label
stringlengths 5
984
| text
stringlengths 76
235k
|
|---|---|
The jackpot in Saturday's Lotto is expected to rise to almost £60m - the biggest figure since it started 21 years ago. Changes to the number of balls in the draw have made a win statistically less likely, but what's actually happened since they were brought in? | By Justin ParkinsonBBC News Magazine
It could be you, but most likely it won't be.
If anyone's lucky enough to guess six correct numbers in this Saturday's Lotto draw, their personal wealth could instantly increase by £60m - on a par with the fortune of Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
But hitting the jackpot's less likely than it once was. In October last year, Lotto operator Camelot added 10 extra balls to the draws taking place on Wednesdays and Saturdays, taking the number from 49 to 59.
This pushed out the odds of picking six correct numbers from one in 14 million to one in 45 million.
So naturally, the layman's assumption would be that they would be less likely to become a millionaire. One national newspaper called the change a "rip-off", but Camelot said it was making the game "more exciting".
It also made the promise that it would create at least one millionaire per draw - something not guaranteed before. It started the Lotto Millionaire Raffle. This assigned everyone buying a £2 Lotto ticket a separate raffle ticket, consisting of a colour and eight numbers - chosen by a computer, rather than the customer - to be entered in a separate draw.
So, how have the changes worked in practice?
Since the first amended-format draw took place on 10 October last year, there have been just four winners of the jackpot. That's over the course of 26 draws.
The jackpot prizes were £14.6m on 21 October, £4.3m on 24 October, £15.8m on 11 November and £4.3m on 14 November. None of these were shared.
These winners, in addition to the 26 raffle winners, mean 30 people - or syndicates - have won at least £1m each in the draws since the October changes. Camelot also notes there have been 37 other £1m winners thanks to a number of one-off draws.
How does this compare with the equivalent period a year earlier?
In the 26 draws that took place from 11 October 2014 to 7 January 2015, there were 24 winners - some taking the full jackpot, some a share. The highest jackpot was £15m, shared five ways between contestants who had guessed five main balls plus the bonus ball correctly. This happened because, under the old system, the jackpot could only be rolled over a maximum of four times.
So, in this equivalent period the Lotto gave out 26 prizes worth £1m or more.
Therefore, four more millionaires have been created under the new system, but there have been 20 fewer jackpot wins.
Camelot says its combined changes - the extra balls and the Millionaire Raffle - mean the overall chance of becoming a millionaire have gone from one in 14 million to one in 10 million for every ticket you buy.
But, if you're now more likely to win a million pounds because of the raffle rather than the numbers you choose for Lotto itself, isn't the whole thing now very different?
"I don't think the lottery has changed in nature because of this," says Katie Chicot, a mathematics lecturer at the Open University. "I think a good chunk of players use the Lucky Dip numbers anyway (random numbers selected for you)."
"I said when these changes came in that they'd increase the chance of rollovers, and that's happened," says Rob Mastrodomenico, of the Royal Statistical Society. He argues that the introduction of the raffle will be largely for the benefit of regular Lotto players, rather than those who buy tickets only when the jackpot inflates to huge proportions.
The odds of winning the raffle will vary from draw to draw based on the number of people buying tickets and therefore being in the raffle. If five million people buy tickets, each ticket has a one in five million chance of winning the £1m raffle prize - if 10 million do, the odds are one in 10 million.
"We don't ever really know the number of people entering, but it's likely to be lower when the prize is smaller," says Mastrodomenico. "I expect that, after the £60m jackpot is given away, the odds of winning the raffle will be far better next week, simply due to the fact fewer people will buy tickets and hence fewer will be in the raffle."
The current rollover stops on Saturday, with the jackpot having to be won by someone or shared.
This is because, under Camelot's amended rules, once the jackpot passes £50m - which it did for Wednesday's draw - it can only be rolled over one more time. If there is no winner, the prize goes to the person/people who have chosen five balls and the bonus ball. If no one gets this, the jackpot is shared among those who get five balls - and so on until the money is given out.
So Lotto winnings are effectively capped at a lower level than, say, EuroMillions (capped at 190 million euros), in which Colin and Chris Weir from Largs won £161m in 2011. The estimated jackpot for the US Powerball lottery is currently $675m (£464m).
Still, the Lotto prize - the largest in the National Lottery's 21-year history - has created huge interest. Its website crashed a couple of hours before Wednesday's draw, such was the demand for tickets.
"It's a PR dream for Camelot," says Pete Davies, director of RMS public relations. "It's word of mouth which is driving sales of tickets and this is the cheapest and most effective form of marketing there is.
"The fact there's been a huge decrease in the chance of winning the jackpot from about 14 million to one to 45 million, which has led to negative PR, makes no difference. The bigger the jackpot gets, the more people want to enter. This exponential growth drives people into a frenzy."
For those not winning or sharing the jackpot on Saturday, it's comforting to remember the words of grandfather John Baxter, who won £1m on EuroMillions in 2013. "I went to the supermarket and splashed out a tenner on new slippers," he said. "I couldn't think of anything else I really needed."
And anyone who guesses two numbers correctly under the reformed Lotto system gets to enter the next draw for free, and experience the excitement all over again.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
|
A village in Hungary has banned the wearing of Muslim dress and the call to prayer. By leading what it calls "the war against Muslim culture", it hopes to attract other Christian Europeans who object to multiculturalism in their own countries. | By Erika BenkeBBC Victoria Derbyshire programme
"We primarily welcome people from western Europe - people who wouldn't like to live in a multicultural society," Laszlo Toroczkai tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme. "We wouldn't like to attract Muslims to the village."
Mr Toroczkai is mayor of Asotthalom, a remote village in the southern Hungarian plains, situated around two hours from the capital Budapest.
"It's very important for the village to preserve its traditions. If large numbers of Muslims arrived here, they would not be able to integrate into the Christian community.
"We can see large Muslim communities in western Europe that haven't been able to integrate - and we don't want to have the same experience here," he says. "I'd like Europe to belong to Europeans, Asia to belong to Asians and Africa to belong to Africans. Simple as that."
The refugee crisis has contributed to a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment across large parts of Europe and Hungary is no exception.
At the height of the migrant crisis, as many as 10,000 people crossed the border - just minutes from Asotthalom - from Serbia into Hungary each day.
The mayor has capitalised on the anxiety about such an influx and introduced by-laws of questionable legality.
The new local legislation bans the wearing of Muslim dress like the hijab and the call to prayer and also outlaws public displays of affection by gay people. Changes are also being brought in to prevent the building of mosques, despite there being only two Muslims living there currently.
Many lawyers think the laws contravene the Hungarian constitution and, as part of a general review of new local legislation, the government will rule on them in mid-February.
The laws, however, have support among many members of the community.
One resident, Eniko Undreiner, said it was "really scary" to see "masses of migrants walking through the village" last year as they crossed into the country.
"I spend a lot of time at home alone with my young kids - yes, there were times when I was scared," she says.
The two Muslims living in the village did not want to speak to the BBC for fear of attracting attention to themselves.
However, one member of the village said they were "fully integrated" within the community.
"They don't provoke anyone. They don't wear the niqab, they don't harass people... I know them personally. We get on just fine."
The mayor hopes the village can be at the forefront of what he calls "the war against Muslim culture".
He has employed round-the-clock border patrols, which he thinks will attract white Europeans to live there.
The Knights Templar International has been advertising homes in Asotthalom on its Facebook page.
Its members include Nick Griffin, former leader of the British National Party, and the party's former treasurer Jim Dowson.
"I have been contacted by Jim Dowson," Mr Toroczkai explains. "He came to Asotthalom a few times as a private individual, just to have a look. Nick Griffin also came with him."
Mr Griffin has previously described Hungary as "a place to get away from the hell that is about to break loose in western Europe".
"When it all goes terribly wrong in the West, more will move to Hungary and Hungary needs those people."
We have asked Knights Templar International and Nick Griffin for an interview, but neither responded.
Mr Toroczkai says he would be happy to welcome people from England.
Asked if he is trying to establish a white supremacist village, Mr Toroczkai replies: "I didn't use the word white. But because we are a white, European, Christian population, we want to stay [like] this.
"If we were black we'd want to stay a black village.
"But this is a fact and we want to preserve this fact."
The Victoria Derbyshire programme is broadcast on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel.
|
Fans have been marking the death of horror writer HP Lovecraft 75 years ago. Unrecognised in his own lifetime, he has gone on to influence figures as diverse as Stephen King and Alan Moore, explains British horror writer Ramsey Campbell. | Howard Phillips Lovecraft brought the 20th Century horror story up to date, out of Victorian occultism into the realm of contemporary science without losing its sense of mystery.
His earliest stories have their roots in the Gothic novel and in the short fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.
Dagon, from 1917, is typical Lovecraft. The narrator is cast ashore on an island raised by an underwater earthquake and glimpses a giant survivor of the race which built a monolith there - froglike and fishlike, yet "damnably human".
Lovecraft developed his own invented mythology, at least as influential on fantastic fiction as Tolkien's work. Most of it is set in a New England steeped in history and in hidden occult influences, although the monstrous creatures glimpsed by his characters are frequently from outer space rather than from any conventional hell.
His fans have been adding to this body of myth for many years, and its central book of occult lore, the Necronomicon, has taken on a life of its own.
Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1890, and died there in 1937. Except for a short-lived marriage which took him to New York, he always made Providence his home.
In some ways he was a lonely figure, convinced of his own physical ugliness, but he corresponded with numerous friends, many of them writers of weird fiction - Robert Bloch of Psycho fame and Fritz Leiber were among them.
He signed himself "Grandfather" to his younger correspondents, and as teenagers, Bloch and August Derleth benefited from his criticism when they began to sell stories to Weird Tales, the pulp magazine which published most of Lovecraft's work in the field.
His criticism of his own work was harsher, and during the last years of his life he believed that almost all his tales were failures, not even worth preserving in book form. But since then he has emerged as the most influential horror writer of the 20th Century.
In 1935 he wrote "Nothing is really typical of my efforts . . . I'm simply casting about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong impressions (involving the elements of time, the unknown, cause and effect, fear, scenic and architectural beauty, and other seemingly ill-assorted things) which persist in clamouring for expression."
In the same letter he advised his correspondent to "avoid actually recognised myths such as vampirism, reincarnation, etc.", and praises writers he himself admires for creating "a sort of distinctive awe of their own". Much of his work seeks to convey a sense of breathless anticipation and of "dread suspense".
The Call of Cthulhu (1926) blends science fiction and an invented occultism to communicate a sense of awe and terror and in particular the enormity of the unknown universe.
It is wholly original and yet rooted in the work of authors Lovecraft admired, particularly the hints of other dimensions which English writer Algernon Blackwood conveys in The Willows (Lovecraft's favourite weird tale) and the complicated suggestive structure of Welsh author Arthur Machen's "Great God Pan".
The Call of Cthulhu is the most famous tale of his invented mythos, which is itself a stage in Lovecraft's attempts to create a perfect form for his preoccupations and for the weird tale.
The mythos was also meant to counteract the over-explanation and lack of imaginative suggestiveness he found in conventional occult fiction.
The following year Lovecraft wrote The Colour out of Space, which he later regarded as his best work. It tells the story of a strange meteorite that blights a farming community. "It was just a colour out of space", but it is Lovecraft's purest symbol, the strongest expression of his sense that the universe, and anything living out there in the dark of space or time, is indifferent to man.
The Dunwich Horror (1928) is probably his most substantial fusion of science fiction and the occult, while The Whisperer in Darkness (1930) and At the Mountains of Madness (1931) show him to be moving closer to science fiction. In the latter pair, in fact, curiosity and exploration are overcoming terror.
Even the aliens in Mountains of Madness are scientists, no longer incomprehensibly monstrous. In the last years of his life he wrote several fine tales of terror - The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Haunter of the Dark - but his best late story, the awe-inspiring "Shadow out of Time", displeased him so much that he posted the handwritten manuscript to colleague August Derleth without even keeping a copy.
"My work dissatisfies me extremely," he wrote to a correspondent, "& of late I have destroyed much more than I have saved." In March 1937 he died of intestinal cancer after a winter of agony.
The last things he wrote were a long unfinished letter and, a scientist to the end, observations on his own symptoms.
Perhaps few people other than readers of Weird Tales would ever have heard of him if it hadn't been for Derleth and Donald Wandrei, who created Arkham House to publish his collected works and showed the world that there was a market for horror in hardback.
Lovecraft has many imitators - I was one myself in my teens - but his more lasting influence is on writers who have adopted his methods to their own very individual ends.
Stephen King has written Lovecraftian tales, but they're unmistakably King - Jerusalem's Lot gives his famous fictitious town a Lovecraftian history, and Crouch End even transforms that area of London into a lair of mythos monsters.
Works by Thomas Ligotti and TED Klein, Poppy Z Brite and Alan Moore are equally personal, but still inspired by Lovecraft.
In striving to write fiction which would make positive use both of his talents and of his limitations, in particular his difficulties with creating characters, Lovecraft developed near-perfect structures for the horror story.
His determination to convey awe gives his tales a quality too seldom found. His work unites the British and American traditions of horror fiction - it unites the realistic and the fantastic, the personal and the cosmic, the occult and the scientific.
|
IT company Fujitsu will bring in specialist staff on a full-time basis to try to get its £70m contract with Highland Council back on track.
| Representatives from the company met with officials and councillors on Monday to discuss problems with the roll-out of new computers.
Two new deadlines have been set for when they will need to be in place.
Resources committee chairwoman Caroline Wilson said the meeting had been positive.
Last week, councillors heard 15% of Fujistu's work at council offices and about 40% in schools had been completed.
The Japanese IT giant won a contract last year to replace and maintain technology, including computers and printers, in the local authority's schools and offices.
Related Internet Links
Fujitsu
Highland Council
|
A "game-changing" drug in the fight against HIV reduces the risk of acquiring the condition. But those at high risk of contracting the virus have struggled to get hold of the medication, despite the NHS trialling it across England. | By Andre Rhoden-PaulBBC News
Ron, who is from London and in his 20s, asked about pre-exposure prophylaxis - known more commonly as Prep - at a sexual health clinic in autumn 2017, but was turned away partly because there were no spaces left on the trial.
"They said it had filled up and that I most likely don't qualify," he said about his visit to Burrell Street Sexual Health Clinic in London.
"They mentioned I could buy it online but they didn't really say where to go or what to do.
"They didn't really imply I needed it."
Ron admits his lifestyle heightened the risk of contracting HIV, as he had frequently been having unprotected sex with men and women while "going through a lot of personal issues".
A few months later, he noticed a voicemail left on his phone.
"I had contracted other sexual transmitted infections in the past, but this was the first time I got a voicemail from a sexual health clinic.
"They asked me to come in and they did not explain why.
"I thought, this is the day I find out I'm HIV positive."
His intuition proved correct.
"In a way I felt like I was probably going to end up being one of those people [who contracted HIV].
"And that was because I saw that my sexual activity was of a risky type and if I don't play safer, this will happen."
He started retroviral treatment a week later and is now living a normal life but Ron is angry others could be at risk if they haven't been able to access Prep.
"At [that] point I still was thinking I might as well get ready to say goodbye to my family and friends and I was going to die, because I was not well informed.
"There's probably so many individuals who are going to get that phone call just like I did."
Prep is a preventative medicine which fights the virus if an HIV-negative person comes into contact with it through unprotected sex.
An Impact trial was launched in England in October 2017 with an initial 10,000 places at sexual health clinics for people at high risk of contracting HIV.
But there has been great demand for the drug, with sexual health charities inundated with stories of people being turned away due to a lack of places.
Critics say allowing it to be freely available on the NHS promotes promiscuity and leaves people more vulnerable to other sexually transmitted infections.
Julia, a sex worker from London, had not heard of Prep until a nurse at a sexual health clinic recommended she enrol on the trial.
"When some of my clients asked me if I was scared of HIV when I did unprotected sex, I would say 'no'," she said.
"[But] to tell you the truth, whenever I got flu I was panicking."
The 34-year-old, originally from Poland, added: "I was surprised and shocked when the nurse told me something like that [the drug] existed.
"I feel more protected now."
Julia, who turned to sex work to survive after separating from her husband, said other escorts thought the drug was only for gay men.
She said she had only met one heterosexual man who was taking the drug.
"To be honest my other escort friends, when they found out I was on Prep, they were thinking that I was HIV positive.
"There was also a strange reaction even among my clients. Sometimes when I am saying 'I'm on Prep' they don't want to listen."
Julia said she had since become "very picky" about her clients and asks them about their status.
"I am trying to educate them a bit about Prep and that it exists."
You might also be interested in
The man who saved thousands of people from HIV
'Having sex five times a day wasn't enough'
'The first time I had sex I contracted HIV'
Women's HIV charity the Sophia Forum said the trial was not being promoted enough to women and other groups at risk.
"For women vulnerable to acquiring HIV, it is not in their magazines or conversations they are having with their friends," said trustee Jackie Stevenson, whose charity which has created the campaign Women and Prep.
"Public Health England figures show we are still doing badly at even offering women a HIV test - if we can't offer them a test, who is going to talk to them about Prep?"
What is Prep?
Pre-exposure prophylaxis is a pill taken daily or on demand prior to having sex, to prevent HIV infection.
If taken consistently, when a condom is not worn and someone comes into contact with HIV, it will protect cells in the body and disable the virus to stop it multiplying.
The UK Medical Research Council-run Proud study, comparing gay men on Prep against non-users, found an 86% fall in new HIV infections in Prep users. Many in the sexual health sector say Prep, when taken correctly, is almost 100% effective.
The drug is aimed at men who have sex with men without a condom as well as others at high risk, including HIV-negative partners of individuals with HIV that is not virally suppressed.
Researchers are currently assessing demand for the drug and its effect on the number of new HIV infections in England.
Some gay and bisexual men and trans women are eligible to receive Prep on prescription through the trial, along with heterosexual people at high risk.
Responding to a request for comment for this article, NHS England said it was planning to fund a further 13,000 places on the trial.
The trial itself is controversial as Prep is provided on the NHS in Scotland and via an uncapped study in Wales.
Initially, NHS England said it was up to local authorities to provide the drug.
Currently, 42 trial centres across England have filled their places for gay and bisexual men.
The National Aids Trust, which forced NHS England to provide Prep after taking it to the High Court, said it was concerned people had been turned away.
"Clinicians are now speaking with distress about seeing people getting HIV, which could have been prevented had they been on the Prep trial," the charity's director of strategy, Yusef Azad, said before the additional places were announced.
At the Whittall Street Clinic in Birmingham, there is a waiting list until May to get on the trial.
The clinic's HIV consultant David White explained: "If this wasn't a research project we could put more people on Prep and we could do it in a wider geographical area."
He said the biggest demand came from gay men.
"If you look at the other high-risk groups, we have higher numbers than other centres but that's because we are trying to engage other communities."
Dr White, from Birmingham, said only a handful of people on the city's trial were black African men and women, despite an estimated 25,000 diagnosed as living with HIV in the UK, according to Public Health England.
He puts this down to many reasons, including stigma around HIV in the African community.
In the north of England, 13 trial clinics, including in Hull and Bradford, have not started giving out Prep, despite the trial starting in 2017.
"It puts pressure on places like Leeds, where people from areas with no access to Prep are registering," said Tom Doyle, who heads sexual health organisation Yorkshire Mesmac.
"So there is now no space left on the trial in Leeds."
He pins the problem on the trial focusing on maintaining those sites already up and running.
He added: "On the trial's community advisory board, we spend a lot of time to make access to Prep equitable, but it really is not in parts of England."
Those not able to get on the trial can buy generic Prep from about £20 a month, cheaper than the branded Prep Truvada. An estimated 10,000 people are self-sourcing, according to website I Want Prep Now.
The Terrence Higgins Trust has launched a fund to give the drug to 1,000 people on no or low incomes who cannot get on the trial or buy it themselves.
Ian Green, CEO, said: "Quite frankly, it is a scandal a charity is having to help people buy their own Prep; what we should be doing and are doing is putting pressure on NHS England to commission Prep.
"What we know is that [the] lifetime cost of treating someone with HIV is over £300,000. The cost of generic Prep is around £20 a month, so it is absolutely cost effective."
The full results of the trial will be available in early 2021.
In an open letter last month, MPs and peers called on public health minister Steve Brine to urgently expand access to Prep in England.
Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who last month revealed in a speech to the Commons that he's living with HIV, said a cliff-edge scenario was approaching.
"We know of people who have become infected with HIV because they cannot access this HIV game-changer," he said.
"I want to see Prep have a long-term home as part of sexual health services, but in the meantime, NHS England and local authorities must act now and agree to increased places on the trial."
NHS England described the trial as a "huge success with over 10,000 participants", and said the increase in places was important for addressing questions from the trial about the need for Prep among women and other groups.
In a statement issued on Friday, director of specialised commissioning for NHS England John Stewart said: "The trial researchers have submitted a case for increasing trial places and NHS England will play its part in delivering on this recommendation by committing to fund additional places in line with existing funding arrangements.
"This will help ensure the learning from the trial is robust enough to fully inform the planning of a national Prep programme in partnership with local authorities for the future, as well as protecting more people from HIV right now."
The Trial Oversight Board - this includes local authorities, which fund part of the trial - will make a decision later this month whether to pass the proposal to double places on the trial to 26,000.
It will then be up to individual local authorities to determine how many additional places they take up.
In reaction, sexual health charities including the National Aid Trust welcomed the proposal.
Its chief executive Deborah Gold said: "It's crucial that the Trial Oversight Board approves this measure, so that we can move swiftly on to the great deal of remaining work to be done in making sure that everyone who might benefit - especially women and heterosexual men - hears the news that there's now an effective HIV prevention pill."
|
Charles Aznavour was an unlikely heartthrob. | He stood just 5ft 3in (1.6m) tall and was almost 50 before he had his first hit in Britain.
In a career spanning 80 years, he wrote more than 1,200 songs, including the classic tearjerker She.
And he was lauded in his home country, where he was once dubbed France's Frank Sinatra.
Varenagh Aznavourian was born in Paris in May 1924, the son of Armenian immigrants who had fled from persecution in Turkey and were staying in the French capital temporarily while waiting for a US visa.
Forced by lack of money to give up school at the age of nine, he was determined to be an entertainer and by 11 he was playing child roles at the Theatre Marigny.
In 1941 he teamed up with another actor, Pierre Roche, to write songs, and in a nine-year partnership they wrote for Maurice Chevalier, Gilbert Becaud and Edith Piaf.
His big break came when Piaf, who had admired his voice, invited him to accompany her on a tour, first of France and then of the United States.
With her encouragement, Aznavour launched himself on a solo career in 1950, singing his own songs.
Multi-lingual
His stage performances were described as the epitome of French romance, but one critic wrote: "To put one's self before the public with such a voice and such a physique is pure folly."
But Aznavour's mournful love songs, delivered by his throaty tenor voice, did catch on, and in 1955 success came with the song Sur Ma Vie.
In 1965 he opened the first of his long-running one-man shows at the Olympia Music Hall in Paris, singing 30 of his own songs.
His first hit in Britain was The Old-Fashioned Way, in 1973, followed by She in 1975.
His linguistic ability - he could sing in more than six languages - made him popular around the world.
His success, including worldwide sales of more than 180 million records, brought wealth, and he lived in Switzerland for many years.
Armenian earthquake
In 1977 a French court fined him about £1m ($1.3m), with a suspended one-year jail sentence, for tax evasion and currency offences.
The following year he was ordered to pay £1m in tax arrears.
Aznavour combined singing with his acting career, and appeared in more than 60 films. In 1982 he played himself as a struggling composer in the film Edith et Marcel, based on Piaf's romance with a boxer.
In 1988, in response to the earthquake in Armenia, he formed his own charity to help the victims, including composing a song that featured a string of top French performers and topped the charts for more than four months.
"What is important to Armenia," he once said, "is important for us."
He took a deep interest in politics. During the 1992 French presidential elections he encouraged people to sing La Marseillaise in public to protest against the right-wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had made it to the run-offs.
He also campaigned vigorously for an extension of copyright law to protect the work of artists, authors and composers.
Aznavour had neither a great voice nor film-star looks but he did have immense songwriting talent coupled with a mesmerising stage presence.
Along with Piaf and Chevalier he was one of France's greatest singing stars.
|
A main road in the centre of Bath had to close after a fisherman discovered a suspected hand grenade. | Bomb disposal officers were called to the Kennet and Avon Canal near Bathwick Hill shortly after 13:30 GMT.
Avon and Somerset Police said an object, believed to be a World War Two hand grenade, had been discovered by a man who was magnet fishing.
The device was taken away for detonation elsewhere and Bathwick Hill was reopened after about two hours.
Related Internet Links
Avon and Somerset Police
|
Scotland's First Minster Alex Salmond will face head of Better Together campaign Alistair Darling in a live televised debate on Scottish independence later. It will be broadcast by STV in Scotland and online. But do TV debates influence voters? | By Esther WebberBBC News
It's been billed as the most important piece of televised political theatre in Scotland's history.
For two hours between 20:00 BST and 22:00 BST, the figureheads of the "Yes" and "No" campaigns will participate in a head-to-head showdown in a bid to win over hearts and minds before the referendum on 18 September, when voters will be asked the yes/no question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"
There's already been drama over the line-up. Mr Salmond repeatedly called for UK Prime Minister David Cameron to face him in the debate, calling him "feart" when he rejected the invitation. Mr Cameron said as leader of the pro-UK campaign, Mr Darling was the man for the job.
Then there was a wrangling over the date. Now there's the much-anticipated spectacle of a live debate. A silver-tongued swipe at the opposition can gain admiration. An ill-timed stumble or an embarrassing gaffe can send a campaign into an tailspin.
Both protagonists have experience in the field. The leader of the SNP faced other Scottish party leaders in a debate before the Holyrood elections in 2011 and Mr Darling has been a familiar face on the small screen as a former Scotland Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
But how much do televised debates matter?
Tom Mludzinski, head of political polling at ComRes - which organised the responsive "worm" that tracked audience reactions to the leaders' debates before the general election in 2010 - says the one thing TV debates guarantee is a wider audience - "viewers who wouldn't normally watch political programmes".
"It can be a particular help where things are unknown - that's what we saw with Nick Clegg [ahead of the 2010 British general election]. He had a much lower profile back then, and that exposure created the 'I agree with Nick' phenomenon and so-called Clegg-mania," he says.
Following that logic, Mr Mludzinski argues that "there is more to gain for Darling, who's perhaps less well-known as an orator and has the chance to make a good impression".
However, Scott Macnab, a political correspondent for the Scotsman, says the SNP leader will also be hoping to gain some ground.
"The polls are against Alex Salmond. He's the one who really has to make it happen. If Mr Darling and Mr Salmond came out level-pegging, I suspect the Better Together people would be pretty happy with that. For Alistair Darling, it's a case of damage limitation," he says.
There is also more of a risk of Mr Salmond's personality eclipsing the campaign on the "Yes" side, he argues, since the first minister is "a love-hate figure".
"He will have to show that independence will be better for the people of Scotland - in terms of the economy, healthcare et cetera - in order to avoid it being a referendum on Alex Salmond," he says.
But if either man turns out to be a smash hit with viewers, would it make people more likely to vote for their cause? And would a gaffe have the opposite impact?
Mr Clegg's rating jumped from just under 20% to fluctuating between 28% and 33% after the three televised leader debates before the British general election, but his TV appearance didn't translate into as many votes as he might have hoped - the Lib Dems went from 62 seats to 57.
But the public response to his performance was "useful all the same", Mr Mludzinski says, "since it helped give him the credibility he needed going into the negotiations that led to the coalition being formed".
Some televised debates across the Atlantic in the US - where they are more widespread - have had more impact.
Texas governor Rick Perry was a much-fancied contender in the 2011 race for the Republican nomination before he decided to list the three government departments he would axe if he made it to the White House in a TV debate. The trouble was, he could only remember two of them. He withdrew from the race shortly afterwards.
And in the first US presidential TV debate in 1960, Republican nominee Richard Nixon famously lost out on the presidency after many thought he appeared sweaty and shifty next to a polished and confident John F Kennedy.
However, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, says in general, TV debates in the US "don't have a great deal of impact on the way people vote".
"Where it does make a difference is for the minority of voters who've not made up their minds or who don't have strong partisan ties - and also where the race is very close," she says.
In the case of the referendum, Mr Macnab thinks it will be difficult for either side to produce a trump card to woo the undecided since "everything's already out there" - something that those that feel there are still many unanswered questions would challenge.
But if debates only make a difference in a small number of cases, why do broadcasters and politicians hold them?
In addition to trying to reach and inform more voters, they also help make politicians more accessible and give an insight into how they might deal with different policies, Prof Jamieson argues.
"While they might not make people switch sides, we know debates help people learn how candidates would govern and how they would handle certain issues - they're very useful in tying campaigns to governance," he says.
So would Scots like to see their politicians on TV more often?
Mr Macnab is sceptical.
"It's been a very long campaign and most people are getting a little weary of it. Watching the Commonwealth Games has been a welcome break," he says.
The debate's viewing figures might be the best indicator of how many people are engaged - or have already switched off.
The debate will be shown on STV on Tuesday 5 August at 20:00 BST.
|
The prime minister has announced new plans to seize the wages of illegal workers as proceeds of crime as part of a new immigration strategy. But how does the UK go about recovering the proceeds of crime, and what challenges might the new plans throw up? | By Emma AilesBBC News
What counts as the "proceeds of crime"?
Any money earned as a result of, or in connection with, an offence can be recovered under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
That also includes assets bought with the proceeds of crime - a red Ferrari and a Bentley Continental car, jewellery, watches and properties within London and the Home Counties are among assets recovered by the Metropolitan Police in the last five years.
Previously, if a person gained a job by deception - for example using a fake passport - any money they earned in wages might be considered proceeds of crime, and therefore eligible for confiscation.
However, people in the country illegally, but who had not obtained a job by deception (for example if their employer knew they were here illegally), would not be pursued for their wages.
The government plans to create a new offence of "illegal working" to change that.
How are the proceeds of crime recovered?
Simply speaking, there are two ways that the proceeds of crime can be reclaimed.
Firstly, anyone convicted of a crime can be ordered to pay. The court would calculate how much they were required to hand over, and a person might face prison if they failed to pay.
Secondly, the police can seize £1,000 or more cash on the spot if they have reason to think someone might have earned it through illegal activity. No criminal conviction is required.
A court would then decide whether that money was indeed earned from criminal activity, and whether it should be forfeited permanently.
The UK authorities can still go after people's assets even if they are abroad, for example by asking the overseas jurisdiction to freeze or sell them.
Where does the money go?
The police are able to claim some of the confiscated money and assets back to reinvest into policing, through an incentive scheme.
For confiscations of assets rather than cash, the Home Office gets half and the other half is spilt equally between the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the courts.
Where cash is seized, the Home Office gets half and the police get half.
In some cases, a judge can decide to award a percentage of any confiscated money to the victims of crime as compensation. There have also been schemes where seized money has been given to community schemes.
How effective is the law?
The Metropolitan Police argues that being able to confiscate the proceeds of crime acts as a deterrent to "acquisitive criminals", such as burglars, because the risk that their ill-gotten gains will be seized begins to outweigh the potential monetary gains.
Officers also claim it helps disrupt "negative role models who have lots of money but don't work" - and that targeting their assets shows them, and the public, that "crime doesn't pay".
As of December 2014, there were 1,244 live confiscation orders under the responsibility of the Crown Prosecution Service, amounting to nearly £500 million, of which 31.5% was deemed "collectable".
According to barrister Will Hayes, who specialises in asset forfeiture, the courts are generally quite successful in recovering the proceeds of crime - but there are challenges.
"Criminals hide their assets very effectively, often overseas, and in some cases jurisdictions might not be very cooperative," he says.
And in some cases, people choose to spend the extra time in prison rather than pay up, he adds.
When it comes to pursuing the wages of illegal workers, he suggests money could prove difficult to recover.
"One would think they're going to be fairly low level modest wages. If you're talking about low sums of money, You've got to think about how much it costs to instruct a lawyer and take something through the courts."
He says there have been some recent successful cases where money was recovered from Eastern European nationals who defrauded the benefits system and bought houses overseas.
But he adds that there must be a "balancing act" to weigh up whether cases are worth pursuing.
|
Looking at a map, Cheshire might appear to be on the fringes of the Northern Powerhouse, but officials in the county say it's actually the Gateway to it - bringing in commuters and investment. | By Phil McCannCheshire Political Reporter, BBC News
Cheshire is home to major employers in science and manufacturing, housing developers are eager - some would say too eager - to build new homes, and it could soon have two high-speed rail stations.
The presence of the Northern Powerhouse's chief architect, Chancellor George Osborne, as the MP for Tatton, means there is the will within Whitehall for Cheshire to benefit from devolution.
The Powerhouse allows Cheshire companies "to be part of something far greater", according to Cygnet Group chief executive Matthew Kimpton-Smith.
His Northwich firm sells specialist machinery, predominantly to China and the United States. He says the Northern Powerhouse gives his company "real power, real punch" on the world stage.
But Cheshire has been beaten in the race to take on devolved powers.
Officials have had to watch as devolution deals were done with the noisy neighbours in Manchester and Liverpool. They've even lost territory as the Cheshire borough of Halton decided to become part of the Liverpool city region.
'Poisoned chalice?'
Over the summer, anxious to avoid being left behind, the two councils in the east and west of Cheshire, plus Warrington, hurriedly put together their own devolution bid to meet a tight government timetable.
Warrington Borough Council's chief executive Steven Broomhead, who used to run the Northwest Regional Development Agency, said the bid wouldn't just "enhance and grow" the county's economy - it would allow the borough to escape the influence of its neighbours' elected mayors.
But as city regions have so far been the only places to have agreed deals, there's a lack of clarity over what a Cheshire deal might look like.
It seems so unclear that the leader of Warrington Borough Council, Terry O'Neill, recently said his authority wasn't sure whether devolution would be "a poisoned chalice or an opportunity".
A report by the think tank IPPR North seems to acknowledge this, calling for "greater clarification of the purpose, process and timescale" of devolution deals for counties.
It's also not clear whether the government will insist on a Cheshire elected mayor.
Until there are firm answers to questions like those, the county's Powerhouse ambitions may just be held back.
|
The wife of the ex-mayor of the Mexican town where 43 students disappeared in September is to be tried on suspicion of being involved in organised crime. | But a federal court statement made no mention of any charges in connection with the students' disappearance.
The Mexican government says Maria de los Angeles Pineda and her husband, the former mayor of Iguala, handed the students over to a local drug gang.
Investigators say the gang then killed the students and burned their bodies.
Federal investigators blamed Jose Luis Abarca and Maria de los Angeles Pineda for ordering local police to hand the students over to members of a local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos.
A court statement said a judge had found evidence Ms Pineda had been acting as a financial intermediary for the gang and had helped protect it.
Her lawyer did not comment.
|
Whichever part of Europe I travel to at the moment, I find myself faced with political and business leaders desperate for intel on the UK, so that come the end of the interview I'm conducting, the tables are turned on me - to the tune of "Finished? OK, good. Now can you tell me anything about Brexit and the path the UK is going to take?" | Katya AdlerEurope editor@BBCkatyaadleron Twitter
Europeans are bemused, confused and hungry for information.
They listen to the prime minister, who says nothing has changed since the election, that she is carrying out the will of the British people... Yet Berlin, Brussels and Paris hear a cacophony of influential voices in and outside the Cabinet, who appear to be calling for all manner of things - hard Brexit, soft Brexit, an immigration-focused or a trade-led Brexit...
In the absence of being officially informed otherwise, the EU is framing its negotiating positions around the Article 50 letter Theresa May sent back in March, triggering the formal Brexit process and pointing to a UK departure from the European Customs Union and Single Market.
But Europeans ARE leaving wiggle room for other Brexit scenarios. The reason, they tell me: They fear Theresa May may well be a here today, gone tomorrow kind of prime minister, so they take her words and the words of her chief Brexit negotiator with a pinch of salt.
Brussels had hoped for a decisive result in last month's general election.
Eurocrats readily admit it was never their business which political party had the upper hand in the UK - that was a domestic issue - but what they did hope for, they told me, was for a strong prime minister to emerge, able to make concessions - some of them possibly painful ones - that the EU thinks will be necessary in order to reach a good Brexit deal.
The phrase Brexit means Brexit has now become a bit of a tongue-in-cheek catchphrase in European circles, to use when you have no idea what to say in a particular situation or you don't want to be drawn on the details of any particular subject.
Not that EU leaders are laughing about Brexit. There is little Schadenfreude about.
I was in Berlin recently, where many politicians are keen anglophiles - but more to the point they realise that if the UK economy nosedives that will have a considerable impact on the rest of Europe too.
You actually find quite a lot of sympathy in Germany for Theresa May and the political situation she finds herself in post-election.
German politicians are also mourning the loss of the UK from EU decision-making. The two countries were closely aligned when it came to attempts to complete the single market, and make the EU more streamlined and competitive. Now Germany fears more protectionist Mediterranean nations may gain the upper hand.
But the UK says it is leaving and there is little appetite in Berlin to make huge concessions. Germany is concerned with the EU's future.
Angela Merkel insists life outside the EU cannot be seen to be more attractive than inside. There cannot be having your cake and eating it for the UK - leaving the EU but just keeping the convenient bits - otherwise, she fears, other countries might be tempted to walk out too.
There is a wholesale rejection at German government level of the idea that a favourable trade deal will be done with the UK to keep up German car sales.
You just don't understand how we Germans think, one high-level contact told me. Europe was Germany's chance of a new beginning, a new respectability after the horrors of the Nazi times - European Unity comes first, before any car sales. European politics trump trade and economics, he said.
Of course Angela Merkel would love Brexit not to happen. I haven't met a European leader yet who was happy about Brexit. But Berlin thinks a reversal is unlikely - however much Wolfgang Schauble, the German finance minister, repeats out loud that the door is always open.
His finance ministry is preparing for a huge row this autumn over what it sees as financial commitments the UK must honour when it leaves, and what the UK views as an EU exit bill.
The EU is factoring in flexibility over the final amount to be paid, but Berlin is unsure the UK government can sell any amount to the British public.
There was no talk before the referendum that Brexit would cost the British taxpayer money, one high-level source told me - so how will they react? They were just told leave the hideous EU and everything will be great.
It's hard to find an upbeat mainstream European voice when it comes to Brexit; most leading politicians fear everyone will come off worse.
The talk of the town right now is rather sartorial in tone. If negotiations are successful - and after a still-to-be-agreed transition period - Eurocrats speak of a tailor-made rather than an off-the-shelf deal with the UK, as in a specially-designed deal rather than a copy of the EU's agreement with Norway, Canada or Turkey for example.
European businesses - like UK ones - are being warned of the possibility of a so-called cliff-edge, no-deal scenario. But my talks with leaders across the continent make clear: the Europeans want a deal with the UK. They need a deal, they'll work towards a deal - but, they insist - not at any price.
|
Wales' football team has departed the country as their Euro 2016 preparations reach a climax. | The side's appearance in France will be its first at a major tournament since the 1958 World Cup.
Players and coaches left their base at the Vale Resort, Vale of Glamorgan, on Saturday and headed to Cardiff Airport.
After a send-off from pupils from Ysgol Treganna, Cardiff, the team took off for a friendly in Sweden on Sunday.
They will then head to France ahead of the team's first game of the tournament against Slovakia on 11 June.
|
The grim task of forensic science and the glamour of jewellery may seem worlds apart. But for Maria Maclennan, the world's first forensic jeweller, the pair can be a perfect match in unravelling the secrets of the dead. | By Graeme OgstonBBC Scotland Tayside and Central reporter
Ms Maclennan, 27, a Dundee PhD student, has spent the past five years helping investigators identify victims by studying jewellery found at crime scenes or disaster sites.
These include the Germanwings crash site in the French Alps in March last year and the Mozambican airliner which crashed in Namibia in 2013.
Ms Maclennan, who grew up in Muir of Ord, will complete her four-year PhD project in forensic jewellery at Dundee's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in October.
She said: "What seemingly might be two quite opposite fields are not as distant as one might think.
"They involve experts with training looking at real detail that other untrained eyes might miss and looking at them in a way we can glean information about an individual and perhaps their life and family.
"Jewellers have been intrigued for centuries by the notion of identity in the human body and why people wear jewellery and its symbolic nature and traditions."
Vital clues
After studying jewellery at art college, Ms Maclennan worked with designers, forensic anthropologists and police officers during her Masters degree on a project at Dundee University's renowned Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification.
This involved working on a jewellery database classification system to assist victims' families trying to describe individual items.
Ms Maclennan said: "It opened up jewellery and human identity in a way I hadn't thought about.
"I took elements of that research forward into a PHD proposal.
"I just got really fascinated with the research and felt that we'd maybe been missing a trick, that these two disciplines had not really spoken."
Jewellery can withstand high-impact, extreme-temperature environments associated with disasters such as plane crashes, leaving vital clues for investigators.
Ms Maclennan said: "I was deployed over the last couple of years for various mass fatalities, mainly aviation crashes but also building collapses.
"One of the companies I work with on a freelance basis is a disaster response company, so I'm part of a database of experts.
"Certainly through the contacts I've made and the people I've worked with, I now know that there's a need for the research."
'Microscopic level'
Closer to home, Ms Maclennan has also been contacted by murder investigators who have found jewellery at a crime scene.
She said: "Particular engravings or personal inscriptions might have some clues as to who the owner was.
"Equally, there are a lot of genealogical markings, serial numbers and inscriptions that appear at microscopic level on gemstones and watches.
"When they are brought in to be repaired, all these little marks all link, in some way, the jewellery to a particular location.
"Some of the research was on hallmarks and how they might be able to narrow down where an item was made and who made it."
Ms Maclennan will give a talk on forensic jewellery at the Dundee International Design Festival on 28 May.
She said: "It seemed to me there was a lot of knowledge in the jewellery industry that might be of benefit in the forensic context that perhaps wasn't being tapped into.
"I'm always very open with people and say it's a very exploratory and new field and I'm using the PhD to explore the potential and try and create a basis for further research.
"I think coining the phrase "forensic jeweller" really did help in engaging the scientific and design communities and how they responded to the idea of these two fields working together."
|
Here is a round up of the key points around the country so far:
| English councils:
Welsh councils:
Mayoral referendums:
Scottish councils:
London:
• All the latest election results are available at bbc.co.uk/vote2012
|
Thousands of people have had sexually explicit photos and videos of themselves published on the internet without their consent. So why have only a small number of revenge porn perpetrators been prosecuted, and how is the law catching up with them? | By Caroline LowbridgeBBC News
While the term "revenge porn" is new, the concept of distributing sexual images of a former partner is not. Before the internet, photos or homemade sex tapes were posted through the doors of friends and relatives.
And there have been reports of vengeful exes submitting photos to pornographic magazines since at least the 1980s.
Numerous celebrities have also had sex tapes released by former partners without their permission. But campaigners say there has been an explosion in revenge porn over the past few years, largely because of the impact of new technology.
A smartphone can be used to make pornographic videos or photos, which can then be shared on social media or revenge porn websites when a relationship breaks down.
This is what happened to Hazel Higgleton in July 2013, after she split up with her boyfriend.
"I'm sure he put the video on every porn site he could possibly put it on, and then it just went viral and spread everywhere," said Hazel, 25.
"I thought it was something that happens to celebrities. I didn't think it would be an issue for people like me."
Miss Higgleton, from Chelmsford in Essex, said the police were very sympathetic when she reported what she believed was a crime.
However, like many victims of revenge porn, she was told no legal action could be taken.
"They were so nice about it but they were upset themselves that they couldn't do anything about it," said Miss Higgleton.
"They thought it was terrible that nothing could be done about it, and they believed something had to be changed because they thought it was a very bad thing."
Revenge porn is now being made a specific offence in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill and the government expects this to become law at some point in 2015, subject to the Parliamentary process.
However, revenge porn can already be prosecuted under several existing laws.
Prosecuting revenge porn
Find out more from the Crown Prosecution Service
Luke King, from Nottingham, was jailed for harassment in November, after sharing an explicit photo of his former girlfriend using the messaging service WhatsApp.
It was thought to be one of the first revenge porn prosecutions.
Janine Smith, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the East Midlands, hopes it will encourage other victims to report incidents to police.
"Victims don't necessarily understand it's a criminal offence and so this is why it's really good the case has been highlighted," she said.
"Obviously it's traumatic and terrible for the victim but it will say to tomorrow's suspect or tomorrow's victim that we take these cases really seriously."
So why was Luke King prosecuted, while police told Hazel Higgleton that no action could be taken against her ex?
Essex Police was asked to comment but said it was unable to find a record of the incident.
Ms Smith said it would not be fair for her to comment on the police but said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) "can certainly make sure that we raise awareness within the police".
"We could just highlight our guidance to them, so they are completely aware of our position," she said.
The CPS updated its legal guidance in October to explain how revenge porn cases could be prosecuted.
The law has not changed but the guidance has clarified the different legislation under which a perpetrator could be charged.
Notable cases
Another victim, who asked to be known as Ann, experienced the same problem as Ms Higgleton when she complained to police.
Her ex-boyfriend had been posting naked photos of her on Tumblr for six months when she reported him.
"When I told the police officer he was kind of like 'Oh that's a bit bad, but I'm not sure what that is, or what we could do about it'," said Ann, aged 21.
She wants revenge porn to become a specific offence, but believes the updated CPS guidance will help other victims in the meantime.
"There are cases such as mine which probably could have been covered under harassment because it was done multiple times, but the police were just unaware of how to deal with cases like that," she said.
"I didn't even know the term revenge porn when it happened to me but I started searching for it and found whole websites with thousands and thousands of images on.
"There are over 30 websites solely dedicated to it just in the UK, which is terrifying."
The people featured on the websites - the vast majority of them women - often receive little sympathy.
Holly Jacobs, founder of the international campaign End Revenge Porn, said they were frequently "slut-shamed" and blamed, even by friends and relatives.
"They blame the victim for taking the photos or creating the video in the first place and sharing it with somebody," said Ms Jacobs.
When a sex tape of celebrity Tulisa Contostavlos was released in 2012, she was mainly described on social media as a "slut", "whore" and "slag" rather than as a victim.
One newspaper columnist later asked if she should "take her own share of responsibility" for the tape, which was filmed and leaked by her ex-boyfriend.
But Ms Jacobs believes blame is gradually shifting from victims to perpetrators.
"I think that's in part due to victims speaking up and talking about their experiences, and also getting laws put in place," she said.
End Revenge Porn campaigns for laws in the US and internationally.
"When a law is put in place against a certain act, it sends a message to society that this is a behaviour that won't be tolerated and that is not acceptable," said Ms Jacobs.
Ann said attitudes towards revenge porn had changed, comparing the response when Paris Hilton's sex tape was leaked in 2004 with the release of naked photos of celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence 10 years later.
"With people like Jennifer Lawrence, the main media narrative 'was this is horrific and shouldn't have happened', whereas in previous years, with sex tapes of Paris Hilton and others being released, there wasn't that narrative that this is an abuse," she said.
The Jennifer Lawrence photos were obtained through hacking but the Paris Hilton tape was released by her ex-boyfriend.
"[Then] it was more kind of like 'Oh look at her, she's a bit of a slut'. Now it's like 'Whoa, this is horrendous and this is non-consensual. Stop'."
Despite her own disappointing experience when she went to police, Hazel Higgleton would encourage other victims to seek help.
"It's not you that's in the wrong and you should not blame yourself," she said.
"The other person is only at blame. You should always try and get justice."
Origins of the term "revenge porn"
Research by Jonathan Dent, an assistant editor for the Oxford English Dictionary
|
A ferry has crashed into the same harbour pier that damaged the freight vessel it was brought in to replace.
| The MV Clipper Ranger, which serves the Ullapool to Isle of Lewis route, was withdrawn from service after last month's incident in Stornoway.
Its replacement, the MV Hebridean Isles, is also now undergoing repairs after hitting the same pier.
Ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne said the Hebridean Isles should be back in service later on Wednesday.
The Clipper Ranger is in dry dock for repairs to its hull.
It had 19 crew and 10 passengers on board when it struck the pier. No-one was hurt.
Related Internet Links
Caledonian MacBrayne
Geograph
|
A preferred bidder has been chosen for redevelopment work to ease traffic flow on a notorious Aberdeen roundabout. | Users of the Haudagain roundabout often face traffic-related delays.
The so-called Middlefield Triangle will be created when a connecting road is built between North Anderson Drive and Auchmill Road.
Aberdeen City Council said Dandara had been selected as the preferred bidder following a decision by the city growth and resources committee.
Housing enclosed by the roads is being demolished.
Related Internet Links
Transport Scotland
|
It's almost impossible to log onto social media without seeing a friend, a relative - or a barely-remembered acquaintance - asking you to sign a petition about some issue of the day. | By Alex PartridgeBBC Parliament
If the petition is being hosted on Parliament's official website there's another inducement to sign. If you get more than 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in Parliament.
Except… your petition might not get debated.
In the current Parliament, 11 well-supported petitions have been rejected by the Petitions Committee. The committee rejects petitions if it believes that the UK government cannot do anything about the issue (the reason it said no to a petition calling for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes, for instance).
But if the Petitions Committee decides that the UK government can do something about your petition, and you've got support, you're in.
A debate on the green benches in the mother of all parliaments is yours.
Except it isn't, because your debate will be held in Westminster Hall, which is best described as an annexe to the main House of Commons chamber.
Debates taking place in Westminster Hall can be thinly attended. In Monday's debate on a number of Brexit petitions there were, at most, around 14 MPs in the room, the other 630 sitting MPs having judged that they had better places to be. So if you were hoping your debate would get your issue noticed among MPs, you may be out of luck.
But you'll get an MP to introduce your debate, and fight your corner. Except they won't necessarily do so. Sutton and Cheam MP Paul Scully introduced Monday's Brexit debate but flat-out disagreed with a number of the petitions being discussed.
He played a similar role during a debate last year on an e-petition entitled "stop allowing immigrants into the UK".
What you do get is a minister who'll have to show up and explain government thinking on your issue.
Don't expect them to have good news for you, however.
There's a reason you've had to fight for the support of 100,000 of your fellow citizens - and get past the Petitions Committee - to get this far. At best, a minister will politely tell you that the government notes your concerns, and then give a justification of current government policy.
Essentially, many of the issues that come up for debate, because of a petition, will not be made law because they are very far off from the values or aims of the current government.
Perhaps more ministers should be as straightforward as then Home Office Minister Mike Penning, who told a debate on legalising cannabis last year that "I will not stand here and say, 'We are going to legalise cannabis'."
So after all that, what have you got? A polite recognition by a minister. And an airing of the issue, in front of a handful of MPs. Publicity for your cause.
Take another look look at the issues debated because of petitions in this Parliament: get rid of Jeremy Hunt, legalise cannabis, stop all immigration, stop the imposition of the junior doctors contract. Many of them appear to be lost causes.
Except one. On 30 November 2015, MPs debated introducing a sugar tax, in response to a petition signed by over 155,000 people.
The debate was well attended, the arguments passionate and overwhelmingly in favour of doing so. But minister Jane Ellison told it to MPs straight. The government had "no plans" to introduce a sugar tax. It would announce its obesity strategy at a later date.
And then in his March 2016 budget, the then Chancellor George Osborne announced a levy on soft drinks manufacturers, linked to the amount of sugary drinks they sell. A policy very much like a sugar tax.
So maybe it is worth signing that petition after all.
|
For years the families of victims of the Hillsborough stadium disaster have been searching for justice, looking to uncover a conspiracy to conceal the truth. Now new inquests have concluded the 96 victims were unlawfully killed. | By Judith MoritzNorth of England correspondent
Tapping phones. Doctoring evidence. Intimidating witnesses.
Not the sort of thing you expect of the authorities in modern-day Britain. But ask the families of those who died at Hillsborough, and they'll tell you that's exactly what has happened.
For years they weren't believed. Even treated as paranoid.
There have been inquiries, investigations and inquests, but for more than a quarter of a century the families have fought to separate truth from myth.
The disaster
Andrew Brookes and Henry Burke never met. One was a car worker from Bromsgrove, the other a roofing contractor from Liverpool. Andrew was 26 and single; Henry was 47, and a father of three.
Both men had a passion for Liverpool Football Club. From the Midlands and from Merseyside, they each followed their team to Sheffield, to watch the Reds play Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semi-final. And so it was that, on 15 April 1989, they came to be standing yards away from each other inside Pen Three on the Leppings Lane terrace at the Hillsborough ground.
It was a glorious day. The prize for the winning team - a trip to Wembley for the FA Cup Final.
It was the third consecutive time that the Football Association had chosen Hillsborough to stage a semi-final. The year before, the same two teams had played each other there at the same stage of the competition.
Andrew Brookes and Henry Burke made the journey to Sheffield with 24,000 other Liverpool supporters from all over the country.
The problems began outside the ground, as the numbers waiting to get in built up. The Liverpool fans had access to fewer than half the number of turnstiles that the Forest supporters did.
With the crowd pressure at the Leppings Lane entrance growing, the officer in charge of that area radioed for the wide exit gates to be opened. At 14:52 the match commander, Ch Supt David Duckenfield, gave the order for that to happen. More than 2,000 Liverpool supporters flooded through exit gate "C" in five minutes.
They headed down the central tunnel which led to the standing terraces that were divided into fenced pens. The two pens directly behind the goal were already full. The crush which developed quickly became fatal. Neither Andrew Brookes nor Henry Burke would escape.
When Andrew died, his sister Louise was 17. Henry's daughter Christine was 23. The women would never have met, but for their common bereavement. Now they consider themselves "Hillsborough sisters".
Louise Brookes says that after 27 years the women are "like family but without the genes". She has also become close to Donna Miller, who lost her 19-year-old brother Paul Carlile, a plasterer from Kirkby on Merseyside.
"The bonds we've formed are unique," says Louise. "We do laugh and wonder 'what would our loved ones think?'"
She adds that together they've had to "fight tooth and nail" for their relatives.
There were 89 men and boys who were killed in the crush at Hillsborough. Seven women, aged between 15 and 38, died alongside them. The 96 were of all ages and backgrounds.
Rose Robinson, whose 17-year-old son Steven died in the crush, has described the Hillsborough families as "a club that you're in but you don't want to belong to".
That club began to form just weeks after the disaster. Travelling to and from Lord Justice Taylor's public inquiry, some families decided that they should organise themselves formally, and thus in May 1989 the Hillsborough Family Support Group was born.
Who were the 96 victims?
Read profiles of all those who died in the disaster
How the disaster unfolded
What the police chief knew
Five key mistakes
Families and players react to conclusions
Margaret Aspinall, mother of 18-year-old James, was one of the founding members and is the group's current chairwoman.
"I remember saying, 'I don't want to meet any families. They're not going to feel the way I feel. They can't have loved theirs like I loved mine'.
"But I got encouraged to go. And when I went along, I saw the pain, the grief, and the heartache, people still crying… I wasn't the only one. We were going to have a fight on our hands here. Especially after that headline."
Spin, lies and headlines
The families were in the early stages of grief, still coming to terms with their loss. But it became mixed with anger almost immediately, borne out of the suspicion that their loved ones were being set up to take the blame for their own deaths.
The headline Margaret Aspinall refers to was splashed across the top of Britain's biggest-selling newspaper, the Sun. Four days after the disaster, it printed an article under a banner reading "The Truth". It falsely accused Liverpool fans of attacking police and robbing the dead.
Margaret recalls the immediate effect it had. "Somebody showed me the headlines of this newspaper and I thought 'oh my God they're going to blame [those who died] and the fans. We've got to do something about it. We can't allow this to happen."
Jenni Hicks and her then husband Trevor were also founder members of the group. They'd travelled to the match with their two teenage daughters Sarah and Victoria, who both died.
Jenni says: "You have to remember how football fans were looked at in the 70s and 80s. They had a terribly bad reputation then, so really the fans who died at Hillsborough, and the supporters, were prime targets."
That was a concern of Peter Joynes, whose son Nicholas died, aged 27. He remembers the families meeting Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
"I was introduced to Mrs Thatcher, and she said: 'Do you have anything to say?' I said: 'It seems there will be a cover-up.' She said in her drawl: 'Mr Joynes, I can assure you there will be no cover-up', and I'm here years on still thinking there was a cover-up that day."
Barry Devonside was at the match at Hillsborough with his 18-year-old son Christopher. They had chosen to watch the game from different parts of the ground.
Barry was sitting in the North Stand, but Christopher was behind the goal at the Leppings Lane end.
After the crush, Barry spent all afternoon searching frantically for him. It wasn't until late that night that he was taken to the club gymnasium, which had been set up as a temporary mortuary by the overwhelmed emergency services.
Christopher was brought out in a body bag for his father to identify. Barry remembers that he was then interviewed by two police officers. "They asked me: 'How did you travel here today? Did you stop on the way? Did you have a drink?' I asked: 'What's that got to do with identification?' I didn't believe what they were saying. I said: 'I know what the score is. Liverpool are going to take the blame for this. The Liverpool supporters.'"
It's been argued that the rush to blame the fans began hours earlier, when the match commander David Duckenfield lied to the FA within minutes of the crush. Although it was on his orders that the exit gate had been opened, he said it was the supporters who'd forced their way in.
The lie went around the world. It was repeated live on the BBC's Grandstand programme, then on TV news bulletins and it prompted some newspapers to fill their pages with claims of fan misbehaviour.
There were allegations that the fans had been drunk, had arrived late, had got into the ground without tickets. And worse.
Steve Kelly is a member of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign - another group which supports bereaved families and helps survivors. His brother Michael died in the Leppings Lane end. "My mother read the fact that somebody may have been urinating on my brother. Stealing from his body. Nobody did that. When they saw the Sun newspaper, Mrs Thatcher must have been rubbing her hands, thinking: 'Well, great, this backs us all up. They're just thugs, they're just scum.'"
Steve says he will never buy the Sun again, in line with a continuing boycott of the paper on Merseyside.
For many years the source of the Sun's story was unknown, but in 2012 the Hillsborough Independent Panel found that it was written up from copy filed by Whites News Agency in Sheffield. It was based on conversations agency staff had had with police officers. The agency also spoke to a local MP, Irvine Patnick, and the secretary of the South Yorkshire Police Federation, Paul Middup.
Giving evidence at the second Hillsborough inquests, Paul Middup maintained he had done nothing wrong and that he'd based his comments on what police officers had told him.
The Taylor interim report into the disaster published in August 1989 found "not a single witness" to support "any of these allegations". Lord Justice Taylor also expressed concern that the police had tried to vilify Liverpool fans.
Businessman John Barry, who lived in Sheffield, had witnessed the crush and seen bodies piling up at the Leppings Lane end. By coincidence, he was also studying on the same MBA business course as Norman Bettison, who was then a chief inspector with South Yorkshire Police. He later served as chief constable of both the Merseyside and West Yorkshire forces.
John Barry said that the men went to the pub with their course mates one evening a few weeks after the disaster. He told the inquest he remembers Ch Insp Bettison saying: "I've been asked by my senior officers to pull together the South Yorkshire Police evidence for the inquiry and we're going to try and concoct a story that all the Liverpool fans were drunk and that we were afraid they were going to break down the gates, so we decided to open them."
John Barry said: "I thought, 'why are you saying this to me?'. He knew I had been at the Leppings Lane end and he had seen the bodies piling up and had been totally traumatised by it."
In his evidence to the new inquests, Sir Norman Bettison agreed he had spoken to fellow students in the pub twice during the fortnight after the disaster in a "typical bar-room conversation" but said: "The comments that have been ascribed to me I would not make in a private or public situation."
The families spent more than 20 years claiming a cover-up had involved many police officers, as well as some politicians, and newspapers. But it wasn't until 2012 that their suspicions were given support, with the publication of the Hillsborough Independent Report. And it wasn't until the new inquests in 2015 that a court heard evidence about the subject.
Back in 1990, Lord Justice Taylor's interim report had concluded that hooliganism had played no part in the disaster, and that the main reason for it was "the failure of police control".
But although it exonerated the fans, and provided some comfort to the families, they say that because of the spin and adverse headlines, they have still been plagued by enormous reputational damage for 27 years.
Charlotte Hennessy has grown up knowing nothing but Hillsborough. She was just six when her dad Jimmy died at the match. Now 33, and a parent herself, she has childhood memories of being bullied as a result of the disaster.
The family had moved away from Merseyside to North Wales. But there, she was taunted. "Children would say things. I'd say: 'Why are they saying mean things what's wrong with Liverpool fans?' I didn't understand until I was a teenager and I got the internet and started doing a bit of research. I've had to grow up with that all my life. Since I was six I've had to fight against that."
Hillsborough was a disaster which happened in the pre-digital era. It was typed up on paper, written down in notebooks, on memos, in minutes of meetings.
Since 2012 when the Hillsborough Independent Panel disclosed documents running to 335,000 pages, searching for information has been possible via a few mouse-clicks.
But for years the families were denied access to much of this, and they suspected that evidence was being hidden and suppressed. They went in pursuit.
Amended statements
In the mid-1990s, through criminologist Prof Phil Scraton, they discovered that some of the statements written by police officers after the disaster had been edited and amended. But it was many years before they found out just how widespread it had been.
South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officers who'd been on duty at Hillsborough were asked to write down their recollections. Unusually, however, they were told to record them on plain paper - not in their official pocket notebooks, with traceable numbered pages.
Originally the statements were intended for internal use only, to help South Yorkshire Police's legal team as they prepared for the Taylor public inquiry. But when West Midlands Police was appointed to investigate the disaster, its team asked for the statements. That was when senior officers, and the SYP lawyers decided they should be put through a vetting process before being disclosed.
The statements went to the SYP solicitors for checking, and were then sent back with suggested changes, to be typed up again before being submitted to the Taylor Inquiry.
Once the families learned that police statements had been altered, they began to believe that there had been a co-ordinated attempt to manipulate evidence.
They pushed for it to be investigated. In 1997 the new Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw set up a Judicial Scrutiny of Evidence.
The Scrutiny was conducted by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, who didn't get off to a good start, offending the families on the first morning. Asking if everyone had arrived, he said: "It's not like Liverpool fans to turn up at the last minute!" He later apologised for "an off-the-cuff remark" which he said he "deeply regretted".
Not for the first time, the families felt that an establishment figure was likely to be against them.
The Scrutiny found that most of the amendments made to police statements were "of no consequence" and it rejected the allegations "of irregularity and malpractice". The home secretary announced that there was no new evidence which could challenge previous verdicts and rulings.
The families had the backing of local politicians. But beyond Merseyside it was harder for the families to win public support. Trevor Hicks says: "We always tried to play fair, play the Establishment rules. But the Establishment wasn't listening." Frustration reached boiling point in 2009 when a lone cry of "Justice!" was directed at a politician, Andy Burnham.
The then-secretary of state for culture, media and sport was speaking at Anfield, at the Hillsborough 20th anniversary memorial service. "Justice for the 96!" rang out across the Kop, thousands of survivors, campaigners, and members of the general Liverpool public chanting so passionately that at last Westminster ears pricked up.
It was the moment that everything changed. Andy Burnham is a Liverpool lad himself. That he's an Evertonian doesn't matter - Hillsborough is the one subject which unites the red and blue halves of the city. Burnham took the message to government and full early disclosure of all public documentation about the disaster was promised.
In 2012 the result of that pledge was the publication of the Hillsborough Independent Panel Report. It confirmed the families' suspicions about the amended statements and many other issues.
The system by which statements were altered was fully exposed.
The panel revealed that "hundreds of officers' statements were vetted" and that 164 statements were substantially changed. References to "chaos", "fear", "panic" and "confusion" were deleted, as were criticisms of inadequate police leadership. Comments about fans arriving late and drunk were left in.
Phil Scraton, who sat on the panel, said later: "There was a mindset amongst the police investigators which hinged on hooliganism, drunkenness, late arrival and ticketlessness." The entire evidence base of the investigations had to be questioned.
In the wake of the panel's report, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) launched a criminal investigation into the aftermath of Hillsborough. The IPCC says it is now investigating the amended statements of more than 250 officers.
One account which was edited was that of William Crawford who was serving as a police sergeant in 1989.
On the day of the disaster he'd been in charge of a group of officers near to the tunnel leading to the Leppings Lane terraces. In his original statement he commented that at previous matches he'd worked at, more officers had been allocated to police the same area. In the amended version of Sgt Crawford's statement that paragraph was removed.
He says: "It was my observations, my opinion, and I thought it was important." Now retired, William Crawford says he was only told that his statement had been tampered with in 2014, when he spoke to IPCC investigators. "I wasn't happy. I thought it was important, and it was removed because it was criticism."
Former PC Fiona Nicol had a slightly different experience.
Also now retired, in 1989 she was stationed by the Leppings Lane terraces when the crush developed. She tried to rescue fans including 14-year-old Adam Spearritt, who did not survive.
In the week after the disaster, she was summoned to police headquarters and told to write up her experiences. She was young and new in service, and felt under enormous pressure. She was put in a small room and says that a senior officer kept coming in and taking her papers away.
The former PC says that at one point the officer queried her description of the crowd in the central pens before kick-off.
"I'd written 'full' and he didn't like that particular word, 'full'. He said, 'don't use that wording'."
She agreed to remove it and says now: "I'm angry at myself for doing it, and I'm angry at myself for letting someone make me do it."
The new inquests heard evidence about the practice of changing statements. Senior officers said they'd been following legal advice, and had only removed opinion and extra comment from the accounts.
Fiona Nicol also spoke publicly about her experience for the first time when she gave evidence. She says that she kept quiet for years while she was still a serving South Yorkshire Police officer. Of her colleagues, she explains: "They were trying to take the blame from themselves, the senior officers, and they didn't care who got the blame instead… and it was lower ranking officers like myself and others that they were throwing some blame at. And at the fans themselves."
This made her feel "extremely angry. And frightened, extremely frightened. I was frightened for a lot of years".
South Yorkshire Police is not the only force to be accused of malpractice. In the wake of the disaster West Midlands Police (WMP) took on three roles. The force was responsible for producing evidence for the Taylor Inquiry, as well as for a criminal investigation, and for the coroner.
The intimidated witness
WMP was tasked with conducting an independent investigation. But survivors now speak of being treated as "the accused". Many relatives believe that the West Midlands officers were in league with their South Yorkshire colleagues in trying to deflect the blame away from the police.
Nick Braley, who was 19 and at university in Sheffield, went to the match. He speaks of the police looking "lost and dazed" outside the ground. He says he remembers a mounted officer inflaming the situation there. He went through Gate C and down the tunnel into pen three, where he was caught in the crush. He says that his relief at getting out has been mixed with guilt at surviving.
After the disaster the student was interviewed by a WMP officer. He is one of several survivors who've spoken out about having similar experiences. Nick describes the meeting as having been "confrontational".
It started civilly. But he says he was quickly accused of having bought a touted ticket, which he denied. Nick says he was then asked about what he'd had to drink.
"When it all went horribly wrong was when I mentioned that a mounted policeman had effectively charged into fans outside the ground and had made a bad situation worse. At this point the DCI flipped. Some of his questioning became really aggressive. He asked: 'Who are you to make accusations against the police? You can't get away with it. Who do you think you are?'
"I started getting asked about my political persuasions. 'Are you a member of the Socialist Workers party? The Workers' Revolutionary Party? Are you a student agitator?' He observed that I'd been wearing my Free Mandela T-shirt. He said: 'You're a student out to get the police.'"
The officer was trying to influence the statement, Nick says. "Having now seen what was written down, I believe he was looking to collect evidence that fitted the police narrative of drunken ticketless fans. He threatened me. He said: 'Do you know what wasting police time is?' He said he'd check my criminal record and make a case for me wasting police time.
"I felt scared and intimidated. This guy's got all the power. I was just a student. I stood my ground as best as I could but it was not a nice position to be in at all."
The IPCC is now investigating the conduct of West Midlands Police, and is looking at police officers' attitudes and lines of questioning when speaking to witnesses. The IPCC is also examining how WMP gathered evidence for the Taylor Inquiry, and the original inquests.
Evidence missed - the first inquests
For more than two decades after the disaster, one of the biggest running sores for the families was the first inquests. They were angry at the way the hearings were conducted, feeling that vital evidence had been excluded, and they were devastated by the verdicts of accidental death.
The first coroner, Dr Stefan Popper, decided not to call witnesses to speak about events after 15:15 on the day of the disaster. It meant that no evidence was heard about rescue and evacuation. And it was based on the premise that all of those who died were fatally injured or dead by 15:15.
From very early on, some families suspected that their loved ones had still been alive and saveable after this time. Anne Williams was one of the first bereaved relatives to explore this.
Anne's 15-year-old son Kevin died at Hillsborough. She had been shown a photograph of an off-duty policeman trying to resuscitate him. She was told that the policeman had felt a pulse on Kevin at 15:37. Then she learned that a special constable, Debra Martin, had been with the teenager in the gymnasium which was being used as a temporary mortuary. She had made a statement in which she described Kevin opening his eyes and saying "mum" before dying at 16:00.
To Anne, the first inquests were worthless. Along with other families she refused to accept the death certificates issued after those hearings. She felt strongly that her son's death had not been fully investigated, and she dedicated her life to fighting for fresh inquests. Anne died of cancer in 2013. She did not live to see the new inquests begin in March 2014.
Before she died, Anne spoke to me about her long battle for justice. "I knew I was right in 1991… We knew that they shouldn't have imposed the 3.15 [cut-off]."
Because Anne suspected that the first inquests hadn't heard all the evidence, she set about the task of finding witnesses herself. She began with the off-duty police officer and the special constable.
Anne was aghast to discover that they'd both agreed to change their statements after meeting with West Midlands Police officers. Anne asked them if they would stand by their original accounts. They both agreed, and they each confirmed that they had seen signs of life in Kevin after 15:15.
She then traced the survivors who had carried Kevin across the pitch on an advertising hoarding, and with the help of TV journalist Roger Cook she found the ambulanceman whose vehicle had driven past Kevin as he was being resuscitated (enabling them to time this precisely).
Anne fought for a new inquest. She made her case to the attorney general's office three times. Three times she was turned down, and told that "it was not in the interests of justice". Eventually she applied to the European Court of Human Rights. Just before the 20th anniversary of the disaster she learned that she had been unsuccessful there too.
But when the Hillsborough Independent Panel's report was published in 2012, it paved the way for new inquests for all 96 Hillsborough victims. Anne submitted her papers to the attorney general for the fourth time.
By now in a wheelchair, she was brought to the High Court to watch the historic moment when the verdicts of accidental death were quashed.
Afterwards she told me: "It's a good feeling, because they bounced me from one wall to the other, and I knew what they were doing. I thought, 'They're wearing me down, but I'll wear them down before they wear me down.' And I've actually done it."
Since Anne's death her family have carried on the fight for justice.
Anne's daughter Sara was only nine when her big brother Kevin died, and so she grew up watching her mum campaigning. "I never doubted she was right, I just didn't ever think we would get this far."
In December 2013 Anne Williams was honoured at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony. She was posthumously given the Helen Rollason award for outstanding achievement in the face of adversity.
Another bereaved mother, Terri Sefton, also challenged the way the first inquests had been conducted. Terri's son Andrew died in the crush. He was 23.
Buried in the pages of the Hillsborough Independent Panel Report there's a fascinating document. It's a note made by the first coroner, Stefan Popper, after taking a call from Terri in 1993. She had apparently phoned to ask the coroner whether he thought the inquests should have been different.
He wrote: "She had never felt that she had got the facts or had her questions answered. I explained that I had retired and that I did not think that I should make any comment and that as far as I was concerned the proceedings were over. She said that might be so for me but not for her… she had previously told me she had not been satisfied with the conduct of the inquest.
"She felt that she, an ordinary mother, had been caught up in a huge intrigue and that none of the questions that she had wanted answered had been answered. I said to Mrs Sefton that whilst she had the right to speak her mind, I had the right not to listen. That I had now retired as coroner and that there was nothing more that I wished to discuss on this."
The 15:15 cut-off wasn't the only one of the first coroner's decisions to prove controversial. Another was his request for blood alcohol levels to be taken from every one of the victims - including the children.
Criminal record checks about some of the deceased were also made on the police national computer. It's not suggested that the coroner knew this, or that the results of the checks were used in the inquiries or inquests. The Hillsborough Independent Panel said that in its view "criminal record checks were carried out on those of the deceased with recorded blood alcohol levels in an attempt to impugn personal reputations".
At the 1990 inquests, the families had hoped for a verdict of unlawful killing to be recorded. But instead the jury decided that the deaths had been accidental. The verdicts caused outrage, prompting an emotional outcry by some families. Trevor Hicks said after the hearing: "It is a lawful verdict, but in our opinion it is immoral." In 2016, the jury at the second inquests was not given the option of delivering accidental death verdicts.
Speaking to the BBC in 2009, Stefan Popper said he felt he'd been unfairly criticised for the way he conducted the original inquests. "I feel I was fair, I made a full inquiry. I had no intentions of hiding evidence from anybody… but I had to do it within the parameters of the coronial system. I may make wrong decisions but I do feel aggrieved that I'm treated as somebody who misbehaved and tried to subvert the evidence, which I have not."
What the coroner could never do was to find someone criminally liable for the disaster. That falls outside the power of an inquest.
Who was to blame?
Many families have struggled with the fact that, 27 years after Hillsborough, no organisation or individual has been convicted of any charge related to it.
In August 1990 the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) announced that there was "no evidence to justify any criminal proceedings" against South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Wednesday FC, or the club's engineers Eastwood & Partners. The DPP also found that there wasn't enough evidence to charge any individual person with a crime connected to Hillsborough.
South Yorkshire Police did pay out compensation money to some of the injured and bereaved. Sheffield Wednesday FC, Eastwood & Partners and Sheffield City Council also made payments. The Hillsborough Independent Panel Report calculates that a total of £19.8m was paid.
In addition, according to the same report, SYP paid compensation of £1.5m to 16 of its own officers.
But in settling the claims, the force did not admit liability.
Disciplinary proceedings for "neglect of duty" began against the match commander Ch Supt David Duckenfield, and his deputy Supt Bernard Murray. But they were discontinued after Ch Supt Duckenfield retired early on medical grounds. The Police Complaints Authority decided that it would be unfair to proceed against Supt Murray on his own.
The Hillsborough Family Support Group decided to bring a private prosecution against the police officers.
In 2000 the families got their moment in court. David Duckenfield and Bernard Murray were charged with manslaughter and misconduct in a public office.
But the jury acquitted Bernard Murray and was then discharged, having failed to reach verdicts on David Duckenfield.
Another legal door had closed. The families would have to wait another 12 years before the launch of two fresh criminal investigations, formed in the wake of the Hillsborough Independent Report.
Operation Resolve, run by Assistant Commissioner Jon Stoddart, is currently investigating the 96 deaths from a criminal perspective.
Running in parallel to Operation Resolve is the biggest criminal investigation into alleged police misconduct in England and Wales ever undertaken. The IPCC is looking at whether any crimes were committed in the aftermath of the disaster, which includes whether there was an organised cover-up.
Both investigations are being run from the same office building in Warrington - an uninspiring grey block on an anonymous business park. Inside are hundreds of staff, including former police officers. They have analysed hours of video footage, and many thousands of photographs, documents and other material. Operation Resolve has also been tasked with providing information and evidence for the new inquests.
Was there surveillance?
One of the areas that the IPCC is investigating is whether Hillsborough families were put under surveillance. Several have suspected for years that their phones were tapped or that they were watched.
The IPCC says it has now interviewed 22 people who've made allegations about surveillance, and that it's "pursuing further lines of enquiry in relation to three specific complaints". Investigators have also approached BT for help with information about the phone network at the relevant time.
Jenni Hicks, who lived in Middlesex at the time, remembers picking up the phone in 1990 to speak to a friend in Liverpool. But their conversation became crossed with another call, being made by Hilda Hammond, whose son Phillip died at Leppings Lane. Both women, whose husbands were active members of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, are convinced that the interference was the result of phone tapping.
Julie Fallon had a different experience. Her brother Andrew was in the crush. Her mother, Terri Sefton, was the woman who called the first coroner to complain about the original inquests. Julie is now the sole surviving member of the family.
She remembers her mum dropping her off at home one day shortly after those original inquests. Julie says: "My mum started to walk across the road towards a shiny black car with two gentlemen sitting in it. One had his hands on the wheel and the other had, in all the great traditions, a newspaper out.
"She was tapping on the window, and she said to them: 'Look, lads I'm just popping into my daughter's and having a cup of tea, and then I'll go home. So you might as well get off.' And the guy folded up his newspaper and said 'Thank you, Mrs Sefton' and drove off.
"I said to my mum, 'Who was that?' And she said: 'Oh it's the police… they've been following me for about a week.'
"We used to joke about it in the family but we never reported it, because who would you report it to? You'd report it to the police, and it was them who'd been sat outside."
For years the family's claims of amended statements, tapped phones and suppressed evidence fell on the deaf ears of a largely sceptical country. It wasn't until the Hillsborough Independent Panel was formed in 2010 that things changed.
Truth Day
The chairman of the Panel was the then Bishop of Liverpool James Jones. He says now that "the families often said to us during the process that 'this is the first time that anybody has ever listened to us; that anybody has ever taken us seriously'".
Some families refer to the date of the publication of the Panel's report - 12 September 2012 - as Truth Day. The prime minister got to his feet in the House of Commons and apologised. It was the ultimate establishment acknowledgement of the validity of the campaigners' fight.
David Cameron said: "These families have suffered a double injustice.
"The injustice of the appalling events - the failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth.
"And the injustice of the denigration of the deceased - that they were somehow at fault for their own deaths.
"On behalf of the government - and indeed our country - I am profoundly sorry for this double injustice that has been left uncorrected for so long."
The apology was well received by both families' and survivors.
The second inquests - what has been learned
The second inquests have provoked mixed feelings for both families and survivors. Some have spent so much time tracing their own witnesses and finding their own evidence that they feel they've learned little new information about their loved ones' deaths. Julie Fallon feels that she fits into that category - although the inquests have still been enormously important to her.
"The whole process, for me, has been about other people's awareness. There is barely anything that we didn't know. It's about clearing people's names, it's about getting those facts out there."
Other families say they have learned information about their individual cases which they didn't know before.
Barry Devonside went to court every day of the first inquests and has attended throughout the two years of the second set. This time around, he's learned much more about the circumstances of his son Christopher's death.
Most notably he's been told, for the first time, that the teenager could have been rescued. "Our only son was laid down on his back in the penalty area and… we were told that he could have been alive - could have been alive - for at least an hour. We have no evidence that anybody tried to save his life. And all we've got now is memories of a lovely, lovely lad and an excellent son."
Many families have also seen their loved ones on video footage of the disaster for the first time. Since 2013, work has been done to try and identify every one of the 96 victims on the television pictures of the day. Because BBC cameras were at Hillsborough to film the FA Cup semi-final match for the Grandstand programme, there is hours of footage.
Margaret Aspinall was shown video of her son James lying on the pitch with a coat over his head. A former police officer told the inquests that he'd put his tunic over the 18-year-old "out of respect" as he thought he was dead.
The footage of him lying alone, with people stepping over him, came as a shock.
"It's my nightmare. I go to bed of a night and I ask James for his forgiveness because I wasn't there to have done something for him. I keep saying 'I'm so sorry, son, I'm so sorry'…
"To put a coat over his face, what chance did he have then, because other people must have thought he'd died? I have to live the rest of my life knowing that."
The inquests have enabled some topics to be aired before a court for the first time, including the amended statements, and the emergency response after 15:15. And they were also the platform for the first ever apology from the match commander David Duckenfield.
The families last faced him across a courtroom at the private prosecution in 2000. Fifteen years later, they crowded into the coroner's court to see him again.
The former chief superintendent accepted that as the crush developed, he "froze" in the police control box. He accepted that his failure to order the closure of the tunnel was the "direct cause of the deaths of the 96 persons".
And of the lie he told to the FA, he admitted: "I said something rather hurriedly, without considering the position, without thinking of the consequences and the trauma, the heartache and distress that the inference would have caused to those people who were already in a deep state of shock, who were distressed. I apologise unreservedly to the families."
Some relatives left their seats and walked out of the courtroom in tears.
Hillsborough timeline
Later, Charlotte Hennessy said: "I feel that he's only said it because he's been forced to, because he's been made to attend the new inquests. And I can categorically say now, I do not accept your apology, David Duckenfield. I do not accept it. You made us live a lie for 26 years. That is beyond cruel. And I'll never forgive it, and I'll never forget it."
Twenty-seven years of campaigning have taken their toll on the Hillsborough families and survivors. Some, like Anne Williams, did not live to see the justice that they craved. For many of those who've spent the last two years listening to harrowing evidence at the inquests, the pain continues.
One relative who attended nearly every day of the hearings suffered a heart attack as they drew to a close. His family believes that the stress of the court process was partly to blame.
And with the possibility of prosecutions still to follow, there could be many more difficult months ahead.
The former Bishop of Liverpool James Jones now acts as the home secretary's adviser on Hillsborough. Of the families, he says: "They are the most experienced lawyers in the country. They may not be formally trained as lawyers but because they've had to fight for justice for over a quarter of a century they know this aspect of the law very intimately. I've seen that extraordinary combination of both dignity and determination. This is not the end. The investigations are ongoing. And that resilience that the families have had to draw on, they're going to have to continue to draw upon it."
Julie Fallon knows that there could still be a long road ahead.
"I don't know what life is like without Hillsborough. It's been so formative, it's been my entire adult life. Andrew has been spoken about every day for 27 years."
For Charlotte Hennessy the inquests have brought answers, and a kind of closure. "I do think that my dad can rest in peace now. There's bits I'll never know, and I'll never find out but I do think he can rest in peace, definitely."
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
All images subject to copyright
|
A video clip of a Kurdish-Iranian girl who died with her family attempting to cross the English Channel last month highlights their drive for a better life. | By Jiyar GolBBC Persian
The clip shows a nine-year-old girl crying and laughing. "My name is Anita Iranejad, I am from Sardasht," she says.
It is a screen test for a short film to be shot in her hometown. In the background, her father Rasoul Iranejad can be heard gently prompting her: "I would like to be an actress… say it."
The video suggests not just paternal pride, but ambition. Rasoul wants his daughter to achieve her dream. But that is a tall order for a little girl from this impoverished and politically oppressed region. The family are from Sardasht, a small, predominantly Kurdish city in western Iran
A year after the screen test, Rasoul, his wife Shiva Panahi, and their three children Anita, six-year-old Armin and baby Artin, 15 months, embarked on a dangerous journey to Europe.
But the family's hopes for their future were brought to a brutal end in the English Channel on 27 October. A small boat heading to the UK in rough conditions capsized just a few kilometres into its journey. Shiva and the children were trapped without life jackets inside the cabin.
Rasoul, 35, left Iran with his family in early August. Relatives did not want to comment directly on why they left, but there are many reasons why they might have wanted to start again somewhere else.
Sardasht, in west Azerbaijan province close to the border with Iraq, is a difficult place to realise any ambition beyond sheer survival. With little significant industry, it has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and holds few prospects for its predominantly ethnic Kurdish population. Many are forced to resort to smuggling goods over the border into Iraqi Kurdistan. This is neither profitable - they earn less than $10 a trip - nor safe.
In the past few years, hundreds of them have been shot dead or injured by Iranian border guards. Many have fallen to their deaths from the rough mountainous terrain or been buried by avalanches in winter.
The region is also heavily militarised. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, there has been conflict between Iranian security forces and armed Kurdish groups fighting for their rights. Iran labels them separatists backed by foreign powers.
Some 10% of Iran's population of 82 million are Kurds, and yet they make up more than half of the country's political prisoners, according to the UN.
There was a brutal crackdown from the authorities during and in the aftermath of anti-government protests in Iran last year, which exploded in the predominantly Kurdish towns on the western border with Iraq, as well as on the outskirts of Iran's major cities.
A friend of Shiva's told the BBC that Rasoul, 35, wanted to escape persecution.
She says that Shiva sold everything they had and borrowed money from friends and family to pay smugglers to take them to Europe. They wanted to get to the UK, which is a popular choice for Kurdish asylum seekers. They believe the UK takes a relatively small number of refugees, compared with other European countries, so they will have better prospects there.
Their first stop was Turkey. A video clip shared with the BBC by Rasoul's friends shows him singing in Kurdish, while the family waits for smugglers to take them to Europe.
"There is pain [in] my heart, huge sadness … but what can I do, I have to leave my Kurdistan and go…," he sings, his son Armin laughing in delight. His baby Artin toddles towards him and sits on his knee.
There is a famous saying among the Kurds: "We have no friends other than mountains." After the end of World War One, and the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Kurds were promised independence by victorious allied powers, but the regional powers never accepted that deal - instead their homeland was eventually divided among the new nations of the Middle East. Since then, any moves by Kurds in Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq to set up an independent state have been quashed.
It used to be the case that Turkey was the final destination for thousands of Iranian refugees, but in the past seven years the political climate has meant this is no longer a viable choice.
There are reports from migrants that Turkish security forces have abused Kurdish refugees in police stations or deported them to Iran upon arrival. There have even been a number of political assassinations and kidnappings of Iranian dissidents in Istanbul.
So Rasoul and Shiva would have been keen to move on.
In September they found a smuggler and paid 24,000 Euros [$28,243] to be ferried from Turkey to Italy, and then taken by lorry to northern France.
Charlotte Decanter, a volunteer for the Adra charity in the coastal city of Dunkirk, says she met Shiva while distributing food at Grande-Synthe, the main camp for Kurdish migrants and refugees.
She was struck by her vivacity.
"A small woman, very kind, very sweet. I said a few words in Kurdish. She laughed a lot. She was stunned."
But somewhere along their journey in France disaster had struck. Shiva and Rasoul were robbed of their possessions.
In texts Shiva sent on 24 October to a friend in Calais, she acknowledges the journey by boat will be hazardous, but says they don't have the money for a lorry trip.
"I know it's dangerous but we have no choice," she texts.
She makes it clear how desperate she is to find refuge.
"I have a thousand sorrows in my heart and now that I have left Iran I would like to forget my past."
A friend of Rasoul's who travelled with the family to France says that on the evening of 26 October the smuggler in Dunkirk said it was time to make the crossing the next day.
They left in the early morning from a beach called Loon Plage, a desolate spot next to an oil depot.
The weather was extremely rough, with gusts of wind up to 30km per hour and waves about 1.5m high. The friend, who calls himself Aware, decided it wasn't worth the risk.
"I was scared, I refused to go," says Aware. "I begged Rasoul that he shouldn't go either. But he said he had no choice."
Rasoul paid the smugglers around £5,500, according to relatives in Iran.
Ebrahim Mohammadpour, a 47-year-old actor and documentary filmmaker from Sardasht, who was also on the boat with his brother Mohammad, 27, and his 17-year-old son, says the craft was only 4-4.5 metres long and designed for eight people, not the 23 that were crammed on to it.
"Honestly we were totally blind because we [had already] suffered so much in this journey," says Ebrahim. "First you think, 'I don't want to get on the boat,' but then you say, 'I will board just to leave this misery."
Yasin, a 16-year-old who was also on the boat, says only he and two others - no-one in Rasoul's family - were wearing life jackets. The 22 passengers were all Kurds from Sardasht, and the pilot was a refugee from northern Iran, they say.
Iranian migrants who have previously made the journey to the UK tell me smugglers usually ask the passenger who has the least money to drive the boat.
Shiva and the children went into the glass-partitioned cabin, which would have seemed warmer and safer. But it turned out to be deadly.
After around eight kilometres, the boat filled with water, according to Ebrahim.
"We tried to remove the water, but we couldn't. We wanted to return to Calais but we couldn't," he says.
His brother Mohammad says the passengers began to panic, lurching from one side of the vessel to the other, before the boat suddenly capsized.
It's difficult to establish exactly what happened next, as the accounts of survivors are confused.
All say that initially at least, Shiva and her children were trapped in the cabin.
Ebrahim says that Rasoul dived under the water to try and rescue them, and came up again to cry for help.
Peshraw, a university student, says he tried to break the glass of the cabin with a carpet cutter but was unable to even crack it. He says that he saw baby Artin floating inside.
Shiva's brother Raso told us he heard Rasoul managed to pull Artin out, then went inside for the others.
Ebrahim sobs as he recalls the moment he saw Anita floating in the water, and managed to grab her.
"I held the child in the water. I thought she might be alive. With one hand I was holding onto the boat and with another, I was holding the child. I kept shaking her to see if she was alive but there was no response," he says.
"I can't forgive myself," he cries.
Rasoul emerged from the boat moaning, and crying out the names of his family, according to Ebrahim's brother Mohammed, and then just let himself be taken by the waves.
A passing sailing boat raised the alarm at 0930 local time, and began to help those in the water, according to the French authorities. The first rescue ship arrived 17 minutes later, they say.
The authorities say that some people were taken out of the water in cardiac arrest, but will not go into details.
The survivors we spoke to believe Rasoul, Shiva, Anita and Armin had already died. Fifteen other people were taken to hospital. Baby Artin is still missing, presumed dead. Yasin says he saw him swept away in the water.
An Iranian man accused of being the captain of the boat has appeared before an investigating judge in France and is set to faces charges of manslaughter.
Shiva's brother and sister, who both live in Europe, travelled to a morgue in Dunkirk to identify the bodies, and were hoping to repatriate them on Friday.
The numbers of migrants attempting the perilous journey across the Channel is on the rise.
In 2018, 297 people reached the UK in small boats, 1,840 did so in 2019, and nearly 8,000 people have made the journey this year, according to BBC analysis.
At least 10 people have died while attempting this since 2019.
Most of the asylum seekers come from Iran.
Refugee charities and French politicians argue that would-be asylum seekers should be allowed to apply for sanctuary before they arrive in Britain.
Ebrahim says the survivors have nightmares.
Despite this, Yasin says he will try again to cross the Channel.
"Everyone was sad, I was very scared too. But I just want to be in a safe place. I will try again."
|
Chile is one of the countries embroiled in a worldwide scandal about child sexual abuse committed by members of the Catholic Church.
The country's top cardinal, Ricardo Ezzati, has been summoned to a hearing for questioning over allegations he covered up the abuse, which he denies.
In total, more than 150 members of the Roman Catholic Church in Chile are under investigation for allegedly committing or covering up sexual abuse from 1960 onwards.
BBC Mundo's Constanza Hola spoke to two of the more than 250 victims of clerical sex abuse and also to Gonzalo Duarte, one of the five Chilean bishops whose resignation Pope Francis accepted in the wake of the scandal . Our reporter spoke to Bishop Duarte before he resigned. | 'If you rejected them, they got angry'
Mauricio Pulgar was member of a Catholic youth group and was thinking about becoming a priest when he was invited to a Church-run retreat in a small town in central Chile in 1993.
He was 17 at the time. The retreat was led by two priests, and when one of them had to leave, the remaining one was left in charge.
Mr Pulgar says that on that first night they were left alone with him, the priest told the boys in the group to go swimming naked in the pool.
"I and another friend said 'no' but he forced us. He told us that if we didn't do it, it was because we had sexual problems," Mr Pulgar told BBC Mundo.
"He came into the pool and touched us. He said it was good for building trust and self-esteem."
Two months later, Mr Pulgar started studying to become a priest. He says that he also suffered abuse at the seminary.
"They hugged you from behind (…). If you rejected them, they got angry. You were bullied if you didn't allow them to kiss you," he says about his experiences at the seminary.
He remembers a traumatic episode with one particular priest, whom he was helping out in a nearby town.
"He asked me why I didn't want to be 'initiated'. I didn't understand what he meant. He said heterosexuality didn't exist, that we were all gay and had to try everything."
The BBC approached both priests but neither responded to our requests for comment.
The BBC also put Mr Pulgar's allegations to Gonzalo Duarte, who from 1998 until his resignation in June 2018 was bishop of the diocese of Valparaíso.
Valparaíso is the diocese where Mr Pulgar was a seminary student and the alleged abuse took place. However, the incidents took place before Bishop Duarte was put in charge of the diocese.
Bishop Duarte said that he had heard that the priest who had spoken about "initiating" Mr Pulgar had had "serious homosexuality problems" in his new diocese.
But Bishop Duarte told the BBC that as those reports came from another diocese, they did not fall under his supervision.
Mr Pulgar says that the same priest had once asked him to stay overnight in his parish. "He gave me some refreshments and I started feeling sick. He told me: 'Lie down on my bed, get some rest.'"
"I fainted and woke up to the sound of panting. He was abusing me. I tried to move my arms and legs, but I couldn't. I finally was able to move one hand but he grabbed it and…," Mr Pulgar's voice breaks.
"He then opened a drawer full of money and told me I was now part of his circle. I told him I didn't want to belong to any circle and left."
Mr Pulgar eventually left the seminary, but it took him 20 years to open up about what he had gone through. In 2013, he lodged a formal complaint with the Church authorities as well as in a civil court.
Bishop Duarte said that a canonical investigation was carried out, but he told the BBC that there had been "no crime".
The priest in question is now living in a residence where church retreats are held.
'He became obsessed with me'
Sebastián del Río knew he wanted to be a priest from the age of 12 and joined the seminary in 1999, after graduating from high school.
The seminary's dean was the same priest who Mr Pulgar said had forced him and his friends to get into the pool with him naked six years earlier.
Mr del Río says the dean became obsessed with him. "He used to come to my room for small talk. I started leaving the door open when he came in, I was afraid."
At some point he reported him to the bishop responsible for the seminary, who told him that the dean had "emotional issues".
"I asked what he meant and he told me that the dean had fallen in love with me."
The bishop encouraged Mr del Río to confront the dean. "I thought he was going to deny everything, but instead he started crying. He told me he had never meant to hurt me."
The dean was eventually transferred. He continues to work in a parish to this day.
Mr del Río says that after he had finished his studies, Bishop Duarte summoned him to his flat to discuss his ordination.
"We were chatting and he suddenly got half naked and asked me to apply anti-inflammatory ointment on his back. It was so humiliating," Mr del Río recalls.
Asked about the incident, Bishop Duarte denied any wrongdoing and labelled Mr del Río's account "a dirty trick".
Bishop Duarte says that he received Mr del Río on the request of the assistant bishop, who had told him that the young man was crying.
Bishop Duarte says that after a long day at the cathedral his back ached. "I told him [Mr del Río]: 'Apply that ointment here while I listen to you', that was all."
Mr del Río says that following that incident, Bishop Duarte refused to ordain him arguing he was "a gossip and a busybody".
In 2010, Mr del Río filed a formal complaint against the dean and Bishop Duarte but he says he never received an answer.
When the BBC showed Bishop Duarte the complaint, he said he had never received it.
Daniel Pizarro contributed to this report.
|
A student whose body was discovered at her university halls of residence earlier this month died of meningitis, forensic tests have revealed. | Alisha Bartolini, from Appley Bridge, near Wigan, was found at her Liverpool Hope University property in Taggart Avenue, Childwall, on 1 November.
The 18-year-old had been to a Halloween party the night before.
A post-mortem examination had proved inconclusive but Merseyside Police said forensic reports were now complete.
A spokesman said: "They have concluded that Alisha died as a result of meningococcal meningitis."
The former Abraham Guest High School pupil and Saint John Rigby College student was studying marketing and media at the university.
She had been to a party at Nation nightclub in Liverpool on 31 October before being found at about 17:30 GMT the following day.
|
The export of the world's most expensive Bentley has been put on hold by the UK government, which has described the 1929 car as of "outstanding significance". But what do we know about the legendary "Blower" and the enigmatic aristocrat, Sir Henry Birkin, who spent his fortune developing it? | By Ben TrusloveBBC News
"He was fearless and he was always in a hurry, with the result that on many occasions he was deprived of victory because the desire for speed overcame his judgement and the endurance of his car," The Times wrote of Sir Henry.
"Dangers, the need for caution, and the advantages of a waiting race were all sacrificed to the love of brilliant driving at high speed."
Sir Henry, who was known widely by the nickname Tim, was famed as a top racing driver, always dapper in his trademark silk neckerchief flapping in the wind as he tore around Brooklands, the Nurburgring or Le Mans.
Using the family fortune made through Nottingham lace, Sir Henry travelled the world, living the glamorous life of a 1920s racing hero as one of the "Bentley Boys".
But he did not drive to win - he raced for the love of speed and to improve the standing of British motorsport, according to his great-great-nephew Sir John Birkin - a filmmaker who worked on a 1995 drama starring Rowan Atkinson as Sir Henry.
"Sailing, shooting and cars was what he lived for and he spent, really, all the family money on it," Sir John said.
"He wasn't the sort of guy who won all the races, he was more concerned with maintaining the lap speeds and records.
"On one occasion, at Le Mans in 1928, he managed a lap with an average speed of 85mph. All on three wheels because one had blown out.
"That's the kind of guy he was."
Sir Henry was an unassuming, shy man who suffered with a stammer but his love of motors and speed began at an early age, according to Sir John.
At the family home in Ruddington Grange, just outside Nottingham, he was bet £15 he could not design and build a vehicle which would make it all the way along the drive under its own power - about three quarters of a mile.
At every third along the route he was met by someone holding a £5 note - he used the money to buy his first proper car.
Severed head
When Sir John went back to the family house, long since demolished, he found a stable with the words "every day, in every way, faster and faster" daubed on a wall by Sir Henry.
And a favourite family tale involves Sir Henry driving a Bentley up the staircase of the Savoy Hotel during a glitzy dinner.
Despite the roaring 20s and living the life of a motoring hero, it was not all smiles - his wife left him, taking the children, after becoming tired of playing second fiddle to his driving.
And Sir John believes his relative would never have got into motorsport had it not been for the tragedies of World War I.
Sir Henry was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and then the Royal Flying Corps, the precursor to the RAF.
Like other men of his generation, his experience of war left him with a zest for life and no fear.
Racing drivers in the 1920s had a short life expectancy. According to his family, he was once racing at Brooklands when he saw an object bounce across the track.
He said to himself 'what could that be?' before realising it was a competitor's head - it had been severed in an accident.
Despite his own success on the racecourse and holding the record lap time at Brooklands in Surrey - regarded by some as the birthplace of British motorsport - Sir Henry felt British sports car-makers were falling behind their Europe competitors.
'Every schoolboy's hero'
It was this belief that drove him to try to persuade WO Bentley, then head of the luxury car company, to develop the supercharged Blower.
But the Bentley boss was not interested, and so Sir Henry chose to sink much of his own money, and that of several supporters, into developing the four-and-a-half litre supercharged Bentley.
It was a huge success on the track and he finished second at the French Grand Prix at Pau in the vehicle.
According to Bonhams, which sold Sir Henry's Bentley Blower at Goodwood Festival of Speed last year, a recent test drive revealed it was still "on song".
It was owned by the celebrated watchmaker and vintage car collector Dr George Daniels, and fetched £5,149,800 - sold to an anonymous bidder from outside the UK.
The car, and the man behind the wheel, were once the talk of a nation - it was the vehicle James Bond drove in the first novel Casino Royale.
"He was a big hero at the time, someone every schoolboy will have known about," Sir John said.
"I still meet men in their 80s who knew of him - they speak of him in awe and say they followed his story.
"He had the right image, was very English and very self-effacing.
"We just wish he hadn't spent all the money!"
Sir Henry's racing days, and spending, came to an end after an accident driving in the Grand Prix de Tripoli in a race which he ultimately finished third.
He suffered a serious burn to his arm that became infected and developed into septicaemia, a blood infection, which led to his death in June 1933, penniless and in a London nursing home.
He is buried in Blakeney, Norfolk.
The government has placed an export bar on the Birkin Bentley until 31 October in the hope someone in the UK can raise the £5,149,800 paid for it at auction.
That period can be extended to May 2014 if there is a realistic chance of the money being found.
|
We asked our readers to send in their pictures on the theme of "life in the water". Here are some of the pictures sent to us from around the world.
| The next theme is "urban living" and the deadline for entries is 27 October 2020.
Send pictures to [email protected] or follow the link below to "Upload your pictures here".
Further details and terms can be found by following the link to "We set the theme, you take the picture", at the bottom of the page.
All photographs subject to copyright.
|
Two men and a woman have been charged as part of an investigation into the sexual exploitation of girls and young women in the Yeovil area.
| It follows raids on businesses and residential properties on Wednesday in which six people were arrested.
A police spokesman said the arrests were made on suspicion of rape and trafficking offences.
Three other men, aged, 70, 63 and 28, have been released on bail until January.
Those charged are:
All three appeared before South Somerset Magistrates' Court earlier and were remanded in custody.
It follows a police investigation that started in August.
|
A 100-strong flock of ducklings has left officers in Perth and Kinross puzzled after they were spotted huddling together near a road. | Police discovered the birds at the B935 Forteviot on Saturday night and ushered them away from the route - then posted the scene on Facebook.
Officers said: "Anyone missing 100 Ducklings? Not the usual Saturday night crowd control!"
It prompted hundreds to speculate over their wellbeing.
Dozens of locals also responded with offers to rehome the birds.
|
Birmingham's 'Floozy in the Jacuzzi' statue is being patched up and mended after being without water for many months. | The statue in Victoria Square, which is actually called the River Goddess Fountain, was left without water due to a major water leak.
The statue also needed more mechanical and electric parts.
The work, which includes the excavation and relaying of the two fountain bowls, should be completed by October.
Related Internet Links
Birmingham City Council
|
A man has appeared in court charged with manslaughter, after a man died in hospital two weeks after being found injured outside a nightclub. | Jordan Bell was discovered in the Holmeside area of Sunderland city centre on 10 July. He died on Friday.
Dominic Robson, 26, of Birchwood, Sunderland, appeared at South Tyneside Magistrates' Court earlier.
He was released on conditional bail and will appear at Newcastle Crown Court on 24 August.
Follow BBC North East & Cumbria on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
|
A man has been charged with raping and sexually assaulting a woman who was walking home over Spring Bank Holiday weekend. | The 18-year-old was attacked on Monday, 28 May in Sudbury at about 03:30 BST.
She had been on Waldingfield Road and was grabbed after turning onto a cycle path next to the bus stop directly opposite Wheelers Close.
Marian Pavel, 28, from Cavendish Way, Sudbury is due before magistrates in Ipswich on Wednesday.
Related Internet Links
HM Courts & Tribunals Service
|
Almost three decades after we first got a glimpse into the life of Tracy Beaker, the wily, headstrong girl who rode the ups and downs of life in care, author Jacqueline Wilson is bringing Tracy back - as an adult. | By Emma SaundersEntertainment reporter
She's the latest in a line of fictional favourites who made it into adulthood, thanks to their creators. Here's what we know about how Tracy's doing now, and what became of some other children's characters who grew up.
Tracy Beaker
Jacqueline Wilson is bringing Tracy back to literary life as a 30-something single mum trying to make ends meet.
Fans will know Tracy as a funny, bolshy 10-year-old living in a care home. The book launched the highly successful TV series of the same name, starring Dani Harmer.
The new book, My Mum Tracy Beaker, will be told from the point of view of Tracy's "challenging" nine-year-old daughter Jess.
"I've always thought that, even though Tracy had lots of problems in her life and a pretty rubbish mum who was never there for her, Tracy herself would be a good mum, no matter what," Wilson said.
Dani was just one fan feeling a little bit excited about the news.
So will Dani be back to play the grown-up Tracy in a potential on-screen adaptation? Fingers crossed.
Adrian Mole
The first of Sue Townsend's comic series, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4, was published in 1982 and the eighth instalment, Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years, was released in 2009.
The Secret Diary and its follow-up, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, made Townsend the best-selling novelist of the 1980s.
The writer said that, in many respects, her hero mirrored her own experience.
Fans saw Mole evolve from a spotty, pretentious teenager to a jaded middle-aged man who lamented in the final book: "What have I done with my life? I have lost two wives, one house and one canal-side apartment, a head of hair and my health."
Sadly, Sue had planned to publish more of Mole's mid-life adventures but she died in 2014.
Harry Potter
Ok, so we're slightly cheating here as we're talking about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - a play rather than a new book instalment - which is based on an original JK Rowling story but co-written by Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany.
However, the West End two-part show was still published as a book, billed as the "eighth Harry Potter story", and sees the return of Harry, Hermione et al as adults.
The grown-up Harry is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and a father of three children.
His youngest son Albus has to take on the weight of the family legacy.
The production has not disappointed - the play won five-star reviews from critics when it debuted in 2016, with one describing it as "a game-changing production".
Jo March
Classic American novel Little Women (1868) introduced the world to Jo March and her sisters and was soon followed by Good Wives.
But while Jo was lauded as a feminist hero in the original two books, many felt author Louisa May Alcott had sold out with her later books, Little Men and Jo's Boys.
Alcott, a single woman herself, had intended Jo to remain unmarried but bowed to pressure from both fans and her publisher.
Little Men and Jo's Boys follow the lives of the dozen boys Jo and her husband Professor Bhaer teach at their school.
But many fans of the original book were left yearning for either Jo to marry childhood friend Laurie instead, or perhaps even better, not marry at all.
Anne of Green Gables
Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel Anne of Green Gables, published more than 100 years ago, has been enjoyed by both adults and children.
Generations have been charmed by the adventures of 11-year-old orphan Anne Shirley, with her famous red-hair in pigtails.
But Montgomery evidently decided she was onto a good thing, writing a series of six books detailing Anne's life up until her mid-fifties.
So we see her becoming a schoolteacher in Anne of Avonlea, through to her marriage in Anne's House of Dreams, and then as a mother-of-six in Anne of Ingleside.
Montgomery then wrote books about Anne's children's lives, in which Anne also features - why quit when you're onto a good thing?
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
|
A teenager has been killed after the car in which he was a passenger crashed near a railway bridge in Cumbria. | Gavin Helps, 17, from Carlisle, was in a VW Polo that crashed in the village of Rockcliffe, on the outskirts of the city, at about 17:10 BST on Sunday.
He was pronounced dead at the scene. His family said he was "taken from us too soon, in tragic circumstances".
Cumbria Police said the 17-year-old driver, who was also hurt, was helping officers with their inquiries.
Two other passengers suffered minor injuries and were treated in hospital.
Any witnesses have been asked to come forward.
|
Wales is in the midst of high street crisis according to recent reports, and there are plenty of stories to be found on this website alone which paint a gloomy picture of shops closing and town centres dying. | By Natalie GriceBBC News
But take a walk around the seaside town of Porthcawl and a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking the resort is enjoying something of a trading boom.
A cluster of smart, boutique-type shops have opened in the past few months in a town centre side street, and a number of other fairly recent start-ups have expanded.
Two of the new shop owners on the block are Austin Henderson and Jake Easterbrook, proprietors of Tuffnell Hill in Well Street, which sells natural skincare products.
The lotions and potions for sale are not cheap and are at first glance an unusual choice for a small town shop opening in the midst of a big economic downturn.
The pair, who bought a company in France to enable them to make their own brand products and as a result also have a store in Paris, believe they can make a go of it in the town as long as, to use their own words, they "don't put all our eggs in one basket".
Mr Henderson said: "We were very surprised with the amount of trade we did [when the shop opened] in November, which was above what we'd forecast.
"While these are premium products, people like to come in and treat themselves. We'd say we're at the bottom end of the luxury market in price terms, and we do stock less expensive products in the back of the shop."
He said their trade at the time being was very much based on local and returning customers, which he acknowledged included people from surrounding towns, rather than being dependent on one-off day trippers.
Mr Easterbrook explained that the company was also in the process of setting up a website to sell online, and also sold wholesale from their French company, so were not totally reliant on sales through the door at the shop in Well Street.
A few doors down, fellow November openers Once Upon a Time are offering wedding and party services as well as a range of bakeware, crockery and Cath Kidston-style trinkets.
In a similar way to Tufnell Hill, the shop is also part of a business offering services in addition to straightforward on-street retail.
Nearby Icon, a baby and toddler clothing store, was in the process of moving stock to a recently vacated premises on the seafront and was planning to retain the present site as well to offer a range of clothing for older boys.
However, it was not all good news on Well Street. Ambience, a home furnishings shop which had been in the town for nine and a half years was selling off stock and retreating to its other base in the Vale of Glamorgan town of Cowbridge.
The reason? "Footfall is down."
Round the corner on the town's main shopping centre of John Street, Michelle Smith, co-owner of jewellery, accessories and clothing store Divine, was upbeat about the future after just 15 months of trading.
Previously in banking, Ms Smith set up the company with her sister-in-law Marie Jones and moved from their first site next door into their present larger premises.
Ms Smith started off doing party planning and corporate events where they would sell their jewellery but they were getting "ridiculously busy" and had many requests from customers asking where they could find their products at other times.
They have since opened three more shops in Cardiff Bay, Cardiff Airport and Narberth, Pembrokeshire.
She said: "It was a big risk starting up in a recession but we feel if we're keeping our heads above water in a recession then we'll be ok when we come out of it.
"We're very cautious about trying to keep things steady.
"We started off quite reasonably priced and people could just pick up and buy quite easily.
"2011 was tough. There was a definite shift in footfall. Then we moved in August and the shop has become far more profitable than it was previously."
Ms Smith said people had been spending less, but towards the end of the year things started to pick up a bit.
She hopes further planned regeneration of the town combined with working together with other traders would help bring more people to the town, but added: "We have got a regular customer base and people coming back to us all the time.
"We need our locals to shop here."
Fifth generation
At the other end of the longevity scale is Walters' Shoes, found in the heart of John Street.
Jo Richards and her cousin Jane Hunt are the fifth generation of the Walters' family to run the business, which opened originally as a general goods store in 1875 before specialising in quality footwear.
They attribute the town's resilience in recent years to a number of contributing factors, some of which have followed on from improvements to the town's facilities and appearance in recent years.
New cafes and food kiosks have appeared along the seafront, and while the town was always a traditional summer holiday destination, now weekends throughout the year see streams of day trippers coming to the town for even the faintest hint of winter sun.
Ms Richards said that, compared to years gone by: "Porthcawl seems to be more a destination just for a walk along the prom. The extension of the prom [from the town centre to Rest Bay half a mile away] has brought lots of people to Porthcawl.
"Sundays can be quite a good [trading] day."
She said the upgrading of the caravan park at Trecco Bay after it was taken over by Parkdean meant it was also attracting different types of visitors to previous years, who tended to be more affluent.
"The Seabank hotel [which has also been refurbished] brings in coaches of people from all over the country. Midweek, we get a lot of groups in. They all seem to be our sort of customer," Ms Richards added.
There are plans to develop the car park and dockside area, including a new Tesco store and other retail outlets.
While the traders were cautious about a potential drain away from John Street if the development was not handled appropriately, they acknowledged that it could draw more people into the town.
Rhiannon Kingsley, town centre manager of Porthcawl, said: "It's definitely bucking the trend. We are getting independent shops opening quite regularly."
She explained the town has partly been shielded from the economic woes of other high streets because it was mainly composed of independent retailers so it was less affected by chain store closures.
Ms Kingsley added that although shops did come and go, vacant premises tended to be filled quickly, not leaving the rows of empty stores seen in other town centres.
'Few more wealthy people'
Whilst Porthcawl is certainly not immune from shop closures, figures from Bridgend council show the number of vacant premises in the town more than halved from 23 in 2005 to 11 in 2010.
Sadly for the town, and in part proving Ms Kingsley's theory, the local branch of seconds store chain Trade Secret had just announced it would be closing down quickly.
Paul Fielding, president of Porthcawl Chamber of Trade, said the picture in the town was mixed, with some traders struggling with what he termed "ridiculous rents" in the main streets.
However he continued: "I think by and large we're doing better than Bridgend, which is in a real mess, and Maesteg is suffering too, neither of which have a chamber of trade anymore.
"We're fortunate in Porthcawl in some respects that we have got a few more wealthy people than other parts of south Wales. But people often forget that we also have a council estate here."
|
Every day, anyone who is connected to the internet leaves an ever bigger trail of data behind them. But how aware are we of who is collecting this information and of who benefits from it? I spent a day without data to to explore these questions. | Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter
My guide for this no-data diet is Dr George Danezis, an expert on privacy and information security at University College, London. As I sit at the breakfast table, handing over my gadgets he sets out the challenge I face:
"Your job today is going to be very difficult, You won't be able to use the internet, but you also won't be able to do lots of other things - in fact you won't be able to live a 21st Century life."
As someone who is addicted to being online, checking Twitter the moment I wake up, still reading online news last thing at night, giving up my smartphone is hard.
But George also makes me hand over my travel card and my BBC identity card which gets me into my office. Both record data about my location, so they have to go.
George explains that there are three big collectors of data: companies, governments and the police and the security services. Consumers may have grown accustomed to this data collection and in some cases see benefits.
But we may still be in the dark about some aspects. "It's collected for primary but also secondary purposes, you might be handing over data while you're shopping and that might be used later for marketing or working out health insurance."
I determine not to buy quite so many biscuits if that is going to send bad signals to my insurance company.
We head out with the dog for a walk, trying not to leave data as we go. George explains that we could not take the car without the risk of being tracked, either by my satnav or by number plate recognition systems.
And of course in London a bus is also out of the question - the drivers no longer take cash, only London's Oyster card.
Without my mobile phone, which constantly tells the network operator where I am, I should be safe just walking along, but then George points to the various CCTV cameras monitoring our progress along the High Street.
Even a trip to the shops with cash rather than cards presents difficulties. "Big notes have their serial numbers tracked by the banks. If you take one out of the cash machine and give it to the shop they will pay it straight back into the bank and then you can be tracked."
I ask George whether I might be better staying at home. For now, he says, that might be okay but what about when my home becomes smart?
"Right now you assume your kettle isn't sharing data but smart objects will be much more difficult to read. You might pick up some object that looks innocuous, like a kettle, and find out that it does actually share information."
We end up taking the dog for a walk in the woods. Surely here, far from CCTV cameras, mobile phones, smart cards, I am off the grid? But George points out that even Archie the dog is chipped, so in theory someone with a reader could work out where his owner is.
And, just as we dismiss that as totally far-fetched he comes up with something more unsettling.
"If someone like you who normally shares a lot of information suddenly goes totally dark, this in itself is quite noticeable and a lot of analytical systems out there will immediately notice that something odd is going on."
Once you have laid a data trail, it seems, even going off the grid does not work.
But having thoroughly unsettled me, George tells me not to be paranoid and gives me some tips for healthy data habits.
"There is a good reason to keep track of public policy around data - make sure that no more than necessary is collected. You should also make sure that the technology you have has options for being used without collecting data, which as we've seen today isn't easy."
Maybe we should all read those endless privacy statements from online companies instead of just pressing "Agree". Or perhaps it is time for consumers to demand more transparency and a better return for their data from all those who collect it.
|
Thieves stole a "substantial quantity of cash" from an elderly couple's home by pretending to be police officers. | The two thieves said they needed to turn the water stop-cock off because of damage from Storm Ophelia around 19:45 BST on 16 October.
After they left, the couple, who live in Llay, Wrexham, noticed money missing and their closet had been searched.
Det Insp Mark Hughes described it as a "particularly mean crime against an elderly couple in their own home".
North Wales Police is searching for the two men and has warned residents to "be aware of cold callers".
|
Do you remember that feeling of being a kid, running after your older siblings and you just couldn't keep up? Your little feet would move as fast as they could, but still you'd lag behind? Well, that's how I feel these days - the reason being a volcano. | By Thora ArnorsdottirIcelandic journalist
Every morning I set my alarm for 06:00, not to jump in the shower, but to refresh every website with volcano news from my home country, Iceland. Since 16 August, there have been thousands of earthquakes beneath Europe's largest glacier, Vatnajokull, which covers 3,400 sq miles (8,800 sq km) in south-east Iceland.
Scientists believe that this seismic activity is caused by an enormous amount of magma moving around under the Earth's crust - it might even be moving from one volcanic system to another.
A small eruption started last week, took a break and started again on Friday 29 August with increased force. The fissure is just north of the glacier, so it's only normal lava flow. It's different if there is an eruption underneath a glacier, a sub glacial eruption - then the magma explodes on contact with the ice and out comes ash.
Hold on - jokull, ash - does that remind you of something? "Volcano, I think I'll call you Kevin." That was comedian Jon Stewart's reaction after watching reporters from just about every major TV station in the world try in vain to pronounce the name of the Icelandic volcano that trashed the travel arrangements of millions of people in April 2010.
The huge ash cloud from that eruption shut down much of Europe's airspace for six days, leading to the cancellation of 100,000 flights. Even US President Barack Obama couldn't fly. He missed the funeral of the late president of Poland, so did Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France.
Eyjafjallajokull was fourth on Time Magazine's list of top 10 buzzwords for 2010, but the airlines weren't happy - the total cost of the shutdown was estimated to have been around $1.7bn (£1bn).
Now, only four years later, it seems it's time to prepare for more disruption. Geological activity comes in waves, and Iceland seems to be in one such phase now.
The island is located on the middle of the North-Atlantic ridge and for that reason it is being torn apart. Half of the country belongs to the North American tectonic plate and the other half to the Eurasian one. They move half an inch (1.2cm) or so per year in opposite directions, on average. It looks like 2014 is going to be a 20-inch (50cm) year.
That doesn't mean Iceland is actually splitting in two, because enough magma always comes up to fill in the gap. It's not getting larger either, because the Atlantic Ocean nibbles from the shores at a similar pace.
The theory is that just beneath Vatnajokull glacier, there is a hot spot, which has nothing to do with internet connections, but connection to the Earth's mantle. Supposedly, this is one of the few places on Earth where such a hot spot exists and that's one reason why a third of the lava that has run over the planet in the last 500 years has been in Iceland.
Oh, and here's the icing on the cake. The name of the volcano system involved is Bardarbunga-Dyngjujokull. Beautiful, isn't it? Looks like the big sister of Eyjafjallajokull, alias Kevin.
Here's an odd thing. Even though volcanic eruptions have had terrible consequences through the ages, Icelanders love their volcanoes. They name their daughters after them, like Hekla and Katla.
They respect them. There's just something majestic about volcanoes, like having a lion in the house. We know they can be dangerous, but we've learned to live with them.
Our country is young and dynamic, still being moulded and shaped by nature. Maps have to be changed every few years because of the continuous seismic movement, appearances of new craters and the ever-changing coastal line and river flow.
Icelanders exchange stories about where they were when this or that eruption happened, we all tune in to the National Broadcast Service Radio when we feel a robust earthquake, to follow the story. How big was it? Was it just an earthquake or a warning that Mount Hekla is about to erupt? Is it maybe Mount Katla's turn now?
The highlands around the Vatnajokull glacier have been evacuated and the few thousand inhabitants in the northern part, where the flood would probably come down, are alert and ready to leave their homes in an instant. It comes without saying that if glowing hot magma finds its way up to the surface under a glacier, an enormous amount of ice will melt - and that water has to go somewhere.
So for the past couple of weeks I've been refreshing websites and messaging my friends and family: Has it started? Not yet? Now? What about now? Or now? Most foreigners thought it was because I was worried about them, but that's not the reason. The capital, Reykjavik, is hundreds of miles away and it's very unlikely that anyone there would be in harm's way.
No, the reason is very selfish. I'm just anxious about not being there to see it with my own eyes. It's great having the opportunity to spend a semester at Yale as a World Fellow, but for a seasoned Icelandic TV reporter, it's almost unbearable to imagine that I'll miss the Bardarbunga-Dyngjujokull eruption.
I follow my colleagues who are already camping out there, following the forces of nature at work. New land is being created and they are just so excited about it.
At this moment I'm thrown back to my childhood of growing up with four older brothers and trying my best to keep up with them moving as fast as I can on my little feet, but not keeping up.
While you may be hoping that this eruption will be over soon and no ash will be a threat to any jet engines, in order to save a lot of people a lot of trouble and a lot of airlines a lot of money, my only wish is this:
Dear Bardarbunga volcano system,
Can you please slow down and hold your breath until 15 December, so that I, your loyal admirer, can witness your spectacular show?
Yours truly,
Thora
PS: Scientists now say the eruption might last for years. That's comforting. Kind of.
Thora Arnorsdottir is a senior news editor at the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service and a 2014 Yale World Fellow.
More from the Magazine
Forty one years ago, an Icelandic eruption buried hundreds of houses. Archaeologists have been uncovering what's left of the buildings, giving the island the nickname "Pompeii of the North". An entire museum has been built around the remains of one of the homes. For some people on the island, however, uncovering the remnants of a traumatic past has been difficult.
Iceland's 'Pompeii' emerging from the ash
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
|
It's been hailed as the defining image of this year's London Marathon: runner Matthew Rees stopping to help fellow competitor David Wyeth after he almost collapsed just metres from the finish line. But why do some runners' legs turn to jelly? | By Emma HarrisonBBC News
With the end in sight, David Wyeth's legs began to buckle. Staggering along The Mall, head dropping, it looked like he would not complete the race.
But - in a show of comradeship that has quickly gone viral - fellow runner Matthew Rees stopped, pulled Mr Wyeth up and they completed the 26.2 mile challenge together.
"I saw David and his legs had completely collapsed beneath him," the Swansea Harriers runner told BBC Breakfast.
"I went over and he said 'I've got to finish' and I said 'you will' and I helped him up."
'Out of petrol'
His struggle is reminiscent of an exhausted Jonny Brownlee, who was helped over the finish line by brother Alistair in the Triathlon World Series in Mexico last year.
Jonny required treatment but later tweeted he was OK, with a photo of himself lying in a hospital bed on a drip.
At the time, Alistair said: "I wish the flippin' idiot had paced it right and crossed the finish line first.
"You have to race the conditions. I was comfortable in third. I raced the conditions, I took the water on, made myself cool and I was alright."
London Marathon Coach Martin Yelling says it is like runners have "run out of petrol".
"At the end of a marathon runners usually have given so much physically that their energy levels are completely depleted - the term is hitting the wall," he says.
"What that means is your body is struggling to find enough physical energy to move forward, the body is trying to tell you to stop."
He says there is a clear wrestle between physical exhaustion and "incredible mental strength" in runners who have hit the wall.
"For every-day runners it is about learning to understand how your body responds.
"We would call it listening to your body."
Training for a marathon, pacing yourself and the correct fuel and hydration is important in avoiding the wall and the so-called "jelly legs", he says.
Tim Navin-Jones, from running club London City Runners, is one runner who can sympathise, having "hit the wall" himself during the New York Marathon.
"Your mind is telling you to keep going and your body is getting to the point where it says 'no'," he says.
"Your legs really do turn to jelly - it is horrific.
"It is like being a really horrible version of drunk. It is sheer exhaustion."
Mr Navin-Jones, who has run five marathons among other distances, says it is difficult to know how to pace a marathon for those who have not done it before.
A common mistake is runners starting a race too fast, he says.
'Sheer exhaustion'
Emma Ross, head of physiology at the English Institute of Sport, says runners "hit the wall" in a marathon when they run out of carbohydrate to use as a fuel for running.
"So what you want to try and do is keep your carbohydrate stores topped up during the race to prevent you from predominantly having to use fat as a fuel," she says.
"When we use fat as a fuel, we have to go slower because as a process of burning energy it is a more complex and a slower system, so we can only support slower exercise."
She also warns that dehydration causes a decrease in blood volume, which makes the heart work harder, so it is important for runners to keep hydrated.
Runner Gary McKee completed 100 marathons in 100 days for MacMillan Cancer Support, finishing on Sunday at the London Marathon.
The 47-year-old, from Cleator Moor in Cumbria, says he managed to not hit the wall as he paced himself carefully during his challenge.
He says runners have to recognise when their body is telling them to stop.
"It is down to hydration. You will come to a point when you are tired.
"Have you overexerted yourself? Have you had enough calories? Enough carbs?
"The more you train, the higher your fitness levels become, so you can sustain it (running) for longer.
"If you understand what your body wants, just give it what it wants."
|
Death Comes to Pemberley, PD James's crime-busting sequel to Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice, is bringing literary heart-flutterer Mr Darcy back to life on the BBC this Christmas. | By Michael OsbornEntertainment reporter, BBC News
It's been two decades since Jane Austen's hero appeared dripping wet after a dip, in the definitive television adaptation of the literary favourite.
Colin Firth made his name as the dark-haired, smouldering incarnation of Darcy, who eventually fell in love with Elizabeth Bennet in a happy-ever-after end to the story.
The new drama is set on the Darcys' estate six years after the end of Austen's tale, and actor Matthew Rhys is charged with taking on this well-loved character, now settled into married life with children.
"They said 'do you want to play Mr Darcy' and I said 'no! absolutely not! But then they said it wasn't for Pride and Prejudice but Death Comes to Pemberley," says the Welshman.
"It's a different Darcy, he's six years older, mellower and wiser, but it's still the same character.
"I'm the Darcy that everyone knows, but there's that whiff of dramatic licence that I clung to dearly so I could say he was slightly different.
"I've made him a lot more Welsh and he's of a similar height to me. But the heavy lifting is left to Colin [Firth]," explains Rhys, meaning that Darcy's sensual dips in the lake have been left behind.
Crime writer PD James has created a murder mystery-costume drama 'mash-up' to take the Pride and Prejudice tale forward, which Rhys calls a "very shrewd move".
"I think there are about 50 supposed sequels to the novel. This doesn't set you up for direct comparisons of a sequel, and PD James is writing in a style that she's incredibly adept in, but still using incredibly famous characters.
"It's a bit of a win-win… You're ticking a lot of boxes," says the 39-year-old.
Rhys hints at concern over how the viewing public will take to the mini series, because it throws two major genres into the same pot.
"There's an element of a curveball to this. It's not a straightforward costume drama, it's an amalgamation of styles. Viewers might not be sure where to place it or they might say 'this is fresh take on period drama'.
"But costume crime-fighting is a lot more interesting because there are no computers, no DNA. Human intuition is always a lot more compelling to watch," says the actor.
A lot has been made in the press about a face-off between the BBC's Death Comes to Pemberley and ITV period colossus Downton Abbey.
They are both major offerings on our Christmas TV screens - even though the shows aren't pitched directly against one another in the schedules.
Pemberley star Rhys downplays the new drama's chances of overcoming its rival.
"I don't think we can measure up to Downton, they have a pre-made army of fans. They're already the juggernaut, we're the curveball. They're the loved and revered heavyweight championship boxer, we're the wildcard coming in from the left."
He jokes about another way to settle any rivalry: "I'd love to see the casts of Death Comes to Pemberley and Downton do something like a celebrity edition of Total Wipeout - and it would have to be done in period costume."
Rhys is no stranger to costume drama, starring in an adaptation of Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood and 1950s thriller The Scapegoat.
His screen career has been divided between the UK and US as the star of Brothers and Sisters and The Americans, which he says caused some problems when filming on Death Comes to Pemberley got under way.
"Stupidly and arrogantly I went straight from The Americans to Pemberley and thought I was coming home to a genre and period I know, then I put the breeches on after six months of wearing polyester and jumping over cars.
"Upper class landed gentry are a bit of a stretch for me and after the first couple of days of rehearsal I thought I'd better pull up my socks here," he explains.
Rhys adds that acting in period dramas is "certainly not easy pickings", adding: "I do have a love for the variation that I'm incredibly lucky to do".
The three-part drama may be self-contained, but is there a chance of Pemberley becoming a place that is regularly strewn with bodies like Midsomer?
In a jocular fashion, Rhys comes up with a pitch for programme executives.
"You could have Lizzie Bennett as a regular crime fighter. When she turns up to a dance, someone - preferably with a Scottish accent - tells her there's been a murder.
"As Darcy, I could just top and tail it - she'd solve the murder mystery after an hour, come home and I'd ask her how it was from behind my newspaper."
Death Comes to Pemberley starts on BBC One on 26 December at 2015 GMT and continues on the 27 and 28 December.
|
Donald Trump loves evangelical voters, and they love him. | Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
That much was clear on Friday, as the president basked in one standing ovation after another during his speech before the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC.
How the thrice-married New Yorker, despite his sometimes salty language, brash demeanour and documented boasts of sexual belligerency, has formed such an unlikely bond with social conservatives is a complicated question.
In the end, it comes down to power. Mr Trump has it - and, if he wants to keep it, he needs the support of the kind of social conservative activists who show up every year at the Omni Hotel to organise and preach about the need to restore Christian values in the US government.
For evangelicals, Mr Trump may be an unlikely vessel - but so far, he has delivered the goods.
"He's not perfect, but his heart is in the right place," said summit-attendee Teresa Ledesma, a health industry worker from Lansing, Michigan. "We believe him to be God's champion. God needed a fighter, someone who was unapologetic. He's gone into the lion's den for us."
God, flags and Merry Christmas
In his speech, the president offered a two-paragraph catechism for this newly minted alliance - a shared embrace of the "customs, beliefs and traditions that defined who we are as a nation and as a people".
It includes protecting the "sacred dignity of every human life" (read: opposing legal abortion), observing traditional family values, defending religious freedom, honouring soldiers and law enforcement, and respecting our "great American flag".
Mr Trump followed it with a litany of promises he said he has kept to these religious voters.
He nominated a reliable conservative, Neil Gorsuch, to the Supreme Court. He loosened government mandates that health-insurance plans include free contraceptive coverage. He eased restrictions on political activities by religious organisations. He increased restrictions on government support for international organisations that provided family planning and abortion counselling.
And, drawing some of the biggest applause from the crowds, he said "we're saying Merry Christmas again".
"I could see right away that there was something in him, but I didn't believe it could be as good as it's been," said Clifford Rice, a lawyer from Valparaiso, Indiana, who was attending his first Value Voters Summit.
It was just two years earlier when candidate Trump, seeking his party's presidential nomination, stood before the summit and held up his childhood bible, telling the crowd: "I believe in God. I believe in the Bible. I'm a Christian."
A common enemy
Many were sceptical at the time, seeming more in tune with the Senator Ted Cruz, a preacher's son from Texas, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee - an actual Baptist minister - or Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has his own evangelical roots.
A straw poll after that year's event had Mr Trump a distant fifth place - with only 5% of the vote.
Evident even then, however, was the anti-establishment fervour that had gripped much of the right, including social conservatives. They cheered, for instance, when they learned on the first day of the conference that House Speaker John Boehner had resigned.
Mr Trump would go on to become the voice of that anti-Washington anger and ride it to his party's nomination - and the presidency. In fact, he would win a larger share of the evangelical vote (80%) than Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 (78%) or John McCain in 2009 (74%).
Now Mr Trump holds the highest political office in the land, but he's not done railing against the political establishment. This time, it's Senate Republicans who have been insufficiently supportive of his agenda - and social conservatives throwing their support fully behind him.
In an opinion piece in Breitbart News, the website of record for Trumpism, summit organiser Tony Perkins called Senate Republicans "the promise-breaking caucus".
"We've been given an opportunity by God that not every generation has had; to turn the nation, to change the trajectory of this country and revive our Republican from the spiritual, moral and economic decay brought on by the radical policies of the left," he writes.
In other words, it's time to "make America great again" - with God's help.
Missing from this year's summit were any Republicans senators, in fact. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Mr Cruz, Mr Rubio and South Carolina's Tim Scott, who were once listed on the organiser's website as possible speakers, were nowhere to be found.
The new face of the party
Instead, the line-up was dotted with Mr Trump's team, present and past. Senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway spoke on Friday. Former advisers Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon, considered the mastermind of Mr Trump's ethno-nationalist populism, took the stage on Saturday.
One after another, they touted this administration's efforts to advance issues dear to evangelical voters - and railed against a Washington establishment that they said was conspiring against their collective agenda.
It wasn't too long ago that the leaders of this Washington establishment - the pro-trade, tax-cutting Wall Street fiscal conservatives and their big-business associates across the country - were the ones who broke bread with the evangelicals. It never was a completely comfortable alliance, and at times social conservatives groused that their issues took a back seat to other Republican concerns.
The ties held through the Ronald Reagan years, however, and appeared stronger than ever when born-again Christian George W Bush became president in 2001.
Now that Mr Trump is the top dog, however, it's clear it was always a marriage of convenience - and if Mr Trump, for all his flaws, can deliver for them, that's what matters. Even if it means the president is followed on the Values Voter stage by Bill Bennett, the former education secretary who has made a career of preaching the importance of personal morality on the part of US political leaders. Even if it means listening to Mr Bannon talk about kicking ass and going to war or Mr Gorka saying they would "damage" their left-wing opponents.
Mission unaccomplished
On Monday afternoon Mr Trump appeared with Mr McConnell in the White House Rose Garden and professed his "fantastic" relationship with most of the Republicans in the Senate.
"The Republican Party is very, very unified," he said.
A more sincere expression of the president's feelings about Republicans in Congress probably came earlier in the day, in comments to reporters during a presidential cabinet meeting.
"I'm not going to blame myself, I'll be honest," he said. "They're not getting the job done."
If the Values Voter Summit is any indication, evangelical voters largely agree.
And when mid-term primaries and the general election roll around next year, a lot of Republican politicians who once counted on the support of social conservatives could come to the unpleasant realisation that the party they once knew has been remade in Mr Trump's image.
|
A cat's life typically consists of sleeping, interspersed with eating and the occasional manic bout of skittishness, followed by a good old nap. But some of our feline friends actually work for a living and hold down a proper job - in some cases, complete with uniform. | By Bethan BellBBC News
Here are some of England's cats that do more than snooze, eat and sidle around while looking superior.
Post Office cats
In 1868 three cats were formally employed as mousers at the Money Order Office in London. They were "paid" a wage of one shilling a week - which went towards their upkeep - and were given a six-month probationary period.
They obviously did their job efficiently as in 1873 they were awarded an increase of 6d a week. The official use of cats soon spread to other post offices.
According to the Postal Museum, the most popular cat of all was Tibs. Born in November 1950, at his biggest he weighed 23lbs (10.4kg) and lived in the Post Office headquarters' refreshment club in the basement of the building in central London. During his 14 years' service he kept the building rodent-free.
The last Post Office HQ cat, Blackie, died in June 1984, and since then there have been no further felines employed there.
An honourable mention must go to the Belgian authorities, who in the 1870s recruited 37 cats to deliver mail via waterproof bags attached to their collars. It was an idea posited by the Belgian Society for the Elevation of the Domestic Cat, which felt cats' natural sense of direction was not being fully exploited.
During a trial, the cats were rounded up from their villages near Liège, taken a few miles away and burdened with a note in a bag - with the idea the cat would return home complete with missive.
Although all the cats - and notes - eventually turned up, the feline disposition unsurprisingly proved unsuited to providing a swift or reliable postal service and the idea was dropped.
Police cats
Dogs have long been part of the police force, but cats rarely got a look-in - unless they were being arrested for burglary. But in the summer of 2016, Durham Constabulary recruited Mittens.
The appointment stemmed from a letter written by five-year-old Eliza Adamson-Hopper, who suggested the force add a puss to its plods.
"A police cat would be good as they have good ears and can listen out for danger. Cats are good at finding their way home and could show policemen the way," she said.
Mittens is not the only police cat. Oscar lives at Holmfirth Police Station in Huddersfield, where his job involves being "a therapeutic source of support for my officers", and Smokey is a volunteer welfare officer at Skegness Police Station.
As a spokesman from the station said, "being a police officer can be very fast-paced and stressful job so when we need to take a break or grab some air now, many of us pop outside a spend a few minutes with Smokey".
Showbiz cats
Whether it's showing off in feature films, flogging luxury pet food to besotted owners, or chilling out on the set of Blue Peter, there has long been a place for cats in front of the camera.
Arthur was the furry face of Spillers cat food for nearly 10 years from 1966, scooping Kattomeat from the tin into his mouth. He was such a star the brand was later renamed Arthur's in his honour. There were rumours that Arthur was made to use his paw to eat because advertisers removed his teeth - but the allegation proved to be untrue. He was just a natural paw-dipper.
Arthur II and Arthur III followed the original.
Blue Peter's Jason, a seal point Siamese, was the first in a long line of presenter pusses on the popular BBC children's programme. Others included Jack and Jill, who became known as the disappearing cats, because of their habit of leaping out of whichever lap they were in whenever they appeared on screen, and Willow, who was the first Blue Peter cat to be neutered or spayed.
Two red Persians played the role of Crookshanks in the Harry Potter film franchise - Crackerjack was a male and Pumpkin a female - while Mrs Norris was played by three Maine Coons named Maximus, Alanis and Cornilus - each was trained to perform a specific act, such as jumping on to actors' shoulders or lying still.
Museum cats
At some point before 1960, a colony of stray cats found its way to the British Museum and established itself there. Unneutered and untamed, it's estimated that at one point there may have been as many as 100 moggies roaming around.
Records in the British Museum's archive contain reports of kittens being born in the loading docks and running through the bookshelves of the museum library.
The museum eventually decided enough was enough. The invaders were set to be exterminated, but were saved by the museum's cleaner, Rex Shepherd, who set up the Cat Welfare Society and had the strays safely neutered and adopted, until the population was brought down to a more manageable six.
Under the guidance of Mr Shepherd, some of the cats, which were kept to control the vermin population, featured in newspaper articles - including a feature on them having their Christmas dinner - and became internationally famous. Suzie could snatch pigeons out of the air to eat them, while Pippin and Poppet were trained to roll over on command.
There are no living cats at the museum today - although there are some mummified ones in the displays. If you're after a live one, try the London Water and Steam Museum, which has Maudslay, a black and white fellow named after an engine, or the Jane Austen Museum in Chawton, Hampshire, where Marmite is on hand (or paw) to greet visitors.
Military cats
As far back as 9,500 years ago, cats were used on naval ships and in rat-infested trenches. During World War One, the British Army and Royal Navy deployed nearly half a million to fend off pests on land and at sea.
By World War Two, nearly every vessel had at least one ship's cat.
One of them, Simon, became the only cat to be awarded the Dickin Medal - the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross - for helping to save the lives of naval officers during the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
While the ship was under siege for 101 days, he was credited with saving the lives of the crew by protecting the ship's stores from an infestation of rats.
The brave chap suffered severe shrapnel wounds when the ship came under fire and was given a hero's welcome when it eventually returned to dock in Plymouth. Simon lived long enough to get back to England, but died in quarantine three weeks later. He was buried in Ilford, Essex, with full military honours.
Another wartime hero was Crimean Tom, also known as Sevastopol Tom, who saved British and French troops from starvation during the Crimean War in 1854.
The regiments were occupying the port of Sevastopol and could not find food. Tom could. He led them to hidden caches of supplies stored by Russian soldiers and civilians.
Tom, who was taken back to England when the war was over, died in 1856, whereupon he was stuffed. He is now a permanent part of the National Army Museum in London.
|
It's four decades since a charismatic preacher and his followers staged an armed takeover of the Grand Mosque of Mecca and the holiest place in Islam became a killing field. The resulting siege, writes the BBC's Eli Melki, shook the Muslim world to its foundations and changed the course of Saudi history. | In the early hours of 20 November 1979, some 50,000 faithful from all over the world gathered for dawn prayers in the huge courtyard surrounding the sacred Kaaba in Mecca, Islam's holiest place. Among them mingled 200 men led by a charismatic 40-year-old preacher called Juhayman al-Utaybi.
As, the imam finished leading prayers, Juhayman and his followers pushed him aside and seized the microphone.
They had placed closed coffins in the centre of the yard, a traditional act of seeking blessings for the recently deceased. But when the coffins were opened, they revealed handguns and rifles, which were quickly distributed among the men.
One of them began to read a prepared speech: "Fellow Muslims, we announce today the coming of the Mahdi… who shall reign with justice and fairness on Earth after it has been filled with injustice and oppression."
For the pilgrims in the courtyard, this was an extraordinary announcement. In the hadiths - reports of what the Prophet Muhammad said or approved - the coming of the Mahdi, or divinely guided one, is foretold. He is described as a man endowed with extraordinary powers by God, and some Muslims believe he will usher in an era of justice and true belief.
The preacher, Khaled al-Yami, a follower of Juhayman, claimed that "countless visions have testified to the coming of the Mahdi". Hundreds of Muslims had seen him in their dreams, Yami said, and now he was in their midst. The Mahdi's name was Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Qahtani.
In an audio recording of the speech, Juhayman can be heard interrupting the speaker from time to time to direct his men to close the shrine's gates and take up sniper positions in its tall minarets, which then dominated the city of Mecca.
''Attention brothers! Ahmad al-Lehebi, go up on the roof. If you see someone resisting at the gates, shoot them!''
According to an anonymous witness, Juhayman was the first to pay homage to the Mahdi, and immediately others started following his example. Cries of "God is great!" rang out.
But there was confusion too. Abdel Moneim Sultan, an Egyptian religious student who had got to know some of Juhayman's followers, recalls that the Grand Mosque was full of foreign visitors who spoke little Arabic and did not know what was happening.
The sight of armed gunmen in a space in which the Koran strictly forbids any violence, and a few gunshots, also stunned many worshippers, who scrambled to reach any exits still left open.
''People were surprised at the sight of gunmen... This is something they were not used to. There is no doubt this horrified them. This was something outrageous,'' says Abdel Moneim Sultan.
But in just an hour the audacious takeover was complete. The armed group was now in full control of the Grand Mosque, mounting a direct challenge to the authority of the Saudi royal family.
The men who took over the Grand Mosque belonged to an association called al-Jamaa al-Salafiya al-Muhtasiba (JSM) which condemned what it perceived as the degeneration of social and religious values in Saudi Arabia.
Flush with oil money, the country was gradually transforming into a consumerist society. Cars and electrical goods were becoming commonplace, the country was urbanising, and in some regions men and women began to mix in public.
But the JSM's members continued to live an austere life, proselytising, studying the Koran and the hadiths, and adhering to the tenets of Islam as defined by the Saudi religious establishment.
Juhayman, one of the JSM's founders - who hailed from Sajir, a Bedouin settlement in the centre of the country - confessed to his followers that his past was far from perfect. During a long evening around a fireplace in the desert, or a gathering in the house of one of his supporters, he would tell his personal story of fall and redemption to a captivated audience.
Usama al-Qusi, a religious student who frequented the group's meetings, heard Juhayman say that he had been involved in "illegal trading, including drug smuggling".
However, he had repented, found solace in religion and became a zealous and devoted leader - and many members of the JSM, especially the younger ones, fell under his spell.
Most of those who knew him, such as religious student Mutwali Saleh, attest of his force of personality as well as his devotion: "Nobody saw this man and didn't like him. He was strange. He had what is called charisma. He was true to his mission, and he gave his whole life to Allah, day and night."
However, for a religious leader he was poorly educated.
"Juhayman was keen to go to the isolated and the rural areas where Bedouins live," Nasser al-Hozeimi, a close follower, recalls. "Because his classical Arabic [the language mastered by all scholars of Islam] was weak and he had a strong Bedouin accent, he avoided addressing any educated audience to avoid being exposed."
More from BBC Arabic
On the other hand, Juhayman had served as a soldier in the National Guard, and his rudimentary military training proved important when it came to organising the takeover.
Eventually, the JSM began to clash with some Saudi clerics and a crackdown by the authorities ensued.
Juhayman fled to the desert, where he wrote a series of pamphlets criticising the Saudi royal family for what he considered it to be its decadence, and accusing clerics of colluding with it for earthly gains. He became convinced that Saudi Arabia had been corrupted and that only a heavenly intervention could bring salvation.
It was at this point that he identified the Mahdi as Mohammad Bin Abdullah al-Qahtani, a soft-spoken young preacher known for his good manners, devotion and poetry.
The hadiths talk of a Mahdi with a first name and father's name similar to the prophet's, and features outlined by a large forehead and a pronounced thin, aquiline nose. Juhayman saw all of this in al-Qahtani, but the supposed saviour himself was taken aback by the idea. Overwhelmed, he retreated into prayer.
Eventually, however, he emerged from his isolation convinced that Juhayman was right. He took on the role of Mahdi, and the alliance with Juhayman was sealed all the more tightly when Qahtani's older sister became Juhayman's second wife.
Conveniently, a few months before the siege, strange rumours spread that hundreds of Meccans and pilgrims had seen al-Qahtani in their dreams, standing tall in the Grand Mosque and holding the banner of Islam.
Juhayman's followers were convinced. Mutwali Saleh, a member of the JSM, recalls: "I remember the last meeting when a brother asked me, 'Brother Mutwali, what do you think about the Mahdi?' I said to him, 'Excuse me please, don't talk about this subject.' Then someone said to me, 'You are a silent devil. Brother, the Mahdi is real and he is Muhammad bin Abdullah al-Qahtani.'"
In the remote areas where he had sought refuge, Juhayman and his followers began to prepare for the violent conflict to come.
The Saudi leadership reacted sluggishly to the seizure of the Grand Mosque.
Crown Prince Fahd bin Abdulaziz al-Saud was in Tunisia at the Arab League summit and Prince Abdullah, head of the National Guard - an elite security force tasked with protecting royal leaders - was in Morocco. It was left to the ailing King Khaled and Defence Minister Prince Sultan to co-ordinate a response.
The Saudi police at first failed to understand the scale of the problem and sent a couple of patrol cars to investigate, but as they drove up to the Grand Mosque they came under a hail of bullets.
Once the gravity of the situation became clear, units of the National Guard launched a hasty effort to retake control of the shrine.
Mark Hambley, a political officer at the US embassy in Jeddah and one of the few Westerners who were aware of the situation, says this assault was brave but naïve. "They were immediately shot down," he says. "The sharp-shooters had very good weapons, very good calibre Belgian rifles."
It became clear that the insurgents had planned their attack in detail and would not be easy to dislodge. A security cordon was established around the Grand Mosque, and special forces, paratroopers and armoured units were called in.
Religious student Abdel Moneim Sultan, who was trapped inside, says clashes intensified from after noon on the second day. ''I saw artillery fire directed towards the minarets, and I saw helicopters hovering constantly in the air, and I also saw military airplanes," he remembers.
The Grand Mosque is a vast building consisting mainly of galleries and corridors, hundreds of meters long, surrounding the Kaaba's courtyard, and built on two floors. During the next two days, the Saudi units launched frontal assaults in an effort to gain entrance. But the rebels repelled wave after wave of attacks, despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered.
Abdel Moneim Sultan recalls that Juhayman appeared supremely confident and relaxed when they met near the Kaaba that day. "He slept for half an hour or 45 minutes resting his head on my leg, while his wife stood by. She never left his side," he says.
The rebels lit fires with carpets and rubber tires to generate heavy clouds of smoke, then they hid behind columns before stepping out of the dark to ambush emerging Saudi troops. The building was turned into a killing zone, and the casualties quickly rose into the hundreds.
"This was a man-to-man confrontation, within a limited space," says Maj Mohammad al-Nufai, the commander of the Ministry of Interior's special forces. "A combat situation with bullets whizzing by, left and right - it's something unbelievable."
A fatwa issued by the Kingdom's main clerics, assembled by King Khaled, cleared the Saudi military to use any degree of force to expel the rebels. Anti-tank guided missiles and heavy guns were then employed to dislodge the rebels from the minarets, and armoured personnel carriers were sent in to breach the gates.
The rebels were galvanised by the Mahdi. "I saw him with two minor injuries under his eyes and his thowb (his dress) was riddled with holes from gunshots," says Abdel Moneim Sultan. "He believed that he could expose himself anywhere out of the conviction that he was immortal - he was the Mahdi, after all."
But Qahtani's belief in his own invulnerability was unfounded and he was soon struck by gunfire.
"When he was hit, people started to shout: 'The Mahdi is injured, the Mahdi is injured!' Some tried to run towards him to rescue him, but the heavy fire prevented them from doing this, and they had to retreat," the anonymous witness says.
They told Juhayman that the Mahdi had been hit, but he declared to his followers: "Do not believe them. They are deserters!"
It was only on the sixth day of fighting that the Saudi security forces managed to take control of the courtyard of the mosque and the buildings surrounding it. But the remaining rebels merely retreated to a labyrinth of hundreds of rooms and cells underneath, convinced by Juhayman that the Mahdi was still alive, somewhere in the building.
Their situation was now dire, though. "The smells surrounded us from the dead or the injuries that had rotted," says the anonymous witness. "In the beginning, water was available, but later on they started to ration supplies. Then the dates ran out so they started eating balls of raw dough... It was a terrifying atmosphere. It was like you were in a horror movie."
Although the Saudi government issued one communiqué after the other announcing victory, the absence of prayers broadcast to the Islamic world told another story. "The Saudis tried tactic after tactic, and it didn't work," says Hambley. "It was pushing the rebels deeper and deeper into the catacombs."
It was clear the Saudi government needed help to capture the leaders alive and put an end to the siege. They turned to French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
"Our ambassador told me that it was obvious the Saudi forces were very disorganised and didn't know how to react," Giscard d'Estaing tells the BBC, confirming for the first time France's role in this crisis.
"It seemed to me to be dangerous, because of the weakness of the system, its unpreparedness and the repercussions this could have on the global oil market."
The French president discreetly dispatched three advisers from the recently formed counter-terror unit, GIGN. The operation had to remain secret, to avoid any criticism of Western intervention in the birthplace of Islam.
The French team was headquartered in a hotel in the nearby town of Taif, from where it devised a plan to flush out the rebels - the basements would be filled with gas, to render the air unbreathable.
"Holes were dug every 50m in order to reach the basement," says Capt Paul Barril, who was in charge of executing the operation. "Gas was injected through these holes. The gas was dispersed with the help of grenade explosions into every corner where the rebels were hiding."
For the anonymous witness, holed up down in the basement with the last of the resisting rebels, the world seemed to be coming to an end.
"The feeling was as though death had come to us, because you didn't know whether this was the sound of digging or of a rifle, it was a terrifying situation.''
The French plan proved successful.
"Juhayman ran out of ammunition and food in the last two days," says Nasser al-Hozeimi, one of his followers. "They were gathered in a small room and the soldiers were throwing smoke bombs on them through a hole they made in the ceiling... That's why they surrendered. Juhayman left and all of them followed."
Maj Nufai witnessed the meeting that followed, between the Saudi princes and a stunned but unrepentant Juhayman: "Prince Saud al-Faisal asked him: 'Why, Juhayman?' He answered: 'It's only fate.' 'Do you need anything?' He just said: 'I want some water.'"
Juhayman was paraded before the cameras, and just over a month later 63 of the rebels were publicly executed in eight cities across Saudi Arabia. Juhayman was the first to die.
While Juhayman's belief in the Mahdi may have set him apart, he was part of a wider movement of social and religious conservatism reacting against modernity, in which hardline clerics gained the upper hand over the royal family.
One man on whom the siege had a profound effect was Osama Bin Laden. In one of his pamphlets against the Saudi ruling family, he said they had "desecrated the Haram, when this crisis could have been solved peacefully". He went on: "I still remember to this day the traces of their tracks on the Haram's floor tiles."
"Juhayman's actions stopped all modernisation," Nasser al-Huzaimi says. "Let me give you a simple example. One of the things he demanded from the Saudi government was the removal of female presenters from TV. After the Haram incident, no female presenter appeared on TV again."
Saudi Arabia remained on this ultra-conservative path for most of the next four decades. Only recently have there been signs of a thaw.
In an interview in March 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, said that before 1979, "We were living a normal life like the rest of the Gulf countries, women were driving cars, there were movie theatres in Saudi Arabia."
He was referring above all to the siege of the Grand Mosque.
|
The UK is marking 25 years of the Disability Discrimination Act, while this year is also the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the US law owes much to a group of disabled people who staged a sit-in more than a decade earlier - led by a determined young activist, Judy Heumann. | By Lucy WallisBBC World Service
Judy Heumann was being pushed in her wheelchair to the sweet shop by a friend, when a boy approached and asked if Judy was sick.
She was about eight at the time, and had been a wheelchair user for as long as she could remember, after contracting polio when she was 18 months old.
"I think that was really the first time I ever realised that people saw me as different," she says.
"I felt very upset and I didn't really know how to handle my emotions. I didn't yell at him, but I did say, No, I wasn't sick. I remember it very vividly."
As a child she played with her friends in the street, went to Brownies, and had piano lessons, but the boy's flippant remark caused her to realise something important: "The world thought I was sick."
But, if she was seen as sick, she writes in a book about her life, then she would be expected to stay at home, not go to school, and not be "part of the world".
"All the things that were happening - from the most basic of having to get pulled up steps all the time, to not being able to go to school. All these things began to make me realise that, although my parents had expectations that I would be like my brothers, the system itself did not."
Everything began to fall into place says Judy.
Her mother and father, Ilse and Werner Heumann, had been among 1,400 Jewish children and teenagers sent by their parents from Germany to the US to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. Neither of them ever saw their parents again.
The couple had met in America, got married and were united in their belief that you should always speak up if you see any wrongdoing and treat everyone in the world equally. Mealtimes at their home in Brooklyn were daunting for some visitors.
"If we invited people over, my friends would always say afterwards, 'How come you didn't tell me what your table was like?'" she says.
"Because I guess people were very used to sitting down and having a meal and having little chitty chatty discussions. That never happened in our house. The table at our house was always heavily engaged in discussions, what was going on politically, analysing things.
"When my cousin got engaged, he told his fiancée, 'When you come to the house of my uncle, don't ask questions, because if you ask a question and you don't know the answer he will send you to the encyclopaedia and have you write a report.'"
In the 1950s, educational opportunities for disabled children were limited.
Judy had not been allowed to attend pre-school, because her wheelchair was considered a "fire-hazard".
And when her mother attempted to get her into a Jewish day school at the age of five, the principal refused on the grounds that Judy didn't know enough Hebrew.
Fiercely determined, Judy's mother responded by arranging private lessons.
"Every day she took me to someone's house who tutored me in Hebrew, and then she called the principal at the end of the summer and said I could pass whatever test they wanted," says Judy.
"Of course she never realised that he had no intention of letting me in the school."
The UK's Disability Discrimination Act at 25
Judy was taught at home for four years. Then, when she was nine, her tenacious mother finally managed to get her into a school. The classes for disabled children were taught in the basement, though, and she only got to mix with the non-disabled children once a week at assembly.
"At that age you don't use the term 'second-class citizens', but it was quite clear that we were not being treated the same," she says.
Judy had aspirations to be a teacher, but had been cautioned that she might not get the funding to study education because, at the time, teaching for a disabled person was not considered a "realistic" career.
Instead she got a place at Long Island University in New York to study speech therapy. But one incident in her student dormitory brought back painful reminders of the past.
"It was a Friday evening and someone knocked on the door and said there were three guys and two women, and they were looking for another woman to join the group [for a triple date] and did I know anybody," says Judy. "I remember just looking at this guy and again, the same thing, 'Are you sick?' came back into my mind. I didn't cry. I didn't yell. I just said, 'No.'
"But then when I closed the door, it was this whole thing again of clearly not being seen as someone who could be sexual or that a guy could be interested in."
Judy, who is now 72, says the prejudice she encountered is still really painful to think about even now.
Just like her mother, Judy wanted to stand up against discrimination and not let it go unchallenged. At university, she began to become more politicised and won a place on the student council, but her biggest fight came later.
Due to rising demand for teachers in the 1960s, after the post-war baby boom, Judy discovered that she could after all be considered for a teaching post, even though her degree had not been in education. Up to that point, however, the New York City Board of Education had never employed any teacher who used a wheelchair.
Judy soon passed all the tests required to gain her teaching credentials. The final medical examination should have been routine, but the doctor's tests and questions quickly changed from the routine to the impertinent.
"She asked me a question, like, 'Could I show her how I went to the bathroom?'" says Judy. "Honestly, at the age of 22, I was completely speechless, and I was thinking, 'Who is ever going to believe me that this is a question that someone asked me?'"
Angry and flustered, Judy completed the medical examination, but three months later received a letter in the post - she had not been awarded a teaching licence. The reason given was: "paralysis of both lower extremities".
"I didn't automatically think I'm going to sue, because I was really worried," says Judy.
"What if I got the teaching licence, and I didn't do a good job, was that going to be a bad mark for disabled individuals?
"Because while non-disabled people fail at things all the time, and nobody thinks, 'I'm not going to hire another non-disabled person,' in the area of disability, when it comes to employment - you'll hear this all around the world - if they hire someone with a disability and they don't do a good job, frequently they'll think, 'I can't hire any more of them.'"
By chance, a friend of Judy's had been working with the New York Times who alerted the paper to her story. An article about Judy's experience was published and she was contacted by a civil rights lawyer who took up her case.
Her father ran a butcher's shop and one of his customers also asked if he could represent Judy.
"I had a team of lawyers that were going to provide services for free," she says. "Then I was invited on a major national television programme, and for about a year there were stories in all the major newspapers in New York, and other parts of the country."
The New York City Board of Education settled out of court and Judy subsequently became the first wheelchair user to teach in the city.
With her new-found fame, Judy began to be approached with other stories of discrimination and in 1970, set up an organisation called Disabled in Action which aimed to protect the civil rights of disabled people.
Around that time, the group took particular interest in a piece of legislation called the Rehabilitation Act, which was going through Congress. A clause in the act, called Section 504, had the power to change the lives of disabled people.
"It was a very important provision, because it would mean, for example, that you could not discriminate against someone with a disability in pre-school, in elementary school, in high school, at universities, in hospitals, in government," says Judy. "Any entity that got one penny of federal money would not be able to discriminate, and if in fact discrimination occurred, you would have a remedy. You could go to court. You could file a complaint."
The Act was vetoed by President Richard Nixon, but Judy and her colleagues knew Nixon was attempting to get re-elected, and with four days to go until the election in November 1972, travelled to his campaign headquarters in Madison Avenue, New York, to protest.
The New York Police Department did not remove the protesters and even helped them find the exact location of Nixon's offices.
"The police that day were really very friendly," says Judy. "Obviously, we were completely disrupting the city. But it turned out that there had been a number of shootings of police officers and some of the police officers who were with us were involved with helping their friends get physical therapy, or they really understood things that we were talking about.
"So they were actually in their own quiet way, supportive of what we were doing, and that was also very telling, to realise that disability really does impact everybody."
Although the Act was finally signed in 1973, Section 504 was still not enforced. In practice, federal buildings could be inaccessible to disabled people, and they still could not go to court to prevent this, or other forms of discrimination.
By the time Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, Judy was living in Berkeley, on the West Coast; she had given up teaching and activism was taking up more of her time.
During his presidential campaign, Carter had vowed to enforce Section 504, but two months into his term of office, the secretary of health, education and welfare, Joseph Califano, announced he needed additional time to review it.
"We were very, very concerned that they were going to make drastic changes to the rules," says Judy.
"We had been fighting very hard for many years to get the rules [to] where they were. So we said, if the regulations were not signed by a certain day there would be demonstrations around the country in nine or 10 cities."
The deadline given by the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD), which Judy had helped to found, was 5 April 1977.
But the date came, and nothing had happened. So the protests began. "Blind people, deaf people, wheelchair users, disabled veterans, people with developmental and psychiatric disabilities and many others, all came together," as Judy has described it.
Judy was among 150 who staged a sit-in at the Health, Education and Welfare building in San Francisco, refusing to leave until Califano signed the regulations. There were no showers and no means of communication, as the phone lines had been cut.
People began to get creative. Messages were relayed to people outside the building using sign language. Judy remembers a fridge being fashioned from an air conditioning unit and duct-tape. Hoses were attached to sinks in the bathrooms so people could wash their hair. Food was donated by restaurants and groups sympathetic to the cause; members of the Black Panthers, a black power organisation, also delivered hot meals every night.
As there were no beds, the protesters slept on mattresses provided by supporters.
The sit-in was long and arduous and for various reasons the protests in other cities, from Atlanta to Seattle, came to an end. The longest of them, in Los Angeles, lasted four days.
But the protesters in San-Francisco kept going. They kept their spirits up with singing, games, wheelchair races in the hallways and even an Easter egg hunt on Easter day, and by helping each other, says Judy.
"At the very minimum, we were really forming a closer-knit group of people," says Judy. "People were getting tired, we didn't know what would happen, but I personally felt like what we were doing was going to achieve something."
Eleven days had passed when a representative from Califano's office arrived to meet the protesters. As Judy spoke to him, she became tearful with emotion.
"We will no longer allow the government to oppress disabled individuals," she said in a speech recorded on camera. "We want the law enforced. We want no more segregation. We will accept no more discussion of segregation, and I would appreciate it if you would stop shaking your head in agreement when I don't think you understand what we are talking about."
Judy remembers that it was the visitor's silence that made her most upset.
"I felt that he was just nodding his head because he didn't know what else to do, and I was very emotional about it, because I think it [is] a real glaring point that when people don't know what to do, frequently, or don't understand, they don't necessarily ask a question."
Two weeks into the protest, Judy and a delegation of some of the activists from the sit-in travelled to Washington DC to put even more pressure on Califano. They held candlelit vigils outside his home and even rammed their wheelchairs into the doors of his office building after being refused entry.
But it had no effect, and after more than a week in Washington things looked really bleak, as Judy sat in a bar on Capitol Hill.
"I had stopped smoking and I started smoking again," she says, describing her state of agitation.
But then a report was broadcast on the television in the bar with the news Judy had been waiting so long for. Califano had finally signed the legislation.
It was 28 April 1977, and victory had been achieved after 24 days, making this the longest sit-in of a federal building in American history, a record that holds even today.
Although they could now return home, people were hesitant to leave.
"When you live together you really get to know people in a different way, and one of the issues with leaving was it wasn't going to be the same, and these relationships were going to change" says Judy. "This group of what one could have defined as a ragtag group of people really made an amazing difference."
Section 504 paved the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, which borrowed some of the same wording, but extended the anti-discrimination rules to private sector workplaces, and resulted in significant changes to accessibility.
Judy's fight for equal rights for disabled people did not stop there. She went on to serve in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001 as an assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services in the Department of Education, and was appointed special adviser on International Disability Rights by Barack Obama.
That eight-year-old girl who stared in disbelief as a boy asked if she was "sick", has not stopped challenging misconceptions associated with disability.
"I do a lot of public speaking and when I talk to parents, I tell people how important it was for me that my parents, my mother in particular, really fought for me," says Judy. "She would have these spurts, kind of like I do, where something would happen and she would go for it."
She urges all parents to do the same.
Judy's book about her life is entitled Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist.
You may also be interested in:
On 23 May 1988 a group of lesbian activists invaded a BBC TV news studio as it went live on air. They were protesting against the introduction of new UK laws to limit LGBT rights. Booan Temple, one of the women who took part in the demonstration, explains her motivation, and how the protest was received.
|
How does adaptation differ from mitigation? And what is REDD? The jargon of climate change can be hard to grasp. Use this glossary to decode it.
| A
Adaptation Action that helps cope with the effects of climate change - for example construction of barriers to protect against rising sea levels, or conversion to crops capable of surviving high temperatures and drought.
Adaptation fund A fund for projects and programmes that help developing countries cope with the adverse effects of climate change. It is financed by a share of proceeds from emission-reduction programmes such as the Clean Development Mechanism.
Annex I countries The industrialised countries (and countries in transition to a market economy) which took on obligations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Their combined emissions, averaged out during the 2008-2012 period, should be 5.2% below 1990 levels.
Annex II Countries which have a special obligation under the Kyoto Protocol to provide financial resources and transfer technology to developing countries. This group is a sub-section of the Annex I countries, excluding those that, in 1992, were in transition from centrally planned to a free market economy.
Anthropogenic climate change Man-made climate change - climate change caused by human activity as opposed to natural processes.
Aosis The Alliance of Small Island States comprises 42 island and coastal states mostly in the Pacific and Caribbean. Members of Aosis are some of the countries likely to be hit hardest by global warming. The very existence of low-lying islands, such as the Maldives and some of the Bahamas, is threatened by rising waters.
AR4 The Fourth Assessment Report produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2007. The report assessed and summarised the climate change situation worldwide. It concluded that it was at least 90% likely that the increase of the global average temperature since the mid-20th Century was mainly due to man's activity.
AR5 The Fifth Assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published over 2013 and 2014. It says scientists are 95% certain that humans are the "dominant cause" of global warming since the 1950s.
Atmospheric aerosols Microscopic particles suspended in the lower atmosphere that reflect sunlight back to space. These generally have a cooling affect on the planet and can mask global warming. They play a key role in the formation of clouds, fog, precipitation and ozone depletion in the atmosphere.
B
Bali action plan A plan drawn up at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, in December 2007, forming part of the Bali roadmap. The action plan established a working group to define a long-term global goal for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and a "shared vision for long-term co-operative action" in the areas of mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology.
Bali roadmap A plan drawn up at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, in December 2007, to pave the way for an agreement at Copenhagen in 2009 on further efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions after the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol. The roadmap gave deadlines to two working groups, one working on the Bali action plan, and another discussing proposed emission reductions by Annex I countries after 2012.
Baseline for cuts The year against which countries measure their target decrease of emissions. The Kyoto Protocol uses a baseline year of 1990. Some countries prefer to use later baselines. Climate change legislation in the United States, for example, uses a 2005 baseline.
Biofuel A fuel derived from renewable, biological sources, including crops such as maize and sugar cane, and some forms of waste.
Black carbon The soot that results from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass (wood, animal dung, etc.). It is the most potent climate-warming aerosol. Unlike greenhouse gases, which trap infrared radiation that is already in the Earth's atmosphere, these particles absorb all wavelengths of sunlight and then re-emit this energy as infrared radiation.
Business as usual A scenario used for projections of future emissions assuming no action, or no new action, is taken to mitigate the problem. Some countries are pledging not to reduce their emissions but to make reductions compared to a business as usual scenario. Their emissions, therefore, would increase but less than they would have done.
C
Cap and trade An emission trading scheme whereby businesses or countries can buy or sell allowances to emit greenhouse gases via an exchange. The volume of allowances issued adds up to the limit, or cap, imposed by the authorities.
Carbon capture and storage The collection and transport of concentrated carbon dioxide gas from large emission sources, such as power plants. The gases are then injected into deep underground reservoirs. Carbon capture is sometimes referred to as geological sequestration.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) Carbon dioxide is a gas in the Earth's atmosphere. It occurs naturally and is also a by-product of human activities such as burning fossil fuels. It is the principal greenhouse gas produced by human activity.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent Six greenhouse gases are limited by the Kyoto Protocol and each has a different global warming potential. The overall warming effect of this cocktail of gases is often expressed in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent - the amount of CO2 that would cause the same amount of warming.
Carbon footprint The amount of carbon emitted by an individual or organisation in a given period of time, or the amount of carbon emitted during the manufacture of a product.
Carbon intensity A unit of measure. The amount of carbon emitted by a country per unit of Gross Domestic Product.
Carbon leakage A term used to refer to the problem whereby industry relocates to countries where emission regimes are weaker, or non-existent.
Carbon neutral A process where there is no net release of CO2. For example, growing biomass takes CO2 out of the atmosphere, while burning it releases the gas again. The process would be carbon neutral if the amount taken out and the amount released were identical. A company or country can also achieve carbon neutrality by means of carbon offsetting.
Carbon offsetting A way of compensating for emissions of CO2 by participating in, or funding, efforts to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. Offsetting often involves paying another party, somewhere else, to save emissions equivalent to those produced by your activity.
Carbon sequestration The process of storing carbon dioxide. This can happen naturally, as growing trees and plants turn CO2 into biomass (wood, leaves, and so on). It can also refer to the capture and storage of CO2 produced by industry. See Carbon capture and storage.
Carbon sink Any process, activity or mechanism that removes carbon from the atmosphere. The biggest carbon sinks are the world's oceans and forests, which absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere.
Certified Emission Reduction (CER) A greenhouse gas trading credit, under the UN Clean Development Mechanism programme. A CER may be earned by participating in emission reduction programmes - installing green technology, or planting forests - in developing countries. Each CER is equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide.
CFCs The short name for chlorofluorocarbons - a family of gases that have contributed to stratospheric ozone depletion, but which are also potent greenhouse gases. Emissions of CFCs around the developed world are being phased out due to an international control agreement, the 1989 Montreal Protocol.
Clean coal technology Technology that enables coal to be burned without emitting CO2. Some systems currently being developed remove the CO2 before combustion, others remove it afterwards. Clean coal technology is unlikely to be widely available for at least a decade.
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) A programme that enables developed countries or companies to earn credits by investing in greenhouse gas emission reduction or removal projects in developing countries. These credits can be used to offset emissions and bring the country or company below its mandatory target.
Climate change A pattern of change affecting global or regional climate, as measured by yardsticks such as average temperature and rainfall, or an alteration in frequency of extreme weather conditions. This variation may be caused by both natural processes and human activity. Global warming is one aspect of climate change.
CO2 See carbon dioxide.
Country in transition Broadly speaking, any ex-Soviet bloc state. At the time the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997, these countries were on the path from a Communist planned economy to a market economy. Many of them would now be categorised as market economies. Countries in transition to a market economy are grouped with industrialised countries in Annex I of the Kyoto Protocol, so they have emission reduction commitments to meet in the 2008-2012 period. In some cases their industrial base collapsed to such a degree in the early 1990s that they will have no difficulty meeting these commitments.
D
Dangerous climate change A term referring to severe climate change that will have a negative effect on societies, economies, and the environment as a whole. The phrase was introduced by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which aims to prevent "dangerous" human interference with the climate system.
Deforestation The permanent removal of standing forests that can lead to significant levels of carbon dioxide emissions.
E
Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) A scheme set up to allow the trading of emissions permits between business and/or countries as part of a cap and trade approach to limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The best-developed example is the EU's trading scheme, launched in 2005. See Cap and trade.
EU Burden-sharing agreement A political agreement that was reached to help the EU reach its emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol (a reduction of 8% during the period 2008-2012, on average, compared with 1990 levels). The 1998 agreement divided the burden unequally amongst member states, taking into account national conditions, including greenhouse gas emissions at the time, the opportunity for reducing them, and countries' levels of economic development.
F
Feedback loop In a feedback loop, rising temperatures on the Earth change the environment in ways that affect the rate of warming. Feedback loops can be positive (adding to the rate of warming), or negative (reducing it). The melting of Arctic ice provides an example of a positive feedback process. As the ice on the surface of the Arctic Ocean melts away, there is a smaller area of white ice to reflect the Sun's heat back into space and more open, dark water to absorb it. The less ice there is, the more the water heats up, and the faster the remaining ice melts.
Flexible mechanism Instruments that help countries and companies meet emission reduction targets by paying others to reduce emissions for them. The mechanism in widest use is emissions trading, where companies or countries buy and sell permits to pollute. The Kyoto Protocol establishes two flexible mechanisms enabling rich countries to fund emission reduction projects in developing countries - Joint Implementation (JI) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
Fossil fuels Natural resources, such as coal, oil and natural gas, containing hydrocarbons. These fuels are formed in the Earth over millions of years and produce carbon dioxide when burnt.
G
G77 The main negotiating bloc for developing countries, allied with China (G77+China). The G77 comprises 130 countries, including India and Brazil, most African countries, the grouping of small island states (Aosis), the Gulf states and many others, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Geological sequestration The injection of carbon dioxide into underground geological formations. When CO2 is injected into declining oil fields it can help to recover more of the oil.
Global average temperature The mean surface temperature of the Earth measured from three main sources: satellites, monthly readings from a network of over 3,000 surface temperature observation stations and sea surface temperature measurements taken mainly from the fleet of merchant ships, naval ships and data buoys.
Global energy budget The balance between the Earth's incoming and outgoing energy. The current global climate system must adjust to rising greenhouse gas levels and, in the very long term, the Earth must get rid of energy at the same rate at which it receives energy from the sun.
Global dimming An observed widespread reduction in sunlight at the surface of the Earth, which varies significantly between regions. The most likely cause of global dimming is an interaction between sunlight and microscopic aerosol particles from human activities. In some regions, such as Europe, global dimming no longer occurs, thanks to clean air regulations.
Global warming The steady rise in global average temperature in recent decades, which experts believe is largely caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The long-term trend continues upwards, they suggest, even though the warmest year on record, according to the UK's Met Office, is 1998.
Global Warming Potential (GWP) A measure of a greenhouse gas's ability to absorb heat and warm the atmosphere over a given time period. It is measured relative to a similar mass of carbon dioxide, which has a GWP of 1.0. So, for example, methane has a GWP of 25 over 100 years, the metric used in the Kyoto Protocol. It is important to know the timescale, as gases are removed from the atmosphere at different rates.
Greenhouse gases (GHGs) Natural and industrial gases that trap heat from the Earth and warm the surface. The Kyoto Protocol restricts emissions of six greenhouse gases: natural (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane) and industrial (perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and sulphur hexafluoride).
Greenhouse effect The insulating effect of certain gases in the atmosphere, which allow solar radiation to warm the earth and then prevent some of the heat from escaping. See also Natural greenhouse effect.
H
Hockey stick The name given to a graph published in 1998 plotting the average temperature in the Northern hemisphere over the last 1,000 years. The line remains roughly flat until the last 100 years, when it bends sharply upwards. The graph has been cited as evidence to support the idea that global warming is a man-made phenomenon, but some scientists have challenged the data and methodology used to estimate historical temperatures. (It is also known as MBH98 after its creators, Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes.)
I
IPCC The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific body established by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical, and socio-economic work relevant to climate change, but does not carry out its own research. The IPCC was honoured with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
J
Joint implementation (JI) An agreement between two parties whereby one party struggling to meet its emission reductions under the Kyoto Protocol earns emission reduction units from another party's emission removal project. The JI is a flexible and cost-efficient way of fulfilling Kyoto agreements while also encouraging foreign investment and technology transfer.
K
Kyoto Protocol A protocol attached to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sets legally binding commitments on greenhouse gas emissions. Industrialised countries agreed to reduce their combined emissions to 5.2% below 1990 levels during the five-year period 2008-2012. It was agreed by governments at a 1997 UN conference in Kyoto, Japan, but did not legally come into force until 2005. A different set of countries agreed a second commitment period in 2013 that will run until 2020.
L
LDCs Least Developed Countries represent the poorest and weakest countries in the world. The current list of LDCs includes 49 countries - 33 in Africa, 15 in Asia and the Pacific, and one in Latin America.
LULUCF This refers to Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry. Activities in LULUCF provide a method of offsetting emissions, either by increasing the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (i.e. by planting trees or managing forests), or by reducing emissions (i.e. by curbing deforestation and the associated burning of wood).
M
Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate A forum established in 2009 by US President Barack Obama to discuss elements of the agreement that will be negotiated at Copenhagen. Its members - Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, the UK and the US - account for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. The forum is a modification of the Major Economies Meeting started by the former President George Bush, which was seen by some countries as an attempt to undermine UN negotiations.
Methane Methane is the second most important man-made greenhouse gas. Sources include both the natural world (wetlands, termites, wildfires) and human activity (agriculture, waste dumps, leaks from coal mining).
Mitigation Action that will reduce man-made climate change. This includes action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or absorb greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
N
Natural greenhouse effect The natural level of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, which keeps the planet about 30C warmer than it would otherwise be - essential for life as we know it. Water vapour is the most important component of the natural greenhouse effect.
Non-annex I countries The group of developing countries that have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol. They do not have binding emission reduction targets.
O
Ocean acidification The ocean absorbs approximately one-fourth of man-made CO2 from the atmosphere, which helps to reduce adverse climate change effects. However, when the CO2 dissolves in seawater, carbonic acid is formed. Carbon emissions in the industrial era have already lowered the pH of seawater by 0.1. Ocean acidification can decrease the ability of marine organisms to build their shells and skeletal structures and kill off coral reefs, with serious effects for people who rely on them as fishing grounds.
P
Per-capita emissions The total amount of greenhouse gas emitted by a country per unit of population.
ppm (350/450) An abbreviation for parts per million, usually used as short for ppmv (parts per million by volume). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggested in 2007 that the world should aim to stabilise greenhouse gas levels at 450 ppm CO2 equivalent in order to avert dangerous climate change. Some scientists, and many of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, argue that the safe upper limit is 350ppm. Current levels of CO2 only are about 380ppm.
Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution. These levels are estimated to be about 280 parts per million (by volume). The current level is around 380ppm.
R
Renewable energy Renewable energy is energy created from sources that can be replenished in a short period of time. The five renewable sources used most often are: biomass (such as wood and biogas), the movement of water, geothermal (heat from within the earth), wind, and solar.
REDD Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, a concept that would provide developing countries with a financial incentive to preserve forests.
S
Stern review A report on the economics of climate change led by Lord Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank economist. It was published on 30 October 2006 and argued that the cost of dealing with the consequences of climate change in the future would be higher than taking action to mitigate the problem now.
T
Technology transfer The process whereby technological advances are shared between different countries. Developed countries could, for example, share up-to-date renewable energy technologies with developing countries, in an effort to lower global greenhouse gas emissions.
Tipping point A tipping point is a threshold for change, which, when reached, results in a process that is difficult to reverse. Scientists say it is urgent that policy makers halve global carbon dioxide emissions over the next 50 years or risk triggering changes that could be irreversible.
Twenty-twenty-twenty (20-20-20) This refers to a pledge by the European Union to reach three targets by 2020: (a) a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels; (b) an increase in the use of renewable energy to 20% of all energy consumed; and (c) a 20% increase in energy efficiency. The EU says it will reduce emissions by 30%, by 2020, if other developed countries also pledge tough action.
U
UNFCCC The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is one of a series of international agreements on global environmental issues adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The UNFCCC aims to prevent "dangerous" human interference with the climate system. It entered into force on 21 March 1994 and has been ratified by 192 countries.
W
Weather The state of the atmosphere with regard to temperature, cloudiness, rainfall, wind and other meteorological conditions. It is not the same as climate which is the average weather over a much longer period.
|
Shandra Woworuntu arrived in the US hoping to start a new career in the hotel industry. Instead, she found she had been trafficked into a world of prostitution and sexual slavery, forced drug-taking and violence. It was months before she was able to turn the tables on her persecutors. Some readers may find her account of the ordeal upsetting. | I arrived in the United States in the first week of June, 2001. To me, America was a place of promise and opportunity. As I moved through immigration I felt excited to be in a new country, albeit one that felt strangely familiar from movies and TV.
In the arrivals hall I heard my name, and turned to see a man holding a sign with my picture. It wasn't a photo I cared for very much. The recruitment agency in Indonesia had dressed me up in a revealing tank top. But the man holding it smiled at me warmly. His name was Johnny, and I was expecting him to drive me to the hotel I would be working in.
The fact that this hotel was in Chicago, and I had arrived at JFK airport in New York nearly 800 miles away, shows how naive I was. I was 24 and had no idea what I was getting into.
After graduating with a degree in finance, I had worked for an international bank in Indonesia as an analyst and trader. But in 1998, Indonesia was hit by the Asian financial crisis, and the following year the country was thrown into political turmoil. I lost my job.
So to support my three-year-old daughter I started to look for work overseas. That was when I saw an ad in a newspaper for work in the hospitality industry in big hotels in the US, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. I picked the US, and applied.
The requirement was that I could speak a little English and pay a fee of 30m Indonesian rupiahs (in 2001, about $2,700). There was a lengthy recruitment process, with lots of interviews. Among other things they asked me to walk up and down and smile. "Customer service is the key to this job," I was told.
I passed all the tests and took the job. The plan was that my mother and sister would look after my little girl while I worked abroad for six months, earning $5,000 a month. Then I would come home to raise my daughter.
I arrived at JFK with four other women and a man, and we were divided into two groups. Johnny took all my documents, including my passport, and led me to his car with two of the other women.
That was when things started to get strange.
A driver took us a short way, to Flushing in Queens, before he pulled into a car park and stopped the car. Johnny told the three of us to get out and get into a different car with a different driver. We did as we were told, and I watched through the window as the new driver gave Johnny some money. I thought, "Something here is not right," but I told myself not to worry, that it must be part of the way the hotel chain did business with the company they used to pick people up from the airport.
But the new driver didn't take us very far either. He parked outside a diner, and again we had to get out of the car and get into another one, as money changed hands. Then a third driver took us to a house, and we were exchanged again.
The fourth driver had a gun. He forced us to get in his car and took us to a house in Brooklyn, then rapped on the door, calling "Mama-san! New girl!"
By this time I was freaking out, because I knew "Mama-san" meant the madam of a brothel. But by this time, because of the gun, there was no escape.
The door swung open and I saw a little girl, perhaps 12 or 13, lying on the ground screaming as a group of men took turns to kick her. Blood poured from her nose and she was howling, screaming in pain. One of the men grinned and started fooling around with a baseball bat in front of me, as if in warning.
And just a few hours after my arrival in the US, I was forced to have sex.
I was terrified, but something in my head clicked into place - some kind of survival instinct. I learned from witnessing that first act of violence to do what I was told.
The following day, Johnny appeared and apologised at length for everything that had happened to us after we had parted company. He said there must have been a terrible mistake. That day we would get our pictures taken for our ID cards, and we would be taken to buy uniforms, and then we would go to the hotel in Chicago to start our jobs.
"We'll be OK," he said, rubbing my back. "It won't happen again." I trusted him. After the bad things I had just endured he was like an angel. "OK," I thought. "The nightmare is over. Now I'll go to Chicago to start my job."
A man came and took us to a photo studio, where we had our pictures taken, and then he drove us to a store to buy uniforms. But it was a lingerie store, full of skimpy, frilly things, the like of which I had never seen before. They were not "uniforms".
It's kind of funny, to look back on that moment. I knew I was being lied to and that my situation was perilous. I remember looking around that shop, wondering if I could somehow slip away, disappear. But I was scared and I didn't know anyone in America, so I was reluctant to leave the other two Indonesian girls. I turned, and saw that they were enjoying the shopping trip.
Then I looked at my escort and saw he was concealing a gun, and he was watching me. He made a gesture that told me not to try anything.
Later that day our group was split up and I was to see little of those two women again. I was taken away by car, not to Chicago, but to a place where my traffickers forced me to perform sex acts.
The traffickers were Indonesian, Taiwanese, Malaysian Chinese and American. Only two of them spoke English - mostly, they would just use body language, shoves, and crude words. One thing that especially confused and terrified me that night, and that continued to weigh on me in the weeks that followed, was that one of the men had a police badge. To this day I don't know if he was a real policeman.
They told me I owed them $30,000 and I would pay off the debt $100 at a time by serving men. Over the following weeks and months, I was taken up and down Interstate 95, to different brothels, apartment buildings, hotels and casinos on the East Coast. I was rarely two days in the same place, and I never knew where I was or where I was going.
These brothels were like normal houses on the outside and discos on the inside, with flashing lights and loud music. Cocaine, crystal meth and weed were laid out on the tables. The traffickers made me take drugs at gunpoint, and maybe it helped make it all bearable. Day and night, I just drank beer and whisky because that's all that was on offer. I had no idea that you could drink the tap water in America.
Twenty-four hours a day, we girls would sit around, completely naked, waiting for customers to come in. If no-one came then we might sleep a little, though never in a bed. But the quiet times were also when the traffickers themselves would rape us. So we had to stay alert. Nothing was predictable.
Despite this vigilance, it was like I was numb, unable to cry. Overwhelmed with sadness, anger, disappointment, I just went through the motions, doing what I was told and trying hard to survive. I remembered the sight of that small girl being beaten, and I saw the traffickers hurt other women too if they made trouble or refused sex. The gun, the knife and the baseball bat were fixtures in a shifting and unstable world.
They gave me the nickname "Candy". All the trafficked women were Asian - besides us Indonesians, there were girls from Thailand, China and Malaysia. There were also women who were not sex slaves. They were prostitutes who earned money and seemed free to come and go.
Most nights, at around midnight, one of the traffickers would drive me to a casino. They would dress me up to look like a princess. My trafficker would wear a black suit and shiny black shoes, and walk silently alongside me like he was my bodyguard, all the time holding a gun to my back. We didn't go through the lobby, but through the staff entrance and up the laundry lift.
I remember the first time I was ushered into a casino hotel room, I thought perhaps I would be able to make a run for it when I came out. But my trafficker was waiting for me in the corridor. He showed me into the next room. And the next one. Forty-five minutes in each room, night after night after night, the trafficker always waiting on the other side of the door.
Because I was compliant, I was not beaten by my traffickers, but the customers were very violent. Some of them looked like they were members of the Asian mafia, but there were also white guys, black guys, and Hispanic guys. There were old men and young university students. I was their property for 45 minutes and I had to do what they said or they hurt me.
What I endured was difficult and painful. Physically, I was weak. The traffickers only fed me plain rice soup with a few pickles, and I was often high on drugs. The constant threat of violence, and the need to stay on high alert, was also very exhausting.
My only possession - apart from my "uniform" - was a pocketbook [a small handbag], and the things it contained. I had a dictionary, a small Bible, and some pens and books of matches I pilfered from hotel rooms, with the names of the casinos on them.
I also kept a diary, something I had done since I was little. Writing in a mix of Indonesian, English, Japanese and symbols, I tried to record what I did, where I went and how many people were with me. I kept track of dates too, as best as I could. It was difficult because inside the brothels, there was no way for me to know if it was day or night.
My mind was always thinking about escape, but the opportunities were so rare.
One night I was locked in an attic in a brothel in Connecticut. The room had a window that I found I could open, so I roped the bed sheets and my clothes together and tied them to the window frame, then clambered out. But I got to the end of my makeshift rope and saw I was still a long, long way from the ground. There was nothing for it but to climb back up.
Then, one day, I was taken to the brothel in Brooklyn where I had arrived on my first day in the US. I was with a 15-year-old Indonesian girl I'll call Nina, who had become a friend. She was a sweet, beautiful girl. And she was spirited - on one occasion she refused to do as she was told, and a trafficker roughly twisted her hand, causing her to scream.
We were talking with another woman who was in the brothel, who was the "bottom bitch", which means she was sort of in charge of us. She was being nice, saying that if we ever got out I should call this guy who would give us a proper job, and we would be able to save up some money to go home. I wrote his number in small piece of paper and I kept it safe.
And it was while she was talking about our debt - the $30,000 the traffickers said we had to pay back - that I just started to freak out. I felt sure I would die before I ever served 300 men. I closed my eyes and prayed for some kind of help.
Not long afterwards, I went to the bathroom and saw a small window. It was screwed shut, but Nina and I turned all the taps on loud, and, my hands shaking, I used a spoon to unscrew the bracket as quickly as I could. Then we climbed through the window and jumped down on the other side.
We called the number we had been given and an Indonesian man answered. Just like the bottom bitch had said, he promised to help us. We were so excited. He met us and checked us into a hotel, and told us to wait there until he could find us jobs.
He looked after us, bought us food and clothes and so on. But after a few weeks he tried to get us to sleep with men in the hotel. When we refused, he phoned Johnny to come and pick us up. It turned out he was just another trafficker, and he, the bottom bitch, and everybody else were all working together.
This is when I finally had a stroke of luck.
Near the hotel, before Johnny arrived, I managed to escape from my new trafficker and I took off down the street, wearing only slippers and carrying nothing but my pocketbook. I turned, and shouted at Nina to follow me, but the trafficker held on to her tightly.
I found a police station and told an officer my whole story. He didn't believe me and turned me away. It was perfectly safe for me, he said, to go back on the streets with no money or documents. Desperate for help, I approached two other police officers on the street and got the same response.
So I went to the Indonesian consulate, to seek help getting documents such as a passport, and some support. I knew that they had a room that people could sleep in in an emergency. But they didn't help me either.
I was angry and upset. I didn't know what to do. I had come to the US in the summer, but it was getting towards winter now and I was cold. I slept on the Staten Island Ferry, the NYC subway and in Times Square. I begged for food from strangers, and whenever I could get them to listen, I told them my story, and I told them that there was a house nearby where women were imprisoned, and that they needed help.
One day, in Grand Ferry Park in Williamsburg, a man called Eddy bought me some food. He was from Ohio, a sailor on holiday. "Come back tomorrow at noon," he said, after I had gone through my tale.
I was so happy I didn't stop to ask him what "noon" meant. I knew from school that "afternoon" meant PM, so my best guess was that "noon" was another word for "morning". So early the next day I went to the same place in the park, and waited hours for Eddy to return.
When he finally came, he told me he had made some calls on my behalf. He had spoken to the FBI, and the FBI had phoned the police precinct. We were to go that minute to the station, where the officers would try to help me.
So Eddy drove me there, and two detectives questioned me at length. I showed them my diary with details of the location of the brothels, and the books of matches from the casinos where I had been forced to work. They phoned the airline and immigration, and they found that my story checked out.
"OK," they said in the end. "Are you ready to go?"
"Go where?" I asked.
"To pick up your friends," they replied.
So I got in a police car and we drove to the brothel in Brooklyn. To my relief I was able to find it again.
Find out more
It was just like a scene from a movie, except instead of watching it on TV I was looking out of the window of a parked car. Outside the brothel, there were undercover police pretending to be homeless people - I remember one of them pushing a shopping trolley. Then there were detectives, armed police and a Swat team with sniper rifles lurking nearby.
I can enjoy it now, but at the time I was very tense, and worried that the police would enter the building and find that nothing was happening there that night. Would they think I was lying? Would I go to jail, instead of my persecutors?
A police officer dressed as a customer pressed the buzzer to the brothel. I saw Johnny appear in the doorway, and, after a brief discussion, swing open the metal grille. He was instantly forced back into the blackness. Within seconds, the whole team of police had swept up the steps and into the building. Not a single shot was fired.
An hour passed. Then I was told I could get out of the car and approach the building. They had covered one of the windows with paper and cut a hole in it for me to look through. In this way, I identified Johnny and the girls working in the brothel without being seen. There were three women there, Nina among them.
Let me tell you that when I saw those women emerge from the building, naked except for towels wrapped around them, it was the greatest moment of my life. Giving birth is a miracle, yes, but nothing compares to the emotions I experienced as my friends gained their freedom. In the flashing blue and red lights of the police cars, we were dancing, yelling, screaming for joy!
Johnny was charged and eventually convicted, as were two other men who were caught in the following days. I still needed support, though, and an opportunity to heal.
The FBI connected me with Safe Horizon, an organisation in New York that helps victims of crime and abuse, including survivors of human trafficking. They helped me to stay in the United States legally, provided me with shelter and connected me with resources to get a job.
I could have returned to my family in Indonesia, but the FBI needed my testimony to make their case against the traffickers, and I really wanted them to go to jail. The whole process took years.
In Indonesia, the traffickers came looking for me at my mother's house, and she and my daughter had to go into hiding. Those men were looking for me for a long time. So great was the danger to my daughter that eventually the US government and Safe Horizon made it possible for her to join me in America. We were finally reunited in 2004.
In return for helping the government, I was granted permanent residency in 2010. At that point, they told me I could choose a new name, for my own safety. But I decided to stick with good old Shandra Woworuntu. It is, after all, my name. The traffickers took so much - why should I give them that too?
A couple of years after my escape, I began getting severe pain and numbness in my joints. I developed skin problems and found I was suffering from terrible migraines.
After many tests, the doctors put it all down to the psychological toll of what I had been through.
It's been 15 years now, but I still have sleepless nights. My relationships with men are still far from normal. I still see a therapist every week, and I still go, once a fortnight, to a psychiatrist to pick up a prescription for anti-depressants.
I still get flashbacks, all the time. The smell of whisky makes me retch and if I hear certain ringtones - the ones my traffickers had - my body stiffens with fear. Faces in a crowd terrify me - they jump out, familiar for an instant, and I go to pieces.
Spend any time with me and you will see me fiddling nervously with the ring on my finger to calm myself down. I used to wear an elastic band on my arm, that I would snap continuously, and a scarf that I would twist about.
So happiness eludes me, and perhaps it always will. But I have got better at dealing with my flashbacks. I love to sing in a choir, and I have found raising my children to be very healing. My little girl is a big girl now - a teenager! - and I have a nine-year-old son too.
I have decided to do everything I can to help other victims of trafficking. I started an organisation, Mentari, which helps survivors reintegrate into community, and connects them to the job market.
At the same time, we are trying to raise awareness of the risks of coming to the US among people who still see this country as some kind of dream land. Every year, 17,000 to 19,000 people are brought to the US to be trafficked. Last year, we helped publish an educational comic book on the issue in Indonesian. We also provide chickens and seed so that the poorest can raise the chickens to sell and eat, and don't feel they have to sell their children to traffickers.
Not all victims of trafficking are poor, though. Some, like me, have college degrees. I have helped a doctor and a teacher from the Philippines. I have also helped men who were trafficked, not only women, and one person who was 65 years old.
I have spoken about my experiences at church halls, schools, universities and government institutions.
After I first started to tell my story, the Indonesian consulate approached me, not with an apology but a request for me to retract my statements about their refusal to help. Sorry, too late - it's out there. I can't pretend what you did didn't happen. Even after my case made the news, the Indonesian government didn't bother to get in touch to check if I was OK, or needed help.
As well as working with community groups, I have also addressed the Mexican government and last year I testified before the US Senate.
I asked the senators to introduce legislation to ensure that workers recruited overseas know their rights, are not charged fees, and are told the truth about the salary and living conditions they can expect in the US. I'm happy to say that since then the law has been changed and overseas recruitment agencies have to register with the Department of Labour before they can operate.
I was also lobbying the Senate, on behalf of the National Survivor Network, to place victims of human trafficking in roles where we can have a direct impact on policy.
The Survivors of Human Trafficking Empowerment Act has done exactly that. I'm honoured to say that in December 2015 I was asked to join a new advisory council, and we met for the first time in January, at the White House.
We urgently need to educate Americans about this subject. Looking back on my own experiences, I think all those casino and hotel workers must have known what was going on. And that brothel in Brooklyn was in a residential area - did the neighbours never stop to ask why an endless stream of men came to the house, night and day?
The problem is that people see trafficked women as prostitutes, and they see prostitutes not as victims, but criminals. And in cities, people turn a blind eye to all sorts of criminality.
We might start by putting men who pay for sex in jail. After that brothel in Brooklyn was raided many sex buyers were interviewed, but all were later released.
Nowadays, men who are caught in the act are sent to a one-day session called John School. It's not really punishment, but it teaches them how to identify children in brothels, and women being coerced into sex work. Good - but not good enough. I think men who pay for sex with trafficked women or men should have their names put on a public list, just like they do for child abusers and sexual predators.
I am still close friends with Nina, who recently turned 30. And for years, I had a phone number for Eddy, the man who spoke to the FBI on my behalf, when I was desperate.
In 2014, around Christmas, I dialled the number. I was going to tell him about everything that had happened to me, but he cut me off, saying, "I know it all. I followed the news. I am so glad for you, that you have made a life for yourself."
Then he said, "Don't even think about saying thank you to me - you have done it all yourself."
But I would like to thank you, Eddy, for listening to my story that day in the park, and helping me start my life again.
Listen to Shandra Woworuntu speak to Outlook on the BBC World Service.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
|
Life at the south pole is harsh. There is darkness for four months of the year. Temperatures reach minus 60 degrees Celsius. Wind speeds get up to 150 miles per hour.
So how did Dr Gavin Francis, an Edinburgh GP who spent a year as the resident doctor at the Halley Research Station in Antarctica, cope in such an inhospitable place? | By Emma AilesBBC Scotland
"Lots of hot chocolate," he said.
"And a comfy bed to sleep in at night…when you're not sleeping out in a tent on the ice of course."
The base, which is run by the British Antarctic Survey, lies at 75 degrees south, 100 miles from the south pole.
It is so remote that it is said it would be easier to rescue someone from the International Space Station.
After the sea freezes over in March, no-one can get in or out. You are stuck there until the next summer.
Dr Francis told BBC Scotland's Stark Talk: "It does feel like an underworld when you're there, it does feel like a parallel universe.
"There is this wonderful perspective you can get in the Antarctic, because it's so different from anywhere else.
"There is nothing human-sized at all. Everything is either tiny like snow crystals, or vast like auroras, the planets moving, stars, meteor showers, glaciers.
"To be a human being in that environment is extremely alien, but it is also quite magical in the sense of giving you a perspective of what the rest of the universe is really like."
Taste for adventure
Dr Francis was born in Fife in 1975, and says that growing up he had a fascination with how the world fitted together.
He spent an idyllic childhood exploring the woods around his home.
At the age of seven, he remembers finding a dead rat and asking his parents if he could be allowed to boil it.
"It seemed to me the natural thing to want to do. Boil the flesh off so you could get the skeleton.
"I built a fire in the field and got an old cracked pan and did it outside."
Later in Antarctica, it was a penguin that he was told he was not allowed to dissect.
"It had fallen over incubating its eggs, and it seemed the natural thing to me, as a doctor and as a naturalist, to cut it open and see how it died.
"I don't think the British Antarctic Survey were too happy with that."
After studying medicine at Edinburgh University, and medical training jobs "where you're working 100 hours a week and you've got a lot of chaos and blood and death to deal with", Dr Francis worked in A&E at the old Royal Edinburgh Hospital.
Cabin Fever
At the Halley base, his job was to look after the health of the team of fourteen people stationed there.
"In such a small community when everyone is fit and well, you are called upon to be a doctor almost never," he said.
"I did use my medical skills, but it was always for fairly minor things - tooth fillings, x-rays of broken bones, people with general aches and pains, skin rashes.
"Every two or three years something terrible happens in the Antarctic, something really horrible, and they are always really glad they have someone there.
"I was there in case somebody injured themselves really badly - fell into a crevasse, or injured themselves with crampons, or got bitten by a seal."
With time to spare, Dr Francis found other ways to occupy himself at the base.
"You have to be part of the base community," he said.
"That means chatting in the bar, preparing meals, doing the thousands of jobs that need doing every day on an Antarctic base, such as refuelling the generators.
"We would go out and do communal exercise every day, and I think that helped.
"It was cold. But by then you are pretty used to it. And digging that amount of snow heats you up pretty quick."
But the extreme environment was not the only challenge. Sharing a small space with fourteen strangers could also take its toll.
"There's times when everybody gets rubbed up the wrong way, but there is enough opportunity to go and spend some time on your own.
"I was very lucky with my team, we all got on very very well in the end."
"It wasn't about the big brother style dynamics of fourteen people in a portacabin.
"For me going to the Antarctic was all about the austere beauty of the place.
"I had a window that looked out over the ice.
"I think having big windows that looked out onto it meant that I was able to keep hold of where I was, that I wasn't just locked into a little box with these strangers."
One of the things he missed most of all was smells.
"There are no smells in the Antarctic," he said.
"When I was coming back to the north, sailing back to the Falklands after 14 months away, one of the first things I noticed was the smell of grass a day before we got there.
"My sense of smell had become so acute, and I missed the smell of greenery so much."
So, would Dr Francis, who has written a book about his experiences, Empire Antarctica, return to the Antarctic?
"I never thought it was a stupid decision [to go]. I sometimes wondered whether I had bitten off more than I could chew," he said.
"I would like to go back... I don't think I would winter again though."
|
Behind the brightly painted exterior of Jalousie, one of Haiti's largest slums, lives a community struggling with a lack of sanitation and running water, intermittent electricity and rivers of plastic waste. | Conservative estimates suggest more than 80,000 people now live in Jalousie. Many of them moved here after the earthquake which devastated much of Haiti in 2010.
Jalousie was spared the worst of the damage and as a result became even more cramped.
But although life is often chaotic and challenging, residents manage to find dignity, hope and a sense of community, regardless of the challenges of poverty and oppression that they face.
Most visitors to Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, only get to see a fleeting glimpse of Jalousie from the road, as they go past its collection of pastel-coloured shacks clinging to the side of the steep Morne L'Hôpital mountain.
The houses were painted by the government in 2013 as part of a $1.4m (£1m) project which many locals mockingly refer to as "the Botox".
Critics have suggested that the motivation for the project stemmed from the fact that Jalousie is visible from the wealthy district of Pétion-Ville.
They argue that the money could have been better spent on improving the slum's water and electrical supplies rather than improving the view from the refurbished villas of Pétion-Ville down below.
Stepping inside this 60-year-old, almost-vertical slum area, between tightly packed cinderblock homes, it is not hard to see how it earned its nickname "misery in colours".
When the tangle of wires illegally tapped into the grid gives out, candles and lanterns light the way, families burn charcoal to cook, and when it rains, rivers of plastic rubbish collect in front of people's homes.
Yet amid these conditions of extreme poverty, the residents of Jalousie work hard to retain their dignity and pride in their surroundings.
They set up makeshift gyms where they work out using weights made out of cement, play sports at Jalousie's main arena or attend one of the many churches.
People in Jalousie have also set up small businesses such as beauty salons or restaurants to try to make ends meet.
Loreu, 62 (below), runs a shop selling charcoal. The father of four has lived in Jalousie for more than 40 years.
But despite their efforts, 85% of families in Jalousie estimate that their income covers only part of, or none of, their needs.
Jean Michelle, 35 (below), works as a car park security guard and has been living in this one room in Jalousie with his three children since 2004.
Here, he is helping his seven-year-old daughter Fatdjoulie with her homework while Catrine Telamoure, who also lives with them, takes a nap.
Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere and has struggled to recover from the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people.
A recent survey suggests that more than half of its inhabitants live below the national poverty line of $2.41 (£1.80) per day. A staggering 74% of Haiti's urban population are now living in slums.
Along with no sewage system or electric grid, inhabitants of Jalousie have no running water. Residents queue at water distribution points, paying $0.35 (£0.26) for a five-gallon bucket.
They then carry the 19kg (42lb) buckets up the mountain on their heads.
Alongside their daily battles with the lack of infrastructure, schools, toilet facilities and waste management, the inhabitants of Jalousie face an increasingly uncertain future for another reason: a secondary seismic fault line runs through the entire hillside making the area vulnerable to future devastation.
There is also a serious danger of mudslides, due to the steep terrain and lack of vegetation, with at least 1,300 unstable homes identified as a threat to residents immediately below them.
Words and photographs by Tariq Zaidi.
|
A man has appeared in court charged with attempted murder after a woman suffered severe burns in a fire at a property in Skegness. | Lincolnshire Police said the woman remained in a critical condition in hospital as a result of the blaze in Firbeck Avenue, on Thursday.
Leigh Pateman, 42, of Firbeck Avenue, appeared at Lincoln Magistrates' Court earlier.
He was remanded and is due to appear at the city's crown court on 24 May.
Follow BBC East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
Related Internet Links
HM Courts Service
|
A UKIP councillor has been chosen to contest Clacton in the general election for the party after earlier nearly abandoning his bid over a Twitter row. | Jeff Bray, who won former party donor Arron Banks's support, decided not to compete for selection after the Huffington Post claimed on Tuesday he had posted controversial tweets.
He then later changed his mind and stayed in the selection race.
The district councillor told the BBC his Twitter feed had been doctored.
Mr Bray won by three votes against London-based barrister Paul Oakley.
Clacton's sitting MP Douglas Carswell had been UKIP's only MP until he quit the party and later announced he would not stand for re-election.
|
The collapse of BiFab fabrication yards isn't complete yet, and former prime minister Gordon Brown has a plan - as well as fury at what has been allowed to happen. The Scottish government has sunk £52m in the company, so how much might it recover as a creditor and shareholder? What is the future for the Fife and Lewis yards, and for several others with potential in growing markets for new energy and breaking up of old ones? | Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland
Is BiFab's Christmas goose fully cooked? The steel fabrication company thinks so, and its majority shareholder in Canada. So does the Scottish government, the minority shareholder that paid £37m for its one third stake.
But perhaps it's not over yet, while intention to appoint administrators has yet to lead to the actual handover. And not according to the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
As a former Labour MP for Fife constituencies including Burntisland, and no stranger to its fabrication yard, he is taking a close interest in the kingdom's economy and has trenchant views on the company's apparent demise.
He reckons there are about 10 days to turn this around. Other insiders on this deal suggest there are fewer. So what does he think can still happen?
The Scottish and UK governments could still combine to provide the £30m contract guarantee needed to secure a contract to build eight offshore turbine platforms, employing more than 400 people.
Mr Brown flatly rejects the legal argument deployed by Scottish economy secretary Fiona Hyslop.
She says European state aid rules preclude governments in either Holyrood or Westminster from providing finance that could and would not be provided by a commercial company.
Ms Hyslop adds that DF Barnes, the Canadian majority shareholder that was brought in by ministers to do the engineering, has not been providing any significant investment.
We haven't seen the legal advice, but Mr Brown joins opposition MSPs and trade unions in questioning why European rules will apply at the end of the month, after a full Brexit break from Brussels regulations.
I asked Fiona Hyslop about this. Her view is that ministers are bound to observe the law, and no-one can tell her what law will apply next year.
To a risk-taking minister, that might be the kind of challenge they like.
It's observed that Ms Hyslop was preceded in the economy role by Derek Mackay, whose risk-taking in his personal life brought him down last February.
But when applied to business, it may also have given the Renfrewshire MSP a bolder vision of what could be achieved.
That goes for BiFab, and also for Ferguson shipbuilder in Port Glasgow, taken into public ownership on his watch.
Gordon Brown told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland: "A new minister came in, I think there was new advice given by the civil service, but actually fundamentally the position of the company had not changed and the contract should have gone ahead.
"Why is it, when you win a contract, you can't discharge it? Because the Scottish government pulls the plug on it at the last minute.
"It's completely unacceptable and I believe that it's doing terrible damage to the Fife economy, because we want to win this work in the North Sea and we want to be part of this new renewables industry which is going to create a better environment as well as create jobs in the country."
The former prime minister has been talking to Whitehall, to BiFab and to its Canadian majority owner.
He talks up the prospects for others saving the yards, and is calling for full inquiries at both Holyrood and Westminster into what went wrong with BiFab.
"I know for a fact that there's a Chinese company interested in looking at the yards," he says. "I know also that the workforce representatives are determined to find work for the area.
"So we're not going to give up. If, after 100 years of serving the community, we can't do better by BiFab, the Scottish Government have to think about the type of economic and industrial policy they're operating.
"I have not seen for a long time such scandalous behaviour that requires an investigation not just by the Scottish Parliament but the UK Parliament as well.
"We are supposed to be building a future in the North Sea in renewables, and we are throwing it away by decisions like this one by the Scottish government."
The Scottish government, obviously, disagrees, though it is not pretending this is a happy position to be in. Governments have to take risks, and this one didn't work out, according to Fiona Hyslop.
The best she can say of the £52m sunk in BiFab is that it helped the company complete an order for the Beatrice wind farm in the Moray Firth - now operational and a project, they imply, that might otherwise have foundered.
How much will be recovered once administrators get to work, gathering assets and selling them for the best price they can secure in creditors' interests?
As lead creditor, the Scottish government could hope to see much of its £15m returned. The assets don't include the yards, which are owned by Scottish Enterprise (Methil), Highlands and Islands Enterprise (Arnish in Stornoway) and privately-owned Forth Ports, which owns Burntisland.
There is some equipment on the sites. But the biggest asset may be an expected incoming payment of between £10m and £12m from a supplier of steel to the Lewis yard two years ago. It has been in dispute over the quality of product delivered, and it seems that BiFab won.
But as for the other £37m, it is equity, some of it converted from loans. In administrations, shareholder stakes are at the end of the employee, tax collector and creditor queue. Recovery of that looks very unlikely.
What about the yards' future?
Could there be a Chinese company coming in to make use of them, as Gordon Brown suggests?
It wouldn't be that surprising. The Fife yards are well-located quayside assets for firms supplying the North Sea, if only for laying down stock and supplies.
There are new technologies being developed for commercial roll-out, including tidal power, floating wind turbine bases which use similar designs to semi-submersible oil and gas production, with which Scottish yards have experience. There may, one day, be a return to wave power fabrication at scale.
Meantime, I hear that Arnish in Lewis is being considered for a different future as a base for decommissioning offshore oil and gas equipment.
That is a business opportunity worth tens of billions in coming decades. Teesside established a lead as the North Sea's breakers yard, but Lerwick is currently host to the former Ninian platform, and there is capacity in other yards.
Indeed, that is important to remember. The BiFab yards gained prominence because they were rescued, and the focus of so much Scottish government effort.
But there is Nigg in Easter Ross. Rosyth in Fife, with its own energy park, has space for further activity. There has been talk of re-opening the deep water facility at Loch Kishorn in Wester Ross. And Hunterston in North Ayrshire is looking to a new energy future beyond nuclear power.
Could they compete with the efficient production lines in China, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Spain, where North Sea jackets are currently being built?
Possibly, they could, with both public and private investment, but they'll also require imagination, determination and consistency.
|
Marine archaeologists are in a race against time to preserve parts of a shipwreck they believe is the most significant found in British waters since the Tudor ship, the Mary Rose. Paul Rose, explorer, diver and presenter of Britain's Secret Seas, visited the site.
| "We've watched it fall apart in front of our eyes for five years," said Dave Parham, senior lecturer in marine archaeology at Bournemouth University. "But you can only do one thing at a time."
The Swash Channel wreck is an early 17th Century armed merchant ship.
It was found in 7-9m of water on a sand and shingle seabed on the edge of Hook Sands near Poole Harbour in Dorset in March 1990, when a Dutch dredger hit it.
It was left for almost 15 years until an assessment for English Heritage in 2005 found it was a much more significant site than first thought.
Bournemouth University's Marine Archaeology programme began visiting and recording the wreck as parts of it became exposed, in work funded by English Heritage and Poole Harbour Commissioners.
But the archaeologists say the wreck is disappearing as sediment, which protects the ship, has been eroding so quickly that parts of the structure are exposed and decay before they can be recorded.
Underwater history
Divers from Britain's Secret Seas were the first team apart from the archaeologists working underwater, to see and film this beautiful piece of history.
After swimming for a couple of minutes, large ship's timbers raised up from the sandy bottom by about a metre came into view, giving me a hint of the functional, beautiful lines of its bow.
Surrounding the wreck site is a steel framework grid which has been built by the research team as an aid to document the excavation accurately.
Countless sandbags are placed all around the exposed parts of the wreck to help to protect it from wave, tidal and storm damage.
The more timbers that are exposed, the more we learn and understand about this wreck.
It faces other threats - its surface is being eaten away by a small crustacean called a gribble.
But it is the shipworm, a mollusc with a bivalve shell, that is boring its way in to the wood and causing structural damage to the timbers.
"It's an absolute disaster, because we're not just talking about one single organism," said Bournemouth University's marine archaeologist Paola Palma.
"We're talking about millions of organisms. So the damage that they cause is absolutely, you know, horrendous."
The survival of rare finds, including the ship's forecastle or upper deck in front of the foremast, and rudder, have cemented its place in history as a significant wreck.
Five carvings have been found so far, including a male head at the top of the rudder and another on the outside of the forecastle, which are early Baroque in style.
On our dive, we moved to the stern and started dragging piles of sandbags away from one of the excavation areas, which I thought would be exposing more structural timbers.
But my breath was taken away when the last bag came off to reveal the fabulous ornate carving on the rudder.
I had never seen anything like it and this beautiful carving was all I needed to see that this really was no ordinary trader. We also saw pottery and canon.
One carving has been raised, a merman, and is already in conservation.
"Initially this was quite a small wreck of unknown character," said Mr Parham. "Now we know it's a large wreck, it's a high status wreck - it's plotted in these carvings.
"It's built and constructed to trade out to the tropics, in a period when this was something new.
"What this ship was engaged in and other ships like it were engaged in, is the reason why we have Japanese cars and Chinese videos.
"So actually, in world history terms, this is an important object."
However not all of the ship can be lifted from the seabed this summer.
"We're going to raise the first 12 metres of the bow. The rest we're going to bury in situ and leave it there," said Mr Parham.
The remains of the wreck that cannot be brought up will be left and buried in the sands for protection.
No-one has brought a wreck to the surface for 30 years in the UK - and the last time this happened it was the Mary Rose.
Britain's Secret Seas continues on Sunday 15 May on BBC Two at 2000 BST or catch up at the above link.
|
A new arts and cultural centre is opening Monday on the site of the former People's Market in Wrexham. | The new £4.5m hub, known as Ty Pawb - Welsh for everybody's house - will have two galleries, performance areas, a gallery shop and market stalls.
A parade will also take place on Monday's Dydd Llun Pawb, a day of celebrations to mark the opening.
More than 500 people have taken part in workshops across Wrexham county ahead of the event.
|
These days, darts is a professional, sober affair, at least for the players. But some of the champions of the past were famous for their boozing. Can alcohol ever enhance people's ability to play darts? | By Reality Check teamBBC News
The answer depends on how nervous you are, and whether or not you're addicted to alcohol.
Many studies have shown that even low levels of alcohol can impair motor skills and spatial reasoning.
But the effects of nervousness and alcohol withdrawal can be far worse, especially in a game like darts.
"For some people, low levels of alcohol improve performance of tasks. It does reduce anxiety and nervousness so if you're impaired by nervousness it can improve performance," Prof Robert Adron Harris, from the University of Texas at Austin, told the BBC.
A degree of stress actually enhances performance, but after a certain point, nerves get the better of people. This is known as the Yerkes-Dodson law.
In pub games, the stakes may be lower, but even amateurs find that the oche holds a strange power over them.
"Nervousness runs right through the sport, as does the belief that alcohol solves the problem," says Paul Gillings, who runs The Darts Performance Centre, a training centre and advice website. "Players totally believe that they can't play unless they have a drink. It ranges from one drink to 10."
He discourages this sort of self-medication, advocating relaxation exercises and positive thinking. He also reminds players that in the grand scheme of things, it's only a game of darts.
John Thomas - or "Jocky" - Wilson, one of the top players of the 1980s, took it to extremes. He said he needed seven or eight vodkas to steady his nerves before playing.
He once fell off the stage at the end of a match.
Trebles all round
Before winning the 2004 BDO World Darts Championship, Andy Fordham reportedly drank 24 bottles of beer along with quite a bit of brandy.
He said in an interview later that people never saw him sober. He weighed 31 stone and developed cirrhosis of the liver.
Fordham, who was also known as The Viking, believed that heavy drinking was the only way he could concentrate - and he was probably right.
For someone who is used to drinking as much as he was, it would be very difficult to play sober.
"The more you drink, the more tolerance to alcohol increases," says Anya Topiwala, a senior clinical researcher at the University of Oxford. "Alcohol withdrawal causes anxiety, tremors and sweatiness, all of which I suspect would make it harder to play darts."
But experts agree that players like Fordham and Wilson won matches in spite of their drinking habits, not because of them.
"There's too much money involved now for players to get themselves too pie-eyed," says David King, who runs Darts501, a darts information website.
He says the sport needs more trainers and psychologists to help people get over stage fright, shaky hands and even a nasty psychological condition known as dartitis, where players find themselves unable to throw a dart.
So alcohol doesn't make most people better at darts, but while the pub remains the best place to practise, aspiring players may need to resist round-the-clock sessions, especially if they're of a nervous disposition.
Read more from Reality Check
Send us your questions
Follow us on Twitter
|
Amid fears that a "frozen conflict" is developing in eastern Ukraine the BBC's Rayhan Demytrie examines life in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh, scene of one of the former Soviet Union's most protracted conflicts. | Fourteen-year-old Karen hides the stump of his left hand in his pocket. His siblings gather round as he looks at Facebook on the family laptop.
"I can't forgive myself for what happened," says his mother, Ludmila Bagdasaryan-Mirzoyan.
Two years ago Karen found a live anti-aircraft shell in the garden. After he started playing with it, the relic from the 1990s war with Azerbaijan exploded in his hands.
The family live in Madagis, a village in the landlocked mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, close to the frontline with Azerbaijan.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was all-out war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, from 1992 to 1994. An estimated 30,000 people were killed.
Despite a ceasefire of 20 years, the area is heavily militarised.
There are frequent shootings across the frontline. Each side blames the other for military casualties, which have risen sharply in recent months.
Ludmila says her children often hear gunfire or warning sirens.
"They wake up and ask me: 'Mum has war started again?'" she says.
Abandoned homes
Azerbaijan lost swathes of territory during the conflict, and more than 600,000 ethnic Azeris from Karabakh and nearby regions were forced to flee.
More than 300,000 ethnic Armenians who used to live in Azerbaijan were also displaced by the conflict.
Today, a drive through Nagorno-Karabakh reveals many abandoned homes. Some lie in ruins, others are intact, with overgrown gardens, behind still padlocked but rusting gates.
Time, it seems, has been frozen here.
But the conflict itself is very much alive.
Peace negotiations mediated by the Minsk Group, under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), have seen little progress.
"If we look at the peace process what it really represents is what I call 'back to basics' diplomacy," says Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Centre, a think tank based in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
"It's no longer about negotiating over Nagorno-Karabakh, rather it's back to basic, minimum objectives.
"The first goal of the mediation is to keep the peace process alive and the second goal is to prevent war, rather than any real diplomacy over negotiations where they can't even agree on the agenda. That's how far apart the two sides are."
Isolated
Internationally, Nagorno-Karabakh is considered part of Azerbaijan, but its Armenian inhabitants call themselves citizens of the Artsakh Republic and remain the sworn enemies of Azerbaijan.
The territory has its own flag, an international airport, police and armed forces, although regular Armenian soldiers serve on the frontline.
In reality, Nagorno-Karabakh is isolated. Financially and militarily it depends on Armenia. Its subjects hold Armenian passports. And the international airport stands empty, because Azerbaijan has threatened to shoot down any planes.
Frustrated by the lack of a diplomatic solution, Azerbaijan's leadership has threatened to retake the territory militarily. Oil-rich Azerbaijan has spent billions of US dollars on modern weaponry.
And most of the arms are supplied by Russia. That is deeply unpopular with Armenia. It counts Russia as its strategic ally, and hosts Russia's only military base in the region.
"We are concerned that Russia, for all sorts of reasons, is selling weapons to Azerbaijan," the Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan, said at a recent public forum in Yerevan.
"The problem is not the quality of the weaponry, but the fact that an Armenian soldier standing at the border knows he could be killed by Russian weapons."
Azerbaijan does not recognise the Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) administration, but the territory's de facto foreign minister, Karen Mirzoyan, says that without their inclusion in the peace process, there will be no resolution to the conflict.
"When you withdraw NK from the negotiation table, it's very easy to say that it's not a conflict for self-determination, it's just a territorial problem and it's very easy to show Armenia as an aggressor. But in reality this conflict is about self-determination."
Ludmila often contemplates what the consequences of another war would be.
"If there is another war, we will suffer, my children will suffer," she says.
"[Azerbaijan's forces] won't care whether we are guilty or not, they will just think that we are Armenians and we have no right to exist."
|
Four men have been found guilty of fatally gang raping a woman on a Delhi bus last December. The attack caused outrage and prompted India to introduce stringent anti-rape laws. Here, prominent Indians discuss whether the case has changed the country. | NILANJANA ROY, NOVELIST
The intensity of the protests in December led many to wonder whether India would actually see a woman's revolution that brought in a lasting, sweeping set of changes.
But even as the protests quietened down, we saw a rise in regressive statements, behaviour intended to curb women's freedoms under the guise of "protection", and across the board a defence of the status quo and of traditions that continue to ignore women's rights.
So it is extraordinary that the conversations that started then - between women, and crucially, between men as well - have, if anything, broadened.
"Rape culture" in India is fuelled by an acceptance of inequality and of embedded violence; it may be the first time in decades that we are exploring these fault lines - of caste, class and gender - in such a mainstream fashion.
Can we put an end to the violence that kills women before birth, that keeps unwanted girls in deprivation, that is seen in the high levels of child abuse and domestic violence, affecting both boys and girls, and that ultimately leads to "rape culture"?
So far, it's been hard to even change small things - to argue for the presence of more, rather than fewer, women on the streets and in public spaces, for instance.
But I am impressed that in a country where we switch from one topic to another as easily as we switch TV channels, we haven't stopped discussing the problem not just of rape, but of violence.
The rapes might not stop; but this conversation isn't stopping either.
One really encouraging development after the Delhi incident is that I see a lot of young people - school and college students, communities - getting interested with issues around discrimination against women.
It's not a knee-jerk reaction, but a genuine, spontaneous engagement of the young with what is a complex issue.
A number of talks on the subject have been held in schools and colleges. Students are reading about and debating the history of women's movements. There's deep introspection about how we end up sustaining violence and discrimination against women.
Less encouraging, however, is the response of the government and institutions.
After last month's gang rape of a 22-year-old photojournalist in Mumbai, the city's police chief almost implied that rapes were happening because women are kissing in public and blamed it on what he called a 'promiscuous culture'!
We need stern action against people who make such statements.
What women are saying is they want freedom without fear. They are saying: "Don't tell us how to dress, just tell men not to rape us."
But the onus seems to be on women, on how they dress, how they behave. People in charge of enforcing the law are not listening to the women.
Such attitudes appear to be in sync with the way the economy and society is working: it's about wanting a docile woman both at home and the workplace.
There is clearly some anxiety all over the world among policymakers about how to re-persuade women to be "real" women - to go back to their traditional docile role even as they become more empowered.
So the template for policing, and government's thinking about policies towards women in India, remains regressive.
Since December we have developed laws that better address violence as women experience it.
Amendments to the Penal Code, for instance, criminalise acts like stalking that can lead to more serious attacks and procedural laws take away the legal security blankets on police impunity.
There's also been a cultural shift.
Many more women now feel entitled to bodily integrity and dignity, and many more men and women are beginning to understand how that changes the texture of the everyday.
To increase that shift there are interesting, small-scale public education campaigns, but the government or public education systems haven't adopted these yet.
Delhi police data show 1,036 cases of rape were reported until 15 August, 2013 - as against 433 cases reported over the same period last year.
This is likely to be in some part due to increased reporting, which would point to a greater sense of entitlement and more societal support for survivors.
Though governments have passed some legislation, they haven't rolled up their sleeves to fix the nuts and bolts of the criminal justice system.
India has one of the lowest numbers of judges and police in proportion to population, and expansion needs financing.
Failures to convict rapists are due to institutionalised misogyny to some degree, but they're also due to insufficient competence of police and prosecutors.
Some state governments have complied with Supreme Court orders that require them to provide survivors of violence with damages, but many survivors and even witnesses are forced to withdraw from trials because we don't have witness protection laws.
Evidence shows that sensitive and competent support for victims of violence leads to increased reporting of crime. There are plans to establish rape crisis centres, but they haven't been executed.
The greatest change since last December, though, is that there are now many more men and women that believe that the epidemic of sexual violence - like polio or smallpox - can actually be wiped out.
I think the police in Delhi have been targeted in a motivated campaign in the aftermath of the Delhi rape case.
I was the police commissioner at the time and we arrested all the suspects within 72 hours of the incident, from all over India - including one from an area where Maoist rebels were active - but we continued to get a lot of flak.
Compare this to what happened in Mumbai last month when a photojournalist was gang-raped. The police were lauded when they arrested the criminals.
Targeting the police does not help matters.
If you look at the data, in 97% of rape cases in India, the perpetrator is known to the victim. These are opportunistic crimes. The question of the police preventing these rapes does not arise. You cannot go into people's bedrooms and houses.
Even in the much fewer cases where rapes happen in the public space, many of the victims and perpetrators are known to each other.
What happened in Delhi was unfortunate, but also extremely rare in India.
Having said that it is a fact that women have to be given a sense of security in public places. This can only happen if there is social change.
Just putting more policemen on the roads will not help matters. Delhi has over 80,000 policemen but simply expanding the force will not necessarily help curb rape. Delhi police also run a gender sensitisation programme.
But sensitisation of the police is not enough. You need to sensitise people to respect women.
The only change I have seen since the Delhi rape is the way men and women have come together and taken to the streets to protest against violence against women.
But, sadly, incidents of rapes continue unabated all over India.
It seems that we have been unable to make use of our new anti-rape laws. The fast-track courts set up to handle rape cases seem to be working at a slow pace.
I strongly believe that unless the police intervene quickly and the harshest of punishment is meted out to the wrong-doers, things will not change.
The aftermath of rape or any sexual abuse is a difficult and challenging journey for the victims.
I did not disclose my identity after the Delhi rape incident because my wounds were still raw.
The decision to reveal my identity came after the rape and murder of a 22-year-old college girl in West Bengal state.
The brutality she was subjected to made me think that I should fight not only for myself but for the nameless survivors and for those women who had lost their lives.
But is there more support today for rape victims?
The long and the short answer is: "NO."
I think India is still coming to terms with the outrage over the December incident. The dialogue about the deeper issues at stake is still in a nascent stage.
For one, India's judicial system has slowed down. Even violent criminal cases take 10-20 years to get decided in the courts.
We have only 13 judges per a million people compared to 50-100 in the developed world. Justice is not done or not perceived to be done. Also, the police-to-population-ratio is pretty low.
Not surprisingly, the capacity of the system to process criminal cases is deeply compromised. People's faith in the system has become frail.
Our political system is also not engaged enough with these issues.
The system encourages politicians to be engaged in the here-and-now issues. Public attention is short and keeps changing: one day it is about rape, the next day it is about corruption, the next day is about alleged border incursions by Pakistan or China.
Politicians are not focused on the deeper issues because they are looking for quick-fix solutions. The system has tuned them to pay attention to the hot button issue of the week.
Ultimately politicians have to get involved with increasing state capacity - setting up more fast-track courts, for example - to deal with crimes against women because all this needs money and parliamentary sanction. We need to be more engaged.
Rape is a very complex issue. Patriarchy is just part of the story.
In India, it is also about rising urbanisation and alienation. A lot of perpetrators are migrants who lead deprived lives, are not educated, don't hold proper jobs and have been left behind in what is an unequal society.
|
Around 100 jobs have been secured after workers at the Cake Crew Bakery in Bala, Gwynedd, were locked out of their building for two days. | But following negitiations with Baker Tilley, a company working for the landlord of the building, an agreement was reached at 13:00 BST on Wednesday.
A spokesman for the bakery apologised to customers for the disruption.
It is understood Baker Tilley removed items from the site during the two-day row.
MP Elfyn Llwyd said it stemmed from a change in the situation between the company and landlord.
A spokesman for bakery said: "Thankfully this disappointing disruption has now been resolved and we are back in control of the facility and production has resumed.
"We apologise to customers and suppliers for any disruption this may of caused in the past two days which has resulted from circumstances beyond our control."
|
A 14-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a double stabbing. | A 16-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man were taken to hospital after the stabbing on Chapelhouse Road, Solihull, at about 14:40 BST.
The younger victim is in a critical condition, West Midlands Police said, while the older is said to be stable.
The force said the 14-year-old boy remains in custody while officers continue their inquiries.
Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]
|
Sixty years separate the North Sea floods of 1953 from last week's tidal surge. The fact the latter fell on the 60th anniversary of the former is an irony not lost on survivors. But how will the 2013 floods be remembered? | By Laurence CawleyBBC News
It was the tidal surge labelled the "worst in 60 years".
The flooding last week hit at least 1,400 homes and some areas witnessed the type of weather conditions expected every once in 500 years.
Particularly badly hit were Lincolnshire and Norfolk.
For those affected, last week's floods will be forever remembered.
But the surge of 60 years ago claimed hundreds of lives as it destroyed villages and parts of towns across the English coast.
For those who experienced the 1953 North Sea floods first hand, last week's surge will be remembered - despite the damage and devastation caused to many - as the year the East Coast was "extremely lucky".
One of them is Harry Francis. He was affected last week too - his beach hut in Walton on the Naze was ruined by the surge.
Mr Francis's memory of the 1953 floods in Jaywick, Essex, begins with his arm falling out of bed into freezing cold water.
Then he remembers being told to get up and get dressed.
The bungalow started to move. His father opened the front door, then went to the back of of their home and kicked a hole in it.
Although this stopped their home from rocking it meant the water level went from 3ft (1m) to 5ft (1.5m).
His parents then smashed a hole in the ceiling and got the family into the loft space.
"That's when we realised how bad it was," Mr Francis said.
"The water was only a couple of inches below the ceiling. We all just sat on rafters.
"Out of the back of our bungalow we were calling to a family and this family were calling back to us.
"And then they stopped calling and we thought they had been rescued.
"But they hadn't. They had all drowned."
Painful memories of that night were brought back last week.
"It is extremely lucky that Jaywick didn't get hit again," Mr Francis added.
"The waves were large but all the sea defences worked.
"The force of the sea is frightening. This time it was different. In 1953 there were no communications, nobody knew anything, nobody was told anything and hardly anybody had televisions.
"Even the policeman had to walk all along the front to let people know to get out.
"This time, the communications were excellent. People knew what to expect and there was plenty of warning and the plans were in place."
Dominic Reeve, professor of coastal engineering at Swansea University, said: "I was looking back at the records for the same sort of event which happened in the 1950s.
"It is testament to the research and design and the effort that has gone into our coastal defences that we didn't see something similar this time around.
"I think we've got a lot more in the way of early warning systems in terms of defences which have prevented the sort of scale of devastation we saw in 1953.
"Defences against the elements are always a balance of costs against the consequences - and that's a decision that has to be made by society as a whole."
|
A feature of the fight for control of the Labour Party over the past year has been a fair amount of finger-pointing, with leader Jeremy Corbyn's supporters decried as "Trots" and "anarcho-syndicalists" and his critics branded "Blairites" and "neoliberals". What do all these terms mean? | By Esther WebberBBC News
Socialism
While Labour members on different sides of the party might not agree on much, most are happy to call themselves socialists.
It was in Tony Blair's controversial speech to party conference in 1994, and it was in Jeremy Corbyn's speech to conference on Wednesday, when he heralded "21st Century socialism".
Since the idea first came into being in the 19th Century, socialism has taken on many forms, but most versions of it have in common a belief in public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources.
Socialists tend to believe everything that people produce is a social product, with everyone who contributes to the production of a good entitled to a share in it.
As socialism first began to move from theory to practice, a division grew up between dictatorships associated with Marxism and democratic socialism as espoused by European political parties.
British socialism took on its own distinct character through the formation of the Labour Party and the trade union movement, which, in the words of Harold Wilson, "owed more to Methodism than to Marxism".
Communism
It has been a matter of debate recently as to whether communists have played a role in the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn - the Communist Party denies getting involved, but many believe other communists have joined the grassroots movement in support of Mr Corbyn.
Communism is usually understood as a process of class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, culminating in revolution, and leading to the establishment of a classless society in which private ownership is no more and the means of production belong to all.
Although its hallmarks also appear in earlier writings, it took a firm shape in the 19th Century in the work of German thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Their ideas underpinned the Russian revolution and a succession of attempts stretching over several continents throughout the 20th Century to put communism into practice, which have led to its being widely discredited as a political system.
How it differs from socialism is a matter of debate, but adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx is one hallmark of communism.
Marxism
For some, Jeremy Corbyn represents the resurgence of the Marxist wing of Labour, which fought for the soul of the party in the 1970s and 80s.
Mr Corbyn once told Andrew Marr "we can learn a great deal" from Marx.
Karl Marx's analysis of and prescription for society is a form of socialist thought, but he and Engels defined their philosophy as "scientific socialism", contrasting it with predecessors' "utopian socialism", which they regarded as not paying enough attention to material conditions or how to bring about change.
He saw society as being built around the "material forces of production," - labour and the means of production - and the "relations of production" - the social and political arrangements that regulate them.
Above that, he saw the superstructure - legal and political "forms of social consciousness" that correspond to the economic structure.
History is defined by the struggle between two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, according to Marx, and the replacement of capitalism with communism can only occur when the proletariat becomes conscious of its oppression and embarks on revolution.
He also thought communism would emerge in advanced economies, although many reinterpretations of his work have tried to transpose his philosophy on to poor, agrarian countries.
Leninism
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the architect of the Russian revolution, whose image adorns badges on sale at Labour conference this week, overlapped with Marx and Engels but rewrote their ideas to create his own doctrine.
He did not trust that historical events, left to themselves, would lead workers to class consciousness and revolution.
He believed the Communist Party should act as a vanguard, an intellectual elite determined to attain power through any means necessary and to overthrow capitalism once in power.
Other distinctive aspects of his thought include his conviction that the state would "wither away" once communism had been achieved, and that there should be a "proletarian dictatorship" following the seizure of power.
After 1917, however, these aims gave way to an increasingly centralised state and the repression of independent thought, prefiguring the dictatorship of Josef Stalin and permanently shaping how communism in practice would come to be seen.
Trotskyism
Leon Trotsky, one of the founders of the Soviet Union, split with Stalin in the 1930s - and was eventually killed in exile by a Stalinist assassin.
The biggest gulf between them was that Stalin believed they could create a socialist society in their own country without a world revolution, whereas Trotsky believed his country could achieve socialism only if the working classes around the world rose up as one to overthrow the ruling classes - the doctrine of "international socialism".
He also thought the Soviet Union had become a dictatorship under Stalin and advocated more democracy in the one-party state.
His philosophy gained traction in parts of Latin America and, at the fringes, in Britain.
He advocated entryism, advising his British followers to form a "secret faction" in the Labour Party to push his revolutionary agenda.
This approach did not begin to bear any real fruit until the 1970s, with the rise of the Militant tendency - and has recently become a live issue again, with deputy Labour leader Tom Watson warning of entryists joining the party to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
Anarcho-syndicalism
In July, former leader Lord Kinnock told a meeting of his party's MPs that Labour believed in parliamentary socialism, not anarcho-syndicalism.
The idea is a variant of anarchism, and revolves around the replacement of the state with trade unions and associated cooperatives (in French, "syndicats").
It had some influence during the Spanish civil war, and the British government was fearful of it taking hold in the 1910s, but it never gained much popularity.
Like other subsets of socialism, it was sent up by Monty Python, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in a scene where peasants declare themselves part of an anarcho-syndicalist commune in which "we take turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week" and "all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting".
Blairism
After Tony Blair became leader in 1994, he continued the process of "modernisation" begun by Neil Kinnock, and pushed ahead with abolishing Clause IV of the party constitution.
It ended the supremacy of the party conference, weakened links with the trades unions and killed off cherished old policies, most notably a commitment to public ownership of industry.
This break came with a label of its own, as Mr Blair actively drew a distinction between "old Labour" and "new Labour".
Many observers and party members credited Labour's subsequent electoral success to this innovation, and were happy to describe themselves as Blairites.
But others saw Tony Blair and his supporters as "entryists" - ironic in view of the same accusation currently being made of the left - who were betraying true Labour values.
This is the spirit in which the term "Blairite" has recently been directed at critics of Jeremy Corbyn within Labour.
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism can be summarised as an economic model that emphasises the value of free market competition, sometimes linked to the economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, although it is difficult to pin down its defining features.
It is commonly associated with a belief in sustained economic growth as the means to achieve human progress and an emphasis on minimal state intervention in economic and social affairs.
It has also been used to refer to the ideology underlying capitalist globalisation - and is most often used as an epithet by anti-capitalists.
Colin Talbot, a professor at Manchester University, recently wrote it was such a broad term as to be meaningless and few people ever admitted to being neoliberals - prompting an angry reaction by supporters of Mr Corbyn who thought he was dismissing the threat they believe it poses.
|
Kenyan TV stations ran breaking news tickers as the news of the withdrawal of President Uhuru Kenyatta's case at the ICC was announced. The website of the leading newspaper, the Nation, carried a huge breaking news banner on its front page and the papers also reported the president's excitement over the news. | A presenter on the Kikuyu language Kameme FM radio station sporadically burst into prayer while announcing the news. The radio's presenters welcomed the news, as "the best news ever heard". They said the withdrawal was great news for the the president's ethnic Kikuyu community.
President Kenyatta tweeted: "It has always been my position that the Kenyan cases at ICC were rushed there without proper investigation (#Vindicated)"
He also said he was "excited" and wanted to "run home to my wife" to tell her the news, the Standard newspaper said.
End of coalition?
There was a great deal of discussion about the fate of Deputy President William Ruto. The accusations against Mr Ruto relate to attacks on Mr Kenyatta's Kikuyu community, especially in the ethnic Kalenjin heartland in the Rift Valley.
An article in the Star newspaper predicted there would now be a strain in the ruling Jubilee coalition, which has occasionally been described as a union of convenience between Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta. "The prosecutors at The Hague could now tighten the noose around Deputy President William Ruto", the paper said.
It quoted a political science lecturer, Henry Amadi, as saying: "Historically, the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities have always lived in mutual suspicion and the ICC decisions may spell the end for the Jubilee Coalition".
Also being tried alongside Mr Ruto is journalist Joshua arap Sang, fellow Kalenjin and presenter of the prominent Kalenjin-language station, Kass FM.
Kass FM's initial reaction was to announce the end of the case against President Kenyatta and then it continued with its regular programming. Another leading Kalenjin station, Chamgei FM, carried a factual report and did not feature any reactions.
Equally low-key reaction was observed in local radio stations broadcasting from the Lake Victoria area. This is the region of Kenyatta's presidential rival Raila Odinga, an ethnic Luo, and leader of the opposition.
Radio Nam Lolwe's news presenter said: "It is a big victory for Uhuru Kenyatta. But Ruto and Sang will still remain in the dock." Other radio stations broadcasting in Luo ignored the news.
Mixed views on Twitter
Many Twitter users were pleased with the announcement. "Now that Kenyatta is acquitted, maybe he can re-focus 100 per cent on his nation," @mugabebright said.
"The victims have only lost because ICC had the wrong people," @Charloh wrote while @BrownsonVK commented: "Just excited that my president is free at last."
Others had a different opinion. @GaelleCarayon posted: "Real losers here are the thousands of victims whose plight for justice remains unanswered." Another user, @ellyakanga, commented: "The ICC's failure to prosecute Uhuru is a triumph for Kenyatta and may be Kenya, but this case risks setting a dangerous precedent."
@DanielKiprutto posted: "Kikuyu MPs says vindication of Uhuru is a Christmas present. Tell Bensouda to take bold steps and drop the others," referring to a separate trial of Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua arap Sang.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.
|
Anyone who wants to understand Vladimir Putin today needs to know the story of what happened to him on a dramatic night in East Germany a quarter of a century ago. | By Chris BowlbyBBC News, Dresden
It is 5 December 1989 in Dresden, a few weeks after the Berlin Wall has fallen. East German communism is dying on its feet, people power seems irresistible.
Crowds storm the Dresden headquarters of the Stasi, the East German secret police, who suddenly seem helpless.
Then a small group of demonstrators decides to head across the road, to a large house that is the local headquarters of the Soviet secret service, the KGB.
"The guard on the gate immediately rushed back into the house," recalls one of the group, Siegfried Dannath. But shortly afterwards "an officer emerged - quite small, agitated".
"He said to our group, 'Don't try to force your way into this property. My comrades are armed, and they're authorised to use their weapons in an emergency.'"
That persuaded the group to withdraw.
But the KGB officer knew how dangerous the situation remained. He described later how he rang the headquarters of a Red Army tank unit to ask for protection.
The answer he received was a devastating, life-changing shock.
"We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow," the voice at the other end replied. "And Moscow is silent."
That phrase, "Moscow is silent" has haunted this man ever since. Defiant yet helpless as the 1989 revolution swept over him, he has now himself become "Moscow" - the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
"I think it's the key to understanding Putin," says his German biographer, Boris Reitschuster. "We would have another Putin and another Russia without his time in East Germany."
The experience taught him lessons he has never forgotten, gave him ideas for a model society, and shaped his ambitions for a powerful network and personal wealth.
Above all, it left him with a huge anxiety about the frailty of political elites, and how easily they can be overthrown by the people.
Putin had arrived in Dresden in the mid-1980s for his first foreign posting as a KGB agent.
The German Democratic Republic or GDR - a communist state created out of the Soviet-occupied zone of post-Nazi Germany - was a highly significant outpost of Moscow's power, up close to Western Europe, full of Soviet military and spies.
Putin had wanted to join the KGB since he was a teenager, inspired by popular Soviet stories of secret service bravado in which, he recalled later, "One man's effort could achieve what whole armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people."
Initially, though, much of his work in Dresden was humdrum.
Among documents in the Stasi archives in Dresden is a letter from Putin asking for help from the Stasi boss with the installation of an informer's phone.
And there are details too of endless Soviet-East German social gatherings Putin attended, to celebrate ties between the two countries.
But if the spy work wasn't that exciting, Putin and his young family could at least enjoy the East German good life.
Putin's then wife, Ludmila, later recalled that life in the GDR was very different from life in the USSR. "The streets were clean. They would wash their windows once a week," she said in an interview published in 2000, as part of First Person, a book of interviews with Russia's new and then little-known acting president.
The Putins lived in a special block of flats with KGB and Stasi families for neighbours, though Ludmila envied the fact that: "The GDR state security people got higher salaries than our guys, judging from how our German neighbours lived. Of course we tried to economise and save up enough to buy a car."
East Germany enjoyed higher living standards than the Soviet Union and a former KGB colleague, Vladimir Usoltsev, describes Putin spending hours leafing through Western mail-order catalogues, to keep up with fashions and trends.
He also enjoyed the beer - securing a special weekly supply of the local brew, Radeberger - which left him looking rather less trim than he does in the bare-chested sporty images issued by Russian presidential PR today.
East Germany differed from the USSR in another way too - it had a number of separate political parties, even though it was still firmly under communist rule, or appeared to be.
"He enjoyed very much this little paradise for him," says Boris Reitschuster. East Germany, he says, "is his model of politics especially. He rebuilt some kind of East Germany in Russia now."
But in autumn 1989 this paradise became a kind of KGB hell. On the streets of Dresden, Putin observed people power emerging in extraordinary ways.
In early October hundreds of East Germans who had claimed political asylum at the West German embassy in Prague were allowed to travel to the West in sealed trains. As they passed through Dresden, huge crowds tried to break through a security cordon to try to board the trains, and make their own escape.
Wolfgang Berghofer, Dresden's communist mayor at the time, says there was chaos as security forces began taking on almost the entire local population. Many assumed violence was inevitable.
"A Soviet tank army was stationed in our city," he says. "And its generals said to me clearly: 'If we get the order from Moscow, the tanks will roll.'"
After the Berlin Wall opened, on 9 November, the crowds became bolder everywhere - approaching the citadels of Stasi and KGB power in Dresden.
Vladimir Putin had doubtless assumed too that those senior Soviet officers - men he'd socialised with regularly - would indeed send in the tanks.
But no, Moscow under Mikhail Gorbachev "was silent". The Red Army tanks would not be used. "Nobody lifted a finger to protect us."
He and his KGB colleagues frantically burned evidence of their intelligence work.
"I personally burned a huge amount of material," Putin recalled in First Person. "We burned so much stuff that the furnace burst."
Two weeks later there was more trauma for Putin as West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in the city. He made a speech that left German reunification looking inevitable, and East Germany doomed.
Kohl praised Gorbachev, the man in Moscow who'd refused to send in the tanks, and he used patriotic language - words like Vaterland, or fatherland - that had been largely taboo in Germany since the war. Now they prompted an ecstatic response.
It's not known whether Putin was in that crowd - but as a KGB agent in Dresden he'd certainly have known all about it.
The implosion of East Germany in the following months marked a huge rupture in his and his family's life.
"We had the horrible feeling that the country that had almost become our home would no longer exist," said his wife Ludmila.
"My neighbour, who was my friend, cried for a week. It was the collapse of everything - their lives, their careers."
One of Putin's key Stasi contacts, Maj Gen Horst Boehm - the man who had helped him install that precious telephone line for an informer - was humiliated by the demonstrating crowds, and committed suicide early in 1990.
This warning about what can happen when people power becomes dominant was one Putin could now ponder on the long journey home.
"Their German friends give them a 20-year-old washing machine and with this they drive back to Leningrad," says Putin biographer and critic Masha Gessen. "There's a strong sense that he was serving his country and had nothing to show for it."
He also arrived back to a country that had been transformed under Mikhail Gorbachev and was itself on the verge of collapse.
"He found himself in a country that had changed in ways that he didn't understand and didn't want to accept," as Gessen puts it.
His home city, Leningrad, was now becoming St Petersburg again. What would Putin do there?
There was talk, briefly, of taxi-driving. But soon Putin realised he had acquired a much more valuable asset than a second-hand washing machine.
In Dresden he'd been part of a network of individuals who might have lost their Soviet roles, but were well placed to prosper personally and politically in the new Russia.
In the Stasi archives in Dresden a picture survives of Putin during his Dresden years. He's in a group of senior Soviet and East German military and security figures - a relatively junior figure, off to one side, but already networking among the elite.
Prof Karen Dawisha of Miami University, author of Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, says there are people he met in Dresden "who have then gone on… to be part of his inner core".
They include Sergey Chemezov, who for years headed Russia's arms export agency and now runs a state programme supporting technology, and Nikolai Tokarev head of the state pipeline company, Transneft.
And it's not only former Russian colleagues who've stayed close to Putin.
Take Matthias Warnig - a former Stasi officer, believed to have spent time in Dresden when Putin was there - who is now managing director of Nordstream, the pipeline taking gas directly from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea.
That pipeline symbolised what was seen, until recently, as Germany's new special relationship with Russia - though the Ukraine crisis has at the very least put that relationship on hold.
Putin-watchers believe events such as the uprising on Kiev's Maidan Square, have revived bad memories - above all, of that night in Dresden in December 1989.
"Now when you have crowds in Kiev in 2004, in Moscow in 2011 or in Kiev in 2013 and 2014, I think he remembers this time in Dresden," says Boris Reitschuster. "And all these old fears come up inside him."
Inside him too may be a memory of how change can be shaped not only by force, or by weakness - but also by emotion. In 1989 he saw in Dresden how patriotic feeling, combined with a yearning for democracy, proved so much more powerful than communist ideology.
So when wondering what Vladimir Putin will do next, it's well worth remembering what he's lived through already.
One thing seems sure. While Vladimir Putin holds power in the Kremlin, Moscow is unlikely to be silent.
Listen to Chris Bowlby's documentary The Moment that Made Putin on BBC Radio 4 this Sunday at 13:30 and afterwards on the BBC iPlayer
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
|
As the suffragettes are remembered 100 years on from the Representation of the People Act 1918 - which gave women the vote for the very first time - singer Kizzy Crawford, 21, from Merthyr Tydfil, who has written about gender equality in her songs, reflects on what still needs to change. | I was raised by a single mother who is a feminist, she worked full time whilst also bringing up me, my three sisters and our brother.
We were definitely raised as feminists, my brother too.
She used to point things out when we were watching TV, reading books or watching the news and make us aware of the inequalities and how women are represented.
It's only recently that I've realised that in doing this, she was teaching us about inequality and pointing out the importance of resisting this.
I was brought up to be conscious of how women are portrayed and treated and to fight against this when it was a stereotype. I think it is important for young girls to understand how our ancestors have paved the way for us to be where we are today.
The actions of the suffragettes are unbelievable to women like myself, the way they fought for what they believed in and the lengths they went to are amazing. But even after they led the way by campaigning for the vote, there is still so much that needs to be done.
My grandmother gave up her job when she was married and didn't have her own bank account or mortgage.
But I have been brought up to believe women and mothers can achieve anything, my life is so different to how my grandmother's was.
I'm fortunate because my music career is my full-time job, which allows me to earn enough money to support myself and my home - 100 years ago I would never have been able to get where I am now.
My mum often reminds me of how lucky I am to be independent and it is thanks to the Suffragettes that we are in a more equal world, and although we have still got quite a lot of work to do to achieve equality in the media, politics and day-to-day life, we are moving forward.
It is really important that we remember those women who changed things for us and the suffering they went through. There are many forgotten names, but we need to celebrate them.
I'm also pleased to see that voting rights in some Welsh elections will be opened up to those who are 16 and over - I think it's important that young people have a say, especially when it comes to politics, because they are the future.
There have been times in my career when I feel I've been treated differently because I'm a woman, I have been told to wear a particular sort of clothing because they say it is better for my shape, or having to wear make-up for certain things when I wouldn't always wear it.
It should be up to the individual to decide what they want to wear and not hinge on what gender they are. I can't imagine a man being told to do these things to the same extent as women often are.
It saddens me that in our society, women are still being treated differently and it is something I want to see change and help change through my music.
There is still discrimination against women, there is still sexual harassment and assault but I feel encouraged by the 'Me Too' campaign and the fact that it has drawn attention to this issue, it has given women a voice and the confidence to speak up and social media has given a platform for them to speak out in a way they haven't been able to before.
Although we've come a long way thanks to the work of the wonderful, strong and inspiring Suffragettes, we do still have a long way to go.
We need to speak to our brothers, husbands and male friends to raise more awareness and work with them in order to bring greater change to our society as a whole.
|
The mosquito is the most dangerous animal in the world, carrying diseases that kill one million people a year. Now the Zika virus, which is carried by mosquitoes, has been linked with thousands of babies born with brain defects in South America. Should the insects be wiped out? | By Claire BatesBBC News Magazine
There are 3,500 known species of mosquito but most of those don't bother humans at all, living off plant and fruit nectar.
It's only the females from just 6% of species that draw blood from humans - to help them develop their eggs. Of these just half carry parasites that cause human diseases. But the impact of these 100 species is devastating.
"Half of the global population is at risk of a mosquito-borne disease," says Frances Hawkes from the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich. "They have had an untold impact on human misery."
Deadly mosquitoes
More than a million people, mostly from poorer nations, die each year from mosquito-borne diseases including malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever.
Some mosquitoes also carry the Zika virus, which was first thought to cause only mild fever and rashes. However, scientists are now worried it can damage babies in the womb. The Zika virus has been linked with a spike in microcephaly - where babies are born with smaller heads - in Brazil.
There's a constant effort to educate people to use treated nets and other tactics to avoid being bitten. But would it just be simpler to make an entire species of disease-carrying mosquito extinct?
Biologist Olivia Judson has supported "specicide" of 30 types of mosquito. She said doing this would save one million lives and only decrease the genetic diversity of the mosquito family by 1%. "We should consider the ultimate swatting," she told the New York Times.
In Britain, scientists at Oxford University and the biotech firm Oxitec have genetically modified (GM) the males of Aedes aegypti - a mosquito species that carries both the Zika virus and dengue fever. These GM males carry a gene that stops their offspring developing properly. This second generation of mosquitoes then die before they can reproduce and become carriers of disease themselves.
About three million of these modified mosquitoes were released on to a site on the Cayman Islands between 2009 and 2010. Oxitec reported a 96% reduction in mosquitoes compared with nearby areas. A trial currently taking place on a site in Brazil has reduced the numbers by 92%.
So are there any downsides to removing mosquitoes? According to Phil Lounibos, an entomologist at Florida University, mosquito eradication "is fraught with undesirable side effects".
He says mosquitoes, which mostly feed on plant nectar, are important pollinators. They are also a food source for birds and bats while their young - as larvae - are consumed by fish and frogs. This could have an effect further up and down the food chain.
However, some say that the role of mosquito species as food and pollinators would quickly be filled by other insects. "We're not left with a wasteland every time a species vanishes," Judson said.
But for Lounibos, the fact this niche would be filled by another insect is part of the problem. He warns that mosquitoes could be replaced by an insect "equally, or more, undesirable from a public health viewpoint". Its replacement could even conceivably spread diseases further and faster than mosquitoes today.
Science writer David Quammen has argued that mosquitoes have limited the destructive impact of humanity on nature. "Mosquitoes make tropical rainforests, for humans, virtually uninhabitable," he said.
Rainforests, home to a large share of our total plant and animal species, are under serious threat from man-made destruction. "Nothing has done more to delay this catastrophe over the past 10,000 years, than the mosquito," Quammen said.
But destroying a species isn't just a scientific issue, it's also a philosophical one. There would be some who would say it is utterly unacceptable to deliberately wipe out a species that is a danger to humans when it is humans that are a danger to so many species.
"One argument against is that it would be morally wrong to remove an entire species," says Jonathan Pugh, from Oxford University's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
And yet that's not an argument we apply to all species, says Pugh. "When we eradicated the Variola virus, which caused smallpox, we rightly celebrated.
"We need to ask ourselves, does it have any valuable capacities? For instance, is it sentient and therefore has the capacity to suffer pain? Scientists say mosquitoes don't have an emotional response to pain like we do.
"Also do we have a good reason for getting rid of them? With mosquitoes, they are the main carriers for many diseases."
The question is likely to remain hypothetical, whatever the level of concern over Zika, malaria and dengue. Despite the success of reducing mosquito numbers in smaller areas, many scientists say knocking out an entire species would be impossible.
"There's no silver bullet," says Hawkes. "Field trials using GM mosquitoes have been a moderate success but involved releasing millions of modified insects to cover just a small area.
"Getting every female mosquito to breed with sterile males in a large area would be very difficult. Instead we should be looking to combine this with other techniques."
Innovative ways of tackling mosquitoes are being developed across the world. Scientists at Kew Gardens in London are developing a sensor that can detect each different species of mosquito from its distinctive wing beat. They plan to equip villagers in rural Indonesia with wearable acoustic detectors to track disease-bearing mosquitoes. This would help them manage future outbreaks.
Meanwhile, scientists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have worked out how female mosquitoes are attracted to certain body odours, raising hope for more effective repellents.
Another promising avenue is to make mosquitoes resistant to the parasites that cause the diseases. In Australia, the Eliminate Dengue programme is using naturally occurring bacteria to reduce the ability of mosquitoes to pass dengue between people.
"This is a more realistic approach for mitigating mosquito-borne disease," says Lounibos.
Meanwhile, scientists in the US have bred a GM mosquito with a new gene in the laboratory that makes it resistant to the malaria parasite.
"We are playing an evolutionary game with mosquitoes," says Hawkes. "Hopefully it's one we can get on top of over the next 10 to 15 years."
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
|
As Japan and China continue to exchange angry words over their competing claims to an uninhabited group of islands in the East China Sea, it's not that easy to get a close look - and sometimes a little deception is required. | By Rupert Wingfield-HayesBBC News, Tokyo
When you arrive in a new country as a foreign correspondent, the first thing you try to do is figure out how that country works.
Japan, where I arrived three months ago, has a reputation for being particularly complex for foreigners to understand. And so it is proving.
Take for example the little trip I recently took out in to the East China Sea.
The objective was the Senkaku Islands, as they are known here in Japan. If you live in China they are the Diaoyu. I'm just going to call them The Islands.
As you may have heard The Islands are currently the subject of a very acrimonious dispute between Japan and China over who owns them.
The Japanese government has banned everyone - including Japanese citizens - from landing on them. You are, however, allowed to go fishing in the waters nearby.
But before we could set off we had to undergo an inspection by the Japanese coastguard, and this is where things started to get interesting.
The coastguard officers were extremely polite and friendly. They were also surprisingly thorough. They wanted to see our fishing equipment, rods, reels and bait. They even wanted to see whether there really was ice in the boat's fish lockers.
Then came a question I was not expecting.
"What is the purpose of your trip?" the senior officer asked me.
I hesitated, wondering whether I was really expected to lie.
"We're… um… going… fishing!" I said.
The officers looked pleased and nodded sagely. "Fishing, yes, good, good."
All of this was being filmed by my colleague, Jiro San, with a large television camera. We had made no attempt to hide our equipment or who we were.
But the charade appeared to be important. And it didn't end once we were at sea.
After eight hours of sailing we approached the islands under cover of darkness. On the radio the Japanese coastguard was calling our captain.
"We are preparing to come aboard," they announced.
Through the darkness a pair of speedboats were sweeping towards us.
Our captain and his two crew now immediately sprang in to action, pulling out fishing-rods and reels and setting them up on the back of the boat.
"We need to look like we're fishing," they giggled.
Then as dawn broke over the islands and we began our filming, our shipmates really DID begin fishing. They pulled aboard at least a dozen beautiful big red snapper which slapped around on the deck at my feet.
"They'll want to see these when we get back," our captain smirked.
For the next few hours everyone lost interest in fishing. The Chinese had arrived in the shape of four maritime surveillance ships.
The Japanese coastguard was now much more interested in keeping the Chinese ships away from us, than us away from the islands.
It was all quite exciting as a slow-motion game of chase around the islands ensued.
But when we finally did get back to the small Japanese island of Ishigaki after 24 hours at sea there were our friendly coastguard officers waiting for us.
"How was the fishing?" they asked. I thought, "Are you serious?" Apparently they were.
So what does this tell us about Japan? Well, I think it shows the tension in Japan between the need to apply rules, and the deep desire to avoid conflict.
Rules are very important here. Japan is a highly structured and hierarchical society. There is a rule and regulation for everything - but there is also a huge fear of conflict.
And so Japanese people have learned to negotiate the web or rules, to interpret them, while still making sure they have covered their behinds.
Something very similar happened when I went to get my Japanese driving licence. British people are, in theory, allowed to swap their British licence.
But there is an obscure regulation that was nearly my undoing. I had to be able to prove that I'd lived in the UK for one year after obtaining my most recent licence.
"How am I supposed to do that?" I fulminated. "I haven't lived in the UK for 20 years!"
The gentleman at the licence office looked pained, and then suddenly his face brightened, he had an idea.
"When did you take your driving test?" he asked.
"1984," I said.
When did you go to university?
"1985," I said.
"So you have a degree certificate from a UK university?" he asked.
Brilliant. He had his piece of paper, I had my Japanese driving licence, and conflict had been avoided.
It was the same with our friendly coastguard. If challenged by a superior he had done his job. Our captain had made sure we had fish to show him. And we had our precious filming.
Of course no-one was REALLY ever in any doubt about what we were up to.
|
The outbreak of a virus has closed a ward to new patients at Guernsey's Princess Elizabeth Hospital.
| Five patients on Victoria Wing, the private ward, and one member of staff have contracted gastroenteritis, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting.
A hospital spokesman said samples had been sent to the UK to try to discover the cause of the sickness.
He said visitors were advised to consider the risk of contracting it before visiting those in the ward.
|
Sir Patrick Stewart has garnered much attention in social circles for tweeting a photograph in which he says that, at the age of 72, he has had his first slice of pizza. He spoke to Eddie Mair on Radio 4's PM. This item contains singing. | Magazine MonitorA collection of cultural artefacts
EDDIE MAIR: You took a photograph of yourself eating a pizza. You announced to the world it was your first ever slice and you've gone viral. How does it feel?
PATRICK STEWART: Eddie, I look on this as maybe being the high point of my career, if not my life. To have something like this happen is like a dream come true and I'm so excited I can barely think or speak or move.
EM: Do you know, I think we're both getting emotional.
PS: Yes, I know. I'm sorry about that, I'll get a hold of myself. OK I'm fine now.
What can I tell you about this experience? You know there's a little history to this pizza slice. And it is true - although the world is amazed - that was my first slice. Of course I've eaten pizza before. But I've never gone into a slice. The fact is yesterday morning my fiancee and I were a little hung-over. I know that's something you wouldn't understand having never had that experience but my fiancée said what we need is a slice of pizza and a fizzy drink.
So here in Brooklyn we went to this little neighbourhood place and innocently somebody took a photograph of me and the rest, as you know, is history. But here's the thing about pizza. This is a little bit of history. I didn't eat or even see a pizza until I was in my twenties. I grew up in a small little town in the Calder Valley and I went to Bristol. There were no pizza parlours in Bristol where I was doing my training. So it came as an exciting new part of my life.
That's the thing, my brother and I, when we were small we would listen to a BBC Home Service programme called Children's Favourites or Children's Choice and they played on a Saturday morning Songs for Kids. My brother and I listened to it every Saturday, we learnt all the words and we sang along to it. One of the hit songs at the time was a song called Volare and the opening line of this song Volare was "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie". Well, my brother and I, we didn't know what pizza was so we decided that line must be "when the moon hits your eye like a big piece of pie". And for years, whenever I sang this Dean Martin song I sang, "piece of pie" until, one day of course, someone corrected me.
EM: I'm a little disappointed you didn't sing for me.
PS: Do you want me to do it?
EM: Why not.
PS: 'When the moon hits your eye like a big piece of pie, that's amore.'
The song wasn't Volare, of course it's Amore. But it's an Italian word, they all sound the same to me.
EM: And your singing's very good.
PS: I know, it's so much trouble in so many different directions. I think it's probably just a good idea that I get in the car and go to the airport.
EM: It's fine, it's fine. Well I need to know a couple of things first. First of all, what was on the pizza slice, what did you choose?
PS: It was a plain cheese pizza, no meat - which I don't eat much of. And I kind of think it was a trick, this one, she was right. A fizzy drink and a pizza. I think you need grease when you have a hangover. This was new information to me. But this is why I'm in love with this woman - she has information for me like that.
EM: I read in the New York Magazine online that maybe you may have met your fiancée in a pizza restaurant.
PS: Oh really. Well she likes to say that when we met she was a pizza waitress. That's not strictly true. They did serve pizza in the restaurant she was working in. But this was - and only Brooklyners know this - gourmet pizza. Not just a regular everyday Dominoes you know. Pizza has linked our lives for the last five years and now, as the world knows, continues to do the same.
EM: I'm filling up again, so just before we end this, is there anything - obviously you say you have had pizza before, this was your first pizza slice -is there any food stuff that you can think of that you still simply have never had.
PS: Thousand year old eggs.
EM: Thank you Patrick.
PS: Never had one. Or four hundred year old eggs.
You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook
|
Guernsey's government-owned airline, Aurigny, is to fly between the island and London City Airport. | Aurigny CEO Mark Darby said he would make sure the service was "slick and on time".
The airline is the only that offers flights to London, currently into Gatwick airport only.
The London City flights will start in September and Mr Darby said the route would be designed around business commuters.
He said they would be leasing a Focker 50 aircraft for a month while they make alterations to their existing planes to deal with the new route.
|
The road leading up to the Tanjung Intan port in Cilacap, near to the prison where several people were due to be executed, was packed with spectators, local people fascinated by the media frenzy on their doorstep. | By Karishma VaswaniBBC Indonesia editor
"I know that there are people who will be executed tonight," said Rahsia, a young woman who came out after seeing the commotion on local television. "I know they sold drugs and that's wrong. There are lots of our young generation and our citizens who die because of drugs. The government must be firm."
It is a sentiment that echoes across Indonesia. Survey after survey shows that the majority of Indonesians support the death penalty for drug traffickers.
And the government was firm - eight convicted drug smugglers were executed by firing squad here on Tuesday night after exhausting the last of their appeals.
Man of action
Joko Widodo, Indonesia's president, denied them clemency. He insists that Indonesia is facing a national drugs crisis and the punishment for traffickers must be severe.
"Eighteen thousand young people die in Indonesia every year because of drugs overdoses," Mr Widodo said in a recent interview. "We are serious about our war on drugs."
Some experts have called that figure into question, and have data suggesting that drug deaths have actually declined in Indonesia in recent years. Critics have also questioned whether all of those executed on Tuesday received due process, as some among them still had legal procedures under way.
But President Jokowi, as he is known here, is under pressure to show that he is a man of action. His first few months in office have been marked by inaction and indecision and his domestic approval ratings have dropped, making his heady victory last July look like a distant dream.
Analysts say he must show that he is in control and that the death penalty is an easy win for him. Backing down now, especially in the face of foreign pressure, would look like a sign of weakness.
'Please don't kill our sons'
Mr Widodo has publicly declared a war on drugs and said he will refuse all clemency applications from convicted drug traffickers - a stance that could prove legally problematic given that the very point of a presidential clemency is to evaluate each individual on a case-by-case basis, to see whether or not they've changed in prison.
But that will be little comfort to the families of the eight people who were executed, or to the scores of other convicted drug traffickers yet to meet their fate.
"Our boys have changed in prison," said Myuran Sukumaran's mother in an interview earlier this year. "They have become different men and deserve a second chance. Please don't kill our sons."
Indonesia risks souring relations with other nations over its hardline approach, as it has already with Australia, home of two of the smugglers. But Indonesia's new president appears willing to take the risk, even if it means tarnishing his own reputation as a liberal, reform-minded leader.
|
GPs should have it all, shouldn't they? | Nick TriggleHealth correspondent
A decade ago they got a new contract that allowed them to give up night and weekend cover, while seeing their pay shoot through the £100,000 a year barrier.
More recently, this government's reforms in England have put them at the heart of decision-making in the NHS by giving them responsibility for two thirds of the NHS budget.
And yet the profession, it seems, is at its wits end. A recent survey of 1,000 doctors by the British Medical Association found GPs had lower levels of morale and work-life balance than their medical colleagues elsewhere in the health service.
This negativity has started to filter through to young medics joining the profession. The government in England is in the process of expanding the number of training places, but at last count one in eight of the posts remained unfilled.
What has gone wrong? If you ask GPs, the answer is simple. They are being asked to do too much. The BMA survey found three quarters thought their workloads were "unsustainable".
There is plenty of evidence to back up these claims. A report produced by the Nuffield Trust think-tank - and given exclusively to the BBC - suggests that GPs have been caught between a rock and a hard place.
While numbers are rising slowly - up by 4% since 2006 to over 32,000 - this has been outstripped by rises in demand. According to estimates (unlike hospital visits their are no accurate figures) the number of patient consultations has risen by 13% to 340m in the last four years alone.
What is more, funding has been squeezed. In the past year spending fell by 3.8% in real terms to £7.55bn.
And this is not just an English phenomenon. Similar complaints are being made elsewhere in the UK. Just this week the Royal College of GPs was warning the GP system in Scotland was under-funded.
Dr Richard Vautrey, of the British Medical Association, says these factors are the "fundamental part of the problem".
"GPs are being asked to do more and more for less. The government is now talking about seven-day services, but at the moment doctors are struggling to provide good quality care during core hours. Without better funding the fear is patients will suffer."
Case study: The GP who gave it all up
Dr Mark Sandford-Wood had been a partner in practice in north Devon for 20 years when he decided enough was enough last year.
He now works as a "freelancer" doing locum shifts, out-of-hours work, providing care in prisons and sitting on local committees.
"I still love being a GP, but the financial risk was just too much. Funding is being squeezed and demands are going up. We have to do more and more paper work to chase little slithers of money. My take-home pay started falling and I began to question what the future held.
"It's not a matter of not wanting to work hard - I'm now working longer hours - but its a question of financial security. GP partners are running businesses and the numbers just don't tack up."
There are signs this is already beginning to happen. Data from the official GP patient survey, carried out by Ipsos Mori for NHS England, shows that patients are waiting longer for appointments and finding if more difficult to get through on the phone than two years ago.
The Royal College of GPs has called this worsening a "national disgrace" - and wants to see the workforce expanded by 8,000.
But is there more to the problem that just simple money? Perhaps. What is noticeable about the Nuffield Trust review is how radically the sector has changed.
At one time, general practice was dominated by small practices where the GPs all had a stake in the surgery. It is why the profession has been called a network of small businesses.
But that is no longer true. A fifth of GPs are now salaried - effectively employees of the business - while the organisations they are working for are getting bigger and bigger.
'Tough job'
The number of single doctor practices has almost halved between 2006 and 2013 to under 900. Meanwhile the number of practices with 10 or more GPs has increased by three quarters to 510 in 2013 over the same period.
Talk to GPs and they will tell you that this is a consequences of the extra services they are being asked to take on and the extra management responsibilities they have been asked to take on.
Just last month the five-year plan set out by NHS England called on them to extend into other areas of care - such as minor surgery, diagnostics and specialist clinics - that have traditionally been the remit of hospitals.
Nuffield Trust chief executive Nigel Edwards has some sympathy for the profession. "Being a GP is a tough job. You can be faced with a patient who has a cold or lung cancer - the opportunity to get things wrong actually is quite high.
"As time has gone by, we keep asking more and more of them and if they are going to be able to cope things are going to have change."
Mr Edwards cites technology as a key area that needs embracing, pointing out that many GP practices are still communicating with fax machines to make his point.
He believes much more could be done on the telephone or by using modern digital technologies and a continued move towards larger practices or - at the very least - practices working together in networks so they benefit from economies of scale.
But as this shift towards bigger, better, faster happens is there a danger that the special relationship GPs have with their patients is lost?
Not necessarily, says Mr Edwards. "If the profession does embrace change, GPs may actually find some of the pressure is eased and that continuity of care becomes easier. Some in the profession realise that, but some don't." The conclusion could not be starker: innovate to survive.
|
Earlier this week Steve Morgan, the chairman of Wales' biggest housebuilder Redrow, claimed parts of the country would become "no-go areas" if tougher building regulations are introduced. He argued that plans by the Welsh government to make new homes more energy efficient - aimed at delivering lower fuel bills and greater safety standards - will increase costs. This, he argued, could lead to affordable housing not being viable in areas such as Wrexham and the south Wales Valleys. Sarah Dickins takes a look at the man behind Redrow. | By Sarah DickinsBBC Wales economics correspondent
Steve Morgan may be a multi-millionaire now running one of Wales' few companies quoted on the stock market but he often refers back to his roots - laying sewer pipes in north Wales.
That was before he set up Redrow in Flintshire 1974 and built his first house in Denbigh in 1982.
Throughout his business career Mr Morgan, who this week said parts of Wales would become "no-go areas" if tougher building regulations were introduced, seems to have had a finely tuned sense of timing.
In the late 1980s when house prices in the south-east of England soared he decided they'd risen too far and left the scene, selling land for around £7m. Just weeks later property prices crashed.
I first met and interviewed Steve Morgan in the early 90s when Redrow was growing quickly.
The company prided itself in developments with a wide range of housing styles, creating street scenes.
Financial crisis
By 1994 Redrow was a UK-wide business worth around £300m and Mr Morgan floated it on the stock exchange.
I remember asking then what would happen to Redrow if its founder ever left. It was just six years later in 2000 that he decided he wanted a change, left Redrow and moved away.
What became pertinent years later was that he kept an 8% stake in the company.
Because he was a a major shareholder, Redrow's new management team made regular presentations to him about how the business was faring.
The financial crisis of 2008 hit the housing sector hard.
Many house builders suffered and some medium-sized companies went to the wall.
Redrow posted losses of just under £200m. Mr Morgan says that moment was a terrible blow and he could see the writing on the wall for the company if it wasn't turned round quickly.
I met up with him again to find out what made him return to Redrow plc.
Hardly changed in the 12 years or so since I last interviewed him, he told me: "It was like seeing my baby in real trouble and I decided I had to come back.
"I just couldn't see what had taken me 25 years to build up destroyed.
"I'd been through recessions before and I knew what to do and what not to do."
Mr Morgan says his return to Redrow's headquarters at Ewloe in Flintshire in 2009 was very emotional.
He couldn't believe how it looked - weeds through the concrete, dirty offices and a closed staff canteen.
He says he was mobbed by the receptionists as he walked through the doors and he set about getting the place clean, painted and, most importantly, got people busy again.
"We addressed everything. There was far too much borrowings when I came back so we had to address that," he said.
"We got rid of stock. We've had to take some big hits on some of the land deals we've done because land prices have dropped dramatically, and went out and bought some new land.
"[We got] the cash back in first of all to give us the capital, we did a rights issue which really put a lot of cash injection into the company and set up and bought new land.
"It's the benefit of the new land coming through which has now turned the business around but we've attacked the market really hard."
By 2010 Redrow had turned a £140m loss into a £700,000 pre-tax profit, which rose to £25.3m in 2011 and £43m in 2012.
Mr Morgan, now chairman, had worked his magic once again.
|
Twenty years ago a truck carrying a homemade bomb ripped apart the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, in what remains the worst act of home-grown terror on American soil. A paediatric surgeon tells the story of a rushed operation among the ruins, to save a woman's life. | By Sara LentatiBBC World Service
Wednesday 19 April 1995 was, like every Wednesday, David Tuggle's main operating day and he was helping a junior registrar through a hernia operation on a small child.
During the procedure a nurse came in with the news that a bomb had gone off in downtown Oklahoma City.
At first Tuggle wasn't sure how to respond. Disaster training drills were not uncommon in the city - because of the frequency of tornados they were held twice a year, usually on a Wednesday, in April and October.
"So I assumed that this was our normal April Wednesday disaster drill and I continued leisurely instructing the student doctor," he says.
But then the nurse came in again. "A bomb went off in downtown Oklahoma City, really," she said. "Do you know what you're supposed to do?"
The bomb exploded at 09:02 and by 09:30 the first children were being brought in.
"The first three children that came in needed surgery. One had exposed brain, one had an open leg fracture and one had an injury to a blood vessel in the leg," he says.
But Tuggle and the rest of the medical team had no idea of the number of victims to expect. They were hearing reports of injured children at the day care centre in the Murrah Building but no more had arrived at the hospital.
At this point Tuggle, along with his friend and colleague Dr Andy Sullivan, asked one of the police officers to take them to the site, to find out what was happening.
Tuggle still remembers the scene. "It was really a surreal experience. All of the ceilings were hanging down, we could see bodies that had not been evacuated and they were still bringing bodies out. There was a lot of smoke rising from the building and there were parts of the building that were falling down."
Being the middle of Oklahoma City there were plenty of volunteers who were willing to help with the rescue operation.
"I saw my dermatologist in scrubs and a gastroenterologist I knew in a three-piece suit walking inside the building without any protection at all," Tuggle says.
Tuggle and Sullivan arrived at the Murrah building about 90 minutes after the bombing and by this time most of the survivors had been evacuated. But they were told three people were still trapped inside.
On the first floor they found a woman with her right arm and leg under a pile of rubble but there was already a rescue team working through the debris.
So they were taken downstairs to the basement where another woman was trapped.
Daina Bradley was in a small hole, pinned by a cement support column that had landed on her right leg between the knee and the ankle.
"Daina was conscious but she was cold, in a little pool of water, and there were a number of firefighters, rescue workers and paramedics who were down there with us, trying to figure out if there was a way we could lift the cement pillar," says Tuggle.
The problem they faced was that the pillar crushing her leg was supporting what remained of the building. A fire fighter was touching the column with his bare hands and if he felt any vibrations had instructions to clear the building.
While Tuggle and Sullivan were still discussing how they could free her they were told to clear the building - one of the bomb dogs had got a sniff of explosives on the sixth floor in one of the federal offices.
The firefighters almost had to drag them out of the building as they could hear Bradley asking them not to leave. "I told her, 'We have to go, but I'll be back,'" Tuggle says.
Oklahoma bomber: Timothy McVeigh
Sullivan went back to the hospital to get medical instruments and sedatives and after about an hour Tuggle was allowed back into the building. He went down to check on Bradley and then called his colleague. "I had an early version of a cell phone - that big brick made by Motorola," he says.
During that discussion they came to the realisation that the only way to save Bradley's life was to amputate her leg.
She gave verbal consent so Tuggle administered pain relief through a vein in her neck and applied a tourniquet above her knee, to keep blood loss to a minimum.
"Dr Sullivan basically had to crawl in head first and started doing the amputation. He would work for a while and then he'd have to take a break and I'd have to pull him out because he couldn't get out on his own," says Tuggle. "He'd come out and take a sip of water, pant a little bit, and then go back in."
The cramped, dark hole, Sullivan had to work in wasn't the only difficulty he faced.
The 46cm (18-inch) amputation knife he had brought from the hospital was too long to use in the hole and the disposable scalpels didn't stay sharp for very long and eventually ran out. "So he pulled out his pocket knife and cut the last tendon with that," says Tuggle.
The amputation itself took about 10 minutes, but to Tuggle it seemed like forever. With the help of 20 firefighters he managed to pull her out of the hole and clamp the blood vessels to make sure the bleeding had stopped before removing the tourniquet.
Getting their patient to the hospital quickly was now the chief concern. Tuggle had asked for an ambulance to be ready and waiting for them at their nearest exit, but when they got to the door it wasn't there.
"We were standing there with our cold patient, with no ambulance. I was not happy."
So another ambulance had to be found and Tuggle rode with Bradley to the hospital.
Daina Bradley had been in the Murrah Building to get a Social Security card for her three-month-old son Gabreon Bruce. She had taken her daughter, Peachlyn Bradley who was three, her sister Felicity Bradley and grandmother Cheryl Hammons.
Her two young children and grandmother were all killed in the attack. Her sister was injured but survived.
Looking back on that day 20 years later Tuggle is not sure if the city will ever recover. "I think it will have a lasting memory for Oklahoma City," he says, "probably for as long as there's as Oklahoma City."
Dr David Tuggle spoke to Witness on the BBC World Service.
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
|
The leader of Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine, Iyad Ag Ghaly, has a complex and colourful past. He has led Tuareg uprisings against the Malian government, acted as go-between in securing the release of hostages kidnapped by al-Qaeda, and spent time as a Malian diplomat in Saudi Arabia. | By Steve MetcalfBBC Monitoring
A little-known figure who rarely speaks to the press, Mr Ghaly's motivation for founding Ansar Dine remains the subject of some debate.
He comes from the Ifoghas tribe and the Kidal region of north-eastern Mali. Believed to be now in his mid-fifties, he first came to public attention in the early 1990s as the leader of a Tuareg revolt seeking independence or greater autonomy for the northern region of Mali that they call Azawad.
Malian state radio referred to him in 1991 as the secretary-general of the Popular Movement of Azawad and head of the delegation negotiating an end to the rebellion with the government. In 1995 Radio France International called him the "undisputed leader" of the Tuareg rebels.
After another, short-lived revolt in 2006, Mr Ghaly became head of a movement called the 23 May Democratic Alliance for Change. The following year he was reported to be a member of the Malian High Council of Territorial Collectivities.
Hostage mediator
In August 2003 he played the key role in securing the release of 14 mostly German tourists kidnapped by the Algerian Salafi Group for Call and Combat, GSPC, which later became Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). He negotiated further hostage releases in 2008, 2010 and 2011.
Although European governments denied paying ransoms, these kidnappings are believed to have earned GSPC/AQIM tens of millions of dollars.
A US diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks referred to Mr Ghaly as turning up "like the proverbial bad penny" whenever there was the prospect of "a cash transaction" between the Tuareg and a foreign government.
Between late 2007 and early 2010 he held a post at the Malian consulate in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, although at times during this period he was reported as being in Mali and elsewhere negotiating hostage releases.
Several Malian press reports say he left this post after Saudi Arabia declared him persona non grata for having contact with terrorist elements.
After the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya in mid-2011, Mr Ghaly reportedly sought the leadership of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), newly-formed by returning Tuareg who had served in the Libyan army, but he was rebuffed.
An MNLA official told Le Monde in April 2012 that this was because of links with AQIM, but that it was unclear whether this association was "out of conviction or out of opportunism".
Other sources say Mr Ghaly was rejected because of his "close ties" with the Malian government, a suspicion which dates back to the rebellion of 1990, when he was seen as having compromised in the course of negotiations.
Mr Ghaly has also faced problems within the Ifoghas tribe.
After reportedly being overlooked during a takeover of leadership of the tribe in 2011, he was then condemned by the tribal chief and religious leaders for his "personal project", Ansar Dine.
The pro-MNLA website Toumastpress reported that the tribal chief asked Ansar Dine to lay down their arms or leave the region.
Religious influence
Mr Ghaly's establishment of Ansar Dine could be seen as a response to setbacks he experienced in the internal Tuareg power struggle, but alongside this Tuareg nationalism one can also trace the development of strong religious beliefs.
He is said to have been attracted to the teachings of a Muslim missionary group, Tablighi Jama'at, which is non-political and condemns violence. He also spent some time in 2002 studying at a mosque in Saint Denis in France.
His subsequent interactions with GSPC/AQIM and his time in Saudi Arabia may have moved his religious orientation in a more hard-line direction.
In 2011 he reportedly told the Ifoghas tribal meeting that he wanted to impose Islamic law on the Tuareg.
After Ansar Dine's seizure of Timbuktu in April 2012, Mr Ghaly made a statement on the local radio in which he announced "jihad against the opponents of the Sharia" and "enmity to the unbelievers and polytheists".
He also called on the local inhabitants to assist Ansar Dine in "establishing the religion, spreading justice, security and ruling between people with justice, and promoting virtue and preventing of vice".
Potential deal-maker
It is difficult to ascertain his motivation for founding Ansar Dine because reliable, first-hand information about him is scarce, and conspiracy theories abound.
One of these theories sees Mr Ghaly and AQIM as tools of the Algerian (and even US) security services. Another considers him a long-term collaborator with the Malian government.
The depth of his adherence to the Islamist cause remains to be seen. As the recent experience in Yemen of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has shown, when a jihadist group seeks to hold populated areas it leaves itself open to a concerted military counteroffensive with international support.
By adding the Islamist banner to his status among the Tuareg, Mr Ghaly may just be manoeuvring himself into a position from which he can emerge, as in the past, as the deal-maker.
BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad. For more reports from BBC Monitoring, click here
|
"I'm really, really happy," said Celeste, as she won the BBC's Sound of 2020 last January. | By Mark SavageBBC music reporter
"I can't wait now to see what the rest of the year will look like. I'm so thrilled and so excited. I can't wait."
Celeste went on to win the Brits' Rising Star award and soundtrack the John Lewis Christmas advert. But, as we all know, 2020 didn't quite go as planned.
So how did the top five acts on the BBC's Sound Of list spend their first year in the spotlight? There were number one albums, missed flights, phone calls with fans and adventures inside arcade machines.
Here's what happened...
5) Inhaler
Irish rock band Inhaler sold 10,000 tickets for their last tour, squeezing in 21 gigs before lockdown struck in March.
After clocking up air miles on trips to America, Japan and Europe, "we were all secretly looking forward to having some down time at home," admits singer Elijah Hewson, "but our desire for that faded quickly".
"We've sort of reverted back to when we were still in secondary school, rehearsing in the shed together and just enjoying playing music and being mates. It's really important to us that we stick together during this time and keep being a gang."
Quarantine gave the quartet time to write new material for their debut album - including the politically-driven When It Breaks, which was written as a response to the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests.
"We felt that people were angry, lonely, upset and scared," says Hewson. "The world feels broken, or like it's about to be broken at any minute, and we wanted to write a song that we could dance to in a field somewhere next summer... or the summer after that.
"We're not a very political band. We don't wear our views on our sleeve but we really felt like this was a big moment and as artists how could you not want to say something about it?"
According to the band's Instagram page, the quartet have been out and about in Dublin recently, searching for locations to shoot their album cover. So, does that mean a release is imminent?
"Sworn to secrecy!" says Hewson. "We're very excited to talk more about the album when we can - but for now we're still tinkering on it and making it the best it can be.
"We're in no rush, it's not like we've got a show to get to!"
4) Joy Crookes
Joy Crookes' conversational soul songs earned her fourth place in the BBC's Sound of 2020. At the time, the 21-year-old said she'd set a "self-imposed deadline of May" to complete her debut album.
Needless to say, that didn't happen.
Some people in her team caught Covid-19, while Crookes, who already suffered from anxiety, developed "serious body image issues".
"It was just a mess." she says.
Drawing on her Bangladeshi-Irish heritage, she chose to prioritise the "collective as opposed to individual", insisting that her team travel home to spend time with their families, instead of "going ahead with this [career] and being a powerhouse for no reason".
She stayed productive though, releasing two singles (including the sublime, Nina Simone-referencing, Anyone But Me) and showcasing new, work-in-progress material on Instagram.
"It's definitely been productive," she says. "Creating a body of work always takes a lot of isolation but that's often overlooked, because people want us for concerts and they want us for interviews.
"I think maybe, potentially, life should be more like this."
3) Yungblud
His album went to number one. He won MTV's best breakthrough award. Dave Grohl called him the saviour of rock and roll. It's safe to say Yungblud had a pretty good year.
"I can't believe it," he beams. "We're just a team of young people working out of my flat, and we got a number one album! It's so funny."
A punk-pop icon in the making, Yungblud has built his career on an intense and symbiotic relationship with his fans. Lockdown may have meant cancelling tour dates, but the bond only got stronger, thanks to fortnightly fan phone calls, livestreamed gigs and his hugely charismatic TikTok videos.
"I think when we have something to kick against, we thrive," he says. "I wasn't going to abandon my fanbase. When gigs started getting cancelled, I was like, 'Nah, this is not going to fly with me. No matter what, I'm going to be connected to them.'
"When all is said and done, what Yungblud is is a group of people coming together for one common reason. And that's what I believe will make us be around for a long time. The connection is more than just a song, or that we look cool. It's deep-rooted. It's a wire from one heart to another, that pulsates."
That connection is brought to life on Mars, a song that was inspired by a young transgender fan in Maryland, whose parents couldn't accept or understand their daughter's transition.
"She said that all she could do, in her head, was to plan to get her parents to a Yungblud show. Not to see me, not to hear the music, but to see everyone there - and the sense of community and the sense of liberation.
"And the parents came, and they saw kids like her, and they took her out for a burger and said they accepted her as their baby girl.
"That makes my head explode. I'm so proud to be a part of something that can do that for someone."
Restless at the best of times, Yungblud is itching to get back out on the road again - with gigs planned for May, lockdown permitting. And he has his sights set even higher in 2022.
"It's not been announced yet, but my plan is to do a massive show like Knebworth or Spike Island. And I want people to come from all over the world. And I want it to become a worldwide movement."
2) Easy Life
Earlier this year, Easy Life's Murray Matravers found himself locked inside an amusement arcade "claw grab" machine.
It was a novel approach to self-isolation... but he had an ulterior motive: shooting a promo photo for the band's breezy, escapist single Daydreams.
"That was definitely my highlight of the year," laughs the singer.
The song itself was a "sign of the times", he adds. Built around a sample of Aretha Franklin's soul classic Daydreaming, it's about, "wishing you were elsewhere, doing anything other than sat in the flat drinking in the daytime".
It was one of several tracks to emerge from lockdown, as the indie/hip-hop group worked obsessively on their debut album. Finished and mastered last month, Matravers says it's a very different record to the one he'd originally imagined.
"If it had been business as usual, I probably would have had to create the same amount of music in two months instead of 12 - so it really allowed us to finesse the writing, and the production and really obsess about it.
"I could spend a week making techno, just to see what that was like. That's a luxury that we've never afforded ourselves before.
"And I feel really lucky to have had that - because if there hadn't been the pressure and desire to create an album, I would have had a very different year indeed. I would have really struggled."
1) Celeste
Celeste had just arrived from Los Angeles when she delivered a spell-binding performance at February's Brit Awards.
She planned to spend a couple of days at home, finding the perfect spot to display her Rising Star award before flying back to the US to finish her debut album.
"And at seven o'clock on Saturday, they announced a travel ban," she recalls.
"I thought, 'Maybe this will last a couple of weeks or a month,' and all of a sudden it's December."
The album release was subsequently pushed back - it now comes out in January - but Celeste says she "hasn't been too disappointed" by 2020.
"I've been able to adapt to the situation," says the singer, whose partnerships with brands like Converse, Sky Sports and Stella Artois "have actually carried me through the year".
But it was soundtracking the John Lewis Christmas advert with her song A Little Love that brought her into millions of homes. The 26-year-old was the first artist to be commissioned to write an original song for the campaign - and found herself inspired by the concept of strangers helping strangers.
"It wasn't only meant to be fantastical and Christmassy. There was this element of realism to it, which is where I always find my inspiration. I wrote it quite quickly".
A Little Love wasn't Celeste's only single of 2020. I Can See The Change was produced by Billie Eilish's brother, Finneas, after they met at the Brits, and the jazzy, piano-thumping Stop This Flame became a top 10 hit in Belgium ("I didn't know that!", she laughs).
But 2020 also gave the singer the opportunity to pause and reassess her songwriting.
"In the last year, I'd only really brought out singles - and singles tend to magnify a very specific part of your personality. It's not always your truest voice.
"Being in solitude helped me to get back in touch with my thoughts and feelings - finding inspiration without it being polluted too much by other people's experiences."
That epiphany inspired the title - and the sound - of her album, Not Your Muse, which was largely written and recorded with her touring band.
"Not Your Muse as an idea, to me, meant that I'm taking charge of who I am and not allowing anybody to taint me too much with their ideas of what they think I should be.
"And I found that true for all sorts of situations," she adds. "Not just work, but personal relationships too."
2021, watch out: Celeste is a force to be reckoned with.
Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
|
A teenager faces a murder charge over the death of a 50-year-old mother of two. | The body of Joanna Thompson was discovered by police officers at a house in Vicarage Lane, Hambledon, Hampshire, on 1 July 2019.
Police previously said she died from "injuries to the neck".
A police spokesman said the teenager has been issued with a postal requisition to appear before Salisbury Crown Court on Tuesday.
|
Government’s proposals to establish a parliamentary select committee on Human Rights and a new IIGEP with eminent persons
drawn from SAARC countries is a ploy to buy time, says Western Peoples Front Leader and Civil Monitoring Commission Convener
MP Mano Ganesan. | Sri Lanka has seen many committees and commissions and many state agencies established by this government in the name of combating
human rights violations but to no avail, he says.
“The long list begins with the formal National Human Rights Commission, the Mahanama Tilakaratne Commission, the Special Presidential
Commission, the IIGEP and a government Ministerial committee. In addition there are the special police units and the Ministry
for human rights. None of these have helped to improve the human rights conditions in this country.” he said.
MP Mano Ganean made these observations when he met with visiting officials of the European Commission's office of the external
relations Director-General, Ms.Helen Campbell and Andrea Nicolaj at the EU premises in Colombo.
Ganesan said that they discussed the prevailing political and human rights conditions in the country.
|
Fact or fantasy? Real world weapons or simply technologies that are under development? A message to the US or largely to his own domestic constituency? President Putin's presentation of Russia's new nuclear arsenal was all these things and more. | Jonathan MarcusDiplomatic correspondent@Diplo1on Twitter
Above all it was a signal that there is going to be no thaw in US-Russia relations any time soon. Mr Putin appears largely to have given up on any hopes of a close understanding with the mercurial Donald Trump.
With both Russia and the US talking much more now about modernising their nuclear arsenals, there are alarming echoes of the Cold War years. And the fact that many of these new technologies are being developed at a time when existing arms control regimes are crumbling again gives added cause for concern.
At the outset it should be stated clearly that even with their current arsenals, contained by the terms of the New START, the nuclear arms reduction treaty signed in 2010, both Russia and the US have more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other many times over.
Russia is obsessed by Washington's deployment of anti-missile defences - which may or may not work as advertised - but no serious western strategic experts believe that Russia's nuclear forces are in any way compromised by current missile defences.
The US insists it has only deployed limited defensive systems to counter the specific threat of long-range missiles from Iran or North Korea.
But countering missile defence seems to be at the heart of Russia's thinking. The Russian view has always been that missile defence may start in a limited way but if the technology is proven, it will inevitably expand.
It remembers the grandiose, though never fulfilled, vision of a missile-proof shield advanced by President Ronald Reagan. And it clearly still smarts from the US decision in 2002 to withdraw unilaterally from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which strictly limited such defences.
President Putin's new arsenal of nuclear systems was orientated then around one principle - defeating US anti-missile defences.
Some systems - including most likely a very long range nuclear-tipped torpedo - avoid missile defences altogether by operating in a totally different environment - the sea - rather than travelling through space.
Others, like the new intercontinental ballistic missile, the nuclear-armed cruise missile or a variety of "hypersonic" systems might simply fly too fast or on trajectories which would make their interception impossible.
Russia is by no means alone in pursuing some of these technologies. Both China and the US are actively exploring the possibilities of hypersonic weapons - described to me by one arms control expert as "a hang-glider on steroids".
They would be launched into space and then glide at extraordinary speeds along the edge of the atmosphere before dipping down to strike their targets.
But the real question about President Putin's speech is: how close are these weapons to becoming a reality? It was instructive that he used video representations to demonstrate their capabilities rather than pictures of real operational systems.
Many of the technologies presented by Mr Putin have been known about for some time.
The nuclear-tipped torpedo for instance - what today we would call an unmanned underwater vehicle - is a project that dates back in one form or another to Soviet days.
In the past the US has also looked at the idea of nuclear-powered cruise missiles but they were abandoned in the 1960s because the then available technology simply couldn't handle the task.
What has changed today is that technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. The weapons championed by Mr Putin are no longer technically unfeasible, even if significant practical hurdles still remain.
Russia has made particular progress in the field of cruise missiles and it is Russia's ongoing modernisation plans - and the development of a variety of new technologies - that have in large part driven Washington's own Nuclear Posture Review that was published just a few weeks ago.
So, there is a reality here behind the rhetoric - even if many of the weapons systems outlined by Mr Putin are still very much in the developmental stage.
This modernisation is not new. Russia has been developing these weapons for a very long time. And in the US, it was President Obama who set in motion a major modernisation of the nuclear triad - its air, land and sea-based nuclear systems. This will take years to complete and has largely been adopted by President Trump.
What is new here is the combative and threatening rhetoric - very much a throw-back to the worst of the Cold War years.
Mr Trump has boasted about having a bigger nuclear arsenal than anyone else. Now Mr Putin is doing his own chest-thumping exercise, insisting that Russia has weapons that nobody else can deploy.
For many arms control experts, one clear message emerges from all of this. The two sides should get around the table and begin to talk seriously again about strategic nuclear disarmament.
The existing strategic arms reduction treaty (New START) expires in some three years time. In a conversation early in Mr Trump's presidency, Mr Putin reportedly spoke of Russia's willingness to extend this agreement.
Mr Trump, it is said, turned to his advisers and asked them what this New START thing was all about. When he heard it had been negotiated by Barack Obama, he determined that it must be "a bad deal" and told Mr Putin: "No."
Veteran arms control expert Mark Fitzpatrick says: "New START should be extended beyond its 2021 cut-off date and new measures should be added to head off the dangerous systems that Putin portrayed."
Arms control matters most at times of rising tensions. And in the wake of Mr Putin's presentation, Washington and Moscow clearly have a lot that they could talk about.
|
A house has been set on fire after being hit by lighting. | Emergency crews were called to the property on Porth Y Waun, Gowerton, Swansea, just after 18:00 BST.
Firefighters from Gorseinon, Sketty and Swansea have been fighting the blaze.
Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service said the roof of the house was "well alight", but everyone in the building had been accounted for and there were no causalities.
Neighbour Stuart Roberts said: "My little girl went to the window and said there was smoke coming from a house down the road.
"It was horrific - it looked like it hit the TV aerial - one in a million that happening, it was a terrible shame."
|
The Ministry of Justice has drawn up plans for a two-storey custody suite at Wrexham Magistrates' Court. | Cells used at neighbouring Wrexham Police Station are due to be decommissioned in the summer.
North Wales Police is due to demolish its tower block police station site and relocate to new premises.
Wrexham MP Ian Lucas has long been pushing for a commitment from the UK government to invest in the court buildings in the town centre.
A planning application submitted to Wrexham council said a custody suite was "essential to the operation" of the law courts.
|
When former Olympic champion Sofia Bekatorou revealed she had been sexually assaulted by an unnamed Hellenic Sailing Federation (HSF) executive, few realised her powerful testimony would prompt a #Metoo movement in Greek sport. | By Kostas KallergisBBC News
She was addressing a little-advertised online conference after all.
But when the sailing federation hit back at her allegations the following day, the whole story exploded. It said it had never received any complaint from Bekatorou and essentially asked her to name the man, since she had "taken the initiative to speak about this unpleasant incident after so many years".
Inspired by Sofia Bekatorou's courage and angered by the federation's cynicism, more athletes began going public with experiences of sexual harassment and abuse using the hashtag #metisofia (on Sofia's side). Now the Greek president has praised the former champion for ending a "conspiracy of silence" and the government says her story has shaken not just sport but society as a whole.
What happened to the former Olympic champion?
Bekatorou was 21 when she went abroad with the rest of the Greek sailing team in 1998 to compete in qualifying trials for the Sydney Olympics. The team was joined by a sailing federation executive who celebrated their qualification with them.
Now 43 and a mother of two children, she told the online conference she had been subjected to "sexual harassment and abuse" in the official's hotel room. The transcript of her speech circulated online.
Bekatorou went on to win two Olympic medals and several world championship golds and was given the honour of carrying the Greek flag at the Rio Olympics in 2016. But she also maintains that the official became an obstacle to her career.
Her decision to stay silent so she could keep on sailing took its toll. It took "years with a lot of work and therapy", she said, before she could take responsibility for not speaking out and seeking the man's removal.
Aristeidis Adamopoulos has now stepped down as vice president of the Hellenic Sailing Federation. He has denied any wrongdoing and says he resigned to protect the federation and the Greek Olympic Committee from negative publicity.
Lefteris Avgenakis, the deputy culture and sports minister, praised the broad spectrum of support for Sofia Bekatorou and said the government had since put an end to the "sickness" of having lifetime executives in charge of Greek sport.
Stories you may also be interested in
Who else has spoken out?
Marina Psychogyiou, another sailing champion, has also spoken out, posting on Facebook that she too was sexually harassed by a federation executive. She was 20 when the man offered her a ride home as she was leaving her club, she explained.
"He touched my leg, he was coming very close to me and was telling me not to be afraid. That it was all for my benefit." When he tried to kiss her, she escaped, she added. Psychogyiou, now in her forties, says such incidents still go on but no-one files a complaint for fear of disfavour or reprisals. "And if the girl doesn't say yes, or stops saying yes, they go to another one," she said.
Mania Bikof, a former member of the Greek water polo team, has revealed how she and some fellow athletes were harassed by a doctor.
"The doctor always asked me to remove my swimming suit simply to administer an injection. When I left his office, I asked the others and they confirmed he had asked them to do a similar thing."
Rabea Iatridou, a former World Champion swimmer has said when a doctor examined her for a knee injury he asked her to remove all her clothes.
"He kept touching me all over my body, in parts that had nothing to do with the examination... that sick guy stood right behind me and groped me, pretending he was examining my thighs."
Since that initial wave of revelations and expressions of support, more cases of sexual abuse have begun to emerge, including from students alleging harassment at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in northern Greece. The dean has asked the prosecutor to investigate the allegations.
President Katerina Sakellaropoulou, the first woman to be appointed as Greek head of state, met Bekatorou on Monday in "recognition of the bravery and dignity with which she shared her traumatic experience". And the former Olympian whose revelations have prompted soul-searching in Greek sport will now meet an Athens prosecutor on Wednesday to give evidence.
The prosecutor will then decide whether the allegations should be investigated further or whether to drop them because of a statute of limitations.
The government has promised further action to protect women in Greek sport: "We have to put a framework in place... so these phenomena can be registered and the victims are not stigmatised but supported," says Minister Lefteris Avgenakis.
|
Their homes are dusty refugee tents - and life is hard. Using cameras on smartphones - and with the support of Save the Children and professional photographer Michael Christopher Brown - Syrian teenagers have created unique portraits of conditions inside the Zaatari camp in neighbouring Jordan.
| Over the course of a week, the girls and boys aged 14 to 18 were taught photographic techniques, and then asked to capture images of their daily reality. The iPhone files were then converted into distinctive square Instagram images.
Take a look at some of their results here - and hear from three of the teenagers - Khaled, Samar and Omar - plus photographer Michael Christopher Brown:
The teenagers' names have been changed to protect their identities. All images copyright Save the Children.
Audio interviews provided by Save the Children. Music by KPM Music. Photo film production by Paul Kerley.
Related:
Inside Zaatari on Tumblr
Save the Children UK Instagram page
|
The illicit trade in cigarettes in South Africa is now in full swing after the sale of tobacco was banned at the end of March as part of strict measures imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus, as the BBC's Pumza Fihlani reports. | Whereas once Michelle could go to her local shop in South Africa's commercial hub, Johannesburg, to buy cigarettes she is now having to do a secret deal.
The 29-year-old economist finds sellers through contacts in WhatsApp groups and arranges a covert meeting in order to get her nicotine fix.
"Once you've found a seller you can trust, a meeting point or pick-up point is arranged," she said.
'No chance to stock up'
Michelle, which is not her real name, is not the only one. What was perfectly legal two months ago has turned thousands of people into potential criminals.
"No warning was given for the ban, so I personally wasn't sufficiently prepared - either to get a stockpile or prepare to go without," Michelle, who has been smoking for four years, told the BBC.
37% of menaged 15 or over smoke
8% of womenaged 15 or over smoke
Most smokebetween one and nine cigarettes a day
Smoking decreasedsince 1998
$790m was raisedin government revenue from smoking last financial year
South Africa's lockdown regulations are among the toughest in the world and also include a ban on the sale of alcohol.
This will be relaxed from 1 June, with people allowed to buy alcohol to drink at home and "only under strict conditions on specified days and for limited hours", according to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
However, he said the ban on the sale of cigarettes will remain "due to the health risks associated with smoking".
Cigarette dealers could spread coronavirus
The government justified the tobacco ban on health grounds based on advice from its own medical experts as well as from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The WHO said that although research is still being carried out, there was reason to believe that smokers would be more adversely affected than non-smokers if they contracted Covid-19.
According to a 2016 government survey, more than nine million South Africans aged 15 and older smoke, burning through billions of cigarettes a year.
"While I understand the health reasons that have now been brought forward, I would like the opportunity to decide for myself when and how to handle my smoking, especially as someone who also smokes as a way to deal with anxiety outside of medical treatment. I believe the ban is excessive," Michelle said.
She also thinks that driving the trade underground poses additional health risks at this time.
The black-market seller is "someone who has potentially touched scores of other people trying to sell their cigarettes", the young professional said.
More than half a million people have added their names to an online petition calling for the government to change its mind.
"We have been provided no scientific evidence to support a tobacco ban," Bev Maclean, who started the petition, wrote.
"With legal tobacco product sales being banned, consumers are turning to the illegal market and paying high prices for mostly illicit cigarettes that don't pay taxes to government."
In the last financial year, South Africa's tax collecting agency raised about $790m (£650m) from tobacco sales. A two-month ban could therefore cost the government about $132m in lost revenue.
There is also the claim that the ban is unconstitutional.
The Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association (Fita), which represents business and smokers' interests, has gone to court and argued that the decision on the ban was made without the correct legal framework.
Why did the government change its mind?
Fita was particularly frustrated by what it describes as an "inexplicable about-turn" by the government.
On 23 April, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a national address that tobacco sales would be allowed as the country eased lockdown restrictions for the first time.
Six days later the minister in charge of the coronavirus response, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, announced that the ban would remain, which upset a lot of smokers.
"There must clearly have been a basis for the president… to clearly and unequivocally state: 'The sale of cigarettes will be permitted,'" Fita head Sinenlanhla Mnguni wrote in court papers.
"It is doubtful the president would have given that undertaking without proper consultation and a mandate."
Fita is demanding to see the papers that informed the government's change of heart.
Quitters 'benefit in hours'
But the government is not budging. Explaining the U-turn, President Ramaphosa said that "government is making every effort to act in a way that advances the rights to life and dignity of all our people".
The authorities believe that by either reducing smoking, or even quitting, the chances of recovering from coronavirus are increased.
There are also general health benefits.
Coronavirus in Africa:
"The science says smokers begin to benefit from quitting a few hours after they quit," explained Dr Catherine Egbe, who works in the alcohol, tobacco and drug unit of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC).
"A smoker's heart rate improves, the carbon monoxide in the blood drops to normal and within two weeks to three months, the risk of a heart attack drops and the lung function begins to improve," she told the BBC.
Dr Egbe is one of the scientists who has publicly supported tobacco ban.
"While we know the worst is not yet over, current statistics point to the fact that the country could be doing something right.
"The pressure faced by the government is coming from those who want to prioritise profits over human lives," said Dr Egbe.
Smoking less in lockdown
Along with the SAMRC, the Cancer Association of South Africa and the Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa, as well as a host of other health bodies, support the ban.
And it seems that some people have been using this time to try and give up smoking.
"We have seen a doubling in the number of calls that we normally receive on our Quitline," said Savera Kalideen, executive director at the National Council Against Smoking.
There has also been an increase in "requests for support to join our WhatsApp group, which provides 30 days of support, tips and messages to smokers who want to stop smoking".
Michelle is not giving up, but has cut down.
"I'm oddly smoking a lot less than I did before the lockdown.
"I average two cigarettes a day now, whereas before the average was six or seven. It wasn't a conscious health choice," she said.
"I think it's mainly because I'm working from home so some of my usual routine, smoking on the drive to and back from work and at work has been disrupted."
|
The story of how the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park aided the allied code-cracking effort during World War II is becoming well known. Its claim to be a forerunner of modern-day computers is also well established. | By Mark WardTechnology correspondent, BBC News
What is much less well known is the tale of how Colossus's story came to be told in the first place. It is a tale of how one man's dogged efforts overcame official secrets and official indifference to rewrite computer history.
Computer scientist Brian Randell was the man who started uncovering the history of Colossus.
That history had to be prised out of the archives because official efforts to cover up its success worked so well. Thousands of people worked in the huts at Bletchley Park during WWII on code-cracking but only a handful were involved with Colossus and fewer still knew everything about it. All those codebreakers signed the Official Secrets Act which demanded that they kept quiet about their wartime career.
Almost all the machines were broken up once they ceased to be useful and design documents were burnt or destroyed at the same time.
"I got to know more about it than they did," Prof Randell told the BBC. "They were so compartmentalised that those who worked in one hut would not dream of talking to people in another hut." Prof Randell detailed his experiences of uncovering Colossus' history during a talk at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.
Sensitive operation
Prof Randell tripped over the story of Colossus in 1970 while preparing an academic paper on a little-known Irish computer pioneer Percy Ludgate who, in 1908, completed the design for a nascent computer.
Because he had a lot of material left over after writing about Ludgate, Mr Randell decided to use it as the basis of a series of papers dealing with early computers.
While putting those papers together, he was asked why he had written so little about Alan Turing. Prof Randell started to look into Turing's war work and got tantalising glimpses of the electronic code-cracking machines that had been in use at Bletchley.
One paper written by Jack Good, one of the engineers who helped create Colossus, and published in 1970 mentioned a "classified, electronic" machine that used 1,000 valves to calculate "complicated Boolean functions involving up to about 100 symbols" to crack codes.
The link with Turing, said Prof Randell, was that Colossus drew on Turing's seminal 1936 paper that laid down the basic specifications for a machine that could carry out complicated calculations step by step.
Finding a little out about this machine prompted Prof Randell to seek out and correspond with those named as being involved with Colossus even though he now knew that their work was covered by the Official Secrets Act.
"A number of the people I wrote to wrote back in very guarded terms," said Prof Randell. "We were very much more conscious about those things at that time."
The result of Prof Randell's work was a paper in 1972 exploring Turing's influence on early computers and making mention of the wartime machines.
In a bid to pierce the official veil of secrecy, Prof Randell wrote to the prime minister of the day, Ted Heath, asking for more information to be released.
He was turned down flat.
Information could not be released, said Mr Heath, because that "sensitive wartime operation... still has important current implications".
Modest men
Prof Randell continued to badger civil servants and his efforts were helped by the appearance of several books about Bletchley and code-cracking that mentioned the machines used to read messages sent by the Wermacht, Luftwaffe and Hitler's generals.
Then, in 1975, a change of government brought a change in policy and Prof Randell was invited to the Cabinet Office to discuss the first official release of information about the Allies' main codebreaking machine.
The official release was a handful of pictures and a short statement which mentioned Colossus' key designers: Max Newman and Tommy Flowers. More importantly, Prof Randell was asked by the government to interview the Colossus creators and publish what they said.
Prof Randell gathered the information into a paper that he presented in 1976 at a conference on the history of computing. Attending was John Mauchly who, before Prof Randell took to the stage, thought that the machine he built, Eniac, was one of the first electronic computers.
Jaws literally dropped as Prof Randell delivered his lecture, he told the BBC. They dropped again in the evening as Prof Randell had arranged for one of Colossus's creators, Allen "Doc" Coombs, to attend and answer questions about the machine and what it did.
Prof Randell's lecture and Coombs's comments meant the computer history books would have to be rewritten.
"Eniac was not the first computer, it was the 11th," he said.
The door that Prof Randell first pushed at is now wide open, he said.
"I'm sure that all of the technical details of Colossus are now well known," said Prof Randell. "With the publication of the official history of the intelligence services we have a very full account of what was discovered by codebreaking and the significance it had."
It has also put the spotlight on the people who built Colossus and their achievements.
"They were so modest and so bloody brilliant," he said. "It was one of the best experiences of my life."
|
A seal pup that was rescued in Conwy county is recovering well and could be released into the wild in the new year, RSPCA Cymru has said. | The pup was found on the opposite shore from Conwy town with an eye injury and with no sign of its mother earlier this month.
It was taken to the Welsh Mountain Zoo where its wounds have since healed.
RSPCA inspector Mike Pugh said: "It's fantastic news that this seal pup is on the mend, after such a tough ordeal."
But he urged the public not to approach all lone seals, as they have not necessarily been abandoned by their mothers.
The pup's release has been planned for the first three months of 2017.
|
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Europe against aggressive and arrogant leaders, a century after the continent went to war. | Unveiling a monument in Moscow to Russian soldiers killed in World War One, he said it would be "good to remember" its lessons today.
The war resulted from "the aggression and egotism and overweening ambition" of leaders and elites, he said.
Mr Putin has been accused of aggression himself towards Ukraine.
World War One eventually brought down imperial Russia when Bolsheviks seized power in the 1917 communist revolution.
|
Minority communities in the US and elsewhere have sometimes turned to traditional money saving methods outside the formal banking system. The economic shock from the coronavirus pandemic could spur renewed interest in those savings clubs. | By Angelica Casas & Boer DengBBC News
When Hilda Robles recalls her first years in America, tears come to her eyes.
"I cried and even wanted to leave at one point because I felt alone," she says. "I would ask people for help and they couldn't help me because they didn't understand Spanish and I didn't understand English."
When she came to San Antonio, Texas some 20 years ago, even daily duties like getting to work or going to the doctor were feats of bilingual diplomacy and logistical planning - she had no car, no English and almost no one to turn to for help.
Opening a bank account seemed impossible. "When I stepped into a bank for the first time, I was told I couldn't open a bank account because I had no social security number," she says.
"Someone told me about a bank where I could open an account with no social security number, but the language barrier stopped me from going."
So Ms Robles, 49, went a different route - she started a tanda, an informal savings club popular in Latin America, with contributions from her extended relatives.
Members of the club each contribute a fixed sum to a pool of money on a regular, periodic schedule, with the lump sum going to one member each round until everyone gets paid.
This means that members get back what they put in over the course of the scheme, but by getting it in the form of a lump sum, the money can be put to use for purchases, investments or debt payments they otherwise could not afford. Members who get their "hand" early are effectively receiving an interest-free loan, while those who receive theirs later in the cycle are essentially withdrawing a lump of "saved" cash.
With the $5,000 lump sum she received for her turn of her tanda, Ms Robles bought her first car. Her relatives and friends in the savings club were able to put down payments on houses, pay for university tuition - and now, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, survive when their families have been out of work or sick.
Since that first savings club 14 years ago, Ms Robles has run them continuously with only a few months break to organise the next one.
"It gives me a lot of joy to see people reach their goals because of the tandas without having to drown in debt from loans," she says. "It's proof that among us Hispanics, we can get ahead here."
Hispanic-Americans are not alone in their use of this ancient savings mechanism that has parallels all over the globe, known generally as a rotating savings and credit association, or roscas.
In Mexico, they are popularly called tandas, but they are also known as huis, susus or ballot committees in various parts of the world. Immigrant communities continue their practice in the US.
As economic hardship accompanies the public health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, for some families, traditional methods of saving outside the banking system have become a lifeline, especially for hard-hit immigrant communities with little access to mainstream sources of capital.
Financial access and security in America has become an increasingly pressing subject of discussion in 2020. Even before the pandemic, the US was behind other rich countries when it comes to accessing money and credit.
Some seven percent of Americans over the age of 15 did not have any kind of bank accounts in the US in 2017, compared to less than one percent of Canadians, and less than four percent of Britons, according to the World Bank.
A quarter of American adults - more than 80 million people - were "unbanked" or "underbanked", meaning either that they had no accounts entirely, or that they are forced to use alternative services besides traditional banks in order to get enough financial access to meet goals or obligations.
Households most likely to fall into the two categories were black or Hispanic, lack university qualifications and to be poor. To access loans, they must sometimes turn to non-bank lending options like payday lenders or loan sharks.
These shadow banking options can be risky, charge high interests and bring dire consequences for borrowers who struggle to pay - but a rosca can provide a safer, more trustworthy alternative.
"These systems are actually useful when we have bank systems that have a finite possibility," says Caroline Hossein, a professor of business and social studies at York University who studies roscas in communities in Canada.
"Banks only have a certain amount of money, and if you only have a certain amount of money, you're only going to dish it out to those that are less risky.
"So it makes perfect sense that people would engage in these kinds of mutual aid or money pooling systems."
Often, they are run by women, whom Dr Hossein calls the "banker ladies" of the community.
"The banker lady, who might be the one organising it - you can be in touch with her anytime of day, it may be someone who lives in your neighbourhood so [there's] the ease of getting there.
"The paperwork is not as treacherous as it would be as a formal bank, so there's a kind of kinship that exists because it's people who voluntarily like and know each other."
Though they tend to be "more of a life line for people who have difficulty accessing banking, particularly on the lending side," such savings schemes are also used by more established members of communities who may have inherited knowledge about them from immigrant parents.
Beyond access to a pool of money, "a primary benefit is building 'bonds of mutual trust' within a network of trustworthy people," says Lee Martin of the University of California, Davis. Roscas are primarily beneficial for people without access to mainstream forms of credit, he says.
But because they are used by marginalised communities, studying their overall prevalence and use has been difficult, says Dr Hossein, who participates in a rosca - known as a su-su in her Afro-Carribean community - as part of her research.
"A lot of these roscas, particularly in places like Canada, the US or Europe, tend to be underground," she says, because many worry that the endeavour is seen as an unrespectable or even an illicit form of financing, only for those who are short of options. Clearly, unlike a savings account, they do not generate interest.
Yet economists believe they are probably quite common in the West. One survey of Korean-American garment business owners in Los Angeles from 2004 found that 77% of households had participated in a version of the lending scheme.
Self-lending within communities can have unexpected benefits. A rosca-like system among Chinese immigrants in Spain, for example, helped expatriate businessmen weather the Euro crisis of the late 2000s and 2010s.
The Chinese business community was "largely insulated from the vagaries of the country's tottering retail banking system" - precisely because the system that shut them out meant they turned to each other, reported the Financial Times in 2014.
In the 2020 Covid-19 crisis, families who participated in the tanda Ms Robles is running were able to pay their bills when some fell ill and could not work.
For most, it was their only source of cash, Ms Robles says - only one of the families has received a cheque from the government for coronavirus relief because they lack the papers to get onto the dole.
Like any investment scheme, however, roscas are not risk-free. A participant could fail to pay their hand, or take their share and run.
Ms Robles says there have been rare times that she misplaced a contribution and had to make up the difference out of her own pocket, which can be costly.
As they operate on trust, usually within a deeply connected community, the social consequences of misdeeds dissuades wrong-doing.
But since they are run by privately, there is little legal recourse for cheating. And unlike putting money in a bank savings account, there is no interest paid.
Could roscas catch on and become more mainstream? The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia asked just such a question in 2006, but was sceptical given the depth of trust it would require.
An attempt by Yahoo Finance to popularise a tanda app in 2018 was unsuccessful. The scheme shut down after only a few months due to, it would seem, lack of participation.
There are two big hurdles, as Dr Hossein sees it - the stigma attached to a non-traditional financial tool used by ethnic minority communities, and the barrier in trust that must be surmounted to put one's faith in other people to handle money.
But with the Covid-19 pandemic, a younger generation of North Americans with an interest in sharing resources and the technology to do so efficiently - from crowdfunding to forms of "caremongering" - roscas are bound to be a savings method that continue and evolve and expand.
For Mayra Martinez, 30, a university administration professional in Dallas, Texas, being in tandas has helped her learn about trust and foster a sense of obligation to save, which can otherwise be hard for young people like herself she says.
"It's not like your commitment to yourself, where you can easily say 'hmm, I'm not going to do that this month because I just don't want to," she says.
It is an added layer of security in an economic world that has been particularly unpredictable for young professionals, which Ms Martinez says she has seen first-hand - her sister and brother-in-law each recently tested positive for Covid-19 and could not work.
"She just happened to get her tanda this week," says Ms Martinez. Because of that, Ms Martinez says, her sister was able to tell her husband: "It's ok".
The tanda Ms Martinez is involved in now consists of family members from all generations and is run by her mother.
Would she ever take over and start one for her own cohort of siblings and cousins once the older generations retire from such schemes?
"I wouldn't mind running one," she says, adding with a laugh, "but it depends on which cousins."
|
A leading Buddhist Mahanayake thero has called on Sri Lanka authorities to support the struggle for democracy in Myanmar led by Buddhist monks. | The Mahanayake of Dambulla chapter of the Siyam Sect told BBC Sandeshaya that it is the 'duty' of Sri Lankan Budhhsits to help monks in Myanmar (Burma).
Inamaluwe Sumangala Mahanayake thero said the monks should always be pro-people not pro-authorities.
Sri Lanka's 'double standards'
Thousands of monks have been arrested by Myanmar's military junta: many are believed to be locked up in a government technical college on the city's outskirts.
Minister in charge of National Heritage, Anura Bandaranaike, has questioned his own government and leading Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka on their silence over the Burmese protests.
After a long silence, the Sri Lanka govenment on 01 October said that the country is "concerned" over the Buddhist monk-led protests.
Tens of thousands of Buddhist monks have been marching in the Myanmar capital, Rangoon, against the military junta.
Should Sri Lankan Buddhists - monks and laymen- support Burmese monks' struggle for democracy?
Should Buddhist monks take part in political affairs at all?
Have your say.
This has nothing to do with us. It's up to the Burmese people to do what they see fit. If Sri Lankans want other countries to stay out of our own affairs, we should offer them the same courtesy.Mal Dayaratna, Melbourne
What is Buddha was expecting from Buddhist monks?For me If Buddhist monks are doing politics in such a way they are no longer Buddhist monks .Dhammika Wickramasinghe, Gaborone, Botswana
International community should support monks to get out from the mess created by JUNTA. It doesnt mean send an envoy and take beautiful photos with everyone in Myanmar. They need a quick and proper solution. Why UN doesnt realise this is as an Humanitarian issue.Niro Pathi, Australia
Yes should help.Anslam de Silva, Dubai, UAE
This is a shadow war/struggle between the West and China. Sri Lanka should act very diplomatically to ensure its interests are secured.Mulagutanni, Sri Lanka
Thanks to western world, the whole world is screwed so much. Everyone is talking about conflict in sri Lanka. 500 years ago sri lanka was a peaceful country, before arrival of english and european. I live in Canada, there are endless killings, abductions, theft, drug trafficking, rapes, abuses heard every single day. Recently, there were some stories about corruptons in Canada. All these western countries want small countries to be in the third world.
If you go to sri Lanka, you will realize, who are the most corupted are, who does the crimes. Buddhism teaches loving kindness, anyone who learns buddhism as a child can't do a crime. By the way, Idiots in BBC goign to edit this anyways. That is the kind of human rights BBC has.Sue Ray, Burnaby, Canada
You all are write and wrong. No where in the world real peace to be find. Find the peace inside you self instead.Metta, Melbourne, Australia
Do you think the Srilankan Buddhist monks are eligible to support the struggle for democracy in Myanmar, since in their country (Sri Lanka)not suporting the crime againts Tamil minoraties.Murthi, Tamil Nadu
Religion aka Sentiment and State aka Logic should not be mixed. Secularism is the foundation of developed world. From Jesus crusification until partion of India and Srilanka's own ethinic conflict the effects of this mixing is continuing and those states would remain in 3rd world and a continuous borrower of IMF. I read that Bhuddhist should refrain themselves from urges and wishes. Im just wondering what these monks are going to gain by poking their nose into another country when they cant do any forward movement in their own country.
PS:- Im not a sympathiser of LTTE, pls dont pass prejudice over my tamil name to my secular comments.Karthikeyan Kadarkarai, Madurai, India
We all as srilankan must protest against military junta Myanmar.All srilakan Buddhists must get together and help monks in Burma.Nimal Ranatunga, Polgahawela
I think the BBC sinhala.com is using the opportunity to tarnish the image of Sri Lankan Buddhist people. Yes there may be few corrupt monks. But it is the same with every religon. Dont the other religons have corrupt religious leadres. Mind you when the innocent devotees at the Sacared Sri maha bodhi at Anuradhapura were brutally killed by the LTTE did the Monks rallied against the minorities? Did they retaliate when 35 innocent monks (most of them young as 7-15 years) at arnthalawa at eastern province being hacked to death?Chaya Liyanage, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Buddhism is the most democratic religion in the world.The buddhist monks in myanamr are fighting according to the buddhism. So any one in the world must support to the Buddhist monks in myanmar in the name of democracy and the buddhism.Gamini, Melbourne, Australia
All religions, including Buddhism do not have a business in the governance of countries. If monks want to be in politics, they should become lay people and politicians. Governments do engage in war, finance, trade,agriculture etc. People become monks to teach the dhamma which basically is the four noble truths. So called Theravada Buddhist countries have been quite corrupt and poor in politics and other affairs in spite of the peaceful teachings of the Buddha.David, Upland, USA
Sri Lanka and Myanmar has a very important long history from the Ancient time. By the Medieval time , that relation was developed in many ways. This relation was happened by the trade and religious activities. Mainly higher ordination has interacted between two countries. By that sense, Sri Lanka, monks and lay men must help to the Bermese monks. But it must not be a radical way. Regarding second question, Buddhist monks should take part in political affairs, But they must not participate party politics.Wimalasena NA, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
Sinhala Buddhist monks in sri lanka have been always stood for the justice and fairness for all people throughout the world. There is no doubt that they will stand against the oppression of Burmese military junta at the right time and in right manner. The problem i have is the attitude of the BBc bringing forth problems which are not at all relevant. Has the BBc ever shed their crocodile tears over the tamils in sri lanka who live in fear of blood thirsty LTTE, While they are being massacred daily in the island?Suneth Karunaratne, Colombo, Sri Lanka
I believe that they are not doing real role in this country today. I ask what are Buddhist monks doing for the people who are suffering from war and violence? So, It is impossible to help monks in Myanmar.Hemantha Jayasekara, Dankotuwa, Sri Lanka
Monks are getting beaten up and killed! That's is wrong!!! The Sri Lankan government, and all Buddhist monks around the world should be ashamed of themselves for their silence!Dutch Dasanaike, Raleigh, USA
Sri Lanka is a country with the romantic idea of making Buddhism a state religion. Its government also has a buddhist Sangha political party. So where is the outcry against the barbaric act of the Butrmese Junta against the monks. Why is the government silent?John Jay, USA
Comparing Sri Lankan Buddist Monk and the Burmes Monks are totally wrong. they are of two oppasite extreme The Sri Lankan Monks are promoting the destruction of its own countrymen the Tamils of Hindu and Christian Origin.where as in Burma the Monks are fighting for a just cause for the people of all community in Burma.and I salute the Burmes Monks.Vic Weerasingham, Harrow, UK
Yes I do believe that the Sri Lankan Buddhist clergy should supprt the struggle of the downtrodden people of Myanmar. At the same time I wish we had patriotic and brave monks like them in our country who would help the people to be rid of these hypocritic and corrupt politicians and build a better country for all, instead of keeping silent for the sake of a few luxuries.Dushy Karunaratne, England
No, they have more things to worry about in Sri Lanka than in Burma!Hashini Jayasinghe, Washington, USA
It is better religious leaders take hands out from politics. They should work towards bringing spritual blessigns to people. Some Monks went into politics in Sri Lanka and as a result people in Sri Lanka have no respect to them. I hope the situation in Myanmar can be resolved politically.Trevor Fernando, Singapore
I think it is Sri Lanka's monks that need help. They need help to find the guts and conviction shown by the Burmese monks. After independence, Sri Lanka's clergy (from all denominations) have done nothing to promote peace in our beautiful island. All they talk about is Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian. The language of hate. I wish the GOSL would provide air tickets to Myanmar to our Mahanayakes, Temple leaders, Mullahs and Priests to observe how messengers of God are supposed to behave.Anthony
Every sri lankan either buddhist or whatever the religion who respect human rights should support honourable priests of myanmar.unlike most of sri lankan priests surprisingly they know how much people suffer from idiotic activities by a tough government.they are going to real DHARMA RAJYAYA.Nimal Aththanayake, Chennai, India
You guys are shame for the religion and the country. you should spend time in meditating to find a peaceful solution for srilanka and stop worrying about Burma. Now the world has a sympathetic view on Burma and very soon the burmese Monks will achive their goal. your participation can only tarnish their immage,given your records in involvement in dirty politics.Senathipathy, Kuliyapitiya, Sri Lanka
As we know from history, Sri Lankan Buddhist monks have, for centuries, played an influential role in the development of the country. Be it morally, or administratively, they have always contributed to the well-being of the country. But, nowadays people expect ALL monks to meditate in thick forests and earn their own salvation. Just because, the monks are ordained people, does not mean, they are superhuman beings who have eradicated all their defilements.
Democracy is much valued in Buddhism. When the monks in Myanmar are protesting to reinstall democracy, it is a duty of the Buddhists to help them achieve it. However, not to forget the common categorization used by the media, of, Sri Lankan Buddhist monks as Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists. It is sad to see that, whatever they do and say, will always be seen as pure nationalistic acts, according to some media.Dissanayake, Toronto, Canada
All i can say is that brave monks who were fighting with non violance against the barberic britsh millitary rule in 1800s pave the path to freedom in sri lanka and i see the same braveness in these burmese monks,hope they achieve freedom.Keppetipola, Kandy, Sri Lanka
"Mahanayake thero says Buddhist monks should always be pro-people" Well said but not practised in SL I fully endorse his views and hope this principle is extended in the treatment of minorities in Sri Lanka. I hope Burma reverts to democracy and the monks thereafter return to their divine mission without dabbling in politics like our egoistic JHU.Anton Chelva, Melbourne, Australia
My greatest teacher was a Buddhist monk from whom I learned how to read interpret and quest for greater knowledge in my language when it was more accepted to read the classics of English only , hence I do not associate Monks with ultra-fundamentalist ideas , so please do not stereo-type monks they are capable of leading others silently and calmly as it is happening in Burma today.Believe me I did not pay a cent for the long hours I spent with this Monk who had the time to spare for an eager student of a Catholic school from a Catholic family.Dorothy Van Arkadie, Brisbane, Australia
The monks in Sri Lanka pay lip service to Buddha's teaching while promoting violence against minorities. Would Buddha promote a country that is not secular in nature and give prominance to Buddhism? His teaching has been taken out of context by monks who are greedy for money and power.Amerasinghe, Washington, USA
I fully agree with the Inamaluwa priest we all over world buddhists or non buddhists,support the cause of democratizing Burma.In Sri lanka buddhists are divided .Some of them in active politics and runing behind BMW and Mercedes and helped to toppel democraticaly elected peace loving Ranil regime.And now 5000 people dead so far.One Buddhist monk wanted to go to war if he promoted as a Brigadier.But majority buddhist priests are silent in our own masacre and sorry situation due to backlash.Sunil Wickramasinghe, NY, USA
It is obivious that BBC sinhala dot com is fully biased and from this comment 7 out of 10 are from tamils which published here. Why? How come tamil personnel living abroad talking about buddhist monks and their activities in sri lanka? They even do not know about the fate of their own tamil people and clergy. It is shame on you BBC sinhala service.Jayantha Dharmasiri, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Yes monks should take part in political affairs. Why? Because if they did not, we would have the same situation that existed during the colonial period when Christians were in power - the Buddhists were oppressed, their temples destroyed and their religion treated like a pariah one. It is because of our monks that we revitalised our religion and stood up against the oppression of the colonials. People who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. And yes we Buddhists should definitely support the Burmese monks' struggle for democracy.Nimal Rodrigo, Colombo, Sri Lanka
No. Buddihst monks shouldn`t take part in politics.Those monks in Sri Lankan politics are not Buddist monks.....they are just "men in orange color",missusing buddhism...a bunch of hypocrites.Daya Weerasinghe, Norway
I disagree with those that say "monks should stay away from politics"..Like it or not politics affect all of us..All of us should stand up to protect human rights and buddhist monks aren't an exception..Yes, they should get involved and protest this regime that oppresses this Burmese nation.. And for those that say that Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka are a currupt lot: Please don't stereotype; It's a very unhealthy attitude that promotes hatred in a place that's already got enough problems..Peace!S Hermes, USA
As a buddhist nation Sri Lankan should support Burmese monk's struggle for democracy, of cause they have a prime right to involve with politics.Mangala, Ealing, UK
The bikkus of Sri Lanka are a tainted lot. Politically, no one would take them seriously. But that should not debar them for taking a righteous stance at least in this instance, in keeping with Lord Buddha's teachings.Balendran, London, UK
Buddhist monks should be men of peace not of war and should be respectable persons that the rest of the population can depend on for some spiritual guidance. Simply said, monks should not get involved in politics.Niromi Weerakkody, Colombo
Sri Lankan Buddhist Monks are politicians and Businessmen. Over 80,000 Sri Lankans been killed in Sri Lanka and most of the monks encouraged violence not peace in Sri lanka and they have no right to interfere in Burma let charity begins at home.Douglas Tisseverasinghe, Toronto, Canada
It is not a matter of politics, it is the life of ordinary people which is at stake here, so yes religous leaders must stand for what is right.Sunitha Goonethileke, Auckland, New Zealand
The answer would be NO!! This is internal issue of that country so it should left those in that country to deal with ...People who say this democracy ,,blah , blah does not understand the complex economic , geo political issues assocaited with it...for all we know this pro-democracy momevement could be CIA coup to disatblize china.Sushan Senanayake, Melbourne, Australia
Yes, the Sri Lanakan Buddhist clergy should support the peoples movement to in Myanmar to eliminate the military rule which has caused serious human rights violations in the country. Democracy should be established in Myanmar and the entire International Community should stand by the side of the people of Myanmar as it happened in the Nepal.Ashoka Nissanka, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Myanmar opposition is backed by UK,USA & EU.and China assists Military Govt.It is better to keep quiet,wait & see.Gamini Abeyratne, Kandy, Sri Lanka
Buddhists monks always play the role to guide the people of their country. this would be great they should help Myanmar to bring-up the democracy.Sajith Gunathilake, Dubai, UAE
Yes, all the Buddisht monks from allpart of the world should joint together to support the monks in Burma because the monks are fighting with empty hands with against the dicator. it is victory for dharm and truth. let the world will know the power of the truth.Shakthivel Vayramuthu, Canada
Sinhala Buddhist chaucinism supports the military junta(only because of it's buddhist sign) almost upto recent past.But now the dilemma emerged to them.Tharaka Warapitiya, Panadura, Sri Lanka
By considering the comments. its clearly shows that tamil terorists trying to mislead the world by accusing buddhist monks.Daya Siripala, Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka
Its very possible that the rise in activism by Myanmar monks were inspired by increasing participation of Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka in politics. However, the Mahanayake of Dambulla chapter of the Siyam Sect will be well placed if the Sinhala monks take a cue from their counterparts in Myanmar; why not take it to the streets to cleanse the ruling parties of corruption and find a just solution to the country in a true Buddhist manner? The Tamils and other minorities do not have a problem with the teachings of Buddha and dont see any problem of living under a government who practices that fully.T Kumaran, NJ, USA
I too agree that most of Sri Lankan monks are ignorant, greedy and corrupt. However, one should remember that when law and order of the country breaks down so is the fabric of life of the inhabitants. What is happening in Sri Lanka is the same that happened in the past. This, however should not be an issue for the present discussion of supporting people of Burma in their fight against the military junta. We should wholeheartedly support that cause, regardless of we are good or bad Buddhists.D Jaya, New York, USA
Yes they should help or support people who need help.Nimal Atapattu, Toronto, Canada
Burmese monks practice buddhism according to the tenets preached by the Buddha.Sri Lankan monks do not do so.They are now politicians,trade union leaders,businessmen and landowners.Buddhism is merely a facade for them.They have no moral right to interfere in Burma.Das, Canada
Buddhism and its followers always take the path of freedom. As some people trying to misinterpret nothing has changed in core values in Buddhism. Monks, even Lord Buddha have been in support for those who ruled countries & Kingdoms since Buddha's time. Buddha did talked about Majority & Minority, just ti eliminate them from use. Now the Buddhist Monks had to do the same in Burma & Even in Sri Lanka to protect our own Greatest Teachings of Buddha. One must not misjudge "Meththa" (loving kindness to all living beings) and "Ahinsa" (deep respect for life) as weaknesses.Dhammika Siripala, Edinburgh, UK
Inamaluwe Sumangala Mahanayake thero said the monks should always be pro-people not pro-authorities. I think this is valid also for tamil people in Sri Lanka. There is a lot of discrimination, Human rights and humanitarian law violations, media suppression, abductions and disappearence in Srilanka, not only within the minority tamils but also within the majority Sinhalese. Dont forget that more than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting in past 24 years , 5,000 of them since a 2002 cease-fire broke down in late 2005. So what the budist monks in Sri Lanka has done against these things?Thilli, Napoli, Italy
Srilankan buddist monks do not have any moral authority to assist the legitimate struggle of the burmese monks and the people against tyranny. Sri lankan monks actively support state sponsored terrorism of the SL govt, reject minority religions,they take part in military recruitment drives and even have representitives in the parliament who drive Merces Benz cars. They do not stand for buddism or understand lord buddha's teachings. They only represent sinhala-buddist racist ideology and hegemony. The burmese monks stand for everything buddha preached and are conducting peaceful protests, they definitely do not need to be influenced by militant SL monks.Rajan, london, UK
What started as a guine case of public protest against the govt has now turned into a political espionage by the Myanmar opposition ,western governments & the so called human rights groups.The rich resources in Myanmar are too appealing the parties of westerd interests in the country (eg:USA,EU)which until now has been off-limits to them with only asian countries like India & China are permitted to invest in the country.My biggest laugh is that when monks prtest in Srilanka they are labelled by western media as "Ultra Nationalists" but in myanmar it's "democracy!"Chandika weerakoon, Sharjah, UAE
Must help to nutralize the military gov into democratically elected one.Dhamith Jayawardene, London, UK
I cannot simply understand the rationale behind this motive and feel it is just a public stunt. As a Buddhist, I am urging the monks in Sri Lanka to adhere to the Theravada Buddhism and the simple way of life, simply there are few Theravadic Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka, who are practicing original Theravada doctrine. All these so called monks are either having lavish lifestyles, doing business, travelling in BMWs, Benz and Volvo s. What a shame!
In terms of current situation in Burma, there would be No argument on need for democracy and freedom in Burma, But need to understand the Yankee outcry and support for the protests. Yankees want to use this opportunity to influence the traditional "Chinese sphere of interests" and de-stable China in long run. So my argument and the request to the monks in are, let the Burmese to settle their disputes and its better to mind your business.Amila Wickramage, London, UK
We should support the monks in Mynmar, not only because we are Buddist. They are strugling for democrocy. As humans who respect freedom of speech and democracy should support the monks in Mynmar. I think we all should support to make the world a better place.Sudinna Hewakapuge, Melbourne, Australia
A new kind of Budhism is emerging in Sri Lanka. Lord Budha must have disowned the Sri Lankan Budhist long ago!! Are they trying to give new interpretation to Budhism? Budha never talked about Majority or Minority!!Selvadorai, Scarborough, Canada
By giving undue publicity to monks like this you are degrading Budhism. Budhism is about Dharma and Justice and not majority or minority. Sri lankan Budhists have their own interpretations of Budhism!! We all should be ashamed of practicing unjust and violent Budhism. What has this monk done to prevent the violence unleashed on the minorities in Sri Lanka? I think he is of the view that the majority has the right to kill the minority.Nandasena, Toronto, Canada
Buddhist monks in Burma are great.This is a national requariment.you can't do meditation in a battle field. Frist the motherland then the religion.Kalubanda Wannaku, Hounslow, UK
With all due respect to the venerable mahanayake thero, I believe Sri Lanka has enough on its plate to be worrying about things happening in Burma.
I would like to remind the most venerable Mahanayake what is happening in Sri Lanka, we are suffering from a brutal civil war, corruption and human rights violations, state sponsored abductions and murder, innocent civilians being intimidated and assaulted by politicians and their cronies, cost of living reaching unprecedented heights, an ailing economy and an anarchist rule of governance to state a few of the woes from a list quite long.
We are in the brink of become a failed nation and the Mahanayake is concerned about Burma???? Please lets get our priorities straight, it is time the Mahanayakas and all patriotic forces come together to pressure our high and mighty rulers to put things right in our country rather than worrying about the affairs of others.Sujeeva De Silva, Dubai, UAE
The Monks should leave politics to the corrupt politicians and not be corrupted by it. The role of the Monks must be to bring to attention the Buddhas teachings to channel all the unscrupulous people into the correct path, and not wheeler deal their way into the wrong path through the mucky waters of politics.
These Sri Lankan Monks who have lost all moral authority to even gain respect of the Sri Lankan Buddhist, should not even consider interfering with the genuine, legitimate and moral struggle of the Burmese, which might well tarnish the respected status of the Burmese Monks. Instead they should take an example to follow them.Mohan Lal Peiris, UK
Not only buddhist monk all world must stand with buraims people for there democracy. this is not place to condement sri lankana buddhist monks.
Any buddhist or muslim,hindu, or christian or other relegious countrys those relegious leaders have there rights to stand for there country. that is a part of there relegious duty.
Sri lankan buddhist stand agints the british for there democracy and freedom british authorites kill them ,same thing what burmis militry juntas doing now they learn from past.Stanley de Livera, London, UK
Buddhist Monks Must Never Ever Take Part in Political Activities.Haneda Sapporo, Japan
Situation in Myanmar is not a religious matter. It is political problem. Nothing to do with Sri Lankan Buddhist monk. Let their own citizen to settle this. It is better to mind their own business.Upul, Singapore
There are two questions raised in this.
1.Is it ok to Buddhist monks to do politics. 2. Should SL Buddhist monks join the Burmist monks.
1. There is nothing wrong with buddhist monks doing politics but there politics should not be a religious politics like our "Hela Urumaya".
2. Yes! SL Buddhist monks should support Burmese Monks and people in their struggle for freedom.Hasaka Ratnamalala, Mississauga, Canada
Burmese monks are doing their job right. Monkhood does'nt mean only practicing the religion. When the nation is in danger they should act. If the monks are not leading nation then who can?
In Sri Lankan history lot of monks sacrifice their lives to protect the nation and the land.I think Burmese monks should be worshiped as gods.Promila Gautam, Hounslow, UK
Of course as Buddhists we should stand up for the Burmese Buddhists who have been under the jackboot of a dictatorship for many decades. The monks of Burma are an inspiration to their people just like the monks of Sri Lanka.Jayasinghe, Sydney, Australia
Not all the Monks maintain their standard, specially many Monks in Ceylon supporting Government who dont respect civilians life, so I doubt which type of Monk in Ceylon want to support Myanmar's Monks.Roy Nathan, Croydon, Surrey, UK
Myanmar people should take care of their issues. There is no business for Sri Lankan Buddhist monks. As well as any other outsider like US and EU who are always willing to protect democracy and human rights of other countries. If outsiders involve everything goes bad to worst. I think this question raised by BBC with a hidden agenda against Buddhism and monks. Myanmar military junta is an evil, also the pro democracy leader is a western Christian puppet. Myanmar people should choose what they want.Gaminda Jayakody, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Its very funny. As the mahanayaka theros says, Buddhist monks should always be pro-people. They should first of all be practical here in Sri Lanka. They should exclaim against the dirty politicians of Sri Lanka, who are destroying the Whole Country.
But unfortunately our Maha Sanghaya silent against the Corruption and injustice involved by politicians in Sri Lanka for their survival. So what I suggest them is, Start from here before go internationalNilantha, Avissawella, Sri Lanka
Considering that Sri Lankan Buddhist monks have played a strong part in promoting ethnic violence and majority-community dictatorship in their own country, the idea of them emerging as champions of democracy and human rights elsewhere in Asia is hard to take seriously.
Ricky, Colombo, Sri Lanka
It is correct that we should help the buddhist monks attempt there inthe burma.As in the history they have come to protect the democracy of the people. people can interprit it in differant ways but one should understand that buddhist monks have always fought for freedom of the people. it may be way of dhamma preaching or some antagonistic means but always harmless.it seems that even in burma they have commenced the same,therefore not only buddhist monks in srilanka but all buddhist around the world should help restore the democracy in burma.Chandika Mahathanthila, Arizona, USA
If there are iniquities happening in any where in the world every human has a right to act against it properly. Since it is not a sin, there is no restraint for Buddhist monks to act so.
There are some ignorant, greedy and corrupt individuals in any religious system and Sri Lankan monks are no more than them. In general Sri Lankan Buddhist monks are still greatly admired for their graciousness, and therefore they have a great potential to oppose any atrocities of any terror organizations.Upul Deepthike, Cookeville
|
It has been a GCSE results day like no other for pupils this year. Grades have risen dramatically in England after exams were cancelled and a government U-turn meant results could be based on teachers' estimates rather than an algorithm. | By Becky MortonBBC News
Following the uncertainty of recent weeks, many students were relieved upon receiving their results.
"I was so nervous this morning, but I just feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders," says Tanisha Sethi, 16, from west London.
With mostly 7s and 8s - equivalent to As to A*s under the old grading system in England - she has the results she needs to go to sixth form, and hopes to go to university in the future.
But she thinks she could have performed better in some subjects if she had sat exams, and was disappointed when they were cancelled.
"I really wanted to prove myself and I was gutted that I didn't get the chance to show all the effort I had put in" she says.
"I'm not going to have the practice and the knowledge and the exam technique that I would have gained from sitting GCSEs, and it will be a lot harder to make a start on A-levels."
Jack Connor, 16, from Kent, was also feeling apprehensive after the confusion over A-level results last week.
"There was a lot of uncertainty and people were very stressed out because we had not control over it," he says.
"Then with the U-turn the government made I didn't know what to expect."
But after receiving a mixture of 7s, 6s, and 5s - equivalent to As and Bs under the old system - he says he is "really pleased".
Results day was a very different experience this year. Jack received his results online rather than going into school.
"I wanted the experience of waiting outside school and getting my grades with my teachers around me," he says.
"Obviously we missed out on that. We missed out on lots of things - exams, prom."
For Lucia Davis, it was also a day of mixed emotions. She is from Dinas Powys in Wales, which kept its letter-based grading structure.
She says the last few months have been difficult as pupils were "in the dark for a long time" about what would happen with their grades.
"With exams being cancelled it put all of us in a really bad mindset because our results were out of our hands," she says.
She is also pleased with her GCSE results, receiving mostly A*s and As. But she is still waiting for her BTec result.
BTec grades were pulled on the eve of results day, after exam board Pearson said they needed to be reviewed to ensure fairness following the U-turn on A-levels and GCSEs.
"It's a bit nerve-wracking," says Lucia. "It added extra stress to everything that's already gone on."
|
Those with cause to lament Donald Trump's departure from the White House may include America's satirists - the people he gave comic material to almost daily. In those four years the videos of Randy Rainbow delighted countless followers with satire chiefly using the improbable medium of Broadway show tunes. But the curtain's not down yet. | By Vincent DowdArts correspondent, BBC News
Randy Rainbow - it's his real name - grew up outside New York City and at 10 moved with his family to south Florida. Returning to New York at 22 he was intent on a performing career.
"But I knew I was a pretty young 22," he recalls. "I'd been on stage as a kid and I thought I just had to grow into myself as a person before I began a career for real. To fill in I did jobs such as working in restaurants and behind the desk at production offices."
To fend off boredom he started writing a blog which picked up on trends in popular culture and especially in musical comedy. "That led me to YouTube and once I had some eyeballs on me I got a job providing content for the BroadwayWorld website," he says.
For a time he was doing two separate things online. "There was my non-musical stuff which, so to speak, Forrest Gumped me into the hot topics in mainstream media. The first video which really went viral was in 2010: I was on the phone in my apartment pretending to date a ranting Mel Gibson.
"Whereas BroadwayWorld wanted material based on what was going on in theatre. So I started writing and performing parodies of show tunes and over the years it all just merged into one.
"Eventually I was doing parody songs on YouTube about whatever was happening in the US. And of course from 2017 that mainly meant satirising Trump - though initially I had no idea how much work it would all mean."
His recent video Sedition has already had more than two million hits. It's based on Tradition, the opening number of the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof.
Warning: Some of the language in this video may be considered offensive.
Among other hits have been Kamala!, based on Camelot, and a version of the West Side Story song Gee Officer Krupke reworked as a love letter to Dr Anthony Fauci.
Rainbow has a fascination for even obscure Broadway and Hollywood songs: The Bunker Boy is a clever rewriting of The Jitterbug, an Arlen & Harburg number dropped from The Wizard of Oz.
Usually Rainbow has been posting a couple of videos each month. For a one-man band working from the spare bedroom of his New York apartment they're made to an impressive standard. Growing financial success has meant he's been able to move from the outer borough of Queens to Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Yet he insists his technical skills remain under-developed. "Basically I'm a ham and my roots are totally in performance. In anything else I'm winging it: I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
"I've taught myself just enough of Final Cut and Adobe After Effects to put all this together. My overhead is small - the expense is mainly for certain videos when I need to buy costumes or maybe props. But it varies - you can get a cheap wig these days for $4.95."
Rainbow films his own contributions on green screen and the music he uses comes from karaoke download sites. Copyright problems are none as US law protects the concept of musical parody.
Luminaries of the theatre who have let Rainbow know how much they approve of his lyrical and musical meddling include Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Rainbow says he needs to produce each video inside 72 hours at most and if possible within 48 hours. "It's because the news cycle has now become so crazy in America that there's always a danger you could start something that will feel out of date before anyone sees it."
Fairly obviously Rainbow is no Trump fan. But he says his own followers are not exclusively of the Democrat-supporting liberal elite the former president was critical of.
"He has devoted supporters and admirers who nonetheless aren't blind to his foibles. I was told by whistle-blowers there were White House people who enjoyed my work. Maybe they were talking about Melania.
"I think at one point her husband did have a sense of humour but I very much doubt now he would take an interest. And he never blocked me on Twitter which I'm very upset about."
Isn't Rainbow worried he's about to have very little left to satirise?
"It's true I don't anticipate Joe Biden being the same endless source of comedy material. The kind of satire I do is always better when there's a great central subject - just like storytelling is enriched by a really juicy villain. But the joke had expired on Trump."
Rainbow's final video of the Trump era may have been his least amusing. Perhaps that was the point.
Seasons of Trump, posted in the dying hours of the presidency, is based on Seasons Of Love from the musical Rent. It's without comic one-liners and the basic tone is of anger and regret.
"The truth is it had been getting trickier for me to make the jokes," he says. "There was a time when the job was a lot more fun. I'm ready to be done with it all because it's become so dark, what's going on in the world."
Rainbow has recorded an album of Christmas classics and he's currently writing his first book. But he doesn't anticipate an immediate end to life as an online satirist.
"Topical humour, by its nature, is an endless well of material. In these times of social media people are always up in arms and debating something. You're looking for the thing everyone is talking about and really I've just been following the bouncing ball."
Rainbow says his job isn't necessarily to spoof whoever's in, or has been in, the Oval Office - although he may still do Trump videos if he's making the news. He points out that in 2020 his output wasn't all Trump anyway - the subject was often Covid-19.
"It just so happens that for four years almost all the heat in comedy came from one source. But that's not how humour is meant to be. Or how America is meant to be."
|
Fracking could transform Britain's industrial heartland in the way it has revived America's Rust Belt, chemicals tycoon Jim Ratcliffe - the man behind Tuesday's first shale gas import to the UK - has told the BBC. | By Dominic O'ConnellToday business presenter
In an interview with Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Ratcliffe said preliminary work by his company Ineos indicated Britain had significant quantities of shale gas in South and North Yorkshire, Lancashire and across Scotland.
"If you look at a place like Pittsburgh in America, a steel town that was on its knees, it has been completely changed by shale gas. We could do the same for our industrial heartland. It could change people's lives," he said.
The Ineos Insight, carrying 27,500 cubic metres of gas from the Marcellus shale field in Pennsylvania, arrived at the company's Grangemouth chemicals plant in Scotland on Tuesday morning.
Grangemouth has used gas from the North Sea, but has been running at less than full capacity as domestic production declines. Mr Ratcliffe said the company had faced a decision on whether to abandon Grangemouth three years ago, which led to the plan to import cheaper US shale gas.
The cargo arrived the day after the Labour Party conference vowed to try and ban fracking in England - there is already a ban in place in Scotland.
Mr Ratcliffe said the opposition was "difficult for me to understand."
"One million wells have been drilled in America and while there were issues early on, it is now a very safe and well regulated industry," he said.
|
The great English landscape is a film icon in its own right - think of the sweeping grandeur of Wuthering Heights, Bond's swaggering London, the Cotswoldian charm of Pride and Prejudice. | By Sarah GoslingBBC News
But what about the film locations you never knew about? Here are some of the country's best disguises.
Avengers: New York State
The grand and futuristic Avengers HQ in "Upstate New York" is in reality nestled in Norwich.
The hangar-like building featured in the Thor movies, the newest Spider-Man offering (Homecoming) and the Avengers franchise is actually the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts on the campus of the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
The building - when not overrun by people in exclusively skin-tight outfits - houses modern art donated by Lord and Lady Sainsbury, including works by Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon and Edgar Degas, as well as world art spanning 5,000 years of human creativity.
Atonement: Dunkirk
One of the most poignant sequences in the film Atonement was shot on Redcar beach. It captures the moment in the story when the character of Robbie Turner, played by James McAvoy, along with two of his soldier friends, arrive at Dunkirk having walked for many days to get there.
They are greeted by chaos, with hundreds of thousands of men on the beach hoping for the British ships to return so they can be evacuated.
Additions to the eight-mile stretch of sand near Middlesbrough included the smouldering wreckage of a seafront French hotel and thousands of local extras in army uniform.
You might also be interested in
Dungeons & Dragons: The revival of a "geeky" pastime
The off-screen heroes behind Marvel magic
London's iconic album cover images
World War Z: Nova Scotia
In the 2013 Brad Pitt film World War Z, one place speaks of safety, tranquillity and freedom following the great zombie panic - Nova Scotia.
Can't get to Canada? Then step forward Lulworth Cove in Dorset.
With its sweeping coastline and green hilltops it's the very picture of safety and natural serenity in this bleak movie.
Les Misérables: Paris
At first glance 2012's Les Misérables seems about as classically French as possible, and yet the majority - sweeping landscape shots aside - was actually filmed in England.
In one scene, Russell Crowe's character - the vengeful police officer Javert - becomes overwhelmed by the futility of his existence and throws himself into the River Seine.
The scene of the Seine, however, is the weir of the River Avon beneath the Pulteney Bridge in Bath, Somerset.
The Princess Diaries: The royal palace of Genovia
While the bulk of the Anne Hathaway movie might be set in San Francisco, her regal life is set firmly in the fictional country of Genovia.
But the exterior of the grand palace is actually Longford Castle in Bodenham, Wiltshire.
The main building is an unusual triangular shape with a round tower in each corner which it's said represent the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Dark Shadows: Collinsport, Maine
The sleepy, eerie setting of Tim Burton's 2012 comedy Dark Shadows is Collinsport in Maine.
It was filmed, however, in England and Scotland.
Those wild and breath-taking beach scenes are in fact filmed at Great Mattiscombe Sands near Kingsbridge in Devon.
A View To A Kill: Silicon Valley
One of the things synonymous with England is 007, Her Majesty's secret weapon - Mr James Bond.
And while we expect to see the Aston Martins and the finely-cut suits in Westminster, what we don't expect is for scenes set in California to be filmed in England.
Nevertheless, this Zorin's mine in "Silicon Valley" is actually a shaft at Amberley Working Museum in West Sussex.
|
The South Western Ambulance Service has urged people to only call them if it is absolutely necessary ahead of Wednesday's day of strike action.
| The service said it expected some staff to strike but it did not know how many.
A spokesperson said it would have to prioritise the most important calls, but an ambulance would be sent to a genuine emergency.
Public sector workers are expected to strike because of changes to pensions and pay.
Dr Andy Smith, the executive medical director at the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust said: "If they dial 999 with an emergency that's serious and life threatening they will receive the same kind of response they receive now.
"We will reprioritise our staff to those who really need us," he added.
|
A man died when he was hit by a car on a motorway after he got out of his vehicle following an earlier crash. | It happened on the M32 near Bristol shortly after 22:00 GMT on Saturday.
Five cars were involved in the crash on the northbound carriageway between junctions 2 and 1.
Another individual suffered back injuries, while two received minor injuries. The motorway has now been reopened after it was closed earlier. Police have asked for dashcam footage.
Related Internet Links
Avon & Somerset Police
|
An Oxfordshire authority is to provide free parking over the Christmas period. | Cherwell District Council approved the plans on Monday evening for Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays from 1 December, for six weeks.
Councillor George Reynolds described the decision as a "Christmas present to the traders".
It will affect all council-owned and run car parks and does not include the Spiceball and Compton Road car parks in Banbury.
Mr Reynolds said shoppers would be restricted to the time limit set for each car park and that this would be enforced.
The town has car parks with one-hour, three-hour and all day parking restrictions, which will remain.
He added that pay machines would not accept money during the free parking days and that there would be increased signage.
"I have a horrible feeling there will be more notices than parking spaces," he said.
Earlier in the year Cherwell District Council refunded £11,600 worth of parking fines after The Local Government Ombudsman found it had failed to properly signpost new charges.
|
It may seem simple - we like chocolate because it tastes nice. But there's more to it than that - and it relates to a fat/carbohydrates balance that is set right from the very beginning of our lives. | By Dr Michael MosleyBBC
I love chocolate and once I start on a bar I can't stop until it's all gone. One square, or even a few, are never enough. My family know that if they bring chocolate into our house they will have to hide it.
So what is it about the food that so many of us find irresistible? And what characteristics does chocolate share with other foods that we simply can't say, "no" to?
As part of a new series on the science of food, botanist James Wong and I went looking for answers.
'Lemonade and a custard apple'
Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which have been grown and consumed in the Americas for thousands of years.
The Maya and the Aztecs made a drink out of cocoa beans called xocolatl, which means "bitter water."
Can people learn to curb their chocolate cravings?
That's because in its raw form cocoa beans are intensely bitter.
To get at the beans you first have to crack open the thick husk of the cocoa pod, releasing a pulp that has an intense tropical flavour that's halfway between lemonade and a custard apple. Known as baba de cacao, it's sweet, acidic and very sticky.
The beans and pulp are then sweated and allowed to ferment for several days before being dried and roasted.
Roasting releases a range of chemical compounds including 3-methylbutanoic acid, which on its own has a sweaty rancid odour, and dimethyl trisulfide, the smell of over-cooked cabbage.
The combination of these and other aroma molecules creates a unique chemical signature that our brains love.
But the rich, chocolaty smells and the happy memories of youth that those smells provoke, are just part of chocolate's attraction.
Chocolate contains a number of interesting psychoactive chemicals. These include anandamide, a neurotransmitter whose name comes from the Sanskrit - "ananda", meaning "joy, bliss, delight". Anandamides stimulate the brain in much the same way that cannabis does.
It also contains tyramine and phenylethylamine, both of which have similar effects to amphetamines.
Finally, if you look hard enough, you will find small traces of theobromine and caffeine, both of which are well-known stimulants.
For a while, some food scientists got very excited about the discovery but to be honest, although chocolate contains these substances, we now know they are only there in trace amounts.
Your brain is not going to get much of a chemical rush from eating a few squares. None the less, they may play a small part in seducing our senses.
Sugars plus fats
So what else does chocolate have going for it?
Well, it also has a creamy viscosity. When you take it out of its wrapper and put a bit in your mouth without biting, you will notice that it rapidly melts on your tongue, leaving a lingering sensation of smoothness.
Special touch receptors on our tongues detect this textural change, which then stimulates feelings of pleasure.
But the thing that really transformed the cocoa from a bitter and watery drink into the snack we adore today was the addition of sugar and fat.
The addition of just the right amount of each is crucial to our enjoyment of chocolate. Look at the side of a packet of milk chocolate and you will see that it is normally contains around 20-25% fat and 40-50% sugar.
In nature such high levels of sugar and fat are rarely found, or at least not together.
You can get lots of natural sugars from fruits and roots, and there is plenty of fat to be found in nuts or a tasty chunk of salmon, but one of the few places where you will find both together is in milk.
Human breast milk is particularly rich in natural sugars, mainly lactose. Roughly 4% of human breast milk is fat, while about 8% is made up of sugars. Formula milk, which is fed to babies, contains a similar ratio of fats to sugars.
This ratio, 1g of fat to 2g of sugars, is the same ratio of fats to sugars that you find in milk chocolate. And in biscuits, doughnuts, ice cream. In fact this particular ratio is reflected in many of the foods that we find hard to resist.
So why do I love chocolate? For a whole host of reasons. But it may also be that I, and chocoholics like me, are trying to recapture the taste and sense of closeness we got from the first food we ever sampled; human breast milk.
The Secrets of Your Food begins on BBC2 at 2100GMT on Friday February 24th.
Join the conversation on our Facebook page.
|
Despite all the other issues demanding China's attention this year - the virus, its trade war with the US, Hong Kong's national security law, and a host of economic woes - the South China Sea has been revived in recent months as an arena for serious tensions. | With US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now - for the first time - calling China's territorial claims in the South China Sea unlawful, Alexander Neill examines China's plans to extend its reach in the region.
The South China Sea, home to vital shipping lanes, has been a flashpoint for years, with several countries claiming ownership of its small islands and reefs and with it, access to resources.
In recent years, China has been increasingly assertive over what it claims are its centuries-old claims to the contested region, and has been rapidly building up its military presence to back up those claims.
Former Commander of US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris once referred to this as the "Great Wall of Sand" - a "nine-dash line" creating a protective ring and supply network around Chinese territory at sea, as the wall did on land.
But while China and the US have traded increasingly barbed comments over the South China Sea, broadly speaking, they had managed such differences.
Despite their trade conflict, the US had avoided taking sides in China's territorial disputes with other countries - other than to demand freedom of movement for its vessels.
Then, the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Criticism of China's early handling of the outbreak, led by the US, has enraged China.
Many Western leaders appear to be persuaded by Mr Pompeo's argument that China was exploiting the pandemic to double-down on its coercive behaviour in general.
And those rising tensions have been playing out in the South China Sea.
Military tensions at a worrying time
In early April, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel close to the Paracel Islands, which China and Vietnam claim as theirs.
Then, a Malaysian oil exploration project also found its operations disrupted off the coast of Borneo by a Chinese marine survey vessel, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, backed by China's Navy and Coast Guard.
Consequently, the USS America, a US Navy amphibious assault ship, joined by an Australian frigate, was deployed to waters nearby.
The escalation continued with the deployment of two US Navy guided missile destroyers, USS Bunker Hill and USS Barry to the Paracel and Spratly Islands (known as the Xisha and Nansha in Chinese) respectively.
The warships conducted Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) aimed at challenging what the US views as a pattern of China's unlawful claims in international waters.
Most recently, China closed off a swathe of sea space to conduct naval exercises in the waters surrounding the Paracel Islands. The US angrily said this violated Chinese commitments to avoid activities exacerbating disputes.
Meanwhile, the US Navy deployed not one but two aircraft carrier strike groups - the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan - for joint operations in the region.
In addition to the US Navy fighters conducting carrier operations and the P8-Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft criss-crossing the sea, the US Air Force sent a B-52 strategic bomber for good measure.
China's state media reacted with predictable vitriol.
The US Navy's surge into the South China Sea increases the risk of an incident between the two rival powers and a rapid escalation in hostility.
The situation is particularly dangerous in light of a recent pattern of increasing assertiveness by China over its "core concerns".
Its recent use of lethal force on its disputed border with India, and the imposition of the National Security Law on Hong Kong, have prompted many to ask how restrained China is likely to be in its response to these challenges.
What is China's South China Sea goal?
Beijing views the South China Sea as a crucial part of its maritime territory, not only serving as a bastion for its seaborne nuclear deterrent based on Hainan island but also as a gateway for the Maritime Silk Road, part of China's Belt and Road Initiative.
The South China Sea is critical, for example, for the future success of China's Greater Bay Area economic development plan, into which Hong Kong is incorporated.
China's plan for populating the South China Sea was launched in 2012 when "Sansha City", the administrative centre for all Chinese-claimed features in the South China Sea on Woody Island in the Paracels, was upgraded from county to prefecture-level status.
The government re-settled the small fishing community there into modern dwellings, built a primary school, a bank and a hospital and installed mobile communications. Tourists have been visiting on regularly scheduled cruises to the islands.
The second phase of the plan was initiated in April this year, when China created two further county level administrative districts subordinate to Sansha City, including the establishment of Nansha District People's government, headquartered on Fiery Cross Reef and administering all the Chinese claimed features of the Spratly Islands.
In the six years since China began reclamation of several reefs and atolls in the Spratlys, satellite and air surveillance has revealed one of the world's greatest feats in maritime engineering and military construction.
In addition to the military facilities on the islands - including 3,000m runways, naval berths, hangars, reinforced ammunition bunkers, missile silos and radar sites - images show neatly arranged accommodation blocks, administrative buildings roofed with blue ceramic tiles, hospitals, and even sports complexes on the reclaimed islands, which have become visibly greener.
Subi reef is now home to a farm - including a six-acre fruit and vegetable plot pollinated by bees imported from the mainland, a herd of pigs, flocks of poultry and fish ponds.
Meanwhile, the China Academy of Sciences established an Oceanographic Research Centre on Mischief Reef in January 2019.
China's top hydrologists have announced that the water table on Fiery Cross - once little more than a rock in the sea - has been expanding rapidly and will allow water self-sufficiency within 15 years (link in Chinese).
The residents of the island already enjoy 5G mobile data access and availability of fresh fruit and vegetables shipped in refrigerated containers.
Imagery also shows large fishing fleets moored in the larger lagoons on Subi and Mischief reef.
Perhaps before too long, fishing families could be permanently housed on China's southernmost islands, their children schooled alongside those of party and government officials.
An 'irreversibly' Chinese waterway?
The most symbolic evidence of China's push into the South China Sea is quite literally set in stone - transplanted from mainland China.
In April 2018, 200-tonne commemorative megaliths, erected on each of the three biggest island bases in the Spratly Islands were unveiled amid some secrecy.
Quarried from Taishan stone and shipped to the Spratly islands, the monuments resonate with President Xi Jinping's China Dream of national rejuvenation.
Mount Taishan is viewed as the most sacred of China's mountains, a symbol of unbroken Chinese civilisation for thousands of years.
All of this shows China has moved into a second phase of a calculated plan to make this great strategic waterway of South East Asia an irreversibly Chinese one.
The recent US Navy exercises in the South China Sea were aimed at demonstrating US resolve to protect the "freedom of the seas": for the US Navy to operate in and ultimately protect the seaspace across these international waters.
Alongside the US Naval manoeuvres, Mr Pompeo's announcement formally stating that China's claims across the region are "completely unlawful" begs the question of what the US is prepared to do next.
At a minimum, Mr Pompeo wants to build a diplomatic coalition to demonstrate China's self-isolation, not just with some of the other claimants but also along with bigger powers.
The US could very rapidly reduce China's new Nansha district to concrete and coral rubble - but this would entail a war for which neither the US nor China has an appetite.
Alexander Neill is a military analyst and director of a strategic advisory consultancy in Singapore
|
Katy Perry has revealed details of her forthcoming second album, Teenage Dream, which will be released on 30 August. | It will be preceded by new single California Gurls on 20 June.
Perry, who is engaged to comedian Russel Brand, said the new single, which features rapper Snoop Dogg is a response to Jay-Z's homage to New York, Empire State Of Mind.
She said: "I decided that we needed to make a response. I want people to want to book a ticket to California the first time they hear it."
The Santa Barbara starlet's debut One Of The Boys, which featured single Hot N Cold and I Kissed A Girl, has sold five million copies worldwide since its release in 2008.
|
In a new YouTube video by 25-year-old filmmaker John Richardson, he and two other young people recount their personal stories of psychosis and the help they received from a mental health service for young people where they live in Sussex. | By Emma TraceyBBC News, Ouch
"I was speaking a million miles an hour to my friends about thousands of different topics," says Richardson in the film, saying he had paint and coffee stains all over him, and had written words up and down his arms.
We then see a young man, Dominic, who believed he was Jesus and later a young woman, Jo, who talks about the troubling agreement she made with her hallucination. She says: "We made a deal that he could be with me when I killed my friends and family." She believed at the time that carrying out this act would save the people she loved from an even worse fate.
The film explains the kind of help and understanding they received from the early intervention service, a team dedicated to helping young people. Richardson says he made the film Simon Says: Psychosis because it's the one he would have wanted to have seen when he became ill. Instead, he says he spent two years jumping out of windows and hiding to avoid discussing his mental health with the team.
John Richardson spoke to Ouch this week:
What was your first experience of psychosis?
I was fed up with my film course and felt unfulfilled, so I started getting all these ideas of films I could make in the summer and it snowballed into a bit of a psychotic episode. I couldn't sleep and was running around the town, filming everything and talking to my Dictaphone. A friend got my mum up from Eastbourne and she found me lying in glass that had accumulated over five days of me breaking stuff. To anyone in a normal state of mind, it just looked like a mess, but to me, in that moment, I was arranging it into some sort of intricate piece of art. I thought that if someone could work it out, they'd glimpse what kind of state I was in. I still have all the footage, which is quite disturbing.
When did the early intervention team get involved?
They came the fourth day I was in hospital... but I wasn't open to help. I think most people have that engagement issue, where they don't feel there's anything wrong with them or they don't feel like the people who are saying that they can help, can actually help. They just don't trust them. The team increased my positive outlook on life. They changed the way I think about hope. Rather than it being that the world's going to blossom into rainbows and flowers, it's that I can find some hope in myself and be a bit stronger in the future. They armed me with the tools that I need to stop similar things happening to me again.
How does your film differ to any other mental health films you've seen?
For a start, we don't have any manipulative, emotional piano. We tried to make it as honest as possible and not too much like a glorified advert. I'm a cynic so I look right through that "this service is amazing" stuff and see it as a lie. It is nice for people to see that the clinicians are actually people and have personalities too. The first thing professionals should do is strike up a relationship in a humane way, something like "what's your favourite colour". It is easier to form a therapeutic relationship if you can relate to them as a person.
You can watch the film Simon Says: Psychosis here
Follow @BBCOuch on Twitter and on Facebook, and listen to our monthly talk show
|
Prince Andrew, the Queen's son, has given an extraordinary interview to BBC Newsnight, denying he had any sexual contact with an American woman who claims she was forced to have sex with him aged 17.
A full transcript of the interview is below, or read our main story and our royal correspondent's analysis. | Emily Maitlis, interviewer: Your Royal Highness, we've come to Buckingham Place in highly unusual circumstances. Normally, we'd be discussing your work, your duty and we'll come on to that but today you've chosen to speak out for the first time. Why have you decided to talk now?
Prince Andrew: Because there is no good time to talk about Mr Epstein and all things associated and we've been talking to Newsnight for about six months about doing something around the work that I was doing and unfortunately we've just not been able to fit it into either your schedule or my schedule until now. And actually it's a very good opportunity and I'm delighted to be able to see you today.
EM: As you say, all of this goes back to your friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, how did you first become friends? How did you meet?
PA: Well I met through his girlfriend back in 1999 who… and I'd known her since she was at university in the UK and it would be, to some extent, a stretch to say that as it were we were close friends. I mean we were friends because of other people and I had a lot of opportunity to go to the United States but I didn't have much time with him.
I suppose I saw him once or twice a year, perhaps maybe maximum of three times a year and quite often if I was in the United States and doing things and if he wasn't there, he would say "well, why don't you come and use my houses?" so I said "that's very kind, thank you very much indeed".
But it would be a considerable stretch to say that he was a very, very close friend. But he had the most extraordinary ability to bring extraordinary people together and that's the bit that I remember as going to the dinner parties where you would meet academics, politicians, people from the United Nations, I mean it was a cosmopolitan group of what I would describe as US eminents.
EM: Was that his appeal then?
PA: Yeah.
EM: Was that what you… because you were perceived by the public as being the party prince, was that something you shared?
PA: Well, I think that's also a bit of a stretch. I don't know why I've collected that title because I don't… I never have really partied. I was single for quite a long time in the early 80s but then after I got married I was very happy and I've never really felt the need to go and party and certainly going to Jeffrey's was not about partying, absolutely not.
EM: You said you weren't very good friends but would you describe him as a good friend, did you trust him?
PA: Yes, I think I probably did but again, I mean I don't go into a friendship looking for the wrong thing, if you understand what I mean. I'm an engaging person, I want to be able to engage, I want to find out, I want to learn and so you have to remember that I was transitioning out of the navy at the time and in the transition I wanted to find out more about what was going on because in the navy it's a pretty isolated business because you're out at sea the whole time and I was going to become the special representative for international trade and investment.
So I wanted to know more about what was going on in the international business world and so that was another reason for going there. And the opportunities that I had to go to Wall Street and other places to learn whilst I was there were absolutely vital.
EM: He was your guest as well, in 2000 Epstein was a guest at Windsor Castle and at Sandringham, he was brought right into the heart of the Royal Family at your invitation.
PA: But certainly at my invitation, not at the Royal Family's invitation but remember that it was his girlfriend that was the key element in this. He was the, as it were, plus one, to some extent in that aspect.
EM: Am I right in thinking you threw a birthday party for Epstein's girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell at Sandringham?
PA: No, it was a shooting weekend.
EM: A shooting weekend.
PA: Just a straightforward, a straightforward shooting weekend.
EM: But during these times that he was a guest at Windsor Castle, at Sandringham, the shooting weekend…
PA: Yeah, yeah.
EM: We now know that he was and had been procuring young girls for sex trafficking.
PA: We now know that, at the time there was no indication to me or anybody else that that was what he was doing and certainly when I saw him either in the United States… oh no when I saw him in the United States or when I was staying in his houses in the United States, there was no indication, absolutely no indication. And if there was, you have to remember that at the time I was patron of the NSPCC's Full Stop campaign so I was close up with what was going on in those time about getting rid of abuse to children so I knew what the things were to look for but I never saw them.
EM: So you would have made that connection because you stayed with him, you were a visitor, a guest on many occasions at his homes and nothing struck you as suspicious…
PA: Nothing.
EM: …during that whole time.
PA: Nothing.
EM: Just for the record, you've been on his private plane.
PA: Yes.
EM: You've been to stay on his private island.
PA: Yes.
EM: You've stayed at his home in Palm Beach.
PA: Yes.
EM: You visited Ghislaine Maxwell's house in Belgravia in London.
PA: Yes.
EM: So in 2006 in May an arrest warrant was issued for Epstein for sexual assault of a minor.
PA: Yes.
EM: In July he was invited to Windsor Castle to your daughter, Princess Beatrice's 18th birthday, why would you do that?
PA: Because I was asking Ghislaine. But even so, at the time I don't think I… certainly I wasn't aware when the invitation was issued what was going on in the United States and I wasn't aware until the media picked up on it because he never said anything about it.
EM: He never discussed with you the fact that an arrest warrant had been issued?
PA: No.
EM: So he came to that party knowing police were investigating him.
PA: Well I'm not quite sure, was it police? I don't know, you see, this is the problem, I really don't know.
EM: It was the Palm Beach Police at the time.
PA: But I mean I'm afraid, you see this is the problem is that an awful lot of this was going on in the United States and I wasn't a party to it and I knew nothing about it.
EM: In 2008 he was convicted of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, he was jailed, this was your friend, how did you feel about it?
PA: Well I ceased contact with him after I was aware that he was under investigation and that was later in 2006 and I wasn't in touch with him again until 2010. So just it was one of those things that somebody's going through that sort of thing well I'm terribly sorry I can't be… see you.
EM: So no contact?
PA: No contact.
EM: When he was serving time there was no call, no letter, nothing there?
PA: No, no, no.
EM: He was released in July, within months by December of 2010 you went to stay with him at his New York mansion, why? Why were you staying with a convicted sex offender?
PA: Right, I have always… ever since this has happened and since this has become, as it were, public knowledge that I was there, I've questioned myself as to why did I go and what was I doing and was it the right thing to do? Now, I went there with the sole purpose of saying to him that because he had been convicted, it was inappropriate for us to be seen together.
And I had a number of people counsel me in both directions, either to go and see him or not to go and see him and I took the judgement call that because this was serious and I felt that doing it over the telephone was the chicken's way of doing it. I had to go and see him and talk to him.
And I went to see him and I was doing a number of other things in New York at the time and we had an opportunity to go for a walk in the park and that was the conversation coincidentally that was photographed which was when I said to him, I said, "Look, because of what has happened, I don't think it is appropriate that we should remain in contact," and by mutual agreement during that walk in the park we decided that we would part company and I left, I think it was the next day and to this day I never had any contact with him from that day forward.
EM: What did he say when you told him that you were breaking up the friendship?
PA: He was what I would describe as understanding, he didn't go into any great depth in the conversation about what I was… what he was doing, except to say that he'd accepted, whatever it was, a plea bargain, he'd served his time and he was carrying on with his life if you see what I mean and I said, "Yes but I'm afraid to say that that's as maybe but with all the attendant scrutiny on me then I don't think it is a wise thing to do."
EM: Who advised you then that it was a good idea to go and break up the friendship? Did that come from the palace, was Her Majesty, the Queen involved?
PA: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that came from… so there were a number of people who… so some people from my staff, some people from friends and family I was talking to and I took the decision that it was I had to show leadership and I had to go and see him and I had to tell him, "That's it."
EM: That was December of 2010.
PA: Yep.
EM: He threw a party to celebrate his release and you were invited as the guest of honour.
PA: No, I didn't go. Oh, in 2010, there certainly wasn't a party to celebrate his release in December because it was a small dinner party, there were only eight or 10 of us I think at the dinner. If there was a party then I'd know nothing about that.
EM: You were invited to that dinner as a guest of honour.
PA: Well I was there so there was a dinner, I don't think it was quite as you might put it but yeah, OK I was there for… I was there at a dinner, yeah.
EM: I'm just trying to work this out because you said you went to break up the relationship and yet you stayed at that New York mansion several days. I'm wondering how long?
PA: But I was doing a number of other things while I was there.
EM: But you were staying at the house…
PA: Yes.
EM: … of a convicted sex offender.
PA: It was a convenient place to stay. I mean I've gone through this in my mind so many times. At the end of the day, with a benefit of all the hindsight that one can have, it was definitely the wrong thing to do. But at the time I felt it was the honourable and right thing to do and I admit fully that my judgement was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable but that's just the way it is.
EM: Because during that time, those few days, witnesses say they saw many young girls coming and going at the time. There is video footage of Epstein accompanied by young girls and you were there staying in his house, catching up with friends.
PA: I never… I mean if there were then I wasn't a party to any of that. I never saw them. I mean you have to understand that his house, I described it more as almost as a railway station if you know what I mean in the sense that there were people coming in and out of that house all the time.
What they were doing and why they were there I had nothing to do with. So I'm afraid I can't make any comment on that because I really don't know.
EM: Another guest was John Brockman, the literary agent. Now, he described seeing you there getting a foot massage from a young Russian woman, did that happen?
PA: No.
EM: You're absolutely sure or you can't remember?
PA: Yeah, I'm absolutely sure.
EM: So John Brockman's statement is false?
PA: I wouldn't… I wouldn't… I don't know Mr Brockman so I don't know what he's talking about.
EM: But that definitely wasn't you getting a foot massage from a Russian girl in Jeffrey Epstein's house?
PA: No.
EM: It might seem a funny way to break off a friendship, a four-day house party of sorts with a dinner. It's an odd way to break up a friendship.
PA: It's a difficult way of put… that's a very stark way of putting it, yes you're absolutely right. But actually the truth of it is is that I actually only saw him for about, what the dinner party, the walk in the park and probably passing in the passage.
EM: Let's go to that Central Park walk which was snapped. Friends of yours suggest that Epstein wanted that photo taken, perhaps he'd even set it up, do you worry that you were being played?
PA: Again, new information is coming out since his suicide has made us reappraise that walk in the park. We can't find any evidence or my staff and my people and I can't find any evidence to suggest that that was what he was doing. I mean you can look at it in so many different ways. The fact of the matter is is that somebody very cleverly took that photograph, it wasn't as far as I remember nor do my security people remember, anybody being present or close because there were enough security around.
I mean there are even photographs of the security people who are around in the photograph. So I mean he could have done but…
EM: Yeah, I guess what I'm asking is do you feel that you were part of Epstein's public rehabilitation?
PA: Oh no, funnily enough I don't, no. I mean if he was… if he was doing… if that photograph was taken with that purpose in mind, then it doesn't… it doesn't equate to what actually happened.
EM: So why wouldn't you announce this break up when you got that? Why wouldn't you publicly explain what you've done? Did you worry that he had something that could compromise you?
PA: No, no.
EM: Do you regret that trip?
PA: Yes.
EM: Do you regret the whole friendship with Epstein?
PA: Now, still not and the reason being is that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful. He himself not, as it were, as close as you might think, we weren't that close. So therefore I mean yes I would go and stay in his house but that was because of his girlfriend, not because of him.
EM: Was that visit, December of 2010 the only time you saw him after he was convicted?
PA: Yes, yeah.
EM: Did you see him or speak to him again?
PA: No.
EM: Never since then?
PA: No, that was… funny enough, 2010 was it, that was it because I went… well first of all I wanted to make sure that if I was going to go and see him, I had to make sure that there was enough time between his release because it wasn't something that I was going into in a hurry but I had to go and see him, I had to go and see him, I had to talk.
EM: And stay with him, and stay in the house of a convicted sex offender?
PA: I could easily have gone and stayed somewhere else but sheer convenience of being able to get a hold of the man was… I mean he was in and out all over the place. So getting him in one place for a period of time to actually have a long enough conversation to say look, these are the reasons why I'm not going to… and that happened on the walk.
EM: July of this year, Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and abusing dozens of underage girls. One of the Epstein's accusers, Virginia Roberts…
PA: Yeah.
EM: … has made allegations against you. She says she met you in 2001, she says she dined with you, danced with you at Tramp Nightclub in London. She went on to have sex with you in a house in Belgravia belonging to Ghislaine Maxwell, your friend. Your response?
PA: I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.
EM: You don't remember meeting her?
PA: No.
EM: She says she met you in 2001, she dined with you, she danced with you, you bought her drinks, you were in Tramp Nightclub in London and she went on to have sex with you in a house in Belgravia belonging to Ghislaine Maxwell.
PA: It didn't happen.
EM: Do you remember her?
PA: No, I've no recollection of ever meeting her, I'm almost, in fact I'm convinced that I was never in Tramps with her. There are a number of things that are wrong with that story, one of which is that I don't know where the bar is in Tramps. I don't drink, I don't think I've ever bought a drink in Tramps whenever I was there.
EM: Do you remember dancing at Tramp?
PA: No, that couldn't have happened because the date that's being suggested I was at home with the children.
EM: You know that you were at home with the children, was it a memorable night?
PA: On that particular day that we now understand is the date which is the 10th of March, I was at home, I was with the children and I'd taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at I suppose sort of 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. And then because the duchess was away, we have a simple rule in the family that when one is away the other one is there. I was on terminal leave at the time from the Royal Navy so therefore I was at home.
EM: Why would you remember that so specifically? Why would you remember a Pizza Express birthday and being at home?
PA: Because going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do, a very unusual thing for me to do. I've never been… I've only been to Woking a couple of times and I remember it weirdly distinctly. As soon as somebody reminded me of it, I went, "Oh yes, I remember that." But I have no recollection of ever meeting or being in the company or the presence.
EM: So you're absolutely sure that you were at home on the 10th March?
PA: Yeah.
EM: She was very specific about that night, she described dancing with you.
PA: No.
EM: And you profusely sweating and that she went on to have bath possibly.
PA: There's a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don't sweat or I didn't sweat at the time and that was… was it… yes, I didn't sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenalin in the Falkland's War when I was shot at and I simply… it was almost impossible for me to sweat. And it's only because I have done a number of things in the recent past that I am starting to be able to do that again. So I'm afraid to say that there's a medical condition that says that I didn't do it so therefore…
EM: Is it possible that you met Virginia Roberts, dined with her, danced with her in Tramp, had sex with her on another date?
PA: No.
EM: Do you remember meeting her at all?
PA: No.
EM: Do you know you didn't meet her or do you just not remember meeting her?
PA: No, I have… I don't know if I've met her but no, I have no recollection of meeting her.
EM: Because she was very specific, she described the dance that you had together in Tramp. She described meeting you, she was a 17-year-old girl meeting a senior member of the Royal Family.
PA: It never happened.
EM: She provided a photo of the two of you together.
PA: Yes, yes.
EM: Your arm was around her waist.
PA: Yes.
EM: You've seen the photo.
PA: I've seen the photograph.
EM: How do you explain that?
PA: I can't because I don't… I have no… again I have absolutely no memory of that photograph ever being taken.
EM: Do you recognise yourself in the photo?
PA: Yes, it's pretty difficult not to recognise yourself.
EM: Your friends suggested that the photo is fake.
PA: I think it's… from the investigations that we've done, you can't prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not because it is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. So it's very difficult to be able to prove it but I don't remember that photograph ever being taken.
EM: But it's possible that it was you with your arm around her waist?
PA: That's me but whether that's my hand or whether that's the position I… but I don't… I have simply no recollection of the photograph ever being taken.
EM: The world has now seen the photo that Virginia Roberts provided taken by Epstein we understand in Ghislaine Maxwell's house.
PA: Well here's the problem, I've never seen Epstein with a camera in my life.
EM: I think it was Virginia Roberts's camera, she said a little Kodak one that she lent to Epstein, he took a photo and your arm is round her waist.
PA: Listen, I don't remember, I don't remember that photograph ever being taken. I don't remember going upstairs in the house because that photograph was taken upstairs and I am not entirely convinced that… I mean that is… that is what I would describe as me in that… in that picture but I can't… we can't be certain as to whether or not that's my hand on her whatever it is, left… left side.
EM: You think that…
PA: Because I have no recollection of that photograph ever being taken.
EM: So why would somebody have put in another hand? You think it is next to her in the photo.
PA: Oh it's definitely me, I mean that's a picture of me, it's not a picture of… I don't believe it's a picture of me in London because when I would go out to… when I go out in London, I wear a suit and a tie. That's what I would describe as… those are my travelling clothes if I'm going to go… if I'm going overseas. There's a… I've got plenty of photographs of me dressed in those sorts of… that sort of kit but not there.
EM: Just to clarify sorry, you think that photo has been faked?
PA: Nobody can prove whether or not that photograph has been doctored but I don't recollect that photograph ever being taken.
EM: And you don't recollect having your hand…
PA: No.
EM: … round her waist in Ghislaine Maxwell's house on any occasion, even if it was a different date?
PA: I'm terribly sorry but if I, as a member of the Royal Family, and I have a photograph taken and I take very, very few photographs, I am not one to, as it were, hug and public displays of affection are not something that I do. So that's the best explanation I can give you and I'm afraid to say that I don't believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested.
EM: Why would people not believe that you were there?
PA: I'm sorry, why would?
EM: I'm just trying to understand, there's a photo inside Ghislaine Maxwell's house, Ghislaine herself in the background, why would people not believe that you were there with her that night?
PA: They might well wish to believe it but the photograph is taken upstairs and I don't think I ever went upstairs in Ghislaine's house.
EM: Are you sure of that?
PA: Yeah, because the dining room and everything was on the ground floor, was as you came in… as you came in the hall. So I don't remember ever going up there. I'm at a loss to explain this particular photograph. If the original was ever produced, then perhaps we might be able to solve it but I can't.
EM: But you can say categorically that you don't recall meeting Virginia Roberts, dining with her?
PA: Yep.
EM: Dancing with her at Tramp?
PA: Yep.
EM: Or going on to have sex with her…
PA: Yes.
EM: …in a bedroom in a house in Belgravia?
PA: I can absolutely categorically tell you it never happened.
EM: Do you recall any kind of sexual contact with Virginia Roberts then or any other time?
PA: None whatsoever.
EM: Because she said in a legal deposition, a legal court document in 2015, she had sex with you three times. She is not confused about this. She said the first was in London when she was trafficked to you, the second was at Epstein's mansion in New York.
PA: That is a date in April I believe, is that correct?
EM: She said it was a month or so later.
PA: Yeah, well I think that the date we have for that shows that I was in Boston or I was in New York the previous day and I was at a dinner for The Outward Bound Trust in New York and then I flew up to Boston the following day and then on the day that she says that this occurred, they'd already left to go the island before I got back from Boston. So I don't think that could have happened at all.
EM: There was a witness there, Johanna Sjoberg who says that you did visit the house in that month.
PA: I probably did, on one of the weirder things, I was staying with the… because of what I was doing I was staying with the Consul General which is further down the street on the 5th so I wasn't… I wasn't staying there. I may have visited but no, definitely didn't, definitely, definitely no, no, no activity.
EM: Because in a legal deposition 2015, she said she had sex with you three times. Once in a London house when she was trafficked to you in Maxwell's house.
PA: Yes.
EM: Once in New York a month or so later at Epstein's mansion and once on his private island in a group of seven or eight other girls.
PA: No.
EM: No to all of those?
PA: All of it, absolutely no to all of it.
EM: Why would she be saying those things?
PA: We wonder exactly the same but I have no idea, absolutely no idea.
EM: She made these claims in a US deposition.
PA: Hmm mmm.
EM: Are you saying you don't believe her, she's lying?
PA: That's a very difficult thing to answer because I'm not in a position to know what she's trying to achieve but I can tell you categorically I don't remember meeting her at all. I do not remember a photograph being taken and I've said consistently and frequently that we never had any sort of sexual contact whatever.
EM: She spoke about you outside the court in August of this year? She said, I quote, "He knows exactly what he's done and I hope he comes clean about it."
PA: And the answer is nothing.
EM: So if Virginia Roberts is watching this interview, what is your message to her?
PA: I don't have a message for her because I have to have a thick skin. If somebody is going to make those sorts of allegations then I've got to have a thick skin and get on with it but they never happened.
EM: For the record, is there any way you could have had sex with that young woman or any young woman trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein in any of his residences?
PA: No and without putting too fine a point on it, if you're a man it is a positive act to have sex with somebody. You have to have to take some sort of positive action and so therefore if you try to forget it's very difficult to try and forget a positive action and I do not remember anything. I can't, I've wracked my brain and thinking oh… when the first allegations, when the allegations came out originally I went well that's a bit strange, I don't remember this and then I've been through it and through it and through it over and over and over again and no, nothing. It just never happened.
EM: Epstein's housekeeper also in a Florida Court legal deposition said that you visited the Palm Beach residence around four times a year, you got a daily massage.
PA: Four times a year?
EM: That was what he said in a Florida Court legal deposition.
PA: No.
EM: I'm just wondering when you look back now, is there a chance that those massages might have been the services of someone who is being sexually exploited or trafficked by Epstein?
PA: No, I don't think… I mean I… no, definitely not, definitely not and I definitely did not visit his Palm Beach house three of four times a year, absolutely not.
EM: How many times would you say you visited?
PA: In total, probably four times in total throughout the time that I knew him. In fact probably that was the place that… if you see what I mean, he was in the house more there than in other… in other places that I was at.
EM: So that's where you'd find him?
PA: But it was usually because I was going… I was going through and on somewhere else so it was a day, that was it.
EM: You said in your statement from the palace, at no time did I see, witness or suspect any suspicious behaviour.
PA: Yeah, yeah.
EM: Virginia Roberts's legal team says, "You could not spend time around Epstein and not know what was going on. You could not spend time around Epstein and not know what was going on."
PA: If you are somebody like me then people behave in a subtly different way. You wouldn't… first of all I'm not looking for it, that's the thing, you see, if you're looking for it, then you might have suspected now with the benefit of a huge amount of hindsight and a huge amount of analysis, you look back and you go well was that really the way that it was or was I looking at it the very wrong way? But you don't go into these places, you don't go to stay with people looking for that.
EM: "You could not spend time around him," that was what they said, "You could not spend time around him and not know".
PA: The other aspect of this is that… is that I live in an institution at Buckingham Palace which has members of staff walking around all the time and I don't wish to appear grand but there were a lot of people who were walking around Jeffrey Epstein's house. As far as I was aware, they were staff, they were people that were working for him, doing things, I… as it were, I interacted with them if you will to say good morning, good afternoon but I didn't, if you see what I mean, interact with them in a way that was, you know what are you doing here, why are you here, what's going on?
EM: But you'd notice if there were hundreds of underage girls in Buckingham Palace wouldn't you?
PA: Oh God, but sorry you would notice if there were hundreds of underage girls in Jeffrey's house. Wasn't there, not when I was there. Now he may have changed his behaviour patterns in order for that not to be obvious to me so I don't… I mean this is… you're asking me to speculate on things that I just don't know about.
EM: You seem utterly convinced you're telling the truth, would you be willing to testify or give a statement under oath if you were asked?
PA: Well I'm like everybody else and I will have to take all the legal advice that there was before I was to do that sort of thing. But if push came to shove and the legal advice was to do so, then I would be duty bound to do so.
EM: Because you've said there are many unanswered questions, everyone affected wants closure, you would help to provide that closure.
PA: If there was… in the right circumstances, yes I would because I think there's just as much closure for me as there is for everybody else and undoubtedly some very strange and unpleasant activities have been going on. I'm afraid to say that I'm not the person who can shed light on it for a number of reasons, one of which is that I wasn't there long enough.
And if you go in for a day, two days at a time, it's quite easy I'm led to believe for those sorts of people to hide their activities for that period of time and then carry on when they're not there.
EM: Virginia Roberts's lawyers, legal team say that they've asked for a legal statement from you. There is an active FBI investigation, would you be willing to provide that?
PA: Again, I'm bound by what my legal advice is… legal advisers tell me.
EM: Epstein was found dead.
PA: Yep.
EM: In prison.
PA: Yes.
EM: In August of this year.
PA: Yep.
EM: What was your response on hearing that he'd died?
PA: Shock.
EM: Some people think that he didn't take his own life.
PA: There again, I'm not one to be able to answer that question. I believe that centres around something to do with a bone in his neck so whether or not if you commit suicide that bone breaks or something. But I'm afraid to say I'm not an expert, I have to take what the coroner says and he has ruled that it was suicide so…
EM: He's dead, his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, your old friend was, victims say, complicit in his behaviour.
PA: That bit I can't help you with because I've no idea.
EM: Do you think that she has questions to answer about her role in this?
PA: In the same way that I have questions to answer in the sense of what was I doing and as I say that I was there to… to my mind be honourable and say to him, "Look, you've been convicted, it would be incompatible for me to be seen with you," but unfortunately somebody was standing around with a camera at the time and got a photograph of us. It's one of the very few photographs there are of us but that was… that was the case.
If there are questions that Ghislaine has to answer, that's her problem I'm afraid, I'm not in a position to be able to comment one way or the other.
EM: When was your last contact with her?
PA: It was earlier this year funnily enough in the summer, in the spring, summer.
EM: About what?
PA: She was here doing some rally.
EM: So even though he had by then been arrested and was facing charges of sex trafficking?
PA: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this was… this was early spring I think, it was long… because when was he arrested?
EM: July.
PA: No, it was before July.
EM: And that was the last time?
PA: Yeah, yeah.
EM: Did you discuss Epstein at all?
PA: No, actually funnily enough no not at all, there wasn't anything to discuss about him because he wasn't in the news, you know, it was just… we had moved on.
EM: I want to talk about moving on now.
PA: Oh yeah, right, okay.
EM: Epstein is dead.
PA: Yes.
EM: The women are now being heard.
PA: Quite rightly.
EM: How do you move on from this?
PA: Well, it's an interesting way of putting it. I'm carrying on with what I do. I have a number of things that I have been doing since 2011, they're pretty well organised, pretty successful and so I'm carrying on and trying to improve those things that I'm already doing.
EM: I wonder what effect all this has had on your close family? You've got your daughters of your own.
PA: It has been, what I would describe as a constant sore in the family. We all knew him and I think that if we have a conversation about it, it's… we are all left with the same thing, what on earth happened or how did he get to where he was, what did he do, how did he do it?
And so it's just a constant sort of gnaw. I mean this first came out in 2011 and it was a surprise to… to all of us because the photographs were published at a separate time to when I was there and then we sort of questioned what on earth is going on and as a family we discussed it.
And then in 2015 when the allegations were made in the deposition, there was a sort of… there was a sort of… this is the immediate family, not the wider family. The wider family couldn't be more supportive but the immediate family, it was well, what's all this about? And we all just were at a loss so it's just…
EM: Has the episode been damaging to the Royal Family, to Her Majesty the Queen?
PA: I don't believe it's been damaging to the Queen at all, it has to me and it's been a constant drip if you see what I mean in the background that people want to know. If I was in a position to be able to answer all these questions in a way that gave sensible answers other than the ones that I have given that gave closure then I'd love it but I'm afraid I can't. I'm just not in a position to do so because I'm just as much in the dark as many people.
EM: How do you reconnect with the public then now?
PA: Exactly what I'm doing which is to use and to continue to work with Pitch, to continue to work with iDEA and the things that I believe strongly in. I'm not somebody who does things in competition with people oddly. I do things in collaboration with people.
So I want people to… to work together to come to, as it were, a solution to a bigger problem. And so I got a number of people working together, particularly in the education field, particularly in… and also in areas of government and what they are doing so that we're bringing everybody together so that we're all pushing in the same direction and iDEA now does that.
We've been going properly now for two years, we've got 3.5 million people who got a badge. We've got half a million, or just over half a million young people are using the service and I'm trying to think what else we've got. But it's… well it's designed for seven to 14-year-olds in the United Kingdom and it turns out it's done from 5 to 95 around the world so it's being done in 100 countries now. So we're slightly on the catch-up at this point.
EM: I know we have to bring this to a close because we're running out of time. You've faced questions today on a very, very raw subject. There has never been an interview like this before, I wonder what that tells us about the way the Royal Family now confronts these difficult situations. Has there been a sea change?
PA: I think the problem that I'm… we face in the 21st Century is social media. There is a whole range of things that you face now that you didn't face 25 years ago because it was just the print media. And I think that to some extent there is a… there is a thick skin that you have to have and again I'm not a confrontationist myself.
I would prefer to be able to, as it were, resolve things in a way that is sensible. And so choosing to, as it were, get out there and talk about these things, it's almost… it's almost a mental health issue to some extent for me in the sense that it's been nagging at my mind for a great many years. I know that I made the wrong judgement and I made the wrong decision but I made the wrong decision and the wrong judgement I believe fundamentally for the right reasons which is to say to somebody "I'm not going to see you again" and in fact from that day forth, I was never in contact with him.
The subsequent allegations are, what I would describe as surprising, shocking and a distraction. But that's… I mean there are all sorts of things that are on the internet and out there in the public domain that we just sort of go, "Well, yeah," but I'm afraid is… it just never happened.
EM: You've talked about a thick skin, I wonder if you have any sense now of guilt, regret or shame about any of your behaviour and your friendship with Epstein?
PA: As far as Mr Epstein was concerned, it was the wrong decision to go and see him in 2010. As far as my association with him was concerned, it had some seriously beneficial outcomes in areas that have nothing and have nothing to do with what I would describe as what we're talking about today.
On balance, could I have avoided ever meeting him? Probably not and that's because of my friendship with Ghislaine, it was… it was… it was inevitable that we would have come across each other. Do I regret the fact that he has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes.
EM: Unbecoming? He was a sex offender.
PA: Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm being polite, I mean in the sense that he was a sex offender. But no, was I right in having him as a friend? At the time, bearing in mind this was some years before he was accused of being a sex offender. I don't there was anything wrong then, the problem was the fact that once he had been convicted…
EM: You stayed with him.
PA: I stayed with him and that's… that's… that's the bit that… that… that, as it were, I kick myself for on a daily basis because it was not something that was becoming of a member of the Royal Family and we try and uphold the highest standards and practices and I let the side down, simple as that.
EM: This interview has been exceptionally rare, you might not speak on this subject again, is there anything you feel has been left unsaid that you would like to say now?
PA: No, I don't think so. I think you've probably dragged out most of what is required and I'm truly grateful for the opportunity that you've given me to be able to discuss this with you.
EM: Your Royal Highness, thank you.
PA: Thank you very much indeed.
Prince Andrew & the Epstein Scandal: The Newsnight Interview was shown on BBC Two on 16 November 2019 and can be seen on BBC iPlayer in the UK and the full interview can also be seen on YouTube.
|
The latest consumer electronics device seems to hold its novelty these days for about as long as a gnat can concentrate. No sooner have you opened the packaging than you're already yearning for the upgrade. It's a fast paced world, and one of the few examples where "better" seems to cost less as time progresses. | Jonathan AmosScience correspondent@BBCAmoson Twitter
No wonder other industries are trying to capture the same magic, and the space sector is no exception.
The British satellite manufacturer SSTL has had a good deal of success down the years by incorporating components into its spacecraft that would ordinarily be used in laptops. "Off the shelf" has lowered the price of the Guildford company's products, and it's constantly on the look-out for that next clever cross-over.
So, enter Microsoft's XBox Kinect. For those who don't play video games at home and need a little education (that's me!), this is a motion sensor system that allows you to interact with the Xbox 360 console without the need to touch any sort of hand controller.
Just sway one way, and the infrared scanner in the Kinect will sense your movement and tilt your surfboard to the left; jump, and Kinect will lift your on-screen avatar into the air.
It's a smart piece of kit that became one of the fastest selling consumer electronics devices of all time when it was released in 2010.
So, what could you do with it in space? Well, the engineers at SSTL and the University of Surrey think the technology in Kinect could form the basis of a novel in-orbit proximity sensor and docking system. And they plan to try it out.
Come together
The Surrey team has a cubesat programme called Strand (Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator).
You may have heard of this already. The first Strand cubesat currently in development will incorporate a Google Nexus One Android phone. It should launch later this year.
The satellite-borne phone will map the Earth with its 5 megapixel camera and conduct a number of scientific and engineering experiments, the most significant of which will be to hand total control of the spacecraft over to the Nexus. That's never been done before.
The Strand-2 project which has just been initiated will see two cubesats launched together on the same rocket.
Once in orbit, these little satellites will separate for a short period to conduct systems checks. Then, when the engineers are ready, the cubesats will be commanded to use their on-board Kinect technology to find each other and dock together.
The Surrey researchers have been developing a simple magnetic docking system that works like a cup and cone. The pair will join, separate, join, separate, and so on.
Shaun Kenyon from SSTL told me: "Kinect uses an infrared laser to pepper its surroundings, building up a 3D model of the space immediately in front of it. A webcam on the box also overlays a picture on to the distance information provided by the laser.
"There are quite a lot of YouTube videos out there of people using the Kinects in different applications rather than just playing computer games with them.
"We saw one really cool idea where someone had taken the electronics from the Kinect and put it on a hobby quadrotar.
"This unit was completely autonomous and it could fly around a room. Because it had the Kinect, it was building up a 3D model of its surroundings as it was flying. So, we thought why not use this technology in space as part of a docking system."
Low-cost space
Where can you go with this? The Strand team sees it as perhaps the start of intelligent "space building blocks" that could be stacked together and reconfigured to build larger modular spacecraft.
We may not be about to see space stations being built this way anytime soon, but one can very easily envisage "snap-on" auxiliary satellites that provide backup power, propulsion or even additional on-board computing to another spacecraft.
Space junk is a big topic for discussion currently, also. So, maybe you could snap on devices to help bring redundant satellites out of the sky faster than would otherwise be the case.
Meanwhile, watch out for Strand-1. One of its experiments is called "Scream in Space" and was suggested by Cambridge University students.
This will see the Nexus phone play videos of people screaming to test the famous Alien movie poster statement: "In space, no-one can hear you scream".
In a vacuum, this is certainly true… but probably only up to a point. It's quite likely the phone's microphone will sense a scream emitted from its speakers if only because they're connected to each other on the same candy bar structure.
"This is all about finding out whether these newer electronics are suitable for use in space. The way we'll know is if we fly them," says Kenyon.
"They may not perform well. There are radiation issues, and there are temperature issues to contend with.
"There are also power constraints: when your mobile phone runs out of juice, it's easy enough to re-charge it; but in space you're dependent on the solar panels and you cannot be constantly re-charging. The power has to be managed. But that said, the electronics found in consumer devices are incredibly powerful and very, very cheap. If we can show these new chips are useful in space, that's very good for our future technology development."
|
A competition to design a flag for Caithness has attracted 327 entries - including 10 ideas from the US and others from Brazil and Australia. | The contest, which involves Highland Council, has also had submissions from across Scotland and England.
The judging panel met in Wick last Friday to whittle the entries down to a short-list.
Four ideas are now being created in a digital format for an online public vote later this month.
The vote would run until 31 July.
Caithness Civic Leader Gail Ross said: "The flag will be the public symbol of Caithness so I was delighted that so many creative and inspiring designs were submitted.
"As well as entries from our local schools, 10 designs came from America and there were also entries from Brazil, Australia, England and elsewhere in Scotland."
Related Internet Links
Highland Council
|
Councillors in Dumfries and Galloway have approved one wind farm scheme in the region but rejected another. | They gave the green light, with strict conditions, to 15 turbines at Crossdykes Farm north west of Langholm.
However, a five-turbine project near Auldgirth was refused.
Force 9 Energy wanted to develop the site but planning officials said it would have a significant adverse impact on the surrounding landscape.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.