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It's a well-known fact that women take longer in public toilets than men. It's partly because it is more than just a place to use the loo - it is often where women chat, bond, fix their make-up and their problems. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Julia BrysonBBC News Samantha Jagger has been documenting these candid moments between friends and strangers for almost 10 years. Instead of staging "Insta-perfect" shots, she uses a battered 35mm point-and-shoot camera small enough to fit in her handbag. Her photographs, taken chiefly in toilets in pubs and clubs in Manchester and Leeds, are about to go on show as part of an exhibition called Loosen Up. "I've been taking photos on film since I was in my teens, but it wasn't until last year when I was looking through them I realised how many are snapped in loos," says Samantha, 25. "It got me thinking about gaggles of girls coming together in toilets - breaking up, making up, gearing up. It all happens in that space and I find it completely fascinating. "It's this I wanted to capture and tell different stories about my friends' escapades." In that time, freelance journalist Samantha has seen "shoulders getting wet from tears, the dumping of girls and guys, pep talks, sympathy smiles, knickers in bins and flooded sinks". "One of my favourite memories was walking out of a loo and a girl was stood on her own making her face move around with with the [air from the] hand drier. "She thought she was alone so she jumped out of her skin. We had a right laugh and became mates." Audio recordings will be played at the exhibition of some of the women involved, in which they share their stories of what happened within the four walls of the WC. One is Charly Downes, 25, from Birmingham, who was photographed with her head over the toilet on a night out in January. You might also be interested in What I learned when I stopped shaving 'I tattooed my face so I couldn't get a normal job' Landing a Specials gig from a viral photo "I was with a friend of Sam's called Hamble, it was only the second time I'd met her. "I had a few too many to drink and as [girls] do, you take you trip to the toilet together, and Hamble held my hair back while I was being sick." Samantha, who is originally from York and now lives in Manchester, said she likes the medium of film because it's "raw". "In a world where editing and filtering your life is rife, I snap that moment and that's it. "It's become a weirdly integral part of my nights out now. My mates roll their eyes now when I go in armed with a camera. "When I say I'm doing a project about toilets to people I don't know, there's usually a long pause. Then I explain the concept and I'm grateful to say people have been on board with the idea. "There have been some photographs I'm going to have to see about putting in the exhibition… I'll see if I'm allowed." Loosen Up will be held at The Brickworks at Barton Arcade Basement, Manchester, from May. |
It might appear to be a pursuit perfectly suited to the lockdown age, but a south of Scotland poet has been using the time of social isolation to bring fellow writers - from across the country and beyond - together to perform their work online. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Giancarlo RinaldiSouth Scotland reporter, BBC Scotland news website More than a month ago, Dumfries-based Hugh McMillan started writing on his blog about poems and poets he liked. It quickly expanded as he tried to "rustle up some favours" from others to perform their "poems from the backroom". "I was very surprised how keen folk were to record themselves in lockdown," he said. "And though there have been many technical challenges, I'm very pleased with the way the project is working." 'I'm a lot less restless' One of those taking part - from hundreds of miles away - is Donald Murray. Originally from the Isle of Lewis, he now lives in Shetland. "Despite my reluctance to engage with technology, I was very happy to get involved with Hugh's idea," he said. Mr Murray said the lockdown had also allowed him - or perhaps forced him - to concentrate on his work. "I must confess I'm a lot less restless as a result of the coronavirus," he said. "I'm an extrovert - in a lot of ways. "I have no choice, however, but to get down and write at the moment. It removes the temptation to do other things. "This is especially true in Shetland which - in percentage terms - has been the worst affected area in Scotland." Another poet involved is Glasgow-based Magi Gibson, originally from Kilsyth. She co-edits the magazine The Poets' Republic with Mr McMillan, and said she was happy to be involved with any of his "madcap ideas". Ms Gibson, who lives with her husband, comedy novelist Ian Macpherson, said that coronavirus had not had a huge effect on some parts of their lives. "We write daytime at home in separate rooms, so lockdown hasn't been much change," she explained. However, it has had an impact on promotional events and she has been missing her family and getting out to poetry readings. As a result, she has welcomed the online gathering created by Mr McMillan. "I've only just in the past few days turned to coronavirus/lockdown as a theme as I've been working on my collection," she said. "I always write about what's going on around me, and I'm often political, so it's inevitable these themes - and political anger, I imagine - will seep into my writing over the coming year." Brian Johnstone from Edinburgh, who has lived near St Andrews for many years, has been using the time in lockdown to work on a memoir as well as sharing his poetry. "I've been amazed by the burgeoning of poems posted on social media and have been taking part in various other online initiatives to spread poetry - and art work in general - around," he said. "I think people find the concision and precise observation of poetry something they can hold on to at these often stressful times." Mr McMillan said that as well as allowing the poets to express themselves, the work has also been of interest outside the writing community. "I know of very many people who look forward not just to this blog - which I think is unique in its form and scope - but others like it," he said. "Poetry is singular in cutting to the chase: saying the things that make people think, feel and empathise." 'It calms us' That is a view echoed by Ms Gibson, who has regularly spoken about how people tend to say: "Poetry's not for me." "Then, when a crisis hits, they do turn to poetry, for comfort, for words that soothe, that untangle and perhaps express the storm of emotions they're overwhelmed by," she added. "A poem might be a temporary escape hatch, a return ticket to a time or place of happiness." Mr Murray said that hearing poets recite their work was something people were hopefully pre-programmed to enjoy, particularly at a time like this. "We all like to be told stories when we're anxious. It calms us," he said. "It's why children like their parents to read to them - an instinct that stays with us to the end." |
Two flood warnings remain in place in north Cambridgeshire as heavy rain is predicted this weekend. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The Environment Agency has warned that water from the River Nene is continuing to rise at the B1040 Thorney to Whittlesey Road. Its second warning is for North Bank Road near Peterborough and west of the Dog in a Doublet sluice. Water levels at the River Great Ouse from St Neots to Earith have stabilised and a flood alert is in place. The Met Office is predicting heavy rain overnight, but said it should clear up by dawn on Sunday. |
Websites that connect pilots with passengers who are willing to share the cost of a flight in a private plane are making light aviation more accessible. It can be a cheap way to travel, but people need to be aware of the potential pitfalls. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Jon DouglasReporter, You & Yours The flight I took from a grassy airstrip in North Yorkshire was tremendous fun. There was no long run up. The little plane took to the air almost as soon as we started moving. We flew at the perfect height to get breath-taking views as we followed the coast looking down on Whitby, Scarborough and Robin Hood's Bay. But if I had been relying on this flight to get me to a certain place at a certain time, I would have been disappointed. It had to be rescheduled twice because of the weather. I had met the pilot, Nathan, through the website, Wingly. It's one of a number of platforms set up so pilots and passengers can share the costs of a flight. "This is my eighth flight with many more bookings to go," said Nathan who uses a plane that belongs to his local flying club. "It's a good way of sharing my hobby, meeting new people and it is more interesting to be honest." Pilots register online submitting copies of their pilot's licence, medical certificate, details of their experience and the aircraft they will be flying. Once verified, they are able to publish their planned flights. Any passenger who chooses to join a flight books online and pays a share of its costs. The websites make money by charging the passengers service fees. No profit allowed Private pilots are allowed to carry up to six cost-sharing passengers in a light aircraft providing no profit is made. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says costs do not have to be shared equally but the pilot must make a contribution. No profit is allowed because that would make it a commercial flight for which an Air Operator Certificate would be needed from the CAA. It is illegal to conduct commercial flights without that certificate. Andrew Waller has been a passenger on eight cost-shared flights from near his home in Oxford. "I've been as far afield as Perranporth down in Cornwall and then done some local sight-seeing flights of about an hour", he tells me. "The Perranporth trip worked out at about £200. An hour local flight can be as little as £40. It varies depending upon the type of aircraft and the expenses that pilot incurs. "Obviously the view from up there is absolutely stunning". Last minute cancellations Some passengers have found the flights can offer a quicker or cheaper alternative to other forms of transport. They can post requests for flights to chosen destinations online, but there is no guarantee a pilot will be available to take them. Unlike a train which takes people right to the heart of a city, these flights rely on airfields in more remote locations. One of Wingly's founders, Emeric de Waziers, accepts it is not always a viable means of transportation. "Weather is a really important constraint for light aviation and flights can be cancelled [at] the last minute that's why we are focussing the company on more leisure types of flights". Emeric thinks it can work as a means of getting from A to B but says "overall you shouldn't use Wingly as a business way to travel". Wingly started in France but launched in the UK in July 2016. To date, it says more than 400 passengers have used it to join cost-shared flights from UK airports. Other websites - such as Coavmi or Skyuber - offer similar services but Wingly currently claims to be the biggest in the UK in terms of the number of flights being offered. Safety worries The growth of these websites can be a boon for pilots who need to fly for a minimum number of hours each year to keep their pilot's licences so value the chance to find people willing to share their costs. But not all private pilots are enthusiastic about flying with a stranger sitting next to them. Others worry about the safety of passengers flying with relatively inexperienced pilots who fly for a hobby rather than as a profession. The websites themselves make it clear these are not commercial flights. Prior to a passenger placing a booking, Wingly's website states: "you should be aware of the fact that safety rules for cost-shared flights are not as strict as they are for commercial flights. This means that there is more risk involved in taking a cost-shared flight than buying a ticket from a commercial airline operator". The risks are "comparable to car transportation" according to Wingly's Emeric de Waziers who maintains "it remains something safe to do". "At the end of the day the flights are conducted by pilots and those pilots - as per regulations - are responsible for all the safety issues", says Carlos Oliveira, the co-founder of Skyuber. Anyone with any concerns - either a pilot or a passenger - can cancel at any time without incurring any cost, he adds. The Civil Aviation Authority says that by enabling private pilots to share the cost of flights, it is "anticipated that they will find it easier to remain in current flying practice and therefore maintain high safety standards". It advises anyone looking to book a seat in a cost-shared flight to conduct their own research and to ask questions prior to any flight. |
When Flavia Lavorino decided to have a baby through surrogacy, she looked Ukraine up on a map and calculated the distance. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Valeria PerassoSocial Affairs correspondent, BBC World Service Some 12,800km (8,000 miles) separate Buenos Aires, in Argentina, from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. "This was our last resort. We had stopped trying when we heard from a co-worker about trying for a baby through a gestational carrier in Ukraine, and we jumped at it," says Flavia. With José Pérez, her partner of 15 years, she had tried every possible fertility treatment. Flavia managed to get pregnant through a complex and painful procedure just once, but had a miscarriage. "So, when we got confirmation that our surrogate in Ukraine was doing well and the pregnancy was going forward, we were over the moon," says José. Little could they predict that by the time the baby was born they would be stranded on the other side of the Atlantic due to the coronavirus pandemic. Their son Manuel is now seven weeks old, but they have yet to meet him. "This is the worst nightmare. Imagine waiting for so long and then having to wait even longer, with no clear idea of when we could be allowed to travel," says José. Ukraine, like many other countries, has closed its borders to international visitors in an effort to limit the spread of Covid-19, which has killed more 300,000 people worldwide. That has left dozens of babies born to Ukranian surrogates - and due to be collected by their intended parents from overseas - in limbo. Argentina has also imposed a travel ban on all commercial flights until September as part of a strict coronavirus lockdown, making it impossible for the couple to plan a trip for the foreseeable future. 'We need to be with him' "The physical contact at this point is key, he needs to be with us and we need to be with him," says the new father. Flavia and José started their surrogacy journey in December 2018 and travelled to Kyiv four months later to create their embryos out of his sperm and her eggs. An embryo was then transferred into the womb of a gestational carrier, or "surrogate mother", that they had contacted through a local clinic. "We never met our surrogate, the clinic managed the relationship and we don't really know much about the specifics. We do know that her fees were paid, of course," says José. Commercial surrogacy is legal in Ukraine, and a big business too - though there have been concerns about the level of oversight of the industry, which has expanded significantly in recent years. The cost of an average assisted reproduction package ranges from $30,000 to $50,000 (£25,000 to £41,000), a fraction of what it costs in the US and other countries where commercial surrogacy is permitted. For the Argentine couple, it meant asking for a loan as well as borrowing money from family. They won't say how much they have spent but that "probably half of it went to the surrogate". "When we got confirmation that the transfer had been successful in late July, we started planning every single detail. We wanted to travel days before the due date, which was 10 April," says Flavia. "In the meantime, we lived this pregnancy through the monthly scans the clinic was sending us," adds José. From optimism to despair The couple had booked transatlantic flights for 2 April, with a stopover in Madrid. As the coronavirus outbreak started spreading and hit Spain badly, they realised their trip might not happened as planned. "But at first we didn't think we wouldn't be able to travel at all. I think we had this false optimism, it was more like, 'uh, it may take us longer to get to Ukraine'. We kept on planning even as we watched airports starting to shut down everywhere," says Flavia. As European countries closed their borders and Argentina went into lockdown in mid-March, the couple began to despair. "I was terrified. We knew circumstances were exceptional, but we underestimated the implications," says Flavia. The picture got complicated further by the fact that both work in healthcare. Flavia is a social worker and José is a medical doctor in an intensive care unit at a hospital just outside Buenos Aires who has been treating Covid-19 patients. As key workers, they were not allowed to take time off at first. "We started communicating regularly with the Ukrainian clinic's Spanish-speaking coordinators via WhatsApp to come up with a plan," says José. Stay put, was the message. The fertility centre had set up a place for Manuel to stay while he waited for his biological parents. "They told us the newborn babies would be safe, taken care of, well fed… They calmed us down, at least as much as it was humanly possible," says José. 'Our baby was born 12,500km away' The couple's son was born early, on 30 March. The anxious parents were texted the news early in the morning as they were on their way to work. "They told us we'd had a child, and we were 12,500km away… We had to stop the car, we almost had a crash," remembers Flavia. Later that day they got to see their healthy, 8lbs-baby boy for the first time - through a photograph. "Our surrogate asked the clinic if she could send us a WhatsApp message and she wrote to us to say she had a happy pregnancy, that she was proud to make our life-long dream come true," says José. "We never got the chance to meet her but we told her she completed our family and forever transformed our lives," adds Flavia. Baby hotel The Ukrainian clinic made arrangements for the stranded surrogate babies to stay at a small hotel the company owns on the outskirts of Kyiv. And it is not just Manuel, some 50 newborns are being looked after in a large dormitory-style nursery. "All they are doing is looking after the baby's basic health and signs of a normal development," says José. "But nobody will be able to give him the love of a parent during these crucial first weeks. That is heart-breaking." The number of babies being kept the hotel may keep growing if travel restrictions continue. New deliveries are scheduled over the coming weeks. "We have Chinese babies, Italian babies, Spanish babies, British babies," says Denis Herma, spokesman for BioTexCom Centre for Human Reproduction, the company behind the hotel. The hotel is normally offered as accommodation for the biological parents coming to Ukraine to collect their child. Now it is run by a team of nurses working round the clock under strict quarantine rules, says the fertility company. A video circulated by BioTexCom just days ago, and published by media around the world, shows the number of babies born to surrogates which have not been able to be picked up due to the lockdown. The images have also reignited the debate about what critics say is a loosely-controlled "baby-making business" in this Eastern European country. Analysis: The lockdown and the fertility tourism debate By Zhanna Bezpiatchuk - BBC News Ukraine, Kyiv From 2015, as surrogacy hotspots in Asia began shutting down one-by-one amid reports of exploitation, Ukraine turned into a global hub for commercial surrogacy. With relatively low prices compared to other countries, looser regulations and growing demand from overseas, Ukrainian reproductive clinics are booming. Many Ukrainian women, mostly from small towns or rural areas, see this as a financial opportunity. The full package may cost around $50,000 and a surrogate may get less than half that - but this is still big money by Ukrainian standards. A surrogate mother must have at least one child of her own in order to be eligible. She will have no genetic link and never takes care of the newborn. This is a strict rule designed to prevent any emotional attachment. The quarantine has laid bare some hard truths that Ukrainian health care officials seem to have ignored. Nobody knows exactly how many babies are born here each year through surrogacy. Two months into lockdown, at least 100 babies are separated from their parents. Cots at the hotel are arranged in rows, names are printed in bright colours on each baby's sleepsuit. "We feel very sorry for them, we know no one can replace their parents," nurse Olha Kuts tells the BBC. José and Flavia get daily updates from the nurses on shift, some of whom speak Spanish. "When he turned one month we had a really long videocall, it was so lovely of them," says Flavia. "It made all the difference to be able to talk to him and see him in real time." But more babies are coming in and "they cannot spend as much time as parents would like, it's becoming more complicated", says José. Diplomatic negotiations Ukraine's borders have been closed since March but some families have managed to travel with special permits. There are also negotiations under way with the Ukrainian authorities, through the embassies and consulates of the parents' countries of origin. The parents of 15 babies have been allowed in so far, including a couple from Sweden that reached the Ukrainian capital on a private jet paid for by an anonymous donor. In Argentina, there are 16 other families in the same position as Flavia and José. Three babies have been born already, and the rest are due between late May and September. The parents have launched a joint petition asking both governments to listen to their plea. "We waited for around 20 days because we understand these are very complicated times. Then we put in a legal request," explains José. Negotiations have moved forward and Ukraine has just agreed to let them enter the country. They are now asking the Argentine government to authorise a flight on humanitarian grounds. They are hoping to get a resolution "before the end of the month". But the wait will not be over when they land on the other end. "We will need to self-isolate for 14 days before we can see Manu," says Flavia. "It makes sense as there are risks involved with flying across the world, and it is also wise in terms of the wellbeing of the baby." Then they will need to process the baby's documents before heading back to Argentina - if they are allowed back in before the borders officially re-open. "We don't care about that second leg of the trip at this point. We have a son that is seven weeks old and he is far away, we need to get there and then we'll see," Flavia says. "It has been so hard to get to this point, for us to have a baby, so physically and emotionally draining. We need that wait to be over. "We need to meet him. We'll take care of everything else later." |
Students at Kenya's Garissa university awoke on Thursday morning to the sound of gunmen prowling the campus, shooting at their classmates. Nearly 150 people were killed in what would become the deadliest attack yet by al-Shabab militants in Kenya. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
"All I could hear were footsteps and gunshots," student Collins Wetangula told the Associated Press news agency. "Nobody was screaming because they thought this would lead the gunmen to where they are." "The gunmen were saying, 'Sisi ni al-Shabab,'" he said - Swahili for "We are al-Shabab." The raid began at dawn - about 0530 local time (0230 GMT). Two Toyota Probox cars drove up to the university gates, according to Kenyan daily newspaper The Star. Five gunmen got out, wearing masks and jungle-style fatigues, the paper says. They shot dead two guards at the gate and entered the campus. A labourer named Boaz Muanja told The Star he initially mistook the gunmen for police officers - until they began firing in his direction. A student said she too mistook the armed men for police when she went to check on an explosion at the gates. "All of a sudden I saw them throw explosives... where the Christian Union members were praying," she said. Inside the dormitories, the students realised they were under attack. "We were asleep… when we heard several gunshots outside the hostel," said Augustine Alanga, an economics student interviewed by the BBC's Newsday radio programme. Many of the students escaped, he said. Those who were left behind were taken hostage by the gunmen. "It was horrible, my life was in danger… they were shooting at us with live bullets," he said. "Everywhere all over the school compound was gunfire." An unnamed witness, interviewed by Reuters TV, also spoke of being awoken by the sound of firing. "Guys started jumping up and down, running for their lives," he said. But some of the students ended up "going to where the gunshots were coming from". The others, he said, escaped to open ground and eventually fled the campus. Mr Wetangula, the vice chairman of the university students' union, told the Associated Press news agency that he was preparing for a shower when he heard the gunshots. He immediately locked himself in a room with three other students. He says he heard the attackers opening doors and asking people if they were Muslim or Christians. "If you were a Christian, you were shot on the spot," he said. "With each blast of the gun, I thought I was going to die." He said the shooting became more intense, apparently as the gunmen themselves came under fire. The students left the room when men in military uniform appeared at one of the windows, identifying themselves as Kenyan soldiers. But Mr Wetangula said the escape was far from smooth. "We started running and bullets were whizzing past our heads... The soldiers told us to dive." Later, he said, a soldier told him that al-Shabab snipers had been firing from the roof of a dormitory. Another student said he noticed that the attackers were fully covered, "leaving just a slit for their eyes". He said he helped a group of students escape by jumping onto chairs placed outside open windows. Outside the university, Kenyan journalist Dennis Okari tweeted that he had been told to take cover amid the sound of heavy gunfire and explosions. "Hundreds of students run out, some crawling," he wrote. Kenya's security forces say the militants were eventually surrounded in a dormitory. Four of them died, apparently as their suicide vests were detonated. The fifth gunman was captured alive. The attack is the bloodiest yet on Kenyan soil by al-Shabab militants, based in neighbouring Somalia. A female student told Al Jazeera that she had stepped over more bodies than she could count as she escaped. James Karubiu, the father of a student, told the BBC that he had searched for his daughter in a mortuary, fearing she was dead because he could not get through to her mobile phone. When she eventually sent him a text message, he learnt that she had spent 10 hours hidden in a closet. "She was just peeping, and seeing how people were being killed like animals," he said. Many Kenyans are asking if the attack could have been anticipated, and if more could have been done to protect the university. Grace Kai, a student at a nearby teachers training college, said strangers spotted earlier in Garissa town were suspected to have been terrorists. The college principal had also warned of strangers having entered the college, she told Reuters news agency. But another witness, who gave his name as Geremano, told the BBC's Outside Source that students had told him they had not expected an attack on the university. |
Prevention not cure has always been good health advice but the trick has been to diagnose early enough. Now a range of medical technologies for use both inside and outside the body may give prevention the upper hand and close the gap between diagnosis and cure. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Peter BowesBBC News, Los Angeles Nowadays doctors are able to monitor the health of their patients without meeting them. Sensors, such as heart monitors or other implanted devices, can send data via smart phones to hospitals and health professionals to help them spot problems before they occur. But in the future this growing area of medicine may go from the edge to the centre of medicine and have an impact on human longevity. The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize will give $10m (£6.5m) to the developer of a wireless hand-held device that monitors and diagnoses health conditions. Its sponsors, the X-Prize Foundation, a US charity, and Qualcomm, a US telecommunications technology firm, were inspired by the tricorder - a hi-tech sensor used by the characters in Star Trek, the science fiction television serial. "If we look at the history of technology over the last hundred years, it has extended life in a dramatic way," says Don Jones, vice president of global strategy and market development, with Qualcomm Life, a company that makes wireless technology for use in healthcare. "I think we're going to see new technologies we have trouble imagining today, in the same way that Star Trek imagined the tricorder in the 1960s. Today we actually believe that such things are possible," he says. The plan is to develop a device that can scan the body and obtain measurements of different medical states or conditions. "The data would be used to inform the consumer about their state of health and potentially make recommendations about what they might do," says Mark Winter, senior director at the X-Prize Foundation. Winter also envisages implanted devices becoming a major facet of healthcare, though he is concerned that the public may reject them. "People are afraid of things that are invasive in their body," he says. Nonetheless, he believes that implanted sensors are going to be the cornerstone of healthcare in the future. "It's up to us, as a community, to help people understand this technology and how it can improve their lives and their health," says Winter. It is now possible to remotely monitor the ECG (electrocardiogram) of a patient over the internet. The University of Southern California (USC) carried out clinical trials of a device that delivers readings instantaneously via a smart phone. "I think body monitoring and body computing will become so ubiquitous that they will be part of our cultural dialogue," says Dr Leslie Saxon, executive director and founder of USC's Center for Body Computing. "Digital medicine will help us live easier and, hopefully, it will be harder to die," adds Saxon, who is a cardiologist. "Every patient will have some kind of sensor that's picking up their body signals from their body computer." Proponents of putting monitoring tools into the hands of the patient argue that it empowers them and so turns the conventional health paradigm on its head. "My vision is, you're in charge of yourself," says Dr David Agus, a professor of both medicine and engineering at USC. "The old days of your doctor being in charge of your health - take that and throw it out the window," says Agus. "Most diseases are preventable or delayable. We need to be in charge of that." Technology will play a growing role in our quest for longer, healthier lives. Digital devices will act as our guardian angels and an array of gadgets will shadow our lives. Joe Perez, a founder of several technology companies, believes that, "mobile life coaches" will help monitor our diets and fitness regimes. "Without having somebody push you, whether it's a gym buddy or some concept of a coach, you tend to fall off the wagon," says Perez. He adds that the concept of a mobile life coach, cajoling and encouraging us to make certain life choices, is still in its infancy. But he believes that there will soon be a myriad of devices monitoring and analysing our state of health, food intake, exercise and social behaviour. His hope is that the devices will prompt people to make decisions that could help them live longer. For the moment "we don't know the interface", says Perez. He speculates that it could be an app, or application software, like Siri, which lets people talk to their mobile phone and be answered. It would tell you, "'Hey, this is where you are,' and, 'This is what you're doing,' and, 'Did you go to this?' and, 'Did you do that?' Or it could be some robotic thing texting you," says Perez. "Ten years from now, you're going to look back and say, 'Oh yeah, I knew about that cancer, it was on its way and we had it taken care of'." Perez adds that the current practice of health screenings for certain diseases, starting at a specific age, will become a thing of the past. "We'll have devices all over the place and information flowing all the time, and that will change wellness." You can find out more about What if the BBC's special series looking at aspects of the future, throughout February and March You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook |
The 1937-built white arrivals building at Jersey Airport has been awarded a Grade Two heritage listing. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
But the listing is at odds with the airport authorities who have applied to demolish it. They have cited a requirement to comply with current safety standards. The Planning Minister Deputy Rob Duhamel will decide on the application to demolish the building at a meeting on 24 February. |
Condor Ferries will return to sailing from Weymouth when the ferry berth is fixed by summer next year. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The company relocated sailings to Poole in February because of safety concerns about the structure of the berth. Weymouth Council has agreed plans to rebuild part of the harbour wall. Operations director Fran Collins said regular fast ferry services to the Channel Islands, and on to St Malo in France, would return to Weymouth from 17 July 2013. In the meantime the fast ferry services will continue to operate from Poole. |
Facebook's collection of data makes it one of the most influential organisations in the world. Share Lab wanted to look "under the bonnet" at the tech giant's algorithms and connections to better understand the social structure and power relations within the company. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Joe MillerBusiness reporter A couple of years ago, Vladan Joler and his brainy friends in Belgrade began investigating the inner workings of one of the world's most powerful corporations. The team, which includes experts in cyber-forensic analysis and data visualisation, had already looked into what he calls "different forms of invisible infrastructures" behind Serbia's internet service providers. But Mr Joler and his friends, now working under a project called Share Lab, had their sights set on a bigger target. "If Facebook were a country, it would be bigger than China," says Mr Joler, whose day job is as a professor at Serbia's Novi Sad University. He reels off the familiar, but still staggering, numbers: the barely teenage Silicon Valley firm stores some 300 petabytes of data, boasts almost two billion users, and raked in almost $28bn (£22bn) in revenues in 2016 alone. And yet, Mr Joler argues, we know next to nothing about what goes on under the bonnet - despite the fact that we, as users, are providing most of the fuel - for free. "All of us, when we are uploading something, when we are tagging people, when we are commenting, we are basically working for Facebook," he says. The data our interactions provide feeds the complex algorithms that power the social media site, where, as Mr Joler puts it, our behaviour is transformed into a product. Trying to untangle that largely hidden process proved to be a mammoth task. "We tried to map all the inputs, the fields in which we interact with Facebook, and the outcome," he says. "We mapped likes, shares, search, update status, adding photos, friends, names, everything our devices are saying about us, all the permissions we are giving to Facebook via apps, such as phone status, wifi connection and the ability to record audio." All of this research provided only a fraction of the full picture. So the team looked into Facebook's acquisitions, and scoured its myriad patent filings. The results were astonishing. Visually arresting flow charts that take hours to absorb fully, but which show how the data we give Facebook is used to calculate our ethnic affinity (Facebook's term), sexual orientation, political affiliation, social class, travel schedule and much more. One map shows how everything - from the links we post on Facebook, to the pages we like, to our online behaviour in many other corners of cyber-space that are owned or interact with the company (Instagram, WhatsApp or sites that merely use your Facebook log-in) - could all be entering a giant algorithmic process. And that process allows Facebook to target users with terrifying accuracy, with the ability to determine whether they like Korean food, the length of their commute to work, or their baby's age. Another map details the permissions many of us willingly give Facebook via its many smartphone apps, including the ability to read all text messages, download files without permission, and access our precise location. Individually, these are powerful tools; combined they amount to a data collection engine that, Mr Joler argues, is ripe for exploitation. "If you think just about cookies, just about mobile phone permissions, or just about the retention of metadata - each of those things, from the perspective of data analysis, are really intrusive." More Technology of Business How Cuba's growing internet is fuelling new businesses How DNA-testing kits are becoming big business 'You can tell by the way I use my walk...' Seeing the light: How India is embracing solar power Facebook has for years asserted that data privacy and the security of its operations are paramount. Facebook data, for example, cannot be used by developers to create surveillance tools and the firm says it complies with privacy protection laws in all countries. Thousands of new staff have been recruited to police its content. Mr Joler, though, while admitting that his research made him a little paranoid about the information that was being harvested, is more worried about the longer term. The data will remain in the hands of one company. Even if its current leaders are responsible and trustworthy, what about those in charge in 20 years? Analysts say Share Lab's work is valuable and impressive. "It's probably the most comprehensive work mapping Facebook that I've ever seen," says Dr Julia Powles, an expert in technology law and policy at Cornell Tech. "[The research] shows in cold and calculated terms how much we are giving away for the value of being able to communicate with your mates," she says. The scale of Facebook's reach can be stated in raw numbers - but Share Lab's maps make it visceral, in a way that drawing parallels cannot. "We haven't really got appropriate historical analogies for the tech giants," explains Dr Powles. Their powers, she continues, extend "far beyond" the likes of the East India Company and monopolies of old, such as Standard Oil. And while many may consider the objectives of Mark Zuckerberg's empire to be rather benign, its outcomes are not always so. Facebook, argues Dr Powles, "plays to our base psychological impulses" by valuing popularity above all else. Not that she expects Share Lab's research to lead to a mass Facebook exodus, or a dramatic increase in the scrutiny of tech titans. "What is most striking is the sense of resignation, the impotence of regulation, the lack of options, the public apathy," says Dr Powles. "What an extraordinary situation for an entity that has power over information - there is no greater power really." It is this extraordinary dominance that the Share Lab team set out to illustrate. But Mr Joler is quick to point out that even their grand maps cannot provide an accurate picture of the social media giant's capabilities. There is no guarantee, for example, that there are not many other algorithms at work that are still heavily guarded trade secrets. However, Mr Joler argues, "it is still the one and only map that exists" of one of the greatest forces shaping our world today. Follow Technology of Business editor Matthew Wall on Twitter and Facebook |
A murder investigation is under way after a six-month-old boy died when he went into cardiac arrest. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Police were called to Walnut Close, Bilston, West Midlands, shortly before 14:00 BST on Sunday 12 June. The boy was taken to hospital but died a short time later. A 24-year-old man and 23-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of murder have been bailed, West Midlands Police said. A post-mortem examination is under way to determine the cause of death. |
When a family arrives in a new country, often the children are first to pick up the new language - and inevitably, they become the family translators. Researcher Dr Humera Iqbal describes what it's like to be a child responsible for dealing with doctors and landlords, bank staff or restaurant suppliers. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
"Baba! Baba!" calls out the driving instructor. Thirteen-year-old Jiawei sits at the back of the car while her dad takes his driving lesson. Father and daughter exchange confused glances, then burst out laughing. The instructor, who has heard this Chinese word during one of Jiawei's father's previous lessons, looks puzzled. "Doesn't 'baba' mean 'move forward' in Chinese?" he asks. "No," says Jiawei. "It means 'father'!" Jiawei was in the unusual position of acting as an interpreter for her dad as he learned to drive. She took notes and repeated in Chinese exactly what the instructor said in English - things like "Turn left at the roundabout," or "Slow down at the junction." She's proud that she helped her father pass his test. "It was quite fun and I thought I was doing something to help my family," she says, looking back. "I was also learning how to drive myself without knowing it, doing something that other kids didn't get to do." A year earlier, Jiawei's family had moved from China to the UK and while she had managed to pick up basic English at school, her father was struggling. Jiawei became a crucial link helping him find his way in a new country. Thousands of migrant children in the UK translate for their families every day. My colleague Dr Sarah Crafter and I have come across child interpreters, some as young as seven, helping their parents communicate in shops, banks, and even police stations. It can be stressful for them, especially when adults are rude or aggressive. "It is very visible and young people feel very noticeable," says Sarah Crafter. "It is also an emotional thing, because if you are treated well you feel good - and if you are not treated well you feel bad about yourself and it really impacts on young people's identities." Seventeen-year-old Oliwia, who has translated from Polish to English for her mother since 2008, is familiar with that feeling. She's used to hearing xenophobic comments. Find out more Humera Iqbal's radio documentary Translating for Mum and Dad is on the BBC World Service from 9 October Click here for transmission times or to listen on BBC Sounds "Some say, 'You're in England, speak English,'" she says. "I hate that so much. People should be more understanding." In fact, her mother has tried hard to learn English, but is not yet fluent. Once, when Oliwia and her mum experienced racist abuse on a bus, Oliwia was faced with the choice of either translating it or shielding her mum from the hateful words. Translating at the doctor's can be especially tricky. Esmeralda, who is 16 and from Peru, was suddenly confronted with the word "cyst" after her mother's minor surgery. "I had no idea," she says. "I didn't know how to say it in English. I was so confused and I was trying to communicate with the doctor to try and say something similar to it. I didn't know what to say." She adds: "Sometimes I don't want to go because my mum's thing is really, really complicated." Professional translators are available for this kind of situation, but not all newly arrived families know about them or realise that they are free of charge (in some areas, anyway). And some just prefer to use their own family members. Moreover, in an emergency professional translators are not always on hand. The rules say a translator should be 18 or over. But if the patients want their children to translate, and the children aren't refusing, what should medical staff do? It's an ongoing debate. Like Esmeralda, 17-year-old Lesly, from Ecuador, has sometimes translated for her mother in hospital. At other times, though, people have tried to stop her. "They say I am under 18, [but] she needs a translator and there is no-one else there. I continue talking and tell them what my mom tells me," she says. "They think we are minors so we don't understand, but they underestimate us." At a school in London, Marian, who is 13 and from Bolivia, is translating from English to Spanish for her mum, Mary Luz, at her own parents' evening. Marian's computer science teacher pays a visit to her table. "Are you translating?" he asks Marian, who nods her head. He goes on to tell Mary Luz that she has reached her target grades. A great start, and Marian calmly translates word for word without hesitation, her mother nodding earnestly. However, this isn't the end of the conversation and things rapidly take a different turn. "While she is working well… she can be a bit chatty with Carolina," he adds. Marian's eyes dilate slightly, and her cheeks rapidly turn a bright red. She pauses, takes a moment to think and goes on to translate the message. "Oh Marian! I wasn't aware you spoke during class!" Mary Luz says in Spanish, waving her finger from side to side. Marian tells me it's not a big deal and she can fix it, but her mum doesn't look convinced. I ask Marian if she thought about changing the message to soften the blow while she was translating. "I was questioning whether I should translate it like, 100% or not! That's why she is reacting like this! Also, my mum can read the face of the teachers, so it's useless if I lie!" she says. As the main English-speaker in her family, Marian has found herself in the middle of some difficult conversations. When they first arrived in the UK, they lived in rented accommodation where the heating did not work - and it was up to Marian to get the landlord to fix it. She made countless phone calls and sent text messages, but her requests were ignored. Marian's parents kept urging their daughter to show anger, in order to emphasise that the problem needed to be fixed urgently. But Marian resisted. "I do not like confrontation and I did not have the anger in me to do it," she says. She was caught between an angry parent and a stubborn landlord - not an easy place to be for a 12-year-old. Her way out was to be doggedly persistent. "I just texted him daily." A whole year later, the heating finally got fixed. For Marian, it felt like a huge accomplishment. At the parents' evening, her English teacher and head of year come to the table. "She is doing very well," the teacher begins. Marianne translates word for word. "Her effort, behaviour and homework are all outstanding. She's very respectful and participates and is enthusiastic. And it's a pleasure to teach her." "Gracias!" Mary Luz calls out, patting her daughter on the back, her eyes glistening with pride. Marian is herself proud of this and so she should be. She came to the UK four years ago with no knowledge of English and now she is reading, writing and speaking at an outstanding level. During our research, Sarah Crafter and I have come across children who are translating not just between two languages but between three or more. At her school in east London, 17-year-old Fatima has a band of friends who, like her, moved to the UK from Italy in their early teens. All are from South Asian families, so they speak Bengali, Sinhalese or Urdu at home, Italian with friends and now English, sometimes switching between all three languages. Often the children were not pleased to be dragged from Italy to the UK; learning a new language and translating for their parents was a burden. Fatima's friend Rashani, for example, has to help her mother understand all the correspondence she gets from her workplace, a fried chicken shop. One text message she had to grapple with said: "Hello Team, please check what items are missing from last week - if you don't understand anything, ask the team leader, they will explain we need to control all the missing items." "In the beginning it felt like it was all on me and I remember thinking this is so unfair," Rashani says. But since then she has become more aware of the upsides. "Now I feel like I'm kind of head of the family, as I influence the decisions of my parents even though I'm young!" Jiawei clearly remembers the day of her father's driving test. She felt nervous, but translated carefully the driving examiner's words, knowing she had to do this quickly without fluffing. "It went really smoothly and we got through the test," she recollects. "I remember the moment the instructor said he had passed and I translated the good news to my dad. 'You've passed the test!' He was overjoyed and I was too. It was a moment in our lives we will share forever." Years later, and now an adult, Jiawei rarely translates for her baba as his English has improved significantly. But perhaps her experience as a young translator has influenced her choice of career? After completing a PhD in medical sciences, she and her partner founded a start-up to develop technology that translates complex medical documents from English into Chinese. She is now learning to drive herself, which has brought back memories of the time she spent with her father and his instructor. The basic principles of driving were already familiar to her, even before she started lessons. Jiawei is looking forward to the day when she tells her baba she has passed her own driving test. "Life has found a way of coming around in a big circle," she says. Dr Humera Iqbal is a lecturer in psychology at University College London You may also be interested in: |
Jacqui Kenny's agoraphobia means a trip to the supermarket can trigger an anxiety attack and fears of impending "catastrophe". But she says her Instagram account is helping her and sufferers like her to explore remote corners of the world. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Kate PalmerBBC News Jacqui, 43, takes shots from Google Street View - among them a group of nuns in Peru and high-rise flats in Russia - posting images to her 20,000 followers under the pseudonym "Agoraphobic Traveller". Since her 20s she has feared busy places and public transport - despite living in central London - but says the digital age has helped her travel to places she would otherwise never see. "I'll go anywhere that feels a little bit magical," she says. "They are places that would be incredibly difficult for me to travel to, so inevitably I'm attracted to them." Jacqui, who was diagnosed with agoraphobia in 2009, chooses remote, eerie places to capture and says she likes anywhere with an "other-worldly feel". "There's a lot of isolation in the shots but there is also colour and hope in there," she says. "The photos I take reflect how I feel and my agoraphobia is part of that." But her "thrill" at discovering faraway places contrasts with her fear of everyday situations. She describes going to the local supermarket as "a nightmare" and says she has not taken a Tube train in 10 years. "I'll start to panic - my palms are sweaty, I have a racing heart, I feel that my feet aren't touching the floor," she says. "Thoughts are racing through my mind - that I'm going to lose control, smash everything in the aisle - and everyone will see." Jacqui was 23 and living in Australia when she had her first panic attack during a busy day at work. "No one told me what it was and I thought I was dying," she says. "Later, a doctor said it must've been something I'd had for dinner. "He blamed it on the black bean sauce - no one was talking about mental health." Hidden illness Before starting the project in 2016, Jacqui managed to hide her symptoms from everyone except her family. At work, she ran a digital marketing company but only went to meetings in the office which was two minutes' walk from her house. She says finding and posting the images has helped her come to terms with being agoraphobic, which she had felt angry about for a long time. "Before my anxiety set in I dreamed of being a photographer," says Jacqui. "I'd resigned myself to this never happening." "Now I feel that the condition doesn't define me but is within a part of me," she says. But does spending hours online posting photos really help her condition? Jacqui admits she "thought it could be an unhealthy thing to do" to trawl the internet for hours at a time. But she says it has given her the confidence to speak about the condition and come to terms with it. "It's only when I started posting these photos I went beyond telling my family and really close friends," she says. "Before, nobody knew," she says. "Now people from all over the world are coming to me sharing similar struggles - it's amazing." She says many people misunderstand agoraphobia as a fear of open spaces, but she has discovered how varied people's anxiety can be. She has been contacted by an agoraphobic journalist who struggles in a busy newsroom and photographers who may fear travelling to a photo shoot. "Quite a few young women have asked me for advice," she says. "I tell them about my experience, but I can only offer my viewpoint as I'm obviously not a psychologist." She adds: "Everybody's dealing with something and I'm really starting to realise that." Jacqui now manages her anxiety with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which aims to change patterns of thinking - recently attending her sister's wedding in New Zealand. "I had therapy which involved a lot of anxiety and not sleeping for three months," she says. But she managed the flight after seeing a psychologist, who made her act out her worst fears. "I pretended to bang down the door of the plane, trying to get out of there," she says. "I realised how funny the situation was, and we both fell around laughing, and when I actually boarded the plane that humour helped me through it." It was not easy - but she says the trip has given her hope. "I try to do these things," she says. "There are times when I can't do it and I go home - but I know that is making it worse." What is agoraphobia? |
A 46-year-old woman is in hospital after being knocked unconscious when a stone hit her on the head at Alton Towers. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Staffordshire Police said they were unsure if it was deliberate or "an act of mischief with an unintended result". The woman, a coach driver, was walking in a coach park when the stone was thrown on Thursday afternoon. She was in a stable condition in the University Hospital of North Staffordshire. on Friday. Staffordshire Police said hundreds of people were walking through the area at the time and appealed to anyone with information to contact the force. |
A Blue Plaque commemorating the start of a 200-mile walk by the author Alfred Wainwright is to be unveiled at a North Yorkshire railway station. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Wainwright, whose walking guide books became synonymous with the Lakeland fells, undertook a marathon walk of 211 miles from Settle station in 1938. Known as his "Pennine journey" Wainwright walked from the station to Hadrian's Wall and back. The plaque and an information board about the walk will be unveiled. In September 1938, Wainwright left Settle on a walk he had planned for some time. The ceremony to unveil the plaque has been timed to coincide with the 73rd anniversary of the start of Wainwright's epic walk. |
Student activists lead a movement to bring an end to a widely-hated military government in Myanmar. It grows into a nationwide uprising, a general strike, which is met with savage brutality by the armed forces. 2021? Or 1988? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Jonathan HeadSouth East Asia correspondent The 1988 uprising remains one of the defining moments of Myanmar's modern history. A regime which had used extreme levels of violence to hold onto power, suddenly found itself facing massive protests over its calamitous mishandling of the economy. By 1988 Burma, as the South East Asian nation was then known, had been ruled for 26 years by the secretive and superstitious General Ne Win, who seized power in a coup in 1962. He was commander of the armed forces - known as the Tatmadaw - which had been fighting insurgencies in several parts of Burma since independence in 1948, and viewed civilians as incapable of holding the country together. General Ne Win cut Burma off from the outside world, refusing to take sides in the Cold War divisions then afflicting Asia. Instead he implemented an eccentric one-party system under his Burma Socialist Programme Party, in which the army played a dominant role, and led to Burma becoming one of the world's poorest countries. The political drama which culminated in the mass rallies of August and September 1988 actually began one year earlier, with Ne Win's sudden decision to demonetise all existing banknotes. This had a catastrophic economic impact, in particular on students who had saved up their tuition fees. 'The 88 generation' The confrontations with the military government escalated from that point, with soldiers using increasing levels of lethal force, to the point where they killed thousands in late 1988. The violence used against unarmed civilians since last month's coup has been shocking, but it's not at that level - yet. To this day the so-called "88 Generation" of students, who led that uprising, have a special status in Myanmar. Many of them spent up to two decades in prison, where deprivation and ill-treatment robbed them of their health, but not their fighting spirit. Some have even been out in today's protests. But they are no longer young - the best known 88 Generation leader Min Ko Naing is 58 years old - and the protest environment has been dramatically transformed by technology, allowing every confrontation to be filmed and uploaded immediately, and many of the abuses by the security forces to be recorded. Social media v pamphlets So today, people even in the farthest-flung parts of Myanmar are instantly aware of what's happening anywhere in the country as news of protests and crackdowns appear on Facebook and Twitter there almost as quickly as those in the big cities. Back in 1988 however, the students relied on crudely-printed pamphlets and word of mouth to communicate; Burma had very limited access to television or even old-fashioned telephone landlines. The scratchy, short-wave broadcasts of BBC World Service were a lifeline, both for Burmese and English speakers. Christopher Gunness, the young BBC reporter who was one of the few foreigners who managed to report from there for a short time during the tumultuous events of August, became a folk hero, as his broadcasts helped spread the word about the general strike called for 8.8.88 - where hundreds of thousands came out to protest before a bloody crackdown. And it was the 26 years of economic isolation and wretched poverty which motivated protesters in 1988, not a sudden power grab after 10 years of democratic rule, as now. In 2021 those leading the protests want to preserve economic possibilities and access to the world that, in the past decade, have been far in excess of what their parents had. "The 1988 uprising started more because of unhappiness with the socialist system in Myanmar," says Ye Laung Aung, a civil servant now active in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). "When that collapsed the military took over. But in 2021 the military seized power by force from an elected National League for Democracy government. That is the big difference. We have joined the CDM because we recognise only the elected NLD government. In 1988 civil servants stopped going to work largely because of public disorder and violence. Today we refuse to work because we do not want to be part of a coup administration." Aung San Suu Kyi v thousands of leaders 1988 also saw the emergence of a clear leader of the opposition movement in Aung San Suu Kyi, who was in the country at that time originally only to care for her ailing mother. She formed the National League for Democracy, a highly centralised and top-down organisation, together with former senior military officers like Aung Gyi and Tin Oo. By contrast, today's movement is often called "leaderless", but in fact has thousands of leaders, all responsible for organising their local part of this loose and flexible structure. Lessons from the past Where 1988 can serve as a useful reference point for today's generation of activists is in the lessons they can learn. In 1988 protesters were too quick to celebrate the installation of a notionally civilian leader, and too slow to organise themselves into a unified movement. Ne Win had resigned in July, and his successor, General Sein Lwin, called the "Butcher of Rangoon" for his part in the 8.8.88 suppression of demonstrations, lasted only 17 days. But divisions within the movement over which direction to take, and growing lawlessness in an increasingly fearful population as local administration disintegrated in the power vacuum, set the scene for a military coup on 18 September. That ushered in more than 20 years of harsh, authoritarian rule, with Aung San Suu Kyi, the symbol of hope for that generation, destined to spend most of those two decades under house arrest. There was little co-ordination, even communication, in 1988 between the student protest movement and the many ethnic minorities who had been fighting for a less centralised, more federal system of government since independence. Mistrust between the ethnic Burman majority and Myanmar's sizeable minorities endures to this day. However, younger activists in the CDM are now openly demanding a more inclusive and representative form of politics, and apologising for their past neglect of the terrible abuses suffered by the Karen, the Kachin and the Rohingyas. No return to the status quo "While everyone agrees on the enemy - the military - they are also increasingly aware that things cannot return to the status quo: merely respect the vote and so forth, putting Aung San Suu Kyi back in that uneasy power-sharing relationship with the military," says Elliot Prasse-Freeman, assistant professor in Sociology/Anthropology at the National University of Singapore, who has written extensively on Myanmar. "And so, ironically, the military has forced this reckoning, in which mainstream liberals are now forced to confront the reality that the so-called democracy of the last 10 years was merely that: so-called." The experience of military rule after the 1988 uprising, when the generals enriched themselves through corrupt business deals, has robbed the armed forces of the grudging respect they once had in the wider population as guarantors of the country's unity. Now they have also broken the pledge they made, back in 1988, to allow a move towards democracy, albeit on their own chosen timescale and conditions. And they have forced a realisation on the people of Myanmar that, whatever they say, they will never willingly give up the grip they have had on the country for most of its 73 years of existence. This helps explain why so many are now risking their lives to try to stop this coup, unlike previous coups, from succeeding. "The generals could always say, with a certain if strained plausibility, that they eventually fulfilled their promise, post-1988, for a democratic transition," says Elliot Prasse-Freeman. "They can no longer say that, and the entire apparatus has now become, in the eyes of most people, nothing more than a terrorist organisation - this is the term used on social media in both English and Burmese [akyan-pet thama]. In daytime the police and other security officials beat and kill peaceful protesters; at night, videos are circulating in which they smash cars, destroy trishaws, and randomly shoot at civilians. "The military has long seen civilians as enemies. But these actions, so desperate and inhumane, demonstrate how vast the gap between them has become." Myanmar in profile |
Some call it military rule by stealth. Others prefer to describe it as the generals and the politicians working harmoniously in the national interest. But however you look at it, there's no denying the Pakistan army's political power is growing. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Owen Bennett-JonesBBC News It all dates back to the Peshawar school attack of 16 December 2014 when the Pakistani Taliban murdered 132 schoolboys. Within days the civilian leadership had formulated a 20-point National Action Plan to confront the militants, curb their hate speeches, control their religious seminaries and cut their finances. Aware that the civilian courts are generally reluctant to convict Jihadists, the parliament then passed a constitutional amendment to establish military courts. The army then announced new "apex committees" that brought together senior politicians, bureaucrats, intelligence officials and military officers. As many as 50,000 suspected militants have been detained or arrested and in another sign of the state's resolve, Malik Ishaq, the leader of a formidable sectarian group, Lashkar e Jhangvi, was shot dead by police in what is widely believed to be an extra-judicial killing. The crackdown has led to sharply reduced levels of militant violence. And with media highlighting the role of the army chief General Raheel Sharif, the army is enjoying a surge of public support. But for all the hopes that the Peshawar School attacks might have marked a significant turning point, some wonder whether the National Action Plan will bring lasting change. After all, Pakistanis could be forgiven for thinking they have seen it all before. Tens of thousands of suspected militants were detained by General Musharraf's regime in 2007, only to be released a few months later. Since the state lacks the capacity to investigate the detainees the same could well happen again. When he announced the National Action Plan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif stated that Pakistan would no longer distinguish between the "good" Taliban (who fight Pakistan's enemies) and the "bad" Taliban (who attack targets in Pakistan itself). Selective targets But in reality the state is still being selective about which groups it targets. Pakistani-based Jihadist groups with a history of fighting Indian forces in the disputed territory of Kashmir are being left alone. So too are the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan-facing Haqqani Network which stands accused of mounting recent attacks in Kabul. Perhaps most controversially of all Lashkar e Toiba (or as its renamed itself, Jamaat ud Dawa), the group accused of mounting the 2008 Mumbai attacks, has not been confronted. The group's leader Hafeez Saeed is frequently quoted in the Pakistan press. And no-one is expecting further legal action against, for example, LSE graduate Omar Sheikh who has been convicted of involvement in the 2002 murder of the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl. His appeal has been pending since 2002. Nor is there likely to be any resolution of the case of Mumtaz Qadri who in 2011 killed the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer. Qadri, who objected to Taseer's calls for reform of the blasphemy laws, enjoys hero status in Pakistan. Neither the army nor the government will want to risk undermining public support for the National Action Plan by including Qadri in its net. Privately officials say they have to prioritize militants who attack targets within Pakistan. But even that claim is questionable. Fearing a violent backlash, the state has hesitated to confront militants in their strongholds in Southern Punjab. The risks are real. Within three weeks of Malik Ishaq's death, for example, Lashkar e Jhangvi hit back with a suicide bomb attack that killed the Home Minster of Punjab, Shuja Khanzada. There are also questions about the impact of the National Action Plan on Pakistan's notoriously volatile civil/military relations. Elected representatives both in the national parliament and provincial assemblies complain that they have been cut out of decision-making. Cult of personality Some also express fears about an emerging cult of personality around Army Chief General Raheel Sharif. Posters of him have appeared on billboards throughout Pakistan's biggest city Karachi. Mysterious websites, which seem to have access to images sourced from the military, praise him to the skies. After decades of very poor PR, the army is now producing emotive, patriotic rock songs to bolster support for the anti-Jihadist campaign. While Pakistani liberals worry about these developments, they simultaneously concede that if the counter narrative to the Jihadists has a militaristic air, its only because the civilians have failed to come up with an effective information strategy of their own. The contest for public support has had an impact on Pakistan's previously irrepressible TV news channels. Many have become so nervous about upsetting the army that they are making use of a 30-second delay on live broadcasts so that the sound can be muted before it's transmitted. Originally brought in to stop uncritical interviews of Jihadists, the mechanism is now being used to protect the army's reputation. One prime time TV host described how her voice was muted as soon as she used the word "military". The person controlling the mute button did not know if she was going to say something supportive or critical of the men in uniform - so decided to play it safe. The army's ascendency means that despite his strong electoral mandate Nawaz Sharif is unable to pursue some of his objectives. His desire to improve relations with India has run up against the army's insistence that the intractable Kashmir issue should be at the forefront of any talks process. General Raheel Sharif Wary embrace Mr Sharif has also been blocked from pursuing legal action against the man who removed him from power last time round, General Musharraf. The army is unwilling to see a former chief on trial for treason. For now the government and the army are locked in a wary embrace. They are working together but in part that is because the civilian politicians fear that if they allow a gap to emerge between them and the military there will be another coup. Some wonder how long the current situation can last. "Let me tell you what I have learnt from history," said Pakistan's most prominent human rights lawyer, Asma Jahangir. "Our army doesn't want power. It wants absolute power." Listen to Owen's report on the Newshour Extra podcast. |
Millions of people swear by vitamin supplements. But many are wasting their time and some could even be harming themselves, argues Dr Chris van Tulleken. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
In November 1912 a party of three men and 16 dogs set out from a remote base in eastern Antarctica to explore a series of crevasses many hundreds of miles away. Three months later just one of the men returned. His name was Douglas Mawson. His skin was peeling off and his hair was falling out. He had lost almost half his body weight. He recounted what Sir Edmund Hillary described as "the greatest story of lone survival in the history of polar exploration". A month into their journey, one of the team, along with the tent, most of the provisions and six dogs plunged into a crevasse, never to be seen again. Mawson and the other surviving member, Xavier Mertz, started to return to base, surviving in part by eating the remaining dogs. After a few weeks Mertz developed stomach pains and diarrhoea. Then his skin started to peel off and his hair fell out. He died incontinent and delirious a few days later. Mawson suffered similar symptoms. With the kind of understatement typical of his generation of polar explorers he described the skin of the soles of his feet peeling off: "The sight of my feet gave me quite a shock, for the thickened skin of the soles had separated in each case as a complete layer... The new skin underneath was very much abraded and raw." It was the suffering of early explorers and sailors that motivated the first studies of vitamins and their deficiency diseases. At first sight Mawson's story seems to be another such tale - starvation combined with a lack of some vital nutrient. In fact, Mawson's description of his symptoms is an almost textbook description of vitamin A overdose - probably from eating dog liver. As little as 100g of husky liver could give a hungry explorer a fatal dose. Mawson lived to the decent age of 76 but in his story we find the cautionary tale for our times - vitamins can be very bad for you. This piece is about what we have learned about vitamin supplements in the last few years - if you are healthy, and you live in a country like the UK, taking multi-vitamins and high-dose antioxidants may shorten your life. For most of us, for most of the time, they're unhealthy. "Argh!" I hear you say, "I spend loads of money on them and the claims on the packet are really persuasive. Everything, from my full head of hair to my sex life, depends on them!" I want to get into this in a bit more detail because the vitamin companies certainly don't agree with me. So why do we believe they're useful and why do we take them? Vitamins are essential for life, and there are groups of people even in the UK who benefit from specific supplementation, but general unsupervised vitamin pill-popping is more than just a waste of money. The problem is that we all feel very warm and fuzzy about vitamins because, firstly, the tales of deficiency are so horrific, secondly, we read breakfast cereal packs and thirdly, a double-Nobel laureate called Linus Pauling liked vitamin C in vast, vast doses. All this is packaged by the people now selling us vitamins over the counter into that most beguiling of all logical falsehoods - if a little is good, then more must be better. Now I knew the names of the most obscure vitamins long before medical school because I have always had a fondness for the kind of multicoloured, artificially flavoured breakfast cereals that are marketed using a combination of unlikely cartoon animals and claims of being "vitamin and mineral-enriched". And it has to be said that this vitamin and mineral enrichment of staple food has been one of the most effective public health interventions in history. It continues to save countless lives per year even in Europe. So, while you shouldn't eat dog liver in Antarctica, vitamin A deficiency hugely increases the risk of blindness and death in children with measles and diarrhoea in developing countries. So the World Health Organization recommends a very strict amount and cautions that higher doses can cause birth defects in early pregnancy among other problems. So vitamins do make a huge difference to life expectancy in some circumstances, which is persuasive, and the breakfast propaganda catches us in our most vulnerable, bleary-eyed, early morning state, hinting to us that these vitamins have some sort of catch-all, beneficial effect on our lives, that will transform us into the healthy, energetic beautiful people/cartoon creatures portrayed on the cereal box. These things contribute to a general ideal of healthfulness of vitamins. And then there's Linus Pauling. Whether or not you've heard of him, Linus Pauling is a major influence on vitamin and nutrient culture. It's almost impossible to imagine someone with more authority and credibility. He won two Nobel prizes and was, by all accounts, a genuinely good bloke. He wrote a book in 1970 saying that high doses of vitamin C could be effective in combating flu, cancer, cardiovascular disease, infections and degenerative problems. He took immense quantities himself, hundreds of times the required amount, and lived to a ripe old age surrounded by many great grandchildren. He was the poster boy for mega-dosing of vitamins and this contributed to the growth of an industry supported by the belief that supplementation of these molecules in our diet is beneficial in almost every way imaginable. But rather than taking one man's word for it, however credible, it's worth looking at the results of studies that look at what happens to people who take these supplements for long periods of time. Looking at any one individual study won't be very revealing to answer the question of whether vitamin supplementation is good for you. They're densely scientific and the conflicts of interest can be very hard to spot. For the answer you have to turn to what are called "systematic review papers". This is where independent scientists gather up all the available data and re-analyse it to answer big questions. Here's what a couple of them say: "We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention [of diseases of any kind]. Beta-carotene and vitamin E seem to increase mortality, and so may higher doses of vitamin A. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered as medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing". (See references below). Just to be clear - "increase mortality" - that means they're killing you. These are powerfully bioactive compounds but they're not regulated in the same way as drugs. Whatever you think about the regulation there should surely be a warning on the pack if there's data saying they're bad for us. The next question is - why are they bad for us? It's very hard to pick apart the data, partly because vitamins are a fabulously diverse group of chemicals. I'm going to include what people normally refer to as minerals under the heading of vitamins. They're required in the diet not for energy, but as chemical partners for the enzymes involved in the body's metabolism - cell production, tissue repair, and other vital processes. Their functions are understood largely by their deficiency diseases so we're not exactly sure of precisely what they all do or how they interact. Antioxidants provide a nice example. They soak up the very toxic, chemically-reactive by-products of metabolism called free radicals. These free radicals, left unchecked, can cause damage to DNA and may be linked to cancer. Your cells are full of antioxidants but surely taking more would be better? Right? Keep those cancer causing radicals under control? Well, unfortunately, your body's immune system fights infections by using free radicals to kill bugs. Exactly what effect huge quantities of extra antioxidants could have on this is not clear but it's easy to imagine that it might not be good and you could get more infections. Vitamin A is linked to increasing lung cancer in smokers. Excess zinc is linked to reduced immune function. Long-term excessive intake of manganese is linked to muscle and nerve disorders in older people. Niacin in excess has been linked to cell damage. And so on. And it gets more complicated still when you start mixing everything up in one tablet. For example, different minerals compete for absorption. If you take large quantities of calcium you won't be able to absorb your iron. If you take large quantities of iron you won't be able to absorb zinc. If you take vitamin C you'll reduce your copper level. So it's not just that taking lots of one thing is not good for you, it's that it may cause a dangerous reduction in something else even if you are also supplementing that. To work out the optimal ratios is all but impossible although some manufactures claim to have worked it out. So when are supplements recommended? The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends certain supplements for some groups of people who are at risk of deficiency, including: Your GP may also recommend supplements if you need them for a medical condition. If you decide to take supplements, stick to within the RDA, unless you've had guidance from a state-registered dietician or clinical nutritionist to exceed the dose. If you've got questions about dosage levels, consult a state-registered dietician or clinical nutritionist. The tales of deficiency combined with the success of enrichment programmes mean that it's easy to make that leap of logic that if a little is good then more must be better. And if you read my article last week on water you'll see where this is going. I could do this every week. The same article. Substitute water for vitamins/probiotics/antibiotics. Don't trust the science done by the people who are trying to sell them to you and don't assume that if some is good more must be better. It's like beer. Or coffee. Or computer games. Goldilocks was right about things needing to be just right. References: Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Simonetti RG, Gluud C. Antioxidant supplements for preventing gastro-intestinal cancers, , 2004 Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Gluud C, Antioxidant supplements to prevent mortality, The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2013 Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Gluud LL, Simonetti RG, Gluud C, Antioxidant supplements for prevention of mortality in healthy participants and patients with various diseases, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2012 Chris van Tulleken is on Twitter: @doctorChrisVT Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook Trust Me I'm a Doctor is broadcast on 17 October on BBC Two at 20:00 BST, or catch up with iPlayer |
At first glance, it was a game jam like any other. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Zoe KleinmanTechnology reporter, BBC News Teams of developers, programmers and artists who had never met before, hunched over laptops, racing against the clock to create computer games from scratch in 24 hours. With just four hours to go, thoughts about coding and graphics were frantically being exchanged over bowls of popcorn and strong coffee. The only difference was that all the participants were women - and for that reason organisers Debbie Rawlings and Helen Kennedy believe the XX Game Jam held in east London at the end of October was the first of its kind in the UK. "The whole idea of an all-female game jam is something I discussed a while ago," said Helen Kennedy, a founding member of a group called Women in Games. "I took the idea out and pitched it for funding and they told me it couldn't be done, the whole format of a game jam was somehow too masculine to be done with just women. I thought that was a rather challenging thing to say as I don't believe in those sorts of categorisations." Global demand The pair certainly had no problem finding recruits for this event, held in the offices of Mind Candy, creators of Moshi Monsters. "Within eight days of the registration going live we had filled 40 spaces," said Debbie Rawlings. "We have a waiting list of about another 40 already so we could run another next week and I'm totally confident that would sell out too." Three women travelled all the way from Copenhagen to take part. Andrea Hasselager, Nevin Eronde and Rositsa Deneva run game development workshops for teenage girls around the world, and decided to put themselves in their shoes for the weekend. "The girls are really very interested - the thing is that maybe they've never been introduced to something like that before," said Ms Hasselager. "Their games definitely have stories from their own lives - one group made a game about dating the cute guy from school, getting your chores done so fast so you can get to your date. "Guys wouldn't make a game like that." Sex appeal Helen Kennedy also believes that a larger presence of women in the games industry will change the landscape of the games themselves. She cites Maxis, creator of The Sims, and Mind Candy, whose Moshi Monsters have become a big hit among the under-12s, as two games developers with a good balance of men and women on board. "If you have more women on your team, you might get a different dynamic in the workplace that might transform some of the decision making that happens," she said. That's not to say that female characters would all suddenly start wearing sensible shoes and sports bras. "Women like to make sexy women too," said Ms Kennedy. "They might be less overly hyper-sexual, less passive, there might be more complicated characterisation, but women love active sexy women just as much as men do. "It's the victim or passive wall-dressing that you get that women find rather repellent." Lovelace legend The theme for games created at the XX Game Jam was clockwork, a nod to Ada Lovelace, the female mathematician credited with writing the world's first computer programs in the 1800s. She worked with Charles Babbage, an inventor whose "difference engine", a complex calculation machine which he designed but never built, is now considered to be the earliest computer. The women worked in teams of five and their games included clockwork crocodiles and android Grim Reapers. "We're all helping each other out, solving each other's problems," said participant Jo Evershed. "Tool challenges have been our biggest challenges, getting our computers working together, understanding each other's strengths and limitations. "As always in all projects, it's the human bit that's the difficult bit." The prizes for the winning team were tool kits - a nod to the masculine environment that women in the games industry find themselves in. "I hardly ever see any women in my job," said developer Helen Mealey, who had only previously attended game jams as an online participant. "It's a nice change." The XX Games Jam will also feature on Click Radio, BBC World Service, on 6 November. |
A pair of dogs which had been "missing for a couple of days" have been rescued from a sewer pipe in Greater Manchester. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The dogs were found after fire crews went to land in Townfield Close, in Bury, at around 01:00 BST. Watch manager Roy Grundy said they had been "stuck six metres down in a metre-wide sewer pipe". He added that after getting them out, the dogs had been "very wet, dirty and bedraggled but, thankfully, OK". "The dogs had been missing for a couple of days and their owners had put posters up in the area," he said. "We worked slowly and carefully to get them out. "A firefighter wearing breathing apparatus went down into the pipe on rope rescue equipment and rescued the dogs one by one." |
A wind farm project will provide electricity for more than 12,200 homes across Derry and Strabane District Council area according to renewable energy company RES. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The company received consent to create the seven-turbine project near Londonderry on Wednesday. Barr Cregg Wind Farm will power over 20% of the district's households. Head of wind projects for RES, Fraser Merry anticipates an injection of £7.7m into the local economy. "We anticipated £7.77m will be spent during construction and £6m of inward investment in Derry and Strabane District Council area in the form of business rates. "We have a track record of using local contractors to deliver our projects and look forward to working with businesses in the area to deliver Barr Cregg Wind Farm," he said. |
Two people re-arrested on suspicion of murdering a Huntingdon man have been charged with his murder. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Sam Mechelewski, 20, was found dead with a stab wound in the town's Hinchingbrooke Park on 1 February. Jordan Shepherd, 23, from Chatteris, and Ashley White, 20, from Brampton, will appear at Peterborough Magistrates' Court on Wednesday. A man in his late teens, arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, has been released on bail until 10 July. White has also been charged with possession of cannabis. Related Internet Links Cambridgeshire Constabulary |
South East Coast Ambulance Service says it is seeing "unprecedented levels of demand" and is warning of longer than usual response times. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The ambulance trust, which covers Kent, Sussex, Surrey and north east Hampshire, said it was "extremely busy", especially in Kent. The public are asked to consider "all other options" before calling 999. Members of the public who have called 999 are being urged not to call back unless the patient's condition changes. A spokesman for the ambulance service said: "Our staff are doing a fantastic job but we are taking much longer to get to many calls than we would like." Follow BBC South East on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk. Related Internet Links South East Coast Ambulance Service |
Work has begun to turn the former HP Sauce factory site in Birmingham into a wholesale cash and carry and spice distribution centre. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
East End Foods bought the site in 2007 when Heinz US relocated production of HP Sauce to the Netherlands, making 125 workers redundant. The factory in Aston was demolished in July 2007. East End Foods said its £9m development would create 95 local jobs and help to regenerate the area. Labour ward councillor Ziaul Islam said: "There is very high unemployment here. Anything that helps bring jobs to this area is a good thing and I welcome it." As part of East End Foods' planning application the firm said recruitment would be targeted at people who had been out of work for more than 12 months. |
My Money is a series looking at how people spend their money - and the sometimes tough decisions they have to make. Here, Lexy Oliver from Cheshire takes us through a week in her life during the coronavirus pandemic. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Lexy is 27 and lives in Cuddington, Cheshire, with her husband Jonny, also 27, and their cat Bobby. She is the fifth generation to work in her family business, a delicatessen owned by her father. Jonny works as a data scientist for a holiday lettings agency. Lexy says there are no better staff discounts than good food and holidays! The Covid-19 situation has certainly had an impact on their finances over the last few months. Lexy was furloughed for 10 weeks, and Jonny has just returned to work having been on furlough since April. During lockdown, when neither of them were in work, they were down over £1,000 a month in take-home pay. Lexy says from the age of 16 when she first started work, her mum always told her to put money away for a rainy day, and thankfully they had done just that. Making sure they have a six-month buffer is a rule they live by, and saved them a lot of anxiety during lockdown. Lexy and Jonny are now both back at work. Jonny is working from home, saving about £100 a month compared to when he was commuting to the office. Lexy works very closely with her father who has asthma, and he lives with her mum who has a blood condition called ITP, so she is doing her best to avoid going anywhere with lots of people. Over to Lexy... It's an early start on Mondays as I have to be in work at the deli for 07:30. I eat breakfast and lunch at work - quality food is a perk of the job! I start my day with a freshly ground coffee and some fruit before settling in to my usual Monday morning admin. We're on temporary hours at the moment due to the pandemic, closing at either 14:00 or 15:00 depending on the day, so the shifts really fly. After work I pop to the local card shop and pick up two cards, one for an upcoming birthday, and one for a friend who just got married (£2.09). Before I know it, I'm home again, where Jonny and I have our afternoon tea break and a quick daily catch-up, which has become a lovely tradition for us since the lockdown. Dinner is homemade fish and chips before the rain clouds disappear and the sun comes out. We throw on our trainers and head off for a little wander round the village. This turns into a one-hour explore down a previously undiscovered footpath. We thought we had found them all during lockdown but we keep finding more! Total spend: £2.09 My Money More blogs from the BBC's My Money Series: 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. It's an early start again today with a similar routine to yesterday. I eat some eggs and fruit washed down with a cappuccino when I get to work. I'm having a bit of a sort out this week and doing all the odd jobs I've been putting off. I also ring one of our main ambient food suppliers and place our Christmas order. I know it seems early but in food retail the deadlines are early! It makes me feel warm and fuzzy knowing that all the delicious chocolates, stollen and festive treats will be on their way to us in a few months. After work Jonny and I catch up on our days again over a nice cuppa before heading out for a quick walk between the rain showers. In the evening we head over to my parents' house for dinner. They only live a few miles down the road and it's great to catch up with them, particularly my mum and younger sister who I don't see every day like my dad. I can do a little happy dance today as I haven't spent anything! Total spend: £0 I pick up a few food bits in work today including some cheese for tonight's fajitas, and some sausages and eggs, which comes to £6.95 with my discount. After work I head to the supermarket round the corner and pick up the missing bits for dinner, some snacks for Jonny, and some strawberries and bananas for homemade smoothies (£11.15). I normally do a big supermarket shop out of town every two weeks or so, and then top it up with fresh bits from the deli and local shops throughout the week. In the evening we enjoy our homemade fajitas before playing online video games with our old housemates from university. Total spend: £18.10 Similar to the rest of the week, I get up early for work and come home just after four. After he's finished work, Jonny and I have our cup of tea in the garden and do a bit of clearing up and weeding round our patio. For dinner we have pasta bake, which is one of my favourite meals for using up all the odd ends of veg in the fridge before our next supermarket shop. In the evening we head out for a two-hour walk in the countryside during sunset. Today is also the big bills day! I'm constantly haggling and looking for better deals on all our bills so I'm happy with how low we have got some of our monthly payments: After all the essentials are paid, we have £500 automatically move into our investment account, which is effectively my pension, and I have a direct debit to move £100 a month into my premium bonds, which I use as a savings account for my next car. Normally the payment for my audiobook subscription comes out today. I enjoy listening to them on my commute to work but since I was off work and hence didn't drive for three months, I've racked up a stash of credits. Therefore I've paused my subscription while I catch up, which saves me £7.99 a month. Total spend: £1,392.60 Fridays are by far the busiest days of the week at work for me, and coupled with the warmer weather it's as busy as we imagined it would be! After work it's time for the fortnightly supermarket trip. I'm big on meal planning so we always go with a list and I've found it's massively reduced our food waste and our food bill over the last year or so. I stock up on everything we need, plus some other essentials like cat food for Bobby. We also get a couple of luxuries including smoked salmon and bagels for a fancy Sunday brunch. The total comes to £57.30. As all our main bills for the month have now been paid, we generally take some time around now to look at our spending over the last month and decide if we have any spare that we can put towards an overpayment on the mortgage. We've held off making overpayments while we were on furlough, but with us both back in work now we agree to make a £650 overpayment. We are quite committed to making mortgage overpayments where we can as the interest rate on our mortgage is higher than any savings rate the banks are offering at the moment, plus we kind of see it as saving for the deposit on our next home. This evening we have three of our friends round for some socially distanced beers in the garden. Two of them live with their parents who have been shielding because of underlying health conditions. Tonight is one of the first times they have been outside their own home since March, so it's so great to catch up with them. Total spend: £707.30 This weekend it's my turn to work on Saturday. Six-day working weeks are a bit gruelling but a lot of my summer and weekend plans have been disrupted by Covid-19, so I'm happy to make hay while the sun shines. I spend £10.80 at work on some nice bits for tonight's dinner, as well as some other food for the weekend. After work, Jonny and I head to our local garden centre. We did loads of work on the garden during lockdown - remodelling flower beds and borders, and planting new lawn. The hard work is mostly done and now it's time to do the "nice bit" and add the colour. We're also looking for some nice pots for our patio. I'm extremely happy to find the pots I had seen on the internet are now half price! We buy loads of lovely plants and flowers to fill our flower bed, as well as some other bits and bobs and the total comes to £186.91. However, we sign up for their membership club which saves us £5, and we use £80 of vouchers we had been given as birthday presents earlier in the year, so we only pay £101.96 cash. To celebrate it finally being the weekend we treat ourselves to a deli cheese and nibbles board and a bottle of nice red wine for dinner, before snuggling on the sofa with Bobby and a film. Total spend: £112.76 Sunday is spent almost entirely in the garden. We definitely have our parents to thank for our green thumbs! My mum is a florist, and both our sets of parents have immaculately kept, beautiful gardens. We set to work filling the flower beds and new pots with yesterday's garden centre haul. We literally spend seven hours gardening with a brief interlude for lunch. I am completely shattered by the end of the day but the garden is finally done, and now we can sit back and enjoy it for the rest of summer! Today is another day where we didn't spend a thing. Total spend: £0 Total spent this week: £2,232.85 How does Lexy feel about her week? This week's spending seems very high but it's relatively normal for this week of the month as it's when all our bills come out, plus we made a mortgage overpayment. £600 was also moved to other accounts rather than "spent". Most of our non-bill spending was food and plant pots. We'll likely spend only a couple of hundred pounds over the rest of the month! |
Avengers: Endgame, the fourth instalment in Marvel's superhero crossover franchise, made an unprecedented $1.2bn at the box office last weekend. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Mark SavageBBC Entertainment reporter It's the biggest three-day haul in movie history; and a testament to the strength of Marvel's serialised approach to story-telling. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo said they were "definitely surprised" by the film's "runaway success" - but also announced they were taking a break from the superhero genre, after making two Captain America and two Avengers films in the space of seven years. "One of the most important things we learned is that when you're shooting two of the largest movies ever made, and you're shooting them back to back… is don't shoot 'em back to back," Anthony told BBC News, confirming the duo's departure. Joss Whedon experienced similar emotions after writing and directing the series' first two instalments. "Why on Earth would I make another Avengers movie? They're really hard," he mused on the DVD commentary for Age of Ultron. "It was ill advised. I see that now." But Marvel's Cinematic Universe will continue - with new instalments of Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy already confirmed; and a new configuration of The Avengers almost a certainty. If you somehow end up in the directors' chair, how should you prepare? Here are 11 key lessons from the people who made the originals. This article does not contain spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, but will discuss plot details from the preceding films. 1) Start out on a TV show All three directors of The Avengers made their names in TV. Joss Whedon created Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly; while the Russo brothers worked on cult comedies Community and Arrested Development. Those experiences were invaluable when it came to wrangling a cast of more than 20 characters, "because they are all ensemble shows," says Joe Russo. "Those were shows that had to be executed in 21 minutes, they had to be funny, and they had to have a plot. And sometimes, like in an episode of Community, you'd have 30 speaking parts - so that's an exercise that certainly trained you in trying to contain as many characters as we do in two hours." "We're drawn to multiple points of view and group dynamics, because we grew up in a very large Italian-American family," adds Anthony, "so we've always loved working with ensembles." 2) Know the characters inside-out The joy of the Avengers is seeing how these disparate characters, and the actors who play them, interact. "There is a natural competition when the leads from two different franchises get together and it plays right into the competition of two heroes getting together - so it is delightful," observed Infinity War script-writer Chris Markus last year. "A very compelling element of crossovers is who has primacy. They're all leaders, they're all used to leading their own worlds, and once you put them into the same room, who gets to call the shots? That is a notion we revisit several times." Still, it's a challenge to give 23 separate characters a distinct voice in the confines of a three-hour film. Luckily, there's an old screenwriting tip that comes in handy: If your characters are well-written, you should know how each of them would react if they accidentally fell into a swimming pool. "Thor from Infinity War would mess that pool up," says Anthony. "Whereas Rocket - he's not exceedingly self-deprecating, so I think I could see him gag and spit. He'd be a little irritated." 3) Take a lot of toilet breaks Scott Derrickson recently tweeted how he "ran into Joe Russo outside the men's room," while he was editing the Doctor Strange film in 2015. "He pitched me the basic story for both Infinity War and Endgame [and] I told him that if he could make the first movie work, the second movie would be incredible." Which begs the question: How long did Joe keep his colleague waiting for the loo? "I think it was like a 10-minute pitch," he laughs. "But the funniest thing is that people are like, 'Do you guys get together at Marvel all the time and have meetings about the storylines?' "And the answer is, 'No, it all happens on the way to the bathroom'. That's where everyone runs into one another and starts exchanging information." In other words, don't hold it in. 4) Keep the story simple For all of the acclaim heaped on Infinity War, the plot can be boiled down to three words: "Thanos wants stones". "We have so many characters in the movie that we knew if the plot was complicated, it would take too [long] to explain and that would take away from the characters and the action," said screenwriter Chris Markus on the DVD commentary. Even the number of Infinity Stones caused a headache, said co-writer Steve McFeely. "Had we invented the idea of Infinity Stones in a vacuum, I'm sure we would not have decided there were six of them. Six MacGuffins is a lot for one movie." To keep things moving, the Russos dictated that every scene "had to do more than one thing". So the opening sequence - in which Thanos crushes the Hulk, kills Thor's brother Loki and steals one of the Infinity Stones - conveys three plot points in two minutes. "It establishes Hulk's journey - he's been defeated and doesn't particularly want to help [Bruce] Banner over the course of the movie," explained Anthony Russo. "It establishes a vengeance story for Thor by taking out his brother, and it establishes the plot for stone collection." 5) The odds should seem insurmountable "I wanted to make a movie where being a superhero wasn't a free pass," said Joss Whedon, about scripting the first Avengers film in 2012. "Where things were tough enough that you would be as strong as you could possibly be and still not be enough to deal with what was going on. "The stakes," he added, "are always the same. "The stakes are: You could die." 6) Acknowledge the ridiculous When your heroes are up against a sentient robot who's ripped an entire city off the face of the planet, it pays to acknowledge that everything's a bit far-fetched. And so, at the climax of Age of Ultron, Hawkeye takes stock of the situation and says: "We're fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense." "I refer to that as 'inoculation,'" Whedon explained. "He says the thing we're all thinking, and it plays." 7) Talk to the animators The Avengers films are some of the most effects-heavy movies in history, with four major characters - Thanos, Hulk, Rocket and Groot - created by computer animation. Making them believable is a crucial task, so both Whedon and the Russos started working with artists before the scripts were written. "Thanos was difficult," says Joe Russo. "We knew we were sunk if Thanos wasn't photo-real, so we spent two years doing research and development on Thanos and making sure that he would work correctly." For his debut as the Hulk, actor Mark Ruffalo even wrote a letter to the effects team, stressing that his motion-captured performances were only the first stage of creating the character. "We are all playing this part," he wrote. "I have taken it as far as I can and you guys have to use what you can and then forget about me and become the Hulk." "It was incredibly inspiring to the animators," recalled Whedon, who set aside a day to explain how the movie portrayed two different aspects of the green-skinned monster: "The one Bruce Banner becomes unwittingly and the one he decides to be". "What I found out later was that most of them - in fact all of them - had not been able to see the script, so they were just animating things in a vacuum," he said. "So it was incredibly productive." 8) Always put the raccoon on a chair* Have you ever noticed that Rocket - the CGI raccoon played by Bradley Cooper - is almost always standing on a chair? "That's a great point," says Anthony. "When you're dealing with characters of radically different sizes, it presents a lot of framing challenges. "You start to learn tricks in blocking [staging the scene] to keep everyone in the same relative plane, so you can actually shoot them." (* or on a table, or positioned in the foreground, or just film everything in a wide shot.) 9) Ban t-shirts When we first meet Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow in Avengers Assemble, she's tied to a chair, barefoot and in a vest top, apparently being interrogated by shadowy Russian forces. Of course, she breaks free in spectacular fashion... but her outfit made it one of the hardest stunt scenes to choreograph. "Whenever you say 'she has no sleeves' to your stunt co-ordinator he cries man tears," Joss Whedon noted afterwards. "It's very difficult to do a lot of these things if you can't pad up the knees and elbows." 10) Embrace the darkness Making these films is "incredibly physically demanding," says Joe Russo, and there will inevitably be dark days. "When you start out, it's all perfect in your head," Whedon told BBC News in 2015, "and when you work with the actors, it gets better. "Then at some point you've been editing for so long you start thinking. 'Who am I? What's happening?' and you forget why you ever showed up, and what you're trying to say. And you despair. It's a very bleak experience. 11) Emotion > action Adding character beats to action sequences has been Joss Whedon's calling card since Buffy - and he pulls it off perfectly in Age Of Ultron's climactic battle, where Hawkeye stops whaling on the bad guys to discuss home improvements. "You know what I need to do? The dining room," he tells Black Widow. "If I knock out that east wall, it'll make a nice work space... What do you think?" "That sequence is, for me, the reason I show up," Whedon said in the commentary. "Where two people in the apocalypse are talking about re-doing the dining room, that says more about their relationship than anything else I could have done." The Infinity War team made a similar decision. Their film doesn't end with a battle but the emotional fallout of Thanos's "snap" - scenes that left some viewers in tears. So what will they feel when they walk out of Endgame? "Catharsis," says Joe Russo. "We realise how impactful the Infinity War ending was," adds his brother. "We saw how difficult it was for many people and that's something that we really respect. So we were very committed to paying off that kind of a story." Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. |
More than 60 migrants have crossed the Channel in six boats. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Five vessels were intercepted by Border Force off the coast of Kent, with a sixth landing on a beach in Sussex. The Home Office said 53 migrants - including what it called six "claimed minors" - found in the Channel would be interviewed by immigration officers. A further 11 people, including four children, were detained by police and handed over to Border Force after arriving at Winchelsea Beach by boat. Sussex Police said it was "very concerned" for another group, which it described as "possibly a family including children", who may have left the beach before authorities arrived. Ch Insp Anita Turner said: "We want to make sure that these people are safely ashore and that they are okay." Meanwhile, two dinghies carrying a total of 19 adults, 10 children and a baby were picked up by French authorities attempting to cross the Channel. More than 900 people, including at least 80 children, have crossed the Channel in small boats this year. The Home Office said it was monitoring the "ongoing situation" and "working closely at all levels with French authorities," adding Home Secretary Priti Patel was due to "raise this issue with her French counterpart in the coming days". A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants. |
The Call the Midwife Christmas special is already being dubbed a perennial favourite in the TV listings - up there with EastEnders and Doctor Who - so it may be surprising to find this will be only its second festive outing. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Keily SmithBBC News entertainment reporter Based on Jennifer Worth's memoirs of her time as a nurse in 1950s London, the show - which is about to head into its third series - centres on life at the Nonnatus House order and the nuns and midwives who work side-by-side. Having already exhausted all of the late author's original stories, the drama is now being penned by series creator Heidi Thomas. The Christmas episode promises to be a tearful affair but avoids the shock value of last year's Downton Abbey Christmas special, which saw the death of one of its main characters, and led to accusations of sensationalism. "It's just a beautifully crafted story," says Helen George, who plays the glamorous yet feisty Trixie. "There is the emphasis on birth and birthing, but it is about relationships of the families and the community as well, which is so touching and emotive in its own essence there's no need to shove a death in for shock value." 'Wiped out' While the series has moved into the tail-end of the 1950s, the drama is played out to the backdrop of a country still recovering from World War Two, particularly in the Christmas episode. Jessica Raine, who plays lead character Jenny, says: "I think it is necessary as people tend to forget how long it took to get over the war, especially in the East End, because a lot of it was wiped out. It had such an effect on everyone's lives still." George adds: "Going into the next series, there are a few reflections of the war still so it still feels like a community and a world repairing itself, which we haven't really covered before. It's always spoken about but the emotional depth of it isn't really explored, but in the new series it is." Pam Ferris, who plays the no-nonsense Sister Evangelina, agrees the war still had a profound effect long after it ended. "For those of us naive of us to think the war ended in 1945, it's a lesson for all historians and people who don't know the war - its repercussions go on and fade slowly." The after-effects of war are also felt in other, more dramatic ways in the Christmas special, as the East End midwives come face-to-face with an unexploded World War Two bomb. The episode also tackles how the experience of women and birth began to change. "The fashion surrounding birth has already changed in the series. At first we were still saying things like 'Get into the correct position for birthing', now even men are creeping into the room," says Ferris, who played the matriarch in the early '90s comedy drama Darling Buds of May. "Of course I can imagine Sister Evangelina is going to fight a heavy rearguard action over that!" 'Absolutely filthy' Jenny Agutter, probably best known for her role in The Railway Children and who plays Sister Julienne, the sister in charge at Nonnatus House, says: "In the Christmas one you see the change in attitudes towards men coming in. "When we are filming I'm so fascinated when we talk about childbirth experiences - the men in the crew always want to talk about it more because they are there and present and part of it. What we are still showing is men not being part of this intimate women's world." And Ferris feels the show has a message the younger generation should take note of. "I hope the younger fans appreciate how things have moved on for women - that within living memory things were tougher, and to not throw away that liberty and freedom the vanguard of feminism and change have brought them," she says. Despite its gentle pace, the birthing scenes can be quite realistic. "We end up absolutely filthy. We use sticky blood that smells like Marmite," George says. Raine adds: "They use a condom filled with blood so whenever you see a gush of water coming out of the woman you have a real midwife standing above with a condom and she just releases it, so there are a lot of condoms lying around the set!" Miranda-factor Call the Midwife often has that feel-good Sunday evening tone to it, drawing in mums and dads, along with grans and granddads. But George insists they have a lot of younger fans. "It's usually 14-year-old girls that come up to us. I think the Miranda [Hart] fan base has spilled over into Call the Midwife." And like ITV's hugely successful period drama Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife is hugely popular in the US. "The last time we were in New York we had a Q&A with lots of fans of the show who were just crazy midwife fans. We felt like One Direction," says George. The cast know they will all be watching on Christmas Day, as their extended families will insist on it. "This is the first show I've been in [that] my husband has told me not to tell him what happens," says Ferris. Call The Midwife is on Christmas Day at 18:15 GMT. |
It's not often a world leader insists so openly on taking the blame. In newsrooms across Europe journalists looked on baffled as Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that a strict Easter Covid lockdown, agreed and announced just 30 hours earlier, was off. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Jenny HillBBC Berlin correspondent Mrs Merkel not only apologised but begged forgiveness. "This mistake is mine alone," she said. Once the surprise subsided, German commentators took a rather favourable view. "Respect!" said the tabloid Bild. Tagesspiegel pictured Mrs Merkel in biblical robes, bent under the weight of a cross, with the words "Merkel Culpa". Mrs Merkel, ran the general view, had made a mistake and, rightly, come clean about it. But most are still scratching their heads over why the chancellor would expend so much political capital over such an insignificant development. Germany usually shuts up shop for three days of public holiday over Easter. Mrs Merkel had agreed with regional leaders to extend the number of "Ruhetage" (rest days) to five. But the plan reportedly infuriated business owners, concerned about logistics, and in particular supermarket chains, which warned of empty shelves if suppliers and staff were forced to shut down. Given the increasingly chaotic nature of the Covid pandemic response here, it's fair to assume that many Germans might have simply shaken their heads and muttered, had the plan been shelved in a less dramatic fashion. So why the mea culpa? It's possible that Mrs Merkel, the daughter of a pastor, and a leader who frequently cites the importance of transparency within a democracy, simply felt it was the right thing to do. But with her apparently heartfelt apology Angela Merkel has, by accident or design, arguably distanced herself from Germany's regional leaders who, throughout the pandemic, have bickered, procrastinated and repeatedly ignored her calls for a tough national strategy. That's their prerogative of course - this is federalism. More on Europe's pandemic The Easter plan was, by all accounts, her plan. It was one of the rare corona policies for which she was more or less directly responsible unlike, say, the fudged agreements last autumn which, against her wishes, saw regional leaders grudgingly - and belatedly - introduce restrictions as the second wave began. Mrs Merkel, who wanted a hard, fast, national strategy then said she regretted the tardy response - but she didn't apologise for it. It was perhaps telling then that, the day after her Easter U-turn, she stood up in parliament and effectively challenged regional leaders to put their money where their mouth was - calling on them to take the initiative and be more creative in their response. If you think you can do it better, the subtext seemed to say, then get on and do it. Pre-election anxiety At least one leader, Berlin mayor Michael Müller, is now resisting the implementation of an emergency brake which, it was agreed, all German states must impose when infections reach a certain limit. So it's fair perhaps to assume that Mrs Merkel's exasperation is growing. Some wonder whether Mrs Merkel - now just months away from stepping down - apologised because she felt she had nothing now to lose. Quite the reverse. Support for Mrs Merkel's coalition government, and her centre-right Christian Democrat (CDU) party, is wavering. Some in the CDU fear it might be driven from government come the September general election. Nor is Mrs Merkel showing any sign of stepping back to allow Armin Laschet, who it's widely assumed will be her potential successor, more room centre stage. Commentators argue that, if Mrs Merkel really wants to make amends, she should turn her attention to Germany's vaccination programme. Its slow rollout is an increasingly incendiary source of public frustration. Just 10% of the population have received a first dose. Case numbers are rising exponentially, fuelled by the spread of the B117 or UK/Kent variant. Lothar Wieler of the Robert Koch Institute, which advises the government, has warned there are already indications that Germany's third wave could be worse than the first two. Without further action, he added, case numbers could soar to 100,000 a day. Mrs Merkel, who has warned that hard weeks lie ahead, has promised to accelerate the vaccine rollout, and is sticking to her pledge to offer all adults a vaccine by late September. The chancellor - who after 16 years in office is famed for her crisis management and safe pair of hands - may find her reputation depends on that pledge. |
Fifty people - most of them holidaymakers from the UK - perished in a fire at a leisure complex in 1973. Forty years on, it remains one of the worst disasters in Isle of Man history. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Lynette HorsburghBBC News Sally Naden remembers the terror of being trapped in the Summerland fire like it was yesterday. "It was a horrific, horror inferno," said Mrs Naden. "There was an explosion and then a huge wall of flames from the floor to the ceiling like a waterfall of fire coming towards us at great speed." In 1973, Mrs Naden from Poulton, near Blackpool, was then Sally Tinker - a 17-year-old dancer waiting to take to the stage when fire ripped through the Douglas leisure complex. "It was the most surreal experience. I didn't panic; I think I was just stunned." She took a deep breath and her eyes widened as she relived the scene in the seven-storey building. "It has never left me." 'Doors chained up' The fire had been started by three youngsters who had been smoking near the crazy golf course outside. "The compere was telling everyone to stay calm and stay in their seats... then there was a big bang, like a smoke bomb exploding," said Mrs Naden. Pandemonium broke out, she said. "It was 1973 and it was a different world. There was no fire alarm or sprinklers and no-one took charge. "There were around 3,000 holidaymakers in Summerland and just two exits. The rest of the fire doors were chained up," she said. "What made it worse was many parents were separated from their children who were on different levels. "Instead of just getting out they tried to find their loved ones." Smashed window She recalled the horror of seeing parents throwing babies from the balcony. "They knew they wouldn't get out and threw them in the hope someone below would catch them." Mrs Naden, now a BBC Radio Lancashire presenter, was unable to reach either exit and followed a group of musicians who were trying to ram a reinforced glass window with a trestle table. "It took all five band members to lift the table and it took a few attempts to smash it. "I was safe in the car park but it was such a strange feeling to know not everyone was out. "People were asking 'Have you seen my mother?' or 'Have you seen my daughter?' "Summerland was an inferno and you knew they weren't getting out." Her future husband Dave Naden was performing at the complex with his brother Peter and went to the dressing rooms to fetch their guitars. "It sounds a crazy thing to do but we didn't realise the fire was going to [take such a hold]," he said. "We had to jump across table tops to get to the fire exit." They made it to a fire door only to find it chained and padlocked and had to run up two flights of stairs to find another exit. The next day, a fire officer told him 11 people had died at the same door, unable to escape. 'Never came back' A close friend of the couple, drummer Malcolm Ogden, was among the 50 who died. Mrs Naden said: "He got out but said to his wife 'Wait here, I'm going back for the [symbols]'. "His wife waited all day and night for him but he never came back." Amid the tragedy, she said she witnessed acts of true heroism. "A DJ stayed in the building to catch children being thrown down from the balcony." When asked if he survived, she answered: "I don't know. I never saw him again." There was no compensation for the survivors or the families of those who died. "All we got was a ticket home," said Mrs Naden. Mr and Mrs Naden recently returned to the Summerland site ahead of the 40th anniversary of the tragedy. "I won't go back again," she said. "It brought back all these terrible memories and the awful things I witnessed. "When I read the names on the new memorial of those who didn't make it, it really hit me how lucky we had been." 'Not in vain' The Summerland Fire Commission conducted a public inquiry into the blaze and said there were "no villains" but that "human errors", a "reliance on an old-boy network" and "poor communications" led to the disaster. No prosecutions were ever brought. The UK government's chief fire adviser Peter Holland said the tragedy was caused by a "series of things that went wrong". These included delays in calling the fire brigade and the use of a transparent plastic in the roof panels which had passed earlier fire testing but melted and dripped in the intense heat, burning people below and spreading the flames. Mr Holland said victims "did not die in vain" as fire safety standards changed around the world as a result. |
A hotel where Charlie Chaplin stayed during holidays in the Highlands has been put up for sale. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Chaplin, famous for his comic roles in black and white silent films, would book into the Newton Hotel in Nairn with his family later in his life. The hotel has been put on the market with an asking price of about £4.5m plus VAT. The former baronial mansion has 63 bedrooms and 21 acres (8ha) of grounds. |
"The first time I saw my brother, I just froze. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Shaili BhattBBC News Gujarati "I couldn't say anything. We sat down on the sofa in his house. There was silence. Then I started to cry. "The first words he said to me were 'don't cry'. Then he took my hand. Everyone who was there cried as well. It was a magical moment." Kiran Gustafsson was 33 when she met her twin for the first time. It was an unexpected twist to an already emotional journey. Kiran had returned to India to search for her biological mother. The last thing she expected to find was a missing twin. Growing up in Sweden with her adoptive family, Kiran says she had warm and loving parents who gave her everything a child could want. Her parents - retired teacher Maria Wernant and businessman Kjell-Ake - had always been open about the fact that she had been adopted from an orphanage in Surat, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, when she was three. 'Something was always missing' Kiran says she has no memories of those early years. "My parents never made me feel different. They always told me to be proud of what I am. I couldn't ask for anything more in my upbringing," she told the BBC. Yet, she admits, she always felt something was missing. She was jealous of the connection between her two younger siblings for instance. She felt they were close to each other in a way they never would be with her. As she grew older, she says that feeling of emptiness intensified. Finally she spoke to her family about it. They were very supportive and in 2000 the entire family undertook a trip to Surat. She visited again in 2005, this time with her college class as a part of a course on sociology and human rights. But these trips left her with more questions. Back home in Sweden, she researched more about her adoption, found out more details about the orphanage she was adopted from. By 2010, she had made the decision to look for her biological mother but was not sure how to go about it. "My parents were OK with my decision. They told me they were proud of me and they loved me," she said. But she followed through on her decision only six years later. In 2016, Kiran, now a career counsellor, found herself attending a lecture by Arun Dohle, the co-founder of the Netherlands-based NGO Against Child Trafficking. Like her, he was from India. Like her, he had been adopted. In his talk, Mr Dohle outlined his own legal battle to get information about his biological mother in India. Inspired, Kiran began communicating with Dohle. He connected her with child protection worker Anjali Pawar who agreed to help. Through her inquiries, Ms Pawar was able to uncover Kiran's mother's identity. Her name was Sindhu Goswami and she had been employed as a domestic servant in Surat. She also found that Kiran had been almost two when her mother had left her at the orphanage. But she made frequent visits to meet her there. She had also given the officials her work address. Armed with this information, Kiran returned to India in April, accompanied by a friend. She met her mother's former employers but the information they gave her was not enough to go on. They couldn't tell where she was now, or if she was even alive. But they did give her a photograph. "We look like each other," says Kiran. Those were emotional days for Kiran. But the biggest shock was yet to come. Ms Pawar had managed to find Kiran's birth certificate. And that was when she found out she had a twin brother. "It was unbelievable. The questions about feelings of connection and belonging were answered. I was shocked. It was amazing,'' Kiran said. She decided to start looking for her brother. This was thankfully, not a difficult search. He had been adopted by a Surat family and was currently a businessman. Meeting him was not easy though. It turned out his family had never told him he was adopted. They were reluctant to tell him. It took a lot of persuasion to get them to agree. Eventually, the twins met in an emotional reunion. "We discovered each other, but we still have so many questions. There is still sadness," Kiran says. She says that her brother, who has asked not to be identified in the media for now, told her "that he had the exact same feeling that something was missing in his life." "When we said goodbye that day it was still surreal so we didn't say much." The siblings decided to meet at Kiran's hotel the next day to talk some more. "He told me he was afraid of losing me again. And he didn't want to see me leave for the airport, so he left early," Kiran said. "When we parted, he gave me a hug and just left with his father. In that moment I felt so empty. But he promised me that we would celebrate our next birthday together in Sweden." |
A 101-year-old Royal Navy sailor was recently laid to rest at sea. Bryan Clowes, a former Petty Officer and veteran of the Arctic Convoy , took his final voyage aboard East Sussex 1, an ex-naval Kiwi class vessel last week. But how unusual is a burial at sea? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Bethan BellBBC News A dozen or so people every year are buried at sea off the British Isles, according to figures by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) service. Here are a few things you might not know about it. Anyone can be buried at sea Although many people who are buried at sea are former sailors or navy personnel, there is no need to have a connection with maritime life. Anyone can be buried at sea, so long as the person arranging it has a licence - available for £175 from the MMO - and complies with some environmental rules. Applicants must provide a certificate from a doctor that the body is clear of fever and infection, and the coroner may also need to be informed. The person being buried must not be embalmed and should be clad in light, biodegradable clothing. Some funeral directors will arrange the event, and the Britannia Shipping Company specialises in it. Charity organisation the Maritime Volunteer Service also helps carry out burials at sea. The navy conducts its own burials at sea, for those veterans who wish it. For more detailed information you should contact the chaplain at the base from which the dead person served. But you can't simply be buried anywhere There are only three designated burial sites in English coastal waters. They are at Newhaven in East Sussex, The Needles Spoil Ground near the Isle of Wight and Tynemouth, Tyne and Wear. If you wish to bury someone in a location other than one of the three above, you can propose a new site when making your application. You will need to supply exact co-ordinates and evidence to demonstrate that the site is suitable for burials at sea. It must be somewhere there is a minimal risk of the body being returned to shore by strong currents or being disturbed by commercial fishing nets. In some rare cases, bodies do drift. Because of this, the person buried must have an identification tag attached to them. It can also take about five hours to reach the burial site and be quite choppy, according to David Hughes from the Marine Volunteer Service, which handled Mr Clowes' burial. For this reason, many families choose to have a ceremony on land, before saying goodbye from the quayside. Mr Hughes says he utters a short prayer as the coffin is committed to the sea. It could have become commonplace - or could it? During the Winter of Discontent, burial at sea was a method hypothetically suggested by the then medical officer of health for Liverpool, Duncan Dolton, in the case of an extended strike by the union representing gravediggers, the GMWU. However, in an interview Dr Dolton did for a Channel 4 documentary in 1998, [Secret History: Winter of Discontent] he said a reporter had "badgered" him about what would happen if the strike wasn't resolved. "The reporter said 'Come on. Come on. If this goes on for months what will happen?' I answer, 'If necessary, we'll have to bury them at sea.' "Now to me, that didn't sound strange. I had been a naval officer... and I thought that this was a dignified and honourable way of disposing of the dead. "So I was completely astonished the next morning with the headlines: 'Burial at Sea says Medical Officer.' And I have to confess, I was horrified." A special coffin is required The MMO specifies the coffin must be made from solid softwood and must not contain any plastic, lead, copper or zinc. This is to make sure it biodegrades and to protect the area from contamination. To make sure the coffin sinks quickly to the seabed and does not float around, two-inch (50mm) holes must be drilled throughout, and about 200kg (440lb) should be clamped to the base. You can find other coffin requirements here. Francis Drake wore a suit of armour to be buried The Elizabethan sailor and navigator died at sea in 1596 and his body, clad in a full suit of armour and in a lead coffin, is thought to be off the coast of Panama. In October 2011, the owner of a US pirate museum clamed to be close to finding Drake's remains as he'd located two ships - the Elizabeth and the Delight - that were scuttled shortly after the explorer's death. However, the coffin has not yet been found. Divers still search for it. Scattering ashes is easier Anyone can scatter ashes at sea, and you don't need a special licence or the involvement of an undertaker. Defra recommends the scattering of cremation ashes at sea, rather than burial, which alleviates the risk of bodies being washed up. There have been discussions about making the taking of DNA samples from bodies to be buried at sea a legal requirement. Famous people whose ashes were strewn upon the waves include Alfred Hitchcock and Janis Joplin (Pacific Ocean), Edmund Hillary (New Zealand's Hauraki Gulf), Robin Williams (San Francisco Bay) and Dad's Army actor John Laurie (English Channel). This quote is often cited at sea burials "The sea is the largest cemetery, and its slumbers sleep without a monument. "All other graveyards show symbols of distinction between great and small, rich and poor: but in the ocean cemetery, the king, the clown, the prince and the peasant are alike, undistinguishable." George Bruce, 1884, St Andrews |
The army in Sri Lanka say an officer and another soldier have been killed in an attack on one of their bases by Tamil Tiger rebels. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The army said the attack took place near the northern town of Vavuniya, close to rebel-held territory. The army said their troops had returned fire. The clash took place amid growing speculation that the European Union is about to ban the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist outfit. The United States, where Tigers are proscribed, earlier this week urged the EU to ban Tamil Tigers following an upsurge in violence between the rebels and government forces in the recent weeks. Meanwhile, a Tamil Tigers said one of their cadres was sot dead at his home on Thursday night at Mankerny in Batticaloa District. |
A new road sign in honour of Dame Shirley Bassey outside the Children's Hospital for Wales has a typo in it. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The singer is a patron of the Noah's Ark Appeal, a charity set up to fund the building, and it named the walkway outside the Cardiff hospital Dame Shirley Bassey Way. However, the Welsh version on the sign says Ffordd Y Fonsig Shirley Bassey. The Welsh word for dame is Fonesig. A Noah's Ark spokeswoman said action will be taken to rectify the mistake. "It is a shame that this has detracted attention from the occasion," she added. Related Internet Links Home - Noah's Ark Children's Hospital Charity |
It's 70 years since Japan surrendered and World War Two ended. But when war with Japan first broke out at the end of 1941 Britain had been woefully unprepared - not least because almost no-one in Britain could speak Japanese. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Nick HighamBBC News The only place that taught the language was the School of Oriental and African Studies, now known as SOAS, part of the University of London. So an 18-month course was devised there for bright sixth-formers with a flair for languages. They were called The Dulwich Boys, and many of them went on to be key players in the post-war relationship between Britain and Japan. The school's Japanese-teaching facilities when war broke out were rudimentary. "Japanese was taught here," says Prof Ian Brown, who is writing a history of SOAS. "There were two teachers at the end of the 1930s. But classes for Japanese - classes for everything frankly - were rather small." The truth was that learning exotic languages was not a priority for imperial Britain in the 1930s. "British investment in Japan was small, and there was no Japanese investment in Britain," says Sir Hugh Cortazzi, who learned his Japanese at SOAS and became Britain's ambassador to Tokyo in the 1980s. "And, of course, Japan had been cutting itself off from the West. But I think there was also an element of arrogance on the part of the British." The shortage of Japanese speakers in 1942 was exacerbated by the disastrous start of Britain's war with Japan. Within weeks of the surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, which brought the US into the war, the Japanese had launched a successful invasion of Malaya, a British colony, and Britain's huge military base in Singapore had fallen. Most of the few who had learnt Japanese at SOAS had, not surprisingly, taken jobs in East Asia. And with the fall of Singapore most had become prisoners of war. So a desperate War Office decided to advertise scholarships for 18-month intensive courses for sixth-formers in Japanese, Chinese, Turkish and Persian (for who knew where the war might spread to next), to start in May 1942. One of those who successfully applied was Guy de Moubray, who died in June at the age of 90. He'd been born in Malaya, where his parents were still living, and was at Loretto School near Edinburgh. "My parents became prisoners of war in February 1942 and it was around then that I put in for this scholarship exam," he said in an interview recorded by SOAS, "partly because of my parents, but partly because I wanted to get away from school a year earlier than I otherwise would have done." De Moubray was one of 30 boys studying Japanese. They were put up at Dulwich College in south London in two of the boarding houses. Each day he and the other "Dulwich Boys" commuted by train to Victoria, and then by bus (if they could afford it) or on foot to SOAS which was based temporarily above St James's underground station, though it seems to have moved to its present home in Bloomsbury during the Dulwich Boys' course. They were a mixed bunch. Sandy Wilson was one, though he soon dropped out - in the 1950s he became famous as the composer of the hit musical, The Boyfriend. "He never took it seriously, he was already writing songs," remembers a contemporary. Peter Parker, who later became chairman of British Rail was another - the boys elected him their prefect. Some on the course thought him dynamic, a born leader - others found him hard to take. "Sanctimonious and self-important" was one verdict. Ronald Dore, another Dulwich Boy, remembers that the group divided naturally into two - the public school types stuck together, and so did the lower middle-class products of grammar schools (of which Dore was one). He thought it a reflection of how class-ridden 1940s Britain was. Dore, now aged 90, was also one of at least four boys on the language courses who later became professors at SOAS. This sudden influx of bright, highly-motivated and state-funded students provided SOAS with an important shot in the arm which was vital to the school's post-war expansion. But in 1942 the biggest problem was a desperate shortage of teachers. Only one of the two pre-war course staff, Saburo Yoshitake, was still in post and he soon left. "The head of the department and the main teacher was a man called Frank Daniels," Dore remembers. "He was a clerk in the Admiralty and had been posted to Japan, and there he very assiduously started learning Japanese and acquired a Japanese wife." Otome Daniels - whom the boys thought very beautiful - also taught on the course. She and her husband had been in Japan when war broke out, but had returned to Britain following a rare prisoner of war swap. Two second-generation Japanese sergeants in the Canadian army helped out. So did Britain's former military attache in Tokyo, General Sir Francis Piggott, who one boy remembered "was almost evangelical in teaching us the titles of the whole hierarchy of the Japanese General Staff". And there were also instructors with even less orthodox backgrounds. "People who had settled down in Soho as manufacturers of lampshades... and they spoke rather less than high-class Japanese," Dore says. And there were a number of Japanese men who had been released from internment. Two of them were correspondents for Japanese newspapers and news agencies. The shortage of teachers was so acute that Ron Dore, after completing his course, soon found himself back on the staff at SOAS. He had been called up into the army, but injured himself during basic training and was invalided out. Among his pupils was Hugh Cortazzi, then an RAF aircraftsman second class who had signed up for a six-month crash course for servicemen. There were two service courses. Learning both to speak and read Japanese in such a short time was thought too difficult. So the servicemen trained either as interpreters, who needed to know only the spoken language, or translators, who could read it but not speak it. In due course the Dulwich Boys themselves were called up. But their first attempts at putting what they had learnt to use weren't always successful. Guy de Moubray was sent to the frontline in Burma to eavesdrop on Japanese military broadcasts. "Every time we got to the new front line, one of us had to climb a teak tree to put the aerial up as high as we could," he recalled, "hoping to receive Japanese regimental radio. Unfortunately, though we tried for over two months, we were never successful." The teak forest, he suspects, was just too thick for radio signals to penetrate. Later, he was the first British soldier ashore when Singapore was liberated. There he found his parents, whom he hadn't seen since he was 14, still alive after three years of Japanese captivity. The Dulwich Boys' real impact came after the war. "Without these young men there would be no UK-Japan relationship," says Dr Christopher Gerteis, the current chair of the Japan research centre at SOAS. "Or if there were it would have rested on the shoulders of an aristocratic class like that of the 1930s. These are the professional statesmen, this is the generation that built the United Nations, that built post-cold war frameworks, that eventually led to the creation of a very strong liberal democracy in post-war Japan." Hugh Cortazzi, now aged 91, plays down the impact of the SOAS wartime graduates on Japan's post-war rebuilding. "The British participation in the occupation was really limited," he says. "We had no role in respect to military government, that was entirely in the hands of the Americans." But his own career is evidence that the Dulwich Boys and their contemporaries at SOAS did become key figures in Anglo-Japanese relations. Some, like Cortazzi, became diplomats. Several, like Ron Dore, became academic experts on Japan. And then there was Sir Peter Parker. After resigning from British Rail, Parker became a director of Mitsubishi. In the 1980s he chaired an inquiry for the government into the teaching at universities of "difficult" languages - a professorship of Japanese at Cambridge was one indirect result. The Japanese liked him, according to Cortazzi. "I think they respected Peter. He had great personal charm, he was interested in Japanese culture, he would always be repeating a haiku at every possible occasion. And when we were working for the establishment of a Japan festival in Britain in 1991 we were clear that the only person who could really be chair of it was Peter Parker." The irony, perhaps, is that it took a war, and a bunch of clever schoolboys, to bring about such a remarkable improvement in Britain's understanding of and relations with Japan. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. |
A council consultation on plans to prepare land for the building of a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point has been reopened. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
It comes after the applicant, EDF Energy, supplied West Somerset Council with more information. The council said it had made a formal request for extra details to be included in the environmental statement. The consultation is due to run until 20 May. The response from EDF includes more information on environmental issues including transport, ecology, landscape and visual impacts, noise, vibration and air quality. The information can be seen on the council's website and at the authority's headquarters in Williton. |
More data than ever before is available about how coronavirus has affected individual neighbourhoods across Scotland. From case levels, to deaths, we can now drill down and analyse how these 1,279 communities have been impacted. Here are six things we've learned from the latest batch of figures. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Marc EllisonData journalist, BBC Scotland 1. The neighbourhood with the highest death rate One in every 100 people has died from coronavirus in the Edinburgh neighbourhood of Liberton West. This is the highest death rate in any of the 1,279 intermediate zones across Scotland. These zones are the statistical small geographical areas designed to contain a population of between 2,500 and 6,000 household residents. It is one of the least deprived parts of Edinburgh and its high level contrasts with the relatively low figures of neighbouring Liberton East where there have been five deaths. However, a single care home - which saw 19 deaths linked to Covid - feeds into the 36 fatalities recorded in the area. 2. The deprivation factor After Liberton West, the next three zones with the highest death rates are all in the most deprived parts of the country. Burnbank South (901 deaths per 100,000 people), Drumchapel South (787), and Irvine Fullarton (766) are all in the 20% most deprived areas of Scotland. This new data appears to corroborate an academic study from last year that argued those living in the poorest areas were more likely to die or be admitted to ICU. 3. Average deaths Nearly a quarter of all the 6,834 coronavirus-related deaths reported in 2020 were in the most deprived neighbourhoods in Scotland. On average seven people died in one of these zones from coronavirus, compared with five in the most affluent areas; 4. December increases December saw huge rises in death figures for a number of zones across Scotland. Between 30 November and New Year's Eve, deaths jumped by 1900% in Glenrothes Woodside (Fife), by 1300% in Crathes (Aberdeenshire), and 900% in Stonehaven North (Aberdeenshire). The average national increase during this period was 27%. 5. New coronavirus hotspot While the number of new positive cases appears to be decreasing overall across Scotland, an interactive dashboard shows there are still notable hotspots like Barra and South Uist. This Western Isles zone had not reported any new cases for the 12 weeks before 6 January. The community now has the highest case rate in Scotland with 37 new cases in the last days - that's 1.2 cases per 100 people. As a result Barra was moved into level four this week. 6. Localised 'third waves' The latest Public Health Scotland data also shows the resurgence of high rates in some Scottish zones such as Milton East (Glasgow), and Langholm and Eskdale (Dumfries and Galloway). Following a brief decline the dashboard shows the latter neighbourhood had a higher rate on 17 January than it did on 6 January. |
Once British sailors were a big part of the whaling industry in the southern hemisphere. Now only rusting buildings and ship skeletons remain, where once thriving whaling stations were, writes Adam Nicholson. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The abandoned whaling station at Leith Harbour on South Georgia in the south Atlantic looks as if it has been bombed. Rusty steel chimneys lie collapsed across the roadways. Power plants and dormitory blocks lie half-smashed, their innards spilling out through the walls - cast-iron beds and baths, piping and wiring, cushions and mattresses all now leaking into the freezing air. Some of the huge steel cylinders of the whale oil tanks, 30ft high and 30ft across, have had their sides folded in, as if by a giant hand. But these are just the effects of time and the brutal winds of the Southern Ocean. It is not somewhere you would ever like to be alone. The winds that hurl off the mountains of this sub-Antarctic island, 800 miles east of the Falklands, on the same latitude as Cape Horn, make the whole place creak and groan. Rusted corrugated sheets screech against their fixings, doors slam open and shut, the ventilator cowls on the giant processor plants still turn in the wind as they have done since the place was finally abandoned and left to the elements in 1965. No-one is there now because Leith Harbour, like most of the other whaling stations on South Georgia, is strictly off-limits. The collapsing structures are too dangerous and the asbestos in which the whale processing machinery is still wrapped makes the enclosed places too toxic. The South Georgia government - this is one of Britain's few remaining overseas territories - had to give us permission to film in this breathtaking time-capsule of a forgotten way of British life. And we had to be accompanied by Tommy Moore, a Yorkshireman familiar with asbestos safety, and dressed in full protective gear. Pick your way through the buildings now and you find yourself in a forgotten world - mounds of harpoon heads lying rusted together, whale ribs and scapulae everywhere, abandoned tractors and rusted lathes. In the manager's villa, graffiti tells of Argentine joy in 1982 at recovering their own, every word of it covered with the unequivocal responses of the crews of Royal Navy ships who arrived a few weeks later. Snow clogs the doorways of the cinema where the whalers used to watch over and over again the few films they had, the dust-filled hall still filled with memories of Elizabeth Taylor and Deborah Kerr. The hospital still has unopened bottles of milk of magnesia and tins of Prickly Heat Powder on the shelves of its half-trashed pharmacy. Stinking fur seals lurk in the radio shack and among the overturned benches of the canteen. In the dormitories, the whalers' pin-ups still smile winsomely from the walls. Hidden in attic spaces you can find the bowls, ladles and tins of yeast with which the whalers made the fearsome hooch to console themselves on long winter evenings 8,000 miles from home. The whole place is a monument to a huge and massively destructive episode in British history. By the beginning of the 20th Century, whaling had virtually eliminated the stocks of whales in much of the northern hemisphere. Europe had a growing appetite for the oils that whales could provide - most of it for margarine and soap - and the vast stormy waters of the Southern Ocean beckoned, teeming with krill and with the whales that fed on it. Almost entirely fuelled by British finance, the whalers came south and embarked on a bonanza that lasted for two-thirds of the century. Individual whalers made the kind of money they could only have dreamed of at home. A young man returning to Shetland or the Hebrides in the 1950s after 18 months "at the ice" could buy a house, start a business or commission a fishing boat on his earnings. Christian Salvesen, the Edinburgh-based whaling company that built Leith Harbour, could hope in some years for 100% dividend on their investment. At the peak of the business in the 1920s, Salvesen's were making the equivalent £100m a year in profit in today's money. None of it was easily earned. The conditions were brutal. Ice often clogged the rigging and individual catching boats were known to founder in the steep seas of the southern ocean. Earnings were dependent on the number of whales caught and the skipper-gunners drove boats and crews relentlessly. When the enormous bodies of the whales were hauled ashore into the huge processing plants, an army of men got to work, working 12-hour shifts, stripping the blubber from the carcasses, "like peeling a banana", as the whalers all say, shovelling the meat into the giant cookers, cutting up the bones with enormous steam saws and boiling them up for the oil they contained. An entire whale, the size of a railway carriage, could be disposed of in 20 minutes. If newly caught, there were consolations: "You could warm your hands in the fresh blood," Jock Murray, a whaler from the Hebrides remembers. "If it was a week old, that was something else." It is difficult to recover the frame of mind in which the destruction of so many of the greatest animals on earth seemed like a good idea. About 1.6 million whales were killed in the Southern Ocean in about six decades. The whalers remain deeply ambivalent about it today. Many say they are proud to have done it but wouldn't do it now. There are other ways, largely through plant extracts, of getting equivalents of the oils once taken from the whales. But, as one of the whalers, John Alexander, says: "We thought we were doing some good for the country." They were garnering fats which Britain desperately needed, particularly in the years after World War Two. It was a difficult task, at which they became immensely skilled. And as boys from crofts or fishing families in marginal parts of Scotland, they were providing for themselves in a way little else could have. Even so, there is some pain in the memory. "When we killed the sei whales," Roddy Morrison, from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, remembers, "they used to make a noise, like a crying noise. They seemed so friendly, and they'd come round and they'd make a noise, and when you hit them, they cried really. "I didn't think it was really nice to do that. Everybody talked about it at the time I suppose, but it was money. At the end of the day that's what counted at the time. That's what we were there for." Britain's Whale Hunters: The Untold Story, presented by Adam Nicholson, is broadcast on BBC Four on Monday 9 June at 21:00 Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. |
The full list of confirmed candidates for the 5 June Newark parliamentary by-election has been released by Newark and Sherwood District Council. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Robert Jenrick is to represent the Conservatives, Michael Payne Labour, David Watts the Lib Dems, and Roger Helmer the UK Independence Party. In April, UKIP leader Nigel Farage ended speculation that he might stand. The by-election was triggered by former Conservative MP Patrick Mercer's resignation over a lobbying scandal. The full list of candidates, in alphabetical order by surname, is: |
Kayaks, canoes and paddleboards have seemingly become more popular than ever during the coronavirus pandemic, with some firms reporting record sales. But what has led to the sudden surge in interest and how has it changed the places where people now go for paddlesports? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Kate Scotter & Rachael McMenemyBBC News Jenny Evans was looking for somewhere to escape the stress of lockdown. She started a new business selling nature subscription boxes from home, while also looking after her two children. "I bought a very cheap kit for an inflatable board that fits in a backpack," she said. "I was desperate for a way to get on the water that was quick and easy." Like many others, Jenny headed to the River Stour in the heart of Constable Country, an area on the Essex/Suffolk border made famous by the paintings of John Constable. It is also within walking distance from her house in East Bergholt. "It's a great way to explore the local area and I see some amazing wildlife, especially when I go out early and the river is quiet," she said. "Paddleboarding has allowed me to have some peace and tranquillity. It has opened up a world of micro-adventuring that I can do solo and is also a great activity for the whole family." Jenny, 33, enjoys paddling on her own or with friends, often with her three-year-old son sat happily on the front of her board. About four miles (6km) further up the river, Dedham has become popular with novice and experienced paddlers alike. You might also like: Andy Large, from nearby Colchester, spent 36 years as a "corporate slave" and said paddleboarding gave him an outlet to relax when he retired three years ago. "It's literally so easy to do, you jump in the car, drive somewhere, pump it up and off you go," he said. "It's a freedom and you're out in nature, it relaxes and calms you down." British Canoeing has seen its members rise to almost 50,000, up 14,000 since May. Of those new members, 38% are female. Supermarkets have helped swell the popularity by selling inflatable kayaks from £40, while paddleboarding lessons start at about £30. Emma Jones and her partner Gary Willingham run an online inflatable paddleboard company, called SUP Inflatables, and have seen a surge in sales. They have already sold three times the amount of stock they normally would shift in the summer months. "People have had more time off than they've had before," said Ms Jones. "It seems a lot of people are using the time to do the hobbies they've wanted to try but never had time for." But there are concerns around the explosion of interest. Mr Large, 55, said: "We do worry that they do not have the right training, safety equipment or licences to use the rivers." He suggested novice paddlers should research where they are going and the type of equipment needed before setting off. As for Dedham, it has always been a popular spot for families looking to enjoy the river as well as art lovers wanting to discover the setting of Constable's famed works. But since lockdown restrictions have been lifted, there has been a rise in litter and parking problems in the village, which some people associate with the increase in river traffic. Tom West, landlord of The Marlborough pub, said: "The rise in the usage of the river is a worrying thing as the amount of litter and waste being left in the area is abhorrent." Mr West said he had noticed an increase in day-trippers to the the village, which has caused potentially "dangerous parking" situations with cars parked on village roads due to car parks being full. "The village is beautiful, but parking to unlock the potential for the village, in a safe way, needs to be built," he said. Colchester Borough Council said it had noticed the increase in visitors to the area. "We are aware that visitor numbers have been well above normal since the government relaxed lockdown restrictions, which unfortunately has led to increased littering and fly-tipping and put a huge strain on the local community and our resources," it said, in a statement. To combat the increase in litter, neighbourhood teams and the parish council have been out on patrol picking up rubbish and emptying bins more often. But debate has raged on social media about who is to blame. Whatever the case, it looks unlikely that the area will become less popular any time soon, as more people look for summer fun. People like Abi Davis, 20, from Southend, who was trying out paddleboarding for the first time on Friday. "It is really fun, a bit nerve-wracking at the start but I'm really keen, I had such a good time," she said. "It would be quite nice to make it a regular hobby." Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story idea email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk |
Cardiff-based insurance company Admiral has seen a drop in turnover despite a rise in customers. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The company's third quarter results for 2014 saw the group increase its customer numbers by 10% from 3.67m in 2013 to 4.03m. Group turnover dropped by 3% - £15m - from £528m to £513m in the same time. Chief executive Henry Engelhardt said the company anticipates that future earnings will be hit by the decline in insurance premiums in recent years. The company's headquarters is in Cardiff and it also has offices in Swansea and Newport. |
Peter Baldwin was 13 when he died. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Gemma RyallBBC News He had become critically ill with undiagnosed type 1 diabetes and his body was shutting down. Six days later he lost his fight. His mother Beth believes four simple questions asked by GPs could help prevent similar deaths in future. In her own words, Beth explains why she hopes Peter's story will lead to change. I'd been watching Peter in his hospital bed all night. He was semi-awake - I was talking to him but he wasn't really responding. He kept trying to move the oxygen mask and he was just so tried. About 6am one of the nurses walked past his room and she said to me "get your head down". I said "I'm ok" but she insisted: "He's ok, get your head down." I was sat next to him and put my head down on a little pillow. I don't know what woke me up about 10 minutes later... I got a feeling. I woke with a start, looked up and he didn't look right - he looked grey. I called the nurse and said "what's going on? This doesn't look right". She came over, lifted his eyes... I don't know if she pushed the buzzer but within 30 seconds all hell broke loose. Someone said "he's really not well, talk to him" and I just started screaming "come on Peter, I'm here, mummy's here". Nurses came from everywhere, alarms were going off, doctors came in shouting for a crash team. One was doing chest compressions. They were trying to save him because he'd had a cardiac arrest. I was shouting at him all the time to wake up and telling him "mummy is here". A nurse said she would call my husband Stuart. He came as our house is only two minutes around the corner. We just watched in disbelief as a team of goodness knows how many doctors and nurses managed to restart his heart. They took him to surgery, off to try to stabilise him. We went up to the surgical department, just waiting, waiting, waiting. Just 24 hours earlier, on New Year's Day 2015, my son Peter - fun-loving, everyone's friend and so clever - had been at our home in Whitchurch, Cardiff. He had been ill with a chest infection. We'd been to see a GP and given antibiotics. But I was so worried about how ill he was that I called my parents to come over - more for reassurance, I suppose. I wanted someone to say he was ok. They took one look at him and said I should call an ambulance straight away. I started to panic. He was not breathing properly. I was very scared. A first responder arrived at our house and one of the first things he did after giving Peter oxygen was prick Peter's finger for a blood test. Within 30 seconds of coming he had diagnosed him as having type 1 diabetes - a condition where the body doesn't produce enough insulin. I was told he was in a DKA - diabetic ketoacidosis - which is when your body starts to shut down if you haven't had insulin and it can lead to organ failure. The ambulance journey to the University Hospital of Wales didn't take long from our house and soon Peter was in critical care in the high dependency unit, hooked up to a drip and oxygen. Stuart went home at midnight to be with our eight-year-old daughter Lia. I remember saying: "Peter will be fine, come back in the morning." I had no idea how bad he was. After he had the cardiac arrest, the doctors and nurses saved him but when we were able to see him again we could tell his poor little body had been through the mill and back. He was in the intensive care unit for four days. We sat by his side the whole time but he never really came back. They said the DKA had gone too far and even though he'd been given medication, his body was already in shutdown mode and he couldn't fight it. That led to too much pressure on his organs. They did all sorts of tests and he was put on dialysis. They came to us and said there were signs of damage to the brain and the outlook didn't look good. On the day he died, it's all a bit of a blur... but they said he's not likely to make any recovery. The majority of the brain had been damaged and the machines were keeping him alive. Hearing this broke us. We played music to him and read to him. We held his hands and rubbed his feet and kissed him a million times and told him how much we loved him and that everyone was praying for him. Then at about lunchtime they said it's not really fair on him and we need to start making decisions. I don't remember much about that day other than trying to process that my child was about to die. It's something you never ever consider and to this day I can't accept or comprehend. I have to be grateful we had six days to get our heads around it almost, even though we were hoping and praying for a miracle. We had to switch the machines off and there was a last hope that he would start to breathe. But he didn't. My daughter was eight at the time and she decided she didn't want to see him with all the tubes and machines. Our family all came in - my parents, brother and sister - and said goodbye. Stuart's family all came down from Newcastle. My mum was hysterical and I was trying to say to her "I tried". I felt like I failed him and there was nothing I could do - he'd gone. My dad died when I was four and Peter was named after him. I was praying to my dad "make sure Peter's ok. Save him". Now I know my dad's looking after him. I have to believe that. It's so hard. We had to leave the hospital that night without him. My life turned completely upside down and I was heartbroken. Within 24 hours my house was full of flowers. It's lovely for people to show their support but flowers will wilt and die - I thought the money should go to charity instead. So we decided to raise money - the target was £500 and we reached that in an hour. It reached £10,000 in a week. It showed the impact Peter had had on people's lives. Diabetes UK got in touch to thank us and offered to support us. We have been working with them ever since. They have taken Peter into their hearts and shared his story as a way of helping raise awareness of the dangers of not diagnosing type 1 diabetes. I'm immensely proud and heartbroken at the same time. This is Peter's legacy. I know he would have been a really good ambassador for type 1 diabetes. The fact he's not here means we have to continue in his spirit and on his behalf. Since we started campaigning, many people and children have been in touch to say they were only diagnosed as type 1 diabetes as an emergency. That should not be happening as four simple questions can raise the alarm for GPs examining a sick child. They call it the Four Ts test: We want those questions to be mandatory for all GPs in Wales - they don't cost anything and take 30 seconds to ask. If the answers are yes to these, there's a simple and accurate test available which GPs can carry out - a finger prick test, like you have if you go to give blood. It takes less than one minute and has instant results. All GPs have finger prick monitors but not all have them on their desk. So we want working equipment they know how to use. If Peter had had that test, we would have had a head start in helping him. Peter wasn't a sickly child and the GP was correct to diagnose him as having a chest infection. But the examination stopped there without exploring if anything else was wrong, even though he was very ill. That's why Stuart and I are leading Diabetes UK's national campaign called 'Know Type 1' to raise awareness of the symptoms. We are also petitioning the Welsh assembly to ensure effective diagnosis and gave evidence to the petitions committee on Tuesday along with Diabetes UK Cymru. Just a few weeks before he died, Peter had gone on a school trip to Germany to see the Christmas markets and he'd just started going into town with his friends - he was getting his first taste of independence. He had an amazing group of friends and he used to play with them all the time, out on his bike and computer games. When he moved to Whitchurch High School he was in the school council and he used to volunteer for stuff like the anti-bullying group. He did well at school and was active in all parts of school life and really took pride in what he did. I'm angry, heartbroken, devastated and distraught that Peter's life could have been saved. It's such a small test that is readily available. That's why it's so wrong. That's why we are determined changes must be made. |
Meet President Donald Trump's inner circle and cabinet. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Vice-President Mike Pence The former Indiana governor is a favourite among social conservatives and boasts considerable experience in Washington. Mr Pence was raised Roman Catholic along with his five siblings in Columbus, Indiana, and says he was inspired by liberal icons John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. He is known for his staunch opposition to abortion, signing a bill to ban abortion in Indiana on the basis of disability, gender or race of the foetus. He has said he would favour overturning a 1973 Supreme Court judgement, often referred to as the Roe v Wade case, which bars the US government from prohibiting abortions. Women's rights advocates have mounted online campaigns against his views, including asking people to call his office to tell them about their periods or to make donations to family-planning organisations in Mr Pence's name. He served as the chair of the House Republican Conference, the third highest-ranking Republican leadership position. He also chaired the Republican Study Group, a coalition of conservative House Republicans, which could give him a boost with some evangelicals of the party that have questioned Mr Trump's ideological purity, the BBC's Anthony Zurcher says. Who is Mike Pence? THE AIDES John Kelly - Chief of Staff The president initially nominated the retired Marine General to oversee Homeland Security before promoting him to chief of staff, replacing Reince Priebus. Mr Kelly was a key influence on the decision to fire the director of communications, Anthony Scaramucci, after just 10 days in office. The former four-star general, whose military career spans four decades, quit as head of the military's Southern Command, which oversees military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, to join the Trump administration. Mr Kelly is the highest-ranking military officer to lose a child in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His son Robert, a first lieutenant in the Marines, was killed in combat when he stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan in 2010. The seasoned commander had previously clashed with the Obama administration on illegal immigration at the US-Mexican border. In December Mr Trump said Mr Kelly would leave his post by the end of the year. It followed reports that the relationship between the two had deteriorated. John Bolton - National Security Adviser Known for his walrus moustache, Mr Bolton has served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and George W Bush. The second Bush appointed him as US envoy to the UN, during which time diplomats privately criticised Mr Bolton's style as abrasive. A strident neo-conservative, Mr Bolton helped build the case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be wrong. Mr Bolton does not appear to have moderated his views since his last spell in government. He stands by the invasion of Iraq and has called for the US to attack Iran and North Korea. Bush-era war hawk makes comeback Stephen Miller - Senior policy adviser Mr Miller was a top aide to Jeff Sessions before he joined the Trump campaign. He often warmed up crowds before Mr Trump took the stage at rallies on the campaign trail and was subsequently named the national policy director for Mr Trump's transition team. He also served as the campaign's chief speechwriter. As a senior adviser, Mr Miller manages White House policy staff, speechwriting functions and ensures the implementation of the president-elect's policy. "He is deeply committed to the America First agenda, and understands the policies and actions necessary to put that agenda into effect," Mr Trump said. A combative interview with CNN's Jake Tapper ended prematurely when the CNN host lost patience. Kellyanne Conway - Counsellor to the President The Republican strategist and veteran pollster serves as the highest-ranking woman in the White House after having earlier been considered for the role of press secretary. "She is a tireless and tenacious advocate of my agenda and has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate our message," Mr Trump said. The mother of four was promoted as Mr Trump's third campaign manager in August 2016 as part of another staff shake-up after the Republican convention. She has been praised as the "Trump whisperer" and became the first woman to run a successful US presidential campaign. Michael Cohen - former personal lawyer Mr Cohen was more than a lawyer, he was a self-professed fixer. And his loyalty was unflinching - he once said he would take a bullet for Mr Trump. The two were introduced by Donald Trump Jr in 2006 and Mr Cohen soon became part of the family. But that close personal and professional relationship began disintegrating the moment Stormy Daniels became news. Ever since the porn actress claimed she had an affair with Mr Trump - and that Mr Cohen paid her off - their friendship has been under strain. After his offices were raided by the FBI, he said his family was his top priority. In return, Mr Trump and his aides have been disparaging of Mr Cohen. This soured further when audio was released by Mr Cohen's lawyer of a conversation in 2016 of candidate Trump and Mr Cohen discussing the payment. Now the news that Mr Cohen had struck a deal with the FBI - as they investigate possible fraud and campaign finance violations - could put even greater distance between them. THE FAMILY Melania Trump A former model born in Slovenia, Melania married Donald Trump in January 2005. She has stood by her husband despite reports of his infidelities, alleged sexual assaults, and campaign revelations that he boasted about groping women. In July 2016 she made headlines after making a speech at the Republican National Convention, which she was accused of having plagiarised from one made by Michelle Obama in 2008. In an October interview with CNN, she was asked what she would change about her husband. She replied: "His tweeting". She stayed in New York with their son Barron until he finished his school term, before formally moving into the White House in June 2017. The new first lady Ivanka Trump Perhaps the best-known of Donald Trump's children, the only daughter of his marriage to Ivana, his first wife. A model in her early years, she was a vice-president at The Trump Organization, before stepping down when her father became president. She also launched her eponymous fashion line and was also a judge on her father's reality TV show The Apprentice. Her brother Donald Junior says Ivanka is the favourite child and is referred to as "Daddy's little girl". She was given a level of authority in the family business that none of his wives ever had and is said to have handled some of the company's biggest deals. Since Mr Trump became president, she has regularly been seen at his side. She, rather than the first lady, travelled with him to an air base in early February 2017 to mark the return of the body of a soldier killed in a raid in Yemen. She joined her father's administration as an unpaid aide with the title Adviser to the President, and has her own office in the West Wing of the White House. After her father became president, Ivanka said she had resigned from her signature apparel and accessories brand. She converted to Judaism after marrying Jared Kushner in 2009. America's other First Lady? Jared Kushner Mr Trump's media-shy son-in-law is the son of a prominent New York property developer and is married to Ivanka Trump. Mr Kushner arrived at the White House with the broadest of briefs and has come out on top of several rounds of infighting in the West Wing. But he increasingly faces a battle for relevance - stripped of his top-level security clearance and locked in a power struggle. It emerged that Mr Kushner had attempted to arrange a communications backchannel with Russia during the presidential transition. But Mr Kushner denies any suggestion of collusion with the Kremlin. He is a wealthy property developer and publisher. He owns 666 Fifth Avenue, a skyscraper a few blocks down from Trump Tower, and in 2006, aged just 25, he bought the once-venerable New York Observer newspaper. Mr Kushner was born and raised in comfort in Livingston, New Jersey, alongside two sisters and a brother. His grandparents escaped Poland during the war, arriving in the US in 1949, and his father Charles made his fortune as a New Jersey property mogul. Trump's right-hand man Donald Trump Jr Donald Trump's eldest son from his first marriage to Ivana is now executive vice-president of The Trump Organization, but had played a significant role during Mr Trump's campaign. In July 2017, it emerged that Mr Trump Jr - along with Jared Kushner and former campaign manager Paul Manafort - had met with a Russian lawyer with links to the Kremlin during Mr Trump's presidential campaign. He initially explained that the meeting was held to discuss Russian adoptions, which were suspended after the US announced sanctions on Russia in 2012. But emails showed that he decided to attend the meeting after being offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton. He and President Trump have since described the meeting as "opposition research" that any politician would engage in. Eric Trump The third child of Mr Trump's marriage to Ivana, he is also an executive vice-president of the Trump Organization. He is president of the Trump Winery in Virginia and oversees Trump golf clubs. In 2006, he also set up the Eric Trump Foundation, which was embroiled in a controversy over donations. THE CABINET Mike Pompeo - Secretary of State-designate The former hardline Republican Congressman became US spymaster as head of the CIA. Now he has been nominated to take over as America's top diplomat following Mr Trump's abrupt firing of Rex Tillerson. The three-term Tea Party Republican from Wichita, Kansas, was a vehement critic of the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran and has defended the National Security Agency's bulk data collection programme. He also opposes closing Guantanamo Bay and, after visiting the prison in 2013, he remarked that some inmates who had declared a hunger strike looked like they had put on weight. In January, he told the BBC that Russia would target the US mid-term elections. Trump's new loyalist top diplomat Steven Mnuchin - Treasury Secretary Not all of Mr Trump's supporters welcomed the idea of handing the levers of national tax policy to a consummate Wall Street insider. During his time running the OneWest bank, his business oversaw thousands of home foreclosures in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis. Mr Mnuchin amassed a fortune during his 17 years at Goldman Sachs before founding the movie production company behind such box office hits as the X-Men franchise and American Sniper. Five things about Steve Mnuchin The treasury secretary found himself under investigation after he took a government-subsidised trip to Fort Knox with his Scottish wife Louis Linton, amid claims they were sightseeing. US treasury secretary's wife rues missteps James Mattis - Secretary of Defense Gen Mattis served in the Marine Corps for 44 years, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. A counterinsurgency expert, he played a key role in fighting in Falluja in 2004. From 2010-13 he led US Central Command, which covers an area from the Horn of Africa into Central Asia and includes all US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is known for his blunt comments. In 2005 he was criticised after saying - in reference to Afghan men who "slap women around... because they didn't wear a veil" - that "it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them". But he is also described as a popular leader, well-liked by those he commanded, and an avid reader of literature on warfare. His nicknames were warrior monk and mad dog. As Gen Mattis retired in 2013, the law that bans military officers from serving as defence chief for seven years after leaving active duty was waived. 'Warrior Monk' to head Pentagon Elaine Chao - Transportation Secretary Born in Taiwan, she became the first Asian-American woman to hold a position in a presidential cabinet when she led the Labor Department under President Bush from 2001-09. Ms Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, served as deputy secretary of transportation and director of the Peace Corps in former President George HW Bush's administration. She came to the US with her family at the age of eight and settled in New York, where her father became a shipping magnate. Jeff Sessions - Attorney General Mr Sessions had been one of Mr Trump's closest allies throughout the campaign, and his loyalty was rewarded when he became the nation's top prosecutor. But the former senator from Alabama has appeared isolated after the president said he never would have appointed him if he had known that Mr Sessions would later recuse himself from the Russian investigation. Mr Sessions later said the president's attacks were "kinda hurtful". Allegations of racism have dogged him throughout his career, and were raised during his confirmation hearing in the Senate. He lost out on a federal judgeship back in 1986 when former colleagues said he had used the N-word. But during the hearing, he acknowledged "the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters". Gina Haspel - nominated as CIA director Ms Haspel has been chosen by Mr Trump to take over from Mike Pompeo as he steps up to become secretary of state. If confirmed, she will become the first female director of the Central Intelligence Agency. A career intelligence officer with more than 30 years' experience, she was appointed CIA deputy director last year. Controversially, she ran a prison in Thailand where suspected al-Qaeda members were tortured by waterboarding in 2002. Trump's pick as new CIA director Nikki Haley - US ambassador to the UN In the Republican primaries, Nikki Haley, then the governor of South Carolina, first backed Mr Rubio and later Texas Senator Ted Cruz before she finally threw her support behind Mr Trump. She was highly critical of Mr Trump's proposal to ban Muslim immigrants, calling it "un-American", and also of his refusal to release tax records. Announcing her as the first woman chosen for his cabinet, Mr Trump called her "a proven dealmaker" who will be "a great leader representing us on the world stage". Nikki Haley, the Republican who took on Trump The daughter of Indian immigrants, Mrs Haley was the first minority and female governor of South Carolina, a deeply conservative state with a long history of racial tensions. At times, she has contradicted the White House, and said "everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections" despite the president's more nuanced stance. Rick Perry - Energy Secretary The former Texas governor heads an agency he proposed to eliminate during his failed 2012 presidential campaign. The former Dancing with the Stars contestant was a vocal critic of Mr Trump, calling him a "barking carnival act" and a "cancer on conservatism" before he dropped out of his second unsuccessful bid for the White House in 2015. As governor of Texas, Mr Perry called for lighter regulation on the oil industry and referred to the science around climate change as "unsettled". After being picked by Mr Trump, he stepped down from the board of directors at Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Betsy DeVos - Education Secretary A wealthy Republican Party donor and a former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman, she became the second woman nominated for a cabinet position. She had however once described Mr Trump as "an interloper" who didn't represent the Republican Party. Mrs DeVos is an advocate of Republican-favoured charter schools, which are publicly funded and set up by teachers, parents, or community groups outside the state school system. She also previously supported the Common Core education standards that Mr Trump and many conservatives have pilloried. Mr Trump called her "a brilliant and passionate education advocate" but she was criticised after appearing to struggle at times during her nomination hearing. Why is Betsy DeVos so unpopular? Alexander Acosta - Secretary of Labor The former Florida International University law dean has worked for the National Labor Relations Board, the Justice Department's civil rights division, and the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Before joining the Trump administration, he was chairman of the US Century Bank, the largest domestically owned Hispanic community bank in Florida. During his time serving as US Attorney in Florida, he cut a secret deal with billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, who had been accused of sexual misconduct with underage girls. The deal was criticised by lawyers representing the alleged victims, saying that the punishment was too lenient. Ryan Zinke - Secretary of the Interior The former Navy SEAL was picked to lead the agency that oversees federal land, including national parks such as Yosemite and Yellowstone. He is a former congressman for Montana, where he was raised near Glacier National Park. Mr Zinke has bucked his party on the issue of privatisation or transfer of public lands to states, which he believes should remain under federal control. Environmental advocacy groups condemned the pick, accusing him of being in hock to corporate polluters. Mr Zinke's time in office has been overshadowed by a series of alleged ethics violations. President Trump announced on 15 December 2018 that he would leave his post at the end of the month. Who is Ryan Zinke? Andrew Wheeler- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) boss The former energy lobbyist was appointed chief of the EPA after Scott Pruitt resigned amid a string of scandals regarding his spending habits and allegations of ethical misconduct. Mr Wheeler, who served as the No 2 official at the EPA, was confirmed as Mr Pruitt's deputy in April. The 53-year-old Ohio native worked for nine years as lobbyist for the coal industry, representing companies that often had business before the EPA. He worked as a special assistant for the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics during the 1990s before becoming an aide at the Senate's Environment Committee. He also was a staffer for Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, who served as a chairman for the Senate environmental panel and has dismissed global warming as a hoax. In announcing Mr Pruitt's resignation, the president tweeted he has "no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!" Peter Navarro - Director of Trade and Industrial Policy Mr Navarro is a top economic advisor to the president and director of the White House's Trade and Manufacturing Policy office. A staunch anti-China and pro-tariff economist, Mr Navarro was sidelined and demoted by Chief of Staff John Kelly and other free trade economists on the National Economic Council last autumn. However, the former Trump campaign advisor - an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine - still wields influence in the White House, as seen by the tariffs placed on steel and aluminium. |
Who would you shapeshift into given the choice? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Steven McIntoshEntertainment reporter For Percelle Ascott, the star of Netflix's new series The Innocents, which deals with the issue of morphing into the body of somebody else, the answer is obvious. "Will Smith," he says instantly. "I just like him as a person, as an individual." But, he adds diplomatically: "I'd like to shapeshift into any person, to understand a new perspective, and hope that that changes my perspective." That is very much the theme of The Innocents, which tells the story of a teenage girl - June, played by Sorcha Groundsell - who runs away with her boyfriend Harry (Ascott) to escape her repressive parents. Things get a little more complicated when she finds she has shapeshifting powers, which she doesn't quite know how to use. It's a device co-creator and writer Hania Elkington says was the perfect way to explore the difficulties of being a teenager. "Your body is changing, you're trying to figure out who you are," she tells BBC News. "Some elements of your emerging personality or psyche might frighten you or feel disconnected from you, so it's about self-acceptance, it's about unconditional love for another person, and shapeshifting seemed a very good way to explore that." Fellow co-creator Simon Duric adds: "Shapeshifting hadn't been explored, and I'm a bit of a genre hound, and I thought 'oh, there's a gap here'. The series, which is released on Friday, has so far received mostly warm reviews from critics. "Say hello to your new favourite Netflix show," wrote Ian Sandwell in Digital Spy. "It works because June's struggles as she navigates the perils of first love are relatable, even if her shapeshifter abilities take them to a whole new level. "Everyone gets a bit jealous, but imagine how it would be if your first love was technically kissing another girl after you shapeshifted into her?" Suzi Feay of The Financial Times was less positive, writing: "From the start, it's so disparate and oblique that it's hard to know what's going on." Variety said the show "gets that sense of dislocation just right," but added its eight episodes could have been "whittled down". "There's less tension than there is amplification; key points are repeated relentlessly, and the season's overarching plot, involving a cruel doctor (Guy Pearce) who wants to crack the secret within June's genes, has fizzled by season's end." But Gavia Baker-Whitelaw in The Daily Dot said: "The Innocents is one of the best Netflix Originals to date, partly because it lacks the structural pitfalls of so many other streaming shows. "With its self-contained episodes, sweeping Northern European locations, and a moody score by composer Carly Paradis, this could easily be airing as a primetime BBC serial." Sorcha, who grew up in Lewis in the Western Isles, is new to the world of high profile TV series, says she is going to try to avoid reading critics' comments. "I've never done anything that will be as reviewed as this. I think the last time I had anything to read of a review I was about 16 and I was just excited to be in it," she laughs. "I personally think I won't [read them], just because it can distract from what you feel happy with, you don't want that to then cast a shadow." Percelle says the key thing he hopes audiences pick up on is "the theme of identity". "That's a massive part of the show, and how shapeshifting is used as a device to explore that. Trying to find out who you are. Being comfortable in our own skin. "We shift in our everyday life, we evolve depending on the circumstances. And it's a question of who we are based on this new dynamic, this new experience, and trying to search for that, I don't think we ever stop searching for who we are in life." Executive producer Elaine Pyke says she was hooked in by the show's script when she first read it, and helped Hania and Simon develop the show and pitch it to Netflix. "I was compelled by it, I was moved by it, and I know that that combination is something you just don't read that often, she says. "I fell in love with it very quickly. And," she laughs, "I didn't want to lose it to another producer." In some ways, launching it on Netflix means pressure is high, with the company's seemingly endless stream of runaway hits. Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why are among the shows to have set a high bar for subsequent dramas, with both developing huge followings and creating breakout stars. But there's one thing that makes it far less stressful than launching it on a traditional TV channel. "We won't get viewing figures," Elaine explains. "We'll get feedback from Netflix about how it's been received, and I definitely feel a certain pressure and a certain stress about it, I want it to land and for lots and lots of people to watch it. "But what I think is really different is you haven't got that overnight, all the pressure on one episode, you've got the whole series and are standing by the whole show." One way Sorcha manages to escape the pressures of a major TV series, is by helping out on her parents' farm in the Outer Hebrides. "For me it's the best possible way to manage this craziness, because it means I can leave London, leave the industry and go back home and be around people who have never heard of Netflix and don't have strong enough wi-fi to stream in any way," she says. "It's sheep and cows and badgers and ducks and it's nothing to do with this, which I personally really love, it can get quite stressful and quite crazy so it's nice to be able to have a break." |
Boris Johnson doesn't tend to do remorse. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Laura KuenssbergPolitical editor@bbclaurakon Twitter He is fond of looking on the bright side and moving forward. "Come on! Come on!" and "Fantastic, fantastic!" are the phrases you hear in public most frequently from his mouth. Even some of his allies agree privately with his detractors that he is a politician for the good times, a spreader of cheer, rather than seeming like a statesman for a crisis. That's one reason why the handling of this terrible epidemic has been a profound political challenge for this prime minister, beyond the enormous strain that coronavirus has put on the government machine and his own health. He moved into No 10 a year ago today, taking charge of a country politically divided over Brexit, with protestors at the gate. But after chucking veteran Tories out of the parliamentary party and suspending Parliament, the first tumultuous phase of his premiership ended with him being clapped back into No 10 for the second time, and with a thumping majority. A pugilistic Downing Street was almost punch drunk with the opportunities that lay before them. But with unbelievable timing, 31 January 2020 - Brexit day - was also the day that the UK confirmed its first cases of coronavirus. Far from the first day of Boris Johnson's dream of raw power, it was the first day of a nightmare for the country's health and economy too. It is the pandemic, therefore, not his hoped-for policies, that have fundamentally shaped Boris Johnson's premiership so far. Like other world leaders, he had to take a series of enormous decisions, at huge speed, that have had consequences for each and every one of us. The worst of the health crisis has faded; however, Boris Johnson has shown a profound reluctance to admit mistakes that were made. The government did expand the capacity of the health service at breakneck speed. The Treasury's interventions in the economy have kept millions of people afloat for now. UK scientists are ahead in the world in terms of treatments and vaccine research. But a debate has raged about whether the lockdown came too late. Stock response Why was the government slow to ramp up the testing they now say is vital? Why were protections for care homes not introduced much sooner? Why has the death rate here been so much higher than in nearly every other country? Why does the government keep promising 'world beating' this, and 'world beating' that, when the UK's record on handling the pandemic has many flaws? When these questions have come, the prime minister's stock response has been to protest that it is not the right time to look at what went wrong. Time and again, ministers have repeated the mantra that "we made the right decisions at the right time". But today, as he reflected on his 366 days in power, Boris Johnson inched towards confronting what went wrong. In his first full TV interview since the lockdown, and his own time in hospital, he told me that ministers had not understood the disease "for the first few weeks and months", unaware that the virus was already here and in circulation before the government fully realised. And what of the timing of the lockdown? Again, he took a step towards acknowledging that there could have been mistakes, suggesting the lockdown timing was an "open question", and that while the government had stuck "like glue" to the advice given by its scientists, maybe that advice had been wrong. Preaching, not practice Despite that change in tone, the prime minister's reluctance to go into detail yet about the mistakes the government might have made is still striking. Advice from his former close adviser Will Walden, who spoke to us on Newscast, is that he should admit mistakes were made, and get on with a proper inquiry into what went wrong, seems to have fallen largely on deaf ears. While the prime minister always says that he takes full responsibility for what the government does, that's perhaps preaching, not practice. Mr Johnson wants to use the government's experience of what happened during the pandemic to speed up his agenda, to "double down on levelling up", as he puts it in his peculiar political jargon. In other words, to push ahead with more determination, and less fudge in Whitehall, with the changes that he says will actually improve the lives of voters, particularly those who voted Tory for the first time in 2019. Questions continue While preparing the NHS for a potential second surge, he clearly wants to concentrate on what's next, not what's gone before. But perhaps until the government is really ready to acknowledge what has happened, the questions will continue - and the public may still feel anxious about whether they can really trust ministers to handle a second surge next time round. Just as 366 days ago, optimism is Boris Johnson's trademark. But if the last few months have shown anything, it is that the real challenge of life in power, is that events that can surprise. |
More than £4.4m is being spent on flood defence work in a Cumbria town where hundreds of homes were deluged in 2009. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The Environment Agency is carrying out the work in Cockermouth to protect 360 vulnerable homes and 55 businesses prone to taking in water. The work will include building walls, embankments and flood gates along the Cocker and Derwent rivers. The agency has already built new flood walls and fitted gates to protect homes in Waterloo Street and Graves Mill. Construction has also begun on an embankment along Derwentside Gardens where existing flood walls are being extended. |
A man has been charged with murder following the death of a woman in Hereford. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Julie Clark, 59, was found dead at her home in Highmore Street on 9 January. A post-mortem examination revealed she died from stab wounds. Jason Nellist, 40, Nicholson Court, Hereford, has been charged with her murder. Mr Nellist been remanded in custody to appear before Hereford Magistrates' Court on Monday. Related Internet Links West Mercia Police |
Beauty salons have been greatly affected by this year's pandemic. With the first Covid-19 vaccines now being administered, we speak to six industry professionals about how they have coped with 2020, and their hopes for the future. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Sarah FinleyBusiness reporter Elizabeth Chandler says that after a tough year "the vaccine could be great for the industry". She is the owner of London-based eyelash extension business - Elizabeth Chandler Lashes - whose clients include model Cara Delevingne, singer Nicole Scherzinger, fashion designers, and dancers on the TV show Strictly Come Dancing. Like all UK beauty treatment businesses, she had to shut up shop in March, given the close face-to-face nature of much of her work. "My income went to zero for six months," says Ms Chandler. "I built my business for 13 years, and I was unable to work for half a year. [Previously] I have never been out of work in my life." In a bid to retain her clients Ms Chandler held weekly free Zoom tutorials, before finally reopening in August - only to have to shut again during England's second lockdown in November. "Any mass vaccination programme will take a long time to roll out," she says. "But the tier system as it stands means we [in London, currently tier two] can all open and continue to work, which is wonderful." In Wales, Poppy Johnson, a make-up artist in Bangor, Gwynedd, took her business Faces By Poppy online this year. She expects to continue with internet classes even after the pandemic has finally ended. "As soon as the lockdown was announced I made the decision to pivot my business instead of pausing it," she says. "I needed to carry on working not only for my mental health, but to maintain the creativity and passion for what I do." So she began offering weekly tutorials on Zoom to those who wanted to learn new make-up techniques. "I wanted to take the experience I would normally offer in the salon, online," says Ms Johnson. As the lessons became popular she created an online subscription portal. For a one-off fee it gives customers access to make-up tutorials and product recommendations. She says she now has more than 250 people signed up. Emma Appleby, who runs London-based skin clinic L'Atelier Aesthetics, has also embraced the commercial opportunities of online video conferencing. Since the first lockdown she has used Zoom for consultations with her clients - giving them advice on their skin needs, then a personal prescription of products. "The pandemic has meant we've had to pivot and engage our clients online," says Ms Appleby. "In these times you really do need think outside of the box." Skincare specialist Katie White, owner of another London salon Re:lax, also went online during the first lockdown, but says customers took a while to get used to it. "We went all in with our online offering, hosting paid and free facial massage, gua sha, rosacea, and [general] skincare workshops, online consultations and seminars," she says. "Initially customers weren't keen as they thought we be open again soon. Once they realised this wasn't the case they were more receptive to our online presence." Leslie Blair, chair of the British Association of Beauty Therapy & Cosmetology, says that 2020 has been "catastrophic" for the sector, but that vaccines will improve things. New Economy is a new series exploring how businesses, trade, economies and working life are changing fast. "Most industries stand to benefit from the vaccines, but naturally even more so those considered to be close contact businesses, such as hair and beauty," she says. "There will be dual benefit in terms of the impact it will have on the way in which their salons need to function, and in the confidence and peace of mind it will provide to the clients they serve. "The vaccine will prove pivotal to a positive outlook for our industry for a variety of reasons - as mentioned already it will boost customer confidence - naturally resulting in increased bookings." She adds: "It will also mean that a number of restrictions currently in place will ultimately be able to be eased - many of which have had a detrimental impact on the profitability of our businesses. These include staggered appointments, limitation on staff numbers, cost of PPE equipment, restrictions on treatments and who could be treated." Susan Vaughan, boss of beauty salon SV Aesthetics, agrees vaccines offer "a little glimmer of hope that things are moving in the right direction". "In the beauty industry we are face-to-face with our clients all day, every day, so if the vaccine ensures people feel safe and well protected, then I can see things slowly but surely going back to how things were prior to March. "We will continue to wear our PPE and face masks, and sanitise the clinic after every client, to keep any risk as low as we can. But with the added protection of the vaccine I have high hopes for a thriving business year in 2021," adds Susan. |
Plans for members of the public to be allowed to speak to council officials in Welsh without translation look set to be challenged. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Carmarthenshire and Flintshire councils are not opposed to the Welsh Language Commissioner's proposals but there is a feeling they are not practical. It is among a host of standards they need to deliver in Welsh from 2016. Nine councils are still considering the rules, six are happy but Pembrokeshire said it would cost them £500,000. |
With the world's biggest bike race starting in Leeds on 5 July, BBC Yorkshire's Tour de France correspondent Matt Slater rounds up the best of the gossip, opinion and stories, on and off the bike, and also tries to explain some of cycling's unique lingo. TOP STORIES | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
What's cooking? After two days of beer news, it is only right that I address one of the other major food groups, sausages, although these have beer in them, too. Ripon-based R & J butchers have teamed up with Keighley's finest, Timothy Taylor, to produce French-style bangers for your delectation in Taylor's pubs. I will be addressing cakes and crisps in future diaries. Full story: meatinfo.co.uk Tour party Salford's self-styled "People's Tenor" Russell Watson will headline a "Grand Departy" concert on Friday 4 July at York's Huntington Stadium. Joining Watson will be "X Factor favourites" Rough Copy, Union J and some other pop combos I have never heard of, but also some that I have heard of, Altered Images, Brother Beyond and The Blow Monkeys, for example. Ten thousand tickets will go on sale from Friday, with a single ticket costing £29.50, a posh ticket £35, or £100 for a family of four. Full story: The Press Not cricket! I am aware that some people are less excited about the imminent arrival of "the world's largest annual sporting event" (according to its owners Amaury Sport Organisation) than I am, but even the grouches at The Guardian's county cricket blog could not help themselves but get into the Grand Departy (thank you, York) mood on Wednesday. Having sniffed at the "Grand Bloody Depart" in one sentence, two paragraphs later they were waxing almost lyrical at the prospect of riders climbing the Cote de Holme Moss, Cote de Ripponden and Cote de Blubberhouses. And then they returned to the cricket - only kidding, plenty of room for both. Full story: The Guardian CYCLING ROUND-UP It was joy unbound at the Giro on Wednesday where Diego Ulissi became the first Italian stage-winner in this edition of their national passion play. The 24-year-old powered away from an elite group on the climb to Viggiano to record the second Giro win of his career. Australian Michael Matthews put in another fine ride to retain the overall lead he has held since the second stage, but it was the display of compatriot Cadel Evans that provoked the biggest post-race buzz. The 2011 Tour winner looks in fine fettle, finishing second on the stage to leap to third in the general classification. With Wiggo rediscovering his mojo in California, could Cuddles be back too? TWEET OF THE DAY "Many have asked for the Team Sky rice cakes recipe, so here it is… #doingthelittlethings" Team Sky kit supplier Rapha reveals how to make the silver foil-wrapped snacks that power Chris Froome and the boys on to Grand Tour glory. A TO Z OF LE TOUR H is for… Hors categorie - French for "out of", or "beyond", category, this term refers to the enormous mountains the riders must get over on the road to Paris. Most of the significant climbs in the Tour route are given a 1 to 4 score, with 1 being the hardest, 4 the easiest. "HC" climbs are, to paraphrase Spinal Tap, one harder. The harder the climb, the more King of the Mountain competition points are on offer. For reference, the hardest ascent on the two Yorkshire stages, Holme Moss, is only a Cat 2 climb. Hors delai - This is what can happen if you have to climb too many HCs: you miss the time cut on the stage and you are "out of time" and out of the race. The time limit for a specific stage is a percentage of the winner's time, and it is set by the commissaires (race referees) each day. What the time limit is on a tough mountain stage is one of the press room's favourite guessing games, and factors such as the weather, the brilliance of the winner and the quality of the chief commissaire's breakfast, all come into play. TODAY'S TOUR TRIVIA Continuing with the H-theme, it is time to address one of the key themes at recent Tours de France: when will a Frenchman win it again? When Bernard "The Badger" Hinault won his fifth Tour in 1985 - to match the records of Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx - nobody thought France would still be waiting for another home-grown hero in 2014. After all, Bernard Thevenet had won in 1975 and 1977, before Hinault claimed four in a row. Then his apparent successor Laurent Fignon won two on the bounce, before Hinault returned to claim his fifth. France had no warning of the drought to come. But after Hinault came American Greg LeMond, then Ireland's Stephen Roche, followed by Pedro Delgado of Spain, then LeMond again, twice. After that we were into the five-year reign of Spain's Miguel Indurain, a spell that was broken by a Dane, who was followed by a German, then an Italian, and then came Lance Armstrong. Since then we have had Spaniards, a Luxembourger, an Aussie and two Brits…but no Frenchmen, and they have not even been very close to winning in recent years. Things have not quite reached British tennis and Wimbledon status yet, but we will have a reasonable chance of ending our 12-month wait for glory in July. Can French cycling say the same? |
The Royal Welsh winter fair has opened for its 25th anniversary year. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The event at Llanelwedd near Builth Wells in Powys runs for two days and will receive a visit from Princess Anne on Tuesday. Nearly 30,000 visitors are expected to attend the event. As well as the stock competitions and displays, a special fireworks display on Monday and a late-night Christmas shopping market will mark the anniversary. |
When British soldiers set off for the trenches in 1914, folded inside each of their Pay Books was a short message. It contained a piece of homely advice, written by the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Dr Clare MakepeaceCultural historian on warfare "In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both." In his memoirs Private Frank Richards, who served continuously on the Western Front, recorded men's responses to these words: "They may as well have not been issued for all the notice we took of them." Visiting prostitutes is a little-known and little-discussed aspect of life on the Western Front, but it was a key part of the British soldiers' war experience. Licensed brothels had existed in France since the mid-19th Century - the war saw the trade flourish. 'Not monks' "Immorality in Boulogne is as prevalent as death in the line," recorded Brig Gen Frank Percy Crozier, who arrived on the Western Front in 1915. ''Rouen has been ruinous to my purse (not to mention my morals)," confided James H. Butlin, a lieutenant who, in 1914, swapped his place at Oxford University for one in the trenches. "But I have enjoyed myself," he confessed. Brothels displayed blue lamps if they were for officers and red lamps for other ranks. Outside red lamp establishments, queues or crowds of men were often seen. Cpl Jack Wood compared the scene he witnessed to "a crowd, waiting for a cup tie at a football final in Blighty". Others saw brothel visits as a physical necessity - it was an era when sexual abstinence for men was considered harmful to their health. Lt R. G. Dixon explained in his memoir: "We were not monks, but fighting soldiers and extraordinarily fit, fitter than we had been in our young lives, and fairly tough - certainly with an abundance of physical energy. "If bought love is no substitute for the real thing, it at any rate seemed better than nothing. And in any case it worked off steam!" 'Presence of death' Physical need made it more acceptable for married men, rather than single men, to visit prostitutes. Cpl Bert Chaney, while he surveyed a queue of soldiers outside one red lamp brothel, was told by those who waited in line "these places were not for young lads like me, but for married men who were missing their wives". Brothels were also places where soldiers went to spend what could be their final mortal hours. Twenty-four hours before the major British offensive of the Battle of Loos, Pte Richards saw "three hundred men in a queue, all waiting their turns to go in the Red Lamp". Lt Dixon described how "we were consistently in the presence of death, and no man knew when his turn might come. "I suppose that subconsciously we wanted as much of life as we could get while we still had life." The war poet, Capt Robert Graves, recorded how this life experience was particularly urgent for some: "There were no restraints in France; these boys had money to spend and knew that they stood a good chance of being killed within a few weeks anyhow. "They did not want to die virgins.' Brothel visits could also be a way to avoid death. They gave soldiers a chance to swap time in the trenches for a few weeks in a hospital bed. According to Gunner Rowland Myrddyn Luther, who enlisted in September 1914, and served through to the Allied advance of 1918, a great many soldiers were prepared to chance venereal disease, rather than face a return to the front. 'Belonged to war' "The total number thus infected must have been stupendous, both officers and men alike. "In fact the contraction of such a disease seemed sought after, even if only to keep a man from the front during treatment." The numbers infected were indeed quite "stupendous". Around 400,000 cases of venereal disease were treated during the course of the war. In 1916, one in five of all admissions of British and dominion troops to hospitals in France and Belgium were for VD. But, succumbing to the temptation Kitchener had warned against was, for many, confined to the extraordinary circumstances of war. For Lt Dixon "the business was compartmentalised - it was, as it were, shut off from normal human relationships, and belonged to this lunatic world of war and to nowhere else." The visits of Tommies and their officers to brothels are unlikely to receive attention in the World War One centenary, but they should. Pte Percy Clare included "the subject" in his memoir because he was "writing faithfully of our life in France". As he summed it up "it is better to know the truth". |
In 1957, the British military began conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean and based themselves on Christmas Island. The tests ended six years later and parts of the island were sealed off for decades. What signs are left of its dramatic history? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By John PickfordBBC News, Kiritimati Main Camp: The name is all that is left of the British military headquarters of 50 years ago. Christmas Island's only hotel, the Captain Cook, stands there now. The searing east wind blows and the ocean swell booms ceaselessly on the reef, like a distant train in a tunnel. There is a ruined church of coral rock close by. An inscription, etched in cement, invites Church Notices. Who pinned up the last one and what did it say? Christmas Island has gone through a lot of change. It is now part of the Oceanic state of Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas) with a capital in distant Tarawa, a day's flight away via Fiji. And it has a new name, Kiritimati. The people of Kiribati, formerly the Gilbert Islands, have difficulty pronouncing the letter S. So Christmas becomes Kritmat, and then Kiritimati - a new name is born. Most significant is the increase in the human population, now approaching 10,000. There are more vehicles today than there were people in 1958. Concerns have been raised about the island's carrying capacity due to its unreliable water supply, but the Kiribati government has continued to encourage resettlement from overcrowded Tarawa. Some fear this poses a 21st Century threat to Christmas Island's environment. There are new schools, a bank and even a small hospital. I spoke to a tired looking doctor, the island's obstetrician. How many babies in a week? "Oh not many, about 10," she says. That is 500 in a year. But for others connected with this island, time has stood still. Trevor Butler, now 75, went out aged 20 as a sapper with the Royal Engineers. After his return he developed a cataract in his right eye and for much of his life he has been trying, and failing, to get compensation from the Ministry of Defence for what he alleges was harmful exposure to radiation during his military service. He is a vigorous, determined man and still fascinated by the island. Before my departure he asked me if I would see if there was anything left of the structures he had helped build during his time there. A few weeks later I am on Kiritimati in a lorry heading south. To my left is the deep blue of the ocean and to my right mile after mile of salt-bush scrub, a rich green after recent rain. The road is remarkably good, considering it is 50 years old. Then I remember Trevor telling me they added cement to the tarmacadam to help it set. I am with William from the Wildlife Department and we are driving to the remote south-east tip of the island, once ominously called the Forward Zone. It was high in the atmosphere over this area or just offshore that the bombs were detonated, and for decades it was sealed off. William traps feral cats out here because they are a threat to the sea bird colonies and he says he has seen something I might find interesting. We have driven fast for two hours - this is the biggest coral atoll on earth - but now slow to a walking pace. It is the birds. Sooty terns. Tens of thousands of them, in the air and on the ground. A glorious, teeming, deafening cacophony. Did they really explode an atom bomb over this? Well they did, and there must have been a moment after the flash when there was silence. William stops the lorry and we begin walking into the scrub. It is taller than we are so it is like entering a maze. What we are looking for has something to do with the giant tethers that were constructed for a couple of the atom bombs which were suspended from balloons and detonated, rather than dropped as air bursts from planes. The sun is setting and I am beginning to get worried we are lost, when William calls out: "Here!" It is a massive slab of concrete about 50 metres square with huge rusted steel rings set into it. In the middle there are six bigger rings close together. I suddenly think of Trevor with his shovel, stripped to the waist in his army shorts like in the photos he showed me. There was a major clean-up of remaining military debris in 2006 but this looks unmoveable. The thing is so extraordinary and in some respects so bizarre in that wild, bleak place that you cannot help but be impressed. You wonder what a visitor from space might make of it or an archaeologist in 500 years with no knowledge of our civilisation. You would have to explain so much: that there was something called a Cold War going on and a once great imperial power was struggling to keep up. How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent: BBC Radio 4: Saturdays at 11:30 and some Thursdays at 11:00. You can also listen online or download the podcast. BBC World Service: Short editions Monday-Friday - see the World Service programme schedule. You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook |
Councillors are encouraging residents across Oxfordshire to leave their cars at home later this week. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Car Free Day will be held on Wednesday and has been backed by Oxfordshire County Council. Councillor Rodney Rose, cabinet member for transport, said its 20,000 workers have been urged to take part to help the environment. Local schools have been asked to join the campaign, which is also being supported by Oxford City Council. |
Two people have been charged with using a drone to send phones and cannabis into a Kent prison. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Ingrid Edwards, 25, from Charlton, and Daniel Lee Kelly, 37, from Grove Park, south London, are both accused of two counts of sending prohibited items into HMP Swaleside in Eastchurch. It is alleged the items were sent into the jail between 16 March and 25 April. Ms Edwards, of Wolfe Crescent, and Mr Kelly, of Amblecote Meadows, appeared before Medway magistrates on Tuesday. They are due to appear before Maidstone Crown Court on 24 May. |
An inquest into the death of a schoolboy who is believed to have drowned off the north Wales coast has been opened and adjourned. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Blake Ward, 16, got into difficulty at Tywyn North, Gwynedd, on 2 August. He was from Wolverhampton and waiting to collect GCSE results from Dudley's Hillcrest School and Community College. Coroner Dewi Pritchard Jones said: "I was informed this young man had been involved in an incident in the sea off Tywyn and appears to have drowned." He opened and adjourned the inquest in Caernarfon. Blake had been described as a "wonderful young man" by his head teacher April Garratt, who said it was a "tragic loss of life". Two others, aged 16 and 17, were rescued during the incident. The three teenagers had been at the beach with their family. |
A main route through Northumberland has reopened five days after it was blocked when a wind turbine stem fell off a lorry. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The 147ft (45m) shaft was left in the A696 near Otterburn on Monday and diversions set up. Cranes were brought in to remove it on Thursday and the road was reopened at about 17:00 BST following road repairs. Traders in the town said the closure had been "devastating" with no passing trade. Northumberland County Council said it had made reopening the road its top priority. The recovery operation involved building two large stone platforms to support the cranes to lift the stem. Parish councillor and pub landlord Clive Emmerson said the effect of the closure had been devastating and he was relieved the road was reopening. |
Mystery knitters and crochetters have been brightening up public spaces in the Orkney town of Kirkwall with a craze known as "yarn-bombing". | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Trees, railings and street signs have been decorated with colourful works. The pair behind it are keen to protect their anonymity, and go under the alias of Knitfish and Ripples the Crocheter. Much of their work has appeared at the public area in front of Orkney Library and Archive. The craze is believed to have originated in Texas. Young trees are sporting crocheted cardigans, while brightly-coloured knitted tubes have been fitted around railings. Orkney's yarn-bombers have promised to continue - as long as public opinion remains on their side. |
Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai first came to public attention in 2009 when she wrote a BBC diary about life under the Taliban. Now recovering from surgery after being shot by the militants, the campaigner for girls' rights is in the spotlight again. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Malala was 11 when she began writing a diary for BBC Urdu. Her blogs described life under Taliban rule from her home town of Mingora, in the northwest region of Pakistan she affectionately calls "My Swat". I am afraid - 3 January 2009 "I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools. Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased because of Taliban's edict. On my way from school to home I heard a man saying 'I will kill you'. I hastened my pace... to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone." By 2009, the Taliban controlled much of the Swat Valley and applied their austere interpretation of sharia law. "When the Taliban came to Swat they banned women from going to the market and they banned shopping," Malala told the BBC last year. But Malala's primary objection was to the Taliban's prohibition of female education. Militants had destroyed over 150 schools in 2008 alone. "Malala Yousufzai was one of the few brave voices who spoke out", writes The Daily Telegraph's Pakistan correspondent Rob Crilly. "She did it anonymously - to do otherwise would have brought immediate death. But her blog for the BBC Urdu Service detailing the abuses meant no one could pretend an accommodation with the terrorists was anything other than a deal with the devil." Halima Mansour in the Guardian heralds Malala as a young "Pakistani heroine" for her bravery and independence. "Malala doesn't want to play to some western-backed or Taliban-loved stereotype. She shows us that there are voices out there, in Pakistan, that need to be heard, if only to help the country find democracy that is for and from the people, all the people." Do not wear colourful dresses - 5 January 2009 "I was getting ready for school and about to wear my uniform when I remembered that our principal had told us not to wear uniforms and come to school wearing normal clothes instead. "So I decided to wear my favourite pink dress. Other girls in school were also wearing colourful dresses. During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colourful clothes as the Taliban would object to it." When she wrote her blogs for BBC Urdu, Malala was already able to speak English and hoped one day to become a doctor. One sombre entry, titled "I may not go to school again", details the imminent closure of her school in January 2009. Other entries express her fear of being killed by the Taliban. But she received support and encouragement in her activism from her parents. The idea for the blog was even that of her father Ziauddin, who runs a local private school. "Of course, it was a risk [to let her write the blog]", he told BBC Outlook in January this year, "But I think that not talking was a greater risk than that because then ultimately we would have given in to the slavery and the subjugation of ruthless terrorism and extremism." I may not go to school again - 14 January 2009 "I was in a bad mood while going to school because winter vacations are starting from tomorrow. The principal announced the vacations but did not mention the date the school was to reopen. "The girls were not too excited about vacations because they knew if the Taliban implemented their edict [banning girls' education] they would not be able to come to school again. I am of the view that the school will one day reopen but while leaving I looked at the building as if I would not come here again." Malala's father was himself an outspoken education activist who received death threats from the Taliban. Along with many locals, Malala and her family went into exile from the Swat Valley when a government military operation attempted to clear the region of Taliban militants. "I'm really bored because I have no books to read", she told Adam B. Ellick, who made a documentary about her in 2009. Following the military's partial success in driving back the Taliban, Malala was able to return to Mingora later that year. During 2009, Malala began to appear on television and publically advocate female education. With her raised public profile, becoming the "progressive face of Swat", Waseem Ahmad Shah, of Pakistani paper The Dawn, finds it inexcusable that Malala was ultimately "left at the mercy of militants". In 2011 she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by The KidsRights Foundation. Later last year the government awarded her the National Peace Award - subsequently renamed the National Malala Peace Prize - for those under 18 years old. Malala's experiences have had an impact upon her future aspirations. She told The Dawn earlier this year that she plans to form her own political party focused on promoting education. For many Pakistanis, Malala has become a symbol of resistance to the Taliban. "Malala was the lone voice in that wilderness," writes Feryal Gauhar in the local Express Tribune. "Hers was the voice which made us consider that indeed, there can be alternatives, and there can be resistance to all forms of tyranny. Today, the attempt to silence that voice shall only make her stronger; the blood stains on her school uniform shall only feed the conviction that as long as there is breath and life, there shall be struggle." "Malala rose to heights few of us can aspire to," adds Gauhar. Interrupted sleep - 15 January 2009 "The night was filled with the noise of artillery fire and I woke up three times. But since there was no school I got up later at 10am. Afterwards, my friend came over and we discussed our homework. Today is the last day before the Taliban's edict comes into effect, and my friend was discussing homework as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "Today, I also read my diary written for the BBC in Urdu. My mother liked my pen name Gul Makai. I also like the name because my real name means 'grief stricken'." Malala is now recovering in hospital after being shot in the head and neck by a Taliban militant on Tuesday. Her shooting "has shocked an unshockable Pakistan", notes Samira Shackle in the New Statesman. Shackle is not alone in juxtaposing Malala's bravery with "the fact that major politicians and indeed, entire governments, have shied away from making such bold statements [about female education] against the Taliban". But Rob Crilly in the Telegraph states how "on this occasion they [the politicians] have sensed the public horror and begun making a beeline for Malala's sickbed". "If she makes a full recovery - and she still has a long, long way to go - I suspect Malala will remain one of the few voices prepared to take on the extremists. And the politicians will make their excuses and forget all about their promises." |
The Irish government is expected to confirm in the near future that it will legislate for the credible threat of suicide as a grounds for an abortion. BBC NI's Dublin correspondent Shane Harrison reports on the battle between pro-choice and anti-abortion campaigners. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Shane HarrisonBBC NI Dublin correspondent It is a cold, wet day outside RTE's Dublin headquarters. And a group has gathered - as they do weekly - to complain about what they perceive as the state broadcaster's anti-Catholic bias, a charge RTE strongly denies. One issue above all else annoys the protestors - abortion. PJ Mallon came from New Ross in County Wexford to voice his opinion. 'Life is sacred' "Abortion; thou shall not kill - it's a commandment. We as Catholics and Christians believe in the commandments of God. And if you're a Christian you have to stand up for what you believe in," he said. "And we believe that life begins in the womb and ends at the tomb. No man, no scientist, no doctor has the right to take life. Life is sacred in all its forms." In another part of Dublin, pro-choice doctors have gathered for a conference organised by the National Women's Council in Ireland. They believe the government's expected decision to legislate for abortion where there is a threat to the mother's life as distinct from her health is a good first step, especially as the credible threat of suicide will be included as a grounds for a pregnancy termination. But Dr Mary Favier, said the expected legislation does not go far enough and not just because it does not allow for abortion in cases of rape, incest or where the foetus cannot survive outside the womb. Changing attitudes She said it will not alter the fact that 11 women leave the Republic every day for a British termination. "Basically what we want to see is the 5,000 Irish women who travel every year will no longer have to do so and can exercise their rights to have good quality reproductive healthcare at home in Ireland. And let's accept that Ireland has abortion like every other European country has but it has to be provided in the jurisdiction of Ireland. This is what the government has to face up to and this is what the Irish people want to see changed," she said. Several opinion polls taken since the death of the Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar suggest overwhelming support for the government's expected proposals. Mrs Halappanavar died in a Galway last October while miscarrying. She was reportedly told she could not have an abortion because Ireland is a Catholic country. Another pro-choice doctor, Peadar O'Grady - a consultant child psychologist - said there has been an amazing change in Irish attitudes to pregnancy termination. Opinion polls "Anti-choice and anti-abortion forces are now seen as a small eccentric minority, whereas before they were seen as a majority. Eighty five per cent of Irish people now support the introduction of abortion services in Ireland; a majority of general practitioners and primary care doctors also support such services but there is still a political job to be done in bringing Ireland kicking and screaming into the 21st century," he said. That is certainly not a view shared by Richard Greene from the Christian Solidarity Party and his fellow protesters outside RTE. He does not trust the opinion polls that suggest a sea change in Irish attitudes to abortion. "I don't believe them," he said. "The real question is how come 35,000 people can come out on the streets against abortion? And how come those who are promoting abortion can only get a few hundred despite being given massive coverage? And that's a phenomenon, not just in this country, but around the world." With the Irish government hoping to have its proposed bill made law by the Dail (Irish parliament) summer break in July, both pro-choice and anti-abortion campaigners are getting ready for a battle lasting several months. |
Emergency services are at the scene of a serious crash between a lorry and a van in Suffolk. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Five ambulances, police, firefighters and an air ambulance were called to the A140 at Little Stonham, near Stowmarket, just after 15:20 GMT. The road has since been closed in both directions at the junction with the A1120. Suffolk Police described the crash as "serious" and said the main road was likely to be closed for some time. The extent of injuries of those involved is not known. |
The shadow justice secretary is accusing Boris Johnson of misleading the Commons at Prime Minister's Questions, when he claimed the government had implemented 16 recommendations from his review into the treatment of ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Leila NathooBBC political correspondent In a letter to the prime minister - seen by the BBC - David Lammy urges Mr Johnson to correct what he calls "a catalogue of falsehoods" - and says only six of those 16 recommendations have been implemented. Mr Lammy was asked by former Conservative prime minister David Cameron to carry out an independent review into the treatment of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities by the criminal justice system in England and Wales. His report, published in September 2017, contained 35 recommendations. During Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Boris Johnson said: "Sixteen of the Lammy recommendations have been implemented. A further 17 are in progress; two of them we are not progressing." Earlier this week, Justice Minister Alex Chalk answered a written parliamentary question saying 16 had been "completed", 17 were still in progress and two were not being taken forward. In his letter, Mr Lammy says he presumes the prime minister was referring to the same 16 - but says of those, only six have actually been implemented. They include the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) publishing all datasets held on ethnicity, the MoJ and Parole Board reporting on the proportion of prisoners released by offence and ethnicity, as well as the proportion of each ethnicity who go on to reoffend, and the Youth Justice Board publishing an evaluation of a trial of its 'disproportionality toolkit'. But Mr Lammy says there are clear examples of measures that have not been implemented - such as the publication of all sentencing remarks in Crown Court in audio or written form, and the renaming of youth offender panels. He writes that if the government is serious about correcting injustices, "it needs to be honest about the actions it has taken". He says the effect of Mr Johnson's comments was that the House was misled - a breach of parliamentary rules - and says he must correct the record. The letter is copied to the Speaker. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "We set out our action plan in response to the Lammy Review in December 2017. "We have completed the actions we committed to for 16 of the recommendations, and actions for a further 17 will be completed within 12 months." Downing Street has been approached for a comment. |
Terrifying tales of "hell hounds" - ferocious black dogs, eyes glowing and teeth bared as they wreak vengeance on the population - have been the stuff of legend for centuries. It has cemented the place of these mythical beasts in English folklore, but how and why have accounts of their terrifying marauding spread so far and wide? | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Katy PrickettBBC News In 1577, according to one particularly poetic account, a snarling beast broke into a church, rampaged through the congregation and bit the necks of two people - who promptly dropped dead. Having traumatised the churchgoers of Bungay in Suffolk, the mythical dog - known as Black Shuck - next cropped up on the county's coast at Blythburgh. Again, it targeted worshippers - bursting though the doors of Holy Trinity Church before killing a man and boy and causing the steeple to collapse. The beast left scorch marks on the church door, according to legend. Photographer and researcher Nick Stone is mapping similar stories and has so far collected between 400 and 500 accounts. Stories added to the map speak of lonely pets pining for dead masters and packs of hounds led in "wild hunts" by men on horseback. Hell hounds were also reported to appear at 17th Century witch trials. But not all accounts of Black Shuck depict the beast as a ferocious predator. In Littleport in Cambridgeshire, a shadowy canine is said to have turned protector, rescuing a local girl from an attempted rape by a friar. According to legend, the dog died in the struggle and its ghost was left to wander through the countryside. There are similar stories of a black dog under other names along the east coast of England. Norwich-based Mr Stone, who began the interactive mapping project in August, as part of Public Archaeology 2015, said: "Living in Norfolk, it's probably the most prevailing piece of kids' scary folklore." While the stories largely spread through word of mouth, the earliest written record of the "hell hound" is found in the 11th and 12th Century Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The chronicler wrote that "reliable witnesses" had seen packs of dogs, "jet black with eyes like saucers and horrible", led in a "wild hunt" by men on horseback, travelling through the woods stretching between Peterborough and Stamford. Lorna Richardson, a researcher in public archaeology at the University of Umeå in Sweden, said folklore was often overlooked when assessing the importance of a landscape or place. "There are lots of different takes on this dog legend and, as Nick's map has shown, it spreads into Europe and back in time." |
Turkey is a divided, unhappy country. It is not clear exactly what motivated the men who plotted the coup. But they tried to seize control at a time when Turkey is deeply divided over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's project to transform the country, and hurting badly by the contagion of violence from the war in Syria. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Jeremy BowenBBC Middle East editor The Turkish government has indirectly accused the exiled Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen of being behind the coup. Mr Erdogan has in the past blamed Mr Gulen for a variety of Turkey's ills. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim threatened any country that would "stand by" Mr Gulen "won't be a friend of Turkey and will be considered at war with Turkey". Mr Gulen lives in self-imposed exile in the United States. He was an ally of Mr Erdogan's, and was sometimes known as Turkey's second most-powerful man, before they fell out. Strengthened president? Turkey is important in the Middle East because of its geographic position, straddling Europe and Asia; because it is a leading member of Nato; and because the Islamist President Erdogan and his AK party have taken a strong interest in the Sunni Muslim-led governments in the region. In a speech a Turkish newscaster said she was forced to read at gunpoint, the plotters claimed that they were aiming to restore Turkey's secular democracy. The ruling AK party has become expert at winning elections, but there have always been doubts about Mr Erdogan's long-term commitment to democracy. Once, he compared democracy to a bus you take to your destination, and then get off. President Erdogan is a political Islamist who has rejected modern Turkey's secular heritage. He has been increasingly authoritarian, locking up troublesome journalists and others. Now that he has crushed an attempted coup he might try to impose an even tighter regime on the country. Mr Erdogan served as prime minister for many years. Now he is trying to change the constitution to turn himself into a strong executive president. Key player Mr Erdogan and his governments have been deeply involved in the war in Syria since it started in 2011, backing mainly Islamist militias fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. But violence has spread across the border, helping to reignite the fight with the Kurdish PKK, and turning Turkey into a target for the jihadists who call themselves Islamic State. The West sees Turkey as part of the solution in the Middle East. That requires stability, and without it a simple equation applies. Turmoil in the Middle East plus turmoil in Turkey equals trouble for everyone. But it can be argued that Turkey has made a lot of trouble on its own in the region and is deeply tied up in the conflicts of its neighbours. Recep Tayyip Erdogan's governments have shown a much keener appetite about getting involved in the Middle East than the Turkish people. He has been a key backer of the mainly Islamist militias that have been fighting Syria's president since 2011. Recently he has been patching up relations with Israel - but President Erdogan also has a natural affinity with Israel's enemy Hamas - which shares roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. And Turkey is seen by the EU as a vital part of schemes to control the flow of migrants from the Middle East. Turkey is facing increasing turmoil, and the attempt to over thrown President Erdogan will not be the last of it. |
Four postcode areas of Wales are among the 20 worst across the UK for drink and drug-driving, a new study has shown. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Llandrindod Wells in Powys has the highest proportion of motorists with these offences with 1.98 per 1,000. Swansea is fourth with 1.76 convictions per 1,000, Cardiff is sixth with 1.71 and Newport is 12th with 1.62. The information came from analysing 11 million car insurance quotes by postcode over the past 12 months. The drink and drug-driving rate for motorists in the LD postcode is more than double that of some Greater London areas, according to the study compiled by an insurance comparison website MoneySuperMarket. The LD postcode includes Llandrindod Wells, Builth Wells, Brecon and Rhayader. |
The world's oldest technology magazine is the MIT Technology Review. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Peter DayGlobal business correspondent Published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2011 it produced a special supplement of original science fiction stories written by top writers from the genre. The Review says its normal mission is to identify important new technologies, and decipher the practical impact they will have on our lives. The sci-fi edition - with contributors such as Cory Doctorow and Elizabeth Bear - was an attempt to do that in an unusual way. The magazine called this "hard" sci-fi. There's a great tradition at work here. When the MIT graduate John Campbell took over the editorship of Astounding Stories Magazine in 1937, he changed the name to Astounding Science Fiction, and insisted that the fiction contained convincing science and characters. This ushered in what people say was the golden age of sci-fi writing, producing a hugely influential magazine. One Astounding story told how to make the atomic bomb one year before Hiroshima. But trying to predict the future is hard, and often wrong; that does not (however) mean it's a futile exercise. If, that is, prediction is what sci-fi is about. There are different critical views about this. Some people argue that far from being far-seeing, most science fiction simply projects current concerns into a fantasy future unhindered by contemporary reality. But futurology it really isn't. Possible futures? The other month at the St Gallen Symposium debates in Switzerland, I had a chat about some of this with the Toronto-based sci-fi author Robert Sawyer. He has written more than 20 acclaimed books, such as Flash Forward, The Terminal Experiment, Hominids, and Mindscan. In 2003 Mr Sawyer won the top sci-fi honour, the Hugo award. His work is not about aliens and rocket ships. Instead he says it is more about social interactions with the future. He thinks the job of sci-fi writers as a whole is to produce "a smorgasbord of plausible futures", not to predict which of them will actually happen. Mr Sawyer points out how popular sci-fi has been in totalitarian societies such as the Soviet Union, as a way of writing about things that cannot openly be talked about. He is the most popular foreign sci-fi writer in China, he says. Fictionalised into the near future, he can write about attempts to control the internet, for example, circumventing conventional here-and-now censorship. We talked about Sir Arthur C Clarke, inventor of the communications satellite. In 1947, 10 years before the first space satellite was launched, Clarke worked out that a satellite 23,000 miles above the equator would stay stationary in the sky. From this idea - published as a working paper in Wireless World - came what is now the global satellite network. And then there is the chilly epic 2001 A Space Odyssey, jointly developed by Clarke and the director Stanley Kubrick. The movie's famous computer Hal 9,000 was a wonderful forerunner of artificial intelligence: Hal could understand speech, beat humans at chess, recognise faces, and attempt moral reasoning. "This is the continuing agenda of the computer revolution," says Mr Sawyer. Too optimistic? Robert Sawyer says his books are optimistic. Today is better that 50 years ago, in 50 years' time things will be better still. They know this in China, he says, at least from the material experience of the past 30 years. But in the West, how many can say they are better off than a few years ago? We are stalled in the old paradigms, unable to see what is happening to the world. Is Robert Sawyer not guilty of techno optimism, I asked him: a sort of over confidence about what science can and will bring about, whatever it is? No he says, it's humano-optimism. In the face of widespread resistance to the idea, you can change human nature, and it's happening, he says. Mr Sawyer gives the example of the way men are now involved with bringing up children in the West in a way undreamed of 60 years ago. And the creation of the European Union after centuries of European strife. "Sci-fi is just as much about social science as technology," he says. Robert Sawyer is also enormously optimistic about something that worries many people: the future of energy. With his sci-fi writer's approach, he foresees a vast expansion of sustainable energy, bringing down the cost of energy to approaching zero. Rapacious robots? Meanwhile, some futurologists - notably the American Ray Kurzweil - are busy predicting that moment out in the 2050s when artificial intelligence might - they argue - at last outstrip its human counterpart, and then go on getting better. It follows the computer power expansion laid down in 40 years ago in Moore's Law: a doubling of the power on a silicon chip every two years. "When we have machines that are as intelligent - and then twice as intelligent as we are," says Mr Sawyer, "there is no reason why that relationship cannot be synergistic rather than antagonistic." He adds that the single biggest flaw with people being fearful of future clever computers or robots "is the idea that a superfast, super powerful intelligence that is not human will share human rapaciousness". Ideas such as this are explored in Robert Sawyer's sci-fi trilogy WWW - Wake, Watch and Wonder. They describe the world wide web gaining consciousness. Fact or fiction? For the moment, I will leave you to decide. |
The Magazine's recent piece on changing your name by deed poll prompted lots of readers to email examples. Here are 25 of the best. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
People change their given names for many reasons, as discussed in the article, and a wide selection is represented here. 1. I changed my middle name last week from Eleanor to Deci after collecting sponsorship to do so. I raised about £400 for the mental health groups I work for. It's only being changed for a year so I don't have to worry about getting a new passport though. A lot of people are calling me Deci or Decibel at the moment. Janet Deci Bell, London 2. My wife and I changed our names when we married. It seemed unfair that I kept my surname and she had to give up hers. A new name also gave us the chance to create something that belonged just to us. By combining our surnames, Walker and Bland, we came up with Blake. Twenty-seven years later we're a pair of very happy Blakes. David Blake, London 3. I took a bet with my work colleague to change. He bet me £1,000 I would not do it but I did. At the time I was 23 stone so the name - John ateall-thepies - was appropriate. This was over two years ago and I am now 15 stone after a long diet. I have since changed my name back to John Spring as I got asked so many times as to why I had this name due to my new figure! John Spring, Sutton 4. Changed name to RU Seerius to stand for parliamentary election. Monster Raving Loony Party of course. Jonathan Brewer, Derbyshire 5. I had my middle name changed to "Danger". Names aren't that important and I think everyone should choose their own name when they come of age. There should be less James Smiths and more Zig-Zag Banana-Hammocks in this world. My mum was fairly mystified when she found out but she didn't give me a middle name to start with so it's sort of her fault anyway, leaving me a blank canvas to paint on. My friend paid for the name change as a birthday present. I'm thinking of changing my first name to "Incredible". Lee Danger Cooper, London 6. I was christened Julian Ralph Willetts Cook but found myself in a school year with four other boys named Julian. At the time my parents were living in Africa so I travelled a bit more than other kids at school, and with the surname Cook I ended up with the nickname Thomas Cook (the travel agent). This quickly got shortened to Tom, which is what I got used to being called. I filed a statutory declaration to simply add Tom on to the front of my existing names. My sister and my niece and nephew as well as my aunt and cousins still call me Julian, and my wife has got used to switching to Julian when we are with them. For everyone else, I'm Tom. Tom Cook, Cowbridge 7. I changed my name to Joseph Stuart James Walcroft-Woodward from my birth name Stuart James Woodward. I changed my family name after genealogical research proved that my direct male line ancestors had a different name. I also first-named myself after a hero from my ancestry, Joseph, who fought and survived throughout the Peninsular War (1807-1814) as well as military service before and after that. I have retained my birth names because I like them and also in honour of my parents. In all normal circumstances I am still known as Stuart Woodward and called Stuart. The rest is really just for my own deeply-held feelings of connection to my forbears. Joseph Stuart James Walcroft-Woodward, Colchester 8. I changed my name last year. I was registered at birth as Anne Carolyn but was called Carolyn from a young child. After a serious illness which involved undergoing lots of hospital procedures, I was sick to death of being called Anne so I applied to have the Anne removed from my name and now I am just Carolyn Mitchell - and very happy with it! Carolyn Mitchell, Harrogate 9. I changed my surname by deed poll to take my wife's name when we got married. I believe the practice of the woman taking the man's name is somewhat anachronistic. It also helped that my surname was Green so Chapelle is much nicer! Similarly my wife is one of two sisters so there is a concern the Chapelle name would die out. Of course, the law of Sod, we have now gone on to have two daughters so let's hope they find a man prepared to do the same. Dan Chapelle, Ipswich 10. I had to pay to change my name to have the same married surname as my partner and now my son. I was not allowed to double up my surname with my partner's as she did with mine when we married. Lee Hamilton-Evans, Brighton 11. I was Caroline for the first 17 years of my life, but I've been Charlie for the last 24 years. My mother chose a very popular first name for me - I had nine school friends in my year with the same name, or a variation thereof - so, to be different, I changed it in my last year of school, much to the amusement of my fellow pupils. I chose Charlie in honour of my grandfather, of whom I was very fond. I changed my name legally in 1994 in order to have my new name on my passport. Charlie, Edinburgh 12. I was born Claire Lily Botley and was teased and tormented throughout school. My mum remarried when I was nine and I became legally known as Claire Lily Douglas. My mother divorced her husband and I decided that I wanted my doctorate title to be associated with my maternal family. I recently got married but have decided not to change my surname for the fourth time as I must remain Scott for work purposes. My uncle's speech at my wedding made reference to me having had more surnames than he had had cars. Dr Claire L Scott, Glenrothes 13. I didn't exactly change my name, just added to it. Having lived without a middle name since birth and feeling that I'd missed out, I thought long and hard about it and finally took my father's middle name and changed it by deed poll. My full name is now Alison Ogston Leith. I have two grown up children who were both given middle names - I wouldn't have had it any other way. Alison Leith, Aberdeenshire 14. I changed my name when I was 18 (now 46) but only by reversing my two forenames and then adding a third forename which was a family name. I was Christopher Michael Young, I am now Michael Christopher George Young. My parents were unhappy about the change and my mother still insists on using my former first name! Michael Young, Brighton 15. When I was in the RAF I was offered a Branch Commission (a commission in one's own trade) but it was suggested to me that I change my name as officers and gentleman did not have foreign names. Can you imagine them suggesting that these days? I did change it, but when I was invalided out I changed it back again. I'm not ashamed of being half Greek - quite the opposite. Len Loullis, Stamford 16.When I was a teenager I changed my name when my mum remarried but when she went to the solicitors, she called me and asked if I wanted to change my first name from Charlotte to Charlie as well as changing my surname, to which I said yes. Now as an adult I hate my name being Charlie, with all the "ooh I was expecting to see a man" and "that's a man's name isn't it?" comments. It is my biggest regret. I will shortly be changing my name back to Charlotte! Charlie Hawkes, Wolverhampton 17. I changed my name a couple of years ago now. I can't say it was because I wanted to be a celebrity or anything like that, I just didn't like the former name (John). Do I regret changing my name? No I don't and I can honestly say I feel happier about myself. Admittedly I changed my full name and I'm not sure if I'm entirely happy with the surname but I created it on the basis of ideals and methods that I want to follow. Kai Childheart, UK 18. I changed my surname by statutory declaration as I wanted to leave the surname of my ex-husband, but my new man did not want to get married. I also wanted my new baby to have the same surname as both her parents (she is now 28), and outside the family most people assumed we were married. Anne Course, Surrey 19. I changed my name after my husband left me and we got a divorce in 2010. My maiden name was Ebbage and I think the reason that I did not revert back to it was because I was going through a lot of self-discovery at the time of my divorce. I have always been a fan of Agatha Christie and at the time I was reading her autobiography and her account of the separation from her first husband. After talking it over with my parents I decided to change my name to Lesley Anne Christie and the day I was able to change my name at the bank, at work and the council was the day I finally felt freedom from my upsetting marriage. I love telling people my name and every time I see it and say it, I am reminded of a very wonderful woman and the strength I found inside myself to overcome a very painful time in my life. Lesley Christie, Cheltenham 20. My (then) seven-year-old daughter and I both chose the name O'Hara as our last name based on my Irish ancestry. We rejected both my father's name and her father's name and chose instead our own family name. Why should we be burdened by the name(s) of people we feel no connection with or loyalty to? We chose to abandon the patriarchal naming system and move forward with our own, new, chosen family name. Kate O'Hara, Hong Kong 21. My current name is Alixandrea Corvyn and was chosen by combining my original first name (Alix) with the name of a character I created in a short story I wrote. The Corvyn comes from the Latin "Corvus" for crow and the surname "Corbin" of one of my favourite artists. I was Alixandrea online for a good year or two before I officially changed my name. I also considered it as my "stage name" before deciding to take it for all aspects of my life. Alixandrea Corvyn, Cambridge 22. My previous surname was Timms. My wife's maiden name was Fowler and she had a son by a previous relationship, also with the surname Fowler. Between meeting and marrying we had two further children and we had to decide what we would do for a family name. After discussions with my wife's first son, who didn't want to loose the Fowler name, we decided to hyphenate our surnames and this is the surname given to our two newborn children at birth. For some years we were a family unit with one surname until my wife's first born son elected to change his name to an obscure made up Italian-style name in an effort to attract girls. This didn't work and he suffered a fair deal of abuse from his peers over it so he promptly changed it back. David Fowler-Timms, Northampton 23. When my parents divorced my mum wanted to change her surname but still wanted to have the same name as my brother and I. Since her family are Spanish it seemed like a logical choice to go double barrelled but sometimes I regret it as the UK doesn't seem to be prepared for it. I often have problems filling out my full name and when I do companies drop one of my surnames. Sometimes I wish I had a nice normal name rather than Chani Emily Francisca Lawrence Martinez - it is a bit of a mouthful! Chani Lawrence Martinez, Bristol 24. I changed my surname last September and it was the best decision of my life. I haven't seen my father for over 10 years. While this used to upset me as a child, I now felt it was time to move on. I felt that my old name associated me with him, as it was his surname as well. I took my nana's maiden name and I feel liberated from my past. My nana was honoured that I took her name and I love that people associate me with her because of my name change. Holly Fernyhough, Keele 25. I am an actor and the opportunity to change my name came when I applied to join Equity. There was already someone with my name in the union.I changed my name in 1998, at the age of 30. It took me a very long time to realise that I felt dissociated from it, that my name didn't - and never had - described "me". When I changed it to something I felt more comfortable with, I immediately noticed how much happier I felt to give my name when asked for it. Not that my birth name was a stupid one - it just wasn't me. Richard Ely, Alfreton And someone who was tempted but did not: 26.When I was younger and fed up with all of the jokes I swore I would change my name as soon as I was old enough. Now I wouldn't dream of changing it. It is a part of who I am and it is memorable, which isn't a bad thing at all so long as you are remembered for the right reasons! Bill Badger, Romford |
A family of Romany Gypsies has been given permission to stay on a temporary site in the Brecon Beacons as plans are finalised for a new permanent home. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Powys council intends to spend more than £2m on the new camp in Brecon and said it could open early next year. The family have lived at Cefn Cantref near the town since 2008 and have permission to stay until February 2014. The council will compulsorily purchase land for the new site and it follows a 15-year search for a permanent home. Powys council confirmed that Brecon Beacons National Park Authority had agreed to extend the family's stay at Cefn Cantref. The authority said people had until 20 June to submit objections to the planned new site adjacent to Brecon Enterprise Park. |
A teenager has been charged with stabbing a security guard at a job centre in Liverpool. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The victim, in his 40s, was stabbed in the back at the Jobcentre Plus in Childwall Valley Road, Belle Vale on Monday. An 18-year-old from Liverpool has been charged with wounding with intent, assault by beating and possession of an offensive weapon in a public place. He will appear at Liverpool Adult Remand Court later. The victim has since been discharged from hospital. |
Bathers have been given the all-clear to swim at a Cornwall beach after a pollution scare. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Signs were put up at Par Beach last week after a number of fish were reported to have been killed by a pollutant in the River Par. Cornwall Council said it had removed warning signs because there had been no further reports of pollution. It also said heavy rainfall would have diluted and washed out any pollutant from the river and beach. The Environment Agency is continuing its investigations into the cause of the pollution. Related Internet Links Cornwall Council Environment Agency |
Attempts to encourage women to go for a potentially life-saving smear test don't always fall on deaf ears, but if you're a victim of sexual assault then an insensitive remark urging you to "get over it" or "just get it done" could be enough to put you off for years. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Annie FluryBBC News A survey for Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust found many women don't go for regular smear tests because of embarrassment and you'd be hard-pushed to find any woman who says they look forward to it. However, for women who've survived sexual assault the experience, or even the thought of it, can be almost as traumatic as the original offence. Jo, 49, who was raped when she was young, said she has only summoned the courage twice since her 20s to go for a smear test and said that even making the call to book an appointment "can leave me in bits". While Donna, who was sexually assaulted both as a child and an adult, said "the very thought of a smear test leaves me feeling terrified". Both women find the distress they experience overrides any potential benefits that a smear test might bring. Here, in their own words, they explain how they have attempted but failed to overcome their fears. 'Vulnerable and violated' Donna, 37, who's from the Midlands, said candidly: "I know I might be putting my health at risk as a result. "Last year I had just reached the point where I knew I had to swallow my fears and go. I had been looking at the support that might be available given my past. "Around this time I attended a doctor's appointment for a cold virus and mid-appointment was tackled by my male GP in a verbally aggressive manner about the fact I had not been for a smear test. "His manner and attitude did nothing to take into account any genuine reasons or fears I may have had, and left me feeling vulnerable and violated all over again. "Subsequently I am back to square one, and the very thought of a smear test leaves me feeling terrified. "I have looked at attending a clinic for survivors of sexual assault but the only one is in London and this would involve a long journey and time off work." 'Barely able to speak' "I'm not being precious," said Jo, who's from London. "I'm not being a silly girl. "I know I'm putting my health at risk because of something that someone chose to do to me but I can't do it. "I became very anxious in the lead-up to the appointments, and, somewhat inevitably, become tearful as soon as I walked into the room. "By the time I got on the bed, I was openly crying and barely able to speak. "On both occasions, I've tried to pre-empt things and explained to an untrained receptionist why I needed to have the last appointment of the day and the most patient of nurses. "And although the nurses were lovely, I was so tense on both occasions I had to be asked to come back and try again as they had not been able to collect enough cells. "Of course, I have not gone back." If you need help dealing with rape or sexual assault you can find information here. If you have concerns about attending a cervical screening following a sexual assault you can contact Rape Crisis for support. You might also be interested in: |
A horse has been rescued from a muddy ditch by firefighters in Oxfordshire. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The owner said his animal was startled by something and ran into the ditch where it became trapped. Fire crews in dry suits and a specialist rescue team managed to lift the distressed horse to safety at the farm in Nether Worton at Hempton, near Banbury, on Saturday. The animal was checked over by a vet and had not suffered any serious injuries. |
The Gambia is known to tourists as "the smiling coast of West Africa", but this masks something more troubling. On his last trip before his untimely death this week, journalist Chris Simpson navigated the different worlds that exist in the small country. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
I had been in The Gambian capital, Banjul, less than an hour and here I was, car pulled over, explaining my business to a group of men in uniform. A thrillingly sinister start to a week-long holiday? Not quite. I had fallen into the clutches of the tourist police, identity badges to the fore, courteous to a fault. "Are you lost?" they asked. They had guessed right. A 12-hour journey from neighbouring Senegal had taken its toll and I had lost patience with my taxi driver's wearing "welcome to Africa" banter and general cluelessness. Sheepishly, I agreed to a police escort. The commander jumped in next to the somewhat nonplussed man at the wheel and me, the slightly fake out-of-season tourist. We tracked down the pre-booked hotel. I checked in, but not before a semi-stern warning from my new friend: "Only ride in the green taxis designated for tourists; watch yourself, there are lots of cheats and chancers about." Yes, the con artists, hard-luck stories and fake friends are out there. Open your heart and your wallet if you must, but show some discrimination. And be mindful that ordinary Gambians have considerably more to fear than you do, never more so than now. The man they are on the run from, sometimes literally, is President Yahya Jammeh. He was less than 30 when he took power in 1994, ousting his predecessor, the much older Dawda Jawara. The president is now 51, but middle age has not mellowed him. Gambian friends told me not to make the common outsider's mistake of treating their leader as a maverick or eccentric - "tyrant" was nearer the mark, they said. "Every day we think about the president's health... and hope it is getting worse," a Gambian back from long stints abroad remarked. Diplomats, both western and African, see The Gambia in freefall. The torture testimonies and accounts of citizens gone missing are too widespread and well-documented to be ignored. Huge numbers of Gambians are discreetly leaving, which has become known as "taking the back way". The last time I had been in Banjul, Gambian journalists had talked openly to me about rough rebukes from the president. They had tried to work out when the threats were serious, and when they were just scare tactics. This time, I proceeded more cautiously. A young reporter at an independent paper agreed to an office rendezvous. He steered me into a side room and talked shyly but candidly about the state of the nation and the fear which truth-tellers had to put up with. For sure, he said, his phone was tapped. His friends often urged each other to soften messages on social media as the security forces are reading, and they do not take kindly to jokes about the leader. From Our Own Correspondent has insight and analysis from BBC journalists, correspondents and writers from around the world Opposition activists, once loyal to Mr Jammeh, were more bullish. They told me of the president's petty jealousy, his willingness to turn friends into foes. They said the people would get rid of him, maybe at the elections in December. But I could not share their confidence. But how did all this play out in the enclaves patrolled by my friends from the tourist police? The smallest country on mainland Africa has prided itself on the welcome it extends to visitors. Revenues from tourism account for close to 20% of GDP. The same package has worked for a long time: Sun-baked beaches, mangrove forests for the more intrepid, the drumming and exotic birdlife. It is a cut-price paradise; a newly declared Islamic Republic where beer is cheap and sex is openly available to both male and female tourists. Same-sex relationships, though, are not part of the scene. President Jammeh has volunteered to slit the throats of homosexuals. On earlier visits, I snobbishly wrote off the tourist belt as toytown Africa, dispiritingly subservient and banal, geared towards clients who are uncurious about the country they were staying in. This time I tried harder. Resisting the freelance blandishments of chancers promising a glimpse of the real Africa, I signed up for a day tour with the official tourism authorities. My guides knew their country. Patient, good humoured and informative, they stayed off politics but were no starry-eyed propagandists. The tour took us from ancient artefacts and historic photographs, to friendly crocodiles and hard-up wood carvers, to an impoverished primary school and an upmarket beach bar. The sky had more grey than blue and it all felt a little like hard work, as if The Gambia was clinging on to an image everyone knows to be an illusion, while a darker, meaner reality now intrudes. Chris Simpson died unexpectedly on Wednesday at the age of 53. He had been a correspondent for the BBC in Angola, Rwanda, Senegal and the Central African Republic. |
Scots author Karen Campbell has written a number of novels. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Giancarlo RinaldiSouth Scotland reporter, BBC Scotland news website She started out in crime fiction but her latest work - The Sound of the Hours - is set mainly in a small Tuscan town during World War 2. Recently, however, she has turned her attentions to a slightly different project. She is working with staff at Dumfries and Galloway Council to capture how they responded to the coronavirus pandemic in the region. 'Beyond the call of duty' "The project of writer in residence at the council is part of a wider regionwide arts project called Atlas Pandemica being done by the Stove (an artist-led community group) in Dumfries," she explained. "The Stove invited local artists to bid for commissions about trying to document and make some sort of artistic response to what has been happening with the pandemic in Dumfries and Galloway." The Galloway-based writer already had some knowledge of the subject having volunteered with the council's communications unit at the start of the crisis. She submitted her idea - which was accepted - to record how staff were going "above and beyond the call of duty". Anthology aim "Basically what I am doing is reaching out to council staff, as many different types of jobs as possible, asking them to tell me their experiences and then I am going to fictionalise these," she said. "No-one will recognise themselves in a story it will just be me trying to give a flavour of the sorts of jobs and the sorts of ways people were coping over the initial three months. "I am hoping to produce an anthology, ideally a hard cover paperback anthology that you can hold but at the very least something that is online." It will sit alongside a bigger artwork planned by Atlas Pandemica near the end of the project in December. 'Slice of humanity' "I have had a range of stuff from people working in refuse collection to people administering grants for businesses to teachers trying to create their classes online," said Ms Campbell. "I really want to get that cross-section of everybody that had to step up to the mark." She said she believed the stories would be relevant to people outside the local authority. "We are all in this together and everyone that works for the council is still a mum trying to teach her kids at home or a person worried about their elderly relative who is shielding," she said. "It is a slice of humanity really that I am trying to gather." 'Piece of history' Ms Campbell said the process had been "a lot different and a lot quicker" than writing a novel. "This is giving staff a wee moment to stop and think - we did do something differently there," she said. "It is almost like a piece of history I want to pin down. "I want to do this job well - not be sycophantic and not say everything was great - but just to give individual wee moments and individual voices the chance to be heard." 'Bad press' Ms Campbell said it might also be a chance to address the "bad press" local authorities sometimes get. "I don't know if there is always that appreciation of the huge amount of care that there is within councils," she said. "Folk in there really care about what they are doing." Through her final work - whatever format it ultimately takes - she hopes to shine a "wee spotlight" on the good work they do. Extract from the short story Winter is Coming You realise all the time that this will happen, with or without you, that communities will grow and protect and shelter and provide. Hunched in the alienation of your spare room and your virtual screens, you realise it is their turn to matter, and it is your job to hold hands and steer and shepherd, to gather and steward and open up the box, to burst the bubbles and unlock doors and let folk soar, if they want to. Suddenly, you understand. Why we call them services, and what it is to serve. Courtesy of Karen Campbell |
When two women wrote about how they had been "gaslighted" - made to question their sanity by an abusive partner - many readers, male and female, got in touch to share similar experiences. Here, three of them explain how they were left feeling utterly isolated. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
"I actually thought there was something wrong with my memory" I moved from southern England to a small Scottish village to be with the love of my life, a handsome and charming man who made me feel more alive and special than I ever thought possible. Just before I moved, a friend said he thought my boyfriend wouldn't be happy until he had me living in the middle of nowhere, far away from anyone and all to himself. At the time I laughed it off but it turned out it couldn't have been more true. At first he was completely attentive. He worked away as a lorry driver but he called every morning, throughout the day and last thing at night. I thought this was really nice of him but I started to notice he was really ratty if I missed a call because I was in the bathroom or in a shop. He became more and more short-tempered when I told him I had begun to make friends, causing us to have arguments on the phone. One day, after he had left for work, a woman from the village asked if I would like to go round to her house for some wine. I had a really nice evening. When I got home, my mobile had several missed calls and many text messages. I had left it behind and not thought about it. The text messages started off asking why I wasn't answering the phone, and descended into calling me all sorts of horrible names, accusing me of being out with other men and so on. I couldn't believe what I was reading - this had come out of nowhere. I sent him a text explaining where I had been. He immediately called and shouted at me for 10 minutes, not letting me speak. These arguments would make me feel terrible and he would blame me for not being able to concentrate or sleep because he was worrying about me, and therefore a danger on the road. But then he would send lavish flowers and I would feel grateful he wasn't angry with me any longer. I lived in a constant state of confusion and worry, never knowing what I had done to make him angry, and worried in case he had an accident. Another time, when he was home, I was walking up the lane to our house when the farmer who owned the land stopped by. We leaned over the farm gate and had a long chat, looking out at the beautiful view. When I went into the house my boyfriend was sitting in a chair, staring at me. He kept denying there was something wrong, but he wouldn't speak to me and kept glaring. Eventually he said he knew what had been going on all this time - I was making a fool of him and having an affair with the farmer! I couldn't believe my ears, but he wouldn't listen to me. I soon stopped visiting my friends in the village. I didn't dare go out in the evenings because he would call the house phone to check where I was. He didn't like me going out to work either, so I was pretty much stuck at home in the middle of nowhere. In some ways it was a relief because I didn't have to pretend to people that all was well. I spent the next nine years walking on eggshells, never knowing if I was doing the right thing or the wrong thing in his eyes. His ultimate punishment was to attempt suicide. He did this more than once after an argument, which completely destroyed my confidence in myself. I was a confident, independent person when we met, and by the time he eventually left me I was a shell. He would also try to make me think I had gone mad by claiming I had said things that I knew I hadn't. Silly things, like I'd make spaghetti Bolognese and he'd accuse me of adding carrots just to upset him, even though I followed the same recipe every time. Or he would say I hadn't cleaned a room when I had, and would clean it all over again. Taken individually, those incidents seem stupid and trivial but he would be so convincing that I would start to question myself. I actually thought there was something wrong with my memory. I couldn't argue any more. I couldn't get my brain to think of a good response because his arguments were completely irrational. It was easier to just agree. I became a quiet, dull person - a shadow of my former self. What is gaslighting? I didn't really look like myself either - he didn't like me going to get a haircut because I had a male hairdresser, so I started cutting my own hair. I stopped wearing make-up or high heels. If I wore nice clothes, I was "dressing up" for somebody. I had to think about everything I did. Before, I was confident, I was always happy, always laughing. If I laughed at something on TV, he would get angry - he thought I was laughing at him. I trained myself not to be happy. Friends of mine have said, "How on Earth do you do that?" But it's the only way to cope. If you don't let yourself be happy, you can't get too hurt or upset by what's happening to you. It doesn't make a lot of sense, looking back. I made two failed attempts to leave. But mostly I felt like I'd made my bed with this person, and I had given up too much to be with him. I hoped it would all turn around and it would be OK - but it never was. It's a bit like a dog that isn't treated well - it stays loyal to the person that feeds him. The day he told me we were splitting up I thought I had won the lottery but a few months later, he decided he wanted to get back together. When I refused, he tried to lure me back to the house. That was really quite scary. He was on a mission - if he couldn't have me, then nobody could. I was afraid he was going to kill us both. I spent about three years hiding from him, constantly moving house. I completely disappeared. What I didn't realise was that it would take years for me to get back to being myself and repair the damage he did to me. I will never forgive him and I'm telling my story so that hopefully it might help somebody else. Caroline, UK "As a man, I feel I have to keep quiet about it" I'm glad that abuse like this is finally being taken much more seriously. Because although some of the other abuses I had suffered with my wife were long-lasting, the psychological abuse, especially in the form of gaslighting, was maybe the worst. It has taken me a lot of therapy to work through the pain. I still look back at things that happened, even petty things like how she had hung up a picture in the main hallway of our apartment and when I commented on how nice it looked, she insisted it had been there for two weeks and I was stupid for not noticing it sooner. It was such an obvious place because it was hung right where the living room met the hallway. You could clearly see it from two parts of the apartment. I couldn't believe I would have missed something so obvious for so long. This was the kind of thing that began happening more and more. She would call me at work and say there was something wrong, that I had to come home - then, when I did, she would say I shouldn't have left work and make me feel like I'd overreacted. I ended up losing a job over this. I would plan to do things with friends, but in the lead-up she would create problems so I couldn't go. Then she'd say: "Oh, weren't you supposed to go out?" I could no longer make any plans, big or small. I became afraid of the consequences of anything I did, because I didn't want to be punished. I gained weight and got depressed, but still had this hopeless desire to make things work. Sometimes things escalated and she became physical, but I had been raised to never hit a woman, so I didn't fight back. I couldn't see what good would come of it. Further help and resources The situation came to a head when she threatened my life. We were having an argument while we were driving, and she purposely wrecked the car. Luckily our child was not with us at the time. That was when I knew I had to get out. Since I left the relationship there have been a few difficult things to deal with because I am a man. The help for men who come out of abusive situations can be incredibly slim. When I was in the process of leaving my wife, there was no shelter assistance and I was frequently referred to homeless shelters. As I was also trying to take our very young child out of the situation with me, that was not an option. We ended up living with family in the end. Then there is the social stigma. I feel I have to keep quiet about it because many people, even potential new partners, view the abuse as something that I, as a man, "should have done something about" - as though if I had just put my foot down, it all would have been fine. That sometimes feels like an extension of the abuse. Dwayne, US "He stole everything from me" Things started to go really wrong at the wedding. The vintage bus he had booked to transport our guests didn't turn up - it had broken down, he said. In fact he had never paid for it. At the reception, I found out later, he asked our guests for cash, saying he still had things to pay for and he didn't want to spoil my day. We had met on a dating site a year earlier. He was a widower and told me he missed his child, who was living with his late wife's family. I felt for him, he seemed like such a good guy. A contractor working in IT, he was generous and looked after me, taking on the boring little tasks of life, like sorting out the car insurance or my medication. Soon I made a discovery that shocked me. His wife had not died a year before we met, like he'd told me, but just six weeks earlier. He said he was sorry. He had been unhappy and lonely. Somehow, I forgave him. That's what marriage is about, right? He managed to alienate me from all my friends and colleagues. He said one of my friends made a pass at him, so we avoided her. Another friend was "taking advantage of me" so I should cut her off. Or maybe he didn't feel like going out because he was feeling low, or he hadn't been paid, so we would stay in. I always ended up doing what he wanted, to try and make him happy. But it got to the point where no matter what I did, nothing would make him happy. When he was offered an exciting new opportunity in Spain, I left my well-paid job and removal men packed up our belongings. But there were delays - payments kept not coming through, contracts weren't honoured. Nothing was ever his fault. My redundancy money drained away. I tried to help him sort his finances out, but every time I was due to meet an accountant or a solicitor, something happened: a mix-up, they were ill or they'd had an accident - a couple of them actually died, he said. Nothing made any sense, I thought I was losing my mind. I was very depressed and considered killing myself. He did absolutely nothing to dissuade me. I realise now that if I had died, he would have had a payout from my pension. Was that the price he put on my life? You may also be interested in: He was often away for days at a time, taking my car. Summonses for unpaid parking tickets began to arrive in my name. Bailiffs knocked on the door, demanding payments for other unpaid bills - he had taken out credit cards in my name. The car turned out not to be insured. When I confronted him, he said it was a mix-up, he had definitely paid. I tried to hide the car, but he found it. He said he was hurt by my lies: why had I not told him where it was parked? He said he couldn't talk to me any longer because I wasn't on his side. He felt like he was all alone in the world - and it was all my fault. One day, when he came back from one of his jaunts, he left his bag in the car. Inside, I found a letter from another woman. She wrote that she loved him, and was sorry that he was homeless. Homeless? He had several homes - the one we were renting in Spain, and one here with his wife. I walked back upstairs to find him waiting for me. He demanded his bag back. I said "No." He twisted my arm and slammed me up against the wall. My dog put her ears back and growled at him, which she had never done before. He let me go. Distraught, I took my dog and drove to my friend's office in London. When she came out to meet me, she said: "You do realise you're wearing your pyjamas, don't you?" He disappeared six months ago. He has stolen everything from me. I lost my income, my credit rating, and for a short time, my sanity. I can't even get my stuff back - I thought it had been shipped to Spain, but actually it's been in storage and about to be auctioned off. I can't go back to my old life, I can't face having to explain. And who would believe me? If they know him, they'll say: "But he's such a nice guy." He was so clever at picking up on my weaknesses and my good nature. He destroyed me from the inside out - he made me doubt my own sanity. When I went to the police they said: "Everybody lies, there's nothing we can do about it." And the lies keep coming. His mother was surprised to hear from me - he told her I was in hospital in Germany, following a suicide attempt. She had given him thousands of pounds to pay for my care. When I tracked down one of his other women, she was horrified. He had told her I was his mentally unstable sister, who had a controlling husband. They were planning to move in together. I don't know where he is now but I fear he has found his next victim. I wish I could warn her, but nobody will listen. Esther, UK All names have been changed Illustrations by Katie Horwich Interviews by Vibeke Venema Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. |
A carnival parade, a picnic and a prince. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Peter HuntDiplomatic and royal correspondent@BBCPeterHunton Twitter William was on The Mall to praise the woman who was the focus of this celebration. The future king's words were directed at his monarch and his grandmother. The Queen travelled, with her husband, in an open-top car, while William, Kate and Harry were in the vehicle behind. It presented an image of the present and the future of the monarchy. It was a notable image with a notable absentee. Prince Charles had chosen to miss the Patron's Lunch and instead attended a street party near his Highgrove home in Gloucestershire. For a Queen, now 90, there will be ongoing adjustments made to her programme. Lifts will be used rather than flights of stairs; the length of visits will be not too long, and standing around will be kept to a minimum. But, officials insist, Elizabeth remains this country's active and fully-engaged head of state. Guests brave rain at Queen's picnic lunch In pictures: The Queen's birthday |
The BBC Technology index has been writing about makers, hackers and other assorted tinkerers for over a year. Time, then, to see if any of the skills and crafts we have filmed and written about have rubbed off. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
All we needed was a project. As if on cue, an e-mail fell into the inbox from Allegra Hawksmoor who told us about a band called The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing. One track of their next album, called Now That's What I Call Steampunk - Volume One, will be available on a wax cylinder. The CD album and single wax cylinder track will be available from 1 June. "As far as we're aware, it's the first album to be sold with (at least a partial) wax cylinder release for the best part of a century," she said. Anyone buying one of the 40 copies of the track on wax will also get instructions for building a phonograph to play the cylinder. Would we be interested in finding out more, she asked? Yes, we said, we would. Just try stopping us. The idea to put one track on a wax cylinder came from band member Andy Heintz. "The second I heard him say it, I knew we had to do it," said Ms Hawksmoor. However, she added, she had no idea whether it was even possible. The internet helped Ms Hawksmoor find Adrian Tuddenham of Poppy Records, one of the few souls in the land that can put digital recordings onto wax cylinders. Finding Mr Tuddenham solved one problem. The other, bigger, task was to draw up plans for a home-brew phonograph that would cost about £20 to make. But she already knew someone who could help with that. Professor Offlogic, aka Sam Kimery, is a veteran maker. "Making things has always been a necessity for me," he told the BBC. "Nobody made good Star Trek props, or toy Geiger counters or any of the neat stuff I wanted to play with," he said. "This led, naturally, to blowing stuff up with a chemistry set, which led to electricity (hey, some of those exploding things needed a remote trigger) and general inventing and tinkering with things." He adds: "If you don't want what everyone else wants you have to make your own, the market just doesn't serve you very well if you are at all strange." This led him to a career in hi-tech and a lifelong interest in making stuff. As a result creating a phonograph from scratch was no stretch, even though he had never actually done it before. "I remember playing an Andy Williams LP using a paper cone and sewing needle as a kid," he said. "That's about as close as I got to this project before." The Prof sent along the plans and we set about getting all the parts together. We scoured DIY shops, craft stores, hobby shops and the cookery aisles of lots of supermarkets. Some bits were easier to find than others. Inspiration struck when we found a cone-shaped metal measuring jug that became our sound horn. The internet helped with other parts, particularly the little motors and pulleys needed to get the cylinder turning. Once we had the bits piled up, the work started. At that point we handed over to Jason Palmer who, as a doctor of physical chemistry, has far more experience with building stuff than anyone else. He takes up the story. Tinker time It is the simplest mechanical means to record and reproduce sound - hence the rich history stretching back to one of history's great inventors. But how about making one, today, with bits you can easily get your hands on? In principle, it's easy, but we were provided nothing more than a schematic with no dimensions, so some careful planning and improvisation were both required through the day. We had our greatest trouble getting a smooth movement of the cylinder. Partly that was down to getting the O-ringed motor shaft centred and stable between the rails on which the cylinder sat. But more than that, the trouble was the sliding friction against those rails. From a design point of view, there are no constraints on these, so take the time to find the right rails and ideally some bearings that they can turn in, or bearings that fit on the rails themselves and can be fitted with O-rings. Our attempts with O-ringed plastic wheels and then with plain rubber grommets were woefully inadequate to keep the cylinder from bouncing all over the shop. One thing to keep in mind throughout is the tiny size of your signal. Even if mechanically everything turns and moves as it should, the phonograph needs to carry a minuscule vibration from the stylus through to a resonator and then out a tube and into a horn. Every connection is another place where sound can effectively be lost, so aim for the shortest path between needle and ear, trying to mechanically isolate anything that's carrying sound. Our first stylus, a carefully cut section of aluminium can, served more to scratch the cylinder than play anything from it; in the end we fitted the player with a length of wire that did the job far better. Sound lessons So, we did it and got it working, after a fashion. Even if it took Poppy Records to help refine the design and improve the sound output. But as has often been said of anything that is hand-made, be it a work of art, a tiled bathroom or a phonograph built from bits; these things are never finished, they are more or less abandoned. Why? Because you know the corners that were cut when the work was being done; the unfinished parts that are obvious to you and no-one else; and all those ideas you had about improving it while making it are clamouring for attention. Even if it works, and works well, you know it could work better. Despite that, there is comfort in knowing that being a hacker or a maker is a journey not a destination, and that no matter how high the shoulders you stand on, you'll never see over the horizon. It is consoling to realise that you, at least, have raised your eyes to the sky and are looking in the right direction. |
An apple a day keeps the doctor away. And over the past day there's been a surge of people eating apples in Poland - but not for medical reasons. Poles have been posting images of apples on social media as a way of protesting against Russia. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By BBC Trending What's popular and why On Wednesday, Russia announced a ban on some fruit and vegetable imports - including apples - from Poland "for sanitary reasons". Polish food producers say the ban is politically motivated as a response to EU sanctions, a claim Russia denies. In response, Poles have been showing their support for local farmers by campaigning on social media. It started on Twitter when the journalist Grzegorz Nawacki shared an image of himself eating an apple and used the hashtag #jedzjabłka, which means "eat apples". "It's the most hurtful thing that could happen to Polish farmers. Over half of apples produced in Poland annually are exported to Russia." says Nawacki. "I thought the best way to help them would be to start eating more apples and drinking more cider. That way some of the apples will get consumed and people will show solidarity with farmers." The hashtags #jedzjabłka and #EatApples began trending on Twitter and within hours the humble Polish apple had become an internet meme. A Facebook page called Eat Apples to Annoy Putin is gathering some of the most popular parody pictures and has so far been liked almost 17,000 times. The campaign has made national news headlines in Poland and the country's agriculture minister is among a number of politicians who've joined the campaign. One of the country's largest supermarket chains, POLOmarket, has also been actively endorsing the hashtag on its Facebook and Twitter pages. A special promotion on its website says, "POLOmarket joins the nationwide #jedzjabłka campaign to popularise the consumption of this great national fruit" and it features recipes where apples are a key ingredient. "I didn't expect it to become so big," Nawacki told BBC Trending. "Perhaps consumers realise they can shape and influence the reality." Anger is growing in Europe over Russia's alleged relationship with Ukrainian rebels. The latest round of EU sanctions on Russia have been described as the toughest since the Cold War. Polish food producers have interpreted Russia's measures on Polish exports as the Kremlin hitting back. There are also reports that Russia may extend restrictions on food imports to the rest of the EU. Reporting by Anne-Marie Tomchak You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending All our stories are at bbc.com/trending |
More than 60 years ago, union leader Placido Rizzotto was killed after standing up to the Mafia in his hometown of Corleone. After campaigning by friends and relatives, he is finally being given a state funeral. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Alan Johnston BBC News One evening, way back in March 1948, Placido Rizzotto emerged from his office in a small town in Sicily. He stopped briefly to chat outside a bar on the main street. Then he walked on into the night, and was never seen again. But nobody had any doubt what had happened to him. The union man lived and worked in the town of Corleone, which has given rise to some of the most ruthless leaders of the Sicilian Mafia. The place would eventually be made infamous around the world as the hometown of the fictional gangster family in the movie The Godfather. Placido Rizzotto had sided with local farm labourers in a confrontation with the mafiosi. He had challenged the gangsters in their heartland, and they had murdered him. 'Symbolic message' But now, more than 60 years on, Italy is honouring this hero in the long fight against organised crime with a state funeral. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano was in attendance to see him being buried in the place where he made his stand - in Corleone. This is only possible because for decades Rizzotto's family and his union colleagues refused to forget his story. They campaigned to persuade the authorities to search for and make as full a recovery of his remains as possible. This was eventually done in 2009. What was left of Rizzotto's body was retrieved from the place where it was dumped all those years ago in a remote stretch of countryside, several kilometres from Corleone. And just recently, DNA testing confirmed the identity of the remains. So now at last a proper burial can go ahead. "The Mafia wanted to send a symbolic message," said Dino Paternostro, who is the current head of the Corleone branch of the CGIL union - the job that Rizzotto had when he was murdered. "Not only were they killing Placido Rizzotto, but they were making him vanish - erasing him." 'Winds of change' The state funeral, however, will help ensure that he will be remembered. "The mafiosi didn't succeed in their objective of erasing Placido Rizzotto," said Mr Paternostro. His death came during a turbulent period in southern Italy in the years just after World War II. Rizzotto had come home to Sicily after joining the Resistance to fight Fascism in the north of the country. And back in Corleone, in keeping with his Socialist principles and union activism, he was soon drawn into the fight for the rights of the area's farm workers, and rural poor. At the time they were pitted against both the land owners and mafiosi interests. And at one point Rizzotto had helped organise an attempt by labourers to occupy fields that were controlled by the gangsters. His successor, Mr Paternostro, has studied the events of the period closely. And he sees the murder in 1948 as part of a Mafia offensive against what he calls the liberalising and democratising "winds of change" that were starting to blow through post-War Sicily. 'Other feelings' Nobody has done more to preserve Rizzotto's memory than his nephew, who was also named Placido Rizzotto in the dead man's honour. "Every time my grandmother spoke about my uncle - even if it was 20 years later - she would cry," he said. "I saw the pain of a mother who did not have her son. His burial means a lot to me. "It is said that the mafia has a good memory: that they never forget. If someone does them wrong, they don't forget and sooner or later, they will make you pay. "Well, I say that the Rizzotto family also has a long memory. And even if 64 years have passed, we have not forgotten." How did he think members of Mafia families still in Corleone would regard the state funeral? Was it possible that they might even feel some sense of shame? Rizzotto's nephew replied that shame was not part of the mafiosi mindset. "They have other feelings," he said. "Shame can be a positive feeling. I don't think the Mafia has positive feelings." Rizzotto vintage But Placido Rizzotto's state funeral is of course much more than just a family affair. It is being seen as symbolically important for the town too. "Over the years the people of Corleone have been followed by a less than enviable reputation," Mr Paternostro said. "They thought we were all mafiosi, or friends of mafiosi, or dominated by the Mafia." He hopes the Placido Rizzotto story will help redress those perceptions. Mr Paternostro said it showed that while the Mafia had indeed always been present in Corleone, it has also been home to those who oppose the gangsters. Brave anti-Mafia activism has played a part in the town's story. And even now, the courage that Placido Rizzotto showed can still be an inspiration. Not far from Corleone, in the rolling hills of western Sicily, there is a farming co-operative set up on land confiscated from the Mafia. Its workers, who initially endured threats from the gangsters, chose to call their new vineyards after Placido Rizzotto. Every bottle of wine that they produce bears his name. |
They're known as the Three Brexiteers - the ministers who all campaigned to leave the EU and are now shaping the UK's foreign relations for years to come. Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox have been racking up the air miles to put the UK's case... | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Gavin StampPolitical reporter, BBC News The foreign secretary has been setting a furious pace in terms of globe-trotting, seemingly spending as much time abroad as he has at home - even during the general election campaign. Of course, he has the edge on his cabinet colleagues as it is his job to be the UK's chief ambassador. His remit includes the full gamut of diplomacy and maintaining inter-state political relations, not just preparing the ground for Brexit and beyond. His travels have taken him to Australasia, East Asia, West Africa and the Balkans among other parts of the world. He pulled rank by being the first British minister to travel to Washington after Donald Trump's election as president. Notable omissions on his itinerary so far include Russia and China. Mr Johnson was due to visit Moscow in April but this was called off amid tensions over Syria. Like his boss, Prime Minister Theresa May, the offer of a visit to Beijing has yet to come but this is expected later this year. The list would be even longer but we've not included EU and Nato foreign ministers' meetings in Brussels and the Iraq and Syria conferences in Paris, and Shimon Peres' funeral in Israel The international trade secretary is the man with the task of banging the drum for British business overseas, with at least one eye on negotiating free trade deals after the UK leaves the EU. While not quite keeping up with Mr Johnson, he has covered plenty of ground himself. As an unabashed Atlanticist who is very much at home over the pond, it was no great surprise that his first destination was the US and that he has also found time in his diary to visit Canada. Other important strategic destinations include the Gulf - he has been on three separate occasions - and India - which in many respects is the biggest but most challenging prize for the UK in the post-Brexit trade scramble. His visits to Europe have been notably and understandably less frequent, with Germany being his destination of choice. The Brexit secretary has been limited in the amount of time he can spend overseas and also where he can go, as his focus is squarely on the negotiations with the EU. He has had to devote much of his time to setting up his department from scratch, fighting Article 50 court cases, piloting legislation through the Commons and preparing for Brexit negotiations. While the EU has specifically ruled out the UK pursuing bilateral talks with individual European countries, Mr Davis has still been out and about, taking his message to European capitals and seeking to deepen understanding of the UK's intentions and positions. He has just about covered most of Scandinavia - but more important, strategically, were his early visits to the Republic of Ireland and Spain - two countries for whom Brexit will have major practical repercussions. He has yet to make it to Paris but has spent plenty of time opposite his French negotiating counterpart Michel Barnier in Brussels. |
A main road in the centre of Bath had to close after a fisherman discovered a suspected hand grenade. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Bomb disposal officers were called to the Kennet and Avon Canal near Bathwick Hill shortly after 13:30 GMT. Avon and Somerset Police said an object, believed to be a World War Two hand grenade, had been discovered by a man who was magnet fishing. The device was taken away for detonation elsewhere and Bathwick Hill was reopened after about two hours. Related Internet Links Avon and Somerset Police |
An Indian man who made his name exposing the "miraculous" feats of holy men as tricks has fled the country after being accused of blasphemy. Now in self-imposed exile in Finland, he fears jail - or even assassination - if he returns. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Samanthi DissanayakeBBC News, Helsinki When a Hindu fakir declared on live television that he could kill anybody with tantric chanting, Sanal Edamaruku simply had to take him up on the challenge. As both were guests in the studio, the fakir was put to the test immediately. The channel cancelled all subsequent programming and he began chanting on the spot. But as the hours passed a note of desperation crept into his raspy mantras. For his part, Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, showed no sign of discomfort, let alone death. He merely chortled his way through this unconventional (and unsuccessful) attempt on his life. He has spent his life as a prominent member of India's small band of miracle-busters, men who dedicate their life to traversing the country demystifying certain beliefs. It's a nation often associated with profound spirituality, but rationalists see their country as a breeding ground for superstition. In the 1990s Edamaruku visited hundreds of villages replicating the apparently fabulous feats some self-proclaimed holy men became renowned for - the materialisations of watches or "holy" ash - exposing them as mere sleight of hand. As a campaigner determined to drill home his point, sometimes with an air of goading bemusement, he has attracted critics. He readily admits he took advantage of the explosion in Indian television channels which discovered an audience fascinated with tales of the extraordinary. "I was campaigning in villages for so long before the television came," he says. "But some people do not like me to be going on television and reaching out to millions of people." But in 2012, four years after his televised encounter with the fakir, a steady drip of water from the toe of a statue of Christ genuinely did, he believes, put his life in danger. Immediately hailed as a miracle, hundreds of Catholic devotees and other curious residents flocked to the shrine in a nondescript Mumbai suburb to watch the hypnotic drip. Some even drank the droplets. Edamaruku was challenged to investigate and so he went to the site with an engineer friend and traced the source of the drip backwards. Moisture on the wall the statue was mounted on seemed to come from an overflowing drain, which was in turn fed by a pipe that issued from a nearby toilet. The "miracle" was simply bad plumbing, he said. It was then that the situation turned ugly. He presented his case in a febrile live television debate with representatives of Catholic lobby groups, while outside the studio a threatening crowd bearing sticks had gathered. He claims they were hired thugs. For some Catholics the veracity of the miracle is no longer the point. Edamaruku, they say, insulted the Catholic church, by alleging the church manufactured the miracle to make money, by claiming the church was anti-science and even casting doubt over the miracle that ensured Mother Theresa's sainthood. In the following weeks, three police stations in Mumbai took up blasphemy cases filed against him by Catholic groups under the notorious Section 295a of India's colonial-era penal code. Section 295a was enacted in 1927 to curb hate speech in a restless colony bristling with religious and communal tensions. It makes "deliberate and malicious" speech insulting to religion punishable with up to three years in prison and a fine. However, some say it is frequently abused to suppress free speech. "Under this law a policeman can simply arrest me even though there has been no investigation... they can just arrest me without a warrant and keep me in prison for a long time… That risk I do not want to take," says Edamaruku. He applied for anticipatory bail, which would prevent police taking him into custody before any investigation - but this was rejected. At the same time, he says, he was getting threatening phone calls from policemen proclaiming their intention to arrest him and telling him that unless he apologised the complaint would never be withdrawn. Threatening comments were posted on an online forum, he says, and contacts in Mumbai told him they had heard talk of somebody being hired to beat him in jail. Catholic groups say they aren't behind any threats Mr Edamaruku may have received. He decided to leave early for a European lecture tour. Finland was the first country to give him a visa and he had friends on the Finnish humanist scene willing to help. He arrived in Helsinki on a summer afternoon two years ago, the endless hours of sunlight saturating both day and night. He thought he would only stay for a couple of weeks until the furore he left behind in India had died down. But the furore has not died down - the Catholic Secular Forum (CSF), one of the groups that made the initial complaint, still insists it will press for prosecution should he ever return. Two years on, he is angry, bitter and defiant. Living in a small flat on the eastern edge of Helsinki, he has forced himself to adjust to an alien landscape. After the crowded hustle of Delhi, more than 3,000 miles away, he can now walk mile upon lonely mile without seeing a single person. His closest friend here - the founder of the Finnish humanist society Pekka Elo - died late last year. "I miss a lot of people… That I cannot meet them is something that saddens me," he says. Since he left India, his daughter has had a child, and his mother has died. He conducts board meetings of the Indian Rationalist Association by Skype and every morning colleagues update him on the latest tales of the supernatural and fraudulent holy men. He plots their downfall. This routine is crucial to him. Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai tried to broker a solution by calling upon Edamaruku to apologise and on Catholic groups to drop their case in return. But Edamaruku staunchly refuses to compromise on what he sees as his freedom of expression. "I don't regret anything I said," he says. "I feel that I have full right to express my views... I am open for discussion and correction but I am not willing to accept anybody's bullying, change my views or submit to their pressure to apologise." Some legal analysts think he could risk returning. The courts recognise that Section 295a is regularly misused, they point out. Writers, activists and others have been arrested and imprisoned even before charge - but most were released on bail. But Edamaruku fears for his safety, pointing to the fate of his friend, anti-black-magic campaigner Narendra Dabholkar. "Narendra Dabholkar… suggested that if I come to Mumbai he and his friends would be able to protect me. I was considering his proposal," Edamaruku recalls, referring to a conversation last summer. But four days later he was murdered, a crime which many believe was linked to his campaign against magic. So Edamaruku spends his time trudging the arresting, bleak forests of Helsinki, sometimes remembering his unconventional childhood in Kerala. His father, born a Christian, grew up to become a rebel who was excommunicated. His mother gave birth to him in the pouring rain having fled her in-laws' Christian home because they pressured her to convert. But the family always managed to reconcile its differences. The bishops and Hindu priests among his relatives could be found sitting around one dinner table laughing at their own beliefs. He insists he has no regrets. "I would do it again. Because any miracle which has enormous clout at one moment, is simply gone once explained. It's like a bubble. You prick it and it is finished." The statue still stands in that sleepy suburb of Mumbai, but it no longer drips. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. |
Counter-terrorism police have been given more time to question a man arrested in Leeds on suspicion of extreme right-wing activity. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The 33-year-old was arrested on Saturday and is being held as part of a pre-planned operation, West Yorkshire Police said. Officers have been granted an extension until 2 March to charge, release or apply for an additional extension. A property in the city is being searched as part of the investigation. At the time of arrest, Supt Chris Bowen said public safety was a "top priority". He added: "If you see or hear something that could be terrorist related, act on your instincts by reporting your concerns." Related Internet Links West Yorkshire Police |
A man who died after an accident at a car parts factory in Shropshire has been identified at an inquest. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
It is not known how Keith Ivison died but he was injured in an incident at the Shrewsbury plant of Stadco on Monday. He died in hospital the early hours of Tuesday, the firm said. The inquest was adjourned to take place at a later date. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is investigating as well as the firm. A spokesman for the firm, which provides parts for the automotive industry, described the death as a "tragic incident". |
BBC drama Call the Midwife is to get its first regular black character. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Casting is already underway for an actress to play West Indian nurse Lucille in the next series. It's to reflect the influence of nurses from the Commonwealth on the NHS in the 1960s. Series creator Heidi Thomas said Lucille will be "elegant, funny and clever" and bring "a fresh new energy to life at Nonnatus House". "My research is continually bringing up new things," Thomas told the BFI & Radio Times Television Festival. "[It] has made me very aware of the contributions made by West Indian and Caribbean nurses to the NHS in the early 1960s. She's going to bring stories with her, and a different cultural point of view, and that's very exciting." Series six of the popular drama finished last month, concluding with a birth, death and a marriage in the final episode. It will return to BBC One for a Christmas special, before series seven kicks off in the new year. The casting news comes as Call the Midwife was voted the best TV drama of the 21st Century in a Radio Times poll. It beat finalists The Night Manager, The West Wing, The Bridge, Happy Valley and Merlin, which won separate genre categories last week. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk. |
"I don't want to live like this, no-one should live like this - but I don't have any options," says Polly Richardson who finds herself at the sharp end of the lack of affordable homes in England. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Michael BuchananSocial affairs correspondent, BBC News For more than a year, she has lived out of a small camper van. "This is my home. I've two sets of clothes in a box. I've got my cups and saucers in this drawer, my pans under this bed, and I have a little camping cooker. "Winter time was horrendous because there was no heating." The 59-year-old grandmother of four from East Yorkshire is one of half-a-million households that aren't even counted as waiting for a council or housing association property, according to the National Housing Federation. New research commissioned by the Federation from Heriot-Watt University says the real number of people in England waiting for such homes is 3.8 million, representing 1.6 million households, or 500,000 more than is indicated by official government data. "I've got belongings in people's garages," says Polly. She spent years working as a retail manager but after taking time off to look after her sick father, and then having a big argument with her sister, she found herself being forced to move into the van in March 2019. "Without a job, you can't have a house. Without a house, they won't give you a job. I'm hoping somebody out there will give me a job," she says. The National Housing Federation say 90,000 homes for social rent need to be built each year for the next decade to meet demand but, according to official figures, just 6,338 such homes were completed in 2018-19, down 84% since 2010-11. The main advantage of social housing - where either the local council or a housing association are the landlord - is that it's more affordable than private rented accommodation, typically around 50% of market rents, and usually offers a more secure tenancy. "What we are seeing is an escalating need for social housing and a lack of supply," says Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation. "Investing in social housing would boost the economy, it would create thousands of jobs, it would support supply chains in the construction industry and it would provide better, more secure, safe housing for people in need." The lack of suitable properties leaves large numbers of families living in overcrowded accommodation. Abigail McManus, a 27-year-old single mother lives in a two-bedroom flat in Leeds with her three young children - two daughters aged six and two and a little boy who's five months old. Leaving her house is a daily grind as she struggles to manoeuvre her double buggy down the stairs. Abigail has been bidding weekly for a three-bedroomed ground floor property for years, without success. She says the council are encouraging her to search further afield to increase her chances being allocated somewhere suitable to live. But she says: "My whole family live on this estate, so I'd like to try and stay as close as possible. "As a single parent, who doesn't drive, it would be hard for me to get anywhere and I'd feel more isolated than I already do, if I move too far from this area." When she was prime minister, Theresa May altered the way in which councils could use funding to allow them to build more homes. Her government predicted the change would lead to 10,000 new council houses each year, a figure that hasn't been reached since 2013-14. While local authorities believe building that number is possible, experts say the pandemic could create problems in the construction industry. The Ministry of Housing said it "didn't recognise" the figures in the new analysis carried out by the National Housing Federation, describing them as a "major overestimation". It also highlighted its £11.5bn investment in affordable homes, to be spent between 2021 and 2026, some of which will be used on building homes for social rent. |
Tales from the past 100 years of the Royal Navy are being recounted in new exhibitions opening later. Visitors to the £11.5m attractions at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth can tour a World War Two submarine or simply reflect on the human stories behind famous battles. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The Royal Navy and Portsmouth walk hand in hand. "Portsmouth is here because of the navy," says Dominic Tweddle, the museum's director general. The city's harbour has been in use since Roman times while a dry dock was first created in the 12th Century. The city's historic dockyard is home to a museum and a set of attractions that explain the debt the nation perhaps owes the navy. For while Mr Tweddle believes people have "become less conscious of the institution's importance", he says the UK's "whole identity and economy" is built on its role in wartime success and ensuring safe international trade. This strength, in turn, has been forged on the individuals who have worked in its service. Lt Albert Edward Pryke "Ted" Briggs, of Redcar, Teesside, is among those sailors whose life story and career is featured at the museum. He was just 18 when he was one of only three people to survive the sinking of HMS Hood in the Battle of the Denmark Strait in 1941 - an encounter which saw 1,415 people killed in the Navy's biggest single loss of life from a ship during WW2. After his ship was sunk by a German battleship, he spent three hours in the water and almost died from hypothermia before being rescued. He then went on to enjoy a 35-year career, which included service during the D-Day landings and the Suez crisis. Head curator Matthew Sheldon said: "It wasn't just about this terrible day in 1941 for him because he went on and fought through the rest of the war as well. "HMS Hood was one of his very first ships so what an incredible thing for an 18-year-old to be in the water and be one of only three men to be pulled out." The more recent story of Sgt Noel Connolly demonstrates how the navy's heroism is not just confined to the sea. The Royal Marine, from 42 Commando, rugby tackled a suicide bomber off his motorbike seconds before he could trigger a device in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2008. Sgt Connolly, from Manchester, was 10m away from the teenager when he heard a loud crack and spotted a toggle switch to detonate the explosives. His actions are cited as having saved the lives of 30 men and the motorbike is among the exhibits on show alongside a video of the explosives being stripped from its saddle. Across the water in Gosport, about £7m has been spent restoring HMS Alliance, Britain's only surviving WW2-era submarine, while a temporary exhibition titled Racing to War charts the Navy's role in the arms race leading up to WW1. In another nod to the centenary of the conflict, the gun from HMS Lance that fired the first British shot at sea on 5 August, 1914 is among the exhibits in the permanent galleries in Portsmouth. HMS Lance and her sister ship Landrail were performing a "sweep" of the North Sea just hours after the outbreak of war when the semi-automatic naval gun fired at a German minelayer off the Dutch coast. Also on show is a sledge used by the search party sent to find the bodies of explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his team after they went missing on their return from the South Pole. Mr Sheldon said choosing what artefacts to show had been difficult, but the aim had been to select "unusual stories" or things that would surprise people. He said: "That might be the Chinese men who were recruited to serve in the navy. Or it might be an artefact that has real drama and pathos to it like the bell that was raised from the wreck of HMS Prince of Wales when it was sunk off Singapore." The more sensitive side of life at sea is also explored in a collection of illustrated letters written by a chief stoker to his sweetheart. Walter Grainger wrote hundreds of love letters to Edith, his fiancée, while serving in the Far East. In one, he wrote: "Each letter I write now is drawing nearer to the last, drawing so close that I can nearly count how many more I shall have to write before I shall have the happiness to see you myself with my own eyes, touch you with my own hand." Mr Sheldon said the "really beautiful" letters were donated by the couple's surviving daughter. He added: "Those little letters have travelled across thousands of miles of sea and passed through many pairs of hands to get home. It makes people think." Among Mr Sheldon's favourite items is the photograph of Lt Briggs with his mother and sister while on survivor's leave after the sinking of HMS Hood. "That's what the exhibition is about. "It's about the human face of service in the navy and it's about the impact on families when things go wrong. That's the thing we want people to reflect on when they see the exhibition." |
At the end of July, Germany was hit by a series of violent attacks, three of which were carried out by asylum seekers. So are Germans turning against Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policy? Damien McGuinness in Berlin is not convinced. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
"Merkel on the ropes!" screeched one headline, after the recent attacks in Germany, before going on to predict confidently that her "premiership is hanging by a thread". "Calls for Chancellor Angela Merkel to stand down grow," wrote another paper. But what's interesting about these and similar articles is that they were written by English-speaking journalists reporting from outside Germany. And in both these cases, the only evidence that Merkel's government was apparently about to fall was a video filmed by Russian TV of right-wing extremists protesting in Berlin. No polling data. No evidence. Just that video. You can't necessarily blame the journalists. From the outside the narrative makes sense. Merkel allows Germany to take in more than a million asylum seekers from the Middle East. A year later there are violent Islamist attacks committed by migrants. So it stands to reason that her government is on the verge of collapse. The problem is, though, the facts really get in the way of that story. Almost 70% of Germans do not think that Merkel's refugee policy contributed to the attacks, and the violence has barely had any effect on support for her centre-right party, making it unlikely that anyone else will lead the next government, let alone topple the present one. Since the attacks, her personal approval ratings have slipped, but almost half of German voters, across the political spectrum, say they still want her as chancellor. In fact, she has no credible rivals - the left-wing opposition is small and the anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party is riven with internal rivalries. In times of turmoil, history shows that the unflappable Angela Merkel actually does quite well. With every crisis she's written off by many commentators. But weirdly, like some indestructible rubber cartoon character, she bounces back. From Brexit to eurozone chaos, she's seen as a safe pair of hands. Even, to a large extent, after these latest attacks. At first there was some criticism that she was too slow to respond. Immediately after the Munich shooting, in which 10 people died, French President Francois Hollande condemned what he called a brutal act of Islamist terror. Some here said: "Why does the French leader speak, and not ours?" Until, it turned out, that it wasn't an act of Islamist terror at all - but rather a US-style shooting spree, carried out by a disturbed German-born teenager obsessed with right-wing extremism and mass shootings. And that's the point: despite what the most lurid headlines indicate, unlike France, Germany hasn't yet been hit by a major Islamist terror attack. In the two recent attacks by asylum seekers, which were claimed by so-called Islamic State, no victim was killed. That's not to ignore the fierce debate around Berlin's refugee policy - Germany is split. People are nervous about more attacks and increasingly uneasy about migration. And with parliamentary elections next year, Merkel faces pressure from all her rivals - from the left and from the right. There are calls to screen migrants better. Many now say failed asylum seekers should be sent back, whether they've come from a war zone or not. And dip into German social media, and the criticism of Merkel becomes vicious. But no leading politician suggests that Germany should stop accepting refugees fleeing war, and some of the pressure on Merkel comes from left-wing critics, who say she's not doing enough to help migrants. The debate in the mainstream media, meanwhile, is the very opposite of alarmist. The tabloid, Bild, Germany's best-selling newspaper, has positioned itself as the crusading champion of refugee rights, while traditionally tough-talking ministers have warned against stigmatising migrants since the attacks. More violence, or a major IS terror attack, could endanger this measured approach. And some do question whether too cosy a consensus in the mainstream marginalises legitimate concerns that should be debated. But the attitude of German political leaders also hints at a deeper question - namely, what is the responsibility of government? Should it lead or follow popular opinion? Angela Merkel's idea of government is top-down, trust-us-we-know-best, which in this age of referendums and social media is not exactly fashionable. But she's not following, she's leading. Not everyone agrees with her, and her approach is not risk-free. Merkel, though, is not changing her mind. And, for now at least, she's staying exactly where she is. Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook |
Instead of fretting about hair loss and diminished virility, should mid-life be re-evaluated as a time to try new experiences and re-invent oneself? Stephen Smith, 55, sets out on a mission to answer these eternal questions. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
On his 80th birthday, the French statesman Clemenceau was taking the air on the Champs-Elysees with a friend when a beautiful young woman came towards them. As she passed by, Clemenceau turned to his companion and sighed, "Oh, to be 70 again!" There are only two subjects, according to the film director Peter Greenaway: sex and death. Put them together and you have the mid-life crisis. On the one hand, the waning of one's charms, vigour and fertility; on the other liver-spotted paw, the incessant susurrus of sand through Father Time's hourglass. Of course, we prefer to avert our thoughts from such elemental things, and tell ourselves that the mid-life crisis (MLC, for short) is about concerns like status and goals. I have a hunch that these are peripheral. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the MLC as a "loss of self-confidence and feeling of anxiety or disappointment that can occur in early middle age". But when is that, exactly? Find out more Stephen Smith, above left, with septuagenarian socialite Nicky Haslam. Smith presents In Defence of the Mid-Life Crisis, on BBC Radio 4 at 10:30 BST, Saturday 20 August. Catch up on BBC iPlayer Radio Most authorities suggest it begins in the mid- to late-40s, though it's perhaps a state of mind more than a black letter day on an actuarial table. It struck former rugby league player Danny Lockwood when his hair began to desert him. "I'd had a mullet in the 80s and this came as a bit of a shock," says Lockwood, now in his 50s. He booked himself into a trichology clinic and emerged, he says, looking like Davy Crockett. "I got through a meeting and thought 'This ain't right'. So I went to the barber's and asked for a number one - had it all shaved off again. The wife never even saw it." Anyone who watches sitcom or romcoms will know men are typically the butt of MLC storylines. But the writer and journalist Miranda Sawyer recounts a by-no-means rare example of the distaff MLC. "The strongest feeling I've had was that I've done it all wrong… I've woken up in this life and it's not my life," says Sawyer, recounting the moment her mid-life crisis truly descended. She had woken up one day, in her 40s, and felt her life "should have been something different". Sawyer has documented her experiences in a new book, Out of Time, and is candid enough to admit that mid-life sex can be a ticklish issue. "As you get older, there's a lot invested in your relationship with your partner and to ask them for more sex, different sex, less sex, better sex, becomes really, really hard." Nor is the phenomenon confined to the straight community. Broadcaster Simon Fanshawe, 59, detects what he calls the gay mid-life crisis when he spots a man d'un age certain in unduly tight shorts. The MLC for gay men, he says, is inextricably bound up with coming out. Whether they like it or not, formerly settled married men who come out in their middle years reset their personal chronometers, says Fanshawe. "One day they're fine and with the wife and children… six months later they've come out and suddenly there's this tattooed leather queen coming down the road. Whatever age you actually come out, in your head you're 16. It's a kind of year-zero of being gay." You might be interested to know what a world-class philosopher has to say about the MLC, but Alain de Botton (46) wasn't available, so we had to settle for the late Arthur Schopenhauer instead. The views of this 19th Century German seer were outlined to me by Kieran Setiya, a philosophy professor who is writing a guide to midlife. "Schopenhauer's basic argument is that the problem with getting what you want is that your pursuit is over and then you have nothing to do," says Setiya. "He thought we were doomed to swing endlessly between the boredom of having no desires, and the agony of having unsatisfied desires." Happily Schopenhauer managed to get out of the bed the right side one morning and acknowledged that although all desire was ultimately pointless he thought the pursuit of atelic activities, like going for a walk, seeing friends for a coffee, was less likely to lead to depression and futility I tried to have the best of both worlds, by inviting BBC director general Tony Hall to savour a cup of coffee with me while I leveraged an inflation-busting salary review, but I soon discovered Schopenhauer's iron laws weren't to be trifled with. Someone who gets that very well is former businessman turned stand-up comic Dave Streeter. He had it all, to coin a phrase: family, business, nice house. But then the business went, and pretty soon, so did everything else. Streeter adapted the presentation skills he had learned at work into stage patter. "My wife got the house, the car, the kids. I got the guilt and a four-man tent," he says. "The tragedy is, I don't know four men that like camping." Like all the MLC veterans I met, Streeter looks back on it as a valuable if painful stocktaking. He introduced me to his new passion: vibing, a kind of disco on two wheels. Vibers work up a sweat on static bikes to the sound of club favourites. With the tang of scorched lycra in my nostrils, I reflected that vibing could be seen as a metaphor for the MLC: pedalling furiously, but getting nowhere. But as I essayed a few sclerotic revolutions myself, I understood that, on the contrary, it could be the perfect tonic. What do Schopenhauer's insights boil down to, after all, but the tried and tested message of the needlework sampler: it's not about the destination, it's the journey. All the data suggests that we're living longer and beginning to adapt accordingly. What used to be pensionable age is now considered late middle-life; if you're not there yet, by the time you are, it will probably have been recalibrated again, to the bloom of youth - think of all that time you'll have to work on your Pokemon Go handicap. So to anyone inclined to take a dim view of Clemenceau and the flicker of desire awakened in the octogenarian, all I can say is that he was clearly ahead of his time: 80 is the new 70. In Defence of the Midlife Crisis, presented by Stephen Smith, is on Radio 4, Saturday August 20 at 1030 BST |
There's currently controversy over the prospect of spending cuts for the British military. But there have been many years after World War Two in which big cuts have been made. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Tom de CastellaBBC News Magazine 1946 - gearing up for peacetime During World War Two the UK defence budget reached a peak of £86bn a year [in real terms - see note at bottom for methodology] in 1944. In the final year of the war, the defence budgets fell by 48% to about £44bn. When the war ended, Britain had to rapidly change gear for a peacetime economy. At this point the British Army numbered 3.12 million soldiers. Add in the Navy, Royal Air Force and other parts of the military and demobilisation involved five million servicemen and women. Britain had won the war but it owed huge sums to the US. At the same time, Clement Attlee's government began building the welfare state. Austerity set in and the defence budget dropped - in 1946 falling by 56% to £19.5bn. There was a steep rise in 1947 before it fell back in 1948 and 1949 with cuts of 18% and 4% respectively. The Times in August 1947 reported "Cuts all round to meet the crisis". The petrol ration was reduced by 33%, coal miners were to work an extra half hour a day. And defence personnel would be cut to 1,007,000 by the end of March 1948, the prime minister announced. By October, further cuts were announced - the armed forces would now number 937,000 by the following April. The Conservative opposition "expressed grave anxiety at the state of the country's defences", according to the Times. Winston Churchill, now in opposition, made his Iron Curtain speech in 1946. There followed a slow period of realisation that the Soviet Union - formerly an ally against Hitler - was becoming a threat. It is thought the term Cold War was first used by Bernard Baruch, a White House adviser, in April 1947. The UK was moving secretly towards a nuclear deterrent. Despite demobilisation, conscription continued and in 1948 the National Service Act adopted this for peacetime. Britain's role was changing. Attlee was dismantling the Empire - in 1947 India gained independence. British forces were still being deployed as peacekeepers to the Middle East and to police the Empire. Troops were based in Palestine in the years before the declaration of Israel's independence in 1948. The Malayan Emergency - an attempt to put down a communist uprising - began in the same year and continued until 1960. 1957 - the year after Suez Britain found itself at war again in the early 1950s. Winston Churchill - back as prime minister - sent almost 100,000 British troops to serve in Korea - 765 lives were lost. UK defence spending rose dramatically to cope with the operation. And 1952 was the year the UK first successfully tested a nuclear bomb. There was a cut of 6% in 1953, anticipating the Korean armistice of July that year. The resolution of Korea led to hopes of detente. The Times talked of an olive branch being extended from Moscow and Peking (Beijing). There were other operations for UK forces to worry about - the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya, the independence campaign in Cyprus, and Borneo, among others. But the Suez Crisis was perhaps the definitive moment for the UK. The seizing of the Suez Canal with France, after Egypt had nationalised it, and then the humiliating withdrawal after pressure from US President Dwight Eisenhower, has been identified by some historians as the moment Britain ceased to be a great power. During the mid-1950s the UK defence budget had bobbed around - up a little in 1954, down in 1955 and up a little in 1956. But in 1957 following Suez, there was a 10% cut. It was the first double-digit cut since the post-World War Two downsizing. Spending on defence fell below 7%. The philosophy was set out by incoming Defence Secretary Duncan Sandys in his 1957 Defence White Paper. The army was to be slimmed down again and aircraft numbers cut. The new philosophy accepted the supremacy of nuclear weapons. In February 1957 a Times report summed up Sandys' position: "We must as far as possible resist the temptation to dissipate our limited resources on forces which in themselves had no deterrent value, for to that extent we should be reducing our contribution to the prevention of war." Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College London, says it was an attempt to reduce the cost at a time when the UK was overstretched. "The basic problem was we were still trying to manage an empire, putting a great strain on spending. Sandys' review was a shift to nuclear deterrence." Sandys also announced the end of conscription, although this didn't come into effect until 1963. The defence budget was frozen in 1958 and 1959. By 1960 the British Army was down to 315,000 men - about a tenth of its size at the end of WW2. 1969 - no place in Vietnam The Cold War was at deep freeze during the 1960s. The early 1960s were shaped by the Cuban Missile Crisis, the end of the decade by the Vietnam War. For the first half of the decade, the UK defence budget rose in most years. But Harold Wilson's Labour government came to power in 1964 pledging cuts. It promised to do this by banishing the "pretence" of a nuclear deterrent independent from the US, while still maintaining UK bases east of Suez, and keeping the British Army on the Rhine up to size. Defence secretary Denis Healey oversaw the scrapping of aircraft carriers but the thrust of defence policy remained the same - a reliance on the nuclear deterrent. In the second half of the 1960s, spending fell in three years - 1966, 1968 and 1969. In an interview in 1968, Healey said: "I think the services can be rightly very upset at the continuous series of defence reviews which the government has been forced by economic circumstances - and maybe economic mistakes too - to carry out." But 1969 was a key year and showed the divergence of US and UK military spending. This was the year that US troop numbers peaked in Vietnam at 549,500. But the UK was not involved, prime minister Harold Wilson having refused to send troops. Instead, the worsening economic picture in Britain led to more cuts. Healey's 1969 defence review produced a cut of 7%, the biggest since the Sandys review of 1957. Healey committed Britain to withdrawing from its bases east of the Suez Canal by 1971. He also cancelled plans to buy US F111 strike aircraft. By the end of the decade spending on defence had fallen to 4.65% of GDP. 1977 - the effects of inflation The UK defence budget appeared on paper to rise fast throughout the 1970s. But inflation was high - fluctuating between 10-25%. Adjusted for inflation, there were only small rises. It is often said that defence equipment costs rise faster than inflation. The reality during the 1970s was that the armed forces were being "hollowed out" by lots of small cuts, says Freedman. The Cold War had entered something of an impasse. But Northern Ireland was a drain on resources. At the height of the Troubles in 1972, there were 27,000 British military personnel based there. Public finances were tight in the later 1970s. In 1976, Prime Minister James Callaghan faced a Sterling crisis and was forced to apply to the International Monetary Fund for a £2.3bn rescue. It demanded cuts and the following year Defence Secretary Fred Mulley oversaw a 3% cut in spending. His Conservative shadow, Sir Ian Gilmour, accused Labour of cutting defence spending by £100m and called on Mulley to resign. According to the Times, in March 1977, Gilmour told the Commons the cuts were exposing the country to the danger of Soviet aggression: "The government had pretended that the defence review had cut Britain's commitments outside Nato but had not cut its Nato capability. That was untrue. They had weakened the fleet on the flank - reduced the reserves earmarked for Nato, and made dangerous reductions in the capability of the air force." By 1978, defence spending was down to 4.5% of GDP. But in this period only two Nato countries spent more on defence as a percentage of GDP - the US and Greece. 1991 - the post-Cold War world Defence spending in the US and UK grew in the 1980s as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher took a more aggressive strategy in the Cold War. The arms race was ratcheted up, which some historians credit for the collapse of the Soviet economy. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and the Warsaw Pact was dismantled, the Cold War seemed over. The "peace dividend" led countries to scale down their militaries. Spending in the UK had already peaked in 1985 at 5.1% of GDP and fallen back slowly. In 1990, the Thatcher government produced Options for Change, a review looking to make the most of the "peace dividend". Alan Clark, defence procurement minister, wrote in his diaries at the time: "We are at one of those critical moments in defence policy that occur only once every fifty years." It was a reshaping of defence now that the Soviet threat had gone. And a chance to save money. In 1992 the budget dropped 6% and the pattern continued for the next five years. Cuts were made of 4% in 1993, 5% in 1994, 7% in 1995, 2% in 1996, 7% in 1997. Spending as a proportion of GDP fell from 4.1% in 1991-92 to 2.4% by the end of the decade. There were similar cuts from other nations. The US announced the closure of more than 100 bases and reduced its army in Germany from 300,000 to below 100,000. It was not just a response to the strategic situation. The US budget deficit was "out of control", the Times reported in June 1990, and defence cuts were inevitable. US spending fell from 6.3% of GDP in the late 1980s to 3.4% a decade later. In the UK, the scale of the cuts met with anger from MPs from all parties. The Army was to be reduced to 116,000. The government cancelled an order for 33 Tornado jets and cut three RAF Tornado squadrons. Defence Secretary Tom King described it as "the biggest cut in real terms" the armed forces had faced for a long time. The Gulf War created concerns that the cuts were too big. Members of the Commons Defence Committee attacked Options for Change. "The Ministry of Defence is being led by the nose by the Treasury towards reductions in Britain's armed forces which have no rational basis," Lib Dem defence spokesman Menzies Campbell said in August 1991. King resisted calls to postpone the cuts because of the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. King said a few days later on the BBC's World at One: "The Warsaw Pact has gone. Soviet troops have left Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Germany is united." Protests among Tory backbenchers and the opposition went on. In an October debate in the Commons, former Conservative minister Julian Amery asked King: "Putting your hand on your heart, could you say 'yes, we could cope with another Falkland operation, with another Gulf operation?' If you can't, you had better go back to the drawing board." Sources and working: All defence spending figures are real terms meaning that spending has been adjusted for inflation. The source is the MoD. The pre-1955 figures are only estimates. They use "current prices" spending figures, which have been turned into real terms budgets using Office for National Statistics inflation figures. Special thanks to Fenella McGerty of IHS Jane's Defence Budgets for her statistical analysis. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. |
Lenin had it about right when he said: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Amol RajanMedia editor@amolrajanon Twitter In recent weeks, several decades' worth of disruption and, frankly, obliteration has come to the UK's newspapers and magazines. Indeed, it's hard to overstate the impact of coronavirus on the sector. Many titles were beleaguered already, propped up by generous owners or operating under commercial models that simply can't withstand 21st Century reality. Some are going bust as you read this. Much of what was going to happen in any case will now happen suddenly: publishing history is suddenly accelerated. The shift from print to digital at virtually all publications will be radically sped up. A lot of publishers are simply going to run out of cash. One regional publisher has being ringing up contractors asking if it can delay payments by three months at least. This is the grim story that was only partially told by the publication on 16 April, of the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC). They only covered the period of 2 March to 22 March - and therefore do not show the full, devastating impact of the lockdown. Print publications are dependent on printers being able to print; distributors being able to drive copies around the country; and shops and stalls being open for people to buy or pick up the publication. A national lockdown obliterates every part of that chain. Moreover, much of the media is heavily reliant on advertising. In any economic downturn, advertising is one of the first things to go, being seen as a discretionary spend. The sharper the downturn, the sharper the drop in advertising spend. This looks a sharp downturn. With distribution systems obliterated, and a major source of revenue not just jeopardised but frozen, while fixed costs such as rents and staffing still have to be paid, inevitably many publications will go bust because of this pandemic. Some have already. Yesterday's news City AM has stopped printing through the crisis. Playboy's Spring 2020 magazine will be its last as a regular print product. JPI Media, a regional publisher, stopped printing 12 titles, including the MK Citizen in Milton Keynes and the News Guardian in North Tyneside. The company has put 350 staff on furlough and cut the pay of remaining staff by up to 15%. Kerrang!, the music magazine, announced that it will stop printing for three months. DIY magazine is not printing this month, but instead asking readers for support. Other publications, such as Loud and Quiet, are trying to innovate their way through, collaborating with other publishers and labels to generate support. This week, The Jewish Chronicle collapsed. It will now be part of a merged operation with Jewish News. My old local paper, the 150 year-old South London Press, has furloughed half its staff and is asking for reader donations to help get through this crisis. That's understandable but obviously won't build a sustainable business. That Google, through its Google News Initiative, should have launched a global emergency relief fund for local news publishers just confirms the extraordinary state of affairs in news today: whether my parents and their neighbours in Tooting find out about, say, parking charges around their local common might depend on the benefaction of a Californian data company whose executives probably couldn't find Tooting on a map (unless they Googled it). In horrible times like these, always think first of the staff: generally creative people who have lived with uncertainty for many years, providing a valuable public service, and often could have chosen a better-paid career. Reach, the regional publisher that also prints the Express and Mirror titles, announced that 20% of its 4,700 staff - that's 940 - will be furloughed. Senior management will take a 20% pay cut; other staff will take a 10% pay cut. While all publications have been hit, those that are most resilient, and least vulnerable to this carnage, are those that are part of a big group, have strong digital properties, and have successfully switched their business model to generate income directly from readers rather than through advertising. It follows that those who are most vulnerable are those that are not part of major empires, are heavily reliant on advertising and print distribution, and don't have really powerful digital operations yet. Despite its editorial strengths, City AM sadly ticks all of these boxes. And to take the next two most glaring examples, for Metro and the Evening Standard, this has been a financial horror-show. The former has some security in being part of DMGT, at least. Both titles depend heavily on footfall: commuters rushing through busy stations and picking copies up for their journey to or from work. Under its free-to-consumer model, the Evening Standard distributed tens of thousands of copies at major commuter hubs. Those are now desolate. Officially, the Standard has furloughed many staff, cut distribution to 500,000 copies, stopped producing ES magazine, and tried a home delivery service. Talk there, and among several senior executives across the industry that I have spoken to, is of "being nimble". But nimbleness is what you need in a tight spot. It's no good if the ground beneath your feet disappears. When that happens, you need to find firmer or higher ground. Metro has also been hammered. Remember: it's Britain's biggest newspaper. Or was. I am told that circulation, which is usually around 1.5 million, has been cut to between 400,000 and 500,000 copies. That's perhaps two-thirds of its daily audience vanished in an instant. The vast majority of its copies had, historically, been distributed in London and the south-east. Now, London and the south-east account for about half of its distribution; and the rest of the country accounts for the remainder. The rate charged to ad agencies varies according to market conditions and the relations with different groups; but at one stage in recent weeks, it was down by 70%. As an unforeseen hit to a business, that's horrific. For titles funded predominantly by advertising, a big cut to those rates has a direct and immediate impact on the bottom line. In the present circumstances, retaining even 30% of advertising revenue is a heroic performance. But such is the hit on revenues that urgent cost-cutting will have to be looked at. Metro has the enormous advantage of being part of a cash-rich company - DMGT - which is big enough and resilient enough to spread costs around for a while. Moreover, the paper has been profitable for several years. It has an underlying business model which, when normality returns, should allow it to move the bottom line from red to black. Staff at the i newspaper can count themselves very lucky that their paper was bought by DMGT, from JPI Media, before this pandemic struck. No title in Fleet Street will be unaffected. At News UK, where new editors were installed at The Sunday Times and The Sun, there were plans to create a seven-day operation across the Times titles, and also launch a radio station. National social distancing measures are not ideal preparation. At the Telegraph titles, perennial questions about whether the daily and Sunday paper are for sale, amid a bizarre legal battle in the Barclay family, get no easier to answer. To date, one obstacle to any sale has been the price demanded by the Barclay twins, even as, in recent years, headline profits have tumbled. Telegraph Media Group announced this week 90 non-editorial workers would be furloughed until the end of May. Remaining non-editorial staff would work a four-day week from 1 May, and their salaries would be cut by 20%. What of The Guardian? A painful, effective turnaround strategy, executed in three years, has been undone in about three weeks. Revenues over the next six months will be £20m down. Plans were already afoot to cut £10m of spending. A hundred non-editorial staff will be furloughed. Guardian staff are of course in the hugely privileged position of being part of a charitable trust that has reserves in the bank, and exists to fund their journalism. Meanwhile at the Financial Times, 20 non-editorial staff are on paid leave, top editors and managers are taking a 10% pay cut for 2020, the board is taking a 20% cut, and CEO John Ridding is taking a 30% cut. Pension contributions are being halved, and an annual bonus scheme suspended. Changing behaviour I have seen one major publisher's unaudited estimates for the circulation decline of major British newspapers since the lockdown was introduced. It suggests some paid-for papers are down by as much as 20% over the past fortnight. All papers have been seriously affected. I am not reproducing those figures here because they are not audited. Trying to get an accurate figure for circulation declines in the lockdown is made very much harder by the fact that most of the places that provide information about sales and pick-up are currently shut. Most papers are trying very hard to use this crisis to accelerate a shift in consumption to the digital sphere and - crucially - to get readers into the habit of paying for journalism online. The success of these efforts varies hugely from group to group. Many big titles have a subscriber base that is used to home delivery. Through Herculean efforts, home delivery services are still largely working - and home delivery services have been drastically ramped up. Moreover, all titles, not least the Daily Mail (which just won Newspaper of the Year) and The Sun (which is pushing a digital edition of the paper known as "the classic"), are using their papers to give a massive push to digital sign-ups. That is, they are trying to get readers into the habit of paying for digital - tablet, say - versions of their newspapers. From a commercial point of view, this is a much, much more attractive way of, in the jargon, monetising users. Think of a single article - a page-lead, for example, on the situation in, say, Italy. To get that article into a print publication, a sub-editor has to lay it out on a page on their computer. That page is then part of a package sent electronically to the printers. There, by a triumph of engineering that unites hot metal, clanging presses and pungent ink, thousands of copies are printed in bundles called "newspapers". Stacks of these are lifted by a human being into a van. Another human being drives that van to lots of retailers, which takes time and fuel. If you aren't living through a global pandemic, you might be inclined to go to a shop and buy this beautiful bundle, whereupon the retailer will take a cut. Think of that same article being sold on the iPad version of, say, the Mail or Times. The sub-editor still has to lay it out on a page. But this is then sent, by a triumph of digital engineering, to all those subscribers who have signed up for an iPad edition. It's done instantly. No paper costs, no staffing costs at the presses, or ink costs, or health and safety and insurance costs; no van costs; no fuel costs; no cut going to the retailer. It happens super-fast, it's very cheap, it's a direct-to-consumer offer and - crucially - if you've logged in with your details, the company can know what you're up to, what you're interested in, and how long you dwell on particular pages. To a publisher, getting the same journalism read on an iPad, say, or smartphone edition is hugely preferable. Over the past few weeks, there has been a huge marketing splurge within newspapers like the Mail and the Sun to shift readers to these navigable digital editions of the newspaper. In that sense, Covid-19 is accelerating innovation that was long overdue and likely to happen anyway. Just as this health emergency has shone a cruel torchlight on the fault-lines in our society, so it has highlighted the ill-health of the newspaper and magazine business right now. What's striking is that, while that business has been in crisis for well over a decade and a half, and in that time been through the global financial crisis and downturn that followed, many titles had still not done enough to prepare for the current emergency. The fundamentals haven't changed; they've just been exposed. The market in local news is broken; there is no editorial solution to the commercial problems of publishing; the sooner you can make digital pay, the better; and revenue direct from readers will always, always be preferable to that from advertisers. All that was as true in 2005 as it is in 2020. The difference is, for those who failed to adapt in time, it's now too late. If you're interested in issues such as these, please follow me on Twitter or Facebook; and also please subscribe to The Media Show podcast from Radio 4. |
The Scottish government is to start work towards a second independence referendum in the wake of the UK voting to leave the EU, with the SNP launching a nationwide "listening exercise" to gauge views. Political reporter Philip Sim looks at the questions the party will seek to answer before taking Scotland back to the polls. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Philip SimBBC Scotland News A second Scottish independence referendum is "on the table"; in fact Nicola Sturgeon says it's "highly likely". Her ministers have been set to work to draw up legislation to make this "option" a "deliverable" one. Note, for a start, that the language is all still hypothetical. So is it really going to happen? Before we find out the answer to that question, a whole host of others need to be addressed. The SNP leader is, obviously, dedicated to Scottish independence. But she has been hesitant to call for a second vote on the matter straight away, despite some members (and MPs) straining at the leash. This is because Ms Sturgeon doesn't just want to hold a second indyref - she wants to win one. The next poll will be a zero-sum game; lose, and it really is over for a generation. The first minister won't fire the starting gun on the race until she's absolutely sure she can win. And amidst the shockwaves of the UK's vote to leave the EU, how sure can a politician be about anything at the moment? Ms Sturgeon will be hoping that her 120,000 party members can bring back some answers about the mood of the nation from the doorsteps. Here are a selection of the other questions the first minister will be pondering before she starts down the road to indyref2. Legality Perhaps the biggest hurdle first - can Scotland even hold a referendum which would bring about independence? Winning the approval of Holyrood would not be the issue. The SNP may have lost their majority in May, but the cohort of pro-indy Greens mean there would be no issue gathering the support of enough MSPs - despite Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems all lining up in opposition. The problem is, the power to call a referendum is reserved to Westminster. The 2014 plebiscite was only held with the blessing of David Cameron; would Theresa May sign off on another constitutional wrangle? She initially made Scotland a high priority, visiting Ms Sturgeon in Edinburgh shortly after taking office, and has said she is "willing to listen to options". However, she warned that some of those mooted may be "impracticable". With a Brexit to negotiate while settling in at Number 10, it might seem unlikely that Ms May would want to add a further complication to her crowded plate. But blocking a referendum would look distinctly undemocratic - and even a Yes vote in an unauthorised referendum would make life uncomfortable for the new PM. Timing If there is to be a second independence referendum, when could or should it be held? Ms Sturgeon had hoped to have more time on her hands to build the case for independence anew. She wanted time to draw up a plan to win over No voters; on that front, Brexit might create an opportunity, but it also presents challenges. Once Westminster sets the wheels of leaving the EU in motion, the clock is ticking on a two-year window. Former first minister Alex Salmond has suggested that Scotland would need to win its independence before the Brexit negotiations are complete, so that Scotland could effectively just stay put in the EU while the UK leaves. Beyond the practical issues of setting up a referendum, when would the best time for the vote be? There are council elections scheduled for 2017 already, and it's still not entirely inconceivable that there could end up being a UK general election ahead of schedule too. Scottish voters have spent a relatively large amount of time in polling stations of late - they've had five trips there in the span of just over two years. The fatigue not just of the electorate but of the party activists who go out knocking on doors to "get out the vote" has been cited as a possible reason for referendum turnout shrinking from 85% in 2014 to 67% in 2016. Holding yet another vote too soon could be a risk. Alex Neil, a member of Ms Sturgeon's cabinet up until May, has warned against being "stampeded" into holding a "premature and unnecessarily risky" referendum. He says the SNP must wait until there has been a "decisive and evident shift in support for independence over a sustained period of time". The electorate Social media is already awash with anecdotes about avowed No voters casting off their unionist roots and pledging themselves for Yes. But as the frantic tangle of polls in advance of the EU referendum showed, gauging what the electorate really think on any issue is increasingly difficult. And in Scotland, the political picture is like an MC Escher painting. There are Remain vs Leave allegiances, reflected through the original indyref Yes vs No prism, and all of that on top of party loyalties. There are endless layers of nuance; for example, what of SNP members who voted Leave out of concern for trade deals like TTIP? Will they now abandon their Eurosceptic leanings for the overarching goal of independence? (Probably, yes). The same could be said for all Leave voters - there were a million of them, after all, and they need to be considered (and indeed represented) too. A million votes is not to be sniffed at, and could lock off a significant proportion of the electorate if the contest is characterised as one about EU membership. As SNP deputy leadership candidate Angus Robertson has pointed out, winning over No voters will be the key task going forward. The collapse in the price of oil, reflected in the GERS figures released in August, may have served to entrench some who voted No primarily to protect their bank balance. Even former SNP aides have gone so far as to say that the 2014 case for independence is "dead". And, again on turnout, what about voters who don't turn up to vote at all? When it came down to it, only 43,000 more people voted Remain in the EU referendum than voted Yes in 2014. Voter engagement appears to be shrinking; would the people come back the ballot box for indyref2? Practical issues Ms Sturgeon has a puzzle to solve over currency; it was an issue in 2014, and it's another of those problems she'd hoped to have more time to mull over. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a member of both Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon's economic advisory teams, has conceded that the proposal to share the pound with the UK "may have been a mistake". Mr Salmond similarly says the Yes side were "gazumped" on the matter. The first minister has has insisted that "the pound is Scotland's currency", but Mr Robertson has cautiously welcomed the idea of discussing a "Scottish pound", while fellow MP Joanna Cherry has suggested that Scotland might not want to be tied to the pound if it sinks post-Brexit. There could be an upside to this; Mr Stiglitz reckons a floating Scottish currency could boost the economy and potentially smooth Scotland's entry to the EU, by cutting its deficit - which is currently far higher than that required of new members. But would the EU let Scotland "join" (or Remain) without taking the Euro as its currency, another common rule for new members? On the flip side of the coin, would the UK allow independent Scotland to keep the pound? Furthermore, what of borders? This was a simpler matter in 2014, but would Brexit Britain want an open land border to an EU member state? Ms May has pledged that there will not be one in Northern Ireland, but she might well strike a less conciliatory note in the heat of a referendum battle. Would Scots vote to leave the UK if it meant embracing a new currency and putting up passport checkpoints at Gretna? And more fundamentally, would an independent Scotland even be allowed to stay in the EU? Some influential member states have already voiced opposition the idea - including France and significantly Spain, which would be loathe to see Catalonia follow a similar path. This is unprecedented territory, so it's hard to know what would be allowed, or who might have a veto - hence Ms Sturgeon's talks with EU leaders. The wider picture Despite the impression that Scotland and England are becoming two rather different places, what happens at Westminster is still going to have an enormous impact on Ms Sturgeon's decision-making. First and foremost, what is the Brexit deal going to look like? Beyond Theresa May's circular mantra of "Brexit means Brexit", we don't really know. We're yet to find out what the UK will look for at the negotiating table, far less what the likely settlement will be. This again is both bad and good for Ms Sturgeon - she can (and has) point out that the UK that Scotland voted to remain in in 2014 will be fundamentally changed. But at the same time, she can't really know what she's campaigning to leave until it is clearer what the post-Brexit UK is going to look like. Beyond these shores, what does Brexit mean for the European Union? The UK is far from the only country unhappy with the role of Brussels. Indeed, it's been suggested that the EU's leaders could be harsh in their negotiations with Britain primarily to discourage other states from eyeing exits of their own. Before you even consider the economic impact, other European leaders will surely be eyeing up special concessions in the vein of David Cameron's (failed) deal. Who can say for sure what the EU will look like in a few years' time? In effect, can Ms Sturgeon even be sure what Scotland would be leaving the UK to remain part of? |
Historian and constitutional expert Lord Peter Hennessy looks back at British history to evaluate the significance of the referendum result. The Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London was speaking to the BBC's Diplomatic Correspondent James Robbins. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Never in our peacetime history have so many dials been reset as a result of a single day's events. The only thing comparable in my lifetime is the end of the British Empire, which, like this, was a huge geopolitical shift. But getting rid of the British Empire was done over many, many years and by and large in the time control of the British government of the day. It left very few scars on us. But this is sudden. This is guillotine time. This is quite extraordinary and in peacetime British history quite unprecedented. If we go back to the beginning, it took three attempts for Britain to join the European project. Harold Macmillan steered his cabinet towards the first application to join the European Economic Community in July 1961, an effort which failed because of opposition from French leader Charles De Gaulle. During Harold Wilson's second application in 1967, The Labour prime minister said we wouldn't take 'no' for an answer and ended up getting exactly that again from General De Gaulle. Ted Heath finally pulled it off with President Pompidou and the law was passed in 1972, leading to our admittance in January 1973. Ever since then it's been part of the warp and woof of British foreign policy and our attitude towards the world. It's part of Britain's notion of its ability to punch heavier than its weight internationally, and it has been central to so many calculations. That's why this vote is the most remarkable jolt to the system. Where it leads in terms of the psychology of British politics as well as the personnel of British politics and indeed the very survival of the United Kingdom as a union with Scotland is all up in the air. There never has been a day when so many moving parts were thrown up in one go and nobody knows where they will fall. We know one thing and one thing only - that within a few years we shall no longer be a member of the European Union. We know so little else about how it will play out, both in terms of the emotional geography of our politics and the emotional geography of our people. The referendum has revealed deeper fissures and deeper divisions than perhaps we realised were there. We know we've been a country ill at ease with itself for a very long time, with all sorts of divides, including those based on geography and wealth. But this process has thrown it into stark relief, and we're going to have to stand back and take a long and careful look at ourselves. We will need to re-examine the kind of society we are and the kind of relationships we want in the world. 'US will be horrified' Looking to our relationship with the United States, ever since the Marshall Plan brought the Western European countries together after the Second World War to put a dollar curtain up against the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union, the US has wanted us to be a good European player. They have also wanted us to be their number one friend. We were meant to be the hinge that joined the North Atlantic instinct with the European instinct. For this reason they will be horrified by this result. Their notion of who we are and the special ingredients of our special position in the world will be as much affected as we are by this. I suspect the feeling will be that they've got enough to worry about in the world with a resurgent Putin and Middle East in the state it is without their one dependable ally causing all this trouble. They will see Britain - instead of being its usual force for stability in the world as a great and mature democracy - as a bringer of instability to Europe, and they won't like it one bit. This result, on the other hand, is, of course, a victory for democracy. The greatest strength of any country is the degree to which it is an open society and this vote showed that on that index we excel. The sovereign will of the British people is what has prevailed in producing this enormous geopolitical shift. So it's three cheers for democracy and for the 72.2% voter turnout rate. While the consequences of it are very complicated, the will of the people will obviously have to be respected. But, my heavens, it becomes a nitty gritty slog from now on. In particular, the long-term consequences for our place in the world are very considerable indeed. In 2025, we will be out of the European Union and we could be shorn of Scotland. We will be a very different country. I hope to heaven - because I love this country deeply - that it doesn't turn narrowly inward-looking and resentful. That ain't what the British people are for. |
In 1988 Saddam Hussein dropped chemical weapons on his own people - the Kurdish residents of the town of Halabja. Thousands died and in the chaos that followed many families were scattered. One woman, a baby at the time of the attack, was brought up in Iran but recently returned to find out whether any relatives had survived. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Jiyar Gol and Kathryn WestcottBBC News "Tonight your destiny will be clear. Everyone in the crowd wants to know who your family is." Bizarrely, the climax of Maryam Barootchian's search for her parents and siblings is taking place on live television, in front of an audience of millions. Gathered in the auditorium where the announcement is to be made are four families eager to claim her. For Maryam's story is bound up with their own - all lost a baby on that day in March 1988 when Saddam Hussein's jets swooped down and dropped a mixture of mustard gas and nerve agents on the rebellious Kurdish community. Maryam, who is now in her 20s, was a baby at the time. She was evacuated with her family by Iranian troops and taken to Tehran by helicopter, though it would be many years before she found this out. In the process, she was somehow separated from her mother, whose sight had been damaged by the chemicals. She was then adopted and brought up in the Iranian town of Sari, close to the Caspian Sea, by a family whose 14-year-old daughter had recently died from leukaemia. Find out more Jiyar Gol's Our World report The Lost Daughter of Halabja can be seen on the BBC News Channel and BBC World News (click for transmission times). Readers in the UK can watch it after 04:30 GMT on Saturday on the BBC iPlayer. "One day they called from welfare, they said children are arriving from the war zone. Come and get one," remembers Maryam's adoptive mother, Fatemeh. It was she who chose the name Maryam, the name of her dead daughter. "I needed this name, I wanted to bring back her memory," says Fatemeh. The first night the baby slept in her arms, she felt "Maryam was back and alive again". But as she grew up, Maryam often felt things were not right. "One day I was playing with the other children in my relatives' garden. They told me, 'You cannot play with us,'" she says. "I asked, 'Why?' They said, 'Because you are adopted.' I did not understand what 'being adopted' meant. "They said, 'It means you are not the child of your parents. If you look at your family album, you will find that you do not look like them.' I went home and looked at my photos. They were right." Maryam's relationship with her adopted mother hasn't always been easy, but she was extremely close to her father, Hushang. At some point after she turned 18, he confirmed that she had been adopted. He explained that she was Kurdish, although he wasn't sure what region she came from. Shortly afterwards he died, and again Maryam felt the stigma of not belonging. "The day my father died, no-one consoled me. I was crying over my father's grave, and they said, 'Why are you crying? You are not his child,'" says Maryam. "Then I understood that my problems were only beginning. That my misery had just started. I felt so alone that, after two years, I asked my mother to help me find my family." She travelled to Iranian towns and cities with a large Kurdish population to search for clues, and luckily ran into two Kurdish social workers at Tehran airport. They had connections with the Halabja Chemical Victims Society, which has helped reunite seven "lost children" with their families by matching their DNA. "I knew I had been born around the same time as the chemical attack on Halabja," says Maryam. "And I thought I might be one of the children from Halabja whose family were killed or displaced." Luqman Qadir, the head of group, took up Maryam's case. "When this catastrophe occurred in Halabja, we were there, we saw what happened - so understanding Maryam's story is easy for us. We saw tens, and even hundreds of children who lost their parents, and were scattered in Iran," he says. No-one knows the exact number of children who are still missing. Maryam is one of a trickle of "lost children" who are now returning to Halabja, searching for their roots. "Losing your parents is a disaster for anyone, but it is particularly hard for women, because when they want to get married they will be asked about their background. That is why she was desperate to find out who she is," says Qadir. Maryam says that back in Iran a possible marriage had been floated but the family put it off when they discovered she had been adopted. "Repeatedly, as a child, I was told, 'No-one knows who your parents are, you might be illegitimate, you might have been the result of a temporary marriage, or you might have been found in a garbage bin or toilet.' But now I know I am from here I can hold my head high," says Maryam. When she arrived in Halabja in May to begin the DNA-matching in earnest, she found bereaved families desperate to claim her. Maryam didn't know how old she would have been at the time of the Halabja attack but each of those families had lost lost a baby at the time. Dr Farhad Bazarnji a specialist in genetic diseases in the nearby Iraqi town of Sulaymaniyah volunteered his services to help Maryam. She appeared on Kurdish TV and appealed for people to come forward for DNA testing. Dr Bazarnji tested 58 families before narrowing it down to just a handful. Maryam spent time with the families whose DNA appeared to be close enough to hers to indicate they might be related. One mother, Meliheh Qurban a women in her 70s, recalled fainting during the chemical attack with her seven-month-old daughter locked in her arms. "I woke up in Kangavar hospital in Iran. I was so confused I didn't even know if I'd had a child or not," she said. After such a long time, she found it hard to remember her baby's face. Asked if she believed Maryam was her lost daughter, she replied: "I hope so. God willing she is mine. I hope my dream comes true." For Maryam, the encounter was emotional. She lay in the woman's arms softly crying. "Having a mother is a great feeling, if she is your real mother," she said. "When I hugged her I wished she was my real mother." Next she met three sisters whose mother and father died during the attack. Their baby sister was last seen in their mother's arms. This time Maryam had no doubt. "They speak like me - very loudly. They laugh exactly like me," she said. "Many of their personal characteristics are like me and now I really believe that they are my family." The feeling was mutual. "I feel her heart is close to us and I love her," declared Leyla Nasraldin. "Not just that - her appearance, he eyes, her body shape, it's all the same." In August, the sisters join the assembled guests at the Halabja Peace Monument for the televised climax of Maryam's search. Dr Farhad now has a definite answer. "Everyone has been waiting for this moment for many months," he says. Silence. "Maryam, unfortunately your father is dead, he was one of the victims of the Halabja attack." Tears stream down Maryam's face. "But, fortunately I can tell you tonight - Maryam, you have a brother, Maryam, you have a mother, and you will be happy tonight because you are going to meet them. Until today you were known as Maryam, but today I can tell you your name is Hawnaz, and you are the daughter of Mrs Gilas Eskander." The agonising wait is over. Cheers, screaming and applause erupt from the crowd. An elderly woman wearing dark glasses gets to her feet and is led to Maryam. Gilas repeats her child's birth name, "Hawnaz" and, as she clutches her daughter, she is overcome by emotion, screaming and sobbing. Gilas Eskander was the last person to come forward for DNA testing in July, and she is a definite match. "I am so happy. I feel as if I am reborn, as if I am seeing the world through new eyes," she says. For the other families, it is a bitter disappointment. "After three months of psychological turmoil, I am torn apart," one of the sisters declares. "I thought my sister had come back to life. But tonight they have killed her. I really feel I have lost my sister Hannah tonight." Maryam's birth mother thought her daughter had died in the attack. She remarried and divides her time between Halabja and the Iranian town of Paveh, where she is still receiving treatment for her damaged eyesight. Maryam has been getting to know her older brother, who has flown over from the Netherlands to meet her, and a half-brother and half-sister. A younger brother has been missing since the 1988 attack. She has spent the months since Dr Bazarnji's revelation getting to know her extended family in Sulaymaniyah and Irbil. She grew up speaking Farsi, the language of Iran, and is learning Kurdish. She hopes to study in Halabja. The welcome Maryam has received from so many people will be matched by financial support from the Kurdish regional government, which has vowed to help all the lost children who find their way home. Jiyar Gol's Our World report The Lost Daughter of Halabja can be seen on the BBC News Channel and BBC World News (click for transmission times). Readers in the UK can watch it after 04:30 GMT on Saturday on the BBC iPlayer. Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox. |
Sellafield nuclear plant is to be prosecuted over allegations that it sent low-level radioactive waste to a landfill site. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
Sellafield Limited is accused of sending and disposing of four bags from the plant to Lillyhall landfill site in Workington in April 2010. It is facing eight charges brought by the Environment Agency and one brought by the Office for Nuclear Regulation. The case is due before Workington Magistrates' Court in December. |
Example has announced details of his next tour for 2013. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The shows kick off at Bournemouth BIC on 11 February and end at Manchester's MEN arena on 1 March. The 16-date tour will follow the release of his new single Say Nothing. After this year's sell out tour, the singer also performed at 12 shows in Ibiza during the summer. Example has also been busy playing festivals including gigs at T in the Park and Radio 1's Hackney Weekend. The full 2013 tour dates are: Bournemouth at BIC - 11 February Nottingham Capital FM Arena - 12 Liverpool Echo Arena - 13 Sheffield Motorpoint Arena - 15 Newcastle Metro Radio Arena - 16 Glasgow SECC -17 Aberdeen AECC - 18 London Earls Court - 23 Cardiff Motorpoint Arena - 25 Brighton Centre - 26 Birmingham LG Arena - 28 Manchester Arena - 1 March |
Almost three years after the end of the civil war, Sri Lanka is still dogged by allegations of human rights violations. Amid fresh moves in the UN's Human Rights Council to hold Sri Lanka to account, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo reports on a rise in sinister abductions by anonymous squads in white vans. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
At a small shrine in her home, Shiromani lights a candle and rings a bell, offering prayers to the Hindu deities. She has few consolations now. Her life has been a nightmare since her husband, Ramasamy Prabagaran, a Tamil businessman, was snatched by eight men outside their front door last month, in front of Shiromani and their three-year-old daughter, and taken away in a white van. "He was screaming, calling for help, hanging on to the gate," Shiromani said tearfully. "There were people and vehicles in the street but no-one came to help as they had T56 guns and pistols. They pushed me down. I pleaded: 'Sir, don't do anything'." But the vehicle disappeared and she was unable to follow in her own car. Mr Prabagaran was abducted shortly before his case accusing the police of torture was due to be heard. He had been held for two-and-a-half years by them and, he claimed, badly tortured before being released without charge. Unidentified bodies Human rights campaigners say there were 32 unexplained abductions between last October and this February, mostly in Colombo or northern Sri Lanka, the victims a mix of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. In addition, 10 mostly unidentified bodies were found in February alone. It's not clear how many of these, if any, are linked to the disappearances - but their discovery has added to a heightened sense of unease here. Of the kidnappings that were witnessed, most were said to have taken place in white vans - which for years have been the vehicle of shadowy gangs behind enforced disappearances. One victim was seized right outside the Colombo law courts - snatched from prison guards bringing him for a bail application. Five of the 32 escaped but seven bodies have been found, including a woman in her 60s. The other 20 have simply vanished. The witnessed disappearances include the case of two young activists, Lalith Weeraraj - half Sinhala and half Tamil - and a Tamil, Kugan Muruganathan. They spent 2011 organising a number of demonstrations, bringing to Colombo people from the former war zone whose family members disappeared as the war ended - mostly, they claim, at the hands of the security forces. In a sinister development in December, Lalith and Kugan themselves vanished in northern Sri Lanka, seemingly abducted as they prepared another demonstration. Death squads? All sorts of people are disappearing, but many of them appear to have been at loggerheads with the authorities. As well as human rights workers and ordinary businessmen, those who have disappeared include some accused of being part of organised crime networks or the so-called "underworld". Campaigners are privately pointing the finger at pro-government forces and security personnel. But the government and security forces deny being responsible for disappearances. In fact the police spokesman, Superintendent Ajith Rohana, says special police teams have been deployed to investigate them. "There are abductions. It happens. But generally we are conducting investigations into the matter," he told me. I put it to him that, in effect, death squads are operating in Sri Lanka despite the end of the war. "No. Not at all," he responded. "We don't have them. We totally deny that allegation. We don't have any type of squads like that." Meanwhile, the disappearances continue. At least one more person, a Colombo restaurateur, disappeared this week. Mr Prabagaran was a successful businessman with an electronics business based in a well-known Colombo mall, Majestic City. In 2009, he was picked up by police when his name was found in the phone of an army officer accused of links with the Tamil Tigers. He denies any links. In a report by the Judicial Medical Officer in October 2009, Mr Prabagaran said he had been beaten with a pole all over his body, stripped naked, assaulted on his genitals, immersed up to his neck in a barrel, had his fingernails removed and more. 'Law of the jungle' One of the few parliamentarians who regularly speaks out on human rights issues is Jayalath Jayawardana of the opposition United National Party. "The human rights situation in Sri Lanka is deteriorating day by day and there is no rule of law in this country," he told me at his office in Colombo. "Jungle law is prevailing... Without the protection or blessings of the government in power or the security forces these type of things cannot take place," he said. And recent days have seen some unexpectedly revealing remarks from within the government. An unnamed senior police officer in Colombo told a Sinhala-language newspaper that, as a precaution against possible street protests, "we have arranged to bring tear gas, and we have plenty of white vans in Sri Lanka". And a cabinet minister, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, told the same paper: "The government should answer for this [missing people]. They can't say we don't know about it." He said the military was getting excessively involved in civil affairs, stopping the country from being democratic and inviting international criticism. Unusually, last Saturday a man publicly said he had foiled an attempt to abduct him - just weeks after his own brother disappeared. With the help of a crowd the intended victim, the mayor of a Colombo suburb, Ravindra Udayashantha, confronted the would-be abductors who were in a white van. They were soldiers. The military denied plans to kidnap anyone. Whatever the facts behind that incident, the rule of law is being flouted in Sri Lanka and disappearances are continuing. |
A major redevelopment of an Oxfordshire town centre has begun. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
The £70m project will see new shops, restaurants, a cinema and a supermarket built in Bicester, along with new bus lay-bys and improved parking. The work will be done in three phases and is due to be completed in early 2012. Cherwell Councillor Norman Bolster said he hoped it would improve business for existing retailers by attracting more customers. "The new seven-screen cinema will also provide more entertainment and hopefully improve the night economy," he added. Ben Jackson, chairman of the Bicester and District Chamber of Trade, said it was "vitally important" to improve the infrastructure in Bicester. "We lack a theatre, we lack a cinema, we lack a decent-sized library. This all needs to be redressed as the town grows," he added. |
Scandals lead to inquiries and to recommendations - leading to a focus on filling in forms and ticking the right boxes. But in this week's Scrubbing Up Sue Bailey, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, says it's time to listen to those receiving the care. | You are an expert at summarizing long articles. Proceed to summarize the following text:
By Prof Sue BaileyPresident, Royal College of Psychiatrists Why do care standards break down? We've all read heartbreaking stories of elderly people with dementia or patients with learning difficulties being neglected, mistreated and abused. When things go wrong, inquiries are set up, reports are published and lessons learnt. Think Winterbourne View; Mid-Staffordshire; childcare in Rochdale, or the Carlisle Report. At heart, the recommendations boil down to improving communication, listening, learning and acting. It means taking notice of what patients and service users have to say. Blame culture But when trying to deliver the right kind of care, the health service often addresses regulation, standard setting, inspection and monitoring. This approach aims to improve scrutiny and accountability, which most people would agree is a "good thing". But there is a risk that a constant focus on targets, procedures and performance can lead to a tick box approach to healthcare. This usually ends up placing more controls on healthcare workers, greater monitoring and prescriptive procedures. Unfortunately, this is often at the expense of professional judgement, leading to dissatisfied and demoralised staff - with the all important relationship between the patient and healthcare worker forgotten. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be held to account for their actions, but the present blame culture doesn't help anyone. Healthcare is, or should be, a moral as well as a practical undertaking. It deals with uncertainty in which mistakes are inevitable - but this isn't a message anyone wants to hear. Positive change won't happen if we continue to exist in a risk-averse bubble. As Professor Eileen Munro of the London School of Economics put it recently, defensive care practice doesn't avoid risk, it simply displaces it - usually onto those using the services. Time sensitive What is needed is something in very short supply in the health service - time. It takes time to develop expertise and build relationships based on intelligent kindness, not just technical skills. It takes time to build critical reasoning skills and provide effective supervision. It takes time to allow staff doing a difficult and stressful job to reflect, offload and be mentored by those with more experience. In an era of unprecedented NHS reform, how can we find the time? I believe we need a greater focus on helping the workforce develop the skills, knowledge and personal qualities required to meet care needs, support new staff more and improve opportunities for career progression Workforce development takes time and money, but it is an investment that could support safer and better care, and mutual respect between patient and carer or doctor. Old fashioned? Don't get me wrong; improved processes can help, too. We need data in healthcare but what we want and need are useful, practical tools that help learning and improve care. This learning should involve ongoing feedback from patients, which is acted on by people like me. What's the bottom line? A health service in which the treatment and care of people - not systems and processes - are at the heart of what we do. Does that seem terribly old fashioned? It sounds an awful lot like what I came into medicine for 40-odd years ago, but which I have seen start to drift away. I will be accused of being simple minded, but a just culture should replace a blame culture. This will require a major shift in approach towards positive risk taking and being open and honest with ourselves and with our patients that not everything can be "cured". It's not too late, but policy makers will have to be brave to think and act in the long term. But is anybody listening? |
Subsets and Splits