label
stringlengths 5
984
| text
stringlengths 76
235k
|
|---|---|
A man has been injured in a crash in Wolverhampton in what police are treating as a "targeted attack". | The victim, in his late 30s, was hit in a crash involving three cars on Frederick Street, just before 04:45 GMT.
He suffered "serious, life-changing injuries", West Midlands Police said.
Dudley Road was expected to remain closed in both directions at Grove Street and the A415 junction until late in the afternoon.
|
A British team is developing a car that will capable of reaching 1,000mph (1,610km/h). Powered by a rocket bolted to a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine, the Bloodhound SSC (SuperSonic Car) vehicle will mount an assault on the land speed record.
Wing Commander Andy Green, world land-speed record holder, is writing a diary for the BBC News website about his experiences working on the Bloodhound project and the team's efforts to inspire national interest in science and engineering.
| By Andy GreenWorld Land Speed Record Holder
Not long back from Los Angeles, where I went to launch a movie. OK, so the film was only three minutes long, but still, I can claim a Hollywood film launch!
The Future of Speed was made in a Bentley Mulsanne at 190mph on Bonneville Salt Flats (and at 190mph, three minutes is a long time).
The really fun bit though was doing an interview with Jay Leno in his world-famous garage. If I ever win the Lottery (which is unlikely - I don't buy any tickets) then I'd have a garage like that, perhaps with less cars and more aeroplanes, but the same general idea.
While I was in LA, our senior engineer Brian Coombs and veteran aerodynamicist Ron Ayers were hard at work on the Bloodhound track.
The rainy season will start anytime soon on Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa, so this was their last chance for a few months.
They were there to test the desert/wheel interaction, and they learned a lot more than we had expected (have a look at Ron's article for more detail). Unfortunately, it's not all good news, but if breaking the World Land Speed Record was easy, everyone would be doing it.
The team mounted two wheels to a purpose-built trailer, which was the result of a truly amazing effort from three engineers in South Africa - our huge thanks go Fabian, Hentie and Colin for working through the night, followed by a 25-hour non-stop drive to get it there in time.
They then filled "Max Max" (a good name for a collection of spare parts running on a desert!) with water to a total of 3.8 tonnes - half the mass of the fully fuelled 1,000mph car.
Towing the trailer along the desert would then tell us how deep the wheels dig into the desert, the width of the V-shaped grooves would show how consistent the surface is, and the changes over the new repairs would show how well the desert was recovering.
First, the good news. We've been debating how wide the wheels need to be, estimating somewhere between 90mm and 120mm at the rim, to support the full weight of the car.
The tracks left on the desert were mostly around 70mm wide, which means that 90mm should be more than enough.
Narrow wheels equals light-weight rims equals reduced loads at peak speeds.
To give you some idea, peak speed for the wheels is 10,300rpm at 1000mph, which gives a peak load of 50,000 times the force of gravity at the wheel rim.
To try and picture this acceleration force, if we put a 1kg bag of sugar on the wheel rim, it would exert a force of 50 tonnes (more than the weight of a fully loaded articulated lorry) at full speed. So reducing the total load on the wheel is a very good thing - and narrower, lighter wheels will do just that.
Next, the not-quite-so-good news. The surface hardness is a little uneven, with the recent repairs rather softer than the rest of the surface. I was surprised to find that the causeway repair, where the old man-made road was graded down to its original level, is actually harder than the surrounding lake bed surface.
That means that the car may have a tendency to jump upwards slightly as it hits the causeway - at around 600mph. However, the "jump" should only be around 10mm, as the wheels will be "planing" on the surface at that speed, and 10mm is well within the suspension travel of +/-50mm. So far, so good.
Now the thing that could worry us the most. As the V-shaped keels are pressed into the surface with nearly two tonnes of load each, the small stones embedded just below the surface are forced against the aluminium surface and dig in. This was the same effect that we saw 15 years ago with Thrust SSC running on the stony surface of a Jordanian Desert. However, the damage on Hakskeen seems to be worse, particularly when we ran the trailer over the (harder) causeway surface.
We've got several options to consider. The damage should not be as bad on the final forgings, which will be a harder alloy than these test wheels. We can reduce the load on the point of the wheel by reducing the angle of the "V", spreading the load over more of the tread. We can make our early runs south of the causeway (which still gives us almost 10 miles of track), to check the damage once the car is running at speed, when the wheel rut will be shallower and the stone impacts less deep.
Finally, if this is a major problem after we've done our first season of testing this year, we can look at making the wheels from steel if we need to - we know that they can be made thin enough, and steel should be more than hard enough.
All this could look quite worrying - but this is exactly what an "Engineering Adventure" is all about. If we hadn't made a trailer and tested the wheels, we wouldn't know about any of this until we arrived with a ready-to-run car later this year. As it is, the more problems we know about, the more solutions we can take with us. It makes the engineering task more challenging, but if breaking the World Land Speed Record was easy…
The build of the car is progressing nicely. The rear lower-chassis has now been delivered to the Bloodhound Technical Centre in Bristol, while the rear sub-frame (the strong bit at the back that supports the rocket and rear suspension) is being manufactured. The team at Nuclear AMRC are doing impressive bits of machining to deliver some beautiful bits for the back end of the car.
The upper rear-chassis, which carries the jet engine and supports the fin (have you put your name on the fin yet? Over 13,000 people already have!) is now about to be manufactured.
The Hyde engineers have been working closely with the Bloodhound team on the design of the fin, which includes the stress analysis. This looks at the loads on the structure, as well as the natural frequencies (the rate at which each part will "vibrate" under load) - and the challenge is to make sure that the different frequencies on the car don't interfere with each other!
For example, the frequency of the fin is around 45 Hertz - that's 45 oscillations per second when it's being buffeted by supersonic airflow. Another major input is the airflow around the airbrakes, so we need to make sure that the airbrake frequency is nowhere near 45 Hz.
Bloodhound stress engineer Roland has been looking at two options for making the airbrakes, aluminium (frequency - 45 Hz!) and carbon fibre (frequency - 80 Hz), so the need to avoid 45 Hz makes the choice fairly simple. Add in the difference in mass between aluminium (88kg) and carbon fibre (18kg) and there's no contest - we're having carbon fibre panels for the airbrakes.
URT is busy laying up the carbon fibre monocoque - which forms the structure around my 1,000mph office - and has already delivered some fibreglass test pieces ("splashes") so that we can start fitting out the cockpit. It's starting to feel very real now - but that didn't stop our computational fluid dynamics expert Ben from jumping into the upper cockpit splash as it arrived, just to try it out.
Following our very successful rocket firing in October, we've conducted an independent review to confirm the results and the choice of rocket for us. We're grateful that some of the UK's leading rocket scientists found the time to mark our homework - and the rocket scored well!
The review panel confirmed that the Falcon hybrid rocket concept would be capable (with some development, of course) of getting us to 1,000mph.
However, the panel did not agree with our measured thrust figure of 6.5 tonnes: they felt that, from their assessment of the rocket parameters, the thrust should be even higher than that - hope they're right! The next set of rocket firing tests will be in the New Year, so we'll know soon enough.
Just in case we haven't got enough going on right now, the Bloodhound Technical Centre is about to move. With the build of the car ramping up, plus a lot of support equipment and vehicles arriving soon, we need more room! We're staying in the Bristol area, and will probably move at the end of February. The bigger Centre should also give us more room for visitors, so if you want to come and see the world's first 1,000 mph car, join our 1K Supporters' Club and come to one of our open days - we'd love to see you there.
Have a truly supersonic New Year. We plan to!
|
Thousands of rail passengers had their journeys disrupted on Friday following a "major power failure" on South West Trains from London Waterloo. | All services were affected after the "wide-spread loss of signalling across the network".
For a time no trains were running between London Waterloo and Woking or Dorking.
A spokesman for South West Trains said the issue was resolved by the close of service at about midnight.
In a separate issue on Saturday morning some services to and from London Waterloo were being affected by an electrical supply problem to the level crossings between Barnes and Richmond.
As a result, some services were being diverted or cancelled.
Travel information updates are available on the operator's website.
|
The well known republican Bobby Storey has been arrested as part of the overall investigation into the abduction and murder of Jean McConville in 1972. | Mr Storey is the Northern Chair of Sinn Féin.
Mrs McConville, 37 a widow and mother of 10, was abducted in December 1972 from her flat in the Divis area of west Belfast and shot by the IRA.
Her body was recovered from a beach in County Louth in 2003.
Mr Storey has been taken to Antrim Serious Crime Suite for questioning.
|
A member of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority, Khalil, trapped with thousands of others on a mountain as Islamist militants advance, described their plight in an interview on Wednesday with the BBC's Hadya Alalawi. | We're hiding inside caves. We have nothing - no food and no water.
We've been under siege for four days. We eat once a day - either in the morning or at night.
We've managed to get some basic food supplies from neighbouring areas, but three children died today because of starvation. Seven women and children have died since yesterday because of dehydration.
A lot of the people here have disabilities or suffer from serious illnesses like diabetes. It's 50C here and we're being bombarded indiscriminately.
We need help. Until now, no humanitarian aid has been delivered and no help provided by aid organisations - not the Red Cross or the Red Crescent, or even the United Nations. The Iraqi government and the Iraqi president have not helped. Nothing at all.
There are clashes going on between the Islamic State [IS] and the Yazidis. But we don't have weapons so what are we supposed to do?
When IS fighters arrived in Sinjar, they said there was no place for us in the area and that we had to leave. But where can we go? When they attacked Mosul, many people fled to Sinjar.
The Peshmerga [Kurdish fighters] have not helped us at all. We haven't seen any of their soldiers. When they found out that IS was coming to shell Sinjar, they all left for Kurdistan.
On top of all the persecution and humiliation we have suffered, IS fighters now want to kill us. They want to slaughter us.
Yazidis under fire
Iraq: The minorities of Nineveh
|
The chain store Marks and Spencer has confirmed it will open a new branch in Ceredigion next year, despite announcing closures across the UK. | The Aberystwyth store is due to open in spring 2017.
M&S announced this month it would shut 30 of its clothing and homeware shops and convert dozens more into food stores.
It said it was "really excited" about its Aberystwyth plans and had received positive feedback from the community.
It is due to open as part of a development in the town centre alongside Tesco, which opened its doors this week.
Twelve homes were demolished to make way for the stores.
|
Ten councillors have failed in a bid to stop £10,000 of Highland Council funds going to an RSPB Scotland peatland restoration project. | The authority's Caithness and Sutherland Area Committee approved the funding from the Landfill Community Fund last month.
The group of councillors had sought to block the grant.
However, at a meeting of the full council a vote confirmed the decision to award the funding by 40 votes to 27.
The money is to help cover the cost of blocking up open drains in parts of the Flow Country in the far north.
The councillors argued that the drains should block naturally over time.
RSPB Scotland said the ditches dated back to the 1950s and had not blocked up or stopped draining water from peat over the past 60 years.
|
At least 10 people have been killed by an earthquake that struck off the north of Haiti, officials say. | The magnitude 5.9 quake was one of the strongest to hit the Caribbean nation since a major tremor in 2010 killed more than 200,000 people.
Several buildings are reported to have been destroyed. President Jovenel Moise has urged people to remain calm.
Government spokesman Eddy Jackson Alexis said a disaster response task force had been set up.
The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of the quake that struck late on Saturday was about 19km (12 miles) north-west of the city of Port-de-Paix.
|
A Pembrokeshire town is set to lose a line of landmark trees over safety concerns. | The horse chestnut trees, which line Tenby's medieval town walls along South Parade, were investigated after one fell in strong winds this month.
They were all found to have fungal infections which could make them unstable.
Pembrokeshire council's environment cabinet member, Cris Tomos said the felling was "reluctant".
But he said the action was needed as "safety always comes first".
|
Officials have now confirmed dozens of deaths in snowstorms that have struck a popular Nepalese trekking route. As emergency teams continued their search experts told the BBC how hikers could stay as safe as possible if disaster strikes. | By Alastair BeachBBC News
Dawa Steven knows all too well how quickly disaster can strike in the Himalayas.
As a Nepalese Sherpa, he has climbed widely in the surrounding peaks and said the weather can change in an instant.
The 30-year-old recalls the time two years ago when he and nine companions ran into trouble while climbing on the Tashi Labsta pass near Mount Everest.
"There was a sudden change in weather and a tremendous windstorm," he said. "It was horrendously difficult and very, very dangerous. Hands down, that was one of my toughest days."
In the latest storms, many people appear to have perished after being caught out on open mountainsides. Others were buried by avalanches.
The deadly weather was highly unusual, whipping through Nepal on the tail-end of Cyclone Hudhud.
Yet Mr Steven, who runs a trekking company in Kathmandu, said there were still life-saving tips which climbers could use to mitigate the risk of catastrophe.
The one thing to remember was shelter, he said, even if it were a yak shed or tea hut.
"If there is no shelter, find a cave or a large rock somewhere," he said. "Just any sort of shelter from the elements.
"Then band up with other people. As it gets colder you can rely on each other's body warmth."
If a hiker is caught without any kind of sanctuary during a storm, he added, then he or she had almost "reached the point of no return".
Tuesday's tragedy occurred on the Annapurna Circuit - one of the most well-trodden trekking routes in the world.
Although frequented by seasoned climbers and mountaineers, it is also popular with less experienced hikers.
Given the severity of the unexpected snowstorms, some of those caught out would not have had been fully prepared.
Simon Lowe, an experienced mountaineer who has climbed widely in Nepal, said: "You just would not expect that weather at this time of year.
"There would have been a reasonable expectation that they could have gone out in good weather and it would have stayed like that."
Preparing for the worst
Like Mr Steven, Mr Lowe said that the most important thing for any hiker to do in such a situation is find shelter - even if it means trying to create a snow cave.
How to avoid an avalanche
Though there is no failsafe method, assessing avalanche risk is mostly a matter of topography, say experts.
Convex slopes and cornices are particularly hazardous, while smooth rock slabs beneath the snow are dangerous as they fail to provide anchorage.
The type of snowfall is also key - the stickier the snow, the less likely it is to sheer off the mountain. In addition, if the sun is shining the day after a heavy storm, then melt-water running beneath the surface could also increase the chances of movement.
For walkers, the odds of surviving an avalanche come down to the surrounding terrain. If it looks like the risks of collapsing snow are high and you are standing on the edge of a crevasse or in a gully, the prospects of survival may be slim.
Even if caught in the flow of an avalanche, experts say, all is not lost. Rolling like a log or even using a swimming motion can help, while covering the mouth with one hand can help create a breathing space when trapped.
But he added that technology was becoming increasingly influential. Weather forecasts are readily available on mobile phones, he said, while his own company always sends groups to Nepal with satellite phones and GPS devices.
However he noted that in the worst storms, GPS technology often does not work.
Another problem is altitude sickness - something which Mr Lowe rates as the single biggest danger for hikers in the Himalayas.
According to Nikki Skinner from the UK-based Trek and Mountain magazine, a good way for walkers to mitigate the risk is to train at home before leaving on a big expedition.
"The best thing you can do is to replicate what you will be doing when you get there," she said. "You need to do cardiovascular fitness training, go for long walks, get used to long days on foot."
Ms Skinner also said there were various training programmes for trekkers, including rescue courses or "winter skills" programmes on how to spot avalanche threats or navigate during a blizzard.
Dawa Steven says that perhaps the most effective way for a trekker to escape catastrophe is to prepare adequately beforehand.
"It all starts before the trek itself," he said, saying that it was important for foreigners to use experience local guides and also inform their embassies of where they were going.
"These days Annapurna is popular with a lot of young people on a budget," he said. "They don't hire proper guides and don't go through proper trekking companies.
"Sometimes they are going into unknown territory and in 99% of cases that is fine. But when something like this happens, they can get into big trouble."
|
There is plenty of evidence in Afghanistan of British and American troop reinforcements to support President Obama's "surge" against the Taliban. Local police and army units are being trained and areas previously held by the insurgents are being cleared. 3rd Battalion, The Rifles are involved in one such operation around the dangerous town of Sangin at the moment - but can the surge strategy work? These are five things that could hinder the plan: | By Sima KotechaNewsbeat US reporter in Afghanistan
Will Obama's 'exit strategy' work?
Obama's critics are already saying that giving the Taliban notice of an 'exit strategy' starting in July 2011 was a mistake. It could encourage the insurgents to keep going with the knowledge that American and British troops will be going home.
However the US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the summer 2011 timetable was not an 'exit strategy' and the numbers leaving would be small.
He also said the movement of troops will depend on how much progress is being made training the Afghan National Army and police, as well as whether the country's various provinces become more stable.
However if the coalition cannot point to success either in training or security by this time the critics could accuse Obama of failure.
Can the Afghan army and police take control?
Obama's plan depends on training local police and army units, but so far eight years of training has produced patchy results with the police still viewed with suspicion by many.
Pay is also an issue - a Taliban 'gun for hire' can earn more for his family than a policeman being paid by the government in Kabul.
So how can the British and Americans train more police and soldiers quickly given the problems so far? Afghanistan is very tribal and the army is dominated by Tajiks who make up about 25% of the population, but troops from the troubled and mainly Pashtun Helmand Province are thin on the ground.
Will Afghan villagers support the troops?
The US counter insurgency plan relies on Pashtun villagers disliking and fearing the Taliban.
But what if the villagers would rather support their fellow tribesman in the Taliban than mainly white, foreigners and a government in far away Kabul that's seen as corrupt?
Government ministers are accused of corruption and this could undermine popular support for the surge and the plan behind it.
Can the president retain the support of the American people?
With unemployment on the rise and a wobbly economy, the war in Afghanistan is not top of most Americans' list of worries.
So spending billions of dollars keeping American servicemen and women there could become more unpopular.
The US government may have to make a clear connection in people's minds between the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the attacks on 9/11, as well as the fear of another terrorist assault on the states, if they want to keep Americans on side.
But if the American death toll rises support could slip further, as it did during the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 70s.
Will Pakistan help?
Obama wants the government in Pakistan to help him destroy the Taliban, but historically Pakistan, with its many Pashtuns, has been closely linked to the Taliban.
Fighters stream across the border to reinforce the insurgency in Afghanistan.
The White House is asking the government in Islamabad, which is already under pressure at home, to risk greater unpopularity and more home-grown terrorism, by the Pakistani Taliban, in return for foreign aid.
|
The stark contrast of poverty and wealth in Scotland's towns and cities has been illustrated in an interactive map of deprivation.
| The Scottish Index of Multiple of Deprivation named Ferguslie Park in Paisley as the most deprived area of the country.
But the maps show that there are pockets of deprivation in most of Scotland's urban areas.
They highlight the most deprived areas in red, while the least deprived are dark blue.
The index found that Glasgow has 56 of the 100 most deprived areas in Scotland.
Meanwhile Edinburgh has six of the most deprived areas - up two on the same survey four years ago.
Outside the central belt, Midstocket, in Aberdeen, and St Andrews south west in Fife were among the least deprived areas.
|
Insurer Admiral Group is selling part of its business, including online portal Confused.com, in a deal valued at £508m. | Price comparison firm RVU will buy its Penguin Portals and Preminen businesses.
Admiral was launched in 1993 selling car insurance over the phone in Cardiff with a team of just 57.
Chief Executive David Stevens said the deal was a positive outcome for customers, employees and shareholders.
"It is the right choice for the long-term success of the businesses," he said.
Admiral has UK offices in Swansea and Newport and overseas sites in Spain, Italy, France, Canada, the US and India.
|
The UK's favourite toys from the past 100 years are being celebrated in a new set of stamps from the Royal Mail. | Characters in the set include the Sindy doll and Action Man, as well as brands like Spirograph, Stickle Bricks and Fuzzy Felt.
Meccano, the Merrythought bear, W Britain toy figures, Space Hopper and Hornby Dublo trains also feature.
The series of 10 stamps will be released on Tuesday at 7,000 post offices and to buy online.
Royal Mail spokesman Philip Parker said: "British toymakers enjoyed a reputation for quality and innovation.
"These nostalgic stamps celebrate 10 wonderful toys that have endured through the decades."
Here are pictures of the 10 stamps in the series:
|
There is an "absolute drought" in Jersey after 15 days of no "measurable rainfall", according to meteorologists. | Jersey Met Office said the last measurable rainfall - more than 1mm - in the largest Channel Island was on 2 July when 2.8mm of rain was recorded.
The dry spell is due to end on Thursday with thundery showers forecast.
This is the 125th time the island has been in an absolute drought since records began in 1894 with the longest period lasting 39 days in 1976.
More on this story and others from the Channel Islands
A Jersey Water spokesman said a hosepipe ban was unlikely as reservoirs were 83% full, with enough water to last three months.
|
The Leeds Library is the oldest surviving subscription library of its type in the UK, with its 140,000 books ranging from crumbling Victorian novels to the latest Robert Galbraith best seller. As the cultural hidden gem celebrates its 250th year, the BBC pays a visit to see how it attempts to protect its legacy while staying relevant to an increasingly distracted audience. | By Tom AireyBBC News
Sitting above a card shop and a bank on one of Leeds's busiest shopping streets, the library building can easily pass you by unless you look up and spot its blue plaque and gold signage.
"My first visit was love at first sight, it was the most magical experience," says Martin Staniforth, library chair of trustees.
"All of these books in a building I'd walked past dozens of times and never given a second glance."
Established in 1768, The Leeds Library is housed inside a three-storey Grade II* Greek revivalist structure on Commercial Street, with only the very highest book shelves visible from street level.
"You get serenaded into the quiet room by the buskers singing 'Halelluiah' on the street outside, but it's far from the madding crowd when you come in," new member Nad Fiorrucci, 63, says.
"It has a wonderful aura about it."
Subscription libraries became a common feature of towns and cities in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at a time when there were no public libraries and only a handful of university libraries.
As books were increasing in popularity but were expensive to buy, groups of people combined their funds to form libraries useful each day and "of increasing value in the future", according to the Independent Libraries Association.
Along with most of the other private libraries at the time, The Leeds Library was predominantly a place for the middle classes, with membership capped at 500 people.
Trustees admit it remained this way right up until 2008 when the library became a charity, doubling its membership in the process.
"You had to apply to become a member, you had to get a share, you were interviewed - the only way to describe it was exclusive," says Carl Hutton, the library's chief executive.
"Thankfully, the trustees at the time realised it's not the way things are done any more and we should open our doors up - the library's thrived by opening its doors."
Subscription libraries - a history
A yearly membership currently costs £132, or £66 for people aged between 18 and 25.
The library has seen a colourful mix of characters of varying professions over the years, with current members including actors, judges and decorative artists.
Alister MacKenzie, a member of the library for 25 years, was a golf course designer whose masterpiece was Augusta, arguably the USA's most famous course, which opened in 1933.
Andrew Graham, a 41-year-old author, has been a member for three years and used the space to research a book he was writing.
He says: "I came in and asked, 'have you got anything on York?' They replied, 'we've got Francis Drake's Eboracum from 1736'. I said, 'that will do'.
"I didn't even need to wear gloves, they just told me to take it away and lumped this huge book on the counter."
Mr Hutton says: "For some people, the library is the thing that gets them up out of bed in the morning.
"We have writers who come here to enjoy the ambience and find it's an industrious place to work, we have some people who just love reading books and a younger element who like that we're diversifying into events."
To celebrate its milestone, the library has hosted about 200 events including film screenings, poetry nights, author talks and theatre performances, working with 32 different organisations in the process.
Since 2014, it has introduced hundreds of uncommon words to the public through its popular Word Of The Day posts on social media, with public events also advertised on its Twitter and Facebook pages.
Mr Hutton adds: "In many ways, the internet and social media are the nemesis of libraries, because of access to information, but it's actually been our salvation.
"It's led to us being able to promote a private library, so what is an issue for public libraries has actually been brilliant for us. Without it, people wouldn't even know we were in Leeds."
Mr Staniforth says: "We retain our relevance because increasingly we've put on these nights, which are open to the public and are attracting in a different audience than we had 20 years ago.
"Financially we also benefit from rental income from the shops underneath the library, our forefathers who built it were very forward thinking in that respect."
Being a part of the library has been a family affair for Angela Beaumont, 67, whose grandfather was also a member.
"I've probably borrowed one book a fortnight since I joined 40 years ago, I'm a total insomniac so the frequency depends on how I'm sleeping really," she says.
"When I first came here the people all looked like the books, they were a bit dusty, but since they've open it up to the general public they do have more younger people."
The library grows its collection by 1,500 books a year, with members able to nominate any new titles they are hoping to read.
The oldest book in its collection is thought to be a travel journal by Sir John Mandeville published in 1483, which is in remarkably good condition.
Jane Riley, Leeds Library's librarian, says she is "very protective over the profession because it is a dying one".
"My equivalent colleagues in public libraries don't handle books half the time, they're helping people log on to computers and stuff like that," she says.
"I'm not saying there isn't a place for that, but the joy of this place is you actually handle the books all day and every day."
A recent addition she has had to stamp up and catalogue is a huge book sharing the work of world-renowned Yorkshire artist David Hockney, which came with its own stand.
Mrs Beaumont adds: "Perhaps libraries don't have the same input in people's lives, but if I had to pick between 50 gigabytes of information in a computer folder or a book.. I know which I'd choose."
The Leeds Library's most-borrowed list of 2018
Becoming - Michelle Obama (non-fiction)
I'll Keep you Safe - Peter May (fiction)
This is Going to Hurt - Adam Kay (non-fiction)
Tombland - C.J. Sansom (fiction)
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House - Michael Wolff (non-fiction)
London Rules: Jackson Lamb Thriller 5 - Mick Herron (fiction)
Photos by Tom Airey
|
Chile is one of only six nations in the world where a woman can be prosecuted for having an abortion whatever the circumstances. Its first female president, Michelle Bachelet, is trying to change that, against stiff opposition. | By Reeta ChakrabartiBBC News
"I believe that women should have legally the possibility of making their own choices. In this country until now this is criminalised - if you interrupt your pregnancy, you will go to jail. And I believe this is not fair," Ms Bachelet told me.
"Women could be in an unhealthy situation because of rape, et cetera, and there might be women who don't want babies in that situation."
First elected in 2006 and now back as president after Sebastian Pinera took the reins for four years, Ms Bachelet has made it her mission to change her country's restrictive abortion laws.
The changes would decriminalise abortion at up to 12 weeks:
And if the mother was under 14 years old, the limit would be extended to 18 weeks.
The proposal has been passed by the country's lower house, but needs Senate approval to become law.
'Powerless'
Urban Chile seems a modern and sophisticated place.
You see gay couples holding hands and a strong alternative street culture.
But some old attitudes endure.
Despite being illegal in Chile, abortions do take place.
Those who can afford it turn to underground private clinics or personal contacts to get them Misoprostol, known as the abortion drug.
But if you are poor, your options are limited.
Paola and Andrea, in their early 40s, both had planned pregnancies and then found they were carrying fatally damaged foetuses.
Paola said she had felt "like a walking corpse, and like my son's coffin. It was torture".
She said abortion must be a very painful experience, but not as much as forcing that baby to be born.
The best advice Paola's doctor could give her was to pray.
She was not allowed an abortion; neither was Andrea, even though her life was under threat.
Both had to carry their babies for months and give birth to them - without any hope they would live.
Andrea told me: "I felt powerless, having to live this process after having my daughter declared unviable.
"I suffered unnecessarily and so did my family."
Later, the president told me she had watched some of her friends go through the same thing.
"There are some people who might be able to live with that, and that's OK, but there's a lot of people who really are destroyed emotionally afterwards, and their lives are changed forever. So that's why we do believe they should have the possibility to decide by their own, what they prefer."
States where abortion is completely illegal:
Previous governments have tried to liberalise the law, but President Bachelet's bill has already gone much further down the legislative process than any before.
But the proposal remains very controversial, with opposition led by the Church.
At the beginning of September, it organised a rally in the capital, which attracted support from tens of thousands of people.
One of them, Gloria, was raped at the age of 12 by a cousin, and made to have an abortion by her family.
She never recovered, and has tried to take her own life several times.
Gloria told me: "In my case, if I had the choice, I would have had my daughter. But it wasn't my choice.
"Abortion scars you for life - before and after.
"Nothing good comes out of abortion - nothing, nothing."
'Women are still dependent'
In Chile, many conversations lead back to the country's violent past, when the democratic government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by a coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet.
The general banned abortion in 1989, in one of the last acts of his military government.
Despite being predominantly Catholic, Chile had allowed pregnancy terminations until then.
Human rights lawyer Lorena Frias told me the military dictatorship still cast a shadow over Chile's attitude to personal freedom and to abortion.
"Even 20 years after the dictatorship, human rights is not part of the political agenda," she said.
"This makes it more difficult to argue in terms of international standards in favour of women.
"In Chile, women are still dependent.
"Women do not have the decision over their bodies, over their own financial things, over their own liberty, so it is more difficult to push forward the abortion agenda."
Despite the controversy, President Bachelet appears to have most of the public behind her.
And she is hopeful Chile's women will soon have choices available to them that their mothers were denied.
|
Facebook's collection of data makes it one of the most influential organisations in the world. Share Lab wanted to look "under the bonnet" at the tech giant's algorithms and connections to better understand the social structure and power relations within the company. | By Joe MillerBusiness reporter
A couple of years ago, Vladan Joler and his brainy friends in Belgrade began investigating the inner workings of one of the world's most powerful corporations.
The team, which includes experts in cyber-forensic analysis and data visualisation, had already looked into what he calls "different forms of invisible infrastructures" behind Serbia's internet service providers.
But Mr Joler and his friends, now working under a project called Share Lab, had their sights set on a bigger target.
"If Facebook were a country, it would be bigger than China," says Mr Joler, whose day job is as a professor at Serbia's Novi Sad University.
He reels off the familiar, but still staggering, numbers: the barely teenage Silicon Valley firm stores some 300 petabytes of data, boasts almost two billion users, and raked in almost $28bn (£22bn) in revenues in 2016 alone.
And yet, Mr Joler argues, we know next to nothing about what goes on under the bonnet - despite the fact that we, as users, are providing most of the fuel - for free.
"All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook," he says.
The data our interactions provide feeds the complex algorithms that power the social media site, where, as Mr Joler puts it, our behaviour is transformed into a product.
Trying to untangle that largely hidden process proved to be a mammoth task.
"We tried to map all the inputs, the fields in which we interact with Facebook, and the outcome," he says.
"We mapped likes, shares, search, update status, adding photos, friends, names, everything our devices are saying about us, all the permissions we are giving to Facebook via apps, such as phone status, wifi connection and the ability to record audio."
All of this research provided only a fraction of the full picture. So the team looked into Facebook's acquisitions, and scoured its myriad patent filings.
The results were astonishing.
Visually arresting flow charts that take hours to absorb fully, but which show how the data we give Facebook is used to calculate our ethnic affinity (Facebook's term), sexual orientation, political affiliation, social class, travel schedule and much more.
One map shows how everything - from the links we post on Facebook, to the pages we like, to our online behaviour in many other corners of cyber-space that are owned or interact with the company (Instagram, WhatsApp or sites that merely use your Facebook log-in) - could all be entering a giant algorithmic process.
And that process allows Facebook to target users with terrifying accuracy, with the ability to determine whether they like Korean food, the length of their commute to work, or their baby's age.
Another map details the permissions many of us willingly give Facebook via its many smartphone apps, including the ability to read all text messages, download files without permission, and access our precise location.
Individually, these are powerful tools; combined they amount to a data collection engine that, Mr Joler argues, is ripe for exploitation.
"If you think just about cookies, just about mobile phone permissions, or just about the retention of metadata - each of those things, from the perspective of data analysis, are really intrusive."
More Technology of Business
How Cuba's growing internet is fuelling new businesses
How DNA-testing kits are becoming big business
'You can tell by the way I use my walk...'
Seeing the light: How India is embracing solar power
Facebook has for years asserted that data privacy and the security of its operations are paramount. Facebook data, for example, cannot be used by developers to create surveillance tools and the firm says it complies with privacy protection laws in all countries. Thousands of new staff have been recruited to police its content.
Mr Joler, though, while admitting that his research made him a little paranoid about the information that was being harvested, is more worried about the longer term.
The data will remain in the hands of one company. Even if its current leaders are responsible and trustworthy, what about those in charge in 20 years?
Analysts say Share Lab's work is valuable and impressive. "It's probably the most comprehensive work mapping Facebook that I've ever seen," says Dr Julia Powles, an expert in technology law and policy at Cornell Tech.
"[The research] shows in cold and calculated terms how much we are giving away for the value of being able to communicate with your mates," she says.
The scale of Facebook's reach can be stated in raw numbers - but Share Lab's maps make it visceral, in a way that drawing parallels cannot.
"We haven't really got appropriate historical analogies for the tech giants," explains Dr Powles. Their powers, she continues, extend "far beyond" the likes of the East India Company and monopolies of old, such as Standard Oil.
And while many may consider the objectives of Mark Zuckerberg's empire to be rather benign, its outcomes are not always so.
Facebook, argues Dr Powles, "plays to our base psychological impulses" by valuing popularity above all else.
Not that she expects Share Lab's research to lead to a mass Facebook exodus, or a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of tech titans.
"What is most striking is the sense of resignation, the impotence of regulation, the lack of options, the public apathy," says Dr Powles. "What an extraordinary situation for an entity that has power over information - there is no greater power really."
It is this extraordinary dominance that the Share Lab team set out to illustrate. But Mr Joler is quick to point out that even their grand maps cannot provide an accurate picture of the social media giant's capabilities.
There is no guarantee, for example, that there are not many other algorithms at work that are still heavily guarded trade secrets.
However, Mr Joler argues, "it is still the one and only map that exists" of one of the greatest forces shaping our world today.
Follow Technology of Business editor Matthew Wall on Twitter and Facebook
|
Brazil's former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's surrender on Saturday capped a dramatic few days in Brazil. But the political spectacle is likely to continue as the country heads towards presidential elections in October. | By Katy WatsonBBC Latin America correspondent, São Paulo
"We are going to return to the time where just a few people have a lot of money, and a lot of people have nothing," Lula supporter Gisele Veloso says.
She was on the verge of tears as she stood outside the steelworkers' union in the early hours of Thursday morning. It was just after the Supreme Court ruled that Lula had to start serving his 12-year prison sentence for corruption and tensions were running high.
Spectacular fall from grace
For many, Lula still holds a special place. He was Brazil's first working-class president and helped lift millions out of poverty. He promised change in a country known for its gaping inequalities.
But it has been a stunning fall from grace for a man who was once the most popular leader in Brazilian history. Convicted and jailed for corruption and money laundering, he now has a less flattering claim to fame as the country's most famous criminal.
For millions, including those who had voted for him in the past, he turned out to be just as corrupt as the politicians who came before him. There are now plenty of people who are eager to see him locked up.
Messy months ahead
Even so, it's unlikely that this is the last we will hear of Lula. Leaders in the Workers' Party (PT) have already said he remains their candidate for October's elections.
It is possible for Lula to campaign behind bars - for now. So the next few months will be messy and emotional.
Parties have to put forward names of their preferred candidates by 15 August. The Electoral court then has until mid-September to analyse them.
Because of what is known as the "Clean Sheet" law, which was introduced in 2010, anybody with a criminal conviction is banned from public office for eight years. At that point, Lula's nomination is expected to be thrown out.
But that means for several months, we could have a convicted criminal attempting to be the country's next leader. This is Brazil and politics is nothing if not complicated - and at times unbelievable.
An act of rejection
For Thiago de Aragão, a partner at political consultancy Arko Advice, this is the end of an era - one that Lula's Workers' Party was warned about.
"They knew that this would happen," he says, adding that they have lined up possible candidates to replace him, including the former mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad.
"From within the Workers' Party, breaking with Lula is not an option," he says, adding that Lula has in the past few years become bigger than the party he founded.
"Because of that, a candidate from the party that is not fully endorsed or linked to Lula does not stand a chance," he adds.
They have a strategy and that, according to Mr de Aragão, is to keep pushing Lula as a candidate until the last moment. When the electoral court throws his candidacy out, that's when they'll put forward another candidate.
"They will make this an act of rejection," he says. "The energy from that moment will then be transmitted to the candidate that will be chosen to run on Lula's behalf."
From far-left to far-right
Brazilian politics is increasingly polarised. Trailing behind leftist Lula in the presidential polls is far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro. So could he become number one?
Many experts doubt it.
"The existence of a candidate like Bolsonaro is a product of the existence of Lula," says Mr de Aragão.
If that's the case, then it throws the elections wide open. There is a great deal of uncertainty as to the political future of this country. Ask a Brazilian who to vote for and many just shrug their shoulders - they have no idea.
One thing is certain though, Lula's influence is here to stay.
"He will still be able to do politics even through his silence," says João Paulo Orsini Martinelli, a criminal lawyer in São Paulo. "His existence will still be there and he's still a gravitational force within Brazilian politics. He's a player."
Additional reporting by Anna Jean Kaiser
|
A motorist has been given a six-month suspended sentence after admitting causing the death of an 11-year-old girl by careless driving. | Isabelle Boshell died in hospital four days after being hit on Tamworth Road, Coventry, on 22 October.
Ola Onubogu, 54, of Wappenbury Road, Coventry, was also sentenced to 120 hours unpaid work and was banned from driving for 15 months.
His jail sentence was suspended for two years by Warwick Crown Court.
In a tribute following her death last year, Isabelle's family described her as a "unique individual" and "the best daughter anyone could ever have".
Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]
Related Internet Links
HM Courts and Tribunals Service
|
Black teenager Stephen Lawrence was killed as he waited for a bus in April 1993. It took more than eighteen years to bring his killers to justice. Read the timeline to find out more about the twists and turns in the case.
|
22 April 1993
Stephen Lawrence murdered
23 April 1993
Suspects identified
4 May 1993
Family express frustrations
7 May-23 June 1993
Suspects arrested and two charged
29 July 1993
Charges dropped
22 December 1993
Inquest halted
April 1994
CPS refuses to prosecute
September 1994
Private prosecution launched
December 1994
Police surveillance
18-25 April 1996
Private prosecution fails
13 February 1997
Inquest verdict
14 February 1997
Daily Mail front page
20 March 1997
Police Complaints Authority investigation
July 1997
Public inquiry announced
24 March 1998
Inquiry opens
July 1998
Police apology
February 1999
Macpherson report published
6 September 2002
Norris jailed
5 May 2004
Trial ruled out
April 2005
Double jeopardy scrapped
26 July 2006
BBC documentary
8 November 2007
Forensics review
7 February 2008
Memorial opens
February 2009
Report anniversary
9 July 2010
Dobson jailed
18 May 2011
Two to face trial
14 November 2011
Trial begins
3 January 2012
Guilty of murder
24 June 2013
Former police officer 'spied' on Lawrence family
Family express frustrations
Charges dropped
Private prosecution fails
Inquest verdict
Public inquiry announced
Inquiry opens
Macpherson report published
Two to face trial
Trial begins
|
Margate's Turner Contemporary has attracted three times as many visitors than expected, picked up awards and received glowing reviews. But can the art gallery really be a catalyst for the long-term regeneration of the Kent seaside town? | Director Victoria Pomery says it has been a "phenomenal year".
Overall, visitor numbers were three times higher than expected, with 500,000 people passing through its doors.
It means the gallery has been the third most-visited attraction in Kent, beaten only by Canterbury Cathedral and Leeds Castle.
Ms Pomery said: "There's a real tangible change in the area of Margate, with more than 35 new businesses opening in the Old Town and Lower High Street.
"Shops have reported doublings of takings and estate agents a surge in people looking to buy a property in the town."
Questions remain, however, as to whether the gallery can help change the image of Margate over the long-term.
In a report to mark its anniversary, the gallery claims to have benefited the Kent economy to the tune of £13.8m.
It says the figure, which was put together following research by a consultancy firm, takes into account the amount of advertising generated by international press coverage of the gallery, as well as the spend generated by visitors.
But James Kennell, who lectures on tourism and regeneration at the University of Greenwich, said it was too early to assess the gallery's long-term impact.
'Slow process'
He said: "Regeneration is a long and slow process. It's tricky for an institution like Turner to have to start justifying itself economically just a year after it opened."
Mr Kennell said it was difficult to interpret the gallery's £13.8m figure.
He said: "The question to be asked is where that money is being spent? Is it being spent locally? Is it being spent on travel? Is it being spent in the gallery? They are all things we need to know about these figures to make a judgement.
"I'm a complete believer in Turner Contemporary as a project and a driver for tourism and regeneration.
"But we need to be judging this in five years' time, 20 years' time, because it's taken Margate 30 years of recession to get to the state where it is now and it's going to take that long again to turn it around again."
Madeline Homer, Thanet District Council's community services manager, agrees more can be done to capitalise on the gallery's success.
She said: "We need to build on the momentum of the gallery. Regeneration takes time and this is just the start.
"The town is changing and we do have some other initiatives to ensure that the success story spreads beyond the Old Town."
But she said it was clear the gallery had made an impact.
She said: "We are nearly at full capacity in respect of business uptake in the Old Town and that is inevitably down to the Turner gallery.
David Foley, the chief executive of East Kent Chamber of Commerce, said he was optimistic over the future of the town.
He said: "We are dealing with brand Margate and brand Margate has suffered over the years.
"For many people it's a dilapidated town that hasn't changed with the modern age and the Turner is doing it's best to change that.
"Give us a bit of time and I think you'll find that Margate will have a happier image, not only to people in Kent but in fact throughout the world."
|
LinkedIn has bought US online learning business Lynda for $1.5bn (£1.1bn), making it the professional networking site's biggest acquisition to date. | LinkedIn is trying to boost the business content it offers to its 300 million users.
Lynda, based in California, has made hundreds of videos that teach subscribers everything from coding to business skills.
Subscribers pay $375 per year to access the tutorials.
Although the company was founded nearly 20 years ago, it has expanded rapidly in the past two years, adding several languages to its video offerings and increasing outside investment.
"The mission of LinkedIn and the mission of lynda.com are highly aligned," said LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner in a statement.
"Both companies seek to help professionals be better at what they do."
Shares in LinkedIn rose more than 1.5% on the New York Stock Exchange after news of the acquisition was released.
|
The media minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa says that there is no issue of media freedom in Sri Lanka while the country has
been ranked low down on the index of media freedom published by the Paris based Reporters without Boarders organization. | He claims that certain individuals and organizations are providing misleading and in accurate information to the international
media watch dogs.
Minister Yapa dismissed claims on undue influence to journalists by Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapksha saying that “he always
responds positively to journalists “
The Defence Secretary had been accused of threatening the editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper and making comments with a
detrimental effect to press freedom.
The media minister said that the government has always investigated killings and abductions of journalists in the North.
“It’s the lack of information that prevents the police bringing successful prosecutions”, said Minister Yapa.
Commenting on the incident where Labour Minister Mervin Silva’s intrusion to the Sri Lanka Rupavahni Corporation and the incidents
that followed , the minister said that the government has deployed three police teams and investigations are underway.
“It’s unfair to say that the government has not acted in the Mervin Silva’s incident” said Minister Yapa.
|
With the NHS facing mounting pressure during the coronavirus outbreak, many doctors, nurses and health workers are finding themselves being asked to step up in some way. One of them is Dr Asif Munaf, whose promotion to consultant has been fast-tracked - but he says he is looking forward to the challenge. | By Michael RaceBBC News
"It's what we have prepared for all our lives. We prepared for times like this," said Dr Munaf, whose first shift in his new role was on Wednesday.
The father-of-one has been promoted to consultant level a year earlier than planned with the single task of treating patients with Covid-19.
But Dr Munaf, who at the age of 31 believes he is one of the UK's youngest medical consultants, said he was "confident" in his new role.
"It's going to be quite intense, but I'm looking forward to the challenge," said Dr Munaf, who is based at Lincoln County Hospital, where has been working as a registrar for the past three years .
"It's a postman's job to deliver... it's a doctor's job to fight whatever [disease] is in front of them."
With all routine operations being cancelled for three months, Dr Munaf said many medics have changed and adapted to new roles as the NHS braced itself for a surge in cases.
Daily tasks for Dr Munaf as a consultant will include assessing and carrying out procedures on patients in the Covid-19 isolation wards, as well as communicating with their family members.
Dr Munaf said even before he was made a consultant the amount of patients being treated with the virus had been "relentless" and he was shocked by how many adults, usually fit and healthy, had been "very unwell".
After his first shift in his new role, Dr Munaf told the BBC he had treated 28 patients, all with confirmed or suspected cases of Covid-19.
He said most of them were unwell but improving, three were "seriously unwell", and "one was dying".
The consultant said difficult decisions had to be made about the treatment of patients, including those who would be "made comfortable - an overused medical euphemism for being allowed to die" because of the severity of their medical condition and likelihood of survival.
Oxygen supply was not an issue at Dr Munaf's hospital, but he said the hospital was short on continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines, with more of the devices, which deliver oxygen to the lungs without needing a ventilator, expected to arrive later this week.
Dr Munaf said part of his job was training surgically-trained nurses how to operate the CPAP machines they would need to use on surgical wards being converted into Covid-19 wards.
To limit risk of infection Dr Munaf has been placed in a hotel away from his family, is required wear full personal protective equipment (PPE), and has had to shave off his beard "for the first time in 15 years".
"I look 10 years old now," he joked, but added he was concerned about the "lack of PPE across the NHS".
He has not been alone in that concern and Dr Munaf told the BBC the PPE available to him and his colleagues was "exceedingly poor".
He said PPE was essential to protect staff during the crisis but said being covered up when treating patients was "dehumanising our approach".
"They feel like they are drowning and you cannot put a comforting hand on their shoulder," he said.
"You see the fear in their eyes. One of the biggest comforts to a patient is a doctor's touch."
Dr Munaf said despite expecting to face unprecedented pressures in his new role, he was "relishing the opportunity" to "really fight this pandemic".
"It's once in a generation, it's something we can tell our kids about. We were there," he said.
"It's time to step up. It's our time to shine."
|
How can a council save £45m in one year? | By Emma SimpsonBusiness correspondent, BBC News, Coventry
That is the shortfall that Coventry City Council reckons it could be looking at for the next financial year.
It is not alone.
Town halls up and down the UK are bracing themselves for big cuts in funding from Central Government, leaving them with unprecedented black holes in their budgets.
It means contemplating cuts to local services that would have been unthinkable before.
What to cut?
But what services should a local authority provide?
That is the question that the boss of one council says every local authority will have to ask itself in the coming months and years.
"We can't salami slice our way out of this," says Martin Reeves, chief executive of Coventry City Council.
"There is no way we can just take costs out and just trim all of our services - all that we'll do is reduce the quality of those services.
"The key for us is, let's do less and do it well. And part of that is saying in the new climate we have to stop doing things."
Big savings
Mr Reeves is on a mission to change the way his council works so he can provide better value for money.
It started well before the financial crisis.
He is already driving down costs:
Here are a few of them:
Savings? £500,000 next year.
Savings? £4m next year.
Savings? £1m next year.
What matters?
The council reckons it can easily save £10m during the next financial year by simply doing things better and more efficiently.
Trouble is, it has now got to go much further and faster to balance its books.
"There are going to have to be some tough decisions made, the likes of which we probably didn't think we'd have to make," says Mr Reeves.
"What we're going to be saying to the people is, what are your real priorities, what are the things that really matter to you?"
Tough choices
The council provides more than 700 different services.
So for ordinary people it is not easy to chose what kinds of services should be cut back.
When faced with choices on a big white board in the centre of Coventry, with a small selection of services, and how much they cost, a few were prepared to close libraries.
A couple of others thought they could do without a weekly bin collection.
Losing public toilets, at a cost of £142,000, got a big "No".
But the £7m bill for adult education programmes was chosen by several as a possible "cut".
However, there were just as many people shaking their heads and saying no to any savings at all.
One pensioner summed it up: "I can't see any savings anywhere because all of those services affect me."
Model for others?
Doing less for less is going to be tough.
"It is a taster of what's going to come for us," says Councillor George Duggins, the politician who is in charge of finance at Coventry town hall.
"What we will be doing is being honest and transparent with the people," Mr Duggins says.
"But at the end of it, there will be people who are going to be disappointed with the decisions we have to take"
His chief executive, Mr Reeves, sees it as a challenge and an opportunity.
"This will provide us with a unique chance for us and our partners to say, 'look, we've got a much reduced budget, how can we use technology and be innovative, to actually fundamentally change the offer to the public out there.' We're going to have to try new things and take some risks."
Coventry is already well ahead in making early savings. Could this council be a model for other town halls to follow?
BBC News will be tracking its progress in the months to come.
|
As the famed and admired early-mover in the high-quality streaming industry, Netflix has built a formidable business worth in the region of $125bn. In the past three months, it added 6.7 million new subscribers, bringing its total userbase to 153 million worldwide. | Dave LeeNorth America technology reporter
But the next three months will prove to be its most challenging yet. Soon, Netflix will be competing with Disney+, HBO Max and Apple TV+ - all companies with enormous brand recognition and a strong desire to take their own slice of streaming’s riches.
On Wednesday, Netflix wrote to investors to tell them that competition would be a good thing. The rising tide of streaming services would just tempt more people away from “linear TV”, as they term it, and into streaming services.
“Just like the evolution from broadcast TV to cable, these once-in-a-generation changes are very large and open up big, new opportunities for many players,” the company told investors.
“For example, for the first few decades of cable, networks like TBS, USA, ESPN, MTV and Discovery didn’t take much audience share from each other, but instead, they collectively took audience share from broadcast viewing.”
Netflix pointed to the fact that its growth rate in the US and Canada had been almost identical in the past six years, despite only one of those markets - the US - having a significant competitor in Hulu.
That may be the case, but Netflix’s argument neglects to address what will be different about what it can offer subscribers in the years ahead. Netflix’s back catalogue is in the process of being slowly picked to pieces, with competitors taking back shows and movies that they agreed to put on Netflix at a time when they didn’t have a streaming product of their own.
Lost shows
In one high-profile example, the era-defining sitcom Friends, which has been a huge hit on Netflix since being added in 2015, will be moving entirely to HBO’s platform in 2020.
In what was seen as an effort to counteract that loss, Netflix reportedly paid an astronomical half a billion dollars to secure the rights to Seinfeld. Up against Friends, Seinfeld has arguably far less global appeal, and looks rather tired when compared to Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David’s Seinfeld spin-off-of-sorts, which will be an HBO Max exclusive.
Friends and “Curb” are just two examples. Netflix is losing shows hand over fist. British classics, such as The Office, are now on Britbox. The US Office, cited by many Netflix users as great “background noise”, is being taken away, too - for NBC’s new streaming service, Peacock. That’ll launch in April.
It means Netflix will need to rely even more heavily on its original content. The “Netflix Original” brand is already well-established and highly-respected. Netflix originals took away 27 wins at this year’s Emmys (HBO won 34, Amazon 15).
“While the new competitors have some great titles (especially catalogue titles),” Netflix told investors, “none have the variety, diversity and quality of new original programming that we are producing around the world.”
That assertion on quality is to be debated in the pages of the Hollywood press, not here. But what’s inescapable for Netflix is that, despite the critical acclaim, those originals aren’t having the bottom line impact investors expect.
Even with the return of one of its stand-out originals, Stranger Things, this most recent quarter (three months ending in September) saw Netflix add just 530,000 new subscribers in the US, below Wall Street's expectations. In the previous quarter, it lost 126,000 subscribers in the country.
Its subscriber growth, then, has mostly come from investing in international markets - with 6.26 million paid members added in the last quarter.
Outbid
Without a strong back catalogue, Netflix knows it must keep investing in original content to survive, an extremely costly endeavour: analysts have said the company is going to spend around $15bn on new content this year.
To maintain that kind of investment, it told investors today it was looking to borrow more money, against a backdrop of investors becoming increasingly worried that the return of investment may not be coming, and that with deep-pocketed newcomers muscling in, the price of acquiring new programmes could rise further.
Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings admitted his company was outbid for Fleabag, which ended up being a co-production between Amazon and the BBC, and arguably the most talked about new show of the past year. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the show’s co-writer and star, has now signed to Amazon exclusively.
Meanwhile, Apple flexed its riches in beating Netflix to securing “The Morning Show”, Jennifer Aniston’s return to TV, where she'll appear alongside Reese Witherspoon. Apple’s clout brings another advantage: every new purchase of an Apple device will come with a year’s subscription of Apple TV+. Netflix has its work cut out in convincing Apple users to add its service on top. So does everyone else, for that matter.
Netflix looks precarious. Old shows are disappearing, and the company faces an unprecedented fight for the new ones.
Reed Hasting’s visionary approach to delivering movies over the internet gave Netflix a 12-year head start, but that counts for little when customers can stop paying whenever they please.
As Mr Hastings told an audience in the UK last month, his company is now part of “a whole new world” (though, if you want to see the movie featuring that song… it’s a Disney+ exclusive).
_____
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC
Do you have more information about this or any other technology story? You can reach Dave directly and securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +1 (628) 400-7370
|
A man has been found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound inside singer Olivia Newton-John's home in Florida, local media report. | Ms Newton-John's family was not at home at the time of the shooting and the man was not a family member, police said.
The Palm Beach Post reported construction was being done on the home near Palm Beach and a worker could be seen crying.
Police were investigating, although they said it appeared to be a suicide.
The property in Jupiter Inlet Colony is owned by Ms Newton-John and her husband, according to public records.
The Australian actress and singer's hits include You're The One That I Want from the 1978 movie Grease and 1980s hit Physical.
|
A man has been accused in court of causing the death of a couple by careless driving on the A76. | John Cooper, 58, and Sharon Cooper, 56, of Gorleston in Norfolk, died in the accident near Sanquhar in May 2017.
Terence Dillon, 73, of Dumfries, is alleged to have driven into the path of their Harley Davidson motorbike.
He pleaded not guilty to driving without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration for others using the road.
The case at Dumfries Sheriff Court was continued for trial in September.
|
If, as we are constantly being told, the world's banking system has been rebuilt and strengthened so that it can resist and survive even the toughest of economic conditions, why does it always seem to be banking shares that fall the most when the markets get nervous about the prospects of another crash? | By Jonty BloomBusiness correspondent, BBC News
In part the answer might be that they are not as solid as we have been led to believe. After all, the man who headed an inquiry into the future safety of Britain's banks has told the BBC that plans drawn up by the Bank of England to prevent another crash aren't strong enough.
Sir John Vickers, who led the Independent Commission on Banking, said that banks should have more money in reserve, to enable them to survive any future financial crisis without a bailout from the taxpayer.
With banking shares already being hard hit this year because of worries about their strength and stability, those comments by Sir John will be of serious concern and will add to what many will see as logical scepticism.
Before the last financial crisis, we were told that the banking system was solid as a rock. Unfortunately, Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers proved that the Bible is right - even the most solid-looking house is vulnerable if it is built on sand. It turned out that a large number of the world's banks were built on very soft and shifting sand.
Volatile share prices
They had borrowed money short term and lent it long term. They had lent it to clients who couldn't afford to pay it back and put it into risky complicated investments they didn't really understand. It then turned out that the banks had nothing like enough reserves to cushion them from a crisis. They managed to do all this while convincing us that financial services were the future and bankers should be paid a fortune.
The consequence was that the ordinary taxpayer, many of whom have probably never had a bonus in their life, had to bail out the banks and the bankers with hundreds of billions of pounds, most of it borrowed. That has hobbled us with huge debts for decades to come, while suffering the worst recession in living memory.
But perhaps the people who suffered the biggest losses were those who had put their life savings into supposedly safe as houses banking shares, they saw their money wiped out. The depositors were saved by the Government, the people who had lent money to banks in the form of bonds mostly got their money back but the shareholders suffered.
It is therefore hardly surprising that shares in banks should be so volatile at the moment. After all, we have received numerous warnings that something is seriously wrong with the world's economy. The prices of oil and many other commodities have plummeted because of over-supply and lack of demand, the Chinese economy is slowing down dramatically and the eurozone still has real problems.
All this while many economies are still being propped up only by emergency medicine eight years after the crisis first started - very low interest rates, the printing of extra money and huge Government borrowing.
Last week Janet Yellen, the head of the US Federal Reserve, spooked the markets when she merely suggested that although the American economy was doing well it could be threatened by problems from other countries.
Contempt
It has all been enough to push share prices lower on fears that another economic crisis might be on the way and like a particularly expensive game of pass the parcel, no-one wants to be left holding bank shares if, or when, the banks go bust again. But how likely is that?
Some banks are, of course, stronger than others, the Greek banking system has lurched from crisis to crisis even over the past year and doubtless there are others in similar difficulties in plenty of other places.
It would be a brave (as in foolhardy) investor who put their life savings into Greek or even Portuguese bank shares. But those are known risks. The big worry is; how risky are the big international banks? Are the huge international Swiss, British, French, German, American and Japanese banks safe?
In theory the answer is yes. The banks have been told to get their house in order and have been doing just that, especially under something called Basel 3, an international agreement to massively increase the reserves the banks have to hold in case of losses or a massive economic shock.
Then there has been a whole rash of new banking regulations at the national and international levels, designed to stamp out reckless behaviour, limit risks, and make sure that the regulators know what is really going on.
Having covered a few fraud trials recently, it is patently clear that before the crash many banks and bankers treated both regulators and their internal compliance departments with barely concealed contempt and did all they could to get round the rules.
That may still be the case in some banks but you are far less likely to get away with it now. Finally the banks have been desperately trying to improve their balance sheets and profits; they have had to write off billions in bad debts, improve their lending practices and concentrate on core businesses rather than obscure financial instruments.
Even so many are still trying to recover from the trauma of the credit crunch. Only this week Commerzbank, one of Germany's largest banks, announced that it was setting even more money aside to bolster its reserves.
And Deutsche Bank said it is to buy back bonds it has issued, an attempt to strengthen bolster its balance sheet, its shares are down almost a third so far this year. Given the current stock market mood those are probably wise moves. But it show that eight years after the credit crunch there is still more to be done.
There are doubtless plenty of banks out there that are as solid as a rock and capable of withstanding almost anything thrown at them. The problem is not so much finding out which ones they are but the fact that last time they all looked solid as a rock as well.
You can reform, regulate and prop up banks as much as you like, but shareholders should remember the old motto: "Once bitten, twice shy."
|
Swathes of England awoke to a stunning sunrise this morning thanks in part to ex-Hurricane Lorenzo. | Social media was awash with pictures of colourful skies, some of which can be seen below.
BBC weather forecaster Billy Payne said the remains of the former hurricane had brought in high-level cloud from the west which combined with the low sun to produce the views.
He said it was a chilly start, with -1.9C recorded in Northumberland.
Some parts of the home counties also neared sub-zero temperatures.
You may also be interested in:
You can see more pictures from England here.
|
It's Parliament, Jim, but not as we know it.... | Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent
Out goes the published Commons agenda and out go the familiar ways of Westminster. When Honourable Members and Noble Lords return to their chambers on Tuesday, for a truncated week, it will be to hybrid Houses allowing participation online as well as by those physically present.
And there won't be many physically seated on the red or green benches - a maximum of 50 in either chamber, with rigorous requirement for social distancing.
The Commons chamber will have large TV screens placed where the clocks are now sited, above the Speaker's chair and attached to the galleries facing the government and opposition benches, so that remote contributions can be seen by everyone on the benches.
There may well be some kind of supermarket-style lines placed on the benches to ensure MPs keep their distance - and the party whips are discouraging their respective flocks from coming in at all.
The idea - driven, I'm told, by Mr Speaker Hoyle - is to demonstrate that democracy is still in operation with a Speaker in the chair and ministers and shadow ministers at the dispatch box, so that the familiar scenery of Parliamentary scrutiny is visibly in place.
That would allow MPs to raise some of the issues flagged up by the record volumes of casework most are experiencing, and have their constituents see the government response.
Microsoft vs Zoom
But the result will probably be a rather more scripted and less fluid version of Parliament, with participation in question times more arranged in advance, and less potential for spontaneous interventions by MPs.
If all goes well - and there will probably be glitches with the technology and the etiquette of these virtual sittings - expect further tweaks to the rules to allow for legislation to be debated virtually, and, crucially, voted on virtually.
In the Lords there will be a similar system, based, bizarrely, on Microsoft Teams rather than Zoom, which MPs will be using to participate from home.
There is some puzzlement among peers about why their House is using a different system, and about why the proceedings at question time (likely to be the most interesting bit of a bland-looking agenda) will not be broadcast as normal.
Parliament's official record, Hansard, is supposed to be rushing out its accounts of the exchanges within a couple of hours, but that's a poor substitute for live broadcasting of sound and pictures.
There is a thought that broadcasting elderly peers perhaps struggling with technology might expose the House to ridicule, but that seems a bit patronising, especially given that the committees and the party groups have been holding virtual meetings with little or no trouble.
Peers will be debating two pieces of legislation non-virtually - the Telecoms Infrastructure Leasehold Bill and the Windrush Compensation Scheme Bill.
Neither is particularly controversial (although as in the Commons, there may be some action around the question of the Chinese telecom firm Huawei's involvement in building the UK 5G network) and there won't be any votes, because the Lords doesn't oppose government legislation at second reading and because the Windrush Bill is a money bill, and all they can do is rubber-stamp it.
Rule changes
So what will the Parliamentarians be doing? The Commons agenda for the week, set out before the Easter recess, looks set to be scrapped - with the sittings on Thursday and on Friday (for private members' bills) cancelled altogether.
The announcement will be made on Tuesday in a business statement by the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees Mogg, and he will probably cancel a number of other proceedings, including Delegated Legislation Committees.
There will be a motion to change the rules of the Commons to allow MPs to participate remotely in question times and statements, and, if agreed, that will kick in on Wednesday.
The whips are emphasising that there will be no advantage to be had from coming into the chamber to take part - MPs there will be no more likely to be called than those participating online.
And there could be any number of urgent questions on aspects of the coronavirus crisis. Tuesday's scheduled Justice Questions will be postponed.
Budget measures
The highly controversial Immigration and Social Security Coordination Bill, an important Brexit measure, was due for its second reading debate on Tuesday - but that would certainly have resulted in a contested division at the end of the day, and many MPs would not have been able to participate, so it seems likely to be postponed (perhaps with the thought that, in the era of the pandemic, population movements will be less of an issue for a while).
On Wednesday, MPs were due to debate the Finance Bill, which puts the measures in the Budget (remember that?) into law.
Under the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, the tax changes in the Budget can go ahead immediately, so long as the Finance Bill receives a second reading in the Commons within 30 sitting days - so there is plenty of time for that to happen, and the second reading will probably now be on Monday 27 April.
Wednesday's main Commons event will be Prime Minister's Questions, but who will be participating?
Still recovering from his spell in intensive care, Boris Johnson seems unlikely to be present, so the assumption is that First Secretary Dominic Raab will deputise.
In normal times, this would mean that the leader of the opposition, who by Parliamentary tradition does not deign to debate anyone but the PM, would also send a deputy.
But this could be Sir Keir Starmer's debut, and I doubt he would be willing to leave the stage to anyone else.
This week will set the pattern for the next few weeks in Parliament - which will mostly consist of question times and statements.
That is not to downplay their importance, because the issues in play are gigantic, but the expectation is that MPs and peers will mostly be holding government to account, rather than lawmaking, for quite some time.
|
It's 60 years since Alan Turing killed himself. In his lifetime he was almost unknown to the public yet today he's famous both as a pioneer of computing and as someone lacerated by 1950s attitudes to sexuality. But sisters Barbara Maher and Maria Summerscale can recall him as a family friend. | By Vincent DowdWitness programme, BBC World Service
When Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning in June 1954 his death was not huge news. The story of how he and colleagues at Bletchley Park had cracked the German Enigma codes was still secret and the Turing name was not yet public property.
In a two-paragraph story reporting his death, the Times described how he had "helped to develop a mechanical brain which he said had solved in a few weeks a problem in higher mathematics that had been a puzzle since the 18th Century". It also noted his work on the Ace "automatic computing machine". A short obituary followed a few days later.
Turing had contributed to a couple of radio programmes on the BBC Third Programme (sadly now lost) but otherwise his wide-ranging work on artificial intelligence and morphology seemed the stuff of specialist journals.
His name emerged from the shadows in 1983 when Andrew Hodges published a well-received biography which inspired the play Breaking the Code. It played in London and on Broadway and was later adapted for TV. The public image of Turing as tortured gay genius was taking shape.
Yet long before the icon, the Greenbaums knew the man. The memories of Barbara and Maria Greenbaum (now Barbara Maher and Maria Summerscale) remain vivid.
Turing came into their lives as a patient of their father Franz Greenbaum in the autumn of 1952. "Our father had trained as a Jungian psychologist," says Barbara. "He was Jewish and got out of Berlin just in time. In 1939 he settled in Manchester where he had a private practice in Palatine Road in Didsbury."
Her younger sister Maria, born in 1945, was seven when she first met Turing. "It wasn't unheard of for patients to come to the house in Longton Avenue but nor was it common. I was only a little girl but I think I knew that because he was a regular visitor he must be a friend of my father's."
Barbara says a friend of Turing had suggested he should see Dr Greenbaum - someone who would be able to empathise with his problems.
In March 1952 Turing, working at Manchester University, was prosecuted for gross indecency. The police had worked out he was in a relationship with Arnold Murray, twenty years his junior, and Turing fell foul of the draconian anti-gay laws of the period.
To avoid prison he agreed to take a course of the hormone oestrogen which was intended to suppress his libido. In the meantime Arnold Murray drifted out of his life. (He died in 1989.)
Barbara says she knew Turing was homosexual but thought little of it. "Our father was very broad-minded and a liberal person. He thought he could help Alan Turing come to terms with the person he was."
Maria believes that being younger her view was simple. "I just saw Alan as a very warm and friendly person who always took an interest in what I was doing. He would come for dinner and often I'd be sitting on the floor playing the board-game solitaire. He would sit down on the carpet next to me and we would talk. I became quite attached to him."
Maria still treasures a letter Alan sent in the summer of 1953, less than a year before his death. He sets out how to tackle the game. "To this day I can't really fathom out what he's telling me. But to an eight-year-old, getting a letter like that from a grown-up was special."
A complete lesson in logic from an acknowledged mathematical genius, written in his own hand, is an extraordinary thing to possess. It's reproduced here, in part, for the first time.
Barbara says to her slightly older eyes Turing was an interesting man. "But he was very gauche. He was embarrassed with himself. He dressed in a very unkempt manner. And he stammered quite heavily, which has been rather missed. He bit his nails too so I think he had issues.
"But he obviously enjoyed coming into the family home and really being part of the family. And I suspect our father liked his scientific brain - there was an empathy between them because of that."
Turing even went with the Greenbaum family on a day trip to the seaside resort of St Annes. But Barbara recalls it ended badly.
"Alan turned up at our house in a very strange outfit, which looked like his school cricket whites. White trousers which came half-way up his ankles and a white shirt which was very creased and crumpled. But it was a lovely sunny day and Alan was in a cheerful mood and off we went.
"Then he thought it would be a good idea to go to the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool. We found a fortune-teller's tent and Alan said he'd like to go in so we waited around for him to come back.
"And this sunny, cheerful visage had shrunk into a pale, shaking, horror-stricken face. Something had happened. We don't know what the fortune-teller said but he obviously was deeply unhappy. I think that was probably the last time we saw him before we heard of his suicide."
Maria remembers hearing about the tragedy. "I was very upset when my mother told me that he had died. That was for me the first experience of the death of someone who was quite close."
The inquest decided that Turing had killed himself using cyanide. A partially eaten apple was by his side in bed but as it was never tested it's impossible to say if it was laced with poison as has been suggested.
An alternative interpretation is that he inhaled or ingested cyanide by accident during a chemistry experiment. But Turing's first biographer Andrew Hodges believes the verdict was accurate.
In the 31 years since the publication of his book Alan Turing's status has changed radically. "At the time almost every publisher turned me down. They said nobody would be interested," says Hodges. "Of course I'm proud the book introduced him to so many readers."
But two developments since would have pushed Turing into the public consciousness anyway.
"One is that computers now dominate our lives in a way even Alan could never have foreseen," says Hodges. "So there's been a boom in people wanting to understand how they developed. You can't tell that tale without Alan Turing."
The other shift has been in attitudes towards homosexuality.
"I started my research in 1977 only a decade after homosexual acts became legal in England and Wales," says Hodges. "Some people were still ill-at-ease at that point contemplating Alan's sexuality. Sixty years ago Alan Turing was subjected to chemical castration for the crime of being gay. It's shocking now.
"How he would have loved to see the changes in terms of same-sex equality. He received a royal pardon last year but how terrible he didn't live to see a more civilised nation emerge."
Listen to Witness: The Death of Alan Turing on BBC iPlayer
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
|
One in five children in the UK are said to be negatively affected by their parents' drinking, and the effects can last well into adulthood. Four women - Karen, Liz, Hilary and Lynne - spoke to Jo Morris about growing up with a parent dependent on alcohol. | "Some people talk about what books they've read, or films they've been to see, but instead we talk about how drunk our parents were," says Karen.
Karen and her friend Liz met at work in their late 20s and quickly bonded when they realised they had a shared history.
"It's not the same talking to somebody who doesn't know what it's like," says Liz.
Gallows humour helps to deal with the horrible memories. Like the time Liz's mum sold her toys to get money for alcohol. Or the time Karen's alcoholic dad went to the pub instead of collecting her from after-school club.
"It's a bit like Top Trumps - alcoholic-parent Top Trumps," Karen laughs.
They both remember dreading the walk home from school.
"It's so disheartening," says Karen. "You think: 'OK, I've had a nice break at school, but here we go again. I'm going to be really polite and be really nice, make sure that I don't say anything out of turn or give you any reason to have a go at me.'"
It was only when Liz was eight or nine that she noticed her friends did not have any such concerns and lived very different lives.
"I thought: 'Oh, you have your dinner cooked for you? I don't even have dinner.'
"That's when you realise it's horrendous and you feel very alone going through it."
Once, her mum spent all her benefit money on alcohol, and all she could afford was a sack of potatoes.
"Potato weekend!" Liz laughs. "We literally had potatoes to live on for the weekend. So we had mashed potato, potato cakes, chips wrapped up in newspaper - she was very resourceful."
Food - or the lack of it - is a common theme.
Hilary, 55, grew up in an upper-middle class family in Sunderland, with a respected surgeon as a father. The family kept up appearances - but her mother drank.
"I can remember being at school, and a girl in my form opening up her lunch and saying: 'Oh my sandwiches haven't been buttered to the edge.' It was like Planet Zorg compared to my life," she remembers.
No-one was making sandwiches for Hilary. In fact it was left to her to look after her younger brother - putting him to bed, getting him ready for school, making sure he was fed.
Her mum's drinking started out with a glass of wine "while cooking" but soon escalated to a bottle of vodka a day.
"She was hiding bottles, they were all over the place - in her shoeboxes, you'd find glasses of neat vodka behind curtains and if you put the oven on you checked there wasn't a bottle hidden in there.
Watching her elegant and educated mother fade away was very painful.
"You couldn't hold a conversation with her because she was drunk," Hilary says. "It was like she wasn't there really - she went from being very present to becoming a ghost."
Liz's mother had been a model, but after she began to drink she never quite knew where to put on her make-up. "She looked like Aunt Sally from Worzel Gummidge," she says.
Liz's own life began to spin out of control, as a result of neglect. By the age of 15, Liz had become involved in an abusive relationship, and was put into foster care. It was thanks to her friends that she survived, she says.
"I've been good at choosing good friends who helped me through it, friends who weren't into drugs and drinking."
Then, when she saw her friends go to university she decided she would, too - the only child in Surrey social services at the time who did. "I definitely deserve a prize for that," she says.
Find out more
For Jabs, 22, living with her alcoholic father was like "walking on eggshells". All this week Woman's Hour will be hearing from adult children of alcoholics. Jo Morris spoke to six women of different ages and backgrounds, from all over the UK.
Now 37, with a young family, she visits her mother a few times a year but wants no further involvement - one reason why she has put off marriage to her long-term partner.
"I don't want her at my wedding," she says. "But I'm too nice to think of her sat at home alone."
Lynne's mother died 13 years ago from complications caused by her alcoholism. She rummages through a box of her mother's things that she put together after bereavement counselling.
"What was hard was that everyone in the church all stood up and said how great she was," she says, remembering their complicated relationship.
"Every childhood memory is laced with the memory of my mum drinking.
"I cannot recall a day when she didn't send me and my sister with a note to the shop: 'Please sell my children two bottles of Olde English and four cans of Special Brew' - and I wasn't the only kid on the council estate doing that."
Her mother could get nasty when she was drunk, and even violent.
"It was so confusing and upsetting. Sometimes I'd barricade myself inside my bedroom. Even now, talking about it, I get that feeling in my gut that I want to leave the house."
Today her flat is cosy and welcoming - the polar opposite, she says, of the home she grew up in. And this is important to her.
"I used to feel that I wasn't entitled to anything that was wholesome or good," she says - but that's no longer the case.
After moving to London she built the life she wanted to have. She feels loved by her husband and friends. "I'm just basking in that," she says.
She pulls out something else from her bereavement box - a ticket from the hospital from when she was born, saying how much she weighed.
"I was amazed that she still kept this," she says, clearly moved.
"Consciously making the decision to not have a child myself is the legacy of it all.
"In my heart I was so afraid I wouldn't be able to look after someone else, and I might repeat her mistakes. Is it in the genes, could this come out in me? That is something I've always thought."
Hilary does have a child, a teenager, and relishes the opportunity to be the attentive mother she herself lacked. She has also made sure that, unlike her own mother - a former nurse, who ended up spending her life at home - she is always busy.
"I learned my lesson from my mum," she says.
"I play a lot of sport, and I work - I need structure.
"I think mum was lonely and sad. That gets me. I think she could have been helped."
She remembers coming home from a Christmas party as a teenager to find her mum at the bottom of her stairs holding a carving knife, threatening to kill herself. She had drunk the Christmas port and replaced it with Ribena, which led to a row with her husband.
Hilary drove her mother to hospital and got her admitted to the alcohol dependency unit there. The next day at Christmas lunch nobody in the family acknowledged what had happened.
"It was the great lie. We never spoke about anything in the family."
Today she still hates liars.
"And I loathe people who fraudulently present themselves as something they're not, because that is how I was brought up.
"The fact that I couldn't talk about how it was probably contributed to my hideous depression," Hilary says.
Shame and secrecy are words that come up often, talking to these women.
All of them wish they'd had someone to talk to about their parents' drinking when they were growing up.
Liz and Karen, who find comfort in sharing stories with each other now, had nobody to turn to as children, and couldn't see a way out.
"When you're eight or nine you can't go anywhere," says Liz, who was bullied about her mum's drinking. "It's not your fault if your parent is alcoholic."
Karen nods in agreement. "How many kids go through this? Keeping all this pressure, stress and anxiety to themselves because they have nobody at school to talk to - it's really sad and horrid and there are kids going through this now," she says.
Lynne feels badly let down by the authorities.
"I find it staggering that my mum was sectioned and no-one said: 'What is happening to this young teenager?'
"Actually that is what makes me the angriest. All that support system in society - school, doctor, social services - where were they?"
Support for children of alcoholics
NACOA - The National Association For Children Of Alcoholics
ADFAM - Supporting families affected by drugs and alcohol
Al-Anon - For families and friends of alcoholics
For Hilary, there was help of sorts in the shape of her Uncle David - her mother's brother.
"No other adult had helped me up to that point, no other adult intervened."
She describes how he bundled her and her siblings into his car and drove them round and round, so that they relaxed and started to tell him stories about her mother's drinking.
He convinced Hilary's mum to stop drinking for three months so that Hilary could concentrate on her A-levels.
"He made us feel safe, suddenly the sun shone in my life."
Her mum only remained sober for those three months, but it meant Hilary passed her A-levels, and then she escaped the stresses of home for university.
She has never forgotten Uncle David's kindness, and she still visits him every week.
Karen's dad stopped drinking 13 years ago, but she still has a recurring nightmare that he's started up again. "I still have that panic of: here we go again."
Does she talk to her parents about what happened? "It's never discussed."
"Now I'm a parent, the thought of acting like that to my child is unbelievable," she adds.
"The stress we get into about what to feed our children."
Liz agrees: "Yes, five a day."
"And you got a sack of potatoes to last the weekend!" jokes Karen.
And they both erupt into laughter again.
Listen to Jo Morris's reports on Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4
*Some names in this article have been changed
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.
|
A number of houses in a North Lincolnshire village were evacuated when a grenade was found during building work.
| An army bomb disposal team was called to a property on Newbigg, Westwoodside, earlier and the road was closed.
Humberside Police said they were called after the discovery of "what is believed to be an old grenade".
A spokesperson said residents were allowed to return home after the device was "safely disposed of".
|
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is Elton John's best-selling and most enduring album. | By Mark SavageBBC News entertainment reporter
Over a two-week recording binge, it grew from a single to a double album, its 17 tracks including hits such as Bennie and the Jets and Candle In The Wind.
Its release came at an exciting period in the star's career. His previous record, Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player, released just nine months earlier, had become his first UK number one.
His elaborate live shows were winning rave reviews in the US while, simultaneously, his musical creativity was hitting a peak.
In its 40th birthday year, the album is being re-released in a box set crammed with live performances, film footage and a disc of covers by the likes of Fall Out Boy, Ed Sheeran and John Grant.
Using a combination of new and archive interviews, here is the story of the album by the people who made it.
TONY KING: Around that time, it was obvious that Elton was becoming a bit of a star. His recordings were becoming more exciting.
DAVEY JOHNSTONE: I remember being on a train, getting Melody Maker and seeing Don't Shoot Me was number one. And it was like, "Oh, that's great. It's happening!"
ELTON JOHN: I didn't ever envisage being a star. It happened so quickly and so stupidly. Suddenly, from nowhere, I was in the same room as George Harrison. I couldn't believe it.
CALEB QUAYE: He had money to spend. His wardrobe started to become more embellished. This is what he had always wanted.
The initial sessions for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road were due to take place in Jamaica, where the Rolling Stones had recently recorded their Goats Head Soup LP.
ELTON JOHN: We land the day after the Foreman-Frasier fight, so the island is swarming. We can't get into a hotel. The band, sensible lot, they went off to the other side of the island - Ocho Rios, which is the more glamorous side. I'm stuck in Kingston in the Pink Flamingo hotel, my only contact being a room with an electric piano in it. I wouldn't go out of my room, I was so frightened.
TONY KING: The Jamaica experience wasn't great at all. They only had one microphone. There was barbed wire all around the studio. It was just a complete mess.
DAVEY JOHNSTONE: We tried to cut Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting and it really sounded hilarious. It was like the Chipmunks or something. There was no balls to it. We all started laughing, but there was no panic - we knew it would work back at the Chateau.
The band decamped to the Chateau d'Herouville in France, where Elton's previous two albums had been made. Once in place, the writing and recording of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road took just two weeks.
ELTON JOHN: I'm not the sort of songwriter that writes all the time. I just write twice a year. If I starve myself from writing, I find I can write better.
BERNIE TAUPIN: It literally was like a mini creative factory. I would write in the mornings and, when the band were having breakfast I would come down and grab a cup of coffee and give Elton a couple of lyrics I'd been working on that morning.
ELTON JOHN: I would write at breakfast at the table. The band would join in. And by the time breakfast was over, we'd written and rehearsed two songs, and we went in the studio and recorded them. The boys did the backing vocals while I was in bed. It was the height of our powers.
DAVEY JOHNSTONE: Elton's notorious for being a very fast writer - and also a little impatient in the studio. But the band was almost telepathic. We'd each know what the other one was going to play.
ELTON JOHN: Gus Dudgeon [who died in a car crash in 2002], I'd have to say, was the fifth member of the band. The sound of the drums, the sound of the piano, the sound of everything on the record was extraordinary - that was down to him. Like the Beatles had George Martin, we had Gus.
TONY KING: Nobody makes an album in two weeks any more - and that's the pity. A lot of people spend too much time in the studio faffing about. If you go in and just play, you capture the urgency of it.
Unusually, the record opens with a long, bravura instrumental, called Funeral For A Friend.
ELTON JOHN: Gus Dudgeon said, a long time before that, "why don't you write an instrumental?" and I never got round to it.
Then I got very down one day and said, "Hmmm - what sort of music would I like to hear at my own funeral?" It sounds very bizarre but I like funeral music anyway, I like sad music. So I decided to write something like that.
TONY KING: I just found out a very interesting thing about Funeral For A Friend. David Hentschel, who did all the synth programming, included bits of the other songs on there.
You can hear the melody of Candle In The Wind, I've Seen That Movie Too and The Ballad Of Danny Bailey. He invented that instrumental using little lines from some of the other songs. It's very clever.
PETER ASHER: Gus Dudgeon is one of the heroes in this discussion, because it's a stunningly huge-sounding record. It starts with those amazing big synths of Funeral For A Friend, and the drums sound amazing on every track. It's a hell of a record.
DAVEY JOHNSTONE: Saturday Night had a multitude of guitars on there. We layered something like 12 guitars throughout the course of the song. And with each guitar track it sounded better and better. Elton kept saying, "Another one! Another one!"
BERNIE TAUPIN: I swear I wrote Candle In The Wind long before Norman Mailer dragged Marilyn Monroe over the coals [Mailer's controversial biography of Monroe also came out in 1973].
I'd been a Marilyn fan for a long time - ever since Madmen Across the Water, I'd wanted to write a song about her. But I'd never found the right way of doing it without being incredibly tacky.
I tried to make it a song that told you the reason she was so popular, was that she was very much somebody people could fall in love with without her being out of reach. I really don't think people thought of her as a sex symbol.
Clive Davis said of Janis Joplin that her life was like a Candle In the Wind. It was a nice phrase to use.
DAVEY JOHNSTONE: That's one of the few songs that Elton's asked me to play a riff on. And I was like, "oh that's going to suck". But being the compatible guitar player that I am, the chorus came round and I played the thing - and it worked perfectly. I was like, "you bastard."
ELTON JOHN: I remember the record company phoning up and saying Bennie and the Jets should be the single in America. And I said "no, I want Candle In The Wind".
They fought and fought and fought, and I turned them down so many times until they told me that the record had gone to number one on the R&B station in Detroit.
For me, a white boy from Pinner who'd grown up loving black music, and played the blues and R&B all my life, I just went "oh..."
So I let them have their way. It shows that, as an artist, sometimes you know nothing.
TONY KING: I went on holiday with Elton in 1973, just before the album came out. He rented a house which had once belonged to Anthony Newley and Joan Collins, and we had a fabulous month in Los Angeles.
He had installed a really top class stereo system, and so anybody who came up to the house was played the album. He was really excited about it. He really felt it was going to be something special.
ELTON JOHN: I look back on it now and I think it's a lot of young adrenalin, and you only have that adrenalin for a certain part of your career.
TONY KING: The record company wanted to put out a 40th anniversary album but we weren't too sure how to go about it. I said to Elton, "the thing is, you don't have any tracks in the vault". And so he came up with the idea of getting people to cover the album.
PETER ASHER: Of course I said "yes" [to producing the album] because it's such a brilliant opportunity to rethink these legendary songs.
TONY KING: Initially we had the idea of doing big stars, but of course all the big stars were busy doing their albums. And I'm glad for that now - because we were able to craft something that felt much more personal. It feels curated.
ED SHEERAN: If I'm honest, if I could have chosen, I'd have done any song other than Candle In The Wind. Not that it isn't a brilliant song, it's just that that song's so special to England's heart. But I think we made it less sad and more upbeat.
PETER ASHER: It struck me in a fresh way, hearing somebody else sing it - because suddenly it wasn't something you'd heard 20 million times before. It's just a beautifully-written song in every respect. It's extraordinary.
TONY KING: Yellow Brick Road pushed Elton into a whole different category of artist. There was no-one bigger than Elton in the States at that time. It sold 31 million overall.
DAVEY JOHNSTONE: We were aware of one thing - we were riding a major wave of popularity. Especially in the States, it was just like a juggernaut. But without sounding egotistical, we weren't that surprised. We were just very happy.
ELTON JOHN: My records don't sell as much as they used to by a long way, but I'm not really interested in that any more. I don't have to chase the charts any more, I can just do what I like and that's a tremendous asset. I've been successful and I have the freedom not to care about that any more.
The anniversary edition of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is out now. Tony King, Peter Asher and Davey Johnstone were speaking to Mark Savage. Other interviews come from the BBC's radio and television archive and Universal Music.
|
A teenage male has been taken to hospital after he was reportedly stabbed multiple times in an incident in south Belfast. | It happened shortly before 03:00 GMT on Monday at a property in Balfour Avenue, police say.
Two people have been arrested in connection with the incident.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said that its investigation is ongoing and added that there are no further details at this time.
|
There have been a series of bomb blasts in Trincomalee killing security personnel and civilians. | The Tamil Tigers are accused of claymore bomb attcks on security forces.
Violence escalated in the volatile region after a senior Tamil activist was killed by unidentified gunmen.
The government and the LTTE are scheduled to meet in Geneva next week.
Please keep your contributions civil, tasteful and relevant.
Here is what you said:
This forum is now closed. Thank you all for your contributions.
I am Buddhist and follow it truly. You can never stop violence by violence. I think Raja and Prabha may be Buddhist or Hindu or may be Christian. Your people are innocent people. Why can you leave your jobs and ask somebody truly like peace. Is Siri lanka is such a dry country for good politicians. I dont think many Tamil or Singalease would appreciate Prabha or Raja. Don't follow Israel or Hamas in Palestine. Talk to Nelson Mandella or Desmon Tutu to learn how you can reconcile your poor people. I am a Laotian and I have many nice Sirilankan friends. They never told me that they are Singalese or Tamil. When I read this section I found only racist people responding very badly. Few people come with good idea.Janei Bouaphan, Vientiane, Laos
This is for mahesh's comments Why should tamil wants separate homeland?". Mahesh I believe you should study why these freedom struggle started before asking that question. if you study that then you don't need to ask that question here or anywhere else.Nilesh Kumar, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Yes, everybody should condemn these kind of killings. But, we should have a solution for this. LTTE is asking for a separate country for them. It is clear. GOSL says it cannot give a separate country. It is also clear, we can't split this small country. Also, GOSL says there should be a democratic solution for this problem. But present ruling party does not have a proper approach or proper solution. This is the major block for the progress and for the current bad situation. Parties like JVP and JHU make the problem worst. They are also helping for some kind of separation of the country.Nimal Jayawardhana, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Neithere the LTTE or the SL govt. want this war to end. Who will finance their personal coffers if it does? As long as the JVP and JHU are part of the govt. there will not be peace in our country as they are as much extremist nationalist as the Tigers are extremist terriorists. We're forgetting who suffers in the long run when we go to the polls and put in place a govt who is paralyzed by their partners reluctance to compromise.Dee, San Jose, USA
Im a Tamil, me and My family suffered too much frm LTTE, but thanx to SLA they took us to a camp, but we still got so may threatenes from most the tamils. LTTE terrorists should stop their violence, all that prabha wants is POWER!! what kind of a political system is he going to use using child soldiers and Suicide bombers, and killing his own kinds.Luxi Thallam, UK
My beliving is any how we have to stop this violence and protect this small country. Why Tamils and sinhaless cant live together? Why should tamil wants separate homeland?? I'm pleading from all sinhala and tamil people please isolate this terrorism, build up faith on borth parties then nobody can drag us to a bloody war again.Mahesh Indrajith, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Well, As some says here what is the use of just going to the peace talk with GOSL and wasting the time & money. Because whatever they agree they are not ready to implement it. GOSL intended to do a war with LTTE with the help of paramilitary gangs.Thavam Mani, Jaffna
How can any one justify people (Tamils) getting killed by thugs in front of the countries police and army. Interestingly the government and the sinhale people on the BBC accuse the LTTE for not bringing peace. If the sinhalese living aboard are still so stupid what can you accept from the poor sinhalese in Srilanka, no wonder they elected JVP ( who have killed more sinhalise than the LTTE in the past)and racist Monks to the parliment.Karu, London, UK
Civilians deaths whether they from the Sinhalese community or our community is wrong and should be unreservedly condemned, at the same time who really killed Mr V. Vigneswaran, or Mr Joseph Pararajasingham or abducted the officials of TRO, the time has come for the truth to be spoken. Let us all take a good hard look at a mirror without sending hate messages.
Claymore mines and bombs go off on the Navy and Army personnel every time before peace talks in spite of the CFA are just as bad as bombing the Trincomalee market where Sinhalese and our civilians died. Similarly the Sinhalese mobs burning shops and killing our people is unacceptable. But it is also our children dying from grenade blasts from grenades brought from our money, it is also our people without democracy and human rights oppressed from all sides now, even our liberators are perpetrating unbelievable violence on us.
Then where do we go from here, What should pro LTTE media like BBC do from now on in an era where rebel groups such as Eeta, Aceh, and PLO all have come to the democratic mainstream renouncing terrorism?Ramesh Sivasothi, Colombo, Sri Lanka
The wholly truth is there is nothing called "Tamil Homeland". Wasn't in the past will not be in the future. Also there is nothing called "Ethnic Problem" in Sri Lanka, that is something given by the West to formulate the real LTTE Tamil Terrorism to an Innocent picture. Day by day world is getting the real fact behind the scene.Dhammika Siripala, Edinburgh, UK
Every one remember the past(1956,1978 and 1983)Ruban Nathan, Melbourne, Australia
It is so sad to hear, again both communities are getting back to where they started, in 1983. I see this as Sinhalese majority failed to select a leader who could be on center. Raising Nationalistic issues won't solve any problems. Only way we can think is consultation and negotiation.Malcolm Edirisinghe, Hamilton, Canada
Is this a forum to voice the partioning? I cannot belive this. Some people say JVP and JHU had take the responsibility, a Tamil guy says he served as a navy man and navy kills tamils. First be a reslistic and be factual. There was no tamil homeland. and there would not be in future.Wickrama Wilegoda, London, UK
Thank you very much for Sinhala People for 1983 riots. If you did not do this I cannot be a European Citizen. If we get a powerful Zunami or Natural disaster Do we have any protection. My dear Sinhala People use your brain do you want to make your counry like Singapore or Iraq ?Sribavan, London, UK
India ,powerful neighbouring country, should step in to this ethnic conflict in sri lanka instead of keeping silenceRam, toronto, Canada
Reply to Jan USA, we know LTTE is a terrorist organization. But 99.99% Sinhala army should be gentlemen army to protect the civilians but the killed selected Tamil civilians. I think you can see the difference?Karuval, Canada
Let not the LTTE hoodwink us tamils anymore. Enough is enough, and the international community, together with BBC should bring pressure on the LTTE to get on with talking real peace, not rubbish to start another round of murder and mayhem.Yohan Selvaratnam, Trincomalee
What I read from the comments posted shows that the Tamils are now as frustrated over this situation, just as much as the Sinhalese. No point calling Tamils who voice their anger over Tamil leadership of the LTTE as Traitors. Look deep inside and see that we all need peace to get that beautiful island flourish again. Though you and I are financially well off in foreign land are we truly happy being away from our motherland just due to some power hungry parties inflicting a war on our brothers and sisters? Already we are years behind other nations. When will we ever learn?Nilakshi Perera, Singapore
Trincomalai is Tamils homelandand holly city. Srilankan security personnels and sinhalees must keep away from Tamil Eelam.Annonymous
It is high time the LTTE as well as the Government do some serious soul searching and find a solution as to how this violence could be eradicated.The bickering among the political parties in the South is also a reason for such violence.The JVP and the JHU which are the key parties resorting to Norway Bashing should realize that they are creating a situation where tension between the two fractions ie the LTTE and the government escalates. It is best to look at the ground situation and bring all the communities together and not allow any distrust and ill feeling.
The need of the hour is to have some skilled negotiators to talk to the LTTE and not experts who are experienced in drafting international treaties. The politicians who are sent to Geneva want to score brownne points and have no experience in dispute settlement.If this situation continues the reality of Elam for the LTTE will not be far off.Dulip Jayawardhane, Colombo, Sri Lanka
LTTE is playing a dirty game of killing innocent civilians at a busy market place during festive season; and whenever they kill armed forces or innocent civilians, they say this is the work of the Tamil peoples' force. This is very dangerous as we can now see that the Sinhala mobs are also adopting the same tactics. This type of provocation is dangerous. Norway should do some thing proactive and not coldly reacting to incidents of killings whoever does this. Just giving out statements is pointless.Jacob Lingham, Toronto, Canada
It is really unfair for Lankan people. There is need to slove this type issue by proper understanding between two parties. In order to creat peaceful enviroment in our country. We all pray for those are injured in serial bomb blast.Linus de Silva, Amman, Jordan
This incident in Trinco reminds 1983 and shows the inability of the SL armed forces to protect Tamil civilians. The armed forces in North-East are only concerned about themselves and the Sinhalese. An alternate force seems to be a must.Rasan, London, UK
I am against the extremism by any party whether it's from sinhalese or tamils. it's always the innocent people who die from violance while leaders from both sides enjoy luxury lives. Ordinary people should realize this before attacking another innocent person.Iresh Ekanayake, Washington, USA
We strongly condemn the ongoing bruital killings which is still happening in Sri Lanka. The Universal People's Forum in Canada's British Columbia is seriously concerned about the most unfortunate incidents which is happening in Sri Lanka.Anthony Fernando, Surrey, Canada
Reply to Bhahi Toronto Canada, If you are talking about the context of killing, yes none of these are isolated incidents, yet remember the killing culture began when the LTTE brutally killed 13 sri lankan soldiers in Jaffna in 1983. It is not the case, the problem is that LTTE employing cheap tactics to regain the lost glory and thereby throwing a golden opportunity out of the window.Jan, USA
All the parties concerned in Sri Lanka North and East are playing cat and mouse game on the expence of innocent people.The so called counter terrorism activity by Sri Lankan armed forces is always has been killing inocent tamil civilian or helping people doing dirty job for them.How can tamil people trust them to protect them.This has been the same story ever since Sri Lanka got Independance from British.Ravi Soosai, London, UK
Trincomalee people have gone through a series of violance over the past 50 yrs since the Brirtish left Sri Lanka. Even a child knows what will happen if there is a bombblast in Trinco. The Tigers have used all the tactics to to spoil the peace process. Finally, they decided to use Trinco to gain cheap political gains.How could you call them representatives of Tamils?Martin, London, UK
To establish long-term peace in Sri Lanka, all the paramilitary groups should be disarmed including LTTE. No country can maintain rule of law by legitimising paramilitary groups of any nature.PI Yapa, Brandon, Canada
People can say what ever and however from out side the troubled area. I am very certain that this is the job of the paramilitaries with the help of SL army. The SL forces were targeting the Tamils. I do not think that there will be peace and the Tamils will have to suffer for ever.Udashangar Ratnasingham, Mannar, Sri Lanka
Rajapaksa or perabakaran They dont want to pease They want powerRajanathan Vithy, Bexleyheath, UK
It was wrong LTTE to explode mines which kills 8 civilians so far two of them Tamils themselves. It was equally wrong that Sinhalese mobs retaliated by burning Innocent Tamil's shops and killing them as well. We should work towards defating racist Nationalist LTTE strategy to create mayhem as well as defeat Sinhala racism towards Minority Tamils.Ajith Dharma, Enfield, UK
This is just another bullshit site, which always post comments againt tamils. or post the comments given by Traitors.Saravanan Muthu, Chennai, India
This is a another covert and pre planned attack against the unarmed and innocent tamil people by the srilankan armed forces and paramilitary gangs.Vathan, Trincomalee
Everyone wants peace, but not LTTE. Terrorism is the only language they can speak. They bring pain and suffer to all tamils, sinhalese and muslims. Tamils can get NO liberation with LTTE.Sandun Dasanayake, Oulu, Finland
The problem is, we take things out of context. These attacks did not happen in the void. Remember, there were no major attacks until the assasination of V. Vigneswaran, whatever the government tells. Why not talk about his killing? The brutal murder of this Tamil activist must be seen as the tipping point. Again, people talk about the Anuradhapura massacre, where over a hundred were killed, but do not talk (or do not know because of a silent media) about the 70 or so Tamils killed just 5 days before on May 9, 1985 in Valvettiturai. It is wrong to discuss things individually, instead of discussing in the context of the general situation.Bhahi, Toronto, Canada
No Talks.First of all ask the UK goverment to exile Anton Balasingham.Their keeping a terriorist in UK soil.Mohan de Silva, Doha, Qatar
My home town is Trincomalee and I served as a Naval officer in Trincomalee. The government and JVP have to take responsibility to this as they fail to fulfil the Geneva promises. Trincomalee is Tamils homeland and the majority was Tamil until well planned colonisation begin. But before the truce , Tamil were scared to express theirs opinions as all over the place deployment of armed forces. After the truce and the international monitor came there, Tamil start to express theirs opinions without fear. Now some Shinhala elements and the government want to make the situation as it was before the truce.Sella Kamal, New Malden, UK
This is a terrible mistake done by LTTE. They sould stop killing of any civilans. Killing of Vignaswaran is also his own mistake. He walked voulnerably on street being a LTTE supporter in a weponary state.Ravi Sivalingam, Windsor, Canada
This is just a sample of what the sinhala thugs and forces are capable of doing to the innocent tamil civilians. This proves why the LTTE should disarm themselves.Jagath Perera, Colombo, Sri Lanka
This incidents clearly show what LTTE wants. They want to see clahes between two communities. LTTE will never allow Sinhalese and Tamils live in harmony. They know that if they do so there wont be a LTTE.Nishan Ratnayake, USA
lets tamils & singhalese talk for a workable solution. If tamil independence is the final solution lets do that and live in peace .. enough damage is done already.. lets leave tamils to decide their future themselvesRavi, Sydney, Australia
Bomb attack on security forces by anti-government armed organizations should not be an excuse for genocide in any country. In Sri Lanka genocide of Tamils take place with the support of armed forces. Officers and politicians responsible for genocide in Sri Lanka must be brought before International War Crimes Tribunal.Jude Sooriyajeevan, Liverpool, USA
Is the West only paying lip service to antiterrorism when it does not affect itself? Why can't US and EU intervene in a more productive and effective way? Mere condemnations are easy but lost on the world's most vicious terroristsShyaman Jayasinghe, Melbourne, Australia
O.K. LTTE has done that. Why burnt shops,kill innocent tamils? Wake up guys, neither Government or Sinhalese nor the LTTE is correct.Only poor tamils are suffering.Paramesh Kirupiah, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka
It is both sad and disgusting to see LTTE throwing this opportunity to finally give a chance to PEACE. The US, UK and finally Canada now accepts that their motive is to terrorise and not participate in real politics.Randhir Senapala, London, UK
Too many arms/weapons, too many unemployed, poor government, what else you can expect? Violent, I do not see any end of it. Where will you employ all the security forces and LTTE, if the war stops tomorrow?Shan Mylvaganam, London, UK
Provoking inter-ethnic clashes has been the standard practice of the LTTE.Kanna, London, UK
Firstly, my deepest sympathy goes to all the families who have lost their loved one, whether it could be Sinhalese soldiers or innocent Tamils. Violent should be condemned when it comes from any corner. At this juncture I would like to urge all parties to stop dirty tactics to gain unfair advantage at negotiation table and honestly go to talk. Remember, you are dealing with peoples life. Coming to power or capturing the power is not important.Ravi Ratnasingham, Toronto, Canada
LTTE show who they are once again.This is not the first time.peace in SL?Only a dream.Thaminda Attygalle, Sri Lanka
This proves that LTTE is waiting for a reason to create violance and to jepordise peace process. Their list of lies and excuses are pathetic.S Mendis, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka
This wesite is always posting one side news which are against Tamils and of course againsr LTTE.Kumar, London, UK
The GOSL should rein in the paramilitary/Homeguards and should not allow them to kill/maim innocent People in Both North and Eastern areas in Sri Lanka. One killing leads to another.Nama Sakaran, St. albans, UK
Goes without saying that the LTTE is not interested in peace and validates Canada's long overdue decision to label them as a terrorist organization.Pri, New York, USA
This is realy terrorisam from LTTE they dont WONT FREEDOM FOR TAMILS they are killlers .they never go to peace .Rajaratnam Ramanan, Dortmond, Germany
|
The revelation on Panorama this week that Dubai's Princess Latifa accused her father of holding her hostage in the city since she tried to flee in 2018 has the potential to create diplomatic tensions between the UK and the United Arab Emirates, a key strategic ally. | By Dan RoanBBC sports editor
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has said he was acting in his daughter's best interests, and the royal family insist she was brought back to Dubai in a "rescue mission".
The UAE have previously said Princess Latifa was safe in the care of family.
But this controversy has left British horse-racing facing some deeply uncomfortable questions.
Over the past 40 years, Sheikh Mohammed has become synonymous with the sport, its most prominent and influential owner.
Indeed, it has become very hard for many in British racing to imagine the sport here without him.
The royal blue silks of Godolphin - the illustrious and hugely successful racing and bloodstock operation he founded and owns - are a constant presence on racecourses during the flat season.
Many jobs are thought to depend on Sheikh Mohammed's investment, especially in Newmarket - where Godolphin and his Dalham Hall breeding operation are based. More than 130 of his horses are trained here in Britain, with many of his millions spent on yearlings at the Tattersalls auction.
This week's allegations have renewed scrutiny on the sport's links with him.
But at a time when racing's finances are already under huge strain due to the pandemic, and fears that possible new affordability checks on gamblers could cost the industry more than £60m, many are loathe to do or say anything that could push the 71 year-old away.
It is perhaps unsurprising therefore, that neither Godolphin, nor the sport's governing body - the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), nor the Jockey Club - of which the sheikh is an honorary member, have made any comment since Panorama was aired.
But this is not the first time that British racing has faced tough questions over its association with the sheikh.
Last March, after hearing extensive witness statements over a period of time, the family division of the High Court found Sheikh Mohammed to have been responsible for a campaign of intimidation against his former wife Princess Haya and for the abduction and forced return of two of his daughters from a different marriage - including Princess Latifa.
The sheikh insisted at the time that, as a head of government, he was not able to participate in the court's fact-finding process, resulting in a judgement that "inevitably only tells one side of the story". He denied the allegations.
But the damage had been done. Previously, the Queen had invited the sheikh to join her in the royal box, and even share her carriage at Royal Ascot.
Following the scandal, she reportedly decided she would not be photographed with him again, despite their shared love of racing.
With the sport only continuing behind closed doors since March, any attempt at distancing has yet not been tested, with any awkward potential meetings so far avoided.
The problems for racing do not stop there.
The BHA's rules for assessing the suitability of owners includes the following: "The criteria to which the authority will have regard in assessing honesty and integrity, include… whether the applicant has been the subject of any adverse finding by a judge in any civil proceedings."
The authority, which is meant to regulate the sport, refuses to say whether an investigation has been launched into the sheikh in the wake of last year's judgement, but insiders say the governing body's "honesty and integrity" criteria are only part of what it considers when assessing the suitability of owners.
The distinct sense from within racing is that with these latest allegations relating to overseas matters involving a head of state of one of the UK's strategic partners and purchaser of arms exports in the Middle East, and with the government referring the matter to the UN, it is unfair to expect the sport to make a stand and speak out against one of its most important benefactors.
Others however, disagree.
"No matter how much money he pays to race his horses, no respectable race should touch Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum until he releases his daughter" tweeted Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, this week.
Beyond racing
Despite such views, racing is unlikely to cut ties with the sheikh any time soon.
Indeed, on Saturday alone, in a sign of just how extensive his investment in the sport has become, as many as 27 Godolphin horses are scheduled to race at seven meetings across four countries.
The ruler of Duabi's sporting connections in Britain extend beyond racing.
The airline Emirates, which he launched, has a shirt sponsorship deal with Arsenal, worth £200m over four years.
It has naming rights to the club's stadium, along with Glasgow's Commonwealth Arena, and Lancashire cricket club's Old Trafford. Emirates also became the first ever title sponsor of the FA Cup in 2015.
But pressure is now mounting on racing in particular to reconsider a relationship that has been hugely lucrative, but which is becoming increasingly controversial.
|
The Magnitsky affair has soured relations between Moscow and Washington, casting a spotlight on corruption in Russia. | It led to US sanctions on a group of Russian officials, retaliation by Russia and the bizarre spectacle of a dead man being put on trial.
That man, the late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, was found guilty of tax fraud by a Moscow court on 11 July 2013, as was his former boss, US-born investment fund manager Bill Browder. Mr Magnitsky died in prison in 2009 - allegedly after beatings - but Russia dropped an investigation into his death.
|
The visitor centre at a Roman museum near Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland has reopened after a £650,000 revamp.
| English Heritage refurbished Housesteads Visitor Centre in Hexham after an overhaul of the museum at the site last year.
Carole Keltie from English Heritage said the centre would host events over the summer focusing on the period when Housesteads was home to the Roman army.
About 100,000 people visit the attraction each year.
The redevelopment was supported by the National Trust and the Northumberland National Park Authority.
Related Internet Links
English Heritage
National Trust
Visit Hadrian's Wall
|
Prime Minister Boris Johnson's long-awaited climate plan includes hastening the end of petrol and diesel cars, new nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon capture. But as our Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin reports, other policies are leaving emissions untouched, or even driving them up. | By Roger HarrabinBBC environment analyst
The prime minister's ambitious 10-point plan has been broadly welcomed by businesses and environmentalists.
But while Mr Johnson creates jobs and cuts carbon dioxide with one hand, he's either increasing emissions - or leaving them uncut - in at least 10 other areas.
These are road-building, SUVs, high-speed rail, aviation, overseas finance, oil and gas, coal mining, farming, meat-eating and peat.
Roads
The £27bn roads programme will actually increase emissions. Increased road capacity not only encourages driving but also leads to car-dependent developments such as retail and business parks. It will be decades before electric vehicles rule the tarmac.
The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps says people should be driving less, and even the AA's president Edmund King concedes: "Arguably in future, we should invest more in broadband [so people can] work from home."
There's secrecy and confusion over the calculations for CO2 emissions from the roads programme, and the government is facing court action by greens complaining that road-building doesn't fit with a zero emissions economy.
Building highways doesn't create many jobs either because most work is mechanised.
SUVs
Large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) emit a quarter more CO2 than medium-sized cars, yet the PM's doing nothing to deter people from buying them.
The motoring industry says electric SUVs will eventually be the answer. But some academics argue that the most polluting SUVs should be removed from the roads immediately.
They say electric SUVs won't solve all problems, because they gobble far more energy and resources than smaller cars.
HS2
There's controversy over emissions from HS2 - the planned high-speed railway linking cities in the north and the Midlands with London. A previous report said it wouldn't reduce CO2 overall for more than 100 years, largely because of the emissions created during tunnelling and construction.
HS2 says that forecast is out of date - and points to measures it has taken to reduce construction emissions by using less steel to do the same job.
HS2's environment director Peter Miller said: "HS2 is playing a crucial role in supporting the green economic recovery and ensuring the UK is on track to achieve net-zero by 2050."
Greens don't trust the revised CO2 figures, and say the £100bn cost of HS2 could have been spent better on more effective climate policies.
Aviation
Aviation poses another transport CO2 challenge. The PM hopes to develop large commercial planes that can fly long-haul passengers planes with zero emissions (Jet Zero, he calls it), but these are decades away.
Right now, some maintain, the government should dampen demand for flying when the economy picks up.
The Citizens' Assembly - set up to gauge popular opinion on climate change - recommended a frequent fliers' tax.
Overseas finance
Finance is another area requiring attention, with the UK accused of carbon hypocrisy over its £1bn finance guarantee for a gas project in Mozambique.
It's part of a broader package for fossil fuel ventures in developing countries.
Friends of the Earth is taking the government to court for contradicting UK climate policy. Its campaigner, Rachel Kennerley, said: "The government is keen to talk up its climate plans, yet it pours billions into oil and gas projects globally."
The prime minister is said to have felt "bounced" into accepting the Mozambique project, but he's not announced any revision so far.
Oil and gas
What about oil and gas in UK waters? Scientists say fossil fuel firms have already found far more hydrocarbons than society can burn without major damage to the climate.
Yet the government aims to enhance oil and gas production in the North Sea.
The UK Oil and Gas Authority said the fuels would form an important part of the UK energy mix for the foreseeable future.
The government is reviewing the offshore licensing regime to make it "greener", while preserving jobs.
OGUK's chief executive Deirdre Michie said this is "an opportunity to shine a light on how our industry is changing".
Oxford University's Prof Myles Allen says firms extracting and importing fossil fuels should pay to dispose of the resulting CO2 emissions by the technique of carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Coal
Meanwhile, there's even a bid to resurrect production of the dirtiest fuel, coal, in the UK.
The Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick is deliberating over a decision on whether to allow a new deep mine to extract coal from under the sea in Cumbria.
Environmentalists say it's irrational to look for more of something there's too much of already. The coal firm says it will create 500 jobs.
Farming
Farming in the UK is emerging as a substantial source of greenhouse gases.
Ministers say their post-Brexit subsidy regime for farms will incentivise farmers to reduce emissions and capture CO2 in the soil and in trees.
Farmers are frustrated because no details - or cash - has been provided.
Peat
Protecting and restoring peat bogs is the simplest, quickest and cheapest way to combat climate change.
The moss covering the bogs locks carbon into the soil indefinitely, unlike trees which soak up CO2 then release it when they rot.
Ministers have promised a strategy to protect peat, but the PM hasn't put laws into place. A £40m grant for countryside restoration announced previously is said to be a fraction of what's needed.
Meat
The Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change, which brought together people from all walks of life to discuss solutions to global warming, foresees a gradual reduction in meat-eating over coming decades to meet emissions targets.
But campaigners say the prime minister should take a public lead on this issue by pledging to eat less meat and inviting others to follow suit.
Follow Roger on Twitter.
|
Swansea University's £450m Bay Campus will open its doors to the first intake of students on 18 September, the university has confirmed. | The 65-acre (26 hectares) former BP Transit site will provide accommodation for around 900 students as well as academic space, a shop and cafes.
The university hopes the campus will contribute £3bn to the regional economy over the next 10 years.
Further development work has been scheduled to continue until 2020.
|
Singapore's government has long insisted that everyone in the island nation should speak English - it's the language used in schools, at work, and in government. But in practice many people speak a hybrid language that can leave visitors completely baffled - Singlish. | By Tessa WongBBC News, Singapore
Singapore is known for its efficiency and Singlish is no different - it's colourful and snappy.
You don't have a coffee - you "lim kopi". And if someone asks you to join them for a meal but you've already had dinner, you simply say: "Eat already."
Singlish first emerged when Singapore gained independence 50 years ago, and decided that English should be the common language for all its different races.
That was the plan. It worked out slightly differently though, as the various ethnic groups began infusing English with other words and grammar. English became the official language, but Singlish became the language of the street.
Repeated Speak Good English campaigns, drummed into Singaporeans in schools and in the media, have had only limited success. Singlish has not only shrugged off these attacks, it has thrived.
It's been documented in a dictionary and studied by linguists. And it has been immortalised in popular culture. Take for example the 1991 comedy rap song Why U So Like Dat? by musician Siva Choy, which dramatises an argument between two schoolchildren.
"I always give you chocolate, I give you my Tic Tac, but now you got a Kit Kat, you never give me back!" sings Choy.
"Oh why you so like dat ah? Eh why you so like dat?"
Over time, Speak Good English campaigns have evolved from trying to stamp out Singlish, to accepting that properly spoken English and Singlish can peacefully co-exist. The language has even come to be seen as part of Singaporean identity and heritage - it appears in advertising campaigns for SG50, the big celebration of Singapore's Jubilee Year, and will feature on floats in Sunday's National Day Parade.
Do you speak Singlish? Decode these five phrases
Among ordinary Singaporeans, Singlish tends to be spoken in informal situations - with friends and family, taking a taxi or buying groceries. It indicates casual intimacy. English, on the other hand, is used for formal situations - at school, or at work, especially when meeting strangers or clients.
Over time, it has become a social marker - someone who can effectively switch between the two languages is perceived to be more educated and of a higher social status than someone who can only speak Singlish.
Someone who can only speak English, and not Singlish, meanwhile, may be seen as a bit posh, or worse - not a real Singaporean.
So how do you speak it?
The grammar mirrors some other regional languages including Malay, which is indigenous to Singapore, by doing away with most prepositions, verb conjugations, and plural words, while its vocabulary reflects the broad range of the country's immigrant roots. It borrows from Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin and other Chinese languages, as well as Tamil from southern India.
Having coffee, "lim kopi", is a combination of the Hokkien word for drink, "lim", and the Malay word for coffee, "kopi".
A person who worries a lot is a kancheong spider - "kancheong" is from the Cantonese word for anxious, and the term evokes the image of a panicked spider scurrying around.
If a situation is intolerable, you may exclaim, "Buay tahan!" The word "buay" is Hokkien for cannot, and "tahan" is Malay for tolerate.
But Singaporeans have also appropriated English words and turned them into something else.
To reverse is to "gostan", from the nautical term "go astern" - a reminder that Singapore was once a British port.
"Whack" means to attack someone, and transposing that to Singapore's favourite pastime, eating, it can also mean ravenously attacking or digging into a hearty meal.
Singlish also has an array of words that are simply invented, that don't mean anything on their own, but dramatically alter the tone of what you're saying when tacked on to the end of a sentence.
"I got the cat lah," is an assurance that you have the cat. "I got the cat meh?" is the puzzled realisation that you may have lost it.
Some Singlish phrases are also used in Malaysia but others are unique to Singapore.
To "merlion" is to vomit profusely, and refers to Singapore's national icon, the Merlion, a half-fish half-lion statue that continuously spouts water.
Thanks partly to social media, Singlish, which used to be only a spoken language, is now starting to evolve in written form with spelling that reflects how the words are pronounced.
"Like that" can be "liddat."
"Don't play play" - a phrase popularised by 1990s sitcom character Phua Chu Kang, meaning roughly "don't mess around with me" - is more accurately written as "Donch pray pray".
Confused? Donch get kancheong.
Spend enough time in Singapore and you sure get it lah.
Some of your comments and examples of Singlish:
Some slangs that are more commonly used among students include "mugging", which means studying very hard, "siao", meaning to the extreme, and "sian", meaning tired and boring Vanessa Kin, Singapore
If something is disagreeable, people will yell "alamak!" Tom, Singapore
Growing up in Singapore, my parents used to frown upon the usage of Singlish, whether we were talking informally at home or with others while outside. They'd insist that we spoke proper English and even had me attend English-language tutorial classes, in addition to having English lessons at school. They'd also prohibit us from watching local TV programmes where the use of Singlish was prevalent. Consequently, I grew up not being able to hold a decent conversation in Singlish and that presented problems for my social life, e.g. ordering food at a local food centre was difficult if the stall owners couldn't understand what I wanted. The problem was especially bad during my National Service conscription period, where I had to work hard to integrate myself with the rest of the boys as we slogged through training together and also having to make sure I didn't incur the wrath of the instructors and trainers because I appeared to be too "posh" as it were. These days, I've learnt to switch between speaking proper English and Singlish depending on the situation I find myself in. Although I do not live in Singapore anymore at the moment, I still find myself smiling whenever I hear Singlish, and realise it's really a part of our national heritage. James Wong, Tokyo, Japan
When I lived in Singapore, your "sunnies" were your sunglasses, your "swimmies" was your bathing suit, and I was expecting at the time, so people would ask if I had been to the "gynie", meaning the gynecologist! Aileen, NYC, USA
"So bad one lah" (a random expression for something disagreeable!) Chwee, Swindon, England
Phrase: Pattern more than badminton. Explanation: Style over substance Lum Wai Loon, Singapore
When I was in Singapore I was asked questions such as "Where you go?" So when I went on their very modern Metro system I was amused to hear an announcement in slow and meticulous "BBC English" saying "Please mind the gap". (The gap incidentally was minuscule compared to some of those on the London Underground.) David Jenner, Bamford, UK
Being a transplanted Singaporean, I am glad (from this article) that I am perceived to be 'better educated' and not just 'atas' (snobbish!) However there are occasions when even I am baffled, most recently after watching a music video (proudly Made In Singapore!), "Unbelievable" where I came across the phrase "stunned like vegetable..." Now even I admit to being blur like sotong when it comes to this! Nicholas Tan, Salford, UK
Having lived in the region for four years, the language felt very efficient, using prepositions as words - "Can you on the fan?" "Can you off the aircon?" - to be always met with the response "OK lah!" Andrea, Marlow, UK
"Want to go out. Can or not?" Question: "Have you been to Malaysia?" Answer: "Ever!" Daniel Muthuswamy, Chennai, India
I may have lived abroad for many years, but I definitely retain my Singlish skills. It evolves continuously with new terms getting introduced every year I return. In Singapore, speaking Singlish builds instant rapport, and because of its nuances, people can easily distinguish between a real native or a newbie. Not using Singlish in a non-work setting when someone is evidently local makes the person appear "jumped up" or insecure about their culture and identity, especially if compounded by a fake foreign (ie US/UK/Aussie) accent. I'm glad that the 'establishment' are recognising the real role Singlish plays in creating cohesion within this multiracial space. Sharliza, London, UK
My favourite is "see how" in answer to a situation whose outcome you can't predict, so you wait to "see how" it turns out. Andra Leo, Singapore
Been to Singapore once. I am amused with calling someone "uncle" even if it's not your relative. Chitetskoy, Manila, Philippines
I learnt Singlish when I went to a local school in Singapore around Siglap where the first phrase I learnt was "relax lah brother, can tankap one corner" from this Malay kid. But I have to say one of favourite phrase is "boh jio! never invite me leh!" whenever I go back to Singapore mainly to visit my dad I somehow unconsciously start speaking Singlish as my lingua franca language amongst my old Singaporean friends but I do get stumped at the coffee shops when I order the different variations. You going from "Could I have a flat white and a bacon roll please" in London to "Uncle! Kopi ci Kai Ci! Kaya toast one!" David Houghton, UK
Favourite phrase is definitely "Eh that level of jio is bo" which is another way of saying "bojio", meaning "Why you never invite me?" Denise, Singapore
I love Singlish. It is colourful, expressive and reflects the wit, humour, history and multiculturalism of Singaporeans. When I first arrived I struggled with the quick delivery, the lilt and the Malay / Hokkien / appropriated words but Singaporeans are resourceful and there was an app for that! I downloaded it and soon I was ordering limau asam boi and yong tau foo in my favourite hawker centre with confidence. A Carey, London, UK
The article misses out on the word "Kiasu". Used profusely in Singapore previously it has less popularity among Singaporeans now because it is a negative term denoting a behaviour emanating from intense materialism, a selfishness ( the 'Me' syndrome) and a desire to be liked at the same time as being looked up to. Choo Weng Choong, King's Lynn, UK
"Sian" is one word in Singlish that can be used in a many contexts and accurately expresses emotions so I like it a lot because it's so efficient. Generally it means to be sick and tired of something or bored or being caught in bothersome situations you can't do anything about. E.g. English: I'm so sick and tired of going to work every day. Singlish: Everyday go work, very Sian. English: The plane got delayed. Singlish: Plane delay, Sian. Caryn, Singapore
You forgot to mention the phrase "Same Same" - you can go around all day and say this! it covers a multitude of meanings and everyone understands what you mean, although this phrase is not just limited to Singlish, you can use it all over South East Asia. Tom Ayre, Kristiansand, Norway
My wife is Chinese and uses lah all the time. My favourite of her expressions is when she puts her phone on silent: "No ding dong" Andy, Baldock, UK
Actually Singlish was developed in both Malaysia and Singapore, not just in Singapore alone. And the most used word in "lah" is a Malay word. Tones are very important. And adding a word to "can" with a correct tone can bring eight different meanings to can: Can ah ? - Can you?; Can la - Can; Can leh - Yes, I think so; Can lor - Yes, Of course; Can hah? - Are you sure?; Can hor - You are sure then; Can meh? - Are you certain?; Can bo? - Can or not; Can can - Confirm; Can liao - Already done Ng Wah Lok, Malaysia
My kids speak impeccable English being products of British and now Australian school system. My wife and I are often under close scrutiny from them on grammar, and use of idioms. The only way we rebel against the kids are when we speak really "deep Singlish" with a spatter of colloquial Malay. It's funny as we observe the kids often scratch their heads trying to decipher the words. Most of the time they only come to know the meaning when we go back to Singapore / Malaysia to visit family. It's me and my wife's only "secret language" around the house. I do welcome the acceptance of Singlish as more mainstream but now it means that me and my wife have to learn a new language (perhaps Russian "govoryu Pa-russki") to confuse the kids! Ahmad Nazhar, Perth, Australia
Only Singaporeans can understand and appreciate: Singlish is the only language in the world that expresses with emotion from text messages. Simon, Singapore
"Area Masjid Sultan is a decent makan place la..." said my friend Ansari. A Singaporean born but now settled down with his family in Sydney. "Makan" is a Malay word for eat and "Masjid" is borrowed from Arabic for mosque. That short sentence above means, "You can get a decent food nearby Sultan Mosque..." Mohd Ayub Sulong, Mayfield, Australia
The Singlish expression "WALAOEH!" is an all-time favourite. It is used mostly to express disapproval, but can also be used to show one's disbelief, ie. a surprise. For example, when visiting a durian stall, one may say "Walao-eh! This durian so big sia!" Mike Lim, Singapore
Question: "How are you? Are you ok?" Possible answers: Ok lah (I'm fine); Ok lor (I'm fine, I guess); Ok lah! (I'm definitely fine); Ok meh? (Am I ok? Don't think so) James, Singapore
I like the long phrases because they are so unique and amusing. "Pattern zuay guay badminton" is a derogatory term for someone sneaky who has got lots of hidden designs. "Chop chop Kali pop (curry puff)" just means hurry up! Li Ching, Singapore
I do like the way Singlish draws on other languages for certain words that just don't have an equivalent in English: my favourite is the loan word 'pai-kwan' taken from Hokkien. It refers to someone who is too eager for any kind of financial gain, no matter how small. For example, "He is so pai-kwan one: when he realized that they were giving out free samples, he shamelessly jostled his way to the front of the queue, knocking over a few old ladies in the process." Alex Liang, London, UK
The use of 'ever' to replace 'have' is quite common. "You go Bangkok, is it? I ever go there oready" translates to "You're going to Bangkok, are you? I've already been there." Ken, Montreal, Canada
I going to watch movie, ghost movie lah , sure very nice one, you want to follow me? Today my mother cooked nasi goreng, so sedap lah, come lah I give you some.. Dewi, Italy
"No more already" means , " it's over long ago.." Mukunda, Bangalore
You know a Singaporean is worth his or her salt when they hear, "eh that guy so stylo milo (trying too hard to be stylish)" and replies, "yeah he think he some yaya papaya (someone who thinks he or she is very important)" Rebecca, Singapore
Here, we include everyone into our way of living, add in our famous efficient character, we live, play and eat together without discrimination (eg. Ah Chan, lai canteen, lunch Yusof blanjar Thosai - Ah Chan, come to the canteen. Yusof treating us Thosai for lunch.) This is what I call My "swee!" Life (My beautiful Life). Gavin, Singapore
|
With two new party leaders and three new MPs, 2015 was a year that saw plenty of change when it came to Northern Ireland politics. | By Mark DevenportBBC News NI Political Editor
Not for the first time, Stormont appeared to be close to suspension or financial breakdown.
And not for the first time, the politicians found their way back from the brink.
Although this time, much to the relief of the Stormont press pack, their talks did not run into the Christmas period.
The year began with plenty of dates for the politicians to mark in their diaries.
The Stormont House Agreement, reached on the day before Christmas Eve 2014, set out a series of targets related to the Northern Ireland Executive's budget, the implementation of controversial UK-wide welfare reforms and the creation of an opposition at Stormont.
But the choreography did not roll out according to plan.
Welfare Reform
In March, Sinn Féin pulled the plug on the Welfare Reform Bill before it reached its final stage.
The party argued that a package designed to mitigate the cuts would not be as comprehensive as it had been led to believe.
Its main partner in power, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), accused Sinn Féin of "dishonourable and ham-fisted" tactics.
The move put a question mark over the financial viability of the executive, as the UK government made it clear it would not release loans promised in the Stormont House deal, and would continue to levy fines related to the failure to revamp the benefits system.
With the future of Stormont in question, the local parties turned their minds to their own fates in May's Westminster election.
The May elections
Many commentators expected a "hung parliament", so the DUP made great play of potentially holding the UK balance of power, something that, with the outright Conservative majority, didn't come to pass.
One of the fiercest contests took place in East Belfast where the DUP's Gavin Robinson wreaked revenge on behalf of his leader and namesake Peter Robinson by winning the seat back from Naomi Long of the Alliance Party.
The DUP were greatly assisted in recapturing East Belfast by an election pact with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).
They repaid the favour in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency, where the Ulster Unionist Tom Elliott took the seat from Sinn Féin's Michelle Gildernew by more than 500 votes.
Although the DUP and UUP reached tactical deals in some Westminster seats, in other places they fought each other as hard as ever.
In Upper Bann, Jo-Anne Dobson failed to unseat the DUP's David Simpson, but in South Antrim the UUP's Danny Kinahan defeated the veteran DUP politician William McCrea by more than 900 votes.
The return of two Ulster Unionist MPs to the green benches meant the party's leader Mike Nesbitt emerged from the May election as a clear winner, while the defeat of both Mrs Gildernew and Mrs Long lowered the profile of local women in politics.
Controversy
Away from the results, though, the election yielded one extraordinary story when the then Health Minister Jim Wells, of the DUP, made controversial remarks about same-sex marriage and the abuse of children in unstable relationships.
A video of his remarks at an election hustings event in Downpatrick in County Down went viral.
Although Mr Wells maintained his comments had been misconstrued, a further incident when he was canvassing a lesbian couple in Rathfriland in County Down led to his resignation as a minister.
The controversy played out against a particularly tragic backdrop as Mr Wells' wife lay seriously ill in hospital.
Back at Stormont, the DUP reshuffled its team, switching Simon Hamilton from the finance portfolio to health, with Arlene Foster moving to the finance department from from enterprise.
Stormont finances
With no movement on welfare reform, Stormont's financial situation appeared ever more dire.
In late May, Mrs Foster predicted that a massive £2.8bn cut might be imposed if civil servants had to take over the reins of power and introduce an emergency budget.
But this doomsday scenario was avoided when she pressed ahead with what commentators called a "fantasy budget", in which she pretended that welfare changes that remained open to dispute had in fact been agreed.
It seemed a bizarre development, but it was not the last time during 2015 that the DUP would adopt strange tactics to keep the Stormont show on the road.
Kevin McGuigan Sr
In August, the murder of a former IRA member in Belfast, in apparent revenge for the murder of another leading republican in May, added a more sinister element to what had previously been a crisis at Stormont over financial and social policy.
The police's suspicion that current IRA members might have been involved in the murder of Short Strand man Kevin McGuigan Sr turned the clock back to the 1990s when the stability of power-sharing was frequently threatened by questions about whether the IRA had gone away.
In that earlier era, the Ulster Unionists took a constant pounding from the DUP who criticised them for sharing power with republicans.
So perhaps some in the UUP could be forgiven for indulging in a sense of schadenfreude when Mike Nesbitt pulled his only minister, Danny Kennedy, out of the executive in response to the police briefings over Mr McGuigan's murder.
The move initially wrong-footed the DUP, who called for Sinn Féin's exclusion from government.
After a senior Sinn Féin official was arrested for questioning about the killing, DUP ministers appeared to follow the Ulster Unionists' lead by handing in their resignations.
But there was a crucial difference - the DUP ministers kept their portfolios in limbo by resuming their jobs then immediately resigning again, a tactic that they repeated.
The DUP's critics lampooned the manoeuvre as "hokey-pokey" politics.
The move generated negative publicity but bought crucial time for fresh negotiations.
The Sinn Féin official was released without charge and, even though an official security assessment suggested the IRA Army Council might still play a role in overseeing Sinn Féin, the DUP ministers returned to their jobs full time and pressed ahead with another attempt to resolve the executive's outstanding difficulties.
Before that came to fruition, though, another of the Stormont parties experienced internal upheaval.
SDLP Leadership
Alasdair McDonnell successfully defended his Westminster seat in South Belfast during a hard-fought personal campaign.
But that did not stop his critics within the SDLP complaining about his leadership.
The 32-year-old Foyle MLA Colum Eastwood decided to run against Dr McDonnell at the party's conference in November, and the bold gambit paid off as delegates voted by 172 votes to 133 to give a younger generation a chance.
The SDLP was not the only party to hold its conference in November.
As the DUP's gathering loomed closer at the end of November, there was an increasing sense that it might serve as a bookend both for the latest inter party talks and the career of the First Minister Peter Robinson.
Peter Robinson
On a personal level Mr Robinson had experienced an extremely tough year.
In May, he was rushed to hospital after suffering a heart attack, something he later blamed on his lack of exercise and diet of "cowboy suppers".
He returned to work but there were occasions when he was clearly hampered by complications related to his treatment.
On top of this, the first minister faced questions about his handling of a massive property deal in which the £1.2bn Northern Ireland portfolio owned by the Republic of Ireland's so-called 'bad bank', the National Asset Management Agency, was sold to the US firm Cerberus.
The loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson used the privilege accorded to a meeting of Stormont's finance committee to claim Mr Robinson was one of a number of people hoping to benefit from multi-million pounds fixer fees associated with the deal.
The first minister strenuously denied the accusation, insisting that his involvement in discussions about the deal had been purely motivated by wanting to stimulate the wider Northern Ireland economy.
Fresh Start deal
With the DUP conference in sight, the two main local parties and the British and Irish governments unveiled their Fresh Start deal.
The welfare reforms resisted by Sinn Féin would now be implemented by Westminster legislation.
The move would free up Treasury loans that would put Stormont back on a more stable financial footing.
A mitigation package would assist those hit hardest by benefits cuts and reduced tax credits, although the chancellor later withdrew his threat to cut the credits.
The DUP and Sinn Féin hailed the deal as the best option available.
But their critics insisted the Fresh Start was a false start, not least because it did not cover the vexed issue of setting up new agencies to deal with the legacy of the Troubles.
The rights and wrongs of the Fresh Start are likely to provide much of the battleground for the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election.
A new DUP Leader
Mr Robinson will not be in the front line of that struggle.
One day after the deal he confirmed his departure as both DUP leader and first minister.
At an emotional DUP conference, it looked like a "dream team" of Nigel Dodds as leader and Arlene Foster as first minister would be anointed as Mr Robinson's joint successors.
But Mr Dodds, the North Belfast MP, surprised observers by deciding not to contest the leadership, arguing that in the days of devolution the DUP could not be led from Westminster.
The East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson briefly considered running his own campaign.
But when he decided against standing as a leadership candidate, the election of Arlene Foster as both DUP leader and first minister became a coronation.
Mrs Foster is the DUP's first woman leader and, as an Anglican and former Ulster Unionist, she represents a break from the party's Paisleyite Free Presbyterian roots.
2016
The new leader will no doubt focus on the assembly election, in which she will hope the DUP does not lose its top spot to Sinn Féin, nor the first minister's title which goes with it.
Martin McGuinness says if Sinn Féin was to be the biggest party he would be relaxed about renaming the two top jobs as "joint first ministers".
Before he gets to that place, though, Mr McGuinness's attention will no doubt be deflected by the forthcoming Irish parliament election, in which Sinn Féin hopes to advance its all Ireland agenda.
There's also the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising that will have inevitable resonance for Irish nationalists, and potentially for unionists if the angry reaction to a stunt in which a 1916 flag and an Irish tricolour were briefly raised over Stormont is anything to go by.
Aside from constitutional issues, the parties will continue to grapple with sensitive moral and social questions concerning abortion, same-sex marriage and blood donation.
And then, of course, there is the unexpected.
As 2015 proved, no year at Stormont unfolds according to any plan laid out before our MLAs on 1 January.
|
About 100 men at the UK's largest detention centre have been spotted in the exercise yard and are believed to be protesting about living conditions. | Some detainees began a hunger strike at Harmondsworth Detention Centre on Sunday in protest at living conditions.
Earlier, they were filmed protesting in the exercise yard by aerial cameras.
The Home Office said detention and removal were "essential parts of effective immigration controls" and it took detainees' welfare very seriously.
The detention facility in West Drayton holds 615 men who are awaiting removal or deportation from the UK.
A Home Office spokesman said: "Detention is only ever used as a last resort after all attempts to encourage individuals to leave voluntarily have failed."
|
"Once there was a girl who loved school." | By Georgina RannardBBC News
So begins the true story of Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Prize-winning Pakistani teenager who was shot by the Taliban in 2012, in newly published children's book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.
The book uses illustrations and fairytale-like stories about 100 inspirational women from across the globe to teach girls to rebel against gender norms and instead follow their dreams.
Families have been describing on social media what their children think of the rebel women.
Brynn, who is five years old and lives in Chicago, was captivated by the story of Manal al-Sharif, the women's rights activist dubbed "the woman who dared to drive" after she challenged the ban on women getting behind the wheel in Saudi Arabia.
"Brynn kept asking 'So they told her she couldn't drive?'. I would answer, 'that's right'. And Brynn would smile mischievously, 'But she did...'," explains her mum Patti.
Brynn was so inspired that she traced the picture and Patti sent it to Manal.
Another profiled star is teenage American gymnast Simone Biles, whose dazzling jumps and twists wowed the world in the 2016 Olympics.
But there are also lesser-known women in the book, including Grace Hopper, the pioneering American computer scientist, and journalist-turned-weightlifter Amna Al Haddad from United Arab Emirates.
Two Italian authors, Elena Favilli, 34, and Francesca Cavallo, 33, are behind the book, which was a hit in the US after a crowdfunding campaign raised US$1m (£815,700) in 2016.
In an interview with the BBC, Elena explained that they first came up with the idea when they realised that children's books are still packed with traditional gender stereotypes.
"Children's books have not changed since we were children - the men are still the protagonists and the women are still the princesses," she explained.
Disparities in the representation of men and women in children's books has long been an issue.
In 2011, academics at Florida State University found that gender bias in books has existed for more than 100 years.
They identified that in almost 6,000 picture books published between 1900 and 2000, only 7.5% depicted female animal protagonists.
You might also like:
BBC 100 Women: Bringing up my son as a feminist
Simone Biles on fame, adoption and meeting the President
Grace Hopper's compiler: Computing's hidden hero
Books and pictures are crucial in defining how children see and understand the world.
By the time they are six, girls see themselves as less talented or "brilliant" as boys, according to research published in January 2017.
The report suggests that both girls and boys aged six tend to identify a "really, really smart" storybook character as a boy, not a girl.
"If all children read is about princesses waiting to be saved by a prince, then the message they learn is that women are not as valuable as men - that we are not equals," says Elena.
The authors are not the first to try to address this issue.
In 2015, American psychologist Stephanie Tabashneck published a colouring book featuring girls of diverse ethnicities in high-profile jobs such as surgeon, professor and engineer, after she grew tired of seeing girls constantly depicted as princesses.
Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole is another example of a story that defies norms, according to education expert Prof Gemma Moss.
Girl Power: How can books empower young girls?
But Elena and Francesca believe that their emphasis on real-life rebellious women who challenged social norms gives an important message to children who frequently only read about fictional girls.
"Historically women's achievements have been diminished," says Elena. "Rebels have negative connotations in all cultures - it is usually considered bad for a woman. Our message is that it is OK and even a good thing for women to break rules."
Feminist rally cry
Robyn Silverman, a child development expert in US state New Jersey, curls up every night with her children Tallie (eight) and Noah (six) to read stories from the collection.
She bought the book on the day that the feminist rally cry #StillShePersisted was born, after US Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced in the Senate in February after reading a letter criticising Jeff Sessions, President Donald Trump's then-nominee for attorney general.
"I wrote a dedication to Tallie telling her to always rise up," Robyn explains.
"She has already been told 'girls can't do this'.
"But in this book there are concrete examples of women who fought for girls' education when it was illegal, or who fought to vote when women were not allowed in politics - this shows to girls that whatever she is up against, we can overcome it," Silverman says.
Robyn says that her son also loves listening to the stories:
"It's really important because men need to see that women use their skills and pursue their dreams to make progress in the same way as men - it's not about saying women are better then men."
Elena says other parents told her how their young sons loved reading the book: "We need to start early and show children of a young age that men and women are absolutely equal."
|
A driver who died in a crash on a dual carriageway in Hampshire has been described as a "wonderful great-grandfather" by his family. | Reginald Kemp, 86, who was known as John, died when his Nissan Micra collided with a pick-up truck near Petersfield on Thursday 17 September.
In a statement released by police, his family said he was a loving husband and a caring father of two daughters.
He also had seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
The crash involving Mr Kemp's car and a Ford Ranger happened on the B2070 London Road at Adhurst Farm, near the A272 junction.
Hampshire Constabulary is continuing to appeal for witnesses and anyone with dashcam footage.
|
If anyone can lift us out of the gloom, it's Little Mix. | By Mark SavageBBC music reporter
Britain's most successful girl band are breaking through the fug of self-isolation with a turbo-charged new single that goes by the self-explanatory title Break Up Song.
It was written in a flurry of creativity last year - one of seven songs the band composed in a single day with their go-to writer (and former stockbroker) Camille Purcell.
Straight away, it was earmarked as the first single on Little Mix's sixth album, which is also their first since splitting from Simon Cowell's record label, Syco, in 2018.
Plans for the album are up in the air after the coronavirus outbreak put recording sessions on hold - but they decided to release Break Up Song anyway, in an attempt to keep their fans happy in uncertain times.
Singer Perrie Edwards joined us on the phone from her house in London to explain what's going on; and how the split from Syco has given Little Mix permission to go back to their first love: pure, unfiltered, hands-in-the-air pop anthems.
Hey Perrie, how are you?
I'm great! I'm in my kitchen making a grilled sandwich.
Excellent news. What filling?
Well, have you ever heard of [swanky Danish juice bar chain] Joe and the Juice?
Yes, there's one next door to the BBC!
Well, I'm a little bit obsessed with that because my boyfriend likes it, so… there's a Tuna sandwich that you get from there, and I'm basically just making my own version of that.
Well, I'm glad we've got all the important stuff out of the way first. Shall we wrap up the interview here?
Haha, yeah.
Or maybe we should talk about the new single...
Oh, alright then.
It's immediately recognisable as a classic Little Mix song, but how did it come about?
So basically, the story goes like this…
Sometimes when we do writing sessions you're literally sat there, twiddling your thumbs, doodling on a piece of paper, pretending you're coming up with ideas while you're secretly going on Uber and ordering yourself a car home.
Then there's other days when everything is flowing and it feels amazing. And this was one of those days. We went in the studio with Camille, who's like the fifth member of Little Mix, and we wrote about six or seven songs in one day.
All completed, polished songs?
Well, it was everything from rough ideas to little tiny demos, and one of them was Break Up Song.
It was very basic at the time. The beat was all over the place and it was really, really rough - but it just had something about it. And we thought, "This has got to be the first single. Let's just bin everything we thought of doing before and roll with this."
So it wasn't always destined to be the lead single?
No, but we played the demo to our label and said, "This is going to be a smash - we just need to finish it."
And they were going, "How can you tell it's going to be a hit when it's literally just a verse and the [main] line?"
And we were like, "Trust us. Let us get a really good demo together, and we'll present it to you and see what you think". And as soon as we did that, everybody loved it. We felt really proud because it was our baby.
I've always wondered how you divide up the singing in the studio. Do you each have specific strengths you play to?
Back in the day we used to have a routine about who sang what but, since the last album, it's become almost a free-for-all.
Like, I got to the stage where I was like, "Guys, I really don't want to belt out the big notes and the ad-libs all the time. I want to sing a verse, or something lower [in pitch] because I like to sing low as well".
So we throw it all over the place now. I think it keeps it more exciting for us and the fans.
One of the lines Jesy sings in Break Up Song is: "I'll be good by myself / I'll find a way to dance without you." Obviously it was written before the lockdown, but it seems eerily appropriate this week.
Exactly! It couldn't have come at a more perfect time. I think it'll uplift everybody at home, just jamming out to it.
And, as if by magic, you've just gone viral by dancing with your boyfriend [Liverpool footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain] on Instagram...
[Laughing] I can't believe that went viral! I don't understand what made it so good.
I think it's because you float up the stairs like you're in a 1950s Ginger Rogers film.
Aw, I love that. It actually does. But we just did it as a laugh; and then it went massive.
Is that your top tip for isolation, just dancing around the house?
Yeah, dancing, keeping yourself busy. I just keep putting fake tan on like I'm going somewhere when I'm not. And I've been knitting a little bit.
What have you made?
Well, like a grandma, I've knitted a blanket - and it's come in really handy, actually.
What does the lockdown mean for Little Mix? You had a tour, festivals, a TV show and an album all due in the next couple of months.
I honestly have no idea. I'm praying and hoping that our tour is going to happen. But I'm also putting things into perspective. It sucks for us but it's a global pandemic, so we're just going to go with the flow and do what we can to keep our fans happy whilst quarantining and figure it out after.
That's basically what everyone's doing.
This is the thing: Everybody's in the same position. We're all in it together.
And yet some people still seem to be taking unnecessary risks.
It's weird, I don't understand why people don't stay at home, it isn't that hard.
It's like people want a sick day at work all the time - but now they're being made to stay at home, they're like, "Well, I don't want to!"
So what stage is the album at right now?
To be fair, it was shaping up very nicely before the whole corona-situation happened. But there's still work to be done. If it was all finished and it was sat there, we'd say, "Do you know what? Let's get it out," but it isn't…
Your last album, LM5, came out a day after you split from Simon Cowell's record company, but it was still on their label. A lot of fans felt it didn't get the promotion it deserved... What was your perspective?
It was a weird time in our careers. There was a lot going on, but it's one of those things. We were proud of the album, we were happy with it and the fans seemed to love it.
I think, moving forward with our music, instead of trying to mature our sound and try different genres, we're just going to do what makes us happy - which is pop and feel-good music like Break Up Song.
Is that what happened with Syco? You were being pushed in a direction you weren't comfortable with?
Hmmm... I think we just wanted to try something new. It was our fifth album and you get to a point where you want to switch up your sound, switch up your look, try different things. You don't want to keep doing the same stuff every day.
You're basically in uncharted territory now. Girl groups don't usually last for three albums, let alone six.
Thank you, yeah. It is pretty unheard of to do this well for this long, so we are really grateful. I think it's just down to friendship and hard work and dedication.
Do you find people underestimate the amount of work you do?
Exactly. I think people think we get on stage, we look pretty, and then we insert a memory card into the back of our necks and the performance just happens.
I don't think they realise it takes weeks and months of preparation and rehearsal and time and effort. It's not easy being a pop star!
What was the diary like before you went on lockdown?
It was intense. It's always the same in Little Mix world. Our schedules are normally planned out two years in advance.
Wow. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow, Perrie.
Well now neither do I!
That must be weird.
It's a bittersweet situation. It's quite refreshing but it's also quite daunting because I'm used to having my life planned out for me. But it is quite nice not to think about work for a little while.
You wrote a really powerful and brave Instagram post last year about your anxiety and panic attacks. How did that affect your ability to be part of the band?
It's weird. It affected it in a huge way, but it also didn't affect it at all, if that makes sense?
When the panic attacks got bad, I didn't want to leave the house. My mam and Sam, my manager, had to meet at my house to take me to work because I couldn't bear the idea of being in a car on my own.
And I've always been really independent. I've always loved my own space. I lived near fields with nothing around me and that was my happy place. Then all of a sudden it slipped and now that's my idea of hell. So I like to be surrounded by people now because I feel like if I was to have a panic attack, it'd be better if I had somebody with me.
So it messed up work in the day-to-day sense, but it's never affected being on stage, because performing's what I love to do. That's where I feel most comfortable and the most safe, I suppose.
It must be hard, though, to get up on that stage after going through all that stress just to get there.
It's the worst thing in the world. It's quite frustrating, 'cos if someone broke their leg, you wouldn't say, "Oh, just get on stage and perform, you're fine." But because you can't see anxiety, it's a mental illness, people don't necessarily believe in it as much.
Has it subsided at all, or have you worked out ways to cope?
Touch wood, the panic attacks have stopped, but anxiety is quite hard to shift, so you've got to try and find coping mechanisms, rather than thinking you'll get rid of it.
Therapy has helped; and so has figuring out the things that trigger my anxiety and trying to avoid those situations somehow. And if not, just try to keep calm and breathe.
In happier news, you've just passed your driving test, is that right?
Yes I did! I never thought in a million years I would pass my test but I absolutely love driving now. It's the best thing ever,
What car did you get?
It's a big truck! It's huge. It's a beast but I absolutely love it.
And do you still play guitar?
A little bit - but not as often as I should. I've got long, natural nails now and I can't play guitar with them.
Aren't they useful as guitar picks?
No! It's really hard when you're pressing the strings to make the chords because your nails get in the way. So I'm putting beauty before guitar talent here!
Have you ever considered doing an acoustic set with the girls?
I've thought about it but I don't know… I'd be really worried because I'm not that good at it. I can play the basic chords and that's about it.
Well, you only need three.
That's true! Every single song is basically only three or four chords, so you never know!
Right, well I'd better let you get back to that tuna sandwich. Thanks for chatting.
Thank you! See you when it's all over. Stay safe!
Little Mix's new single, Break Up Song, is out now Since this interview took place on Wednesday, their BBC TV show, The Search, has been postponed.
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
|
A man accused of spitting at police officers while claiming to have symptoms of coronavirus has been charged with assault. | Paul Leivers was arrested on Thursday in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.
Mr Leivers, 48, of Tideswell Court, has been charged with two counts of assaulting an emergency worker, and is due to appear before magistrates.
Police said the general response to social distancing in Nottinghamshire had been "phenomenal".
The government has introduced emergency legislation which means people can be fined for ignoring the measures.
However, police said this would be done only "as a last resort".
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
|
Four soldiers are self-isolating after testing positive for Covid-19 at one of the largest Army garrisons in Britain, it has been confirmed. | The four, whose names and regiments are not being disclosed, are based at Colchester in Essex.
They are believed to be housed in the Merville Barracks.
"We can confirm that four Colchester-based soldiers have tested positive for coronavirus," an Army spokesman said.
"In accordance with government guidelines they are self-isolating and contact tracing procedures are being followed."
Merville Barracks is the central camp of Colchester Garrison and houses the headquarters of 16 Air Assault Brigade, 18 Army Education Centre, the WRVS centre and living accommodation for unaccompanied or single service personnel.
Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]
|
A man has been charged with attempting to steal the Magna Carta from Salisbury Cathedral. | Mark Royden is accused of attempted theft and criminal damage of the Magna Carta in October, Wiltshire Police said.
Mr Royden, 46, from Ilfracombe, Devon, is due to appear at Salisbury Magistrates' Court on Friday.
Salisbury Cathedral's copy of the text is one of four that remain in existence from the original 1215 charter.
|
Welcome to the Daily and Sunday Politics manifesto tracker. As the name suggests, it tracks the progress the government is making - or not - in achieving the promises made by the Conservatives in their 2015 general election manifesto and major policy announcements. | The traffic light scorecard above shows the current status of all of the policies. The tracker will be updated over the course of this parliament.
The tracker has been broken down into policy areas, which can be explored by clicking on each of the links below.
Manifesto tracker by theme
This section deals with culture, media and sport. This is a partly-devolved area: read more.
CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT
Give Parliament the opportunity to repeal the Hunting Act
- Manifesto, page 23
Stop children's exposure to harmful sexualised content online, by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material and age rating for all music videos
- Manifesto, page 35
Keep our major national museums and galleries free to enter
- Manifesto, page 41
Strengthen Ofcom's role so that tough measures can be taken against channels that broadcast extremist content
- Manifesto, page 63
Support a Great Exhibition in the north
- Manifesto, page 41
Build a tunnel where the A303 passes closest to Stonehenge
- Manifesto, page 41
|
Working from home during a pandemic has brought extra challenges for probation officers who work with serious offenders after their release from prison. Many have had to handle unpleasant subject matter in their own homes, as they deal remotely with violent or sexual offenders. | By Jenny ReesBBC Wales home affairs correspondent
I spent the day with a member of the probation team that works with the 50 most dangerous male offenders in Cardiff, to see how they are managing.
Salli Dixon is part of the special team of probation officers usually based at a police station.
While some face-to-face appointments have continued, whether in the office or the offender's doorstep, others have to be done over the phone or by video call.
The pandemic also means more of the work is done remotely from home, including work with sex offenders.
"It makes it a little more hard to switch off mentally, and you're having really difficult conversations in your home environment, which feels intrusive," she says.
"But it hasn't made the service any less effective. We can't have a less effective service - we protect the public, so we've just had to adapt."
Her first call of the day is with a registered child sex offender, who is living in a halfway house after recently being released from prison.
He's tested positive for Covid-19 and has been moved into isolation quarters, meaning their appointment must now be over the phone.
He tells her he's anxious about plans to find him his own flat where he would be living alone full-time.
The length of time prison leavers spend in approved premises like a halfway house has been reduced during the pandemic.
"It's a little early if I'm honest - far, far too early," he says.
"When my mind is in a corner and up against a wall - it just goes 'right where is the way out? The way out is to go back to prison'."
His anxieties are kicking in, meaning his risks increase, Salli explains.
"He has got 16 or 17 instances of breaching his restrictions, usually by going too close to an area where there are children - like a nursery or school. He says he does that because he wants to self-sabotage and go back into prison," she says.
"So when he feels that he is being moved into his own accommodation, where he'll be by himself, he gets anxious and he thinks it's easier to just do something that would warrant him going back inside.
"The risk to the public would be that he would commit a child contact sex offence. He hasn't done that yet, but we can't rule out that he wouldn't."
How does she feel discussing the nature of his offending?
"We're not completely desensitised as probation officers, because we still hear things that shock us," she says.
"No matter how long you've done a job it is quite difficult sometimes and quite unusual to hear somebody talk candidly about their sexual views towards children."
The small team deals with complex cases - like repeat domestic violence or sex offenders who also have additional issues, such as a personality disorder, mental health problems or drug and alcohol misuse.
Known as Wisdom (Wales Integrated Serious and Dangerous Offender Management), they have a reduced case load to reflect the risks posed, as well as more resources than typical probation officers.
Her second case of the day is able to come to the office. He committed a sex offence against a vulnerable adult and was released earlier this year after decades in prison.
Much has changed since he was a young man on the outside, and he says the pace of life compared with prison has felt overwhelming at times.
Weeks after his release, lockdown was announced and he too wonders whether it would be better to be back in prison.
"We've done a lot of work around what's going well and the reasons he wants to stay out," says Salli.
"If you reinforce that enough, they will make changes and they will stay out. He's done phenomenally well."
She still carries out some home visits, but they're now on the doorstep, which naturally makes the job more challenging.
"We're risk assessors, it's what we're trained to do. So even though we might not be able to physically go inside, we'll do everything we can to make sure that everyone is safe."
The use of video calls also means more checks can be done in a day, but if Salli is working from home she has to make sure none of her personal items are on view.
"I would try and have video calls in the office because not only is it safer but I'm in the right frame of mind to be talking to somebody [in that] environment."
'Change lives'
Covid-19 has also brought greater practical challenges for the men she works with.
"It's made it more difficult for people to access basic things like housing, money and universal credit, signing up at the doctors, getting a prescription. We've had to be more hands on in terms of helping people get set up."
The rewards keep her going, she said, and she is proud of the good the team is doing for the wider community.
"We change people's lives," she says.
"I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it. It's got its ups and downs and you know you can't help change everyone. You have to manage your expectations about what you can help people achieve."
|
Andrea Arnold, one of the UK's most successful female directors, is calling for "active" employment of women within the film industry, saying that she's "shocked to discover how few women are making films". | By Emma JonesEntertainment reporter
Figures published by the Directors Guild of America showed that in 2013 and 2014, 6.4% of Hollywood films were made by women, while just over 1% of movies were made by women from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Arnold, who has won an Oscar, two Baftas, and four prizes at Cannes Film Festival since she started directing 18 years ago, says she saw the statistics recently, and "was so shocked at the amount of women directors".
"The figures were so small. We actively have to employ more females, perhaps we need to at this point. There are a lot of capable women out there."
'Mainly male stories'
Arnold's latest film, American Honey, follows an African American heroine, Star, as she travels across the US with a road crew selling magazine subscriptions.
It won the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and is showing at this year's BFI London Film Festival. The director believes that "we've grown up mainly on male stories, and most of the films have been written and directed by men - and that's only half of the human race".
"I remember going to a women's film festival and feeling a slight amount of trepidation, but actually it was fantastic. Some of the films made me cry because they really spoke to me," she recalls.
"It was then I realised up till then I had mostly been spoken to by men in cinema."
All of Arnold's four feature films are centred around a female story, and three are set, including American Honey, during the teenage transition to womanhood.
It's a time Arnold calls " very precious, and very interesting - there are a lot of hormones flying. And I always wanted to do a girl's road trip story, a coming of age".
The desire to make the film had been with Arnold, she says, since she saw a New York Times article some years ago detailing the so-called "Mag Crews", itinerant young people who travel across the US, sleeping in camper vans, and going door to door, scratching a living by selling magazine subscriptions.
To research and write it, the director took her own road trip, starting off from Salt Lake City, Utah, "as the sun came up, with the freeway ahead of me, and Spirit in the Sky on the radio.
'Intense poverty'
"We're all fascinated by America, aren't we? We've all grown up with the idea of it."
"I wasn't trying to subvert the American Dream with my story but it's complicated - this belief that you can have whatever you want, as long as you stick at it," she says.
"It depends how well you started in life - and if you started in poverty, without proper parenting, how easy is it to find the self-confidence to do what you want to do?
"And if you don't do it, that's doubly hard - you are stuck with a sense of failure."
Arnold's journey took her through some states, where she says "I didn't fully understand how intense the poverty would be".
She describes driving through a town in Oklahoma "where everything was shut - the whole high street, the factories, everything".
"There were people there, but nothing for them. I suppose that's when certain political messages get appealing - when you can't even access a doctor or a dentist. It made me profoundly grateful for the NHS, actually."
The film stars Shia La Beouf as the crew leader, Jake, and a 21-year-old Texan, Sasha Lane, who was "discovered" by Arnold and her scouts.
"It was Spring Break and we were on a Florida beach," Arnold recalls, "and there were 20,000 teenagers on that beach. At first she was careful, because there were actually people out there recruiting for pornography films too.
"She just had a certain something - she was very awake and alive, she was very present with us when we spoke to her."
Arnold also employed first-time actors in her previous films, Wuthering Heights and Fish Tank, and admits: "I like it because they provide a faithful representation of the world that I am seeking to portray.
Shia LaBeouf 'mucked in'
"It's often easier to use 'real' people; you can genuinely believe it's the life they have led just by looking at their faces. Sometimes I feel I am making life difficult for myself, as they never do quite what you expect them to do.
"But they never repeat themselves, they bring something different and no take is the same."
Shia LaBeouf, she adds, "just mucked in with everyone, we got on really well from the first moment we met".
"He strikes me as an actor looking to do things in a different way. He was up for the adventure and stayed for the duration of the whole trip, as I wanted him to. There was no flying in and out, just staying in the same motel rooms as the rest of the crew."
Arnold often drove her cast from one location to another, and early on, sent them to try and sell magazine subscriptions for real, "or how else would they have the experience? So I sent them off, and the first time was OK, we had a 'Mag Manager' come and teach them the craft, and they even made some money.
'We lived together for two months'
"However the next time we did it again, on a housing estate in Nebraska, the police were called and we got chased away - I think the residents were more protective.
"The people in my film are very much like the real magazine crew that I read about and met.
"It was a huge experience for all of us, I think - we lived together for two months. They say road trips change everyone and at the end of that period, I sensed a great deal of sadness from them, that it would all come to an end."
American Honey premieres at the BFI London Film Festival on October 7th and is released in the UK on October 14th.
Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram, or if you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
|
Another day, another death. Another headline about someone being killed in London. | On the first Monday of this month, Tanesha Melbourne, 17, died in her mother's arms after being shot in Tottenham. On the Tuesday, 16-year-old Amaan Shakoor died after being shot in the face in Walthamstow. Wednesday saw Israel Ogunsola, 18, stabbed to death in Hackney. Three more names to add to the grim litany of fatalities in the capital. Three more bodies in the mortuary.
Why is it happening? The BBC asked those who are dealing with the consequences of the epidemic of violence for their insights.
'Until you've killed someone you'll just carry on'
Nequela Whittaker used to be a gang leader in south London. Now she's a youth worker.
"The youth culture seems to be falling apart at the moment. Young people don't feel like they fit in with society and there doesn't seem to be a voice for young people so at the moment there's a bit of carnage. On the streets it seems to be feuds from social media, from gang rivalry, postcode wars. At the moment it seems to be an epidemic of violence between the young people and it's getting worse.
"It's a discussion and conversation we need to have, to address what's happening and think what the community is doing.
"What is it that young people are lacking - what can we do? what opportunities can we create for young people?
"They feel that this is the life they are accustomed to - but there is a lot more out there and we need to find out what will keep them motivated.
"Due to spending cuts there has been less policing, community centres are closing. There's been not money directed at the third sector for a while and with all these cuts and reductions we've got more young people falling out on to the streets.
"Young people argue on social media over nothing. A boyfriend or girlfriend is in a feud and it escalates and you get people getting involved in situations that didn't necessarily involve that young person first hand.
"Young males are coming from homes with no fathers, no male role models. Many are lacking love.
"At the moment there are a lot of parents trying to be their children's friends rather than being the authoritarian person in their lives. When it comes to the stage of trying to impose discipline it's too late and the young person is 15 and has learnt their own way of life.
"I've got to be honest - looking back at my mindset when I was 15 or 16 - nothing would have stopped me.
"Until you've either killed someone or it's you in that body bag you're just going to get a Youth Referral Order and you'll just carry on."
'You get the society you deserve'
Martin Griffiths is a consultant surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust in London.
"We've seen a real sea change over the past few years, with a significant increase in the number of people who have been injured, in the number of injuries sustained per person, and the severity of those injuries.
"The youth of many of the victims and the assailants is really, really concerning. Back in the 1980s, we looked at interpersonal injuries involving knives and guns as being relatively uncommon - a niche injury. Now it's our core work. Knife and gun injury is most of what we see. We're performing major lifesaving surgery on a daily basis.
"One of my military colleagues has described the situation as like being at Camp Bastion [in Afghanistan], which is really worrying to hear.
"And we routinely have children in our care. Thirteen, 14, 15-year-olds coming in with knife and gun wounds is a daily occurrence. We used to look after people in their 20s, now children in school uniforms are being admitted.
"Some kids are involved with gangs or in the drugs trade, but more often than not it is that young people with poor impulse control who've been put into difficult situations and who don't respond well to conflict.
"I think young people are easily swayed and the lack of positive role models, mentorship, and support for young people feeds into them being led down the wrong path.
"We've seen a normalisation in attitudes toward violence globally - and also we take offence about pretty much everything. If we look at people now - things escalate on social media now about absolutely nothing. People now, when placed in conflict situations, react in a much more expressive manner. And if people who are running countries react in that manner, it's a signal for everyone to react that way.
"Members of the public who are not involved in gangs or violence let these things pass without comment. You get the society you deserve. If you ignore violence and ignore offending as a member of the public, your society will change.
"We are all responsible for what is happening right now."
'Each community centre has a gang'
Patrick Boyce's son Jamel was aged 17 when he was stabbed in Clapham in 2016. He is now in a semi-vegetative state and will never recover his brain function.
"It's a new game for the teenagers; running into one area and stabbing or shooting someone in that area and then going back to their own area. Then someone from that area will go to the other area and stab or shoot someone else.
"The tragic thing is that those they're stabbing or shooting are just innocent people who accidentally live there.
"My son was attacked after he came from college. He got stabbed in his leg and stabbed in his heart. He knew the attacker; they used to go to the same college.
"My son didn't carry a knife and he wasn't in a gang, he was just going out on the Friday afternoon after college with his friends and he got into an argument with somebody. That guy decided he wanted to kill my son. Just like that.
"These kids come from dysfunctional families, often single parents with no father around and the mother might be working 14, 16 hours a day.
"They come home and there's nobody there, so the streets become their family. They find comfort in each each other. Schools are letting them down, families are letting them down. Then they perceive that being in a gang makes them stronger, that it makes them somebody. It's a negative path for any teenager to think that is the only future they might have.
"Social media does play a part but social media does not make a teenager pick up a knife and go out on the streets with it.
"I think it's good that cuts mean community centres are closing, otherwise community centres would have more murders. Each community centre has a gang and they are going to attack each other.
"We need to get these children into a position where they can see a future, an option rather than saying they are going to pick up a knife or gun and sell drugs. And it's all down to drugs, they're killing each other because they're selling drugs."
'It doesn't bode well for us this summer'
Ken Hinds is the chairman of Haringey's Independent Stop and Search Monitoring Group.
"Stop and search is playing into the hands of the violence. It needs to be used with caution or we are going to alienate the very community that is being affected disproportionately by this violence. We will alienate them into not giving intelligence to the police so they can actually find knives and guns on our streets.
"In the Haringey community what's happened now is that if you shoot me or one of my people, I am going to shoot one of your people.
"It doesn't bode well for us for this summer.
"I think we need a curfew in place for those aged 21 and under between 9pm and 7am to get a grip of what's going on across the hotspot areas, particularly in north London - the high-crime areas where the murders are happening.
"We ought to have some sort of respite and think outside the box. So if you've not got a good reason to be on the street and you're just hanging around, you should be in your home. What happens is that big groups hang about on the street or in McDonald's intimidating people. The police can't do much; if they move them on they group just goes elsewhere.
"Lots of people are not being guided, or they are being misguided. In these situations violence will happen."
'The policy of austerity'
Dr Anthony Gunter, a criminologist from the University of East London, has written a book Race, Gangs and Youth Violence.
"The young people I spoke to felt that the gang problem was a media invention, it didn't speak about the realities of their daily lives. They believed the causes of youth violence included bad parenting, lack of youth centres, poverty, the media and status.
"They also talked about the need to have 'back-up', and the protection that comes from moving in a big group of friends. To them their experiences in their neighbourhoods represented a place of constant risk and danger. Young men in particular had to be vigilant against the constant threat of violence and robbery.
"The government has made the fatal error of assuming that all violence among young people in cities is caused by gangs. But the evidence for that is extremely thin, and much of the data that does exist is distorted, London-centric, and contrived from unverified police intelligence sources and the opinions of a small group of justice professionals and senior police officers.
"The policy of austerity has had an especially large impact on those young people most affected by knife and gun violence. They no longer have access to the Educational Maintenance Allowance, Connexions Careers Service or housing benefits, and youth support services have been decimated. Those fortunate enough to get into university have seen tuition fees tripled, while maintenance grants for students from poorer backgrounds have been scrapped.
"The teenage years are associated with risky and problematic behaviours for everyone. But these behaviours are aggravated by poverty, inequality, school exclusions, mental illness and chaotic family circumstances. Rather than thinking of violence among young people solely as a crime problem, it should be considered a health risk, alongside drug use, smoking, drinking and unprotected sex.
Then it becomes clear: the way to respond to stabbing deaths among young people is to improve their life chances and opportunities, by investing in education, health and welfare services for all.
'It is entirely predictable'
Sir Peter Fahy tackled violent crime during his time as Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police. He has said the police service was "being cut in half" due to central government spending changes.
"There's a very strong link between young people excluded from school and those who end up as offenders, often violent offenders.
"When you look at the background of most of those convicted of violent crime - sadly it is entirely predictable.
"In certain districts where there is a high level of criminality, there's a high level of social deprivation.
"In this country it's very rare for a stranger to be shot or a shooting in a robbery situation, most of it is between people with some sort of criminal association or when you get young lads involved in street gangs when they fight across territory. You see people getting shot dead for the most stupid of reasons.
"It can only be cured by good local intelligence-led policing and working with faith groups, churches, schools and community groups."
Under the Conservative and coalition governments, the number of police officers has fallen by somewhere between 19,000 and 22,000.
The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, said she was talking to the government about reconsidering future funding. In response, the Home Office said it was "undertaking a period of detailed engagement with policing partners and relevant experts".
|
Why has St Patrick's church become a flashpoint?
| There has been an annual protest against Orangemen parading past the nationalist Carrick Hill area, and down the non-residential Donegall Street in which St Patrick's stands, for some years but no major disturbances.
On 12 July, a loyalist band taking part in the annual Orange parade in Belfast was filmed marching in a circle outside the church, playing The Famine Song, an anti-Catholic song judged racist by a court in Scotland.
The band, the Young Conway Volunteers, said they were entertaining watching supporters while the parade was at a temporary halt and that they had not been aware they were outside a Catholic church.
They maintained they were playing Sloop John B, a Beach Boys song.
The incident was filmed by a Sinn Fein activist.
What was the reaction?
The Parades Commission described the incident as "totally inappropriate".
Sinn Fein's Conor Maskey said it was "deeply provocative."
DUP MLA and Orange Order member Nelson McCausland said that while the actions of the band were "thoughtless and naive" it did not deliberately set out to offend.
"It was just an empty building. There was no-one there to be provoked," he said.
What happened next?
As part of a determination on a Royal Black Preceptory march on 25 August, the Parades Commission banned the Young Conway Volunteers band from marching past St Patrick's Church.
The 32 other bands taking part were restricted to playing a single drum beat while passing the church.
And..?
On 25 August, the Young Conway Volunteers and some of the other bands defied the rulings of the Parades Commission.
Disturbances followed and several arrests were made.
The reaction to these events?
Nelson McCausland has said the actions of loyalist bands in Belfast on Saturday were "almost inevitable" given the "anger" felt about the Parades Commission.
Loyalists have accused the commission of bias and said restrictions on their parades had grown in number and severity.
The leaders of the two main Protestant churches in Northern Ireland criticised the actions of the loyalist bands as "sectarian".
A number of leading unionists put their names to a letter describing the Parades Commission's ban on the YCV band as "monstrous".
Administrator of St Patrick's Church, Fr Michael Sheehan, said of the 25 August events: "There seemed to be a lot of anger and rage that there was so much disrespect shown to our place of worship."
|
My Money is a new series looking at how people spend their money - and the sometimes tough decisions they have to make. Here, Angela Jansen from South London records her spending over a week and shares tips for saving. | We're looking for more people to share what they spend their money on. If you're interested, please email [email protected] or get in touch via our My Money (UK) Facebook group, or if you don't live in the UK, please join our My Money (World) Facebook group and we'll aim to contact you.
Angela is 31 and works in Westminster as a civil servant after moving to the UK from Canada nine years ago. She currently makes £53,000 a year, however her role has recently been expanded and the unit she manages has grown significantly, so she's also receiving a temporary duties allowance of £10,000 a year. She lives in South London and has one flatmate, her cat Hunter.
Angela's week: Lounging in bed, a lot of Netflix and a chorizo omelette
I have the day off, which is quite unusual. I typically only take time off to travel, but I have a few days of leave I need to use up by the end of the year so I have booked myself a long weekend. I lounge in bed and make myself a cup of tea and my favourite breakfast, a toasted bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon (£1.47 per portion).
After breakfast I head out to Asda to pick up a few bits. I don't normally shop at Asda, but they have a really great skincare range and I am running low on my daily moisturiser (£10). I also pick up some things for my charity Christmas box - every year I fill a shoebox full of toys and supplies for a child in need. Last year I made a box for a boy, and this year I'm doing one for a girl, so I pick up hair ties, a toothbrush and toothpaste and a stuffed animal (£9.97).
Lunch is leftover veggie stir-fry (£1.35 per portion) which I never get tired of. I spend the afternoon doing some life admin and my meal prep for the week. I used to buy my lunch at work almost every day, but was spending between £6-£8 per day, which just wasn't sustainable. Now I do all my meal prep at the beginning of the week and it saves me so much money! I make three big salads (£1.90 per portion) and teriyaki salmon with rice and spicy Szechuan green beans (£3.03 per portion). The beans are so delicious that I'd be happy to eat them on their own, but I tend to pair it with a protein.
I dig into my salmon and green beans and spend the rest of the evening relaxing on the sofa and catching up on my Netflix shows.
Total spend: £19.97
I'm back to work today, so after my customary cup of tea and bagel with smoked salmon, I head into Westminster. As I live in Zone 6 in South London I have an hour commute, but I comfort myself knowing that many people who are connected to the tube still have an hour commute. I pay using my monthly railcard and make a mental note to renew the railcard as it's going to expire soon.
As I've been out of the office for a couple of days, I spend the morning catching up with my team and sorting out my emails. Turns out things were quite busy while I was away, so there is lots to review. I manage to pop down to the gym for a quick workout at lunch - we have a gym in the basement of our building, and I pay £22 a month for access.
Once I'm back at my desk, I eat one of my salads and spend the rest of the afternoon deep in spreadsheets. The thought of having to work with spreadsheets is enough to send some people running for the hills but I really love it.
After work I head over to catch up with a friend. She has offered to make supper, so I buy us dessert on the way over, which is a massive donut (£4.50). She also messaged me to say she got a job offer earlier that day, so I buy a bottle of wine to celebrate (£7.70).
We spend the rest of the evening eating delicious food, drinking wine and chatting. I'm very grateful that she has offered to let me stay the night, as it means I don't have to do the commute home!
Total spend: £12.20
I get into work earlier than usual as the commute from my friend's flat is only a half hour, which is a win! I pick up a banana (50p) to add to my packet of porridge which I keep in my drawer for busy mornings (20p).
The day is incredibly busy with several big deadlines and a half a dozen meetings. I manage to squeeze in a half-hour break to eat lunch with a former colleague - we try to catch up once every couple of months. She updates me about her life while I eat another of my meal-prepped salads (it has a different dressing today so I don't get bored), yoghurt and fruit.
I rush out the door at the end of the day in order to make it to my HIIT class on time. I use Classpass, which costs me £35 a month and gives me access to hundreds of studios across London. I love it, but if you miss a class you pay a penalty of £15, which I hate doing. I manage to make it with four minutes to spare, which is just enough time for me to change before the class starts.
After class I take the train home, have my meal prepped salmon and beans for dinner and do jobs around the flat until it's time for bed.
Total spend: 50p
I wake up and realise that it's payday, which is always exciting! On the commute into work I do my personal banking. I have multiple savings accounts for different goals, such as travel, gifts and long-term savings. I've given my savings accounts nicknames on my mobile banking app so I'm less tempted to dip into them for other things. I also pay for a new monthly travelcard, which costs a whopping £246.
Work is really busy again, and I eat my last salad at my desk in between conference calls and meetings. Before I know it, the day is over and it's time to head home. I don't know where the day went!
I make myself fish and chips for dinner (£1.25 per portion) and I spend my evening on Skype with my uncle, who lives back in Canada. We speak at least once a fortnight and it's always great to speak to him and hear about everything going on at home.
Total spend: £246
I let myself sleep in this morning as I'm working from home. Most of my team is working from home today, and I'm travelling twice next week, so I don't feel guilty.
Today is the day the money for my mortgage and my bills goes out of my account, so I'm exactly £1,000 lighter, but this covers my mortgage, utilities and council tax. It's reasonable for London and one of the perks of living a bit further out, but still a lot of money.
I work most of the day but take a break to make myself a chorizo omelette for lunch (£1.15 per portion). I also manage to get out for a walk, as otherwise my step count would be shockingly low for the day.
My evening is spent making a birthday card for a friend and snuggling with Hunter while binge-watching YouTube.
Total spend: £1,000
I wake up early in order to get my grocery shopping for the week ahead done. I know the rest of my weekend is going to be busy, so I want to go to the big grocery store while I have some time. I spend £25.47 on ingredients for my weekly meal prep, and another £10 on a soup pot for a friend (she will pay me back when I next see her).
I take everything home and have just enough time to unpack the food before one of my best friends shows up. I make us American-style pancakes with strawberries, banana and maple syrup for breakfast (£1.33 per portion) which we eat while catching up on life. After breakfast she insists on going for a walk, despite the fact it is pouring outside, and we both get soaked.
After our walk she heads home and I make myself pumpkin Thai soup for lunch (72p per portion). I had a pumpkin that I didn't want to waste, so I thought I'd try a new recipe. It's pretty good, and I have enough for at least another five meals.
In the evening I travel to north London for a friend's birthday party. I bring a bottle of prosecco from the cupboard to contribute to the party (free as it was a gift to me) and give her my homemade birthday card, which I think she likes! I get to catch up with a lot of friends I haven't seen in a while and have a brilliant time.
I make sure to leave with enough time to catch my train home, but tube delays mean I miss my last train home. Annoyed with Transport for London, I decide to wait 55 minutes for the hourly train that runs through the night instead of shelling out for an Uber. I have to get a taxi the last bit of the way home (£6).
Total spend: £41.47
I allow myself to sleep in given I got back so late. But I don't have time to have a relaxed Sunday morning, as I'm off to Hampton Court Palace with two friends. I make myself a bagel with cream cheese, and hop on a train to meet them.
My friend very kindly picks me up from the station and we drive to Hampton Court Palace together. I'm a member of the Civil Services Sports Council, for which I pay £4.25 a month, and it gets me all sorts of benefits, including free entry at the historic royal palaces. So instead of paying £78.30 for the three of us, it's completely free!
We spend three hours wandering around the palace. I'm always impressed by the quality of the audio tours and the beautiful gardens, and my friends really love it too. But we start to get cold and hungry, so find a local pub to have a Sunday roast. We go to a little place along the Thames and I have the roast chicken with extra gravy and a hot water and lemon to warm up. My share of the bill is £15.50, which includes a tip.
It takes all my willpower not to fall asleep in the back of my friend's car on the way back to the station. Thankfully I manage to stay awake, and I catch the train home. I am absolutely shattered by the time I get home, so after doing a bit of tidying and some more meal prep, I spend the rest of the night laying on the sofa watching TV.
Total spend: £15.50
How does Angela feel about her week?
My spend looks quite high this week, but that's because I had to pay my mortgage and bills. I'm actually really pleased with the rest of the week.
I managed to prepare most of my meals, get to the gym, and see lots of friends, all while keeping the costs down, even in the face of a transport disaster on Saturday night!
Total weekly spend: £1,335.64
|
The "army of builders" of Stonehenge ate animals brought from as far away as the north east of Scotland, according to a new exhibition at the famous Neolithic site in Wiltshire. | Analysis of pig and cattle teeth has revealed some of the animals were from as far as 500 miles away.
The "Feast! Food at Stonehenge" exhibition includes the skull of an aurochs, an extinct species of cattle.
It is aimed at allowing visitors to explore diet from 4,500 years ago.
English Heritage historian Susan Greany said: "Our exhibition explores the important role feasts and food played at Stonehenge.
"Raising the ancient stones was an incredible feat but so too was feeding the army of builders.
"Our exhibition reveals just how this was done."
The displays reveal research and stories from a "feeding Stonehenge" project, which has been exploring the lives of the people who lived at the nearby settlement of Durrington Walls.
The researchers say thousands of discarded animal bones and teeth excavated at Durrington Walls suggest it was not a typical village but a site of major feasting and ceremony.
|
Average house prices in Jersey were 2% lower in the first quarter of 2014 than in the same period a year ago.
| Latest figures show three-bedroom home prices have fallen 7% in three months and are at their lowest since 2007.
Two-bed and four-bed property prices grew slightly, say States statisticians.
The average property price was £398,000, though, second only in the UK to London.
Overall, the Jersey house price index has been flat or falling since 2008.
|
Most National Eisteddfod visitors would have travelled a couple of hours from north or west.
But for others, the journey has been longer, more traumatic, and one that could have claimed their lives had they not been so fortunate. | By Chris WoodBBC News
For Mogdad Abdeen, from Khartoum in Sudan, his visit to the Maes in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, is confirmation a life snatched away from him can finally begin again in a new country.
He was among 24 refugees and asylum seekers from countries such as Pakistan and Iraq brought to the event by Oxfam Cymru to give them a taste of Welsh culture.
Currently, there are 3,000 people in Wales who have fled war and persecution, including 78 from Syria - but the charity said the UK should take many more.
For Mr Abdeen, now 34, he completed university and had what he believed was a "bright future" as an engineer until civil unrest in the country spread to the capital.
"I was an activist when I was a student, campaigning, trying to protect rights and criticising the government for bombing [province] Darfur," he said.
"The dictatorship didn't want such freedoms. They were tracking people and I was worried I would be put in jail and then killed which is what happened to others like me."
His uncle made arrangements and eight months ago, Mr Abdeen began what he described as "a horrible journey", travelling to Egypt and spending seven days on a small boat on the Mediterranean Sea before making it to Italy and moving through France.
"I arrived in the UK from Calais and went to the police station and they told me I would be safe here," he said.
"At first I went to London but it was busy. I like Cardiff, it is multi-cultural and I can ride a small bicycle around the city. I am awaiting a decision on my refugee status. I hope I get it so I can start my life again."
While all 22 Welsh local authorities have agreed to take refugees, the difficulty comes in matching families to an area that best matches their needs.
For example, somebody from a city may feel isolated in parts of rural Powys or Ceredigion.
'Not good enough'
The majority visiting the Eisteddfod with Oxfam were from Swansea and Cardiff and while they were happy to show them around, there was a sense of frustration the numbers here are not greater.
"There are currently millions of people on the move in the world, fleeing war and extreme poverty. The UK has taken in less than 1% despite being the sixth wealthiest nation in the world," Kirsty Davies-Warner, head of the charity in Wales, said.
"We could do more and should be a nation of sanctuary. In 1914, Wales took in 4,500 Belgian refugees. While they later went home, they left so many cultural benefits. We should have at least that many here now.
"There are still empty houses and school places. It's not good enough to say 'sorry we don't have room'. We took so many in 1914 in recognition that it could one day be us."
Former Prime Minister David Cameron committed the UK to take 20,000 refugees from war-torn Syria over the next five years.
But Ms Davies-Warner said that number should be at least double, with Oxfam campaigning ahead of a conference of world leaders in September.
After arriving on the Eisteddfod site, the refugees firstly had a Welsh taster session, where they learnt a few basic phrases such as "bore da" (good morning) and "sut dy chi?" (how are you?).
As the group was instructed how to count to 10, Rakan, nine, shouted out the answers ahead of the tutor.
Along with his mother May Alrariees, 32, and brother Amr, six, he has only been in Cardiff six months, yet has picked up some Welsh from school and was an enthusiastic fan of the Wales football team at Euro 2016.
The family arrived in the country six months after dad Mohammad, 38, fled their home city of Homs in Syria.
"It was so bad, all the country was destroyed by fighting. There is nothing left now. I just got on an airplane and flew to London, where I got help," the former sales manager said.
His wife, a civil engineer, used to sit at home in fear every day when he went to work.
"It was so frightening with the sound of bombs in the distance all day," she said.
"I couldn't send the children to school, it was too dangerous for them to play outside. They lost their freedom."
While they were able to join Mr Alrariees in Cardiff, they still fear for their parents and family who still live in their home city.
"But I like Cardiff. It feels like my Homs, it is very similar with the weather, the green areas, the kindness of the people," said Mrs Alrariees.
While the couple look for work in their new city, they received words of encouragement from First Minister Carwyn Jones, who met the group at the Eisteddfod.
"Many asylum seekers and refugees who come to Wales have had their lives torn apart by war, persecution or natural disaster," he said.
"We are committed to helping them rebuild their lives."
|
Medieval re-enactors are being asked to check their wardrobes after several items of apparently stolen clothing and accessories were found. | They were discovered by a member of the public at a water treatment works on Sproughton Road in Ipswich at about 12:15 GMT on Monday.
A chainmail shirt and hat were among the items found.
Anyone missing any protective body armour has been asked to get in touch with Suffolk Police.
Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]
|
Art made from reclaimed items is not new, but what makes the spider made from a moped, stained-glass shopping trolley and "Lesser Tipping Dredger Bird" unusual is that they all started out at the bottom of a canal. | The works, part of the Art Dredge exhibition in Manchester, have been created by artists Jason Heppenstall, Donna Bramall and Matt Sewell from a variety of items, including TVs, bicycles and safes, that were pulled from the Rochdale Canal by volunteers in March.
According to the exhibition's organisers, Spearfish, the aim "is to raise awareness of the damage that fly-tipping into waterways does to the environment".
Ben Reed of Spearfish says the project has also seen artists deliver workshops to residents who live close to the dredged canal section in Newton Heath in the hope of "spreading the message" about fly-tipping.
He says he selected the three artists involved "because they are all sensitive to environmental issues".
'Weird and wonderful'
Bramall, who creates work from found objects, lives alongside the canal, which she says meant the project was "dear to my heart".
"Seeing the boats come through and [the drivers] saying that they couldn't get down because there was so much rubbish is so sad," she said.
"Some have said to me that it will stop them coming back, so this has been a great project to be involved in, giving something back to the waterways."
Sewell, who is known for his paintings of birds, took part in the canal dredge and says he "loved the project from start to finish".
"As I waded through mud up to my knees, pulling out old signs and all manner of weird and wonderful things to paint on, it really appealed to my hunter-gatherer side," he explained.
'Very rewarding'
He says the day at the canal was inspirational for other reasons too.
"I did a bit of spotting and jotting and drew the Canada geese, magpies, goldfinches, pied wagtails and blue tits that were all keeping an eye on us during the day," he continued.
"We also had the good fortune to get to see the scaled canal inhabitants up close, studying the pike, roach, perch and tench that were saved from the shallow water at the beginning of the day."
Welder and sculptor Heppenstall, who created a "selection of amazing animals and otherworldly creatures" for the show, says it was "a very rewarding challenge working with the amazing amount of scrap pulled out of the canal".
'Work to be done'
However, he says that while he has enjoyed the good response to the show, he wants the message behind it to get through.
"I really hope we have had an impact on the communities and brought awareness to the damage being done by fly tipping into the waterway."
Reed says he hopes for the same, as the aftermath of the volunteer dredge in March shows exactly why the exhibition is needed.
"The week following the dredge, [the local paper reported] a fresh batch of rubbish was thrown into the very section that had just been cleaned," he said.
"It illustrates that there is much work to be done to protect what should be a place of natural beauty in the city."
Art Dredge is at Piccadilly Place, Manchester until 5 June.
|
A sixth person has been arrested over allegations of fraud in connection with welfare-to-work company A4e.
| The 33-year-old man was detained at an address in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.
He was questioned on suspicion of fraud before being released on bail until mid June, Thames Valley Police said.
Five other people arrested in connection with an investigation into A4e's offices in Slough, Berkshire, are on bail until dates in May and June.
The Sheffield-based company handles millions of pounds worth of government contracts for welfare-to-work schemes.
|
Condor Ferries has cancelled Friday's high-speed sailings between Poole and the Channel Islands due to "adverse weather conditions".
| Strong westerly winds and rain have been forecast for the day.
The company said passengers would be contacted about rearranging their travel plans.
Its conventional ferry services, which run between Portsmouth and Guernsey and Jersey, have also been rescheduled due to the weather.
The Commodore Clipper was due to travel to Guernsey and then on to Jersey before returning to Portsmouth, but will now go to Jersey first.
|
Health and airport workers are to meet to plan for the transportation of urgent medical cases during a series of closures of Guernsey Airport next year.
| The Health and Social Services Department (HSSD) wants to devise a plan for the transfer of patients during four two-day closures in 2012.
In 2010, there were 209 flights for patients needing off-island treatment, the same figure as 2009.
HSSD said around six flights a year were for urgent, immediate treatment.
The meeting with airport and clinical staff will take place on 7 December.
Guernsey Airport will close on 20-21 March, 8-9 May, 27-28 November and 4-5 December 2012.
The dates were confirmed after a consultation with businesses and the public. Work will see the runway and other areas extended.
|
The coke ovens at the mothballed Redcar steel plant will remain operational over the weekend, the official receiver has said. | About 1,700 lost their jobs when owner SSI went into liquidation on 2 October.
Some staff were kept on to maintain the site, including the coke ovens, which would allow production to restart if it was taken over.
It was feared fuel would run out, but it has been confirmed that additional supplies have now been purchased.
The official receiver also said it was continuing to talk with interested parties about the future use of the site.
|
Swansea University officially opens its new £450m science and innovation campus on Monday. | It has taken just over two years to build and will be home to almost 5,000 students and 1,000 staff in the university's College of Engineering and School of Management.
The Bay Campus has direct access on to a beach and its own seafront promenade.
The university hopes the campus will contribute £3bn to the regional economy over the next 10 years.
|
Around the world, people are living longer. | By Hannah RitchieOxford Martin School
In 1950, global average life expectancy at birth was only 46. By 2015, it had shot up to over 71.
In some countries, progress has not always been smooth. Disease, epidemics and unexpected events are a reminder that ever-longer lives are not a given.
Meanwhile, the deaths that may preoccupy us - from terrorism, war and natural disasters - make up less than 0.5% of all deaths combined.
But across the world, many are still dying too young and from preventable causes.
The story of when people die is really a story of how they die, and how this has changed over time.
Causes of death around the world
About 56 million people in the world died in 2017.
This is 10 million more than in 1990, as the global population has increased and people live longer on average.
More than 70% die from non-communicable, chronic diseases. These are not passed from person to person and typically progress slowly.
The biggest single killer is cardiovascular disease, which affects the heart and arteries and is responsible for every third death.
This is twice the rate of cancers - the second leading cause - which account for about one in six of all deaths.
Other non-contagious diseases such as diabetes, certain respiratory diseases and dementia are also near the top of the list.
Preventable deaths
What may be more shocking is the number of people who still die from preventable causes.
About 1.6 million died from diseases related to diarrhoea in 2017, putting it in the top 10 causes of death. In some countries, it's one of the largest killers.
Neonatal disorders - the death of a baby within the first 28 days - claimed 1.8 million newborns in 2017.
The frequency of these deaths varies greatly from country to country. In Japan, fewer than one in 1,000 babies die in the first 28 days of life, compared with just under one in 20 in some of the world's poorest countries.
Other preventable deaths are high up the list.
Road accidents incur a high death toll in the richest and poorest countries alike, claiming 1.2 million lives in 2017.
While many high-income countries have seen significant falls in road deaths in recent decades, globally the number dying on the roads has almost stayed the same.
Meanwhile, almost twice as many people around the world died from suicide as from homicide - the killing of one person by another.
In the UK, suicide deaths were 16 times higher; it is the leading cause of death for men aged 20-40.
What types of death tell us
What people die from changes over time and as their country develops.
In the past, infectious diseases played a bigger part than they do today.
In 1990, one in three deaths resulted from communicable and infectious diseases; by 2017 this had fallen to one in five.
Children are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases. As recently as the 19th Century, every third child in the world died before the age of five.
Child mortality rates have fallen significantly since then thanks to vaccines and improvements in hygiene, nutrition, healthcare and clean water access.
Child deaths in rich countries are now relatively rare, while the poorest regions today have child mortality rates similar to the UK and Sweden in the first half of the 20th Century, and are continuing to catch up.
The decline in global child deaths is one of the greatest success stories of modern healthcare.
The number of children dying each year has more than halved in recent decades, as we have got better at fighting contagious and infectious diseases.
This has shifted death rates towards non-contagious diseases in elderly people.
Many countries have growing concerns about the increasing burden on relatives and healthcare systems as people get older and have longer-term illnesses.
More stories like this
Unexpected events can throw this steady improvement off course.
The 1980s HIV/Aids crisis is a striking example of this.
The epidemic was felt across all regions of the world, but the most notable impact on life expectancy was in sub-Saharan Africa.
After decades of steady improvement, life expectancy fell substantially across many countries in the region.
A combination of anti-retroviral therapy, treatment and education on prevention means global deaths from Aids-related illness have halved in the last decade alone - from 2 million per year down to 1 million.
Life expectancy has since began to recover in these countries, but is only now returning to pre-crisis levels.
Even in the richest countries, continued progress is not a given.
Life expectancy in the US has fallen slightly over the past few years, largely as a result of the opioid drug crisis.
Life expectancy for new mothers has also not consistently increased.
There are about 10 countries where a young woman today would be more likely to die during or shortly after childbirth than her mother was, including the US.
Further to go
Today's overall picture is positive: we are living longer lives while fewer people - especially children - are dying from preventable causes. But it's also true that we still have a long way to go.
Further improvements in sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, vaccination and basic healthcare are all crucial to this.
So too are increased safety measures and mental health provision.
Understanding what people die from is crucial if we want this recent progress to continue.
About this piece
This analysis piece was commissioned by the BBC from an expert working for an outside organisation.
Hannah Ritchie is an Oxford Martin fellow, and is currently working as a researcher at OurWorldinData.org. This is a joint project between Oxford Martin and non-profit organisation Global Change Data Lab, which aims to present research on how the world is changing through interactive visualisations. You can follow her on Twitter here.
Edited by Eleanor Lawrie
|
Two boys have been arrested on suspicion of arson after a blaze gutted about 20 beach chalets. | Emergency services were called to North Bay in Scarborough shortly after 05:10 BST on Thursday following reports of a fire spreading through several huts.
Police said a number of other chalets had also been broken into.
The teenagers, aged 14 and 15, have both been detained, with the older boy also being held on suspicion of burglary.
Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
|
There has been, in truth, precious little subtlety in this most remarkable of election contests. Whether in TV debates or in chilly doorstep conversations, the parties have tended to stick to the old political doctrine. | Brian TaylorPolitical editor, Scotland@tannadiceladon Twitter
Preview what you're going to say; say it; then sum up what you've just said. In short, leave as little room as possible for doubt and uncertainty.
The political leaflets have tended to yell at voters in large font typefaces, rather than cajole in measured prose.
I suppose the calculation is that, in these busy, concerning times, there is but a moment to grab the citizen's attention before said leaflet is recycled in obedience to environmental concerns.
In these few, final days, any lingering vestige of subtlety has gone. It is time for core messages. In truth, that has been the case from the outset.
And that is because so much is at stake. In an election, customarily, the loser can find a micro-quantum of solace in the thought that another democratic contest will be around in a few years.
This time, however, there are more fundamental issues at stake. The future of the UK's relationship with the EU - whether as a member or not. Plus, potentially, the future of Scotland.
Party leaders in Scotland have more experience than most of coping with blunt, sharp messaging. And so, mostly, they have honed their offers, bringing past experience to bear upon contemporary challenges.
Did you catch Nicola Sturgeon on the wireless this morning? I did, not least because I was on just after her to provide analysis.
As is her wont, Ms Sturgeon was disarmingly clear. One objective of the SNP in this contest was to "lock Boris Johnson out of Downing Street".
In which regard, she advances the notion that a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn would be obliged to concede indyref2, were they in need of SNP support in the Commons. En passant, Ms Sturgeon offers a degree of nuance, unfamiliar in this contest, in stressing that this she is no particular fan of Mr Corbyn.
It strikes me this is all something of an each way bet by the SNP. It is designed to draw into their corner a combination of opinions. Those who want to Remain in the EU, those who generally favour independence and those who dislike the Tories and/or Boris Johnson.
However, what if the cadre of SNP MPs rises in number, but Boris Johnson still retains the key to Number 10, because of the voting pattern in England?
Why, then the SNP can argue that Scotland's wishes have again been thwarted. They will, in those circumstances, insist that they made every effort to prevent such an outcome - but that Scottish opinion was over-turned once more.
Which leads us to the still more elemental argument adduced by Ms Sturgeon. It is, as I have noted from the outset, a syllogism.
This is to the effect that Brexit is bad for Scotland and contrary to Scottish wishes; that this bad thing arises from Westminster governance; that the UK's handling of Brexit and arguable neglect of Scottish concerns demonstrates that the Westminster system more generally is broken; and thus that the answer to a broken Westminster (and Brexit) is independence, via indyref2. QED.
This is, to be clear, more than just "Brexit is bad, vote for indy". It is: the system which brought you Brexit is unendurable, vote for the SNP and the option of indy.
Pressed on the wireless this morning, Ms Sturgeon made clear - once again - that her pursuit of independence was not solely linked to Brexit and would not, consequently, evaporate in the event of Brexit being abandoned by an incoming UK government, after a referendum.
She argued that the desire to give Scotland a further opportunity to choose independence was driven by material need and by her perception that Westminster's treatment of Scotland, as evidenced by Brexit, was high-handed and dismissive.
Now, opponents will - once again - argue that this proves the sole objective of the SNP is independence, regardless of other circumstances. Ms Sturgeon will argue that her consistent support for an independent Scotland is scarcely a shock.
The SNP's broader objective in this election is, therefore, to make sufficient progress to be able to argue that there is momentum behind the campaign for a second independence ballot, towards the close of next year.
Again this morning, Ms Sturgeon made clear that she was only interested in a formal ballot, with the necessary UK sanction, which would be legitimate and attract domestic and international recognition.
And the Tories? Their message in Scotland is rather different from their counterparts in England. Or, to be clear, it contains a distinctive emphasis.
Boris Johnson and each of his Cabinet colleagues preface virtually every remark, no matter the subject, with a re-statement of the necessity to "get Brexit done". In this, they resemble the Roman Senator Cato who argued, every time he got to his feet, "delenda est Carthago" (Carthage must be destroyed).
In Scotland, where folk mostly voted to Remain in the EU, the Tory message is necessarily rather different. Yes, they talk about Brexit. They emphasise the need to move on.
But the legend on the front of their Scottish manifesto is "No to indyref2".
Indeed, Jackson Carlaw made that distinction clear when he was interviewed by the redoubtable Chief Commissioner Miekelson on Scot Squad (motto: "forget the polls, listen to the polis").
In the same interview, all the leaders were asked to characterise various political figures as "bam or no bam". Invited to categorise Boris Johnson, Mr Carlaw said - no doubt, with tongue firmly in cheek - that he "veers between the two".
Actually, maybe he was simply being drolly candid in this most droll of encounters. The Scots Tories know that Mr Johnson is, potentially, a tricky sell in Scotland. So they steer clear of overt evangelism.
Instead, they make twin pitches.
They have dumped their attempts to mitigate Brexit, explicitly backing Boris on that. And they operate on the basis that Mr Johnson, with a new deal in his pocket, is more likely to carry weight, even with truculent Scots.
More generally, it is a whispered aside, an implicit adoption of Scotland's intrinsic attitudes. Look, they are saying, we know you may be none too keen on Brexit. To be frank, quite a few of us campaigned against it.
But, hey, we need to move on. We need to get past this. And, instead of agonising over Brexit, what about the threat to the Union? That's a big deal for you, isn't it? Isn't it? Bigger than Brexit?
That is why "No to indyref2" is front and centre for the Tories in Scotland. Ahead of Brexit. It is an attempt once again to corral into their corner all voters - Labour included - who prefer the Union to independence. It is an older message, with a new post-Brexit twist.
Then there is Labour. They have sometimes struggled with the constitutional issues in this contest, preferring to stick to topics germane to their potential voter base, such as public services and relative poverty.
In past elections, sundry parties have disavowed constitutional questions. One thinks of the Tories dismissing devolution as a salient topic - right up to the point when they lost every Scottish Westminster seat in 1997.
One thinks of supporters of the Union arguing variously that the SNP have no role in a Westminster contest where, by dint of simple arithmetic, they cannot hope and do not seek to form the UK government.
The SNP have sidelined that argument in this contest with their Brexit-linked syllogism. But, more generally, the constitution looms large and dominant in contemporary politics.
Brexit must be settled - either by proceeding with it or by reversing it. Plus, in Scotland, the issue of independence is to the fore - from its advocates and its detractors.
In vain have Labour occasionally tried to divert focus from these constitutional conundrums. They revive. They resurface.
Which has caused Labour transient disquiet. What is their stance on Brexit? A further referendum in which Mr Corbyn hopes to present what he has called a "sensible" renegotiation of the Brexit terms, with the option of Remain also on the ballot paper.
And his position in this referendum? He would be "neutral".
I can readily understand that. Firstly, he is a life-long critic of the European Union. Secondly, he is trying to retain Labour support among Remainers but also in seats in the north and midlands of England which voted Leave. Sundry potential supporters might not welcome guidance from the Labour leader, either way.
However, it leaves him vulnerable to caricature from rivals, including from the Tories who have taken to arguing in favour of "getting Britain out of neutral". A phrase deployed almost as frequently as "get Brexit done" or "no to indyref2".
And independence? Labour is agin it. But then notes that it might be prepared to contemplate indyref2 after two years of a Labour UK government. In short, after the next Holyrood elections in 2021.
The party's Scottish leader, Richard Leader, has coped valiantly with this. On Brexit, he says the Scottish party would campaign for Remain, despite Mr Corbyn's stance. On indyref2, he says he expects to be first minister after 2021, and so the issue won't resurface.
But it has been a challenge.
And then the Liberal Democrats. They deliver a firm no to both Brexit and indyref2. Keeping it simple in these most complex of times.
Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, has restated this dual commitment in all circumstances. It's a no. Twice.
Indeed, Mr Rennie has contrived gallantly to keep a straight face as he has argued that his party - the party of PR voting, the party of political reform - wants to get off the obsession with constitutional matters.
They have stumbled a little over two related issues. One, the declaration by Jo Swinson, the federal leader, that she was out to be prime minister. Two, the suggestion that they would simply cancel Brexit should they have majority power.
To be fair to Ms Swinson, she was disinclined to place early limits on her party's ambitions. Perhaps she might have found a more nuanced way of saying it. "We're standing in seats across GB. And, you know what, if folk vote for us then I could end up PM! What about that, eh?"
But some, even in her own party, think that the promise to drop Brexit through revoking Article 50 was a little too courageous, even in this polarised election.
Perhaps, some think, they might have been better to stick with the promise of a further EU referendum - with a vigorous Remain campaign. Especially as the revoke message - which allowed critics to pounce - was predicated upon the relatively unlikely scenario of majority Lib Dem power.
In practice, they've talked up the referendum, anyway.
Scottish Lib Dem strategists insist their stance sets them apart. That folk on the doorsteps or watching telly hear a party which is ineluctably opposed to Brexit - and vigorously in favour of the Union that is the UK.
And there's more. The Scottish Greens advocating environmental concerns, with an energetic campaign. The Brexit Party, perhaps less visible in Scotland, advocating what they call a "clear break" departure from the EU, with no extension to the transition period.
And the others. All those candidates clamouring for your support in this curious, curious election.
|
Two people have been found dead at a house in Leicestershire. | Police and ambulance crews were called to Tatlow Road, Glenfield, at 23:50 GMT on Tuesday by a concerned member of the public.
The deaths of the woman, 27, and man, 31, are being treated as unexplained but police are not looking for anyone else.
Police said a post-mortem examination has taken place and further tests are being carried out.
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
|
A man has appeared in court charged with murdering his 38-year-old wife who was found dead in their home. | The asphyxiated body of Sarbjit Kaur was discovered on 16 February in Rookery Lane, Penn, Wolverhampton.
Gurpreet Singh, 42, her businessman husband, appeared before Birmingham Magistrates' Court earlier charged with Mrs Kaur's murder.
Mr Singh, of Rookery Lane, will appear before Wolverhampton Crown Court on Monday 14 May.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
|
Work aimed at reducing the risk of flooding to thousands of properties near the Humber Estuary is about to begin as part of a two-year project. | The first phase of the £20m Grimsby flood alleviation scheme is due to start next week with the construction of a large concrete wave wall.
The wall, made from hundreds of pre-fabricated 20-tonne concrete blocks, will be built at Grimsby Docks.
Further phases of the scheme are expected to follow in 2014 and 2015.
The need for a flood defence scheme in Grimsby was identified as part of the Humber Flood Risk Management Strategy which was given the go-ahead by government in 2008.
Mike Dugher, from the Environment Agency, said: "Thousands of homes and businesses would be at significant risk of flooding should these defences fail."
|
A former council children's care home worker has been jailed for six years for the abuse of a 13-year-old boy. | Barrie Pick, 74, of Nottingham, was convicted at Nottingham Crown Court of two counts of indecent assault and two of indecency with a child.
Police said the offences dated back to 1977 and took place at the Beechwood children's home in the city.
Pick's case was part of Operation Equinox which looked a historical abuse in Nottinghamshire care homes.
He was cleared of a third count of indecency with a child.
More stories from across the East Midlands
|
A teenager assaulted in a street fight involving several people died of severe head injuries, a post-mortem examination has confirmed. | Reece Hornibrook, 17, died in hospital on Tuesday after the disturbance in Saddlebow Road in King's Lynn, Norfolk, just before 03:30 BST on Sunday.
Liam Russell, 31, of Metcalf Avenue in the town, appeared in court charged with grievous bodily harm earlier.
He is yet to enter a plea and was granted bail at Norwich Crown Court.
His next appearance there is due on 7 August.
In a statement issued via Norfolk Police after his death, the boy's family described him as a popular gentle giant who would do anything for anyone.
A 30-year-old woman arrested in connection with the fight was released on police bail on Tuesday.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
|
After weeks of tough talk and escalating tensions between the US and North Korea, President Donald Trump has referred to the possibility of meeting his opposite number, Kim Jong Un. Let's take a step back and look at how we got here. | By Barbara Plett UsherBBC News
What's changed under Trump?
The threat perception: The Americans believe that Pyongyang already has the technology to fire nuclear warheads at Japan and South Korea. And they calculate that it will likely be able to hit the United States within a few years.
So North Korea is now seen as a threat to US national security, not only a menace to regional allies. Hence the sense of urgency and resolve.
The rhetoric: Military options have always "been on the table", sometimes more actively than others. But rarely if ever has a US administration been as blunt or outspoken about it. That is largely a factor of President Trump's style but it's also due to growing concern about the imminence of the threat.
The military posturing: Spring is usually a tense time in the Korean Peninsula, because North Korea celebrates a number of patriotic anniversaries that can serve as launch pads for weapons tests, and the US conducts military exercises with Seoul.
But this year the Trump administration added to the firepower on display, including a submarine equipped with guided missiles, and an aircraft carrier group. The confusion over the deployment of the latter, however, may have detracted somewhat from its deterrent effect.
North Korea: Pyongyang has long held that it needs nuclear weapons to guarantee its security, and has been ready to face down international censure and punishment. But Kim Jong Un has shown particular determination and, unlike his father and grandfather, a disregard for the views of his only major ally, China. "Kim Jong Il for all of his sins at least cared what other people thought and particularly cared what the Chinese thought," the former US negotiator Chris Hill told the BBC. "His son Kim Jung Un doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks."
China: China is exasperated by its recalcitrant ally and worried about the growing sophistication of its weapons. It had already begun tightening its implementation of sanctions by following through with the UN's recent ban on coal imports. But it's probably even more worried that Trump's military posturing will escalate tensions, and uneasy about his insistence that Beijing is uniquely positioned to squeeze Pyongyang. In an apparent response to US pressure, Chinese newspapers have published tougher statements about North Korea. There's also been closer coordination between Beijing and Washington.
The Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Beijing has threatened Pyongyang with unilateral sanctions if it carries out a sixth nuclear test.
What hasn't changed
The options: There are still no good ones.
Tillerson says denuclearisation would still be the goal, but he has not been precise about conditions for starting talks.
The strategy: Actually, it has sort of changed and sort of hasn't.
The administration says it has. But the components - pressing for tighter economic sanctions, urging China to lean on its neighbour, and waiting for North Korea to buckle - look a lot like Barack Obama's "strategic patience".
The difference seems to be less patience, a more credible threat of military force, and more coercive diplomacy. Tillerson says the knob on the pressure campaign is at "five or six" right now, with the US "testing" Beijing's ability to influence North Korea, and threatening to sanction parties that violate the UN embargo. Alongside China, the Trump administration is also trying to convince South East Asian nations to isolate North Korea.
China: China may be more willing to turn the screws on Pyongyang, but only so far. There is no sign that it has changed its calculation of North Korea as a buffer state. Beijing fears that if the regime collapses the American security umbrella will be extended across the peninsula right to its borders.
And while North Korea is a dangerous headache, America is its biggest strategic rival. Tillerson's recent assurance that the US is not seeking regime change was aimed as much at Beijing as it was at Pyongyang.
The wild card: Even with a nuclear rogue state, President Trump likes to be unpredictable. And his tactics are those of a deal maker.
Nevertheless observers are struggling to interpret the contrast between his hardline rhetoric and his recent suggestion of a meeting with Kim Jong Un - under the "right circumstances" .
Barack Obama also said during the 2008 election campaign he'd be willing to meet the North Korean leader.
But he did not go on to praise his adversary as did Trump, calling him a "smart cookie" for holding onto power by wiping out his rivals.
It's not clear if the president was deliberately dangling a carrot, making another overture among several to a strongman, or simply throwing an offhand comment into the mix.
|
Our world has changed immensely in the last few weeks but amid the upheaval and distress, there are reasons to believe we can emerge from the crisis with some human qualities enhanced, writes Matthew Syed. | A few years ago, Michael Michalko, a former US army officer, came up with a fascinating idea to sharpen creativity. He called it "assumption reversal". You take the core notions in any context, subject, discipline and then, well, turn them on their head.
So, suppose you are thinking of starting a restaurant (obviously not possible right now!). The first assumption might be: "restaurants have menus". The reversal would be: "restaurants have no menus". This provokes the idea of a chef informing each customer what he bought that day at market, allowing them to select a customised dish. The point is not that this will turn out to be a workable scheme, but that by disrupting conventional thought patterns, it might lead to new associations and ideas.
Or, to take a different example, suppose you are considering a new taxi company. The first assumption might be: "taxi companies own cars". The reversal would be: "taxi companies own no cars". Twenty years ago, that might have sounded crazy. Today, the largest taxi company that has ever existed doesn't own cars: Uber. Now we are living through a disruption (you might even call it a reversal) of unprecedented scale.
The coronavirus has turned our lives upside down and, although we hope to return to some version of normality in the coming months, it is probable that nothing will quite be the same again. Many have lost their livelihoods and businesses, and there is no diminishing the difficulties - emotional and financial - this has brought in its wake.
But amid the darkness, there are also opportunities.
Opportunities to reimagine the world and one's place within it. Reversal techniques are typically used by people working in the creative industries to come up with new products or innovations. I wonder if we can all use it to seek out a silver lining or two amid the grey clouds.
Take education. This has traditionally been conceived as a place where children absorb knowledge. In Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Mr Gradgrind says "give me facts, sir!". Education has, of course, moved on since then, but there is still a tendency to see classrooms as forums for imparting formal knowledge. So how about this for a reversal: "Education is not about imparting knowledge."
This provokes the idea of helping children develop skills that are not drawn from traditional disciplines. Softer skills. Skills that are important in the real world but which teachers struggle to find time to teach because of the demands of the curriculum. Improvising, for example. Debating. Thinking on one's feet. Working in teams.
Most parents (if they are anything like me) will have realised how difficult it is to teach kids at home. But here are some "rebel" ideas that emerge from assumption reversal. Get your kids to walk to the front of the room, pick up a card lying face down, and then turn it over to reveal a topic. Their task is then to turn around to the rest of the room and speak on this topic for 60 seconds.
I tried it with my daughter (seven) and the first time, she froze. She had the topic "Paddington Bear" and she managed five seconds before trailing off. But by the second time (the topic was "tennis") she got to the end, albeit in a stumbling way, and by the fourth attempt (on "wildlife"), she was fluent throughout. She is learning the art of improvisation.
I also asked her and her brother to write down their biggest failure and what they learned from it.
The idea was to shift the concept of failure from something stigmatising to part and parcel of how we grow. We shared stories of famous people who had failed. A JK Rowling quote was very helpful: "Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default."
These are just reversal ideas related to education, but I am sure you can think of dozens of other contexts in which this technique could work. The point of the education example isn't to stop kids imbuing formal knowledge, but to find ways to supplement this with other skills (and have fun at the same time). Innovative schools are already trialling some of these ideas.
Another positive that might emerge from this crisis is a surge in kindness. In the UK, more than 700,000 volunteers stepped forward to help the NHS, and the nation showed its appreciation to carers by applauding in unison. Kindness is often considered (particularly by economists) to be a short-lived anomaly. But I wonder if kindness can become a more sustainable part of our societies, particularly when people realise that altruism and self-interest are not so very afar apart.
Consider a study of more than 600 medical students, which found that the selfish ones - people who focused on their own progress, and cared little for others - performed very well in their first year. These "takers" were good at extracting information, and by offering little in return they were able to focus on their own progress. Those who were more generous with their time and were willing to offer insights to their fellow students, the "givers", got left behind.
But here is the curious thing.
By the second year, the kinder cohort had caught up, and by the third year had overtaken their peers. Indeed, by the final year, the givers had gained significantly higher grades. Indeed, a kinder attitude was a more powerful predictor of school grades than the effect of smoking on lung cancer rates. What was going on? The givers hadn't changed, but the structure of the programme had shifted.
As the psychologist Adam Grant has written: "As students progress through medical school, they move from independent classes into clinical rotations and patient care. The further they advance, the more their success depends on teamwork and service. Whereas takers sometimes win in independent roles where performance is only about individual results, givers thrive in an interdependent roles where collaboration matters."
This is a finding that keeps re-emerging in social science: people with a giving approach are flourishing in a world of interdependency. The evidence also shows that the most successful givers are strategic, seeking out diversity but cutting off selfish people who seek to exploit them. As one researcher put it: "a giving attitude is a powerful asset when allied to social intelligence."
I don't wish to diminish the scale of our present difficulties, but neither do I believe that the future is inherently gloomy. A world with more kindness and creativity is one to look forward to. We would be reaching out for new solutions, rebelling against outmoded ideas, but in a spirit of collaboration, helping us to become successful.
As one psychologist put it: "According to conventional wisdom, highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability and opportunity…. [but] there is a fourth ingredient: success depends heavily on how we approach our interactions with other people. Do we try to claim as much value [for ourselves] as we can, or do we contribute value? It turns out that these choices have staggering consequences for success."
Matthew Syed is the author of Rebel Ideas: the Power of Diverse Thinking
Drawings by Emma Lynch
|
In Bulgaria, six people have burned themselves alive in protest at worsening poverty levels since the start of the year. Ahead of parliamentary elections this weekend, the BBC's Tom Esslemont meets some of those affected. | By Tom EsslemontBBC News, Sofia
Dimitar Dimitrov did not just want to die. He wanted to sacrifice himself for his country.
On 13 March, the unemployed 53-year-old set off from his apartment in the capital, Sofia, and headed for the presidential offices in the city centre.
When he arrived, he doused himself in petrol and set himself alight.
Presidential guards rushed to put out the flames.
After three weeks in hospital and a number of operations to repair his face and limbs, he is home and telling the tale.
"It was excruciating. People who have had minor burns will know how bad that pain is," he says. "But they don't know what it is like when your whole body, your flesh, is on fire. Now I realise why the church used to burn people at the stake."
Mr Dimitrov still bears the scars. He has several large blisters and the skin on his arms is patchy from the skin grafts used to repair his face.
His protest happened weeks after thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets, demanding an end to falling wages and rising energy bills.
The demonstrations led to the resignation of the centre-right Prime Minister, Boiko Borisov.
Mr Dimitrov wanted the world to understand the predicament of the EU's poorest member.
He sees what he did not just as a protest against his own drop in salary, but also as a moment of self-sacrifice for his compatriots.
"I believe I achieved what I set out to achieve. I might have been a fool, but I hope it will change things for the better here," he says.
Mr Dimitrov is not alone.
Rampant unemployment
Drive two-and-a-half hours east from Sofia and you get to the town of Radnevo.
Rows of concrete apartment blocks welcome you, transporting you back to Bulgaria's communist era.
Visually, this town has changed little in the two-and-a-half decades since independence. Coal mining and manufacturing provide some of the few jobs going. Unemployment is rampant. Officially, the national figure is close to 12%. Some analysts say the real tally is much higher.
Here, trust in regional and national government has largely broken down.
Vechislav Arsenov, from Radnevo, was 53 and unemployed the day he set fire to himself.
Handouts from the local authority were drying up.
On the day he died, Vechislav Arsenov rang each of his five grown-up children to tell them he was sorry for what he was about to do.
Then he went to the mayor's office to ask for money. He insisted that the mayor come and talk to him, shouting to the receptionists that, if no such meeting were granted, he would light a match.
Hero
"We were desperate," his son, Txumir, explains. "My father had recently lost his job. We could not pay our bills or our debts and he could not afford to buy food for us."
Txumir is now trying to keep his impoverished family alive. He, too, is unemployed and relies on summer work as an agricultural labourer.
Eleven of the family (six children and five adults) share Txumir's two-bedroom flat.
He used to be angry with his father, but now he says he feels his protest was heroic.
National tributes were paid to him and the four other Bulgarians who have died, since January, by burning themselves.
One of them, Trayan Marechkov, was 26. Another, Plamen Goranov, a mountain climber and photographer, was 36.
But what do politicians make of this disturbing pattern of self-harm and suicide?
I asked Boiko Borisov who, two months after resigning, is running for parliament once again and hopes to be re-elected prime minister.
He is proud of his first term, taking credit for a string of building projects his government completed, including a metro line in Sofia and a new road connecting the capital with the Black Sea.
He does not not want to dwell on the subjects of poverty and protest.
"We already had a day of grief for the victims of self-immolation. We are very sorry for the people, but changing Bulgaria cannot be done in the space of a few weeks," he says.
"During my time in office we have successfully built several new infrastructure projects. I believe these help stabilise our economy."
Voice of the people?
Back in Dimitar Dimitrov's apartment on the outskirts of Sofia, the evening television news is on.
A glamorous woman introduces items on the election and the economy. A few weeks ago, as he lay recovering in hospital, Mr Dimitrov was the main story.
"I never thought there would be so much media attention," he says.
"Now I see that, having survived setting myself on fire, I can be the voice of those experiencing what I have experienced. I hope that by telling my story I can make more people aware of the situation here in Bulgaria."
Back home with his wife and daughter, Mr Dimitrov hopes to return to work as a blacksmith.
Weary of earning the lowest wages in the EU, Bulgarian people are hoping whoever wins this weekend's election will put an end to the misery that has tipped those like him over the edge.
|
We usually think of cyberwar as a secretive world, dominated by spooks and shadowy government agencies. So why did South Korea recently admit that it is developing a cyberweapon to cripple the North's nuclear capabilities? | By Joe BoyleBBC News
Almost every nation with enough cash is funding its own cyberwar programme. But few nations have made the the details public, and fewer still have openly identified their intended target.
South Korea defence chiefs broke those unspoken rules on 19 February by outlining their aim to develop a cyber-tool aimed specifically at knocking out North Korea's nuclear capabilities, according to Yonhap news agency.
Their blueprint appears to be a 2010 cyber-attack on Iran, which used software known as Stuxnet to damage nuclear facilities. Although the US and Israel are often accused of launching the attack, neither nation admitted involvement.
There are very good legal and political reasons for keeping such activity under wraps. Not least because a cyber-attack could lead to a counter-attack with conventional weapons. In South Korea's case, the North could theoretically now build a legal case for launching missiles over the border.
Eric Jensen, a professor at BYU Law School in the US, says that assuming last month's announcement was an official statement of South Korea's intentions, the North could mount a legal argument based on anticipatory self-defence - the same rationale that the US has used to justify its so-called war on terror.
"Anything that was playing a significant role in preparing or launching a potential cyber-attack would become a target," he says.
The North has utilised anticipatory self-defence arguments before, particularly to argue that the US would be a legitimate target for a pre-emptive nuclear strike. After all, if the US could attack another country simply because it felt under threat, then there was no logical reason why North Korea did not have the same right.
It seems unusual, then, for the South to have made such an announcement. Perhaps they wanted to send a message to the North. It must be remembered that over the years the North has regularly threatened to destroy the South, using bloodcurdling language.
Caroline Baylon from Chatham House think-tank believes the South was thinking of deterrence, particularly since the North is believed to have launched a series of debilitating cyber-attacks on its neighbour during 2009 and 2013.
"South Korea is an extremely wired country, so has a lot to attack. Unfortunately for the South Koreans, North Korea has extremely limited internet connectivity and hence is a target-poor country," she says.
"Hence, the only option is [conventional] war - or convincing the North Koreans that they can attack them in cyberspace as well."
But it is a dangerous game. Russell Buchan, a law lecturer at Sheffield University, has suggested that the South's threat to use Stuxnet-type software may itself have broken international law's prohibition on using or threatening to use force against another state, as outlined in Article 2 of the UN Charter.
"If you think, as I do, that Stuxnet represented an unlawful use of force, then the threat to use a similar weapon is also unlawful. So South Korea is on very shaky ground," he says.
There is also always the danger that the North simple ignores the niceties of international law. Sean Watts, a law professor at Creighton University in the US, points out that the South should have considered the possibility of a violent reaction from the North before publicising its intentions.
"While my sense is that some international lawyers would regard an operation against [North Korea's nuclear] facilities as lawful given the direct and serious threats the North Korean government makes against the South, the feasibility and likelihood of a wildly disproportionate reaction from the North seems likely enough to give the South serious pause," he says.
And there is an added legal headache for South Korea. As the two nations never signed a peace treaty at the end of the 1950-1953 war, they are often said to be "technically at war" with each other. Although this designation has no legal force, it is often used as an excuse by the North to launch attacks.
Under the law of armed conflict, the North would be legally allowed to attack "military objects" within South Korea. Those objects are usually regarded as military installations, soldiers, and infrastructure directly involved in the war effort, such as arms factories.
In a cyberwar, it is unclear who the defending nation could legitimately target. The people pushing the metaphorical button to launch the virus? The software developers working for private companies helping to develop the virus? The communications networks used to transmit information about the virus?
These scenarios might sound far-fetched, but they are being played out by strategists across the world, and studied in a growing body of legal scholarship. If there is any place on Earth where escalation is possible, it is the Korean peninsula. South Korea's Western allies will no doubt be hoping for fewer statements of this kind from the top-brass in Seoul.
|
Reporting assignments in the Middle East often involve great danger - think of Syria and Gaza. Others run into bureaucratic obstruction. But the Sesame science project in Jordan is so bizarre it presented challenges of a wholly unexpected kind. | David ShukmanScience editor
The first was the sheer difficulty of grasping that the story was not the figment of someone's imagination but was actually happening.
We had come to get a look at a "synchrotron" facility called Sesame - at its heart, a particle accelerator not unlike Europe's Cern - coming together in Jordan. A news story on the Sesame project explains the science it aims to do, but that is not the striking thing about it.
On the scale of surprises that take a very long while to sink in, Sesame is off the scale: common sense would scream at you that it just should not be feasible.
At first sight the project to build a shared research centre in the Middle East sounds like a far-fetched and wholly unrealistic fantasy of the kind John Lennon conjured up in "Imagine…"
The scenario goes as follows: take one of the world's most unstable regions, pick some of the countries that are most violently opposed to each other and then bring them together under one roof to do science.
The list of countries involved looks utterly improbable: it includes Jordan, Turkey, Bahrain and Egypt - so far so normal. But then add Iran and - amazingly - Israel too.
And they actually have to meet each other every year to discuss plans including the fraught question of contributions.
This is Sesame in a nutshell: an extraordinarily bold idea to plant a world-class science facility - a synchrotron light source - in the heart of the Middle East for researchers from anywhere from Cairo to Tel Aviv to Tehran.
So the first obstacle is getting past one's own natural incredulity that anything like this could ever get off the ground.
But the fact is that it has. Sesame not only has a rather grand new building, near the village of Allan in the hills northwest of Amman; it also has the first components that will generate and accelerate a flow of electrons. If all goes well, sometime around 2015, the energy from those electrons will be harnessed to help peer into the world of the microscopically small.
Diplomatic minefield
There are builders hoisting vast concrete blocks into place for the radiation shielding. Scientists are running tests on the first batches of equipment. Administrators are planning budgets and new appointments and all the intricate detail of a highly technical undertaking.
And that leads to the second challenge of reporting on Sesame, that of picking a path through the infinite sensitivities of a diplomatic minefield.
To give you a few examples of the tensions among participating countries: Turkey and Cyprus do not recognize each other; Iran and Pakistan do not recognise Israel and Eqypt and Jordan face their own internal difficulties. Meanwhile, Iranian scientists have been jailed or assassinated (including two associated with Sesame). This is no ordinary science project.
Yet somehow, after a decade of huge uncertainties about funding and endless doubts about who will take part, the people making this project work have found a way of rubbing along.
We timed our visit, earlier this month, to coincide with one of the annual rounds of meetings of scientists and officials - but we had no idea whether anyone would welcome the prospect of a television camera in their midst, let alone talk to us.
Even the organisers were not sure, and they certainly did not want us barging in with a camera uninvited and risk wrecking everything. As I may have mentioned, this was no ordinary story.
Given the hostility felt towards Israel, for instance, would any Arabs or Iranians ever consent to being pictured in the same room as Israeli scientists? If we were seen talking to one, would others boycott us? And, worst of all, would our filming put anyone in danger back home? Not everyone in Iran or Israel or the Arab countries likes the idea of their people fraternising with the other side.
Addressing a meeting
There was only one way to find out: I offered to stand up at one of the meetings and ask. I was given my chance between a talk on Sesame's potential to examine the nanometre-scale structures of proteins and one on plans for high-powered computing to handle all the data - a journalistic interlude amid high science.
In front of me was a sea of nationalities - a few men in suits, the Iranian men characteristically tie-less, women in different styles of head-scarf, some very covered, others less so.
We were in the basement ballroom of a hotel, gloomy after the bright sun outside. From the room next door I could hear lively voices; ironically, it turned out to be a medical training session by a British wound-healing company.
As I described why I wanted to report on Sesame, and how we planned to do that, I was relieved to see a few heads quickly nodding in approval.
But I then asked our most difficult question: whether anyone did not want to be filmed. The room was silent. This was a key moment. Our coverage would be determined by the outcome.
Long way to go
The conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza had not quite started, but tensions were high over Iran's nuclear programme. Newspaper reports had just revealed that Israel had been ready to bomb Iran's nuclear sites two years ago. And the Iranian government has never withdrawn its pledge to destroy Israel.
I asked again, fully expecting at least a handful of people, probably the Iranians, to raise their hands in polite objection. But no-one did. Against every expectation, against all the odds, here was a group of people from a region wracked by hatred and conflict who were not only here for the science but also were proud of it.
I nodded to cameraman Matt Goddard and producer Kate Stephens: we were on. Filming could begin. No one was keen to be filmed befriending the Israeli. But everyone was happy to be interviewed. We were holding our breath in disbelief.
I'm aware this could all appear ridiculously naive. There are countless scenarios that could kill Sesame before it's complete. Iran and Israel could start a war. Jordan's current unrest could make travel there dangerous. One of the contributors' cheques could bounce.
The richest Arab countries, like Saudi Arabia, have always stayed away, presumably because of Israel's involvement. The US sends an observer but no money because Iran is taking part.
But somehow, astonishingly, a dream to use science as diplomacy is alive. Enough people are determined to push for it. The world's most impossible science project is really taking shape.
'Open Sesame: science in the desert' will be on BBC Radio 4 tonight at 8pm
|
When you're stuck in a traffic jam wreathed in fumes or squeezed onto a sweltering commuter train, the promised future of a smart, efficient transport system may seem like a utopian dream. | By Matthew WallTechnology of Business editor
But optimistic technologists assure us relief from this gridlocked hell is closer than we think.
And it's all down to the "internet of moving things" - cars, buses, bikes, trains, and planes laden with sensors beaming data to a big brain in the cloud.
The better we know where everything is, the better we can manage traffic flows and optimise routes, avoiding congestion, accidents and natural hazards, the argument goes.
Faster deliveries
"The internet of moving things is giving us whole new sets of data," says Shiva Shivakumar, chief executive of Urban Engines, a specialist in urban mobility data.
"Delivery companies, taxis, travel cards, smartphones, and connected cars are all pushing movement data to the cloud which we can then mash up with real-world maps to create a space/time engine," he says.
"Transport providers from Singapore to Sao Paulo can now analyse journeys trip by trip and understand why a bus was late, spot where there is unused capacity or see opportunities for new routes."
Mr Shivakumar, a former Google engineer, says his firm has been able to help delivery companies in San Francisco optimise their routes in real time, testing different scenarios based on current traffic flows and weather conditions.
This type of analysis has led some companies to experiment with mobile delivery hubs, rather than having all goods stored in one warehouse and making all the journeys from there.
Taxi firms now know where the most demand is at each point during the day, even the areas where customers tip the most.
"Experience might tell you one thing, but the data might tell you something else," says Mr Shivakumar.
And in the not-too-distant future, automated travel advisers on our smartphones with access to real-time data from all forms of transport will tell us the best way to reach our destinations, he believes.
Saving lives
Mapping firm Here - recently acquired by German vehicle makers BMW, Audi and Daimler - is busy mapping the road networks of major cities around the world using laser technology, or lidar. It has a fleet of hi-tech camera cars much as Google does.
This kind of technology can perceive road markings, lane widths, and concrete barriers, says vice-president Aaron Dannenbring, to create a "precise, reference index of the road system globally".
"But we also need a dynamic map that reflects everything that's happening on the road. So by connecting other vehicles to our cloud platform we can capture how the traffic situation is changing."
And as more vehicles are fitted with sensors and cameras, the more accurate and useful these dynamic maps will be, he believes.
"Say a number of cars sense black ice on the road, that data will go to the cloud and be analysed by our algorithms. If a pattern emerges a warning will be beamed down to other cars to inform them.
"We think tens of thousands of lives could be saved each year as a result of these systems."
This internet of moving things will also be crucial to the success of driverless vehicles.
Managing the flow
Rail, too, is benefiting from this kind of movement data analysis.
For example, indoor location start-up Pointr is tracking how people move around railway stations to offer navigation tips and live train updates. It is taking part in the Hacktrain innovation programme.
Such data analysis could aid the design of stations and ticket offices, while the move to digital ticketing and the integration of rail data with other transport data is bringing closer that "magic carpet ride ideal - gently wafting through stations without any barriers or friction," says Mark Holt, chief technology officer of rail ticketing website, Trainline.
More Cloud Computing features from Technology of Business
All this data is also helping government agencies manage transport networks more efficiently.
For example, in Los Angeles congestion improved by 10% after the authorities experimented with traffic light timings at busy times of the day.
And in Seattle, the government has introduced toll-based charging to manage traffic flows.
In time, says Bryan Mistele, chief executive of traffic intelligence specialist Inrix, this type of decision-making will become automated as computers learn traffic patterns and respond to changing conditions.
Inrix collects real-time data from more than 275 million vehicles and devices in 60 countries, including anonymised population movement data gleaned from mobile phone masts.
Of course, problems in one type of transport can affect the rest of the network.
This is why the UK's Gatwick airport is using cloud analytics firm Splunk to predict how incidents could affect peak performance four hours ahead.
For example, motorway pile-ups can lead to passengers being late for their planes, causing delays that then affect turnaround times and the number of slots for take-off and landing.
Such early warnings could help airport managers decide on staffing levels to prevent huge queues and grumpy passengers.
Standards, standards
The fly in the ointment for this vision of a unified transport intelligence, however, is that it presupposes common data standards - all moving things accessing and understanding every piece of useful information.
But rival manufacturers don't have a very good track record when it comes to openness and sharing.
"We've proposed an open standard for data exchange so that any manufacturer could receive this type of data," says Mr Dannenbring.
And it is significant that three automotive rivals banded together to buy Here, suggesting that the industry is realising co-operation would be to the benefit of all.
But will a tech giant like Apple, rumoured to be developing its own car and known for creating its own closed ecosystems, be willing to share data so readily?
There are other issues around data privacy and ownership: whose data is it and what guarantees do we have that speed data, for example, isn't being used to police us in a more draconian fashion?
Such concerns aside, the tech utopians do paint an alluring picture of the connected future.
"Once all this tech is integrated with your calendar, your car will automatically know where you're going and how long it's going to take," says Mr Mistele.
"It will choose the optimal route, and if you're going to be late it will message the people you're meeting."
Dream of that next time you're in a jam.
Follow Matthew Wall on Twitter @matthew_wall
|
A major regeneration project for the area around Burry Port harbour has been put on hold, following intervention by the Welsh government. | Carmarthenshire's planning committee was due to consider six applications to develop several hundred new houses.
But head of planning Eifion Bowen said the Welsh government has been asked to "call in" the application.
The Welsh government said the move had been taken to give ministers more time to consider the requests for call in.
The plans also include leisure facilities and a new Welsh-medium primary school.
|
Nine new coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Middlesbrough. | On Friday, 28 cases were confirmed, connected to a small number of households in the Acklam, Linthorpe and town centre end of Marton Road.
Middlesbrough Council said it was informed of four new Covid-19 cases on Saturday and a further five on Sunday.
The authority said a mobile testing centre set up over the weekend would remain in place on Monday.
The four positive tests revealed on Saturday date from 6 August and on Sunday four of the tests date from 7 August and one from 5 August.
The authority said at this stage it is believed the cases are linked to the cluster reported over the past week.
'Cautious but not panicking'
Middlesbrough Mayor Andy Preston said: "As you'd expect, we're keeping a close eye on things.
"We're being cautious but not panicking. We think these cases are linked to a small number of households via family and friends.
"We'll keep everyone updated so we can protect people's health and jobs."
Anyone known to have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive is advised to test themselves and to self-isolate until the results of those test have been confirmed.
A testing centre at the disused Sainsbury's site close to the Riverside Stadium is open from 08:00 BST to 20:00, seven days a week.
The mobile testing unit will again be in the Centuria South car park at Teesside University on Monday from 11:00 to 15:00 BST.
The council urged people to cover their face in public, wash hands regularly and keep a distance from others. Anyone with a high temperature, a new continuous cough or a loss or change to their sense of smell or taste should isolate and book a test.
The local authority is also working with Public Health England's North East Health Protection Team.
Follow BBC North East & Cumbria on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
|
As campaigning for the 2020 election ramps up, President Donald Trump has continued to focus on immigration as a key issue, calling the number of migrants at the southern border a national security crisis. But what do the numbers say about undocumented immigrants already in the US? | New reports of unsanitary and at times dangerous conditions at migrant detention facilities along the US-Mexico border has added fuel to the immigration debate.
Democratic lawmakers have been touring the centres, describing conditions where migrants are reportedly forced to drink water out of toilets.
In June, Congress passed a bill to send $4.6bn (£3.6bn) to address the ongoing crisis at the border, amid growing outrage over the conditions.
But while the number of apprehensions at the border has been rising over the last two years, the number of undocumented immigrants in the US is decreasing, according to new analysis from the Pew Research Center.
Much of that has to do with unauthorised Mexican immigrants - many of whom are now leaving the US.
Total undocumented population dropping
Analysing US census data from 1990 until 2017, Pew reported a decline in the overall undocumented immigrant population within the US.
After a high of 12.2 million undocumented immigrants in 2007, the totals for 2017 dipped by nearly two million.
Pew attributes this decline largely to a decrease in unauthorised Mexican immigrants, with more leaving the US than entering.
Mexicans no longer the majority
The departure of Mexican-born immigrants means that for the first time in decades, they are no longer the majority demographic of undocumented residents in the US, according to Pew.
That said, they do still make up a significant share of the population at just under five million of the total 10.5 million.
Where undocumented immigrants are living
According to 2016 data, California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Georgia and Illinois had the highest populations of undocumented immigrants.
Montana, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia, Maine and Vermont had around 5,000 or fewer undocumented residents.
In 2017, more states saw drops in undocumented population
The decline in undocumented immigrants is apparent across the country, even in five out of the six states with the largest populations of these immigrants.
Five states did see rises in their undocumented populations compared to 2007: Louisiana, Maryland, the Dakotas and Massachusetts.
Changing make-up of immigrants arriving in the US
As evidenced at the border, the demographics of undocumented migrants arriving in the US are changing.
The number of Central American migrants - particularly from the Northern Triangle region of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras - is on the rise.
But 2017 still saw fewer unauthorised arrivals than 2007, mostly due to the drop in Mexicans entering the US.
And reports by the Department of Homeland Security note that most undocumented immigrants do not cross the US border illegally, but rather overstay their visas. In 2017, Canadians overstaying their visa made up the largest group of these migrants, followed by Mexicans.
|
Shell is among several major oil companies trying to find a route from heavy dependence on the black stuff for big dividend payouts, towards a greener future. Its new strategy holds firm on current production levels of oil and gas, and takes some big bets on being able to mitigate that. Not following the path of its rivals, towards a big bet dependent on renewable energy investment, it is taking an approach focused more on the customer, the retail and the service end of its business. | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
This is a time of unprecedented challenge to the old ways - disease control, curtailed travel, the digital economy, automation of jobs, voters in revolt, and, not least, tackling climate change.
Some are going to be swept out of the way. Oil and gas producers are trying to find a way to ensure they're not among them, and can instead catch the tide.
The easy bit is declaring your company is now about "energy". Several companies have set out their intention of becoming big in wind and solar power. But these are capital-intensive and not high-margin.
Much more difficult is reducing the dependence on oil and gas for generating shareholder returns.
Royal Dutch Shell is the latest to set out its vision and targets. In a lengthy presentation by chief executive Ben van Beurden on Thursday, one word that only snuck out on two occasions (that I noticed), was "oil". It seems to have become a dirty word, more commonly referred to as "upstream".
The company is prouder of its leading position in gas, arguing it is a necessary alternative to coal, a baseload back-up for intermittent renewable power and replacing oil burn in shipping. Its scenario-planning foresees LNG (liquified natural gas) growing at 4% per year up to 2040.
Adding together oil plus gas, rising to 55% of the joint total, production is on track to remain steady through this decade, and to be the main way of sustaining and growing dividends into the 2030s.
Energy parks
You're more likely still to hear talk of transition. And while the aims are lofty and the time horizons are distant, that still leaves a long tail of attachment to the old ways.
Having peaked in 2019, Shell's oil production is expected to fall by 1% to 2% each year. Some big new projects will get backing until 2025, and after that, there will be no new frontier projects, but a lot will continue pumping.
The company is retreating from several oil basins, including Nigerian onshore, which has brought a barrelful of cost and reputational damage. Divestments are targeting $4bn per year. Only nine core regions will be retained - the UK's offshore sector being one of them.
Other assets will be sold off, almost always to companies without such a consumer reputation to protect, less exposure to fickle public shareholders, and fewer qualms about carbon footprint.
With the oil majors reducing their presence in UK waters, asset ownership by lesser-known, private-equity or sovereign-backed, late-stage specialist drillers is now a feature of the UK North Sea.
But Shell is trying to take on responsibility beyond its drilling.
With 14 refineries (reducing to six, to be known as "energy and chemical parks") and a huge worldwide retail arm, it retails three times more oil produced by others than it produces itself.
Plug-in points
The intention is to reach net zero carbon by 2050, including all the other oil and gas that it sells. The boss says that, by mid-century, he doesn't want to be selling to anyone who isn't mitigating the climate changing effects of burning it.
So Shell's approach is to focus on marketing, to innovate with new premium products, to improve energy efficiency, to recycle plastics, and to become a service company to customers who are willing to pay to offset their climate-changing impact.
On its own account, it aims to spend $100m per year on natural solutions, including forestry as a carbon sink, and less natural ones, including carbon capture and storage (50 million tonnes of it each year), and to go big on making hydrogen power work commercially for industry and heavy transport.
With such a big forecourts presence - 44,000 outlets in more than 75 countries - it intends to build that specialism from 6,000 plug-in points for cars in 14 countries to 50,000.
It made a small contribution towards that last month, buying Ubitricity, a German company with 2,700 charging points in the UK, or 13% of the total. Shell already had 1,000 at its forecourts.
But one striking aspect of this plan is that Shell is not following BP or Equinor into renewable energy stakes, at least on anything like the same scale.
It wants to double the amount of electricity it sells, having bought and rebranded First Utility three years ago, adding 450,000 Post Office broadband customers in the UK last month.
With expanding service station retail, adding collection points for online purchases, it's diversifying, but not focusing on renewable investment.
The vision has been set out on the same day a Shell-led joint venture has announced a subsidy-free wind farm in the Dutch North Sea. But it sees its strength as being a retailer and not a major generator of green electricity.
And wanting to be a good global citizen, it is aiming to get electricity to 100 million people who don't currently have it at home.
Tricky transition
This is a very tricky transition. Shareholders, both retail and institutional, are seeing oil majors less as a sure bet and questioning whether it's an ethical one.
The pressure is on all the oil majors - both to keep the dividends flowing and the share price up, and to set out a persuasive trajectory towards a greener future.
But if business isn't taking part in that transition, or is only pushed into it reluctantly by regulation, it's doubtful that climate change targets can succeed with them.
|
Police launched a series of raids in Renfrewshire after Border Force seized around 4,000 ecstasy tablets. | The joint operation, which involved Police Scotland and the UK National Crime Agency, targeted premises in Barrhead and Paisley.
It followed intelligence that criminals were using the postal service to import controlled drugs into the UK.
The NCA confirmed the haul of Class A drugs had a street value of about £40,000.
Two people were arrested and later released while investigations continue.
NCA senior investigating officer John McGowan said: "Working with our law enforcement partners we are determined to do all we can to disrupt the criminal networks involved in drug importation and supply."
|
A teenager has been charged with the murder of a 16-year-old boy in Coventry. | Jaydon James, known as JJ, was with friends in Deedmore Road, Wood End, last November when he was stabbed. He died later in hospital.
A 17-year-old boy appeared before Dudley Magistrates' Court on Thursday and was remanded in custody to appear at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday.
The teenager is also charged with two counts of wounding.
Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, and sign up for local news updates direct to your phone.
|
Crime drama series Hinterland will return for a third series, it has been confirmed. | The programme, filmed in Ceredigion, is shot in English and Welsh and called Y Gwyll for the bilingual version.
It features Richard Harrington playing Det Ch Insp Tom Mathias.
Filming in and around Aberystwyth for the new series starts in January, with the Welsh version being screened on S4C next autumn and English on BBC Wales in early 2017.
|
A burst water main inside an underground car park has caused flooding which led to people being rescued by an inflatable boat. | A man was rescued from a flat by boat, while another woman was taken to safety from a shop after the pipe burst off Lea Bridge Road, Hackney, east London.
About 40 firefighters have been dealing with the floods since 08:50 BST.
Specialist teams from Thames Water have been working to fix the pipe which has affected surrounding shops and houses.
Thames Water said the burst was on a 36in diameter water main and was thought to have happened overnight.
Related Internet Links
London Fire Brigade
|
A Soviet monument in Sofia, Bulgaria has been painted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, sparking protest from Russia. | Unknown artists painted the Monument to the Soviet Army on Saturday night, local media reported.
Russia has since demanded an explanation of the "vandal incident", the Itar-Tass agency reported.
It is the latest in a series of modifications of the monument which have tried to make political points.
|
Election spending should be capped and anonymous donations banned in Isle of Man Elections, the Manx Government has proposed.
| The island's Council of Ministers has published a series of proposals for reforming the electoral system in a consultation document.
The plans were produced after a review of election funding by a panel set by the council's Governance Committee.
The consultation period ends on 21 January.
The candidates would face a spending cap of £2,000 plus 50p per voter in a constituency.
A ban on anonymous donations to candidates would also extend to political parties or other organisations, such as trade unions, who back a candidate.
Other proposed measures include the public disclosure of all donations by House of Keys members, and allowing political adverts on Manx Radio.
|
Food served to patients at Weston General Hospital has been rated "excellent" for the first time by the National Patient Safety Agency.
| The hospital in Weston-super-Mare has always received a "good" rating in previous years.
Lorene Read, Weston Area Health NHS Trust chief executive, said they had changed their menus this year as a result of patient feedback.
Patients are asked about the food on exit cards on the day they go home.
|
Two police officers were attacked with a glass bottle and one also kicked in the stomach after being called out to reports of a man acting suspiciously. | They were attacked as they led a man away from the scene in the Nottingham Road area of Eastwood, in Nottinghamshire, on Friday night.
One officer suffered injuries to her head and the other has arm injuries.
A man, 34, was charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, assault by beating, affray and criminal damage.
He is due to appear at Nottingham Magistrates' Court.
Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
|
The Mediterranean city of Oran was the setting for a famous fictional outbreak of bubonic plague in Algeria under French colonial rule. The BBC's Lucy Ash finds parallels between Albert Camus' novel The Plague and how the country is coping with the coronavirus pandemic amid political upheaval. | Although it was published 73 years ago, today The Plague almost feels like a news bulletin. It has been flying off bookshop shelves around the world as readers struggle to make sense of the global spread of Covid-19.
Sitting in his office in the Mohamed-Boudiaf Hospital, where many of Oran's coronavirus cases are treated, Professor Salah Lellou says he is exhausted.
An expert on tuberculosis in Algeria's second city, he's been working flat out for months, rarely leaving the hospital before midnight.
"The sick arrived in a very serious condition. Everyone was panicking - patients and the staff. We had a terrible time of it.
"We're not sure if we've arrived at the peak, or if there's a second wave because right now we have another spike in cases."
Haunted by the novel
The third worst affected country in Africa after Egypt and South Africa, Algeria has officially reported 43,016 cases of coronavirus, including 1,475 deaths.
It imposed a strict lockdown after the first infection was recorded at the end of February and in much of the country night-time curfews remain in force.
With his salt and pepper moustache and receding hair, Prof Lellou is older than Camus' hero, Dr Bernard Rieux, but he seems equally devoted to his patients.
Unlike many in Oran today, he is familiar with the novel set in his hometown and almost seems haunted by it.
"We weren't able to avoid thinking about the plague Albert Camus described during this pandemic… Most patients were very scared, there were a lot of rumours going around. Everyone was caught off-guard."
In Bouira, east of the capital, Algiers, a hospital director was cornered by angry relatives of a patient who had just died of Covid. He jumped out of the second-floor window of his office to escape, suffering multiple fractures.
"There was a parallel between coronavirus and Camus' plague. People started to blame the authorities," says Prof Lellou.
In Camus' novel, the Cathedral of Sacré-Cœur in downtown Oran - now a public library - was the setting for a fiery sermon delivered by the Catholic priest, Father Paneloux, who tells the congregation they have "deserved" the calamity which has befallen them.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Algeria's mosques have been closed and religious leaders like Sheikh Abdelkader Hamouya have been delivering health messages and sermons online.
He has a reputation as a progressive but when he reflects on the meaning of the pandemic, there are echoes of Camus' 1940s Jesuit priest.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's a message from Allah to believers, and to all people, to come back to him. To wake up!" he says.
Virus halts protests
Many Algerians tell me that the real danger they face is less the coronavirus itself and more the way the authorities are exploiting it for other purposes.
Before the pandemic brought the world to a standstill, Algeria was swept up in a wave of peaceful protests - known as the Hirak, Arabic for "Movement" - which eventually forced President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down in April 2019 after 20 years in power.
Despite the celebrations that followed, the candidates to replace the aged president all belonged to the old guard. A former prime minister became head of state in December after widely boycotted elections.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune promised to extend a hand to the Hirak movement to build a "new Algeria". He talked of reforms and the need to "separate money from politics".
But with no sign of desperately needed jobs, protests became increasingly tense, with scores of activists arrested.
The authorities say Algeria is threatened by a rerun of the bloody violence of the 1990s - known as "the black decade".
Just as the stand-off seemed to be reaching a climax, coronavirus emptied the streets. Activists like Afiff Aderrahmane agreed to temporarily halt the protests.
The web designer threw himself into charity work, setting up a website to put donors in touch with organisations which distribute food and other aid to needy families and the homeless during the lockdown.
"The Hirak during the quarantine transformed itself into one enormous act of solidarity," he says.
Solidarity during a crisis is a major theme in The Plague.
Mr Aderrahmane could be seen as a modern-day version of Camus' character, Jean Tarrou, who organises sanitary teams of volunteers to accompany doctors on house visits, transport the sick and support those in quarantine.
"In fact many Algerians have something in common with him... the urge to help others in difficult times," says Mr Aderrahmane.
Fascism and repression
The sanitary teams organised by Tarrou may reflect Camus' own experience of fighting in the French resistance.
Written just after World War Two, the novel has often been interpreted as an allegory for the Nazi occupation of France with the rats that bring the disease representing the "brown plague" of fascism.
But it can be interpreted in myriad ways and may also contain lessons for the excesses of an authoritarian state.
Walid Kechida, the young creator of Facebook page Hirak Memes, was charged in April with offending the president and religious authorities with his irreverent images.
Although the authorities released some political prisoners to mark Independence Day on 5 July, many high-profile detainees like Kechida remain behind bars.
Earlier this month, prominent journalist Khaled Drareni was sentenced to three years for "inciting an unarmed gathering" and "endangering national unity".
The government also passed a controversial law against "fake news" and blocked three websites that had been covering the pandemic and protests.
From 4,000 miles away, a radio station has been trying to fill the information gap.
Radio Corona International was set up by Abdallah Benadouda, an Algerian journalist now based in Providence, Rhode Island, in the US.
In 2014, he got on the wrong side of Said Bouteflika, the then-president's brother, was sacked, blacklisted and after getting death threats, he and his wife fled.
The radio station airs each Tuesday and Friday to pay homage to the days of the street protests - and Benadouda says it helps to keep the flame of the Hirak burning.
You may also be interested in:
"I'm trying to do my best to be part of the revolution. So my body is in Providence but my mind and my heart are in Algeria."
In The Plague, there is a French journalist - Raymond Rambert - who's been sent to report on housing conditions in Oran and finds himself trapped as the city goes into lockdown. He is desperate to return home.
I think of Benadouda as the mirror opposite of Camus' character. He is a journalist stuck on the outside, yearning to get back in. And his anguish increases with the mounting repression in Algeria as he worries about the safety of his contributors there, where frustration is increasing.
'Inoculated against violence'
But like the vast majority of Algerians, Benadouda fears chaos. During the 1990s when the military fought an Islamist insurgency, 200,000 people died and 15,000 were forcibly disappeared.
Abdelkader Djeriou, the star of a gritty TV drama set in Oran, agrees. The actor often addressed huge crowds during the Hirak and was briefly imprisoned last December.
"Our experience of what we call 'the black decade' has inoculated us, it gave us some maturity to not be confrontational, and to avoid violence.
"This pandemic has really caused the mask to slip. We've seen that it's civil society which helps the poor and those in need."
Camus understood that when disaster strikes, people show their true colours.
The current crackdown on anti-government protests is a far cry from the freedom Algerians enjoyed at the start of the Hirak.
Algerians who know the novel might have recognised Camus' warning against complacency at the very end of the book when he says that the plague bacillus - however the reader interprets it - never dies or disappears for good.
You can listen to Lucy Ash's BBC World Service Assignment programme about Algeria's Plague Revisited here.
|
There are many ways to measure the health of the nation. | Nick TriggleHealth correspondent
The publication of the government's consultation on a minimum price for alcohol puts the focus on harmful drinking habits.
Physical activity is also in the spotlight because of the call by health experts for people to cycle and walk more.
But to get the most comprehensive picture it is perhaps best to look at all the lifestyle factors together.
There are seven established factors that raise the risk of ill-health and these are all measured by the Health Survey for England.
They are: smoking, binge drinking, low fruit and vegetable consumption, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and raised cholesterol (a lack of physical activity is a factor in the last three).
In England, an incredible 93% have at least one risk factor. Over a third have three or more.
That makes depressing reading and raises the question about why we are not doing more to look after ourselves.
People in England - and across the rest of the UK for that matter - have some of the worst lifestyles in Europe, particularly in terms of drinking habits and obesity levels.
Commercial pressures
There are a host of reasons and explanations put forward by experts.
Talking about the low cycling and walking rates, Dr Harry Rutter, of the National Obesity Observatory, laments the "congestion and pollution" in our built-up areas.
Many would agree with such sentiments, arguing the amount of traffic is also a major factor in why both children and adults are getting less active.
Dr Rutter wants to see councils, which get responsibility for public health next year, take a lead in creating environments that encourage healthier lifestyles, arguing they have a huge influence through their control of planning, housing transport, schools and leisure.
And certainly there is some good international evidence that action at a local level can make a difference.
Some of the countries with populations that pursue the most healthy lifestyles have strong and proactive local government, particularly those in Scandinavia.
Take the example of Denmark's capital, Copenhagen, where for the last two decades the city authorities have been investing in measures to encourage cycling.
The result? More than a third of people cycle to work, university or school, making it arguably the cycling capital of the world.
But of course councils can't solve all the problems on their own.
Commercial pressures from marketing and advertising are also often highlighted - and this is why the government has looked at regulation and legislation on a national level.
The minimum pricing proposal for alcohol is an example of this, as is the plain packaging suggestion for cigarettes which has already been put forward by ministers.
Socio-economic factors play a role as well. Research shows that those from poorer backgrounds are more likely to lead unhealthy lives.
Smoking - the leading cause of avoidable deaths - is now twice as common among groups in lower socio-economic groups.
But once again that cannot explain everything away. After all, as the overall figures show, having an unhealthy lifestyle is not a minority problem.
In fact, in some cases the worst excesses are seen among more affluent groups - for example, the largest rises in alcohol consumption have been seen in the higher income groups in recent years.
It raises the question whether there is something in the public psyche here which encourages people to gamble with their health.
Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, a former president of the Faculty of Public Health, while believing the focus should be squarely on the factors mentioned above, acknowledges there could be something in this.
"There may be a cultural reason. It could even be the NHS.
"Since 1948 there has perhaps been a feeling that medicine will be there to bail us out and that could be contributing to this. It's hard to know really, but what is clear is that we need to do something about it."
|
Few subjects are likely to enrage British wildlife lovers more than the idea of a badger cull - yet it's something the government has been debating this week. Why do people have such a strong attachment to this scarcely-seen creature? | By Tom de CastellaJournalist
Rabbits, foxes and hedgehogs have their supporters, but the badger has traditionally elicited a unique mixture of fondness and respect.
"No animal enjoys better protection than the badger, though few need it less. Uniquely, it has its own Act of Parliament to defend its wellbeing, yet - unlike hundreds of much more poorly safeguarded species - it is not at all endangered," wrote environmental journalist Geoffrey Lean in the Daily Telegraph earlier this year.
And this despite the evidence that badgers are responsible for infecting cattle with bovine TB.
One proposed solution to stop the spread is a cull of the creature - but this is highly controversial. This week Lord Krebs, author of a 1997 report that led to a randomised badger cull, questioned the effectiveness of widespread killing. In parts of Wales, the rural affairs minister has proposed a new attempt at a badger cull.
But the debate raises a wider question: just why is it that so many of us have a soft spot for the black and white striped digger who spends most of its time hidden underground?
It brings to mind the thoughts of Mole in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows:
"The Mole had long wanted to make the acquaintance of the Badger. He seemed, by all accounts, to be such an important personage and, though rarely visible, to make his unseen influence felt by everybody about the place."
Badgers may be a nuisance but the British public loves them regardless, says Jack Reedy, a spokesman for the Badger Trust.
"They occupy an important place in our hearts. Even people whose gardens have been torn apart by badgers have a grudging respect for them."
Some find it hard to resist their striking black and white striped faces, comical gait and playful behaviour.
But there's also the wonder one feels at seeing them emerge from their secret subterranean society and showing what busy, resourceful animals they are, he says. So much so that enthusiasts like Mr Reedy will sit up half the night watching badgers from hides.
"One of them will poke their nose out of the sett, sniff around and go back inside. A few moments later it comes out with the other badgers as if it's told them that the coast is clear."
Once out of the sett, the badgers will roll around, grooming each other with teeth and claws, and in early spring the cubs have play fights, learning to defend their territory.
It would be wrong to call them cute though - badgers have a nasty bite and are the "biggest and best civil engineer" in the animal kingdom, he says.
"Their setts are like a parish - 200 yards of interconnected tunnels crisscrossing an area of 30m by 30m. And each sett will usually have 15 or 16 entrances and seven or eight living chambers."
In this and their housekeeping - changing the straw in the sett every month or so - we can see reflections of ourselves, Mr Reedy says.
Ratty to blame
For the National Farmers Union, this is all rather unfortunate.
"It is an image issue," admits Kevin Pearce, head of food and farming at the NFU. "A lot of farmers like badgers but we also want to control the disease. If your vector spreading TB was a rat, I'm sure that there'd be no problem for farmers in securing a licence to take action."
In New Zealand the TB carrier is the possum, which is considered both a pest and, worse still, Australian. "So the Kiwis have a different attitude and drop poison into wooded areas from helicopters and planes."
Our sentimental attachment to badgers may be a peculiarly British phenomenon. In Ireland culling has been taking place for several years with no public outcry. Because of that, many farmers would prefer if The Wind in the Willows had never been written, Mr Pearce says.
There's no doubt that anthropomorphic characters in animal stories have an effect, says the Times's children's book critic Amanda Craig. And yet, two giants of the genre - Beatrix Potter and Kenneth Grahame - were "very divided" on the subject of badgers.
"Beatrix Potter cast the badger as one of the villains. In The Tale of Mr Tod, the badger and the fox want to catch and eat Peter Rabbit. As a farmer herself she saw these as the two main predators. She's on the side of rabbits and kittens - the small and fluffy v the large and clawed."
In contrast, Grahame's book presented a gruff, ascetic figure who doesn't suffer fools gladly. "Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing," Ratty observes.
For book critic Craig he is the fearless moral policeman.
"Mr Badger is completely independent, ancient and lives in the Wild Wood, a place that the other animals are afraid to go. Nothing can stop him, he's the figure of authority, even the weasels and stoats are afraid of him. He's the animal version of God and squire mixed into one."
Craig is used to seeing badgers around her Devon home.
"We often see this enormous black and white bump trundling ahead of us in the headlights - they're utterly fearless. They're one of the largest wild animals left in this country and quite magical."
Unfortunately it's something city dwellers rarely experience as badgers hate noise, she says. Which perhaps explains why they have been eased out of children's literature by an "endless" number of books about foxes - a creature now happily ensconced in the suburbs and inner cities.
But there is one badger story that has caught on in recent decades.
Susan Varley's Badger's Parting Gifts, first published in 1984, has become something of a favourite at funeral services. Telling the tale of a popular badger who dies and is mourned by his fellow creatures, it seeks to help children cope with the idea of death.
"A badger seemed just right for the story," says Varley. "It's a strong, sturdy looking animal - perfect for the dependable, reliable character who was always willing to lend a helping paw. And their beautiful black and white striped heads were just made for pen and ink."
And yet her badger owes more to human traits than anything observed in the natural world.
"Badger's character has far more to do with my grandmother than a real badger's characteristics," Varley says. "She died shortly before I started the project and a lot of the book is based on the emotions that went along with that."
In short, the badger's purposeful and private way of life offers writers the chance to debate very human concerns.
At a time when the idea of culling or shooting badgers is gaining ground, the animals' supporters must hope that Mr Badger's prediction proves accurate.
"People come - they stay for a while, they flourish, they build - and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I've been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again.
"We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be."
(Frederick Warne & Co owns all rights, copyrights and trademarks of Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations)
|
Britain is calling for urgent action to prevent a Greece-style financial crisis in Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, where recent political turmoil, a suspension of foreign aid, and an abrupt currency devaluation have conspired to leave the new government with a gaping hole in its budget. | Andrew HardingAfrica correspondent@BBCAndrewHon Twitter
"Malawi is at a crossroads today and action in three to six months may be too late," said Andrew Mitchell, UK Secretary of State for Development.
The UK was among those which suspended direct aid to the government last year.
Now it is scrambling to bring forward some £30m ($47m) - not due to be handed to the Malawian treasury until later in the year - in the next few weeks, and is urging other donors to do the same.
"We need a lot of support, very quickly - in the region of $500m," acknowledged Joyce Banda, Malawi's new president, who grappled her way to power last month after her predecessor Bingu wa Mutharika died of a heart attack and his aides briefly attempted to subvert the constitution to keep her from taking over.
"Look at me - I'm not panicking," said President Banda, in an interview at State House in Lilongwe.
She argued that much of the cash has already been pledged by foreign donors, then suspended last year because of the increasingly autocratic behaviour of her predecessor, and could be released to Malawi swiftly once the IMF gives her new government's economic programme its blessing.
"We have moved quickly. The situation was self-made therefore things can be corrected - and the good thing is that we know what to do," said President Banda, pointing out how swiftly her team has moved to restore diplomatic relations with Britain, and to invite the IMF back to Malawi.
The 33% currency devaluation - although widely recommended by economists - has put huge strain on the treasury, and on many ordinary Malawians, as the price of imported goods has soared.
Privately, western diplomats here are warning of the possibility of economic collapse, and a backlash against President Banda, if the situation isn't handled firmly and fast.
"An inflationary spiral is a real threat - if the economy collapses, Banda will lose support and political instability could follow. The cost of rescuing Malawi will be much more expensive than supporting it now," said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
|
If you mention the word "podcast" to people, many immediately come up with a list of "must listens". But this popularity is fairly recent. Why have podcasts taken so long to become visible, and does that mean you can make a living out of them? | By Philippa GoodrichTechnology of Business reporter
It's easy to make a podcast.
All you need is something you want to say, a microphone, a recording device (known as a tape recorder in the old days) and some editing software.
For enthusiasts, part of the beauty of audio has always been that you don't have to be a technological wizard to create something magical.
While podcasts have been around for a good decade and a half, they've emerged from their niche recently thanks to the proliferation of smartphones, podcast apps and voice-activated speakers in homes.
Plus, their more informal, less "produced" style is proving popular with the much sought-after "millennial" generation, says Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism in New York.
"What podcasting has is a youth audience that feels very passionately about the people that they listen to and that they engage with."
And the old problem of visibility has largely been solved by distribution platforms from the likes of Apple, SoundCloud and Whooshkaa, although it's still true that old fashioned word-of-mouth is one of the most effective ways of getting your podcast noticed.
Now there are more than 600,000 shows worldwide covering everything from sport, politics and music, to the thoughts of geeks in their bedrooms.
The podcast has become fashionable.
And not just in the West. South Korea tops the global rankings, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018, with 58% of its population listening to a news podcast in the past month, compared with 33% in the US and 18% in the UK.
Young people are now far more likely to listen to podcasts than to speech radio, Reuters says.
"What distinguishes radio from TV is the intimacy. What distinguishes a podcast from radio is that it's intimacy plus, because you've chosen it and it's literally in your ears," explains Olly Mann, who's been co-hosting Answer me This since 2007 with comedian Helen Zaltzman, and now also produces The Modern Mann.
"People tend to listen on headphones in their personal bubble."
He describes the growth in podcasts as a "slow, gentle upward curve", but like others, acknowledges that there is one show responsible for propelling the genre into the mainstream: Serial.
In October 2014, the team behind the successful public radio programme This American Life released the first episodes of their true crime story set in Baltimore County, Maryland.
Serial broke the mould because it was a podcast first, not just a radio show uploaded to the internet after broadcast, as was typical at the time. Producer Julie Snyder says this meant that if the show flopped, they hadn't wasted too much time, money or reputation.
But listeners were gripped by reporter Sarah Koenig's investigation into the murder of high school student Hae Min Lee and the conviction and imprisonment of her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed.
Now in its third season, Serial has been downloaded 420 million times in total. And it's testament to the influence of Season One that Syed has been granted a retrial.
Five podcasts to look out for in 2019
Source: Wired, Global, Vulture Lists
"A lot of people were not used to hearing non-fiction serialised storytelling that's as compelling as Serial was," says Ms Snyder.
"And because the technological barriers had sort of come down, it was really easy to get at. For the first time a lot of people learned how to access a podcast."
Its success encouraged many listeners to explore what else was out there, she believes.
The sound of money
But how do you make money from podcasting?
Here's where it gets a little complicated.
Once you've pressed Save on your programme, you need a hosting platform to which you can drag and drop your show.
That platform creates an RSS ("rich site summary" or "really simple syndication") feed - the link between your audio file and the so-called pod catchers - programs that download and distribute the podcasts to your listening device.
"It's a very fragmented marketplace," says Ross Adams, chief executive of Acast, the Stockholm-based podcasting platform that hosts 3,500 podcasters.
Acast not only looks after the technical nuts and bolts, but also the advertising that gives podcasters a chance to monetise their content.
In common with other digital platforms, Acast's global sales teams sells advertising on a "cost per mille" (CPM) basis.
So if your podcast has 1,000 listeners and there are six ad slots, that adds up to a total of 6,000 impressions, or clicks, to sell. But podcast advertising doesn't come cheap. Airtime ads start at about £12 ($15) CPM, but some branded content may sell for as much as £100 ($126) CPM, says Mr Adams.
More Technology of Business
"It's the most expensive priced audio product in the marketplace," says Mr Adams, largely because podcast audiences tend to be affluent and audio ads are effective, particularly if they're read out by the programme host.
"It's not a commercial radio audience that's listening, it's the Netflix subscriber, the Spotify premium subscriber," he says. "It's the very affluent audiences, which is why we can charge a lot higher."
This sounds like good news for the impoverished podcaster, but bear in mind that as far as spending on digital advertising goes, audio is still the poor relation to video, where revenue is measured in billions, rather than hundreds of millions.
Nevertheless, a report for the Interactive Advertising Bureau by consultants PWC predicts advertising revenues in the US digital audio sector will grow more than 110% to $659m (£521m) by 2020.
It's that sort of upward trend that has convinced industry heavyweights like the UK radio company Global to launch a podcasting service on its global player app.
Networks like Radiotopia and Gimlet Media, and platforms and apps like Acast and Global, help make the podcast visible to listeners and advertisers, and because they aggregate podcasters, even those with lower download figures stand a chance of attracting advertising.
That said, the marketplace is still too crowded for many people to make serious money.
"For anybody who wants to make a living on it there's nowhere near enough money," says Emily Bell.
"I'm sure probably over 80% of the revenue goes to the top 20% of the podcasts."
But audio has never been all about the money. It's a medium for enthusiasts produced by enthusiasts. And podcasts may have secured its future.
|
A restructure of Guernsey's dairy industry may be needed after figures show full-cream milk sales were down by a quarter over the last decade. | Guernsey Dairy General Manager, Andrew Tabel, blames a desire for healthier diets on the sales slump.
In 2002, about 900,000 litres of full-cream milk were sold, which had dropped to fewer than 690,000 in 2013.
By law, the only fresh milk allowed to be sold in Guernsey is from Guernsey cows on the island.
Mr Tabel said people were switching to the semi-skimmed product, but that it could also be a good thing for the company.
"From a business perspective, the more people that consume lower fat products, the more cream we have to produce butter with," he said.
"So our butter margins are increasing and the sales of butter products are increasing."
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.