Updates on Friday 22 April 2016
More news, sport, travel and weather from 08:00 Monday
Live updates for Coventry and Warwickshire have now ended.
We'll be back on Monday with the usual mix of news, sport, travel and weather.
Follow updates on Shakespeare Live over the weekend here.
In their own tribute to the Bard, BBC News correspondents around the world recite one of his most famous passages.
A Public Space Protection Order will come in to place for Edgwick Park from next week giving police and the council extra powers, external.
Archive pictures of Shakespeare's birthday celebrations dating back to 1907 are available on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust online archive, external.
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Rebecca Wood
BBC Midlands Today
Any patchy rain will ease away this evening with clear spells becoming lengthy overnight.
A chilly night with patchy frost forming by dawn and lows of 3C (37F).
Jeremy Guscott
Rugby union analyst, BBC Sport
English teams fill three of the four semi-final slots, with Wasps and Saracens meeting in the first encounter on Saturday before Leicester take on Parisian big-spenders Racing 92 on Sunday.
So which players could ensure an English side becomes European champions for the first time since Wasps triumphed in 2007?
Vanessa Pearce
BBC Local Live
These are some of our headlining stories in the newsroom today:
- Robber jailed after forcing elderly man to cash machine
- Motorcyclist dies in Lillington crash
- Stratford-upon-Avon prepares to welcome thousands for Shakespeare celebrations
Joan Cummins
Midlands Today reporter
Scores of international journalists and TV crews are descending upon Stratford this week to remember a writer who's been dead for four centuries.
But why the global attraction?
The UK's first national research centre dedicated to early miscarriage opens next week.
Experts at the centre in Coventry will seek to find out why it happens, if it's likely to happen again and how to prevent it.
It will be known as Tommy's@UHCW and will comprise a partnership between the Universities of Warwick and Birmingham as well as Imperial College London.
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Sir Ian McKellen has hailed William Shakespeare as an exponent of diversity, ahead of events marking the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death.
Image source, PAQuote MessageShakespeare wrote about black people, he wrote about us all, he wrote about gay people like me, he wrote about women - my goodness, did he write fantastic parts for women! He wrote about leaders, tyrants, people you meet in the pubs, soldiers of all ranks, so the colour of your skin or the culture from which you come from isn't really relevant, but the plays go on being persistently relevant
Sir Ian McKellen
BBC Arts
After a celebrated career in photojournalism and a move into portraiture, renowned photographer and chronicler Peter Marlow died in February this year while completing work on his upcoming exhibition The English Cathedral, which is opening on 29 April in Coventry Cathedral.
Read more on the BBC Arts site.
Image source, Peter Marlow / Magnum Photos
BBC Travel
A vehicle carrying cattle has overturned on the A46 in Leek Wooton, causing problems both ways near the A429.
More details on BBC Travel.
The BBC's Shakespeare Lives festival marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare - widely acknowledged as the greatest of all playwrights and the most extensively read and studied author in the English language.
From 19:00 to 22:00 tonight and again from 08:00 to 23:00 tomorrow, the team will be serving up a Shakespearean banquet of continuous live video coverage from around the UK alongside highlight clips, live text updates and the best of your Bardy chatter on social media.
A robber who broke into an elderly man's home and forced him to walk to a cash machine , externalhas been jailed for four years.
Andrew Wilson, 39 of Clovelly Way, Nuneaton, pleaded guilty to robbery and attempted robbery and was sentenced at Warwick Crown Court yesterday.
Image source, Warwickshire Police
BBC Coventry & Warwickshire
The cast and crew of our Shakespeare Street production of Romeo and Juliet are making final preparations for tonight's performance.
Crowds will be gathering from 18:30 and the show starts at 19:00.
A tabby cat and her four kittens have been found in Cawston Woods, Coventry, having been dumped there in a plastic container.
Image source, RSPCAThe mum has been named Willow and the kittens have been named Oliver, Cherry, Apple and Spruce, after the woodland where they were found.
They are now being looked after in the RSPCA's care and are all doing well.
Quote MessageIt is very sad that a mum and her four vulnerable and defenceless kittens were left out in the open like this, where anything could have happened to them
Nicky Foster, RSPCA inspector
Some councillors are demanding an emergency Coventry City Council meeting into who is running the local authority and whether rules have been breached, external, following this newspaper’s revelations from a leaked email concerning the chief executive’s job.
Image source, Coventry ObserverHe may have died 400 years ago but the Shakespeare brand is keeping the local economy alive.
Clive Eakin
BBC Coventry & Warwickshire Sport
James Haskell will captain the Wasps' team to take on Saracens in the European semi final at the Madejski Stadium tomorrow.
There are two changes to the Wasps’ squad that beat Exeter Chiefs in the European Quarter Final. Lorenzo Cittadini packs down at tighthead, while Bradley Davies starts in the second row alongside Joe Launchbury, with Jake Cooper-Woolley and Kearnan Myall ruled out through injury.
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A former member of the Outlaws motorcycle group raised his hands towards his head and ducked in the witness box, external as he told a jury of his reaction to a shot outside a Coventry pub.
