Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Monday 20 Aug 2012

Tycoon Asil Nadir has been found guilty of theft at the Old Bailey, 22 years after his company Polly Peck collapsed amid claims he stolen millions from it to pay off his debts. Nadir, now 71, left the UK before his trial in 1993 but returned in 2010. He faces a total of 13 counts, and has so far been convicted of three and cleared of one.

Tony Scott, the British-born director of Top Gun and Days of Thunder, has been found dead after jumping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge into Los Angeles Harbor. A suicide note was found in his car parked nearby. He is the younger brother of Ridley Scott, director of Alien and Gladiator.

French police arrested a group of seven women among a crowd protesting in sympathy with the jailed Russian punk band Pussy Riot outside the Russian consulate in Marseille yesterday because they were wearing the group's trademark balaclava helmets. France banned full-face coverings in public in 2011 to outlaw the wearing of the Muslim niqab.

The wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai was given a suspended death sentence early today for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood. Gu Kailai did not contest charges at her 9 August one-day trial that she poisoned Heywood in November 2011. She is expected to serve 14 years if the sentence is commuted to 'life' as expected.

An academic study to be published next month claims that the growing number of asexuals in the world should be classed as a "fourth sexual orientation". Professor Anthony Bogaert argues that asexuals account for one per cent of the world's population, or 70 million people with "no sexual attraction at all", some of them in reaction to the "sexualisation" of the culture.