Great Britain fight back to beat China for Paralympic curling bronze

British curlers Aileen Neilson, left, Bob McPherson, centre, and Jim Gault during the Paralympic Games in Sochi. Photograph: Sergei Chirikov/EPA

Skip Aileen Neilson inspired Great Britain's curlers to Winter Paralympic bronze with a 7-3 triumph over China. Neilson's rink, beaten 13-4 by the hosts Russia in their semi-final , regrouped superbly to fight back from an early 3-0 deficit. Victory took Britain's medal tally in Sochi to six.

Neilson was in tears at the finish as she celebrated with her team-mates, Angie Malone, Jim Gault, Gregor Ewan and alternate Bob McPherson. Britain had lost 6-3 to the Chinese in their final round-robin match on Thursday, but in the bronze medal match Neilson produced her best match of a tournament in which her all-Scottish rink have been inconsistent, mixing impressive wins with heavy losses.

It was thanks to Neilson they were not trailing by more than 3-0 after two ends, a rescue effort in the first limiting their opponents to a one-stone success. A pinpoint takeout from the 42-year-old in the third end made it 3-2 and in the next she forced an error from the China skip Wang Haitao to put her side 4-3 in front.

One-stone successes then followed in the fifth, sixth and seventh ends to leave China with too much ground to make up.

Neilson finished the match with an accuracy of 75%.

Malone, the only remaining member of the 2006 silver medal-winning team from Turin, who was brought in for McPherson for the match, also justified her inclusion with 75% accuracy.

Lewis Hamilton claims pole position for Australian Grand Prix

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton flies round the Albert Park circuit during qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. Photograph: Brandon Malone/Reuters

Lewis Hamilton showed just why he is favourite to win this year’s Formula One world championship when he won pole position for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix.

It was his 32nd pole, drawing him level with another British champion, Nigel Mansell – and he is now just one behind two of the all time great drivers, Jim Clark and Alain Prost.

In a nail-biting finale to the first qualifying session under the radical new rules and regulations, pole was up in the air until the very end, with first Hamilton, then Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, then Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and finally Hamilton again toping the timings.

Alongside him on the front row will be local hero Ricciardo, a tremendous performance by him and Red Bull after all their difficulties in pre-season. But team-mate and four times world champion Sebastian Vettel had a miserable afternoon, failing to make it to Q3 for the first time since 2012.

Rosberg had to settle for third place in the end, one ahead of McLaren new boy Kevin Magnussen, with Fernando Alonso fifth.

Hamilton said: “It’s been an interesting weekend. It was so much harder in the wet conditions. It’s harder to drive these cars in the wet. It was a great showing for the team. There was a small hiccup on Friday morning but it was a quick fix. To get to the same number of poles as Nigel Mansell, who was one of the great British drivers, feels like a great achievement.”

Ricciardo said: “The weather added to the mix but it was very exciting. But this was just the start.”

Apart from Vettel, the other drivers not to make Q3 were Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen, who crashed his Ferrari at the very end of Q2, Adrian Sutil (Sauber), Sergio Perez (Force India) and Kamui Kobayashi (Caterham).

The big story in Q1 was that it claimed both Lotus drivers Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado. Maldonado came off twice, not helped by the fact that rain started to fall 10 minutes into the session.

The other casualties at the first hurdle were the Marussia pair, Max Chilton and Jules Bianchi, Sauber’s Esteban Gutierrez and Caterham’s Marcus Ericsson.

But for Lotus, who beat McLaren to fourth place in last year’s constructors world championship, this was another desperate set-back following their difficulties in testing and with Friday’s opening practice sessions.

Grosjean, who qualified 21st, said afterwards: “We’re all very unhappy, but we will bounce back and learn and work. The guys were doing an amazing job [working through the night]. It’s been a painful first weekend but we will learn and make it better for the next race.”

Ireland clinch Six Nations crown after beating France in thriller

Ireland's hooker Sean Cronin celebrates. Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

Ireland won the Six Nations by a matter of inches. With only 90 seconds to play in this extraordinary match, as thrilling as any in the recent history of the tournament, their players were sure that they had blown it.

France's No8, Damien Chouly, had just crossed in the corner. The referee, Steve Walsh, had asked the television match official to check whether or not the try was good. And … it wasn't. The pass that put Chouly through, delivered by Pascal Papé, had been forward. Only just. But just was enough. Moments later, the Irish won the ball back at a scrum. And then they could start to celebrate, they had secured the Championship with a win in Paris that will go down as one of the greatest in their history, alongside their last here, when Brian O'Driscoll scored a hat-trick in 2000.

It was a hard road to the title. It was obvious in the opening minutes that Ireland were feeling at least a little nervous. They offered little, firing only in fits and starts, flashing passes sparking passages of attacking that soon petered out. The French, on the other hand, eased their way into the match. Maxime Machenaud kicked a three points in the first minute after Chris Henry was penalised for hanging on to the ball. Machenaud added another from a similar position out on the right ten minutes later. That made it 6-0.

Matthieu Bastareaud kept battering his way through midfield, scattering Gordon D'Arcy and O'Driscoll as though they were just so many skittles in his way. All that was undone by the passes he provided afterwards, which were invariably wild and often forwards. And the one area where Ireland did have an obvious advantage was at the scrum. When their front row went to ground, Jonny Sexton sent the ensuing penalty down towards the French 22 for a lineout.

Ireland won it, and set off on wave after wave of short drives, working the ball across to the other wing and back again as they went. Cian Healy was particularly prominent, twice smashing his way through the line.

Finally, five yards out, Chris Henry picked up the ball and flicked it away to Sexton, who cut through towards the line, slicing past Bastareaud and through Chouly. A fine finish, but he missed the conversion.

Within five minutes Ireland had another. Back in his own half, Louis Picamoles made a slapstick attempt at catching Murray's clearance, knocking the ball on. O'Driscoll burst through off the ensuing scrum. Murray was on his heels. He sniffed a chance, sold Machenaud a dummy, and spat a pass out to Andrew Trimble, who was coming up at such a serious lick of pace that no one had a chance to catch him. All of a sudden, Ireland were in the lead.

And then things got really interesting.

The French kicked a penalty deep into the Irish 22, and took a drive off the lineout.They tried to batter their way through Paul O'Connell and his cohort, once, twice, three times, before Dimitri Swarzewski sent the ball out to fly half Rémi Talès. He had spotted Yoann Huget, almost alone out on the far wing, and booted a high, hanging kick in that direction. Huget and Rob Kearney leapt up together. Huget won, but instead of trying to take the catch he swatted the ball back infield with his fingertips. It fell into the path of the full-back Brice Dulin, who took it without breaking stride and sprinted in to the corner. Dave Kearney caught him, but could not stop him grounding the ball.

It was a wonderful try, the third scored in just ten minutes. Machenaud added the conversion, and France were back in front. Talès tried for a drop goal soon after, and missed. Ireland had one more opportunity to take the lead before the interval. They won yet another penalty at the scrum, and France were caught offside after the following lineout. It was a simple shot. But Sexton missed it, hooking the ball wide to the left. A poor kick, but perhaps not the worst of omens. Ireland had led at half-time in each of their three previous matches against France, and not won any of them.

Sexton soon made amends with his second try. Ireland won a turnover in midfield, and whipped the ball out along the line to Trimble. He bamboozled Maxime Médard, turning him this way and that with a shimmy and a step.

O'Driscoll was hot on his heels, and took an inside pass as the pair of them crossed into the French 22. The way to the line was open in front of him, but there wasn't enough speed left in those old legs. He was stopped short. But support arrived soon after, and Sexton sped through to score. He scored the conversion, and then kicked a penalty. Ireland were nine points up with thirty minutes to play. Fields of Athenry rang around the ground. That, surely, was that.

France, though, were working from a different script. They rallied, and redoubled their efforts. Huget diddled O'Driscoll, and the French flooded behind him into the Irish 22. From there, they smashed, bashed, crashed onwards. Drive after drive after drive. In the thick of it all, Healy caught Picamoles at a ruck, knocking him out cold. Play went on.

Eventually, after a penalty, Chouly drove into the padding around the post, and Swarzewski snaffled the ball up and got it down on the line. The referee Steve Walsh awarded the try, Machenuad kicked the conversion, and the game was set up for an excruciatingly tense finish.

By now players were starting to drop. Sexton was knocked out in a collision with Bastareaud. And Jean-Marc Doussain had replaced Machenaud, who had not yet missed a kick. Doussain duly did, pushing a penalty goal wide after France finally got on top of the Irish scrum. Even that, though, wasn't the end of it. The best was still to come.

Aston Villa's Fabian Delph halts Chelsea's Premier League title charge

Chelsea's Willian tackles Aston Villa's Karim El Ahmadi in the Premier League match at Villa Park. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images

The title race is not a foregone conclusion after all. Not only did Chelsealose ground to Manchester City when Fabian Delph's late winner for Villa cut their lead to six points, they ended up short-handed as first Willian and then Ramires were dismissed. Willian picked up a second yellow card for a rather soft foul on the goalscorer, but the stamp on Karim El Ahmadi that brought a straight red card for Ramires was altogether more serious and brought the game to a bad-tempered conclusion with players squaring up to each other in front of the Chelsea bench.

City have three games in hand so can now overhaul Chelsea if they keep winning. Their 2-0 victory at Hull was achieved by 10 men but Chelsea could not show the same drive and determination, even before their numbers were reduced.

Villa spent the first 10 minutes bemused by the movement and interchangability of Chelsea's three-quarter line of Oscar, Willian and Eden Hazard as the visitors opened the game with businesslike intent, moving the ball around smartly and purposefully and always appearing to have a spare man making himself available.

It was impressive to watch, yet Chelsea's approach work did not lead to any openings in front of goal, just speculative long shots from Willian and Oscar. Most of the actual attacking threat was being channelled through the industrious Hazard, and once Villa worked that out they settled down and began to put together some moves of their own.

Christian Benteke could not keep his header down when Fabian Delph crossed from the left, and Karim El Ahmadi should have done better than waft wastefully over the bar with a decent shooting opportunity, though at least Villa boosted their own confidence by showing they knew the way to goal.

When Benteke missed narrowly with a volley from the edge of the area that had Petr Cech scrambling just before half time it was the closest the game had come to a goal, at least until Nemanja Matic bundled the ball over the Villa line a couple of minutes later, only to be recalled for handball by a linesman. It was hard to detect what the official had seen. It was far from an obvious handling offence, yet the player was slow to celebrate the goal as if he knew he might be pulled up.

If that annoyed José Mourinho, he was even more incensed on the stroke of the interval when Joe Bennett escaped with just a yellow card for bringing down Ramires in full flight when the Brazilian would have been through on goal. It was quite a long way out to be considered a clear goalscoring opportunity. Other players may have been able to come across and cover, though it would certainly have been an opportunity and Chris Foy's lenience brought Mourinho to his feet waving an imaginary card, presumably a red one.

Chelsea might have had a goal early in the second half when Brad Guzan failed to cut out a cross and Hazard was presented with the briefest of shooting opportunities, but he chose to pass instead and when the eventual shot arrived from Oscar it was both hopeful and high. Oscar's next shot was lower and on target yet straight at Guzan, who saved it comfortably even though he could only have seen it late.

The visitors were dominating the game by the hour mark, with Villa rarely managing to cross the half way line, though Chelsea's lack of conviction in front of goal was again highlighted by the directness the home side showed when they did come up with the occasional counter attack. Benteke was only inches wide after a one two with Andreas Weimann in the area as once more Villa demonstrated they could soak up pressure and still threaten a goal on the break. Mourinho replaced Fernando Torres with Demba Ba midway through the second half in an attempt to bring more urgency to the Chelsea attack.

Torres had not had one of his better games, losing the ball cheaply on more than one occasion, though the real problem seemed to be that while Hazard, Willian and Oscar could find each other with ease, even in tight situations in the penalty area, they could not find Torres or anyone else in a position to take a shy at goal.

Then with 22 minutes remaining Willian was gone and Chelsea were down to 10. The Brazilian was cautioned in the first half for a foul on El Ahmadi and saw a second yellow, rather harshly in view of the trifling nature of the offence, for the slightest of tugs on Delph. That was all the encouragement Villa needed. Ba was a mere spectator, just as Torres had been, and after Ron Vlaar had missed with a header from a corner, Delph put his side in front. Whether he applied the finish he intended was debatable, though Delph set up the goal by dispossessing Chelsea on half way and if there was a bit of luck in the way he connected with Marc Albrighton's return pass to guide the ball in he probably deserved it. Delph hit the bar in stoppage time. Chelsea could have no complaints, especially after finishing with nine men.

McDonald's lawsuits allege wage theft by fast-food giant and franchise owners

A diner sits next to a help wanted sign at a McDonald's restaurant in Brooklyn. Photograph: Keith Bedford/Reuters

McDonald’s is being sued in three states by workers who allege that the fast-food giant is systematically stealing the wages of tens of thousands of employees.

Seven lawsuits, some of them requesting class-action status, have been filed this week against the corporation and McDonald’s franchise-owners in California, Michigan and New York, lawyers announced on Thursday afternoon.

The lawsuits allege that thousands of McDonald’s workers have their pay pushed below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, through a variety of practices. Some are not paid for all the time they work, some have wages docked in order to pay for their uniforms and some are made to wait for hours until busy periods before they are allowed to clock in, the complaints allege.

“These suits have been filed to stop this widespread wage theft,” said Joseph Sellers, one of the attorneys for the workers, in a conference call. “They highlight a broad array of unlawful pay practices, which together reflect ways in which McDonald’s has withheld pay from its low-paid workers in order to enrich the corporation and its shareholders.”

Heidi Barker Sa Shekhem, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s, said in an emailed statement the company was “currently reviewing the allegations in the lawsuits”.

“McDonald’s and our independent owner-operators share a concern and commitment to the well-being and fair treatment of all people who work in McDonald’s restaurants,” she said. “McDonald’s and our independent franchisees are committed to undertaking a comprehensive investigation of the allegations and will take any necessary actions as they apply to our respective organisations.”

Representatives for the plaintiffs stressed on Thursday that McDonald’s made more than $5.5bn in profit a year on revenues of about $28bn, and that the total annual pay package for Don Thompson, its chief executive, amounts to about $13.75m.

They said that if granted class-action status, the lawsuits could apply to more than 25,000 workers. They declined to estimate a total for the compensation being sought in back-pay but said McDonald’s could also be forced to pay extra damages and legal penalties.

Across three lawsuits filed in California, workers allege that McDonald’s bosses there failed to pay workers for all the hours they worked, prevented them from taking breaks or time out for meals, and even altered records in order to remove hours worked from time-sheets.

“When I took a job at McDonald’s, I knew I wouldn’t be making a lot of money,” Jason Hughes, a plaintiff in one of the California suits, told reporters during the conference call. “But I thought a well known company like McDonald’s would treat me fairly – at the very least follow the law. We have brought this lawsuit because neither has happened.”

In Michigan, two lawsuits filed against McDonald’s and two Detroit-area franchise owners allege that bosses forced workers to buy their own uniforms and frequently made employees who arrived on time for their shifts wait without pay until a number of customers arrived at the restaurant.

“McDonald’s franchisees closely monitor the ratio of labour costs to revenues,” lawyers said in a news release about the lawsuits. “When it exceeds a corporate-set target, managers tell workers arriving for their shifts to wait for up to an hour to clock in, and sometimes direct workers who have already clocked in for scheduled shifts to clock out for extended breaks until the target ratio is again achieved.”

Meanwhile a lawsuit filed in New York alleges that low-paid workers were forced to spend their own time and money cleaning their uniforms, sometimes three times a week, in violation of New York state laws requiring firms to pay employees for uniform maintenance.

“Because McDonald’s restaurants pay so little, forcing workers to clean their Golden Arches uniforms on their own dime drives many workers’ wages below the legal minimum,” said Jim Reif, an attorney who filed the New York lawsuit.

The lawsuits are being assisted by a union-backed campaign that has been pushing since 2012 for a rise in the federal minimum wage to $15 and the right for fast-food workers to form trade unions without retaliation.

City was like a giant hedge fund before crisis, says Bank of England official

Charlie Bean said: 'The international net investment position is the most important figure.' Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The City operated like a "giant hedge fund" in the runup to the financial crisis, and the resulting crash could leave the British economy with permanent low productivity and stagnant earnings, according to a seniorBank of England official.

Charlie Bean, the Bank's deputy governor responsible for monetary policy, added that the UK's foreign investment hot streak had cooled and was unlikely to fully recover. A shrinking surplus on investment income from abroad could spook markets and trigger a sharp fall in sterling, he said.

Asked whether Britain could be stuck in a "new normal" of a low-productivity and low-investment economy, Bean said: "It is always possible. We do not fully understand the current weakness of productivity. We have done a lot of work on it down to company level to try to get a better picture. There have been some plausible explanations, one of which, of course, is the possibility that the official data may understate the position."

Bean, who leaves the Bank on 30 June after 14 years of service, said the Office for National Statistics was "doing its best", but some surveys suggested that the British economy was growing more strongly.

"Business surveys suggest output growth is a bit stronger than the official data. Employment growth suggests the same. There may be a measurement error in the data. This should not be taken as a criticism of the ONS. Inevitably, the ONS numbers are just estimates. The division of labour is that the ONS does its best to measure what is happening, and we interpret."

Bean added that a sustainable recovery requires three pillars: a rise in business investment, a pick-up in productivity growth and an expansion in exports.

Britain's current account was last in balance or surplus in 1983, but, Bean said, while the foreign investment figure is the most important, its apparent health belies a contribution from the City that is unsustainable.

"Despite our having run deficits for many years, this net position is close to balance … in large part that is a result of our having run a surplus on investment income' In other words, our investments abroad produced better returns than foreign investors achieved in Britain. Up to the crisis, we were a bit like a giant hedge fund."

But he added that the blow dealt to the financial services sector by the credit crunch could have permanent consequences for the deficit. "There has been a recent deterioration in that component of our current account performance," he said. "Is it likely to be long-lasting or temporary? My view is that it may come back a bit, but not all the way back to where we were before the financial crisis.

"Will that leave us in trouble? I would hesitate to say so, in the sense that countries can run deficits for years. But certainly an adverse net position would leave us vulnerable, making it more likely for the exchange rate to fall sharply were investors to lose faith in the economy. We have seen that happen in the emerging markets."

Commenting on his plans after leaving Threadneedle Street, he said: "The first thing I am going to do is take a holiday in Italy. Then I shall re-establish links with academia [he was a professor at the London School of Economics before joining the Bank] and, I hope, do some interesting things, including in my role as president of the Royal Economic Society."

He added: "It will be only semi-retirement."

Thousands of Morrisons staff personal details leaked online

The posting of Morrisons staff personal details online came only hours after Dalton Philips, the chief executive, boasted of new IT systems. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

The personal details of thousands of Morrisons staff including salaries, bank account details and addresses have been stolen and published online.

Police are investigating the serious security breach which occurred on Thursday night and is believed to have been the result of an internal leak, with data copied onto a portable storage device and taken out of Morrisons' Bradford headquarters.

A disc of the data, which has details of staff from director level to the shop floor, was also sent anonymously to a local paper in Yorkshire, the Telegraph & Argus, by a "concerned Morrisons shopper".

The leak appeared timed to cause maximum embarrassment to Morrisons in the wake of a massive profits warning on Thursday, which sent shares diving 12%. It also came hours after the chief executive, Dalton Philips, boasted that new IT systems would help to turn around Morrisons' performance.

Morrisons said that all the staff details published were put on an unspecified location on the web for a few hours and were taken down immediately when they were discovered. It said in a statement: "We can confirm there has been no loss of customer data and no colleague will be left financially disadvantaged." It is working with police to identify the source of the theft, which "initial inquiries" suggested was not the result of an external breach of its security systems.

It said it was now "urgently reviewing our internal data security measures," and was working with UK banks and credit check service Experian to help colleagues secure their bank accounts.

Morrisons said it had contacted staff via email and its Facebook page to inform them of the leak. It also set up an email address for questions. But some staff took to social media to express their anger and complain that they had not been informed.

One post on Facebook reads: "I've been at work for nine hours and nobody has told me – good communication M!"

Another staff member wrote: "Reading about this on Facebook does not inspire confidence, we should have been notified by phone by our HR departments first thing this morning."

Another post on Facebook reads: "Ironic that Dalton Phillips was on BBC Breakfast yesterday stating he'd updated the IT systems from the 1950s. Those systems were probably too old to be hackable!"

Another post appeared to threaten action against those complaining about the leak: "This is further bad publicity for our company at a difficult time, and I'd like to ask all of my fellow colleagues to think carefully about what they say in the public domain and the effect it could have on our reputation."

The leak is the latest embarrassing issue for Morrisons, just weeks after the supermarket group's treasurer and head of tax, Paul Coyle, was arrested and questioned over alleged insider dealing relating to trading in the shares of Ocado, Morrisons' partner for its new online grocery-delivery service.