04/04/2017 North West Tonight

The so-called wonder material, graphene,

A priest has gone on trial today, accused of abusing a boy

at a Catholic seminary in Lancashire almost forty years ago.

Liverpool Crown Court heard Father Michael Higginbottom,

who's now 74 - breached his position of trust in an horrific way.

He denies eight charges relating to the boy, Ian Haslam reports.

Father Michael Higginbotham arriving for the start

of his trial this morning, a man who the prosecution alleges

had been in a position of trust and had breached that trust

He had been a priest and teacher at St Joseph's Roman Catholic

From the late 1800s until the early 1990s, this now disused building

had educated boys aged between 11 and 18.

Many including the alleged victim had aspirations of becoming priests.

But, the court was told, it quickly became a cold and dark,

forbidding place for him where he suffered mental,

The abuse he said began shortly after he arrived at St Joseph's

and in the private quarters of Father Higginbotham.

Asked how many times he had been abused, he replied, a lot.

After six months, and desperate to leave the seminary,

He told police he was deliberately caught with it.

He was subsequently expelled and says he ran to meet his parents

He first revealed the allegations to a friend in 2013 who encouraged

Asked today why he had never spoken of the experiences before this,

he replied, "I'd spent a lifetime trying to cover this up,

I'd never even talked about it to my wife,

Father Higginbotham was arrestedat his home in Newcastle in 2015.

The courts heard he'd told police he did not remember the alleged

victim and that the allegations were total lies.

He denies eight counts of sexual abuse as the trial

The so-called wonder material, graphene,

discovered here in the North West, has made another breakthrough.

One with the potential to save millions of lives around the world.

As you may have just heard on the 10 o'clock news,

researchers at Manchester University have come up with a new way

of turning sea water into clean drinking water.

So having discovered graphene here, how can our region ensure we benefit

We'll be hearing from an expert in just a moment, but first,

our Chief Reporter Dave Guest has more on this latest discovery.

Water is an increasingly rare commodity yet fast areas of our

planet are covered by. Scientists believe they have found a cheap and

simple way of turning sea water into drinking water. It involves using a

filter made from graphing. Depict the graphing on top of this polymer

support. So this black is grapheme? Yes. Then we put this somewhere

here, and we apply the, fill the container with Asus -- with sea

water and apply pressure. The sea water is being squeezed through the

membrane and you have clean water here. This method of desalination is

quicker and easier and less energy required for this process, we should

work closely with industry to make sure this product is a viable for

commercial applications. And they want to keep Manchester ahead of the

game when it comes to finding uses for the material first extracted

here. Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan

is an expert and researcher in Graphene at the university

of Manchester and earlier he told me how projects like this

might ultimately benefit It is very important to turn what

we're doing in the lab to something that people can benefit from. We

have the innovation Centre that we are building and all these are about

working with industry, the manufacturers and end users as early

in the development process as possible. So that the ideas, the

research we do in the lab has, in order for it to be successful must

be scaled up and optimised and integrated to system and all that

needs to be done in partnership with industry which is exactly what we're

doing now. And I suppose that will take some time. It's depends on the

application, yes, it could take a few years, 20 years, depending on

the field. We have heard lots of stories about how grapheme could

revolutionise every day object but how much is it being used at the

moment? There isn't really anything you can go out now and by, maybe a

tennis racket but other than that there is not anything you can buy

that has grapheme in it that benefits from it. But there are a

lot of prototypes, we work with over 50 companies just in Manchester and

hundreds around the world pussy or her prototypes that are either

designed to compete with something that is already in the market or

something which we probably don't have yet, but it is more than just

can we make something, it is can we make something that works really

well, a step change and can also be made cost-effective and cheaply so

people will buy it. Those are the challenges. The engineering and

commercial challenges which are difficult to predict how long that

will take. Exciting times for science in Manchester. A grey place

to be. Taking over Cambridge a bit? We are definitely in the top three

or four universities in the UK and are doing very well in terms of

science, we have been revolutionary things in terms of how we

commercialise science, for grapheme it is not just the UK will in the

world this is the place to be. Thank you.

A man's been remanded in custody after several pit-bull type animals

Armed officers shot dead two dogs, seized two others and a 5th is still

missing following the incident on Sunday in Queens Park.

39 year old Daniel Hennessy is charged with two counts

of allowing dogs to be dangerously out of control, affray

Police in Lancashire say they'll have to spend an extra

?450,000 a month due to an increase in activity

The force says it's having to place more officers at the site

on Preston New Road as protests are increasing.

She's one of Manchester's most famous women.

Emmeline Pankhurst was one of the founders

of the Suffragette movement - and played a crucial part

She will soon be remembered with a statue in St Peter's Square -

the first of a woman in the city in more than a century.

Today the winning design was unveiled.

When it comes to statues and Manchester, there's a common theme.

Of the 17 staring down at us in the city's

streets and squares, 16 are of men.

The exception is this lady put up in 1901, 116 years ago.

There should be more female statues in Manchester.

I come from a culture where men are more than women.

That is your culture, I am shocked for you.

But this lady will go a small way to change that.

The winning design unveiled today for a statue of celebrated

suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.

Having a coffee with a friend of mine, in the sculpture hall, she

said, these oral men, were other women.

So if I had something to do about this, I said I will.

Women of Britain, you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Emmeline's famous slogan, was words, not deeds.

Born in 1858 in Moss Side, to many she symbolises the struggle

women made at the start of the 20th century.

As the suffragettes became more militant, she was arrested six times

and staged the first prison hunger strike.

The suffragettes won the streets ringing bells,

summoning people from their home to come and listen to her

A check is brought as a makeshift Bostrom.

As an artist it is important to celebrate the lives and stories of

Emmeline's statue will be unveiled in 2019.

But first, ?300,000 must be raised to fund it.

Securing her legacy in the city where she fought so hard for women -

Abbie Jones, BBC North West Tonight, Manchester.

Football and in the Premier League games Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored in

injury time penalty that Manchester United drew at home again against

Everton while Burnley beat Stoke by one goal is nil. In the championship

Wigan lost 3-0 Ipswich well Preston scored five in Bristol city at

In week one there were winds for In week one there were winds for

both Rochdale and Bolton. Just don't have a look at incredible CCTV

footage, this rare TV giraffe dropped more than six feet as it

arrived yesterday morning at the zoo. It follows a 15 month

pregnancy. We don't know the sex or name of it yet, at just over a

-day-old calf already stands five feet tall. That's all the news and

Good evening, some really good spells and sunshine across the

region is rumoured to the day-to-day. Here is Blackpool

looking absolutely glorious. Think over the next couple of days because

of the wind direction if you follow that isobars the wind coming towards

us from the Northwest, we will have quite a bit of cloud cover times but

still room for brightness even there. As we speak we still have

quite a bit of clear whether around, the story is equal to the writers

for the cloud to push its way in. Over high-level routes there could

be tedious parts of Brazil button could not that might not want be

much more than that. Temperatures will stick around seven or eight as

we head into the early hours so for tomorrow morning like this morning a

grey start to the day, a teeny spot of drizzle and today it rained up

quite quickly, tomorrow we will not have brilliant blue sky but not

about pitcher. You have the north-westerly breeze and from time

to time it is really bit from the south, so we could get

to 18 or higher on Sunday. Now the national focus. Good evening,

things are looking good in the next few days, some pressure drifting in

from the Atlantic, bringing some finance settled with it. Just some

questions about the amount of cloud we will see under that. The cloud we

saw the sea links gave rise to a lovely sunsets are many areas. This

is the view from one of our weather watchers in Cornwall. Look at the

tones in the sky in Warwickshire this evening.

Here is the satellite sequence which shows it was pretty gloomy on the

eastern side of England. Not much rain, but a good swathe of sunshine

for many early on. In the north-west, showers. Gusty wind as

well, northern Scotland seeing 60-70 miles an hour overnight, rattling

though showers through. Also some cloud toppling its way further sap.

Keeping temperatures in the northern half at seven or eight. In the south

with light winds and clear skies it will turn chilly, especially in

rural