The Coventry city centre nightclub where 18-year-old Daniel Kirkwood was fatally stabbed, is to be transformed into an entertainment complex with karaoke booths and an "e-gaming" centre.

The Society nightclub's licence was revoked in 2015 and two years later Mr Kirkwood's family called for it to be demolished.

Image source, Create Magic Design & Decoration

The planned £1.3m new centre will be the biggest venue of its type in the UK, according to developers Players Entertainment, creating more than 20 full-time and 30 part-time jobs.

Image source, Create Magic Design & Decoration

Developer Jeffy Li, the businessman behind Apps Living - which operates more than 1,000 student apartments in Coventry - said it would be based on entertainment venues that are very popular in Asia.

“We are investing heavily in the fit out, in the equipment and a karaoke system that will offer a choice of over one million songs, as well as the fastest internet speeds available," he said.

A knife is recovered after a teenage boy is stabbed outside Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College.

Amy Hill, from Stafford, talks about living with perinatal obsessive compulsive disorder.

Council tax will rise by almost 4% in the Worcestershire County Council area, with the local authority saying it needs to cover the rising cost of social care.

The council will also go ahead with plans to cut its libraries and archive service budget from £1,700,000 to £1,250,000 over the next three years.

Image source, Getty Images

The budget plans were approved at a meeting earlier today and members also agreed to spend more money on railway stations, Worcester's Sabrina bridge and on tackling congestion.

The council is also expected to receive almost £5m more after a successful bid to the government to keep 75% of the county’s business rates.

Detectives investigating the stabbing of a Birmingham college student have recovered a knife.

West Midlands Police says officers were called to Joseph Chamberlain College in Balsall Heath at 16:00 yesterday and the 16-year-old victim is still in a critical condition in hospital.

A 16-year-old from the Highgate area has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and he remains in police custody.

Insp Jim Mahon said there could have been dozens of witnesses leaving the college at that time and has made an appeal for mobile phone footage of the attack, which also left a 19-year-old and an 18-year-old with cuts.

James Bond
Sports Producer, BBC Shropshire

Shrewsbury Town have a new head of their youth academy.

David Longwell used to work at Scottish side St Mirren and more recently has been involved in youth development in the USA with Orlando City and New York Red Bulls.

He replaces Eric Ramsay, who was promoted to first-team duties earlier this season.

Shrewsbury's academy has produced players such as Connor Goldson, Ryan Woods and Jon Taylor in recent years.

Poet Sue Brown's parents moved to Britain in the 1950s from Jamaica.

In the documentary The First Black Brummies she looks at what life was like for Birmingham’s Caribbean community after World War Two and meets people who experienced the hostile environment that faced many of the early migrants.

The documentary, part of the series A Very British History, initially only broadcast in the Midlands, but will be shown on BBC Four on Monday 18 February at 21:00.

A man has been charged in connection with an armed robbery at a house in Keresley, near Coventry in January.

The 21-year-old has been charged with robbery and possession of a firearm in connection with the incident at a property in Howat Road, said Warwickshire Police.

Birmingham Live

Some of today's Birmingham Live headlines are:

• Crowbar wielding robbers raid store after failed ram-raid, external
• Sick robbers hold boy at knifepoint and break pensioner's back, external
• New York-style public park plan in Birmingham city centre, external

Six baby hamsters have been found in a box dumped on a park bench in Crewe.

They've been handed over to the RSPCA by the council workers who discovered them in Queens Park.

Image source, RSPCA

They're now recovering at the charity's wildlife centre at Stapeley Grange.

Local Democracy Reporting Service
Tom Davis

An “abysmal” bin collection service in Coventry over Christmas was down to booked agency staff simply not bothering to turn up, a council boss said.

Image source, Coventry City Council

Some residents complained streets were left looking "like a refuse dump" last month after about 2,500 blue bin collections were missed on 5 January.

Additional recycling bags were also left piling up on the streets due to confusion over who was collecting them, a council meeting heard.

Sarah Elliott, head of fleet and waste management said: "I am not going to promise Christmas will ever be 100% okay, while we are relying on non-council employees that is always an issue."

But she insisted she made "no excuses" for them and would be holding a meeting to discuss the Christmas issues.

BBC News

Almost all councils in England plan to increase council tax and many will be cutting services, research suggests.

Three-quarters of local authorities are set to increase tax by more than 2.5% from April, the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) said.

It comes as almost a third of councils surveyed said they were planning to cut spending on adult social care, and a quarter may reduce children's care.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said councils had "little choice".

BBC News

Flowers, chocolates and a romantic dinner for two?

Or how about discovering your boyfriend leaving a hotel with another woman, just hours before you're due to go for a Valentine's Day dinner.

Image source, Getty Images

That is what happened to Helen from Walsall, who is among those sharing their 14 February horror stories.

"I'd gone into town to buy myself a new outfit and called into somewhere for a cup of coffee," she said.

"It was opposite a hotel where I got a full view of him emerging from the hotel entwined with another woman.

"I sat there and considered just contacting him and saying I'd seen him, or not showing up to the meal. There were various options."

Helen decided to go out with him, pretend she didn't know and then confront him.

"He tried to deny it but went bright red, I could tell he was lying. I just lost it. Fortunately for him, what I was eating wasn't soup. It was fish and chips and peas and I just stood up and tipped it over his head and walked out."

Ideas to make Birmingham a plastic-free city in time for the Commonwealth Games have been discussed at a special meeting today.

Image source, Getty Images

The city currently recycles only about 21% of its household waste - one of the lowest rates in the country, the meeting heard. , external

Campaigners from Friends of the Earth put forward proposals to dramatically reduce plastic waste over the next three years.

Ideas include a ban on single-use plastics in all council-run and owned facilities, and rolling out a pilot by a Wolverhampton supermarket which now offers refunds on bottles via reverse vending machines.

Local Democracy Reporting Service

Plans to turn one of Oswestry's historic Lion pubs into flats have been withdrawn by the landlord.

The Golden Lion was once one of five pubs with "lion" in their names, the others being the Black Lion, the Red Lion and two White Lions.

Image source, Google

When the plans were lodged, the agents acting for landlord Lee Ryan said neither he, nor the 10 landlords before him had been able to make the pub popular.

Yusaf Akbar
BBC News Online

Animals across the West Midlands are being introduced to Valentine's Day.

In Shropshire, a greyhound rescue centre hopes a speed dating event can help match would-be owners with dogs in need of a home.

There's also love in the air at the National Sea Life Centre in Birmingham.

Keepers hope to match Prince the penguin with the partner of his dreams in a bid for a first chick born at the centre in two years.

A scheme in Wolverhampton is training homeless people to learn trades.

The fine, described by a Coventry councillor as a "staggering overreaction", has been refunded.

A 30-year-old pedestrian was struck in the early hours between junctions 14 and 13 for Stafford.

BBC Radio Stoke

Council tax in Staffordshire is to go up, after the county council approved budget plans to meet a £35m budget shortfall.

The rise will be 2.95%, and the authority will also be making cuts to voluntary services and looking at its staffing costs.

Image source, Google

The county council says it needs to make savings to pay for the increasing cost of adult social care.