TEN years ago, this week, two men were facing life sentences after they were convicted of being fugitive gunman Raoul Moat's henchmen during his murderous rampage.
Karl Ness and Qhuram Awan conspired with Moat before, during and after he shot three people, killing one and seriously injuring the others.
Relatives of victims cried "Yes" when a jury at Newcastle Crown Court returned unanimous verdicts, convicting Ness of murder, and both defendants of conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and robbery.
Ness was also convicted of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. Awan was cleared of that charge.
Ness and Awan, who claimed they had been held hostages by Moat, appeared to collapse when they learned their fate.
Ness and Awan helped Moat stay one step ahead of the law during his rampage in July 2005.
Ness, 26, of Dudley, North Tyneside, was with Moat on the night he calmly executed karate expert Chris Brown, 29.
After Mr Brown was murdered, Moat turned his gun on his ex-girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart, 22, who had been seeing Mr Brown while Moat was in prison.
She was left fighting for her life in hospital, as Moat's former business partner Ness waited nearby.
While in prison, Moat had ordered Ness to spy on her to catch her with a new man.
Part-time mechanic and doorman Awan, 23, of Blyth, Northumberland, helped the pair afterwards by driving a getaway car to a woodland hideout.
The next day, Awan drove 37-year-old Moat in his modified black Lexus to the junction of the A1 and A69, where Moat shot Northumbria Police traffic officer PC Rathband, 43, and left him for dead.
Throughout the trial, Ness and Awan maintained they went along with Moat's demands only because they feared for their lives and those of their families.
Crucial evidence against the accomplices included "hostage" letters which proved the men were pretending to be held against their will.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people were killed after a tsunami triggered by one of the largest earthquakes on record engulfed Japan’s eastern coast.
The huge wave swept away ships, cars and homes while widespread fires burned out of control.
The tsunami then hit Hawaii, thousands of miles across the Pacific, but did not cause major damage.
Warnings rang out around the Pacific, putting areas on alert as far away as South America, Canada, Alaska and the entire US west coast.
In north-eastern Japan, the area around a nuclear power plant was evacuated after the reactor’s cooling system failed.
Police said 200 to 300 bodies were found in the north-eastern coastal city of Sendai, the city in Miyagi prefecture, or state, closest to the epicentre.
Another 137 were confirmed dead, with 531 people missing. Police also said 627 people were injured.
The magnitude-8.9 offshore quake unleashed a 23ft tsunami and was followed for hours by more than 50 aftershocks, many of them of more than magnitude 6.0.
Dozens of cities and villages along a 1,300-mile stretch of coastline were shaken by violent tremors that reached as far away as Tokyo, hundreds of miles from the epicentre.
A large section of Kesennuma, a town of 70,000 people in Miyagi, burned into the night with no apparent hope of being extinguished, public broadcaster NHK said.
The quake was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that struck New Zealand late last month, devastating the city of Christchurch.
Train services in northeastern Japan and in Tokyo, which normally served ten million people a day, were suspended, leaving thousands of people stranded in stations or roaming the streets.
Concern was growing for Britons caught up in the devastating earthquake and tsunami, and the Foreign Office said there were no confirmed casualties from the UK, but they had received more than 4,000 calls from worried loved ones.
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