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For many visually impaired people, guide dogs are a vital lifeline, bringing mobility and independence. But when a dog retires or dies the impact can be huge - as "heartbroken" politician David Blunkett revealed, following the death of his guide dog Cosby. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Alex TaylorBBC News "It's a wrench to say goodbye," says John Welsman, who is currently guided by seven-year-old retriever Breck. "The dog becomes part of you, and also becomes a much wider part of your family." The 54-year-old's former guide dog, Dalton, retired because of old age, while another, Sorell, died suddenly after rupturing his spleen. "It's a difficult process leaving a dog behind," Mr Welsman says. "You build up a very strong bond being with it 24/7 - the dog is not only your mobility aid, it is your companion and communication aid." There are about 5,000 guide dog owners in the UK, says the charity Guide Dogs, which breeds about 1,300 puppies each year. A guide dog's average working life is six to seven years and they are normally retired at about 10 or 11 years old, depending on their health and the amount of work they need to do. The charity increases the monitoring of dogs aged eight and above, checking their health and watching for reduced willingness to carry out their guiding role. A retired guide dog can stay with its owner, as long as someone else can take responsibility, but a new home can also be nominated. Beyond this, the dog is offered to those people who had been involved in its initial training and development, before going through the charity's re-housing scheme. The owner is then put on a priority list for a new dog. Mr Welsman, from Somerset, says he has been "fortunate" to have family members and colleagues take on his retired dogs, so he can remain in contact. Steve Cook, 52, also found it comforting to have three of his retired dogs go to his parents. This for him meant the loss was not as great "because I knew where they were". But it took longer for his last dog, Shep, to be re-housed. "It was much harder because he wasn't so close by," he says. "I did miss him greatly." After Shep, Steve waited a year for his new dog. "It wasn't ideal, I had to undergo white cane training," Mr Cook says. Fortunately, he now has two-year-old Labrador Honey, who he calls his "little fast machine". 'Job for life' For every dog owner, the emotional challenge of re-housing their dog is topped only by its death. "As an owner it's always there, knowledge that you say goodbye twice - one when they retire, and again when they die," says Dave Kent, who has had guide dogs for 30 years. The 57-year-old, from London, tries to stay in contact with his re-homed dogs. The family who adopted his former dog, Ruben, allowed the dog to die in his arms after it contracted cancer. "There was an ocean of tears, but it gave me closure," Mr Kent says. He also formed an incredibly close bond with his former guide dog, Quince, and the pair starred in a national television advert together. Now retired, 12-year-old Quince was adopted by Mr Kent's former support worker Melanie Kemps, who says he does what he wants and is "very happy". For those who take on retired dogs, Guide Dogs help to cover the costs of pre-existing medical conditions, such as arthritis. Ms Kemps says re-homed guide dogs can be "perfect" for families because of their temperament. This is most evident in Quince when dealing with his guiding successor to Mr Kent, four-year-old Chad. "It's a special relationship between the pair," she says, adding that Chad looks up to Quince and learns from him. "For Quince, it's a job for life." If you are finding it difficult to cope with the death of a pet and need someone to talk to, the charity Blue Cross provides a bereavement support telephone service. It is available from 8.30am - 8.30pm every day on free phone 0800 096 6606 or email pbssmail@bluecross.org.uk |
Men and women have long searched for the fountain of youth, the meaning of life, and the secret of happiness. Well, youth still passes, life still puzzles but the secret of happiness has, it seems, at last been found. It is vanilla yogurt, writes Adam Gopnik. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
This is not a facetious conclusion, or at least was not intended to be when it was offered not long ago by a team of Austrian, Finnish and Dutch scientists who have been filling their dark winter days studying the emotional responses of subjects when they eat different kinds of yogurt. You may think that people don't actually have emotional responses when they eat yogurt - that eating yogurt is a way of avoiding any emotional response. It is arguably the least feeling of all the breakfast foods - very far from the emotional excitements and hedonic highs of toast, bacon, or marmalade. I once went to a wedding where the bride and groom actually exchanged marmalades during the ceremony (yes, it was in California, but they did). No-one does that with yogurt. As it happens, I like Greek yogurt for breakfast - but it is a way of seeming to be engaged in something while my spouse talks about her dreams, her symptoms, and her plans. Then the little dog gets to lick what's left in the plastic cup. It is a ritual, but it is hardly romantic. Nonetheless, the tri-national team persisted. They found that while fruit flavourings in yogurt made no difference to anyone's happiness, there was, and I quote, a highly marked hedonic response to vanilla. Eating vanilla yogurt made people happy. I should add that they used an odd technique to measure the happiness of their subjects. Asking people how they feel when they eat something is, apparently, too easy. It is a principle of psychology that people try to please psychologists by saying what they think the psychologists want to hear. So, instead, the psychologists showed their subjects seemingly unrelated photographs of seemingly unrelated people and asked how happy the subjects thought those people were. Apparently, it is also a principle in psychology that we project onto others - or photographs of others, anyway - what we feel ourselves. Find out more A Point of View is broadcast on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays, 08:50 BST Previously by Adam Gopnik: Phoneless in Paris Why are opponents of gay marriage so sure they're right? A Point of View: How much longer can sprawling TV box sets get? Showing a combination of Austrian tenacity, Finnish purposefulness and Dutch flair, the researchers pursued the question more deeply. Why did vanilla yogurt make people happy? And here is where the subject blossoms and blooms and swells and begins to touch on issues larger even, if you can credit it, than happiness and its keys. For one simple explanation is that vanilla is just inherently pleasing. It has long been known that vanilla scents in hospital waiting rooms make patients calmer and happier. Well, it says that in the study - myself, I've never noticed a vanilla scent in a hospital waiting room. Hospital waiting rooms have hospital waiting room scents. Still, apparently this is so, and it is not an accident that vanilla is, so to speak, the base scent of our lives. It is because it has been long been intuited to be the most quietly pleasing of flavours. The other theory though, vibrant and equally persuasive, is that what was making Hans and Johan and Jarri - I am assuming that the subjects were divided along the same national lines as the scientists - happy was not simply the scent and flavour of vanilla. It was that they were not told in advance what they were going to eat. They looked at the white stuff in the breakfast bowl, and assumed that what they were about to eat was plain yogurt. Tasting, they discovered that it was instead vanilla - and their pleasure rose with the surprise that it did not taste like yogurt but like vanilla yogurt. It was the element of unexpected pleasure that was the secret of happiness. The secret of happiness was not eating vanilla yogurt. It was not expecting to eat vanilla yogurt, and then eating it. I'm sure you've sensed, as I did, that no experiment in eating, or in anything else, has ever so neatly laid out the dilemmas and secrets of all aesthetics, erotics, and the philosophy of pleasure. All arguments about what gives us pleasure in art, in bed and in life are vanilla yogurt questions. Are the intrinsic qualities of something more powerful than the context in which we perceive it, or are what we call the intrinsic properties really only the effect of expectations and surprise? Do we admire famous paintings, for instance, because they are intrinsically beautiful, or because we have been coaxed by our expectations into finding them so? Take, say, the Mona Lisa. You may recall that the aesthetes' view, popular in the 19th Century with critics like Walter Pater, is that she is intrinsically beautiful and mysterious - those settled hands, those blue mountains, that smile. The other view, argued in our time by the art historian EH Gombrich and his disciples, is that countless, unsmiling sober Italian ladies had to precede her for Mona to have the effect she does. Against those expectations of sobriety, a minimal smile creates maximal mystery. A small smile delights when none precedes it. Our minds prepare for nothing, and then get vanilla, and we are happy. Music theorists say similar things - that the overwhelming emotional effect of music doesn't rise from the sounds themselves, but from the expectations of our ears. We hear the C Minor chords in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as extreme only because our minds are accustomed to hear C major as normal. The chord itself is nothing, the expectations all. Sex of course, is the greatest arena of these effects. The truth is that we keep our marriages alive by a skilful coaxing of yogurt flavours. It may seem odd to insist that we have to try to pretend that what we are about to eat is not vanilla in order to enjoy the fact that it is vanilla - but, in truth, we do that all the time. We try to create a circumstance where we do not know what the flavour is of something whose flavour we know all too well, or well enough. The second honeymoon, the weekend getaway, are instances of this power of self-created context. Money is spent on plane tickets, at Agent Provocateur or La Perla, or at the chemist's counter, or for that matter at the men's cologne shop - all to create a context of the unknown, of uncertainty. What flavour, so to speak, will this yogurt be? Well, it's still vanilla, but, having coaxed ourselves into the fantasy of not knowing, the vanilla is enough to make us happy again. So vanilla yogurt alone is not the key to happiness - it is not knowing what we are going to get, or pretending not to know - and then getting vanilla. What we ought to spray in hospital waiting rooms is the scent of surprise - or at least, we should leave the room unscented day after day, only to delight the patients one morning with vanilla. Ever since I read this study I have been eating vanilla yogurt for breakfast, hoping to be happy. And I am now prepared to announce that the truth of the matter is utterly different from what the psychologists suggest. For the hidden truth, shamefully concealed by the Austrians and the Finns and the Dutch and their photograph-staring subjects, is that vanilla yogurt never only contains vanilla. Vanilla yogurt is, above all… sweet. It always contains sugar, and it is the incidental sugar as much as the vanilla scent that surprises us so at eight am, and then makes us happy. Vanilla is merely the free rider. Once, when I was very small, I was so intoxicated by the scent of vanilla extract when my mother used it in baking, that I slipped into the kitchen closet secretly, found the bottle, opened it and took what I expected would be a delirious sip. It was revolting - bitter and alcoholic. I can taste it still - it taught me the truth that pleasure is deceptive, and compound. For the scent of vanilla is nothing without the sugar in the cake. We dream of sweetness all our lives, and so are surprised by joy when it arrives without warning. Poets have known that truth for centuries. Our bodies and our souls do not crave novelty alone. They crave nectar, coming at us unawares. Life does have a secret, and happiness a key. But they are not in a scent or even in a scented surprise. The key to happiness is always the same and it is not vanilla, nor surprise alone. The secret of life is unexpected sweetness. A Point of View is broadcast on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays 08:50 BST Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. |
A former soldier caught trying to smuggle an Afghan child into the UK has been given a suspended fine by a court in France. The four-year-old girl is just one of many migrant children who have attempted to, or been coerced into, crossing into the UK, and the number arriving is on the rise. But what happens to them once they reach these shores? And can the system cope? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Kayleen DevlinBBC News "My aunty told me: 'Don't ask anything. These people will take you through.' So I didn't ask anything. I just followed.' In 2011, 16-year-old Makdes was given instructions by her aunt to follow so-called "agents" - or people smugglers - who would help her flee Eritrea, in east Africa, for the UK. This same aunt had already bailed her out of prison, where she had been jailed along with her father for opposing the current government. Makdes eventually ended up at Calais's so-called "jungle" - the refugee camp on the edge of the French port where thousands of migrants live. Once in Calais she was handed over to another smuggler who arranged for her to be transported to England in the back of a lorry. Makdes' journey to the UK is just one of many made by lone migrant children, and the number arriving is on the increase. The latest Home Office figures suggest there were 2,654 asylum applications in the UK for lone migrant children in the year ending September 2015 - an increase of 50% on the year before. Under the Children Act 1989, it is a council's legal responsibility to care for unaccompanied children who arrive in their local authority area. For some councils, this has presented a particular challenge. Kent County Council is currently looking after 932 unaccompanied migrant children - the largest number among councils in the UK and an increase from 220 in March 2014. The county council recently claimed the "unprecedented" influx was having a negative impact on "citizen" children in its care, and, to accommodate the rise in entrants, buildings have had to be reopened, and some young migrants have been placed out of the county, as far away as Herefordshire. According to Peter Oakford, cabinet member for specialist children's services at Kent County Council, the government reimburses the county council for some of the costs involved in looking after the lone migrant children but, he says, there is still a shortfall. "Our shortfall was running at £7.5m and is now down to £2.5m," he said. Mr Oakford says the county council wants the government to introduce a national dispersal scheme, so that when the lone migrant children arrive, they are shared out across the UK. Another council dealing with a relatively large number of children seeking asylum is Croydon, in south London, where latest figures show the council has 451 unaccompanied children in its care. Similarly to Kent, the majority of lone children seeking asylum in Croydon are males aged 16 or 17. What happens? Unaccompanied children under the age of 16 are generally placed in foster care by the local council. For those who are 16 or 17 at the time of arrival, some may be placed in foster care but others, like Makdes, are placed in semi-independent accommodation. "My first few weeks were so hard," Makdes said. "I was just sitting in the house and didn't have anyone at the start to show me where anything was, where to get food. It was really lonely. There was no-one to talk to." When she arrived in England from Calais, she says the asylum process was "horrible". "It was so hard. I was so nervous. The lady interviewing me said I was 18, and I was trying to tell her I was 16. I just wanted to go home. I didn't want to argue with her." For those applying for asylum as children, one of the main issues is age disputes, says Kamena Dorling, head of policy at Coram Children's legal centre. In the year ending September 2015, 590 asylum applicants had their age disputed and there were 574 recorded as having an age assessment. According to the Home Office, there is no single technique to determine an applicant's age. "Many children arrive without documentation to prove how old they are and have their age questioned by the Home Office and/or local authority," says Ms Dorling. "These cases can be long and costly, during which time the child involved often doesn't receive the support they need." Home Office figures state that in the year up to September, 65% of applicants who underwent an age assessment had a date of birth suggesting they were over 18. Culture shock For those who are accepted as minors, the next step is going through the asylum process. Refugee Council figures show that in the first quarter of 2015, 181 UASC (Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children) leave grants were handed out to unaccompanied children compared to 98 grants of refugee status, 18 grants of discretionary leave, and 1 grant of humanitarian protection. Ms Dorling says most children are not granted refugee status but instead are given UASC grants, which are a temporary measure that protect minors until they are 17-and-a-half. Many, she adds, then "find themselves facing removal from the UK once they turn 18". According to Rebecca Griffiths, who works with trafficked children at Barnardo's, the majority of trafficked minors they deal with are those who have come to the UK unaccompanied and seeking asylum. "A lot of the children we have dealt with have experienced loss and grief. We've dealt with children who have seen close family members who have drowned in the boats going across the waters to Greece - that's not an unfamiliar story. "There's also the culture shock and language barriers. They're essentially isolated. It makes it very difficult to build trust. "They're some of the most vulnerable children in this country." Recruiting foster carers to meet the needs of such children can, says Kevin Williams, CEO of Fostering Network, be a "challenge". "The number of young people in the care system is increasing and the vast majority are in foster care," he told the BBC. The Fostering Network says there is an urgent need for more foster homes in the UK, and figures released this month estimate over 9,000 more will be needed during 2016. "Generally, the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will have suffered some trauma or loss so it's about getting foster carers who understand loss, and making sure they are the right cultural and language fit. "We think if the government are to commit to taking in more lone asylum seekers, they need to make sure resources are in place to meet that challenge," said Mr Williams. For the young migrants already here, everyday life in a new country can be daunting. 18-year-old Jetmir, who sought asylum as a minor in the UK from Albania, expresses his uncertainty best through his poetry: "This is another different country with a different way. I don't know where to go or even what to say. "I've left my family and my home, I had to make a trip and I have done it alone. I didn't want to leave but people sometimes don't have a choice. The only thing I have is myself and my voice. " |
The first Welsh member of the Supreme Court has been appointed. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Lord Justice Lloyd Jones - Sir David Lloyd Jones - has been a judge on the Wales circuit and was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2012. One of three new justices, he was born and brought up in Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taff. The concept of needing a Welsh member of the highest court in the UK had been rejected as "premature" by a former deputy high court judge in 2015. Lord Thomas of Gresford said that while Scotland and Northern Ireland had long-standing judicial systems, cases of Welsh law would "not be frequent" and did not require one of the 12 Supreme Court judges to be from Wales. However, the court's then chief executive Jenny Rowe said as the body of Welsh law increased due to devolution, appointing a justice with a Welsh background would have to be considered. On Friday, the Supreme Court said 65-year-old Lord Justice Lloyd Jones would begin work on a date to be agreed. The Supreme Court has handled rows over whether certain powers reside with UK or Welsh ministers. They involved a Welsh asbestos compensation bill in February 2015 and, in July 2014, moves by ministers in Cardiff to protect the wages of agricultural workers. |
If you want to know why India has courted international controversy by awarding a medal to an army officer who tied a civilian to the front of a jeep, you need to understand what is really happening in Indian-administered Kashmir. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Justin RowlattSouth Asia correspondent@BBCJustinRon Twitter What happened? On 9 April, a Kashmiri man called Farooq Ahmed Dar was trussed to the spare tyre at the front of a jeep and driven on a five-hour journey through several villages at the head of an army convoy. He had just voted in a by-election for the national parliament when he was picked up by an army patrol. He was allegedly beaten before he was lashed to the vehicle with a sign saying "This is the fate that will befall stone throwers" pinned to his chest. Kashmir is disputed between India and Pakistan and Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a fresh upsurge of violence in the past few months, with stone-throwing civilians pitted against military personnel. Why was he seized? The young army officer responsible, Major Leetul Gogoi, said Mr Dar was seized because he was directing a stone-throwing mob that was besieging a polling station - something denied by both Mr Dar and witnesses in the village. Major Gogoi says he decided to tie Mr Dar to the jeep in a "fraction of a moment" and subsequently claimed it saved 12 lives. Despite the length of Mr Dar's ordeal, he argues it created "a window to move out of the area safely". How did people react? The incident was filmed and shared on social media, causing uproar in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. The use of Mr Dar as a human shield was criticised around the world. Amnesty International described it as "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment amounting to torture". The Indian government announced there would be an inquiry into the incident but on 22 May, before the inquiry had been completed, the army awarded Major Gogoi a commendation medal for, it said, his "sustained efforts during counter-insurgency operations". What does the decision to award the medal tell us about the situation in Kashmir? This incident shows just how difficult India is finding it to keep a lid on unrest in Kashmir. Indian army sources have told the BBC that morale among soldiers stationed in the valley is very low. Many soldiers are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with their role in Kashmir, saying they fear they are effectively becoming an army of occupation. Meanwhile, opposition to Indian rule in Kashmir appears to be deepening. That is reflected in the fact that Mr Dar was just one of 7% of eligible voters who actually voted in the by-election - the lowest turnout for decades. "We are fighting a legacy of political betrayal, infiltration, rigging in local elections, cynical politics, bad governance, vested interests, religion and regional divides," one senior army officer in Kashmir told my colleague, Soutik Biswas, a few weeks ago. The officer acknowledged how difficult it is to operate in an environment where many people want the army to withdraw and said that, despite efforts to reach out to Kashmiris, the army remains unpopular. How does the army justify the medal? This weekend the chief of the Indian army, General Bipin Rawat, was clear why he wanted to honour Major Gogoi. He told the Press Trust of India (PTI) that the medal was given as a way of boosting the morale of young officers. Gen Rawat served for many years in Kashmir and, like many Indians, believes much of the opposition to Indian rule is orchestrated by Pakistan. He described Major Gogoi's actions as an "innovation", arguing the armed forces have the right to self-defence and that by using Mr Dar as a human shield, he avoided the need to fire on the crowd. "This is a proxy war and a proxy war is a dirty war. It is played in a dirty way. That is where innovation comes in. You fight a dirty war with innovations," he told PTI. "People are throwing stones at us, people are throwing petrol bombs at us. If my men ask me what do we do, should I say, just wait and die? I will come with a nice coffin with a national flag and I will send your bodies home with honour. Is it what I am supposed to tell them as chief? I have to maintain the morale of my troops who are operating there," Gen Rawat said. Will the conflict in Kashmir worsen? That's certainly what many Kashmiris fear will happen. They say that the award of the medal to Major Gogoi has deepened opposition to Indian rule and to the presence of the army. Gen Rawat actually appears to be keen to see an escalation in the conflict in Kashmir. "In fact," he told journalists, "I wish these people, instead of throwing stones at us, were firing weapons at us. Then I would have been happy. Then I could do what I [want to do]." This is an extraordinary sentiment and a measure of just how difficult India is finding it to keep order in its most restive province. His worry is that Kashmiris are losing their fear of his troops. If that happens, he says, the country is doomed. "Adversaries must be afraid of you and at the same time your people must be afraid of you," says Gen Rawat. "We are a friendly army, but when we are called to restore law and order, people have to be afraid of us." |
As Ofsted criticises five Birmingham schools for not doing enough to protect children from extremist ideas, parents of pupils at the schools in the "Trojan Horse" case say they fear their future prospects could be damaged by the allegations. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
"There are genuine concerns that children will go to apply to universities or for jobs and when it is shown they attended Park View School, they will be seen as some Islamic extremist, even though nothing has been proved," says Arshad Malik. His 14-year-old son Imran's school, Park View, is one of the six schools put into special measures after Ofsted's inspection of 21 schools in the city. Mr Malik says he believes students' and teachers' reputations are being "tarnished". "Those kind of negative stereotypes can build up," he adds. "I think parents will think twice to send their children here even if they believe the staff and teachers, because of the stigma. "We need the clear facts to come out and if the school is cleared, they should change the academy name and move on." Ofsted said in its report Park View Academy "had not effectively raised students' awareness of the risks of extremism". It is run by the Park View Educational Trust, along with other academies, Golden Hillock and Nansen Primary, which are all to have their funding agreements terminated. Another parent, Farooq Ahmed, whose daughter attends Golden Hillock, says he is now "worried" about any cuts to funding. "The most important thing for me is she gets better results and can get better jobs and I would worry if the trust [Park View Educational Trust] had to go," he said. In the school's inspection report, Ofsted said: "Too little is done to keep students safe from the risks associated with extremist views." 'Children victimised' Meanwhile, Anoor Khan said he was considering transferring his 12-year-old son from Golden Hillock to another school. "This is is his first year but I'm thinking of taking him elsewhere," Mr Khan said. "I want him to be able to get grades... I don't want his education to be affected by politics at all." Oldknow Academy, which was also placed in special measures, has also been warned it could lose funding unless concerns are addressed. Shabina Bano, whose two daughters attend Oldknow, said that would have a "serious negative affect" on their future learning. "We need to know, on what basis can they take funding away? As parents we see no proof that the school is failing," she said. "Of course children are stigmatised by these accusations and the nature of the playground is that these children could become victimised when they leave to go to secondary school. "You're going to get children saying, 'are you part of Al Qaeda, are you from a Jihadi school?'. It's unfair on them." |
Israeli archaeologists have discovered the well-preserved remains of a 2,000-year-old factory for making garum, the fabled fish sauce that the Romans took with them on all their journeys of conquest. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By News from Elsewhere......as found by BBC Monitoring The Israel Antiquities Authority came across the small cetaria, or factory for making the prized sauce, while inspecting the site of a planned sports park on the outskirts of the southern city of Ashkelon, Israel's Kan public broadcaster reports. The dig was funded by the local authorities, and young people and school children from the Ashkelon area came to help out. It is one of the very few garum factories found in the eastern Mediterranean, despite the Romans' long presence in the area and the premium they put on the pungent fermented sauce. Most surviving examples are to be found in the Iberian Peninsula and southern Italy. "We have something really unusual here," Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Dr Tali Erickson-Gini told The Times of Israel, as the Romans added garum to almost all their dishes to give them a salty savoury kick. "It's said that making garum produced such a stench that cetariae were located some distance from the towns they served, and in this case the factory is about two kilometres from ancient Ashkelon," Dr Tali Erickson-Gini said, according to Kan. You may also be interested in: Although the garum factory was gradually abandoned after the Romans left, later rulers found the site was also suitable for cultivating grapes. In the fifth century CE, a local Byzantine monastery made a living from producing wine there, and the remains of three winepresses have also been discovered at the site. Anyone curious to see what a garum factory looked like is welcome to visit on the afternoon of 22 December, when the Israel Antiquities Authority will open the site to the public free of charge. Reporting by Martin Morgan Next story: Canada's grizzly bears move into Arctic north Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter. |
Fancy dinner and a photo with David Cameron? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
That was what was on offer recently for wealthy business figures at an event in China - as long as they stumped up about £12,000. Mr Cameron featured on social media adverts for the Shanghai International Ball and Leaders' Forum, which took place earlier this week. A photograph of the former prime minister was accompanied by a price in Chinese renminbi. A spokesman for Mr Cameron said the event in question had actually been the Global Alliance of SMEs' Women Leaders Forum. He did not comment on the advertised pricetag. Mr Cameron is also due to meet China's President Xi Jinping during a visit to the country as he prepares to launch a new investment fund aimed at boosting trade links. As prime minister, he hosted President Xi during a state visit to the UK in 2015, which was described by both sides as the beginning of a new "golden era" in relations. Mr Cameron was UK prime minister from 2010 to 2016. He resigned after being on the losing side of the referendum which saw the UK voting to leave the European Union. |
Few deny that the UK is facing a housing crisis, the subject has become a hot political topic. But the best way to solve it is still widely disputed, as national ambition confronts local anxiety and tradition. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Mark EastonHome editor@BBCMarkEastonon Twitter The Prime Minister David Cameron told his party conference earlier this month that housing was the "one big piece of unfinished business in our economy" and he wanted a "national crusade" to get homes built. The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told his party conference that housing was "a top priority" and promised the biggest council house-building programme since the 1970s. Housing policy is on the front-line of UK politics. Both Conservatives and Labour agree there needs to be significant increase in supply, but there is a clear divide on what to build. For the Tories it is about measures to encourage home ownership while for the opposition the focus is on homes for social rent. Housing is not just about putting a roof over people's heads - it is ideological. Parties accuse each other of 'social engineering' in the policies they are putting forward. Homeowners are more than twice as likely to vote Conservative as Labour and those in social rented homes are more than twice as likely to vote Labour as Conservative. Housing has always been tribal. It is generational too. According to the last census, among the over 50s more than 80% are owner-occupiers. But among the under 35s, a majority are in the rented sector. What is more, twice as many pensioners voted Conservative as Labour at the last election. Few deny that Britain is facing a housing crisis, although its real impact is felt most acutely in the south of England - and nowhere more so than the city of Oxford which, according to the council leader, is facing catastrophe because of it. Bob Price says Oxford is now the most unaffordable place to live in Britain and warns that the world-famous city's very future is at risk. "Our University is unable to recruit and retain key people, the city hospitals cannot get enough doctors and nurses, high-tech industries like BMW and Mini are unable to maintain the workforces they need," Mr Price argues. "The major institutions of the city are in danger of grinding to a halt." It is a vision of a city unable to function. Already the shortage of affordable homes means that 46,000 people commute into Oxford each day, workers coming from as far afield as Birmingham and Swindon. The average house price is more than 16 times average earnings. To get a mortgage on a mid-priced semi requires an income of at least £70,000 and with rents sky-high too. The man who runs Oxford Bus Company, Phil Southall, is actively considering building a staff dormitory because he cannot attract enough bus drivers to keep services going. "We need some more housing for our staff so they can afford to live locally otherwise people have to travel further and further, which means we have to pay more and more, which means people in the city have to be charged more for their bus travel," Mr Southall says. Oxford can't expand because of what some call the green garotte, a ring of greenbelt land where it's almost impossible to build homes. And even beyond, in David Cameron's Witney constituency there's fierce opposition to government efforts to increase supply. Under new planning laws introduced by the Conservatives, local councils are required to "boost significantly the supply of housing" and must commission an independent Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) to work out how many homes are needed in their area. In Oxfordshire, the SHMA calculated that to meet demand and the affordability crisis, the county needed to provide 5,000 new homes each year over the next two decades. West Oxfordshire, including Mr Cameron's constituency, should contribute around 660, the assessment calculated. But the district council refused to accept the verdict, claiming the numbers were "too high and should be adjusted downward". Councillors agreed on their own figure of 525 a year. Some parish councils in West Oxfordshire argue that even this number is far too high and have promised to fight what they see as unnecessary development. The attitude of such local communities is quite understandable. New housing development almost certainly involves disruption, noise and a lot of mess. There are often real issues around the infrastructure to support new neighbourhoods. And, of course, there will be those who worry the arrival of new affordable homes will potentially reduce the value of their own homes. The housing crisis sets homeowners against private renters, rural heritage against urban expansion. It is where progress collides with tradition and where national ambition must confront local anxiety. Party leaders at Westminster may say it is a priority these days, but the politics of housing is as multi-layered as a residential tower-block, and the solutions often hard to reach. For decades, politicians rarely talked about housing. Now, it seems, they rarely talk about anything else. Housing Britain Interactive: Where can I afford to live? In video: What the average price will buy you Q&A: Why are starter homes controversial? |
So far, 2018 has been a rough year on the High Street. Toys R Us and Maplin have collapsed, while New Look and Mothercare have announced closures, as have Jamie's Italian, burger chain Byron and Prezzo. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Karen HogganBusiness reporter They're the latest victims of increased online shopping and higher overheads. The shift to online and more frequent food shopping also means some retailers have more store space than they need. So what's happening to the space that's being freed up? 1. Gyms Talk to anyone in retailing today and they'll tell you "experiences" are crucial - an effective way for bricks and mortar retailers to differentiate themselves from online. Richard Lim, chief executive of Retail Economics, says experiences are about "what Amazon can't do". Retailers need to create an interesting experience that "drives footfall and better loyalty and creates an environment that can't be replicated online", he adds. Gyms are a case in point and they've been busily snapping up empty retail space. Low-cost operator The Gym Group has opened up in part of a former BHS in Walthamstow, north London. It's also rented excess space from Sainsbury's at its store at Murrayfield in Edinburgh. Founder John Treharne says: "We have always converted retail space - there just happens to be more of it available today." 2. Crazy golf and climbing walls And it's not just gyms getting in on the act. "Competitive socialising" is a big thing these days, says Colin Flinn, regional managing director of shopping centre owner intu, whose properties include Lakeside in Essex and the Trafford Centre in Manchester. Ping-pong bars, trampoline parks, social darts, indoor golf, climbing walls, escape rooms and virtual reality games are all growing in popularity - and are on the hunt for suitable space. That can be empty space in shops. For instance, crazy golf operator Swingers has moved into the first floor of the former BHS flagship store on London's Oxford Street. Co-founder Matt Grech-Smith says snapping up the site was as "no-brainer", because it's "literally a stone's throw from the ultra-high footfall of Oxford Circus. Sites in a location as prime as this don't come along very often - especially sites this big." But the big and successful shopping centres are also attracting activities. "Major regional [shopping] centres are becoming 'resorts'," says intu's Mr Flinn. "Customers can either pop in to do a quick shop or spend a full day with the family." 3. Prosecco and patisserie A key focus for retailers and shopping centres is turning themselves into "destinations" - persuading people to visit and stay for longer, rather than simply ordering stuff online. Next's revamped store in Manchester's Arndale Centre includes a prosecco bar, a barber, a children's activity centre and, in the summer, a car showroom. It's also in talks with a spa operator. A Next spokeswoman says the idea is to give "people a real reason to come to the store - people aren't browsing as much as they were before. Lots of things under one roof is far more appealing to a shopper." Debenhams has also gone down this route. Boss Sergio Bucher says the focus of its strategy is leisure and "social shopping". It's ramped up its food offering and the likes of Patisserie Valerie and Nandos are now in some stores. It has also teamed up with gym operator Sweat, with the first gym due to open later this year, and taken a stake in beauty company Blow Ltd, which has opened salons in store. "When people go shopping with friends, they tend to spend more," says a Debenhams spokesperson. "Destination is really important for all department store operators." Recently, department store group John Lewis kitted out a fully furnished apartment in three of its stores. Customers could stay overnight and order dinner, while everything in the flat was for sale. The department store group says customers are increasingly using its stores as a "leisure destination" and as a convenient place for click-and-collect. "This means that our strategy in shops focuses much more on experiences and giving people a reason to come in and visit us," says a spokeswoman. 4. Houses and flats In some instances, there may be no option but to admit the empty space is not going to work for retail or leisure, either in a town centre or in a worn-out shopping centre. That's when it's time to turn it into residential property. "It makes sense, because we've got too many shops and a lack of flats." says Richard Lim of Retail Economics. The British Property Federation's chief executive, Melanie Leech, agrees: "We think there's a huge opportunity from the empty retail outlets. "We have a huge shortage of residential stock and we know people increasingly want to live in towns and cities." 5. Discounting and convenience Of course, some retailers are still expanding and looking for new space. Leading the charge are discounters Aldi and Lidl, whose popularity is surging. The Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) reckons that by 2022, one of every £7 spent on groceries will go to the discounters, with the total value of their sales jumping by nearly 50% between 2017 and 2022 to about £30bn. Lidl has more than 700 stores in the UK and plans to open 50 this year alone, while Aldi has more than 750 stores and will open 70 this year. Convenience stores run by the big supermarket chains are also springing up in many neighbourhood locations as more and more people abandon the weekly shop and leave decisions about an evening meal to the last minute. As a result, the IGD expects convenience store sales to rise by nearly 18% to about £47bn by 2022. |
The Queen has officially opened the new Queensferry Crossing. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
She was accompanied by Prince Philip as she cut the ribbon on the £1.35bn road bridge - exactly 53 years after she opened the Forth Road Bridge. The Queen said the structure, the UK's tallest bridge, was a "breathtaking sight" and one of three "magnificent structures" across the Forth. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said people would "marvel" at the bridge in 100 years. The Queen met children and officials at the south end of the bridge and was given a floral posy by Elizabeth Martin, grand-daughter of crossing project director Michael Martin. After cutting the ribbon to cheers from the watching crowd, the Queen then travelled by car across the bridge. She then made a speech and unveiled a plaque to declare the crossing formally open. There was also a fly-past by the Red Arrows and a flotilla of boats travelled under the bridge as the national anthem was played. The bridge was blessed by the Church of Scotland's Moderator, The Right Rev Dr Derek Browning. The Queen said the bridge, which sits beside the Forth Road Bridge and the Forth Rail Bridge, would be an "important link" between the Lothians and Fife. "The three magnificent structures we see here span three centuries, are all feats of modern engineering and a tribute to the vision and remarkable skill of those who designed and built them," she added. In her speech, Ms Sturgeon told the workers who built the bridge that in 100 years people would "gaze at the towers and marvel and what you have created". Ms Sturgeon said the creation of the bridge was an "outstanding achievement" as she thanked those involved in the project. She told them: "The nation's heart is bursting with pride at what you have achieved." The bridge opened to traffic last Wednesday. It then shut at the weekend to allow 50,000 members of the public to walk across it . They were selected in a ballot. Local schools and community groups will be allowed to walk over the bridge on Tuesday before it closes to pedestrians for good. It will then reopen to traffic on Thursday. The crossing is essentially an extension of the M90 motorway across the Forth with a 70mph speed limit, although operators said an initial 40mph limit would be in place to take account of "driver distraction". The new bridge will take most of the traffic that currently uses the 53-year-old Forth Road Bridge. The old one will remain open for cyclists, pedestrians and buses. Construction of the Queensferry Crossing began in 2011, with a variety of milestones marked along the way. More than 10,000 people have worked on the site at some point, clocking up over 13 million hours of work. About 24 million vehicles are expected to use the crossing each year, reducing the strain on the older road bridge. The new bridge has a projected life of 120 years but could last for longer than that, experts believe. |
One Direction have announced that they will release two books in 2014. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The group have signed a deal with HarperCollins to publish an official autobiography and One Direction: The Official Annual 2015 this year. Since releasing their first book in 2011, One Direction have sold three million copies worldwide across all formats. Their most recent book, Where We Are: Our Band, Our Story, spent five weeks at the top of the UK top selling list. One Direction's first full joint autobiography, which will be released in September, will chart the former X Factor group's rise to stardom. According to HarperCollins: "Fans will discover how the boys have really felt over the last few years and their hopes and ambitions for the future. "The One Direction official autobiography will offer an incredible insight and intimacy to the band as never before and will bring fans even closer to Harry, Niall, Liam, Louis and Zayn." Publishing director Natalie Jerome said: "The boys are an absolute pleasure to work with and always strive to deliver more to their fans. "It's a hugely exciting departure from the books we've published with them so far and there's a lot we're going to be doing that will make this an extra special experience for their loyal and devoted fans." One Direction: The Official Annual 2015, set to be released in August, will contain photos, interviews and behind-the-scenes stories. In December, One Direction's third album, Midnight Memories, entered the US Billboard 200 at number one making them the only group to have their first three albums top the chart in their opening week. The album also went to number one in the UK and is the fastest-selling album for two years. This year the band embark on their Where We Are world tour, which includes dates in London, Manchester and Edinburgh. Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter |
Windows 8 marks what is arguably the most radical tech launch of the year. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Microsoft aims to leapfrog the competition by offering a touch-based, dynamic, futuristic-looking interface which can run on processors designed for both high-spec computers, and chips more commonly associated with smartphones. Its market-leading status is at stake. More than 1.5 billion devices currently use a version of Windows, making it by far the most installed operating system, according to tech research firm Gartner. But investors are more concerned about the firm's growth prospects amidst growing competition for customers' cash. "We think the industry changed with the iPad launch because the tablet is effectively a PC - it doesn't need to be connected to a network to work and runs third-party applications," Steve Brazier, chief executive of research firm Canalys, says. "Once you segment the market that way, Windows share of the global PC market has fallen to 72%. Three years ago that would have been over 95%. "If you add the PC market together to the smartphone market - which we call the intelligent device sector - Windows share falls to 32%." Windows 8 and its close relation Windows Phone 8 are designed to reverse that trend. One thing is certain: Microsoft's efforts will have industry-wide ramifications. A study by Gartner indicates worldwide PC shipments were 8.3% lower than the previous year in the July-to-September quarter. That spells trouble for companies including HP, Dell and Acer which have seen sales decline as a consequence. A successful launch might recharge demand, but first they must face the prospect of a challenge from Microsoft's own tablet, Surface. The BBC asked a selection of industry experts for their views of Microsoft's new products: SINK OR SWIM Raimo Lenschow is Barclays bank's software analyst. He says Microsoft's share price and wider fortunes hang in the balance. In our view, Microsoft needs a successful tablet to prevent an erosion of market share and loss of earnings from its core Windows and Office businesses. The key question on our and most investors' minds right now is how much traction the Windows 8 system and Surface tablet can gain. A success could spark a comeback story for the company, while failure would reinforce concerns about the firm's core products. Microsoft's management has remained fairly reticent about providing forecasts for sales and the expected adoption rate of the products, which is likely due to the fact there could be a wide range of possible outcomes. What's more, for the Windows 8 launch the situation is somewhat different from previous launches, as the strong momentum in the new tablet category from the iPad and Android-powered devices is negatively impacting the PC business, and hence raises questions as to whether previous cycles are still a good indication for the current launch. Given the lack of certainty, we prefer to wait on the sidelines before making any detailed predictions about the product's success. Although the new tablet will likely have meaningful sales right from the start, the addition of a significant hardware product to Microsoft's business model is likely to put pressure on its profit margin. FULL-FAT OR SLIMLINE? Sarah Rotman Epps is a senior analyst at the market research firm Forrester. She warns that Microsoft risks confusing consumers by offering two flavours of its new operating system. Most consumers don't pay attention to the chipset in their device, but Microsoft's latest update to its Windows operating system forces buyers to confront the trade-offs of chipset choices. It gets confusing quickly: There are two versions of Windows to choose from, Windows 8 and Windows RT. Windows 8 has two choices of chipsets: x86 (such as Intel Core i5, what your PC is probably running today) and new x86 system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs from Intel and AMD, which function more like the chip in your mobile phone. Windows RT works only with ARM-based chip designs by Nvidia or Qualcomm. Here are the trade-offs that will matter to most consumers: • Battery life and boot time versus "performance": Windows devices with SoC and ARM chips have the longest battery life and the shortest boot time, but they won't perform as well for intensive computing activities. The Microsoft Surface running Windows RT that I've been testing stutters while playing 1080p video, for example, but Windows 8 tablets running Core i3 or i5 don't have this problem. • Task flexibility: Windows RT does not allow users to do activities like install an alternative browser, install plug-ins (which are required to make many websites work), or access Flash websites unless they are pre-approved by Microsoft. Windows 8 devices let you do anything you would normally do on a PC. While RT devices have longer battery life, many consumers may find the trade-offs in terms of task flexibility too restrictive. HITTING HACKERS Rik Ferguson is director of security research at the anti-virus firm Trend Micro. He thinks Microsoft has made several advances in its new operating system. Microsoft has taken advantage of computer hardware to increase and speed up security in Windows 8. Dedicated computer components can now be used to ensure that malicious code is not loaded as Windows boots up and self-encrypting hard drives take the load off when making your data illegible to snoopers and thieves. The new capabilities are designed to effectively limit the possibility that malicious software is loaded before the operating system. This kind of malware, known as a rootkit, can often bypass or even disable key security functionality and hide its own presence entirely. Windows 8 also provides a means for security software to ensure that it is the first thing that gets loaded when the PC is powered on, in a further effort to stop malware from overriding your protection. When it comes to authenticating users, Microsoft has added some functionality obviously designed for those touchscreen devices it is anticipating. Picture or pin logins can be used once a user's password has been set, as a shortcut to logging in. While this feature may be convenient, research during beta testing has demonstrated some serious weaknesses that could allow an attacker to uncover the actual password of accounts using this feature, so discretion is advised! There are several other features that I don't have the space to detail here, but it's great to see Microsoft continuing to take security seriously and allow specialist security providers to integrate more deeply with its system. OPEN VERSUS CLOSED Jason Kingsley is chairman of Tiga - the trade association representing the UK's video games industry. He reflects on the controversy caused by Microsoft's decision to launch its own curated app store from which it will take a cut of the sale price. The power of touchscreen computers of all sorts is very impressive and means our creativity as games developers can be unleashed. Is it right therefore that some hardware manufacturers offer shop windows that place limitations on the sort of game that they take? Should Microsoft, for example, only offer products in its Windows that it considers are suitable? In a situation without a monopoly I would say that this is for the market to decide. You can put your carefully crafted game through Microsoft's certification system and have it featured in its shop window, or choose not to take that route and release the game on the same platform in the wild. If Microsoft owns the shop window there is an argument to be made for it deciding what to put in it after all. There are many players who want a curated service, where certain technical and editorial standards are enforced, other users will be just as happy with making their own minds up and taking a risk elsewhere. But while the full Windows 8 system allows choice, the Windows RT version only lets new apps be installed from the store, meaning some games will fall foul of a ban on 18-rated titles. That decision worries some who see Microsoft turning away from its "open platform" roots. What we do know as an industry is that things change very rapidly and that the market is a brutal and unforgiving place. Which approach is the right one for both creators and distributors will be defined simply by the market and people power. EVOLVING THE INTERFACE Dan Kraemer is co-founder of the Chicago-based design consultancy IA Collaborative. He says the look of the new Windows system marks a significant step forward in computer interfaces. User interface (UI) is one of the most impactful manifestations of human centred design in our modern society. And while it's one of the most progressive spaces for design, I believe it will follow a historic aesthetic sequence. We can think of Windows 8's approach not as a right versus wrong, but as evidence of the progression of a category. Take a look at architectural styles over the ages. One hundred years ago, decorative styles like Victorian and Art Deco prevailed as architecture emerged as "art," much like early web design. In the mid-century Modernists demonstrated "less is more" with nearly no ornamental elements and stark simplicity - think the Google search page prior to all those whimsical banners. At the same time, understanding of architecture elements and new materials emerged. Now we have neo-modernism which embraces a less rigid, more emotive expression of modernist. We might think of Windows 8 as today's neo-modernist interface. Microsoft's rejection of skeuomorphism - the idea that applications need to look like their real-world equivalents - distinguishes it from Apple's OS X whose calendar app features a leather-skinned interface with ripped paper to hint at earlier entries. Apple's design has been attacked by some as being "kitsch", but praised by others for humanising the interface. Windows 8 clearly moves away from this, at least in part - it still uses icons, shapes and colours to identify states which relate to our "real" world. As a designer, I am energised by the fact users are becoming sophisticated enough to handle both kinds of design. Each interface is a unique opportunity to engage and inspire users while progressing the discipline forward. INTERESTING AGAIN Kirk Schell is the vice president of Dell's consumer products division. To take advantage of Windows 8's touch interface his firm is releasing a laptop whose screen can swivel in its bezel to lie flat against its keyboard, among other innovative designs. This is an exciting time as it makes people want to look at the different type of computers out there. I see more innovation as companies act to take advantage of the Windows 8 environment, when in a purely price-driven market you would have seen less. Windows 8 is a catalyst to invest more in differentiation. That's a good thing as it will get people out to see what is happening. There is new news. A big box retailer in North America described it to me this way: When big tube-based TVs were the norm and we introduced flatscreen displays, the biggest driver wasn't that consumers had high definition material they wanted to play. It was that they saw all these slim TVs hanging on the wall, looked at their big box in the corner, and said: 'I am so behind the times I need to upgrade.' We think that with the launch of computers that they want to touch and which offer other new technologies, that people will look at their old PC and think they at least need to go and look at what's new. This is not just a tablet story. I believe that all consumer-targeted computers will feature touchscreens in less than a decade. At the moment there are manufacturing capacity and cost issues, but the price difference to include the feature will come down to tens of dollars. People like more ways to interact with their device and there will be more cool things to come. |
Some of New York City's most iconic boxing gyms have been forced to close because of the coronavirus pandemic, and with no official guidance on how they can reopen, many gym owners fear the city will forever lose this sporting legacy, writes Ben Wyatt. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Former featherweight champion Heather 'The Heat' Hardy stands on a Brooklyn street corner dressed in workout gear. She has boxing mitts in her hands and a pair of gloves around her neck. As masked pedestrians walk along the sidewalk she tries to persuade them to join an impromptu training session on the sunshine-baked tarmac. Boxing has always been a tough career, but at the age of 38, and as a single mother of a 16-year-old daughter, the streets that forged Hardy are now proving her only refuge. Like all journeyed fighters, she talks a good game: "In New York City we work paycheque to paycheque, you know. "I was born and raised in Brooklyn. I always figure out a way. I'll get through this too." But her optimism belies the fact that her neighbourhood gym of Gleason's - a cultural and pugilistic icon of the city that's also the source of Hardy's private training income, her big-fight coaching team and her closest friends - has been closed by the state since March with no pathway to reopening. "You miss the jokes," she says of her fellow fighters, who before the pandemic trained and taught in the gym up to 12 hours a day, six days a week. Other opportunities have been missed too. The two fights Hardy had booked for this year, one of which was a title shot, were cancelled as the outbreak gathered pace. Without savings to spend or workout classes to supplement her income, Hardy's street hustle is her best hope. It's a far cry from her last fight at Madison Square Garden, where she suffered the first defeat of a gutsy 23-fight career, losing to interim world champion and fellow Brooklynite Amanda Serrano in an internationally televised match. Fights overseas are returning, but without access to her coaches or a ring she will be forced to consider bouts for which she'll be dangerously underprepared. Hardy's story personifies the plight of pro boxing in the Empire City in 2020. Madison Square Garden's position as the sport's first mecca made New York an epicentre for the sweet science in years gone by, but from a heyday-high in the 1920s there's been a steady decline with each passing decade. Of the 25 professional gyms that existed across the five boroughs in the 1970s, only a handful remain. These glitz-free, idiomatic churches of sweat and sparring - where age-old ring knowledge nurtured colossi such as Sugar Ray Robinson, Jake LaMotta and Riddick Bowe - were already on shaky legs prior to lockdown. Their enforced closure, without an end in sight or mention in the state's phased reopening measures, means they are all now on the precipice. Bruce Silverglade, the former president of amateur boxing in New York and owner of Gleason's for 37 years, argues that at a time of their greatest need, boxing is being discriminated against by politicians choosing to look the other way. He's watched other professional sports franchises such at the NBA, Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball receive government guidelines on how to train and eventually resume play, while boxing has been left in the dark. In boxing, where individuals have no leagues, federations or expensive attorneys to speak on their behalf, Silverglade argues the fighters of the city should be allowed to resume behind-closed-doors training at the very least. It's a lifeline that could prevent the extinction of the culture and its gladiators. "If the governor or the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] were to give me directions, I'd adhere to them," says Silverglade. "I have no idea when I can reopen, why I'm closed, or when I can earn a living again. Gyms in other states are open. List your objections, so I can take care of them." Originally based just one block from Madison Square Garden, Gleason's moved to Brooklyn in 1987, schooling local talent such as the young Mike Tyson in the process. As the USA's oldest boxing gym, it's welcomed everyone from Muhammad Ali to Paul Malignaggi, and there were times in the 80s when all five of its rings would creak from the sparring of world champions. The clientele slowly evolved, with hobbyists accounting for 85% of members by the turn of 2020. Up until March, this income flow supported 92 trainers and eight staff. Now, most of the coaches are surviving on unemployment benefits. "Today, I made 40 bucks selling two t-shirts. Last week I made 120 bucks selling a pair of gloves," Silverglade says of his earnings from the last month. "I've still got to pay rent and insurance and I've spent thousands on PPE equipment." Worryingly, Gleason's is faring better than most in lockdown. The Fight Factory gym, located near the boardwalks of Coney Island and Brighton Beach, closed at the end of June after 11 years in business. Former soldier Eugene Ryvkn built the gym with help from local pro Dmitry 'Star of David' Salita after moving to New York in 1997 from Belarus. Having notched up 60 amateur fights back home, Ryvkn fought on in the US until he was 45; sparring in his gym until its last day. Ever mindful of his 165lb (75kg) fighting weight, the already slim Ryvkn, 50, has shed 15lbs since the closure. "I didn't sleep well, in like three months, because everything in my head. The rent, the business, everything, everything. I built it from scratch myself. I invested a lot of money in this place," he says. "I had three full size rings, wrestling mats, weights area. An area where parents could do homework with the kids after school. I tell you, there's no more American Dream here, no more dreaming." He applied for loans but found that he was ineligible for emergency funding due to the part-time nature of his coaches. After regularly housing pro boxing names such as Bakhtiyar Eyubov, Nikita Ababiy and Arnold Khegai along with 250 local children from the ages of six and up, the remnants of The Fight Factory is now functioning within a rent-free home in a local synagogue, contemplating how it might serve its largely Russian immigrant community in the future. Across the East River, the story is similarly critical. Marc Sprung, the owner of Church Street Boxing, initially moved his operations online, paying his coaches to host Zoom training sessions while relying on recurring subscriptions to weather the 80% drop in income. But when there was no further guidance from the state on how or when they might reopen, Sprung stopped charging fees and - with his staff's blessing and on the advice of lawyers - sacked his team so they would be eligible to file for unemployment benefits. "It was very emotional, I've known these guys for over 20 years. If nothing changes we'll be closed in a month," Sprung tells the BBC. "We could be looking at wiping out the fight culture in New York City." Sprung is part of group that has launched a lawsuit against the state government demanding the inclusion of small, independent gyms in the plans for phase four of reopening. More than 300 gyms and workout studios have joined the lawsuit. A few blocks from Church Street in Manhattan's financial district is Trinity Boxing, owned by former Golden Gloves super heavyweight champion Martin Snow. A heavy-hitting slugger in his fighting days; the garrulous coach stands at the front of his gym under an entrance bedecked with two signs. The first reads: "Fight the good fight", the second: "Sorry, we're closed". "Why can they train in California but [we] can't do it in New York? Do they know something we don't know?" he says. Without the greater resources of beginner-friendly boxing chains such as Rumble and Title, Snow feels the independent pro gyms - traditional havens for "the outcasts and the disenfranchised, the immigrants and the working class" - are particularly vulnerable. Even the city's sex clubs have been allowed to reopen before a road map for boxing facilities have been discussed, he adds. "You can have socially-distanced orgies with hand sanitiser and masks, but you can't go into a boxing gym? That's f—king nuts. So I decided, I'm going to have boxing orgies: only with no sex, three minutes a time, fully clothed, wearing boxing gloves and head-guards." You may also like: It's not just income that's being lost in the crisis but leaders too. As one of the legion of immigrant boxing enthusiasts in the five boroughs, Mexican-American Francisco Mendez opened the Mendez Gym on East 32nd Street in 2004. It became one of the city's leading locations for novices and champions alike. Sadly, Mendez died on 21 April because of Covid-19 related complication. Ultimately, the gyms may take up opposing corners come fight night but are united in their time-of-crisis message. "New York boxing is the forgotten sport," says Hardy. "Promoters are calling on New York fighters because they know we're not training. [Governor] Cuomo, don't let us be the underdogs, man." Follow Ben Wyatt on Twitter @benwyatt78 |
That most time-consuming of the traditional rituals surrounding the UK Parliament, the swearing in of all the MPs, has become an emblem of the changing shape of British society. A ceremony originally designed for exclusion - to keep out religious and political undesirables - has become a display of diversity, writes Stephen Tomkins. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Where 200 years ago all MPs would swear allegiance to the Crown in English, on the Authorised Version of the Bible, today they swear and affirm, in English, Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish, on (or ignoring) an array of scriptures, including the Koran, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Hebrew Bible, and the Christian scriptures in various languages and in Protestant and Catholic editions. One MP on Tuesday - Kwasi Kwarteng - asked for the Book of Mormon, and the clerk seemed willing to go and have a root around for one, until it turned out he was joking. But there is an actual Mormon MP - Craig Whittaker. He made the same request, this time in seriousness, as Kwarteng, but the clerk did not have the Book of Mormon handy and, rather than hold up his colleagues, Whittaker opted instead for the Bible. MPs are even offered the opportunity to swear on the New Testament alone, an option of which George Osborne availed himself. It is often assumed that the opportunity to "affirm" rather than swear was created so that atheists didn't have to call upon a deity they didn't believe in. On Tuesday, Twitter buzzed with the revelation that Labour's eight most senior shadow cabinet members were atheists, as they all chose to affirm their allegiance. In fact, Parliament first came up with affirmation as an alternative for especially serious Christians. A number of Christian groups from the 16th Century onwards refused to swear oaths on the Bible, the best known being the Quakers. Quakers believed in living in such honesty that an oath could add nothing to what they said. As one of their founders George Fox said, when arrested and asked to swear the oath of allegiance: "Our allegiance [does] not lie in oaths but in truth and faithfulness." When handed a Bible to swear on, Fox opened it at the verse that read, "Swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath" - a rather awkward text for the book that people are supposed to swear on. It was in law courts that affirmation was introduced as an alternative to swearing. This was in 1695, many years before it reached Parliament, when it emerged that alleged criminals were going free because Quaker witnesses refused to give evidence against them. Quakers, such as John Archdale in 1699, who were elected to Parliament could not take their seat, until the Quakers and Moravians Act of 1833 allowed them to take a version of the oath that did not mention God. Catholics, meanwhile, had been deliberately debarred from Parliament by the oath, which involved recognising that the monarch rather than the Pope was in charge of the Church. A new oath was written in 1829 to allow Catholics to enter Parliament, but it was 400 words long, requiring them to "solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present Church establishment". Jews were excluded by the oath less deliberately, as it included the words ''on the true faith of a Christian", as well as being sworn on the Christian Bible. The Jewish Liberal David Salomons was elected to Parliament in 1851 and took the oath, taking it upon himself to omit the problematic phrase. He was ejected from his seat a few days later, with a £500 fine for voting illegally in Parliament. Jewish MPs were allowed to swear without the phrase by Jews Relief Act 1858. Affirming, as an alternative to swearing, was introduced by the Parliamentary Oaths Act of 1866, but did not at first apply to atheists or agnostics. The law applied to "the people called Quakers" and anyone else who was already allowed to affirm in a court of law, but atheists were not supposed to affirm in court because the affirmation was made "in the Presence of Almighty God". The right to affirm in Parliament was finally extended to atheists in 1888, after Charles Bradlaugh, founder of the National Secular Society, was thrown out of the Commons four times for atheism, and re-elected each time. He had first of all tried to make the affirmation which was intended for Quakers, and then later tried to take the standard oath (perhaps, like the republican Tony Banks in 1997, with his fingers crossed) but MPs who knew about his beliefs refused to let him. Bradlaugh administered the oath to himself and was expelled anyway. Only on his fifth election to Parliament in 1886 was he allowed to swear and take his seat, and it was his Oaths Act which in 1888 extended the right to affirm to atheists and anyone else who objects to swearing. Today, far from imposing the one true faith in its members, it seems hard to imagine a religious position that Parliament couldn't accommodate. The remaining objections to the oath are political rather than religious. Opponents argue that it overturns the will of the people by preventing democratically elected Sinn Fein members from taking their seats. Other republicans go along with the oath and voice their dissent, as in Tony Benn's version: "As a committed republican, under protest, I take the oath required of me by law." Or Dennis Skinner's inimitable twist: "I solemnly swear that I will bear true and faithful allegiance to the Queen when she pays her income tax". Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox |
Buried under the avalanche of reactions to presidential candidate Donald Trump's verbal attack against Muslims, the stream of headlines about the San Bernardino couple who shot and killed more than 14 people last week and the dissection of President Barack Obama's Sunday Oval speech about the war against the so-called Islamic State (IS) was a very significant announcement. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Kim GhattasBBC News, Washington Singapore said it would allow the US to deploy a spy plane out of its territory to monitor Chinese activities in the South China sea. The move, which angered the Chinese, comes at a time of heightened tensions in the area over China's building of artificial islands in disputed places. It is a reminder that while Washington's thinking, bandwidth and resources, including military, seem continually consumed by the crisis and threats emanating from the Middle East, the more serious long-term challenge for US national security interests remains the management of its relationship with China. The complexity crisis in US foreign policy is how security and defence analyst Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) describes it. He talks of the need to handle multiple, urgent and important short-term and long-term crises at the same time and being reactive while formulating coherent long-term strategies. It's a challenge that has frustrated the Obama administration. The president had hoped to disentangle the US from the Middle East and its wars during his time in office, only to find the region follows him everywhere: he had to answer numerous questions about his Middle East strategy, in the wake of the Paris attacks, during a trip to Asia last month. The stops in Manila and Kuala Lumpur were meant to showcase a landmark trade deal - the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) - which leaves out China. While the TPP is seen as a key part of the administration's much-vaunted rebalancing towards Asia - what Obama had conceived as a grand realignment in how the US approaches the world, once dubbed the Asia Pivot, has become more of a grinding daily and crucial exercise to keep up with Beijing. The Chinese capital has emerged as a regional and world power at an unusual speed for a rising power, spreading its money across the globe as well as aggressively asserting itself in Asia. South China Sea disputes Tensions in the South China Sea because of disputes with other claimants like the Philippines and Vietnam are leading to alarming headlines about possible conflict. China insists it is simply doing what all its neighbours are trying to do - but it is doing it at dizzying pace. The US Department of Defense assesses that as of June 2015, China had reclaimed 17 times more land in 20 months in the South China Sea than all the other claimants combined over the past 40 years. China's exact intentions remain unclear, but the overall assessment is that Beijing wants to slowly push the US out of the area without causing a conflict. Experts say that while China knows it cannot claim territorial sea based on land reclamations, the artificial islands will allow Beijing to have forward military bases and patrol the seas a long way away from China. The Pentagon's report on Asia Pacific Maritime Security Strategy warns that: "China is unilaterally altering the physical status quo in the region, thereby complicating diplomatic initiatives that could lower tensions." Anja Manuel, a former State Department official during the George W Bush administration, said: "China has no intention of challenging US military power globally, but they do want primacy in Asia and they like to pick off their adversaries one by one." But China's military is also moving well beyond its usual focus on protecting the borders. Beijing has just announced it will build its first overseas military outpost in Djibouti, a naval facility, not far from the US's own military base and its only one in Africa, Camp Lemonnier. Economic muscle In Pakistan, the Chinese signed $46bn worth of energy and infrastructure contracts. The Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor will open up new trading routes from Beijing to the Middle East. China is also building a new Silk Road to Europe - a strategic economic agreement that could rival the TTP. Last month, the IMF announced that the Chinese renminbi would join the world's basket of reserve currencies. When China announced it was setting up an Asian Investment and Infrastructure bank, the US tried to strong-arm its allies in staying away, but 57 nations joined, including the UK. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank All of this has led to criticism that Obama is not pushing back hard enough against an assertive China, with one analyst, Harry Kazianis, even claiming that the US has just handed over the South China Sea to Beijing, along with the annual $5tn of international trade that goes through it. "There is concern about whether the US is doing enough to impose a cost on China for what is seen as destabilising behaviour," said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at CSIS, who pointed out it took two years for the US to finally conduct freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to push back against Beijing. "I am quite worried about the perception that the administration is not doing enough. It's a perception, even though some of the criticism is fair." Direct conflict with China is highly unlikely, but the risks would be enormous and the impact on the US economy tremendous. US goods account for one-fifth of all trade passing through the South China Sea. But accidents are possible and managing the relationship is an exercise in balance and subtleties that requires constant co-ordination with Asian allies, also in dispute with the Chinese. "People want to know the United States is going to be a stabilising force [in Asia]," Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said recently. "But they also want us to have a good relationship with China." Many experts think Obama has handled China well - but warn it is a work in progress, which will need to be continued by the next president, no matter how much China-bashing happens during the presidential campaign. None of the world's long-term big problems, like climate change, can be resolved without Beijing - COP21 talks in Paris have been yet another reminder. "You can see a positive track (in the relationship), where there's a climate change deal and trade is fairly open," said Manuel. "But that's not automatic, it's not necessarily the trajectory we are on." A situation where the US is spending more and more on its military and trading less because of China is not inconceivable. So if the headlines today are urgent and the crisis in the Middle East real, the long-term strategic implications for the US of mismanaging the relationship with China are worse. |
Seven teenagers have been charged in relation to disorder that broke out in the Tottenham, last August. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Six of the teenagers have been charged in relation to burglary or violent disorder offences on Tottenham High Road on 6 or 7 August 2011. They will appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court on Friday. Leanne Mills, 19, from Lansdowne Road, Tottenham, north London, who is charged with burglary, will appear at the same court on 13 June. The six teenagers to appear on Friday are: |
A body found on a beach in East Lothian was that of a 79-year-old local man, police have confirmed. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
He was discovered near Longniddry Golf Club on Wednesday morning. Police Scotland initially appealed for help in identifying the man but they confirmed later confirmed his identity. Officers said his death was not suspicious and a report would be submitted to the procurator fiscal. |
Nigeria has a bad reputation when it comes to fraud. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Tom JacksonBusiness reporter "Dear Friend" emails originating from the country - also known as 419 scams - are among the most notorious in the world, with statistics from Ultrascan AGI suggesting losses from such schemes totalled $12.7bn (£8.2bn) in 2013. And the number of scams is growing by 5% each year. "Nigeria certainly has a problem," says Cormac Herley, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, who has looked in detail at 419 scams. "[The country has] become associated with a particular form of scam that's very visible and known to everyone who receives those emails." However, identity fraud is also a serious problem. Identity problems In May last year, 16 people were charged in the US for using stolen information to obtain money and goods and then shipping them to Nigeria. Those arrested, most of them Nigerian, were charged with taking over bank or stock brokerage accounts, removing all the money, and making purchases. They were eventually sentenced to seven years imprisonment. And it is not just foreigners who are targeted by such fraud. Nigeria's Inter-Bank Settlements Systems estimates the country's banks lost 159 billion naira ($800m; £515m) to electronic fraud between 2000 and 2013. Faced with its negative international reputation, and local banking losses, the Nigerian government is seeking to address the issue centrally. Last year, the National Electronic Identity (e-ID) Card was launched in collaboration with MasterCard, with President Goodluck Jonathan the first recipient. Ending impersonation The smart card's Match-On-Card technology matches a holder's fingerprint against a profile stored in the embedded chip. The card is also a travel document, conforming to the same standards as international passports. It contains electronic identification information, as well as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology that allows for document signing, non-repudiation and encryption. The National eID card is "capable of identifying two identical twins by the use of biometrics," says Chris Onyemenam, chief executive of Nigeria's National Identity Management Commission, which is handling the rollout of the cards. Part of the problem for Nigeria, which has a population of about 170 million, is that until now it has had no unified national system for recording identity data. Rooting out fraudsters The new card is "actually addressing the issue of multiple identities by some Nigerians," explains Mr Onyemenam. "It is addressing the issue of stolen identity. It is helping security agencies verify and fish out who the real culprit is." Aside from its identification features, the card offers can be used as a form of payment. Separated from the other services by a firewall, the payments function uses MasterCard's prepaid technology and is chip and pin certified. Daniel Monehin, division president for sub-Saharan Africa at MasterCard, says the fact the card has a computer chip embedded protects cardholders from fraud, and protects against the creation of counterfeit cards. The rollout of the payments-enabled e-ID card will also go some way to addressing another of Nigeria's major issues: lack of access to banking. Fully 70% of adult Nigerians do not have a formal bank account. "By giving every Nigerian of 16 and older an identity card with payments functionality, the government can effectively eliminate financial exclusion in Nigeria, and help citizens to improve their livelihoods," says Mr Monehin. "The broader economic impact of the card will be felt as the previously unbanked and under-banked are able to gain access to the mainstream economy and the visibility of their assets allows them to build a financial history and establish creditworthiness with financial institutions." This will be particularly helpful to small and medium-sized enterprises, Mr Monehin adds, which will now be able to access the financing that they need to grow their businesses. Privacy concerns The eID card has, however, caused some controversy. Civil liberties organisation Privacy International has raised concerns about the data integration, saying it would make it easy to link together pieces of information about a person. It is also concerned about the combination of the identity scheme with a strongly commercial initiative such as the bank card. Concerns were also expressed on popular Nigerian social networking site Nairaland. "The future of 170 million Nigerians sold to MasterCard," said one user, while others said they were worried about their personal data and how it would be used. MasterCard, however, has reiterated that the banking function is separate from the others and it does not have access to the identity information of any Nigerians. 'Time will tell' Nigeria is actually ahead of the game globally in terms of rolling out such identity cards, with identity analyst firm Acuity Market Intelligence forecasting half the world's population will have a chip-based National e-ID card in five years time. For Nigerians themselves, however, the proof will be in the pudding. Paul Adepoju, who lives in the city of Ibadan, says many Nigerians are not aware of the threat of identity theft due to the low level of education about e-banking. He added, however, that if the government could facilitate easier uptake of the cards, there was nothing to say this would not be successful. "At least they are doing something, and we have to be optimistic that something somewhere and somehow could, would and should work. "It could be this one - we will only know when every Nigerian has got it." |
A man charged with murdering a young mother who was found stabbed and strangled in her bathroom has pleaded guilty to manslaughter. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Ezekiel Foster, 42, of Twybridge Way, Brent, north London, has denied murder but admitted manslaughter, which the prosecution does not accept. Sashana Roberts, 24, was found dead at her terraced home in Cricklewood, north London, on 12 September. The plea was entered at the start of his trial at the Old Bailey for murder. |
Later this week, thousands will head to Manhattan's historic Chinatown to celebrate Lunar New Year. But amidst all the pomp and the parades, revellers might also find themselves caught up in a healthy dose of politics, writes Zhaoyin Feng of the BBC's Chinese Service. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Almost every day, 76-year-old Fang Yanhua, the president of the Chinese-American group Suyuan Association, follows the same routine, which includes playing mah-jong for hours at the association's office at New York City's Chinatown in Lower Manhattan. Drastic change is unusual in the historic district. But a seemingly small change, made by Suyuan Association, has sparked a heated and profound debate within the community. In August 2018, for the first time in nearly a century, the association raised the People's Republic of China's five-starred red flag. It replaces another Chinese flag commonly known as the Blue Sky, White Sun and a Wholly Red Earth, the national flag of the Republic of China (ROC) , which ceased to be used, except in Taiwan, when the PRC was founded in 1949. "I am Chinese, so I support China," Mr Fang told the BBC. When he was born in southern China in 1943, the country still flew the ROC flag, which is now history in Fang's view. "The historical current has changed direction." Why are there two flags? The ROC was founded in 1912 and ruled by the Kuomintang party. In 1949, after the Chinese Communist Party defeated the Kuomintang in the civil war, the CCP founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing, and the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, claiming Taipei as the temporary capital. The five-starred red flag is PRC's national flag, while the ROC flag is now mainly displayed in Taiwan, which has been effectively independent but regarded by Beijing as a rebel region for more than 70 years. In mainland China, the ROC flag is usually only seen in museums and history television series, or as a sign of nostalgia to the "old China". In Taiwan, the PRC flag is largely considered as an unwelcome symbol of Beijing's aggression. In international events, Taiwan is banned from using the ROC's name, emblems and flags. In 2015, during a Washington DC event to commemorate the end of World War II in Asia, the Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai cancelled his attendance at the last minute, due to a wreath displaying the ROC's national emblem. The two China flags are rarely displayed together, with overseas Chinatowns as one of the few exceptions. Which flag to fly Across a narrow alley from the Suyuan Association, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), the oldest and largest Chinese American association founded in 1883, flies its ROC flag proudly. "I don't agree that changing to the PRC flag is the general trend. They (Suyuan Association) simply pursue a different political vision from ours," Eric Ng, President of CCBA, told the BBC. The president of the CCBA used to be called "Chinatown Mayor", but Mr Ng may be losing his grip. Most newly established Chinese-American groups fly the PRC flag, and across the country the PRC flag has become more and more ubiquitous in America's Chinatowns, as several older associations in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco changed over. Mr Ng attributed the phenomenon to a large influx of immigrants from mainland China in the recent years, who are politically pro-Beijing and now hold leadership positions in various immigrant associations. The rise of China plays a role too. "China is now stronger," Mr Fang says. His association had considered switching flag years ago, inspired by China's soaring political and economic status in the world. When the Suyuan Association adopted the new flag, anti-Beijing protestors gathered in the street outside. Mr Fang, now a US citizen, says he respects the rights to protest and dissent in the US, and acknowledges it's not the case in China. "In America, one can criticize President Donald Trump, but in China, one can't do the same to President Xi Jinping." But the flag switch was not at all political, insists 72-year-old Kuang Junlin, co-president of Suyuan Association. "We just wanted to express our love for the motherland," he told the BBC. He says the PRC flag represents "mother", while the ROC flag is "grandmother." Rising tension between Taipei and Beijing may be another contributing factor. Taiwan's Presidenjt Tsai Ing-wen has been vocal in her opposition to Beijing's attempts to exert authority over her country. In an interview with the BBC, she said China needs to "face reality" and show the island "respect". Beijing is unhappy with her stand, as are some Chinese-Americans. "We support a unified China and would not accept Taiwan independence," says Junlin Kuang, a former chairman of Suyuan Association. Meanwhile, Remus Li-Kuo Chen, a senior diplomat of Taipei, told media that the flag switch highlights mainland China's increased efforts of minimizing Taiwan's international space. Agree to disagree Almost all Chinese-American associations that switched flags made the decision by casting a direct vote among members. "We follow the American rule, as we live in America now," Mr Fang says. He prefers decision-making in the democratic way because "the association belongs to all of us". Only 100 out of the Suyuan Association's 700 members voted on the flag change, but among those who casted a vote, more than 95 percent supported the change. "The two China flags are flying side by side, mirroring the freedom to identify in the US," Nancy Yao Maasbach, President of the Museum of Chinese in America, told the BBC. The changing of flags is associated with a thoughtful, reflective and potentially painful conversation among Chinese immigrants about their mixed identity, she says. Though discontent with Suyuan Association's decision, Mr Ng agreed to disagree. Whenever Ng and Fang occasionally run into each other on the bustling streets in Chinatown, they will still nod at and greet each other in Taishanese, their shared mother tongue. "I believe in free will," Mr Ng says. |
Can Jewish people walk the streets of Paris in peace? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
BBC Trending What's popular and why That's the question Zvika Klein - a journalist at an Israeli news website - says he set out to answer. He borrowed the "10 hours in...." YouTube format, in which a hidden camera is used to show what it's like to walk a city's streets. It first appeared back in October, when hidden camera footage of a woman facing sexist abuse as she walked the streets of New York was watched almost 40 million times. It spawned a raft of of copycat videos. Klein's version takes place in the French capital. In the film he dons a kippah - the traditional Jewish skullcap - in front of the Eiffel Tower, and wanders the streets of the city. He appears to face significant abuse as he walks around. Residents are seen staring and spitting at him, while others apparently shout "Jew" and "Viva Palestine". The footage was gathered over 10 hours at the beginning of February, says Klein, and edited down into a clip lasting just over 90 seconds. It's been watched more than 100,000 times in less than 24 hours, and the number is climbing fast. He told BBC Trending he flew to Paris to conduct the experiment for NRG, a news website based in Israel. It's impossible for us to verify Klein's video, and like other "10 hours in..." videos there has been a large amount of editing - which critics say conveys a false impression. The clips featured appear to be shot in poorer and predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods. Could he be accused of deliberately seeking out negative comments? He doesn't see it that way. "If I was walking around with an Israeli flag, I understand it might create negative feelings. But I don't think [wearing a kippah] should generate that kind of thing." So are Jewish people confronted with this kind of abuse throughout the city? No, not everywhere, Klein tells BBC Trending. In its more famous neighbourhoods - around the Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower - he saw "a little bit, but nothing worth putting in the video". "As we went to the suburbs, or certain neighbourhoods in the city, the remarks became more violent," he says. Although a bodyguard was trailing Klein and his secret cameraman, he was not called into action. "I did think that there might be some violence, but there was none," Klein says. In fact some locals spoke out in his defence when heckled, and there was a friendly conversation as well, but these were not filmed and included in the video. With an apparently anti-Semitic murder among two killings in Copenhagen this weekend, and last month's Paris attacks including four murders at a Kosher supermarket, some Jews in Europe are feeling vulnerable. Marc Konczaty, president of MJLF, a Jewish community organisation in Paris, says he is not surprised by the video, and that anti-Semitic abuse in the city is "getting worse". "People are no longer bothered about saying things in public," he says. But he agrees with Klein's observation that it is usually confined to certain neighbourhoods in the north and east of Paris. He is keen to point out that Muslims and other minorities in the city can face similar problems. You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending |
Thirty of the 38 people killed by a gunman on a Tunisian beach were British. The dead Britons were all holiday-makers staying in the popular resort of Port El Kantaoui, just north of Sousse. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Carly Lovett Carly Lovett was a 24-year-old beauty blogger and photographer from Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. "Carly was and always will be our beautiful shining light," her parents Joanne and Kev, fiance Liam and other family members said. She had recently got engaged to Liam, her childhood sweetheart of 10 years. A graduate of Lincoln University, she had worked for an e-commerce company called Fizzco Ltd in Fillingham near Gainsborough. It was reported that she was killed by a grenade during the attack. Charles (known as Patrick) Evans, Adrian Evans and Joel Richards Adrian Evans, 49, from Tipton in the West Midlands, died along with his father, 78-year-old Charles (known as Patrick) Evans, and nephew Joel Richards, 19, from Wednesbury. A statement released on behalf of the families by Suzanne Richards said: "We are a very small and normal family, but nothing will ever be normal again. "My son Joel, dad Pat and brother Adrian were our rocks and we are all heartbroken and devastated and will never get over losing them." She added that the men had been so close that even in "those minutes of pure panic" they and her younger son Owen, who survived the attack, had stayed together. "The 'jolly boys' outing', as they called it, was to celebrate Joel finishing his second year at university with high grades and Owen finishing his GCSEs," said Mrs Richards. "Their holiday lasted less than 24 hours and their futures and lives ended tragically." Adrian Evans worked for Sandwell Council in Oldbury as a manager in the gas services department. Joel was a student at the University of Worcester and a keen football referee. Walsall FC said the men were all fans of the club and that their thoughts were with their family. Fellow fans showed their support by laying scarves and shirts outside the stadium. Denis and Elaine Thwaites Former Birmingham City Football player Denis Thwaites, 70, and his wife Elaine, 69, were from Blackpool. Their daughter Lindsey, and son-in-law Daniel Clifford, said: "Words can't express what all the family are feeling at this difficult time. "We can say that both Lindsey and I flew to Tunisia with the help of the BBC and we can confirm that a positive identification was made by Lindsey of her mother and father. "We would like to take this opportunity to thank people on the ground in this horrendous situation. It was extremely hard to find out any information beforehand but now we completely understand." Stockton-born Mr Thwaites played for Birmingham City from 1962-1972. In a statement, the football club said it was "deeply shocked and saddened". He later moved with his family to Blackpool, where he worked as a hospital porter. John and Janet Stocker Grandparents Janet and John Stocker, from Morden in south London, were described as "the happiest, most loving couple" by their family. "They enjoyed life's simple pleasures as well as the pleasures and love of their extensive family and their many friends, but most of all they were still very much in love with each other," they said. "They were both young at heart and enjoyed all that life could offer, and especially enjoyed travelling to new places, exploring and appreciating local cultures, and they died together doing what they enjoyed most; sunbathing side by side." Retired printer Mr Stocker, 74, was born in Peckham, south-east London, and was a "proud father of us five children and 10 grandchildren" while Mrs Stocker, 63, was born in Fulham, west London, and was described as a "fun-loving and devoted mother" who "loved nothing more than being around all of the grandchildren". John Stollery John Stollery, 58, a social worker from Nottinghamshire, had been on holiday with his family. "John was special; he made a difference and gave his best to others," his wife Cheryl said. "We, his family, are proud of him and deeply saddened that he was taken from us in such a horrific and tragic way. We still had a long life to live with plans and dreams for our future together." Mr Stollery had worked at Nottinghamshire County Council for 33 years and spent the last 16 years working with children in care. Flags were flown at half-mast as staff there gathered to pay tribute to him. William and Lisa Graham Married couple William Graham, 51, known as Billy, and Lisa Graham, 50, were from Bankfoot in Perth and Kinross. They were in Tunisia to celebrate Mrs Graham's 50th birthday. Mr Graham worked as a turnstile operator on match days at St Johnstone FC's McDiarmid Park having previously served for 22 years in the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards. "Billy was part of the St Johnstone family and a great ambassador for the club who always did his job with a smile on his face," said Saints' chairman Steve Brown. At their funeral Reverend Sydney Graham said: "Billy and Lisa had a lovely relationship and life together at Bankfoot with their much loved daughter Holly and Bailey Boy, the mini longhaired Daschund who earned a special place in their family life." Sue Davey and Scott Chalkley Ms Davey's son Conor Fulford, from Tamworth in Staffordshire, had used Twitter to appeal for news of his 43-year-old mother's whereabouts in the wake of the attack. He later told the BBC: "We have lost a very, very special person to us. "My memory is of my mum grinning from side to side and she is looking at me on the camera and she is saying 'We are going to Tunisia next week, I can't wait'." Ms Davey's daughter Chloe is the partner of Leicester City footballer Marc Albrighton. The football club offered support to the family, saying: "They are all in our thoughts and prayers." Mr Chalkley, 42, from Chaddesden, Derby, was Ms Davey's partner. His son, Ross Naylor, from Derby, confirmed his father's death, posting on Twitter: "I want to say thanks to everyone who has helped; you have all been amazing. One love to all and rest in peace dad." The couple both worked for Severn Trent Water. Flags at Tamworth Borough Council and Tamworth Castle were flown at half-mast as a mark of respect for all those killed in the shooting. Bruce Wilkinson Mr Wilkinson, 72, from Goole, East Riding, was a retired worker at Drax power station. His family said he was "a kind and compassionate man with a dry sense of humour". "We are devastated at the loss of Bruce, who was a devoted husband, father and grandfather," they said. "Bruce was a loving family man, and in his working life worked to support the care of others. "He was fun-loving, and will be deeply missed by friends and family alike." Lisa Burbidge Ms Burbidge, in her 60s, from Whickham, Gateshead, was described as "the most beautiful, amazing, caring and gentle person in our lives" by her family. "We have been left with a massive hole in our hearts," they said. They added that she had "four fantastic grandchildren who were her world" and they would "miss her tremendously". One of her granddaughters, Chloe Thompson, left a tribute on the Newcastle Chronicle's Facebook page, saying: "My angel, my best friend love you always grandma, rest in peace." Claire Windass Claire Windass, 54, from Hull, was on holiday with her husband Jim when the attack happened. He "miraculously managed to escape physically unharmed and has now returned to his home in Hull, where he is surrounded by family and friends at this emotionally difficult time for us all," her family said. "She was a warm, kind-hearted woman who made friends easily and was loved by everyone who knew her. She will be deeply missed." Mrs Windass, who had two children and two step-children, lived in Scunthorpe for 35 years before moving to Hull in 2012 when she married Mr Windass. Staff at North Lincolnshire Council, where she had worked for 18 years, were said to be "deeply saddened" by news of her death. Jim and Ann McQuire Recently retired couple Jim, 66, and Ann McQuire, 63, from Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, were "devoted to each other" and "lived to enjoy life", their family said. "They spent their lives contributing so much to the community," they added. "Through their many interests they made many friends and helped many causes within and outwith the church." Their son Stuart said they would be "sorely missed." Mrs McQuire sang and played guitar at Abronhill church, while Mr McQuire helped hundreds of young people over many years as captain of the 5th Cumbernauld Boys Brigade company. Trudy Jones Mother-of-four Trudy Jones, 51, a care home worker from Blackwood in south Wales, had been on holiday with friends. Her family described her as their "beautiful mother" in a statement. "Our mother of all people didn't deserve this, such a caring person who put everyone else before herself," they said. "Always willing to help others, she loved everyone around her including all of the people she cared for at work. She'll be missed by so many people. She was the rock of our family and kept us all going." Shawkat Ilahi, the manager of the care home where she worked as an activity co-ordinator, said: "She was a very popular member of the team. She was like a bottle of pop, very lively and always smiling." Stuart Cullen Mr Cullen's wife and daughter said he had a "wicked sense of humour and only ever wanted to put a smile on people's faces". In a statement, Christine and Emma-Jayne Cullen said: "He was Dad, husband, best friend and soulmate. "The legacy he leaves is his strength - the strength to move forward whatever that may look like." Stephen Ardley, mayor of Lowestoft - where Mr Cullen lived - said: "My heartfelt sympathy goes out to not only the Cullen family, but to all the families and friends that have been affected by this devastating act of cruelty. "I was walking along that very same beach eight days earlier. My wife and I used to go for a walk on it every morning, so it really brings it home." Stephen Mellor Stephen Mellor, 59, from Bodmin in Cornwall, was killed as he attempted to shield his wife Cheryl, 55, who survived the attack. His wife, a retired psychiatric nurse, survived by pretending to be dead after she was shot and injured. Mrs Mellor told the Plymouth Herald newspaper: "Someone came over and said they'd move me but the gunfire started up again so I just lay there. "I just played dead. I was absolutely terrified. When the gunfire stopped I kept hearing foreign voices but I still played dead." In a tribute to her husband she called him her "soul mate" and said she would love him forever. Philip Heathcote Philip Heathcote, 52, and his wife Allison, 48, from Felixstowe in Suffolk, were due to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary during their time in Tunisia. Mrs Heathcote was was shot several times in the attack but survived. Simon Boon said the family would "deeply grieve" the "terrible loss" of Mr Heathcote, his brother-in-law. In a statement reported on the Eastern Daily Press website, he said: "For 30 years, Philip has shown my sister love, care and loyalty that was second to none. "Philip was truly Allison's soulmate and they did everything together, sharing the same interests life offered. Philip was without question a member of our family that everyone dearly loved and enjoyed so many good times with." Christopher and Sharon Bell The family of rail worker Christopher Bell and his wife Sharon, from Leeds, said they were "deeply saddened" by their loss. Mr Bell worked for Northern Rail in Leeds and Mrs Bell was said to be a health and care worker. The couple were described as hard-working by their neighbours. The BBC understands the couple had two grown-up children and a third, teenage child. Mark Brady, a neighbour who had known the couple for 28 years, said: "It's absolutely devastating, I've watched his kids grow up and his grandkids grow up. "It's absolutely ridiculous and sad. They worked hard saving up to have nice holidays like this." Adrian Thompson, of Northern Rail, said Mr Bell was "a much-loved and highly valued colleague who will be sadly missed". Chris Dyer Chris Dyer, 32, an engineer from Watford, was on holiday with his wife Gina Van Dort when he was killed in the attack. She is reported as having clung on to her dead husband's hand as paramedics tried to get her to safety. Mr Dyer was a Jiu-Jitsu enthusiast and a member of Watford Gracie Jiu-Jitsu club. In a statement on Facebook, the group said: "There are no words to express how incredibly shaken we are by Chris Dyer's unexpected, tragic death." A minute's silence was held outside Watford Football Club's ground, Vicarage Road, to remember Mr Dyer and other people killed in the attack. David Thompson David Thompson, 80, from Tadley in Hampshire, was a retired Atomic Weapons Establishment scientist. He was described by his neighbours as a "wonderful man". Tadley Town Council chairman David Leeks said the reaction in the town was one of "pure shock". Local residents told the BBC Mr Thompson was a keen walker who kept himself very physically fit, having undergone heart surgery. They added he would do up to 60 press ups a day and loved holidays. John Welch and Eileen Swannack John Welch, 74, and his partner of eight years Eileen Swannack, 73, loved Tunisia and had stayed at the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba twice a year for the past four years. Mr Welch was one of three siblings, and had three children, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. The retired plumber was born in Abertillery, south Wales, but moved to Corsham at an early age and lived the rest of his life in the town. He met Mrs Swannack, a widow, following the death of his partner Nanette in 2005. "As well as travelling, he loved to socialise. We were so pleased when he met Eileen as he had someone special to share these things with," his family said. Mrs Swannack's family paid tribute to her saying: "She had a heart of gold and was always first to offer help to others... She exuded youthfulness and had a real sense of fun and mischief." She was one of five siblings and moved to the village of Biddestone with her husband Eddie in the 1960s. Angie and Ray Fisher Angie, 69, and Ray Fisher, 75, were from Leicester. The couple had been together since they were about 15 and at their funeral Reverend Stephen Burnham said they "had a deep love and so much enjoyed getting old together". Son Adam and daughter Donna said it was "a source of comfort they were enjoying a holiday when they were taken". Donna added: "Dad loved to travel and share a drink with others. He was very friendly and full of gusto. It was perhaps apt, or ironic, that he died on holiday." Mr Fisher's brother, Roland, described him as a typical Leicester lad, who liked fishing and kept birds of prey. |
So there we were, standing by for the new-look, no-singing, no-dancing Prime Minister's Questions, where "yah-boo" politics was replaced by a Socratic dialogue on the major issues of the day. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
David CornockParliamentary correspondent, Wales Yes, was the first time MPs had the chance to question David Cameron, since Commons Speaker John Bercow wrote to the party leaders to ask them to clamp down on "yobbery and public school twittishness" during PMQs. I suspect Mr Bercow may have been disappointed (although not surprised) as the traditional wall of noise accompanied most questions and answers. Occasionally, but only occasionally, a serious detailed question was listened to in respectful silence but otherwise it was largely business as usual. There was cross-party consensus on the successes of Team GB at the Winter Olympics but little agreement on anything else. And while some things may change, others stay the same; a Conservative MP offered David Cameron a free hit at the Welsh government's record, one he felt unable to resist. Charlotte Leslie raised recent correspondence between the medical director of NHS England, Sir Bruce Keogh and his Welsh counterpart. She wanted to know if David Cameron was as astounded as she was by the response of the NHS in Wales. The prime minister said Sir Bruce's views should be respected and listened to by the NHS in Wales. He then went further, highlighting concerns raised by the Royal College of Surgeons: "What they've (RCS) said today, what they're saying effectively, is there are people on NHS waiting lists who are dying in Wales because the waiting lists are too long and because the NHS isn't being properly managed, properly funded and properly reformed in Wales. That is a matter for the Labour Welsh assembly government and they need to get their act together." The NHS in Wales may be devolved but - less than 15 months before the general election - it has seldom been as high on the agenda of the main governing party at Westminster. |
Nelly Furtado is to release her first non-English language album. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Greg CochraneNewsbeat music reporter Mi Plan, the Canadian singer's fourth solo album, is sung entirely in Spanish and will be released on 14 September. Released on the same day, the first single will be Manos Al Aire (Hands In The Air). In a statement Furtado said: "After 10 years recording in English, I hit a wall. I felt this was the moment to make the dream." Featured artists The daughter of Portuguese parents, Furtado has also enlisted the help of notable artists for the 11-track release including Grammy Award winning artist Juan Luis Guerra, Alejandro Fernandez and Julieta Venegas. Mi Plan is the follow up to Furtado's 2006 album Loose. Furtado has sold over 15 million albums worldwide since releasing debut Whoa, Nelly! in 2000. |
Poet Edward Lear was a genius at writing "nonsense" verse. But the author of surreal limericks was also a serious travel writer, zoological illustrator and landscape painter. Had he been alive today he would have been 200 years old, alongside his great contemporary Charles Dickens. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Robin BanerjiBBC World Service Children's author and laureate Julia Donaldson - writer of The Gruffalo - is among Lear's many enthusiasts and has written a sequel to his most celebrated work The Owl and the Pussycat to mark the anniversary. Lear's poem tells the story of two animals who go to sea in a beautiful pea green boat. The elegant fowl serenades his feline love to the sounds of "a small guitar". After getting a ring from the nose of "a piggy-wig" they are married next day by the turkey on the hill. This romantic and touching little poem has been set to music by Igor Stravinsky and Laurie Anderson among others. It has also been translated into languages as diverse as Bengali and Polish, Cree and Amharic. Perhaps surprisingly, however, Lear's career began not with words but with pictures. He jokes that he "began to draw for bread and cheese' at about the age of 15. He soon became a commercial artist. By the age of 18 he received permission to draw from life the parrots of London Zoo and, from 1830 to1832, he published in total 42 lithographs of parrots. Lear's lithographs were so successful that in 1832 the president of London Zoo, Lord Stanley, hired Lear to draw the menagerie of birds and mammals at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool. It was there that Lear's gift for light verse made him a huge success with the family of the Earl of Derby. "He started writing verse for this man's great grandchildren to entertain them," says Donaldson. "It was just meant to be a sideline, I think the serious business of his life was his art." The sideline made Lear famous. In 1846 he published A Book of Nonsense. It contains some of his best-loved limericks such as: "There was an old man with a beard, who said, 'It is just as I feared! Two owls and a hen, four larks and a wren, have built their nests in my beard!'" Donaldson is a great fan of Lear's "nonsense words, the wonderful words such as runcible and scroobious that children and adults love". Although accomplished and successful, Lear's life was marked by much unhappiness. The bad times started early on. Lear was the 20th of 21 children. His father was a stockbroker but when the boy Lear was four his father went bankrupt and - like Charles Dickens's father - seems to have ended up in a debtor's prison. At the time the young Lear left his parents' home with his eldest sister, Ann, who was 21 years older than him. "Ever since he was a child he had fits of depression," says Donaldson. One day when Lear was around seven years old, his father took him to a field near Highgate in north London. He saw some clowns, and a band playing. Afterwards he went home and cried "half the night" - as he recollected years later. Donaldson says "he realised, at an early age, that happiness and beauty were transient". Lear's own word for it was "morbidness" and it may explain what Donaldson calls "that mixture of happiness and sadness in his work". In Lear you find humour but also pathos. "Creatures such as the Dong with the Luminous Nose and the little birds in the poem, Callico Pie, that never come back. There is a kind of sadness mixed in with the humour, which is very appealing," says Donaldson. In The Owl and Pussycat, however, pathos is held at bay, just. Of her sequel, Donaldson says: "I cannot tell you everything but they go off in search of that very ring that they got married with - it gets stolen right at the beginning of my story by a crow - and they sail away in a beautiful blue balloon." Surely Lear would have approved. Julia Donaldson spoke to Newshour on the BBC World Service. |
My Money is a series looking at how people spend their money - and the sometimes tough decisions they have to make. Here Zak Hoblyn from London takes us through a week in his life as a first-time buyer during the coronavirus pandemic. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Originally from Wiltshire, Zak is 27 and lives in North London with his fiancée Leah who is a radio presenter. He works as a lift and crane engineering surveyor and loves his job. However, he says it is made hard by his height; reaching for door releases can be difficult at 5ft 6". The couple hope to get married in July 2021 in Glastonbury. He enjoys running so much he describes himself as "addicted" to it. He is running both the rescheduled Tokyo and London marathons (last year he completed the Paris marathon - his first ever.) Another hobby is finding bars and pubs in an attempt to soak up the London vibe. He is a Liverpool fan, so residing and working within Arsenal and Tottenham can be challenging. This week Zak and Leah bought and moved into their first home. Over to Zak... A 06:30 alarm rudely awakens a deep sleep, I check my emails and BBC Sport on my phone with the screen brightness on full to help wake myself up. Whilst checking my emails I have a confirmation email from the van hire company which Leah and I will be using tomorrow to move out of our apartment (£86) for 24-hour hire. I head to Kings Cross on the bus, my travel is all paid for by my company so no expenditure. Once at Kings Cross I have to walk past a Pret A Manger which was closed last week due to coronavirus but is open today! Without doubt due to the fact all the coffee at home is packed away somewhere, I go in and order my normal filter white coffee (99p) for the caffeine boost I am desperately needing. I finish my first two sites opposite Paddington station which were on the same road in quick time so I see a small independent café (on the hunt for more caffeine) but unfortunately the card minimum is £5. Not to worry, nothing a vegetable samosa can't sort out. I am in North London come 14:00 and I am left waiting for a client. Whilst doing so I order a circular saw online as I need to cut my 3m long oak table to be able to move it out of the apartment (£39.99). I buy a sparkling water (99p) from a petrol station and use the toilet, two birds, one stone! Public toilets are gold dust in London. Total spend: £132.97 I am up early again as I need to pick up the hire van from just outside Camden. I buy an avocado and some breakfast muffins from Lidl for a pre-move breakfast (£1.24). I pick up the hire van and pay (£2.50) for an hour's parking in Haringey, enjoy the avocado and muffins and start loading the van. One trip to the new place with the van full, unload with help from the seller which was greatly appreciated then we were back in the van going back to the old place for round two! Whilst lugging a washing machine and fridge into the van Leah hears the sweet, sweet sound of an ice cream van. I had the audacity to order a 99 with an ice lolly plopped right in the middle whilst I got a usual 99 with a flake for the other half [£4.20.] Once the new place was full at 19:00 we could not even fathom the thought of going to the shop to buy ingredients, so we get on Uber Eats and hunt down the closest highest reviewed fish and chip shop. Two cod and chips... [large of course] comes to £24.59. This included delivery. It did take us five minutes to remember to change the home address on our Uber Eats account. The day ends with me returning back to the old flat to cut my table with my new circular saw at 23:30... the now old neighbours will not be happy, a 15-hour day, I am still wondering if my wallet or body will ever recover? Total spend: £32.53 Five hours sleep and I am up, scrambling around boxes and bags trying to hunt for my toothbrush, I am out the house by 07:00 as I need to drop the van back before 08:00 to ensure I do not exceed the 24-hour hire. The traffic is very calm and I make good time. I stop at a petrol station to top the van up. Luckily, due to coronavirus and the issue Opec are having with balancing the price, £15 is more than enough. Once the van is done I get a bus to Kings Cross, I am working with a colleague today and he is a little late so I head to Pret and stock up on coffee and food because our fridge is still empty. I opt for an avocado and egg baguette, oat cookie and white filter (£4.93). We work hard and have a lot done by 12:00. Luckily the premises, usually extremely busy with human traffic using the lifts, is absolutely silent again due to coronavirus - this makes our job a lot easier. We stop for lunch, back to Pret (creature of habit, I know) for a duck wrap, sparkling water, another cookie and a white filter. I also buy my colleague a fizzy drink as he is doing the hard bits today as he can see how broken I am from the move yesterday (£8.83). I get home around 15:30 and remember that we have to use a portable BBQ on the balcony as we have no oven! I take a three-minute walk to Tesco to pick up halloumi, Heineken beer and some caramel ice creams. We have a freezer for the first time in two years so this is a novelty (£7.20). We enjoy the BBQ and catching up on the day, whilst blissfully ignoring the boxes on the floor, despite Leah's monstrous effort at getting through a lot of it. How do two people have so much stuff? Total spend: £35.96 My day starts a little later today. I head to Finchley Road. I of course stop at the Pret outside the station (99p). I get an email from my boss telling me to go home at lunch to crack on with the house - what a star! I get home for 12:30 and begin my DIY on the leaking sink and the flush that does not flush! Diagnostics done, jog to B&Q to pick up spares (£15.57), a new outlet valve for the toilet and a new basket strainer for the sink. Repairs worked a treat until I remember I need a new flush for the toilet. Another jog to B&Q and I spend £5.25. I also buy Rug Doctor formula for £11. When I go outside I get a call from Leah asking me to meet her at Asda Home. We buy a portable stove, super glue and a mop and bucket (£30.33) - they were all fairly essential items. The food consumed tonight was tortellini. Total spend: £63.14 My day starts at 06:30. I head to the North Circular to cover a colleague's patch and then come back into London to the Whittington Hospital. After this I stop at Lidl for two packs of sushi and a Diet Coke (£3.97). My day ends at 15:00. Once home we begin decorating, sanding down the bathroom and then we head to Tesco to pick up some Rug Doctor (£31.98). We are home in under an hour and begin the process of cleaning the stairs. After two hours we begin to tire so I jog to Lidl and pick up two bottles of beer (£3.95). Total spend: £39.90 My Money More blogs from the BBC's My Money Series: Working overtime today so I am back in Kings Cross for 08:00 and without hesitation head to Pret for the white filter (99p). Our work is done by 12:30 so I head home and begin painting the bathroom walls whilst my partner is just waking up from a nap after her morning shift. We continue decorating together until around 18:00 when we decide food supplies are needed. I swap my painting t-shirt for something a little more presentable and head to Lidl. I pick up some empanadas, arancini and four tins of lager (£6.97). We work late into the night fuelling off lager, red wine and prosecco which our lovely new neighbour brought round for us yesterday. With the bathroom half gold and half pink we gingerly head to bed and consider, have we been too garish? Bed by 01:00. Total spend: £7.96 Sunday started with a poor attempt at a lie-in. We got up just before 10:00 for a final coat of pink for the bathroom. Breakfast wrap on the move whilst we head out the door to drop off the Rug Doctor at Tesco. The queue was pretty small considering it is a Sunday and we only had to wait five minutes before making it into the store and dropping the Rug Doctor off. We purchase sweets and fizzy drinks (£3.50) as we require a little pick-me-up whilst heading down to Vauxhall for the Black Lives Matter protests. We get home for 15:15 and head straight to Asda from the station to pick up a smaller paint roller (£2). We then go next door to Lidl and purchase gnocchi for dinner and some tortilla wraps for the week, as well as some lagers as tonight is my partner's night off (£13.32). We continue with the bathroom whilst enjoying gnocchi and lagers late into the night. Nice way to end a busy, emotional week. Total spend: £18.82 Total spent this week: £331.28 How does Zak feel about his week? If it was not for the move I think it would have been a very cheap week. That being said there were no scary hidden costs that we did not expect. The fixes within the house were basic maintenance to some extent so that could have been a lot worse. I definitely spent more on coffee this week but I think that is due to Pret finally opening. The beer runs were cheaper as we live next to a Lidl now so no more paying corner shop prices. I think this saved me £10 over the week. Whilst life is cheap due to the virus it is also cheap on experiences and social interactions. I would prefer to spend more money on a nice cold draft with the people I love. We're looking for more people to share what they spend their money on. If you're interested, please email my.money@bbc.co.uk or get in touch via our My Money (World) Facebook group, or if you live in the UK, please join our My Money (UK) Facebook group and we'll aim to contact you. |
Medieval re-enactors are being asked to check their wardrobes after several items of apparently stolen clothing and accessories were found. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
They were discovered by a member of the public at a water treatment works on Sproughton Road in Ipswich at about 12:15 GMT on Monday. A chainmail shirt and hat were among the items found. Anyone missing any protective body armour has been asked to get in touch with Suffolk Police. Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk |
Whitehall officials have told the BBC that contrary to recent announcements, the number of Britons emigrating to Syria to live under Islamic State (IS) rule peaked two years ago. However, the proportion of women among those joining the extremist group has risen dramatically. So what's behind this and what exactly is the IS strategy behind luring women into their ranks? Our Security Correspondent Frank Gardner investigates. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Frank GardnerBBC Security correspondent Islamic State, also known as Isis, has a dual attitude to women. On the one hand it treats those it considers heretics as almost sub-human, as commodities to be traded and given away as rewards to jihadist fighters. Shocking footage from a modern-day sex-slave market in Mosul, Iraq, shows militants discussing prices for Yazidi girls, captured last year, many of them underage. At least 2,000 Yazidi women are still being held, only a few have escaped. 'Corner stones' "They put us up for sale," said one who did recently escape. "Many groups of fighters came to buy. Whatever we did, crying, begging, made no difference." But on the other hand, IS has big plans for Muslim women who migrate to their territory to play a key role in building the so-called caliphate. "They want women to join them," says Dr Katherine Brown, an expert in Islamic Studies at King's College London. "They see women as the corner stones of the new state and they want citizens. "What is really interesting is that people talk of IS as being a death cult, but that is the opposite of what they are trying to create... they want to create a new state... and they very much want women to join that as part of this utopian politics." That utopia includes a treatise published in Arabic in February, setting out a code of conduct that harks back 1,400 years. It is aimed primarily at Arab women in the Gulf states and the wider Middle East and includes passages that are incomprehensible to most people in the West: "It is considered legitimate for a girl to be married at the age of nine. Most pure girls will be married by 16 or 17, while they are still young and active," the treatise says. Putting down roots A former al-Qaeda member with a deep insight into the jihadist mindset is Aimen Deen. He believes the IS approach to women is very different from that of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. 'Unlike al-Qaeda, Isis is looking to establish a permanent society with roots. They are bringing families from the entire Muslim world, not just from Europe and the US but from Central Asia... providing families for the Islamic State." Online recruitment messages are pumped out continually, in different languages, telling Muslims to abandon their safe but conflicted lives in the West and come to the caliphate. Ignored by the vast majority, there are nevertheless a growing number of women heeding the call. Some are like the British girls from Bethnal Green in east London, who wanted to be jihadist brides, marrying a fighter who will give them status. "There is a romantic element here," continues Aimen Deen, who warns that it can often end in tragedy. "The life expectancy of a jihadist is a month or two. So what will happen is that a woman will marry someone, he will die and for four months and 10 days she will be in mourning. "If she is pregnant then maybe longer, and then she will marry someone else and then there will be another martyred husband, another four months in mourning and she will go through this process again. "That is not a happy life, that is a miserable one." Social media role But unlike the Taliban or al-Qaeda, IS have allowed many of their western female recruits a prominent public role on social media. Perhaps the best known is the 20-year-old Glaswegian runaway, Aqsa Mahmoud, who calls herself "Umm Laith". She has become famous for dispensing advice to women thinking of abandoning their families in Britain, from the mundane to the philosophical. Mah-Rukh Ali, a Norwegian researcher at Oxford University who specialises in women and propaganda in IS, believes it is a deliberate strategy to give women a prominent role online. "Isis uses women much more actively than we ever saw the Taliban or al-Qaeda using them," she says. "There are about 100,000 pro-Isis tweets every day and many of these tweets appear to come from women who have joined Isis from western societies." Researchers say that many of those women who make it across the Turkish border into IS-controlled territory end up frustrated by the roles they are assigned. Unmarried women are kept in a safe house, usually with others who speak their language and given religious indoctrination and Arabic classes while a husband is found for them as quickly as possible. Any thoughts of taking part in battles and wielding a Kalashnikov on the frontline are soon dashed. But some join the Khansaa Brigades, a women-only vigilante force that patrols cities like Raqqa and Mosul enforcing strict Islamist rules. "They've been known to carry out harsh punishments like beatings and whipping someone for not wearing the right clothing," says Dr Katherine Brown. They have also been known to put animal trap clamps on a women's breasts because they have been breastfeeding in public, she says. But beyond the cruelty and the shocking practices that have propelled IS to international infamy, the uncomfortable fact is that their so-called caliphate is not going away. I asked Aimen Deen, the former jihadist, if IS now sees women as essential to the group's chances of survival. "Indeed, there is no question about it. They are half of the society. They are playing an important role in many departments: the medical department, the educational department and even the tax collection department, so they are essential for the survival of Islamic State." |
For this sleepy village a summer of protest beckons. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Nick TarverBBC News Balcombe, in West Sussex, has found itself at the heart of a debate over hydraulic fracturing - known as fracking. Test drilling is due to begin for oil exploration by energy company Caudrilla, however, there are worries locally this will lead to the search for shale gas. Protesters, police and journalists have descended in their hundreds as lorries drive in and out of the site delivering equipment. So how have the villagers responded to the test drilling? And do the protests, which could last through August and into September, have the support of the village? 'Standing up against it' Balcombe has 2,000 residents, one village store, a pub and several small shops. It is also now home to a drilling company and a large group of impassioned protesters. This was not always the case. Three weeks ago Balcombe resident Louisa Delpy stood alone with two others outside the gates of the site. She said: "We couldn't imagine the protest would be like this now - I thought I was an individual standing up against it." Speaking at the camp outside the drilling site, which is a 15-minute walk from the village, she said the village was "united" against the drilling but added that Balcombe was "very conservative". 'Nimbyism' Unsurprisingly, support for the protest is unanimous down at the camp. However, up in the village, despite it being festooned with placards and posters protesting against the drilling, there is also opposition to the protest. Michael Dutton, who has lived in the village since 1948, said: "It's all 'nimbyism' along with professional protesters - they're very disruptive. "I would prefer we get our oil from Balcombe than the Middle East or Russia." And Balcombe resident Jacky Hall said the protesters were "primarily outsiders". "They're not fracking - why don't they [the protesters] wait until they've done the exploratory drilling? "People used to drive through the village and say, 'oh it's a lovely village'. Now they talk about the protesters." 'Don't like outsiders' So far there have been dozens of arrests since police started to move protesters away from the gates. Cuadrilla, which had hoped to begin drilling last week but has been thwarted by the protesters, would need fresh permission from the Environment Agency to carry out shale gas exploration. Kathryn McWhirter, who is from the village and an active member of the protest camp, said she believes support for the drilling among villagers is minimal. "It's a very conservative village and there's a small element who are against the protests," she said. "They don't like outsiders and they don't like a fuss being made." However, with permission to drill currently due to end on 28 September, it is likely protest camp will remain over the summer with the "fuss" set to continue. |
Here are the full results of the 2016 Isle of Man General Election. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
BBC News App users: tap here to see results Isle of Man 2016 General Election results Boundary changes saw the number of constituencies reduced from 14 to 12 for this election. Each area now elects two members to the House of Keys. Constituency results |
Philip Hammond did not give the "indexation allowance freeze" a lot of welly in his speech and certainly didn't try very hard to explain its rather economicky sounding title but it's a tax rise the government hopes will raise half a billion pounds a year by the end of this parliament and could have important consequences - particularly for the buy-to-let market. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Simon JackBusiness editor@BBCSimonJackon Twitter The way it works is this: Individuals who buy assets, like second properties, and then see them rise in value have to pay 28% of the full rise in the price when they come to sell it. Companies, on the other hand, have been allowed to deduct the amount of that price rise that was due to inflation. For example, if I was to buy a rental flat for £100k and sell it for £200k 10 years later I would have to pay £28,000 capital gains tax. If Simon Jack Property Limited was to buy the same flat and inflation had been at 3% for that 10-year period, inflation would have accounted for £34,000 of that price rise and I would only have to pay 28% on the remaining £66,000 price rise. Simon Jack Property Limited pays tax of £18,480 rather than £28,000. Disliking landlords From January of next year that discrepancy will be eliminated. The change will only affect price rises from January of next year, so companies will not pay extra on the gains they have already made. Property is not the only asset this new tax hike affects, but it is in its sweetspot and is further evidence that the government seems to have taken a dislike to buy-to-let landlords. Last April, buy-to-let landlords were hit with a 3% surcharge on stamp duty which would have left some thinking the sums no longer added up - acting as a deterrent to buy to letters hoovering up properties. Treasury sources tell me that it's not that they have it in for buy-to-let landlords but there have been tax advantages for buy-to-let landlords compared with regular buyers. They want to make sure that owner occupiers are on "a level playing field" when it comes to buying the housing stock that is available now - while we wait for the 300,000 houses a year promised in the next decade. |
An opposition coalition won an overwhelming victory in Venezuela's legislative election on 6 December. For the first time in more than 16 years, it will control Congress. The newly elected lawmakers take up their seats on 5 January. What changes are likely to be brought about by this new National Assembly? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Who is in control? Venezuela has a presidential political system. The president is the head of the executive. The National Assembly is the legislative branch. It consists of just one chamber with 167 members. President Nicolas Maduro was elected in April 2013 to a six-year term. Up until 5 January 2016, his party, the socialist PSUV, had a majority in the National Assembly, allowing him to pass laws smoothly and even allowing him to govern temporarily by executive decree. President Maduro will now face a National Assembly in which the opposition MUD coalition is in the majority. Venezuelan politics have hitherto been highly polarised and the opposition could hold up much of President Maduro's legislation. The likely result is going to be a power struggle between the executive and the legislative. How much power does the National Assembly have? The National Assembly can pass most laws with a simple majority (50% of the lawmakers plus one). Under Venezuela's constitution, the president only has limited powers to veto laws. The president can send laws back to the National Assembly, but the latter can override the veto with an absolute majority (half of those present at the time of the vote plus one). With a three-fifths majority, lawmakers can give the president the power to govern by decree, sack the vice-president and ministers and hire and fire members of the country's National Electoral Council. With a two-thirds majority, the National Assembly can remove judges from the Supreme Court and create a constituent assembly with a view to rewriting the constitution. How strong is the opposition? The opposition MUD coalition won 112 seats in the elections on 6 December. That gives them a two-thirds majority, also called supermajority. However, since the election, the Supreme Court has suspended the inauguration of four lawmakers while it investigates allegations of electoral irregularities. Three of them are members of the MUD opposition coalition, the fourth is a member of President Maduro's PSUV party. Fifty-four pro-government and 109 opposition Assembly members were sworn in at the inaugural ceremony on 5 January. A day later, the opposition defied the Supreme Court order and swore in its three barred lawmakers. The former speaker of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, said he would lodge a complaint with the country's top court. What changes does the opposition want to make? Opposition lawmakers said they would seek the release of dozens of politicians and activists jailed under President Maduro. Mr Maduro said he would veto any amnesty law, setting the scene for the first clash between the executive and the legislative branches. The opposition also said it would demand that the Central Bank release key data such as inflation figures but this move seems to have been thwarted by a last-minute change to the law made by President Maduro a day before his decree powers expired. If it keeps its supermajority, it could replace prosecutors and judges, but this is likely to take time. What about the economy? Venezuela's economy is in dire straits, suffering from skyrocketing inflation, shortages of some basic goods and dwindling revenue from oil. Opposition lawmakers have promised reforms but without access to key economic data, depleted state coffers and an executive with an iron grip on the finances it is hard to see how it can make sweeping changes quickly. One of Venezuela's main problems is its almost exclusive reliance on oil, the price of which has fallen sharply. Diversifying its production would be key to its recovery as global oil prices remain low, however this would not be a speedy endeavour in a country which has focussed almost exclusively on its oil production for decades. The opposition says Venezuela's problems have been further exacerbated by government mismanagement. But replacing personnel in state-run companies such as oil giant PdVSA would take time and likely encounter opposition from the executive. Many Venezuelans said they were prompted to vote for the opposition because of the shortages and endless queues they have to brave to get some basic goods. But lifting price controls, which many people say are to blame for the shortages, could turn poorer Venezuelans against their newly elected lawmakers. A reform of its strict currency controls would also be unlikely to be immediate. Will President Maduro remain in power? President Maduro's term runs until April 2019. However, once he is halfway into his term, from April 2016 onwards, a recall referendum could be held. Four million signatures are needed to trigger it and some opposition members have already threatened to seek such a referendum. President Maduro's predecessor in office, Hugo Chavez, won a recall referendum in 2004, but Mr Maduro's popularity has never been as high as that of his mentor. |
When it comes to Brexit, all negotiations are inter-linked: EU-UK trade talks, the process to implement their divorce deal, negotiations on fishing rights and Brussels' deliberation on UK financial service. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Katya AdlerEurope editor@BBCkatyaadleron Twitter What happens in one area very much affects progress in the others. You cannot separate them entirely. Which is why this week, as the war of words and wills between Brussels and Downing Street raged over the government's threat to throw a grenade at key parts of the divorce deal, everyone's thoughts turned immediately to the trade talks between the two sides. Could they survive? In fact, they limp on. Negotiations are set to resume in Brussels on Monday. This, despite the EU ending the week by threatening Downing Street with legal action unless it rowed back on its threats to the Withdrawal Agreement by the end of the month. The government insists it will not budge. So it is significant that the EU stopped short of threatening to press the nuclear button - shutting down trade talks altogether. Why is that, when we know the EU is furious? First of all, Brussels still wants a deal with the UK, if at all possible, this autumn. Secondly, the sense in Brussels is that the government is trying to provoke the EU into abandoning the trade negotiations. "We're not going to give them that satisfaction," a high-level EU diplomat told me. "We refuse to be manipulated." So, despite bitter arguments over legislation on the one hand, and a huge list of outstanding issues still to be ironed out in bilateral trade talks; despite time and trust running out on both sides; neither the EU nor the UK seem to want to be the first ones to walk out the door. It is still possible, of course, that the government's bill is stopped in the House of Lords or even beforehand by rebel MPs. It is possible for the EU and UK to iron out their differences over the divorce deal and in trade talks. Concessions can always be "dressed-up" to look like victories, after all. It has been done before. Remember last autumn? Finding agreement on the divorce deal seemed nigh on impossible - until it was not and a deal was signed. But, right now that feels like a long shot. The chatter on both sides of the Channel is that "no deal" is becoming more likely by the day. |
It's Parliament, Jim, but not as we know it.... | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Mark D'ArcyParliamentary correspondent Out goes the published Commons agenda and out go the familiar ways of Westminster. When Honourable Members and Noble Lords return to their chambers on Tuesday, for a truncated week, it will be to hybrid Houses allowing participation online as well as by those physically present. And there won't be many physically seated on the red or green benches - a maximum of 50 in either chamber, with rigorous requirement for social distancing. The Commons chamber will have large TV screens placed where the clocks are now sited, above the Speaker's chair and attached to the galleries facing the government and opposition benches, so that remote contributions can be seen by everyone on the benches. There may well be some kind of supermarket-style lines placed on the benches to ensure MPs keep their distance - and the party whips are discouraging their respective flocks from coming in at all. The idea - driven, I'm told, by Mr Speaker Hoyle - is to demonstrate that democracy is still in operation with a Speaker in the chair and ministers and shadow ministers at the dispatch box, so that the familiar scenery of Parliamentary scrutiny is visibly in place. That would allow MPs to raise some of the issues flagged up by the record volumes of casework most are experiencing, and have their constituents see the government response. Microsoft vs Zoom But the result will probably be a rather more scripted and less fluid version of Parliament, with participation in question times more arranged in advance, and less potential for spontaneous interventions by MPs. If all goes well - and there will probably be glitches with the technology and the etiquette of these virtual sittings - expect further tweaks to the rules to allow for legislation to be debated virtually, and, crucially, voted on virtually. In the Lords there will be a similar system, based, bizarrely, on Microsoft Teams rather than Zoom, which MPs will be using to participate from home. There is some puzzlement among peers about why their House is using a different system, and about why the proceedings at question time (likely to be the most interesting bit of a bland-looking agenda) will not be broadcast as normal. Parliament's official record, Hansard, is supposed to be rushing out its accounts of the exchanges within a couple of hours, but that's a poor substitute for live broadcasting of sound and pictures. There is a thought that broadcasting elderly peers perhaps struggling with technology might expose the House to ridicule, but that seems a bit patronising, especially given that the committees and the party groups have been holding virtual meetings with little or no trouble. Peers will be debating two pieces of legislation non-virtually - the Telecoms Infrastructure Leasehold Bill and the Windrush Compensation Scheme Bill. Neither is particularly controversial (although as in the Commons, there may be some action around the question of the Chinese telecom firm Huawei's involvement in building the UK 5G network) and there won't be any votes, because the Lords doesn't oppose government legislation at second reading and because the Windrush Bill is a money bill, and all they can do is rubber-stamp it. Rule changes So what will the Parliamentarians be doing? The Commons agenda for the week, set out before the Easter recess, looks set to be scrapped - with the sittings on Thursday and on Friday (for private members' bills) cancelled altogether. The announcement will be made on Tuesday in a business statement by the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees Mogg, and he will probably cancel a number of other proceedings, including Delegated Legislation Committees. There will be a motion to change the rules of the Commons to allow MPs to participate remotely in question times and statements, and, if agreed, that will kick in on Wednesday. The whips are emphasising that there will be no advantage to be had from coming into the chamber to take part - MPs there will be no more likely to be called than those participating online. And there could be any number of urgent questions on aspects of the coronavirus crisis. Tuesday's scheduled Justice Questions will be postponed. Budget measures The highly controversial Immigration and Social Security Coordination Bill, an important Brexit measure, was due for its second reading debate on Tuesday - but that would certainly have resulted in a contested division at the end of the day, and many MPs would not have been able to participate, so it seems likely to be postponed (perhaps with the thought that, in the era of the pandemic, population movements will be less of an issue for a while). On Wednesday, MPs were due to debate the Finance Bill, which puts the measures in the Budget (remember that?) into law. Under the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act, the tax changes in the Budget can go ahead immediately, so long as the Finance Bill receives a second reading in the Commons within 30 sitting days - so there is plenty of time for that to happen, and the second reading will probably now be on Monday 27 April. Wednesday's main Commons event will be Prime Minister's Questions, but who will be participating? Still recovering from his spell in intensive care, Boris Johnson seems unlikely to be present, so the assumption is that First Secretary Dominic Raab will deputise. In normal times, this would mean that the leader of the opposition, who by Parliamentary tradition does not deign to debate anyone but the PM, would also send a deputy. But this could be Sir Keir Starmer's debut, and I doubt he would be willing to leave the stage to anyone else. This week will set the pattern for the next few weeks in Parliament - which will mostly consist of question times and statements. That is not to downplay their importance, because the issues in play are gigantic, but the expectation is that MPs and peers will mostly be holding government to account, rather than lawmaking, for quite some time. |
A fourth teenager has been charged with murdering a 17-year-old who was chased and stabbed in Nottinghamshire. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The 15-year-old girl is due before Nottingham magistrates later accused of Lyrico Steede's murder. Lyrico died six days after suffering a number of injuries in the attack in Stock Well, Bulwell, in February. Kasharn Campbell, 19, from Bobbers Mill and two 17-year-old boys have already been charged with murder and are due to go on trial in October. A 17-year-old girl has also been charged with assisting an offender |
Sir John Tavener defied doctors' expectations when he resumed composing after a heart attack. Regarded as one of Britain's greatest living composers, he talks about how the possibility of "sudden death at any time" has changed his music, his outlook and his faith. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Ian YoungsArts reporter, BBC News When Sir John Tavener suffered a heart attack in Switzerland in December 2007, he had emergency bypass surgery and spent four months in intensive care. "They didn't know whether my brain had been damaged," he says. "My wife had flown over, and she played me Mozart. And I apparently, in my unconscious state, began conducting. So that brought me round again." The power of music came to Sir John's aid in his hospital bed. That music should connect with something deep within him is perhaps not so far-fetched given his lifelong devotion to harnessing the power of music himself. The composer has achieved a popularity that is rare in the classical world with choral works that are marked out by their pared-down beauty and intense spirituality. Music has always been sacred to Sir John, who converted to the Orthodox church in 1977 and has said that "my way towards God has been to write music". In 1992, The Protecting Veil, for solo cello and strings, topped the classical charts for several months. In 1997, Sir John's Song For Athene was played as the coffin of Princess Diana was carried out of Westminster Abbey during her funeral. And his A New Beginning was chosen to see in the new century at the end of 1999 in the Millennium Dome in London. Now he is premiering three new works, all written after his heart attack, at the Manchester International Festival. "Nobody in the hospital thought I'd get this far," the 69-year-old says. "They didn't think I'd write again." The new works include one based on a "rather terrifying" short story by Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in which the central character seeks redemption as he stares into the void of death. "That was one of the first pieces I wrote after I'd been ill," Sir John says. "And in a way there is a sort of autobiographical slant to it, although I've ritualised it very much. "It's an extraordinary study of physical agony. He's reviewing his miserable life and then attaining a kind of half peace just at the end." Another new work, The Love Duet, is "some of the most ecstatic music that I've ever written", he says, taken from what the composer describes as a pantomime about the life of the Hindu deity Krishna. The third, If Ye Love Me, will be performed by the festival's Sacred Sounds Women's Choir, which draws members from six faiths in the city. "I was very happy to do it because I think actually all religions have reached a stage of maturity, therefore decay, and, up to a point, senility," Sir John says. "Therefore to get back to the basis of them is something very exciting to be able to do." Since the start of the 2000s, Sir John has been open to inspiration from other faiths and has looked beyond his Christian devotion to Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Native American beliefs. "I always go back to what Plato said, that Heaven and Earth were once joined and there was one single primordial being, God," he says. "And one understands from that, that all religions are equally true, or equally false, I suppose you could say, depending on your perspective. "I think there will always be a possibility that God doesn't exist because He is infinitude and into that infinitude must come that possibility." During his most recent illness, he has "had a lot of time to think about what I really feel about these things", Sir John says. "I suppose it's grown me up spiritually." Does the suggestion that God may not exist reflect a crisis of faith? "When I became ill in Switzerland and I became conscious for the first time, the religious zeal that I had before, I found had gone," he replies. "But so had my ability to write music. It was about three years without doing anything, I just wanted to lie in a darkened room. And the faith came back in a different way, with writing. "I think I've been very lucky all my life because the writing and the faith seem to go together." Sir John has suffered ill health for much of his life. He had a stroke in 1979, and in 1990 was diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome, a hereditary condition that can cause heart defects. He had heart surgery the following year. These days, composing is a welcome distraction from constant abdominal pain, he says, although he cannot work for more than two hours a day without becoming exhausted. He claims that, "deep down", he is grateful that his health problems have given him more time to listen to other music and made him a "more sensitive and more caring" person. "I'm much closer to my family than I've ever been," he says. "I give more time to them. I live through them more. And I feel I only want to write if I feel there's something urgent I have to say. "The music's become more condensed, I'd say. More terse. I tended to write works that lasted, like seven hours with The Veil of the Temple [in 2003]. But now I would say nothing I write is over 20 minutes." Despite the physical impediments, is he trying to write as much as he can while he can? "I've always been aware of mortality because I've always had ill health most of my life," he replies. "But I suppose much more now because the cardiologist always says to me, 'Sudden death at any time.' "He's not very cheerful," Sir John adds with a chuckle. "He's a dour Scot. I think he has to cover himself. "Yes, I'm obviously living with that possibility all the time." The concert of Sir John Tavener's music is at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, on 7 July. |
Indonesia, the nation with the world's largest Muslim population, is home to a rapidly growing middle class. As Rebecca Henschke reports from Jakarta, this has given rise to a striking phenomenon - the so-called "Crazy Rich" Indonesians. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The colourful invitation on our cluttered fridge had said it would be a dog-themed birthday party. "That's cute," I thought - and different. Traditionally in this country dogs are not well-liked or looked after. But that wasn't the only surprise. To celebrate their little girl turning six, her family had turned an empty piece of land in Menteng, the most expensive part of Jakarta, into a park for the day. Security guards escorted us off the street into another world. Real grass - an incredibly rare thing in this concrete jungle - had been rolled out. There were also fully grown trees and an obstacle course for dogs. In one corner, a groomer was giving appreciative canines - which had also been specially brought in for the event - massages and baths. In another was an air-conditioned marquee where the parents were sipping freshly made iced coffees - and, later in the day, wine. High alcohol taxes here mean wine is expensive. The middle of the "park" was filled with dog-shaped balloons, a bubble-blowing performer and a slime-making station. That was back in October and I had just got back from reporting the destruction, grief and devastation in Palu, on the island of Sulawesi, which had been hit by a tsunami and earthquake. It made for a bizarre, almost surreal contrast. "Where do you go from here?" I whispered to one of the other parents. "What would an 18th birthday party have to be, if you kept this up?" "It's not what the children ask for, it's really for the parents," she replied. The party bag we left with was three times the size of the present we had brought. I'm not sure why I'm still surprised. Parties like this have become the norm among the upper-class Indonesian children that my kids now go to school with. One family hired a film company to re-edit the Hollywood blockbuster Suicide Squad so that the birthday girl appeared as a character in key scenes. The kids watched it on a cinema-sized screen in the ballroom of a top hotel. On that occasion I had recently returned from a trip to the remote province of Papua, where I was covering a children's health crisis - tiny malnourished toddlers dying in a measles outbreak. When the film Crazy Rich Asians came out here in September, people took to Twitter to tell stories of the "crazy rich Indonesians" they knew, particularly in country's second biggest city, Surabaya. The hashtag #crazyrichsurabayans started trending on social media after a local teacher at an elite school shared anecdotes about the family of one of her students - tales of them travelling to get their vaccinations done in Japan and of holidays in Europe. She is now writing a book about it and there is talk of a movie. Recently, the luxurious lavish wedding of a couple from Surabaya was dubbed the ultimate Crazy Rich Surabayans event by local media. Hundreds of guests from Indonesia and abroad attended, it was reported, and all were said to have been entered into a prize draw for a Jaguar sports car. The groom, it's understood, had proposed with the assistance of a flash mob in front of hundreds of total strangers at the Venetian Macao resort. Many members of Indonesia's growing upper-middle class, concentrated solely in the west of the country, have money their parents would never have dreamed of - and most think it's normal, and perhaps even essential, to show it off. Following a massive reduction in the country's poverty rate in the last two decades, one in every five Indonesians now belongs to the middle class. They're riding a commodities boom - the burning and churning-up of this vast archipelago's rich natural resources, including logging, palm oil, coal, gold and copper. This, combined with aggressive domestic spending, low taxes and little enforcement of labour laws, means that those who know how to play the system are raking it in. Salimun is one of the many who don't understand that system - but has, in a way, also eked out a future for his children that is very different from his own life. He is a street sweeper, paid the minimum wage of £194 ($254) a month to take away the waste of the wealthy houses in Menteng - great plastic mountains in front of Greco-Roman-inspired concrete mansions - piles of rubbish like monuments to out-of-control consumerism. He drags by hand a cart that he banged together from scavenged wood. He is the strongest man I have ever seen. My children call him Superman. He pulls anything that might have value out of the trash, sorts it and stores it at our house - and then sells it on. Salimun lives in a room behind our house - he effectively came with the property. He was squatting there at the time we came to look it over before deciding to rent it, and asked if he could stay. I am glad we decided, after some debate, that he should - he has become like an uncle to my children. He's a farmer at heart who has turned our swimming pool into a fish pond and the garden into a banana plantation. When I cleaned out my wardrobe and left a pair of high-heeled leather boots I didn't wear any more out at the front to give away, I found him wearing them. He had cut off the heels and was very pleased with them. Whatever he earns, he sends home to his family in a village in central Java, going home just once a year to see them. That money from the waste of the rich has meant that his children finished high school and now have jobs in manufacturing, producing goods for the shops in the giant glittery shopping malls of Jakarta. "What's an iPad?" he once asked me. "My son says he really needs one. How does it work?" I talked him out of paying for one, suggesting a cheaper alternative. His daughter came to stay briefly - she seemed very interested in her phone. Salimun might not be crazy rich, but the next generation are already seasoned consumers. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. |
Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, has been described as the most dangerous city in the world. But some people there are trying to bring life back to the place. During her regular visits, BBC World Service Africa editor Mary Harper came to know one of them - an entrepreneur named Mohamed Mahamoud Sheikh. Then she received some bad news. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The last time I saw Mohamed, he gave me flowers. He chose one of the biggest and most colourful bunches from the display in his florist's shop. Next door, machines whirred at a dry cleaners - which also belonged to him. Stopping off to see Mohamed was always one of my favourite things to do when I visited Mogadishu. While the world's media spoke of famine, pirates and suicide bombs, he quietly and determinedly got on with his life, bringing what many would see as entirely normal, mundane services back to his country. He also encouraged others. He set up a community of people involved in start-ups, and became something of an inspirational figure - but always remained modest. Lots of brave new businesses have sprung up, from the young man with a motorbike who has started a food delivery business to the girl who has set herself up as a mechanic. Visiting Mohamed in Mogadishu was not entirely straightforward. As for all my other appointments in the city, I never fixed a precise time. Sometimes I would just show up outside the metal gates of the Somalia Premium Laundry on the busy Maka al-Mukarama road. I always travelled there with heavy security - at least six bodyguards in one vehicle, a couple more in the other. It is best to be unpredictable - people say phone calls are listened in on and that there are informants everywhere. But taking care with information and security is no guarantee of safety. Earlier this month, Mohamed was driving in his car in full daylight in a heavily guarded area, known as Kilometre Five. Two men appeared and shot him. This unassuming but influential young man died later in hospital. So far, his murderers have not been caught. Now Mohamed won't be able to realise the other dreams he told me about - of opening a gym, a playground for children, of growing all the flowers for his shop in the fertile fields of Afgoye, not far from Mogadishu. He dreamed of greening the city and had already brought in flowering trees to plant there. Somali social media was soon awash with comments from people whose lives he had touched. Many were accompanied by the hashtag #WeAreNotSafe. Three days after he died, a rare demonstration was held in Mogadishu. Young people wearing white headbands held up banners emblazoned with phrases like "Stop Killing Youth". They asked how and why people like Mohamed were being killed, and why nobody was being held accountable. Find out more On that very same day, a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the city, killing at least three people. I first heard about Mohamed when a friend called to tell me about someone who'd given up a safe, well-paid job in Dubai to return home and set up the first dry cleaners in Mogadishu for more than two decades. I thought this would make a great story - Somalis like Mohamed, who'd lived in peaceful countries abroad, coming home to rebuild their nation. The dry cleaning element also appealed. Every time I flew out of Mogadishu, politicians and businessmen would board the plane carrying vast piles of dirty suits to be cleaned in neighbouring countries. Once at a summit held in Ethiopia's most luxurious hotel, I was astonished to see Somalia's top politicians marching down the corridors with armloads of freshly dry-cleaned suits. Mohamed had spotted an excellent business opportunity. His murder has thrown up questions about the nature of violence in Somalia. About who is killing who. People often rush to blame the Islamist group al-Shabab which for more than a decade has spread terror in Somalia and beyond. But the jihadists are not the only killers. It could be a politician who doesn't like what you do or say, a business rival… or caused by a property dispute, or plain jealousy. People are quick to reach for their guns in Somalia. I have been stuck in traffic jams where the guard in my car has rolled down the window and fired live bullets into the air, just to get the other vehicles moving. Mohamed was not the only rising young star to have his life cruelly cut short. Abbas Abdullahi grew up in a refugee camp and was named a government minister last year. He was shot dead accidentally by the then-auditor general's bodyguards. Young journalists are murdered on a regular basis. It seems strange that, with all the billions spent on security in Somalia, the presence of tens of thousands of African Union troops, US drones and special forces, there is little protection for people like Mohamed. I keep catching myself thinking about him - about our friendship, his welcoming gap-toothed smile and his unswerving commitment to making life better. I wonder about his businesses. Are they standing empty now, the dry cleaning machines quiet and still, the flowers wilting? Is anybody watering the pots of plants he tended so carefully and sold to people trying to bring a bit of brightness into the homes and businesses they are rebuilding in Mogadishu? Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. |
US comedian Joan Rivers has died at the age of 81. Throughout her career, she was renowned for her many acid-tongued pearls of wit which took swipes at other celebrities but also turned inwardly, mocking her own later penchant for plastic surgery. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
She once said: "Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century." Here is a selection of her best one-liners. ON PLASTIC SURGERY "I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery." "I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware." "I am definitely going to watch the Emmys this year! My make-up team is nominated for Best Special Effects." "Looking 50 is great - if you're 60." "The only way I can get a man to touch me at this age is plastic surgery." ON GETTING OLDER "You know why I feel older? I went to buy sexy underwear and they automatically gift wrapped it." "I said to my husband, 'my boobs have gone, my stomach's gone, say something nice about my legs'. He said, "Blue goes with everything." "When a man has a birthday, he takes a day off. When a woman has a birthday, she takes at least three years off." "You know you've reached middle age when you're cautioned to slow down by your doctor, instead of by the police." "I must admit I'm nervous about getting Alzheimer's. Once it hits, I might tell my best joke and never know it." "The fashion magazines are suggesting that women wear clothes that are 'age appropriate'. For me that would be a shroud." ON OTHER CELEBRITIES "Elizabeth Taylor was so fat that whenever she went to London in a red dress, 30 passengers would try to board her." "At my funeral, I want Meryl Streep crying in five different accents." ON RELATIONSHIPS "I said to my husband, 'Why don't you call out my name when we're making love?'. He said, "I don't want to wake you up." "I got a waterbed, but my husband stocked it with trout." "My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on." "My husband killed himself. And it was my fault. We were making love and I took the bag off my head." "Trust your husband, adore your husband, and get as much as you can in your own name." "My daughter and I are very close, we speak every single day and I call her every day and I say the same thing: 'Pick up, I know you're there.'" "When I was born, my mother asked the doctor: 'Will she live?'. He said, 'Only if you take your foot off her throat'." |
Until recently, a small, politically neutral Syrian radio station was broadcasting in exile from Istanbul, but then, last year, the US administration withdrew funding for Syrian stabilisation projects. Radio Alwan is now off air, and - as Emma Jane Kirby discovered - its journalists no longer feel welcome in Turkey. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
It's when Rahaf, Radio Alwan's former social media reporter tells me that she's abandoned her dream of motherhood that I begin to understand. We're sitting in my minimalist-chic Istanbul hotel room - with dusk falling and the desk light spilling a wan, sickly light on our faces, the room feels sparse and sterile. Thirty-five-year old Rahaf and her husband have always imagined having a son together. They even talked about names, she says, smiling shyly. But when you don't belong anywhere, when you might be kicked out of one country at a moment's notice and sent back to another that's completely broken and wild, and where you cannot guarantee a child's safety... well, you have to ask yourself, is it really fair to insist on realising your dream? She swallows and smiles at me bravely. "So," she says, "I have decided I must not become a mother." It's been seven years since most of the Radio Alwan team left Syria. Seven years since they last closed the door of that house or that flat which they had always unthinkingly called "home". Now that word has floated free of its meaning - has blurred, been scrambled into some unfathomable code. Just as Radio Alwan has vanished from the airwaves, so the word "home" has disappeared from its former employees' lexicon. "When you ask me do I miss home," asks Sami, Radio Alwan's former manager gently, pulling on his black beard. "What do you mean by 'home'?" Sami and Rahaf were at university together in Damascus. When they speak of those days, their language becomes romantic, poetic, as they talk faster and faster about the architecture, the smells, the sounds, the vibrant soul of their homeland. But when they recently revisited their former town, they no longer recognised it. It was blackened by hatred, says Sami, by militias, by murder. "You see, home," he explains tentatively, as if tasting the strange word, "a place you call home has to feel safe. And I don't feel safe in Syria." Sami no longer feels at home in Turkey either. Earlier reports on Radio Alwan: The hard-hitting soap for a country at war (April 2016) The radio station giving hope to listeners in Syria (December 2016) The radio station that wishes it could bring back laughter (September 2018) If the recent Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria has complicated an already chaotic war, it's also made things much more difficult for Syrian asylum seekers, like the Radio Alwan journalists. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rhetoric has recently become more abrasive. Sami argues this is legitimising what he believes is an ugly racism in parts of Turkish society. On his way to meet me this evening, Sami was stopped by transport police on the metro who checked his papers. When they saw he was Syrian, the officer told him ominously, "Syria? Syria's dead." Sami makes a point of no longer speaking Arabic in public places and only sends texts in English. Like all the Alwan team, he has a Turkish tourist visa which has to be renewed annually and which could be revoked at any time. Sometimes he dreams of getting asylum in Canada. "Or settlement status anywhere in the world that's safe," he muses. "Somewhere I am not seen as a disease but as a human being. Maybe then I'll have a new understanding of the word 'home'." Mariam listens curled up in her chair like a child but her face is contorted with suppressed emotions. She's learned not to give way to her feelings, she explains, because it's wiser these days, as a Syrian refugee in Erdogan's Turkey, to keep one's "tracks light" - to put up a neutral facade. Likewise, she reminds me, when she was Radio Alwan's youth programmes presenter she always used a pseudonym to broadcast - because you never knew who was listening back in Syria either. She curls up smaller in her chair, as if to minimise her presence, as if to make her imprint on life imperceptible. Then suddenly she springs up like a cat. "Yeah, I'm frightened here," she agrees. "But if things get really tight, I'll just pick up my stuff and go - I won't wait for them to kick me out." I recognise her feisty spirit as pure Radio Alwan. How Radio Alwan began And that's when Sami shows us the photograph on his phone - it's of the station's former engineer, who is defiantly building a tiny radio station in his own sitting room, in the hope of resurrecting Radio Alwan - albeit a much reduced service - from the ashes of silence. "I'm in!" shouts Rahaf. "Me too!" yells Mariam. They both look at Sami expectantly. "If it happens, of course I'm in," he grins. "I so miss the listeners," Mariam tells me wistfully, studying the picture on Sami's phone. "I got so attached to them. You know every day they'd hear my voice - every day we talked." Sami is nodding. "They weren't just listeners," he says. "They were, well, family." And then it clicks why Radio Alwan matters quite so much to its former staff. The station wasn't just about providing listeners in war-torn Syria with innovative dramas, debate and distraction - it was about offering them refuge, comfort, familiarity. Equally, when listeners selected the Radio Alwan frequency, they were opening their door to the Alwan exiles, inviting them in, saying, "You're welcome here." And in these fractured, brutal times of war, perhaps that counts at least as some sort of home. Listen to Emma Jane Kirby's report from Istanbul on From Our Own Correspondent, on Radio 4, on 28 December |
A Bengal tiger growls menacingly as it prowls the rehearsal room. A zebra, hyena and orangutan are also on the loose. And a 16-year-old boy is doing his best to stay out of the way of them all. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Ian YoungsEntertainment & arts reporter The tiger is about to pounce, but the despairing boy distracts it by catching a rat and throwing it in the predator's direction. He's safe. For now. There's no particular panic among the other couple of dozen people in the room, though. Well, only the low-level panic you get when you're turning one of the best-loved and best-selling novels of the past two decades into a major play, and opening night is approaching. The tiger growls again. The boy throws the rat again. And again. The novel is Yann Martel's Life of Pi, which tells the story of an Indian boy who is stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It won the Booker Prize in 2002 and has sold more than 15 million copies. For the rehearsals, one floor of an empty department store in the middle of Sheffield is doubling as the Pacific Ocean - there isn't enough space in the usual rehearsal room at the city's Crucible theatre, where the show is being staged. The animals are puppets, but even though the tiger needs three people to operate it, it still appears disconcertingly realistic, especially when it is growling in your direction. Life of Pi is an enchanting book about survival and religion and what is real and what's not. But for a long stretch, it is just a boy and a tiger. In a lifeboat. At sea. When it was adapted for a film by director Ang Lee in 2012, people wondered how it would work. But Hollywood has the benefit of CGI wizardry, and it ended up winning four Oscars, including best director and visual effects. So how on earth will it work in a theatre? "Loads of people said to me, 'Oh, my God, how are you going to do that?'" says writer Lolita Chakrabarti, who has adapted the book for the stage. "I was like, 'It's just theatre!' And as it's gone on, and I've seen what an enormous story it is, and how theatrically challenging it is, I've got more and more daunted." Martel says he has been more involved in this theatre version than he was in the film. "If anything, I think theatre will work better telling the story than the cinema," he argues. "The problem with cinema is special effects are so developed that they can imitate any kind of invented reality they want, and we're used to it now. "Now you have stupendous special effects that cost thousands of millions of dollars, and we just sort of shrug it off. What's wonderful about theatre is that the artifice is so visible. You can see obviously it's a puppet. It's a dorky puppet. But it moves so naturally." People are asked to use their imaginations and so buy into the magic of a tiger coming to life on stage, he says. "Whereas in the movies, you realise it's just a whole bunch of computers and it seems sweatless and artificial, and you don't buy into it emotionally." The animals, fashioned from a lightweight, super-strong foam, are being overseen by puppetry director Finn Caldwell, who was in the original War Horse cast and has helped pioneer the use of puppets on stage. Life of Pi is full of "sort-of-impossible staging challenges", he says. Some of the actors operating the animals have had lots of experience with puppets, while others have had none. In preparation, they studied videos and read about how tigers, hyenas, zebras and orangutans act, and have tried to imagine what might happen when they get together in a confined space. "That level of puppetry choreography is further than I think I've ever done," Caldwell says. As well as the puppets, the show will use state-of-the-art projections on the stage and backdrop to conjure up an entire Indian zoo, and then swiftly summon up the vast, mighty Pacific. "Sometimes big physical theatre shows are about the tricks themselves, or showing off about spectacle and images, which can be amazing and beautiful," says director Max Webster. "But this is very much taking all these theatrical techniques to serve a great human, serious, emotional story. It's not just about a magic zebra - it's got a big human point to it." To help bring the human story to life, Chakrabarti has decided to make 16-year-old Pi, played by Hiran Abeysekera, see visions of his family and other characters as he is helplessly swept across the sea with only the tiger for company. "If you go through a terrible time in any walk of life, the things that get you through are what you've been taught, and the echoes of people in your life," the playwright says. "So ghosts - elements of people that taught him things and who were significant to him - appear in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and he has a conversation with them, and they help him solve how to eat, how to find water, how to kill a turtle and eat it." This is the first major stage version of Life of Pi, although it has been attempted once before, by now-defunct theatre-in-education company Twisting Yarn, in Bradford in 2004. "Just before we signed on with Hollywood, they snuck in," Martel says. "In fact, there had to be huge negotiations between the Goliaths of Hollywood and these little Davids in Bradford to negotiate to allow it, because I'd already committed to them before we'd signed the contract with Hollywood. And Hollywood, when they buy film rights, they get 'all rights in the Universe'. That's the actual language they use." Twisting Yarn had a tiny budget for their version. "And yet simple stories, reliance on words, great acting and very simple effects - it was very powerful," Martel adds. "So I did have a glimmer of what theatre can do." Life of Pi is at Sheffield Crucible until 20 July. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. |
A 32-year-old man has been arrested after having to be rescued when his car went into the River Clyde at Port Glasgow. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Emergency services were called to the scene at Newark Castle at about 23:40 on Saturday. It is believed they found the man sitting on the roof of his car several metres out into the water. After being rescued he was taken to Inverclyde Royal Infirmary for treatment before being released. Police Scotland said a 32-year-old man had been charged in connection with the incident and a report would be sent to the procurator fiscal. Ch Inspector Graeme Gallie said: "We are currently working with the coastguard to the retrieve the vehicle." |
India's central bank will have to destroy, by one estimate, some 20 billion "expired" banknotes after it scrapped two high-value denominations - the 500 ($7.60) and 1,000 rupee notes - this month to crack down on "black money" or illegal cash holdings. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Soutik BiswasIndia correspondent To give some idea of the amount of the currency that represents - there were more than 90 billion banknotes in circulation in India last March. Most central banks destroy soiled and mutilated banknotes on a regular basis and replace them with new, crisp ones. The Reserve Bank of India, similarly, shreds such notes and makes briquettes of them. But they are not your usual briquettes. Briquettes - usually made of farm waste in India - are used for cooking, lighting and heating. They are cheaper than coal, have lower ash content, are less polluting, and easier to store and pack. They are mostly used as fuel in factory boilers. But briquettes made out of shredded cash are brittle and serve no such purpose, a senior central bank official told me. So the bank's 27 shredding and briquetting machines in 19 offices across India will now snip the expired banknotes into the smallest of pieces and the resulting briquettes will be then dumped in India's vast landfills. Sometimes the shredded currency is also recycled to make files, calendars and paper weights and ballpoint pen shells, tea coasters, cups and small trays as souvenirs for guests. The practice is similar in the US: counterfeit banknotes are sent to the Secret Service, while unfit notes are shredded and sent to landfills or given away as souvenirs to the public touring the Federal Reserve Bank. Central bank officials believe shredding 20 billion banknotes will not be a huge challenge. In 2015-16 the Reserve Bank of India destroyed more than 16 billion soiled notes. More than 14 billion were removed in 2012-2013 after nearly 500,000 fake notes were found in the system. "Destroying so much cash is not a challenge because we have enough shredding and briquetting machines with very high capacities. These are automatic machines which shred the cash into the finest of pieces," says an official. So, India's mountain of expired currency will soon become rubbish, literally. Cash in India |
Pop star Lily Allen has become the latest London celebrity to buy a home in Gloucestershire. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The 25-year-old singer, who was educated in Somerset at Millfield School, has paid £3m for a house in the Cotswolds. Ms Allen's move will bring her close to her actor father Keith Allen's home at Minchinhampton. She will live in a six-bedroom property in an area of outstanding natural beauty and boasting a croquet lawn. |
A man has been charged with two counts of kidnap and four counts of assault against women in Gloucestershire. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Police said the alleged offences happened between July and October and included an incident in which a woman was allegedly hit with a hammer. The force said the man, from Gloucester, had also been charged with two counts of attempted kidnap and possession of an offensive weapon. He was remanded in custody to appear at Gloucester Crown Court on 7 November. |
Billie Eilish was the big winner at the 2020 Grammys, winning all four of the ceremony's main prizes. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Mark SavageBBC music reporter The 18-year-old was modest in victory, declaring, "so many other songs deserved this," as she picked up song of the year for Bad Guy. Accepting the award for best new artist, Eilish also gave her fans the credit for her success. "They have not been talked about enough tonight [but] they're the only reason any of us are here," she reasoned. The star's sombre performance of the ballad When The Party's Over was one of the night's highlights, but there were several stand-out performances and speeches over the three-and-a-half-hour show. Here's a selection of the most emotional, breath-taking and funny moments. Demi Lovato's emotional return When Demi Lovato took to the stage, it was already a moment loaded with emotional significance. This was to be her first performance since 2018, when she was rushed to hospital after a suspected overdose. The moment almost got the better of her. She faltered as she began to sing, and asked her pianist to start over, a single tear running down her cheek. But the 27-year-old rallied round and delivered an astonishingly raw and powerful vocal, as she premiered her new song, Anyone. Lovato has described the ballad as a "cry for help," written days before she was hospitalised. "I feel stupid when I sing," she cried in the chorus. "Nobody's listening to me." We were listening, Demi. Welcome back, and God speed. Diddy said the Grammys were 'killing' hip-hop In one of the night's best jokes, Alicia Keys took aim at the multitudinous sobriquets of Sean "Puff Daddy / P Diddy" Combs, who was honoured with a lifetime achievement award ahead of the main show. "If I was to list all his accomplishments or just his names, we'd be here all night," said the host. But Combs, or Diddy to his friends, was one of the only artists to address the scandal enveloping the Grammys, after claims the voting process was compromised. "Truth be told, hip-hop has never been respected by the Grammys," Diddy said, accepting his prize at Saturday's pre-Grammy gala. "Every year, y'all be killing us, man." "This current situation is not a revelation - it's been going on around the world, and for years we've allowed institutions that have never had our interests at heart to judge us. And that stops right now. I'm officially starting a clock. Y'all got 365 days to get this [expletive] together." Nick Jonas got something caught in his teeth The Jonas Brothers rocked the stage near the start of the show, playing one new song (tentatively titled Five More Minutes) and their current single What A Man Gotta Do. But fans were distracted by something about Nick Jonas's appearance. "Is it me, or did someone not tell Nick Jonas he had something stuck in his tooth?" one person tweeted. "Nick Jonas with spinach in his teeth is my favourite part of the whole show" added another. But the singer took it all in his stride, tweeting after the performance: "At least you all know I eat my greens." Camila Cabello made her dad cry Señorita, Camila's duet with Shawn Mendes, was one of 2019's biggest-selling singles - but she chose to perform an album track, First Man, instead. A simple, stripped-back piano ballad, the track depicts the moment a father walks his little girl down the aisle, while she whispers: "You don't even know how much it means to me now / That you were the first man that really loved me." As she sang, the cameras cut to Alejandro Cabello in the front row, wiping away tears. By the end of the song, the father and daughter were in each other's arms, having a big old hug. I'm not crying, I'm just chopping onions for a lasagne. BTS made Grammys history Lil Nas X's cameo-studded performance of Old Town Road was pretty hard to follow; but for 45 glorious seconds, he popped into sync with 14-legged pop phenomenon BTS. The boy band are the first Korean artists to perform at the Grammys - and with a new album on the way, they could be the first K-pop band to receive a nomination next year. Map Of The Soul: 7 is due out next month. On the red carpet, the band promised fans it would blow their socks off. "Whatever you're expecting, it's going to be better and harder," said RM. "You will know when you hear the album," added J-Hope, "that liking BTS is the best decision ever". Tyler, The Creator set the stage on fire (literally) Tyler, The Creator won best rap album for Igor, a visceral, vulnerable story of a doomed love triangle. But he also gave one of the all-time greatest Grammy performances, with a medley that captured the album's mix of romantic entanglement (Earfquake, assisted by Charlie Wilson and Boyz II Men) and its devastating, messy fall-out (New Magic Wand). The latter half was incredible to watch, with Tyler screaming into a microphone, surrounded by two-dozen clones in Andy Warhol wigs and bright pink suits on a fake suburban street. When they stomped across the stage, the cameras shook and fell over, the houses caught fire and a huge crater opened up in the road. As the music ended, Tyler fell backwards into the pit, taking everyone's breath away as he left. Finneas gave hope to aspiring musicians everywhere Billie Eilish's brother, Finneas O'Connell, was named producer of the year for his work on her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? The 22-year-old said the record had been made exclusively in "hotel rooms and our parents' house" because "I'm the most creative where I'm most comfortable." "It's a huge honour to be given a Grammy for making, you know, home-made cookies," he added. When Eilish won best song for her smash hit Bad Guy, O'Connell held the trophy aloft and declared: "This is to all of the kids who are making music in their bedroom today. You're going to get one of these." Keith Urban had to make a swift exit The country star was there to present the first award of the night, best pop solo performance, to Lizzo. But he ducked out the back door and raced home afterwards to look after his wife, Nicole Kidman. "My wife is home with the flu," Urban told People magazine. "A lot of that going around." "She's home with our girls tonight and I'm heading home ASAP," he added, assuring reporters that Kidman was "in good hands" with nine-year-old Faith and her 11-year-old sister, Sunday. Alicia Keys repurposed Lewis Capaldi's Someone You Loved Returning for her second year as host, Alicia Keys' musicality and generosity of spirit held the sprawling show together. An early highlight was her cover of Lewis Capaldi's Someone You Loved, which she turned into a meta-commentary on the year in music and the Grammys itself. "Rosalía's hot, Beyoncé took us all on safari / We obsessed by BTS, H.E.R, and Lewis Capaldi," she sang, breaking off to ask Capaldi if he was ok with her repurposing his song. He responded with an enthusiastic thumbs-up. After suggesting Cardi B should replace President Trump in the second verse, she she issued a friendly warning to the winners. "It's the Grammys / 10,000 hours long," she observed, not incorrectly. "So keep the speeches short / And go for one more song." Capaldi's original version, a number one on both sides of the Atlantic, was up for song of the year, but lost to Billie Eilish's Bad Guy. Lizzo gave a motivational speech Lizzo won the first prize of the televised ceremony - best pop vocal solo performance for her breakout hit, Truth Hurts. The star, who'd already opened the show by paying tribute to Kobe Bryant, seemed to reference his death in her speech. "This whole week I've been lost in my problems, stressed out," she said. "And today, all of my little problems, that I thought were as big as the world, were gone and I realised there were people hurting right now." Turning to the audience, she made a powerful statement about music's healing powers. "You guys create beautiful music, you guys create connectivity. And, as I'm speaking to all of y'all in this room, we need to continue to reach out. "This is the beginning of making music that moves people again, making music that feels good, that liberates people." "If I hadn't have reached out" to other musicians, she added, "I don't know where I would be right now. "Probably sleeping in my car." But not everything was brilliant... Overall, it was a good night for the Grammys - but, good grief, parts of the show were a total shambles. Let's start with Aerosmith's much-vaunted duet with Run-DMC; which fell to pieces faster than the fake polystyrene wall they kicked down at the start of the performance. Joe Perry's guitar was excruciatingly out of tune, Steven Tyler had apparently swallowed a jackdaw, and Run-DMC seemed to be struggling to find the beat. All we can say is it must have sounded better live, judging by the enthusiastic reaction it got from Flavor Flav and Lizzo. Less abhorrent, but still oddly flat, was Usher's tribute to Prince; which featured precisely zero per cent of the late star's incendiary magnetism. To make it worse, they roped in FKA Twigs, one of pop's most intriguing and versatile performers, and reduced her to a pole dancer. So much for the Grammys' progressive attitude to women. After the ceremony, the singer tweeted: "Of course I wanted to sing at the Grammys. I wasn't asked this time but hopefully in the future. Nonetheless, what an honour. Congratulations to all winners." And finally... Sharon Osborne trying to read out the rap nominees We don't know whose decision it was to get Sharon and Ozzy to read out the nominees for best rap / sung performance, but we hope they get a bonus. The couple got a rapturous reception from fans who were delighted to see Ozzy on stage, so soon after revealing his Parkinson's diagnosis, But Sharon soon had the crowd in stitches, as she theatrically recited a list of artists she'd clearly never heard of before. As well as butchering names like Lil Baby and Young Thug, she took particular relish in lingering over song titles like "Ballin'" and "Drip Too Hard". Viewers were enthralled. We're siding with Billboard magazine's Jason Lipshutz, who insisted: "Give Sharon Osbourne an hour-long television show where she just happily reads rap song titles." Or, at the very least, book her to do the voice-over at next year's Grammys. See you then. Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. |
Millions of women rely on the contraceptive pill and many are happy with it - but some find it has a devastating effect on their mental health. Here Vicky Spratt, deputy editor of The Debrief, describes years of depression, anxiety and panic as she tried one version of the pill after another. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
I sat in the GP's office with my mum and told her that I'd been having my period for three weeks. She told me that the contraceptive pill might help. She warned that it wouldn't protect me from sexually transmitted infections and told me that if I had unprotected sex I could get cervical cancer, so I'd best use it wisely. She had to say that, though I was 14 and sex was very much not on the agenda. My prescription was printed in reception. And then, a three-month supply of the combined pill was mine. Picking up the green foil-covered packets full of tiny yellow pills felt like a rite of passage - I was a woman now. In the plastic pockets was the sugar-coated distillation of feminism, of women's liberation, of medical innovation. This is where it all began, 14 years ago. I then played what I call pill roulette for more than a decade, trying different brands with varying degrees of success and disaster. It was around this time that I also developed anxiety, depression and serious mood swings which, on and off, have affected me throughout my adult life. Relationships have ended and I had to take a year out from university - I thought that was just "who I was", a person ill-equipped for life, lacking self-confidence and unhappy. It wouldn't be until my early 20s, after graduating from university - when my mental health problems and behaviour could no longer be dismissed as those of a "moody teenager" - that I would seriously question whether it was linked to my use of the pill. Pill varieties One day in the early hours, sitting at my laptop, unable to sleep because of a panic attack which had lasted overnight, I began to Google. I had started taking a new pill, a progestogen-only pill (POP) which had been prescribed because I was suffering from migraines, and the combined pill is not safe for people who suffer from migraines with aura. I tapped the name of the pill + depression/anxiety into the search engine and the internet did the rest. There it was: forum threads and blog posts from people who were experiencing the same symptoms as me. At this point I had already seen my GP several times, following the sudden onset of debilitating panic attacks, which I had never experienced before. At no point had my contraceptive pill come up in conversation, despite the fact that the attacks had started when I switched to the new contraceptive. Instead, I was prescribed a high dose of beta blockers, used to treat anxiety, and it was recommended that I should undergo cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). I lived like this for somewhere between six and eight months - I can't tell you exactly because that year of my life is a blur, recorded by my mind in fast-forward because of the constant sense of urgency and impending doom that coursed through my veins. Find out more The Debrief carried out an investigation, surveying 1,022 readers, aged 18-30 The Debrief's investigation in full I wish, wholeheartedly, that I could look back on this and laugh. That's how all good stories end, isn't it? But there was then, and is now, nothing funny about what I went through. It was terrifying. I was scared. I didn't recognise myself, I didn't like myself and I couldn't live my life. I didn't know what to do, who to turn to or whether it would ever end. I was not only anxious but lethargic, I felt completely useless. I blamed myself. At the time, convinced that I had lost my mind and feeling as though I was having an out-of-body experience, I explained to my GP that "I felt like someone else", as though my brain "had gone off and gone mouldy". "Do you think this could have anything to do with my new pill?" I asked. I remember the look on her face, an attempt to look blank which barely concealed a desire to tell me I was ridiculous. I explained to her that I had felt awful on every single one of the six or seven pills I'd taken up until that point, with the exception of one high-oestrogen combined pill which made me feel like superwoman for a year, before it was taken away from me (partly because of the migraines and partly because of an increased risk of thrombosis with continued use). She told me, categorically, that my new pill was not the problem. But, disobeying both her and my therapist, I stopped taking the progestogen-only pill. I can only describe what happened next as the gradual and creeping return of my sense of self. After three or four weeks I also stopped taking the beta blockers. To this day, I still carry them with me. They're in every handbag I own, a safety net should I fall off the enormous cliff of my own mind again. In three-and-a-half years I have never had to take them. My problems didn't disappear overnight, of course, but I did stop having panic attacks. I haven't had one since. I feel low from time to time, anxious and stressed but it's nowhere near on the same scale as what I experienced while taking the progestogen-only pill. I felt joy again, my libido returned and I stopped feeling terrified of absolutely everything and everyone. A year after the panic attacks subsided I sat on a faraway beach, after taking a solo long-haul flight halfway round the world. This would have been unthinkable the previous year. As I sat there, underneath a tropical electrical storm, I cried with relief. Relief that I was myself again, relief that I had control of my own mind once more and relief that I hadn't been wrong, that I knew myself better than doctors had made me feel I did. Now 28, I no longer use hormonal contraception and with the exception of mild mood swings in the 48 hours before my period I am, touch wood, free of anxiety, depression and panic attacks. In the years that have passed since I lost myself on the progestogen-only pill and found myself again on a South Asian beach, this issue has been gradually receiving more and more attention. Holly Grigg Spall's book, Sweetening The Pill, published in 2013, put the effects of hormonal contraception on women's mental health firmly on the agenda. Since then a study, overseen by Prof Ojvind Lidegaard at the University of Copenhagen, found that women taking the pill - either the combined pill or the progestogen-only pill - were more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant than those not on hormonal contraception. The difference was particularly noticeable for young women aged between 15 and 19 on the combined pill. Lidegaard was able to conduct this research because he had access to medical records for more than a million Danish women aged 15-34. Following the publication of Prof Lidegaard's study I sent a freedom of information request to the NHS, in my capacity as a journalist at The Debrief. I knew, from the number of our readers who write to us on a near-daily basis about this issue, that significant numbers of women were suffering. I asked the NHS whether they knew how many women were taking antidepressants or beta blockers concurrently. They told me that their systems do not yet allow them to collect this data. The pill and depression Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, says: "There is an established link between hormones and mood, both positive and negative, but for the vast majority of women, the benefits of reliable contraception and regulation of their menstrual cycle outweigh any side effects, and many women report that taking hormones actually boosts their mood. "If a woman believes her contraception might be adversely affecting her mood, she should discuss it with a healthcare professional at her next routine appointment." See also: How risky is the contraceptive pill? Depression is listed as a known but rare side effect of the hormonal contraceptive pill, it's there in the small but hefty leaflet you get in the packet. The NHS website lists "mood swings" and "mood changes" but not explicitly depression, anxiety or panic attacks. We shouldn't throw our pill packets away but neither should we accept negative side effects which impinge on our day-to-day lives. We can't make informed choices without information. We need better research into how hormonal contraception can affect women's mental health, better ways of monitoring reactions in patients, more awareness and support for those who do experience serious side effects. No woman should feel dismissed or ignored. Vicky Spratt is deputy editor of The Debrief, a website for women in their 20s. Its investigation, Mad About The Pill, launched on Wednesday. Listen to the discussion on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. |
Over the last two years, Joy Crookes has released enough music to fill a (decidedly accomplished) debut album. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Mark SavageBBC music reporter Those early EPs and one-off singles show a nuanced and individual ear for melody, while her "mad honest" lyrics depict love lost and found on the rainy streets of south-east London. They've earned her fourth place on the BBC Sound of 2020 list, which tips acts for success in the next 12 months. But if the attention is welcome, Crookes isn't sure she's enjoying it. "What does it feel like? Anxiety central is what it feels like!" laughs the singer. "I could give you the pretty answer but, honestly, it feels like when you go to Winter Wonderland and you get on that huge tower that rises up above Hyde Park then - whomp - it drops and your stomach rises to your eyeballs. "It's half an incredible feeling because there's so much adrenalin, but the other half is like, 'I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die!'" The 21-year-old, who is of Bangladeshi-Irish descent, first came to attention when she posted a cover of Hit The Road Jack to YouTube as a teenager. Since then, she's developed a sound that combines the eclectic range of music her father played as he drove her to her weekly Irish dancing lessons. "My dad wanted to give me a real education, from Nick Cave to King Tubby to all this Pakistani music," she says. "He'd say, 'This is from your ends of the world, you should hear this.'" To celebrate her position on the Sound of 2020 list, Crookes took a break from recording her actual debut album to chat about her rise to fame, impersonating Liberty X, hustling her school-friends, and the pressure to succeed. Joy Crookes was chosen for the BBC Sound of 2020 list by a panel of 170 music critics, broadcasters, festival bookers and previous nominees - including Lewis Capaldi, Chvrches and Billie Eilish. The top five were. 1.Celeste 2.Easy Life 3.Yungblud 4.Joy Crookes 5.Inhaler What's your first memory? When I was three or four I went into my mum's room and put on her knee-high boots, then I summoned my family like, 'Mum! Dad! Assemble!' They sat on the sofa, and I walked in and performed Just A Little by Liberty X. We had it on VHS and I stood in front of the TV doing the moves. Amazing song choice. Maybe not for a three year old! I remember the night before, I got my mum to cut a hole in my black vest because the girls in the video had leather PVC suits with holes where their cleavage would be. I mean, I didn't have cleavage at three or four, but I wanted to look like them. So your first memory is a musical one? Yeah, it's so vivid in my mind. I was so, so concentrated on that performance. I hadn't even practiced it, I was just like, "This is my time to shine!" I heard you were quite an entrepreneur as a child, too... Where did you find that out?! But, yeah, when I was about nine, I worked out it would cost me £80 to get everyone in my family Christmas presents. So I went to Poundland in Elephant and Castle, and you could buy a box of 10 candy canes for £1. I worked out that if I sold each of them for £1, I could make 900% profit. I also had a side hustle selling clothes, because that £80 needed to come quick. If someone said, "That top looks great on you", I'd say, "I'll give it to you for a fiver". When my mates came round to our house, little did they know, it wasn't playtime, it was selling time! If music doesn't work out, you can always apply for the Apprentice. I probably will! You grew up listening to music - but was there a point where you thought, "This is something I can do for a career?" I never had that epiphany because I never thought music was a legitimate job. I thought that pop stars were pop stars and that's who they were. I almost didn't see them as human beings until Kate Nash came about. She made me realise I could use music as a diary. I was going through a lot at home and I didn't have anyone to talk to, so I just used my guitar. But I didn't really think, "Oh, I'm a musician now". How did you learn to play? With piano, I learnt a couple of chords at school, then I taught myself the songs from the film Once by looking up the chords on YouTube. With guitar it was the same: I learnt two chords from a family friend, then I went home and learned a lot of Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber songs because, no offence, I thought they'd be easy. I used to have a cupboard that had a mirror on it, so I'd sit down and watch myself playing guitar. That's really good when you're learning, because you can watch where your hands are going. So that was my mentality, and then I started writing after that. What happened next? My mum's friend had a son who was my age who played the most incredible Brazilian guitar. I loved Astrud Gilberto, so I asked him round to mine and I said, "Do you know this song Hit The Road Jack? I think we should cover it". So we recorded it on iMovie, put it on YouTube and it got 500,000 views - which was mad. Things really exploded in 2017 when you played Mother May I Sleep With Danger on the YouTube channel Colors. The video's now been watched 8 million times. Did it change your career? That song was never meant to be a single. I wrote it on my own, at the piano, on the first of January 2017. But the Colors performance made more sense than the record, because I'd been playing the song on tour. When you tour a song you get to know it - you stay over at its house, you meet its mum, you get to know the sibling it doesn't like. So by the time we did Colors, it was a walk in the park. That performance was our third take and I remember I pretended my mum was right there and I was singing it to her. The video really changed everything. For about six months after that, everywhere I went people would say, "Are you Joy from Colors?" You thought music wasn't a viable career, so did that video force you to rewrite the story in your head? It definitely started kicking in there. We'd gone to Germany [to make the video] and I was like, 'What do you mean I'm flying to Berlin for work, to sing songs?' But even after that, I went for a job interview as a waitress at a Kurdish restaurant. Did you get the job? No! As soon as I went for the interview, I regretted it. The manager was looking at me like, "What do you mean, you can't work on most days?" Several of your songs, like For A Minute and London Mine, are love letters to London. Why does it inspire you so much? The beauty of London is that it wouldn't be London without all the immigration, and the mix of cultures and colours and the smells and the stories it contains. I grew up on a street where my neighbours are Bajan and the neighbours after that are Bengali and the neighbours after that are from Nigeria. I learned so many mannerisms and different forms of respect and stories and myths and legends from all these places. I wouldn't be the person I am without London. It inspires me to be a certain kind of woman, and a certain kind of person. American musicians often eulogise their hometowns, but it's not so common in the UK. Why is that? I love my area, and London as a whole, so I think I should sing about it and celebrate it. But when I write about London, it's also a response to the austerity of the last 10 years. For A Minute is about growing up in an area that may not be rich or vibrant, but making the most out of things like having £2 to go to the chicken shop after school. There's a lyric, "eating sunshine every day", that's a comment on poverty. Then I also talk about "creamy legs in London air" because when I was growing up all the girls from secondary school, who are mainly black and brown, would have the most moisturised legs you've ever seen in your life. So I try and have a positive message: "Hey, this is the sick stuff about London. If we all packed up and left, and went back to India, Yorkshire or wherever, you wouldn't know what to do. It wouldn't be London any more." There's a fearlessness in the way you talk about relationships, too. I love that line in Man's World - "I find my love in red wine". I was very angry when I wrote that! I'm saying I find my love in something that's an object, as opposed to you. You are less important to me than a drink. At least alcohol's always there when you need it. Exactly. That's probably a very Irish message! On a more serious note, you've been playing a new song recently that addresses your mental health... Yeah, it's called Anyone But Me. The first line is, "Seven years strong with my therapy, making mosaics of my memories," so there's no mucking around. It's literally like, this is how I feel: I feel like there's another person living in my head. It's something I've battled with for a long time. I remember when I was 12, I rang up the NHS and said, "I can't get out of bed. I'm not ill, I haven't got a cold, I just can't get out of bed". And the guy on the other end of the phone said, "Ah, have you heard of depression?" Have you spoken to your therapist about how the music industry could affect your health? No, I haven't been able to see him because I haven't had time - which is not good. And I'm kind of struggling with that now. The first album just makes me want to crap myself. I'm like, "Why am I stressed every day, I should be excited about this? But why should I be excited when this is nerve-wracking?" I'm massively over-thinking everything. It's like when I did my GCSEs, I was the type of person who'd leave an exam going, "Oh my God, I failed that". Then I got all As and A stars, and dropped out straight after. Where does the pressure to succeed come from? It's all me. My manager is like, "You don't have a deadline for the album", and I'll go, "Yes I do. It's May." I've got IBS. I am the most stressed person ever. That doesn't come across in the music… Thank goodness. I can't imagine what an IBS song would sound like, though. Maybe like that Mabel song, The Anxiety Anthem? I could do the IBS Anthem, and the video would be me against a green screen, and the background would be the inside of your insides. A colonoscopy? Yeah! Perfect. Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. |
Twenty jobs have been lost at a Swansea homeless charity that went into administration following allegations of fraud against two members of staff. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Cyrenians Cymru has shut its office and community centre as well as ending three projects. Its remaining 35 staff and projects have now been taken over by two other Swansea charities. Two people have been arrested as part of a fraud investigation by South Wales Police's economic crime unit. Three Cyrenians projects - Supporting People project, the Cyrenians Furniture Scheme and the Cyrenians Horse and Pony Scheme - have been taken over by Caer Las and the Gwalia Group, where the 35 staff have gone to work. |
MPs are to hear calls for a full public inquiry to be carried out into North Sea helicopter transport. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Aberdeen North MP Frank Doran has secured an adjournment debate on 27 November. It will be answered by a minister from the Department for Transport. The House of Commons Transport committee is holding its own inquiry into helicopter safety. It follows the Super Puma crash off Shetland in August in which four people died. |
A former star of US hit TV show Glee has been arrested in Los Angeles over allegations of possessing images of child sex abuse, said police. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Mark Salling was taken into custody after a warrant was served at his home, said a Los Angeles police spokesman. The 33-year-old, who played football player Noah "Puck" Puckerman, had been investigated by a special police task force, the spokesman said. His representatives did not respond to requests for comment. The musical comedy-drama aired on Fox from 2009 until March 2015. |
A road in Northamptonshire was closed for five hours after a lorry became trapped while attempting to drive under a low railway bridge. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The A428 was shut between East Haddon and Great Brington when the lorry crashed into the bridge near Althorp at about 11:00 BST. Northamptonshire Police said the road was cleared at about 16:00 BST. London Midland said it had disrupted rail journeys on the Northampton to Rugby line. |
The London Mayor and Assembly elections will be held on Thursday, 3 May 2012. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The declared candidates for the mayoral elections are: Siobhan Benita: Independent Carlos Cortiglia: British National Party Boris Johnson: Conservative Jenny Jones: Green Ken Livingstone: Labour Brian Paddick: Liberal Democrats Lawrence Webb: UK Independence Party/Fresh Choice for London In order to vote you must be registered before Wednesday, 18 April. |
Amsterdam's oldest prostitutes have been thrust into the spotlight with the release of their memoirs and a documentary film about their lives. The film, Meet the Fokkens, follows 70-year-old identical twins Louise and Martine Fokken as they share secrets of selling sex in the city's famous red light district. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Anna HolliganBBC News, Ijmuiden Louise and Martine shuffle round their cluttered two-bedroom apartment in Ijmuiden, just west of Amsterdam. One in slippers, the other in sandals, they fetch foaming mugs of coffee and their favourite cream cakes. There is an absent-minded synchronicity to their movements. Martine hums as Louise breaks into an old lament about families forced to flee during World War II. Their mum was part Jewish, something they managed to hide from occupying Nazi forces while remaining in the Netherlands. Louise's song dwells on the joy of living and the sadness of leaving. "We were very little during the war. When the sirens started our mum would take us down into the basement. We didn't have any helmets so we used frying pans to cover our heads. We all looked so funny. And we had fun there." I ask, when she looks back at her life in Amsterdam, was there more laughter or tears? "Oh laughter, definitely laughter. You have to laugh even if you are sad because it is your life and you can't change it, but it is always better if you are smiling." The sisters nod in unison. But their expertly applied scarlet smiles do not detract from the shimmer of sadness in their eyes. "Of course when we were 14 or 15 we never thought we would be working as hookers one day. We were creative and we had dreams," Martine says. Louise adds: "I always say that my husband beat me into it. He was violent and said he would leave me if I didn't sell sex to make us more money. "He was the love of my life…" she says. Louise's children were taken into foster care. She holds one of the photographs, showing their small smiling faces, that sits on the shelves of an antique bookshelf. Speaking from experience Martine still sells sex. She says the Dutch state pension alone is not enough to live on. Louise quit because of arthritis. Martine says she would like to retire but cannot afford to. The documentary shows her at work - perched on a stool in stockings, suspenders and patent leather stilettos. Young men who pass by, some of them on stag parties from abroad, mock her for being old. She laughs it off (like she does with everything) and says she does not care. She says times have changed: "The boys are different now, they drink too much, they're fat and they don't respect you. They should be on their bikes like Dutch boys, not just drinking all the time." Despite younger competition next door, there is still a market for Martine's services. She appears to specialise in bondage for older men. Targeting them with things they like to dress up in. Tempting them into her brothel with an array of dangerous looking whips and high-heeled shoes. It seems she has found a niche in the fetish market. "We know the tricks, we know what they want. We know how to talk to them and we know how to make them laugh too." "Honeybee come to me," they chorus in English with a strong Dutch accent. Martine says they are lucky to be alive: "Once there was a man and there was something I didn't like about him. So I made him take off all his clothes. Then I sat on the bed and I felt under the pillow he'd hidden a huge knife." "There are always ups and downs," Louise adds. "Ups and downs, ups and downs..." the twins sing-song, before falling into each other in fits of laughter. They have a century's worth of experience between them. And now their story is going global. The twins' memoirs topped the Dutch bestsellers list, and now an English translation is being printed and is due to be released later this year. The twins say that Meet the Fokkens has helped to change attitudes; some of the abuse has been replaced by respect. And as Martine tucks into the remains of Louise's cream cake, sharing a forkful with one of their three Chihuahuas, balancing on her shoulder, she swears they would not have done it any other way. "This is what we know. If we didn't do hooking then what would we do? This is our life. "And," she glances again at her sister, "we are still having fun". |
A distressed swan has been rescued from a canal in Somerset after it partially swallowed a fishing hook and line. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
A boat crew from Burnham-on-Sea rescued the cygnet after a volunteer from wildlife charity Secret World saw the bird in Bridgwater Canal on Tuesday. After being captured with a net, the bird was taken to a vet for treatment. Volunteer Mervyn Gratton said: "The bird was in a lot of pain, having attempted to swallow a discarded hook and line." Related Internet Links Secret World - Wildlife Rescue Burnham-On-Sea Hovercraft |
After two years of war in Yemen and a Saudi-led blockade lasting 18 months millions of people are slowly starving - some are already dying for lack of food. One doctor in the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah is doing all she can to save them. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Nawal al-MaghafiBBC News, Hudaydah In her 20 years as a doctor Ashwaq Muharram has never seen things so bad. "I'm seeing the same thing I used to watch on TV when the famine unfolded in Somalia," she tells me. "I never thought I would see this in Yemen." For years Muharram worked for international aid organisations, but most of them left when the fighting began in March 2015, and those that remain have drastically curtailed their activities. So she now distributes medicine and food out of her own pocket, using her car as a mobile clinic. I spent two weeks with Muharram, visiting towns and villages near Hudaydah, and witnessing things that I too never thought I would see in Yemen. Find out more Hudaydah, controlled by Houthi rebels who took over most of the country in 2014, was until recently the entry point for 70% of Yemen's food imports. Now, not only is it under blockade, it has been pummelled by airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition - the port itself smashed, an entire tourist resort on the beach completely destroyed. The bombs and the blockade pose a double threat to Muharram's patients. "If you don't die from an airstrike, you're going to die from being ill and from starvation," she says. "And the hardest way to die is dying from starvation." Having loaded up the car with medicines, we drive to Beit al-Faqih, 100km (60 miles) south-east of Hudaydah. The village was once prosperous, growing bananas and mangoes for export but today the exports have stopped, most workers have lost their jobs, and the fruit we see loaded on to donkeys by colourfully dressed women is for most Yemenis simply unaffordable. It is here that we meet a mother with a lactose-intolerant toddler, Abdulrahman, who weighs no more than a six-month-old baby. "How old is he?" I ask her. "Eighteen months," she says. "He should be walking and talking by now." She immediately breaks down into tears. Abdulrahman needs a special type of milk that was once available everywhere in Yemen but has not been seen since the destruction of the port at Hudaydah and the start of the blockade. "We looked in every single pharmacy. All said it was nowhere to be found," says the mother. Muharram tells the mother she will help her - before quickly realising this is a promise she may not be able to keep. She knows the boy will die without the milk, but getting hold of it will be a huge challenge. "I've myself looked for this milk before, and it is nowhere to be found," she says. Her own family has faced similar problems. After the war began, her husband fell ill and his heart began to fail; it was a heart infection and he was in urgent need of medication. "I ran into Sanaa's main cardiac hospital, but as a doctor I knew what they were about to tell me - that they were out of supplies, and there was nothing they could do to help me," she says. "I'm a doctor myself, my husband was dying in front of me and there was nothing I could do…" Muharram breaks down. Her husband eventually left for Jordan, taking their two children with him to safety. They had already stopped going to school. "I am tired as a doctor, as a mother, and as a wife," she tells me. Driving back into Hudaydah, tents line the pavements. Out of the window, I can see a man having a shower - with his clothes on - in the middle of the street, as barefoot children run around him, chasing one another. These are Yemenis who have fled to Hudaydah from areas where the conflict is at its fiercest. "The rich are now the middle class, the middle class are now the poor, and the poor are now starving," says Muharram. "Some of these people had a life like you and me, and now look." She points at the people on the pavement. "They have lost everything." We stop to talk to a mother we have spotted on the street with three children. She says the family once lived in Haradh, near the Saudi border, far to the north. They spent months in a refugee camp with little access to food or medicine, but then the camp was bombed. The woman's husband died in the attack. As we sit on the pavement talking, coalition jets return, flying low above us. Yemenis are trapped. More than three million people out of a population of 27 million have left their homes. Meanwhile, all ports have been closed by the Saudi-led coalition, preventing anyone from leaving. What's more, many countries that once welcomed Yemenis without a visa have since closed their doors to them. Travelling with Muharram from one village to the next, again and again we come across children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. To put it bluntly, they are starving. Malnourishment affects the immune system and makes children far more likely to fall ill. But at the same time it is becoming more difficult for them to get treatment. Many of the country's hospitals have had to close, either because of bombing or the lack of medical supplies. The children's ward of Hudaydah's central hospital is so full, there are two or three children in every bed. We meet four-year-old Shuaib, whose grandfather has borrowed money from neighbours to travel to the hospital. The boy has been suffering from diarrhoea and fever, but doctors have had to tell the grandfather there is nothing they can do. "None of the antibiotics we have can treat the kind of bacteria he has," the hospital manager tells us. As Shuaib lies there, his body growing colder by the minute, his grandfather holds his hand and weeps. An hour later, Shuaib is dead. I watch as the grandfather, silently crying, covers his little body with his headscarf and carries him home to the boy's mother. Yemen conflict Yemen is a country under siege. Two years ago, Houthi rebels and their allies - an army faction loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh - took control of most of the country, including the capital, Sanaa. The government was forced to flee. Saudi Arabia says it intervened at the request of the government. For 18 months a Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US and the UK, has been at war with the rebels. No end in sight for war in Yemen (March 2016) Muharram herself is inconsolable. "Who is responsible for Shuaib's death?" she asks. "The war is responsible! But he will be considered a victim of hospital neglect. Thousands like him are dying. Do they have to be killed by an airstrike to be acknowledged as victims of this war?" As we leave the hospital, news arrives that a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the nearby city of Abs, has been shelled by coalition planes. "They are bombing hospitals, why?" Muharram fumes. One reason is that Saudi Arabia accuses Houthi rebels of using hospitals to store arms. The next day, I visit the MSF hospital. As I walk through the ruins of the children's ward, I find a scene of devastating poignancy - a paper party hat and the remains of a birthday cake and candles scattered across the floor. "The children were having a birthday party before the airstrike hit," explains Dr Yahya al-Absy, the hospital manager. In total, 19 people died in the strike - and the Abs governorate no longer has a hospital. In a statement, the Saudi government denied deliberately targeting civilians and humanitarian supplies. It also said it was the single largest donor of humanitarian assistance to Yemen. The next day, Muharram finally receives some good news. A friend has found a way, at considerable cost, to get young Abdulrahman some life-saving milk from Saudi Arabia. Six days later, Muharram receives it and immediately rushes to his house. Having witnessed nothing but despair for two weeks, it is incredible to see, at last, one happy ending. Abdulrahman takes his milk bottle and swiftly drinks it to the last drop, his mother crying as she watches. "You've brought happiness into my home" she tells Muharram, wrapping her arms around her in a loving hug. Though Ashwaq Muharram was able to save a child's life, more than million other children continue to starve across Yemen. Ten out of 22 governorates are on the brink of famine. Unless something is done very soon to end their suffering, the country could lose an entire generation. Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook |
Call it the gospel according to Mark, or the thoughts of Chairman Zuck, it is an extraordinary document. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Rory Cellan-JonesTechnology correspondent The letter from Mark Zuckerberg which accompanied Facebook's IPO filing is rather different in tone from the mission statements issued by a conventional chief executive. So will it inspire or terrify investors? Let's try a bit of textual analysis: |
More than 300 jobs are set to be created in Scunthorpe if expansion plans by a kitchen firm are approved. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Wren Kitchens has applied for planning permission to develop a site on the Foxhills Industrial Estate to manufacture doors for kitchen units. Operations director Armando Sanchez said the plant, a former B&Q warehouse, would employ at least 320 people. Once up and running it would supply doors to Wren's kitchen unit assembly plant at Howden in East Yorkshire. Mr Sanchez said the company planned to open the Scunthorpe site "as soon as possible", subject to planning consent. |
A friend was mulling over whether or not to buy a ticket to see Jackie Sibblies Drury's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fairview at the Young Vic in London (its sell-out run had been extended). She asked me what I thought of the play. I said it was impactful. She said, so is a punch in the face. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter I paused. Maybe impactful was the wrong word. It's certainly an awkward, ugly, uncomfortable word. Maybe, then, it was exactly the right word for a play that sets itself up as a comedy, but is actually a powerful polemic about race. Was the play fun? Not really. Was it entertaining? In parts, but it was also annoying and confusing: absurd, even. Was it impactful? Yes, it was. In fact, it lands some blows so hefty and memorable that there were moments when it did feel like being punched in the face. I, for one, came away feeling dazed and confused. Did I like the play? Did I hate it? Did it work? Or, was it a near-miss? These are questions to which I still do not have answers. What I am sure about, though, is Fairview is an important, provocative, mind-altering work of art, the like of which I have never seen in the theatre before. It starts out conventionally enough. We are in the bourgeois home of a black, middle-class American family. Beverly (Nicola Hughes) is peeling carrots for a celebratory birthday meal for her elderly mother, who is resting upstairs. There is music playing. Beverly is singing along while her husband, Dayton (Rhashan Stone), pops in and out, doing his bit here and there. Enter Jasmine (Naana Agyei-Ampadu), Beverly's opinionated sister, who immediately turns an atmosphere that was already simmering with tension, up a notch or two. Dayton can't be a good lover, she tells her sister high-handedly; it's obvious from the awkward way he "walk around like his balls all heavy." Dayton's response is to offer Jasmine a nibble from the cheese tray, a gracious act at which she turns up her nose, and announces grandly that she no longer eats dairy. Into this family gathering arrives Keisha (Donna Banya), Beverly and Dayton's gifted teenage daughter, who is doing very well at school but wants to take a gap year before going to college, which is against her mother's wishes. And there you have it, a sit-com type set-up with lots of banter and some amusing sight gags. Theatre doesn't get more comfortable or conservative than this, with Jasmine posing upstage in front of an imaginary mirror, and Beverly hiding Dayton's old beer bottle behind a sofa cushion. I mean, it couldn't be more tame. But then, as Jim Thompson, a 20th Century American writer of crime fiction once said: "there is only really one plot: things are not what they seem." And that is the case with Fairview. Act II and Act III take the homely Act I between their teeth like a starving Rottweiler dog, and break its neck in a thousand places. The theatrical fourth wall that Jasmine made such a fuss about accentuating when looking into the mirror in Act I, is not so much broken as smashed to smithereens with a sledgehammer, leaving shards of its imaginary glass all over the auditorium. You see, this is not a play about a birthday party, even a Pinteresque one with all its menacing overtones. Fairview is about something else altogether. It is not a traditional play operating within the confines of a stage framed by a proscenium arch. It is Shakespearian in scope. All the theatre's the stage, and all the men and women in it merely players. I won't divulge more - you'll find out if you go. But what I can say without risking spoilers, is the play's true subject is how white people watch black people perform and the effect that has on both parties. It is, to use a fancy term, about the white gaze. As an art fan, I was familiar with the "male gaze", which is a pejorative term to describe the privileged position male viewers have been given in art. Put simply, the game has been rigged for their benefit: images are produced for the male gaze, most obviously in the genre of the female nude. Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview's 37-year old black playwright, describes the "white gaze" in theatre as the effect a predominately Caucasian audience has on black performers, making the actors feel an otherness, while at the same time being expected to conform to racial stereotypes. As with the male gaze, the white gaze is about inequality and privilege: how those subjected to it are diminished while the empowered beneficiaries remain blindly, smugly, oblivious. Far from being a conservative play, Fairview is a radical, conceptually bold piece of theatre that toys with form like a cat plays with a mouse. Tropes and clichés are mischievously subverted, as are the limits of what theatre should be. There's a surreal humour evident throughout, which starts as a knowing wink before becoming increasingly dark and aggressive. It's a week since I saw it and I still don't know what to make of Fairview, an intentionally divisive play with contemporary concerns centred around surveillance and identity politics at its heart. I can't say I enjoyed it, but I will never forget it. And I'm lucky I had the chance to see such a remarkable work of art, which made me think differently about theatre. It is difficult to sum up with a star rating, but easy to do so in a word, which is "impactful." Recent reviews by Will Gompertz Follow Will Gompertz on Twitter |
A team of British scientists, engineers and logistics experts has launched a daring attempt to hunt for life deep beneath the Antarctic ice. The research project will see the group drill 3.2km (two miles) down to Lake Ellsworth - hidden for hundreds of thousands of years. Click on the labels below to find out more about the mission and life at the drilling camp. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Introduction to the mission BBC science editor David Shukman explains the technical challenges facing the British team and why the mission could reveal crucial information about the limits of life on earth and elsewhere. Work and social tent As well as sleeping tents, the group also has the use of larger tents, used as work and social areas. They contain banks of laptops, communications equipment and kitchen facilities. A resident professional chef provides the team with homemade meals and fresh bread every day. Generators The entire site is powered by electricity from a bank of generators (top). The generators and their essential cables (below) provide enough power - the equivalent of 256kW - to drive the entire site, including the water filtration systems, winches and pumps. Specialist vehicle The on-site Sno-Cat vehicle has helped the team transport equipment needed for the drilling mission. It is also used to lift heavy cargo and shovel snow. Equipment containers A series of containers houses the team’s key equipment, including the boiler (bottom right) used to melt the snow to feed the hot water drill, the hose reel (main image), winches (top right) and pumps. The containers were towed by tractor train 250km through the Ellsworth mountain range. Drill hole Using a high-pressure hot-water drill specially designed for the mission, the team is boring a hole through 3.2km of solid ice all the way down to Lake Ellsworth. The hot-water drill, designed by British Antarctic Survey engineers, will take about five days in total to reach the lake. Boreholes The team is drilling two boreholes. The first to create a hot water cavity to balance Ellsworth's pressure and a second down to the lake. The second is used to deploy sampling equipment. This borehole can only be kept open for 24 hours before it refreezes to an unusable size. Hot water cavity Before the team drills down to the lake, they have to create a shorter borehole 300m beneath the ice to make a chamber to house a water pump. This balances pressure on the lake and prevents water rushing back up the borehole. Click play to listen to engineer Chris Hill explain. Lake Ellsworth The ancient lake - isolated for hundreds of thousands of years - is buried under 3.2km of ice on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. It is equivalent in size to the UK’s Lake Windermere. Geothermal heat from the Earth’s core and the pressure of the ice above keeps it liquid. Sampling equipment A 5.5m-long titanium water sampling probe (left) is being deployed to capture water samples and grab “goo” from the lake bed. A sediment corer (right) will collect mud samples. Both are protected by plastic to ensure they remain uncontaminated. Sleeping tents The 12-man team of scientists, engineers and logistics experts spend their nights in four-man clam tents or pyramid tents. It took them five days of flying to reach the camp and four weeks to set up living and working facilities. They are enduring temperatures of -25C and winds of up to 20 knots. Images and video courtesy of Pete Bucktrout of the British Antarctic Survey. Graphic not to scale. Produced by: Lucy Rodgers, Mick Ruddy and Steven Connor |
When her newborn son was placed in her arms for the first time, Lucy Lintott shed tears of joy. It was the most natural of reactions after what was, undeniably, a remarkable pregnancy. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Mary McCoolBBC Scotland news The 25-year-old was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) in 2014, making her the youngest person in Scotland with the terminal disease. The illness cast doubt over the very possibility of Lucy bearing children - and so when baby L J arrived in February, she could not believe he was real. "I had built it up so much in my head, I didn't think it was going to happen," said Lucy. "I was very emotional and I wouldn't let anyone take him off me." MND gradually makes gripping, walking, talking and swallowing extremely difficult - and eventually impossible. It kills about a third of people within a year and more than half within two years. Yet six years on from her diagnosis, Lucy, from Garmouth in Moray, says she is experiencing the "best feeling ever", taking care of her "strong, cheeky bundle" - who has a "great set of lungs". Lucy says she has navigated early motherhood without much advice, given that MND usually affects people over the age of 40 and, as such, pregnancy among patients is incredibly rare. She said: "I think there's only five or six cases in the world of people who have given birth while having MND. "They didn't know how my body or lungs would deal with it so it was really up to me. "But it went really well - the only thing I did was come off medication to give L J the best start in life." Just weeks ago, Lucy and her fiancé Tommy were planning a May wedding, which has now been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. As one of the 400 people in Scotland with MND, Lucy has been advised to stay at home for 12 weeks. Normally she would go about her daily life with assistance from three carers - however, she has had to move back to her parents' home in order to protect her health and still receive the care she needs. She said: "Because of isolation, I'm down to one carer and I can't really go out. "The coronavirus has had a massive impact, I'd normally be out shopping, at the gym or seeing friends. "I'll have to reorganise the wedding - and it's hard enough preparing one wedding then to have to change it all. So I'm quite gutted." 'It's crazy and surreal - but the best feeling ever' In 2017, Lucy gave a stark account of how MND was like being "slowly paralysed" in the BBC documentary MND and the 22-year-old Me. However, her strength, positivity and good humour were very much at the forefront of her story - she confessed most people knew her for her "weird-ass laugh". Such qualities have now carried her through not just the upheaval of lockdown, not just illness and not just the challenges of parenthood - but all three at once. She says that living with her parents has been a "godsend", and laughs as she admits the greatest challenge to her family - "probably dealing with me". She said: "I'm really looking forward to introducing LJ to friends and do what we'd normally do over the summer, like going swimming or taking him to the park. Just the little things. "I'm staying away from the coronavirus and my MND is stable and hasn't really changed. "It's very crazy and surreal that I'm a parent - I'm responsible for a little bundle. But honestly, it's the best feeling ever." |
Manx vehicle owners will be given "greater flexibility" in paying their road tax, the government said. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The Department of Infrastructure (DOI) was "actively pursuing ways" to give drivers an alternative to the current annual payment, a spokesman said. An online petition of more than 2,200 names has called for "more manageable" monthly payments to be introduced. Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology had identified 54 untaxed vehicles since May, the DOI said. |
At precisely 02:00 GMT on Sunday, a maligned train operator stopped running the West Midlands rail franchise covering a swathe of the nation. Since 2007, London Midland had offered more than 1,000 services a day. Or according to its timetable it did. The reality was somewhat different. What follows are the moments that left customers bemused, peeved or just plain chilly on a platform, wishing their phone had more charge. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Cattle class From London, through southern counties and central England, to the North West, services London Midland had offered are going Dutch. Or at least being operated by new franchisee West Midlands Trains Ltd, a joint venture between Dutch firm Abellio and Japanese partners. Among the pledges, when it won the contract in August, was space for an extra 85,000 passengers on rush-hour services in Birmingham and London. Here's why... At one point during London Midland's tenure, there were more people standing up than sitting down on the 16:46 from London Euston to Crewe - then the most overcrowded rail service in England and Wales, according to Department for Transport figures. The service was said to be 111% over capacity at its busiest, meaning there were 206 people able to read newspapers, watch Game of Thrones and not make eye contact with the strangers opposite, while 229 had tired feet, sighed a bit and, it turns out, felt like cattle. Among passengers' testimony by 2016 was that they were commuting with faces pressed against the windows - not in the sweet shop way, the good way, but the squashed way. One observed that he travelled "cattle class". Watch him talk about "going to market" here: We don't like Sundays Winding back the clock to a weekend in September 2009, there was a to-do when passengers were warned to expect delays. But not just any old delays; the kind that were more like non-starters. Behind it was the cancellation of all of London Midland's Sunday services across England. Working on Sundays was voluntary for most London Midland staff and the firm said a large number had not signed up. The bittersweet news - the travel equivalent of losing a fiver and finding a pound - was that replacement bus services were available. Into the next decade and drivers were thin on the ground, or tracks. On one day in December 2012, a shortage of drivers meant 39 services were cancelled or disrupted - with more than 800 services subjected to the same fate, for the same reason, across that year. There were similar difficulties in 2013, but London Midland's contract was extended despite the record delays that had landed it with a £7m compensation bill. Wrong kind of leaves Snow, shmo - the wrong kind of falling flake is so 90s. Here in the 21st Century, it is leaves that will not do as they are told. In October, a train overshot a station in Bedworth because of "decomposing, damp leaves", London Midland said. It amounted to a "slippery residue" that was "similar to motorists driving on ice". But can anything more be done when a resistible force meets a moveable object? There is always this gadget here... Fallen key, dropped clanger In June, a morning train travelling between Tring and London was delayed by a few minutes when the driver dropped the key on to the track. He apologised over the on-board speaker system as the service pulled into Euston. He explained what happened and said the delay was caused by his going to the office to collect a spare. Christmas sprouts... and The Turnip But was it really all doom and gloom? Well, there was the time peace broke out at Christmas, like when that football was kicked between trenches. By December 2016, people who met during their daily commute from Shropshire to Birmingham had become "train buddies", marking their friendship with a touch of tinsel and trimmings. Yes, that's right, a Christmas party on the way to work. Anything else touchy-feely? Let us return to football and recall when former England boss Graham Taylor - once given a turnip head for daring to do his job - was awarded a nicer legacy following his death. Think less carriage clock and more, well, carriage. In June, a London Midland Class 350 model was named after him on a service calling at Watford Junction, Aston, Wolverhampton and Wembley Central stations, reflecting the clubs and nation he had overseen. The firm said it was in "recognition of a man who made such a lasting mark on the sport across the country". London Midland also won awards for its use of Twitter, gaining accolades for its interactions with passengers on the social media platform. At one point it claimed to have sent more tweets than any other train company in the world. Getting goodbye wrong In December, as the buffers were in sight for London Midland, commuters at Birmingham New Street were given a farewell cake. But the box carried a best before date of April 2017. Those who feared an upset stomach, though, were apparently mistaken about the mistake. "The printing on the box is wrong," a spokesperson said. "If you inspect the inside wrapper, you will see it says 'best before April 2018'." Does this count as London Midland running early? And that was not all the box said. Here is how London Midland signed off: "A different rail company takes over on 10 December. It's been a pleasure." And here was how one customer took it: |
Andrei Ostapovich was a high-flying young police investigator in Belarus when protests broke out earlier this year, in the wake of the country's disputed presidential election. He was so horrified by the beating and torture of demonstrators in custody that he left the country. He's one of hundreds of Belarusian police officers now in exile in Poland and the Baltic states. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Lucy AshBBC News, Warsaw Sitting on a Warsaw park bench in the autumn sunlight, Andrei Ostapovich is lost in thought. He's oblivious to the couples strolling past, to the laughing teenagers and to the grandmother and toddler feeding the ducks a few metres away. With his sharp cheekbones and olive green eyes, the 27-year-old could almost be mistaken for a guy modelling Italian knitwear or promoting an expensive brand of aftershave. But Andrei is a policeman on the run. Strictly speaking, Andrei is not running any more - he feels relatively safe in Poland. But when he decided to quit his job as a high-flying detective in the Belarusian capital, Minsk this summer, he realised he would have to leave the country straight away or risk arrest. "I've been in police uniform for the past 10 years," he says. "But after the elections in August, I thought I was no longer safe wearing it because of the way people now feel about the police. My uniform made me ashamed" Brought up in the Grodno region, near the Polish border, Andrei's bravery and quick wittedness was first spotted when, aged 15, he saved a younger boy from drowning in a lake. Local firemen and paramedics were so impressed by the rescue that they suggested he might like a job with them after he left school. But Andrei had other plans. After five years at an academy attached to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he studied law and forensics, he qualified as an investigator. He began with probes into medical negligence and just three months after graduation he made a name for himself by catching a notorious paedophile. He soon moved on to some of the country's most complex murder cases. "The job was really exciting," he tells me, sucking hard on a cigarette. "There were interesting cases in which the suspects proved elusive and it was such a thrill when you managed to outsmart them - like winning a game of chess." He says there was little political interference in his work as a senior investigator. But as elections approached he was troubled by the arrest of presidential candidates - a banker, Viktor Babaryko and blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky - on the flimsiest of pretexts. Official results after the 9 August poll gave Alexander Lukashenko a landslide victory and a sixth term in office. But many both inside and outside Belarus were certain that the voting had been rigged. People took to the streets in unprecedented numbers demanding the resignation of the former collective farm boss who has ruled the country for the last 26 years. Andrei went to the rallies after work to see what was going on. He found himself running for cover as police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades into the crowd. What he saw with his own eyes - and in videos posted online - sickened him. So although he loved his job, he wrote a five-page letter of resignation, detailing all the abuses he'd witnessed, stating that the riot police "were the only people who provoked violence" and claiming that they had executed "criminal orders". Fully aware that he might face arrest, he fled across the border to Russia. Very soon the Russian security services, the FSB, showed up at his hotel in the city of Pskov. "They put handcuffs on me and a ski mask covered with black cloth," says Andrei. "Then they attached a dumbbell to the handcuffs - it was so heavy, more than 30kg of metal. I thought they might throw me in the lake with this dead weight, and I wouldn't be able to swim. When you can't see anything, you have no idea what's going on." The FSB officers, who did not introduce themselves, drove for four hours to the Belarusian border. Then they stopped, took Andrei out of the car, and removed his mask and handcuffs. "The FSB tried to act like they were not involved in my arrest," he says. "They gave me back my things and told me to walk along the road. I saw some [Belarusian] KGB agents approaching so I didn't hang about, I ran into the forest," says Andrei. "They chased me but they couldn't keep up, so I managed to escape." Dressed in no more than his jeans, trainers and a T-shirt, Andrei sought refuge among thick forests of pine and birch, lakes and treacherous marshes. He immediately threw away his three mobile phones, to avoid being traced. He had no food apart from some chocolate bars and a bottle of water. Once he slipped into a swamp up to his waist and couldn't move his legs. Fortunately he was able to reach some thick reeds, but it took all his strength to haul himself out. Then there was a close encounter with a wild boar - "a huge beast with tusks", he says. "I managed to dazzle it with my torch and it ran off but it was very scary being alone at night in the forest." After 10 days of wandering in circles and getting hopelessly lost, Andrei eventually reached Poland, where he applied for asylum. According to Evgeny Yushkevich, a former senior Belarusian police investigator now in Lithuania, at least 350 men and women from the police and other law enforcement bodies have resigned from their jobs. Together with activists who helped supply hospitals with food and protective equipment when Covid first struck last spring, he launched a scheme to help people in Andrei's situation. Bysol, which stands for Belarusian Solidarity, offers financial and legal support for police and other state employees who left their posts in protest against state sponsored violence and election fraud. Mikita Mikado, who founded a software company in Minsk called Panda Doc and later moved to Silicon Valley, came up with a similar initiative. His project, ProtectBelarus.org, offers retraining in the tech industry for Belarusian police officers who refused orders to attack protesters. "I appeal to Belarusian security officials," the tech entrepreneur wrote on his Instagram account, "if you want to be on the side of good, but finances do not allow, write — I will help." Soon afterwards, the site said it had received 594 applications from police officers. Apart from offering ex-cops pathways to new careers, Mikado said he would help to pay off loans. Belarusian police are effectively "indentured employees" because they are paid upfront at the beginning of their contract, so when they break it they are immediately in debt to the state. Andrei, however, who repaid the state without Mikado's help, doesn't plan on retraining because he wants to go home as soon as possible. He's in contact with the exiled opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya - the woman many Belarusians now consider their legitimate president - and hopes one day to help her end a culture of violence in Belarusian law enforcement. The response to the protests was just the most extreme example of a tendency to violence that had always existed, he says. "I think it's a kind of herd instinct," he says. "In police departments there are sinks used to wash away blood - the floor can get soaked with blood. So they call the place near the sink the Wailing Wall. I don't know if they think all this is funny or not, but after doing horrible things to people they'd sit with their mates and chat and laugh… it looked like pure sadism to me. I know they enjoyed it, the excitement and the adrenaline." He adds that many police and special forces officers have signed papers which absolve them of responsibility for their actions, as they are supposedly protecting the state at a time of crisis. According to human rights groups, to date, more than 19,000 people have been arrested, thousands have been beaten and some horrifically tortured in police stations and detention centres. I asked the Belarusian Interior Ministry's spokeswoman Olga Chemodanova to comment on these numbers and the allegations of mistreatment. She wrote back to say she was not yet in a position to comment. Some in the opposition believe that one way to disempower the security services is to expose and shame them individually, either by physically pulling the balaclavas from their faces - or, more controversially, by uploading on social media any photographs they can get hold of. Names, addresses and phone numbers are often published too. "One of the best tactics against the police and Omon is not open warfare, fighting on the streets," says Stepan Svetlov, the 22-year-old founder of a channel on the social messaging app, Telegram, that has helped to co-ordinate the Belarusian protests. "Instead we are fighting an information war. We have to keep up the psychological pressure on them and on their families because it does have an effect." Svetlov's channel is called Nexta, meaning "someone", and sitting in his small Warsaw office he tells me that it gets the data about these officers in leaks from whistleblowers or "cyber-partisans" inside government ministries. But Andrei Ostapovich argues that attempts to publicly shame police officers could increase their determination to crush the protests with violence. "They know they are tied to this current government and if it gets changed, they would end up in court," he says. "When citizens start insulting the riot police, calling them 'inhuman and fascists', they are under constant negative pressure and they become even more aggressive." President Lukashenko appears to agree. Although he has hinted in the last few days that he could step down, he recently warned some Russian journalists that if he fell, the country would fall with him, including those who protect him. "Guys in the Omon, the riot police and many others, like that guard sitting over there", he said pointing to his security guard. "Why should they be blamed? And yet they would be slaughtered - torn to pieces - if I'm forced out." You may also be interested in: Hanna Kostseva was in court when her two brothers, Stanislaw and Ilya, aged 19 and 21, were sentenced to death for murder. She and her mother will never find out when they were shot, or where they were buried. 'My brothers on Europe's last death row' (June 2020) |
The Public Prosecutions Service (PPS) insists it takes decisions on whether to prosecute cases involving the legacy of the troubles "without fear, favour or prejudice, in strict accordance with the Code for Prosecutors". | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Mark DevenportBBC News NI Political Editor It was responding to criticism from MPs in a Westminster Hall debate yesterday. It was alleged that the current system is disproportionately focussed on soldiers and police officers. A Conservative MP complained about the treatment of a former soldier. Sir Henry Bellingham said the soldier from the Life Guards regiment had previously been told he would not be prosecuted. However, he argued that the situation had changed after the appointment of Barra McGrory as Director of Public Prosecutions. Using parliamentary privilege, Sir Henry pointed out that Mr McGrory represented Martin McGuinness in the Saville inquiry, adding: "this is the person who is prepared to move away from credible evidence to political decision making, which I find very worrying. "It has to be stopped. There are potentially 278 more cases involving the security forces. "I do not want any more veterans to be dragged out of their retirement homes any more than I want Sinn Féin councillors to be dragged out of council chambers." In response the Public Prosecution Service said: "the Westminster debate reflects the political interest in historic criminal cases potentially involving military personnel. "A number of such cases have been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions by the Attorney General of Northern Ireland and have been the subject of investigation by PSNI Legacy Branch. 'Without fear, favour or prejudice' "When these investigation files are submitted to the PPS, the Test for Prosecution is applied without fear, favour or prejudice, in strict accordance with the Code for Prosecutors. "While political representatives may have an interest in such cases, the public can be assured of the rigour of the processes put in place by the Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure that this will never be allowed to influence the proper taking of prosecutorial decisions. "It is disappointing to note the unfounded nature of some of the comments made in this debate and we would wish to remind those in public office of the responsibilities they hold to maintain public confidence in the criminal justice system," it added. During the Westminster Hall debate the Northern Ireland Office Minister Kris Hopkins, who has himself served as a soldier in Northern Ireland, agreed with unionist and Conservative MPs that the current system in Northern Ireland is imbalanced in its treatment of soldiers and police officers. Mr Hopkins said: "The almost exclusive focus on the actions of the state is disproportionate and must be challenged and redressed if we are to deal with the past in a way that is fair and balanced and allows victims and survivors to see better outcomes than the current piecemeal approach." Correcting the 'imbalance' The Northern Ireland Office minister argued that the creation of a new Historical Investigations Unit (HIU) would correct this imbalance. Mr Hopkins said he believed the implementation of the proposed new body "will make the situation better for victims and survivors, and will be the only chance we have of prosecuting terrorists who murdered soldiers and police officers along with other innocent victims". Mr Hopkins said: "The HIU will not focus on the deaths caused by soldiers, as the investigations systems in Northern Ireland do today. "Instead, it will take each case in turn and will investigate the many hundreds of murders caused by terrorists, including the murders of soldiers." The minister told MPs: "It is clear that the status quo is not working well enough for victims and families, and it is time that progress is made. "This should create a more proportionate approach in dealing with the past and ensure that the balance of investigations is rightly on the terrorists who caused so much pain and suffering, rather than disproportionately on the brave soldiers and police officers who sacrificed so much to protect us." |
New clues have emerged in what could be described as the world's oldest murder case: that of Oetzi the "Iceman", whose 5,300-year-old body was discovered frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Jason PalmerScience and technology reporter, BBC News Oetzi's full genome has now beenreported in Nature Communications. It reveals that he had brown eyes, "O" blood type, was lactose intolerant, and was predisposed to heart disease. They also show him to be the first documented case of infection by a Lyme disease bacterium. Analysis of series of anomalies in the Iceman's DNA also revealed him to be more closely related to modern inhabitants of Corsica and Sardinia than to populations in the Alps, where he was unearthed. 'Really exciting' The study reveals the fuller genetic picture as laid out in the nuclei of Oetzi's cells. This nuclear DNA is both rarer and typically less well-preserved than the DNA within mitochondria, the cell's "power plants", which also contain DNA. Oetzi's mitochondrial DNA had already revealed some hints of his origins when it was fully sequenced in 2008. Albert Zink, from the Eurac Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy, said the nuclear DNA study was a great leap forward in one of the most widely studied specimens in science. "We've been studying the Iceman for 20 years. We know so many things about him - where he lived, how he died - but very little was known about his genetics, the genetic information he was carrying around," he told BBC News. He was carrying around a "haplotype" that showed his ancestors most likely migrated from the Middle East as the practice of formal agriculture became more widespread. It is probably this period of transition to an agrarian society that explains Oetzi's lactose intolerance. Prof Zink said that next-generation "whole-genome" sequencing techniques made the analysis possible. "Whole-genome sequencing allows you to sequence the whole DNA out of one sample; that wasn't possible before in the same way. "This was really exciting and I think it's just the start for a longer study on this level. We still would like to learn more from this data - we've only just started to analyse it." |
A man in his early 30s has been injured in a paragliding incident at Whiterocks Beach in Portrush, County Antrim. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The Coastguard received a call from the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service requesting assistance at about 14:30 BST on Sunday. Rescue teams from Coleraine and Ballycastle recovered the man from the sand dunes, where he landed. He was brought to the Causeway Hospital in Coleraine for treatment. Later in the day, he was transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. |
Edinburgh tram firm Tie's former chief executive said it was bizarre Transport Scotland did not have anyone on the board as it was giving 80% funding. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Richard Jeffrey who took on the role in 2009 said it was unhelpful to have them disengaged from the scheme. The Scottish government removed Transport Scotland from the bodies overseeing the trams after failing to get the project scrapped. The inquiry is examining why the tram system was delivered years late. It is also looking at why the project was £400m over budget and mired in legal dispute. Mr Jeffrey also said the contract was laughably complex and confusing. He said when he started in the role there was no completed design, no idea of final cost and no clear way forward. He said the consortium building the tram infrastructure were holding them to ransom. The inquiry, before Lord Hardie, continues. |
The wettest summer for 100 years has wiped out a fifth of Britain's apple crop but with the UK still importing about two-thirds of the apples it consumes, farmers have more than just the weather to contend with. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Peter JacksonBBC News With 2,200 varieties of apple in Britain, you could eat a different kind every day for six years - and still find more. But try to source a Peasgood's Nonsuch, Port Wine Kernel or Lord Lambourne at your local supermarket and you will struggle. In fact, just two varieties - Gala (28%) and Braeburn (19%) - now account for almost half of all sales across UK outlets, British growers say. The supermarkets sell about 85% of the total. The market remains dominated by cheap imports and focused on a few easy-to-grow varieties with long shelf-lives that travel well - depriving consumers of valuable choice. Farmer David Knight, 65, who has run Pippins Farm in Kent for 30 years, says some traditional varieties have been pushed out as they are prone to disease, crop every other year or do not keep well. But other fantastic varieties, he says, never see the light of day. "Two things really matter for supermarkets and that's the shelf-life and appearance," he says. "Those are two huge things and quite a long way down come the flavour and taste, whatever they say, but maybe they're getting a bit better." Mr Knight's 50-acre farm produces 50 varieties of apple but only six or seven are taken by the one major supermarket chain he supplies as part of a co-operative. 'Obsessed' He dedicates just one-and-a-half acres to heritage varieties, which he sells at special festivals, fairs and in the farm shop. He's also planting popular new foreign varieties such as Cameo (US), Jazz (Australia), Rubens (Italy) and Fuji (Japan). "They [supermarkets] have lost sight of seasonality, they're obsessed with having everything on the shelf every week of the year and none are going to break ranks," he says. Mr Knight says he recently grubbed four acres of one of his favourite apples - Russets - as they were not selling. "The apple's great, but it has a limited season, and it's not red, it's not green, it's golden brown, so it doesn't fit in very easily. "They sell at market stalls if you go into London because there's someone behind the counter to talk to the customer... but you've got to produce what you can sell." He says supermarkets have strict specifications on size, colour and surface characteristics, with any deviations leading to rejections. Eating apples must range from 55-80mm, Bramley cooking apples from 75-110mm, and apples must be almost entirely free of russeting, frost cracking and hail and insect marking, he says. English Apples and Pears, which represents growers, says consumers should also take responsibility for the limited varieties on offer as they do not often choose based on taste or seasons. "People want the same thing available 12 months of the year and however much we urge them, the reality is many consumers buy on appearance rather than taste," says chief executive Adrian Barlow. "We don't like it but we have to be realistic." He says the number of British growers has fallen dramatically from 1,550 in 1987 to just under 400 today but the industry has seen a revival in recent years. Supermarkets have greatly improved their support for British growers, he says, increasing the overall home-grown market share from 23% in 2003 to 38% today. The industry has also been boosted by investment in more efficient cold stores and pack houses, which help prolong the British season. The supermarkets say they work closely with British growers but also need to satisfy demand from shoppers for other varieties that cannot be grown in the UK. Golden Delicious, Granny Smith and Pink Lady do not grow successfully in the UK because of the climate. Sainsbury's says it stocks just short of 100 varieties of apple, of which 52 are home-grown, with up to 65% British during peak season. It says its orchards develop new varieties and stores will promote traditional and new apples in "Best of British" packs. Morrisons says around 40% of the 45 varieties it sells are British during the home season, while Tesco says 21 of its 34 varieties are home grown. Waitrose says it stocks 50 varieties, half of which are sourced from the UK, rising to 85% in November and December. And last year Asda says it stocked 56 different kinds, 40 of which were British. |
Conflict over much of the past three decades in Iraq has caused the number of widowed women to pass the one million mark. Here, Iraqi widows tell the BBC Arabic Service about their experiences, and hopes and fears for the future. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Nahla al-Nadawi, 44, Lecturer at Baghdad University The day I had to bury my husband was the hardest day in my life. I was not able to grieve properly as I had to look after my son who suffers from autism. My husband, Mohammad, was a surgeon and a refugee in Germany, but after the regime change in 2003, he returned to Iraq immediately. In mid-April 2007, an explosion occurred at al-Jadiriyah Bridge in Baghdad causing many deaths. There were 10 bodies that were completely charred. One of those was my husband. Aseed, my son, who used to sleep every day on his father's chest to the sound of his heartbeat, felt the loss of his father immediately. For many days, he sat in the wardrobe wearing the same clothes. If any good has come out of his father's death, it made him more determined to face life. I feel that my husband is still with us. He was a writer, a thinker and a painter and for that reason, I feel he has only died in physical form, and his works remain with us. To get out of my crisis, I challenged myself to carry on. With the help of friends, I managed to get a second job, as well as training other widows on the art of living life after a crisis. In fact, I was helping myself because I still could not overcome my own crisis. Elham Mahdi, 42, Housewife in Baghdad I have become the mother and father of four children ever since my husband was killed in a bus explosion on his way to work. He left the house at eight that morning to get to the Shorja market in Baghdad where he worked as seller. But his life was over within half an hour. We received compensation from the government, but it will never compensate for losing a loving father to four children. Although we also get help from a local organisation which provides a monthly salary for my children, clothing for Eid [festival], and help at the start of the academic year, our living conditions are difficult, and I need more money to meet the needs of four growing children. Razan Othman Mohammed, 29, Worker in Baghdad After a love story that lasted 10 years, one minute was all it took to lose my husband. Back in 2008, my husband, his orphaned relative - who was only five years old - and I were caught up in a bomb explosion at the market. When the medics came to our rescue, a suicide bomber strapped with explosives set off another bomb. I lost consciousness at that moment and my body was full of shrapnel. My husband died of his injuries on his way to the hospital and the orphaned child was badly injured. He is now disabled and no longer able to walk. I have undergone five surgeries in the aftermath of the explosions. My condition was so serious that I didn't know my husband had died for three months, as the doctors advised my family to keep the news from me. I have since moved back in with my parents and I look after myself using my own income. I see myself in a better position compared to other widowed women since I do not have any children. But what about all the other young widowed women who have children? Who will support them? Adawyia Mutar Hussein, 40, Najaf I lost my husband while I was pregnant with our daughter, who is now six years old. She became fatherless even before she was born. My husband was killed in 2004 in a family dispute and left me with two daughters to take care of, alone. I have tried to get my husband's entitlements but no-one seemed to help, neither the government nor my family. My first source of income is from my neighbours and well-wishers who collect money for me every now and again. My second source is from working as a cleaner at party and wedding venues. More than half of my income goes on rent for the house that I live in at the moment, which consists of one room. I currently live with my two daughters and my 35-year-old orphaned nephew who is completely disabled. We want only one thing from the government, and that is a small piece of land to build the simplest house just to keep the family all together under one roof. Huda Abd al-Hafith, 37, Baghdad I am a mother of four children whose father used to work as a taxi driver. He left the house one day for work and never came back. After four days of absence, I found his tortured body in the local hospital. The criminal report into his death concluded that he died in a car-jacking attempt that went wrong and the case was closed. But I think the sectarian extremism that was prevalent at the time led to his torture and killing in 2007. I now live alone with my four children in a rented one-bedroom house after I was kicked out of my old house. I receive a small amount of income support from the government, 150,000 dinars ($125; £80) per month, which does not even cover the rent of 200,000 dinars per month. I work from home because I cannot leave my children alone at such a young age. I make and sell bread and food to the neighbours. I'm not thinking of getting married again, I have tried my luck once and the children now are my main concern. Majda al-Basrah, 60 The shock of his failed attempt to migrate to Germany back in 1995 led to my husband's death. We lost everything - our jobs, our house and money. That year, the situation in Iraq was very difficult. I had problems at work mainly because I refused to become a member of the [then ruling] Baath Party. We decided to travel to Jordan and move on from there to Germany, but we were not able to obtain a visa. Because of harsh conditions that we were facing in Jordan, we decided to return to Iraq and start our life from the beginning. We bought a simple house and basic furniture with the money we had left. But after a year, my husband passed away, partly because he couldn't cope with the stress and pressures of life. At the moment, I live alone in my house and I work as a tailor every now and then, and my family helps too with the finances. I started receiving the widows' income support recently after help from my local council. All the widows and divorced women in my area are receiving their income support because of the help of a kind man that works in the council. |
A painting by Mexican artist Diego Rivera has been sold by Christie's in New York for a record $9.76m (£7.17m), the highest price paid for a Latin American artwork at auction. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The record had previously been set by a work by Frida Kahlo, with whom Rivera had a decades-long tumultuous relationship. Her Two Nudes in the Forest sold for $8m in 2016. The Rivals was bought by an unnamed collector bidding over the phone. It is part of the record-breaking sale of late US billionaire David Rockefeller's private art collection, which has become the highest-grossing sale of a single-owner art collection at auction. The colourful painting depicts two men in conical hats attending a traditional Mexican celebration. It was commissioned by Abby Rockefeller, David Rockefeller's mother, for her own private collection. In 1941, she gifted the painting to David and his wife Peggy, who hung it prominently in their living room at their home in Seal Harbor, Maine. Another work by Rivera, Dance in Tehuantepec holds the record for the Latin American painting to fetch the highest sum ever, not just at auction. You may also be interested in: |
The Care Quality Commission, regulator of health and care services in England, has come under intense scrutiny this week after allegations that former managers were involved in "covering up" a report into the deaths of babies at a hospital in Cumbria. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The organisation was set up in 2009. So what was it charged to do, and how has it fared? What is the CQC? The commission took over the work of three previous regulators: the Healthcare Commission, which inspected the NHS as well as private and voluntary healthcare providers; the Commission for Social Care Inspection; and the Mental Health Act Commission. That means it has responsibility for ensuring hospitals, care homes, dentists, GPs and care homes are safe and that they offer high-quality compassionate care. Health and social care providers also have to register with the organisation to operate. It has an annual budget of around £160m. It employs around 2,100 staff, around half of whom are front-line inspectors and assessors. What does it do? It can go in unannounced to carry out an investigation, or after concerns are raised about poor care. However, much of its system relies on self-assessment by trusts - a political decision. The CQC carried out 15,408 inspections in 2009-10 and 7,271 in 2010-11. There were 18,858 inspections in 2011-12, a figure the regulator is set to significantly exceed this year. Inspection teams are made up of people from these different backgrounds: some from the health and social care service, others from the police or fire service who have experience of carrying out inspections. How has it fared? There have been difficulties. At the outset, the CQC had to introduce new monitoring systems and it also found it hard to recruit enough staff. A series of reports from the Commons Select Health Committee and the National Audit Office in 2010 and 2011 highlighted problems including too much focus on registering providers rather than inspecting them. A new management team, led by the current chief executive David Behan, came in last summer. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said he has confidence in the current team. What happened at Furness General Hospital? Concerns first came to light in 2008 after the deaths of a number of babies and mothers in the hospital's maternity unit. But it was given a clean bill of health by the CQC at its next inspection in 2010. The following year, police began an inquiry into a number of deaths. Also in 2011, the CQC commissioned an internal review of its investigation of the hospital. What are the allegations against the CQC? A whistle-blower raised concerns with senior CQC managers in March last year about the organisation's regulation of the Cumbrian trust. Mr Behan ordered external consultants Grant Thornton to investigate. It found the 2011 internal CQC report was not made public because it was decided it was too critical. Grant Thompson highlighted a meeting of senior managers in March last year at which that decision is said to have taken place. Its report said this "might well have constituted a deliberate cover-up", though the allegations have been denied. The CQC initially refused to name those at the meeting because of data protection concerns. However, it came under pressure to put the names in the public domain, and finally did so on Thursday. The CQC revealed that the people present were Cynthia Bower, then CQC chief executive, her deputy Jill Finney, Anna Jefferson, head of press, and Louise Dineley, CQC head of regulatory risk and quality, who had written the report. Ms Bower and Ms Jefferson have denied being involved in a cover-up. Ms Finney has had her employment terminated at her new job, chief commercial officer at Nominet, which controls the .co.uk web domain. She has not commented. The current bosses of the CQC are set to be questioned by MPs on the Commons health committee. Are things going to change? Mr Hunt has said he has faith in the new team at the head of the CQC, He has also announced there will be chief inspectors of hospitals, GPs and social care. Mr Hunt has also said he wants NHS inspection to be more like Ofsted, which investigates schools. There have similar budgets, while the CQC has more staff. Health think-tank the Nuffield Trust recently said Ofsted-style inspections were a good idea. But hospitals are typically much bigger and more complex organisations which carry out a wider array of tasks than schools. The Nuffield Trust said to make such a system work the CQC would need extra resources, political support and time to develop it. |
On one side of the Atlantic: a country that quite can't decide how it should cut off ties with its close trading partner. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
On the other: a government so divided that it shuts down when it can't agree on how to spend its money. Our correspondents - Anthony Zurcher in Washington and Rob Watson in London - took a moment to ask each other via webcam: is my government more dysfunctional than yours? Anthony: I'm an American political journalist, but we pay attention to what's going on on the other side of the pond. Rob: I lived for 11 and a half years there so it still fees a bit like home, the US. Anthony: So you have good knowledge. One of the things I do is follow a lot of Brits and Americans and there was a tweet that caught my eye and this is what it said: "We are a nation sleepwalking towards a cliff edge. If we do not pull ourselves from the brink the damage will be permanent." I read that, and I did a double-take because I wasn't sure which country they were talking about, who the 'we' was. But it was David Lammy, a British Labour MP. So I guess my first question to you is: convince me, why are things worse on your side of the Atlantic? Rob: I'm not sure I'd want to do it that way round Anthony. But I guess if had to do a score of a zero to 10 of how bad are things, I'd say a nine. And the reason I say this, and to get a bit serious for a second, I do think this is the worst peacetime crisis Britain has faced since the end of World War Two. For three reasons, basically. Number one the issue is massive, it's not just about deciding to leave a golf club. It affects how we project power in the world, our place in the world, our economic model, it's incredibly important to our labour market here, so the issue is huge. Number two: the politicians are utterly and hopelessly divided about what to do about the result of that referendum in 2016. And lastly, and this is where things are really nasty here and maybe have similarities with the US: the people are divided. And people are divided in a way they haven't been in this country. I mean normally people are divided on political lines, class lines, wealth lines, now they are divided on cultural identity. So people who supported Brexit tend to be described often as nationalists and people who voted Remain are often thought of as progressives. So there you go, I'd give us about a nine out of 10. Where are you Anthony? Anthony: Nine out of ten? Hah, it's hard to give a number to this crisis. I'd say a six, maybe a seven. I mean the crisis that we're having in the US right now, at least the immediate crisis, is such a ridiculous issue: it's five billion dollars of wall funding in a federal government budget that is a trillion dollars. The stakes on this, when you look at it, seem small, it's just a little drop of money. But it's a good point you make about how the people are divided - and it's something you see here in the US as well. I mean this wall fight and the government shutdown were about $5.6bn - this is a symbolic battle over the direction of the country, who gets to set political priorities, whether it's Donald Trump or the Democrats in Congress. I think it shows the systemic problem of the American government right now where can we as a divided nation where people have very different views, can a government that is inherently divided where you have different parties controlling different parts of government, can that function without grinding to a halt? And I'm not sure it can. Rob: Well, let me put this to you. I always remember when I was a reporter in the US after covering many of Bill Clinton's speeches, and not sure if this one was after Columbine or the Oklahoma bombing, but he said this, and I don't know if he borrowed it from anybody else, that really resonated with me. You know he did that thing where he bites his lip and says "There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what is right about America." Immensely powerful. Do you think that's still true? Anthony: Clinton had a way with words. There are signs of silver lining. I mean there were compromises last year on criminal justice reform, and there were signs that people could come across the aisle and co-operate. Take one example: there's a mayor in Indiana, he's called Pete Buttigieg. And he's running for president. He's gay, in a happy marriage. And the idea that gay marriage could be a non-issue, people didn't really mention it when he announced his candidacy, they were talking about him being a millennial and not that he was gay, that represents a sea change in US politics even from just 15 years ago. Maybe there's still the potential that Americans have a short memory - we see a lot of conflicts right now and they put it behind themselves, move on and before you know it, something that seemed a life and death battle, whether it's immigration now or trade now, that can change into a shrug and a "Oh, that's no longer a big deal and we all agree on it." Rob: I guess that's one of the things I'd pick out from my American experience - the thing I loved living about in the US - was that can-do spirit. So that no matter how many problems, sometimes self-inflicted, that America creates it's also brilliant at coming up with the solutions. Whereas us here in the UK, our national slogan, and I think a newspaper had a competition about this, is "Mustn't Grumble."But maybe there are two ways of skinning a cat. I have a theory about the UK. Everyone is immensely gloomy right now. And I tend to take the view that in 2012, when people were looking at Britain and we were holding the Olympics here, all over the world they were saying "My goodness, isn't the UK cool, look how there are so many non-white athletes, the country's also recovering from recession." Now they are looking at the UK and thinking "What's happened, have these people gone crazy?" So my take is that maybe people were way too optimistic in 2012 and way too pessimistic now - I mean how would you score the US on that front now? Because that does seem to be one of the big problems we have, and the US: we have very divided populations. Anthony: Right … yeah. I think you touched on something earlier, part of the problem here in the US and in the UK, there is a group of people who have been left behind. You looked at London and the Olympics and it was all great news; and you looked at the election of Barack Obama here and the way US society was changing, this was all great news and progress. But the reality was that the systems, the global systems, were hurting people. One of the funny things was, I was covering the Donald Trump phenomenon very early on, and I kept being asked by British colleagues how he could be doing so well and why he was touching into this groundswell of support from people who seemed to be upset at the American system and felt they had no purchase in the American politics. That changed a lot after Brexit! Lots said I don't understand. And right before the November election, it was British colleagues telling me "I think Trump is going to win - this feels like Brexit redux." I was saying well there's a chance … Clinton has an electoral lock. We see this is a problem that isn't getting fixed any time soon. Rob: That's very interesting. I was about to say there's something similar in the UK. And in other European countries we all have that in common because with the Brexit voting phenomenon, a lot of it was about people who looked at the world around them and thought "This isn't the Britain I grew up in. The economy has changed. Everyone raves about the kind of people who go off to Davos and super-cool cars and planes but from where I'm sitting this doesn't look so great." And I remember during the Brexit referendum going to parts of the UK where the population had barely changed in its ethnic composition in 800 years since the Normans invaded and suddenly 40% of the town has got EU nationals who have come in to do various things in the field, agricultural jobs. But here's the thing. I scored it high right at the start - nine out of 10 - because I said people are very divided. My hunch would be here in the UK that if - and my goodness this is a big if - that if some fantastic politician was to miraculously appear, and I have to say there's absolutely no sign of this person in the Brexit era, I suspect that they could start to heal the divisions in the UK. But I suspect, I maybe wrong, that it would be more difficult in the US. It's hard to imagine an American leader who could bring together people who are Trump supporters and people in big cities who had been super-enthusiastic about Barack Obama. What do you think? Anthony: One of the things you see time and time again with Donald Trump is the strength of his base. It's not a huge percentage of the US population - 30-35% - but they are sticking with him through thick and thin. And even when Donald Trump is off the scene, one way or the other, whether it's re-election in 2020 or he's removed by some strange chance before then, the idea of Trumpism - the idea that there are people totally disenfranchised from the political system - that's not changing. In the United States, demographically, culturally, socially, we're in a transition. And any time there's a transition, any time there's change, there's going to be unease, resentment and crisis that is created by those transitions. And you're seeing it in the UK and you're seeing it in the US. The question is can the US political system handle this? Obviously we've handled political crises in the past. But because of the way the country is divided regionally, divided culturally, even between cities and suburbs, the system I think is creaking under the pressure. Rob: That's an interesting point. And it also presents challenges for us journalists doesn't it? What do you do when you meet people as a journalist who you're very unhappy with. Do you tell them "Actually if you look at the statistics things aren't as bad as they seem?" In the US I think it's called the Man on the Street. And you think, hang on a minute, maybe we should, yes, absolutely have as many ordinary folk as possible on the telly, but also challenge them a bit. What do you think? Anthony: Right, yeah. I go to a place like Texas and talk to people where I'm from, and they have a decidedly different view of US politics, of what government can and cannot do, the role that government plays in people's lives. And then I go to California, and for them government is good, government is a positive force, they aren't afraid of higher taxes and they aren't afraid of more government involvement in their lives. I mean, those are diametrically opposed viewpoints and on a local level, on a state level, it works alright, but when you send all those politicians from those states to Washington and get them to agree and compromise when the people back home are telling them that the other side is anathema to their way of life it becomes a real challenge. I said six or seven for the American crisis because long term I think there are systemic problems. But you know, there are immediate crises too, like the investigations into Donald Trump. You don't have to deal with anything quite like that with your government. Donald Trump is being devilled by obstruction of justice, possible ties to Russia, business dealings - all of that could push us up to a nine or a ten in the blink of an eye. Rob: Anthony, I think we need to wrap it up. So I would just say this: When people say to me "Rob, when is it all going to end? How's this Brexit, how's it all going to end?" I often hear on the street, "Well, it's probably going to be alright." It's very British and to go back to that phrase we had at the start: mustn't grumble. What about you Anthony? Anthony: You know, I think that eventually there will be some kind of kicking the can down the road but the problems, the divides in this country, aren't going to go away. It's going to be difficult to find any kind of long-term solution. It seems that this conflict and division is going to be with us for at least two years until the next election might sort out some of the government divisions. But the reality is that the system is set up for conflict - and conflict is what we're getting. Rob: We'll talk again before that's up. Anthony: Absolutely. |
In early 2019, Maya was on the run - but happy. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By M Ilyas KhanBBC News, Peshawar She was from Nowshera, northern Pakistan, where society is conservative and tolerance for non-conformity runs thin. And Maya didn't conform. She was transgender, born male but identifying and living as woman. She had escaped abuse at home three times, running far away each time. She'd found happiness and a new community, but then took the chance of moving closer to her family home in Peshawar. "I wish we had known better," says her childhood friend Mehek Khan. Because Maya's family tracked her down and within a month of her move, she was dead. Police suspect her brother and uncle killed her, but they have denied any involvement. Rights activists allege the police have left many loopholes in the case, meaning justice may never be reached for Maya, as for so many of Pakistan's murdered transgender women. 'We were drawn to each other' In Maya's home state of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, transgender women tend to identify as being a third gender - they often refer to themselves as "she-males". A series of court rulings since 2009 have recognised a third gender in law, but implementation is problematic. Socially, transgender individuals continue to be treated as lesser beings, having no right to claim privacy or personal dignity, or even safety. Maya's story highlights the dark side of these realities. "We were drawn to each other right from the start," says Mehek. "It may be because we were becoming aware of our common gender." Maya and Mehek grew up across the road from each other in the rural outskirts of Nowshera. Both were born male, but always felt female, says Mehek. She would sometimes put on a dupatta (a head scarf) or paint her nails. Mehek's father and uncle considered her a disgrace. "They would often beat me up, lock me in a room... but I couldn't stop repeating it," Mehek says. Maya faced the same treatment from her male relatives when she experimented with dressing as a woman. Things became harder as they approached their teens, says Mehek, when "she-males start feeling they are not what people think they are". "When that happens, life with the family becomes increasingly difficult, and you wait for an opportunity to step out." The two fantasised for years about running away and becoming great dancers, and then, in 2016, Mehek finally managed to do so. She fled to Peshawar, where a boyfriend found her work at a garment factory. It was a year before she heard from Maya, who called her saying she was planning to escape. "I was so happy I cried," says Mehek. Maya and Mehek moved together to Kamra, in the northern highlands of Punjab province, and into the care of a guru. Pushed to the fringes of society, transgender women in Pakistan tend to cluster in small communities organised around an older trans woman, a guru, who acts as their guardian and protector in exchange for a cut of their earnings. The guru will also teach them how to dress and perform, so they have access to one of the few sources of income available for them - as wedding dancers. Betrayed and dragged home The year the two spent fulfilling their dream of dancing "was the best year of our lives", says Mehek. Having transgender dancers at weddings is not only a cheaper alternative but also spares the hosts the censure they would expect from community elders if they invited cisgender women. For dancers, it's a way of avoiding having to beg, or enter sex work. "We went all over Pothowar region, dancing at weddings and other parties, and making more money than we had seen before." But it was a brief period of happiness - they were both ultimately betrayed by boyfriends, who tricked them into putting themselves in the path of their families. Both were dragged back home. Both women had their hair cropped and, Mehek says, were tortured. Maya was badly beaten, she says, and her brother chained her to a bed in the basement of their house for several days. Undeterred, in March, they both escaped again, eventually ending up in Peshawar, where the trend for "Tommy dancers" - transwomen dancers with a less feminine look - meant they could still get wedding work, despite their shorn heads. Naina Khan became their new guru. She described how Maya seemed to be settling well in Peshawar. "She was quite relaxed, and bold, almost over-confident," she says. But then on Saturday, "the doorbell rang and an old acquaintance walked in, holding a phone in his hand", she says, sitting in the nine-room apartment where she houses nearly 20 youthful chailas, or disciples. Maya was reclining in a cot in the lounge, she says, talking on phone. The visitor sat in another cot, and kept looking at his phone, sometimes stealing a glance at Maya. "I now suspect he had Maya's picture in his phone and wanted to confirm her presence," Naina says. The visitor left abruptly. Minutes later the bell rang again, and three men walked in. "I saw Maya rush in. She quickly removed her earrings and nose-pin, turned off her phone, put everything in a purse and gave it to me. She was very frightened. She said her brother and uncle had come to get her." A tall young man barged into the room, walked up to Maya and hit her. Naina and her chailas rushed in. The man pulled out a gun but Naina refused to be intimidated and, with the help of the others, was able to push all three men out of the apartment. But within half-an-hour, a police party arrived and the officer ordered Maya to go with him. When Naina intervened, he said Maya had stolen gold from her home. Left with no option, Naina and her chailas decided they would accompany them to the nearby police station. Over the next couple of hours, they raised a ruckus, demanding to know why Maya was there since she didn't want to go home. She was an adult, they said, and couldn't be forced to do anything she didn't want. The head of the police station assured her that they just wanted Maya to have a word with her father, who was on his way from Nowshera, and that after that, Maya would be free to go where she wanted. Naina and her followers left for a wedding appointment, but when they went back to the police station in the early hours, Maya was not there. A law that can clear murderers What happened to Maya that night is not clear, and may never be. A top police officer of Peshawar city, Zahoor Afridi, told the BBC that Maya had given her consent to leave with her father, uncle and other male relatives. But an undertaking shown to BBC by the Hashtnagri police is written on a plain paper and signed only by her father and uncle, not Maya. Investigations by Nowshera police showed that the car carrying Maya had stopped briefly at a petrol station owned by her uncle. There, Maya was moved to the car in which her uncle and brother were travelling. The rest of the family was asked to proceed home. The next morning Maya was found dead, lying in a pool of blood in the woods near Nowshera. Nearly a dozen people have been arrested so far, including Maya's father, her brother, uncle and other members of the extended family. In statements to court, they all denied having killed Maya. All have been released on bail. Taimur Kamal, a transgender rights activist, says the circumstantial evidence is strong, but the police are "reluctant to include some relevant clauses in the case that will make it hard for the offenders to avoid punishment". For years in Pakistan, the heirs of a murdered person had the right to pardon the killers in exchange for blood money, an ancient Arab custom. However, in 2016, in order to curb so-called honour killings - and letting families get away with murder and walk away with money - parliament abolished this right in all cases classified as "honour crimes". "Maya's is clearly an honour killing," says Taimur Kamal. "But the police haven't included the honour clause in the case, which leaves the door open for Maya's mother or sister to pardon her killers." A body unclaimed but paid for Peshawar-based transgender rights group Transaction says at least 70 trans women have been murdered in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province alone since 2015, when the group started keeping data on crimes against the community. Among the more recent cases, that of a Peshawar trans woman, Nazo, stands out. She was killed by two friends in July last year. They hacked her body into pieces, stuffed it in plastic bags and were carrying it for disposal when police caught them. Nazo's family considered it below their dignity to accept her body, so it was buried in a police graveyard in Peshawar. But they did feel they owned Nazo when they were offered blood money by the killers in return for filing a pardon in court. The two men were acquitted on the basis of that pardon two months ago. More recently, a trans woman from Mardan was allegedly killed by her family. Though pictures of her dead body were circulated by rights activists on social media, no-one filed a murder case with the police, nor did the police bother to act on the tip. According to rights activists, a majority of these murders are committed by angry lovers. Murders by family members are rare, mainly because most trans-women leave their homes at an early age and lose all contact with their relatives. The only "relatives" these trans women are left with are members of the community where they live. And that is where they are missed the most when they are gone. Naina, Maya's former guru, says she is reminded of her every time she opens her safe. "I see her purse, and start crying. It's all there; some money, her phone, her national ID, her jewellery. She was so young. You can't look at a young person and imagine death." For Mehek, Maya's memories run even deeper. "Naina is kind and protective, and our place is bustling with friendly she-males. But my heart continues to be in pain. I've lost my best friend and no-one will ever replace her," she says. |
If you are one of the thousands of firms - and millions of jobs - that rely on the £423bn annual trade in goods between Britain and the EU, today you may be feeling a little brighter. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Kamal AhmedEconomics editor@bbckamalon Twitter Yes, it is still far from clear that the EU will even go part of the way to accepting the government's offer of a "common rule book" on that goods trade. Or, in a technologically indistinct future, whether it ever allow a "third country" to be responsible for collecting its own customs tariffs. But the White Paper on UK-EU relations has at least put that goods relationship at the heart of attempts to secure a future trade deal. The Government has said it will be willing to fully abide by EU rules and regulations, even though after March 2019 it will have no formal say in how those rules are constructed. Business groups that rely on goods trade have been supportive. The EEF manufacturers' group described it as a "further step forward". Yet when it comes to the UK's £1.4 trillion services sector - which makes up 80% of the economy - it is a very different matter. Here the Government has called for "regulatory flexibility" out of the EU services single market and admitted that "this means that the UK and the EU will not have current levels of access to each other's markets". In other words, there are costs attached. 'Real blow' That has brought strong words of protest from the financial services sector, and more specifically the City, which relies on friction-free access to the EU for much of its business. "Today's Brexit white paper is a real blow for the UK's financial and related professional services sector," said Catherine McGuiness, head of policy for the City of London Corporation. "With looser trade ties to Europe, the financial and related professional services sector will be less able to create jobs, generate tax and support growth across the wider economy. It's that simple." It seems the Government has made a calculation. If there is no agreement on regulatory alignment on goods, chaos at the ports - and economic damage - could ensue. Essential supply chains - such as those used to produce millions of cars - will be disrupted. And there will be no solution to the "no hard border" on the island of Ireland. That has to be headed off. On services, the risks are less clear. In sectors such as finance, law and legal - Britain is a global leader, the government says. As such, its services enjoy high levels of global demand. The City has a large trade surplus with the EU, and the Bank of England, for example, has always made it clear it believes the EU needs Britain more than Britain needs the EU when it comes to governments and businesses raising finance across the continent. The huge growth markets for financial, technology, legal and business support services are China and the rapidly growing emerging economies of south-east Asia, as well as America and India. 'Cherry picking' The government believes Britain can make progress on services trade deals outside the EU, where services trade grew by more than 73% between 2007 and 2017. "Essentially the UK has accepted it will not have access to the single market in services," Michael Gasiorek of the UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex told me. He said that asking for single market access for goods and services together would "almost certainly" be rejected by the EU as "cherry picking" - particularly as the government has rejected free movement of people, a third principle of the single market. "Because single market access in goods is needed to resolve the Irish border issue, the UK government is accepting no single market access in services. Instead the government wants to negotiate services access in particular sectors," Dr Gasiorek said. "This is analogous to the approach taken by the EU in its [free trade] deal with Canada. Given that services comprise around 80% of the UK economy, and over 40% of UK exports, inevitably this will have a negative impact on services trade and consequently investment." The UK appears to want a close deal on goods - and is willing to sacrifice services to get it. Read more from Kamal Ahmed here |
People living near a number of Devon and Cornwall rivers are being warned about flooding on Sunday night with heavy rain expected over the counties. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The Met Office is forecasting up to 3in (80mm) of rain for parts of the South West over the next 48 hours. The Environment Agency said the Teign, Dart, Exe, Otter, Axe and Torridge rivers could be affected by the rain. The Yealm, Tamar and Tavy rivers might also start to rise, the agency has warned. The Environment Agency said: "Significant disruption, including disruption to travel and flooding of properties and communities, is possible. "Strong winds will increase the risk of flooding as wind-blown debris has the potential to block watercourses and drains." |
Tony Blair overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, sent ill-prepared troops into battle and had "wholly inadequate" plans for the aftermath, the UK's Iraq War inquiry has said. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Chairman Sir John Chilcot said the 2003 invasion was not the "last resort" action presented to MPs and the public. There was no "imminent threat" from Saddam - and the intelligence case was "not justified", he said. Mr Blair apologised for any mistakes made but not the decision to go to war. The report, which has taken seven years, is on the Iraq Inquiry website. Prime Minister David Cameron, who voted for war in 2003, told MPs it was important to "really learn the lessons for the future" and to improve the workings of government and how it treats legal advice. And he added: "Sending our brave troops on to the battlefield without the right equipment was unacceptable and, whatever else we learn from this conflict, we must all pledge this will never happen again." Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn - who voted against military action - said the report proved the Iraq War had been an "act of military aggression launched on a false pretext", something he said which has "long been regarded as illegal by the overwhelming weight of international opinion". After meeting relatives of British service people killed in Iraq, Mr Corbyn said: "I now apologise sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war." He urged the UK to back moves to give the International Criminal Court "the power to prosecute those responsible for the crime of military aggression". A spokesman for some of the families of the 179 British service personnel and civilians killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2009 said their loved ones had died "unnecessarily and without just cause and purpose". He said all options were being considered, including asking those responsible for the failures identified in the report to "answer for their actions in the courts if such process is found to be viable". Tony Blair responds to report In a statement to the media, his voice at times cracking with emotion, the former Labour prime minister said the decision to commit troops was the "most agonising and momentous" decision in his decade as prime minister, adding that he would "carry it with me for the rest of my days". "I feel deeply and sincerely in a way that no words can properly convey the grief and sorrow of those who lost ones they loved in Iraq - whether our armed forces, the armed forces of other nations or Iraqis. "The intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong, the aftermath turned out to be more hostile, protracted and bloody than ever we imagined.... and a nation whose people we wanted to set free from the evil of Saddam became instead victims of sectarian terrorism. "For all of this, I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you may ever know or can believe." But he was defiant on the central decision to go to war, saying "there were no lies, Parliament and Cabinet were not misled, there was no secret commitment to war, intelligence was not falsified and the decision was made in good faith". Analysis By Peter Hunt, BBC correspondent It's been a long wait. It may prove to have been a worthwhile wait for the people who have always opposed the Iraq War. Remember, one million individuals took to the streets in 2003 in opposition to the march to war. They will seize on this Inquiry's judgement that Saddam Hussein didn't pose an immediate threat and military action at that time was not a last resort. Those seeking action against Tony Blair are likely to be disappointed - but probably not that surprised - that a panel which didn't include any lawyers, hasn't expressed a view on whether military action was legal. Sir John Chilcot's public remarks were peppered with the word "failure". But he was careful not to apportion blame. Others will now do that on the evidence his report has placed in the public domain. The political space will be filled with claims and counter claims about a war in Iraq where - as Sir John Chilcot put it - its people have suffered greatly. In a nearly two hour news conference he said he would never agree that those who died or were injured in Iraq "made their sacrifice in vain" as they had played their part in "the defining global security struggle of the 21st century against the terrorism and violence which the world over destroys lives, divides communities". Quizzed about what he was apologising for, he said: "There is no inconsistency in expressing my sorrow for those that have lost their lives - my regret and my apology for the mistakes - but still saying I believe the decision was right. There is no inconsistency in that." He said the US would have launched an invasion "either with or us or without us", adding: "I had to decide. I thought of Saddam and his record, the character of his regime. I thought of our alliance with America and its importance to us in the post 9/11 world and I weighed it carefully with the heaviest of hearts." Mr Blair, who was PM from 1997 to 2007, conceded that intelligence on Iraq's weapons had "turned out to be wrong" and the invasion had destabilised Iraq but said he still believed the country was "better off" without Saddam, comparing it with the situation in Syria where the decision had been taken not to intervene. He also said he should have "disclosed" the attorney general's legal advice to the Cabinet on the eve of war - but he defended his close relationship with President Bush, saying: "we are better to be strongly onside with the US", arguing that it was "better for our own security". George Bush comments George W Bush's communications director, Freddy Ford, told BBC News: "President Bush is hosting wounded warriors at his ranch today and has not had the chance to read the Chilcot report. "Despite the intelligence failures and other mistakes he has acknowledged previously, President Bush continues to believe the whole world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. "He is deeply grateful for the service and sacrifice of American and coalition forces in the war on terror. And there was no stronger ally than the United Kingdom under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair. "President Bush believes we must now find the unity and resolve to stay on the offensive and defeat radical extremism wherever it exists." The key points of the report Sir John, the ex-civil servant who chaired the inquiry, describes the Iraq War as an intervention that went "badly wrong" with consequences still being felt to this day - and he set out lessons to be learned for future conflicts. His report, which is 2.6 million words, does not make a judgement on whether Mr Blair or his ministers were in breach of international law. But it does highlight a catalogue of errors in political and military decision-making, including: In his statement, Sir John said military action against Saddam Hussein might have been necessary "at some point" but that when Britain joined the US-led invasion in March 2003, the Iraqi dictator posed "no imminent threat", the existing strategy of containment could be continued and the majority of UN Security Council members supported continuing UN inspections and monitoring". He added: "The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of a mass destruction - WMD - were presented with a certainty that was not justified. Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated." UK military fatalities Full details of the 179 British servicemen and women who died Blair/Bush memos Previously classified documents, including 31 personal memos from Tony Blair to then US president George W Bush, have been published alongside the Chilcot Report. They show that momentum in Washington and London towards taking action against Saddam Hussein quickly began to build in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 in the US, which killed nearly 3,000 people. On the day after the attack on New York's Twin Towers, Mr Blair sent a note to President Bush offering his support to bring to justice the hijackers and looked ahead to the "next stage after this evil". Mr Blair said some would "baulk" at the measures necessary to control "biological, chemical and other weapons of mass destruction", but added: "We are better to act now and explain and justify our actions than let the day be put off until some further, perhaps even worse, catastrophe occurs." The memos reveal that Mr Blair and Mr Bush were openly discussing toppling Saddam Hussein as early as December 2001, when the UK and US had just launched military action in Afghanistan. "How we finish in Afghanistan is important to phase 2. If we leave it a better country, having supplied humanitarian aid and having given new hope to the people, we will not just have won militarily but morally; and the coalition will back us to do more elsewhere," says Mr Blair in the memo. "We shall give regime change a good name which will help in our arguments over Iraq." In another memo, from July 2002 - nearly a year before the invasion of Iraq - Mr Blair assured President Bush that the UK would be with him "whatever," but adds that if Mr Bush wanted a wider military coalition he would have to get UN backing, make progress on Middle East peace and engineer a "shift" in public opinion in the US, UK and the Arab World. The note, marked "personal," was shared with then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, but not then defence Secretary Geoff Hoon - a decision criticised by Sir John, who is scathing about the way the collective Cabinet discussion was bypassed by the Blair government. Intelligence failures Sir John echoes the criticisms made in earlier reports into the Iraq War of the use of intelligence about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction to justify war. It says the assessed intelligence had not established "beyond doubt" that Saddam Hussein had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons. Of Mr Blair's September 2002 statement warning that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons that could be launched within 45 minutes of the command to use them, Sir John says: "The judgements about Iraq's capabilities in that statement, and in the dossier published on the same day, were presented with a certainty that was not justified." On the eve of war Mr Blair told MPs that he judged that the possibility of terror groups in possession of weapons of mass destruction was a "real and present danger to Britain and its national security". "Mr Blair had been warned, however, that military action would increase the threat from al-Qaeda to the UK and UK interests. He had also been warned that an invasion might lead to Iraq's weapons and capabilities being transferred into the hands of terrorists," said Sir John. The legality of the war The then attorney general Lord Goldsmith advised Mr Blair to seek explicit UN authorisation for military action but when diplomatic efforts failed, informed him that intervention was lawful on the basis of previous UN resolutions on Iraq relating back to the 1991 Gulf War. Sir John said the report did not make a judgement on the legality or otherwise of the war - pointing out that participants did not give evidence under oath and his findings had no legal force. But he added: "The circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory." In the report he says Lord Goldsmith should have been asked to set out in writing how he arrived at his change of view. When the UK failed to get a UN resolution specifically authorising military action in March 2003, Mr Blair and then foreign secretary Jack Straw blamed France for an "impasse" in the UN and said the UK government was "acting of behalf of the international community to "uphold the authority of the Security Council". But Sir John concludes that the opposite was true. "In the absence of a majority in support of military action, we consider that the UK was, in fact, undermining the Security Council's authority," he said in his statement. Post-war planning and aftermath Much of the report focuses on the post-war planning for the governance of Iraq, originally undertaken by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, and how well equipped British troops were to oversee the large area of southern Iraq around Basra. Many of the witnesses to the inquiry, including former ministers and military commanders, were highly critical of what they said were failures in the Ministry of Defence to provide the necessary resources and equipment and the UK's general deferral to the US in key areas. In his statement, Sir John said: "We have found that the Ministry of Defence was slow in responding to the threat of improvised explosive devices and that delays in providing adequate medium weight protected patrol vehicles should not have been tolerated. "It was not clear which person or department or department within the Ministry of Defence was responsible for identifying and articulating such capability gaps. But it should have been." Mr Blair told the inquiry the difficulties encountered in Iraq after the invasion could not have been known in advance but the inquiry says, the risks of "internal strife", regional instability and al-Qaeda activity in Iraq were each "explicitly identified before the invasion". "The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate. The government failed to achieve its stated objectives." The report acknowledged that the initial campaign to overthrow Saddam was successful and praised the "great courage" of service personnel and civilians involved during and after the invasion, which led to the deaths of more than 200 UK nationals and at least 150,000 Iraqis. But the report adds that Britain's military role "ended a very long way from success" and it was "humiliating" that British troops was reduced to doing deals with a local militia group in Basra, releasing captured militants in return for an end to attacks on British forces. Wider reaction Sir John said he hoped the report would answer some of the questions the relatives of those who died and enabled them to make their own mind up on the basis of the evidence. Reg Keys, whose son Tom was killed in Iraq four days before his 21st birthday, told a news conference that his son had "died in vain". And Karen Thornton, whose son Gunner Lee Thornton died in 2006 after being shot while on patrol in Iraq, told BBC Radio 4's Today that she wanted Mr Blair to face war crimes charges if it was proved he had lied. "I think the people who lied should be held to account for what they have done," she said. "They are responsible for the deaths of so many people." Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, whose party opposed the war, said Mr Blair owed the British people an apology. "It's a stark contrast between Mr Blair's absolute, ruthless determination to go to war almost no matter the evidence on the one hand and on the other hand his complete failure and the government's failure to plan at all over what happened next," he said. The SNP, which also opposed the war, said it wanted to know why Tony Blair had supported the invasion "come what may", adding that those who failed in their duties must be held accountable for their actions. And leading lawyer Philippe Sands, who gave evidence to the inquiry, said the cabinet had been "misled about the legal advice". But Mr Blair's former director of communications Alastair Campbell said he did not believe people were "misled" and the report now lays to rest "the allegations of lying and deceit". What was the Iraq War? The war, which lasted about six weeks, ended Saddam Hussein's 25-year regime in Iraq, but the aftermath unleashed years of sectarian violence that has killed thousands since then. The US, which led the intervention in March 2003, lost 4,487 service personnel in the war. Figures about Iraqi deaths vary from 90,000 to more than 600,000. The worst attack happened last weekend when so-called Islamic State militants - who control swathes of Iraq and Syria - launched a suicide bombing in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing more than 250 people. |
High numbers of emergency hospital admissions and a shortage of beds has led to the cancellation of more "non-essential operations" in Guernsey. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Non-emergency operations at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital have been cancelled until the end of the week, with more cancellations possible. The Health and Social Services Department said it had prioritised emergencies and urgent operations. It said the situation would be monitored daily. The department said all affected patients were being notified as far in advance as possible. The bed shortage was blamed on the continued closure of Ozanne Ward and unfilled nursing vacancies. The ward was closed due to work being carried out on its floor and was due to reopen towards the end of last year. However, problems with the floor structure meant the work would take longer and it is now due to reopen in the spring. |
A hundred years ago, teams of women were playing in front of large crowds and making big money. Then the Football Association banned them from its grounds. Here's the story of the fall and rise of women's football, told through 10 objects collected by the National Football Museum. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Bill WilsonBusiness reporter, BBC News "Complaints having been made as to football being played by women, the [FA] council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged. Complaints have also been made as to the conditions under which some of these matches have been arranged and played, and the appropriation of receipts to other than charitable objects." With these words in 1921, the FA decided to ban the playing of women's football in FA-member grounds, which strangled the game as a successful business as the stricture remained in place for 50 years. In other countries there were outright bans on women playing. Jean Williams, the University of Wolverhampton's professor of sport, takes us through items which show the business history and struggles of the women's game. 1. 1895 Sketch magazine print of Nettie Honeyball 'in her football costume' "In 1863 we get the formation of the Football Association and of the modern game. The first women's football games that we know about are in 1881, and they are professional games played to large audiences and they make money. It seems they are organised by local businessmen. The 1881-82 games are relatively short lived. "Nettie Honeyball is the secretary and captain of the first British Ladies Football Club, which was founded in 1894. She was a middle class woman, and they had a non-playing president Lady Florence Dixie, who was upper class. "In historic terms this was the first time women organised football for women. The first game was in Crouch End in 1895 before 10,000 people, which must have generated healthy receipts. Hundreds of games follow in the next few years and the women's game is played all over Britain." 2. Wheaties cereal box from the 1990s featuring US player Michelle Akers "In the 1991 women's world championship she was the winner of the golden boot. She was the first real international women's football star and was massive in the US. She paved the way for Mia Hamm and Hope Solo, but interestingly one of the things that constricted her potential success was that she suffered from chronic fatigue disorder. But for that, her international profile could have been much more. "The narrative of the Wheaties box is that she has had challenges to overcome but is still achieving and can't be held back. This is all referred to on the packaging of the cereal, which the manufacturers call 'The Breakfast of Champions'. "It is one of the first commercial endorsements of this type in the 1990s, at a time when Fifa finally decided they were going to actively oversee women's football, having taken over its stewardship in 1971 but not doing much to promote it in the intervening years." 3. Programmes from 1950s women's football matches "The crux of the FA's ban is that it does not ban women's football outright, but stops it being played on member clubs' grounds. Before the ban women's football is an entertainment spectacle, and if you play it in enclosed stadiums then you can charge people money to come in and watch. "Once the ban comes in women's football goes to other venues: to rugby league and cricket grounds, as well as other venues. These programmes show games being played at Belle Vue speedway stadium, Manchester, and at a general sports stadium on the Isle of Man. "But the FA puts pressure on other sports not to host women's games, which destroys the business model of the women's game. And that gives growth to the myth that women's football has never been an entertaining commercial spectacle. The game is still finding its way back from the ban." 4. Christie and Barbie football dolls "These dolls were released for sale before the 1999 Women's World Cup by toymaker Mattel. The goalkeeper of that team was Briana Scurry." [The first woman goalkeeper and first black woman to be elected to the US National Soccer Hall of Fame.] "But more generally, it reflects [the fact] that the American consumer market was sensitive and aware of questions of ethnicity and race. The marketing of the dolls was as diverse and inclusive as it could be. "There was obviously already an established business around the Barbie and Christie brands, but such was the growing marketing power of women's football that a major manufacturer thought it could cash in further around the 1999 World Cup." 5. Shirt from Eniola Aluko's debut, England v Netherlands, 2004 "The business significance is that major manufacturer Umbro produced the shirt. Historically, sporting brands have not created consumer markets in women's football replica wear in the same way that they have done in other sports, particularly the high-fashion ones of tennis and golf. "It is only relatively recently that that sporting brands have released football shirts cut for women, or boots specifically made for female feet. However, while these other aspects of women's football shirts have progressed, what is interesting is that often the shirt sponsors within the game are not of such 'high brand value' as the men's game. "There is a real opportunity out there for brands such as cosmetics firms to sponsor women's football teams, but you get brands like Nivea preferring to partner with the Liverpool men's football team." 6. A ticket from the 1991 Women's World Championship with sponsor "This ticket, being sponsored by M&Ms, shows that a major US confectionery brand was using women's football to try and crack the potential new business market of China. The tournament was played for the M&Ms Cup. Meanwhile, China wanted to establish a commercial relationship with the West. "There were seven sponsors of this first official women's global tournament in 1991, which Fifa interestingly, and tentatively, called a 'world championship' and not a World Cup. Fifa wanted to get into China and China wanted to join the world football family, so to test the waters this low-financial-risk event was drawn up. "The event was a sporting success and also a successful media product, it was sold to TV companies around the world, and it showed full stadia for the women's game." 7. Ball and boots of the type worn by 1920s/30s star Lily Parr "Lily Parr was the star of the Dick, Kerr Ladies football team of Preston. She began playing for the team at 14, and played for them for 20 years. There are various reports of Lily receiving 'broken time payments', that is, financial compensation for amateur players for time they had had to take off from their day jobs. These women players were nurses, munitions workers, and so on. "These payments, with her earnings from nursing, enabled her to become the first person in her family to own their own home. Obviously this all relates to the ban of 1921 as the FA decides too much of the charitable funds from women's matches are being used for player expenses. They were meant to be amateurs but the financial arrangements could be described as at best opaque. "The boots and ball are from her era. She was a left winger, then moved back into defence and ended her career in goal." 8. Poster for an unofficial Women's World Cup in 1970 "There were two unofficial Women's World Cups held in the early 1970s: one in Italy in 1970 and one in Mexico a year later, both backed by local business interests and played in major football stadiums. "In Mexico the event definitely looked to piggyback the men's World Cup held in the country the previous year. That would explain the commercialisation of the women's event there, which was considerable, with key rings, badges, programmes and other consumables produced, and a lot of coverage in the local press. The final was played in the Azteca Stadium in front of 110,000. "The Italian event was sponsored by Italian multinational drinks brand Martini & Rossi, and its final was held in the Turin's Stadio Communale in front of 40,000." [Denmark defeated the host nations in both finals]. 9. Postcard of Dick, Kerr Ladies FC (1920s) "Dick, Kerr wanted to be known as the best in the world, but also wanted to plug into the success of the local men's team and the civic notion of Proud Preston. They had a regular paying public who supported them financially at weekends but also at pioneering floodlit matches. "Most of the crowds at their games are local working-class men. When we think we are being progressive by following women's football, it was these men who were coming out to support the team week in, week out. "This commercially-produced postcard is evidence of 'ambient marketing', typical of how the team's fame spread beyond their home town to a much wider audience. Newsreel films and magazine articles will also have spread their name further afield." 10. Art deco statuette of a female footballer "Because women's football has always been topical, representing modernity, assertive female physicality, and - in its early days - played solely to raise large sums of money, its broader representation has always been culturally significant. "So artefacts, collectables, disposable items, ephemera, have been created around the game over the decades. This statuette is an example of a stylised female football player that someone would have had in their home. It is 1920s in appearance. "There were a lot of similar models made around women's boxing and athletics; beautified art deco creations." Professor Williams has organised Upfront and Onside: The Women's Football Conference, about the history and heritage of women's football to be held at the National Football Museum in Manchester on International Women's Day, 8 March, and the following day. |
A Japanese man has learnt to scuba dive so he can search the freezing waters of the Pacific Ocean looking for his wife, who has been missing since the catastrophic Japanese tsunami of 2011, it's been reported. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
News from Elsewhere......as found by BBC Monitoring Last week, Yasuo Takamatsu, 57, got the higher-level diving licence he needs for underwater searches and clearing debris. He decided to start training right away instead of waiting for warmer weather after the authorities made three unsuccessful searches in the last year for his wife Yuko's body, the Mainichi Daily News reports. "I want to start looking for Yuko as soon as I can, tomorrow even," he said. "I'll keep diving as many times as it takes. I'll get better, a little at a time." Takamatsu says Yuko was at work at a bank when she felt tremors on 11 March. Fearing a tsunami, employees went up to the roof of the 13m (42ft) building - but the wave was reportedly 20m high when it hit the town of Onagawa - one of the worst affected areas. Four bank workers were confirmed dead and eight others, including Yuko, were declared missing. The town of 11,000 lost around 1,000 people after the catastrophe. Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter. |
The Newport Street Gallery is one of six UK buildings up for the 2016 Riba Stirling Prize for architecture. A select line-up of judges will decide the winner, but the BBC, in partnership with Riba, is inviting you to vote for your favourite. Find out about the other buildings here . | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
If you are viewing this page in the BBC News app, tap here to vote. What is it and where? Artist Damien Hirst's new gallery houses more than 3,000 pieces of art from his personal collection. Designed by Caruso St John, the gallery occupies a row of converted and extended former industrial buildings in Vauxhall, south London. How much did it cost? Confidential, but reported to be £25m. What was the vision? To link together the ground and upper floors of the five buildings, so the space can be used flexibly for different exhibitions. The two levels are connected with two (much praised) new spiral staircases. The proportions of the three Victorian workshops, with their low-level windows and high blank walls, are echoed in the design of the two new buildings bookending the former industrial units. What have people said about it? "It's a sturdy yet finely crafted building on a tough site." Hank Dittmar, Building Online, August 2016 "Its location is rather uncool. Still - it is very, very Caruso St Johnny. Lovely staircase. Nice brickwork. Tasteful all round." Rory Olcayto, Archinect, July 2016 "It may be the creation of a multimillionaire artist with his own agenda to pursue, but it has a real and generous public spirit." Rowan Moore, Guardian, July 2016 Explore the other buildings on the shortlist BBC Riba Stirling home page Find out more about the BBC Riba Stirling Prize partnership Credits: Video by Richard Kenny and Dave O'Neill Artworks © Jeff Koons and © Damien Hirst and Science ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2016, gallery images © Victor Mara Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. |
Two health trusts in Norfolk and Suffolk could be merged in a bid to make efficiency savings. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The Suffolk Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (SMHP) is looking at merging with the Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. The SMHP's board, meeting on Wednesday, will decide whether to halt its existing application for NHS Foundation Trust status, to merge trusts instead. The board will look at the potential benefits to the services. It will look at "opportunities for staff and economies of scale which might be achieved through a merger", an SMHP spokeswoman said. |
A man has been placed in an induced coma after being found collapsed in the street having taken the legal high 'Annihilation', police have said. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The 33-year-old was found in Drake Street, Rochdale, on Friday morning. He was taken to hospital and is in an induced coma. His friends told officers he had been taking the legal high. Police issued an urgent warning after a second man, aged 39, was also found collapsed in Drake Street several hours later. The man is also believed to have taken a legal high and was treated by medics at the scene before leaving. Det Insp Andy Butterworth, from Greater Manchester Police, said: "The use of legal highs is a worrying trend and has ended with a man in hospital in intensive care. "I want to remind people about the potentially life-threatening consequences of legal highs - they may not be illegal but they definitely are not safe." |
Here is the full text of Theresa May's letter to European Council president Donald Tusk, beginning the start of Brexit negotiations. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Dear President Tusk On 23 June last year, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. As I have said before, that decision was no rejection of the values we share as fellow Europeans. Nor was it an attempt to do harm to the European Union or any of the remaining member states. On the contrary, the United Kingdom wants the European Union to succeed and prosper. Instead, the referendum was a vote to restore, as we see it, our national self-determination. We are leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe - and we want to remain committed partners and allies to our friends across the continent. Earlier this month, the United Kingdom Parliament confirmed the result of the referendum by voting with clear and convincing majorities in both of its Houses for the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. The Bill was passed by Parliament on 13 March and it received Royal Assent from Her Majesty The Queen and became an Act of Parliament on 16 March. Today, therefore, I am writing to give effect to the democratic decision of the people of the United Kingdom. I hereby notify the European Council in accordance with Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union of the United Kingdom's intention to withdraw from the European Union. In addition, in accordance with the same Article 50(2) as applied by Article 106a of the Treaty Establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, I hereby notify the European Council of the United Kingdom's intention to withdraw from the European Atomic Energy Community. References in this letter to the European Union should therefore be taken to include a reference to the European Atomic Energy Community. See the letter as published by Downing Street (PDF) This letter sets out the approach of Her Majesty's Government to the discussions we will have about the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union and about the deep and special partnership we hope to enjoy - as your closest friend and neighbour - with the European Union once we leave. We believe that these objectives are in the interests not only of the United Kingdom but of the European Union and the wider world too. It is in the best interests of both the United Kingdom and the European Union that we should use the forthcoming process to deliver these objectives in a fair and orderly manner, and with as little disruption as possible on each side. We want to make sure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and is capable of projecting its values, leading in the world, and defending itself from security threats. We want the United Kingdom, through a new deep and special partnership with a strong European Union, to play its full part in achieving these goals. We therefore believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the European Union. The Government wants to approach our discussions with ambition, giving citizens and businesses in the United Kingdom and the European Union - and indeed from third countries around the world - as much certainty as possible, as early as possible. I would like to propose some principles that may help to shape our coming discussions, but before I do so, I should update you on the process we will be undertaking at home, in the United Kingdom. The process in the United Kingdom As I have announced already, the Government will bring forward legislation that will repeal the Act of Parliament - the European Communities Act 1972 - that gives effect to EU law in our country. This legislation will, wherever practical and appropriate, in effect convert the body of existing European Union law (the "acquis") into UK law. This means there will be certainty for UK citizens and for anybody from the European Union who does business in the United Kingdom. The Government will consult on how we design and implement this legislation, and we will publish a White Paper tomorrow. We also intend to bring forward several other pieces of legislation that address specific issues relating to our departure from the European Union, also with a view to ensuring continuity and certainty, in particular for businesses. We will of course continue to fulfil our responsibilities as a member state while we remain a member of the European Union, and the legislation we propose will not come into effect until we leave. From the start and throughout the discussions, we will negotiate as one United Kingdom, taking due account of the specific interests of every nation and region of the UK as we do so. When it comes to the return of powers back to the United Kingdom, we will consult fully on which powers should reside in Westminster and which should be devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But it is the expectation of the Government that the outcome of this process will be a significant increase in the decision-making power of each devolved administration. Negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union The United Kingdom wants to agree with the European Union a deep and special partnership that takes in both economic and security cooperation. To achieve this, we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the EU. If, however, we leave the European Union without an agreement the default position is that we would have to trade on World Trade Organisation terms. In security terms a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened. In this kind of scenario, both the United Kingdom and the European Union would of course cope with the change, but it is not the outcome that either side should seek. We must therefore work hard to avoid that outcome. It is for these reasons that we want to be able to agree a deep and special partnership, taking in both economic and security cooperation, but it is also because we want to play our part in making sure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and able to lead in the world, projecting its values and defending itself from security threats. And we want the United Kingdom to play its full part in realising that vision for our continent. Proposed principles for our discussions Looking ahead to the discussions which we will soon begin, I would like to suggest some principles that we might agree to help make sure that the process is as smooth and successful as possible. i. We should engage with one another constructively and respectfully, in a spirit of sincere cooperation. Since I became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom I have listened carefully to you, to my fellow EU Heads of Government and the Presidents of the European Commission and Parliament. That is why the United Kingdom does not seek membership of the single market: we understand and respect your position that the four freedoms of the single market are indivisible and there can be no "cherry picking". We also understand that there will be consequences for the UK of leaving the EU: we know that we will lose influence over the rules that affect the European economy. We also know that UK companies will, as they trade within the EU, have to align with rules agreed by institutions of which we are no longer a part - just as UK companies do in other overseas markets. ii. We should always put our citizens first. There is obvious complexity in the discussions we are about to undertake, but we should remember that at the heart of our talks are the interests of all our citizens. There are, for example, many citizens of the remaining member states living in the United Kingdom, and UK citizens living elsewhere in the European Union, and we should aim to strike an early agreement about their rights. iii. We should work towards securing a comprehensive agreement. We want to agree a deep and special partnership between the UK and the EU, taking in both economic and security cooperation. We will need to discuss how we determine a fair settlement of the UK's rights and obligations as a departing member state, in accordance with the law and in the spirit of the United Kingdom's continuing partnership with the EU. But we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the EU. iv. We should work together to minimise disruption and give as much certainty as possible. Investors, businesses and citizens in both the UK and across the remaining 27 member states - and those from third countries around the world - want to be able to plan. In order to avoid any cliff-edge as we move from our current relationship to our future partnership, people and businesses in both the UK and the EU would benefit from implementation periods to adjust in a smooth and orderly way to new arrangements. It would help both sides to minimise unnecessary disruption if we agree this principle early in the process. v. In particular, we must pay attention to the UK's unique relationship with the Republic of Ireland and the importance of the peace process in Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland is the only EU member state with a land border with the United Kingdom. We want to avoid a return to a hard border between our two countries, to be able to maintain the Common Travel Area between us, and to make sure that the UK's withdrawal from the EU does not harm the Republic of Ireland. We also have an important responsibility to make sure that nothing is done to jeopardise the peace process in Northern Ireland, and to continue to uphold the Belfast Agreement. vi. We should begin technical talks on detailed policy areas as soon as possible, but we should prioritise the biggest challenges. Agreeing a high-level approach to the issues arising from our withdrawal will of course be an early priority. But we also propose a bold and ambitious Free Trade Agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union. This should be of greater scope and ambition than any such agreement before it so that it covers sectors crucial to our linked economies such as financial services and network industries. This will require detailed technical talks, but as the UK is an existing EU member state, both sides have regulatory frameworks and standards that already match. We should therefore prioritise how we manage the evolution of our regulatory frameworks to maintain a fair and open trading environment, and how we resolve disputes. On the scope of the partnership between us - on both economic and security matters - my officials will put forward detailed proposals for deep, broad and dynamic cooperation. vii. We should continue to work together to advance and protect our shared European values. Perhaps now more than ever, the world needs the liberal, democratic values of Europe. We want to play our part to ensure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and able to lead in the world, projecting its values and defending itself from security threats. The task before us As I have said, the Government of the United Kingdom wants to agree a deep and special partnership between the UK and the EU, taking in both economic and security cooperation. At a time when the growth of global trade is slowing and there are signs that protectionist instincts are on the rise in many parts of the world, Europe has a responsibility to stand up for free trade in the interest of all our citizens. Likewise, Europe's security is more fragile today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Weakening our cooperation for the prosperity and protection of our citizens would be a costly mistake. The United Kingdom's objectives for our future partnership remain those set out in my Lancaster House speech of 17 January and the subsequent White Paper published on 2 February. We recognise that it will be a challenge to reach such a comprehensive agreement within the two-year period set out for withdrawal discussions in the Treaty. But we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the EU. We start from a unique position in these discussions - close regulatory alignment, trust in one another's institutions, and a spirit of cooperation stretching back decades. It is for these reasons, and because the future partnership between the UK and the EU is of such importance to both sides, that I am sure it can be agreed in the time period set out by the Treaty. The task before us is momentous but it should not be beyond us. After all, the institutions and the leaders of the European Union have succeeded in bringing together a continent blighted by war into a union of peaceful nations, and supported the transition of dictatorships to democracy. Together, I know we are capable of reaching an agreement about the UK's rights and obligations as a departing member state, while establishing a deep and special partnership that contributes towards the prosperity, security and global power of our continent. Yours sincerely Theresa May |
Opponents of plans for a third bridge over the River Don in Aberdeen have lodged a legal bid to block the crossing. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Supporters of the project insist the bridge would ease traffic congestion in the Tillydrone area. Now residents, some of whom have been served compulsory purchase orders, are going ahead with a legal challenge at the Court of Session. Aberdeen City Council said it had not received confirmation of the action. |
Research by BBC News shows Staffordshire bull terriers are the third most popular dog in the UK. But why are they considered by some as the "chav dog" of choice and what does this tell us about British attitudes to class? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Lauren PottsBBC News Bred originally as fighting dogs, the reputation of the Staffordshire bull terrier often precedes it. And when the BBC's Dog Map appeared on 18 January, a fierce debate broke out on social media. Painted by many as aggressive, vicious and worthy of a place on the "dangerous dogs" list, every negative view was in turn met by a barrage of positive praise citing the breed's loyalty and affectionate character. "No surprise to see Staffies popular in big cities where gangs of chavs live and people use them to guard homes," said one user. "The usual brush is tarring the Staffy," said another. "I'm not a chav and neither are the good people I know that also own Staffs." So why do the dogs have such a negative reputation? And why do we judge in the first place? "They're one of those breeds that has a negative stigma attached to them and one of those is around 'chav culture'," said Dr Thomas Fletcher, a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University. "You hear stories about dangerous dogs and [people] being mauled and a pattern emerges about the type of breed that's [involved]. "Staffies do have a particularly bad reputation, but it is important to recognise that those we hear about represent the minority of the breed. I think it's as much to do with the owner. Animals are individuals and I think it's very much about nurture over nature." Dr Fletcher recently completed a study with dog-walkers about the relationships between humans and animals. Staffordshire bull terrier facts "The majority of coverage of Staffies represents them as the dog of choice among certain groups - white working class youths - or 'chavs' - being one of those," adds Dr Fletcher. "Rarely are Staffies portrayed in a domestic setting - i.e., in 'normal' family life. "Staffies come with a degree of baggage in that respect as they have emerged as a modern-day folk devil. Their reputation then may demarcate boundaries between social groups. Again, these boundaries may be defined along class lines. "But equally there are dogs that can be a marker of other [traits], like sexuality. "It comes down to social norms and the expectations - who should be walking the dog and what we associate with certain people, than the breed itself. "If a gang turned up with a dachshund it wouldn't have the same impact." Elvira Meucci, campaigns director for the Dogs Trust, said dog choice and image extended beyond Staffies and "chav culture". "There's no doubt that you're saying something about your personality [with your dog]," she said. "Staffordshire bull terriers are powerful-looking dogs and therefore they can be used to portray their owners as strong and macho, just as a Chihuahua is the choice of girls who want to look trendy. "If you look back at how dogs have been used, it does change. [At one time] it was Dobermans, because they're big and powerful dogs and that makes a statement." Staffordshire bull terriers are not banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act, but are often confused with banned breeds like pit bulls, Ms Meucci added. That being said, Staffies have made headlines for aggressive acts. In 2011 a girl's pet Chihuahua was mauled to death by four Staffies while a dog owner was given a suspended sentenced in 2013 after his dog decapitated another dog. The same year, teenager Jade Anderson was killed after she was attacked by four dogs in Greater Manchester, two of which were Staffordshire bull terriers. But Coroner Alan Walsh told her inquest the problem was not specific breeds, but the control of dogs in general. According to microchipping data, 356,000 Staffies have been tagged in the past decade by pet registration companies. The statistics perhaps fly in the face of concerns that Staffies should be given a wide berth. But being the dog de jour is a double-edged sword, with over-breeding, a saturated market and owners who do not commit long term contributing to the number of Staffies ending up in shelters. In 2013 more than a third of the dogs that came through the doors of Battersea Dogs and Cats Home were Staffordshire bull terriers. Bill Lambert, from the Kennel Club, said Staffies are not naturally aggressive and were one of the only breeds it recommended as suitable around children. "We have seen enormous growth in the popularity of Staffordshire bull terriers in the last 20 years and there's no doubt that some of that has come about because of an increase in status dogs," he said. "However, the fact is that they're a dog that doesn't deserve the image it's been given. They need a lot of socialising when they're puppies, but that's down to the owners. "Any dog can be trained to be a bad dog, just as they can trained to be a good dog." |
Control of a half-finished shopping centre site has been returned to a city council after the company which was set up to oversee the redevelopment was officially wound up. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Nottingham's 1970s Broadmarsh Centre was undergoing a redesign when the coronavirus lockdown hit. The partnership in charge of the redevelopment - Broadmarsh Retail Limited - has gone into liquidation. The partnership included owners Intu, who are in administration. The liquidation was announced by The Insolvency Service, a government agency, which said the partnership did not have any employees or customers. "The effect of this notice is to hand control of the site back to Nottingham City Council as freeholder," it said. Intu declined to comment. The city council, which owns the site and has already put £17m into the project said it was, "awaiting the outcome of legal processes." Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk. |
Fours cows have had to be euthanised after a 4x4 car towing a trailer with the animals inside overturned in Leicestershire, police have said. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The incident happened at about 10:45 BST on the A46 northbound between Anstey and Wanlip causing traffic disruption for several hours. Highways England said it blocked the dual carriageway southbound to allow northbound traffic to be released. Leicestershire Police confirmed no people were injured. Recovery work was carried out between A5630 and A6 Loughborough Road and diversions were in place during the "severe accident". Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk. |
Over the past year, Russia has seen an unprecedented rise in the activity of "Kremlin trolls" - bloggers allegedly paid by the state to criticise Ukraine and the West on social media and post favourable comments about the leadership in Moscow. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Olga BugorkovaBBC Monitoring Though the existence and even whereabouts of the alleged "cyber army" are no secret, recent media reports appear to have revealed some details of how one of the tools of Russian propaganda operates on an everyday basis. "Troll den" The Internet Research Agency ("Agentstvo Internet Issledovaniya") employs at least 400 people and occupies an unremarkable office in one of the residential areas in St Petersburg. Behind the plain facade, however, there is a Kremlin "troll den", an investigative report by independent local newspaper Moy Rayon ("My District") suggests. The organisation, which the paper ties to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a restaurateur with close links to President Vladimir Putin who allegedly pays bloggers to produce hundreds of comments on top news websites and manage multiple accounts on Twitter, LiveJournal and other social media platforms. "[During one 12-hour shift] I had to write 126 comments under the posts written by people inside the building. And about 25 comments on pages of real people - in order to attract somebody's attention. And I had to write 10 blog posts," a former employee, Anton, told Radio Liberty. Typical troll accounts, Moy Rayon noted, were operated by people posing as "housewives" and "disappointed US citizens". To avert suspicions, the fake users sandwich political remarks between neutral articles on travelling, cooking and pets. "My name is Tatyana and I'm a little friendly creature)). I'm interested in what is happening in the world, I also like travelling, arts and cinema," user "tuyqer898" wrote on her blog. However, a leaked list of alleged Kremlin trolls published by liberal Novaya Gazeta newspaper suggests that "Tatyana" is in fact a fake account. Strict guidelines A collection of leaked documents, published by Moy Rayon, suggests that work at the "troll den" is strictly regulated by a set of guidelines. Any blog post written by an agency employee, according to the leaked files, must contain "no fewer than 700 characters" during day shifts and "no fewer than 1,000 characters" on night shifts. Use of graphics and keywords in the post's body and headline is also mandatory. In addition to general guidelines, bloggers are also provided with "technical tasks" - keywords and talking points on specific issues, such as Ukraine, Russia's opposition and relations with the West. One recent technical task, former employee Lena told Radio Liberty, was devoted to the murder of prominent Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov. "It was mandatory to convey the message to the people that Nemtsov's murder was a provocation ahead of the [opposition] march and that he was killed by his own associates," she said. "As a result, hundreds and thousands of comments, where this idea is served up under different dressings, emerge under every news article of leading media," she added. "Reverse censorship" Despite the efforts of the founders of the "troll den", some Russian experts are not convinced there is much point in the Kremlin having an online army. "The efforts the paid crowd make to create a pseudo-patriotic and pro-government noise on the net go to waste," popular blogger Rustem Adagamov told St Petersburg-based news website Fontanka.ru. "It is TV that changes the public conscience, rather than the internet," he added. Internet expert Anton Nosik agrees. "Internet trolling is not, in the first place, aimed at effectiveness, that is at changing the political views of the audience," he told Moy Rayon newspaper. But prominent journalist and Russia expert Peter Pomerantsev, however, believes Russia's efforts are aimed at confusing the audience, rather than convincing it. "What Russians are trying to go for is kind of a reverse censorship," he told Ukrainian internet-based Hromadske TV ("Public TV"). They cannot censor the information space, but can "trash it with conspiracy theories and rumours", he argues. BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook. |
At first glance, it looked like a typical summer festival was getting under way in Pineham Park, Milton Keynes - a haphazard collection of tents, distinctive portable toilets and a very well-stocked bar. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Zoe KleinmanTechnology reporter, BBC News But not every festival has its own bespoke 300 megabits per second (Mbps) broadband connection, electricity almost literally on tap thanks to networks of specially adapted festival toilet cubicles called Datenklos and delegate badges that change colour according to who you are meeting. The very first Electromagnetic Field Festival, known as EMF, started at Pineham Park in Milton Keynes on Friday and runs until 2 September. Aimed at "people with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things", events planned for the weekend include soldering and blacksmith workshops and the opportunity to learn how to build a mechanical Turing machine. "People just want to show off things they've made - the whole camp is about sharing and teaching others," said organiser Jonty Wareing. "There are hacker camps abroad but they are more focused on computers - there's more of a culture here for physical stuff." Mr Wareing and his team actively encouraged all attendees to bring their own creations and cheerfully admitted he had "no idea" what might arrive. Homegrown hacks Unsurprisingly, EMF had a distinctly homegrown feel. Local hackspaces and other groups set up large tents, and while the festival received some sponsorship (University College London, helped with funding the Arduino-powered delegate badges, for example) there was a notable absence of logos and corporate activity throughout the venue. Participants in a yurt-building workshop would be using fibreboard "rescued" from Winchester College of Art, and in another corner a makeshift geodesic dome made of plastic sheeting and duct tape billowed - but no corners had been cut in providing enough power to service even the most high maintenance of hackers. Two 30m-high masts were erected for the occasion, one at the campsite and the other in the car park of a data centre 2.5km away. They were linked by microwave but there was also a fibre connection between Milton Keynes and Docklands in East London playing its part. The infrastructure team had been hard at work on the tech spec since June. "As long as people don't complain about the internet being too slow, we're happy," said Nat Morris modestly. Mr Morris' real pride and joy was the network of adapted WCs, which opened to reveal rows of sockets and an all important wi-fi box. Despite their purpose they were all delivered fully stocked with toilet paper. The infrastructure team tent was a thriving mission control, with flatscreen monitors displaying usage graphs and a large server stack tucked behind a curtain possibly once designed to be denote a bedroom. "It's the kind of thing you'd normally find in a data centre, not a field," said Mr Wareing with a hint of pride. Eager inventors Engineering student James Glanville attended the festival without his creation - he built his own 3D printer but was deterred from bringing it by the logistics of the park-and-ride travel arrangements. "It probably cost about £300 to make but it's paid for itself three or four times over by selling things I've made from it," he said, pointing to a 3D-printed smartphone case. In the next tent Chris Simpson, an "ethical hacking" student from Northumbria University, was looking forward to learning how to solder. Jim MacArthur spent two years perfecting his mechanical Turing machine - powered by steam and controlled by ball bearings. It's a bit temperamental, he admitted, and "about a million billion times slower" than an average PC. "I just always wanted to build a mechanical computer," he said. Words of wisdom Veteran tech festivalgoers Loz and Ian came to lend their support to the new event, having previously travelled to CCC (Chaos Communication Camp) in Berlin and HAR (Hacking At Random) in the Netherlands, both of which take place every four years and attract around 3,000 attendees. They had encouraging words for the organisers. "Watch this space - in a couple of years EMF will be massive," said Ian. "Through the internet, space and time don't have the same restrictions." Before leaving, we paid a quick visit to the bar, which was constructed away from the tents, beneath the flyover of the M1 motorway. I asked the barman why they chose that spot. He fixed me with a long stare. "Because it's awesome," he said, and returned to stacking glasses. |
Tennent's lager reigned supreme in Scotland's pub trade, so how has it adjusted to lockdown and renewed restrictions? The shift from keg to tinned and bottled booze has been a vital part of the transition. While putting in their defences, companies with deeper resources are trying to ensure their business customers also survive and reach the other side of the pandemic. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Douglas FraserBusiness/economy editor, Scotland It's just a pint of lager, but according to Time Out website, it's brewed in the eighth coolest neighbourhood on the planet. With the current focus on the hospitality trade, Tennent's sheds some light on what's been going on in Scotland's pub trade. From its Wellpark brewery on the edge of Dennistoun in Glasgow, it has a huge reach into Scottish drinking habits. Lager is the biggest selling drink in the on-trade of pubs and restaurants. And within the lager category, Tennent's sells nearly half of the Scottish total. Or at least, it did. Now, we can't be so sure, except to note that, temporarily, there is no on-trade in Scotland. The market has been upended by lockdown and the subsequent months of tentative reopening of licensed premises, and now a renewed bar on selling alcohol for consumption on the premises. All companies have had to put up their defences - in this case, a sort of lager laager. And many have reached out to support business clients as well, in a bid to help them survive the pandemic onslaught. No/low alcohol So what can we learn from the half-year figures put out by Ireland-based C&C, owners of Tennent's for the past 11 years, and also of Magner's cider? The figures cover March to the end of August. Convenience wine With dependence on the on-trade in normal times, the company mobilised its financial firepower to help out with its trade customers. As an enthusiastic user of jargon, C&C points out that it is "structurally integral to the markets we serve". Old kegs, gone stale during lockdown, were replaced one-for-one. Moratoriums on loan repayments were agreed. There was support with the hygiene materials, screens and extra costs to prepare pubs for reopening. C&C has a stake in Admiral Taverns, including around 950 tenanted outlets. That required €7m of liquidity support. Big, long pub chains are more a feature of the English on-trade than the Scottish ones. And they're shedding jobs. In the case of Marston's, 2,150 are going. From C&C comes a strong hint that it could be going in the same direction: "We have begun to take action to permanently right-size our fixed cost base." Being diversified, C&C also owns wholesale distributors of drinks, Matthew Clark and Bibendum. It's the biggest such distributor to the hospitality sector in Britain and Ireland, supplying 35,000 licensed outlets. There too, a seemingly catastrophic fall in volumes, of 63% - from 16 million cases of wine and spirits to 5.8 million. So the company shifted suddenly into supplying the off-trade, and while that's dominated by the big supermarkets, Matthew Clark managers saw the opportunity in stepping up service to the independent convenience store operators, and throwing in a loyalty scheme. The result was revenues in those sales went up by 71%. 'Robust' condition You can also see the measures necessary to handle the financial challenges from such drastic changes in revenue. The Dublin company's half-year results show it had to persuade creditors to ease up on loan conditions, known as covenants, and that has been secured through to February 2022. Debt rose by €45m, to €371m, and liquidity was helped by making use of the Covid corporate financing facility, the support scheme aimed at big stock exchange-listed firms and operated through the Bank of England. That apparently puts London-listed C&C in reasonable (or in its word "robust") condition to withstand renewed restrictions, hospitality closures and constraints. But the prospects for having a recognisable on-trade of pubs, clubs and restaurants to recover its business model are not at all robust. The vital Christmas trade looks "uncertain and challenging", and in the jargon, there is "limited near-term visibility". In other words, none of us have the foggiest.r |
A Korean palm oil giant has been buying up swathes of Asia's largest remaining rainforests. A visual investigation published today suggests fires have been deliberately set on the land. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Ayomi Amindoni & Rebecca HenschkeBBC Indonesia Petrus Kinggo walks through the thick lowland rainforest in the Boven Digoel Regency. "This is our mini market," he says, smiling. "But unlike in the city, here food and medicine are free." Mr Kinggo is an elder in the Mandobo tribe. His ancestors have lived off these forests in Papua, Indonesia for centuries. Along with fishing and hunting, the sago starch extracted from palms growing wild here provided the community with their staple food. Their home is among the most biodiverse places on earth, and the rainforest is sacred and essential to the indigenous tribes. Six years ago, Mr Kinggo was approached by South Korean palm oil giant Korindo, which asked him to help persuade his tribe and 10 other clans to accept just 100,000 rupiah ($8; £6) per hectare in compensation for their land. The company arrived with permits from the government and wanted a "quick transaction" with indigenous landholders, according to Mr Kinggo. And the promise of development was coupled with subtle intimidation, he said. "The military and police came to my house, saying I had to meet with the company. They said they didn't know what would happen to me if I didn't." When he did, they made him personal promises as well, he said. As a co-ordinator, he would receive a new house with clean water and a generator, and have his children's school fees paid. His decision would change his community forever. Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of palm oil, and Papua is its newest frontier. The archipelago has experienced one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world - vast areas of forest have been cleared to make way for row upon row of oil palm tree, growing a product found in everything from shampoo to biscuits. Indonesia's palm oil exports were worth about $19bn (£14bn) last year, according to data from Gapki, the nation's palm oil association. The rich forests in the remote province of Papua had until recently escaped relatively untouched, but the government is now rapidly opening the area to investors, vowing to bring prosperity to one of the poorest regions in the country. Korindo controls more land in Papua than any other conglomerate. The company has cleared nearly 60,000 hectares of forests inside its government-granted concessions - an area the size of Chicago or Seoul - and the company's vast plantation there is protected by state security forces. Companies like Korindo have to clear the land in these concessions to allow them to replant new palms. Using fire to do that - the so-called "slash and burn" technique - is illegal in Indonesia due to the air pollution it causes and the high risk blazes will get out of control. Korindo denies setting fires, saying it follows the law. A 2018 report by the leading global green timber certification body - the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), of which Korindo is a certificate holder - concluded there was no evidence that illegal and deliberate fires were set by the company. But according to a new investigation by the Forensic Architecture group at Goldsmiths University in London and Greenpeace International, published in conjunction with the BBC, there is evidence that indicates deliberate burning on the land during the land-clearing period. The investigation found evidence of fires on one of Korindo's concessions over a period of years in patterns consistent with deliberate use. Forensic Architecture uses spatial and architectural analysis and advanced modelling and research techniques to investigate human rights violations and environmental destruction. "This is a robust technique that can with a high level of certainty determine if a fire is intentional or not," said senior researcher Samaneh Moafi. "This allows us to hold the large corporations - who have been setting fires systematically for years now - liable in the court," she said. The group used satellite imagery to study the pattern of land clearing inside a Korindo concession called PT Dongin Prabhawa. They used the imagery to study the so-called "normalised burn ratio", comparing it to hotspot data in the same area - intense heat sources picked up by Nasa satellites, and put the two datasets together over the same period of time, 2011 to 2016. "We found that the pattern, the direction and the speed with which fires had moved matched perfectly with the pattern, the speed, direction with which land clearing happened. This suggests that the fires were set intentionally," Samaneh Moafi said. "If the fires were set from outside the concession or due to weather conditions, they would have moved with a different directionality. But in the cases that we were looking at there was a very clear directionality," she said. Korindo turned down several BBC interview requests, but the company said in a statement that all land clearing was carried out with heavy machinery rather than fires. It said there were many natural fires in the region due to extreme dryness, and claimed that any fires in its concessions had been started by "villagers hunting giant wild rats hiding under stacks of wood". But locals near the concession in Papua told the BBC the company had set fires on the concessions over a period of years, during a timeframe which matched the findings of the visual investigation. Sefnat Mahuze, a local farmer, said he saw Korindo employees collecting leftover wood, "the worthless stuff". "They piled up long rows, maybe 100-200 metres long, and then they poured petrol over it and then lit them," he said. Another villager, Esau Kamuyen, said the smoke from the fires "closed the world around them, shutting off the sky". According to Greenpeace International, companies are rarely held to account for slash and burn - a practice that almost every year creates a smoky haze in Indonesia which can end up blanketing the entire South East Asian region, causing airports and schools to close. A Harvard University study estimated that the worst fires in decades in 2015 were linked to more than 90,000 early deaths. The fires that year are also believed to have produced more carbon emissions in just a few months than the entire United States economy. Many of the tribal allegations against Korindo were investigated for two years by the Forest Stewardship Council. The regulator's tree logo - found on paper products throughout the UK and Europe - is meant to tell consumers the product is sourced from ethnically and sustainable companies. The FSC report into allegations against Korindo was never published, after legal threats from the company, but the BBC obtained a copy. The report found "evidence beyond reasonable doubt" that Korindo's palm oil operation destroyed 30,000 hectares of high conservation forest in breach of FSC regulations; that Korindo was, "on the balance of probability … supporting the violation of traditional and human rights for its own benefit"; and was "directly benefitting from the military presence to gain an unfair economic advantage" by "providing unfair compensation rates to communities". "There was no doubt that Korindo had been in violation of our rules. That was very clear," Kim Carstensen, the FSC's executive director, told the BBC at the group's headquarters in Germany. The report recommended unequivocally that Korindo be expelled from the body. But the recommendation was rejected by the FSC board - a move environmental groups say undermined the credibility of the organisation. A letter sent to the FSC board in August, signed by 19 local environmental groups, said the groups could no long rely on the body "to be a useful certification tool to promote forest conservation and respect for community rights and livelihoods". Mr Carstensen, the executive director, defended the decision to allow Korindo to stay. "These things have happened, right? Is the best thing to do to say they were in breach of our values so we're not going to have anything to do with you anymore?" he said. "The logic of the board has been, 'We want to see the improvements happen'." Korindo strongly denied that the company was involved in any human rights violations but acknowledged there was room for improvements and said it was implementing new grievance procedures. It said it had paid fair compensation to tribes and that it had paid an additional $8 per hectare for the loss of trees - a sum decided by the Indonesian government, which granted them the concession. The BBC tried to confirm the figure with the Indonesian government, but officials declined to comment on Korindo. The Indonesian government maintains generally that Papua is an integral part of the nation, recognised by the international community. The province, which is half of the island of New Guinea (the other half belongs to the country of Papua New Guinea), became part of Indonesia after a controversial referendum overseen by the UN in 1969, in which just 1,063 tribal elders were selected to vote. Since then, control over Papua's rich natural resources has become a flashpoint in a long-running, low-level separatist conflict. Papuan activists call the 1969 referendum the "act of no choice". The Indonesian military has been accused by activist groups of gross human rights abuses in its attempts to suppress dissent in Papua and protect business interests there. Foreign observers are rarely granted access, "because there is something that the state wants to hide", according to Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian researcher with the US-based Human Rights Watch. "They are hiding human rights abuses, environmental degradation, deforestation," he said. "And the marginalisation of indigenous people - economically, socially and politically." In an attempt to ease tensions, Papua was granted greater autonomy in 2001, and there has been a significant increase in government funds for the region, with Jakarta vowing to bring prosperity to the people of Papua and saying it is committed to resolving past rights abuses. Derek Ndiwaen was one of those in the Mandobo tribe who, like Petrus Kinggo, took money from Korindo for their land. Derek's sister Elisabeth was away at the time, working in the city, and she didn't find out about the deal until she returned home. According to Elisabeth, Derek became embroiled in conflict with other tribes over the land deals. She believes the stress played a role in his death. "My brother would never have sold his pride or forest before," she said, through tears. "The company didn't bring prosperity. What they did was create conflict, and my brother was the victim." Elisabeth said that her brother was also made promises of free schooling for his children and health care for the family - promises she said were never realised. "The forest is gone and we are living in poverty," she said. "After our forest has been sold you would think we would be living a good life. But here in 2020 we are not." According to Elisabeth, Korindo told the community it would build good roads and provide clean water. But residents in her village of Nakias, in the Ngguti district say life hadn't changed the way they hoped. There's no clean running water or electricity in the village. Those that can afford it use generators but fuel costs four times as much as in the capital Jakarta. Korindo said that the company directly employs more than 10,000 people and has put $14m (£11m) into social projects in Papua, including food programmes for malnourished children and scholarships. The company has stopped all further clearing until an assessment of high conservation and high carbon stock forests inside their concessions is carried out. "The bigger question of what to do with the sins of the past will take a bit of time," said Kim Carstensen, the FSC chairman. "Whether it's two years, three years - that I don't know." Elisabeth fears that nothing will make up for the destruction of the rainforest. "When I see that our ancestral forest is all cleared, chopped down, it's heart-breaking," she said. "It should have been passed on to the next generation." "I walk through the plantation crying, and ask myself, where are our ancestors' spirits now that our forest has been completely destroyed. And it happened under my watch." Petrus Kinggo did receive money from Korindo, he said - about $42,000 (£32,000), equal to 17 years' pay on the provincial monthly minimum wage. And the company paid for one of his eight children's school fees until 2017. He said he did not receive a house or a generator, and the money is all gone. "I have nothing left," he said. "Uncles, nephews, in-laws, grandchildren, brothers, sisters all took some. And then I spent what was left on my own children's education." Thousands of hectares of the Mandobo tribe's once vast rainforest has been logged and replaced with neat rows of oil palm trees. A further 19,000 hectares now inside a Korindo concession is earmarked for clearing. Mr Kinggo is fighting to save some of what's left. He fears future generations will have to "live off money" rather than the forest. He blames the government for not consulting with the villagers before giving the concession to Korindo and "sending them here to pressure us". But when he walks through the forest now, he looks inside, and the money he took weighs on him. "According to God I have sinned, I deceived 10 tribes," he said. "The company said, 'Thank you Petrus for looking after us so well'. But in my heart I knew I had done wrong." You can watch a film version of this story, The Burning Scar, in the UK on the BBC News Channel on the 21/22 November 2020 at 21:30 GMT and at various times this weekend on BBC World News. You can also listen to the radio documentary on the BBC World Service here. All images copyright |
On the road from St Petersburg to Valmiera in northern Latvia, an ornate tower is all that remains of the tsarist-era manor house Valmiermuiza. Traditional Latvian beer was once brewed here for thirsty Russian aristocrats on their way to Western Europe. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Damien McGuinnessBBC News, Latvia Now, as the eurozone prepares to take in Latvia on 1 January, it looks like Western Europe is heading this way instead. Today the manor is a romantic ruin. But in the grounds beer is being made here once again. The owner of Valmiermuiza brewery, Aigars Rungis, says the euro will give his business an extra boost. The malt, hops and specialist brewing equipment all come from Germany, so at the moment buying ingredients also means having to buy euros - and paying hefty bank charges. Once Latvia has the euro, the cost of currency exchanges will vanish. Aigars sees the single currency as the final step in Latvia's integration into Europe, away from domination by the former colonial master Russia, which occupied Latvia for much of the 20th Century. "I think being part of the euro will help us to feel more safe economically, less that we can be influenced by outside, by Russia," he says. Stability But the real argument for business owners is an economic one. "Over the last five years there is a lot of discussion: will Latvia devalue or not devalue?" says Aigars, "When we have the euro, I can be sure that the currency will not devalue, then I could really speak with banks and plan my business. And in general business will feel more stable in Latvia." According to polls, the majority of businesses in Latvia tend to agree with Aigars. They believe borrowing costs will go down and foreign investment will go up. When the European Commission announced in June that Latvia had met all the economic targets to switch to the euro, it was seen as an endorsement of Latvia's economic health. Rating agencies raised the country's credit rating by one notch. Latvia's government now predicts that once the country adopts the euro in 2014 its rating should go up still further, to an "A" category. This increased confidence should mean Latvia will be able to borrow more cheaply on international markets. And businesses hope this will bring down the high interest rates charged by banks for business loans. Inflation worries But not everyone is as enthusiastic about the euro as business owners. According to a survey of 1,000 people by pollster SKDS, 58% of Latvians oppose the currency switch, with just 20% in favour. Take the Latvian border town of Valka, for instance. Half of this town is in Estonia, which adopted the euro three years ago - so people here go in and out of the eurozone everyday, often shopping in the Latvian part where many goods are cheaper. Chatting to Latvians as they cross the invisible border, it is impossible to find anyone who is positive about the euro. "Prices shot up in Estonia when they got the euro. And it's already happening here in Latvia. There's a shop I go to once a week, and every time I go prices are little bit more expensive," says one elderly woman. "While we have our own currency, we are independent. But when we lose that, we'll lose our autonomy," says a middle-aged woman. 'Not a currency crisis' But the Latvian government says the situation was similar in Estonia before it adopted the euro, and that now the single currency there has widespread support. The driving force behind Latvia's desire to join the eurozone was Valdis Dombrovskis. Taking over as prime minister at the height of the crisis in 2009, he stood up against international pressure to devalue Latvia's currency, in order to stay on schedule with euro adoption in 2014. Instead he kept the peg with the single currency, which meant having to pursue a painful and controversial policy of severe cuts in wages and benefits, and turned around Latvia's economy, which is now the fastest growing economy in the European Union. Mr Dombrovskis astounded critics by not only surviving politically, but even being re-elected - twice. Earlier this year, I asked him why, despite the ongoing crises in the eurozone, Latvia's government still wanted to join. "This crisis is not a currency crisis. If you look at the euro as a currency it's doing just fine," he said. "What we are really seeing is a financial and economic crisis in certain eurozone countries. But we also see that this problem is being addressed through strengthened fiscal discipline and stricter economic governance." Last currency? But an unexpected tragedy will prevent Mr Dombrovksis from celebrating what was expected to be the crowning achievement of his premiership. In November the roof of a supermarket in Riga collapsed, killing at least 54 people. The nation is still reeling from the shock. A week later, Mr Dombrovskis resigned, accepting political responsibility for the tragedy. The move was unexpected but was seen as an unusually principled act. The prime minister's resignation also meant that the government was dismissed. So Latvia's parliament now has to form a new governing coalition. Analysts say that although losing a prime minister as credible at home and abroad as Mr Dombrovskis is a blow, a loss of investor confidence in Latvia's economic health is unlikely: the euro is seen by international investors as an anchor for the country's future economic policy. And the new government will look very similar to the outgoing one, says Latvia's Finance Minister Andris Vilks. "No-one is going to change, because society and business want to see stability and predictability of conditions. No one is going to change that." And when it comes to currency reform, Latvians have certainly had enough of change. Throughout a turbulent 20th Century of foreign occupation Latvia experienced six different currencies: from Hitler's reichsmark to Stalin's rouble. The euro will be the seventh. Yearning for stability and predictability, most Latvians hope this currency will also be the last. |
Off the coast of Western Australia, a battle between mega giants is unfolding. The combatants involve the world's biggest semi-submersible platform, the longest sub-sea pipeline in the southern hemisphere, and the largest floating facility ever built. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Chris BaraniukTechnology of Business reporter They're all there for the same reason: natural gas - and they're hoping to start drawing it up this month. As several countries begin to move away from coal as an energy resource, this alternative fossil fuel, which produces 50% less carbon dioxide for every unit of energy generated, is increasingly in demand in our energy hungry world. Consumption is forecast to rise to 177 trillion cubic feet (tcf) or 5,012 billion cubic metres by 2040, up from 124tcf in 2015, says the US Energy Information Administration. That's why Shell's gigantic Prelude platform - which is 488m (1,600ft) long and displaces roughly as much water as six aircraft carriers - is competing with Japanese firm Inpex for access to gas in the Browse Basin. Although they are working on separate gas fields, those fields are connected. Shell and Inpex are essentially vying for the same resource. "The way I describe it - I have a slide I present to clients and I have a picture of two people drinking out of the same milkshake," says Saul Kavonic, an analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Prelude is a true behemoth. It has been designed not only to collect gas from sub-sea well heads, but also liquefy it on board at temperatures of -162C. As a liquid, the gas takes up significantly less space, making it easier to transport around the world on ships. This liquefaction would usually be done after piping the gas onshore, but Prelude can do the job herself - something never achieved on such a scale before. More Technology of Business Some serious technology is involved in making this happen. Prelude has high-capacity pumps that can draw 50 million litres of water from the sea every hour to help cool down the natural gas. Once liquefied, it is then stored in massive storage tanks with a volume equivalent to 175 Olympic swimming pools. And this all has to keep going even through the worst imaginable weather. Prelude's hefty mooring chains are designed to survive Category 5 cyclones. While Inpex has opted for sending its gas onshore for liquefaction, it also has a huge offshore semi-submersible platform to extract water and impurities from the gas first. And nearby, there is a floating storage and off-loading facility called Venturer. Collectively, Inpex has dubbed these bits of mega-infrastructure Ichthys - ancient Greek for fish. However, both projects have been beset by delays and spiralling costs, which may be why neither company was prepared to talk to the BBC for this feature. The pressure to start drawing gas first is obviously intense. The race for Browse Basin gas has even ignited competition on an international scale. Australia may overtake Qatar to become the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) once Ichthys and Prelude production is in full swing. But will any future vessel match or even exceed the scale of Prelude? Mr Kavonic says the fossil fuel industry isn't likely to try to build one any time soon. "We need new projects to meet demand [for gas] in the early 2020s," he explains. "We needed projects to be sanctioned last year and that didn't happen, we only saw one." That single project will be built by Italy's oil and gas giant Eni. A floating facility off the coast of Mozambique, it will have a slightly smaller capacity than Prelude - 3.4 million tonnes of LNG per year versus Prelude's 3.6 million. The capacity of Ichthys will be much bigger, at 8.9 million tonnes. "There's so far no [other] similar projects under the radar," says Jean-Baptiste Dubreuil from the International Energy Agency. The only other comparable vessel might be Allseas' Amazing Grace - an enormous twin-hulled construction ship due to be built over the coming years. Its job will be to lift offshore platforms, however, not process gas. Without more projects for gas production, industry watchers worry that, in about five years' time, demand for natural gas could outstrip supply. There is the "spectre of an LNG supply shock in the early 2020s" looming, says Stuart Elliott, gas editor at data provider S&P Global Platts. The problem could be particularly pronounced in Asia - especially China. "Last year, Chinese production increased by 8%, but they're not able to keep up with the growth of demand," says Mr Dubreuil. "We expect their needs for imports will grow over time." In fact, the IEA thinks that China will be importing 43% of its natural gas by 2040. This supply will need to be reliable if the country wants to avoid the gas shortages it experienced last winter - caused, ironically, by a botched attempt to cut coal use. In the meantime, there is some hope that the unexpectedly speedy growth of renewables - particularly solar and wind - will help to plug the gap. But there's little doubt that over the next few decades many countries, including the UK, will be heavily reliant on gas for their energy needs. Prelude and Ichthys are due to come online soon, but neither Shell nor Inpex will commit publicly to a start date. And with wholesale natural gas prices currently half what they were in early 2014, such multi-billion dollar projects may never recoup their outlay. As climate change climbs to the top of the world's agenda, funding such huge fossil-fuel extraction projects - impressive feats of engineering as they are - will look increasingly risky. Both Shell and Inpex must be hoping that their sea-faring mega giants don't go the way of the dinosaurs. |
MPs debate plans, opposed by many religious groups, for same-sex marriage next week. Ahead of that occasion, the government has published its assessment of the possible wider impacts. Here are eight ways it believes the bill might change things: | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Ed LowtherPolitical reporter, BBC News 1. Economic stimulus Lavish spending often accompanies a wedding, and so a large increase in the number of marriages taking place each year would create a significant boost to certain parts of the economy. Beneficiaries might include ceremony venues, cake manufacturers, function band agencies, and hoteliers. The government estimates the total economic stimulus could be as much as £14.4m - but thinks it is more likely to be closer to £0. "As the demand for same-sex marriage is uncertain, and because these economic benefits are not guaranteed to be additional (for example, the spending on a civil partnership or marriage ceremony may not be additional if the couple and guests cut back on spending in other areas), we use zero benefit as our best estimate," it explains. 2. Transgender spouses and the law Also facing increased demand for its services is the Gender Recognition Panel, which furnishes transgender people with certificates documenting their gender transitions. At present, it is impossible for a member of a married couple to change gender and remain legally married. So the government is anticipating a "noticeable increase" in the panel's workload as "those who may have changed gender some years ago but decided not to apply for legal recognition, since they wished to remain in their existing marriage", adapt to the change in the law. 3. Health benefits During its consultation on same-sex marriages, the government received evidence from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which said lesbian, gay, and bisexual people (LGB) people experience more mental health problems and a greater likelihood of drug addiction than heterosexuals. Ministers believe that discrimination against LGB people partially accounts for this phenomenon. The removal of discrimination against same-sex couples in the current legal definition of marriage, the government argues, might therefore improve public health. 4. IT upgrades A number of Whitehall departments will need to tweak their computer systems to enable them to administer services properly to same-sex married couples. The biggest impact will be felt at the Home Office, which oversees the registration of marriages, civil partnerships, births and deaths. The government estimates that necessary changes to its online registration system will cost £2m. Lower costs will fall on the Department for Work and Pensions, which will need to adapt its systems to cope with changes to pension entitlements, and the Ministry of Justice, which will need to alter the courts' "FamilyMan" IT system. 5. Tourism boost If the government's plans become law, the UK will join a select group of 12 countries where same-sex marriage is legal. The Lesbian and Gay Lawyers Association told the government in its consultation to prepare for a "modest boost" in tourism as a consequence. "We are aware that same-sex couples from the UK travel to places like Canada to get married because they prefer this to a civil partnership. We expect that if marriage is open to same-sex couples in England and Wales, couples especially from elsewhere in Europe will come here to get married here," it said. 6. Re-training registrars Those who will be conducting same-sex marriages will need to get to grips with the new system. The government assumes that they will need between two and seven hours' training each - "time which could have been spent on other tasks", it notes. 7. Who to tell and how "Currently, if a person discloses that they are in a civil partnership rather than a marriage, they automatically disclose their sexual orientation," the government says. People in same-sex marriages will have greater discretion over how, when, or whether to divulge this information. Recent research suggests that one in five LGB people think they have been harassed at work because of their sexual orientation, the government says. 8. Societal benefits Same-sex marriages might encourage greater acceptance of same-sex couples in society, the government believes. This would be good for society as a whole, ministers have concluded, by helping to create "a more inclusive society where there is more choice and acceptance". |
A Welsh company has joined forces with Cardiff University to set up the UK's first centre of excellence for compound semiconductors. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
IQE will develop new technology for smart phones, tablets, healthcare and biotechnology. The partnership has the potential to create thousands of jobs in Wales, the company said. Vice-chancellor Prof Colin Riordan said the centre would put the university "ahead of our competitors". The UK government announced in March it was backing a new semiconductor research foundation at the university with a £17m investment, on top of £12m from the Welsh government. Last autumn, the university also announced it was ploughing £300m into new research and innovation facilities in the city. |
It is Sunday, and a chorus of Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia greets shoppers at the Lucky Plaza mall along Singapore's Orchard Road. Hundreds of foreign domestic workers from the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere come here every Sunday to catch up with friends and send money home via the many remittance shops. They make up the 200,000-plus workers employed in Singapore's households. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Sharanjit LeylBBC News, Singapore Liza Padua is among them. She is here to meet friends and celebrate her 49th birthday. Her friends have brought cake and presents, and she is looking forward to a day of festivities. She has spent 20 years in Singapore as a domestic helper and has always enjoyed her day off. "It's so good to have Sunday off and be able to reconnect with your friends and keep in touch with the Philippine community," she said. "Many of us have families we left behind back home, so meeting with friends is a nice way to have a sense of having a family too here in Singapore." Basic right Having a day off from work is a basic right for workers around the world, but in Singapore a weekly rest day for domestic workers was only introduced at the start of this year. Previously, they were only allowed one day off a month. When the topic of a weekly day off was first broached, there was backlash from some quarters in Singapore who felt that the move would inconvenience many households. But nine months on since the new ruling came into effect, critics say it is not being enforced. John Gee, an activist and past president of advocacy group Transient Workers Count Too was one of the people behind a decade-long campaign lobbying the Singapore government to give domestic helpers a mandatory day off a week. He thinks the ruling is long overdue but estimates that in spite of it, as many as 50% of Singapore's domestic helpers still do not get a weekly day off. "Saying that there has to be a regular day off for domestic workers doesn't necessarily mean they get it. The problem is there are two get-out clauses if you're an employer who doesn't want to give a day off," he said. "The first is that if you're a domestic worker who signed a contract before 2013, when the law came into effect, you still have to serve out your two-year contract before you can have a day off. Then there's a clause that says a worker and employer can agree that they'll be paid to work the day off. Many employers are prepared to offer extra money but they aren't prepared to give workers a day off. " Mr Gee says Singapore will often compare itself with the best in the world when it comes to business practices, but when it comes to domestic workers they will often compare themselves with the worst, such as the Gulf countries. This he thinks is wrong and needs to change. Reports from international non-government organisations appear to back up his claims. Singapore's labour laws exclude domestic workers from the Employment Act, which regulates hours worked, safety guidelines, time off and retirement. Singapore also has no minimum wage system, but advice from employment agencies suggest domestic helpers are on average paid between S$400 ($320; £200) to S$600 a month, excluding a levy of S$265 that is paid to the government. The nation has abstained on several key votes on the issue at the International Labour Organization (ILO). It did not support the ILO convention on domestic workers that includes rules on working hours, minimum wages, and maternity protection. Worker abuse Domestic workers seeking to better their lives can look to a number of organisations in Singapore. One such is Aidha, a micro-business school, which started under the auspices of United Nations Women in 2006. At S$350 for a nine-month course, domestic workers are given financial training, entrepreneurship and computer skills. Ms Padua is a graduate from the school, which she says has enabled her to lease a farm in the Philippines and buy a water buffalo to work the land. It has helped her put her six nephews and nieces through college back in the Philippines. She undertook the cost of the lessons, but when she graduated her employers were so pleased they gave her a bonus. But for every contented domestic helper in Singapore, there are also ones who have suffered terrible ordeals at the hands of their employers. Jane - not her real name - arrived from the Philippines two years ago to take up a job as a domestic helper in a Singaporean household. But she ran away after being abused by her employers, who she said regularly hit her. She added that they would often punish her by forcing her hands down the toilet while it was filled with a combination of bleach and urine for 15 minutes at a time. Jane said she escaped by jumping out of their kitchen window and in the process, breaking one of her legs. She was rescued by another domestic worker in the building, who called a helpline for migrant workers. That happened last October, and the police are currently still investigating her case. Jane said she had no choice but to escape because her employers never let her out and she was not allowed to speak to anyone. The consequences of not having a day off in her case meant she could not get help through the usual channels. Singapore's Ministry of Manpower declined a BBC request for an interview, but issued a statement saying the weekly rest day policy would take time to implement. "As with any policy, we have had to give time for the various parties to adjust. The rest day requirement was designed to be phased in over two years, and will cover all employment relationships from 1 January 2015. The agreement to opt for compensation in-lieu should be based on mutual consent, as with any contractual agreement. It should not be concluded under duress." The ministry will impose stiff penalties of up to S$10,000 for employers who force their domestic helpers to go without a rest day or fail to compensate them for working on a rest day. Such employers could also face a jail term of up to 12 months. But for Jane, who now works at a shelter for migrant workers helping others who are still escaping abuse, these rules cannot come soon enough. "I don't want others to go through the same experience as me, so I want to share my story." |
Volunteers trying to revive oyster farming in a Somerset village have installed 12 wooden poles in the sea to grow the shellfish from. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The group is using £17,000 from Porlock Parish Council and Exmoor National Park to pay for a year's trial in the Porlock Vale area. Harvesting shellfish died out from Porlock almost 100 years ago. The oysters are grown on ropes strung from the wooden poles, which results in grit and barnacle-free meat. Metal trestles anchored in the sea bed are also being used to farm the shellfish in mesh bags. Porlock Bay was famous for its high quality oysters. If the year's trial is successful, the group intends to set up a business. |
A woman was injured after being thrown from a fairground ride in Blackpool. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Police said she suffered head and neck injuries after falling from a waltzer on the seaside town's south pier on Tuesday evening. The woman, aged in her 20s, was taken to hospital where her injuries were "not thought to be life-threatening", Lancashire Police said. The incident is being investigated by the Health and Safety Executive, the force added. |
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