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Photojournalist Sean Sutton has worked for Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a not-for-profit humanitarian organisation, since 1997, after almost a decade covering conflicts as a freelance photographer. To mark International Landmine Awareness Day, he has written about his work and selected some of his pictures from his archive from the past 25 years.
Phil CoomesPicture editor I started my career as a photographer back in 1988 and found myself drawn to conflict and the impact it had on people's lives. My initial work in Burma over a two-year period led to assignments in many countries affected by war. Landmines were part of the story wherever I went, and in the early 90s I decided to focus on this issue while working on other stories in these countries. I got to know the actors involved, especially MAG, who were one of only two charitable organisations clearing landmines at the time. To my complete surprise, in early 1997 MAG offered me a staff job to act as the interface between the situation on the ground with decision makers and the public - to use my photography, design and page-layout skills to communicate on the issues. The problems and the solutions. It has been an extraordinary journey and a pretty unique one for a photographer. When I was freelance I worked for many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and United Nations (UN) agencies as well as the international press. This was amazing work, but it certainly had its frustrations. It was also getting increasingly hard to publish stories, so I jumped at the chance to focus on the issue I cared so deeply about. I had experienced the horrific impact of landmines first hand for a number of years and the issue stood out to me due to the indiscriminate nature of the hidden weapons. Primed like coiled explosive springs under the ground for decades - waiting patiently for their unsuspecting victims. Mine clearance is a prerequisite to any normal activity in so many areas after conflict. People can't safely farm, they can't safely build a house and their children can't safely play. Aid agencies can't drill water wells, can't build schools and in many cases can't deliver medical assistance or food aid. People don't want to survive on aid handouts. Many are subsistence farmers and they need land to survive. In my experience the vast majority of people who stood on a landmines knew they were in a minefield. They had no choice. They had to get to the stream for water, they had to collect the firewood and they had to use the land to grow food. This is the tragic situation still affecting thousands today. In many places, such as Cambodia, villages became military positions. This is due to a water source, shade from trees, solid structures and so on. The occupying military would surround the village with defensive minefields. The other side would take it, clear some of the mines and also lay more around the village for defence. This would go on for many years - villages would be taken by different sides time and time again - and you end up with a patchwork quilt of contamination. After the war when people returned they had no choice but to go to their ancestral lands. They would have to pay someone to use other land - and they had no money. Also there was a risk that people would take their land. The pressures were massive. As a result Cambodia has one amputee for every 290 people. After World War Two there was extensive contamination across Europe, but the countries involved had the resources as well as the resolve to deal with it. More recent conflicts mean that the poorest countries are now affected and they don't have the resources themselves to pay for clearance. As a result MAG, prioritises those areas where the humanitarian need is greatest, land for farming, rebuilding homes, safe access to water and other resources. Children are a specific cause for concern - every day a child is killed or injured by a landmine. Children often look after animals and herd cattle and goats across land in other countries, so that also makes them particularly vulnerable. But the biggest thing really is that children are naturally inquisitive, kids are likely to pick up shiny metal objects they might find in the bush or in the rice field. The results are horrific. One day, the husband of a family I met was walking to the rice field and a few hundred metres from their house he stood on a mine, he went to hospital and had an amputation. Six weeks later, he returned to the village and asked his wife if she could go and get him some medicine for his pain. So she went to a neighbour's house, got some medicine and on the way back - just a few metres from their house she stood on a mine. She laughed as she said to me: "So I took the medicine instead of him because I needed it more." The couple told me they were the poorest family in their village of Chisang because neither parents could work as hard as others, due to their injuries. But they said the most important thing of all for them was their children and their future and that if MAG hadn't come and cleared the village and surrounding area it would be a very different scenario. So it was a message of happiness in a way, despite the sort of tragic scenario they found themselves in, at least their kids were not going to stand on a mine going to school. I have seen the village change dramatically over the years. Now it is lush and full of life with a school, a clinic and a busy market.
Residents of a housing estate in Hull have held a huge street parade as part of the UK City of Culture 2017 arts festival.
Giant puppets and homemade costumes were created for the event on Orchard Park in the north of the city. Artists ran special sessions to help people design and build their creations. Roads on the estate were closed and hundreds of people turned out to watch the event. Kerith Ogden, one of the artists behind the parade, said it was a chance for people to bring their ideas to life. "It's about bringing lots of different people together to make a brilliant spectacle that can be enjoyed by all," she said.
At least 5,000 children currently in care have been split from their siblings, a Freedom of Information request to councils in England and Wales has found. Two sisters tell the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme what it was like to be separated from as young as nine.
By Ashley John-BaptisteBBC Victoria Derbyshire programme Vicky Willis still clearly remembers the day she was split up from her sister. "I just remember packing everything and getting in the car. We cried. There was no going back," she says. "I found it unfair because we hadn't done anything wrong to get separated. We just got taken away and that was that." Vicky, now 19, was four when she and her two siblings went into care due to neglect. Five years later, she was split from her older sister Pip, to whom she was particularly close. She was found a placement near her brother, in their childhood town, but Pip moved away to Oxford. She says she really struggled without having her sister to look after her. Vicky, who now lives in a mother and baby unit with her two-year-old son, Louie, says she was very jealous of her sister, who was making a new life without her. "Her accent changed. She became posh. She changed. I didn't change - but she had moved to a new area and a new family," she said. Loss and bereavement There are currently more than 70,000 children in care in England and Wales - and many of them, like Vicky, have been split from siblings. When a court makes a care order for a child or sibling group to go into care, the local authority then becomes responsible for them. Nearly 2,500 sibling groups, at least 5,000 children, are currently split up in care, data from 50 councils in England and Wales that responded to a Freedom of Information request showed. In 30 of the 50 councils, more than 50% of sibling groups had been split. In Islington, 73% of their sibling groups are split up, in Oxfordshire it's 68% and 60% of sibling groups are split in Cheshire West and Chester. And in Bridgend in Wales, 58% are split up. The Family Rights Group has campaigned for more children in care to be kept together with their siblings. Its chief executive, Cathy Ashley, said when siblings who had experienced the same things and supported each other were split up, "that sense of loss and bereavement alongside the other trauma can be overwhelming". "Practically, local authorities struggle to find carers who will take on a sibling group," she said. "It's a lack of importance perhaps being placed on that sibling relationship, but the price of that is being paid by those individual children." She explained there were times when it was in a child's best interest to be moved away from their sibling group, for example if they needed counselling separately after trauma, but that was not the norm. "The norm should be that priority is given to brothers and sisters being able to live together like most brothers and sisters," she said. Funding gap David Simmonds, Conservative leader of the Local Government Association, said councils consider keeping siblings together as a priority. "There's a £2bn funding gap in children's social care in England and inevitably that's going to have an impact on the way councils do their work," he said. He also called on the Children's Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, to listen to the voice of young people in care. The Department for Education said "local authorities have more than £200 billion available for local services up to 2019-20 - which includes funding for children's services". Pip, the elder sister, says she loved the family she was taken in by, but would have preferred to be with a different family if the siblings could have been kept together. Her foster family planned to look after just one child, so it wasn't possible for Vicky to move in as well. Pip says of her younger sister: "We just had a bond and we stuck together. We had each other's backs. We didn't have a good social worker at the time so we had to rely on each other. "Being moved from a little village to a big city. I was a three-hour drive away from Vicky. I shut off from everything. Social services set up weekends. It wasn't the same. "Having your sister there and then the next minute she's gone, is difficult." Pip says that although it is difficult for foster parents, children should be kept together. "The damage and cost of sibling separation is way greater than the pressure on a foster parent to raise a sibling group," she says. Watch the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel.
Is fighting a pandemic like fighting a war? Two Vietnam veterans - Thomas Hall, in Kansas, and Marsha Four, in Philadelphia - talk about their wartime experience, the coronavirus, and the parallels they see between the two.
Marsha spent three years in Vietnam as a US army nurse, stationed on the front lines in a critical care unit. It was, she recalls, "in many ways a very dark time" in her life. War "embraces you - good or bad it becomes the only world that you live in. Nothing else exists but that war and your safety and the work you have to do inside of it", she says. Tom was 20 years old when he stepped off a plane in Saigon. "As Marsha said we were all very young. And I just looked at it kind of 'Oh, what's this.' I went through a myriad emotions I wasn't even aware of." He served as a military police sentry and dog handler in 1969 and 1970, working mostly at night, alone, patrolling landing zones or large bases. The emotion he felt on those first deployments "was abject fear", he recalls. "You kind of have to get over that and say what's going to happen will happen, and you just do it." He is now national chair of the post traumatic stress and substance abuse committee for Vietnam Veterans of America. Numbing emotions, he says, "that's a good thing in a war zone. Not so good when you come back to your country and be in a civilian world". Using war metaphors when referring to efforts to fight the pandemic is fair, he believes. "It's an invisible enemy," he says. "It's killing people at random and if we don't marshal all our resources and get focused on that, then it will overrun us." He adds: "Front-line workers, they're dying. Nurses and doctors have died fighting this, just like in a war. And they're putting their lives on the line, just like in a war. I think the parallels are innumerable. I don't think it's a stretch at all." Find out more The interview with Marsha and Tom was part of BBC OS Conversations on the BBC World Service Marsha agrees, saying she sees a parallel between the work of healthcare workers in the pandemic and what nurses and doctors had to do during Vietnam. "When you look at what the individuals had to endure during this time - everyday was total chaos, everyday they had to live under the stress and anxiety not only of the work that was demanded of them," she says, adding "there was the loss of the humanity that was laid at their hands. "They had no control over the pain of seeing these individuals who were losing their lives, who were slipping away, and their families were not with them." She said patients in Vietnam died alone, without the comfort of their loved ones. "They looked at us as their mothers, their wives. We were the ones that helped them across to the other side. We gave them the strength and we gave them the courage to let go, and that all would be well," she says. She adds: "When you look at what the staff in the hospitals are going through today there is an overwhelming comparison with some of the things that we had to experience." In the US, over half a million lives have been lost in just over one year, more than the American death tolls from World War 1, World War 2 and the Vietnam War combined. And like with war, Tom expects the pandemic will have a lasting impact on those who worked on the front lines. Normal emotions need to be turned down while in the midst of it all, he says. Later, that act of self-preservation can create a feeling of distance, an isolation from others. "Nobody understands exactly what you've been through," he says. "There were several million people who went to Vietnam and everybody had a different war," he adds. "The idea of everybody being in the same situation that experienced battling Covid on the front-line health professions - each of them will be dealing with different issues that will colour the arc of their life. They will not be the same, after this."
It reportedly cost more than A$500m ($437m; £279m) for Australia to put on, but in just two days, the G20 summit has come and gone. The world's powerbrokers are making their way home.
Jon DonnisonSydney correspondent But aside from a few healthy air-mile accounts and an unhealthy dose of jetlag, what have they got to show for it? This summit was primarily meant to be about economics. As predicted, and indeed recommended many months ago, the headline in the G20 final statement issued on Sunday was a pledge to increase global growth by just over 2% over the next four years. This will apparently pump around $2 trillion into the global economy. But for many people watching and listening around the world those figures are pretty hard to relate to. It is easy for summits like G20 to be perceived as little more than expensive talking shops. "They come here, sit in our air-conditioned hotels, drink our chardonnay and talk bullshit," Mal, a plain-speaking Queenslander, said to me on the sidelines of the G20 this weekend. But the less cynical would point to fact that it is not often that 20 of the world's most powerful people actually get to meet to face to face. There must be some benefit in that. Fighting talk And indeed at this year's summit there were plenty of woes to talk about - the threat from Islamic State and the turmoil in the Middle East, the Ebola crisis as well as the tensions between Russia and Ukraine. In the end, it was the last of these issues that dominated the headlines coming out of Brisbane this weekend. Vladimir Putin cut something of an isolated figure, as world leader after world leader set about verbally assailing the Russian president. The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott had set the tone early when, last month, he offered the prospect of an actual physical confrontation with the black belt wearing Mr Putin who he promised to "shirtfront". This is an expression originating from Australian football, which means charging an opponent forcefully in the chest. In the end, Mr Abbott proved a little milder when confronted with Mr Putin face to face, opting instead for a firm handshake and a somewhat forced smile. The "Putin-versus-the-world" story was the one that dominated this year's G20. Reporters wrote far more words on this than any other angle. Reading and watching the news in Australia or Britain it is easy to see Mr Putin portrayed as the villain, bullying little Ukraine But it is easy to forget that at home the image of the Russian leader standing up to an alliance of world powers probably plays rather well. And certainly President Putin gave no sign that he is ready to make the change of direction that many of the G20 leaders are demanding of him. Furry friends The one surprise of this year's G20 was a pledge to do more to address climate change which ended up on the final communique, somewhat embarrassingly for the hosts Australia, a country often criticised for its environmental policies, which had resisted calls to put the issue on the official summit agenda. But the move came after President Obama's surprise announcement at last week's Apec meeting that the US and China had reached an agreement to reduce their respective emissions. There was more pressure when Mr Obama then made climate change a key theme of his speech to a receptive audience of students at the University of Queensland on Saturday. So in the end the G20 had plenty of talking points, at least for the journalists here. But summits are not really events that capture the public imagination. And it's probably fair to say that if you asked most people the one image they remember from this weekend in Brisbane it would be that of various suited and booted global bigwigs cuddling koalas. If nothing else G20 2014 will go down as the summit where "koala diplomacy" was born.
BBC correspondents from around the world report on the international reaction to the death of Baroness Thatcher.
IAN PANNELL, WASHINGTON Margaret Thatcher remains perhaps the most widely recognised and admired British prime minister in America after Sir Winston Churchill. Her bond with former President Ronald Reagan is often held up as a shining example of the so-called "special relationship" between the two nations. President Barack Obama called her a champion of "freedom and liberty", saying America had "lost a true friend". Like others, he paid tribute to her achievement in becoming Britain's first female prime minister: "She stands as an example to our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can't be shattered." Presidents Carter, Clinton and Bush also offered praise and condolences, with former Secretary of State Colin Powell describing her as a woman of influence and power: "The hairstyle, the dress, her manner, the way in which she carried that handbag. When she walked into a room, you knew that somebody had arrived and you'd better be careful." American conservatives continue to admire and be influenced by Margaret Thatcher. The Republican Party chairman called her "one of the world's great conservative leaders" who "inspired a generation far beyond the shores of Great Britain". Perhaps the most moving response came from actor Meryl Streep, who portrayed the British leader on screen. The actor said "she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit", singling out her rise to the top against the odds in a system that was "class bound and gender phobic". STEVE EVANS, BERLIN Respect rather than affection has been the general German reaction. Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Baroness Thatcher had been no feminist but "by proving herself as a woman in the highest democratic post, she gave an example to many". Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl said he "greatly valued Margaret Thatcher for her love of freedom, her incomparable openness, honesty and straightforwardness". As British Prime Minister at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lady Thatcher had opposed German re-unification. The foreign minister of the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, bemoaned that view, blaming it on her background: "Many of her beliefs were influenced by her childhood in the World War II more than by the challenges of the post-war period." Bild, the country's most popular paper, said she wasn't liked but she was respected. Die Frankfuerter Allgemeine Zeitung called her "an icon of clarity". The Tageszeitung, on the left of German politics, says: "Thatcher gleefully trod on the workers." DIARMAID FLEMING, DUBLIN Margaret Thatcher's time in Number 10 saw relations with the Republic of Ireland decline to their worst post-war level - over Northern Ireland and also the 1982 Falklands War which the Irish government under Charles Haughey opposed. Reflecting her widespread unpopularity in Ireland while in office, political tributes were measured. President Michael D O'Higgins - a fierce opponent of Thatcherism while a politician - said her place in history was assured but her legacy would be "discussed and debated for many years". He praised her signing the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement - giving Dublin a formal role in the affairs of Northern Ireland for the first time - as a "valuable early contribution to the search for peace and political stability". Despite some praise on phone-in shows for her policies against the IRA, her uncompromising stance during the 1981 H-Blocks hunger strikes in which 10 protesting republican prisoners died has been remembered largely negatively: Fianna Fail and opposition leader Micheal Martin said her "hardline approach" to Northern Ireland may have helped boost IRA recruitment. The most strident political criticism came from Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams who said that Mrs Thatcher had brought "great hurt to the British and Irish people" and described her policy on Ireland as a "total and absolute failure". Media analysis has noted that far from being an Iron Lady "not for turning", her public stance could differ from that behind the scenes - such as signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement in the face of furious Ulster unionist opposition, and opening secret negotiation channels with the IRA. ANDREW HARDING, JOHANNESBURG Baroness Thatcher was a polarising and influential figure in South Africa - and reactions to her death have been forceful and divided. Members of the old apartheid government, like the former President FW de Klerk, have praised her support for "constructive engagement" and her opposition to "draconian sanctions and isolation" in the years before democracy. But to those who fought apartheid, Lady Thatcher was a figure of hate. "I say good riddance," said Pallo Jordan, who was a senior figure in the ANC during those turbulent years. The current government here has tried to tread a more diplomatic line. Presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj acknowledged her as a "formidable figure". But the governing ANC said it had been "on the receiving end" of her "failure to isolate apartheid". South Africa's trade union federation, Cosatu, called her a "unique figure" who "personified the brutal attacks on the working class during the 1980s". DANIEL SANDFORD, MOSCOW Russians respect strong leaders, and that has been reflected in their reaction to Baroness Thatcher's death. President Vladimir Putin described her as one of the "most outstanding political figures of the modern world". The former Soviet General Secretary and President Mikhail Gorbachev, who she famously did business with, said she would go down in history. "We achieved mutual understanding," he said, "and that made a contribution to the changing atmosphere in the relations between our country and the West, and to the end of the Cold War." But of course those who remember the Soviet Union fondly were more critical. Ivan Melnikov, the First Deputy Chairman of the Communist Party said she had "politically seduced" Mr Gorbachev, and had played "a major part in the destruction of the USSR". But even he paid tribute to her strength of character. It was a Russian journalist, Captain Yuri Gavrilov who first coined the phrase "Zheleznaya Dama" - "Iron Lady" - all the way back in 1976. The coverage of her death has brought more metaphors. The pro-government newspaper Izvestia said her political style was like that of a surgeon's scalpel - "decisive" but "leaving behind terrible scars". JEREMY BOWEN, MIDDLE EAST EDITOR Baroness Thatcher famously told the first President George W Bush not to get "wobbly"' after Saddam Hussein sent Iraqi troops into Kuwait in 1990. Her response to what was happening in Kuwait was conditioned by her own experience of the war to recapture the Falklands Islands from Argentina in 1982. And Britain had its own reasons to protect oil supplies from the Gulf, as well as what had become a highly lucrative business relationship with Saudi Arabia. From early on in her premiership, Lady Thatcher recognised the commercial possibilities in the Gulf. She was closely involved in the negotiations that led to the al-Yamamah arms deal, selling British warplanes worth tens of billions of pounds to Saudi Arabia. The deal has also been surrounded by allegations that bribes were paid to members of the Saudi royal family. Since her death was announced on Monday, both Israel's president and prime minister have praised her support for their state. During her time in Number 10, though, Britain was one of the first western countries to establish relations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, pressing it to recognise the existence of Israel. In 1989 she sent William Waldegrave, then a junior minister in the Foreign Office, to Tunis to meet PLO officials and eventually the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. It was one of the steps that led to the Oslo process. MATTHEW PRICE, BRUSSELS "The mother of neo-liberalism and the cause of the credit crisis." The Dutch left-leaning daily De Volkskrant offered that as one view of "the woman who changed the world". The paper said others would remember her as a "woman who brought down the Communist world". Europe's papers concur on one point: Baroness Thatcher changed things. For Spain's El Pais, she was not just the Iron Lady, she was the Iron Revolutionary. Online, France's Le Monde reproduced Tuesday's front page of the Socialist Worker ("A brutal ruling-class warrior is dead") though it took that down and replaced it with a "Love her or hate her" quote. In Germany, Frankfurt's Allgemeine Zeitung, broadly sympathetic to the right, called her an "Icon of Clarity", praising her as a politician who spoke her mind and stood by her principles. "England lost its best man" read the Tageszeitung headline. "Thatcherism", it said, is a synonym for unbridled capitalism and the destruction of the welfare state. In Belgium's De Standaard you see perhaps the most eye catching photo: Margaret Thatcher rather reminiscent of an early Hollywood icon, as she attended the 25th anniversary commemorations of the signing of the Treaty of Rome. The paper said when it was first printed back in 1982, Thatcher's staff asked for a copy for her grandchildren. She thought it "the most beautiful portrait ever made of her", said the paper. YOGITA LIMAYE, MUMBAI In India, Margaret Thatcher was one of the best-known British leaders, and her death has drawn reactions from political and business leaders around the country. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed sadness at her death and said in a statement: "She was a transformative figure under whom the United Kingdom registered important progress on the national and international arena." Indian businesswoman Kiran Mazumdar Shaw tweeted: "Margaret Thatcher was a great role model for women all over the world." Most national newspapers have published obituaries of the late UK prime minister, calling her the woman who changed and divided Britain. The media have also highlighted her relationship with the country's first and only female Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Mrs Gandhi was already head of state when Margaret Thatcher met her during a visit to India in 1976. Comparisons have often been drawn between the two leaders as strong-willed women politicians who took bold yet controversial decisions. MARTIN PATIENCE, BEIJING Baroness Thatcher may have been known as the "Iron Lady" but in China she is best remembered for the negotiations that led to the return of Hong Kong. It was during her time in the office that she signed the agreement that led to the handover of the British colony in 1997. For China's leaders the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty was a hugely symbolic moment and cause of much rejoicing across the country. News of her death featured on the front-pages of most of the Chinese newspapers. She was praised by state media as an "outstanding" leader for what it described as her compromise over Hong Kong. One analyst quoted in the China Daily - an English-language newspaper - said she sought dialogue over confrontation. An editorial in the People's Daily newspaper - the mouthpiece of the Communist Party - said it was hard to deny her "remarkable achievements". But it also noted a softer side in her character and said that as a woman she had some leadership qualities that men could never match. VLADIMIR HERNANDEZ, BUENOS AIRES Margaret Thatcher was never the most popular world leader in Argentina. The conservative newspaper La Nacion had Baroness Thatcher on its front page under the headline: "She marked an era, but left a wound." The left-leaning daily Pagina 12, which is closer to the government, chose a much more direct headline: "Galtieri waits for her in hell," referring to Argentina's last military ruler whom Lady Thatcher is credited with helping to bring down. Many here associate her with the defeat of Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982, and in particular with the sinking of the warship General Belgrano by a British submarine, when more than 300 hundred Argentine sailors died. It was one of the bloodiest chapters of the war and it remains an open wound for some in Argentina. But there are also those who hold no grudges. "It was a war. What can you expect her to do?" says Jose Luis Ferreira, a veteran of the conflict and a survivor of the General Belgrano incident. As a 17-year-old sailor he spent 24 hours adrift under freezing temperatures when his ship was sunk - a harrowing experience that marked him forever, he told the BBC. "She was defending her country. It was not a rivalry between people but between nations," Mr Ferreira added. "I think she deserves our condolences. May God forgive her."
Taking photos of your child on their birthday might not get you recognition from the Royal Photographic Society , like the Duchess of Cambridge, but most parents understand the work that goes into capturing the moments that will be treasured for many years.
By Hanna YusufBBC News So what makes a good photograph of a child? Art critics say it's all about the emotion, and that parents often make the best photographers for their children, as the best photos are "full of love". For Jemella Binns, who specialises in photographing children, the key thing is to try to let the child's character shine through. "I focus on getting the child really comfortable so they can be themselves. I'm always prepared to make myself look really silly with props and toys to keep the child engaged and entertained. "The more comfortable the child is, the less forced and unnatural the photos will look," she says. In addition to ensuring the basics are in place - natural lighting, good colours, stylish framing - it's important to keep the process as organic as possible. This involves avoiding a situation where the child is doing something they don't want to do. You may also like: "I tell parents not to pressure their children into smiling because some babies are not smiley, so it can seem really fake. And when the child has a missing tooth, making them smile might not be the best thing," says Miss Binns. Echoing this is Jazz von Loeben, an agent at the Pixie Child Model Agency. She says that the sort of pictures that make it into the portfolios of the child models she represents are the most organic-looking. "Happy pictures are the best pictures. The ones in which the child looks like they are genuinely enjoying themselves," says Ms von Loeben. "Princess Charlotte's photos include a lot of movement, which I love," says Miss Binns, "Having her run around and climb a fence really shows her fun spirit. "For children of Charlotte's age, it's always great to take the photos outside, instead of in a studio, so the child can run around." Five tips By Emma Lynch, BBC News website picture editor The ultimate trick in getting the young child co-operate is to let them see themselves, adds Miss Binns. "Always show the child their photos, children love to see themselves!" Tell us your stories of photographing your young child by emailing [email protected]. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:
With England in lockdown again, and many others parts of the UK enduring severe restrictions, people are looking to film, books, music, online art, podcasts and more for their cultural kicks.
Here, BBC presenters and journalists share their lockdown picks. It's an eclectic list of suggestions for where to look next if you fancy some inspiration. Veteran broadcaster Mark Radcliffe presents BBC Radio 2's Folk Show and 6 Music's weekend chat and music show Radcliffe and Maconie . The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (Netflix) I like a courtroom drama, I must say. For people who don't know the Chicago 7, they were students and hippies and anti-Vietnam protesters who picketed at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention and were arrested for inciting riots. If you remember that year, it was a really highly-charged time. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April, and then Bobby Kennedy in June - so this is an extraordinary snapshot of those times. It still has a resonance, particularly in how the one black defendant is treated. In the time of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests, it reminds you that not everything has changed, by a long way. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Picador books) This is set in the time of Thatcherism, and it's a tragic tale of this young lad Shuggie Bain, who is protecting and caring for an alcoholic mother, living in extreme poverty. It's rather Thomas Hardy-esque, in that you know everyone is doomed to disappointment or death, but it feels very real. And like the film, one suspects life hasn't changed very much for a lot of people. The novel is nominated for the Booker Prize, although I don't generally take that as a massive recommendation. I have certainly bought Booker-winning novels and thought they were dreadful. The Queen's Gambit (Netflix) Anya Taylor-Joy plays Beth Harman, who's in an orphanage at the beginning of the film, and is intrigued by the janitor who plays chess. He gradually agrees to teach her and it turns out she's an absolute prodigy. It's based on a novel by someone called Walter Tevis but it feels like it ought to be true. It's about the connections you make as an orphan - friendships and connections and adoption. And there's a lot of chess. In fact, we started playing chess at home, inspired by it, and my wife is miles better than me and she can see several moves ahead. We don't play anymore. It got too annoying. The Asian Network presenter has hosted its breakfast show since 2017, having joined the station in 2015 from community radio. Strictly Come Dancing (BBC One, iPlayer) Watching my next door neighbour Clara [Amfo] absolutely bossing it on screen is amazing. I'm a huge fan of BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing anyway, but seeing Clara shine like a Queen is great. Rooting for her no doubt. And I usually find anything music or dance related to be therapeutic for me. It's fun, an easy watch and it's a great way to wind down. Grab some munchies and sit on the sofa while having your own party. It's perfect. Made In Heaven (Amazon Prime) I've also just finished watching season one of Made In Heaven. A couple of colleagues have been meaning to get me into it and now I'm hooked. It's more of a drama series, but it's so good and keeps you on the edge of your seat at the end of every episode. Can't wait to start the second season. Sister Sister (Netflix) And thirdly, I'm watching Sister Sister, a 1990s US sitcom about twins Tia and Tamera who were separated at birth and reunite 14 years later. It's brought back my youth. And you can never get enough. If you grew up watching Tia and Tamera, you already know how good it is. If you fancy a giggle, put them on." DJ Friction has been on the BBC airwaves since 2002, and is now presenting the Asian Network's evening show. Space videos (YouTube) It's the biggest kind of escapism - forget pandemics, let's talk about 1,000-year journeys to other galaxies. He devours YouTube series by scientists and futurists John Michael Godier and Isaac Arthur, who use science fact to examine what might actually be possible beyond Earth. They'll swing between stuff that's happening in our solar system to real mad stuff like, what will the universe look like a trillion years from now? And then they'll break it down using real physics and real science. The Real Housewives of America (Sky, ITV Be, Amazon Prime Video) I don't watch much TV or reality shows," says Friction. "But I fell into this hole of watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta and The Real Housewives of Potomac. It wasn't until the summer that I went, 'Wait a minute, they're the only two reality shows from that franchise that feature black women. Every other show features white women. I'm subconsciously dealing with Black Lives Matter, race and everything that's happening this year via these reality shows. Believe me, I've fallen so deep into them. Anyone who asks a question about the seasons or the episodes, I have the answer. The Beatles Friction has been rediscovering The Beatles by listening to all their albums back-to-back again. "I just got back into it and thought, my God, how did these guys write nearly every genre of music that we're still listening to? And you're telling me they released The White Album and Yellow Submarine and Sgt Pepper within the space of 18 months? It's ridiculous." Will Gompertz has been arts editor for BBC News since 2009 and before that was a director at the Tate Gallery. What I Love (podcast) I'm loving this podcast, presented by the award-winning theatre director Ian Rickson. It has a simple format: one guest with whom Rickson has worked selects three things he or she loves. Chiwetel Ejiofor included a Michael Kiwanuka song, Kae Tempest picked a book by William Blake. Good listening. Strata: William Smith's Geological Maps (Thames & Hudson) Some books are beautiful, others are enlightening. Strata is both. Packed with exquisite illustrations, it presents the work of William Smith, a 17th Century geologist, who was the first person to comprehensively map the earth beneath our feet. It's the best non-fiction book I've read in a long time. Call My Agent (Netflix) French TV doesn't get that much attention for some reason - but they produce some great programmes. Spiral is the best police procedural on telly, while Call My Agent is the perfect lockdown escape: uptight actor's agents dealing with uptight actors in a Paris office where they end up either bickering or sleeping with each other. Or both. Tres bon! Musician Hannah Peel presents late-night Radio 3 show Night Tracks, which ranges from classical to contemporary music. She was Emmy-nominated last year for her soundtrack for HBO's Games of Thrones: The Last Watch. Notes On Blindness (Download, Netflix) This is a documentary about the writer John Hull, who went blind just before the birth of his son and started to make a diary of audio cassettes. In the film you hear all the actual recording, and it's just incredible. You're immersed in a world of sound, instead of being totally bombarded with visual information. It sounds like it should be a podcast, but it really works as a film - delving into the mind and the body and dreams and memory. I think it's a masterpiece. Bandcamp (Independent music store) I'm Bandcamp all the way, for everything. They do an amazing thing once a month called Bandcamp Friday, where every artist gets 100% of the profit on their merchandise or downloads or CD sales. It's the only place that does that in the music industry. The last thing I bought was a compilation by a wonderful little indie label called Salmon Universe, who put out a lot of ambient, electronic music. I like compilations because you're led to artists from all across the world, from Ohio to Japan. It's amazing. Islands (RTÉ podcast) This is made by the world-renowned sound recordist Chris Watson, who's teamed up with the writer/presenter Luke Clancy to take a journey across the atlas of remote islands, from Ross Island to the Galapagos to the possibly mythical isle of HyBrasil. It's full of stories and sounds, and it's beautiful. I just like the way you can use podcasts to express something emotional, rather than factual. So you get a sense of ethereal escapism within that. Mark has been the BBC's music reporter since 2015, and presented 6 Music's History of Video Game Music last year. Ted Lasso (Apple TV) After Schitt's Creek ended, I was desperately searching for a TV show that hit the same sweet spot of belly-laughs and heart-warming humour. This is that show. Starring Jason Sudeikis, it tells the story of an American Football coach who comes to London to oversee a fictional Premiership team, despite knowing nothing about football. Unbeknownst to him, the club's owner (played with delicious relish by Hannah Waddingham) is trying to get the team relegated to spite her adulterous husband. I won't spoil the plot, but the show's relentlessly optimistic tone is just what I needed in lockdown. Pikmin 3 Deluxe (Nintendo) Pikmin isn't as well-known as Nintendo's bigger franchises, like Mario and Zelda, but it's been made with just as much care and attention to detail. You play as a crew of astronauts, stranded on a hostile planet, who have to enlist a crop of plant-like creatures to help them find the missing parts of their spaceship. You command up to 100 of the little Pikmin, each of whom have different abilities (some are fighters, some are swimmers, others are impervious to electricity) to solve a bunch of increasingly tricky puzzles against a time limit. It's simultaneously relaxing and panic-inducing; but I've been focusing on completing the less stressful challenge mode with my 10-year-old, who just likes throwing the Pikmin around and laughing at their cute noises. Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia (Warner Music) Rush-released at the start of the first lockdown, this is still my favourite record of the year. A sweat-glistened hymn to the dancefloor, it never fails to lift my mood. The album is getting the live treatment later this month, with a virtual gig that's been dubbed Studio 2054 - with Dua promising (deep breath) "a kaledioscopic, rocket-fuelled, journey through time, space, mirrorballs, roller discos, bucket hats, belting beats, throbbing basslines and an absolute slam-dunk of the best times in global club culture". See you there. Hotpants optional. The BBC Radio 3 broadcaster presents late-night show Unclassified, which showcases music by composers who might have a classical background but also draw from pop, rock, jazz, and experimental music. Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami (Pushkin Press) The Japanese author's novella is evocative but breezy, conversational and unsentimental. She's dealing with the difficulties and complexity of human life but in a really relatable, warm and humorous way. It's about the relationship between an adolescent and their mother. It's a coming-of-age tale and about the anxieties of being a teenager, but you get to see it from both sides. You can sense what the mother's feeling as well. She's a fortune teller and their grandma's ill upstairs. It's a family tale about female identity in Japan. Fat Out Fest (YouTube) The annual music festival from Salford-based underground and alternative promoters, Fat Out Fest happened live online this year, and they are now putting sets on YouTube every Friday over the next month. They really do take it to the edge. On 20 November they're broadcasting Lone Taxidermist - her shows are wild. It's performance art as well as music. Her new show Marra starts with her singing along to a cattle market. An actual cattle market. Her voice is synced with the auctioneer and Maxine Peake is in the video. It's out there. Radiophrenia (Streaming) Radiophrenia is a Glasgow sound art radio station that's streaming 24/7 until 22 November. I was listening to an Italian sound artist called Tobia Bandini. He'd interviewed all these people asking for their response to the apocalypse and then he'd mix their stories - they're all in Italian - with electronic soundscapes. If you want to tune out of the news then this is a really nice place to escape to. There's all sorts in there, and a lot of it is just really pleasing and quite hypnotic. The 1Xtra broadcaster started hosting its Drivetime show at the end of September, having joined the station in 2016. Billions (Sky, Amazon Prime) During lockdown I have started an obsession with the TV series Billions already watching three seasons! I think throughout the first lockdown, many of us found new interests and hobbies - for me one of those was trying to learn more about stocks. Billions is pretty much the ideal programme for being more of a nerd around finance! The Philosopher's Zone (podcast) I also found an amazing podcast called The Philosopher's Zone. With some thinking time during this lockdown, this podcast is perfect for that. It covers so many different past philosophers as well as different debate topics. It's really nice to just put it on play and binge listen. Aspire (William Morrow) I've started reading Aspire by Kevin Hall - an incredible read! It's very self-helpy (which is very me) but it's such a great read, it focuses on the power of words and how they make a real impact in our lives. I don't think I've sold that book well, but trust me on this one, haha! Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
While Donald Trump's decision to restrict entry into the US for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries has been the dominant topic of conversation online in Yemen - one of the affected nations - another event involving Americans has also sparked widespread anger.
By Mai NomanBBC Trending On Saturday, US special forces carried out an operation in central Yemen targeting the house of a suspected leader of the jihadist group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It was the first such raid authorised by the Trump administration. US officials initially said an estimated 14 al-Qaeda militants were killed, as well as one Navy Seal commando. But on Wednesday, they acknowledged that an investigation team had "concluded regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed" too, adding that children might have been among the casualties. Yemeni medics and officials had earlier said that at least 10 women and children were killed. But it was the locally-reported death of one particular individual - eight-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki - that provoked particular fury among Yemenis. Her grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, told several news outlets that Nawar was shot in the neck during the raid. In an interview with the Guardian, he added that he did not believe the US special forces members had meant to kill his granddaughter. Nawar's uncle, Ammar al-Awlaki, also wrote about upsetting details of how he said she had died in a Facebook post that was widely shared in Yemen. The al-Qaeda connection Nawar's father, Anwar al-Awlaki, was a Yemeni-American cleric and suspected senior al-Qaeda leader who was touted as a potential successor to Osama bin Laden before being killed in a US drone strike in 2011. The strike was said to have been personally ordered by President Obama. Two weeks after the strike, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman - also an American citizen - was killed by another US drone. Some Yemenis on social media denounced the US, accusing it of targeting the Awlaki children because of their father's activities. "Trump killed Nawar six years after Obama killed her brother... who was killed while eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant," read one Facebook post. "Way to go America, keep making America great again." More from BBC Trending Visit the Trending Facebook page The killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki drew international criticism, with some journalists claiming that he was not a member of the militant group and had no part of his father's activities - although this has never been verified. Human rights groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, raised questions as to why Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed. A US administration official speaking on condition of anonymity to the Washington Post described Abdulrahman al-Awlaki as a bystander who was "in the wrong place at the wrong time". President Obama was asked by Mother Jones magazine journalist Nick Baumann during a Reddit AMA in 2012 what he had thought about the teen's death. The question received hundreds of votes from Redditors, yet remained unanswered. Now, there similar criticism over the reported killing of eight-year-old Nawar. Photos said to be of her lifeless body have been shared widely online. "Why kill children? This is the new [US] administration - it's very sad, a big crime," her grandfather told local media. War, famine and visa bans Nawar's death comes as a war in Yemen between the government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, and the Houthi rebel movement enters its third year. The UN says more than 10,000 people have been killed and that 21 million are in need of some kind of humanitarian assistance. While Nawar's death was a leading topic of conversation among Yemenis on social media, the travel ban did not escape notice. "I would rather have a 100 bans then to have this happen again," wrote one Facebook user. Propaganda boost The think tank International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report on Thursday that the US raid may have given AQAP a propaganda boost, playing into the militant group's "narrative of defending Muslims against the West" and potentially increasing "anti-US sentiment". Pentagon spokesman Capt Jeff Davis told reporters that the operation "was specifically to enable us to gather the information we needed to be able to map out this group better, and to prevent future foreign terrorist attacks." Western intelligence agencies consider AQAP the most dangerous branch of al-Qaeda because of its technical expertise and global reach. Next story: No... it's not Trump's brother So then who is this a picture of? READ MORE You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.
Two Jewish girls from north-eastern France found themselves in great danger when Germany invaded 80 years ago. But while their parents and younger sister were caught and murdered, they survived - with dozens of other Jewish children - thanks to the bravery of a nun in a convent near Toulouse.
By Niamh HughesBBC News Twelve-year-old Hélène Bach was playing in the garden with her younger sister, Ida, when they saw a military truck approaching and rushed inside. The two girls and their mother had left their home in Lorraine, north-eastern France, after the German invasion in May 1940 and started travelling towards the "free zone" in the south of the country. To reduce the risk of the whole family being caught, it had been decided that the father, Aron, and oldest daughter, Annie, would make the journey separately. But when Aron and Annie were arrested in 1941 and taken to a detention camp near Tours, Hélène's mother rented a house nearby. And they were still there a year later, when the German soldiers came driving up the road. Hélène and eight-year-old Ida ran into the kitchen to warn their mother. "My mother told us to run - to hide in the woods," Hélène says. "I was holding my little sister by the hand but she did not want to come with me. She wanted to go back to my mother. I could hear the Germans. I let her hand go and she ran back." Isolated in the woods, Hélène hid until she felt the coast was clear. Then she crept back to the house and found some money her mother had left on the table. "She knew I would come back," she says. Hélène went to stay with a friend she'd made in the area. She never saw her mother or younger sister again. Hélène's older sister, Annie, had her own narrow escape. After a year at the camp near Tours, she succeeded in escaping through some fencing and running away. Aged 16, Annie succeeded this time in making the journey alone to her aunt's home in the southern city of Toulouse, but even there she wasn't safe. While her aunt's family were not officially registered as Jews and could pretend to be Catholics, this wasn't an option open to Annie. One day in the autumn of 1942, the police rang at the door "They ordered, 'Show your family book and all your children, we want to check!'" she says. "The luck of my life is that my cousin, Ida, had gone to buy bread - that's why sometimes I believe in miracles. So my aunt said this is Estelle, Henri, Hélène and, pointing at me, Ida." Find out more Not long after Annie's arrival in Toulouse, her aunt received a letter from Hélène, from her hiding place near Tours. She then made arrangements for her to be rescued. So one night a young woman from the French Resistance, the Maquis, knocked at the door of the house where Hélène was staying. "She said that she came to find me, to cross the demarcation line," Hélène remembers. To show that she could be trusted, the visitor pulled out a photograph of Hélène that her aunt had provided. It was a difficult journey. The young woman had false papers in which she and Hélène were described as students, even though Hélène was so young. They were stopped and questioned several times. The "free zone" in the south of France did not live up to its name. The government of Marshal Philippe Pétain, based in Vichy, passed anti-Jewish laws, allowed Jews rounded up in Baden and Alsace Lorraine to be interned on its territory, and seized Jewish assets. On 23 August 1942 the archbishop of Toulouse, Jules-Geraud Saliège, wrote a letter to his clergymen, asking them to recite a letter to their congregations. "In our diocese, moving scenes have occurred," it went. "Children, women, men, fathers and mothers are treated like a lowly herd. Members of a single family are separated from each other and carted away to an unknown destination. The Jews are men, the Jewesses are women. They are part of the human race; they are our brothers like so many others. A Christian cannot forget this." He protested to the Vichy authorities about their Jewish policy, while most of the French Catholic hierarchy remained silent. Out of 100 French bishops, he was one of only six who spoke out against the Nazi regime. Saliège's message struck a chord with Sister Denise Bergon, the young mother superior of the Convent of Notre Dame de Massip in Capdenac, 150km (93 miles) north-east of Toulouse. "This call deeply moved us, and such emotion grabbed our hearts. A favourable response to this letter was a testament to the strength of our religion, above all parties, all races," she wrote after the war in 1946. "It was also an act of patriotism, as by defending the oppressed we were defying the persecutors." The convent ran a boarding school and Sister Denise knew it would be possible to hide Jewish children among her Catholic pupils. But she worried about endangering her fellow nuns, and about the dishonesty that this would entail. Her own bishop supported Pétain so she wrote to Archbishop Saliège for advice. She records his response in her journal: "Let's lie, let's lie, my daughter, as long as we are saving human lives." By the winter of 1942, Sister Denise Bergon was collecting Jewish children who had been hiding in the wooded valleys and gorges of the region around Capdenac, known as L'Aveyron. As round-ups of Jews intensified - carried out by German troops and, from 1943, by a fascist militia, the Milice - the number of Jewish children taking refuge in the convent would eventually swell to 83. Among them were Annie Beck, whose aunt realised she would be safer there than in Toulouse, shortly followed by Hélène, taken directly to the convent by her guide from the Resistance. Hélène finally felt safe, though was overwhelmed with emotion on her arrival. "At the beginning, Madame Bergon took me into a room and she tried to make me feel as if my parents were here, and so she was like a mother really," she says. At the same time, the fate of her younger sister, Ida, weighed heavily on her. "Every evening, we had to first do our homework. And then when we finished we could go out and play. I always thought if my sister had not let go of my hand, she would have been in the convent with me," she says. Another Jewish refugee from Alsace Lorraine was a boy called Albert Seifer, who was a few years younger than the sisters. "Surrounded by big walls, we were like in a fortress," he says. "We were very happy." We did not really feel the war despite the fact that we were surrounded by danger." Parents and guardians would send their children with money, jewellery or other valuables in order to pay for the children's upkeep, before they did their best to escape from France. Sister Denise kept careful records. "From the beginning of 1944, the round-ups of Jews were becoming tighter and numerous," she recalled in 1946. "Requests come from all sides and we received around 15 little girls, some of whom have just escaped in a miraculous way from the pursuit of the Gestapo." She added: "They had simply become our children, and we had committed ourselves to suffer everything so as to return them safely to their families." Other than Sister Denise, only the school's director, Marguerite Rocques, its chaplain and two other sisters knew the truth about the children's origins. The other 11 nuns were aware that a number of the children were refugees from Alsace-Lorraine, but did not know they were Jewish - and nor did the officials whom Sister Denise pressed for more and more ration books. The children's lack of familiarity with Catholic rituals threatened to expose them, but an explanation was found. "We came from the east of France, a place with many industrial cities and a lot of workers who were communists," says Annie. "So we posed as communist children who knew nothing of religion!" The longer the war continued, the more dangerous the children's position became and Sister Denise began to worry about possible searches. "Even though all compromising papers and the jewellery from the children's families had already been hidden in the most secret corners of the house, we did not feel safe," she wrote in her 1946 journal. "So, late at night, when everyone was asleep in the house, we dug a hole for the hidden things in the convent's garden and we buried as deep as possible anything that could be compromising." In May 1944 a battle-hardened elite SS Division known as Das Reich arrived in the area from the Eastern front. About this time, Annie remembers that a member of the Resistance arrived with an alarming warning. "One day the doorbell rang. Since the sister in charge of the door was a bit far, I opened it myself," she says. "A young man was standing there. He said: 'Quick! I must speak to your director! It is very, very urgent!' "The man told us that we had been denounced. News had spread that the convent was hiding Jewish children." Sister Denise hatched a plan with the Resistance, who agreed to fire warning shots if the enemy was approaching. "The children would go to sleep, the older ones paired up with the younger ones and, at the first detonation heard in the night, in silence but in haste, they must get to the woods and leave the house to the invaders," she wrote in 1946. But soon she decided to hide the children without waiting for the invaders to arrive. One group, including Annie, was taken to the chapel. "The chaplain was strong and could lift the benches. He opened a trap door. We slid down in there," she says. The tiny underground space was 2.5m long and less than 1.5m high. Seven children huddled together there for five days. They could not stand up or lie down to sleep during the long nights, and were only allowed out for short periods in the early hours of the morning, to exercise, eat, drink and go to the toilet. Air came through a small vent that opened on to the courtyard. "After five days there it was no longer possible to endure," Annie says. "Imagine if the nuns had been arrested," she adds. Those days hidden underground marked Annie for life - she has slept with a night-light ever since. Hélène was fortunate enough to be housed instead with a local family. Though they didn't enter the convent, the SS did leave a trail of destruction right on the convent's doorstep. "We found some maquisards [members of the Maquis] who had been killed and tossed on the road. The Germans set an example so that others did not resist," Annie says. Sister Denise wanted to pay her respects to the dead and asked Annie to help her place flowers on each of the dead bodies. In June 1944, Das Reich was ordered north to join the effort to repel the Allied landings in Normandy. On the way it took part in two massacres designed to punish locals for Maquis activity in the area. Then, on arrival in Normandy, it was encircled by the US 2nd Armoured Division and crushed, losing 5,000 men and more than 200 tanks and other combat vehicles. After southern France was liberated, in August 1944, the Jewish children slowly left the convent. Albert Seifer was reunited with his family, including his father, who returned alive from Auschwitz. Annie and Hélène weren't so fortunate. Although their aunt survived, their parents and younger sister, Ida, were murdered in Auschwitz. Annie settled in Toulouse, married, had children and recently became a great-grandmother. She still regularly meets Albert, now 90. Hélène married and had a son, settling in Richmond, west London. Aged 94 and 90, the sisters travel between London and Toulouse to see each other as often as they can. They refer to Sister Denise as "notre dame de la guerre" - our lady of the war. They were sad to say goodbye to her, and regularly visited her for the rest of her life. When Annie's children were young she often took them with her, in order to keep this period of history alive for them - a constant reminder of what the Jewish people endured. Sister Denise remained at the convent and continued working until her death in 2006 at the age of 94. Later in life she helped disadvantaged children, and then immigrants from North Africa. In 1980, she was honoured by the Holocaust Memorial Center, Yad Vashem, as Righteous Among the Nations. A street is named after her in Capdenac, but apart from that the only memorial is in the grounds of the convent. It says: "This cedar tree was planted on 5 April 1992 in memory of the saving of 83 Jewish children (from December 1942 to July 1944) by Denise Bergon… at the request of Monsignor Jules-Geraud Saliège, archbishop of Toulouse." It stands close to the spot where Sister Denise buried the jewellery, money and valuable items parents left behind - and which she gave back, untouched, after the war to help the families start again. You may also be interested in: A Jewish teenager avoided death in occupied France thanks to the kindness and bravery of a doctor in a small Alpine resort. But it's a story local people seem reluctant to remember, Rosie Whitehouse discovers. The doctor who hid a Jewish girl - and the resort that wants to forget
Brexit is THE priority of Boris Johnson's government.
The new prime minister has just 99 days until the UK leaves the EU, and he faces an uphill task to secure a new deal. But it's not the only demand on Mr Johnson's time. One criticism of Theresa May's time in Number 10 is that other important decisions that affected the future of the UK were put on hold because Brexit became all-consuming. But these nagging priorities have not gone away. So what are they? After years of the government rejecting complaints about funding shortages for England's schools, Boris Johnson is now promising to spend more. Like a constant stone in the shoe, worries about school budgets have hobbled the May government's efforts in education - and the incoming prime minister will be told this needs to be tackled as a priority. But how much will he offer? And will it be enough to satisfy head teachers who have been radicalised into unlikely activists over cash shortages? Mr Johnson's promise to increase per-pupil funding to at least £5,000 per year would mean an extra £50m - and in terms of the overall budget would be, to use one of his own phrases, only "chickenfeed". Other campaign comments suggested reversing the decline in budgets - which would mean closer to £5bn. So schools will be waiting to see how much bristle is on the new broom. Investing in education is a key part of Mr Johnson's post-Brexit pitch - and universities will be seen as important to research, boosting infrastructure and creating an economy of bright ideas. They will also be seen as an important international export opportunity and source of soft power - and all the signs are that a Johnson administration will see overseas students as a financial asset rather than an immigration problem. The other big thorny question in the education in-tray will be whether to cut tuition fees to £7,500, as announced by a review requested by Theresa May. Universities will campaign against it, but with the prospect of an election never far away, could he really announce a U-turn on lowering fees, taking thousands off student debt? The challenge facing Mr Johnson in terms of both health and care in England - responsibility for both is devolved - can be summed up in one word: money. The NHS has been promised (relatively-speaking) lots of it - an extra £20bn a year by 2023. But it is how it is spent that matters. Social care - the system administered by councils to support the elderly and disabled - is in desperate need of more. But it is unclear where it will come from. Unlike Jeremy Hunt, who drew on his experience as health secretary, Boris Johnson had relatively little to say about the NHS during the leadership campaign. Perhaps his most revealing remarks came at a private garden party for Conservative party members. He talked about the NHS being the "crowning glory" of the country, but that in return for the cash injection, reform and greater productivity were needed. Many in the health service will scoff at this - a 2012 restructure is still fresh in the memory, and the NHS is already considered one of the most efficient health systems in the world. Finding a solution to the social care crisis is, after Brexit, perhaps the most difficult conundrum. Tales of frail and vulnerable people going without support are appearing more regularly. But the Tories - and Labour before them - have talked endlessly about what to do without actually doing it. Mr Johnson is, it is understood, sympathetic to the idea of over 40s paying what is effectively an extra tax to fund care for their old age. For the past 20 years, the Home Office has struggled to come up with a modern migration system that satisfies everyone. A failure to reach a national consensus over migration was a driving factor behind many votes to leave the EU. Yet Boris Johnson could not be more different to Theresa May on immigration. As mayor of London, he witnessed first-hand the role migration played in boosting the capital's growth. He is so liberal on the issue that he has repeatedly floated an amnesty for migrants who arrived in the UK illegally. His instincts therefore chime with those of Sajid Javid who, as home secretary, disowned the phrase "hostile environment" and effectively abandoned his party's never-achieved net migration target. But the challenge remains massive. The Home Office is still dealing with the disaster of Windrush generation deportations - while seeking to win the trust of EU citizens worried about their future in a country they have made home. On top of that, it needs to devise a post-Brexit immigration system that many experts warn it is neither ready nor able to deliver. Draft plans published last year propose both scrapping a cap on skilled workers and no restriction on unskilled workers coming for up to a year. But what happens if the UK crashes out of the EU with no deal? Many experts predict Brussels will demand preferential access to the UK for its citizens in return for a trade deal. As Mr Johnson steps into Number 10, the cloud of uncertainty hovering over High Speed 2 (HS2) gets a little thicker. During the leadership campaign he said he wouldn't scrap plans for the new rail line linking London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. But he did express "anxieties about the business case". Then, last weekend, came reports the project's £56bn budget could balloon to as much as £85bn. Boris Johnson has already asked a former Chairman of HS2, to look at the scheme. Significant alterations would not be straightforward. However, it feels like the new prime minister will want to make his mark. Another project known as Northern Powerhouse Rail, which would see new and better rail lines linking cities in the north of England, got a clearer backing from Mr Johnson. And then there is Heathrow. Boris Johnson once promised to lie-down in front of the bulldozers to stop a third runway being built at the airport. However his opposition has become muted. Mr Johnson, I'm told, will not try to scupper the scheme. Perhaps more immediate than big infrastructure projects is the transport everyday: how to sort the UK's charging infrastructure so more people buy electric cars; what reforms are needed to improve the railways. A government-commissioned review will report this autumn. Not surprisingly, the answer to many of these pressing demands is more money... Mr Johnson has his hands on three big policy levers almost immediately that could, in combination, reshape the economy. Firstly, our trading stance should change materially as a result of his Brexit approach. It detaches our total integration with the European economy, and appears to involve a closer relationship economically with the United States. If by 31 October he carries through his promise to leave, even without a deal, that change could be rather abrupt. Second, the approach on the public finances is about to change too. Tax, spending and borrowing plans - known as fiscal policy - will change. One former cabinet minister wooed by the Johnson team said the strategy was "spend, spend, spend". The tax cuts and spending pledges sprayed around the Conservative leadership campaign amounted to more than £30bn a year. In essence this dispenses with the idea of running a surplus. As spending will be higher, and taxes cut, planned deficits will rise. There is room for this, and interest rates paid on our national debts are still at historic lows. The risk of course is that a no-deal Brexit in combination with higher borrowing could cause problems. The Treasury will prepare a stimulus plan to help rescue impacted manufacturers and farmers, and perhaps consumers too. But this brings us on to the third lever - the Bank of England. Although traditionally independent on setting interest rates, or monetary policy, it is Mr Johnson's good fortune that his government will advise the Queen on the appointment of the bank's next governor, to replace Mark Carney. Some economists rather close to the new PM are in the mix. Inflation is on target. Rates could be cut further, and money created to flood the economy in the event of no deal. The bank could, as it has done repeatedly since the crisis, buy up the increased flow of government borrowing. There are other risks here. Mr Johnson's party has long decried the Opposition for its belief in a "magic money tree" - with the hurdles ahead he may well need to find his own smaller version - a magic money shrub.
A collection of ceramics from a museum in China has gone on show in the UK for the first time.
More than 300 pieces from the Zibo Ceramics Museum have been loaned to The Lightbox in Woking, Surrey. The display includes replica pieces of ancient ceramics including two terracotta warriors and vases from the Qin dynasty. David Hodge, the leader of Surrey County Council, said it was a privilege for Surrey to host the exhibition.
What do Jeremy Corbyn and George Osborne have in common? Yes, read that sentence again. They are not exactly fellow travellers. But, believe it or not, on conference platforms they made almost identical claims.
Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter The former chancellor, in 2015, claimed the Tories had created a "new centre ground", believing that after the crash, the case for reducing the country's debt, and shrinking the state, had been won. The Labour leader, who has been arguing all week for a much more statist society, today said that after the crash, the fabled centre ground has moved to the left, "certainly not where it was twenty or thirty years ago". His claim was "we are now the political mainstream". For many months this has been Team Corbyn's analysis. But it is their advance in June's election that has given them the confidence now to express it. For a leader who, for years, was on the fringes of his own party, it is quite something to behold. In this hall, in this city this week, he has proved beyond doubt that the vast majority of Labour members, the new influx, think he is right. But there are some nerves. Divisions in the party are much diminished, but have not completely disappeared. Jeremy Corbyn has changed - grown in stature. Labour has transformed under his leadership, energised by the hopes of his legions of supporters. Yet even inside this confident bubble there is an awareness that the leadership can't count on that vigour forever, nor rely on the excitement you can see and feel here being enough to send him to No 10. Just as George Osborne had hopes that his new centre ground would get him there, there are no guarantees.
In China, there is a growing rank of unmarried women who are choosing to freeze their eggs overseas. These women are educated, middle class and often opt for a single life. They are the hallmarks of fast-changing Chinese society. But Chinese laws have not caught up, as the BBC's Grace Tsoi reports.
The rise of "singledom" is a worldwide trend and China is no exception. China replaced its one-child policy with a universal two-child policy in 2015, but it is also witnessing the rise of a female workforce that wants to focus on their careers and postpone starting a family. An increasing number of Chinese women see egg freezing as a solution that could allow them to have it all. But the Chinese government forbids unmarried women from freezing their eggs, and there are still significant restrictions on fertility treatments. "I am not sure whether I want to have children. But I can afford the time and expense of egg freezing, so I want to give myself a choice in the future," said a 40-year-old woman living in Beijing , who only wanted to be known as ZZ. She froze her eggs in Los Angeles in January. The explosive growth of the Chinese economy has allowed urban Chinese women an entirely different life and income bracket from their mothers and grandmothers. They can craft a career of their choice, accumulate wealth and enjoy pleasures like international travel. This is the first generation to have such benefits and they are acutely aware of it and want to maximise it. "I can control everything in my life and I am happy with my independence." A marketing manager in a foreign company, ZZ is also a fine art aficionado with a passion for painting and movies. She keenly feels her right to enjoy such luxuries. For these women, egg freezing is a form of insurance. They may not necessarily use the stored eggs, but it gives them a shot at family life later down the line. Career advancement For the career-minded, egg freezing buys them time to pursue their professional goals. Jia, 26, doesn't have a boyfriend at the moment but she is planning to freeze her eggs in two or three years if she hasn't met Mr Right by then. "Even if I have a boyfriend, I won't get married until I am 30 or older." "Career is an important part of life," said Jia, who will be pursuing a PhD degree in the United States. "I need to make sure my income reaches a certain level…I hope that I will be teaching at universities [after obtaining my PhD]." Some Chinese women have their eggs frozen overseas to extend their fertility window, nursing the hope that they will meet and marry the right person in the future. Describing herself as traditional, Ms Zhang, 40, has longed for years to find a husband and start a family of her own. "It is difficult to find a suitable partner… Men are looking for younger women because they want to have children." She first froze her eggs in Taiwan two years ago, and she has undergone the procedure multiple times. Ms Zhang believes women now encounter more difficulties looking for a suitable husband. "China has undergone tremendous changes. After the Chinese economic reform [in 1978], it has led to great income disparity." "In the past, everyone had similar income and social status. My parents' generation did not need to buy houses because they would be allocated housing by the work units," Zhang said. "[So] they would not take factors like education level into consideration [when choosing a spouse]… Their social circles were smaller… and they were more parochial." She feels the ability to freeze her eggs has bought her some crucial time, but she could not have done this in China. Chinese women also face additional pressure from Chinese culture, where extending the bloodline is sometimes considered a moral responsibility. "By freezing my eggs, I can show my parents that I will eventually have children, just that I am focusing on other priorities now," Manman, a 31-year-old photography studio owner based in Beijing. Her eggs are now stored in Los Angeles. Choosing egg freezing over adoption says a lot about the rootedness of the concept of bloodline, even among Chinese women, according to Tiantian Chen, who studies egg freezing practices among Chinese women. It is difficult to estimate the number of Chinese women freezing their eggs overseas, but it is an active topic on social media. There is a WeChat group advising unmarried women how to have children through unconventional means including egg freezing. Fertility agencies and clinics have already sensed the market potential. "This is a growing business area," said Sammi Kwok, chief operations officer of Fertility & Surgical Associates of California. In recent years, about 25 Chinese women freeze their eggs at Fertility & Surgical Associates of California every year. Kwok added that the number rises annually. But egg freezing will remain a niche treatment because of its price tag. Although it is available in places like Taiwan and Cambodia, the US remains the destination of choice. Freezing one's eggs in the US costs about $15,000 (£11,400) to 20,000 (£16,000), excluding flights and accommodation. A storage fee is also needed. Single women excluded The availability of egg freezing technology remained unknown to the majority of the Chinese population until 2015, when A-list actress Xu Jinglei told the press that she had frozen her eggs in the US. Later, state broadcaster CCTV reported that single women were not allowed to freeze their eggs, causing uproar on social media. Under the regulation by China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, all assisted reproductive technology, including egg-freezing, cannot be used by single women. Even married women face a lot of restrictions if they want to freeze their eggs in China. According to Xinhua, hospitals will only store the eggs of married women under two circumstances: they are suffering from infertility and undergoing IVF treatment, or they are cancer patients before chemotherapy. Similar restrictions are not applied to men if they want to freeze their sperm. The regulation states that men are allowed to freeze their sperm as a form of "fertility insurance". It does not look at their marital status, or general health. Family planning policy "[Banning single women from freezing their eggs] has a lot to do with the family planning policy," said Chen Yaya, vice secretary of gender and development centre of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Marriage is a prerequisite to giving birth under China's family planning policy. In most provinces, one of the unmarried parents is obliged to pay a fine called social support fee - but in most cases the burden falls upon the mother; children born out of wedlock also face trouble obtaining "hukou", the household registration document. Women's rights activist Xiao Meili believes that part of the reason for the egg freezing ban on single women is to stop them from having children of their own. "There must be a man [in a family]. The policy is a clear indicator of patriarchy in China." Take back control Chinese women's bodies have been subjected to stringent strict control by the state ever since the birth control policy came in place in the 1970s. Even though such laws represent another form of state control over women's bodies, many of those who opted for egg freezing have a pragmatic attitude. "Not allowing single women freeze their eggs is [motivated by] archaic ideas, but I am not radical enough to stand up and oppose the regulation," ZZ said. "I managed [to freeze my eggs] using other ways. But I think the situation will change in the future."
If there's one thing West Africans don't want you messing with, it's their Jollof rice. Or at least that's how it seems from the online reaction to Jamie Oliver's recipe for the dish.
By BBC Trending What's popular and why Here's how to think about Jollof rice: it means to West African nations what paella means to the Spanish, what fish and chips means to Brits or what burritos mean to Mexicans. The traditional dish is made with tomatoes and spices and it's widely considered part of the heart and soul of the region. So when British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver published his own "interpretation" of the dish on his website, there was always the potential for controversy. His recipe was posted in June and went largely unnoticed for months - until this week. The reaction from Africans began with dozens of comments posted on the chef's website in the past week. The conversation then moved on to social media where it escalated. The Oliver recipe has attracted 4,500 comments, a large number of them seemingly from Africans - and many outraged at what they say are changes Oliver has made to the traditional recipe. In the past 24 hours Twitter joined the debate using hashtags like #jollofgate and #jollof. Oliver is known for his quick, simple dishes, but it seems that with his Jollof rice recipe his sin was trying too hard. He uses coriander, parsley and a lemon wedge, ingredients that users online say are not usually associated with the recipe. But what really offended them was the 600 grams of cherry tomatoes "on the vine". Jollof rice is popularly made from using a mix of blended, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and scotch bonnet. "This is the base," says Lohi, a Nigerian food blogger. "Jamie's recipe called for whole vegetables!" "People were surprised that this recipe was so much different from the original," says the author of the Motley Musings blog, which writes about how Africa is represented in popular culture. She warns that people in Africa take their traditional food very seriously, although Oliver does stress in his recipe that he's aware of and has considered the many traditional variations of the dish and has "come up with his own kind of rice". By creating this recipe Oliver has increased the exposure of the dish. Vera Kwakofi, from BBC Africa, says that's part of the problem: "The danger is that in five years his version will become the official one." The blogger behind Motley Musing agrees: "We have to ask ourselves who actually benefits from Jamie Oliver's 'appreciation' of Jollof rice. This doesn't necessarily translate into value for Africans. For so long, different African cultures have been appropriated without any direct benefit to Africans themselves, and people are particularly sensitive to this." This is not the first time social media users have targeted a Jollof recipe. Last June the supermarket chain Tesco removed its Jollof rice recipe from its website after complaints on Twitter said it had nothing to do with the real thing. A spokesperson for Jamie Oliver told BBC Trending: "Obviously there was no intention to offend anyone which is why the recipe printed on the Jamie Magazine website is described as 'Jamie's twist' on jollof rice." Reporting by Gabriela Torres You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending
A new bridge to replace a 245-year-old one destroyed by Storm Desmond has opened, restoring the link between two rural communities.
Bell Bridge at Sebergham collapsed into the River Caldew six weeks after being hit by the December 2015 storm. The £1.1m structure has been designed to withstand future floods and incorporates stone from the old bridge. It was opened by Councillor John Bell, Leader of Cumbria County Council. The Bell Bridge, named after a family from a nearby farm, was built in 1772 and was a Grade II-listed structure.
Margate's £17.5m art gallery Turner Contemporary opened in 2011 with hopes it would spearhead the regeneration of one of the most deprived parts of the UK. Since then the gallery has had several hit shows and is hosting this year's Turner Prize. But how much has it changed the surrounding town?
By Tanya GuptaBBC News Tracey Emin grew up in Margate in the 1970s, when the north Kent resort was still attracting crowds of holidaymakers to its "golden mile" of sand, jellied eels, buckets and spades and Kiss Me Quick hats. But by the 1980s the town had become a "no-go zone", she recalls. As visitors found other destinations abroad, Margate - like other seaside resorts - had fallen into sharp decline. At its lowest ebb, it was an unloved town of boarded-up shops, deserted trains, empty streets and derelict arcades. Its theme park had closed and it was home to some of the poorest communities in the country. Emin has never wavered in her passionate support for her hometown, believing in its beauty, its sunsets and skies. These famously also inspired the Romantic artist JMW Turner, after whom both the Turner Prize and the Turner Contemporary are named. The brand new glass-clad Turner Contemporary opened its doors eight years ago on the seafront site of a cottage where JMW Turner had stayed. Emin predicted visitors would discover a "different, edgy, sexy" town. Since those first visitors arrived, the town has undergone a transformation. The theme park Dreamland has reopened, the quaint streets of the Old Town have filled up with quirky cafes, stylish restaurants and vintage shops, and across the town, galleries, studios and cottage industries have opened. Rambling old houses have become desirable again and even the gardens have been smartened up. Now Margate makes the news for its hipsters, its London cool and celebrity residents, such as The Libertines frontman Pete Doherty. Figures show thousands of people visit the town each day. "Now there are new restaurants, there's a vintage theme park, there are thousands of people on the streets, people on the beaches, people on the harbour arm, people dancing, people swimming, the caves have reopened, the shell grotto has never had so many visitors, the trains are so busy you can't get a seat," says Emin. But despite the success questions remain whether Margate's regeneration is skin deep. Dan Thompson, an artist, lives in the 1960s tower block Arlington House that overlooks the railway station and sees the crowds of visitors arriving in the town each day. He welcomes the "fancy galleries" but says Margate still has social problems that the gallery has not improved. "We've still got to make that real, deep lasting change," he says. Economic data bears this out. Latest figures issued last week by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government show the area around Turner Contemporary is still one of the 1% most deprived in the country. You may also be interested in: While this represents an improvement on the picture in 2010, when the area was among the UK's 0.3% most deprived it follows a five-year period after the gallery's opening in which there was no significant change. Others claim the gallery does not do enough to help struggling artists. Dr Jonathan Ward, who has researched the gallery's impact on the town, cites the story of a local artist as evidence. "She was putting on a show but she wasn't allowed to put her flyers for the show in Turner Contemporary because it would spoil their attractive and very thought-out, cool interior to have a row of flyers, so she went in the toilets and hid them there," he says. "There are clearly people in Margate doing work out of Turner Contemporary. One of the greatest things they're doing is the cafe is buying all fresh produce from a place up the road, so keeping some money in the local economy. "But I'm quite critical of Turner Contemporary because it's not done enough to support the local creative community." But Emin, who is now the Royal Academy's professor of drawing, strongly disagrees. She says the gallery's impact on Margate is proven by the footfall in the town and at the gallery. She also claims the gallery has led to more students studying GCSE and A-level art in the town. "That's the improvement people need," she says. "Many wanted more from the money that was spent without realising the real effects. I don't agree with that." In its first eight years, the gallery, under Victoria Pomery's directorship, has hosted big-name shows including Rodin's The Kiss and Emin's My Bed. Its latest coup came on Saturday when it unveiled the Turner Prize shortlist to the public. Nearly 10,000 people came through its doors over the weekend, making it the gallery's busiest autumn yet. In total it has received more than 3.3m visits since it opened in 2011 and in that time visitor numbers to Thanet - the council area Margate sits within - have risen by one million. The local authority says tourists cite the gallery and Dreamland as their main reasons for visiting. The area's economy has also grown by £89m since 2011 and the number of jobs has increased from 5,477 to 7,950. Some say the town's high-speed rail service, which since 2009 has made the town more attractive to London commuters, is responsible for much of this boom. But it seems indisputable that the gallery itself has had a positive impact on the town too. How much change has there been? Official deprivation figures released in September show the area of Margate around Turner Contemporary was among the most deprived 1% of neighbourhoods in England. As of 2019, it is the 139th most deprived out of more than 32,800 neighbourhoods, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) figures show. In 2010, it was 81st most deprived but it slipped further down the rankings in 2015 to 21st before its score changed again in the latest data. The adjoining neighbourhood, Cliftonville West, was the 117th most deprived in England, an improvement on being ranked fourth most deprived in 2015, but still well within the 1% most deprived. In 2010 it was England's 33rd most deprived neighbourhood. Rankings for deprivation are based on a combination of factors including income, employment, education, skills and training, health and disability, crime, housing and living environment. Source: MHCLG Dr Andrew Jackson, an expert in advertising, marketing and arts management, says research has shown half the people who visit Margate would not do so if the gallery was not there. Local businesses even see a downturn when the gallery is between exhibitions, he adds. Dr Jackson, who acts as a consultant to the gallery, says: "That's a really clear indication their success depends on the gallery and its funding." Kate Kneale, a designer who left London and moved to Marine Studios in Margate in 2009, has seen it all happen. She remembers how the gallery opened in a "broken, challenged" town but said the gallery had "played its part in spades" in the town's success. The town has also seen a passion for art sweep through its schools, according to Katie Green, at Ramsgate's Harbour Academy. She said students were more openly talking about art, were more engaged in lessons and wanted to do art in their spare time. Year 7 and Year 9 pupils are also currently engaged in projects based at the gallery. Meanwhile, the Margate Art School is launching its master of fine arts degree in October and attributes its uptake to the gallery's reputation and profile. Director Uwe Derksen said: "Turner helps the atmosphere. It helps to have the Turner Prize, it's an uplift. People think 'this is a place where I want to study'." Emin herself is now based in a studio in her hometown following a career that has taken her across the globe. She insists: "Margate hasn't had a boom like this for 40 years and I do attribute it to the gallery, 100%. "This is because of art. This is only a good thing." 'Highest honour' The Turner Prize is an annual award given to a visual artist born in or based in Britain. It is considered the British art world's highest honour. It was established in 1984 to promote new developments in contemporary art and often brings fierce debate about artists and the definition of art. The exhibition used to be held in London but now alternates yearly between Tate Britain and a gallery outside the capital. In the 1990s, artists including Damien Hirst and Emin sparked controversy for the provocative, often conceptually-driven works they showcased. The winner of the Turner Prize receives £25,000, with the three other short-listed candidates receiving £5,000 each.
Bar terraces are filling up with red-skinned holidaymakers ready for a drink after a day on a beach. Daylight is giving way to neon signs. Laughter mingles with summer hits. Cocktail bars in Portugal's tourist hotspot, the Algarve, are just warming up for a busy night. But their managers are struggling to find staff - in a country where unemployment has just hit a record high of 18%.
By Mira GalanovaThe Algarve "Almost everybody is looking for people to work," a young manager of the Piccadilly bar, Joao Carvalho says. On a window, a notice in Portuguese and English indicates he is looking for waiters and bartenders. In the Algarve, where unemployment is higher than elsewhere in Portugal, bars, together with restaurants and hotels, provide one out of every six jobs. But long working hours, often from six in the evening to four in the morning, six days a week, put job-seekers off bar jobs. "They want to work in hotels, have two days off, good salaries," says a tired-looking Rui Carvalho, the manager of the Second bar. For weeks, he has been trying to make up for missing staff. What about those who fail to get hotel jobs? "Some people prefer to live on benefits rather than working," says Jorge Sa of the JC bar. Still substantial After all the austerity measures in crisis-hit Portugal, unemployment benefits are still quite generous. At 65% of the pre-unemployment wage, jobseekers get between 419 and 1,048 euros (approx £355-£888; $549; $1,374) a month for the first half-year and 10% less afterwards. People in their 20s and 30s - the age typical of bar staff - can receive the benefits for some 12 months, if they have worked for just a couple of years. They form a significant part of the Algarve's unemployed. One in four of the 25- to 34-year olds was without a job in March, according to Portugal's statistics institute. Not all of them are on benefits. "Young people live too long in their parents' homes and have no need to get a job," says Lourenco Vicente of the Meet bar. Similar claims come from others, not only bar managers. So are the Portuguese in the Algarve really happier jobless than working? Experts say it is not that simple. "The situation in Portugal is too tough to believe that people have free choice between work and unemployment," says Portuguese economist Jose Reis. Seasonal On a hot June morning, the door at one of the Algarve's job centres is very much open for business. Many of those coming in "are willing to accept jobs they wouldn't have a few years ago", says Carlos Baia, the regional director of Portugal's employment agency. However, jobseekers who have a choice are cautious about the job they take. "They don't want work for just six months," says Rui Carvalho. Tourist season in the Algarve ends in October. Few bars stay open and keep their staff all year round. Many are left to survive the winter without a job and with no right to any financial help from the state. Only the jobless who have worked for at least 12 months during the last two years qualify for unemployment benefits, leaving out all those who worked their first season. The prospect of long months without a job greatly reduces the appeal of otherwise good salaries that bars offer. This has shrunk even more after a recent rise in income tax. "I'm earning 100 euros less than last year," says Daniel Napier, a daytime waiter. He is planning to get a job in the UK during the winter. "Then I'll come back and work another season here," he says. "In Portugal it is like this." Eyes east To encourage employers to keep their employees on over the winter, the government has offered to pay half of the wages. "During the low season we give training to the workers so that they improve their skills and do their job better the next summer," says Mr Baia of the employment agency. The programme under which this is happening was launched too late to make any significant impact last year. Whether it will interest small bar owners is uncertain. "Bosses don't want to keep the staff," says Mr Vicente. "Nobody wants to promise anything, because you don't know what will happen next year." Managers are impatiently waiting for the end of the school year, when students from other parts of Portugal and abroad come to work during the summer. "Last year I had staff from Denmark, Holland, two years ago from Norway," says Mr Vicente. Bar jobs, shunned by Portuguese, are attracting jobseekers from neighbouring Spain, where unemployment is at 27%. But managers' new darlings are immigrants from eastern Europe. Ukrainians, Romanians and Moldovans form a big chunk of the Algarve's foreign community. They do not shy away from any kind of employment. "Maybe they don't like it, but they can do the job," Mr Vicente says. "They have come here to work, not to have fun."
In my work as a journalist I am lucky enough to meet some brilliant people and learn about exciting advances in technology - along with a few duds. But every now and then I come across something that resonates in a deeply personal way.
Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent@BBCRoryCJon Twitter So it was in October 2018, when I visited a company called Medopad, based high up in London's Millbank Tower. This medical technology firm was working with the Chinese tech giant Tencent on a project to use artificial intelligence to diagnose Parkinson's Disease. This degenerative condition affects something like 10 million people worldwide. It has a whole range of symptoms and is pretty difficult to diagnose and then monitor as it progresses. Medopad's work involves monitoring patients via a smartphone app and wearable devices. It then uses a machine learning system to spot patterns in the data rather than trying to identify them by human analysis. In its offices we found one of its staff being filmed as he rapidly opened and closed his fingers - stiffness in these kind of movements is one of the symptoms of Parkinson's. As we filmed him being filmed, I stood there wondering whether I should step in front of the camera and try the same exercise. For some months, I had been dragging my right foot as I walked and experiencing a slight tremor in my right hand. Getting to grips I had first dismissed this as just part of getting older, but had eventually gone to see my GP. She had referred me to a consultant neurologist, but at the time of filming I was still waiting for my appointment. As we left Medopad, I clenched and unclenched my fingers in the lift and reflected on what I had seen. A few days later my coverage of the project appeared on the BBC website. Three months on, in January this year, I finally met the consultant. She confirmed what I had long suspected - I was probably suffering from idiopathic Parkinson's Disease. The "idiopathic" means the cause is unknown. As I got to grips with the condition and started a course of medication, I quickly found out that there are all sorts of unknowns for people with Parkinson's. Why did I get it? How quickly will the various symptoms develop? What are the hopes of a cure? There are no reliable answers. My response has been to take a great interest in how the technology and pharmaceutical industries are investigating the condition. Developments in artificial intelligence, coupled with the availability of smartphones, are opening up new possibilities, and this week I returned to Medopad to see how far it had progressed. I asked the firm's chief executive, Dan Vahdat, whether he had noticed anything that suggested I might have a special interest in Parkinson's when I first visited. "I don't think we noticed anything specifically," he said. "But - and that's weird for me to tell you this - I had this intuition that I wanted to get you to do the test." That, of course, did not happen but over the last year there has been a clinical trial involving London's King's College Hospital. People with Parkinson's have been given a smartphone app, which their relatives use to record not just that hand-clenching exercise but other aspects of the way they move. "We think this technology can help to quantify the disease," Dan explained. No instant impact "And if you can quantify the disease, it means you can see how the disease progresses. "It gives you lots of opportunities, in terms of treatment adjustments, interventions at the right time, potentially screening a larger cohort of patients with the technology in ways that were not possible before." This made me think about my own situation. Since February, I have been prescribed Sinemet - one of the most common Parkinson's drugs - in the form of two tablets taken three times a day. While some patients see an instant impact, I cannot say I notice much effect. If anything my main symptom, dragging my right foot, has got slightly worse. When I see my consultant every four months we discuss whether the prescription should be adjusted, but it is difficult for me to quantify my symptoms. Dan told me this was exactly the kind of scenario they are trying to address. "We think you will end up having a more continuous observation via machine and the doctors can look at it remotely. And with that they will be able to adjust your treatment, if needed, because potentially right now you're either overdosing or underdosing." I am now going to get access to the trial app and look forward to finding out what it says about me. This is just one of many projects run by a variety of companies where real-time data is collected from people with Parkinson's and other conditions via their handsets. The search for a cure to Parkinson's goes on. We appear to be a long way off, but in the meantime quantifying a condition like mine could do a lot to improve how I and many others cope with the symptoms. What is exciting to me is that the smartphone revolution, which I have documented since watching Steve Jobs unveil the iPhone in 2007, now promises to change healthcare just as it has transformed many other aspects of our lives. And I hope to continue reporting on that revolution for many more years.
The decision by the MQM party to pull out of the ruling coalition leaves the government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani short of a majority in the parliament by over a dozen votes, as the numbers appear at the moment.
By M Ilyas KhanBBC News, Islamabad But few expect the government to collapse immediately. There are several reasons for this. For one, the shortfall is too thin and there may be smaller groups and independents who would be willing to step in to bridge the gap. Besides, Prime Minister Gilani would be in trouble only if President Asif Ali Zardari asks him to prove his majority. If he chooses not to do that, which for many is a likelihood, the prime minister is not under any legal obligation to call for a vote of confidence. The onus will then be on the opposition to call for a no-confidence move against the prime minister. In this case, it will be the opposition, not the government, which will have to prove its majority. If the MQM joins the opposition in such a vote, all the opposition parties combined can muster up to 174 votes, which is two more than the votes needed to unseat the government. Populist rhetoric But the opposition is not likely to go for this option. The smaller groups are too fractious to jointly vote in a no-confidence move, and the largest opposition party, the PML-N, is not willing to step into the prime minister's office for two reasons. It will have to depend for support on the same groups that have deserted Mr Gilani's government, and it will be stepping in at a time when the country's economic and security challenges require unpopular decisions. The two coalition partners who quit Mr Gilani's government are themselves not likely to push things decisively beyond populist rhetoric. The reason is that while they have left the central government, they have stopped short of abandoning two provincial governments in which they are junior partners of Mr Gilani's PPP party. The Islamist JUI-F party, which walked out of the central alliance in early December, continues to be a part of the provincial cabinet in Balochistan province, while the MQM remains a partner in Sindh province.
Works by artists Francis Bacon and Tracey Emin are going on show in a new exhibition which looks at issues around sexuality.
Coming Out marks 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act 1967 partially decriminalised male homosexual acts. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery's exhibition looks at how the artists explore themes of gender and identity. A standout artwork is Grayson Perry's "Claire's Coming Out Dress", a spokesman said. He wore the dress to mark his emergence as a transvestite to the art world. The exhibition runs from Saturday with comedian Joe Lycett performing the official opening. It continues throughout December and also includes work by Vanley Burke, Gillian Wearing and Andy Warhol. Related Internet Links Museum & Art Gallery - Birmingham Museums
Best known for drawing a crooked-toothed monster that meets a mouse in the woods, Axel Scheffler has used his distinctive illustrative talents to create the 2012 set of Royal Mail Christmas stamps.
Here, take a look at how his humorous style, which helped make Julia Donaldson's Gruffalo books so successful, will adorn the corners of millions of envelopes this festive season. Click bottom right for image information. All images subject to copyright. Artwork by Axel Scheffler. Music by Focus Music and Bing Crosby. Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Publication date 13 December 2012. Related: Room on the Broom - BBC One Christmas Day Axel Scheffler at children's publisher Nosy Crow The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites. More audio slideshows: Skyscrapers - past, present and future Ansel Adams and American nature A 23-year, 500,000-mile drive You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook
The senior lawyer who represented the Trump Organisation during its battle to build its golf resort in Aberdeenshire is to leave the company.
George Sorial was often the spokesman for Donald Trump during controversy surrounding plans for the course at the Menie estate. Mr Sorial confirmed to BBC Scotland he was leaving. He will instead promote a book about Mr Trump which he co-authored with former Aberdeen journalist Damian Bates. President Trump opened his controversial but widely-acclaimed golf course on the Menie estate in 2012. It was approved in 2008 by the Scottish government, after being rejected by councillors in 2007.
When the younger brother of the BBC's Ruona Meyer became addicted to cough syrup, she began to investigate the men who make and sell opioid-based medicine on the streets of Lagos. Her investigation took her deep into Nigeria's criminal underworld, uncovering an epidemic that is destroying young lives across West Africa.
"Where there are lots of school kids, as soon as they get a taste for it, they'll keep pestering you for more," says Junaid Hassan. When I heard him say these words I felt sick to my stomach. I had already witnessed what he described - young Nigerians hooked on cough syrup made with codeine, an opioid which can be addictive. A 14-year-old girl from my home city of Lagos, her parents distressed and unsure how to help her. A young man in Kano, chained to the floor of a rehab centre, swarming with flies, driven mad by months of drinking syrup with his friends. My own brother has suffered from codeine cough syrup addiction. The strawberry tasting opioid hooked him after our father was killed. Grief, depression, a desire to be cool are just some of the reasons Nigerians are falling for this drug. Musicians sing about the high it gives you. Dealers peddle it in nightclubs and on the streets. Teenagers mix it with soft drinks, or swig it straight from the bottle at "syrup parties". Mr Hussan, aka Baba Ibeji, works at Bioraj Pharmaceuticals, a licensed medical producer which manufactures a codeine cough syrup called Biolin. The company is a major supplier to northern Nigeria. He is one of a number of pharmaceutical company employees who the BBC have secretly filmed doing illegal cough syrup deals over the past few months. It is not illegal to drink or manufacture the medicine - but it is against the law to sell it to people without a doctor's prescription or those who don't have a pharmaceutical licence. "Even if someone wants to buy 1,000 cartons, we won't give them a receipt," Mr Hassan told us, explaining how he avoids detection from authorities. Corruption like this is against Bioraj company policy, but is helping to fuel the industrial quantities of syrup leaking on to the black market. When we informed Bioraj that we had evidence Mr Hassan was engaging in this illicit activity, it responded with a statement saying the company only sells codeine cough syrup legitimately, that Mr Hassan denies wrongdoing, and that company chairman Bioku Rahamon personally guards Biolin sales. Like all opioids, codeine is in the same chemical family as heroin. It's an effective painkiller, but is also capable of giving you a euphoric high if consumed in large quantities. It is highly addictive and, taken in excess, can have a devastating impact on the mind and body. In the Dorayi Rehabilitation Centre in Kano, I met a man said by staff to have been driven insane by the drug. He was shackled at the ankles and chained to the roots of a tree, screaming and thrashing his arms. Seventy-two hours earlier he had been out on the streets, breaking car windows in traffic. "He's still going through his withdrawal issues now," said Sani Usaini, the officer in charge of the rehab centre. Codeine cough syrup - the scale of the problem In addition to kidney damage and seizures, serious abuse of codeine cough syrup can trigger mental psychosis - delusions, hallucinations, and even schizophrenia. Many of the syrup addicts in the rehab centre can become so violent that staff chain them to the floor. "He can't be in a bed because he has broken the bed, he has broken the windows and hurt himself," Mr Usaini told me, as I stood in front of another shackled young man. The air hung with a faint smell of faeces and the hum of flies. "Plenty of parents come here to cry." Pharmaceutical company employees who illegally sell syrup on to the black market know just how addictive codeine can be. Among them is Chukwunonye Madubuike, a business development executive with Emzor pharmaceuticals, which illegally sold us 60 bottles of codeine syrup in a hotel room deal in Lagos. "When somebody is addicted to something - you get me? - and he needs it, the price I don't think is an issue on this," he told us. "This is a product that I know that if I have one million cartons, I can sell it in a week." Emzor Pharmaceuticals told us that it is now investigating Mr Madubuike, adding he has access to a very limited amount of Emzolyn with codeine and could not sell large quantities illegally. The company says it is a responsible and compliant business, is reviewing its distribution policies, and treating our findings with the utmost seriousness. 'It crosses all class' In Kano, northern Nigeria, the drug enforcement agency (NDLEA) regularly leads raids to seize and destroy codeine syrup destined for street sale. Officers showed us over two tonnes of syrup - Bioraj's Biolin with codeine - that had been seized by Swat teams. They also showed us weapons criminal drug gangs use to protect their business, including knives, swords, and even a chainsaw that had been used to attack an NDLEA officer. But the NDLEA in Kano, by its own admission, is struggling to cope with the sheer scale of the syrup epidemic. The Nigerian Senate estimates that as many as three million bottles of codeine syrup are drunk every single day in just two states, Kano and Jigawa. "We may not even arrest 10% [of cough syrup on the market]," said Commander Hamza Umar of the NDLEA in Kano. "It crosses all class, no matter the level - rich and poor, educated and illiterate, a beggar and a toddler." Back in the rehab centre, Mr Usaini measures the scale of the epidemic by the number of young syrup addicts who are brought into his care. He used to see perhaps two or three cases each week, but "now we see seven, eight, sometimes even 10 within a week… Any child that you see they're bringing here as a drug addict? It's codeine." In a windowless room, still shaking after two months of withdrawal, we found one of those children - a 16-year-old girl in a pink hijab who told us that she used to get syrup from her boyfriend and drink it after school. She had a simple message for other young Nigerians tempted by the syrup craze: "I would advise them not to go into it if they haven't already. If they do, it will ruin their lives." This is the first report from BBC Africa's new investigations unit, Africa Eye.
Sean Penn is one of the more colourful Hollywood stars of recent decades, emerging from his early incarnation as a hard-drinking young Hollywood actor to become a double Oscar winner and high-profile campaigner on social and political issues.
The 55-year-old's secret interview in the Mexican jungle with fugitive Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, published in Rolling Stone shortly after the notorious drug lord was recaptured, is just his latest brush with controversy. Penn was a noted critic of the administration of President George W Bush, visiting Baghdad ahead of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq which he firmly opposed. He also met Washington betes noires like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Raul Castro. Meanwhile, his personal life - involving marriages and relationships with high-profile women including Madonna, Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron - has become the stuff of tabloid legend. Born in 1960 in Los Angeles, the son of actor and director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan, Sean was one of three brothers. Childhood friends included Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen, both of whom would also go on to become successful actors. Appearances on US TV in his early teenage years - the first a cameo in the popular western series Little House on the Prairie - started his acting career, which took off after his central role in the 1983 film Bad Boys, a crime drama mostly set in a juvenile detention centre. The 1980s also saw him marry Madonna, then as now one of the best-known pop singers on the planet. Their supposedly private wedding on a Malibu clifftop was an occasion that saw several media organisations deploy helicopters that buzzed the ceremony in an attempt to film and photograph the happy couple. The often tempestuous marriage, characterised by frequent rows and Penn's fraught relationship with press photographers and cameramen, lasted four years and saw the couple star together in the 1986 film Shanghai Surprise - a widely derided box office flop. Penn's next serious relationship was with actress Robin Wright, with whom he went on to have two children and a 14-year marriage. It was eventually dissolved after several withdrawn divorce petitions by both parties. Despite once being quoted as describing awards seasons as times "where manipulation and very good marketing are rewarded", Penn has been nominated five times as best actor in the Academy Awards, initially in 1996 for his role as a racist murderer on death row in Dead Man Walking. He has won the Oscar twice, in 2003 for his role as an ex-convict Boston shopkeeper in Mystic River and in 2008 for his portrayal of a gay rights activist and politician in Milk, a performance that led director Gus Van Sant to describe him as "the Brando of our generation". He has also worked extensively behind the camera, directing both films and music videos for singers including Shania Twain. Penn on meeting Guzman: "I search the skies for helicopters. There is no question in my mind but that the DEA [US Drug Enforcement Agency] and the Mexican government are tracking our movements." "He is interested in the movie business and how it works. He's unimpressed with its financial yield... He suggests to us that we consider switching our career paths to the oil business." "I will discover that his already accomplished engineers had been flown to Germany last year for three months of extensive additional training necessary to deal with the low-lying water table beneath the prison. A tunnel equipped with a pipe-track-guided motorcycle with an engine modified to function in the minimally oxygenised space, allowing El Chapo to drop through a hole in his cell's shower floor, into its saddle and ride to freedom." Winning an Oscar for playing Harvey Milk - the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California - gave Penn a platform to voice support for gay marriage, but he had already tied his colours to the liberal mast with his vocal opposition to the policies of the Bush administration, in particular the invasion of Iraq. He visited Baghdad to express solidarity with the Iraqi people a few months ahead of the US-led invasion. "Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented pre-emptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine," he said at the time. He also developed a friendly relationship with Venezuela's socialist President Chavez, another staunch critic of President Bush, and - in a foretaste of his Guzman interview - was allowed to question Cuban leader Raul Castro in the run-up to the 2008 US presidential election that foreshadowed a softening of US policy towards the communist island. But Penn has also become known for his humanitarian work, including during the chaotic aftermath of the hugely destructive earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010. The actor spent time in Haiti, helping to dispense food and medicine and even reportedly sweeping floors. He went on to found the J/P Haitian Relief Organization, which employs hundreds of people working on development projects in the poor Caribbean nation. Broken engagement Five years before and closer to home, Penn got involved in the rescue effort after Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the US Gulf Coast. "Displaying a mix of bravado, altruism and daredevil recklessness, he repeatedly swam over to trapped homeowners to take them to higher and drier ground," Vanity Fair reported. More recently, Penn has enjoyed romantic relationships with actresses Scarlett Johansson and Charlize Theron, the latter ending abruptly last year when Theron reportedly broke off their engagement. Despite having divorced more than a quarter of a century ago, Penn and his first wife remain close. As news of his interview with Guzman broke, Madonna accompanied Penn to a benefit concert in Beverly Hills for his Haiti charity, where she was one of the acts performing. At the event Penn spoke passionately about his charity's work in Haiti. "We can't depend on governments," he said. "We have to make it better now." But Republican senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio was more interested in Penn's interview with the Mexican drug lord. "If one of these American actors who have benefited from the greatness of this country, who have made money from our free enterprise system, want to go fawn all over a criminal and a drug trafficker in their interviews, they have a constitutional right to do it," he told ABC News. "I find it grotesque."
A statue of a Sikh soldier has been unveiled in a West Yorkshire park to commemorate the thousands of Sikhs who fought and died in World War One and Two.
The £65,000 Indian bronze statue was revealed at Greenhead Park, Huddersfield. Donations have helped pay for the 6ft-high (1.8m) monument, the Sikh Soldier Organisation said. Huddersfield was chosen because of its "vibrant" Sikh community, it added. Kalvinder Bhullar, of the Sikh Soldier Organisation, said: "It is a stunning sculpture and an emotional piece. "We've accomplished our mission to get the statue put in place. The support has been overwhelming." More than 83,000 Sikhs were killed and many more wounded during World War One and World War Two, the organisation added. More stories from Yorkshire Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].
A masterplan is being drawn up to try to exploit unused land in the shadow of Wrexham's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct world heritage site to attract more visitors and boost economic prospects.
Chemical firm Solutia UK, which owns 59 hectares (147 acres) of nearby land, such as brownfield sites and woodland, is holding a consultation with the charity looking after Llangollen Canal. The Canal & River Trust said ideas put forward included a new visitor centre. A public consultation is now under way. The draft plan will then be published in November. The aqueduct and canal attracts about 300,000 visitors a year but has "potential to bring more jobs and economic prosperity to the area," according to a trust spokesman. Pontcysyllte Aqueduct was constructed under the instruction of Thomas Telford between 1796 and 1805.
On Tuesday, the Vote Leave campaign published the Department of Health figures, which show that the UK pays an average of £773m a year to other EU countries for the medical treatment of UK nationals, while it receives only £51m a year back for treating EU nationals here.
By Tamara KovacevicBBC News The campaign concluded that "health tourism from the EU has cost us billions". This is not the case, because the figures show the amount the UK pays for having its citizens treated elsewhere in the EU, and is not the amount the UK spends treating the citizens of other EU countries. But is the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign right when it says that ending the current system would force UK holidaymakers to pay the full cost of medical treatment when they fall ill or suffer an accident in an EU country? Would it leave them with a bill of £773m a year? Treating UK holidaymakers when they get sick or have an accident in another EU country is only one part of the average figure of £773m a year. The sum also includes the cost of medical care for UK pensioners who live in another EU country, and the cost of treatments that the NHS funds for UK patients in other EU countries. Citizens of all EU countries can get the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), which entitles them to state-provided emergency medical treatment within the EU country they are visiting. The treatment received is identical to the treatment the nationals of that country get. The EU country that provided the treatment can claim the cost of it from the home country of the patient. The EHIC covers Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein as well, even though they are not EU members. The average annual figure of £773m also includes the money the UK pays to other EU countries for providing healthcare to UK pensioners who have retired there. Under EU rules, each country is required to reimburse the healthcare costs of its pensioners residing in other EU countries. UK pensioners receive an S1 form when they leave the UK, which they then register with the local health authority in the EU country where they end up. The host EU country will provide them with healthcare that is identical to the provision that local pensioners receive, and can then ask the UK to reimburse the cost of the care provided. Reciprocal deals There are a few other categories of citizens who may be entitled to an S1 form. Workers paying National Insurance contributions in the UK but working temporarily in another EU country would have their healthcare costs reimbursed by the UK. The UK does not pay for the healthcare of UK citizens who retire to other EU countries before they reach retirement age, nor for those who worked and lived in the EU country where they retired and have therefore qualified for the pension of that country as well. Would British holidaymakers have to pay for emergency medical treatment if the UK left the EU? That would not necessarily have to be the case. The UK already has reciprocal deals with a number of countries, including Australia and New Zealand, under which visitors can receive free urgent treatment. It could agree similar deals with EU countries. The situation becomes more complicated with the other healthcare rights of UK citizens in the EU, but the final outcome would depend on the post-Brexit deal negotiated. Reality Check verdict: Not necessarily as the UK could agree reciprocal deals on emergency healthcare like the ones it already has with a number of non-EU countries around the world. READ MORE: The facts behind claims in the EU debate
A driver died after his car was in collision with a lorry in Shropshire.
The man, aged in his 30s, was in a Vauxhall Astra which crashed with the lorry in Telford, at about 11:10 GMT on Sunday. An off-duty nurse gave him first aid until paramedics arrived at the scene on Wellington Road, near Donnington, West Midlands Ambulance Service said. Witnesses are being asked to contact West Mercia Police on 101.
The future of Hay Castle in Powys has been secured following a £4.46m lottery grant.
The medieval castle ruins and its Grade I listed mansion in Hay-on-Wye will be restored and the ancient gate reopened. When the project is complete, it will be the first time the castle has opened to the public in its 800-year history. The Hay Castle Trust has also raised £1m towards the project. It is hoped work will begin in 2017 if a further £900,000 can be raised.
Australian and New Zealand scientists have launched a strategy to locate and preserve a hidden world of undiscovered species. They argue that increased research could bring about profound scientific benefits, but that time is running out, as the BBC's Phil Mercer reports from Sydney.
It is estimated there may be as many as 400,000 as-yet unknown animals, plants, fungi, microbes and other organisms in Australia. That comprises about 70% of all species across the vast continent, according to government and scientist estimates. Around 2,500 species are found and classified each year, including in recent times a rare horse fly (Scaptia beyonceae) with a golden bottom, and a tropical tree snail (Crikey steveirwini), both from northern Queensland. Taxonomists and biosystematists - the researchers who painstakingly find, identify and categorise organisms - have been naming all manner of creatures since the 18th Century. Often they have ascribed the names of the rich and famous, such as Beyonce and, as with that snail, Steve Irwin, partly to raise money and to attract attention to their often unheralded work. Mega-diverse environment Australia is rare among developed countries because it is described as mega-diverse, but experts warn that biodiversity is under threat from extinctions and environmental upheaval. The Australian Academy of Science and New Zealand's Royal Society Te Apārangi have called for a new plan to register hundreds of thousands of unknown species in both countries. "Exploring and discovering life on Earth has got to be one of the grand scientific challenges of our time," explains Dr Kevin Thiele, a plant taxonomist who is in charge of the Australian academy's expert working group on taxonomy and biosystematics. Dr Thiele says it would take current methods up to 400 years to discover and classify everything in Australia's animal and plant kingdoms, much of which are hidden. He would like the job to be finished by 2050, with the help of advanced technology. According to Dr Thiele, this should include the scanning of organisms' genomes, the study of DNA in soil and water samples to understand what lives there, and the use of supercomputers and 3D imaging. "What we would like to achieve is to really the change the fabric of taxonomy into what we could call hyper-taxonomy," he tells the BBC. Potential for discovery The possible benefits, Dr Thiele says, are immense. Australia's native species and agriculture could be protected from pests and pathogens, and, critically, there's the potential for new drugs and breakthroughs in the treatment of mosquito-borne diseases. Sea sponges found in Australia are often rich in compounds that form the basis for antibiotics. "Every species is a potentially critical discovery for the welfare of human beings," Dr Thiele adds. "Any species of those 400,000 could have the life-saving drug that we'll be developing in the future that will help us to deal with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, say. And every species that goes extinct, or that remains out there but we don't discover, is potentially an opportunity lost." It is estimated that 200 species of mosquitoes native to Australia have yet to be named or studied, and some could be carrying serious infections. Dr Thiele cites the Zika virus as a previous example. "It came out when a virus that was previously circulating between mosquitoes and animals jumped into humans and suddenly created problems," he says. "So any of these native mosquitoes may have similar types of diseases associated with them. Unless we document them, we will be behind the eight ball if one of those diseases suddenly jumps out and starts threatening people." Extinction threat But is there the political will? Australian government spending on the environment has decreased by a third since 2013, according to a submission to the Department of the Treasury in December. However, the government has consistently said it is committed to protecting the environment. Among its evidence, it has pointed to funding of programmes including a national threatened species strategy, and conservation efforts for the Great Barrier Reef. Jess Abrahams, a nature campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, says he is optimistic but believes that attitudes must change. "Australia has an unenviable record of having more mammal extinctions than any other nation," he says. "We have lost 27 mammals since colonisation and we have nearly 700 animals on the threatened species list. This is a national disgrace and Australia is in the midst of an extinction crisis, and that is just the species we know about." But he adds: "I am hopeful for the future because Australians love the bush and the wildlife, and I do honestly believe that future Australian governments will rise to the challenge of protecting nature." The ambitious trans-Tasman taxonomy strategy, launched on Friday, includes an endorsement by Sir David Attenborough, who has lent his name to several Australian animals and plants - such as a millimetre-long spider known as Prethopalpus attenboroughi. The British naturalist has lamented that funding for discovering and listing species was declining. "This has serious consequences for the future of life on Earth," he wrote.
The British seaside has always been an environment that draws photographers to it and Margate in Kent is well known for its traditional donkey rides alongside more recent attractions, including the Turner Contemporary art gallery. Yet for those who remember sampling its delights in the past, it was the amusement park Dreamland that drew the crowds.
Phil CoomesPicture editor Dreamland was one of the country's oldest amusement parks; at one time, the 16-acre site held a zoo and miniature railway, a cinema, cafes, restaurants, bars, shops and a 2,000-capacity ballroom, not forgetting that in later years it was home to Europe's largest big wheel. Of course it evolved through the years. The site I remember from the 1970s was no doubt very different from that of the 1920s and the much smaller site that operated in the late 1990s. As tastes changed and Margate, like many other seaside resorts, fell on hard times, the site finally closed in 2003 and sank into disrepair. Yet now there are plans to see it rise once more, to bring back the wooden Grade II* listed scenic railway ride which was damaged in an arson attack in 2008. It's a ride that may not have the speed and gravity-defying plunges that many of today's fairs offer, but instead provides a link to the past, and the sounds of the cars on the wooden rails is one to savour. In addition to that, the Dreamland Trust is gathering historical rides from other fairgrounds around the UK, working in partnership with Thanet District Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund, as well as Hemingway Design. This process of restoration is being documented by photographer Rob Ball, who, since January, has been creating ferrotypes, also known as tintypes, of the existing site. The ferrotype process was established around the same time the site on which Dreamland stands became an entertainment venue in the 1860s, with the first amusement rides arriving 20 or so years later. Each time Ball shoots, he creates a darkroom on site, ensuring the photographic plates are both created and developed in the location itself. The ferrotype process is quick, at least in comparison to other processes of that time, and was a favourite of while-you-wait photographers of the 19th Century. You can find out more and watch a video of the ferrotype process on the blog of the National Media Museum. Ball has also taken some pictures in colour and is planning to continue the project as the new site takes shape. The Dreamland Visitor and Learning Arcade is planning to open over the spring bank holiday and details will be announced on its website. Rob Ball will be there on 26 May to photograph the motorcyclists who are taking part in the annual drive from the Ace Cafe in London to Margate, this year marking the 50th anniversary of clashes between mods and rockers in 1964, an event dubbed "gang warfare" and the "battle of the beaches". You can follow progress of Rob Ball's work on the Dreamland site. For those interested, the South East Archive of Seaside Photography is well worth a look. Rob Ball is the deputy director. In pictures: Dreamland
Yves Saint Laurent became head of one of the world's great fashion houses aged 21. Until his death half a century later in 2008, he was one of fashion's dominant figures. This year sees the release of two feature films about his tumultuous professional and private life. The first opens this week in the UK.
By Vincent DowdArts Correspondent, BBC World Service Earlier masters of Parisian couture such as Christian Dior or Cristobal Balenciaga shaped fashion around the world. But until Yves Saint Laurent, no designer found such personal fame with the public. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a regular in gossip columns, photographed endlessly with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Andy Warhol and the most gorgeous models of the day. Born in colonial Algeria in 1936, Saint Laurent became an extraordinary prodigy. Always obsessed with fashion, as a painfully shy teenager he moved to Paris to work for Dior. Three years later, Christian Dior died and Saint Laurent took over as artistic director at just 21. Many in the fashion world were astounded but it was clear a star had arrived. Pierre Niney takes the title role in the first of two rival biopics out this year. At 25, he is well-known in France, with an obvious talent for comedy. He's also a good physical match for Saint Laurent in his younger and more handsome days. "I did five months of preparation on his life and character," Niney says. "I met many of the people Yves knew. The centre of the film is his relationship with Pierre Berge, who was Yves' partner in business and in his private life. "I was lucky to sit down with Berge - who's now 83 - and discuss their life together. It was a privilege and a big help because mainly the film is their love story." The director of the film, simply titled Yves Saint Laurent, is Jalil Lespert, previously an actor in the likes of Tell No-One. He, too, was fascinated by the men's long friendship. "Saint Laurent always had a revolutionary vision for women's fashion - but fate gave him his moment very early and without Berge perhaps he would never have achieved so much. "To give a purpose to life there has to be someone you love and who loves you back - otherwise what in life makes sense? Yves needed Berge emotionally, although our screenplay is honest about the problems they had later on," he explains. "YSL's best designs had a purity to them: he was a sort of poet of fashion. But I also wanted people to see he was funny, at least with his intimate circle when I think his diffidence disappeared a little. "Of course it's good that Pierre Niney resembles Yves but the casting is also because I knew he would bring out that humour." Lisa Armstrong, fashion editor of the Daily Telegraph, says Yves Saint Laurent remains a major figure. "He had an innate talent but he was also very quick to grasp that in the 1960s, the so-called 'youthquake' was changing all kinds of culture - not just clothes. The French worried the centre of fashion was drifting north to London: YSL was vital in pulling it back to Paris. "And his partner, Pierre Berge, combined aesthetic insight with business sense - that's very rare." Armstrong says the film shows how they complemented one another, without quite finding a way to dramatise how Saint Laurent totally changed female fashion. "He gave us individual pieces like the famous 'smoking' tuxedo in 1966 and the safari look. After he split with the House of Dior, he and Berge moved fashion away from haute couture towards pret-a-porter. Armstrong says the designer "gave us the concept of cool on the catwalk, leaving behind the elegant but slightly old-fashioned look which dominated for years. His big idea was that women could be sexy, modern and emancipated by looking slightly androgynous. "Women don't think twice today about slinging on a boyfriend shirt or even boyfriend trousers - but we've forgotten that that Left Bank insouciance was basically down to Yves Saint Laurent. Putting a woman into an elegant trouser suit was a revolution. " The French actor Guillaume Gallienne plays Pierre Berge in the film. "He's much better known now than in the early years. Even in France, few people in the 1960s and 1970s would have known what he looked like, which obviously wasn't true with Yves." Berge has actively assisted in the making of Lespert's film - providing access to locations and designs - whereas he had no involvement with the other imminent biopic, starring Gaspard Ulliel and Jeremie Renier. Gallienne insists they didn't trade independence for cooperation. "Pierre Berge has always known how to recognise an artist. He saw it in Yves, in the fabulous artists they collected together and he saw it with Jalil as a filmmaker. "That's why he said yes to the project. But as an actor I didn't set out to please Pierre Berge with my performance. "And he didn't interfere with the script at all: There was nothing we didn't allow ourselves to think or do. And I'm very proud of the film which emerged. It's a love-story between two men but no one is labelling it as a gay movie. "I love showing a younger generation how in the 1950s these two very different men were so strong and audacious together." The film grows darker as it records Saint Laurent's acknowledged dependence on drink and drugs as he struggled against depression and the pressure of producing two collections a year. The young Saint Laurent - timid but possessed of a sly charm and huge energy - became heavy and lethargic. At times he seemed barely to know where he was. Lespert says that part of the problem was that Saint Laurent and Berge found success very quickly. The move into ready-to-wear fashions supplied vast amounts of money. "Often when you reach the top, things change and you lose the taste for life. Things become less interesting. Yves wasn't the first person to discover that. "But despite the problems and the pressures, Yves and Pierre succeeded in passing through life together for many years. And that is the story we are telling." Yves Saint Laurent is released in the UK on 21 March.
"Venezuela is now a dictatorship," says Luis Ugalde, a Spanish-born Jesuit priest who during his 60 years living in Venezuela has become one of the South American nation's most well-known political scientists.
By Vanessa BuschschlüterBBC News, Caracas A former rector of the Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas, Mr Ugalde does not mince his words. He compares Venezuela to an ailing patient who is on the brink of being killed off by well-meaning but incompetent doctors. Venezuela's problems are not new, he says. At their heart is the mistaken belief that it is a rich country. He argues that while it may have the world's largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela should be considered overwhelmingly poor because it hardly produces anything except oil. The curse of oil A lack of investment in anything but the booming oil industry in the 20th Century meant that its human talent was never really fostered and its economy never diversified, resulting in an absolute reliance on imports. Venezuela's late leader, Hugo Chávez, further compounded the illusion of Venezuela's wealth to the detriment of the country, Mr Ugalde argues. "He told the Venezuelan people that there were three things standing between them and prosperity: the US empire, the rich and the entrenched political elite, and that he would deal with all three so that the people could enjoy Venezuela's wealth." Investing Venezuela's oil revenue in generous social programmes, building homes and health care centres, expanding educational opportunities and providing the poorest with benefits they did not previously have, gave the government of President Chavez a wide support base. But with falling global oil prices, government coffers soon emptied and investment in social programmes dwindled. The death from cancer of President Chávez in 2013 further hit the governing socialist PSUV party hard. His successor in office, Nicolas Maduro, lacked not only the charisma of President Chávez but also his unifying presence at the top of the party and the country. Mr Ugalde does not doubt that President Maduro came to power democratically in 2013. But he argues that what he has done since - such as undermining Venezuela's separation of powers - has turned him into a dictator. The Democratic Unity Roundtable opposition coalition won a landslide in the December 2015 election and yet it has seen almost all of its decisions overturned by the Supreme Court, a body which opposition politicians say is stacked with government loyalists. An attempt by opposition politicians to organise a recall referendum to oust President Maduro from power was thwarted at every step by Venezuela's electoral council, another body opposition politicians say is dominated by supporters of Mr Maduro. 'Final straw' But for many the final straw came on 29 March 2017, when Supreme Court judges issued a ruling stripping the National Assembly of its powers and transferring those powers to the court. While the Supreme Court suspended the most controversial paragraphs just three days later, the ruling managed to unite the hitherto divided opposition and spur them into action. There have been almost daily protests and more than 45 people have been killed in protest-related violence. While many of those protesting against the government share Mr Ugalde's view, the government is adamant it is defending democracy in Venezuela. It argues that the National Assembly was in contempt when it swore in three lawmakers suspected of having been elected fraudulently and that all of the decisions made by the legislative body since then are therefore invalid. New constitution call The government has responded to the most recent wave of protests by calling for a constituent assembly. Drawing up a new constitution will bring together the people of Venezuela and create peace where there is now unrest, President Maduro argues. He also says he wants to enshrine some of the social programmes created by the socialist government in the new constitution. At a pro-government rally, a sergeant in the National Bolivarian Militia, a body created by the late President Hugo Chavez, says he whole-heartedly backs the idea. "We're against terrorism, those people protesting violently who're burning buses, we support the constituent assembly," Gerardo Barahona says. Marta Elena Flores, 60, says the opposition is "out to wreck everything" achieved under the socialist government. "We need to protect all the benefits the government has given to the people," she says. "We need to enshrine them in the constitution so that the opposition doesn't even have the chance to rob us of them." "I personally have been able to have two operations thanks to the government's medical programmes. The opposition begrudges us those benefits." Opposition politicians have been dismissive of the president's call for a constituent assembly, saying it is a ruse to delay overdue regional elections and further strengthen the power of President Maduro. Representatives of the major opposition parties declined a government invitation to discuss the creation of the assembly and, three weeks after the idea was first mooted by President Maduro, little progress has been made. Previous attempts at dialogue backed by former international leaders and even the Vatican have failed. Anti-government marches meanwhile have been spreading throughout the country and clashes between protesters and the security forces have become more frequent and the number of dead has been on the rise. Those opposed to the government say they are determined to keep the protests going until fresh general elections are called and the government is ousted. Some analysts have said that what it will take for the government to fall is for the protests to spread to the "barrios", the poor neighbourhoods which have been the support base of the governing socialist party. Miguel Pizarro, an opposition lawmaker who represents the barrio of Petare, one of the poorest in Caracas, dismisses that argument. "The only contact people who make that argument have with the barrio is through their cleaning lady," he says. "There has been resistance to the government in the barrios for a long time, that is how I got elected!" Others think that it will take the military to switch sides for the government to be ousted. But with Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino taking to Twitter on 20 May to accuse protesters of fomenting anarchy and international organisations of being "immoral accomplices who don't denounce the violence" there is little sign of that happening any time soon, at least within the highest ranks. In the short term at least, there seems little chance of the current deadlock in Venezuela being broken and every likelihood that the crisis will worsen.
Final preparations are being made to temporary stopover sites for travellers heading to next month's Appleby Horse Fair.
Durham County Council has designated six areas in Teesdale along traditional routes to Cumbria. The sites, which will include toilets, refuse collections and, in some cases, water supplies for animals, will be open between 26 May and 23 June. The council said it hoped they would reduce unauthorised encampments. The fair will be staged from 8-14 June.
A 28-year-old man has appeared in court charged in connection with the death of Craig Parker, who died earlier this year.
Mitchell Thorpe was charged with manslaughter in relation to the death of Mr Parker, 45, who was attacked in Stockwood, Bristol, on 25 March. Mr Thorpe, of Hengrove, was also charged with possessing criminal property at Bristol Magistrates Court. He was remanded ahead of his trial at Bristol Crown Court on 4 January. Follow BBC West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]
If or when scientists succeed in making a coronavirus vaccine, there won't be enough to go around.
By Dominic BaileyBBC News Research labs and pharmaceutical companies are rewriting the rulebook on the time it takes to develop, test and manufacture an effective vaccine. Unprecedented steps are being taken to ensure roll-out of the vaccine is global. But there are concerns that the race to get one will be won by the richest countries, at the expense of the most vulnerable. So who will get it first, how much will it cost and, in a global crisis, how do we make sure nobody gets left behind? Vaccines to fight infectious diseases usually take years to develop, test and deliver. Even then, their success is not guaranteed. To date, only one human infectious disease has been totally eradicated - smallpox - and that took 200 years. The rest - from polio to tetanus, measles, mumps and TB - we live with, or without, thanks to vaccinations. How soon can we expect a coronavirus vaccine? Trials involving thousands of people are already under way to see which vaccine can protect against Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by coronavirus. A process that usually takes five to 10 years, from research to delivery, is being pared down to months. In the meantime, manufacturing is being scaled up - with investors and manufacturers risking billions of dollars to be ready to produce an effective vaccine. Russia says trials of its Sputnik-V vaccine have shown signs of immune response in patients and has rolled out the vaccine for public use while late-stage trials continue. China says it has developed a successful vaccine that is being made available to its military personnel. But concerns have been raised about the speed at which both vaccines have been produced. Neither are on the World Health Organization's list of vaccines that have reached phase three clinical trials - the stage that involves more widespread testing in humans. Some of these leading candidates hope to get their vaccine approved by the end of the year - although the WHO has said it does not expect to see widespread vaccinations against Covid-19 until the middle of 2021. Pfizer and BioNTech say preliminary analysis shows their vaccine can prevent more than 90% of people from getting Covid-19. They plan to apply for emergency approval to use the vaccine by the end of November. Pfizer believes it will be able to supply 50 million doses by the end of this year, and around 1.3 billion by the end of 2021. British drug manufacturer AstraZeneca, which has the licence for the Oxford University vaccine, is ramping up its global manufacturing capacity and has agreed to supply 100 million doses to the UK alone and possibly two billion globally - should it prove successful. There are dozens of other pharmaceutical companies with clinical trials under way. Not all of them will succeed - normally only about 10% of vaccine trials are successful. The hope is that the global focus, new alliances, and common purpose will raise the odds this time. But even if one of these vaccines is successful, the immediate shortfall is clear. Preventing vaccine nationalism Governments are hedging their bets to secure potential vaccines, making deals for millions of doses with a range of candidates before anything has been officially certified or approved. The UK government, for example, has signed deals for undisclosed sums for six potential coronavirus vaccines that may or may not prove successful. The US hopes to get 300 million doses by January from its investment programme to fast-track a successful vaccine. But not all countries are in a position to do likewise. Organisations such the Medecins Sans Frontieres, often on the frontline delivering vaccines, say locking in advanced deals with pharmaceutical companies creates "a dangerous trend of vaccine nationalism by richer nations". This in turn reduces global stocks available to the vulnerable in poorer countries. In the past, the price of life-saving vaccines has left countries struggling to fully immunise children against diseases such as meningitis, for example. Dr Mariângela Simão, the WHO's assistant director-general responsible for access to medicines and health products, says we need to ensure vaccine nationalism is held in check. "The challenge will be to ensure equitable access - that all countries have access, not just those who can pay more." Is there a global vaccine task force? The WHO is working with the epidemic response group, Cepi, and the Vaccine Alliance of governments and organisations, known as Gavi, to try to level the playing field. At least 94 rich nations and economies, so far, have signed up to the global vaccine plan known as Covax, which aims to raise $2bn (£1.52bn) by the end of 2020 to help buy and fairly distribute a drug worldwide. The US, which wants to leave the WHO, is not one of them. By pooling resources in Covax, participants hope to guarantee 92 lower income countries, in Africa, Asia and Latin America, also get "rapid, fair and equitable access" to Covid-19 vaccines. The facility is helping to fund a range of vaccine research and development work, and supporting manufacturers in scaling up production, where needed. Having a wide portfolio of vaccine trials signed up to their programme, they are hoping at least one will be successful so they can deliver two billion doses of safe, effective vaccines by the end of 2021. "With COVID-19 vaccines we want things to be different," says Gavi's CEO Dr Seth Berkley. "If only the wealthiest countries in the world are protected, then international trade, commerce and society as a whole will continue to be hit hard as the pandemic continues to rage across the globe." How much will it cost? While billions of dollars are being invested in vaccine development, millions more are being pledged to buy and supply the vaccine. Prices per dose depend on the type of vaccine, the manufacturer and the number of doses ordered. Pharmaceutical company Moderna, for example, is reportedly selling access to its potential vaccine at between $32 and $37 a dose (£24 to £28). AstraZeneca, on the other hand has said it will supply its vaccine "at cost" - or a few dollars per dose - during the pandemic. The Serum Institute of India (SSI), the world's largest vaccine manufacturer by volume, is being backed by $150m from Gavi and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to make and deliver up to 100 million doses of the successful Covid-19 vaccines for India and low- and middle-income countries. They say the ceiling price will be $3 (£2.28) a dose. But patients receiving the vaccine are unlikely to be charged in most cases. In the UK, mass distribution will be via the NHS health service. Student doctors and nurses, dentists and vets could be trained to back up existing NHS staff in administering the jab en masse. Consultation is currently under way. Other countries, such as Australia, have said they will offer free doses to their population. People receiving vaccines via humanitarian organisations - a vital cog in the global distribution wheel - will not be charged. In the US, while the shot might be free, healthcare professionals could charge for administering the jab - leaving uninsured Americans possibly facing a vaccine bill. So who gets it first? Although the pharmaceutical companies will be making the vaccine, they won't be the ones who decide who gets vaccinated first. "Each organisation or country will have to determine who it immunises first and how it does that," Sir Mene Pangalos - AstraZeneca's Executive Vice President told the BBC. As the initial supply will be limited, reducing deaths and protecting health care systems are likely to be prioritised. The Gavi plan is that countries signed up to Covax, high or low income alike, will receive enough doses for 3% of their population - which would be enough to cover health and social care workers. As more vaccine is produced, allocation is increased to cover 20% of the population - this time prioritising over 65s and other vulnerable groups. After everybody has received 20%, the vaccine would be distributed according to other criteria, such as country vulnerability and immediate threat of Covid-19. Negotiations are still under way for many other elements of the allocation process. "The only certainty is that there won't be enough - the rest is still up in the air," says Dr Simao. Gavi insists richer participants can request enough doses to vaccinate between 10-50% of their population, but no country will receive enough doses to vaccinate more than 20% until all countries in the group have been offered this amount. Dr Berkley says a small buffer of about 5% of the total number of available doses will be kept aside, "to build a stockpile to help with acute outbreaks and to support humanitarian organisations, for example to vaccinate refugees who may not otherwise have access". How do you distribute a global vaccine? A lot depends on which vaccine is successful. The ideal vaccine has a lot to live up to. It needs to be affordable. It needs to generate strong, long-lasting immunity. It needs a simple refrigerated distribution system and manufacturers must be able to scale-up production rapidly. The WHO, UNICEF and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF / Doctors Without Borders), already have effective vaccination programmes in place around the world with the so called "cold chain" facilities - cooler trucks and solar fridges to keep vaccines at the right temperature as they travel from factory to field. But adding a new vaccine to the mix could pose huge logistical problems for those already facing a difficult environment. Vaccines usually need to be kept refrigerated - usually between 2C and 8C. That's not too much of a challenge in most developed countries, but can be an "immense task" where infrastructure is weak and electricity supply and refrigeration unstable. "Maintaining vaccines under cold chain is already one of the biggest challenges' countries face and this will be exacerbated with the introduction of a new vaccine," MSF medical adviser Barbara Saitta told the BBC. "You will need to add more cold chain equipment, make sure you always have fuel (to run freezer and refrigerators in absence of electricity) and repair/replace them when they break and transport them wherever you need them." AstraZeneca has suggested their vaccine would need the regular cold chain between 2C and 8C. But at present it looks like the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine would need ultra-cold chain - storage at -80C before being distributed. Welcoming the Pfizer announcement, Dr Richard Hatchett, of Cepi acknowledged that would "remain a challenge for use in some settings". "This is something which will have to be addressed if the vaccine is to be made broadly available," he said. But the Ebola vaccine also needed very low temperatures, so it is not impossible. "To keep the Ebola vaccine at -60°C or colder we had to use a special cold chain equipment to store and transport them, plus we had to train staff to use all this new equipment," said Barbara Saitta. There is also the question of the target population. Vaccination programmes usually target children, so agencies will have to plan how to reach people that normally are not part of the immunization program. As the world waits for the scientists to do their bit, many more challenges await. And vaccines are not the only weapon against coronavirus. "Vaccines are not the only solution," Says Dr Simao, of the WHO. "You need to have diagnostics. You need to have a way to decrease mortality, so you need therapeutics, and you need a vaccine. "Besides that, you need everything else - social distancing, avoiding crowded places and so on." What do I need to know about the coronavirus?
In the 1990s many second-generation British Asians were coming of age and breaking free - they had grown up in a different country from their parents and were forging their own path. For Farah Sayeed, it meant making a difficult phone call which left her mother, Runi, heart-broken.
By Kavita PuriBBC News In 1988 Farah Sayeed left her family home in London to study Biology and Psychology in Liverpool. But it wasn't just the lectures she was looking forward to. "University was my legitimate ticket to finally getting the freedom that everybody else seemed to be enjoying except me," she says. Farah's parents are Bengali Muslims who came to Britain in the late 1960s. She had a happy upbringing, although she sometimes felt stifled. Her parents were more liberal than their Bengali contemporaries, "but that's not the comparison I was making. I was merely comparing them to my English friends' parents." Her mother, Runi, acknowledges that she was an anxious and clingy parent, which she puts down to losing her own mother at a young age. However, she never interfered with where Farah was going to study. Farah loved being away from home, and felt liberated from the weight of her parents' expectations. But as her time at university was coming to an end, she worried that if she returned home she would be treated like a child again, and might even be pressured into an arranged marriage. So she found a one-bedroom flat in the city centre, and got jobs working in a bar and at a women's refuge. She then plucked up the courage to call her mother and tell her she wasn't coming back to London. Runi was so shocked by the news, she immediately hung up on her daughter. The conversation had lasted barely a few minutes. Farah didn't even get the chance to explain why she wanted to stay, and reacted with defiance. "That's fine by me," she thought. "They've cut me off, they've cut me out of their life. I've done nothing wrong." But the call left Runi heartbroken. She ran out of the house and went straight to an English friend's house, because she felt her Bengali friends would not understand. Runi needed to take in what she had heard, so they decided to drive to Botany Bay in Kent, to be by the sea. Runi cried all the way there in the car. Dressed in her sari, tears still flowing, she sat on a cliff top looking out to sea. But seeing the water was no balm, in fact it only made her feel worse. It reminded her of the Buriganga river that she had grown up with in Dhaka, where she would fish and play, and where she had been so happy. All she could feel was a sense of loss, not just for her daughter but for her country too. After the phone call, mother and daughter did not speak for nine months. During this estrangement, Farah met a group of people who would change her life. One night, a friend came into the bar where she was working and mentioned he was starting an Asian Writers Collective. He asked Farah to join. Days later, she walked into Toxteth library and found a group of British South Asians sitting around a table. "It was a revelation," says Farah. They had so many shared experiences of what it was like to grow up as a second-generation Asian and then come to university and be surrounded by predominantly white contemporaries. The Asian Writers Collective became a space for Farah to talk honestly about the ups and downs of her life. She could talk about the racism she had experienced and open up to like-minded people in a way she had never done before. Her parents' formative experiences had been in Bangladesh, so she felt she was not really like them - but she also felt very different from her English friends. Farah admits that before joining the group she had felt a bit lost at times, as though she existed in a no-man's land - and that could feel lonely. They quickly became her alternative family. After nine months of silence, Farah and Runi began tentatively to talk to one another again. But Runi was still struggling to come to terms with what had happened. She had always expected Farah to come home from university and be part of her life again. "Even now I feel weepy and full of hurt," she says, her voice breaking, 30 years later. That phone call with Farah was Runi's first realisation that her children, who had been brought up in Britain, had a different world view from hers. "Their understanding of the world and mine started to clash very seriously and I found that difficult to cope with," she says. It felt like a rejection, and was not something she had anticipated when she chose to bring up a family here. Runi had come to Britain as a young bride in 1968 to be with her husband, Muhammad, who was training to be a barrister. She had never met him before. They were married over the phone, while she was in Dhaka and he was in London. Afterwards they exchanged many letters, declaring their love for one another. Yet when Runi arrived at Heathrow airport and her new husband came to collect her, she had no idea who he was in the crowd. A graduate, Runi had been head teacher at a kindergarten outside Dhaka, but she started off doing menial jobs in London, as that was all that was available to her then. In time she became a teacher and later trained as a psychologist. She brought up three children, and it was hard. When you raise children in your own society, she says, talking of Bangladesh, "you have a kind of scaffold around you: your family, your friends, your society." Here, she and her husband were on their own. She worried that if her children went astray, it would be their fault. And then there was the racism they regularly encountered. Yet none of that was as hard as her eldest daughter telling her she had decided to stay away from home. Runi describes it as the most intense pain of her adult life. There are always differences between parents and children, but for first-generation immigrants whose children are brought up in their adopted country, those differences are more pronounced. Farah is now in her early 50s, and lives near her parents in London. She's a social worker and has three children of her own. She says she gets her strong-mindedness and independence from her mother, who she clearly admires and respects. Mother and daughter didn't discuss the difficult phone conversation with each other for many years. Since then both have changed their outlook. For Farah, not returning home had felt like "a decision that my very survival was based upon". But she now realises how angry and heart-broken her parents were. And Runi and her husband no longer worry about Farah making her own life decisions. "Now I know that life is different when you live in another country," she says. Runi denies planning an arranged marriage, although she admits she and her husband were concerned Farah might never marry. Then, in 1997, Farah brought someone home from the Asian Writers Collective - her future husband. "He's a British Pakistani Irish Muslim, and I think that definitely ticked enough boxes for them to have been overjoyed," Farah says. So it wasn't the end of the world that he wasn't Bengali. The battles for acceptance and equality by ethnic minority communities may be documented in the history books, but these smaller struggles are also part of the story. Delicate conversations like this one between Runi and Farah reveal that what represents personal progress for the second generation can feel, for the first, like a further untethering from the homeland they left. Runi wants her descendants to keep a connection to their culture, and now teaches Farah's children and her other grandchildren Bengali. She is mindful that for those coming to a new country, "the first thing you lose is language, then you lose your traditional clothes, then the last thing is food." Before lockdown, every Sunday the children would have lessons, then the three generations would eat together as a family. For the generation who came here, there is a wrench, a pull to another land, that never goes away. Runi never regrets coming to Britain, but there is a "longing for the place I left behind". It's a feeling that can be evoked at any time. While getting ready, on the day we met, Runi heard a Bengali song which took her back to her childhood in Bangladesh. "The lyrics made me feel so emotional," she says. That first generation also find themselves in a no-man's land - their history, culture and roots are still in their homeland, even though they have lived here for so long. Decisions like the one Farah made are a reminder to those pioneers that for their children there is a further pull away from one place, and a deeper anchoring in another. Runi left Dhaka aged 24. She has lived here for 53 years but, she says, "still I don't feel I'm totally embedded in England. I'm staying here for my children and for my grandchildren. Not for myself." You can hear the next episode of Three Pounds in My Pocket at 11:00 on Friday 22 January on BBC Radio 4 - or catch up later online You may also be interested in: One evening in 1993, Mits Sahni was standing in a queue in Leicester Square in central London. He was trying to get into a nightclub, but when he got to the front of the line he was turned away by the bouncer. It wasn't the first time this had happened. So he started his own club nights. Bombay Jungle: How British Asians broke into London's club scene
At noon on Wednesday, President Donald Trump's term will end. It's been a whirlwind four years, so what might the legacy be of such a history-making president?
By Ritu PrasadBBC News There's a lot to consider, so we asked the experts to break it down for us. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. 'His relationship with alt-right' Matthew Continetti is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, focusing on the development of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement. What's Trump's key legacy? Donald Trump will be remembered as the first president to be impeached twice. He fed the myth that the election was stolen, summoned his supporters to Washington to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote, told them that only through strength could they take back their country, and stood by as they stormed the US Capitol and interfered in the operation of constitutional government. When historians write about his presidency, they will do so through the lens of the riot. They will focus on Trump's tortured relationship with the alt-right, his atrocious handling of the deadly Charlottesville protest in 2017, the rise in violent right-wing extremism during his tenure in office, and the viral spread of malevolent conspiracy theories that he encouraged. What else stands out to you? If Donald Trump had followed the example of his predecessors and conceded power graciously and peacefully, he would have been remembered as a disruptive but consequential populist leader. A president who, before the pandemic, presided over an economic boom, re-oriented America's opinion of China, removed terrorist leaders from the battlefield, revamped the space program, secured an originalist (conservative) majority on the US Supreme Court, and authorised Operation Warp Speed to produce a Covid-19 vaccine in record time. 'A surrender of global leadership' Laura Belmonte is a history professor and dean of the Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. She is a foreign relations specialist and author of books on cultural diplomacy. What's Trump's key legacy? His attempt to surrender global leadership and replace it with a more inward-looking, fortress-like mentality. I don't think it succeeded, but the question is how profound has the damage to America's international reputation been - and that remains to be seen. The moment I found jaw-dropping was the press conference he had with Vladimir Putin in 2018 in Helsinki, where he took Putin's side over US intelligence in regard to Russian interference in the election. I can't think of another episode of a president siding full force with a non-democratic society adversary. It's also very emblematic of a larger assault on any number of multilateral institutions and treaties and frameworks that Trump has unleashed, like the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the withdrawal of the Iranian nuclear framework. What else stands out to you? Trump's applauding Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, really turning himself inside out to align the US with regimes that are the antithesis of values that the US says it wants to promote. That is something that I think was really quite distinctive. Another aspect is extricating the US from any really assertive role in promoting human rights throughout the world, and changing the content of the annual human rights reports from the State Department and not including many topics, like LGBT equality, for instance. 'Putting democracy to the test' Kathryn Brownell is a history professor at Purdue University, focusing on the relationships between media, politics, and popular culture, with an emphasis on the American presidency. What's Trump's key legacy? Broadly speaking: Donald Trump, and his enablers in the Republican Party and conservative media, have put American democracy to the test in an unprecedented way. As a historian who studies the intersection of media and the presidency, it is truly striking the ways in which he has convinced millions of people that his fabricated version of events is true. What happened on 6 January at the US Capitol is a culmination of over four years during which President Trump actively advanced misinformation. Just as Watergate and the impeachment inquiry dominated historical interpretations of Richard Nixon's legacy for decades, I do think that this particular post-election moment will be at the forefront of historical assessments of his presidency. What else stands out to you? Kellyanne Conway's first introduction of the notion of "alternative facts" just days into the Trump administration when disputing the size of the inaugural crowds between Trump and Barack Obama. Presidents across the 20th Century have increasingly used sophisticated measures to spin interpretation of policies and events in favourable ways and to control the media narrative of their administrations. But the assertion that the administration had a right to its own alternative facts went far beyond spin, ultimately foreshadowing the ways in which the Trump administration would govern by misinformation. Trump harnessed the power of social media and blurred the lines between entertainment and politics in ways that allowed him to bypass critics and connect directly to his supporters in an unfiltered way. Franklin Roosevelt, John F Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan also used new media and a celebrity style to connect directly to the people in this unfiltered way, ultimately transforming expectations and operations of the presidency that paved the path for Trump. 'Reshaping the judiciary' Mary Frances Berry is a professor of American history and social thought at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on legal history and social policy. From 1980 to 2004, she was a member of the US Commission on Civil Rights. What's Trump's key legacy? In what he did with judges, Trump has made a long lasting change over the next 20 years, 30 years in how policies will stand up to legal tests and how they're able to be implemented - no matter what any particular president or administration proposes. The courts are controlled by the Republican appointees. Sometimes judges surprise us, but for the most part, the historical evidence is that they pretty much do what their politics and their backgrounds say they will do. What else stands out to you? When he supported that package of measures that helped particular people in the black community, like First Step, pardoning people at the same time that he supported an amendment in the appropriations bill that gave a whole bunch of money to historically black colleges and universities for the first time. He put all of these things together, as well as having the first stimulus programme making sure that black businessman and entrepreneurs get some of those loans they've had trouble getting before. The effect of all of that, which we will see over time, was in the midterms, a lot more young black men voted for Trump than before. And if that's a trend, it may help the Republican party. Trump also made egregious comments about black people and other people of colour, tried to have protests against police abuse disrupted and in other ways appealed to his white supremacist base. His lasting impact on race relations depends on what the Biden administration does on policy, and on healing and how long the pandemic and economic downturn lasts. 'Contesting the 2020 election' Margaret O'Mara is history professor at the University of Washington, focusing on the political, economic, and metropolitan history of the modern US. What's Trump's key legacy? Contesting a very constitutionally and numerically clear election victory by Joe Biden. We've had plenty of really unpleasant transitions. Herbert Hoover was incredibly unpleasant about his loss, but he still rode in that car down Pennsylvania Avenue at inauguration. He didn't talk to Franklin Roosevelt the whole time, but there still was a peaceful transfer of power. Trump is a manifestation of political forces that have been in motion for a half century or more. A culmination of what was not only going on in the Republican party, but also the Democratic party and more broadly in American politics - a kind of disillusionment with government and institutions and expertise. What else stands out to you? Trump is exceptional in many ways, but one of the things that really makes him stand out is that he is one of the rare presidents who was elected without having held any elected office before. Trump may go away, but there is this great frustration with the establishment, broadly defined. When you feel powerless, you vote for someone who's promising to do everything differently and Trump indeed did that. A presidency is also made by the people that the president appoints, and a great deal of experienced Republican hands were not invited to join the administration the first go round. Over time, his administration has diminished to a band of loyalists who are really not very experienced and are ideologically uninterested in wise governance of the bureaucracy. What has happened within the bowels of the bureaucracy is going to be a slow slog to rebuild. 'Standing up to China' Saikrishna Prakash is a University of Virginia Law School professor focusing on constitutional law, foreign relations law and presidential powers. What's Trump's key legacy? The last gasps of his administration are the most consequential, as he exerts a control over his most devoted followers and he's talking about running again. He forced people to consider what the presidency has become in a way that wasn't true I think either during the Bush or Obama administrations. Issues like the 25th Amendment and impeachment hasn't been thought of since Bill Clinton, really. It's possible that people now when they think of the presidency are perhaps going to adopt a different stance going forward, knowing that someone like Trump could come along. It's possible that Congress will delegate less to the president and take away some authority. What else stands out to you? The president has demonstrated that there's a constituency who's opposed to a lot of these trade deals and that there are people willing to vote for those who will either extricate us from these trade deals or "make them fairer". The president has also suggested that China has been taking advantage of the United States in ways that are deleterious to our economic and national security - and I think there's a consensus behind this view. No one wants to be accused of being soft on China, whereas no one cares if you're "soft" on Canada, right? I think people are going to fall all over themselves to be tougher or at least say they're tougher on China. Domestically the president had a populous tone to him. It wasn't ever fully realised in his policies, but we see more Republicans adopting populist ideas.
Fifteen men have been trapped inside a so-called rat-hole mine in India's north-eastern state of Meghalaya since 13 December. Priyanka Borpujari spoke to a miner who left his job at the same mine days before the accident because he found it to be too dangerous.
Abdul Alim believes if he had stayed, the job would have killed him. Two cousins, Omor and Shirapat Ali, are among the 15 miners who have been trapped for three weeks. Abdul, who fears they may be dead by now, stutters every time he speaks about them. Flooding blocked their exit from the rat-hole mine - named for the narrow crevices through which coal is extracted. Efforts to rescue them have made little headway - a fact that does not surprise Abdul. "Once we went down, there was hardly any light streaming in from above," he recalls. "The mines I had worked in earlier were only about 30 ft (9 metres) deep. But this was far more dangerous." It was nearly 400 ft deep. Abdul is 25 years old. He lives in a bamboo and mud house with his wife, Anjura, in a village called Magurmari on the the western edge of Meghalaya. Parts of the hilly state are home to deposits of coal, which is extracted through deep narrow holes after first digging pits. The mines are so narrow that several agencies involved in the rescue efforts have struggled to find a way inside. After several attempts, navy divers reached the bottom of the mine on Monday. But they returned saying they did not see any of the men and that rescue could only be attempted after all the water was pumped out. Rat-hole mining was banned in 2014. But it's still widely practised across the state, especially in the East Jaintia Hills where the men are trapped. These mines are privately owned and it is not clear how many exist. India is the world's third largest coal-producing nation and coal provides 60% of the country's energy needs. But the industry is poorly regulated. In early December, Abdul got into a taxi with his cousins and drove for 16 hours to reach Ksan, where the mine is located. Abdul first started working in coal mines about two years ago. Before that, he worked as a mason and earned a daily wage of 400 rupees ($6; £4.50). But as a worker in the rat-hole mines, he was paid up to 30,000 rupees every month, partly reflecting the dangerous working conditions. Abdul says about 8-10 men would hop into a metal container suspended by a crane that would then be lowered into the mining pit. "Once we touched ground, the mines spread out in different directions. Each of us would crawl into one and go as far as 30 ft," he said. At this point, he gets off the bed he is sitting on and bends down to explain. "The mine would be this high, about two feet," he says holding his hand that high. "Our sardaar (leader) would instruct us about where to dig. We lie on our sides and chip the coal with the gaaithi (pickaxe). I would put my pushcart just under my legs, so that the coal would fall into it. Once it fills up, I would drag it and bring it to the central assembly point." A small torch tied into place behind his ear provided the only light available. Abdul says a supervisor kept track of the number of workers and how often each one of them returned with a cart full of coal. This determined their wages. He would work four hours straight before taking a break. He often began work at 5am and kept working until noon. During winter, he says he preferred the warmth inside the mine to the biting cold outside. When I ask if crawling and lying on his side for such long hours affected his body, his wife, Anjura, answered. "The skin on his back has gone hard and black like leather," she says. But Abdul says: "Only my right side. Because I would lie on that side and work." Usually, there are up to 200 men working shifts in a single rat hole mine. But Abdul says that the mine in Ksan faced a shortage of workers in December because many of them were from the neighbouring state of Assam. Most of Meghalaya's illegal miners are migrant labourers who come to earn better wages, but many of them went home to Assam to vote in local elections in the first week of December. And the ones who were left behind took on more shifts. Meanwhile, Abdul who had lasted a week in the mine started to look for a way out. The work was the same as the other rat hole mines he had worked in before. But the sheer depth of this one, he says, petrified him. And it drove him home. He told his cousins he wanted to leave but they wouldn't let him, reminding him of how much he was getting paid. "So, one afternoon, after lunch, I told my cousins that I needed to buy a belt for myself. I went to the nearest market, bought the belt and got onto the first bus I saw, and finally made it home," he said, lifting his shirt to show the brown belt. He says he actually needed the belt. Returning to the accident, Abdul says it's possible that water from a nearby waterfall gushed into an adjacent mine. "A hole in the mine where I worked intersected with a hole in the adjoining mine and water from there probably rushed in," he says. "The supervisor warned us not to dig in that direction but some of them did not listen to him." Officials blame this and water from a nearby river. He adds that by the time a miner hears the water coming, it's too late to escape. He doesn't think it's likely that the men in the mine can be saved. "To get all the water out, they would need to pump out 15 neighbouring mines simultaneously," he said. Officials have started pumping water out but say the operation will take time. Abdul left three days before the accident that has cast gloom over Magurmari: seven men from the village are trapped in the mine. He left with only his ID, abandoning clothes as well as seven days' wages. "I don't care for the money I left. I needed to save my life."
Elbow are to headline the Thursday night of next year's Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival.
Over 20 years, the Manchester band has won three Ivor Novellos, a Mercury Music Prize, and a BRIT award for Best British Band. Solo artists Tom Odell and Lewis Capaldi have also been confirmed for Bella, near Beauly. The festival will take place from 1-3 August and will have a science-fiction theme.
The instrument landing system at Guernsey Airport is up and running after being delayed by several weeks, airport authorities have confirmed.
The system allows aircraft to land in low visibility by sending radio signals to guide them on approach. The ground around the one of the devices was too bumpy for it to work properly, so had to be flattened. Director of Guernsey Airport, Colin Le Ray, said the system will allow more flights to land in fog. The work was part of a wider £80m project to renovate Guernsey Airport's runway.
A multi-million pound investment in the Galloway Forest Park's new visitor centres has been described as a "great boost for the local economy" by the environment minister.
Forestry Commission Scotland has invested £4.5m in three sites. It has built a brand new centre at Kirroughtree and upgraded facilities at Clatteringshaws and Glentrool. Paul Wheelhouse said the park was a "beacon for tourists" and the visitor centres a "major draw". He said: "It is currently estimated that Galloway Forest Park brings in around £11m to the local economy. "With the opening of the new centres, we can expect this boost to the local economy to grow over the next few years." Keith Muir, FCS recreation manager in Galloway, said it had been "working hard" to improve visitor facilities. "The new and improved visitor centres are proving very popular and we are pleased to be working hand in hand with local businesses to boost forest tourism in Galloway," he said.
A 74-year-old woman has died after being hit by a car.
Gwent Police said the incident happened on Bryn Road in Pontllanfraith, Caerphilly, at about 08.25 GMT on Monday. The woman, from Blackwood, was pronounced dead at the scene, the force said. It said her family was being supported by officers, and appealed for anyone who witnessed the incident involving a blue Toyota Yaris to get in touch.
"We learned when America retreats, chaos often follows." This assertion was made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during his recent speech in Cairo. But the remark did little to resolve the uncertainty among Washington's friends and allies in the region. Are US troops in Syria staying or going? If staying, for how long? And if going, when?
Jonathan MarcusDiplomatic correspondent@Diplo1on Twitter Mr Pompeo's speech was a broader attempt to re-set US policy in the region and to give some sort of coherence after days of mixed messages. But taking a leaf from his boss in the White House, Mr Pompeo spent a good deal of his time castigating the Obama administration's approach and contrasting it with the apparent progress made on Mr Trump's watch. But there were some significant elements missing in Mr Pompeo's remarks. There was no mention of human rights in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Indeed there was only the briefest of mentions to Saudi Arabia at all, a country that surely should loom large in US policy. The Yemen crisis got only a passing comment; divisions amongst the Gulf countries were papered over; and Mr Trump's much heralded peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians was not touched on at all. The emphasis was on Washington's friends and allies in the region doing more. The US would seemingly work behind the scenes - Mr Pompeo noting that "in Syria the US will use diplomacy and work with our partners to expel every last Iranian boot". Containing Iran and its widening sphere of influence seems to be the central goal of US policy, but beyond economic sanctions there seems no real strategy to achieve this aim. The issue is not the presence or otherwise of some 2,000 US troops on the ground in Syria. It is how their presence or withdrawal serves wider US policy goals. The whole story of President Trump's decision to announce the Syria pullout says a good deal about his own approach to the region. It speaks volumes too about how his administration works. National Security Adviser John Bolton's subsequent efforts to turn this into a conditions-based withdrawal is the sort of input that should surely have been there prior to the initial announcement. The response from many of the Washington pundits and think-tank experts was predictable and uncompromising. Op-eds and blog posts spoke of the betrayal of Washington's Kurdish allies; they suggested that Moscow's influence in the region would only rise; and that a vacuum was being created from which the only beneficiary would be Iran. All this may be to one extent or another correct. But there is a deeper problem here, and it goes to the heart of the Trump approach and his antipathy towards military entanglements overseas. 'No grand strategy' A small number of pundits have condemned the president's approach to policy-making and his apparent lack of a strategic sense, but they have nonetheless welcomed his withdrawal decision. In part, their argument is to question what some 2,000 US troops can really achieve in Syria. They sympathise with Mr Trump's gut sense. The president, though frustrated by the efforts of some of his advisers, is finally acting to at least to scale-down, if not to end, the so-called Forever War against Islamic extremism. That war began in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. But it quickly moved to Iraq and then more recently to Syria. As the scope of the war widened, the US had to face up to some of the consequences of earlier policy decisions. Iran's regional prominence, for example, is a direct outgrowth of the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad, which provided a strategic counter-weight to Tehran. While the focus has been on President Trump's Syria decision, he has similarly called for a significant US troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. It is suggested that about 7,000 - roughly half the force - could be pulled out. Here, too, the pundits and think-tankers divide along familiar lines, with a minority questioning the basis of the continuing US deployment; stressing the futility of building up a coherent national government whose writ extends across the country; and ultimately doubtful of the logic behind staying to fight a war that neither side can win. My aim here is not to suggest who is right and wrong. But President Trump's instinct suggests that Americans are tired of the Forever Wars, and to this extent he has a point. Where this should leave US policy in Afghanistan or indeed the wider Middle East is another matter. As it so often is, Mr Trump's fundamental compass is that of his supporters back home. He does not really do grand strategy. He sees international relations in transactional terms - perhaps one of the reasons he seems to prefer dealing with authoritarian rulers rather than say Washington's often critical Nato allies. The problem is that, viewed from many foreign capitals, the US is indeed - to use Mr Pompeo's word - seen as being in retreat. A resurgent Russia and a rising China are making much of the running. The Trump presidency has been unable to translate the slogan "America First" into a coherent approach to the wider world. International agreements are overturned; the liberal order established by the US itself is questioned. "America First" indeed risks leaving considerable chaos in Mr Trump's wake.
Lt Den Brotheridge was the first allied soldier killed in combat on D-Day. When he left to go to war, his wife was eight months pregnant with their first child. Yet it took his daughter 40 years to discover her father's role in one of D-Day's most famous operations.
By Richard SpaldingSouth Today At 22:40 on Monday 5 June 1944, six wooden gliders carrying 181 men from the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry swept into the sky from Tarrant Rushton airfield in Dorset. Towed by Halifax bombers, they were heading for two small bridges over the River Orne and Caen Canal in Normandy. The aim of the operation, codenamed 'Deadstick', was to land the gliders near the bridges and capture them from the Germans. Holding the bridges would prevent German tanks getting to the beaches where allied troops would land the following morning. In one of the gliders was Lt Brotheridge. A talented footballer and cricketer, he had signed up at the beginning of the war and been promoted from the ranks to become an officer. He and his wife Maggie had married four years earlier and she was at home in Smethwick, in the West Midlands, heavily pregnant with their first child. At 00:16 on D-Day the gliders crash landed just yards from the bridge at Benouville, now called Pegasus Bridge. The men of Lt Brotheridge's 25 platoon stormed across the bridge. There was a short, sharp firefight with the Germans and the bridge was taken. But, as Lt Brotheridge went back and forth across the bridge, a German machine gun opened up again and he was hit in the back of the neck. He died a short while later without regaining consciousness. Just 19 days later Maggie gave birth to a baby girl and named her Margaret. Now living in Honiton, Devon, she is approaching her 70th birthday. She said: "I knew he had died in the war. My mother remarried when I was four and she didn't talk about it. When my mother married again my grandparents [Lt Brotheridge's parents] didn't like it. "I went to see them twice but they didn't connect so I didn't know any of that family at all. My mother never talked about them for whatever reason known to her. I can't blame anybody, it's just circumstances isn't it?" It was not until the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984 that Margaret discovered what had happened to her father. "I found out just before I was 40. I opened up the paper and there was this big picture of my father's group and it had 'Brotheridge' on it and I said 'Oh my, just look at this.'" With the help of surviving members of her father's unit, Margaret was able to piece together what had happened to him. "He was very much a person of the people, he wasn't a typical officer," she said. "I met his batman [officer's servant] who was an absolutely lovely man and he talked about him being very likeable. He said he often thought he would get told off because he [Lt Brotheridge] would polish his own boots. "He would sit and talk to his men about football. I wouldn't ever have wanted him to pull rank. "They respected him and they would follow him. A couple of men I met said they would have followed him to the death and that's the best thing you would like to hear." Very few of the men who took part in Operation Deadstick are still alive. One is Pte Frank Bourlet who was on the same glider as Den Brotheridge. Now 91 and living in Hampshire, he told the BBC: "He seemed a very, very nice chap. He didn't use his rank a great deal. You felt comfortable with him, that was the main thing." Mr Bourlet was close to Lt Brotheridge during the attack on the bridge. He said: "He was up on the corner shouting 'Come on 25! - Come on 25!' That's the last words he ever said. "We were very upset amongst ourselves. Everybody was upset. To miss Danny, so out of the blue, you just couldn't take it in." When her mother died, Margaret found her father's medals in a box. She has no children of her own and has given the medals to The Royal Green Jackets Museum in Winchester so that something of his sacrifice will remain. She said: "He's a symbol of all of them really. He was recommended for the Military Cross but because he died too soon it had to be rescinded - ridiculous isn't it?"
When it comes to happiness, it seems that the young and the old have the secret. And it turns out what's true for humans is also true for our primate cousins, explains neuroscientist Tali Sharot.
How does happiness change with age? Most people assume that as children we live a carefree existence, then we go through the miserable confusion of teenage years ("Who am I?") but regain happiness once we figure it all out and settle down, only to then grow grumpy and lonely with every additional wrinkle and grey hair. Well, this is utterly wrong. It turns out that happiness is indeed high in youth, but declines steadily hitting rock bottom in our mid-40s - midlife crisis, anyone? Then, miraculously, our sense of happiness takes a turn for the better, increasing as we grow older. This U-shape pattern of happiness over the life span (high during youth and old age, low during midlife) has been observed across the globe, from Switzerland to Ecuador, Romania to China. All in all, it has been documented in more than 70 countries, in surveys of more than 500,000 people in both developing and developed countries. How can we explain these counter-intuitive findings? Does it have something to do with juggling kids and careers in our 30s and 40s? Apparently not. Even after accounting for the presence of kids in the household the U-shape pattern of happiness remains. Perhaps the pattern is due to generational differences? As studies did not follow the same individuals throughout life, but rather different individuals of different ages, it could be that teenagers and the elderly are happier than the middle-aged because they were born during better times. But this is not the case. Controlling for "cohort effects" does not seem to affect the U-shape pattern. It also persists when other demographic factors are accounted for, including marital status, education, employment status, and income. Then, just last month, a group led by Prof Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick, reported that happiness of our evolutionary cousins - the great apes - also follows a U-shape pattern throughout life. Of course we cannot ask apes to rate their life satisfaction on a scale from one to 10. But the well-being of 508 apes was estimated by asking their human care-givers to assess it. Apes, like humans, were less happy during midlife than when younger or older. The existence of a midlife crisis in the great ape strengthens the notion that the pattern of happiness throughout life is not due to socioeconomic factors. This leaves two likely explanations. Firstly, "the survival of the happiest" - happiness is known to be related to longevity. Put simply, the happier live longer, while the pessimistic die prematurely, possibly because the latter experience more stress, which impacts on health negatively. Therefore, the elderly individuals who remain for scientists to test should be happier than the average 30- or 40-year-olds. But this only explains the latter half of the U-shape. Secondly, the U-shape could arise in both humans and apes because of similar age-related changes in brain structures that influence happiness. One part of our brain which changes considerably both throughout the first two decades of our life, and as we move into old age, is the frontal lobe. Our frontal lobes mature well into our mid-20s and then start deteriorating as early as 45. This means that as we develop, we slowly increase some frontal-lobe function, which we then lose later in life. One such function is our ability to learn from bad news. My colleagues and I have found that people tend to discount the relevance of undesirable information to themselves (such as news that alcohol is bad for your liver) but readily adopt good news (being told that red wine is good for the heart). So when smokers see warning signs on cigarette packets they think: "Yes, smoking kills - but mostly it kills the other guy." At the same when we hear the housing market is going up we think: "The value of my house is going to double!" Using brain imaging techniques we discovered that the tendency to discount bad news is related to how well regions of the frontal lobe are coding unexpected negative information. Now, you may think that discounting bad news can get people into trouble - for example, causing us to smoke more and save less. There is some truth to this, but it is also good for our mental health. Our research shows that the successful incorporation of bad news is related to depression. Discounting bad news, as most of us do, presumably allows us to keep a rosy view of the future, and while this view is not necessarily realistic it does keep us happy. But the tendency to discount bad news also follows a U-shape pattern over our lifespan. Kids, teenagers and the elderly discount unwanted information more than middle age individuals. The developmental change in the frontal lobes appears to be mirrored by our ability to learn from bad news, which in turn could drive age-related differences in happiness. So happiness may come at a price - a reduced ability to take into account unwanted information. In essence, this means that we may need to re-frame health and safety campaigns, especially those targeted at the young and the elderly. Instead of, or in addition to, labelling a packet of cigarettes with the words "SMOKING KILLS", we may want to print "80% of people who try to quit smoking succeed". And instead of highlighting the risks of skin cancer on a bottle of sun lotion, how about highlighting the sun cream's benefits (fewer wrinkles, healthier-looking skin)? Will fewer people reach for another cigarette when we focus on social norms? Will more people protect their skin from UV rays when we emphasise the positive? Each case needs to be tested. But given that we now know that people tend to respond to warnings with "It's unlikely to happen to me" and to the possibility of a glorious future with "Why not me?" there is reason to believe this may be so. Tali Sharot is the author of The Optimism Bias and The Science of Optimism, of which this is an adapted extract You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook
The government is overhauling the way the NHS in England works.
Under the plans, GPs and other clinicians will be given much more responsibility for spending the budget in England, while greater competition with the private sector will be encouraged. It has been dubbed one of the most radical plans in the history of the health service - and has certainly proved controversial. Ministers even had to take the unprecedented step of putting the plans on hold last spring after criticisms from MPs and health unions. After carrying out a "listening exercise" they agreed to make changes, but this has still not been enough to appease critics. A host of health groups have recently said they totally oppose the plans - and these include some royal colleges which set professional standards as well as the major unions representing doctors, nurses and midwives. The bill gained Royal Assent in March 2012, more than 14 months after first being tabled in the House of Commons.
The high street faced unprecedented strain when the coronavirus lockdown came into force. Exactly a month after shops started reopening, BBC News spoke to businesses in Brentwood, Essex, to find out what it is like now.
By Zoe ApplegateBBC News It pays to be beautiful in Brentwood. The home of reality TV show The Only Way is Essex, the High Street has a grooming and pampering service for every part of the face, body - and pet. But during lockdown, the shutters were down at these and other so-called "non-essential services". Has business picked up again since lockdown was eased? Anneliese Sid, 29, owner of The Greenhouse plant shop, opened her business just eight weeks before the lockdown. She said it gave her time to focus on her social media strategy and build her brand in the area. Her social media followers now total 5,000 - a five-fold increase since the start of the lockdown and Ms Sid said there had been an influx of customers post-lockdown keen to visit her store as a result. "We could recommend what plants could go in what rooms and by the end of the lockdown people were dying to get down here and see the shop," she said. "It gave us the time to offer a bespoke service and we really enjoyed doing that." She said the next challenge would be to implement shoppers wearing compulsory facemasks as about 90% of her customers currently did not. "We're happy to go with the guidelines and we've been rigorous with everything else," she said. She also saw the lockdown as an opportunity to work closely with other businesses. "We just came together and shouted from the same hymn sheet about each other. You may also like: "We also did click-and-collect with other businesses in Brentwood so customers could order a book and pick it up from here as well as a plant." Jamie Burton, 26, has also just opened his dog grooming business, Pet Spa Essex, after taking on his shop premises a year ago. "It required a lot of building work, then when it was time to open we went into lockdown," he said. However, he remained upbeat and is convinced he's made the right decision to branch out on his own after eight years in the industry working both at Harrods and with one of the country's top dog groomers. "It is always scary opening anyway, but I was confident. I have won lots of awards and I knew there was a niche in Brentwood for someone like me. "I've been dog grooming since I left school so I had built a good foundation and it was the right time." Mr Burton said footfall since the easing of lockdown had not returned to previous levels, but he believed his business would keep busy due to its nature and his investment in the building. "Dogs will always need grooming," he said. "Unlike having your hair cut, a dog has to have its hair cut because it grows into their eyes, they gets mats in their pads. "It's an Instagram-able shop, but you can't just have a good-looking salon as you have to be good at what you do too." Just off the High Street amid a cluster of independent shops lining Crown Street is the Chicken and Frog bookshop, which relocated there in January. Natasha Radford, 46, opened the specialist children's shop almost eight years ago and said the fact she also offered tuition helped it to "weather the massive drop in book sales" during the lockdown. "We had always wanted to be in Crown Street and so we pounced on it, but obviously the timing wasn't ideal," she said. "Luckily we've got the two strands to the shop and have been incredibly busy. "I was a teacher for 20 years... so I decided to put the two together. You have to make your shop part of the community as people can buy the same products elsewhere for a couple of pounds less, so you have to offer them something else." With people now venturing out, she said her week-on-week book sales had increased, which she attributed in part to customer loyalty engendered through free in-store workshops and running online storytelling sessions and book clubs. "Before the lockdown business was going up-and-up-and up, so I just hope it continues in that vein," said Mrs Radford. "There had been a shift to local shops and I feel the lockdown has compounded that feeling of 'if you don't use it you'll lose it'." Brentwood Borough Council chief executive Jonathan Stephenson said it had stepped in to help businesses by giving millions of pounds in emergency grants. It has also implemented a range of measures including providing free parking for those working in essential shops, running retail recovery workshops and handing out 500 coronavirus information packs. "We have distributed over £17m in Covid grants to 1,300 Brentwood businesses," he said. "The feedback from businesses has been highly complimentary for the range of support we have offered." As for Mr Burton, he's hoping the dual power of social media and being located in a place well-known for its celebrity pulling power might also give his salon a further boost. "I've just had a very famous singer book an appointment for her dog," he said. "She has 7.5m followers on social media and I'm hoping if I do a good job she might tag me!" Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]
On Tuesday night's Coronavirus Catch-up, Dr Eddie O'Neill, the product manager for the StopCovidNI contact tracing application, answers your questions.
So what do you want to know? Get in touch with us using the form below. Watch Coronavirus Catch-up live on Tuesday night at 19:00 GMT here on the BBC News NI website, the BBC iPlayer or the BBC News NI Facebook page. Your contact info Please don't publish my name I am over 16 years old I accept the Terms of Service If you are reading this page on the BBC News app, you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question on this topic.
In Cambodia almost anyone who sees a doctor or goes to hospital, is given an injection or put on an intravenous drip. This is what patients want, and what medical staff give them - it has become part of the healthcare routine. But it has serious, sometimes tragic, effects.
By John MurphyBBC News, Cambodia Mom Hing is chewing as he talks. The abbot of a Buddhist temple, he is sitting on the floor in his orange robes. He's been receiving gifts of food, drink and some money from worshippers in the village of Roka. In exchange, he gives them a blessing. But this 82-year-old monk is HIV-positive, and he's certain how that came about. "Since I came to this village in 1994, I've been having injections from a medical doctor who was trained in a refugee camp. And I got HIV-Aids from him - I only got injections from him." The man he's talking about was the village "doctor" for two-and-a-half decades - an unqualified, unlicensed doctor. Earlier this month he was given a 25-year prison sentence for manslaughter, accused of reusing needles and syringes. Yet Mom Hing bears no malice. "Let it be - life and death are normal things," he says. "I'm not worried about myself at all. I'm getting older. What I'm concerned about is the young." Tragically, more than 270 people in and around Roka - a population that numbers in the hundreds rather than thousands - have tested positive for HIV. Ten are reported to have already died from Aids. Lap Hoy, a 51-year-old grandmother, says she went to the village doctor when she had a cold and a fever. She is now HIV-positive and so are four other members of her family, who were also given injections by the doctor. "My grandchild got infected, her mother got infected and I, her grandmother, also got infected," she says. Lap Hoy says she doesn't want the doctor to ever to return. Her son-in-law, lying in a hammock, is more forthright. "If he ever came back, he wouldn't have any chance of survival," he says. Find out more Listen to Cambodia: Trust Me, I'm not a Doctor on Crossing Continents on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 17 December, or catch up later online. The mass outbreak shocked a country which, with substantial help from foreign donors and NGOs, has made good progress over the last decade in reducing HIV levels. It also prompted the Cambodian government to announce a clampdown on unlicensed health workers. But are the unlicensed doctors, midwives and pharmacies really the problem? A Westerner, who has worked in Cambodia's health sector for many years says there is a general lack of knowledge about infection control throughout the country's healthcare system. "I would say there are many more Rokas in Cambodia," she says. The practices are so poor that it's inevitable. I don't think there's a difference between licensed and unlicensed doctors. I think what we saw in this case was a breach of infection control practices [and] doctors working in the government sector get very little training - if any - in infection control." Part of the problem is the fascination many Cambodians have with injections and intravenous drips. Driving from the capital Phnom Penh, towards Roka, in the west of the country, I regularly saw people on IV drips - and not just on IV drips but also on motorbikes. These were mobile IV drips. I stopped one motorbike, which had three people on it. The passenger at the back was holding up a stick, at the end of which, covered in a black plastic bag, was a bottle of IV fluid. The plastic tube leading from the bottle was injected into the right arm of the man sitting in the middle. He said he'd been diagnosed with malaria by a private doctor and that he had liver disease and intestinal problems. He also felt weak. The IV drip, he said, was "cooling" his body down and giving him more energy. "There are a lot of people who have IV drips on motorbikes," he said. "I'm poor, I'm not rich, I don't have a car to drive, so I have a drip on a motorbike." The Western doctor, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, says demand for IV drips in Cambodia is immense. "It's not just in the village. Everybody who goes to hospital gets an IV because they think it's important and the doctors and nurses think it's important. "I think IVs and injections are given for spurious reasons. And they can be harmful. If you walk into a hospital, pretty close to every patient will have an IV. They'll just get them, you know, ad infinitum, until they leave the hospital." In theory, hospitals are the only institutions allowed to give injections. Local health clinics are forbidden from doing so. But this helps to push patients into the hands of the unlicensed doctors. "A mother brings her child to the clinic and says, 'OK physician, just give my child an injection,'" says Vong Tu, who trained as a nurse and is director of the Tuol Ampil health centre in Kompong Speu Province, south-west of Phnom Penh. "And I say, 'No, I can't give that to you, it's impossible.' Then the mother goes to the unlicensed doctor and simply says, 'Just one injection, one IV drip.' And the unlicensed doctor gives her what she wants." He says people take their children to private, unlicensed doctors to get IV drips or injections even when they only have a "normal fever". Ten minutes' drive from the health centre, lives "Dr Chin", an unlicensed doctor, who says he learned his skills from Vietnamese doctors after being recruited by the Khmer Rouge 40 years ago. War was raging and he dealt with malaria and dengue fever, while also patching up wounded soldiers. "My training was in the forest. It was all based on experience and reality," he says. As he goes on his medical rounds, weaving through the rice fields on his motorbike, it's clear that Chin is both popular and busy despite the government's intention to stop unlicensed doctors from practising. He's cheaper than the official hospitals and clinics, he lets his patients pay in instalments, and he's available day or night. He also gives his patients plenty of injections and IV drips. One woman says her husband had an operation in hospital to remove a tumour, and doctors gave him just five days to live. She credits Chin with keeping him alive for the last eight months. When I visited, the husband was attached to an IV drip, with yellow liquid in the bottle, which Chin said included painkillers and antibiotics. I spent about half a day with Chin. Despite his assurances that he never reuses needles, I wasn't wholly convinced by his infection control practices. He didn't wash his hands, or wear surgical gloves. I had my suspicions about a loose needle he kept in a silver metal box, which he used to fill the syringe with medicine from a bottle, before returning it to the box. And I had doubts about how sterile his cotton swabs were. I took my concerns to the Western doctor who quickly pointed out that no needle should ever be reused, whether it's to inject directly into a patient or to draw up the medicine. "Of course, things are only problems if you recognise them as problems," the doctor warned. "Many Khmer do not see these problems - for example antibiotic resistance [and] infection control breaches. "People blame this HIV outbreak [in Roka] on an unlicensed practitioner. But it could be many practitioners, licensed or unlicensed, working for the government or not, who have bad practices which can end up with Hepatitis B, or Hep C, or HIV. If you aren't aware of the problems then it's harder to fix them." Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
The naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough is to travel to Edinburgh to make an impassioned plea for urgent action to protect biodiversity and fight climate change.
Sir David will address charity workers at Edinburgh University's McEwan Hall on Wednesday 11 March. He will be the guest of honour at the People's Postcode Lottery annual charity gala in the capital. Last year, George and Amal Clooney attended the event. They received a Postcode Hero award in recognition of their work to protect human rights. Clara Govier, managing director at the People's Postcode Lottery, said: "Over the decades, Sir David has inspired generations of us to safeguard biodiversity and protect the planet. "We are delighted he will be joining us in Edinburgh early next year, Sir David's message is more important than ever."
Ocado's revenue grew by 11.2% in the 13 weeks to 13 March compared with the same period last year, although the online food retailer's income was hit by a fire in its warehouse in February.
It brought in £404m during the period, but the fire in its Andover base had a 1.2% impact on its sales. The firm had more orders per week, but their average size was slightly lower. Last month, Ocado announced a deal with Marks & Spencer to give the department store its first home delivery service. It will start in September 2020 at the latest, once Ocado's current deal with Waitrose has expired. 'Temporary setback' More than 30,000 orders - 10% of Ocado's capacity - were processed at the Andover warehouse, which was on fire for four days. Chief executive Tim Steiner said: "The fire has been a setback, but it will only be a temporary one. "Our teams have been working hard to minimise any disruption to our customers and we will build a state-of-the-art replacement facility that reflects all the innovations and improvements we have made since Andover opened in November 2016." Ocado also said that the initial investigation into the causes of the fire did not suggest there was any risk relating to its model, which relies on robotic warehouse machines to pack orders. Meanwhile, a temporary delivery outpost is being set up in Andover and capacity at another customer fulfilment centre in Erith is being increased faster than planned to cope with the disruption. Ocado is selling the operating system to other retailers and there was concern it could affect the other parts of its business. Mr Steiner said that with the Marks & Spencer deal, he felt that "Ocado Retail has never been in a stronger position". He added: "We are looking forward to the future with excitement and determination." Sophie Lund-Yates, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Today's announcement leaves no doubt Ocado has its eyes firmly on the future, with the group letting investors know last month's warehouse fire will be nothing more than a temporary setback. "The first quarter has gone about as well as can be expected and it's looking more and more like Ocado will make it over this bump in the road."
Passenger numbers at Doncaster's Robin Hood Airport increased by 5% in 2010, despite problems caused by heavy snow and the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.
The airport said there were 895,136 travellers in 2010 compared with 851,355 people the previous year. Its managers said the rise was "fantastic news". The airport closed for five days in December because of snow and ice. It also had to introduce no-fly zones in April and May due to the ash cloud. Airport director Mike Morton said: "This is fantastic news, especially given the difficulties we faced in the travel industry in 2010. "The severe weather conditions at the beginning and end of the year and the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland had a major impact on travel in and out of the UK. "Despite this, we saw more passengers taking off and landing in Doncaster."
Chris Scott was falling towards the ground above Long Island, New York, when he realised that something was wrong.
By Ant AdeaneBBC News An experienced skydiving instructor with around 6,000 jumps behind him, this should have just been another day at work. Strapped to Scott's chest was a tandem jumper named Gary Messina, for whom the jump was an annual birthday tradition. But when the men reached an altitude of 175ft, the parachute that had been slowing their descent suddenly collapsed. It had most likely been caught by a dust devil, a small unpredictable tornado that is the bane of skydivers, as it forms in the same clear conditions that are perfect for their sport. Messina, a prison officer who was due to turn 26 the next day, died on impact with the ground. Remarkably, Scott survived, although he soon blacked out. "I remember staring at the ground - and that was it," he later told reporters. He was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital. When he woke up 11 days later it was early August 2014 and doctors told him he had broken his neck. He was paralysed from the shoulders down and lucky to be alive. "I was a light beam away from death," he said. Scott went to a specialist rehabilitation centre in Atlanta, Georgia, before moving back to New York to live in the same apartment building as his family. He used a mouth-operated joystick to move his wheelchair and regularly went to Mount Sinai Hospital in East Harlem to work on his rehabilitation. It was there that he met Dr David Putrino in March 2019. In his role as the director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai, Putrino explored different ways of improving patient health. He used training methods associated with high-performance athletes, as well as technological solutions like virtual reality. The pair met at a time when Scott was struggling to cope. He missed being part of a team and felt a lack of purpose in his day-to-day life. Putrino had been recommended as someone who might be able to help. "We sat there staring at each other in silence for a little while," says Putrino. "And then I was like: 'Well, what do you like to do?'" Scott replied that he loved playing video games against others. Putrino was surprised. "That was me being naive at that point," he says, "because I'd never seen competitive gaming from someone as severely paralysed as Chris." They loaded a basketball game called NBA 2K into a PlayStation 4 at the hospital. Scott's backpack hung from his wheelchair and he asked Putrino to reach inside and fetch a device for him. The device had a mouthpiece with a joystick and different sensors that could be sucked on or blown into. This was Scott's QuadStick and it helped him to play video games using his mouth. Putrino mounted the QuadStick on to the wheelchair so that it lined up with Scott's mouth. Then they began to play. Scott moved the joystick with his lips. He could control the basketball players, making them pirouette, leap and throw, by puffing and sipping on the holes. "It was just incredibly dextrous and skilled," says Putrino. "And all of a sudden he was kicking my ass at NBA 2K." The experience gave them an idea. They were both familiar with the growing industry of e-sports where gamers competed against each other in tournaments. What if they could use Scott's video game skill and Putrino's expertise in high-performance training as the basis for an e-sports team with other quadriplegic players? Scott sent out a message to other patients at Mount Sinai to gauge interest. "This was the big test, because we weren't sure whether anyone would reply," says Putrino. But they didn't have to wait long to hear back. "People contacted us immediately and they were saying: 'We want a piece of this.'" Blake Hunt was one of those who got in touch. He had played video games since he was a child. "I remember playing Nintendo with my brothers," he says. Whoever came in first place had bragging rights for the day. A talented American football player, Hunt was 17 when he broke his neck during a match for his high-school team. "I couldn't really figure out a way to be competitive once I got hurt," he says. "That's where I got a lot of my enjoyment in life from. So I struggled with my identity for a while." After the accident Hunt couldn't move his legs, but he was able to move his arms and wrists. Without full use of his hands, however, he couldn't find a way to play the video games he'd always enjoyed. "One day I got really angry, and I decided to game by any means possible," says Hunt. Although he couldn't move each finger individually, he could make his hand close by pulling back his wrist. By flexing his wrist back and forth, he discovered he could press the buttons and move the joystick of a specially-designed controller. The first game he played was Call of Duty: Black Ops - a shooting game with a zombie mode that Hunt particularly enjoyed. Then he began playing American football on Madden NFL. It was a revelation. "That's when I realised that I can still be as competitive as anybody," he says. Shortly after their call-out, Scott and Putrino held a meeting where they set out their vision for an e-sports team that could compete at the highest level. Hunt was one of those in attendance. Soon a group of eight people with paraplegia and quadriplegia were meeting up regularly to practice. "And from there it kind of skyrocketed," says Hunt. One of the first video games they played together online was League of Legends, a gladiatorial game where two teams battle each other in a fantasy setting. It is a game that relies on teamwork and, as they played, the different playing styles and characteristics of each team member came to the fore. Sergio Acevedo was a laid-back, calming personality, while Richard Jacobs was lively, animated and often spoke in the third person as he played: "Good job, Rich!" Hunt could sometimes be heard singing at points of particular tension. Some of the team played by pressing pads with the side of their heads, while others manipulated controllers with their arms. They found that playing together they were a formidable outfit. "Individually we had a hard time winning sometimes," says Hunt. "But when we all came together, it was very hard to beat us." Nyree Stevens was another who responded to the initial call-out. Thirty years old and a keen artist, she uses her mouth to paint portraits of her friends. She was injured by a stray bullet on a night out with friends in Harlem when she was 18. "It was a gunshot wound to the neck," she says. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Video games have become an important part of her life. "It helps me get my independence back to be able to play," she says. When she joined the team, she was the only woman. "You know what boys are like with their games," she says. "They live for gaming. But I'm getting up there with them." Often the people that they played online - and beat - were non-disabled. Sometimes their opponents didn't know who they were playing. "People don't know," says Hunt. "And it's very liberating to beat them. That's part of the fun." But with the growth in popularity of streaming platforms like Twitch, often gamers can see each other. Nyree Stevens enjoys it when her opponents can see her. "A lot of people wouldn't think that the person on the other side of the avatar is beating them by playing with their mouth," she says. "So that's totally cool." Practice paid off. By the summer of 2019, the team were ready to begin playing in competitions where prize money and greater prestige would be up for grabs. On the cusp of their first tournament in late July 2019, they held another team meeting. Afterwards, Putrino remembers being with Scott as he left Mount Sinai for the day. "He stopped his chair and looked over his shoulder to ask me: 'Do you really think we can do this? Can we really pull this off?'" Putrino told him that to get as far as they had they were already winning. Scott smiled and rode his chair out of the hospital. A few days later, there was terrible news. Scott had died from a chest infection. "It was a shock to all of us," says Hunt. "It's still hard to deal with. We don't really discuss it too much." "That was a big blow," says Putrino. But he adds that for many disabled people, health is fragile. "You just never know what's going to happen." The team got together and resolved to continue what Scott had started. Their team name would be the Quad Gods. "We call ourselves the Quad Gods because in our minds we're all gods of our own lifestyle," says Hunt. They each came up with different alter egos. Hunt chose Shango. "He's an African God of thunder, and when I bring the pain, I bring the thunder." Richard Jacobs chose Zeus. Nyree Stevens chose SittinPrettii. In the first competitive tournament they played in there were 99 teams, and the Quad Gods were hoping to finish in the top half. They came fourth. They began playing in - and winning - more tournaments online, finding particular success with the popular fighting game Fortnite. As stories about their team spread among the gaming community, funding opportunities came their way. They received money to buy equipment and to launch as a legitimate e-sports team. The New Jersey Nets basketball team donated a gaming space. The Quad Gods began looking around for a full-time coach. Their next goal is to place highly at a range of different e-sports World Championships next year. The Olympic Committee are strongly considering e-sports for the 2024 Olympics and, by securing a world ranking, the Quad Gods hope to qualify. For the team, the benefits of competitive gaming have been considerable. "When we do things we enjoy, it releases stress," says Hunt. "Stress is a killer in its own right. In that way gaming has been therapeutic. I've been in the chair since I was 17. I'm now 31. In many ways gaming has saved my life." "None of us would be together if it weren't for Chris showing up to my lab one day and saying 'Hey, I got to do something,'" says Putrino, known affectionately as "the Quadfather" by the team. The Quad Gods logo was painted by the laid-back Sergio Acevedo, who, like Nyree Stevens, paints with his mouth. It is of a wheelchair being held aloft by wings. "Chris will always be our captain," says Hunt. "He's our guardian angel and the wings embody that." For more stories about video games and disability, listen to Unplayable: Disability and the Gaming Revolution You may also be interested in: "I was 19 years old and didn't know how I would even begin to think of my body without my legs," writes Kat Hawkins. "I remember thinking: 'I'm not going to be able to walk, let alone dance.'" 'I thought dancers had to have two arms and two legs'
Three reports into health care in the north-east of Scotland have highlighted "extremely serious" issues and "make stark reading" for NHS Grampian.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) conducted a review of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and also an unannounced inspection of services for older people in acute hospitals in the NHS Grampian region. A separate review from the Royal College of Surgeons looked at General Surgery. ABERDEEN ROYAL INFIRMARY Leadership and culture Governance and accountability Staff governance CARE FOR OLDER PEOPLE IN ACUTE HOSPITALS Treating older people with compassion, dignity and respect Discharge Staffing Documentation GENERAL SURGERY SERVICE REVIEW
A-level results day in Wales has been overshadowed by claims that results for some pupils are "utterly unfair and unfathomable".
Top grades have risen despite a chaotic summer when exams were cancelled. But more than 42% of final grades were lowered from those estimated by teachers, after the exams watchdog called them "too generous". The education minister has pledged grades would be no lower than pupils' earlier AS results. Up to 4,500 may now be given improved grades, which exam board officials have promised to do as soon as possible. There has still been strong criticism by teaching unions and some head teachers, who claim pupils were being "short changed" and the calculations had placed an over-emphasis on last year's AS-levels. One further education organisation has called for a review of the process. But Education Minister Kirsty Williams said she was confident the system was fair and "very robust". "In any year under normal circumstances, sometimes the grades of a student... do not meet the expectations of maybe the teacher, or maybe the student and that's not different this year," she said. "Clearly, I wish we had not been in a position to make last-minute changes but [students] can be absolutely confident that the exams that they have achieved today are as good as exams that were taken last year." The late intervention by Ms Williams on Wednesday followed an outcry in Scotland after thousands of results were initially downgraded, sparking changes in other parts of the UK. WJEC chief executive, Ian Morgan, said he thought the system had been "fair and balanced." "We probably looked at a dozen different models and it was felt, from a WJEC perspective, and signed off by Qualifications Wales, that the approach we took was the fairest in the circumstances," he said. Mr Morgan said there would "inevitably" be appeals. "It's about ensuring that we are fair and consistent in that appeals process," he said. He said his organisation had done "the best that we possibly can in the circumstances." What do the results show? What has been the problem? The qualifications watchdog found that the estimated grades by teachers had been too generous in Wales. If you look at the last 10 years, usually about a quarter of grades are at the very top - last year it was around 27%, when record numbers of pupils got A and A*s. But Qualifications Wales found if it had gone along with the estimates for this summer then more than 40% would have been A and A* grades. Following the revision, the majority of students (53.7%) have been given their original assessment grade while the remainder (42.2%) get a lower grade. A small proportion get a higher grade. Altogether, 37% were downgraded by a single grade and 5% were dropped two grades. But once ministers in England and Scotland had stepped in to overrule the usual exam moderation practices it was inevitable that Wales would have to follow suit. Students who get their grades today are being told if their results are lower than their earlier AS-level grades, they will be issued with revised ones by the WJEC as soon as possible. Education expert Gareth Evans, from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, said some students would still wonder if they might have performed better than expected. "While it will doubtless be of some comfort to those who performed well at the halfway stage of their A-levels, it will be of scant consolation to those pinning their hopes on boosting scores at the end of the course," he said. "Issues with the artificial moderation of grades allocated by teachers remains. The right of pupils to challenge their grades as appropriate is absolutely essential." What has been the reaction? Eithne Hughes, director of the ASCL Cymru union said: "We have received many calls from school leaders expressing their frustration, confusion, and disappointment at the results awarded to their students. "They report that grades have been pulled down in a way that they feel to be utterly unfair and unfathomable, and they are extremely concerned about the detrimental impact on the young people concerned."   Neil Foden, a north Wales-based member of the national executive of the National Education Union, said that from his contact with schools, more than 90% of headteachers were unhappy with the grades. "There is real concern in schools about the number of learners whose results have been downgraded from the teacher estimates," he said. Dilwyn Roberts-Young, of Welsh teaching union Ucac, said: "There remains serious concern that there are many discrepancies at individual and centre level, in spite of the education minister's pledge last night. "The last-minute changes and the results of individuals are inevitably going to create anxiety and we hope we will not see this repeated next week." Colegau Cymru - an education charity representing further education providers - has called for an urgent review of the awarding process. It said there had been "considerable inequalities" in the results of individual learners. Director of development Kelly Edwards said: "We must ensure that the grades awarded are fair and accurate so that learners can progress on their chosen path." Qualifications Wales chief executive Philip Blaker said this year's process had not disadvantaged particular groups of pupils and the grades were "meaningful and robust". "We have analysed attainment gaps this year relative to previous years - looking at aspects such as gender, age and eligibility for free school meals", he said. "Our analysis shows no statistically significant differences this year relative to other years." The results show Wales has proportionately more pupils with top grades and grades A* to C than in England, but fewer than in Northern Ireland. There had also been a 3.3% rise in the proportion of A* to C grades in Wales, higher than elsewhere. And the performance at both A* to C and A*-A grades in Wales is higher than in all regions of England, apart from the south east, which is only slightly higher. 'Quite a lot of people I know have got lower than they were predicted' Sophie Price, 18, from Bassaleg, Newport, is aiming to start a fashion buying course in London but was told online that she did not have the right grades. "I was freaking out, I didn't know what to do," she said.  "There's not a lot of guidance on what to do - you're just left there. You can't really ring them, you have to email them and then you're waiting for an email back.  "Quite a lot of people I know have got lower than they were predicted.  Lots of people have been predicted Cs and got Us." Sophie passed her Welsh Bac and got a D in business and E in art; she was predicted two Cs. Her art mark will be upgraded because of her AS grade last year but she will now need to appeal against her business grade, although her university said it will keep her place open for now. "I don't have a back-up plan - I was so set on the one thing.  "It's a bit heart-breaking, you don't really know what else to do.  It's hard when your future's in the hands of other people and you have no control over it." At Merthyr College, Caitlyn Foley got an A* and three As. "It's been a bit weird having to deal with all the changes so last minute," she said. "We thought the teacher's predicted grades were final but then we found out that there was a bit more than that," she said. "Obviously the announcement last night that we wouldn't get less than what we got in AS, that was a bit reassuring." Fellow student Tom Bush, who got an A and two Bs, added: "I've actually got lower now than I had at AS in Psychology which is odd but hopefully I'll go up." Zac Evans, a pupil at Ysgol Glan Clwyd, St Asaph, said he got Cs in art, design and technology, and an E in PE. "I'm going to look into an appeal with the hope of getting a higher grade in DT because I was hoping for a B but it will all be OK in the long run. "I've just had advice from the headmaster and they'll be releasing how the application process works on Monday because they say it's changing and I'll be looking into it." Can I appeal? Qualifications Wales has been asked to quickly make any relevant adjustments to the appeals process and liaise with other exam regulators. The advice to pupils getting results is: As things stand, appeals have to be made through a school or college, rather than direct to the WJEC exam board - and there are limited grounds. These are restricted to the process - such as the exam board using the wrong data to calculate a final grade. It will not allow schools and colleges to rethink their estimated grades or ranking of pupils. If other mistakes are highlighted through an appeal, the other pupils affected will not see their grades lowered, the exam board has said. Jackie Parker, head of Crickhowell School in Powys said: "We will all be working to look through every individual child's performance data to look at what results they've achieved and to ensure if appeals are necessary they are going forward positively. "I think the WJEC and others have tried to be as fair as they can but I personally think there's more work to do here. "For me, the moral purpose of leadership is to ensure that our young people are not disadvantaged in any way." Lisa Thomas, principal of Merthyr College, said it had been a very unsettling time and results would now be closely scrutinised. "If we feel that there are learners that have been disadvantaged in any way then we would be looking to use the appeals process," she said. Analysis: Robert Cuffe, head of data science at BBC News Is there a fair way to award grades without exams? Even exams can be unfair. Some of us perform badly under exam pressure, and two people marking the same paper can give different grades. But this year's assessment had left many people feeling their future chances have been harmed by a computer model. The awarding body put in place a system that led to more than 40% of grades being downgraded to stop grade inflation. But on the eve of results day thousands of students were rescued when the Welsh Government announced students that achieved higher AS grades are entitled to have their A-level result upgraded to match. Information available to calculate grades differs across the UK: like in Northern Ireland, AS results contribute to overall A-level results in Wales and therefore can be taken into account. However, this doesn't happen in England - where AS grades have no bearing to A-level results. Research suggests that using AS performance can improve the overall accuracy of grades. It still means that if a school has a stronger year group than last year, or if teaching has improved, that might not be fully recognised this year. Grades could be calculated using a range of evidence including work to date, mock exams and teacher assessed grades, but even experts can't agree on a perfect way to navigate yet another difficult problem caused by the coronavirus. How schools' past performance is accounted for There has been concern about how the "standardisation" process looks at schools and colleges' previous results. In Wales, this does not apply to the process for A-levels, the Welsh Bacc and some GCSEs where you already have a lot of hard data from previous assessment - such as AS-levels - to work from. But average results from 2017-19 are taken into account when standardising most GCSEs. Schools could appeal to the WJEC if they think there were significant circumstances or events in those previous years which might bring the average down. However, currently there is no scope for pupils to appeal against the grade they were given by their school or college - the Centre Assessment Grade (CAG). If pupils have concerns about bias or discrimination in allocating those grades, they can appeal to the WJEC and a process similar to a malpractice complaint would be followed, but those are expected to be rare. In other years there can be requests for exam scripts to be reviewed, but this is obviously not an option when no exams have been taken. The minister has announced, however, that the appeal process will be free for all students. Qualifications Wales has set a 17 September deadline for initial reviews and then a 42-day deadline for appeals to be dealt with by the WJEC exam board. A further independent review is possible.
Britain voted by a margin of two-to-one to stay in the European Economic Community, as the EU was then known, in a 1975 referendum. How many of the things the defeated Out campaign were warning about have come true?
By Brian WheelerPolitical reporter Through the looking glass Welcome to the 1975 European referendum - a mirror image of the one being fought today. Today the Conservative government is deeply divided over the big question. In 1975, it was the Labour government. Prime Minister Harold Wilson had come back from Brussels with what he claimed was a better deal for Britain (sound familiar?) and was leading the In campaign. But Labour's left, led by Tony Benn (and including a then-unknown Jeremy Corbyn), hated the Common Market, seeing it as a "capitalist club" that would erode British democracy and destroy jobs. The Conservatives - including their new leader Margaret Thatcher - were, almost to a man and woman, enthusiastic cheerleaders for staying in "Europe" on free trade grounds, after taking us into it two years earlier. Like now, big business backed Britain's membership - but so did the tabloid press, with The Sun famously declaring in an editorial "we are all Europeans now". So who was right? Running our own affairs A common complaint from those who voted to remain in the EEC in 1975 is that they were hoodwinked - they thought they were voting for a trading arrangement but ended up with a bossy "superstate". This is not entirely true. Sovereignty - the ability to run our own affairs - was very much an issue in the 1975 referendum. Enoch Powell, the maverick right wing Tory who had just become an Ulster Unionist MP, and left wing Labour cabinet minister Tony Benn - the loudest voices in the Out campaign - talked endlessly about it. In its leaflet to voters, the Out campaign warned that the Common Market "sets out by stages to merge Britain with France, Germany, Italy and other countries into a single nation," in which Britain would be a "mere province". The In campaign openly acknowledged that being a member of the EEC involved "pooling" sovereignty with the eight other nations who were members at the time. But it said Britain could not go it alone in the modern world and it assured voters that British traditions and way of life were not under threat. The In campaign also stressed that all the big decisions in Europe would be subject to a prime ministerial veto - something that no longer holds true 41 years later - and that there was no need for Community-wide laws apart from for a "few commercial and industrial purposes". Today's Leave campaigners would take issue with that "few". Enoch Powell was asked to explain why the British people had ignored his warnings about giving up the power to determine laws, as it became clear that his side had lost. "It is a thing so incredible to them that I am not inclined to blame them overmuch," he told the BBC. The price of butter With inflation running at 24% (CPI inflation is currently 0.3%), rising food prices were a huge issue for voters in 1975. Some blamed the recent introduction of decimal coins. Others blamed the parlous state of British industry. The Out campaign blamed the Common Market, which through the Common Agricultural Policy, forced Britain to buy food from other member states and, to give one much quoted example, banned the import of cheap butter from New Zealand. "The price of butter has to be almost doubled by 1978 if we stay in," warned the Out campaign in its leaflet. In fact, the price of butter quadrupled by 1978, although debate continued to rage about whether the Common Market was entirely to blame for that. Food mountains The In campaign raised the spectre of food security in 1975, warning that "Britain as a country which cannot feed itself, will be safer in the Community which is almost self-sufficient in food. Otherwise we may find ourselves standing at the end of a world food queue". In fact, there were huge surpluses of food being sold off at knockdown prices by the EEC itself. Subsidies to farmers had produced "butter mountains," "beef mountains" and "wine lakes". The surplus food was, as the Out campaign pointed out, being destroyed or sold off to Russia "at prices well below what the housewife in the Common Market has to pay". We don't hear much about European "butter mountains" these days. The EU is taking action to end the "dumping" of cheap food on African nations, where it has damaged local farmers, although everyone - including the Remain camp - still thinks the Common Agricultural Policy is in need of further reform. The UK is, however, heavily dependent on other EU member states for food. UK food production is below 60% of consumption and particularly reliant on imports for fruit and many vegetables, according to the National Farmers Union, which backs a Remain vote. UKIP points to a 2008 Defra report which suggests Britain could, at a pinch, become self-sufficient if had to. Jobs and trade Out campaigner Tony Benn claimed Britain's membership of the EEC had cost 500,000 British jobs in just two years. He blamed rising unemployment on the growing trade deficit between Britain and the rest of the EEC. We were importing far more stuff from European countries than we were exporting to them. (Britain has continued to run a trade deficit with the rest of the EU, and it hit a record high this year, thanks in part to a stronger pound.) The In campaign said Mr Benn had effectively plucked the jobs figure out of thin air and the real cause of rising unemployment was the global slump and rampant inflation, which was well above levels in the rest of Europe. They warned that leaving the EU would be potentially "disastrous" for British industry as it would block access to a market of what was then 250 million people. In an echo of the arguments being made today, the 1975 In campaign said that even if Britain was able to negotiate a free trade deal with the EEC it "would have to accept many Community rules" without having any say in how they are made. Lurking behind this debate was the growing feeling that Britain - crippled by strikes, power cuts and inflation - was just about finished as a country. "Since the national decline of Britain became fully apparent after the war there has never been a rational alternative to a European base for the redevelopment of Britain," the pro-EU Times argued in an editorial. Out campaigners argued the only way to save Britain was to get out of the EU, but the British public in 1975 were not convinced. The Commonwealth Britain had only just given up its empire in 1975, so there was much anxiety about what would happen to the country's links with its former colonies. Britain had to cut most of its trade links with the Commonwealth nations and replace them with trade deals with the EEC. This prompted the Out campaign to claim that Britain would effectively cease to be a member of the Commonwealth. The In campaign said the leaders of the Commonwealth nations all wanted Britain to remain in the EU and assured voters that the Queen would "continue to be head of the Commonwealth". This issue has resurfaced in the current campaign, with Leave campaigners saying Britain would be able to strike its own trade deals with Commonwealth nations, although some economists have suggested that may result in something close to the status quo, as the EU already has deals with the majority of former British colonies. What no one saw coming The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent admittance of former Communist bloc states, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, into the European Union would have seemed an extremely far-fetched proposition in 1975. The Cold War and the Soviet Union were seemingly immovable facts of life back then. The In campaign even declared in its leaflet that "some want a Communist Britain - part of the Soviet bloc". The Common Market was sold to voters as a bulwark against Soviet aggression, in much the same way as today's Remain campaign claims Vladimir Putin would celebrate a British Leave vote. Immigration was not an issue The other dog that didn't bark in 1975 was immigration. It was barely mentioned at all during the campaign. This was due, in part, to the fact that there were still limits on workers from other member states. Full EU "free movement" did not kick in until after the 1992 Maastricht Treaty was signed. But the idea that people would want to come to a depressed, economically stagnant Britain in large numbers would have seemed fanciful at best in 1975. The growth of emigration was more of a concern. So what lessons can we draw from 1975? Perhaps the biggest lesson is that although some of the things the Out campaign were warning about, particularly on sovereignty, have come to pass - and the In campaign will claim Britain's membership has delivered the peace, stability and prosperity their kipper-tied forebears had promised - it is best to take confident predictions about what might happen in the future, from either side, with a large pinch of salt.
When Seria Hogg was knocked off her bike by a hit-and-run driver, she was left with deep cuts to her face, a broken and collapsed cheekbone, four missing teeth and a damaged tongue.
By Angie BrownBBC Scotland News It took a year of dental work and three operations to reconstruct her face, but she has been left with mental as well as physical scars. The 49-year-old from Penicuik in Midlothian said she first realised the extent of her injuries when her 19-year-old son visited her in hospital and cried when he saw her face. When she was given a mirror and saw the damage for herself, she said she was "absolutely horrified". "My face was maybe twice the size it should have been because there were so many stitches. I sobbed as I couldn't bear to look at myself," she said. "I tried to be so strong for my family despite feeling like my life was over." Children were visibly scared by her face and adults would stare, the mother-of-three said. "It was a terrible time," she said. "I wasn't offered any counselling by the NHS or told about any organisations who could help me. "A year went by of attending appointments, going to work and all the while I was completely unravelling and it culminated in me having a breakdown." Seria had been cycling in Edinburgh when she was knocked down by a disqualified driver in April 2009. He was later fined £600 for dangerous driving. "I can't remember anything about the accident and when I regained consciousness I was inside an MRI scanner. It was scary and I didn't know where I was," she said. "They then sewed all my face up. I asked how many stitches I had and they said there were so many they couldn't count." A bone had to be cemented in her jaw and she had to go for three hours to the dentist every week for more than a year. She said: "The repairs were so traumatic and the drilling so painful and it caused me to keep refocussing on the accident." She had an operation on her nose, another for titanium plates to be fitted and a third using cartilage from her ear to repair her face. "I had just started coming into my own as a woman and feeling confident when this happened and suddenly I felt like my life was over, it was a really hard thing to deal with," she said. "I felt I couldn't look at people or they would be scared or disgusted. I overcame it initially by pretending but really I was falling apart and then a year later I had a breakdown. "I grew my hair that was very short in a bid to cover my scars but it was in the middle of my face and I just couldn't hide it." Browsing the internet five years after the collision, she came across free counselling charity Changing Faces, for people who had suffered "visible differences" to their faces. "I wish I had known about this charity at the time because my facial injuries really affected my mental health," she said. "If I had known about the charity sooner I would have been able to get help sooner and maybe I wouldn't have had a breakdown." Eleven years later Seria still is unable to feel one side of her face, which means she cannot smile. Now she plans to cycle from Land's End to John o' Groats solo in a bid to raise money for Changing Faces. "I decided that the driver had already impacted my life so much that I wasn't going to let him take my love for cycling away," she said. "It still does upset me as it was such an awful time so I will use the time on my own on the bike to process my accident and focus on how much has changed since then." Catherine Deakin, Changing Faces director of fundraising, says: "Seria's fantastic cycling challenge will help us keep open the UK's only free counselling service for people with visible differences who need more help to cope." She sets off on her cycle on 18 September.
It's more than 20 years since Jerry Garcia died ending the glory years of the Grateful Dead, one of the most popular rock bands to date. These days some ardent fans (or "Deadheads") will pay top prices for the right piece of band memorabilia. But now, possibly the ultimate Garcia artefact is coming to auction in New York - his favourite guitar, nicknamed Wolf. And a single charity is to benefit.
By Vincent DowdArts reporter, BBC News Officially the Grateful Dead had no leader. But from the band's origins in 1965 to his death 30 years later, Garcia was the best known member of a group which still evokes the excitement of American counterculture in the 1960s. As well as '60s psychedelia, the group's albums show the influence of jazz, bluegrass, mainstream pop and even their early days as a jug band. But when they toured it was the lengthy jam sessions fans loved - and central to those was the Garcia guitar sound. Devoted Deadheads identify five classic guitars which Garcia played at different times: Alligator, Rosebud, Lightning Bolt, Tiger and Wolf. The last two were auctioned together in 2002 and made more than $1.5m (£1.2m). Now Wolf is back at the same auction house to benefit the advocacy group the Southern Poverty Law Center. Arlan Ettinger runs Guernsey's auction house in New York which is handling this month's sale. Guernsey's specialises in the unusual. "I've loved having a pioneering sale of John F Kennedy memorabilia or jazz artefacts," says Ettinger. "But selling Tiger and Wolf the first time round was a huge thrill because real fans are amazingly passionate about the Grateful Dead. It's like they've become the ultimate rock icon of '60s America and all that excitement and the passion that went with it." Tiger was bought in 2002 by the hugely wealthy Jim Irsay, who owns the National Football League (NFL) team the Indianapolis Colts. Wolf went for more than $700,000 (£543,000) to Dan Pritzker, whose family founded the Hyatt hotel chain. Ettinger remembers there had already been a lot of press interest in who owned the guitars. "They were consigned to Guernsey's by the man who made them - the luthier [guitar maker] Doug Irwin. In his will Jerry had bequeathed the guitars back to Doug but the band members challenged that legally. Times had been tough for Doug Irwin and he had at times been homeless. "Everyone was saying they were worth maybe $25,000 (£19,000) or $50,000 (£39,000) apiece. But we built a big auction of Grateful Dead material around them and we proved they were worth a lot more. The auction was at the ultra-hip disco Studio 54 in Manhattan which made it pretty special. "So I was surprised and delighted when Dan Pritzker got back in contact to say all these years later he wants to auction Wolf again for charity. Dan is intent that every dollar of the hammer price should go to the Law Center and we've agreed to that. "Given what it sold for in 2002 and given how great a cause this is, we're hoping the Center will get more than $1.5m (£1.2m) from the sale this month." Wolf 'accident' The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in Alabama in 1971 to focus on civil rights. Ettinger thinks Garcia would be delighted to see it benefit from the sale of Wolf. "Southern Poverty has fought racism and hate groups and neo-Nazis through the courts. So I thought it was a noble thing for Dan Pritzker to do. It's a pure gift with no tax write-off and there's no seller's commission for us. "Dan told me he was deeply troubled by the direction our new government is taking. He wanted to take some proactive steps to do something important and good with the money the auction will raise." The guitar's Wolf association came about almost by accident: it wasn't something Irwin included when he made the instrument. Garcia stuck a cartoon wolf on the guitar as a joke. At one point the instrument went back to Irwin for repairs and he decided to incorporate the cartoon wolf more permanently. Ettinger thinks only the most obsessive Deadheads can identify exactly which guitar Garcia played in each recording. "But the Wolf design means you can often pick out that exact instrument at a particular concert in photographs and film footage. "There is so much interest still in Jerry and the band. There's a new Martin Scorsese six-part TV series about them: I think that will tell us about the world they lived in, not just about their music. "It's funny when you think of the guitar as just wood and strips of metal and wire strings. But it takes people back to very important moments in their lives. It's been around since 1973 so it's fantastic that all these years later it will do so much good in the world." The guitar will be auctioned at Guernsey's in New York on 31 May. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected].
Superfast computer technology is to be piloted in the Highlands.
The project, to create a high performance computing (HPC) network, involves Fujitsu, Highland Council and business group Energy North. A hub in the Highlands will be linked up to computer clusters in other parts of the UK and the rest of the world. Those involved said the HPC would be able to handle huge amounts of data and do tasks in minutes that normally take days to complete. Fujitsu, which has bases in Inverness and Alness, along with Highland Council and Energy North will run the trial for four months. Energy North is a trade group with more than 200 members in the oil and gas, renewable energy and nuclear industries. The Highland system will use a portal to connect initially to a HPC cluster in Wales and later to a pilot scheme in Northern Ireland. It will also connect to Fujitsu operations at Hayes in Middlesex, the base for the Laboratories of Europe, a global network of research facilities in Europe, Japan and the US. The HPC will allow companies in the Highlands to be able to link into computer technology previously unavailable. 'Pioneering project' The Welsh HPC network, which connects six universities, as well as private sector companies, is capable of doing 320 trillion operations every second. The Scottish pilot is also linked to efforts to create a Highland Science Skills Academy. Drew Hendry, leader of Highland Council, said: "HPC opens up a new world of potential for the business and research community in the Highlands and beyond. "It will put the region at the forefront of the HPC revolution in Scotland by providing access to unprecedented computing power to help develop products and processes that will benefit the wider economy. "It fits perfectly with our plans to develop a Highland Science Skills Academy and together these pioneering developments could benefit people for generations to come." Jim Brophy, Fujitsu's client director, described the HPC pilot as a "pioneering project". Ian Couper, chief executive of Energy North, said: "Using HPC could bring vast rewards to the industry and help grow the Highlands' reputation as a leader in energy research and development - something we are working with the industry to achieve through the Energy North Oil and Gas Taskforce." Related Internet Links Energy North Fujitsu Highland Council
New details have been released on three contracts worth up to £60m each for the design of new dual carriageway on the A9 between Perth and Inverness.
Transport Scotland said the contracts cover Birnam to Glen Garry, Glen Garry to Dalraddy and Dalraddy to Inverness. The work forms part of a £3bn Scottish government project to dual the road completely between the two cities. The construction work involving 80 miles (128.7km) is scheduled to be completed in 2025. A previous announcement on the design contracts worth between £40m and £60m did not include details on the sections of road to be covered.
As the scale of Ekrem Imamoglu's victory became clear, his supporters thronged his election headquarters. Lining the street outside was a row of cameras. Among them: Turkey's state broadcaster TRT, heavily under the thumb of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
By Mark LowenBBC Turkey correspondent, Istanbul A woman approached, waving her Turkish flag bearing the face of Mr Imamoglu at the TRT cameraman. "Now are you going to film us?", she cried, "we're here, now show we are!" It encapsulated the feeling of an opposition that has been stifled for years, all the organs of the Turkish state controlled by Turkey's powerful, polarising leader. Finally, the other side of this country feels as though the hand that has covered its mouth has been unclasped. Rarely is a local election of such national importance. But Mr Erdogan has built his political career over twenty-five years on a sense of victory and an aura of invincibility. He was born in Istanbul, he ran it as mayor and it propelled him to power first as Prime Minister in 2003 and then President eleven years later. He has towered over an opposition that long been hopelessly divided. And he has thrived on seeming unchallengeable. Accruing ever more power through the devotion of his pious, conservative supporters, he has transformed Turkey economically and socially, every area from media to construction filled with loyalists who backed him in return for favours. A 'disastrous miscalculation' When his AK Party (AKP) lost Istanbul in March this year by a sliver - just 13,000 votes - the electoral board was widely seen as buckling under the government's pressure for a re-run, based on dubious claim of irregularities. "Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey", said the country's omnipotent President, assuming this was once again a gamble he would win. It was a disastrous miscalculation. Mr Imamoglu won by a landslide - the largest in a mayoral election here in 35 years. Conservative areas of the city - Fatih (Istanbul's pious heart by the Blue Mosque), Tuzla (the constituency of the government candidate Binali Yildrim) and Uskudar (where President Erdogan himself lives) all backed Mr Imamoglu. How did he achieve it? The answer is in one word, plastered over his posters: umut (hope). The AKP called him everything they could think of: terrorist, coup-supporter, fraud, Greek, even equating him with the Egyptian autocrat President Sisi, an arch rival of President Erdogan. He rebuffed the smears with smiles. Vowing to embrace his opponents, he has pushed his message of an inclusive Turkey and a greener, fairer Istanbul, freed of the corruption and nepotism that have built up over 25 years of conservative rule. During the 18 days when he ran the city after the last vote before it was annulled, his team uncovered a deficit of almost $4bn (£3.1bn), largely due to state tenders linked to President Erdogan's family. His victory could have a seismic impact here. Is this the beginning of the end for Erdogan? The opposition finally feels it's capable of winning - and will channel that through to the next national elections. Those are, for now, due in 2023 but are widely expected to come earlier after the AKP's crushing defeat. Vultures are already circling, with Mr Erdogan's predecessor as President preparing to launch a breakaway party, as is a former Prime Minister. That will bleed support from the President's now-declining voter base. As Mr Erdogan's authoritarianism has grown, his inner circle has shrunk. He does not have an obvious heir - his son-in-law, the current Finance Minister, has little of his charisma. The party he founded and has built up could be crippled without him. Whispers will now grow louder about the beginning of President Erdogan's end. But even if it comes - and nobody here underestimates his ability to bounce back - unpicking a quarter of a century of Erdoganism would take far longer. Turkish society has been battered over recent years, the country plummeting in indexes of press freedom, judicial independence and human rights. But the one thing the opposition clung on to for dear life was free elections. They partied late into the night here, celebrating victory - but also the fact that there is still life in Turkish democracy.
It's a year since the Syrian city of Raqqa was freed from the grip of the group known as Islamic State. Evidence of the brutal battle to dislodge the extremists is visible everywhere you look. But the fear of the people who've returned to this broken city is that the rest of the world is now walking away.
By Jonathan BealeDefence correspondent, BBC News, Raqqa, Syria Raqqa is still a rubble city. The chaos is ultimately the creation of IS. But the devastation was also caused by thousands and thousands of coalition airstrikes. It took more than five months of intensive bombing to dislodge the extremists from their de facto capital. Mostly dropped from US warplanes but British ones too. Yet neither Britain nor America appears willing so far to take responsibility for repairing the damage they caused. Despite the devastation, many families who fled the fighting have now returned. Some shops have re-opened. Traffic runs past the rubble piled high on the side of the streets. But they are now asking who will rebuild their shattered city? We were driven around Raqqa by US special forces in unmarked armoured 4x4 vehicles. Some children waved at the convoy as we passed. The US commander in the front seat, who we can't identify, told me: "There's still a tonne of goodwill." The danger is that any goodwill will evaporate the longer their needs go unmet. We were taken to meet Raqqa's Civil Council which has a long list of concerns that need to be addressed. Much of the city is still without essential services such as running water and electricity. None of Raqqa's destroyed bridges, essential for the movement of goods and people, has been repaired. The main hospital where IS made their last stand still lies in ruins. Council member Layla Moustaffa says: "We're concerned about how long it's taking for the international community to respond." She likens Raqqa to a sick man in urgent need of medical attention. Ammar Jabor, another council member, says he believes "everyone who contributed to the destruction of the city should help rebuild it". When I ask who, he replies: "I'm asking the USA and the UK to rebuild this beautiful city." America and Britain may have contributed to the devastation. But both have stated they won't get involved directly in efforts to rebuild those areas of Syria that have been destroyed by the war until there's a UN-backed peace process for the whole country. That doesn't look like happening anytime soon. Instead the US and a handful of other nations say they're focusing their efforts on "stabilisation". Patrick Connell, a senior US State Department official on the ground, says that means denying the extremists the "fertile ground they can recruit from". There are still IS sleeper cells operating in the city. The US says it's already spent more than $8bn (£6bn) on humanitarian assistance right across Syria. Britain, the second-largest bilateral donor, has committed £2.7bn. In Raqqa itself, some of that money has been spent on clearing some of the thousands of explosive devices left behind by the extremists, and providing food, medical supplies and education. But these efforts have stopped short of reconstruction. Even that limited help is now in doubt. Raqqa's fear of being forgotten has been heightened by a decision by the Trump administration to cut more than $200m (£150m) earmarked for Syria's stabilisation. US officials say it's being done to force other nations to do more. Patrick Connell says it's a signal from the president "that the burden needs to be shared". The US says a handful of other nations have already pledged contributions that will help ensure that work will continue. But Raqqa still needs more support and it's the children of Raqqa whose futures will suffer without it. Our US military minders took us to a school which is helping young children who've suffered the emotional and physical scars of the war. The pupils included a girl who'd been forced to marry an IS fighter at the age of 11 and who'd then been divorced at 13 after she was injured. Sitting in a classroom, two young boys who'd lost limbs were enthusiastically learning the alphabet. Both are among the victims of the thousands of explosive devices left behind by the extremists. The State Department official overseeing the programme told us they were giving them the opportunity to learn and play that they were denied under IS. But the US funding for this programme will run out by the end of the year. The US is keen to remind the rest of the world that, even if it's cutting its funding, it's not turning its back on north-east Syria. There are still 2,000 US troops on the ground helping the Syrian Democratic Forces clear the last pocket of IS territory in the region. The US says they will stay until they ensure the "enduring defeat of IS". Maj Gen Pat Roberson, the US special operations commander on the ground, believes America is already "fulfilling its responsibility by ridding Syria of IS". He says the rest of the world now needs to help out, too. The people of Raqqa are trying their best to rebuild the city. At the city's sports stadium, which was used by IS as a prison and execution centre, we witnessed signs of reconstruction. Some of the work was being carried out by the same men who were brutally held in captivity by the extremists. But on their own, they are just scratching the surface. It will take billions and billions of dollars to repair the damage of the war. Ahead of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President George W Bush "you break it, you own it". But so far no-one seems willing to apply that rule to the reconstruction of Raqqa.
A 21-year-old man has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of three people from Northern Ireland following a car crash in County Louth.
Keith Lennon, of Forest Park, Dromintee, County Armagh, appeared at Drogheda Circuit Court on Tuesday. Bryan Magill, from Newry, County Armagh, and Mary and Kevin Faxton, from Bessbrook, in County Armagh, died in the two-vehicle crash on 29 February. It happened on the N1 at Carrickarnon, Ravensdale, Dundalk. The court heard Lennon wanted to surrender his bail as an acknowledgement of the serious wrongs committed. Judge Patrick Quinn adjourned the case to January and remanded Lennon in custody to appear by video-link.
MPs have debated how Welsh language TV channel S4C should be funded in the future, as its grant from UK ministers continues to shrink.
The grant is being cut from £6.7m to £5m by 2020, but most of S4C's funding now comes from the BBC licence fee. The debate, in the Commons, was led Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire Conservative MP Simon Hart. In December, Broadcasting Minister Ed Vaizey said S4C was well funded, with a "guaranteed income" of £90m a year.
This was, surely, a moment for some salesmanship.
Andrew HardingAfrica correspondent@BBCAndrewHon Twitter After the most damaging months that South Africa's economy has experienced in two decades - with foreign investment and confidence shrinking alarmingly (and perhaps excessively) following the Marikana killings and subsequent industrial unrest - President Jacob Zuma had come to address the world's media at a televised breakfast meeting in Johannesburg. Mr Zuma walked into a room bristling - if that is possible - with silence and scepticism. Perhaps we should draw a polite curtain over the president's opening remarks. Mr Zuma has always struggled to deliver written speeches - excusable perhaps given that English is his second language, and his education was curtailed by the fight against apartheid - but the dreary listing of the African National Congress's achievements since 1994 and a handful of bland generalisations about industrial relations hardly seemed calibrated for the occasion. An opportunity to generate some positive headlines abroad was sleepily squandered. Tipping point? Then came the more feisty question-and-answer session. But again, rather than selling his vision of the way forward for South Africa, Mr Zuma chose to focus almost exclusively on his trademark tactic - wounded defensiveness. Those who were criticising South Africa, were simply misunderstanding it: The "mishap of Marikana" was a "surprise to everyone", he said, but it did not represent a "tipping point" for the country - coming close to contradicting his vice-president and rival Kgalema Motlanthe - and it is "wrong to exaggerate" or call the situation "a crisis". Strikes, he pointed out quite reasonably, were a by-product of democracy. As for the corruption and infighting within the ruling ANC, Mr Zuma again suggested that outsiders were missing the point. His administration had done more than any other to fight corruption, and the infighting was a healthy sign of the ANC's democratic processes at work. In the past, Mr Zuma has urged the public to stop blaming the legacy of apartheid for all of modern South Africa's ills. But today he seemed to begin most answers with a history lesson and a plea for his country's special status. Overall it was an unsurprisingly uninspiring performance - defensive, short on details or any new policy initiatives; the performance, you might say, of a chairman rather than a leader. But Mr Zuma's central point - that South Africa is not in a state of crisis - has a certain inconvenient truth to it. I say "inconvenient" truth because, like the old story about the frog in the pot of water that does not notice he is in danger, South Africa seems to have learned to live with its problems - an unwieldy political alliance between the ANC, trade unions and the Communist Party, massive corruption, a collapsing education system, inequality, a shrinking tax base and expanding welfare system and some of the most protective labour laws in the world. And so, instead of being confronted with a sudden crisis that prompts real change, South Africa appears to be drifting - sustained by an expanding middle class and buoyant local economy - while the water in the pot keeps getting steadily hotter. I am not a pessimist. South Africa remains an extraordinary country with huge mineral reserves, a history of proving the sceptics wrong, plenty of achievements to boast of, and the potential to transform itself. But it is hard to live here and not feel the keen absence of a charismatic leader - someone to pull the country behind him, or her. Perhaps it is worth ending with what sounded like a presidential Freudian slip, as Mr Zuma was chatting to journalists after his main remarks. South Africa's government was an unwieldy ship to steer, he suggested, "You cannot change direction overnight. It's like the Titanic."
A woman in her 70s has been killed and two other people have been seriously injured in a car crash in Lincolnshire.
Police said the woman was driving a red Suzuki which collided with another car on the B1397 London Road in Kirton at about 21:40 BST on Saturday. A male passenger in the Suzuki and the man driving the other car were both taken to hospital with serious injuries. The road was closed overnight and police have appealed for witnesses.
South America's second poorest nation is bracing for an oil boom that could catapult it to the top of the continent's rich list - and beyond. But can Guyana avoid the so-called oil curse and ensure that its newfound riches benefit all Guyanese?
By Simon MaybinAssignment, BBC World Service "Many people still do not get how big this is," then-US Ambassador to Guyana Perry Holloway told a reception in the capital, Georgetown, last November. "Come 2025, GDP will go up by 300% to 1,000%. This is gigantic. You will be the richest country in the hemisphere and potentially the richest country in the world." It may sound far-fetched, but with a population of around 750,000, in per capita terms, Guyana's wealth is set to skyrocket. ExxonMobil, the main operator in Guyana, says it has discovered more than 5.5 billion barrels' worth of oil beneath the country's waters in the Atlantic Ocean. 'Oil curse' The money would certainly be welcome. This former British colony - the only English-speaking country in South America - has high rates of unemployment and poverty. But history carries a warning for Guyana. The discovery of big oil in other developing nations has exacerbated existing corruption, leading to the new oil wealth being squandered and stolen. It has become known as the oil curse. You may also be interested in: In Guyana, "corruption is rampant," says Troy Thomas, the head of the local chapter of global anti-corruption NGO Transparency International. He says he is "very worried" about the oil curse. A political crisis in recent months has been seen by some as an early sign of the curse's effects. After the governing coalition lost a no-confidence vote in December, rather than call elections it challenged the vote in the courts. That has led to protests. "All we're asking for is for the government to respect our constitution," a demonstrator tells me, standing on the road outside Guyana's ministry of the presidency. "They just want to remain in power and control the oil money," she adds. The legal battle has continued and this week the Caribbean Court of Justice is hearing the latest appeal in the case. Betting on education "We've seen the experiences in other countries," says Vincent Adams, the new head of Guyana's Environmental Protection Agency, who worked for three decades at the US Department of Energy. "They got all this oil wealth and a lot of those countries are now worse off than before oil." For Mr Adams, there is one key to avoiding that trap: "Education, education, education is the foundation. It's the best investment that this country or any country can make." He is leading a push to revamp the faculty of engineering at the University of Guyana, the country's biggest higher education provider. But preparing young Guyanese for the lucrative new industry has not been straightforward. "Unfortunately for us, we don't have right now labs for a petroleum engineering programme," says Elena Trim, the dean of the faculty. It has also been a challenge attracting academic talent with the relevant expertise. "Our salaries are not that high," she says with an ironic chuckle. "So people are applying to the University of Guyana and when we tell them our salary level, they actually don't want to take the offer." Nonetheless, even at this early stage, Guyana's oil industry has already been taking on the faculty's graduates from other engineering specialisms. Two years ago, 10 were given jobs. Last year, the same company asked for 20 more. "Now they [are] taking our students like hotcakes," says Ms Trim. Scepticism abounds In Sophia, one of Georgetown's poorest neighbourhoods, there is less optimism. Some of the self-built houses and shacks only got access to electricity and running water this century. "Quite frankly, in this community, it's close to 10% of the city's population who live here, but 10% of the city's resources are not being spent in here," Colin Marks tells me at the youth centre he set up. That helps to explain the scepticism about how far the benefits of oil will spread. "Most people are sensitive to it. Because there's more negativity on what it could do for Guyana than positivity. And that's happening because what is happening at the political level. I mean, you're hearing about what happened in Guinea, what happened in Nigeria - Venezuela's next door, you know. So people are very, very sensitive, and not too sure." "In a grassroots community like this, people just want know that if there is money in oil, we want a share of it. We want to benefit from it." Listen to Simon Maybin's report, Guyana - bracing for the oil boom, on Assignment on the BBC World Service or on the BBC Sounds app.
As tensions between India and Pakistan escalated following a deadly suicide attack last month, there was another battle being played out on the airwaves. Television stations in both countries were accused of sensationalism and partiality. But how far did they take it? The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan in Delhi and Secunder Kermani in Islamabad take a look.
It was drama that was almost made for television. The relationship between India and Pakistan - tense at the best of times - came to a head on 26 February when India announced it had launched airstrikes on militant camps in Pakistan's Balakot region as "retaliation" for a suicide attack that had killed 40 troops in Indian-administered Kashmir almost two weeks earlier. A day later, on 27 February, Pakistan shot down an Indian fighter jet and captured its pilot. Abhinandan Varthaman was freed as a "peace gesture", and Pakistan PM Imran Khan warned that neither country could afford a miscalculation, with a nuclear arsenal on each side. Suddenly people were hooked, India's TV journalists included. So were they more patriots than journalists? Rajini Vaidyanathan: Indian television networks showed no restraint when it came to their breathless coverage of the story. Rolling news was at fever pitch. The coverage often fell into jingoism and nationalism, with headlines such as "Pakistan teaches India a lesson", "Dastardly Pakistan", and "Stay Calm and Back India" prominently displayed on screens. Some reporters and commentators called for India to use missiles and strike back. One reporter in south India hosted an entire segment dressed in combat fatigues, holding a toy gun. And while I was reporting on the return of the Indian pilot at the international border between the two countries in the northern city of Amritsar, I saw a woman getting an Indian flag painted on her cheek. "I'm a journalist too," she said, as she smiled at me in slight embarrassment. Print journalist Salil Tripathi wrote a scathing critique of the way reporters in both India and Pakistan covered the events, arguing they had lost all sense of impartiality and perspective. "Not one of the fulminating television-news anchors exhibited the criticality demanded of their profession," he said. Secunder Kermani: Shortly after shooting down at least one Indian plane last week, the Pakistani military held a press conference. As it ended, the journalists there began chanting "Pakistan Zindabad" (Long Live Pakistan). It wasn't the only example of "journalistic patriotism" during the recent crisis. Two anchors from private channel 92 News donned military uniforms as they presented the news - though other Pakistani journalists criticised their decision. But on the whole, while Indian TV presenters angrily demanded military action, journalists in Pakistan were more restrained, with many mocking what they called the "war mongering and hysteria" across the border. In response to Indian media reports about farmers refusing to export tomatoes to Pakistan anymore for instance, one popular presenter tweeted about a "Tomatical strike" - a reference to Indian claims they carried out a "surgical strike" in 2016 during another period of conflict between the countries. Media analyst Adnan Rehmat noted that while the Pakistani media did play a "peace monger as opposed to a warmonger" role, in doing so, it was following the lead of Pakistani officials who warned against the risks of escalation, which "served as a cue for the media." What were they reporting? Rajini Vaidyanathan: As TV networks furiously broadcast bulletins from makeshift "war rooms" complete with virtual reality missiles, questions were raised not just about the reporters but what they were reporting. Indian channels were quick to swallow the government version of events, rather than question or challenge it, said Shailaja Bajpai, media editor at The Print. "The media has stopped asking any kind of legitimate questions, by and large," she said. "There's no pretence of objectiveness." In recent years in fact, a handful of commentators have complained about the lack of critical questioning in the Indian media. "For some in the Indian press corps the very thought of challenging the 'official version' of events is the equivalent of being anti-national", said Ms Bajpai. "We know there have been intelligence lapses but nobody is questioning that." Senior defence and science reporter Pallava Bagla agreed. "The first casualty in a war is always factual information. Sometimes nationalistic fervour can make facts fade away," he said. This critique isn't unique to India, or even this period in time. During the 2003 Iraq war, western journalists embedded with their country's militaries were also, on many occasions, simply reporting the official narrative. Secunder Kermani: In Pakistan, both media and public reacted with scepticism to Indian claims about the damage caused by the airstrikes in Balakot, which India claimed killed a large number of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militants in a training camp. Hamid Mir, one of the most influential TV anchors in the country travelled to the area and proclaimed, "We haven't seen any such (militant) infrastructure... we haven't seen any bodies, any funerals." "Actually," he paused, "We have found one body… this crow." The camera panned down to a dead crow, while Mr Mir asked viewers if the crow "looks like a terrorist or not?" There seems to be no evidence to substantiate Indian claims that a militant training camp was hit, but other journalists working for international outlets, including the BBC, found evidence of a madrassa, linked to JeM, near the site. A photo of a signpost giving directions to the madrassa even surfaced on social media. It described the madrassa as being "under the supervision of Masood Azhar". Mr Azhar is the founder of JeM. The signpost's existence was confirmed by a BBC reporter and Al Jazeera, though by the time Reuters visited it had apparently been removed. Despite this, the madrassa and its links received little to no coverage in the Pakistani press. Media analyst Adnan Rehmat told the BBC that "there was no emphasis on investigating independently or thoroughly enough" the status of the madrassa. In Pakistan, reporting on alleged links between the intelligence services and militant groups is often seen as a "red line". Journalists fear for their physical safety, whilst editors know their newspapers or TV channels could face severe pressure if they publish anything that could be construed as "anti-state". Who did it better: Khan or Modi? Rajini Vaidyanathan: With a general election due in a few months, PM Narendra Modi continued with his campaign schedule, mentioning the crisis in some of his stump speeches. But he never directly addressed the ongoing tensions through an address to the nation or a press conference. This was not a surprise. Mr Modi rarely holds news conference or gives interviews to the media. When news of the suicide attack broke, Mr Modi was criticised for continuing with a photo shoot. The leader of the main opposition Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, dubbed him a "Prime Time Minister" claiming the PM had carried on filming for three hours. PM Modi has also been accused of managing his military response as a way to court votes. At a campaign rally in his home state of Gujarat he seemed unflustered by his critics, quipping "they're busy with strikes on Modi, and Modi is launching strikes on terror." Secunder Kermani: Imran Khan won praise even from many of his critics in Pakistan, for his measured approach to the conflict. In two appearances on state TV, and one in parliament, he appeared firm, but also called for dialogue with India. His stance helped set the comparatively more measured tone for Pakistani media coverage. Officials in Islamabad, buoyed by Mr Khan's decision to release the captured Indian pilot, have portrayed themselves as the more responsible side, which made overtures for peace. On Twitter, a hashtag calling for Mr Khan to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize was trending for a while. But his lack of specific references to JeM, mean internationally there is likely to be scepticism, at least initially, about his claims that Pakistan will no longer tolerate militant groups targeting India.
A consultation has been launched into plans for a new six lane swimming pool in Hull.
The proposed £6m facility at Woodford Leisure Centre would see the closure of East Hull Pools on Holderness Road, which has been open since 1898. The Hull City Council consultation is running until 5 January. The local authority has said the new 25 metre pool would be more modern, energy efficient and less expensive to maintain and run.
The richest man in China opened his own Twitter account last month, in the middle of the Covid-19 outbreak. So far, every one of his posts has been devoted to his unrivalled campaign to deliver medical supplies to almost every country around the world.
By Celia HattonBBC News "One world, one fight!" Jack Ma enthused in one of his first messages. "Together, we can do this!" he cheered in another. The billionaire entrepreneur is the driving force behind a widespread operation to ship medical supplies to more than 150 countries so far, sending face masks and ventilators to many places that have been elbowed out of the global brawl over life-saving equipment. But Ma's critics and even some of his supporters aren't sure what he's getting himself into. Has this bold venture into global philanthropy unveiled him as the friendly face of China's Communist Party? Or is he an independent player who is being used by the Party for propaganda purposes? He appears to be following China's diplomatic rules, particularly when choosing which countries should benefit from his donations, but his growing clout might put him in the crosshairs of the jealous leaders at the top of China's political pyramid. Other tech billionaires have pledged more money to fight the effects of the virus - Twitter's Jack Dorsey is giving $1bn (£0.8bn) to the cause. Candid, a US-based philanthropy watchdog that tracks private charitable donations, puts Alibaba 12th on a list of private Covid-19 donors. But that list doesn't include shipments of vital supplies, which some countries might consider to be more important than money at this stage in the global outbreak. No one else other than the effervescent Ma is capable of dispatching supplies directly to those who need them. Starting in March, the Jack Ma foundation and the related Alibaba foundation began airlifting supplies to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and even to politically sensitive areas including Iran, Israel, Russia and the US. Ma has also donated millions to coronavirus vaccine research and a handbook of medical expertise from doctors in his native Zhejiang province has been translated from Chinese into 16 languages. But it's the medical shipments that have been making headlines, setting Ma apart. "He has the ability and the money and the lifting power to get a Chinese supply plane out of Hangzhou to land in Addis Ababa, or wherever it needs to go," explains Ma's biographer, Duncan Clark. "This is logistics; this is what his company, his people and his province are all about." A friendly face Jack Ma is famous for being the charismatic English teacher who went on to create China's biggest technology company. Alibaba is now known as the "Amazon of the East". Ma started the company inside his tiny apartment in the Chinese coastal city of Hangzhou, in the centre of China's factory belt, back in 1999. Alibaba has since grown to become one of the dominant players in the world's second largest economy, with key stakes in China's online, banking and entertainment worlds. Ma himself is worth more than $40bn. Officially, he stepped down as Alibaba's chairman in 2018. He said he was going to focus on philanthropy. But Ma retained a permanent seat on Alibaba's board. Coupled with his wealth and fame, he remains one of the most powerful men in China. It appears that Ma's donations are following Party guidelines: there is no evidence that any of the Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation donations have gone to countries that have formal ties with Taiwan, China's neighbour and diplomatic rival. Ma announced on Twitter that he was donating to 22 countries in Latin America. States that side with Taiwan but who have also called for medical supplies - from Honduras to Haiti - are among the few dozen countries that do not appear to be on the list of 150 countries. The foundations repeatedly refused to provide a detailed list of countries that have received donations, explaining that "at this moment in time, we are not sharing this level of detail". However, the donations that have been delivered have certainly generated a lot of goodwill. With the exception of problematic deliveries to Cuba and Eritrea, all of the foundations' shipments dispatched from China appear to have been gratefully received. That success is giving Ma even more positive attention than usual. China's state media has been mentioning Ma almost as often as the country's autocratic leader, Xi Jinping. Over 150 countrieshave received donations from Jack Ma, including about: 120.4mface masks 4,105,000testing kits 3,704ventilators It's an uncomfortable comparison. As Ma soaks up praise, Xi faces persistent questions about how he handled the early stages of the virus and where, exactly, the outbreak began. The Chinese government has dispatched medical teams and donations of supplies to a large number of hard-hit countries, particularly in Europe and South-East Asia. However, those efforts have sometimes fallen flat. China's been accused of sending faulty supplies to several countries. In some cases, the tests it sent were being misused but in others, low-quality supplies went unused and the donations backfired. In contrast, Jack Ma's shipments have only boosted his reputation. "It's fair to say that Ma's donation was universally celebrated across Africa," says Eric Olander, managing editor of the China Africa Project website and podcast. Ma pledged to visit all countries in Africa and has been a frequent visitor since his retirement. "What happens to the materials once they land in a country is up to the host government, so any complaints about how Nigeria's materials were distributed are indeed a domestic Nigerian issue," Olander adds. "But with respect to the donation itself, the Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, called it a "shot in the arm" and pretty much everyone saw it for what it was which was: delivering badly-needed materials to a region of the world that nobody else is either willing or capable of helping at that scale." Walking the tightrope But is Ma risking a backlash from Beijing? Xi Jinping isn't known as someone who likes to share the spotlight and his government has certainly targeted famous faces before. In recent years, the country's top actress, a celebrated news anchor and several other billionaire entrepreneurs have all "disappeared" for long periods. Some, including the news anchor, end up serving prison sentences. Others re-emerge from detention, chastened and pledging their allegiance to the Party. "There's a rumour that [Jack Ma] stepped down in 2018 from being the chairman of the Alibaba Group because he was seen as a homegrown entrepreneur whose popularity would eclipse that of the Communist Party," explains Ashley Feng, research associate at the Centre for New American Security in Washington DC. Indeed, Ma surprised many when he suddenly announced his retirement in 2018. He has denied persistent rumours that Beijing forced him out of his position. Duncan Clark, Ma's biographer, is also aware of reports that Ma was nudged away from Alibaba following a key incident in January 2017. The Chinese billionaire met with then-President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower, ostensibly to discuss Sino-US trade. The Chinese president didn't meet with Trump until months later. "There was a lot of speculation of time that Jack Ma had moved too fast," Clark says. "So, I think there's lessons learned from both sides on the need to try to coordinate." "Jack Ma represents a sort of entrepreneurial soft power," Clark adds. "That also creates challenges though, because the government is quite jealous or nervous of non-Party actors taking that kind of role." Technically, Ma isn't a Communist outsider: China's wealthiest capitalist has actually been a member of the Communist Party since the 1980s, when he was a university student. But Ma's always had a tricky relationship with the Party, famously saying that Alibaba's attitude towards the Party was to "be in love with it but not to marry it". Even if Ma and the foundations connected to him are making decisions without Beijing's advance blessing, the Chinese government has certainly done what it can to capitalise on Ma's generosity. Chinese ambassadors are frequently on hand at airport ceremonies to receive the medical supplies shipped over by Ma, from Sierra Leone to Cambodia. China has also used Ma's largesse in its critiques of the United States. "The State Department said Taiwan is a true friend as it donated 2 million masks," the Chinese Foreign Ministry tweeted in early April. "Wonder if @StateDept has any comment on Jack Ma's donation of 1 million masks and 500k testing kits as well as Chinese companies' and provinces' assistance?" Perhaps Ma can rise above what's happened to so many others who ran afoul of the Party. China might just need a popular global Chinese figure so much that Ma has done what no one else can: make himself indispensable. "Here's the one key takeaway from all that happened with Jack Ma and Africa: he said he would do something and it got done," explains Eric Olander. "That is an incredibly powerful optic in a place where foreigners often come, make big promises and often fail to deliver. So, the huge Covid-19 donation that he did fit within that pattern. He said he would do it and mere weeks later, those masks were in the hands of healthcare workers." Duncan Clark argues that Ma already had a seat at China's high table because of Alibaba's economic heft. However, his first-name familiarity with world leaders makes him even more valuable to Beijing as China tries to repair its battered image. "He has demonstrated the ability, with multiple IPOs under his belt, and multiple friendships overseas, to win friends and influence people. He's the Dale Carnegie of China and that certainly, we've seen that that's irritated some in the Chinese government but now it's almost an all hands on deck situation," Clark says. There's no doubt that China's wider reputation is benefiting from the charitable work of Ma and other wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs. Andrew Grabois from Candid, the philanthropic watchdog that's been measuring global donations in relation to Covid-19, says that the private donations coming from China are impossible to ignore. "They're taking a leadership role, the kind of thing that used to be done by the United States," he says. "The most obvious past example is the response to Ebola, the Ebola outbreak in 2014. The US sent in doctors and everything to West Africa to help contain that virus before it left West Africa." Chinese donors are taking on that role with this virus. "They are projecting soft power beyond their borders, going into areas, providing aid, monetary aid and expertise," Grabois adds. So, it's not the right time for Beijing to stand in Jack Ma's way. "You know, this is a major crisis for the world right now," Duncan Clark concludes. "But obviously, it's also a crisis for China's relationship with the rest of the world. So they need anybody who can help dampen down some of these those pressures."
The succession of intense and deadly tropical cyclones that have barrelled across the Atlantic in recent weeks have left many people wondering if a threshold of some sort has been crossed. Is this chain of hurricanes evidence of some significant new frontier in our changing climate?
Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent@mattmcgrathbbcon Twitter The answer is mostly no, but with worrying undertones of yes. The first thing to note about this season is that it shows the power of science and weather forecasting. Every year, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) puts out a hurricane forecast for the season that runs from 1 June to 30 November for the north Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. In August, Noaa updated its predictions, stating that there would be 14-19 named storms and of these, 5-9 would become hurricanes. To date, we've had seven cyclones, with four that have gained category three status or stronger. So this season is unusual but not unprecedented. The bigger picture shows that between 1981 and 2010 the average was six hurricanes per season. What has happened this year is that a number of natural variable factors have come together and helped boost the number and power of these cyclones. In the background, climate change has loaded the dice. This season has been particularly warm in the region of the Atlantic where hurricanes form with temperatures 0.5 to 1.0C above average, according to Noaa. A wetter and stronger monsoon in West Africa and a natural cycle called the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO) have also helped boost the energy available for the massive, swirling heat engines that hurricanes become. Another factor that has helped so many storms form is the lack of wind shear. Some scientists believe that because this is a neutral El Niño year, there has been less wind shear which tends to break these storms apart. "There haven't been the upper-level wind flow or lower pockets of moisture that can often erode these storms; all these factors have come together this year," said Prof Richard Allan from the department of meteorology at the University of Reading, UK. "It relates primarily to the weather, but also the slower fluctuations in the ocean that you get from year to year have produced an unusually strong hurricane season." That view is echoed by Kerry Emanuel, an eminent atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US. "The number of hurricanes in the Atlantic varies a great deal from year to year for reasons that have to do with natural climate fluctuations like El Niño and also just plain random variability," he told BBC News. "A lot of it is just sheer chance." Those who have been sceptical of the impact of carbon emissions from human sources on the climate have crowed about the fact that it has been 12 years since a hurricane rated category three or above has made landfall in the US. But those working in the field believe that measuring the connection between hurricanes and climate change based on the number that make land is hugely mistaken. "Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which was the most damaging of any US hurricane, occurred in a very quiet year," said Kerry Emanuel. "That's just because the noise is so large and we are looking for these small signals - A busy year is no guarantee that you are going to see a major hurricane [make] landfall." Most researchers who study extreme events like hurricanes agree that climate change is most likely making the impacts of these events much worse. Rising temperatures lead to warmer air holding more moisture, which causes more intense downpours in a hurricane. The oceans have risen thanks to thermal expansion and glacier melt and this works to increase the dangers posed by storm surges. "In terms of the factors that control the genesis and the intensification of these hurricanes, a number of these point to the fact that they will undoubtedly be slightly more severe due to the extra heat content in the ocean due to the long-term warming of the climate," said Richard Allan. Kerry Emanuel strongly agrees. "The warming of the climate has increased the underlying probabilities of very heavy rain events like happened in Harvey and very high category hurricanes like Irma. "It is just not sensible to say either storm was caused by climate change, but the underlying probabilities are going up." Both experts believe that these factors are making the current round of hurricanes more threatening - but they are also making weather-related events, such as the recent floods in South East Asia, much more dangerous. "There are other damaging events going on, particularly flooding, in other parts of the world which link into the same physics as is impacting the hurricanes," said Richard Allan. "So even though it might be a normal monsoon season in the Indian sub-continent, the amount of rain that will fall will likely be more as the air can hold more moisture." Right now the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says there is low confidence in attributing changes in hurricane activity to rising temperatures - but in its fifth and latest assessment report in 2013, it argued that this perspective was likely to change. "The frequency of the most intense storms will more likely than not increase substantially in some basins," the report says. "More extreme precipitation near the centres of tropical cyclones making landfall are likely in North and Central America, East Africa, West, East, South and Southeast Asia, as well as in Australia and many Pacific islands." Climate scientists say that to see the full impact of emissions of greenhouse gases on hurricanes, you really have to look at the long-term record. "The evidence is that there is not really going to be an increase in the number of tropical cyclones but there is certainly some evidence that the strongest hurricanes will become more intense," said Richard Allan. "In terms of the rainfall and the storm surges that's very strong evidence that the amount of rain that will fall out of these intense hurricanes will be greater and storm surges will be higher and more deadly." Follow Matt on Twitter and on Facebook
The life of a liberal journalist in Pakistan is not an easy one. Write about someone fighting a blasphemy case, or someone whose faith is considered heresy, and you may very soon find yourself in deep trouble.
By Mohammed HanifPakistan Shoaib Adil, a 49-year-old magazine editor and publisher in Lahore, has many well-wishers and they all want him to disappear from public life or, even better, leave the country. Since blasphemy charges were filed against him last month, the police have told him that he can't return home, he can't even be seen in the city where he grew up and worked all his life. It wouldn't be safe. As a journalist, Adil has been a vocal critic of religious militarism. But the threat to his life doesn't come from the Taliban. He is the victim of an everyday witch hunt by Pakistan's powerful religious groups - the kind of witch hunt that's so common and yet so scary that it never makes headlines. For the past 14 years, Adil has been editing and publishing a monthly current affairs magazine, a rare liberal voice in Pakistan's Urdu media. Back issues of Nia Zamana read like a catalogue of human rights abuses. The June issue's cover story, for example, reports on the murder of a human rights lawyer, Rashid Rehman in the city of Multan in central Pakistan. Rehman, defending a literature professor accused of blasphemy, was told in the court by the prosecuting lawyers that if he didn't drop the case he would not live to see the next hearing. Sure enough, Rehman was gunned down in his office before the next hearing. Adil had just published this issue of Nia Zamana when his crusading journalistic enterprise came to an abrupt end - and he was lucky to avoid sharing Rehman's fate himself. He was sitting in his Lahore office when a contingent of police arrived with a dozen religious activists, people Adil simply calls maulvis - teachers of Islamic law. They waved a book at him that he had published seven years ago - an autobiography of a Lahore High Court judge, titled My Journey to the Higher Court. The author, Justice Mohammed Islam Bhatti, had written that he belonged to the Ahmedi faith - a former Muslim sect that was declared non-Muslim in Pakistan exactly 40 years ago, and whose members have since then been prosecuted by the state and hounded by religious groups with equal gusto. He had then gone on to say some complimentary things about the founder of the faith. "The maulvis ransacked my office looking for more copies of the book or any other material to pin blasphemy on me," says Adil. Police officers meanwhile explained that the group the activists belong to, the International Council for the Defence of Finality of Prophethood, had demanded the registration of a blasphemy case against him. The Council is a much feared entity. Its sole purpose is to hunt down Ahmedis in Pakistan and to look for suspected sympathisers. They don't have to work very hard. The laws against Ahmedis are such that there is almost nothing that they cannot be accused of. They have been imprisoned for saying a casual Muslim greeting like "Asslamu aliakum", for printing a verse of the Koran on a wedding invitation, for calling their prayer a namaz and for calling their mosque a mosque. In Pakistan if you want to tarnish anyone in public life all you have to do is to insinuate that they are Ahmedi. Or an Ahmedi sympathiser. "I, the complainant work as a preacher for the Finality of the Prophethood," reads the application for a blasphemy case to be registered against Adil. "I bought and read a book called Journey to Higher Judiciary, an autobiography of Mohammed Islam Bhatti, published by Mohammed Shoaib Adil. I discovered that in many parts of the book serious blasphemy has been committed against various prophets, particularly against Jesus Christ, and the prophet Mohammed. Besides that, the cursed Mirza Ghulam Ahmed Qadiani (founder of the Ahmedi sect) has been shown sitting alongside our Prophet Mohammed. The whole book is full of such blatant blasphemies." The complaint goes on: "Because this book has hurt the religious feelings of all Muslims… the complainant pleads that the strictest action be taken against the accused." As soon as Adil saw the book being waved in front of him, and as soon as he heard the word "blasphemy", like many others before him, he knew that life as he had known it was over. He was taken to a police station and while he waited for his fate to be decided the Council activists stood outside making sure that the police didn't let him go. Adil managed to make some phone calls. First he called an uncle, a right-wing newspaper editor who "knows these kind of people". He called up a nephew, an influential TV reporter whose calls everyone returns. He called up the head of a journalists' collective, an influential Urdu columnist, a human rights activist. All these people started to call other people and thanks to their support the police backed down and decided not to register a case against Adil. His late father had been a well-known religious scholar, and his name was invoked again and again to plead Adil's innocence. The police asked him to stay in the police station as the activists were still surrounding it. When they finally dispersed at 04:00 in the morning, police whisked him to a pre-designated place where his nephew waited with a bag of clothes, and he was put an early morning bus leaving for another city. The parting advice from the police was: "Don't even think of returning to the city, stay silent, write nothing in the press, don't squeak on social media, a word out of you and we wouldn't be able to guarantee your safety." He would only be safe, they said, if he disappeared from his own life and maintained a permanent silence. For the next few weeks he hid at a friend's house while his family found shelter with other relatives. Adil meanwhile sought advice from other influential friends. The country's top human rights campaigner advised him to stay invisible, adding: "When you come to see me I feel scared for both of us." A powerful senator advised him to leave the country and promised to help him get a visa. Adil still hoped that there might be a way of getting the blasphemy application against him squashed. Justice Bhatti, the author of the autobiography, called fellow judges in the Lahore High Court but there was no response. Then he found a friend who was on good terms with a very influential religious scholar, no less a figure than the chairman of the Council of Islamic Scholars. As it turned out the blasphemy campaign against Adil was headed by the chairman's younger brother. He listened to Adil's plea patiently and then said: "Sorry, I can't help you. My brother is so radical that he considers me an infidel." As Adil waits for the Council activists to call off their hunt or for a country to provide him temporary refuge, there is still no registered case against him. But the police who may one day register this case, the lawyers who would then defend him, the judges who would hear the case, and every single one of Adil's journalist and activist friends have told him that if he tries to resume his former life there is no reasonable chance of his survival. Over the past few months Pakistan has become an increasingly harsh environment for journalists, particularly those considered liberal. In Lahore a TV presenter and writer, Raza Rumi, survived an attack in March. His driver didn't. Now Rumi lives somewhere abroad and is not likely to return to Pakistan for the foreseeable future. Pakistan's most famous TV journalist, Hamid Mir, took six bullets in April and remains off air and under guard after returning from treatment abroad. And the country's most famous TV host, Shaista Wahdi, had to flee the country overnight after she was accused of having shown disrespect towards the prophet's family by playing a wedding song in her morning TV show. So Shoaib Adil's well-wishers are not exaggerating the threat to his life. Nobody has given him any advice about the magazine that is his life's work, Nia Zamana, because everyone knows that even going near that office is like inviting death. Police have told him repeatedly that his tormentors have reconnaissance teams - they will find anyone who hangs around there. "I had only one full-time assistant, I have asked him to stay home, never mention that he was associated with me and try and find a new job," says Adil. Although Nia Zamana had a small print run, what made it significant was that it published in Urdu, where liberal voices are now rare. After a series of interviews during which Adil was not sure whether he should tell his story, and wasn't sure whether his well-wishers should be named or not, he made a request. "Is it possible that you write this in English because if it comes out in Urdu and those people read it they'll be even angrier." Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
A team of street pastors to help improve night-time safety are taking to Cambridge streets in coming days.
The volunteer street pastors will be in the city to support anyone who is unwell or vulnerable or in any form of difficulty or trouble. Their role includes helping people to get home safely and offering practical care. The team will be on the streets from 1000 GMT until 0400 GMT on 22 and 31 December. Related Internet Links Cambridgeshire County Council
It was a bit ponderous, sometimes.
Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent Virtual questions was the easy bit... now for the votes The sound quality was occasionally poor. And no-one laughed when the Speaker announced that the (former Scottish Secretary) David Mundell was unable to connect. But the first session of the virtual Commons was a success, with Mr Speaker Hoyle keeping the proceedings moving at a sedate pace, to allow the technical staff behind the scenes time to get the right faces on-screen, when their turn came to ask a question. The Lords, too, have launched their virtual system, although its first outing was conducted behind closed doors, after a dress rehearsal so chaotic that the House authorities didn't dare let the public watch. The Lords currently bases its virtual proceedings on the Microsoft Teams system, rather than Zoom, as used by the Commons. This is because that was the system their Lordships had to hand when the crisis arrived, but it has not proven well-adapted to the requirements of a virtual parliament, and they will eventually switch to Zoom. In the meantime one official will have the sole function of muting and un-muting peers during virtual sessions, which sounds like a fairly thankless task. More managed debates Compared to the normal, glacial, pace of change in Westminster, parliamentary procedure has been moving at warp factor nine. The question now is whether the 'dilithium crystals' can take much more. Because, considerable though the achievement of virtual question times has been, that was the easy bit. Creating a virtual system capable of dealing with the much more free-flowing debate that would normally come when MPs consider the detail of legislation - particularly at Report Stage or Committee of the Whole House - will be rather more difficult. The kind of thing I mean is where MPs intervene on a minister to ask for a clarification or assurance about a particular point, and maybe rebellion (or even acceptance) crystallises on the floor of the House. Question times have an established list of questioners; spontaneity, with some MP unexpectedly rising to push a particular issue, is much harder for the Chair to cope with, when they're not in the Chamber. The chances are that debate will be much more managed and stilted, with MPs having to organise their spontaneity in advance. Votes cannot be avoided forever Then comes the question of voting. For the next week or so the "usual channels" - the parliamentary business managers - will try to avoid divisions, that is to say counted votes, in the House. So, for example, the Second Reading of the Immigration Bill has been postponed, precisely because that was one measure where MPs would expect to have to troop through the Aye and No lobbies. Another is the forthcoming vote on allowing abortion in Northern Ireland - a very sore point with the Democratic Unionist Party. The forthcoming business will be subject to a "nod or nothing" rule, so that if, unexpectedly, someone does oppose it, and seek to force a division, the division will be postponed. But votes cannot be avoided for ever - and a system to allow remote voting will need to be in place fairly soon. Trials of a system similar to the kind of thing that happens when people need to change a password on something important like internet banking, have already taken place. MPs would be emailed a link and texted a code number to allow them to log into a website where they could register their vote for each division.... but, I'm told, there was an 80 per cent failure rate. Mr Speaker's discretion Even so, the House has now agreed a motion on remote voting, leaving much to the discretion of Mr Speaker Hoyle. • There will be the option to make a remote vote a "deferred division" (this would allow votes to be taken in a group at a later time) • It is up to the Speaker to confirm that a remote vote is applicable • The technicalities of the remote voting will be "authorised by the Speaker" • There will be no tellers • MPs have 15 mins to vote • The 15 mins can be suspended if the Speaker thinks there are issues • The Speaker will announce the result from the chair • MPs can continue with subsequent business before the result is announced - and the Speaker will interrupt proceedings with the result • The Speaker can rule that the vote is "null and void" and order a re-run if there are "problems in the conduct of the division occurred which might have affected the result" The nightmare scenario is that the validity of some close vote is challenged because someone's vote was somehow not registered, or even wrongly registered. The Chair of the Procedure Committee, the former Cabinet Minister, Karen Bradley, didn't push an amendment, delaying the implementation of remote voting to a division. But she remains to be convinced about the technology.
The Red Dragons, Tigers and Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF) - these are just some of the armed groups which have sprung up to fight for independence in English-speaking parts of Cameroon, posing a major security threat to Sunday's elections, in which President Paul Biya, 85, is seeking to extend his 36-year rule.
By Farouk ChothiaBBC News In the absence of reliable opinion polls, it is impossible to gauge the level of their support but the authorities' brutal crackdown has only pushed more of the local population into the arms of the separatists, analysts say. The militias, formed in the past 12 months, have made many small towns and villages in the two main Anglophone regions, the North-West and South-West, "ungovernable", something unimaginable just a few years ago, Nigeria-based Cameroon analyst Nna-Emeka Okereke told the BBC. "They probably have 500 to 1,000 active fighters, but more importantly they have the morale and determination to fight for the independence of what they call Ambazonia state," he said. The militias have repulsed attempts by the powerful Cameroonian army, including its elite US-trained troops, to defeat them because of the support they command in the two regions, Mr Okereke said. "Women will cook for them, share information with them on troop movement and, in at least one instance, even helped lure a soldier to his death in Manyu Division [in the South-West]," Mr Okereke said. 'Proud of Anglophone heritage' The militias began to emerge in 2017 after a security force crackdown on mass protests, led by lawyers in wigs and teachers in suits, over the government's alleged failure to give enough recognition to the English legal and education systems in the North-West and South-West. The government was accused of relying heavily on people trained in the French legal and educational tradition to work in key posts and generally marginalising Cameroon's English-speaking minority, who make up about 20% of the population. After some groups declared independence on 1 October 2017, the government dismissed the armed groups as "terrorists", and state radio reported that Mr Biya "declared war" on them. "People in these regions are proud of their Anglophone heritage - especially their legal and education institutions. So it was a campaign for greater political and civil rights, and the separatists were seen as very marginal. But the government intervened in a heavy-handed way and that stirred support for the militants," Francophone Africa analyst at the UK-based Chatham House think-tank, Paul Melly, told the BBC. Locals say this happened in many areas, including the farming town of Bafut, where soldiers were accused of carrying out random attacks, even torching the motorcycle taxis of young men. 'Classic rural insurgency' With their source of income destroyed, the taxi operators made the town a no-go area for the government by forming the Seven Karta militia - "karta" refers to a famous cloth worn by people in the area and "seven" to a group of men who, legend has it, were known for their strength during the colonial era. Rights group Amnesty International said the militants have also committed atrocities. Apart from killing members of the security forces, they have also carried out attacks "designed to strike fear amongst the population, going as far as burning down schools and targeting teachers who did not enforce the boycott", Amnesty said in a report. The International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank estimates that around 10 armed separatist groups exist, gaining control of a "significant proportion of rural areas and main roads" in the North-West and South-West regions. "They are not operating under one broad front, but there is very likely to be co-ordination between political elements in exile," ICG Cameroon analyst Richard Moncrieff told the BBC. "They are waging a classic rural insurgency. They don't control territory all the time. They move around. They use hit-and-run tactics against isolated units of the security forces or prestigious targets - like local chiefs, whom they kidnap," Mr Moncrieff told the BBC. Mr Okereke said he believed that the Ambazonia Self-Defence Council (ASDC), which is also known as the Ambazonia Restoration Forces (ARF), is the largest armed group, incorporating smaller militias like the Seven Karta, the Red Dragons and the Tigers. Cameroon - still divided along colonial lines: Read more: Cameroon timeline But the monitoring group, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (Acled), said on its website that the ADF is the most active militia. The ADF launched operations in 2017 in the Manyu district in the South-West and Mezam in the North-West, before shifting its focus to six other districts, the monitoring group said. African mythology The ADF and other militia have clashed with government forces 83 times this year, compared with 13 times last year, Acled added. "Many of the regions where Ambazonian separatists are newly active are in North-West Cameroon. This expansion does not necessarily suggest that any one militia that comprises the Ambazonian separatists is expanding its operations; the spread could be the result of new groups forming in the North-West," it said. The armed separatists have also established a strong presence on social media, with the Red Dragons posting videos of its fighters, including women, in gumboots and uniforms in a bush, and showing what they say was the shooting down of a military helicopter. Critics dismiss the videos as propaganda and say the group has suffered heavy setbacks at the hands of government forces. The militias rely heavily on imagery of animals, as well as African mythology, to rally support. "You must know a tiger to become a Tiger," the Tiger group said on its website. "It is believed that some of the Tigers are the ghosts of dead ancestors who have risen from the grave to defend their people," it added. The name Ambazonia comes from Ambas Bay, the area of a settlement of freed slaves which is regarded as the boundary between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon. 'Desertions from army' A phrase often heard among the fighters as they appeal to their supporters, inside and outside the country, for funding is: "We need to buy sugar cane and ground nuts." It is a euphemism - sugar cane refers to guns and ground nuts to bullets. Read more about Cameroon: Many of the Amba Boys, as the separatist fighters are colloquially known, are armed with hunting rifles, though more sophisticated weapons, like Kalashnikovs, are said to have been seized from government forces while ammunition is being smuggled in from neighbouring Nigeria, according to some analysts. More significantly, the ranks of the militias are also being swelled by some English-speaking deserters from the Cameroonian army, the ICG said. "The security apparatus is under pressure, as evidenced by the proliferation of military desertions in the English-speaking area, some 20 of them even joined armed separatist groups," the ICG said. Agreeing with the ICG, Mr Okereke said some government officials, including governors and mayors, fled their posts or failed to take up new appointments after the conflict started. "Biya thought he could overrun the separatists, but the government is under immense pressure from them," he added. 'No serious dialogue' While the army has been unable to defeat the separatists, they in turn are unable to win a military campaign, Mr Moncrieff said. "They do not have sufficient international support and military strength to defeat the army," he added. The conflict has, in the past year, claimed the lives of at least 420 civilians, 175 military and police officers, and hundreds of separatist fighters. More than 300,000 people have also been forced to flee their homes, according to the ICG. Mr Melly said the conflict was mainly between the armed separatists and the government. "This is not an inter-communal war between two nations who hate each other. People move back and forth all the time between the Anglophone and Francophone regions, and many of the people fleeing the conflict are going to Francophone areas. If there is political will, a solution can be found," he added. For now, there is no sign of that. The armed separatists have vowed to enforce a boycott of Sunday's election, raising fears of attacks on polling stations and a low turn-out in mainly Anglophone areas. Mr Biya is likely to win the poll, as he has "absolute control over the security forces, and the electoral body", Mr Moncrieff said. The key question is whether he will offer an olive branch to the separatists after the poll. "So far, his strategy has been to keep multiplying troops," Mr Moncrieff said. "There has been no serious attempt to advance dialogue. He'll need to do that. The overwhelming majority of Anglophone Cameroonians have genuine grievances, and feel they are treated like second-class citizens."
Far up South Las Vegas Boulevard, past the glitzy resorts and mega-casinos of the city's strip, you will find an unassuming brick building with a boarded-up fire door at the front.
By Kelly-Leigh CooperBBC News On the surface, it looks like any of the many pawn shops and quickie wedding joints nearby. But before it closed last month, Showgirl Video was the last business of its kind in Vegas. Signs outside boasted of its unique selling point: private cubicles screening 125 adult channels and - most unusually - a live peep show. Past the aisles of adult films and toys, you could find boxed-off booths where $1 would lift a partition to unveil a dancer performing for tips behind a window. Opened in 1983 by Vietnam War veteran Ray Pistol, Showgirl Video was a fixture of the downtown area of Las Vegas for almost four decades. But now, the signs showing scantily clad women have been removed and the venue will soon be gone for good - it is set to be demolished and replaced by a marijuana dispensary. Former employees told the BBC it was a safe space, where they felt they were in control. Some in the city say the loss represents a natural progression for the place known as Sin City as it pivots toward a new adult market. But to others, the closure of Showgirl represents a city sanitising itself from its more salacious past. Treasure Brown, a former performer at Showgirl, is torn about the peep show closing. "My first day of work at Showgirl, I was 18 years old. It was 1992 and I made $115," she tells the BBC. "It was wealth beyond my imagination. I couldn't believe I had made that much money and decided this was what I would do to put myself through school." Unlike many who live in Vegas, Treasure was born there. While working at Showgirl, she met Pistol, as is he is more widely known, and he became her partner. The couple have an eight-year-old son together. "The peep show industry was very much a twilight business in the last few years," she says of Showgirl's closure. "But seeing it go makes me kind of sad personally because I have heartstrings to it. But on a more cognitive level - it's time." For a long time, before VHS and DVDs became widely available, businesses like Showgirl were the sole refuge of those seeking video pornography. Peep shows date back centuries but pornographic ones and adult theatres, like the porn industry itself, only started taking off by the 1970s. A growing sense of sexual liberation, combined with advancing technology, created an explosion in adult entertainment. By the end of the decade, it was estimated that there were about 800 dedicated porn theatres dotted around the US. Even drive-in showings, known as the Durand Dirties, sprung up to quench public demand. By 1986, Madonna would star as a peep show performer in the video for her US chart-topping single Open Your Heart. That same year, a report into the dangers of pornography, commissioned by President Ronald Reagan, was released. The report said peep shows and other "back room" ventures were earning up to double what the venues were making at the front of house, often without being declared or taxed. One Californian tasked with touring the adult venues described the peep shows she witnessed as both "very unsettling" and having a "rest-room ambiance". "The floors were sticky, the air was musty," she was quoted by the Washington Post as saying. "I was astonished at the ability of some people to be sexually aroused in a place like that." Over the years some local officials - including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani - committed to cleansing their streets of such businesses. In some places, theatres and peep shows were legally mandated to remove private booth doors or forced to screen equal amounts of adult and non-adult material. This regulation, combined with rising real estate prices and the increased availability of porn elsewhere, led to the shuttering of venues nationwide. Peep shows with live performers, like Showgirl, became even rarer. Although former performers like Treasure remember their experience working in the 1990s fondly, other people have not been so complimentary about the sunset years of the peep show industry. One writer for the now-defunct NSFW Corp website, who visited Showgirl in 2013, described her experience in the booth as "the worst consensual moment I've ever had with a naked person". With porn now easily accessible online within seconds, it is perhaps a surprise that Showgirl and other venues like it were able to survive as long as they did. "Sexually-oriented businesses have been supplanted by the internet," Pistol, who stepped away from the business in 2016, told the Las Vegas Sun. "You can get anything you want at any time. It's a 24/7 smorgasbord from all around the world." Dr Barbara Brents, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, has been researching the state's sex industry for 25 years. "In some ways, the sex industry has been decentralised," she says. "Thanks to the internet, you can go on an online webcam and essentially do a peep show. It functions just like a peep show, and you can do it in the privacy of your own home." Dr Brents says Showgirl and its owners played a pivotal role in the fight for free speech and sexual expression in Las Vegas. She has witnessed a decline of similar businesses in the area, aimed at working-class consumers, as financial disparity grows. Aside from its reputation as the last live peep show in Vegas, Showgirl was unusual because of its location. In the early 1990s authorities moved to push sexualised businesses away from the main strip but Showgirl, protected under old regulation, remained on the main boulevard. Despite the tourism campaign message "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas", which gave the impression that boundless sex and hedonism were available to visitors, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors to the city's relationship with sex. Officials, aiming to broaden the destination's appeal, have implemented a range of restrictions on sexualised entertainment over the past few decades. Dayvid Figler has been at the frontline of this battle for almost 30 years. When he first started out as a lawyer, he worked almost exclusively on cases involving local pornographers, strippers and others in the adult entertainment and sex trade. His anecdotes, including fighting for the right to strippers to offer lap dances, are colourful to say the least. "Las Vegas often attempts to be everything to everyone and to provide anything that anyone would ever want," he says. "And while that might be true to some degree, it's not without limitation." The image Las Vegas likes to portray can confuse visitors, says Dr Brents. "Some people definitely think that prostitution is legal in Las Vegas - which it's not," she says. Businesses like strip clubs are even required to brandish bright yellow signs near their entrance to clarify this to visitors. Confusion arises because Nevada, where Vegas is situated, is the only state in the US to have legal brothels. They have been present since the days of the Gold Rush, but as of 1971 were allowed to be licensed only in counties with low populations. Today the nearest brothels to Vegas are in Pahrump, a 60-mile drive away. The legal brothels still dotted around Nevada's rural areas remain divisive. Critics say the authorities fail to regulate the illegal sex trade, which is thought to dwarf the state's legal market. A federal lawsuit filed this year on behalf of a sex trafficking victim seeks to end the legal brothel system completely. The 21 remaining brothels have already survived several calls for a state-wide ban. Last year, efforts to close them in two counties failed and Dennis Hof, a well-known brothel owner and activist, was even voted into the local legislature - despite passing away during his campaign. Victoria Hartmann, a former dancer at Showgirl who is now director of the city's Erotic Heritage Museum, says fears around sex trafficking in the industry risk obscuring the stories of those who have chosen to enter sex work voluntarily, including strippers. "Those windows that we danced behind provided a safe space for us to express our sexuality, to have fun with dance and to make a good living," she says of her time at the venue. She believes local governments should work to de-stigmatise sex work and believes the more sex disappears from the surface of Las Vegas, the more it will thrive within local counter-culture. Dr Brents says calls for the criminalisation of prostitution historically came from the city's gaming industry who, as the city distanced itself from the mob, wanted to clean up their public image and appear legitimate - particularly to the federal government. Mr Figler says this insecurity persists within the gaming industry today. "That's why, for example, you don't have strip clubs even in casinos - which would make a fortune - but you do have more muted topless revues," he says. "It's an interesting dichotomy between the selling of sex and the regulation of all things sexual." This commercialisation of sex is still visible when you walk around Vegas today. It's hard to miss mobile billboards driving down the resort roads advertising "hot girls direct to you" and people handing out suggestive business cards for the ostensibly legal escort or outcall dancing services. You will also likely see topless men or showgirls, nude except for some body paint or strategically placed crystal underwear, trying to sell tickets to their racy revue shows along Las Vegas Boulevard. But even these productions have caused complaints over the years. In 2013, a risqué nightclub was ousted from the Palazzo hotel after the resort owners accused its shows of crossing the line into obscenity. Billboards advertising the burlesque show Crazy Girls, displaying bare bottoms, also faced calls to be banned. In a city happy to test the limits of acceptability, Showgirl always teetered on the edge. "I don't know if one could shed a tear for the type of establishment that Showgirl Video is," says Dayvid Figler. He knew the business and its owners well, having represented and written about them in the past. "But I think on a larger scale, it was representative of a sort of libertine existence that Las Vegas, on some level, has always tried to achieve - but maybe never fully realised. "As more places like Showgirl Video go away, Las Vegas is moving to be less of an outlier and more of a respectable mainstream place." The fact that Showgirl is being replaced by a marijuana dispensary is highly symbolic. Since Nevada legalised its recreational use in 2016, outlets selling the drug have sprung up across the Las Vegas area - including Planet 13, a superstore which bills itself as the largest dispensary and entertainment complex in the world. Some lawmakers and business owners in the city have made no secret of their ambitions to tap into weed tourism and become a "new Amsterdam". For now, though, tourists hoping to indulge are in legal limbo. Public consumption is still against the law and regulated lounges have not yet been given the green light. But could marijuana ever completely replace sex-based adult entertainment as the city's vice of choice? Treasure Brown doesn't think so. "There will always be a place for nude women, probably everywhere in America," she says. You can see the strip from the couple's house and they still own another downtown strip joint that continues to do well. Even though she no longer works in the industry herself, Treasure says she can't imagine leaving the weird and wonderful world of Vegas behind. "I would always want to call Las Vegas home because I enjoy the 'Through the Looking Glass' feel of it all," she says. "It's kind of insane. It's tacky. It's kitsch but I love it." All pictures copyright
A US naval reconnaissance drone was downed by Iranian missiles. President Donald Trump says he ordered - and then aborted - a retaliatory attack, changing his mind 10 minutes before the planned strikes. The sequence of events provided a glimpse of how a conflict might start.
Jonathan MarcusDiplomatic correspondent@Diplo1on Twitter Just suppose the president had not changed his mind. What might have happened? The first US strikes would have been limited in scope, targeting Iranian missile sites or radars, either associated with or similar to the ones that shot down the US drone. They would have been accompanied by a clear diplomatic warning to Iran (as appears to have been delivered over-night on Thursday) that this was indeed a limited attack, solely in retaliation for the loss of the US aircraft. Mr Trump also reportedly offered an olive branch; according to reports the message to Tehran - which was relayed through Oman - included a further request for talks. Say the strikes had gone ahead. What would happen then? The next move would be Iran's. According to one report, it responded last night that it was not interested in talks, and gave a warning of its own: "Any attack against Iran will have regional and international consequences," one un-named official told the Reuters news agency. So where might such a conflict go and what would it look like? There are many variables to consider, and it is easier to say what will not happen. The Trump administration may be an implacable foe of the Iranian regime but there is not going to be a full-scale ground invasion of Iran to topple the regime. This is not Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Iran is an altogether more complex challenge both militarily and politically. Some in the White House clearly want regime change. They are likely to be disappointed. So rule out a major land war. Any follow-up Iranian attack on US ships or aircraft would almost certainly be met by an escalation from the Americans. Iranian naval installations, air bases and so on would be hit by aircraft and cruise missiles with the focus, in part, on the Revolutionary Guard Corps whose naval arm appears to have played a prominent role in recent events. Of course the United States can deliver punishing strikes against Iran's military infrastructure. But Iran has the means to strike back too. It can use a variety of measures from mines, swarming small boat attacks or submarines to disrupt operations in the confined waters of the Gulf. Oil tankers could be attacked forcing the Americans to take steps to protect them too. Where the US clearly has an extraordinary advantage is in intelligence gathering and situational awareness. But as the downing of the very sophisticated and hugely expensive drone illustrates, there are significant US vulnerabilities too. All Iran may think it needs to do is to damage or sink a few US warships to make the price of this conflict one that Mr Trump will not want to pay. Any war would be characterised by this "asymmetric" aspect. This term suggests a war of the weak against the strong - two sides with very different goals and very different metrics for success. If a war does break out the US will seek to pummel Iran's armed forces. It would probably go about it in its time-honoured fashion; initially taking down Iranian air defences and so on. But the Iranians simply need to do enough damage to turn US public opinion against the conflict - to make it appear open-ended and uncertain. Iran, if under sufficient pressure, might also seek to spread the conflict more broadly, urging its proxies in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere to attack US targets. In extremis it might even try to prevail upon Hezbollah (in concert with its own forces in Syria) to launch rocket attacks on Israel. The goal would be to demonstrate to Washington that what Mr Trump might see as a short-punitive campaign actually risks setting the region on fire. But why would either country allow themselves to drift into a war? After all, modern conflicts are not "won" in any conventional sense. The Americans should have learnt this lesson all too well from Afghanistan and Iraq. And Iran surely cannot think it can "beat" the United States in any meaningful sense? But the reality is that somewhere between punitive attacks on the one hand and a full-scale conflict on the other, both countries may believe that they can make strategic gains. The US wants to contain Iran. Severely damaging its military capabilities - especially those of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - would serve this purpose. A serious reversal for Tehran might ultimately impact domestic politics in the country, though a war could equally have the unwanted result of consolidating support for the current regime. Iran may be pursuing its own high-stakes version of a "regime change" policy too. It may see the current US administration as aggressive, but equally as indecisive and lacking support from its key western allies. By drawing the Americans into a costly and open-ended conflict, the Iranian leadership may believe that they can absorb the pain while damaging President Trump's chances in the next Presidential race. An Iranian reading of the US political scene may see the Democrats as more likely to return to some kind of nuclear deal and as more willing therefore to relax economic sanctions. The problem for Tehran is that time is not on its side. The economic pressure of sanctions is hitting hard. Iran has relatively few cards to play beyond threatening chaos. Thus it may see escalation as a route out of this crisis. President Trump on the other hand, according to his own tweets, says he is "in no hurry". Let's hope all this discussion is academic. President Trump appeared ready to strike back at Iran after the downing of the drone and then had second thoughts. Many will hope that it is these second thoughts that prevail in the president's mind over the coming days. A war with Iran would indeed be costly and unpredictable. It would neither resolve the problem of Iran's nuclear programme nor of Iran's growing prominence in the region. That was the indirect outcome of Washington's last major war in the Middle East - the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Conflicts, it should be remembered, have unintended consequences.
The downfall of retired Gen David Petraeus, once America's most prominent post-9/11 military leader, has stunned a nation. Why does the US hold its top military commanders in such high esteem - and what are the consequences?
By Daniel NasawBBC News Magazine, Washington America's 12th president was so apolitical that before he ran for the job in 1848 he had never voted. But Zachary Taylor had been a successful general during the US-Mexican War. That was enough to take the Whig Party nomination - and win the White House. "Generals have played a very central role in American politics - this cult of the general goes back to Washington and the Continental Army," says Ron Chernow, a biographer of George Washington. "In Britain they get knighthoods. We reward them with political positions in high office." Now, Gen Petraeus, the most prominent military leader in a generation, who went on to head the CIA and had been mentioned as a future presidential candidate, has wrought his own downfall in a dalliance with his biographer. Gen John Allen, a Marine and Gen Petraeus' successor as commander in Afghanistan, has been accused of exchanging "inappropriate communications" with a second woman involved in the scandal. Gen Petraeus' disgrace - in a matter that has little apparent connection to his performance as a military leader - opens the way for a needed public discussion, says Andrew Bacevich, visiting research fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a retired Army colonel. "Knocking him off the pedestal - this huge standing that he had - ought to create a climate in which serious people can begin to ask serious questions about why our military has not delivered on our expectations" in Iraq and Afghanistan, he says. America's adoration of its generals dates back to its founding years, when military leaders defended the country from the perceived twin threat of European invaders and Native American tribes. George Washington, the first president, had commanded the army that won independence from Great Britain. At the time, Americans' sense of national identity was weak - they still considered themselves citizens of their respective states first. Washington's army was one of the first national institutions, and he embodied it, says Chernow. Since then, generals have exemplified much of what Americans profess to love - and distrust - about their democracy. They are seen as having worked their way up through the ranks even from modest backgrounds. Gen Ulysses Grant, who commanded victorious Union armies in the Civil War and was later president, was the son of a tanner. President Andrew Jackson was the son of Scots-Irish emigrants to the US. Before the White House, he was a general who won glory in the War of 1812 by defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans. "They earn their status on the basis of ability, and they get great public trust," says Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Even though they are adept at manoeuvring within military institutions, generals are seen as unsullied by national politics and its backroom deal-making or potential for moral compromise. "Since fairly early in the history of the US, there's been a certain amount of cynicism toward politics on the part of many Americans," says James McPherson, a Princeton historian and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War history Battle Cry of Freedom. Generals are perceived to be more pure - uncorrupted by the political cesspool, he says. In the public eye, generals have an advantage over another prominent class of supposedly non-political politicians: business leaders. "These are the ones who are supposed to be selfless," says H W Brands, a University of Texas historian and biographer of Gen Grant. "They put their lives at risk for the welfare of the public." And before the advent of mass media, military heroism lent instant fame in a far-flung country, says Chernow. "How many Americans would have been so well known and admired throughout the country? Not very many," he says. "What an advantage for a military hero-turned-political figure." America's adoration of its generals shows up in the numbers: 10 US presidents have served as generals. In the same period, a single retired general became British prime minister: the Duke of Wellington. "In American politics you can parachute in at the top - you're a general," says Brands. "In British politics, you have to work your way up through the party." Like Taylor, Grant had no political background and before the Civil War was a failed businessman and junior army officer. But the Republican Party saw advantage in his reputation and nominated him for president in 1868. The Vietnam War was so toxic for the public that none of its generals found later political success, and their names are not etched in the American memory in the same way. And like Vietnam, the Iraq war in which Gen Petraeus won national prominence was deeply divisive and regarded by many Americans as an imperialist exercise. But since the 1970s, Americans have been adept at distinguishing the individual soldier - and his or her presumed heroism and gallantry - from the cause. Few Americans look back on the Gulf War as a heroic national cause, but Gen Colin Powell was mentioned in the 1990s as a presidential candidate and later served as secretary of state. Gen Norman Schwarzkopf became a figure of international renown. "Americans knock themselves out, especially since 9/11, praising the military," says Brands. "If you put on the military uniform you're a prima facie hero. Generals are the epitome of that. They're the ones who have been most successful at the soldier's trade." Today, the military is the most respected public institution in America. Seventy-eight per cent of Americans profess "a great deal" or "a lot" of confidence in the military, according to a 2011 Gallup poll. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer political leaders today actually served in uniform, so they make up for that by genuflecting toward the military, says Kohn. President Ronald Reagan began saying "we'll listen to the military", and George W Bush made a political mantra of "we'll listen to the commanders in the field", he says. Gen Petraeus became a household name in January 2007, when Mr Bush named him overall commander of US forces in Iraq. "Nothing in Iraq seemed to be going well, and there was this need to find somebody who could demonstrate that it was not a completely lost cause," says Bacevich. "The moment was right for us to discover a new hero and Petraeus was that hero." With Gen Petraeus' public downfall, the American public can begin to grapple with why after 11 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan "we haven't won anything", Bacevich says. The consequences of the myth of "the great heroic general" have been dire, he says. "It's an excuse to not think seriously about war and to avoid examining the actual consequences of wars that we have chosen to engage."
Britain is a land of rolling hills, rugged moors and spectacular coastline, which millions of us enjoy exploring.
By David McKennaBBC News But some of these idyllic spots hide potentially explosive secrets. Every year, unsuspecting members of the public stumble upon dozens of undetonated shells and bombs, most dating back to World War II. So what happened in these remote places during the war? And how much do we know about the people who lived and worked there? WAR ON LANGSETT MOORS In 1941, hundreds of soldiers began descending upon an isolated part of the Peak District. Troops fired chemical weapons, tanks thundered along rubble tracks, and abandoned farm buildings were bombarded with bullets and mortars. What they left behind still has the "potential to kill". Mountain rescue volunteer Milo Milinkovic has been helping to clear what remains of the ordnance left on the moors around Langsett and Midhope. "They've been there 70 years plus, so they've eroded - markings can't be seen and fuse cases are corroded. You can't see anything that will guarantee it's safe." "The shells could make a room sized crater, so as far as an individual is concerned if you activated it, it's going to kill you and anyone near you." As well as helping make the area safe, Mr Milinkovic is part of a team working to unearth the little-known wartime history of the area. Langsett, he said, was a "totally different place" during the war. "There were soldiers billeted to protect the dams, and there were an awful lot of troops stationed here. "The dams were defended by searchlights, guns, and things called catenary defences - which was basically a metal curtain to stop planes being able to run in and bomb them. "At the same time we were training our own tank regiments, and Canadian, American, Polish, French troops for what ultimately became the D-Day landings." Access to the moors was severely restricted, and life changed dramatically for the few hundred people living in the surrounding farming communities. Soldiers stayed in houses belonging to the water board and, as the camp grew, a NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) was built. Staffed by local women, it provided bars, shops and a place for troops to eat. Local people often adapted to the army's constant presence in idiosyncratic ways. Mr Milinkovic said: "One of the stories I have heard is about a then young lady who lived in a property that was within the secure area. "She used to go the [Girl] Guides, but to come back home had to cross the dam wall where there was a sentry post. Safety warnings "She was a little bit put off by the soldiers challenging her, so as she and her friends approached they would stamp their feet loudly so the soldiers knew they were coming in plenty of time." "It doesn't seem a lot, but if you're out in blackout conditions, it would have been quite frightening for the girls to have someone jump out at them." Mr Milinkovic said he had also heard stories about young men sledging during the Blitz, and seeing German bombers flying over with aircrew visible in the turrets. "There are lots of little examples of things like that. "It was an interesting time, that's just never been recorded, and it's worthy of that story being told." The team has received a £7,400 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, which will be used to put up signage about the moors' role in the war, and safety warnings about ordnance. THE NEW FOREST'S ROLE IN WWII A tranquil area of what is now the New Forest National Park was used to test some of the biggest and most destructive weapons of WWII. The 12,000lb Tallboy and the 22,000lb Grand Slam "earthquake" bombs were designed to hit targets with pinpoint accuracy, and cause huge damage. "The bombs would penetrate deep into the ground before exploding, with the shock wave devastating nearby structures and foundations," said Gareth Owen from the park authority. "Local residents were told to keep their windows open, but not the reason why [to prevent them shattering]." Developed by Barnes Wallis - the inventor of the Dambusters' bouncing bomb - the top-secret projects in Hampshire were part of a shift away from large-scale carpet bombing. Viewed from above, the landscape at Ashley Walk is littered with craters and the remains of large chalk targets. One former RAF pilot - 92-year-old Arthur Poore, who joined the Dambusters' 617 Squadron after the raids on Germany's Ruhr dams - flew test missions there. These involved dropping Tallboys on reinforced concrete buildings. He said: "There were huge U-boat pens the size of three football pitches at Brest and the French ports. They had twelve feet of concrete on top so that if you had a direct hit with a 4,000lb bomb, it would just bounce off. "So to experiment, they built a small building in this aerodrome [Ashley Walk] with ten feet of concrete on top and squadron bombers came along and dropped their bombs to see what happened." The results showed the Tallboy's shock waves could cause extensive damage to a hardened or underground building, even if it was not a direct hit. They were later used to great effect destroying rail tunnels and heavily fortified V-2 bunkers. A 9ft (2.7m) reinforced wall was also built at Ashley walk to test Barnes Wallis' most famous invention - the bouncing bomb. It is generally believed the Upkeep bomb was not used after the Dambusters' raids - but tests were carried out in the New Forest in 1943 to see if the device could be adapted to breach sea wall defences in France. Fragments of ordnance are often found in the area, although it is rare for large-scale bombs to be found intact. However, last year two 500lb objects were unearthed - they turned out to be WWII training devices. Mr Owen is working on the New Forest Remembers WWII project which aims to chart the wartime history of the area. He said: "Ashley Walk is probably still strewn with shards and remains of Second World War bombs, which, along with archive reports and photos, really sheds light on this period. "It was a top secret testing area, so even local people weren't meant to fully know what was going on. "We knew before this project began that Ashley Walk was an important site, but we didn't realise the sheer scale and number of bombs dropped and how important it was." Other parts of the New Forest were also used extensively during the war. Twelve airfields were built within the park, with commandos based along the Beaulieu River - the last part of England many of them saw before they left for occupied France. COMMANDO TRAINING IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS US boatman Joseph "Eddie" McCann was just 15 when in 1944 he led a small boat carrying troops onto the beaches of Normandy. "We thought it might be an easy one - you're always hoping for an easy one. I wasn't really prepared for what come about in the next 100 yards. It was unbelievable," he said. "We lost in that first wave over 2,000 men. We got hit with body parts, heads come flying, guts start stacking up all over the beach, along with the bodies - it's hard to really talk about it, when you see your brothers being mangled." The D-Day landings of WWII were key to the liberation of German-occupied western Europe. Although bloody, brutal and chaotic, they had been rehearsed at length. Training took place around the UK, including at Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands, where troops dodged live bullets as they practised beach assaults. Commandos were based at Achnacarry, near Fort William, with Special Operations Executive (SOE) at Lochailort, near Mallaig. Local coastguard Craig Burton said: "Camas an Lighe, more popularly known as Singing Sands, on the north coast bears witness to that history. "The beaches and their dune system were used for live fire landings training prior to many operations, including D-Day. "One in particular, known locally as number three beach, contains most of the evidence." He said: "Operations involved using fixed-height machine guns, fired above the troops as they landed. "They returned fire as they advanced up the beach using rifles, machine guns, mortars, grenades and other ordnance. "They were even reputed to be able to call in air support to attack a target painted on a rock face at the back of the beach." He added: "Today, as the sands continue to move around, they regularly reveal evidence of all this activity. Spent and live rifle and pistol bullets have been found in abundance. "High explosive, smoke, and, more worryingly, phosphorus mortar bombs and hand grenades turn up less frequently - although they cause quite a stir when they are placed on the bar at the local hotel or are handed in at the local police station." 'Shelled by accident' Larger ordnance, such as bombs and shells, has not been found for a number of years - but other evidence of the military exercises is often uncovered, especially barbed wire and the folding cutters used to penetrate it. Although there is a memorial at Spean Bridge to the commandos who trained in the Lochaber region, few accounts of life during the war have been recorded. Mr Burton said one story he had heard was about a local postman being shelled by accident whilst trying to deliver the post to Gorteneorn. He said: "Luckily, he decamped to the nearest ditch and used his own military training from WWI to time the shells - making his break to the next ditch between salvos. "Both the postman and his post got through unharmed."
A man has appeared in court charged with the murder of a 43-year-old man in Glasgow.
Andrew Linton was found with serious injuries at Lochend Road, in the Easterhouse area of the city, at about 16:45 on Tuesday. Mr Linton, of Easterhouse, was taken to Glasgow Royal Infirmary where he died a short time later. Thomas Reilly, 43, made no plea when he appeared in private before Glasgow Sheriff Court. He was also charged with assault. Mr Reilly was remanded in custody for further examination and will return to court next week.
For a long period of time, especially during the late 1990s and 2000s, Jet Airways was the shining face of Indian aviation. But now it finds itself on the verge of collapse. What went wrong? The BBC's India business correspondent Sameer Hashmi explains.
Jet Airways won itself many loyal customers when it started operations because it redefined the Indian flying experience. It set itself apart in a market dominated by the national carrier, Air India, by offering world class service. Over the last decade it grew steadily - becoming India's largest international carrier. But the airline, which celebrated its silver jubilee just last year, is now fighting for its survival. In recent weeks it has cancelled thousands of flights, affecting passengers flying on both international and domestic routes. It has grounded more than two-thirds of the 119 aircraft it had in its fleet because it is no longer able to pay leasing companies. The company has amassed a debt of more than than $1bn (£750m) and has failed to pay salaries and loans. Rescue efforts But for now at least, all is not lost. In a rare move the Indian government is desperately trying to save Jet, despite the fact that it is a private airline. So it is asking state-run banks to step in with a bailout plan. With elections scheduled to start next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to stop the airline - which employs 23,000 people - from collapsing. The "rescue mission" is headed by the State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest public sector bank. Its head, Rajnish Kumar, on Thursday said that lenders are close to working out a resolution plan. But not everyone is convinced it can be saved. Air India's former executive director, Jitender Bhargava, says it will be very difficult for banks to find investors - given the current financial mess the airline is in. "Who will be ready to put in money when profitability is not on the horizon? You cannot put in money to sink it." SBI has already held talks with Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, which owns a 24% stake in Jet. The lenders want Etihad Airways to invest more money in the airline but the latter is reported to have declined the offer and instead wants to sell its entire stake and exit the business. But aviation expert Mahantesh Sabarad thinks that Jet Airways is still a strategically good investment for Etihad. By increasing its stake, he believes, the gulf carrier will get a bigger foothold in an aviation market that is forecast to become the third largest by 2024 behind the United States and China. "If immediate cash is injected and the aircraft that are grounded start flying again, then the airline can be rescued. In the current scenario, Etihad is the best bet for Jet Airways," he said. The Goyal problem But the major factor that has held back potential investors, including Etihad Airways, is the founder and chairman of the airline. Naresh Goyal has been reluctant to give up control of the company. According to multiple reports, Etihad Airways initially agreed to invest more money and raise its equity stake in the airline. But the deal collapsed after Mr Goyal refused to step down as the chairman of the airline. He and his family own a 52% stake in Jet Airways. Indian aviation rules allow foreign airlines to own a stake of up to 49% in Indian carriers. "Mr Goyal has always wanted to keep control of the airline at any cost. Even in the past when the airline was going through tough times, he turned down deals to protect his position," says a former senior executive of Jet Airways who didn't want to be named. Many news reports say lenders have asked Mr Goyal and his wife to step down from the board. "Mr Goyal stepping down will open up a lot of options for the airline. Any investor that is willing to invest would want full control and to run it professionally," says Mr Bhargava. An email sent to Jet Airways regarding Mr Goyal's future did not elicit any response. Turbulence from low cost carriers Jet Airways was born in 1993, two years after India liberalised its economy and opened its doors to private investments. The company was one of five private airlines to set up soon after. The others did not survive but Jet Airways kept cruising to new heights. It kept increasing its market share, eating into the monopoly enjoyed by national carrier Air India. In fact, the rise of Jet coincided with the decline of Air India, which was plagued by poor service and bad business decisions taken by its political masters. Its troubles however, began with the entry of low-cost carriers like IndiGo and SpiceJet in the mid-2000s. The new airlines began offering tickets at a much lower prices. IndiGo also kept its operational costs low by offering basic services and no food on flights. To compete with them, Jet also started lowering its fares, despite continuing to be a full service airline. "The biggest challenge for Jet Airways was that its operational cost was much higher compared to low-cost carriers, which is what prevented it from making profits," says Mr Bhargava. Apart from stiff competition, volatile crude oil prices and a depreciating rupee also exacerbated its financial problems. Since 2008, the airline kept incurring huge losses , forcing it to keep borrowing from banks. Meanwhile, IndiGo kept eating into Jet Airways market share. Things turned from bad to worse in 2018. Crude oil prices shot up significantly, touching $80 and simultaneously, the Indian currency lost nearly 20% of its value against the dollar. Both factors play a critical role in the airline business. "These two factors really dented the airlines' cash flow, and it couldn't recover from there," says Mr Sabarad. Borrowed time Jet Airways used to operate on 600 domestic and 380 international routes. But since the crisis began, it has cut down hundreds of flights including to international destinations like Abu Dhabi, Manchester and Hong Kong. It has also curtailed its operations within the country by stopping flights from the capital Delhi to major Indian cities like Bangalore, Chennai (formerly known as Madras) and Hyderabad. According to some media reports, the government has nudged low cost carriers like SpiceJet to consider taking over some of the aircraft grounded by Jet Airways. To make matters worse, the airline's pilots union has said they have decided to stop flying from 1 April if Jet Airways does not have a rescue plan in place by then. "It is not about the salary right now, it is about getting clarity about our future. We have bills to pay, and many of us are sole breadwinners in the family," Asim Valiani, vice president of the union, told the BBC. Airfares have soared with passengers sometimes having to pay four to five times the cost of a regular ticket. It is still unclear what the outcome of the Jet Airways fiasco will be. But for now, airline staff and customers are bearing the brunt.
What's the point of a computer in a hermit country sealed off from the internet? What use can a smartphone be if the smartest uses are blocked? And why would anyone learn computer coding in a country closed off from the world-wide-web?
By Stephen EvansBBC News These are the conundrums at the core of the puzzle about technology in North Korea. If the south is the most teched-up nation in the world, the north ought to be the least - except it's not. At least one in 12 people there have smartphones. Not only that but North Korea has some very sophisticated computer programmers designing clever applications. We know that North Korea has so many smartphones because its 3G network is run by Koryolink, a joint venture between an Egyptian company, Orascom Telecom, and the North Korean state. The Egyptian end publishes figures which add up to about two million North Korean subscribers. Mobile manners So great is the use of mobile phones that North Koreans have been advised on etiquette. Some of it resonates everywhere. The main South Korean news agency got hold of a northern magazine which complained that "speaking loudly or arguing over the phone in public places where many people are gathered is thoughtless and impolite behaviour". The magazine also bemoaned the habit of not identifying oneself when answering the phone. This meant the caller had to enquire along these lines: "Is it you, Comrade Yeong-cheol?" Some problems are the same the world over; some are not. But the bigger question is: how do North Koreans manage without the global internet? With difficulty, is the answer. Cookery tips A few bright students are trained and do have access from controlled and monitored institutions while the mass of the citizenry have to make do with the internal North Korean intranet called the Kwangmyong. This is some way short of the sum of all knowledge and delight provided by the worldwide web. It does relay the words and deeds of the Supreme Leader but also recipes, including:"Our nation's beautiful dietary manner" and "Rabbit meat tonic broth: Do remember not to feed the rabbit anything but water for a day before slaughter - read the recipe to find out why". There's also advice in English, Korean and Chinese on diet and age, the kind of health webpage which would generate clicks on any website anywhere. "During the meal, don't drink too much water," it warns. "If drinking too much water, the gastric juice is diluted and the food is not digested well. And in summer, the bacteria in the food go down to the intestine without being killed by the stomach acidity and can cause the disease". For the general populace this intranet has to suffice. The authorities are hyper-keen to close the slightest crack in the wall to the internet outside. Border patrols According to North Korea Tech, which monitors technology there, foreign visitors now have to de-activate their Sim cards on departure. They can buy cards which give web access on entry but, in the past it was possible that they could be left behind, still loaded with unused internet access for locals to use. That gap has been plugged. So has the possibility that North Koreans near foreign embassies and the offices of international organisations could access the buildings' wi-fi. In August, foreign missions were told that "signals of regional wireless networks… produce some effect on our surroundings" and, therefore, their licences were revoked. The ban followed a report on a South Korean website that demand for property around embassies in Pyongyang had risen because of the ability of neighbours to furtively make use of unencrypted wi-fi. There is a continual game of cat and mouse between the North Korean authorities and people who want to talk to the outside world - for which there are fierce penalties. Some may, for example, want to get onto South Korean or Chinese networks near the northern or southern borders, but Martyn Williams who runs the North Korea Tech monitoring site tells the BBC this isn't easy. "It's very difficult for the average North Korean to get near the South Korean border because that's such a heavily guarded security area", he says. "It's difficult but easier to get near the Chinese border and there you do see people inserting Chinese Sim cards into their phones, or they'll have smuggled phones from China. "If they can get onto the Chinese cellular network, they can make calls to anywhere in the world. They can also access the internet without the North Korean government stopping them. "One of the things the North Korean government does is heavily patrol the border and try to find people using these cellphones." Video game malware With such constrained access to the outside world, it's a wonder any kind of sophisticated computer programming exists in North Korea - but it does. "When I talk to people who work with North Koreans for business, they are impressed with the level levels of sophistication of some of the programming," says Mr Williams. "Of course, it's not just for commercial reasons they're doing this. Offensive cyber-capability is something big which many nations are building up. "It seems North Korea sees it as useful tool on the military side but also something that could be used on the business side." Just like other countries, the North Korean militarised regime needs top coders to intrude on the systems of other countries and to resist hacking by the intelligence agencies of other countries. South Korea certainly thinks that North Korea listens in. According to the head of the South Korean National Intelligence Service, North Korea infected about 20,000 South Korean smartphones with malware hidden in games between May and September in a bid to monitor their owners. Pyongyang denies the claim. But Martyn Williams says that bright students are indeed selected and then trained in computer skills at specialised institutions to carry out such programmes, but he adds there are also bright software engineers working on apps designed for civilian use. North Korea launched the Samjiyon tablet last year, running on the Android system and pre-loaded with games including what appears to be a rip-off of Angry Birds. The tablet was also loaded with the eBook Gone with the Wind, the classic novel set on a slave plantation in the American Deep South. According to the Washington Post, the novel was accompanied by an introduction which said the book was "particularly useful for understanding how modern capitalism spread to all of the United States". The difficulty for bright people trying to innovate in North Korea is that without easy and constant access to the web, they don't always know what the competition might be. Geoffrey See, who founded the Choson Exchange - which tries to improve skills and knowledge in North Korea - recently organised an IT conference in Pyongyang. "We often find that when we talk to the smaller IT companies there, they are developing products for which there is already a very strong product on the market," he says. Cut off from the world, North Korean software developers risk toiling in darkness on products which others have already made. Mr See thinks the way forward is better links. "You need a lot of collaboration with international programmers, being plugged into that network of programmers and venture capitalists who are able to tell you who else is working on such a product," he explains. And therein lies the problem. The North Korean regime clearly does not want to grant its people that kind of access to the outside world. Twenty-five years ago, the Berlin Wall was pushed down. If you talk to East Germans now, they often say that their real yearning was not for some abstract idea of freedom but just to get a first-hand view of the outside world. Kim Jong-un knows the dangers of that. But for how long can the gaps be plugged?
The Bosna, the river that gave this country its name, flows northwards through the city of Zenica, slicing it in two. On its banks, the chimney stacks of the giant steelworks in the centre of the city funnel thick smoke into the surrounding valley.
By Stuart HughesBBC News In the garden of a women's refuge overlooking the plant, Lejla describes the brutality she suffered as a teenager. "I was 14 and living with my grandmother when the war began," she says. "I was captured and spent three years in a prison camp, where we were forced to do manual labour. Later, I was separated from the rest of the prisoners along with three other women and taken to a house. "The soldiers would drink. We would have to serve them like slaves and they would rape us." Estimates for the number of women like Lejla who were subjected to sexual violence during the Bosnian War range from 20,000 to more than 50,000. The true figure will never be known, not least because many women have chosen to remain silent, fearing they will be stigmatised by society if they speak out. No witness protection As the Bosnian war slips further into history, it is becoming more difficult than ever for some women to talk openly about their experiences, according to Nela Porobic from the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. "What we are finding from our discussions with victims of sexual violence but also with the professionals working with them is that talking about sexual violence was actually easier in the midst of war and immediately after the things happened rather than now, with the passage of 20 years," she says. "They feel society is tired, they don't want to hear about what happened, they want to move on - but these women can't move on." Researchers say the war in Bosnia created a "hierarchy of trauma". With so many atrocities committed between 1992 and 1995, sexual violence is viewed by some as a lesser evil than ethnic cleansing or torture. For those seeking justice, the obstacles remain immense. The courts are already trying to clear a backlog of some 1,300 war crimes cases. Only those cases regarded as the most serious, or involving high-ranking officers, are dealt with at the state level where witnesses are given anonymity and protection. Cases involving women raped by rank-and-file soldiers are often passed to lower-level regional courts, where there is no witness-protection programme and victims may be asked to give evidence in front of their attacker. 'A shell of a man' So far, there have been fewer than 70 prosecutions for crimes of sexual violence during the Bosnian War. "Survivors of sexual violence feel that no one believes what happened to them," says Sabiha Husic, director of the Medica Zenica women's project. "Most survivors tell me they don't want to go through with the legal process if it means they're going to have to give evidence to prove their case. "We try to support and encourage them but sometimes when they are asked to appear in court, it's just too stressful and traumatic." Men were also raped during the Bosnian War, often as a means of humiliation. Zihnija, a former soldier in the Bosnian army, shakes visibly as he recounts what happened to him. "The military police took me to a basement and beat me unconscious," he recalls. "When I woke up, one of the officers took a shovel, ripped my trousers and put it inside me. Then they threw me back on the floor. They thought I would probably bleed to death. "When you lose an arm of a leg you can see it - but when your soul is hurting it's invisible. I may look like a rock but I'm just a shell of a man. A shell." Rapists still at large The issue of sexual violence in conflict will be addressed at a major international conference in London in June, chaired by UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and the Hollywood actress and UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie. The pair have been working together on the issue since Mr Hague watched Angelina Jolie's film about the Bosnian War, In The Land of Blood and Honey, two years ago. They travelled to Bosnia last week, and pledged to use the London summit to launch new guidance on documenting and investigating war zone rape and to increase the support given to survivors. While better evidence-gathering may lead to more prosecutions in future conflicts, for some any improvements are already too late. "The men who raped me are still at large," says one survivor, Edina, as Hague and Jolie toured the crumbling former UN peacekeeping compound in Srebrenica. "I've found some of them on social networks. They walk around freely. They have Facebook profiles," she says. "I'm bitter towards the Bosnian government because the process of arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators is so slow. After 20 years, many victims have already died." "They didn't live long enough to see justice being done." she says.
Bomb disposal experts were called to a park in Devon after the discovery of a ordnance device.
Devon and Cornwall Police said the bomb, believed to be a World War II munition, was found at Devonport Park in the Stoke area of Plymouth. A 200m (656ft) cordon was initially put in place when the bomb was discovered at about 1140 GMT, but that has now been removed. A police spokesman said the bomb was not thought to be "viable". Last month part of Plymouth city centre was evacuated when a partially buried German World War II bomb was found by workmen at a building site in Notte Street.
Islanders in Alderney are being asked for their views on fishing in local waters.
The General Services Committee is carrying out a review of commercial and recreational fishing. They want to hear from anyone involved, either directly or indirectly at a public meeting on 24 June. The agenda includes trawlers, charters, the size of vessels, protected areas, fishing limits, the closed season and fishing in bays.
Many people may not realise the beer in their pint glass contains a product made from fish. Now the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) is calling on brewers to investigate alternatives for their drinks. But why is fish put in beer anyway?
By Liam BarnesBBC News Ask somebody to list the classic ingredients of beer and the chances are they will come back with: hops, malt, barley and water, with a bit of yeast thrown in for good measure. It is unlikely the swim bladder of fish would be on the list, but isinglass - a gelatine made using the organ - is in fact very likely to be in your average pint. Used since the 19th Century as a fining agent to make beer clear, bright and more attractive to drinkers, the odourless added extra is used widely by brewers, from mass-produced brands to small microbreweries. Its prevalence poses a problem for vegetarians and vegans, many of whom do not realise they need to tread carefully when ordering at the bar. Now Camra is calling on breweries to examine alternatives to isinglass in beer, is a brewing revolution on the cards? While flocculation - the process where the substance mixes with the yeast in the beer to make it less hazy - is useful for many breweries and landlords looking for beer to settle quickly, Twisted Barrel Brewery made the decision not to use isinglass to clear its beers soon after setting up in 2014. Brewery owner Tim Bosworth, a long-term vegetarian who went vegan two years ago, said he was shocked when he first learned about the ingredient. "It's kind of disgusting to think about, even to people who eat meat, and it's something that's not talked about," he said. "Nobody really wants to advertise that they filter their beer through dead fish." As well as the ethical and environmental issues around veganism, the Coventry-based brewer has another more practical objection: the effect of isinglass on the taste. "It takes away a lot of the flavour from the beer," Mr Bosworth said. "More people know now that beer doesn't have to be clear - it doesn't matter what it looks like, and isinglass is just used for aesthetics." When Manchester's Marble Brewery started out in 1997, the production of vegetarian-friendly ales was not a consideration, but the desire to be authentic meant the brewery steered clear of fining agents. Its stance means Marble is one of a handful of breweries to be approved by the Vegetarian Society, something that's earned it a loyal following. While not averse to using odd ingredients - from Japanese citrus fruit yuzu to bergamot - the idea of filling a pint full of fish bladders left a bad taste with the brewery's brains trust. "When I first came here I asked [brewery owner] Jan if we needed to be vegetarian, and she said yes we do because it's a very big thing for us," said James Kemp, who took over as head brewer this year. "We'd lose a lot of customers if we weren't part of it. "We always try and make our beers as clear as they can be through great brewing - it's a source of pride for us." If the likes of Marble got the ball rolling with unfined beer, then the momentum has picked up with the recent British brewing boom. As the number of active breweries has soared - from fewer than 700 in 2009 to more than 1,500 in 2016 - the number of those that leave out isinglass and other items has grown. Alternative vegetarian-friendly finings, such as products derived from the algae Irish moss or seaweed, are also on the market. But why did breweries start using finings in the first place? Beer author, journalist and Camra stalwart Roger Protz traces it to the 19th Century, when pale ales challenged porters and stouts in the popularity stakes and transparent glasses replaced stone, china and metal drinking vessels. The reason it has carried on, he says, is the pressure to turn over beers in the shortest time possible. "Particularly in this day and age of 'pubcos', people want to get the beers on as quickly as possible, and isinglass is a shortcut to help them," he said. It is not just ethical concerns driving the increase. Mr Protz - himself a vegetarian for more than 25 years - points to increasing customer knowledge of different beer styles, such as German wheat beers, that are naturally cloudy, meaning British drinkers no longer naturally fear the worst when served a less-than transparent pint. Mr Protz is encouraging more breweries to follow the lead of Guinness, which announced last year it would stop using isinglass in its products. Unsurprisingly, the practice is enthusiastically backed by the Vegetarian Society. John Soonaye, from the society, said the exemption alcoholic drinks enjoy on nutritional labelling regulations makes life harder for ale-drinking vegetarians. However, with greater consumer awareness about the provenance of food and drink and a number of breweries signing up to earn the society's approved trademark, he hopes the situation will improve. "The use of isinglass in drinks production is a major frustration for vegetarian beer lovers as there are very few obvious ways to identify whether or not it has been used," he said. "Personally, there's nothing I like more than savouring a cool pint of real ale on a lazy Saturday afternoon, so if Camra can help encourage breweries to make more beers suitable for more people, that's a brilliant thing." Where once brewers skipping on finings was very much swimming against the tide, could we be looking at a situation where a flocculated beer filled to the gills with isinglass is a thing of the past? "I think with the craft beer revolution more breweries aren't using isinglass," said Mr Bosworth. "People are moving away from the idea beer needs to be clear. "All of the people who have brought back beer to our bar thinking it was off have had it explained to them, and once they were told about it they realised the beer was fine. "Some people do tell me they drink with their eyes, and if they want a clear beer with finings then that's up to them, but nobody has left my bar unsatisfied." Mr Protz agrees greater consumer awareness could lead to the change. "I think that the pressure is on," he said. "Even if you're not a vegetarian you must wonder why on earth are people putting fish bladders in beer?"
Business leaders have been told they will get a preview of the government's final position on customs and trading arrangements ahead of the publication of a government White Paper next Thursday - but NOT before the whole cabinet thrashes out the final contents of the paper on Friday at the Prime Minister's country retreat, Chequers.
Simon JackBusiness editor@BBCSimonJackon Twitter I'm told that many members of the full cabinet have yet to receive any documents to review ahead of Friday's crunch talks. Media reports - that businesses would get a heads up before ministers - were dismissed by senior government sources. However, the government IS hoping that business will do its bit by responding positively to what the government will claim is a new level of post-summit clarity. It hopes business will be just as noisy in welcoming it as they were in complaining about its absence in the last two weeks. Large manufacturers including Airbus, BMW and Nissan have all recently warned that future investment in the UK is threatened by lack of clarity on future trading arrangements with the EU, with specific worries about delays at borders caused by new customs procedures. It's been reported that a new idea will be unveiled at the summit on how to keep the borders friction free - a third way between the two options already considered. Options To refresh memories, the first option - the maximum facilitation (or "max fac") model - envisages using new (as yet unspecified) technology to reduce (not eliminate) friction at our ports, airports and, crucially, at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The second, a "new customs partnership" would see the UK collecting EU tariffs on goods bound for European markets on the EU's behalf - and sending them on to Brussels - with the option of paying refunds on goods remaining in the UK. I'm told that of the two options, the latter was winning the argument in cabinet as it's much cheaper for business and does away with the need for any new physical borders with the EU - particularly important on the island of Ireland. It therefore seems likely that any third way will look more like the customs partnership than the max-fac model. The problem is that both have been dismissed by the EU as unworkable and that is why some business leaders I've spoken to are sceptical that Chequers and the subsequent White Paper will herald the kind of breakthrough businesses crave. "Alice in Wonderland" summit One veteran business leader described the Chequers summit as an "Alice in Wonderland" meeting. Another told me the credibility of senior UK managers at multinational companies was "completely shot" as messages of reassurance from the government - that were dutifully carried back to their international boards - proved to be "meaningless promises". However, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, Dr Adam Marshall, told the BBC that if the government delivers a settled position from which to base negotiations, business will say "hallelujah". A senior cabinet minister hoped that Friday's summit would prove to be a "big moment" in the history of the Brexit process. If the Chequers summit produces a clear position, which has broad support from her own government and provides business with a sense of clarity about what the UK is trying to achieve, then it will have been one. Theresa May and David Davis will feel they can then finally turn OUTWARD to the EU and legitimately ask them to use more imagination in finding a solution that delivers a version of Brexit which is in the economic interests of both sides.
James Comey may not have added much new detail in testimony on Thursday about his one-to-one meetings with Donald Trump but he did add something: he set the scene, and law professors say that could be a missing piece in an obstruction of justice case against the president.
By Joel GunterBBC News, Washington Mr Comey, the former director of the FBI, gave three hours of evidence in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, describing personally for the first time the series of exchanges with the president that led to his sacking last month. In one of those exchanges, the president said he "hoped" Mr Comey could "find his way" to dropping an investigation into then-national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a Trump ally who was under scrutiny over his ties to Russia. We knew that already - Mr Comey made details of the meeting public several weeks ago - and Committee Republicans sought on Thursday to paint it as an innocent exchange: "I hope" was not an instruction, they said. The former FBI director declined to offer his own opinion at the hearing on whether the president was attempting to obstruct justice, saying only that he found their exchange "very disturbing". Whether the president had broken the law would be a matter for special counsel investigator Robert Mueller to decide, he said. So what's changed? Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law professor and former federal prosecutor, said the oral testimony gave new and legally significant insight into how Mr Comey interpreted the president's words in the moment. "The critical aspect of an obstruction case is assessing the intent of the speaker and whether it was corrupt," Mr Whiting said. "People communicate with much more than words, and some of the best evidence for what a speaker meant can be how the speaker was understood at the time." Mr Comey testified on Thursday that he clearly understood Mr Trump to be pushing him to drop the inquiry. We also heard for the first time that the president cleared the room before making the remarks, removing even Mr Comey's boss, the attorney general. Added to that, Mr Comey, who has a long history of high-profile legal positions and who took meticulous notes directly after his meetings with the president, was a "dream witness", Mr Whiting said. "I think if you take together his written and oral testimony together, he has now made a prima facie case of obstruction of justice. "Whether it's a case that should be prosecuted, or whether it merits impeachment, those are separate questions, but the elements are now there for obstruction. There was a corrupt intent to impede justice. I think you could charge this case." Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, also said that Mr Comey's oral testimony had changed the legal picture. "Comey may not have added specific pieces of information, but the way he presented himself and consistency of his account, and the coherency of the account, all of these things are important," he said. "In his oral testimony, he made it clearer that he believed Trump was trying to obstruct justice. He said that when Trump used the word hope, he understood that to be a command of some sort, and that strengthens the case for obstruction. "It was a borderline case before, now it is somewhat stronger." But the case remains essentially circumstantial, said Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at University of North Carolina who testified at the Clinton impeachment hearings. "Everybody is parsing the words of course, but I don't know that Comey's testimony strengthens or weakens an obstruction case," he said. The meetings described by Mr Comey were however "clearly inappropriate", he said. "This is simply not how Americans want a president to conduct himself." The testimony would serve to strengthen Mr Comey's credibility with congress, Mr Gerhardt said, possibly at the expense of the president. "Comey put his credibility on the line today and he did it in a very public way," he said. "Now it's a credibility contest between him and the president, and I think it's safe to say Comey is winning that contest." That could prove crucial if legal action were ever taken over this affair. Were the president to face impeachment or criminal proceedings, the former FBI director would "without doubt" be a central witness, Mr Whiting said, and his credibility against Mr Trump's would be key to the case. Both those scenarios remain unlikely however, at least for the meantime. It is effectively impossible to bring criminal charges against a sitting president - the case would have to be brought by the executive branch, of which Mr Trump is the boss. As for impeachment, there is political resonance to obstruction of justice charges - it factored in the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the resignation of Richard Nixon - but it is still highly unlikely. The Republican party controls both houses of congress, and a special counsel investigation into the Russia affair is only in its infancy. So Mr Comey's testimony will not trigger legal proceedings any time soon, but it does have the potential to damage the president's political standing and resonate with moderate voters, Mr Posner said. "Obstruction of justice is clearly on the minds of a lot of people and I think it damages the president politically," he said. "He continues to have supporters of course. But for many people in the middle, their opinion of the president will decline and their reservations will strengthen."
The number of rough sleepers with mental health problems has tripled in recent years, and a ground-breaking project in east London now aims to identify and support rough sleepers with such issues. The BBC's social affairs correspondent, Michael Buchanan, spent three months following Thames Reach staff as they try to help those homeless people who struggle with a range of psychological issues.
We meet in the dead of night in her former home - a bin chute at the bottom of a block of flats. Donna Reader spent nearly a week amid the large metal containers - sleeping among rotting food and other smells. "I'm used to it, it doesn't bother me, the smell," says Donna. She'd ended up here after becoming homeless - a chaotic life including long-standing drug addiction and schizophrenia causing her to sleep rough. Her life was rescued by an outreach team who scour the streets of east London looking for homeless people with mental health problems. Donna now has a bed in a hostel and attends a clinic every fortnight to receive her psychiatric medication. "I live healthier now I'm not living on the streets. I wake up - I've got a toilet, I can have a cup of tea, go downstairs, talk to people. My mental health is better, more controlled. You can't make mental health go overnight." The woman administering Donna's injection is Fatima Taylor, a psychiatric nurse. She works for the homeless charity Thames Reach, part of an outreach team paid for by the local council, Tower Hamlets. Nightly, they can be found on the streets of east London trying to identify, engage with, and support the increasing numbers of rough sleepers who have mental health problems. Last year, official data showed there were at least 2,521 people sleeping on the streets of London who had identifiable psychiatric needs. In 2009-10 the figure was just over 700, according to the charity St Mungo's. We travelled with the team as they went to meet a long-term rough sleeper who'd called for help. The woman suffers from schizoaffective disorder and wanted her medication. As Fatima approaches, a man with the homeless woman tries to pull her away. A small argument ensues, there is a scuffle, but Fatima manages to give the woman the pill. Fatima is shaken. "It's extremely upsetting. It's a vulnerable situation for me as well because he could have turned on me. But then you have to try and do what you need to do to help people like this." The team engage in a wide spectrum of outreach work - from initial, gentle contact through to detaining people under the Mental Health Act. The rough sleepers are often suspicious and regularly refuse help. Persistence is the key, as we saw with the team's approach to a man who lives in a tent by a busy dual carriageway in the shadow of Canary Wharf. They visit him up to three times a week. The first time we went along, he wouldn't talk to them. Weeks later and he did engage - to forcefully tell them he didn't want their help. But the team saw his engagement as a small victory, a sign of progress. Each evening can be a frustrating battle - but the team rarely lets that deter them. They spent almost three months trying to talk to one man - CCTV pictures they'd seen suggested his behaviour had become erratic, talking to himself, shouting at strangers. On the night he finally stopped to talk to them, Fatima concluded that he should be sectioned. But by now it was after midnight, and no doctors could be found to assess him as required by law. So the man walked off. "That's the nature of outreach, because it's so unpredictable when you can find somebody so chaotic, to get them into services." On a separate evening, the team gather in Whitechapel and this time doctors are present. They're here to section a different man, someone with long-term psychiatric needs whose health has deteriorated once more. He's been displaying erratic behaviour in recent weeks, including begging aggressively. A rough sleeper and habitual drug user, he has been sectioned several times before. He reacts calmly and departs for hospital. But just two days later he's back on the streets. The psychiatric unit had discharged him - the outreach team say the NHS hadn't bothered to check if he had anywhere to sleep. "They fall through the cracks all the time," says Fatima. "You try and get them [help] through A&E, [they say] it's a matter of substance misuse, drug induced psychosis, that it's nothing to do with their mental health." Often however their psychiatric health is the problem - and without the determined effort of this innovative team, far more people would be forced to struggle alone.
"Postnatal confinement" - where new mothers do not leave the house, have visitors or shower for a month after giving birth - is said to be widespread among the UK's Chinese community. Experts warn that few in the medical profession know this occurs.
By Amber HaqueBBC Victoria Derbyshire programme "Being confined in your flat is important," says Ching Ching Turner, from her home in London that she has not left since giving birth 28 days earlier. She speaks to the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme via video call, as visitors are not allowed. Mrs Turner argues confinement is an important process as traditional belief is that the mother and baby's immunity is very low. She is of Chinese ethnicity, and says: "For us, if you don't practise it you're kind of disadvantaging yourself." Confinement is common across Asia and in China there are special hospitals where mothers stay confined for a month, sometimes only seeing their babies once a day. It is carried out because traditional Chinese medicine asserts that women who have just given birth are more susceptible to cold air, and becoming ill as a result. Mrs Turner, who believes she has "done confinement in a modern way" by still showering for example, says her wishes came as a surprise to her husband, who was born in the UK. "I don't think he realised that [confinement] came with a whole set of rules," she says. "It was a bit difficult for him as he wanted to show off his baby. "But now we've nearly completed the month, he sees the benefits." Dr Kit Wu, a neurologist at King's College Hospital, says postnatal confinement is a tradition so engrained in Chinese culture "that even I did it". "Some of the very strict rules are that you shouldn't drink cold drinks during the month, you shouldn't really shower, hair washing isn't allowed and obviously not going outside the boundaries of your house. "Some ladies who are very strict don't actually get out of bed for the first two weeks, and then do very minimal exercise after that," she adds. Dr Wu is particularly concerned about the effect confinement has on British Chinese mothers who experience postnatal depression. "New mums can often be left in isolation and it can be difficult to cope," she explains, adding that many will also hide the symptoms from health professionals because of the pressure within Chinese communities for giving birth to be seen as a time of happiness. She also worries that "when mothers have medical problems, they try to deal with them themselves and that can be detrimental to the health of themselves and the baby". In Mrs Turner's case her mother travelled from Singapore to be with her daughter. Public Health England said: "Health visitors and midwives are specially trained and skilled in various cultural traditions and how to respect them while safeguarding the needs of the family. "If a more tailored programme of support is needed then that will be agreed with the family." Traditional medicine Dr Wu says many in the Chinese community are also being "overlooked" by mainstream health services as a result of the cultural aversion to seeking help. When contacted, the Royal College of Midwives, the Institute of Health Visiting and various maternity mental health charities said they had very little, if any, expertise in healthcare for the British Chinese. Dr Lip Lee, a clinical oncologist at Christie's Hospital, says there is also a tendency for members of the UK's Chinese community to put on a "brave front" - including when it comes to cancer. "Even when the doctor asks if they're in pain, they may deny it. They feel that, 'if I have cancer, it's a given, I should endure the pain' or, 'let's just treat it with traditional Chinese medicine'." Experts also suggest that the decision not to ask for help is also harming elderly members of the UK's Chinese community, who are living alone in old age. "There are a whole generation of first generation migrants now living in the UK and they are very isolated," explains Eddie Chan from the Chinese Healthy Living Centre in London, who also says that dementia can be heavily stigmatised among the British Chinese. "They will find it very hard to find any mainstream services that cater to their needs," he says, explaining that this is in part because of the language barrier. 'No' to chemotherapy Hon Cheung Tang, aged 73, lives on his own in a tiny bedsit and is unable to speak English. He was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, but has decided against any treatment. He is in pain and cannot walk. Volunteer carers from the Chinese Healthy Living Centre come to see him when they can, but Mr Tang says some days he does not have a meal or a cup of water. "One doctor tried to tell me to have chemotherapy as I will certainly die if I don't. I said, 'No, as with almost all cancers you're certain to die or you won't last long'," he says, contradicting medical evidence. In Mr Tang's case, the loneliness he feels is exacerbated by the absence of his children. "One day I was going to the bathroom, and then blacked out, felt dizzy and fell," he explains. "I laid down on the floor for a while then realised the bed was so far away, I had to crawl there. "I called the kids - my daughter answered but she didn't say much and they didn't turn up. "Those few days were very bad. I don't know how I got through those days." In a statement, the Department of Health said it wants "everyone to have the same opportunity for a long and healthy life, whoever they are, wherever they live and whatever their background". It added: "We take a comprehensive and strategic approach to reducing health inequalities so we can address the cause of ill-health and promote healthier lifestyles." But for Dr Wu, more needs to be done to understand the Chinese community. She is calling for more data to be collected regarding their health needs - currently they are "grouped into a box along with other ethnicities", she explains. She also wants more funding for Chinese community groups, as for many individuals they are their main and only source of support. "Just because we're silent and polite doesn't mean we should be ignored," she says. Watch the Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel.
For centuries Indian women have been raised to believe that fairness is beauty, and this has given rise to a vast and ever-growing skin-whitening industry - which is now encouraging women to bleach far beyond their hands and face.
By Rajini VaidyanathanBBC News, Mumbai It all began with a YouTube video a friend sent me. You need to see this, she said, trying to contain her shock and laughter. And so I pressed play. It was an advert. A couple sits on a sofa. The husband reads a paper ignoring his beautiful wife: her face, a picture of rejection. What could this be selling? I wondered, as I watched. Moments later, this scene of spurned love turned soapy when the leading lady was seen taking a shower. But - she wasn't using any ordinary shower gel. No, she was using a skin lightening wash, which, as the graphic which then popped up on screen informed the viewer, would lighten her genitals. After an application of said fairness cream, rose petals appear on the screen, and just like the ending of a good old Bollywood film, the couple are seen happily embracing. The moral of this story - true love will conquer if your nether regions are a few tones fairer. That a skin lightening product should exist for such a private area has attracted criticism, shock, and disgust from some quarters of the media. The desire for lighter skin is nothing new in India. For centuries women in South Asia have been raised with the belief that a fairer complexion equates to beauty. But this latest development in a new area has reopened the age-old fairness debate. Should such products be on sale? Is applying bleach to your skin healthy, and what are the psychological effects on girls who are told they're only pretty if they're paler? It even reached the highest level with one government minister writing to the advertising standards body calling for the product to be withdrawn. But, despite repeated concerns, the lightening industry is booming, and diversifying. One market research firm even reported that more skin lightening creams are sold in India than Coca Cola. The market, which initially focused on beauty conscious women, is now pitching to men too. "The first fairness cream that fights sweat" read the large white letters on a bus stop billboard I passed. It was accompanied by a photo of one of Bollywood's actors of the moment, John Abraham, his chiselled face promising fragrant fairness to all who buy the product. If those variants weren't considered enough, you can also find deodorants for fairer underarms and talcum powders for whiter skin. Advertisers specialising in this field, must spend hours devising new campaigns for their products. "Do you think twice before wearing certain clothes because they don't seem to suit your body's uneven skin tone?" asked one half-page advert in a respected newspaper. "Notice how the colour of your hands is different to the colour of your face?" asked another. It seems illogical that such prejudices should continue to exist in modern day India, but they do. One wannabe actress told me she failed to get parts in films because directors bluntly told her she was too black. You only have to look at posters and ads in India to see glamorous Bollywood stars who, thanks to a bit of graphics software, have dramatically lighter skin tones - with others going the whole hog and endorsing the products. These are the stars who are worshipped by so many in India, and if many of them are complicit too, then it's fair to assume that this industry will only continue to grow. How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent: BBC Radio 4: A 30-minute programme on Saturdays, 11:30 BST. Second 30-minute programme on Thursdays, 11:00 BST (some weeks only). Listen online or download the podcast BBC World Service: Hear daily 10-minute editions Monday to Friday, repeated through the day, also available to listen online . Read more or explore the archive at the programme website .
Police say they are becoming increasingly concerned for the safety of a missing yachtsman after his vessel was found apparently abandoned in Somerset.
They said David Moore, 43, of Avonmouth, Bristol, was being treated as a missing person case. Witnesses saw the Egoist boat leaving Watchet Marina on Saturday afternoon, and it was found early on Monday. A Coastguard search was stood down on Monday. This was decided after "further information" became available, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said. Burnham RNLI recovered the yacht from Berrow beach on Monday evening and towed it to nearby Burnham-On-Sea. Lifeboats had been launched from Burnham-on-Sea earlier on Monday to investigate reports of the grounded yacht. But crews found no-one on board.
The UK has recorded its hottest day of 2016, with temperatures soaring to 33.5C (92.3F) in some areas on Tuesday. Temperatures are expected to dip in the coming days, but that hasn't stopped people asking a number of questions about how to deal with prolonged periods of hot weather.
By John HarrisonBBC News Here are some of the questions you asked Google most frequently. How do you sleep during hot weather? Weather expert Philip Eden recommends keeping curtains closed during the daytime to stop the sun coming in. He says it is best to keep windows open on the shady side of your home and closed on the sunny side, which could mean closing some windows and opening others halfway through the day. Thin cotton sheets rather than nylon bedding are also recommended. Prof Kevin Morgan, director of the Clinical Sleep Research Unit at Loughborough University, says a lukewarm shower before bed is preferable to a cold shower. When it comes to children, the NHS says a cool bath before bedtime can help, as well as keeping bedrooms cool by keeping blinds or curtains closed during the day and using fans. Pyjamas and bedclothes should be kept to a minimum, and if a baby kicks off its bedcovers during the night then they could sleep in just a nappy. Babies sleep most comfortably when their room is between 16C (61F) and 20C (68F). Read the BBC Magazine article on sleeping during hot weather How do you keep babies cool? The NHS recommends keeping all babies under six months out of direct sunlight, and older infants should be kept out of the sun as much as possible, particularly in the summer and between 11:00 and 15:00. They should be kept in the shade or under a sunshade if they're in a buggy or pushchair. Sun cream with a high sun protection factor should be applied regularly - particularly if children are in water. All children should be given plenty of fluids and the NHS says babies who are being breastfed may want to feed more than usual, but will not need water as well as breast milk. If they are bottle feeding, babies can be given cooled boiled water as well as their usual milk feeds. What are symptoms of heatstroke? People can suffer both heat exhaustion and, more seriously, heatstroke in hot weather. Signs of heat exhaustion can include tiredness or weakness, feeling faint or dizzy, having muscle cramps or feeling sick. If left untreated, the more serious symptoms of heatstroke can develop, including confusion, disorientation and even a loss of consciousness. Those suffering the signs of heat exhaustion should go to a cool place with air conditioning or shade, use a cool, wet sponge or flannel and drink fluids - ideally water, fruit juice or a rehydration drink, such as a sports drink. The NHS offers guidance on dealing with heatstroke here. What are the best sun creams? There are lots of places that rate sunscreen brands, including consumer website Which?. However, the British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) says in general you should look for two ratings on bottles of sun creams. The sun emits two types of ultraviolet rays - UVA (most commonly responsible for premature ageing and wrinkles) and UVB (which causes most sunburn). The BAD says you need to be protected from both. The sun protection factor (SPF) offers guidance on a cream's protection against UVB rays, while a star system indicates the level of protection against UVA rays. The sun factor protection factor (SPF) is graded between two and 50+ - with factor 50 and above offering the strongest protection against UVB rays - while the star rating ranges from 0 to five. Experts say it is important to choose both a high SPF as well as a high star rating. How long does it take to burn? The risk of sunburn depends on how sensitive your skin is, and how strong the sun's UV rays are. The UV index will vary, depending on where you are in the world, the time of year, what the weather is like, the time of day, and how high up you are compared to sea level. During the UK's summer months, the sun's UV rays are strongest between 11:00 and 15:00. However, Cancer Research UK suggests using a simple "shadow rule" to estimate the strength of the sun. It suggests that if your shadow is shorter than your height, the sun's UV rays are strong - and you are therefore more likely to burn. Can you tan through a window? Glass will filter out most of the UVB rays which cause sunburn, but you can still tan or burn. A 2010 study by St Louis University School of Medicine - reported in the New York Times - found that people who spend a lot of time driving a car each week are more likely to develop skin cancers on the left side of the body, the window side in North American cars. The NHS says snow, sand, concrete and water can also reflect the sun's rays on to your skin - particularly at high altitudes, when the sun is more intense. How hot does it have to be to stop work? Unfortunately for those seeking a day off there are currently no laws in the UK about when it is too hot to work. Employers should provide a "reasonable" temperature in the workplace. But the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says a limit cannot be introduced because some industries have to work in high temperatures. However, two MPs this week tabled an early day motion in the House of Commons calling for a legal limit of 30C, or 27C for those doing strenuous work. It can, however, be too cold to work. Guidance recommends a minimum working temperature of 16C (61F), or 13C, if employees are doing physical work. How hot is it really? Compare the temperature where you are with more than 50 cities around the world, including some of the hottest and coldest inhabited places. Enter your location or postcode in the search box to see your result. Find a location Your location
For 16 years South Africa's Lucky Mazibuko, an Aids activist and columnist, did not take Aids drugs in protest against former President Thabo Mbeki's government's refusal to make drugs available for Aids patients. He speaks to the BBC's Pumza Fihlani about his journey with HIV. He finally started taking the drugs four years ago.
I've been living with HIV for 20 years now, it has not been easy - it has been a tough road. I've been on an oxygen mask three times because of my personal protests when the former President Mbeki did not want to provide treatment to children and also people living with HIV. I could not live as though nothing was happening, the motivation for my activism has always been that people have a right to life and I always felt guilty living healthy while watching my fellow countrymen dying. There was a time when 600 people were dying every day in South Africa because of the disease and I could not simply be selfish and not want to get involved and help. Thankfully time has changed. New era for Aids sufferers? It is a privilege for me to see the fruits of my and many other people's sacrifice in my lifetime. Millions of children are being saved on a daily basis, children are being born free of HIV because of the treatment available for children. People living with HIV are receiving ARVs easily now even though the numbers are not sufficient - but it is a most welcome change. I think with the new government there was a shift in mindset; the new thinking has served well for us people with HIV. It is still a challenge, though, getting men to go for tests - mostly women are the ones going for the tests. If I said we are living in an ideal world where there is no stigma against Aids, I would be lying and that would be disingenuous. I think the stigma still exists even among those who test positively for HIV. They stigmatise themselves because they automatically assume they will be discriminated against - the danger of that is that once someone feels that way they resign themselves to death, they become desperate and they infect other people. The biggest challenge we now have as South Africans is to personalise HIV, to see it not as something removed from us but as something personal - this will make the struggle make sense to each of us. While the stigma attached by society has subsided, we now need to deal with the personal stigma and personal ramifications of living with HIV. Joy and pain My personal journey has always been very painful - living with HIV is no picnic at all, it is far from that. For me the greatest pain has been seeing children die on a daily basis, like Nkosi Johnson - who was my youngest friend and Phephile Hlabisa from KwaZulu Natal who was raped by her uncle because he believed sleeping with a child would cure him of HIV - she died when she was eight. It has been from seeing healthy strong men and women succumb and fade away into the soil. For me living with HIV, to this day always has a shadow of sadness, of loss, death and of dying. But with that I've also witnessed great stories of human recovery and triumph, seeing the recovery of people who were on the verge of death claiming they've seen Jesus Christ's heels. So its been a journey of joy and pain, a journey of inspiration and disempowerment. Its been a painful journey generally, but personally I am happy that I am a living witness to where we are now. My greatest inspiration has always been knowing that whatever sacrifice I've made over the past few years has been to save another person's life. My greatest strength comes from laughter. The laughter and smile of a healthy child give me strength. Every time I need my immune system to be boosted I always go to children's wards in hospitals and just spend time with them - the hospital officials have been very kind over the years because I almost have a free passport into those wards. Every time I've come close to giving up, when I visit those kind of places, I'm reminded why I was at one time prepared to lay down my own life for those little ones.
A person has died after being hit by a train in Bridgend county affecting rail services between Swansea and Cardiff.
Police were called to the scene near Pyle Railway Station just before 05:30 BST. They say the death is not being treated as suspicious. Arriva Trains Wales and First Great Western put on a bus service until lines reopened just before 07:40 BST. The train involved was the 04:58 BST Swansea to Paddington service.
Boyan Slat is a 20-year-old on a mission - to rid the world's oceans of floating plastic. He has dedicated his teenage years to finding a way of collecting it. But can the system really work - and is there any point when so much new plastic waste is still flowing into the sea every day?
By Vibeke VenemaBBC World Service "I don't understand why 'obsessive' has a negative connotation, I'm an obsessive and I like it," says Boyan Slat. "I get an idea and I stick to it." This idea came to him at the age of 16, in the summer of 2011, when diving in Greece. "I saw more plastic bags than fish," says Slat. He was shocked, and even more shocked that there was no apparent solution. "Everyone said to me: 'Oh there's nothing you can do about plastic once it gets into the oceans,' and I wondered whether that was true." Over the last 30 to 40 years, millions of tonnes of plastic have entered the oceans. Global production of plastic now stands at 288 million tonnes per year, of which 10% ends up in the ocean in time. Most of that - 80% - comes from land-based sources. Litter gets swept into drains, and ends up in rivers - so that plastic straw or cup lid you dropped, the cigarette butt you threw on the road… they could all end up in the sea. The plastic is carried by currents and congregates in five revolving water systems, called gyres, in the major oceans, the most infamous being the huge Pacific Garbage Patch, half way between Hawaii and California. Although the concentration of plastic in these areas is high - it's sometimes described as a plastic soup - it's still spread out over an area twice the size of Texas. What's more, the plastic does not stay in one spot, it rotates. These factors make a clean-up incredibly challenging. "Most people have this image of an island of trash that you can almost walk on, but that's not what it's like," says Slat. "It stretches for millions of square kilometres - if you went there to try and clean up by ship it would take thousands of years." Not only that, it would be very costly in terms of both money and energy, and fish would be accidentally caught in the nets. Slat had always enjoyed working out solutions to puzzles, and while pondering this one, it came to him - rather than chase plastic, why not harness the currents and wait for it to come to you? At school, Slat developed his idea further as part of a science project. An array of floating barriers, anchored to the sea bed, would first catch and concentrate the floating debris. The plastic would move along the barriers towards a platform, where it could then be efficiently extracted. The ocean current would pass underneath the barriers, taking all buoyant sea life with it. There would be no emissions, and no nets for marine life to get entangled in. The collected ocean plastic would be recycled and made into products - or oil. The high school science project was awarded Best Technical Design at Delft University of Technology. For most teenagers, it would probably have ended there, but Slat was different. He had been interested in engineering from a very young age. "First I built tree houses, then zip-wires, then it evolved towards bigger things," he says. "By the time I was 13, I was very interested in rocketry." This led him to set a Guinness World Record for the most water rockets launched at the same time: 213, from a sports field in his native Delft. "The experience taught me how to get people crazy enough to do things you want, and how to approach sponsors." Useful skills, as it turned out. When Slat began studying aerospace engineering at Delft University, the idea of cleaning up the oceans just wouldn't let him go - he says it niggled at him like "an asymmetrically positioned label" on a pair of boxer shorts. He set up a foundation, The Ocean Cleanup, and explained his concept in a TedX Talk: How the Oceans can Clean Themselves. Then, six months into his course, he made the decision to pause both university and social life to try make it a reality. His entire budget consisted of 200 euros (£160) of saved-up pocket money, so he spent a few desolate months trying to get sponsorship. "It was so disheartening, because no-one was interested," he says. "I remember one day contacting 300 companies for sponsorship - only one replied, and that, too, resulted in a dead end." But then something happened. On 26 March 2013, months after it had gone online, Slat's TedX talk went viral. "It was unbelievable," he says. "Suddenly we got hundreds of thousands of people clicking on our site every day. I received about 1,500 emails per day in my personal mailbox from people volunteering to help." He set up a crowd-funding platform that made $80,000 in 15 days. Slat still doesn't know what made his idea take off like that, but he describes it as a great relief. "A year ago I wasn't sure it would succeed," he says. "But considering the size of the problem it was important to at least try." The amount of plastic being discarded into the marine environment is such that we could eventually see an ocean where the amount of plastics is roughly one third the total biomass of fish - 1lb of plastic for every 2lbs of fish, according to Nicholas Mallos from Ocean Conservancy, which organises coastal clean-ups. According to the UN Environment Programme there are on average 13,000 pieces of floating plastic per square kilometre of ocean - but that goes up to millions of pieces in the gyres. Many of these particles end up being accidentally ingested by marine animals, which can die of starvation because of the plastic filling their stomachs. Albatrosses are particularly vulnerable because they feed on the eggs of flying fish, which are attached to floating objects - now most likely a piece of plastic. Dr Jan Andries van Franeker from the Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies (IMARES) in the Netherlands has some of these objects in a pot in his office: a toothbrush, cigarette lighters, floaters from fish nets, a golf ball, a tampon applicator - all found in albatross chick's carcasses. "The plastics may not directly kill the bird, but it will have less energy reserves and it will have a higher load of chemicals so if things get problematic at sea, or if you have to raise a chick, those are the ones that die first," he told the BBC. Turtles tend to be the victims of plastic bags, which when immersed in water look just like jellyfish. Evolutionary adaptations make it impossible for turtles to reject bags once they've started to eat. "Because jellyfish are so slippery, turtles have a system in their throat that stops their prey from slipping out, so even if you find out it's a plastic bag, it has to go in all the way," says van Franeker. The amount of industrial plastic pellets van Franeker finds in the birds has halved since the 1980s - it seems the industry has at least partially cleaned up its act. "It's an economic loss if the factory loses raw product," he says. "Unfortunately with consumer plastic, there is little profit in taking back waste. It doesn't cost us anything to throw it away." But the cost to us could be very high, in the long term. Plastics can act as a sponge and soak up chemicals in the water. "There are a lot of pollutants in the oceans now, things like DDT," Nancy Wallace, director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Program, told the BBC. "Those chemicals adsorb on to the plastic and we know birds and fish are eating those pieces of plastic - so the question is, how does that transfer up the food chain and what is the impact?" Find out more It is a grave situation - so when Slat came along with a seemingly simple solution, he began making headlines across the world. Could a teenager save the world's oceans? His enthusiasm fired up millions of people, but along with the offers of help and donations, came criticism. It wouldn't work, some said. Others argued that it would be better to collect litter from beaches, where it gets deposited by waves. "It's in my nature that when people say something is impossible I like to prove them wrong," Slat says. Having caught the world's attention, the first thing he did was to disappear from sight. He needed scientific evidence to back up his theory and answer his critics. He assembled a team of 100 people, mostly volunteers, who were spread out across the world - the lead oceanographer was based in Australia. To manage so many people at such a young age was "interesting", says Slat. "We had an intern who was 24 and we weren't too satisfied with him - I remember some colleagues saying: 'Oh, he's so young, he'll learn,' not realising that they were talking to a 19-year-old." During the feasibility study Slat visited the gyre known as the North Atlantic Garbage Patch, where the platform is destined to be built. "I was pretty seasick the first three days. There were winds of 25-30 knots and waves 3m high. It was quite an experience," he says. In June, a month before his 20th birthday, Slat re-emerged with a 530-page feasibility report, the cover of which was made out of recycled ocean plastic. The report, based on extensive testing and computer simulations and authored by 70 scientists and engineers, answered many of the questions which had been levelled at him by his critics. It was followed by another crowd-funding campaign which swiftly reached its target of $2m. This will fund a larger pilot next year and Slat hopes the North Atlantic platform could be a reality in 2020. But if Slat expected all experts in the field of ocean plastics to welcome his concept this time, he was wrong. Plastic soup on your plate? One problem is that plastic isn't just floating on the surface, but found throughout the water column, even in sediment at the bottom of the ocean. Dr Kerry Howell, a deep-sea researcher at the University of Plymouth, told the BBC that she has found rubbish in the deepest parts of the ocean. "You're going to a place no-one's ever been to before, you're going to the last frontier on earth, exploring new places, and you find that our litter's got there first," she says. "It's like going to the moon and finding a crisp packet." Another issue is the potential effect on wildlife. "In terms of biological damage the concept is flawed," says van Franeker. "They say anything alive will be able to swim under the curtain, but some, like the fish eggs, will be trapped with the plastic which means they will still be there to be eaten by albatrosses - and in 10 years' time you will take away all the fish eggs along with the plastic." Aside from the question whether the Ocean Cleanup technology could work, there is also the question whether it should be a priority. "It seems a foolish strategy to focus on approaches to take litter out of the oceans, when we could prevent it from getting there in the first place," says Prof Richard Thompson of Plymouth University. "If I had a sum of money to invest in the problem then I would spend 95% of it on approaches to stop the plastic from entering the oceans. Of course we want to find ways to remove litter but we shouldn't delude ourselves. It's like trying to mop up the bathroom floor while leaving the bath overflowing and the taps turned on full." The mop analogy is one that Slat has heard often, and it really gets him fired up. "First of all, the 'mop' hasn't been invented yet so it certainly can't do any harm to try," he says. As for focusing solely on prevention, he feels it is an "uninspiring and demotivating message to say 'The best we can do is not make it worse'." He adds: "Of course it shouldn't be an excuse to pollute, but I think it's a motivating message that it's not a hole that's too deep to climb out of." Nicholas Mallos disagrees. "The risk is that people think there is one device that will solve our problem in a few years - this grossly over-simplifies the problem," he says. "He has bright ideas about how to get plastic of various sizes out of the water, but it would be better if he directed his efforts to smaller-scale projects in river outlets," says van Franeker. "Only a fraction of the money would be necessary and it would be more effective." Several other companies are now emerging with clean-up technology designed to capture plastic in rivers and streams, like the Plastic Visser ('plastic fisher') which is being trialled in the Netherlands, or the Trash Wheel - a solar-and water-powered barrier being used in Baltimore harbour. Slat, too, is looking to develop spin-off technologies for use in rivers. "It is difficult to adapt something that works in rivers to the sea, whereas it's actually quite easy to adapt something that was developed for the worst conditions in the world - the sea - to work in rivers," he says. "That is why we're approaching it in this order." At this point he is planning to stay in the Netherlands. "A lot of big names are here that I have to work with so it's a very suitable place to be - it's like the Silicon Valley of the off-shore industry," he says. "Perhaps [the Dutch] are under the impression that through engineering everything can be solved, and we're pretty good at mastering the ocean." Meanwhile, as his friends lead normal carefree lives, Slat still works 15-hour days. "I haven't seen my friends for ages, they try to annoy me by telling me how fun university is," he says. Slat doesn't think his youth has held him back, if anything it may have been an advantage: "Not only does it make the story more appealing, but I think I'm very enthusiastic about my concept and that really helped," he says. Besides, he had everything to play for. "I had nothing to lose except my study income, so it was not a worry," he says. "If you want to do something, do it as soon as possible." A rallying cry to teenage inventors everywhere. Boyan Slat spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service. Listen again on iPlayer or get the Outlook podcast. Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook
In all the coverage of HSBC's Swiss private banking arm and Stuart Gulliver's banking arrangements (channelled through Switzerland and Panama), it is easy to miss the fact that HSBC has more broadly had a torrid year.
Kamal AhmedBusiness editor@bbckamalon Twitter Its return on equity (the key marker of the return a bank is making on the money it invests) has fallen from 9.2% to 7.3%. Its earnings per share are down. Its operating expenses - the amount it costs to run the bank - are up 6.1%, largely down to huge regulatory changes which now mean the simple cost of being a global financial institution is much higher. On top of that, fines and "redress" (for foreign exchange manipulation, payments for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance to individual customers and interest rate products to businesses) total £2.4bn. The bank has also raised significant concerns over Europe and Britain's membership of the European Union. HSBC - which is head-quartered in the UK - said that reform is "far less risky than going it alone". The global banking model is under significant strain and it is little wonder HSBC's share price is down nearly 6% this morning. Putting it in perspective Of course, there is a need for perspective. HSBC's balance sheet is very strong, its capital position is robust and £1bn a month in profit is not exactly struggling. The bank's chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, admitted that the bank's rapid growth from under 140,000 employees in the mid-1990s to over 300,000 a decade later had not been matched by increases in governance controls. He said the bank had done a lot since the financial crisis to simplify its business, selling 77 divisions and cutting staff to 257,000. On the conference call this morning, Mr Gulliver suggested there may be further to go - which must be a worrying thought for the 47,000 people employed in the UK alone. Paras Anand, analyst at Fidelity World Wide Investment, told me that 2014 had been disappointing for HSBC but, long term, there were still plenty of advantages to being a global bank. "Today's disappointment is tomorrow's opportunity," he said, pointing out that there were few banks in the world as well positioned as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation for growth in Asia. 'Everyday explanation' With so many regulatory and misconduct issues, the last thing Mr Gulliver wanted was questions about his own tax affairs. But he became part of the story when The Guardian revealed last night that he had both a Swiss bank account and a Panamanian corporate account as a repository for his bonus payments in the 1990s and early 2000s. This morning, Mr Gulliver said the arrangement was nothing to do with tax, which he said he had paid at the highest rate in the UK on all his global earnings since he moved to Britain in 2003. It was actually to do with confidentiality. In Hong Kong - where Mr Gulliver worked in the 1990s - the investment banking computer system allowed staff to see details of other people's remuneration. In order to keep those payments confidential (Mr Gulliver was the highest paid director in Hong Kong) he opened a Swiss account, as did, apparently, many of his colleagues. He was then advised by the Swiss banking arm of HSBC to open a Panamanian account to keep payments secret from colleagues in the Swiss business. Mr Gulliver, who has since rid himself of the Panamanian account, said that this was a "completely everyday explanation". Which of course reveals that Mr Gulliver's "everyday" is pretty different from most peoples.
The long heralded next chapter of the Daily Mail's push into digital media will take shape this week, as consolidation across Fleet Street gathers pace and publishers who built businesses on clicks reel from the latest tweaks to algorithms crafted in Silicon Valley.
Amol RajanMedia editor@amolrajanon Twitter Mail+, a premium service which has already soft-launched, will this week see columnist Andrew Pierce become host of a daily radio show from just next to the Mail newsroom. The Daily Show will air at 5pm each day, from Wednesday. Pierce has presented radio programmes for many years, not least on LBC. Pierce's show may benefit in the short term from sharing a title with the hit American TV programme now hosted by Trevor Noah. Veteran political editor Simon Walters and columnist Amanda Platell are also launching a weekly podcast, called Order! Order!; and TV journalist and author Michael Crick is to present a weekly video and briefing on Wednesdays. Mail+ follows in the footsteps of, and is inspired by, similar services from The Times and New York Times among others. The Daily Show may come to resemble the successful New York Times podcast The Daily. Certainly, Mail bosses would be thrilled with a fraction of the latter's success. Mail+ will differ from Mail Online - to which it is wholly separate - by eventually charging readers for some upmarket content. Like those offerings from rival publishers, the idea is to deepen engagement with the Mail brand, and the journalists who represent it. The basic Mail+ service will be free; some paid-for products will be released in the coming months. What those products are, and how much they will cost, isn't yet clear. Big name columnists including Sarah Vine and a Richard Littlejohn are likely to be a prominent part of the offer. The core of Mail+ will be a bulletin-based digital service, in the form of daily briefings at 7am, 12 noon and 5pm. It is being run by Tristan Davies, the former editor of The Independent on Sunday and deputy editor of the Mail on Sunday. His team, of around 40, are to be based in the Mail's newsrooms, and will report to Geordie Greig, the editor of the Mail. Multiple models Why is the Mail doing this? It represents the most significant new iteration of its journalism since the launch, under Paul Dacre, of Mail Online. To future-proof their businesses, newspapers are having to diversify, pursuing different business models at the same time, hoping each will help fund journalism in an age of - paradoxically - unprecedented competition among publishers, and immense concentration of power among tech giants. Even 20 years ago, newspapers basically earned money via the printed product, from advertising (display and circulation ads) and reader payments. Now they have to make money via their websites too, as well as other products such as events. And even within the digital business, there are different sources of revenue. Mail Online has proved wildly popular through a remorseless pursuit of all the various techniques that get people reading online: strong presentation, big pictures, grabby headlines, vigorous search engine optimisation, and celebrity content. Mail+ will contribute to the bottom line differently: both direct reader revenue (when they start charging for products), and promoting the Mail brand to those who engage with it. It should also be seen as something of an experiment in a model which may be more durable than relying on social media behemoths like Facebook to send you traffic. Just last week Mark Zuckerberg launched a new news service on his platform; but every publisher knows that building a business on the whim of Californian techies is dangerous. Ten years from now, who knows if that revenue will dry up. Safer, perhaps, to rely on readers who pay. New chapters The Mail's parent company has been mooted as a potential buyer for The Daily Telegraph. News that the Telegraph is for sale was first reported on Friday by Richard Fletcher of The Times. It should be remembered that the Mail group tried to buy the Telegraph the last time it was for sale. It was beaten to it by the Barclay brothers. According to the Financial Times, the Mail's owner was rebuffed when he approached the Barclays about a sale more recently. Today, the weakness of the British newspaper by historic standards may mitigate concerns over competition. And Mail executives may argue that if News UK can own both The Sun and The Times, they should be allowed to own the Mail and Telegraph. That will be a matter for regulators, if ever such a bid should come about. And it may depend to some degree on the result of the Mail group's current attempt to buy the i newspaper. The Mail's ferocious conservatism has made it one of the most powerful, and at times controversial, brands in British media. The amusing contretemps between current and former editors played out in the letters pages of the Financial Times recently shows how it is navigating a new path. Greig's pragmatic rather than ideological approach to Brexit has been the source of much more commentary than the Mail's commercial evolution. But these days, editors are judged not merely by their story selection and journalistic impact, but how they navigate the digital challenge. In replacing Dacre, the most influential print journalist of his generation, the task Greig would have been given by Jonathan Harmsworth, the Mail's owner (also known as Lord Rothermere) is to keep the paper relevant editorially while building a digital business in which the power ultimately lies in Kensington rather than California. That is the point of Mail+. Like others before it, this seems a necessary and low-risk bet, as long as costs are controlled.