a private plane on Monday, had suffered “social and emotional pressures” before his defection.
The fighting on Wednesday continued in cities that dot the western mountains, including Gheryan in the east and Tiji in the west. Heavy fighting was also reported in Sabratha, on the coast, and doctors who worked in Surman said that city was under rebel control.
By the early afternoon, doctors at a clinic in Bir Muammar, about six miles from the front lines, said three rebels had been killed in the day’s fighting, a much lower tally than in previous days. Wooden coffins were strewn on the lawn outside the clinic, including one big enough only for an infant.
Wounded men were brought in by ambulance and in private cars, a doctor said, including one who was shot in the jaw and had lost his tongue.
The Associated Press, quoting a rebel commander in Zawiyah, said 100 Qaddafi soldiers remained inside the refinery. The commander, Osama Arusi, said an oil pipeline to Tripoli had been cut off, but his assertion could not be immediately confirmed.
Elsewhere in Zawiyah, government snipers were stationed in tall buildings, including a hospital in the city. The rebels also said they had managed to keep control of a highway connecting Tunisia and Tripoli.
But it was not clear that the rebels could or would halt all traffic to the capital. At the Tunisian border on Tuesday, trucks carrying rice and wheat were preparing to drive to Tripoli. Their drivers said they had received news that there were routes around the fighting.
On the eastern front around the coastal city of Brega, insurgents were battling Qaddafi forces for control of an oil refinery, The Associated Press reported. Fighting has swept through Brega several times during the war, and the refinery has not been operating for several months. Rebel forces said 18 insurgents were killed and 33 wounded in fighting on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Reuters.
NEW DELHI — Having trumped a government effort to defuse his anticorruption movement, the protest leader Anna Hazare announced that he would leave a city jail on Friday and begin a mass demonstration and hunger strike at a public ground in the national capital.
Mr. Hazare had initially suggested that he would emerge from Tihar Jail on Thursday and lead a public protest against corruption at Ramlila Maidan, a large outdoor public space in New Delhi. But with an enormous crowd expected to participate, Mr. Hazare’s aides announced on Thursday that another day was needed to adequately prepare the protest site.
“I just spoke to Anna ji, in view of conditions of Ramlila Maidan,” an aide, Arvind Kejriwal, said in a press release, affixing the Hindi-language honorific of “ji” to Mr. Hazare’s name. “Anna ji will reach Ramlila Maidan tomorrow.”
The delay means that for another night Mr. Hazare will remain inside Tihar Jail, where he has been fasting since his controversial arrest on Tuesday. Thousands of people have poured into the streets in different Indian cities this week to express support for Mr. Hazare and his campaign to create a new, independent anti-corruption agency with sweeping powers to investigate government officials.
His incarceration has become a major political crisis for India’s national government, especially after Mr. Hazare rejected a government offer to release him on Tuesday night. He refused because the release was contingent on his agreement to limit the scale and length of his hunger strike, terms he declined to accept. With pressure mounting, a deal was reached early Thursday morning under which Mr. Hazare agreed to limit his protest to 15 days and the police lifted any restrictions on the size of his crowd.
Mr. Hazare’s refusal to leave jail had seemed to galvanize his supporters and tapped into a public disgust with official corruption. More than 10,000 people marched through New Delhi on Wednesday in a peaceful rally that began at the India Gate monument.
Fueled by nonstop television coverage, the jailhouse protest appeared to capture the imagination of the country and back government leaders into a political corner.
Corruption is a source of growing public anger and frustration in India, and threatens to drag down the coalition government led by the National Congress Party. Mired in scandals for months, Congress Party leaders have tried to convince the public that they are cracking down on corruption, yet public skepticism remains high.
Mr. Hazare’s presence in the jail was especially embarrassing to the government because several politicians charged with corruption are being held there
Leaders announced a national council Wednesday at a news conference in Sana, Yemen. Plans call for choosing a president and a 20-member executive committee.
Seven months after demonstrators first took to the streets in Yemen calling for democracy, opposition leaders formed a national council on Wednesday to act as a government-in-waiting, a provocative step the government condemned even before it was announced.
The council consists of 143 members recruited from a broad array of tribal sheiks, protest leaders, southern separatists, military commanders and former members of the governing party. It was created to unite a fractured opposition and reinvigorate an uprising that has ground to a virtual standstill.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in Saudi Arabia recovering from a bomb attack that left him gravely wounded, has insisted that he will return and resume power. In anticipation of the opposition’s forming a national council, the government spokesman, Abdu al-Janadi, said last week in an online posting that such a move would amount to “a declaration of war.”
“This is an action that means to create a state within a state and create civil war in Yemen,” Mr. Janadi wrote.
The council, which includes 11 women, plans to choose a president and a 20-member executive committee.
An opposition leader, Mohammed Basandwa, announced the creation of the group at a crowded news conference on Wednesday inside Sana University, a center of the continuing antigovernment protests. After the announcement, organizers issued a statement saying the council hoped to “escalate the struggle.”
The opposition has remained incredibly resilient for months, with core demonstrators remaining camped out on the streets, even during this holy month of Ramadan, when the faithful do not eat or drink during daylight hours.
But from the very start in January, divergent political agendas have made it difficult to find a strong and agreed upon leadership within the opposition. A rift between the original youth protesters and formal opposition leaders grew deeper as the weeks stretched into months, prompting each side to name its own “transitional council.”
Naming a national council seeks to reverse those divisions.
Unlike Libya’s national council, Yemen’s shadow government does not control any territory or have any tangible authority. Its announcement is largely strategic and symbolic. That the opposition was able to announce the council on the day it said it would was a rare showing of political organization.
But still, one independent Yemeni protester, Faris Siraj, said the council was “without value or use” because Mr. Saleh remained president. A Yemeni diplomat speaking on the condition of anonymity, in keeping with diplomatic protocol, said “the council will only prolong the current stalemate.”
Members of the governing party have said that early presidential elections are the only way out of the current political impasse, in which the opposition has refused to work with the governing party as long as Mr. Saleh remains president.
Additionally, the national council is not part of the internationally-backed political transition plan for Yemen. In that plan, still on the table, the opposition would share leadership responsibilities with the governing party for a set period of time.
Mr. Saleh has been recuperating from the bomb attack on the presidential palace in early June. He appeared on state television on Tuesday, looking more healthy than during previous appearances, and vowed that he would return to Yemen.
Nigerian soldiers have responded to the insurgent threat with a crackdown in Maiduguri. More Photos »
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — A shadowy Islamist insurgency that has haunted northern Nigeria — surviving repeated, bloody efforts to eliminate it — appears to be branching out and collaborating with Al Qaeda’s affiliates, alarming Western officials and analysts who had previously viewed the militants here as a largely isolated, if deadly, menace.
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Maiduguri and Kaleri in the north have suffered attacks.
Just two years ago, the Islamist group stalking police officers in this bustling city seemed on the verge of extinction. In a heavy-handed assault, Nigerian soldiers shelled its headquarters and killed its leader, leaving a grisly tableau of charred ruins, hundreds dead and outmatched members of the group, known as Boko Haram, struggling to fight back, sometimes with little more than bows and arrows.
Now, insurgents strike at the Nigerian military, the police and opponents of Islamic law in near-daily assaults and bombings, using improvised explosive devices that can be detonated remotely and bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Western officials and analysts say. Beyond the immediate devastation, the fear is that extremists bent on jihad are spreading their reach across the continent and planting roots in a major, Western-allied state that had not been seen as a hotbed of global terrorism.
In the past two years, Boko Haram has met and trained with Qaeda affiliates outside the country, American and Nigerian officials and analysts say, and the group has begun waging a propaganda campaign that includes conference calls with reporters — another sign of its growing sophistication.
“Where are they getting this knowledge of I.E.D.’s?” said Kashim Shettima, the new governor here. “Some of them went as far as Sudan. Why? I believe they are making efforts to reach out to the global terrorism network.”
The Nigerian government appears to have only a shaky grasp of how to confront the threat, responding with such a broad, harsh crackdown that many residents see the military as more of a danger than Boko Haram. Shops are shuttered, vans laden with refugees can be seeing heading out of town and the normally wide, traffic-choked streets lined with neem trees are unexpectedly clear.
About 140 people have died in the violence since January, according to Amnesty International, including dozens of civilians killed by the military. Most of Boko Haram’s attacks have occurred here in this city at the edge of the Sahara, but there have also been blasts farther south in Kaduna and outside the national police headquarters in the capital, Abuja.
Several dozen civilians were killed in June when bombs were hurled into the rudimentary outdoor beer parlors that exist furtively on the Christian-minority fringes here. Shariah law exists in this overwhelmingly Muslim region, but in a relatively loose form. Not all women are veiled, and beer and wine can be obtained — apparently an affront, the authorities here say, to the group’s goal of imposing strict Islamic law in this country’s restive and impoverished north.
Boko Haram’s militants fade into the warrens of sandy alleys, protected, officials say, by supporters in the population and even in the security services. The brutal Nigerian military tactics — shoot first, ask questions later — are creating more sympathizers on the ground, analysts and residents here suggest.
“You are Boko Haram!” said Saude Maman, recounting how soldiers yelled at her husband on July 9 after a patrol vehicle was bombed and the military cordoned off Kaleri, a district of low cement houses and courtyards.
When her husband denied it, “they dragged him to the courtyard and shot him,” said Ms. Maman, sitting with a group of women in front of a scorched house. Four of them said they had lost their husbands that night.
Ms. Maman, dressed in black from head to foot, told of holding her spouse as he died and then having to pay about $20 to recover his body. At least 25 people died in that operation alone, Amnesty says. A week later, the neighborhood still showed the scars of the military’s nocturnal onslaught: burned-out vehicles, charred walls, melted cookware.
Boko Haram’s growing sophistication is not being matched by the government’s, analysts contend. Last month, at another insurgent attack near the military headquarters here, a blasted-out jeep lay on its side, a pool of blood forming under it. No soldiers were guarding the fresh crime scene, and no evidence was being gathered from it, an hour after the blast, even though several security-force personnel were wounded, one severely
Cousins will receive a £15,000 grant to help him create new solo work 
Tom Jackson Greaves was awarded a runner-up prize 
