Retailers offer up a dizzying array of special offers and big discounts, with more deals added online on Cyber Monday.

But how can you spot a genuine bargain?

Before you buy, it is always worth checking if the same product is cheaper somewhere else, experts say.

Some specialist sites can tell you if the product has been discounted more heavily before.

For example, Camelcamelcamel.com shows the price history of Amazon products - allowing shoppers to see if they have been offered more cheaply in the past.

Researchers trained an algorithm using more than 1,500 photos of Chinese citizens, hundreds of them convicts.

They said the program was then able to correctly identify criminals in further photos 89% of the time.

But the research, which has not been peer reviewed, has been criticised by criminology experts who say the AI may reflect bias in the justice system.

"This article is not looking at people's behaviour, it is looking at criminal conviction," said Prof Susan McVie, professor of quantitative criminology at the University of Edinburgh.

"The criminal justice system consists of a series of decision-making stages, by the police, prosecution and the courts. At each of those stages, people's decision making is affected by factors that are not related to offending behaviour - such as stereotypes about who is most likely to be guilty.

"Research shows jurors are more likely to convict people who look or dress a certain way. What this research may be picking up on is stereotypes that lead to people being picked up by the criminal justice system, rather than the likelihood of somebody offending."

The researchers took 1,856 ID photographs of Chinese citizens that fitted strict criteria of males aged between 18 and 55 with no facial hair or markings. The collection contained 730 ID pictures - not police mugshots - of convicted criminals or "wanted suspects by the ministry of public security".

After using 90% of the images to train their algorithm, the researchers used the remaining photos to see whether the computer could correctly identify the convicts. It did so correctly about nine times out of 10.

The researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University said their algorithm had identified key facial features, such as the curvature of the upper lip and distance between eyes, that were common among the convicts.

But Prof McVie said the algorithm may simply have identified patterns in the type of people who are convicted by human juries.

"This is an example of statistics-led research with no theoretical underpinning," said Prof McVie, who is also the director of the Applied Quantitative Methods Network research centre.

"What would be the reason that somebody's face would lead them to be criminal or not? There is no theoretical reason that the way somebody looks should make them a criminal.

"There is a huge margin of error around this sort of work and if you were trying to use the algorithm to predict who might commit a crime, you wouldn't find a high success rate," she told the BBC.

"Going back over 100 years ago, Cesare Lombroso was a 19th Century criminologist who used phrenology - feeling people's heads - with a theory that there were lumps and bumps associated with certain personality traits.

"But it is now considered to be very old and flawed science - criminologists have not believed in it for decades."

Prof McVie also warned that an algorithm used to spot potential criminals based on their appearance - such as passport scanning at an airport, or ID scanning at a night club - could have dangerous consequences.

"Using a system like this based on looks rather than behaviour could lead to eugenics-based policy-making," she said.

"What worries me the most is that we might be judging who is a criminal based on their looks. That sort of approach went badly wrong in our not-too distant history."

Thursday's 12% fall comes on top of a 5% drop following the news that letting agents fees are to be scrapped.

In its third quarter trading update Countrywide said it expected transactions to fall because of stamp duty changes and the Brexit vote.

Group revenue was £188.5m compared with £197.1m for the same time last year.

The group, whose 55 high street brands include Bairstow Eves, John D Wood and Gascoigne Pees, forecast transactions would be 6% down this year, and for levels to fall even further in 2017.

The company said the reduced level of market transactions it had seen in the second half of this year would lead to its 2016 profits being at the "lower end of expectations".

Countrywide said figures for the three months to the end of September showed that overall house exchanges were down by 1% compared with the same time last year, however in London they were 29% lower.

It also said mortgage approvals were 12% down on the same time last year.

The lettings side of the business was affected by the rush to beat the changes in stamp duty at the end of the first quarter of the year, which resulted in a larger than usual supply of rental properties, it said in its statement.

News of the ban on letting agents' fees announced in Wednesday's Autumn Statement was described as a "hammer blow" to estate agents.

Countrywide's chief executive Alison Platt said the company was looking forward to working with government on the "consultation".

"We have made good progress this year despite tough market conditions since the EU referendum," said chief executive Alison Platt. "Particularly pleasing is our growth in market share in both sales and lettings."

However, ETX Capital markets analyst Neil Wilson said: "Countrywide shares are tumbling again this morning after it offered a very downbeat assessment of the property market.

"The company says it's making good progress but today's trading statement confirms that estate agents are facing a troubled future.

"Yesterday's Autumn Statement bombshell banning letting agents from charging upfront fees to tenants couldn't have come at a worse time for the sector. The trading statement presumably doesn't take stock of this change so we could see a greater adverse effect as a result," he added.

The store, which specialises in frozen food and has its head office in Deeside, Flintshire, has been trading under the name for 46 years.

It owns the European trademark for using the name Iceland, which Icelandic officials claim the firm defends "aggressively".

The company said it regretted the move.

The Nordic nation confirmed on Thursday that it had mounted a legal challenge against the food store at the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

It said it hoped to ensure "the right of Icelandic companies to use the word 'Iceland' in relation to their goods and services".

In a government circular, officials stated: "The government of Iceland is concerned that our country's businesses are unable to promote themselves across Europe in association with their place of origin - a place of which we are rightly proud and enjoys a very positive national branding.

"This untenable situation has caused harm to Icelandic businesses, especially its small and growing companies."

The Icelandic government said it had made efforts to negotiate with Iceland Foods, but said it had been met with "unrealistic and unacceptable" demands.

The claim is disputed by the supermarket, which has more than 800 stores across the UK and employs more than 23,000 staff.

"Contrary to their assertion we have received no recent approaches to achieve an amicable resolution of this issue, which would be our preferred approach," a company official said.

The firm insisted it would "vigorously defend" its established rights, adding: "We have been trading successfully for 46 years under the name Iceland and do not believe that any serious confusion or conflict has ever arisen in the public mind, or is likely to do so.

"We hope that the government will contact us directly so that we may address their concerns."

A report by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) describes overall punctuality and reliability across Britain as "mixed", but generally "poor".

The report covers the period from the start of April until mid-October.

It says the biggest drag on performance is Govia Thameslink Rail (GTR), which operates Southern trains.

Although this is only one franchise, because it carries a fifth of passengers in England and Wales it's big enough to warp the national stats.

All the rail companies are compared using something called the Public Performance Measure, or PPM. It mixes punctuality and reliability to come up with a percentage. The higher the number, the better the performance.

Adding the latest figures mean that for the year to mid-October, GTR managed a PPM of just 76%. The next worst was Virgin Trains East Coast, on 82.7%.

The best was c2c on 95.3%. The average across England and Wales was 87.7%, which is some way shy of the 92.5% it's meant to achieve by March 2019. It's currently 89.5% in Scotland, which has the same 2019 target.

While I'm dishing out the stats, I've got one more for you, but it's a goody. It all adds up to 454,594 late trains in Britain over the past 6 months. So presumably, around a million a year then.

GTR has suffered from a cocktail of issues. On-board guards have been periodically on-strike since April, over changes to their role. The report also talks about "a significant increase in sickness amongst these staff".

It goes on to say, "this makes the service harder to operate even when there are no other problems on the network, and when an incident does occur recovering the service is much harder. So, while Network Rail is responsible for 58% of delay minutes impacting GTR services, this is being made worse by GTR's train crew problems".

Strike action and staff sickness are merely compounding other problems on differing parts of the franchise.

Network Rail is rebuilding London Bridge station to make way for a much-improved Thameslink service. But - and this is the understatement of the year - the work was more disruptive than anyone realised.

Experts predicted 10,000 delay minutes per year. In reality, it's caused 10,000 delay minutes per week.

Couple that with a shortage of drivers and you get Britain's worst rail service.

The ORR report does have some positive things to say about Network Rail.

Health and safety performance is good. Renewal plans are ahead of target. And it's reached seven out of eight project delivery milestones, although that's after the new chairman had to scale back their ambitions earlier this year because they were slipping so far behind and so over budget.

Network Rail is also likely to miss the next delivery target for electrifying the line between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The company had a big boost from Wednesday's Autumn Statement. It's been handed a £450m cheque to put in digital signals, which should make the whole network much more efficient.

Turkey's military said the soldiers had been targeted in a Syrian government air strike on Thursday, during an offensive by Turkish-backed rebels against so-called Islamic State.

However, a Syrian monitoring group said the deaths were caused by a suicide bomb attack on Wednesday claimed by IS.

Meanwhile a member of the US military has died while fighting against IS.

The soldier, who has not been named, died from wounds caused by an improvised explosive device in Ayn Issa, north of the IS stronghold Raqqa.

Officials gave no other information. It is not clear whether this was linked to the deaths of the Turkish soldiers.

Syria's military has not yet commented on the fate of the Turkish soldiers.

It would be the first time Turkish soldiers have been killed by Syrian government forces in the offensive, which Damascus has denounced as a "flagrant violation of Syrian sovereignty".

Dubbed Operation Euphrates Shield, the offensive was launched three months ago with the aim of pushing IS militants away from the Turkish border.

The Turkish government also wants to contain US-backed Syrian Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) militia, which it says is an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey.

So far, the rebels have driven IS militants out of more than 1,800 sq km (694 sq miles) of territory, according to the Turkish military, and recaptured the key border town of Jarablus and the symbolically important village of Dabiq.

They are now besieging the town of al-Bab, the last IS stronghold in Aleppo province.

The Turkish military statement said the soldiers who were killed were deployed in northern Syria when they were targeted at about 03:30 (00:30 GMT) in an air strike that it "assessed to have been carried out by Syrian regime forces".

It did not give an exact location, but the state-run Anadolu news agency reported that it was close to al-Bab.

The dead and injured soldiers, one of whom was said to be in a critical condition, were taken to hospitals in the southern Turkish provinces of Kilis and Gaziantep.

Later on Thursday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights disputed the Turkish military's account, saying the soldiers had been killed an IS suicide bombing on Wednesday near the village of Waqqah, north-west of al-Bab.

IS also issued a statement saying it had carried out a suicide bombing on a Turkish army position near Waqqah on Wednesday evening that caused an unspecified number of casualties.

Its self-styled news agency, Amaq, released video footage of the attack showing an explosives-filled armoured vehicle driving towards the frontline and then exploding.

The three deaths mean that at least 15 Turkish soldiers have been killed since Operation Euphrates Shield began, according to AFP news agency. Most died in clashes with IS, but one was killed in an attack blamed on the YPG.

But the New York Times on Friday reported Prakash was still alive, citing senior US sources.

Prakash handed himself to Turkish authorities several weeks ago, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said. 

Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Counter-Terrorism, Michael Keenan, said the government could not comment on intelligence matters.

"The government reported Prakash's death in May on the basis of advice from the US government that he had been killed in an air strike," he said in a statement on Friday.

"But as we have said previously, the government's capacity to confirm reports of deaths in either Syria or Iraq is limited. These places are war zones, with many ungoverned spaces."

Prakash, also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, has been linked to attack plots in Australia and appeared in propaganda videos and magazines.

Using the acronym of the previous name of IS, Mr Brandis said in May that Prakash was a "prominent Isil member and a senior terrorist recruiter and attack facilitator".

"Prakash has been linked to several Australia-based attack plans and calls for lone-wolf attacks against the United States," he said.

"He has actively recruited Australian men, women and children, and encouraged acts of terrorism."

The Melbourne man, of Cambodian and Fijian heritage, converted to Islam from Buddhism in 2012. He left Australia for Syria in 2013.

MUMBAI (Dunya News) – The name behind some of the greatest flicks in Bollywood history has finally tied the knot, however the wedding ceremony was not in real but instead performed on the sets of ‘The Kapil Sharma Show’. Everybody laughed their guts out the moment they saw the most bizarre couple at the sets of  famous Indian show.

The posts and pictures related to this unconventional marriage are viral over social media henceforth. It is pertinent to mention that the famous director has not worn the wedding ring as yet despite being 44 years old. 

LAHORE (Dunya News) - Junoon singer Salman Ahmad has cancelled his participation in a cultural concert in Indian city Goa. He announced the decision on Twitter. According to his tweet, Salman has opted out of the concert to protest the ongoing violence from India alongside Line of Control (LoC).

NEW YORK: UN Secretary-General Banki-Moon expressed serious concern over the prevailing situation at the Line of Control.

In a statement issued on Friday, the Secretary-General said he is “deeply concerned about the deterioration of the situation along the Line of Control in Kashmir in recent days.”

He called on “all involved to prioritise the restoration of calm and stability in order to prevent any further escalation and loss of life.”

The statement further said that “the Secretary-General trusts that the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan can find common ground and work towards a sustainable peace.”

“The United Nations stands by the people of the region and supports all efforts to reach durable peace and security,” the statement concluded.