Andrew Segal
Local Live

Live updates for Devon and Cornwall have finished for the day, but we'll be back at 08:00 on Wednesday with the latest news, sport, travel and weather.

Don't forget Spotlight on BBC One later. There will also be news through the night on your BBC Local Radio station.

BBC Spotlight

Image source, Ian Curtis

We wanted to share these pictures from one of our viewers, Ian Curtis, and a heart-warming story of a friendship between a fisherman and a cormorant in Brixham.

Image source, Ian Curtis

When Ian asked the fisherman what he was doing, the angler explained he'd been fishing from the wall with his dog when a cormorant with a leg injury befriended him.

Realising the bird would be struggling to catch any fish, he decided to do it for him. Apparently the bird followed him for a few days wherever he went.

Image source, Ian Curtis

The mystery angler has been revealed as 60-year-old Bill Naran, who said he took pity on the cormorant about two weeks ago after he saw it was injured.

Image source, Apex

He said: "I could see it had an injured foot and couldn't feed itself, so I started feeding it some fish.

"The funny thing is it appeared at different locations I was fishing at, so it must have recognised me.

"But I haven't seen it for a few days now so I think it may be mission accomplished and the bird is fit enough to feed itself again."

BBC Weather

A dry overnight period is expected, with any areas of patchy cloud gradually clearing.

This will allow some mist or fog patches to develop during the early hours of the morning, especially near prone spots.

Minimum temperature: 6C (43F).

Any early mist and fog patches will slowly clear through Wednesday morning.

This will leave a dry and warm feeling day, with light winds and a large amounts of sunshine. However it could turn a little cloudier late in the day.

Maximum temperature: 14C (57F).

Andrew Segal
BBC Local Live

Image source, Paignton Zoo

A giant pumpkin appears to have met its match in the form of an African elephant at a Devon zoo.

Paignton Zoo said the 31kg fruit, grown by Riverford Organic Farmers, near Buckfastleigh, was donated to Duchess to provide an edible plaything for her, and also resulted in some half-term fun for visitors.

Phil Knowling, from the zoo, said: "It was not a fair contest. While the pumpkin was huge and impressive, Duchess weighs about 4 tonnes, or nearly 9,000lbs.

"The pumpkin was great environmental enrichment for her – though it only took her a few seconds to rip it open with her tusk."

Hayley Westcott
BBC News Online

There are reports of congestion on Plymouth's roads resulting in some bus services being delayed by up to 40 minutes.

Hayley Westcott
BBC News Online

New evidence released this Halloween suggests a Devon city was gripped by a fear of witchcraft for much longer than previously thought.

Historian Professor Mark Stoyle, from the University of Southampton - but who grew up in Exeter - said about 20 men and women were executed between 1566 and 1660 in Exeter, which dated back earlier than previous records stated.

Image source, Via Professor Mark Stoyle

The city is widely-known to have held the last English witch executions in 1685 at the Heavitree gallows.

Prof Stoyle said: "Everybody knew about these late trials and executions - they're very famous.

"But what hadn't really been realised was this long history of witch prosecutions in Exeter, and also several executions that occurred long before that.

"Right through the period when witchcraft was a crime for which people could be hanged in England, Exeter seemed to have had a really quite severe fear of witches."

He added: "The modern mind tends to jump immediately to women as witches but in fact about 10% of those who were executed for witchcraft in England were men."

Andrew Segal
Local Live

A section of the A30 in Cornwall is to be closed overnight for a week to carry out essential winter maintenance work, highways bosses say.

Highways England said the section between Carland Cross and Chiverton Cross, near Truro, would be closed between 20:00 and 06:00 from Monday 6 November to allow annual maintenance

The work, will involve drain and gully clearance, road repairs, line marking and barrier and sign repairs along the eight-mile section

Drivers are being advised to allow extra time for their journeys during the work. Diversions will be in place.

Andrea Ormsby
BBC Spotlight

On the spookiest night of the year, we’re looking at stories of the gruesome and the paranormal which have slipped under the ghostly radar.

Dr Joanne Parker, senior lecturer at the University of Exeter, has shared the terrible tale of Cornwall’s Castle an Dinas, near St Columb Major.

She said: "It all began when Uther, father of King Arthur, marched down to seize the wife of Cador, Duke of Cornwall, killing Cador.

"Then, in 1671, 19-year-old John Trehenban murdered two girls in St Columb and was sentenced to death. He was brought to the hillfort where a cage was erected on a rock, and he was left locked up to die. Such doom only seems to have drawn more crime to this terrible site.

"On a summer’s eve in 1904, 17-year-old Jessie Rickard and 20-year-old Charles Berryman cycled to the hillfort and were never seen alive again. She’d been shot six times at close range, and it was five days before they found Charles’ boots sticking out of a pool.

"He’d shot himself in the head. In his pocket was a picture of Jessie and a farewell letter to his mother.

"Even now, the story goes that if you run 50 times around the rock, you can hear the chains of John Trehenban clanking."

So, best not to go alone … or at night.

Cornwall Live

Hollywood superstar Sigourney Weaver has described how she asked blockbuster Avatar film-makers to rework their filming schedule just so she could appear in Doc Martin, external.

BBC Radio Devon

The British Red Cross is recruiting hundreds of community reserve volunteers across Devon.

The charity has launched a campaign to find people living in communities in the county who can help out during major emergencies in their area.

From filling sand bags during floods to sorting food supplies in the snow, those who came forward would be expected to "drop everything" to help out in a time of need, the organisation said.

Volunteers must be 18 or over and have access to a mobile phone, it added.

Amy Gladwell
BBC News Online

A disabled father from Devon drowned when a large wave swept him into the sea while he tried to scatter his sister's ashes, an inquest has heard.

Shane Galliers, 51, was on rocks at Trebarwith Strand, north Cornwall, when a "surge" of water dragged him down in "treacherous conditions", the Truro inquest was told.

The former welder had been with a group of about 20 family members who had gathered to remember Michelle Galliers in January 2015 when he branched off alone onto the rocks carrying a jar of ashes, police said.

Image source, Family photo

Image source, Google

Deputy Coroner for Cornwall Andrew Cox said Mr Galliers "had put himself in a risky position and was maybe not thinking straight due to his grief" when he "got close to the sea presumably to scatter the ashes".

He concluded that Mr Galliers had died accidentally. The inquest heard his body has never been found.

BBC Radio Devon

Residents of Dunkeswell have voted in favour of a proposed neighbourhood plan for the town, East Devon District Council says.

The authority said the plan would "help decide the future of Dunkeswell in terms of development and planning applications".

Some 317 residents (22.42% of those eligible to vote) voted. The plan was approved by 89.9% of voters.

Sarah Gosling
BBC Local Live

With magic and mystery in the air, we’re looking at the most supernatural places in the South West, and this next has been included on lists along with Stonehenge and Machu Picchu.

In 2002, in Saveock, a hamlet outside Truro, archaeologist Dr Jacqui Wood discovered "pits lined with swan breast feathers, two magpies, and 55 eggs placed in the middle. Seven had chicks ready to hatch inside".

Image source, Via Dr Jacqui Wood

Sensing the occult, she contacted witchcraft experts, who were dumbfounded.

Carbon dating aged the pits to about 1640 and, digging further, she and her students found more pits. These contained cat skins, teeth (pictured below) and, most astonishingly in one, the skin of a dog - its body (pictured above) lain on top, and a half-boiled pig jaw between its legs.

Image source, Via Dr Jacqui Wood

Twine was also found in one pit, dating it post-1970, yet no-one professed to know of the practice.

With more than 55 pits now discovered, Dr Wood said she believed them to be part of a fertility rite.

She said: "To sacrifice 55 potential chickens in a period as difficult as the Civil War for symbolism ... it had to be for something incredibly important."

Labour Cornwall councillor and former Falmouth and Camborne MP Candy Atherton has died at the age of 62.

She was elected to Cornwall Council in the 2013 local elections, representing the Falmouth Smithwick division.

"One and all" is, of course, the motto of the county, appearing on the Cornwall crest.

Cornwall Live

Pranksters in Plymouth left a friend - who has been terrified of clowns since childhood - in hysterics after dressing as a killer clown and hiding in the back seat of her car late at night, external.

The South Western Ambulance Service covers Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and the former Avon area.

BBC Radio Devon

A new Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) has come into force in the Stonehouse area of Plymouth to tackle antisocial behaviour.

The city council said its introduction followed "months of consultation, during which the initiative received unanimous support from residents".

It added that drinking, drug use and begging in public areas were among the issues being targeted.

Those breaching faced prosecution or being "dealt with via other interventions", the council said.

Twitter

Exeter MP Mr Bradshaw was first elected to Parliament in the same general election as Ms Atherton - 1997.

Clare Moody is Labour Member of the European Parliament MEP for the South West and Gibraltar.

Former Falmouth and Camborne MP Candy Atherton has died at the age of 62.

Devon Live

A Royal Maine left with life-changing injuries after a bomb blast in Afghanistan has become the first UK veteran to be treated using iPod therapy, external.